River of Shadows: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 1)

by Valerio Varesi

  “I was late because I had to question the men at the boat club. Today I went to the barge where I found a note that said something about a partisan. Perhaps that’s the key to understanding the motive, but it’s all very puzzling.”

  “I’ve never been on board a barge. Anyway, if you’re in your office tomorrow, I’ll see you there.”

  “Will you be defending anyone I caught?”

  “No, calm down. It’s a small-time dealer picked up by the drugs squad.”

  “Just as well.”

  “Pity. I’d have made you squirm,” she said, mischief in her voice.

  As soon as Angela was gone, he dialled Juvara’s number.

  “At long last!” the ispettore exclaimed. “I was about to send a search party along the Po.”

  Soneri peered into the mist which made it impossible for him to put on any speed. He was afraid he had completely lost his way, not only on the road but in the investigation he was leading. The sensation was heightened as he listened to the words of his assistant: “Nanetti and Alemanni were both looking for you. Nanetti says he has further results from the analysis of the blood found on the windowpane. It doesn’t belong to anyone in the ward.”

  “And Alemanni?”

  “I think he was after you for the same reason.”

  He felt his stomach tighten with the unpleasant sensation of having got it all wrong. He had set off along the Po searching for the ghosts of times past and for a missing man, while in the city that man’s brother had unquestionably been a murder victim. “Did you tell them where I was?”

  “Yes,” Juvara said, with a tremble in his voice.

  That tone told him all he needed to know and was in its own way more eloquent than any reproach. He had no wish to go on with the conversation. In annoyance, he pressed the accelerator, but then had to step smartly on the brake when the rear lights of a car suddenly loomed out of the darkness ahead of him.

  When he got home, he chose to remain in the half dark in his kitchen, smoking his last cigar, his elbows on the table. Before he fell asleep, with the taste of the Fortanina still in his mouth, he remembered that this was the position often assumed by his father.

  Alemanni did not detain him for more than a quarter of an hour. He informed him of the outcome of the tests on the broken window with a degree of pedantry worthy of an infant school teacher, which irritated Soneri, but he refrained at least from making comments on the conduct of the investigation. For his part, Soneri made no reference to the magistrate’s earlier scepticism, but on the telephone Nanetti had set out in detail his impressions. The man must have been at least unconscious before being ejected from the window. There was no sign on the windowsill or on the radiator of any struggle, nor were there any fingerprints, a clear indication that he had not grabbed hold of anything or been able to resist. The only sign of any struggle was the indentation on the steel cabinet where there was the imprint of the rubber sole of one of Decimo’s shoes. Furthermore, no-one had heard the thud, nor had they noted any unusual coming or going. Soneri was curious about the way the killer had struck the blow and how he had stunned his victim. Everything had gone smoothly until the impact with the windowpane and the sound of breaking glass. Then the escape through the ordinary hospital exit. The murderer was plainly a cold-blooded individual, so much so that he had moved off without conspicuous rush, merging in with patients and visitors.

  “Juvara!” he yelled.

  The ispettore arrived as the secretaries were putting forms in front of him for his signature.

  “Interrogate the patients and the nurses in the wards frequented by Decimo Tonna,” he said without raising his eyes from the clerical assistant’s index finger as she showed him where his initials were to go. “I want to know all his movements in the last fortnight and anything he was talking about.”

  He was now in the grip of an unhealthy frenzy, and only somewhat later, in the peace of the half-deserted Milord, behind the smoke screen of his own cigar, calmed by the prospect of a plate of tortelli stuffed with herbs and ricotta, did he come to recognize that his anxiety was the product of curiosity aroused on the banks of the Po and capable of being satisfied only there. He brought to mind the faces of Barigazzi and the others, with that slightly contemptuous look they had. He was already aware of a pressing urge to return when his mobile rang. He hated having it ring in the middle of a meal, but he had forgotten to turn it off. The few other diners, hearing the strained tones of “Aida”, turned in mild irritation in his direction. He uttered a peremptory “Hello” to silence it.

  “Commissario, I’m in a consulting room at the hospital,” Juvara stuttered.

  “Have you broken your leg?” Soneri said, finding Juvara’s preambles more and more tiresome.

  “No, but the nurses on duty are telling me something I can’t make sense of …”

  “What can you not make sense of?” he said, stuffing a whole tortello into his mouth.

  “They say that recently Decimo was extremely nervous and would stare suspiciously at everyone who turned up, and that once they saw him rush off when he noticed someone or other walk down the corridor.”

  “Did you get any idea who that person might have been?”

  “No, nobody remembers. It was only a brief appearance.”

  Juvara’s account had distracted his attention from the tortelli, and when he turned back to it, the dish had gone cold. He could not bear butter and cheese once they formed into lumps and lost the warmth of soul acquired in the oven.

  Alceste stared at the plate as though he had espied a beetle on it. “It’s what I always say. The sound of the mobile telephone turns good ricotta bad,” was all he said.

  By this time, Soneri was in a state of agitation. Juvara’s report had created for him such a mêlée of competing scenarios that he could have been in a puppeteer’s workshop. So as not to give way to mere conjecture, he got up and made his way to the hospital. He found the ispettore perched on a high stool in the canteen.

  “When you get down from your roost, they’ll take you straight off to the treatment room and case you in plaster,” Soneri said, mildly mocking the ispettore’s less than agile figure.

  “I’ve been here all morning,” Juvara said, “and I haven’t broken a single bone yet. But something or someone is breaking my balls.”

  “It goes with the job. Who else could I annoy if I want to find out about the worries of the townee Tonna?”

  “The sister’s name is Luisa. She finishes her shift at two.”

  She was a pleasant woman, solid inside and out. “Was what I told your colleague not enough?” she said with a laugh.

  She had received him in the off-duty room, where the odour of disinfectant hung heavy in the air.

  “Did he seem anxious recently?”

  The sister stared at him a few moments before replying.

  “I would have said so, yes.”

  “What gave you that impression?”

  “Normally,” she said, “he stayed the whole morning but in the last couple of days he came and went as though in a state of distress. He spoke less than ever.”

  “Did you form any idea of what was on his mind?”

  “I asked around. They told me there was some anniversary, some date looming, but they didn’t know what it was for. Not even if that was what was bothering him.”

  “They didn’t tell you anything else?”

  “No,” the sister said, “I would have preferred to go into it a bit more deeply, but the man who knew most about it died a few days ago.”

  “Was there any explanation of all that popping in and out several times a day?”

  She stretched out her arms. “He would go away then come back. I don’t know why. I got the impression he felt someone was pursuing him and that he was keeping on the move all the time so as not to be caught up with.”

  “Whereas normally, how did he behave?”

  “He was much more calm. They’ll have told you that he would stay here until t
he last patient had left, and sometimes he even waited till we were all leaving the consulting rooms and he would go out with us. We would often find him in the waiting room reading magazines, and it would take the cleaning ladies to persuade him it was time to go. The nursing staff thought of him as one of the family.”

  “What did he talk to the patients about?”

  “He comforted them, he listened to them and at times took a real interest in them, taking advantage of the fact that the doctors all knew him. There are a lot of elderly folk who come here and they never have anyone to talk to, but with Signor Tonna they were quite at ease.”

  “You say he had an anniversary coming up?”

  “So it seems, but it might not have had anything to do with him.”

  As he took his leave of the sister, the commissario remembered Sartori. He walked along the wards in the direction of the nephrology unit, where he found the man he was looking for half asleep, needles in his arm and the machine buzzing. He appeared even more yellowish and wizened than before, but he turned a tired smile on Soneri.

  “Any news?” he said, opening his eyes wide.

  “Your friend Decimo didn’t throw himself from the window. He was pushed.”

  Sartori, although plainly moved by the news, did not stir. He lay there in silence, staring at the ceiling.

  “Is it true that he’s been highly agitated recently? I mean in the last few days,” the commissario said, in an attempt to rouse Sartori from his silence.

  He watched as the old man moved his head very slightly in a sign of assent. Then, just as Soneri had resigned himself to not receiving an answer, he made out a feeble voice. “Forgive me, but I am deeply troubled.”

  “Did you know that there was some anniversary coming up for him?”

  “He had spoken to me about it, but when I tried to discover more, he found a way, as he always did, of avoiding giving an answer to my questions. He was like that. If he didn’t speak of his own accord, there was no way of getting anything out of him.”

  “What did he tell you about this anniversary?”

  “It was plainly not something he was looking forward to. He referred to it with fear. All he told me was that he had received a letter.”

  “From whom?”

  “I don’t know. I do know that it had shaken him to the core. He became gloomy. The last time I set eyes on him, he asked if I had noticed any new faces around the ward. I told him that in addition to us long-term cases, there were always new faces in a hospital. I was joking, but he took it the wrong way. He didn’t say anything, he went and sat beside the exit, where he could see anyone coming down the corridor.”

  The following day, Tonna had been defenestrated from the General Medical section on the third floor. Everything pointed to the likelihood that someone, perhaps the murderer, had been tailing him from department to department. Soneri was lost in his own train of thought, heedless of Sartori stretched out on his bed, and when he turned back to him, he found he had drifted off to sleep. He got out of the room just in time to avoid waking him with the triumphal march from “Aida”.

  “You still away fishing?” Nanetti began.

  “You caught me on the hop with that news about the townee Tonna.”

  “So you’re feeling pleased with yourself? What kind of face did Alemanni make?”

  “He wanted to bawl me out for having gone searching for the river Tonna, but he had to hold back in case I had something up my sleeve.”

  “You missed your chance. Never let him get away with a single thing. Anyway, there’s something new about the brother who fell out the window.”

  “What?”

  “You remember the dent on the cupboard? Well, I can confirm that it came from one of Tonna’s shoes, but it wasn’t a strong blow. The steel is only a couple of millimetres thick, so it doesn’t take much to leave a mark. Then the wound on the head. The doctor said it was caused by a heavy object, such as a club, but one with a pointed tip. More likely, something metal. Between the blow and the fall from the window, no more than two or three seconds elapsed, which is why there was no blood of Tonna’s on the floor or on the windowsill.”

  “He was being hunted,” Soneri said, translating his thoughts into words. “Someone had been following him from department to department. Someone who was very smart and discreet, who managed to remain unobserved by everyone. Perhaps the same person who had delivered to him a letter capable of unnerving him.”

  “That’s your business, Commissario,” Nanetti cut in.

  A short time later, Soneri dialled Juvara’s number. “Have you got Decimo’s file to hand? Look up when he was born. Check his brother’s dates as well.” He heard the ispettore’s keyboard click. Juvara’s silence was eloquent testimony to his astonishment over the request. “In your opinion, was there some anniversary of Decimo’s which could fall on one of the days leading up to his death?”

  Juvara sighed, a sign that he had finally understood. “It’s not his birthday, that’s in September. Not the boatman’s either. His is in June.”

  “I wish we knew what he was talking about …” the commissario muttered.

  “The ward sister was able to report only one thing Tonna had said one of the last times he ate in the department, but she had no idea what he was referring to.”

  “What did he say?”

  “They were talking about his health, about how he was the healthy one among all those sick people, but for some reason he took it the wrong way, got all upset, started mumbling that perhaps he would soon be going to ‘the angels’. The sister said they all burst out laughing, but later, when she thought about it again, she couldn’t make head nor tail of what he had been on about. Was it that all of our lives hang by a thread? Or something else?”

  “And that’s the only detail she can remember?”

  “That’s what stuck in her mind. There must be some reason, mustn’t there?”

  Soneri said nothing for a few moments. “Has Decimo’s apartment been sealed off ?”

  “Yes, but if you want to get in, all you have to do is advise the magistrate.”

  Decimo Tonna had lived in a block of flats with a faded facade not too far from the hospital. Two rooms and a bathroom, and the all-pervasive smell of rotting food. The coffee pot had been left on the cooker, and the rooms were in a state of some disorder as though Decimo had had to rush off for an appointment. In the bedroom, Soneri’s attention was drawn to the photograph of an elderly couple who must have been his parents and of a young woman, perhaps his niece. On the sideboard stood a picture of him as a young man, in a black shirt.

  Soneri opened the drawers and started to go through them. One was filled with bills arranged year by year in an elastic band. The second contained pension documents, medical certificates and receipts. The apartment gave off the idea of a life lived barely above subsistence level. And the objects in the apartment, even if conserved with great care, were shabby. The mirrors, grown dark with age, the discoloured table covers, the threadbare curtains and the damp corners of the walls which were now the colour of a mountain hare, all spoke of poverty borne with dignity.

  As he was going through the wardrobe, in which he found pairs of knickerbockers and a black shirt, the ringing of his mobile startled him. He ignored it for a while before answering.

  “So whose house have you broken into this time?” Angela wanted to know, picking up on the absence of background noise.

  “I’m engaged on a house search.”

  “More likely you’re searching up the skirt of some lady, one of those who adore uniforms and men of action.”

  “I do not have a uniform, nor do I have any love of action.”

  “There’s no doubting that, and no-one knows it better than I do.”

  “I’m in the house of Decimo Tonna, and I have not the faintest idea what I’m looking for.”

  “What a coincidence! I’m right downstairs!”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “I’ve
always been able to get round Juvara. Anyway, I’m coming up to join you.”

  The news caused him no little anxiety, in part caused by the fear of breaking regulations and in part by the arousal of desire. When Angela appeared before him a few moments later, it was the second which prevailed, and overwhelmingly. She tossed her coat on to a chair with studied nonchalance, approached Soneri and took hold of his collar. In her face, the commissario saw the same excitement which he too felt as he came into contact with his partner’s body.

  “Where?” he said, his imagination telling him where it would all end.

  “In the living room. I don’t trust sheets that other people have slept in,” she said, casting a glance at the bed in the room they were in.

  Soneri got to his feet feeling a little bruised. The excitement had passed, leaving him so relaxed and yielding that it required an effort to recapture the thoughts that had been in his mind before Angela made her appearance. It was she who brought him back to the investigation once they had their clothes on again, “Have you really no idea what you’re looking for?”

  “No,” he said, combing his hair. “Maybe a letter containing some kind of threat.”

  “A recent threat?”

  “I believe so, judging from Decimo’s anxiety in his last couple of days.”

  Together they went over every piece of paper in the sideboard. They searched the clothes which seemed to have been worn in the recent past, examined a dressing gown left hanging behind the bedroom door, but they failed to turn up anything of any interest. They went back to the living room and it occurred to Soneri that if Alemanni had had any idea he was in Decimo’s house with a woman, he would have mobilized every policeman in the city.

  “There’s nothing here,” he said with unconcealed irritation, sticking the burned-out cigar back in his mouth.

  “Either there’s nothing here or else the thing we are looking for has been left in such an obvious place that it hasn’t occurred to us to look there,” Angela said.