‘Yes! Exactly! Why can’t you just let me be?’
He is so on edge that it is difficult for Cataldo not to let himself be infected with his anxiety. But one quick look makes the academic stop in his tracks, brings him back to the minimum of politeness: ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers.
‘Don’t worry. But tell me, why are you so wound up?’
‘I’m not wound up…’
‘What are you afraid of, then?’
‘Who, me?’
Because fear is easy to read, in so many small signs: the trembling fingers, the tension rising in the voice. And the way he holds his gaze, with an air of challenge and defiant patience. He will relax in a moment.
‘Good for you.’
He goes into the living room and looks around. ‘Are you on your own?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘No reason.’
Cataldo smiles now. And before the other man can ask him why, he carries on speaking, but his voice is different now – calm, peaceful.
‘Sometimes an object enters into your life and it just doesn’t want to leave it… remember I told you that?’
‘Yes… I think so.’
‘Well… for me it’s a photograph. The same one.’ He looks at Ramondini again, smiles again. ‘Understand now? I’d like to see those photographs, the ones we looked at yesterday. Just for a moment, to be sure of something.’
He is amazed. ‘Is that all?’
Cataldo nods. ‘Could you get them, please?’
He walks away and comes back with the old-fashioned album in its floral cover. Cataldo picks it up, opens it, but patiently because he already knows what he is looking for. It is just the one photograph that interests him and he finds it immediately – towards the end. So he stops turning the pages and hands the open album to the other man.
‘This one.’
Ramondini looks at it, his eyes wide open… curious. Then he starts looking more closely. For a moment it is as though he is trying to understand something very important, some great mystery of life. Then his expression opens and Cataldo understands that Ramondini has realized who the killer is, now knows the name of the person who entered that dark, evil place with Zoboli.
He takes back the album, pulls the photograph from the cellophane pocket, and places the album on the table.
‘May I?’
‘Sorry? Oh… yes, of course.’
Then Cataldo sighs, tapping his index finger on the photo.
‘I should have realized yesterday,’ he says, sombre. Because out of disorder there has come harmony. It is clear now, now he knows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The truth
He seems lost now, confused. All his authority has vanished, and this happened even before Cataldo pulled the photograph out.
‘It’s all over.’ And after a moment’s pause: ‘You do realize, don’t you, why I’ve come?’
He says nothing. He really is lost in some far off world.
So Cataldo shows him the photograph, the one he took from Ramondini. He does not even look at it, but all of a sudden, he responds: ‘They told me you were good at your job.’
Cataldo keeps his guard up: ‘I simply used my eyes. Tried to be objective.’
Who said that in life everything happens in a moment, and that a photograph can take that moment and make it eternal? That is exactly what has happened here. And there is a destiny tied to this photograph.
He is motionless there in front of him, and the light on the desk illuminates the upper part of his face, leaving his chin and his mouth in shadow. A muscle near the outer corner of his left eye contracts spasmodically.
Cataldo is relentless, handing him the photo. And perhaps, who knows, he will remember for a long time the sight of those screwed up eyes, trying to focus, and the big hand. And then his own voice: ‘You see, everything has a story to tell. A letter… even a photograph, can be misinterpreted, but they never lie. It’s human beings who do that.’ He stares at him, changes his tone, ‘Just as you’ve done.’
The other man nods, surrenders. No resistance. And he looks at Cataldo through his tired eyes.
‘You knew I wouldn’t deny the truth. Yes, you knew,’ he says quietly, his voice full of fatigue. Now he looks beyond Cataldo, without seeing anything. Not even the oak bookshelves with their attractive inlaid decoration, the ivory bindings of the books. He is trapped in the tension.
Now Cataldo looks at the photo too. The killer is face to face with Ramondini in the picture, as they raise their glasses in a toast, perhaps the last one of the evening because there is a waiter already clearing the table…
‘There’s a clock on the wall… it’s clearer in other photos. See? It’s very small here, almost in the corner,’ adds Cataldo. ‘If the photographer had moved just a little it would have disappeared. I only mention that because I’m sure if it’s enlarged properly we’ll be able to read the time. But that’s not important… the clock doesn’t matter. The waiter was enough to make me realize…’
The other man lowers his head and Cataldo continues, ‘that you weren’t the first to leave, to get ready for the next day’s conference on Rebora. Sometimes you don’t need answers, you just have to ask yourself the right questions. Then the answers come along by themselves.’
He swallows, takes a deep breath, then adds: ‘So I asked myself why you might lie about this… and with such detail. There was no apparent reason for it. But often what logically appears irrational leads straight to the truth.’
Now Cataldo’s voice is cold, cutting. Merciless.
‘You killed Nunzio for this photo. For nothing.’
Don Lodi lifts his eyes, and it seems to cost him an incredible effort. And when he speaks his voice is unrecognizable.
‘I realized almost immediately… after I told you… that I shouldn’t have been so precise about the time, because I remembered Nunzio and his magazine. So I checked in the library…’
‘Where?’
‘Not here. In Modena.’
‘At the Estense?’
‘Yes…’
‘Ah… carry on.’
‘I saw the photograph…’
‘And you took it.’
‘Yes.’ He hesitates before adding, ‘With a razor blade. There’s never much surveillance in the private study room…’
‘Reserved for scholars, eh? And then?’
‘Then I had to destroy the other photo that certainly existed, the one here in Guiglia…’
For a moment Cataldo’s voice quavers, ‘And to think that it was my fault too… I’d spoken to Nunzio about it.’
‘You only mentioned it, but I realized that you were going to go and look for it, so I had to get there before you…’ He pauses anxiously. ‘But I didn’t want to kill him… no, not him. I only wanted the photograph.’
‘Go on.’
‘Then I saw the paperweight, on the table, near the open book, the issues of Guiglia Oggi… I only wanted to steal the photo, to tear it out of the page without killing anyone… that was how I wanted to make it disappear and no one would have known how long it had been missing… or perhaps they’d never have found out… but that wasn’t possible anymore. And then I saw the paperweight… the paperweight. The thought came to me that people would think the crime wasn’t premeditated… I didn’t know you were on your way.’
‘I should have realized last night,’ Cataldo grumbles.
‘How?’ asks the priest. But he is so tired it is obvious he has no real interest in the answer.
‘From a mistake that you made. When you mentioned that wart on his nose. Nunzio didn’t have a wart, he’d never had one. In the half-light of the tourist office you mistook a match burn for a wart – Nunzio had a small accident on Wednesday morning. Nothing wrong with that, but you couldn’t have seen him a year ago, as you claimed, with that sore on his nose, it must have been a few days ago at the most. And we both know precisely which day you saw him…’
He looks at Cataldo, almost as though implor
ing him: ‘There is… there has to be a dark side to every man in which his will is almost impotent. You must believe me… there’s something inside him that a man’s will just cannot control…’
Cataldo stops him with a gesture: ‘Let’s forget the dark side of man. Tell me what happened that night eighteen years ago. I think it’s about time.’
Don Lodi points to himself in the photograph, very different from how he is now – an exhausted old man.
‘I remember there was one last toast. I said goodbye to Ramondini at almost midnight. And then I got in the car with Zoboli. He’d come back, he’d started drinking again and he was so drunk I felt sorry for him. He had ruined the evening for everyone with all his envy. And that stupid woman Miriam wasn’t around when he really needed her…’
He coughs, turns red in the face, and when he starts again his voice is hoarser. ‘I couldn’t let him leave in that state. So I drove. But I was on edge, worried… perhaps I was driving too fast, I don’t know… and it was raining and at the Torre bend we met the Mercedes, and it went off the road.’
He has said all this in one single breath and now he swallows.
‘And then?’
‘I turned the car round and went back. I should have recognized the driver, but I didn’t… all that blood. There was blood everywhere – on his face, his neck – his head had smashed against the windscreen. But he was still alive. Perhaps we could have done something…’
‘But then you saw the money.’
‘Yes. Lots of it all over the back seat – the suitcase had sprung open. We stood there staring, looking at him and then we looked each other in the eye… I’ve always thought that at that moment Zoboli had suddenly sobered up, that he was suddenly back with us…’
‘So then what did you do?’
‘Nothing. We just stood there in the cold for ages, while he struggled for breath, moaning, more and more quietly, his eyes closed. Just towards the end I think he opened them, looked at me, but maybe it was just nerves… then we realized he was dead.’
‘Just a minute. Let me get this straight. You stood there side by side watching him die?’
He has spoken quietly, calmly, but inside there is a repressed anger that gives his words remarkable force. The other man nods.
‘But it wasn’t our fault, it was just fate… pure chance. If Giulio hadn’t been drinking, if we hadn’t taken that road…’
He is about to say that we create our own fate, but then he thinks better of it. What does it matter now anyway?
‘And then?’
‘We just took the money in the dark, without saying a word. And we agreed we wouldn’t spend it for a while, until things had calmed down. We didn’t even know there had been two of them in the car. And when we did find out, it was too late…’
‘It wasn’t too late.’
Cataldo’s voice, even though controlled, expresses his anger: ‘There was a young man doing time. But forget that, just carry on… or shall I do it? Once the trial was over, Zoboli got married and bought the villa… and you? You tell me, because I’d like to understand…’
‘I gave up teaching to set up the publishing house. Then the Foundation… my dream come true.’ He nods now, as though speaking to himself. ‘Yes, that’s how it was. Everyone needs dreams. To give up on your dreams means you never grow up… often it’s just another way of dying…’
Cataldo’s gaze becomes severe as the priest continues monotonously: ‘That’s where the difference is. Ordinary people have careers, make money, nurture mediocre loves… but they never have the courage to take their own dreams seriously.’
‘These aren’t dreams, Don Lodi. These are ambitions! And ambition isn’t love for your fellow man, it’s self-love… egotism. That’s what it is.’ And he stares into Don Lodi’s eyes severely and the other man holds his gaze for a moment, then turns his head to the floor, to an imaginary point by his feet. ‘Ambition is a cancer. If it grows, it dominates your will and then it destroys you.’
Don Lodi continues speaking, almost as if he has not heard. ‘It was my dream, yes. My life’s dream. A man is alive for as long as his dreams are alive.’ And he turns to Cataldo: ‘Do you have a dream?’
‘Yes. To be a normal person. Capable of sympathizing with other people’s pain. But then I realize, as I do now, just how inadequate we all are in life, and in death too.’
There is a deep silence now, and Cataldo respects it. He has looked at his watch just once since they started, but decided that Petronio can wait. Because there is still something he would like to know, and perhaps it will come now as the priest starts talking again.
‘Eighteen years ago I really believed. You watch a man die, you wait until he exists no more. He has become a thing. Nothing. He exists no longer, not even his mind… I really did believe it. I thought that the years would have diluted all the turmoil into some sort of detachment, that the memory would eventually be free of remorse…’ He stops, lifts a hand to his shirt collar: ‘I thought the memory of that night would have hovered for a while near that black hole into which everything disappears suddenly, painlessly, creating the illusion of a time in which we never existed.’ His breathing is strange now, almost asthmatic, but he continues: ‘I believed this. But no. It’s not easy to exorcize remorse… or to make a compromise with guilt. Because you can’t change what you’ve done, and even if you try there’s always something that will carry you back again. Because the anguish returned with Marchisio’s arrival. And I had to do it. I killed Zoboli first, at his house.’
‘Why?’
‘He’d called me. He wanted to settle things with Marchisio, who’d been to see him. I didn’t know what to do, but I took my pistol. Then Zoboli pulled his pistol out to show it to me, he’d already made up his mind about what to do. So then I made mine up.’
‘The same type of gun…’
‘Identical. He’d copied me. I bought mine first… a long time ago.’
‘Alright, alright. But why in his right temple?’
‘It was a sudden idea that came to me. It might make them think it was a stranger… that’s why I shot him there.’
Cataldo nods. ‘But that’s exactly what made me suspicious. No one commits a crime that goes against their character. And there was an intelligence behind this crime. A criminal mind. Just like yours.’
He pulls a cigarette out of his packet, but he does not light it.
‘Do you remember when I told you that the perfect crime doesn’t exist? Even you made a mistake… three in fact.’
The other man looks at him, but with no curiosity.
‘First, when someone shoots himself the direction taken by the bullet is usually upwards, not downward. Second, on the hand that pulls the trigger there are always traces of smoke or powder, and there was neither on Zoboli’s. Third, you should have realized that the microscope analysis would show categorically that Zoboli’s Beretta hadn’t fired the bullet into his head.’
‘I thought everyone would immediately think it had been suicide.’
‘And that the enquiry would stop there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now I know what you did then. You put on a pair of gloves, you took Zoboli’s pistol, with his prints on it, and you placed it close to his head, after having fired a shot from it. Am I right?’
‘Yes, out the window at the back, towards the countryside… I took my pistol with me.’
‘And then you used it again. On Zanetti.’ He looks at him now as he pulls out his lighter and adds, ‘Zanetti… why?’
‘Can’t you guess?’ He smiles slightly, bitterly.
He is right, it is not difficult to guess: ‘Blackmail?’
Athos Lodi speaks even more slowly now, with concentration. Is it repentance, or is it just undone pride?
‘Zanetti, a long time after the event, remembered what really happened. Zoboli had left with Miriam, but then came back on his own. He left with me, at the end of the evening. Idiot… all he was good for was sel
ling one apartment a year.’
Cataldo wants to laugh, but all that comes is a strange, suffocated sound.
‘But he managed to remember me almost twenty years after that night…’ he says bitterly. ‘He phoned me the day before yesterday, while everyone was here…’
‘Then you cleaned the pistol and planted it in Marchisio’s room. You must have done that last night, while he was eating, since you knew that he planned to leave today.’
‘I had no choice. At that stage…’
‘But even there I got suspicious, when we found the pistol with no prints. It’s called the utility of anomalies, just as they taught us in police college. Think about it. Someone kills two people with a gun, but he doesn’t throw it away, he actually cleans it and puts it away in his wardrobe… but why if he’d already completed his act of revenge? And so that was a help, too, in understanding what happened.
‘And then there was another thing, last night,’ Cataldo continues, calmly. ‘When you said that there are things we have no right to judge… and then you added… what was it you said? Ah…. yes, “I was telling him just before…” and you were referring to Marchisio, who was sitting here. Remember? You gave me the impression that he had come to confession, looking for some sort of absolution from you… but that couldn’t have been the reason for his visit. Marchisio never thought of himself, not even indirectly, as some sort of avenger. You wanted to raise this suspicion, channelling my thoughts in his direction.’
Looking at him now, it seems impossible to imagine that this tired old man, stripped of his charisma, has killed, and killed again, with a perverse consistency, with a precise wilfulness. The will to eliminate, to silence. And Cataldo almost wants to ask him if the money has brought him the good life he had dreamed of. If the publishing house and the Foundation and all the rest were really worth that much to him. But there is no time for all this, he has to tell him to stand up. Because it is all over.
‘It’s funny, though,’ he whispers, ‘that it was a photograph that made you realize.’
‘Evidence. Today we’ll be doing the stub test.’
‘What’s that?’ There is a vague look of worry in his eyes.
Inspector Cataldo's Criminal Summer Page 18
