by John Harris
Caporelli seemed to have recovered his good humour a little, however, though there was a current of anxiety and bitterness running through everything he said, and they were distantly polite with each other.
They drove to the slopes above the top of the dam and stared across the grey sheet of water to the spires of the Catena di Saga and La Spiga just behind, blurred by the mist. All they could hear in the breeze was the music of the pines and the rush of the feeder streams roaring into the lake in great gouts that thundered over the rocks in their dash to find a level. The rain was still falling in an unrelieved deluge and they could smell more of it in the rinsed air, and see it in the grey-blue light. There was still plenty to come, Henry could see. It didn’t need a meteorologist to tell him that. The chill damp air and the ruffled grey water stirred by the squally wind, and the cloud rolling round the base of La Spiga, were more than enough.
‘The water’s risen,’ Caporelli said at once, staring along the shore where an unexpected heron was fishing disinterestedly among the rocks.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Henry observed. ‘The feeders are probably pouring in three million gallons with every hour it goes on.’
He gestured at the streams running into the lake which had become waterfalls overnight, bursting over the crags in great foaming cascades that were atomized by the breeze into clouds of spray.
‘They weren’t like that last time we saw them,’ he said.
They climbed out of the car and examined the sluice gates again in a mood of desperate optimism, as though they half hoped that somehow, miraculously, during the night, the rusted machinery had freed itself. But they were still jammed with the rubbish of years and would have taken an army of men to clear them, and the reddened iron was as solid as it had ever been.
On the way down, they called at Dieter Oswino’s farm. Oswino’s wife was standing in the kitchen, underneath the calendar of St Stephen’s in Vienna. She had an old mackintosh over her shoulders like a cape, and her feet were in rubber boots. There was a sullen look of rebellion on her face.
‘It’s dangerous,’ Oswino said flatly in answer to Caporelli’s questioning. There was a surly suspicious look in his eyes and he gestured angrily with a brown knotted hand. ‘I called at the Municipio when I was in town yesterday. It’s rising all the time. I’ve told them before but nothing’s ever been done. We keep getting rats round the farm from up there. They’ve been driven out by the flood, and I’m always having to shoot them. And the path keeps getting washed away with the water that’s leaking out of it.’
When they got back to Cadivescovo, Caporelli drove at once to the Municipio. Major Mornaghini was in his office, his face worried.
‘I’ve been up there,’ he said defensively, retreating under Caporelli’s immediate attack. ‘At dawn. We tried to remove the gratings, but you couldn’t move them. They’re not only jammed with rubbish, they’re rusted solid.’
‘You could blow out the gate on the stopper wall,’ Caporelli suggested fiercely.
Mornaghini gestured quickly, nervously. ‘That’s no good,’ he said. ‘We’ve been into all that and you know it won’t work. We’re not allowed to. I’m going to get some men up there to dig a spillway.’
‘You can’t do it,’ Henry pointed out quietly. ‘There’s too much rock. You’ll never be able to take the pressure off. You’ll never get deep enough.’
‘We must try, nevertheless.’
‘When?’ Caporelli demanded.
Mornaghini looked hurt, his lined aristocratic face dull with the weight of the responsibility. ‘It will be done,’ he said. ‘I shall not forget, though I have so many other things to attend to.’
‘What other things?’
‘Part of the Via Colleno’s fallen into the lake and there’s been a landslide near Trepiazze. And I’m in constant demand by the police who wish to have this done or that done. Yesterday I was up at the railway track. They needed my advice. It meant almost a day’s journey. In this weather, too.’
‘The weather won’t stop for you,’ Caporelli said harshly. ‘Or the Montanari!’
‘I am the authority, Signore Caporelli,’ Mornaghini said sharply. ‘Not you. I have to make the decisions. That’s what I’m paid for, and I have to make my decisions in their order of importance. I shall be going up there again this afternoon.’
‘I just hope for your sake,’ Caporelli grated, ‘that the dam doesn’t burst this morning.’
The rain seemed to go on endlessly, without the slightest relief in the downpour, and as he stared at the dripping roofs and the river of water coming down the hill below the rocky headland where the Stettnerhof stood, Henry could just imagine it tearing away the mountain like a powerful shovel as it rushed to its place in the dam.
The bar was full of Dei Monti’s team, who stood by the windows, staring at the rain, suffering from depression and espresso stomachs.
‘Goddam’ weather,’ Henry heard Maggs saying: ‘Does it always do this here?’
He had picked up a shabby tourist guide from a shelf by the counter and was staring at the spine. ‘Colleno, Lake of Beauty,’ he read out. ‘Oh, brother, listen to this – Storms on Lake Colleno are sudden and fierce, with hail and thunder and lightning and drama. But the lifting of the clouds brings unthought-of grandeur to the rock pinnacles around, which become as splendid as an army with banners.’ He glanced at the title page. ‘Stainer. Published 1908. During the Austrian period of occupation. All the photos are here. Same as usual. Arzen mit Festung. That’s Cadivescovo with La Fortezza in Austrian. Trepizano mit Cano. Collenosee mit Sägekette. Like now.’ He touched the cup in front of him. ‘Coffee mit rhum. Stettnerhof mit rain.’
Henry listened to them, his eyes on the streaming windows again and the shrouded mountains beyond. Up there, the streams were filling and pouring into the dam, spreading their threatening loads in the silent dark waters behind that great grey wall that looked so strong and yet was so potentially dangerous.
Maggie didn’t appear during the afternoon and he learned she’d spent it with Dei Monti checking on the missing altar cross. Towards evening, Caporelli, unable to stand it any longer as the rain lashed down, pushed Henry towards the Alfa Romeo and took him down to see Mornaghini again. Henry climbed out of the car still nagged by the feeling of having failed Caporelli but determined not to get himself involved.
Mornaghini was slumped at his desk, trying to work, but his face looked grey and he didn’t seem able to give his mind to it.
‘We tried to start a spillway,’ he said. ‘But we couldn’t get down as far as we wished to go. There was too much rock.’
Caporelli gestured wildly at Henry, who stood by the door watching them. ‘He told you there would be,’ he shouted fiercely. ‘He said so. I heard him. If the water flows over the top of that dam it’ll go.’
‘We got down a metre wide and a metre deep.’
‘Madonna!’ Caporelli flung his arms up. ‘Pathetic! Ridiculous! Puerile! What good will that do?’
Mornaghini looked up, his eyes tragic. ‘We couldn’t get any deeper,’ he said. ‘We tried. We couldn’t hear ourselves speak. The sound of the water drowned our voices.’
Caporelli sneered. ‘So what did you do?’ he demanded.
Mornaghini’s face lit up. ‘We’ve had a telephone line installed,’ he said. ‘I had the engineers go up there at once. They’ll be working now. From Oswino’s instrument direct to my office. If there’s any danger he can telephone us. He can still use his own phone, of course,’ he ended irrelevantly.
Caporelli stared at him. ‘Ha,’ he snorted. ‘That’s nice. He can still use his own phone. He can telephone all his girl-friends and Alois can ring up his wife and make arrangements for a rendezvous!’ He turned and thrust his face at Mornaghini, and beat on his forehead. ‘Great God,’ he stormed, ‘what good does that do?’
Mornaghini pushed back in his chair to escape from the furious face. ‘We shall be warned,’ he said.
‘It won’
t stop Cadivescovo ending up in the lake!’
Mornaghini lost his temper at Caporelli’s bullying with the suddenness of a tired man who felt he had done all in his power. ‘Signor Caporelli,’ he shouted back, ‘I have been in touch with the Provincial Engineer at Trepizano, as I promised! I can’t flood the lake at the Punta dei Fiori! Not without authority! There’d be too many objections from too many sources! I’ve thrown the responsibility on to them!’
Caporelli whirled, his arms spread wide, his eyes blazing, and Henry suspected he was almost enjoying the drama of his appeal. ‘Typical,’ be said. ‘The civil service mind at work. Whirring like a broken clock to produce a result. And what have we got? Give someone else the baby. And what did the Provincial Engineer have to say?’
‘He’s promised to come over and look. He’s asked me to send him a report at once.’
Caporelli’s hands came together with a loud smack just in front of Mornaghini’s nose. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course! What did you expect? A report! More paper! Soon we shall all drown in paper. I have a file of paper on the dam fifty centimetres wide already.’
Mornaghini stood up abruptly and slapped the desk. ‘I have no authority to act on my own,’ he stormed. ‘And the rain can’t go on for ever. It’s June already. We are bound to get a lessening in the weather.’
‘How do you know? Have you had a word with God Himself?’
‘There are forecasts.’
‘And have you read the forecasts?’
Mornaghini calmed down and smiled deprecatingly, as though he found Caporelli’s outbursts tiring. ‘We all know what these valleys can do,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow we might have brilliant sunshine lasting for weeks. That will take the strain off the dam and give us a chance to repair it. A lot can be done in a few weeks, and the summer’s almost here.’
When he got back to the Stettnerhof, Caporelli went straight into his office to ring up some official he knew in Rome. ‘I might be able to do something,’ he said, but he didn’t sound very hopeful.
As he disappeared, Maggie appeared at the foot of the stairs. Her hair was wet, as though she’d been out in the rain.
‘I’ve been to see Sister Ursula,’ she said. ‘She’s very upset. Dei Monti told her he held her and the children responsible for the loss of the cross.’ She looked at Henry for a second, then she burst out angrily. ‘He’d no right to say that,’ she said.
‘Perhaps he didn’t really mean it,’ Henry suggested. ‘He’s probably a bit overwrought like the rest of us.’
‘He’d still no right to say it,’ she insisted. ‘It was cruel and meaningless and unnecessary. Those children had no part in it. They can’t be held responsible. Sister Ursula was wonderful about it, yet she knows that the children were relying on the pocket money to buy things.’
She paused. ‘I went to see him to tell him what I thought,’ she ended.
‘I don’t suppose that did a lot of good,’ Henry said gently.
‘No.’ She sighed. ‘It won’t put things right for Sister Ursula and it won’t give the children their jobs back. Giovanni’s inconsolable. Sister Ursula said that for the first time she’d found him something that made him feel intelligent, something responsible that he needed because he is intelligent. Now he’s sulky again. I think he feels he’s been cheated and that outside the orphanage there are nothing but enemies.’
‘I don’t think Dei Monti would take these things into consideration,’ Henry said. ‘Not just now.’
She shook her head. ‘He said it was my fault, too,’ she whispered. ‘Because I was the one who suggested using the children to wash the things we brought up. I knew that was what he felt.’
‘He’ll probably be round here, tomorrow,’ Henry pointed out quietly. ‘Ready to apologize for it. Give him the chance to see things clearly. He’s a worried man and he’s lashing out at anybody who’s near.’
It was all on television again during the evening. Cadivescovo seemed in the last fortnight or so to have occupied the greater part of the television news programmes and an equal proportion of the columns on the front pages of the newspapers.
They were all there again, all being interviewed, all looking worried and a little bewildered and tired – Dei Monti, Father Anselmo, the Mayor – some saying one thing, some another. There was a rainwashed picture of the archaeological group packing crates and a pen-sketch of the missing cross by Frank Maggs. Maggie watched it with unhappy eyes, no longer a part of it, and when it had finished she insisted on going round to see Sister Ursula again.
‘I must tell her what Dei Monti said,’ she told Henry. ‘I just must.’
‘It’s still raining,’ Henry pointed out. ‘Can’t I take you? I still have Caporelli’s Fiat.’
She shook her head and went off through the dripping trees, small and fragile-looking, no longer in the black clothes she’d affected, no longer wearing the dark glasses, and with her hair pinned up off her shoulders, as though she had suddenly become a normal lay human being again, disinterested in history or archaeology.
Henry almost bumped into Caporelli as he turned away. He seemed always to be standing behind him these days, his eyes accusing.
But this time Caporelli’s face wore a shut-in expression and his mouth was tight. For once there seemed to be no hostility in his eyes.
‘Aynree,’ he said. ‘Come into my office. I want to tell you something.’
Henry stared at him for a second, then he followed him. Caporelli closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock.
‘Did you get your friend in Rome?’ Henry asked.
Caporelli gave a shrug, a bitter hopeless shrug. ‘He wants a report,’ he said. ‘He merely wants to add to the pile of paper we have already.’
‘So you got nowhere?’
‘No.’ Caporelli gestured irritatedly. ‘Look,’ he said, haven’t you noticed anything?’
Henry glanced round.
‘Not here. Outside. In the bar. Dittli’s left.’
Henry glanced at the bar and realized the ski-instructress dish-washer was there behind the counter. Even as he watched her wiping a glass it came apart in her hands and he saw the comic look of dismay on her face.
‘Well, I expect you can get someone else before long,’ he said.
Caporelli shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can get someone else. But do you know why he left?’
Henry stared at him, puzzled, and Caporelli gestured angrily.
‘I had him in my office this afternoon,’ he said, ‘for airing his political views in the dining-room. You heard him. We all know these people have got political views but nobody wants to hear them in a bar. Not from a waiter. Then I remembered he was there that night when we were talking about getting the pentolite from Florence. The night we were both on brandy. And I remembered he was in the hall when I was telling you I’d got it. I didn’t say what I’d got, but he guessed all right.’
Henry studied him, feeling curiously detached and thankful that he wasn’t involved. ‘What did you do?’
‘What could I do?’ Caporelli said. ‘I couldn’t hand him over to the police. Not without questions being asked. I told him he’d better take the boat to Trepizano and disappear quickly before I told Castelrossi. When he’d gone I realized that the last boat had left already and I wondered where he’d go. So! I followed him. He went to Alois’ room.’
‘Alois Stettner? Has he got it?’
Caporelli shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said wearily. ‘He wasn’t there. The door was locked. Yesterday I could have sworn he wasn’t one of the Montanari. Now I’m not so sure.’
‘You don’t think he’s “Hofer”, for God’s sake, do you?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Suddenly I know nothing and yet I know everything, all at the same time. Everything that has happened lately has happened in this valley, and Alois knows the place like the back of his hand.’
‘Does he know anything about explosives?’
‘He did h
is service in the army.’
There was agony in Caporelli’s eyes. He was like a man with a demon on his back and no way of getting rid of it, and Henry began to remember other things.
‘The night the car disappeared,’ he said. ‘He was in Maggie’s room. You remember? You thought it was me. She believed he was after her bag, to get some money. But Alois doesn’t need money that badly, and she keeps the key to the old Customs House in that bag. And they store their explosives down there.’
Caporelli stared, his face hardening, then he struck himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand, and ruffled the papers on his desk in a distracted manner. The naked dilemma of the man was frightening. ‘It all hangs together,’ he said. ‘Dittli and Wasescha up the mountain. Alois’ anger.’ He slapped the desk. ‘Aynree, that time when you were nearly hit by the rock. Could that have been deliberate?’
‘I think it was deliberate. Because I saw Wasescha. He was as mad as a hornet.’
Caporelli shook his head. ‘No, Aynree,’ he said. ‘Alois doesn’t ever get that sort of mad. I think you should go home.’
‘Go home?’
‘I thought you wanted to. If you stay here you are going to get hurt. That was no accident with the rock.’
‘I never thought it was,’ Henry said slowly.
‘You stumbled on the link between them all. You saw Dittli with Wasescha. It’s only now that it begins to make sense. Nobody worried about Alois and Dittli being seen together. That was nothing, but seeing one of them with Wasescha made it dangerous. You’ve got yourself involved in more than we bargained for!’
‘Isn’t there anything we can do? Can’t we tell the police, for God’s sake?’
‘It could mean prison for me if too much comes out. And I can’t go accusing people until I’m certain. I just wish I knew where my box has gone, that’s all. I just wish something would happen.’
‘Do you think something will?’
Caporelli raised his head and stared at Henry, his eyes steady. ‘People like those we saw in the Edelweiss don’t steal pentolite to make fireworks,’ he said.
