by Marco Vichi
That night he indulged in the same fantasy and felt the same emotions as before. He turned into a giant and looked out over the city in darkness, his gaze following the deserted streets, the rows of street lamps along the avenues, pausing to take in the dark spots that were the parks and the gardens hidden in the courtyards of palazzi, trying to identify monuments, piazzas, his own childhood home. Then the moment he was waiting for arrived … From the black sky emerged an enormous hand that stretched over the city and with no effort at all tore the roof off a large villa on the hill of Marignolle. Two fingers reached down and picked one of Giacomo Pellissari’s killers out of his bed and crushed him like a fly. A little red stain was all that remained between its fingertips. Now it was the turn of the fourth, the last, the worst of the lot. Stripping the roof of his villa in Viale Michelangelo, he saw him get up out of bed in terror. He lifted him delicately by one arm, hearing him scream, and after letting him hang in the air for a few moments, he dropped him slowly into the Arno, holding him under water for a few minutes. Then he pulled him back out and tossed him on to the hills of Cintoia, staying to watch the boar fight over his corpse.
After a walk in the woods behind the house, he collapsed into the armchair and started thumbing through La Nazione. In the city crime-news section there was a big headline in block letters: KILLS HUSBAND FOR INHERITANCE. The subhead read: In teary confession, young wife admits to having a lover and setting up murder to look like accident. The article told of the doubts that had arisen from the start, doubts that quickly turned into valid suspicions. They involved a faint mark left on the wall by a small bathroom table, which had apparently been moved from the other side of the sink and placed right beside the bathtub so that the electric shaver, still plugged in, would fall into the water. The wife was questioned at great length until she finally cracked and confessed.
Bordelli closed the newspaper, thinking that it was probably Piras who first noticed the mark left by the table. It was his style to notice small details, starting from the premise that appearances are deceptive and that what looks like an accident may in fact be covering up a murder …
He glanced at the clock: a few minutes after twelve. It was time to ring the SID offices. Agostinelli was in a meeting and called back almost an hour later. Bordelli was cooking and put the phone as close as possible to the stove.
‘You’ll have to forgive me, Franco, but the sky is falling in around here.’
‘You guys must be used to that, no?’
‘It’s a big deal this time … I’m sure you’ll be reading about it shortly in the newspapers.’
‘Now you’ve aroused my curiosity, Pietro …’ said Bordelli, stirring the chopped onions in the skillet with a wooden spoon.
‘I can’t tell you anything.’
‘Nobody’s listening … and if it’s going to be in the papers I’m going to find out anyway.’
‘Forget about it. It’s just the usual Italian rot … What’s that noise in the background?’
‘Nothing, I’m just cooking …’
‘You need a woman, Franco.’
‘We’ll talk about that another time … Have you found anything on those two people?’
‘Nothing special …’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘I won’t read you the whole thing … Rolando Torrigiani left Italy in 1955 and that’s the last anyone’s heard of him. It’s presumed he’s in Brazil, but nothing is certain. And he didn’t leave empty handed. He took along a vast sum of money pilfered from the estates of the Florentine nobility he’d served as administrator.’
‘I’m not sure whether to call him a thief or a hero of the Republic,’ Bordelli said, smiling. With his own tomatoes still in the ground, he was opening a tin of canned tomatoes, holding the telephone between his chin and his shoulder.
‘Actually the money preceded him over there. Before leaving, Torrigiani had transferred it to Brazil with a few skilful banking manoeuvres.’
‘Nobody can touch the Italians in those sorts of things. They’re the best.’
‘A degeneration of the famous art of getting by …’
‘Find anything on the other lawyer?’
‘Hardly anything … He was Torrigiani’s associate, in the shady dealings as well … An aficionado of art and ancient weapons … He died in February of ’63. I’ve got nothing else of interest …’
‘Thanks just the same.’
‘Why did you want this information anyway? I’m a curious man myself, you know …’
‘Tell you what. You tell me what you guys have got cooking up there, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.’
‘I don’t think the two secrets are of equal weight, Franco … But actually you’re right: in a few weeks you’ll find out anyway … But you go first …’
‘No, I don’t trust the SID: you go first,’ said Bordelli, stirring the tomatoes with his wooden spoon. Agostinelli sighed and resigned himself.
‘In the summer of ’64, before getting sick, President Segni set up a sort of coup d’état under the direction of General de Lorenzo. There are some people claiming it was merely a law-enforcement operation in anticipation of potential public unrest … You know, with the fall of the centre-left government … when some were clamouring for a technocratic government led by Merzagora …’
‘And that’s all?’
‘And that’s all.’
‘The usual Italian stuff …’
‘As I’d said. But now it’s your turn.’
‘There isn’t much to tell you … The authorities have no leads, as the newspapers always say …’
‘Tell me anyway, I’m curious.’
‘Well, a contessa who lives on the hill opposite my house …’
In few words he told him the story, concluding by saying that Orlando, at the time, was working at the firm of Manetti & Torrigiani.
‘What if the contessa’s right?’ asked Agostinelli.
‘I doubt it, but at this point I want to see the thing through.’
‘Torrigiani has vanished into thin air where nobody will ever find him, but now you have a motive. The lad discovered that the two lawyers were stealing money from their clients and so they killed him. It makes perfect sense …’
‘That may well be, but don’t forget that the castle was locked from the inside … The firemen had to break open a window.’
‘My dear Franco, now that you’re retired you have all the time in the world to devote yourself to mysteries.’
‘I also have a vegetable garden to tend …’
‘You want to have some fun? Try taking for granted that the contessa’s son was in fact murdered, and try to work out how it was possible in spite of all appearances. Almost every problem has a solution; take it from the SID.’
‘I get it, you want to keep me from sleeping at night.’
‘That’s the method we normally use … If nothing else, it’s a good workout for the mind and soul …’
‘Ah, yes, a little gymnastics … Well, I have to go now, it’s time to put the pasta in the water. Thanks, Pietro.’
‘I’m on my way to lunch, too. Give my best to the chickens,’ said the admiral.
Bordelli dumped a good handful of spaghetti into the boiling pot, and after stirring it for a minute or so, he started setting the table. Mentally he’d already accepted Agostinelli’s challenge and was trying to imagine how it might be possible to kill someone at home by simulating the perfect suicide … Then he suddenly understood why he was so doggedly pursuing the mystery of Orlando’s death … It now seemed as clear as day …
With a smile he thought back on his fantasy of the night before … Not so much the oneiric omnipotence as the desire concealed behind that fantasy. There were four people responsible for Giacomo Pellissari’s death. One actually did commit suicide. The other committed suicide at the hands of a retired police inspector. That left two. He had to kill them. He couldn’t help it. He had to. It was as though God himself had asked him to
do it. Ego te absolvo …
He ran over to the boiling pasta water and tasted a strand of spaghetti. He’d made it just in time. Another minute and he would have had to throw it all away. He drained the pot, put the spaghetti into the bowl and poured the tomato sauce on to it. After pouring himself a glass of wine, he started eating.
He felt split in two. One side of him was the Franco he more or less knew, with his memories and obsessions … The other Franco was walking down a path already determined, which he had no choice but to follow. He would kill them; it was already written. But he couldn’t very well hope to run into the lawyer Moreno Beccaroni or Monsignor Sercambi in the woods, served up by fate on a silver platter, as had happened with the butcher. He had to get busy now. He needed another suicide. It was better to start with the lawyer Beccaroni, who seemed the more vulnerable of the two. And anyway, he would rather save the monsignor for last. He was sure of this, so it was Beccaroni’s turn. But it absolutely had to look like a suicide. He couldn’t afford for Monsignor Sercambi to get scared and unleash the secular arm of the masons again. Eleonora had already paid dearly for his mistakes, through no fault of her own. It must not happen again …
Whether the contessa’s son killed himself or was murdered, probably nobody would ever know … But he would try to find out, if for no other reason than to convince himself that it was worth finding a solution to the mystery. The motive, as his spymaster friend had suggested to him, was possibly there. But that wasn’t the point. If he could find out how to kill someone in their own home and somehow escape while leaving all windows and doors closed from the inside, he would have a model to use for setting up a suicide, one that would leave no room for doubt. This was the next move that fate was proposing to him. Now he understood … It had not, after all, been a waste of time getting involved with the old contessa’s obsessions …
At eight o’clock the next morning he opened the bedroom window wide and went down to the kitchen to make coffee. He calmly prepared his backpack, still thinking about what his spymaster friend had said … Try taking for granted …
Half an hour later he parked his Beetle in La Panca and set out on the steep trail that led up Monte Scalari, thinking that these hills had seen every imaginable sort of thing, and not only during the war. The climb made him work up a sweat, and his heart was beating fast. Nowadays the only place where he seemed to feel right was in the woods. Walking through the trees allowed him to think more clearly. That morning the same question kept going round and round in his head … How do you kill someone and then escape while leaving all doors and windows locked from the inside? Was it true that there was a solution to every mystery? He wasn’t entirely convinced. Not even the ape in the Poe story could pull it off.
As on every Sunday, reports of rifle shots through the hills were not wanting. A mere week had passed since his pleasant encounter with Panerai, and yet it seemed a distant memory. He decided to try to enjoy his walk without thinking about that nastiness, though it wasn’t easy. The place had been fire-branded by events impossible to forget.
After passing the ancient abbey of Monte Scalari, he took the trail that led down to Celle. The backpack weighed heavy on his shoulders, as the shots rang out in the distance, breaking the silence … It brought back to mind another morning, on the fourth of August 1944, when news came that the bridges of Florence, with the exception of the Ponte Vecchio, had been blown up by the Germans. He’d tried to imagine the Arno without the Ponte alle Grazie, the Ponte Santa Trinita, the Ponte alla Carraia … but he couldn’t. He’d seen the devastation a few months after the end of the war, when he went home. The Allied bombs had also unleashed their fury, razing whole neighbourhoods to the ground … He’d heard hundreds of stories from his parents and other people who’d stayed in the city during the fighting … The Carità gang … The torture in Villa Triste … The fear of informers … The German consul in Florence, who, thanks to a sort of conversion, had devoted himself to saving works of art and people of every kind, including Jews and partisan fighters, with the support of the Swiss consul … And the blasts of the German artillery in retreat, the Allied advance, the snipers firing from the rooftops … The partisans who’d come down from the hills, the endless bloody clashes in the streets …
His thoughts were interrupted by a spot of reddish fur up ahead on the path. It was clearly an animal, but it wasn’t moving. As he drew near he realised it was a dead fox. Stopping in front of the carcass, he grazed it with his shoe, expecting the fox to leap to its feet and run off. It looked alive. It’s eyes were still half open, and its sharp little teeth jutted out from its mouth. He prodded it a little harder with his foot and felt that it hadn’t stiffened yet. Bending down, he put a hand on its soft fur. It was still warm. It must have died only a few mintues before. He turned it on its other side, but saw no trace of blood. It could not have been killed by gunshot. Apparently its time had come. He patted it on the head by way of goodbye and resumed his walk. Poor animal … Who knew whether it had had time to think its last thoughts before collapsing. He would never want to die suddenly, not even in his sleep. The very thought of it depressed him. He prayed heaven to allow him to savour the moment of his death in a state of full awareness, as had happened with some of his war comrades whose eyes he’d shut on the field of battle … Some, however, hadn’t had time to realise what was happening as they were swallowed by darkness in an instant … What happened to their minds, their thoughts, the images that had filled their eyes until a second earlier?
After a long hike through the woods and some chaotic forays into his memory he returned to the car, pleasantly tired. As soon as he got home he made a nice fire and sat down in the armchair to read. He finished the Lermontov novel and sat staring at the flames with the book on his knees, thinking of the adventures of Officer Pechorin. He would never forget him. As happened every time he read a good novel, he felt as if he’d actually met the characters in the story. He knew that he would think back on them from time to time, confusing them with real people he’d met turing his lifetime. Don Abbondio, Raskolnikov, Emma Bovary, Hans Castorp, Gregor Samsa … Even Odysseus was part of his memory, just like his battle companions who’d been killed and the women they’d lost their heads over.
He felt like staying in Russia. Going upstairs, he put Lermontov back on the bedroom bookcase and took out a volume of Dostoyevsky. Back in the kitchen, he put a log on the fire and sat down again in the armchair. He opened Notes from the Underground and started reading, having no idea what kind of adventure awaited him … I am a mean man, I am a sick man …
The protagonist’s thoughts fascinated him. Here was a man who penetrated the labyrinths of the mind with bitter satisfaction, falling into painful realisations, sinking into a disdain of mankind and especially himself, unable to live with any dignity because of his maniacal analysis of reality and his own conscience. At times Bordelli thought he recognised himself in the lucid confusion of the underground man’s thoughts, and this helped him at last to unravel arguments and understand emotions that had been forever tangled in his mind. Every so often he would stop reading, and with his eyes on the fire he would sink into his own mental labyrinths, plumbing depths that until then he’d only imagined, digging like a worm into the earth …
At one point he heard a noise that sounded as if it came from the chimney flue, and after an avalanche of soot fell on to the fire, two small female feet, elegantly shod, appeared. A second later a young woman emerged whole from the chimney, standing on the fire. She was wearing a very white dress soiled with soot, and stared at him with two stern eyes. Bordelli looked back at her in wonder, trying to understand the reason for her visit. The woman slowly raised her arm and, casting him a menacing glance, she pointed an accusing finger at him, like the angel that banished Adam and Eve …
‘You are mine,’ she whispered.
‘Who are you?’ Bordelli asked, spellbound by her beauty.
Moments later she was enveloped by a great flame and dis
appeared … Bordelli opened his eyes, disappointed that it had only been a dream. He could still see the finger pointed at him … Who was that woman? Fate personified? Only now did he realise that she had Eleonora’s face, and his desire to see her again became even keener.
It was almost eight o’clock. He picked up the book, which had fallen from his hands. He stuck the bookmark in it and got up to fetch the telephone directory. He looked up Eleonora’s number, and with a shudder he read the six digits that stood between him and being able to talk to her. All he had to do was pick up the phone, turn the dial with one finger and … What would happen? What would Eleonora say to him? Would she be pleased or would she hang up?
The ring of the telephone startled him, and for a moment he imagined … What a fool. He had to stop imagining that every time the phone rang, it was … With the woman in white still in his eyes, he went to pick up.
‘Hello?’
‘Were you asleep?’ asked Diotivede, who never missed anything.
‘I was dozing by the fire.’
‘That’s how you discover you’re old.’
‘Has it ever happened to you?’
‘Many years ago, when I was old like you.’
‘You sound cheerful. Did you recently cut up a particularly nice corpse?’
‘All corpses are nice because they can’t talk rubbish,’ said Diotivede.
‘How’s Marianna?’
Marianna was the forensic pathologist’s pretty girlfriend, some thirty years younger than him.
‘She’s all right, thanks. Have any important engagements for dinner?’
‘After frying an egg I thought I’d try to domesticate a spider.’
‘Feel like coming down from the wilderness and into the civilised world?’
