She replied immediately, without any anguish, a polite, precise, meticulous Lombard who knew what she was doing and wanted to do it well. ‘Just under three years ago.’
So it had been going on for quite a while. ‘Why did Ulrico have to go to Genoa to get those cases?’
‘Because they came in from France.’
‘From Marseilles?’
‘Yes, from Marseilles.’
A little flash of light: Turiddu Sompani was an ex-Frenchman, an ex-Breton, and the provenance of the weapons was French.
‘And who did Ulrico have to hand these cases over to?’ He already knew, but he wanted to see if she confirmed it.
‘To Silvano.’
‘And who did Silvano have to take them to?’
‘A lawyer named Turiddu Sompani.’
Yes, the woman was telling the truth. Now to see if she knew more than that. ‘And who did this Turiddu Sompani have to take them to?’ He couldn’t have kept all those weapons for himself, in his personal armoury.
‘Even Ulrico didn’t really know,’ she replied immediately, ‘but he was very scared, because Silvano had told him once the things ended up in the Alto Adige.’9
So that was what this bunch were up to: transporting guns through Italy to supply terrorists. He felt disgusted, but he had to go on. ‘And why did Ulrico agree to this work? He made a lot of money from it, I suppose?’
Her eyes, inside the blue halo, glittered with disdain. ‘Not a lira, and he wouldn’t have agreed even if they’d offered him a billion lire, but they forced him.’
‘How?’
‘He told me they were people who had done a lot of favours for him at the end of the war, and later saved him several times when he did something not quite above board and if he’d refused they’d have ruined him, or worse.’
Duca looked at Mascaranti. ‘Did you hear that?’ Yes, Mascaranti heard everything perfectly well. ‘I want you to phone Carrua immediately, this is something he has to look into.’ Mascaranti nodded. ‘Tell him this. Provenance of the weapons: France, Marseilles. Final destination: terrorists in the Alto Adige.’ What a bunch of crooks! ‘Route: Ulrico Brambilla collects the material in Genoa, from persons unknown, he passes it on to Silvano Solvere through his fiancée Giovanna Marelli, and Silvano Solvere passes it to Turiddu Sompani, who gets it to the Alto Adige through the base in the Binaschina. A perfect plan, because nobody would suspect that weapons for terrorists, submachine guns, explosives to blow up pylons, would be passing through Italy. And what’s more, we don’t know anything – not even their nicknames – about the bastards at the starting point in France, the ones supplying the weapons, or the other bastards at the finishing point, the ones who hand them over to the terrorists. But that’s something he’ll have to find out, I don’t want to get involved, because otherwise …’ He looked at the case on the floor, the magazines were in it, no, you can’t, you can’t, the law forbids you to kill the bastards, the ones who betray everyone, especially those who always have to have a defence lawyer, a regular trial, a regular jury and a verdict inspired by the desire to rehabilitate society’s misfits, although you don’t need permission to spray a couple of patrolling Carabinieri with bullets, or shoot in the mouth a bank teller who’s taking his time handing over bundles of ten-thousand-lire notes, or firing a submachine gun into the middle of a crowd in order to get away after a robbery, that you can do, but giving a punch in the face to some son of a bitch involved in all kinds of nasty business, that no, the law forbids it, it’s bad, you haven’t understood Beccaria10 at all, no, he, Duca Lamberti, hadn’t understood On Crimes and Punishments at all, he was a rough character and had no hope of becoming refined, but he would have liked to meet these bastards and punch their faces in. ‘And please tell Carrua that I’m only interested’ – in passing, he grabbed one of the little white flakes of pollen which in those incredible days were sailing in the air between skyscrapers, trams and trolleybuses, trying in vain to inseminate cement and asphalt and aluminium – ‘that I’m only interested in those falls in the water.’ He opened his hand, and the pollen wasn’t there any more, or rather, he hadn’t caught it at all, it was in fact still sailing gently through the room, his abortive medical surgery that was now a secret, anonymous, unauthorised police office.
6
And while Mascaranti phoned, Duca again looked at the black-clad woman, Rosa Gavoni. Maybe he was too suspicious towards people, but was there any reason, a single one, to trust them? ‘Why have you confessed all these things to me?’ he asked the woman, looking her straight in the eyes. ‘When we find Ulrico, he’ll go to prison for arms smuggling, and they may find other things, it’s unlikely he’ll get less than ten years.’
She was a precise Lombard. ‘But at least he’ll be alive. And if they’ve killed him, the police will get those responsible.’
She was beyond reproach. ‘Why did Ulrico run away after his fiancée and Silvano Solvere were killed?’
She shook her head gently, now that she had unburdened herself of all her secrets. ‘I don’t know. He closed up all the shops, sent the assistants on holiday and then left. I was in Ca’ Tarino, and he said, “Close the shop and stay at home, and I’ll phone you”.’
‘And did he phone?’
‘Yes, twice, he asked me if anyone had come looking for him, I told him no, the same day he phoned me again and asked me the same question, and I gave him the same answer, because nobody had come for him, then I wanted to know why he was doing this, what he was afraid of, but he told me that he would phone the day after.’
‘That was when we came,’ Duca said.
Yes, that was when they had come and she had told them that she was expecting a phone call from Ulrico, but Ulrico hadn’t phoned again and she was afraid, because if Ulrico hadn’t phoned, that meant that something had happened to him.
‘Like what?’ He had to be merciless. ‘Do you mean they might have killed him?’
She nodded, and her face quivered a little: it was the thought that they might have killed Ulrico that had driven her here, to see Duca and Mascaranti, and it didn’t matter if they were friends of Silvano’s or policemen, as long as they could do something for Ulrico.
‘You know him well,’ Duca said. ‘Do you have any idea where he may have gone when he left home?’ A woman knows a man’s habits, his impulses, his vices, even without knowing anything specific, and she, Rosa Gavoni, might give them a lead that would help them find Ulrico Brambilla. ‘Just say the most stupid thing that comes into your mind. Could some other woman have put him up?’ During the war he had been a local Scarlet Pimpernel, escaping German roundups, and now, to escape other enemies, he might have found other pretty women and girls to put him up.
‘No,’ she said. ‘The only other woman was Giovanna. She was all he talked about, she was the only person he wanted to be with. I know him.’ She raised her head, proud to know him, even in her humiliating position as a woman who had not been loved for years but who still loved. ‘When he settles on one, there’s no one else.’
So where was he hiding? Not in hotels, where he would be too exposed and his enemies could easily find him. ‘When he phoned, did you think he was calling from Milan? Or was it a long distance call?’
‘No,’ she said, lowering her head pensively. ‘In fact, I could hear him quite well.’ And anyway, with direct dialling, you couldn’t tell the difference between local and long distance calls any more.
‘All right,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Go home now and wait. If anyone comes, phone me. If they put you in a position where you can’t phone, leave a clue.’ He thought for a moment, looking at her: she was listening without fear, she understood the danger, but wasn’t afraid of it, as long as Ulrico was safe. ‘Leave a light on, for example, move a chair, drop an ornament, the house is so tidy that we’ll immediately understand the signal.’ When they were at the door, he said, ‘From now on, we’ll phone you every three hours. Help us, and we’ll do everything we can to find hi
m.’
By the time he had closed the door behind the unfortunate Rosa Gavoni and gone back to his surgery, the setting sun had set the Piazza Leonardo da Vinci ablaze and a bright flame-like light entered the room, together with two more white flakes of pollen. This time, he managed to grab one when he opened his palm. It was in his palm, and it seemed like nothing, but it was a nothing from which a plane tree might come, or one of those huge trees you see photographs of in encyclopaedias, which form canopies through which cars pass. ‘Mascaranti,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ Mascaranti said, coming in from the kitchen.
‘What did Carrua say?’
‘He said okay, he’ll look into the arms.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes.’ Mascaranti hesitated, but only for a moment, his face gold in the reflection of the setting sun. ‘He said to be careful, these are nasty people.’ There was a bitter irony in his tone, even though it was very serious.
He was being very careful, he thought. ‘Mascaranti, let’s go and grab a sandwich and buy the newspapers.’
‘I know a trattoria near here that’s quite cheap,’ Mascaranti said: he was tired of meals consisting only of sandwiches.
‘All right, then. I’ll change my shirt.’ In the chest of drawers in his room there was one last shirt that wasn’t too bad, his sister Lorenza had said, ‘Keep it for important occasions, because after that one you don’t have any others.’ He wasn’t sure if lunch with Mascaranti was an important occasion or not. He decided it was, took off his shirt with its threadbare cuffs and put on a new one, took out his royal blue tie and then realised that he had to change his suit as well, fortunately, his only decent suit, of the three he had, was also blue, he went in the bathroom and with the electric razor shaved his rough, masculine facial hair. Scoundrels and betrayers, betrayers of everybody, they sold their own mothers and their own daughters, their own country, their own friends, every word they said was false, they had one hand over their hearts and the other on the handles of the knives in their pockets. ‘Mascaranti,’ he called as he was finishing shaving.
Mascaranti came into the bathroom, looking calm, almost lordly.
‘You have to tell me the truth,’ he said. ‘Do you think we should drop this whole thing? Remember what Carrua said. They’ll kill each other. The more they do that, the better it is. What do we care if A was killed by B or by C or if B killed C or D, when A, B, C and D are all as unsavoury as each other? Tell me the truth, Mascaranti: shall we stop or shall we carry on?’ He continued moving the shaver over his chin because the rough, masculine hair on his chin was rougher and more masculine than he had anticipated, every now and again he wished he could be like the ancient Romans, the best shaved people in history, using wax, the kind that women use for the hair on their legs.
‘Dr Lamberti, you’re not asking that seriously,’ Mascaranti said formalistically.
He abruptly took out the plug for the electric shaver, said irritably, ‘I don’t ask questions as a joke,’ and scrupulously rewound the cord. ‘You must know the proverb.’
‘What proverb?’
‘He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.’
‘Then we die by the sword.’ Mascaranti could actually be witty.
Duca gave him a small, not very happy smile, put the shaver away, poured a little lavender in the hollow of his hand and rubbed it into his hair: it was long, almost half a centimetre, he had never been so negligent, but without his sister he couldn’t even get to the barber’s. He left the bathroom. ‘You can play the hero if you like, but this evening I’m buying you a farewell dinner.’ He had no desire to get himself bumped off by some hired killer. Yes, of course he would have liked to uproot all the weeds, but why did he have to uproot them by himself? And what could he really uproot, when you came down to it, when you put one in prison and three others were let out, when you put them inside and someone much more powerful got them out again, maybe because, as he had read the day before in the Corriere, His state of health would not withstand a custodial sentence? How was it that someone could kill ten people, then, because he’s poorly and the air in the San Vittore isn’t good for him, they commute his life sentence and transfer him to Nervi and even let him eat fish soup in little restaurants on the promenade? Was he supposed to put himself in danger of being riddled with bullets like a bird for the sake of these invalids? ‘I’ll take you to a place where we can have a good meal, let’s go to Prospero’s.’
It was a trattoria near the church of San Pietro in Gessate, he had been there with his sister and niece after Epiphany, little Sara had miraculously behaved herself, in the sense that after a huge plate of tagliatelle with butter she had fallen asleep, sinking into the paradise of relaxation caused by the tagliatelle, and she hadn’t made another sound and they had put her back in the pushchair like a toy dog, and they too had eaten very well, and he had promised Lorenza that he would do everything he could to get himself put back on the medical register, and he had also promised her that he would take no further interest in these police matters: it made no sense, after studying for so many years to be a doctor, to then start running after call girls and car thieves. He had promised her, and now he was going back there to remember that promise, which he intended to keep.
‘It’s Friday,’ he said to Mascaranti. ‘Let’s have fish.’
They ate like men – spaghetti with clams, fried fillets of cod with pecorino cheese – and while they were eating they read the afternoon papers, because they were men but also bachelors and didn’t have wives to hold a conversation with over dinner. They read that at 10.30 that morning there had been an eclipse – the headline was Dark Sun – although they hadn’t even noticed it, and they read that anti-doping checks for the Giro d’Italia had been abolished, so everybody could take whatever they liked and when somebody won a lap the reporters no longer asked them what gear they had used on the climb to San Bartolomeo, but what pill they had managed to get hold of. When they got to the pecorino, after reading that modern Japan has a European face and that after pop music at mass there might next be pop music at funerals, they were pleased to read Bank Robber Caught in the Spotlight: an automatic camera in the bank had taken the photographs, published by the newspaper, in which you could see a big idiot pointing a gun at the cashier and in another photograph the idiot escaping with a bag full of money. According to the caption, he had been arrested, thanks to these photographs, just an hour later (Atlanta, Georgia, United States).
‘Mascaranti, can you take me to Inverigo tomorrow morning?’ He would spend a few days with his sister and Livia and try to forget all these things.
‘Yes, of course,’ Mascaranti said.
‘Then take the case with the submachine gun to Superintendent Carrua.’
‘Yes,’ Mascaranti said.
‘And tell him I’m dropping this business and that he can go ahead himself.’
‘Yes, I’ll tell him.’
Duca exchanged the pages of the newspaper with Mascaranti, and as soon as the brandy arrived, he drank slowly but without stopping until he had finished the generous glass, then realised that he had taken the literary page and read, again with real pleasure, a review, entitled A Doctor of 2,000 Years Ago, of a book about Hippocrates by Mariano Vegetti, published in Turin, 6,000 lire, and re-read with genuine, deep pleasure a quotation from the Corpus Hippocraticum: “In acute diseases, you should first observe the countenance of the patient, if it be like that of a healthy person in health, and especially if it be like his usual self, for that is best of all. But the opposite is the worst, such as: a sharp nose, hollow eyes and sunken temples; ears cold and contracted and with the lobes turned outwards; the skin of the forehead rough, stretched and dry; the colour of the face green or livid.” And he too, two thousand years later, was a doctor, even though they weren’t allowing him to be one, he would buy the book, and then, as they say, move heaven and earth to be put back on the medical register and so he would start again, and even his father, from
the grave, would be happy to see him say once more, ‘Cough, say 33,’ and measure the blood pressure, because for his father that was what medicine was: prescribing the right syrup to get rid of a cough.
He looked at his watch: the restaurant was emptying, it was ten o’clock, maybe it wasn’t too late to phone Inverigo. He left Mascaranti alone and went to the telephone on the cash desk, and beside the cash register stood a pleasant lady who was taking the thread from some beans, and as Inverigo was available by direct dialling, he dialled the prefix, 031, and then the number and then he heard the manly, low and deeply aristocratic voice of the incredible butler from the Villa Auseri.
‘Signora Lamberti, please.’ Strictly speaking, his sister was Signorina, as she was unmarried, and a functionary in the town hall of Milan could have reported him for false pretences.
‘Just a moment, sir.’ He gave exactly the answer that butlers give in films, in real life he had rarely heard anyone say Just a moment, sir. And instead of his sister’s voice, he heard the voice of Livia Ussaro. ‘It’s me, Signor Lamberti, Lorenza and Sara have already gone to bed.’
Signor Lamberti: after receiving seventy-seven cuts on the face, from forehead to chin, from one cheek to the other, all because of him, Duca Lamberti – it was his colleague, the surgeon at the Fatebenefratelli who had tried to put her together, who had informed him of the number, because he had had to count them, which he, Duca, had not had to do – after all that, Livia did not feel close enough to him to dispense with the terminology Signor Lamberti. ‘I just wanted to hear your voice,’ he said.
Silence, a silence that breathed kindness, the silence of a woman wrapping herself in a man’s kind words as if in an expensive fur. And at last, very sweetly, very courageously for someone as formalistic as her, she said, ‘I wanted to hear your voice too.’
He looked at the woman who was taking the thread from the beans, and feeling herself being looked at she raised her head and smiled at him. ‘And I also needed your advice,’ he said.
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