“A police cordon,” Juvara said, relieved that Soneri was forced to brake.
When they came closer, they saw a car balanced precariously between a ditch and the side of the canal. It was the Citroen from the campsite.
“An evening full of surprises,” Soneri said.
The patrolman was standing beside an elderly, somewhat dishevelled man. “He’s drunk,” the officer said.
The commissario nodded. “I did notice,” he said, referring to the skid marks he had seen further back, but leaving the officer puzzled. “Who is he?” he asked, indicating the old man but not taking his eyes off the policeman.
“We’re checking him out,” the officer replied, pointing to his colleague on the car radio.
The man stayed silent, prepared for the worst.
“Is this your car?” the officer said.
There was no reply. The man continued to stare ahead into the mist in the background, as though he would rather lose himself in that nothingness.
“These are false documents,” reported the other police officer who had been communicating the data to the control centre. “And the car is registered in the name of one Omar Manservisi, of no fixed abode.”
“Oh great! Let’s get this one along to the station,” the patrol leader said.
The old man’s attitude was surprising. For a few moments, he stood stock still in the same position, then turned towards the policeman who had taken him by the sleeve and stared at him with the expression of a bewildered child.
“Manservisi … Manservisi … I’ve heard that name, but I can’t remember where,” said the officer.
“He’s one of the travelling people camped up by the dump at Cortile San Martino,” Soneri informed him.
The officer looked at him in surprise. “The ones who lit the fire?”
“The very same. Manservisi is a kind of chieftain. I believe the old guy here took the car a short while back.”
“Stole it? He stole something from gypsies!” The officer’s tone was incredulous.
The commissario stretched out his arms, looking again at the old man who, judging by his expression, seemed sunk in a state of drunken depression. “What about the car? We can’t just leave it here in case someone crashes into it.”
The patrolman raised his visor and snorted: “Suppose not …”
“He’s coming with us. You stay here until the pick-up lorry arrives,” Soneri said.
This time it was Juvara who took the old man by the arm, and as he did so the man turned towards him with the same expression as before.
“You go into the back seat with him,” Soneri ordered. “He looks like the sort who could do all kinds of crazy things. Keep your wits about you.”
They set off and within a quarter of an hour they saw the milk-white glow of the first lights in the city. Ten minutes later they were turning into the courtyard at the police station.
*
“So, how come you took the chieftain’s car and were going around with forged documents?” Soneri began wearily, reflecting on the bizarre conduct of this unknown figure.
The old man looked down at a point in the centre of the desk, avoiding Soneri’s gaze.
Juvara cut in. “Would it not be better for us to leave him to Musumeci? He’ll be here in about twenty minutes. We’ve got that other business to attend to.”
The commissario shrugged. “The main thing is to get him to make up his mind to talk,” he said impatiently. Just then, another officer came in to take the man’s fingerprints.
“Look, it’s in your own interests to put an end to this, eh!” Soneri said, raising his voice in growing exasperation at the man’s indifference. “Could you tell us who the fuck you are?” he went on, tossing the false identity card on the table like an ace of spades. “That way we can clear this business up. You’ll be charged with possession of forged documents, car theft and drunk driving, but you’ll be treated lightly.”
Nothing seemed to make any impression on the man, who was now sunk in a comatose stupor. The more the interrogation dragged on, the more absurd his behaviour seemed to Soneri. He was just concluding that he had a madman on his hands when the telephone rang.
“Not making much headway here,” were Nanetti’s opening words.
“Not surprising, with all that mist.”
“It’s not a laughing matter. This burned-out stump of a human being has nothing on him to identify him. He looks as though he’s been on a spit.”
“Have you searched around? On the grass verge?”
“You can forget the grass verge. It’s been ploughed up by the emergency services. We’ll come back tomorrow and comb the slope. The torches are no good in the dark.”
“Alright. We can only hope you come up with something.”
He was about to resume questioning the old man when Juvara and the officer who had taken the fingerprints came in.
“Commissario, there’s a warrant out for this man. His fingerprints match those of Otello Medioli. He killed his wife twenty years ago. We’ve been on the computer and there’s no doubt.”
“This is some night for coincidences,” Soneri said.
He turned to face the man: the suffering appearance, the watery eyes and the weary pallor made him an improbable murderer. He looked like an ordinary old-age pensioner, but no-one was more aware than the commissario of how misleading impressions could be when dealing with criminals. It was one of the pitfalls of the trade. And in the case of Medioli, twenty years on …
“So, you’ve made up your mind?”
All of a sudden, the old man burst into life. He raised his eyes and looked rapidly around as though afraid someone was spying on him.
“It’s all true,” he said, with a sigh which seemed to come from deep inside him.
“At last! We’ve made the first step,” Soneri said, with a gesture of his hand which was an invitation to Medioli to continue. Meanwhile Juvara, with perfect timing, had activated the recorder and attached a microphone to the computer.
“Commissario, I was tired of that life,” Medioli said, pushing back the white hair which was hanging over his forehead.
“A life on the run?”
“With those people. In the caravans, always on the move, hiding away. What kind of life is that? If I think about it, I believe I have already served my sentence. Any way you look at it, I’d have been better off in jail.”
Medioli abandoned himself to self-pity, while the commissario made an effort to imagine the man as he must have been twenty years before, still strong, sure of himself, perhaps even arrogant. When he compared him to what he was today, Soneri almost spluttered with laughter, but this, he then reflected, was the destiny of all humankind.
“You could have left sooner, couldn’t you? As you did this evening. You’d have got away with it if it hadn’t been for the mist, and the fact that you were drunk. After all this time …”
“I didn’t know where to go. In the outside world, I don’t have anyone left, and in the world of the Roma travellers, I’ve always been a guest.”
“You’ve no children?”
“Yes, two grown-up daughters, but they didn’t want any more to do with me. I read that in the papers. I’ve never seen my grandchildren.”
Soneri weighed him up, looking at him distrustfully. There was something about the man and his story which did not square up, and while he was trying to work him out, the officer who had taken the fingerprints brought in an old folder from the archives with the dossier on Medioli. He started flicking through it. It had been done with a typewriter and the pages were turning yellow. “Probable motive, jealousy,” he read in the report.
“You stabbed her because you thought she was seeing another man, is that right?” Soneri asked abruptly, continuing to read. The man had several previous convictions for causing an affray, malicious damage to public property and resisting arrest.
Medioli nodded like an altar boy.
“But was it true?”
“I
don’t know. It’s hard to think back after all this time. It’s as though it belongs to another life.”
“Yes, I can understand,” murmured Soneri, thinking of his own and of other people’s lives. “Unfortunately it’s the same one.”
The old man replied with a despairing, unresisting look. “I’m old and infirm. I’ve nothing to lose. All I ask is a place where I can die with dignity. Something other than a caravan, something that doesn’t follow laws that are not mine. I would like a normal end – I just want to be like other people, even if that means being in jail.”
“And you’re telling me that’s why you put on this crazy act, this absurd flight? You must have known it was going to make us suspicious.”
“A last clutch at life. If it had gone well, I’d have had a couple of hours of excitement, but it would’ve been even better if I’d crashed the car like the people on the autostrada. That too would have been a normal end. I heard the collisions in the dark. One after the other, a barrage, and I thought: if only that had been me …”
“I would hardly call that a normal end. There’s a burned body on the side of the motorway in front of the camp … Maybe that’s somebody’s wife who met her end because of a husband like you.”
Medioli seemed to stiffen. “What have I got to do with that business?”
“I’ve no idea. But I did see you make off as soon as we arrived. What do you expect me to think?”
“Commissario, I swear …” The man did not manage to complete the sentence. He held his head in his hands and sat hunched up as though he wanted to disappear.
“If you hadn’t been as naïve as you have been …” Soneri said, attempting to console him. “Listen, let’s do a deal: you give me another lead. You tell me all you know or have heard around the camp. Maybe, over there, someone noticed some movement, saw a car pull up …”
“If there was anything, the one to ask would be Omar. He checks everything and knows everything that’s going on.”
“You weren’t on the best of terms with him?”
Medioli shrugged again. “You’re O.K. over there only as long as you’re useful.”
“Same as everywhere else.”
“Maybe so. Anyway, I was tolerated there, and if you’re not one of their kind …”
“So how exactly were you useful?”
“I’m a mechanic. I can fix cars and engines.”
“Is that all?”
“I was the odd job man. There are not many men who really work. The women and children earn their keep by begging. You understand?”
The commissario nodded.
“I was fed up doing their bidding,” Medioli said bitterly. “And when I began to feel my age and get aches and pains, they started complaining that I was not pulling my weight. Some of their cars would never move even if you shoved them. I sometimes did some work for the people in the fairgrounds, and that is one hellish life.”
“Are you telling me you’ve spent the last twenty years with the travelling people?”
“Why not? What choice did I have?” Medioli said, raising his voice slightly, seemingly on the verge of tears. “I threw it away, remember?”
“You threw it away the day you decided to murder your wife.”
Medioli sighed and seemed to be once again peering into the emptiness.
“Was it really out of jealousy?” Soneri asked again.
“What does it matter?” the man whispered. “I was another person. When you grow old, you might be more forgiving and understand criminals better. You can never tell. I have been a criminal, but now I could be a policeman.”
“I understand them today, don’t doubt it. At least, I understand why they behave in a certain way. Then there’s the law, but that’s another matter.”
“Perhaps my wife was not unfaithful to me,” the old man murmured, sounding like a sleepwalker. “The problem is that she was vague, ambiguous. She gave me the impression that she was not thinking only of me. She kept me on tenterhooks. That was what I really couldn’t stand.”
“It’s the best way to make people love you,” Soneri said, “but I understand it might not be easy to put up with somebody who wants to be in charge.”
“That’s the way it was then …” Medioli said, letting his hands fall on his lap in a sign of surrender, while the commissario kept his eyes on him, thinking how grotesque, inconsistent and senseless life was.
“I still don’t understand why you stayed with these people for twenty years,” Soneri said, getting back into the policeman role. “Twenty years roaming about in muddy camps with people who never accepted you.”
“I had no idea where to go and I hardly ever had any money. I had a half friend who worked in a fairground and I asked him to hide me until everything blew over, but the way things went, until yesterday I ended up moving from one tribe to another, running here and there, wherever there was a call for my services. I was pushed from pillar to post. It was the only way to avoid arrest. You know that a camp with travelling people is the best place to hide.”
The commissario thought that observation over and it seemed to him the most logical thing that had been said in the course of that bizarre evening. Medioli’s story was just one surreal piece of it. Juvara called him back to the present by going over to him discreetly. “Commissario, do you want us to make a start on checking the register of missing persons? I was wondering if …” he said, alluding to the body.
Soneri nodded, but was still deep in thought.
“Will we include foreigners?”
“Definitely,” he replied, and as though on automatic pilot, turned back to the old man. “Were there many foreigners in the camp?”
“Not too many, but I knew a lot who tended to hang about. Up till yesterday, there was a group of Romanians at the dump. We let them be because they had been chased away from somewhere else. The spaces around the dumps are the only places where you don’t get evicted.”
The door opened and the same officer as before came back in. “We’re ready,” he announced, approaching Medioli.
“So am I,” Soneri said, placing his hands on the desk in the manner of a man who has nothing more to ask. Medioli appeared disconcerted. “Are you locking me up?” he asked ingenuously.
The officer looked across at Soneri in bewilderment. “The magistrate will question you tomorrow,” Soneri said.
“I was beginning to feel at ease with you,” Medioli murmured, seeming overcome by despairing regret.
Soneri gestured to make him understand that this was routine and there was nothing he could do about it. The scene seemed to him, yet again, a kind of dream.
The old man stayed in his seat for a bit, and when the officer took him by the arm he had the same look of disbelief he had had at the beginning.
3
ANGELA AND THE commissario woke very early, when it was still as dark as midnight. He imagined that the previous evening’s mist still lingered on outside and that everything was damp. In some way this idea enhanced the dryness and warmth of his own little corner. Angela stretched out her hand and slipped it under his pyjamas. She too was warm and her caress gave him reassurance and brought back childhood pleasures. A sense of delight mingled with unease pervaded his whole being, making him feel almost ashamed of indulging in a passivity which clashed with his normal role in life. It was as if he was letting himself go, regressing towards feelings which, however distant, were still keenly felt. As she searched more and more insistently for him, the commissario felt her body draw closer and at that moment he grasped how some men might find in a woman their lost mother, in a different way perhaps but a way which was perfectly recognisable. He understood how adulthood might well kill many things, yet without really killing them off.
Later the commissario told Angela about the evening before in the yellow mist, the animals emerging from it, the bulls, the fires burning in the night, the car speeding off and the story of Medioli.
“What is this? Euphoria? You sound drunk – on me,
I hope.”
“It does seem like a tale told by a drunk,” he agreed. “The mistake lies in our way of thinking. We believe that everything should unfold in accordance with a predictable pattern, and when that doesn’t happen, we’re left baffled.”
“When you start to philosophise, you’re always troubled by bad thoughts,” she said, putting her arms round him.
“Have you ever had any dealings with Roma travellers?”
“I have defended one or two in trials for theft. I was duty solicitor. Why?”
“Yesterday evening I ended up in a camp, the one where Medioli had been living. It’s a world apart, with its own rules and regulations.”
“Laws as we know them – written laws – are tied to territory, and they have none.”
“And there are no written laws for them. It’s all based on tradition.”
They were interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.
“There’s no chance of us ever getting a long lie-in even if the alarm doesn’t go off,” she said savagely.
“Commissario, I’m at the station,” Juvara began warily, as was his wont.
“Have a good trip! You could have warned me you were off on your holidays.”
“No, I mean, I’m at the bus station …”
“A pilgrimage to Medjugorje, is it?”
“Sir, something strange, something very unpleasant has occurred.”
“What?” the commissario asked, turning serious.
“A man, quite an old man has been found dead on the coach from Bucharest.”
“Was he murdered?”
“Seems not, but they called us in anyway, as a precaution. You know how it is in these cases.”
“Juvara, tell me clearly what you think. Does it look like murder or not?”
“At first sight the doctor believes it was death from natural causes. Perhaps a heart attack. Date of birth 1931, so not in the first flush of youth. But there is one suspicious fact.”
Soneri seriously disliked the inspector’s way of delivering his report piecemeal. “What is it, dammit?”
“Death occurred many hours ago.”
Gold, Frankincense and Dust Page 3
