Gold, Frankincense and Dust

by Valerio Varesi

  “Come to bed,” she whispered, taking him by the hand.

  Soneri followed her, undressed and pulled the covers over him. She joined him almost immediately and took the initiative, almost assaulting him. The commissario’s every sense was delightfully aroused, even if he still failed to understand, but when she crawled on top of him he suppressed all doubt and let himself go. Afterwards, as he relished the ardour they had shared, his eyes met those of Angela a few centimetres away on the pillow.

  “Is this a wish that it would never end?” he asked, thinking more of himself than of his partner.

  “Do you think it can produce these miracles?” she laughed.

  “Sometimes partings can be very intense.”

  Angela shook her head but said nothing.

  Soneri felt desperately in need of some confirmation. He wanted reassurance. He felt that something had burst inside him and was haemorrhaging, leaving him shaking with fear.

  “Tell me what you want,” he said finally. “Even if it will be terrible for me, I must know. I can’t live with this uncertainty.”

  “If I were sure of what I want, I’d tell you, but I’m all mixed up. I need to understand.”

  “Whether to stay with me or with your other man?”

  “I can’t just live my life with someone as part of a settled routine. I’m trying to make out how strong the relationship between us really is, but I can only do that by questioning it. It’s what you do when you’re on a case and you get an idea in your head. You start to attack it, so as to understand. If it stands up, it means it’s well grounded.”

  He knew well the methods of his woman. He had seen her too often at work in court and that made him fear the worst. “This is not a police investigation. Rationality has nothing to do with emotions. There is no way of measuring how unwell a person is, nor do I find it at all reassuring to hear that you’re conducting a test.”

  She showed her awareness of what he meant by moving her head on the pillow. “I know. I’m asking you to live with uncertainty, to put up with my doubts, even if it’s hard for you. It is for me too. After all, you ought to be used to the precarious nature of convictions, given the work you do.”

  “Exactly, and I’ve had enough of it. I’d like to have something solid in a world which is too liquid. I thought that you at least were a fixed point. Just today I met Picelli – remember him? I felt sorry for him. He’s thrown everything up – him, the man who was intransigence made flesh. He’s fallen in love with a thirty-something Catholic woman who wants to have children.”

  Angela shook her head in astonishment.

  “He told me that emotions are one of the few things that matter. What’s left? Every single thing that your head can think passes, but that obscure cluster of sensations that we call emotions endures. Maybe precisely because our heads can’t really understand a thing about friendship, love, art …”

  “He’s not far wrong,” Angela murmured.

  “Maybe not, but we’re running the risk of losing them,” Soneri said, hoping that at that very second she would come back at him and say, no, that’s not right, but she did not utter a word.

  Both remained silent, thoughtful, heads on the same pillow.

  The commissario broke the silence with a sudden outburst. “There’s no point whining. Precariousness is the human condition. The difference is that very few people recognise it and the majority go blithely on.” Anger had taken over from sadness, as it had outside the wine bar.

  “But it’s you I want. I am certain of this, if of nothing else,” she said.

  Soneri felt mildly relieved, and found the strength to go on asking questions. He was always enquiring, and for this reason it was often he who identified the villain, in police affairs as in life.

  “Tell me if you’ve been to bed with him.”

  Angela did not reply. She stared at him seriously, with vacant eyes, and although not another word was spoken the commissario understood. It had never crossed his mind that she could hurt him so deeply. His phantoms took concrete shape and rubbed explosively against his subconscious and all it contained. His derailed thoughts careered off the tracks of rationality, and ran so completely out of his control as to leave him ashamed. He felt on the point of insanity. All the instruments he customarily employed to gauge things were out of kilter. Nothing could contain his pain or despair, nothing could save him from this headlong plunge into the void. All attempt at explanation, all dialogue would have been useless, and so the only partial antidote was a wordless caress from Angela. Her hand stroked his cheek, his neck, ran along his chest, washing away the pain for a few seconds.

  “It has happened twice,” she said after a few minutes’ silence, “and perhaps will not happen again.”

  That “perhaps” only heightened Soneri’s anguish. Angela did not dispel the ambiguity which was minute by minute eating away at him. They were engaged in an ongoing game of statement and denial and it was wreaking havoc on him.

  He wandered mentally in a swamp of thoughts, then gave in. There was no point in seeking any reassurance from Angela as she herself was undecided. He looked at her without recognising her. For the first time, she appeared to him inscrutable, a stranger, and that was the most wounding sensation of all.

  “You like that man, you find him attractive and perhaps he’s going to be your future.” Soneri sat up, yelling in fury.

  She tried to keep him beside her on the pillow, but only managed to make him turn slightly to one side. “He’s good-looking and clever, but you’re more important. He knows nothing about the bonds between us, nor have I ever spoken about them. First and foremost there’s you and me, and it will be you and I who will make any decisions,” she said, with pitiless clarity.

  The commissario sat with his back propped against the headboard. The investigation had reached its finale, the confession had been full and detailed, but the heaviest sentence would fall on him. He realised he had been at fault in having taken their relationship too much for granted, or perhaps, as Picelli had put it, for never having been able to get away from himself and open up to other people. He felt a lump in his throat which would not be removed by any words but only by the language of the body. He drew close to her, and they embraced, holding tightly to each other to maintain some equilibrium.

  *

  In spite of everything, he felt physically better when he left the house. He had not slept much and a multitude of thoughts were buzzing about in his head, but there was a spring in his step and in the mist which still enveloped the city he was breathing more easily. Juvara was a great believer in biorhythms, and perhaps he was right, or perhaps the body simply makes up its own mind when to respond to life and let everything else take care of itself, including the psyche.

  In the police station, he found the record of the calls made by Nina. There was nothing that stood out: radio taxis, takeaway pizzas, Signora Robutti, a car-hire firm and a beauty salon. The incoming calls were of greater interest. The list took up a whole page and there were some recurrent numbers.

  “In great demand …” Soneri commented.

  “They all say she was very pretty,” Juvara said. “But not altogether in the clear,” he added after a pause.

  The commissario threw a questioning look at him.

  “I’ve just been told she was wanted in Romania for a series of car thefts, but the impression is that she was small fry, used as cover for somebody or other.”

  “Have you made a fresh check on the missing persons list?” Soneri asked, changing the subject and referring to the case of the burned body.

  “Nothing doing there. The forensic squad are engaged on a reconstruction of the face to produce a reliable identikit.” He paused for a few moments, and then went on, “Do you know what criminologists say about bodies which have been set on fire?”

  Soneri took the cigar from his mouth and shook his head.

  “That normally they’re people the murderer knew and with whom they had a relationship.”r />
  “A story, a love story …” Soneri said, accidentally plunging back into the pit of his discontent.

  “Either that or a family connection.”

  For a moment Angela came back into his mind and he found himself overcome by feelings of rancour. He would have liked both to embrace her and get away from her. However, someone had wanted to eliminate the girl forever and destroy her with fire. Nothing had clear outlines in her case. It was a game of appearance and reality, an elusive dance of smoky figures or, better, of misty figures, since the cloak of mist was as heavy as ever and continued to weigh down on the city. Soneri paced up and down the room under the startled gaze of the inspector who seemed on the point of making some pronouncement, but after a little time the commissario wheeled round and their eyes met. It was Juvara who broke the silence. “Listen, commissario, I have a suspicion that this Nina …”

  “… is the woman whose body was burned.” Soneri completed the sentence.

  “I might be wrong. Maybe we’ve connected the two stories too closely and ended up with one jumbled up with the other.”

  The commissario shook his head, and resumed observing the coming and going of patrols in the yard. He heaved a sigh. “I don’t think so. Do you understand now why I was so taken with the story of the old man who died on the coach?”

  “You have a nose for …”

  “No, it’s just that I’m a bit older than you.”

  “If that was all …”

  “Spending a long time with criminals makes you understand humanity. You get to a stage where you believe that evil is so familiar because it dwells inside us without us noticing.”

  He turned round again to find Juvara staring at him dumbfounded. “You and I too might one day become aware that it’s part of our being as well, and this awareness almost always dawns when the evil manifests itself. And by then it’s too late.”

  The commissario moved away from the window and changed the subject. “We’ll find out if Nina is the girl whose body was burned when we have the identikit. It’s only a matter of hours.”

  The telephone rang and Soneri rushed to grab it. He still hoped it might be Angela, but was surprised to hear Pasquariello’s voice. “We’ve been interrogating that Mariotto, the gypsy.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “He’s still saying he fell and bumped his head, but nobody believes him, even if technically it can’t be ruled out.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “The Romanian and Italian Romas didn’t get on very well. There’s been a series of thefts. In my opinion, scores are being settled, but if Mariotto doesn’t speak, we’ll never make any headway.”

  The conversation with Pasquariello was interrupted by the ringing of another telephone. The head of the flying squad rang off immediately with the words, “I’ll keep in touch.”

  Once again, it was not Angela. Nanetti, who grasped the commissario’s disappointment, made a joke of it: “It could’ve been worse. It might have been Capuozzo.”

  Soneri said: “No, it’s not that. It’s just that …”

  “Do you think I don’t know? At least you might work something out with Angela. I’ve lost everything, but I’m plodding on. Meanwhile I’m getting more interested in lingerie.”

  “You’re not becoming one of those men who make a collection of knickers?”

  “Who do you think I am? Listen, colleague, do you remember the label between her buttocks that was saved from the flames? Well, there’s a shop in Via Garibaldi that stocks only one brand – that very one! Do you understand me?”

  “You are telling me she did her shopping there …”

  “It’s not the only outlet for that kind of underwear, but on the balance of probabilities it’s likely.”

  “Right then. Since you’ve become an expert, would you like to pay them a visit?”

  “Are you afraid they might take you for some kind of pansy? I don’t do investigations. My job is to come up with proof.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “You’re getting on my nerves, commissario. I’ve been there. It’s the widower’s syndrome, a sort of rancour that keeps you well away from anything that smacks of femininity.”

  “I’m already a widower,” Soneri replied bitterly.

  “Sorry, I’ve touched a raw nerve.”

  The commissario’s mind was elsewhere, in a dreamland where the past and the present overlap, with the irreversible loss of Ada and the probable loss of Angela already a part of the landscape. That was what growing old meant – seeing parts of yourself and parts of a shared life fade away. As he forced himself to focus on the crime, memories of his dead wife and his unborn son merged with the image of the girl, producing a fresh surge of indignation inside him.

  “I’m grateful for this lead. I’ll go round myself,” he said, cutting short the conversation.

  Nina provoked a whirlwind of emotions because she brought back the trauma of the loss of Ada and the sudden disruption of his whole life. This case was running disturbingly parallel to the life he had known. He was unsettled by the realisation that people’s experiences were not so very different and could be superimposed one on top of the other. Not even a solitary soul like him could claim originality.

  “What idea have you formed of Nina?” he asked Juvara.

  The inspector had nothing to say. The commissario envied his detachment. He was young and could dodge putting awkward questions to himself. There was time enough for that, and in the meantime it was better to let him live.

  “The photographer, Dimitriescu, told me she was very shy, and she regarded her good looks as a problem,” Juvara said.

  “He confirmed that the photographs were his?”

  “Yes. He even remembers when he took them. The first one at the end of high school and the second a couple of years later.”

  “They seem two different people.”

  “The photographer had the impression she had changed her lifestyle, but he doesn’t know anything else.”

  Soneri contemplated the photographs in silence, but he became aware of a level of frenetic activity in the yard outside that was hard to reconcile with the rhythms of life in a sleepy town like Parma. Instinctively he thought of Nina as a naïve girl who attracted attention because of her beauty. Perhaps they had duped her and she had ended up in dubious circles. She reminded him of the fate of dogs abandoned on the motorways, acquired as fluffy toys when they were puppies and tossed aside the first time they peed on the sofa.

  “What’s causing all this commotion?”

  “The maniac. Some serial rapist on the loose. He’s been prowling after women in public gardens, in doorways, in parks. He’s already raped three. They say he’s a foreigner. Musumeci’s in charge.”

  “He won’t be operating during the day, will he?” Soneri said, looking at the grey skies.

  “The city’s completely neurotic. People are talking about nothing else. The switchboard’s jammed. They’re seeing maniacs everywhere,” the inspector said.

  Soneri was surprised he had known nothing about it, and put it down to the state he was in. “It’ll be the same as with the bulls,” he muttered, “but this guy knows how to keep out of sight a bit better.”

  9

  “SEEMS LIKE THEY’VE got him,” Alceste announced, as he put a plate of anolini in brodo in front of the commissario.

  “Got who?”

  “What do you mean – got who? The sex maniac, obviously. An illegal immigrant, or so they say.”

  “So now the witch hunt gets underway once again,” he mumbled to himself as he blew away the steam from the dish. He could sense the opening of the tiresome ritual enacted so many times before: the Right railing in shrill tones against immigrants, the Left asking people not to make a mountain out of every molehill and the Fascists threatening to get their clubs down from the attic. Reality was always elsewhere, the facts denied, and he would have to deal with the consequences.

  At least he could s
till enjoy the consolations of the table, the one pleasure left to him apart from walking in the mist and sitting at home with a book on autumn evenings. Such thoughts were running through his mind as he gazed at the rings in the soup, but they were interrupted when he found Sbarazza standing before him. His gait was so silent and discreet that it was easy to miss his approach, even for a trained eye like the commissario’s.

  “Thank goodness you’re here, otherwise I’d have gone hungry. There’s not one free table and there’s a queue of people waiting.” Three women had just got up from a table next to Soneri’s, and Sbarazza reached out to pick up a plate with an almost untouched chop. Another agile movement and a half-full bottle was placed in front of the commissario.

  “A dolcetto di Ovada. Not bad,” Sbarazza said

  Soneri looked around in embarrassment, but no-one seemed to have noticed.

  “Don’t worry, commissario. The important thing is to possess the right measure of self-confidence and nonchalance. When you have these attributes, even the most crass gesture will not arouse the slightest objection, because you need a bit of pluck to make a fuss, don’t you? And in this place,” he added, looking around the restaurant, “who do you think has such pluck?”

  The commissario thought again of the girl whose body they had found, and wondered if she had been particularly plucky. “A rare commodity,” he said. “Did you fancy one of the women sitting there?” he asked.

  “Each woman draws us into another world. When all’s said and done, that’s what seduction consists of. We’re given a glimpse of the missing part of ourselves.”

  “Very much missing,” the commissario replied in a dull voice, thinking of his own situation.

  “We always lack something or other. In my case, time is running out. The man out there who is assaulting women lacks a partner, but these are all insignificant and transient passions, like a man complaining of hunger while facing a firing squad.”