Gold, Frankincense and Dust

by Valerio Varesi

  “What party was ruined?”

  “You obviously don’t keep abreast of the goings-on in high society in this city! It was the wedding of the century.”

  “Don’t tell me those cars were there for the Dall’Argine …”

  “You see, you knew after all. You obviously read the glossies in the hairdresser’s.”

  “You’re kidding. It was in the papers today. Two whole pages.”

  “Instead of printing something serious …”

  “Now I get it,” Juvara said. “The Dall’Argine boy was marrying the Soncini girl and that’s why they put a bomb in the Golden workshop. At about the very moment the daughter was saying ‘I do’.”

  “Right,” the commissario said.

  “A terrible business,” Juvara said as they got out of the car in the darkness at Lemignano, but it was not clear if he was referring to the dynamic of events or to the large black mark on the factory wall where a fire had briefly blazed, shattering the windows.

  The investigating magistrate, with her blonde, flowing locks standing out in the headlights as clearly as the phosphorescent jackets of the carabinieri, arrived within minutes. Maresciallo Santurro of the carabinieri had taken charge because of the success of his detachment in making the arrest, and he directed operations like a little Napoleon. Soneri had little to do except observe what had happened and absorb any suggestions of the kind invariably prompted by a crime scene. While Marcotti went to speak to the maresciallo, the commissario turned in the direction of the Golden offices, and there he found Soncini gazing at the burn marks on the wall with the concentration with which another man might have looked at a painting.

  “I was right,” he muttered without turning round.

  “The facts are on your side,” Soneri said drily. “Thus far, at least,” he added, reminding himself of the changeability he had discussed with Sbarazza. “Anyway, they’ve got them in custody, so you can relax …”

  “With those people, you can never relax. They never give up and there are so many of them. This is a warning shot. Next time …”

  “There won’t be a next time.”

  “You should’ve done something when I told you they were threatening me,” Soncini said angrily. “I have the right to protection. And then … the business …” Soneri could have sworn he all but said “my business”.

  “They’ll not try again for a while. They’re not that stupid,” the commissario reassured him. “To change the subject, I know you came to the station to identify your car. It seems there are no doubts, is that right?”

  Soncini nodded. “It’s mine alright. They wanted the blame to fall on me.”

  “Where are your wife and daughter now?”

  “Where do you think!” exclaimed Soncini arrogantly. “At the reception. They could hardly walk out on the guests! What would the Dall’Argine family have thought? These things make a lasting impression. Even if we were the victims, mud sticks.”

  The commissario began to feel so exasperated with Soncini that he was tempted to give a brutal reply. What did he have to be afraid of? The wedding had taken place and it was too late for the Dall’Argine family to have second thoughts. However, he remembered his position as a public servant and merely said: “People forget very quickly.”

  Marcotti came over and took him aside. “Did you know the judge has refused permission to tap the phones of Iliescu’s lovers? He said there were not sufficient grounds.”

  Soneri stretched his arms wide, all the while thinking that had he been in the judge’s shoes, he too might have been cautious. There was nothing concrete to point to them as likely murderers. They had gone to bed with Nina and had left part of their hearts with her, but nothing more.

  “What do you make of this bombing?” she asked Soneri.

  “It’s another piece in the jigsaw, but we don’t know where it fits.”

  She laughed. “We’re still pulling in the nets and something will come to the surface. However, I have to warn you that tomorrow the newspapers are going to go wild. This time somebody has trodden on the toes of the high and mighty. It’s no longer just about some poor Romanian girl.”

  As he went back to the car with Juvara, Soneri reflected on that obscure threat. “We’re going to have the questore breathing down our necks,” Juvara said.

  “The city demands an explanation of the disturbing events occurring all around us,” Soneri said in a sing-song voice, mimicking Capuozzo and the next morning’s headlines. “As long as everything’s covered up they’ll all sit tight, fooling themselves they’re in the best little city in the world, but the moment the dirty washing appears in public, they start screaming about it all being a terrible scandal,” the commissario bellowed.

  Juvara said nothing until Soneri had calmed down.

  “Tomorrow,” Soneri said, changing tack, “pop along to that friend of yours who sells computers and make him give you Soncini’s P.C. Take it home and have a good look inside it – although you’d better talk to Marcotti first. If you can’t get hold of her, try to persuade that Sauro.”

  “Do you think there’ll be anything interesting in the laptop?”

  “No, but you never know.”

  “A couple of days ago you told me Soncini needed something for his office computer. What was wrong with it?”

  “You know perfectly well I never remember these things. It must have broken down or something …”

  “Forgive my saying so,” Juvara began timidly, “but I think you should get to grips with this field. It’s fundamental for our work to—”

  “I know, I know,” Soneri interrupted in annoyance more than anger. “But I’m too old now to learn new tricks and I’m going to carry on with the tried and tested.”

  “What do you mean? You’re still young. You’re suffering from nothing more than mental laziness. Did you know that even Capuozzo is taking a course?”

  “Well I never! He should really be taking a course to raise his I.Q., but unfortunately there’s no such course available.”

  “And it would be a good idea for you to learn some English.”

  “Juvara, that’s enough. You’re getting on my nerves. You know what you’re going to do next? You’re going to come with me on a visit to the Campo San Martino Romas to see if the bulls have all been rounded up.”

  “In this mist? And it’s nearly ten o’clock,” said the inspector hesitantly.

  “They can have a long lie-in tomorrow.”

  *

  They took the narrow roads along the Lower Valley, as they had done the time before, when it was all starting up.

  “If this is a punishment, it seems to me over the top,” Juvara grumbled.

  “Don’t talk nonsense. I want to hear what Manservisi has to say. I think we might be given the right cards by our good friends, the Italian gypsies.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s a coded language I learned from Sbarazza, a highly eccentric aristocrat.”

  Juvara made no reply. He was relieved the commissario was not angry with him.

  Soneri missed the signs to the dump and the U-turn he executed brought the inspector out in a cold sweat. Nothing much had changed in the clearing apart from the fact that there was more rubbish than ever and now it was piled alongside the huge bins. The encampment was deserted and the fires almost out. All that remained were a few tongues of flame on a bed of ashes. Some televisions flickered inside caravans. The commissario parked and walked over, with Juvara at his heels. The heads of several children appeared at windows and some doors were hurriedly opened and just as hurriedly closed. A moment later Manservisi, cap on head, came to meet them with the relaxed gait of a man without a care in the world.

  “Good evening,” he said, drawing up in front of Soneri. In the background, the mist took on a yellowish tinge in the lights of the service area and hypermarket. There was no music playing. Perhaps the fairground had moved on.

  “I take it something serious has occu
rred to bring you out in the mist at this time of night. Another death?” Manservisi enquired.

  “We just wanted to know how Mariotto is getting on,” Soneri said.

  Manservisi gave a raucous laugh. “You must be joking.”

  “By no means.”

  The gypsy put on a serious face and grew tense.

  “Now it’s you who must be joking,” Soneri said.

  “Me? Mariotto has already told you all he knew. We’ve told you everything too. What more can you want?”

  “That you don’t piss me off with that story about a bull goring him. You know very well it’s not true. Mariotto was beaten up.”

  “Commissario, in the mist people see all sorts of things that never happened. Go and ask him for yourself.”

  “Don’t talk shit. There’s no doubt he was threatened, and it was probably you who ordered him to keep his mouth shut. In addition, no judge would credit a witness who is mentally defective.”

  “I have not ordered anybody to do anything. I defend my community, that’s all I do.”

  “And you think you’ll defend it by not talking? Why did the Romanians rush off so suddenly? There must have been a huge row between all of you.”

  “This is a big world. There’s room for everybody,” Manservisi said, implicitly confirming what Soneri had suggested.

  “Not big enough, to judge by all that’s been going on. They dump a burned body in front of the encampment, one of your lot runs off after a ridiculous theft, and another one is beaten up and it’s passed off as his being gored by a bull. That’s a lot of coincidences.”

  “So what are you getting at?” Manservisi said impatiently.

  “That you know much more than you’ve told me.”

  Manservisi grunted, while somewhere behind him there was a rustling sound and a snort. They must have caught one of the missing pigs and put it in a pen.

  “Anyway, the carabinieri did a search of your ex-neighbours and they came up with piles of gold. A magistrate could order the same thing here,” Soneri said, knowing his threat was a bluff.

  “Go ahead,” Manservisi said with total confidence. “We don’t touch that stuff. The people here go to work and our children go to school.”

  “What became of the Romanians’ gold?”

  “How should I know? If you had valuables in your possession, what would you do with them? Not any old stuff, but stuff that had a name and address.”

  “Like a painting,” Soneri reflected.

  “But you can give gold a new identity. You can’t do that with a painting.”

  “That’s true. Gold comes in many shapes and forms.”

  He remained where he was for a moment while Manservisi moved off with the same self-assurance with which he had arrived. Juvara was by the fire trying to get warm.

  “Let’s go,” Soneri called to him, as he got into the car. Juvara ran awkwardly to the car, and there was no concealing his relief that they were leaving.

  “What do you think he meant by that last remark?” the commissario said as they drove through the mist.

  “I think he meant that objects in gold are easily recognisable by the person they were stolen from, but they can be melted down and transformed into perfectly anonymous items.”

  “Well done. I see you’re beginning to develop an investigator’s mind. Tomorrow I want you to go to Suzzara and see if there’s been a rise in the number of thefts of gold. And persuade our colleagues to tell you if there have been robberies around Cortile San Martino.”

  As they reached the city boundary, one of their mobiles rang. Juvara fumbled about for a while before he located the correct one. “It’s yours. They both have the same ringtone,” he said.

  It was Marcotti. “Soneri,” she began, “I’ve had the two bombers moved to prison. I wanted to let you know that if you plan to interrogate them, I’ll be there tomorrow morning at nine.”

  “Are they talking?”

  “No different from the other two: not a word. And they too say they’ve been fitted up.”

  “We’ll have to find some way of making them talk. Maybe they could be convinced …”

  “Forget it, commissario. I’ve got experience in dealing with gangs from Eastern Europe and it’s not only the Italians who practice omerta.”

  “Then we have only one card to play.”

  “Which card is that?”

  “Medioli. I invited him to cooperate, and perhaps he will. He’s not one of the Roma community and doesn’t subscribe to their rites. We could look on him as an infiltrator.”

  “And you really believe he’ll help? He doesn’t seem to me quite of this world.”

  “Let’s have a go.”

  He dropped Juvara off at his house.

  “I’ll be in the office first thing tomorrow morning and I’ll get to work on the internet to do the research we were discussing.”

  “Internet, internet! Wouldn’t you be quicker going round in person to the officers responsible for investigating thefts? Their office is only two floors up. It’s always better to talk face to face.”

  “Whatever you want, commissario, but you really are too dismissive of computer technology.”

  “Enough, Juvara! And don’t forget your friend Sauro. You can drive each other crazy with all this talk.”

  The inspector made a sign that meant ‘I will obey’, and shut the car door. The commissario accelerated away in the direction of Angela’s house. He wanted to see her and spend the night with her. He parked underneath her residence and called her, but the telephone in the house rang out. Her mobile was switched off. He sank from desire to frustration and on to unhappy thoughts, and then began to think like a policeman and assess all possible hypotheses concerning his partner’s silence, coming inevitably to the worst possible conclusion. He was tired of forever banging his head against forces that refused to yield up their mystery, first in his work and now in his emotional life. Sbarazza had been right: for him it was all too much.

  He decided to go home, but then could not bring himself to drive off, so he chose instead to smoke a cigar and walk off his anxiety. He went along Via D’Azeglio with the mist ahead of him and swirling at his back. From time to time groups of Arabs and Africans emerged from the nearby neighbourhoods, their raised voices cutting through the silence of the deserted street. He came to Piazza Garibaldi and crossed into Via Farini before turning into Vicolo Politi in the direction of the court. There were still cars parked in front, perhaps belonging to magistrates. Angela might be busy inside, perhaps questioning a witness. He hung about for a while, and then saw Marcotti, the chief prosecutor, Capuozzo and Maresciallo Santurro go out. There had been a meeting no-one had told him about, and that promised nothing good for him, unless the agenda had been limited to the explosion at Golden.

  He went away certain that there would be trouble the following day, but he did not want to think about it. He was tired, disappointed and frustrated. He could not take any more. The moment he got home, the telephone rang.

  “Were you looking for me?” Angela said.

  “You talk to me as though I were president of the society of lawyers.”

  “Sorry. I’m out of breath. I’ve been working late and I’m extremely tired.”

  “So am I. And not only because of work.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That I can’t stand any more of this. I can never find you, I can’t reach you to talk to you, and when I do you’re very cold.”

  “I’ve really got a lot of work on.”

  “And I’m telling you that this is no way to live. You’ll have to make up your mind, Angela. One way or the other. I know you’re still seeing him. You were in the wine bar with him tonight.”

  There was a pause. Soneri would have given anything to hear her deny it, but instead she came back at him, totally composed. “So you’re playing the policeman with me again, are you?”

  “You’re wrong. It was pure chance. But I believe in coincidences.”

>   “You’ve already said that. You’d be better to keep your imagination in check, considering the job you do.”

  “Angela, I’m serious. I can’t go on this way. This situation is causing me too much pain.”

  She sighed. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m not ready to decide. I’m too confused.”

  He would have liked to tell her to let events take their course, as Sbarazza counselled, but he stayed quiet and it was she who murmured: “I still want to see you.”

  Soneri could understand nothing, but at the same time he was aware that there was nothing to understand, that there was nothing for it but to live for the moment, savour it and take everything he could from it without wondering what would happen next.

  17

  JUVARA HAD BEEN at work a full two hours before the commissario arrived at the office.

  “You were right,” Juvara told him. “There’s been quite an increase in reports of thefts of gold and jewellery in recent weeks, but the really interesting facts are contained in the data provided by colleagues who investigate theft and robbery. In the area around Cortile San Martino a lot of houses have been burgled and they’ve lost count of the number of cars broken into in the parking area at the autostrada petrol station.”

  “A whole industry!”

  “And another thing. They’ve not spared the churches either.”

  “The churches?”

  “Four parishes have reported thefts in the last two months, and in every case sacred vessels in gold have been carried off.”

  “Did this happen in Suzzara as well?”

  “Apparently not, but that could be because they’ve only been there a short time.”

  A few minutes passed and then the telephone on his desk rang.

  “Commissario Soneri, I’ve got Dottor Capuozzo for you,” announced the questore’s secretary. It seemed to Soneri there could be no worse way to start the new day.

  “I’m phoning about the Iliescu crime,” Capuozzo began. “I’m worried about this investigation because, unless I am very much mistaken, we’re not even within sight of a conclusion.”