Soncini collapsed on a chair as though he were on the point of fainting. He appeared more distraught and unnerved than before. Soneri allowed the silence to emphasise the gravity of the confession, but his mind went back to the farce played out in front of him a few days previously by Soncini, his wife and daughter, and his fury increased. In comparison, Nina, no matter how casual with men, seemed to him like a lost soul trying to stay afloat in a sea of filth. The thought of her helped him nurture a little hope that he would not sink into that slime.
“It would have been better for you to keep the baby and pretend to be a caring partner. Perhaps even, for the first time in your life, you would have assumed responsibility for something. And you wouldn’t be where you are now.”
“Please,” the lawyer intervened, “avoid making judgments. It’s not your role.”
The commissario threw a contemptuous look in his direction. “You’re quite right. It’s up to the judge to do that.” He turned once more to Soncini. “You forgot to add one thing.”
Soncini looked up, giving him a quizzical look.
“You’d have had to resign your position as a kept man.”
Soncini bowed his head again and said nothing.
19
AFTER HE HAD signed his confession, they took him away. Soneri watched him being led off by two officers followed by the lawyer, done up like a mannequin, and wondered why at that stage murderers appeared to him always so banal, so bereft of all pride, even of the pride of malice. He invariably found himself confronting unremarkable faces or insignificant people who were nothing out of the ordinary. It was impossible to see them in the role of killers. He recalled substantial mafiosi who looked like pensioners, serial killers with the appearance of admin staff, rapists who could have passed for seminarians and pitiless female poisoners with the features of a doll. Never had there been one with the surly expression of a cut-throat, the menacing eyes of a basking shark or the insolence of arrogance.
As he reflected on this, he felt his disquiet grow. There was something artificial in Soncini’s submissiveness. He might have been playing a part. If it all went well for him, he might indeed be able to show it had been an accident and perhaps even get off with a sentence of a couple of years’ imprisonment. He might claim he had acted under the influence of cocaine, and that burning the body had been a reaction of fear produced by the drugs.
All these doubts were swept aside for the time being by a flood of congratulations, starting with those of Capuozzo, who knew that this way he was guarding his back against public opinion and laying the groundwork for the parade of the following morning’s press conference. The newspapers were guaranteed to write that the investigators had done their job, and the political bigwigs would express their renewed faith in justice. Even Esposito phoned him from his car: “Well done, Commissario. We’ve pulled it off. You’re the pick of the bunch.”
Soneri was pleased, but he found it hard to show his satisfaction in public. He was uncomfortable with compliments because he never knew what to say. Fortunately the investigating magistrate, Marcotti, who was very like him in this way, restricted herself to a vigorous handshake and an eloquent look which said it all. The thought occurred yet again to him that if they had been contemporaries, he could easily have fallen in love with her. Juvara, who had been gazing into the middle distance for a while, apparently wrapped in thought, attempted to bring him back to earth. “Don’t forget your promise, commissario.”
“What promise?”
“The computer, remember? If we’ve solved the case, it was all down to the hard disk.”
“It was down to chance. And self-interest. Young Sauro thought he could make a bit of money from a machine he should have put out. He did it because some guy had asked for a computer at a giveaway price, so he was acting in his own interests.”
“That’s a very reductive analysis. Sauro could have kept quiet, told us he’d thrown everything out and fitted the hard disk to another computer,” Juvara objected.
“He had just opened up and needed customers. He might have decided it’s always a good idea to stay on good terms with the police. Anyway, what did he care about Soncini? You’re a much better customer.”
The inspector surrendered. “You’re always too pessimistic. Anyway, the case is solved and that’s what matters.”
“Solved? Mmm … You know what bothers me? That note, the one at Nina’s house, covered with insults. Whoever wrote that must have known Nina’s intentions regarding Soncini, and presumably before finding out about the baby.”
Not knowing how to reply, Juvara threw up his hands helplessly, but at that moment the telephone on Soneri’s desk rang.
“Commissario, Dottor Capuozzo has called a press conference for tomorrow morning at ten and would like to invite you to come along,” the usual secretary announced.
“Unfortunately I can’t be there. Please give the questore my apologies,” Soneri said perfunctorily.
The secretary was by now accustomed to Soneri’s refusals, and acting almost mechanically she assured him she would tell her superior.
“I’m going out for a breath of fresh air,” he told Juvara.
He wandered about in the city centre and dropped in to a couple of tobacconists to buy cigars and the wooden matches he continued to use in preference to a lighter. He detested those bright little implements which produced fire with no smoke, these being two elements which should always go together. He made his way back to the questura, but when he was in the courtyard under the fir trees, he realised he had no wish to shut himself up in an office, so he got into his car. He had a vague idea of where he would like to go. He would like to drive across the plain towards the first of the Apennine slopes and from there climb above the mist. On the road towards the hills, the skies would gradually clear, the sun would begin to peep out, but then he would briefly plunge once more into the last of the white mist before everything would finally brighten and the world would change. At times it was only a matter of a couple of metres. He would be happy to warm his bones over lunch in a trattoria on a hillside, looking down at the plain under its sheet of chilly mist.
Such thoughts were in his mind as he got to Via Spezia but instead of proceeding in the direction of Cisa, he turned at Lemignano towards the industrial zone. He did not know what had made him abandon the idea of an outing to the hills, but he soon understood as he parked in front of Golden. He was missing Angela. Once in the hills, he would be reminded of their days away from the city, and that was what had made him turn back. He had no wish to invite pain. Better to face the hostility of Giulia Martini, who was even now staring resentfully at him. The commissario preferred to tussle with another person rather than with himself.
“Did you manage to visit your husband in jail?” he said.
“No, and I don’t care to. As far as I am concerned, you can keep him. That man has been my ruination.”
“You could have left him, if you hadn’t been slaves to a bella figura.”
“All my life I’ve had to put up with his affairs. The man is an inveterate womaniser,” she said, without restraint. “After a while, I told myself I didn’t care about him anymore and he could do what he liked. Once my daughter had grown up, she understood. However, I could not tolerate the idea of him breeding a litter of bastards. There is a limit.”
“Don’t go any further. That unborn baby had very little to do with it. What mattered was your self-interest. You’re not defending respectability, just business.”
The woman seemed about to assault him. The commissario savoured his own mordant lucidity and was indifferent to any offence he gave. He stood in front of her, throwing down the gauntlet with words she had never wanted to hear, words which stripped her naked.
“For years the two of you were happy to play the part of the united couple, just so long as it kept the business turning over. It was of no concern to you if your husband went after other women in nightclubs, because the thing that mattered was to put on a
brave front for the people who placed the orders, the ecclesiastical curias. A fine marriage, a flourishing company, a daughter who marries into the Dall’Argine family, a veneer of dutiful Catholicism … a model family,” he said sarcastically. “And all to display an irreproachable image, a guarantee for the bishops and traditionalist clients who buy the gold and jewellery from you. And then a Romanian girl turns up and it all gets serious. She wants a family. You know perfectly well she’ll not back off and so you threaten her, you send her threatening letters, but the girl holds fast. At that point, you take to blackmailing your husband: either you stop seeing her or I’ll cut off your allowance. No more dolce vita as kept man, no more women, no more clubs and expensive cars. And when you find out she’s expecting a child, you deliver your ultimatum. He’s got his back to the wall, forced to choose between the playboy life and giving up Nina, and he opts for the second, but he didn’t reckon with her sheer grit. She really did want an ordinary life with the man she loved most of all of them. So she had to be got rid of. After all, what was she but an illegal immigrant from Romania? Who’s going to go looking for her? And in fact nobody did go looking for her, except one old grandparent who set out for Italy to act as peacemaker between the girl and the gypsy community, but the bus journey finished him off. End of story.” By the end of his story, Soneri found himself trembling with rage.
“You’re a visionary!” Martini screamed, hissing like a cobra. “You can believe anything you like, but she was no more than a common whore. She gave herself to one and all, and I’ll tell you something else. She had a great talent for getting men all worked up. She knew how to appeal to their weaker side, playing each one in a different way. She sniffed them out like a snake, and then drew them into her trap. I can’t help laughing at your portrait of her as a victim. A vulgar prostitute! A slut!” She was yelling at the top of her voice, all pretence at being una vera signora cast aside.
Soneri stared at her in consternation. At that moment for the first time he grasped just how venomous to each other women can be, and to a degree unimaginable in a man. Her eyes expressed infinite ferocity, and her snarling mouth twisted by hatred could have torn off chunks of meat with a single bite. The commissario took a step back when she screamed at him to get out of the office. He felt sick, and as he left he was glad once again to breathe in great, reviving gulps of fresh air. He felt himself growing lighter and lighter, less bound to life and for this reason more pitiless in his judgments of it.
He sat behind the wheel of his car and when he got to the turn-off for Via Spezia he contemplated for a moment which direction to take, Cisa or the city. He remembered it was time for lunch and thought it would be a waste of time to go looking for the sun when the sky would already be taking on the colours of dusk. In the mountains in winter, only morning counts.
When it was almost two o’clock, anxiety began to take hold of him again. He was still hoping for some communication from Angela, but he sensed that she would not call that day. He decided to go to Alceste’s, once again looking for refuge in food and drink. With a wry smile, he recognised that there was not much else available to him.
There were not many people there, but Sbarazza had had the luck to find one table which apparently three women had just left.
“You’ve chosen a place where there’s not much for you to eat,” Soneri said, coming up behind the Marchese.
“Man does not live by bread alone,” Sbarazza replied. “I was very taken by the lady who was seated here.”
The outline of her lips had been imprinted on the serviette in crimson, and Sbarazza gazed longingly at that trace of femininity. “I can smell her perfume and the seat still has the warmth and the very form of her body,” he said, as if in a dream.
The commissario smiled. The old man was one of the few people with whom at that moment he was happy to spend the afternoon. There was something profound and consoling in his conversation.
“I hear you’ve solved the case of that unfortunate Romanian girl,” Sbarazza said. “So did you finally draw the right card from the pack?”
“It did finally emerge, although I was on the point of despair.”
“You see? Never give up. Never lose faith.”
“For the last few days I had been thinking I would never get a good hand.”
“It’s when it seems that nothing can happen that chance does its work for us. Even at this moment while we’re here eating, absorbed with nothing more than flavours and scents, perhaps something which concerns us is occurring. A billiard ball rolling into a pocket can be the result of a thousand cannons,” the Marchese chuckled.
“Maybe you’re right,” Soneri said as a plate of tortelli di zucca arrived at the table. “Maybe something will cannon off something else in my path this afternoon and change the prospects for me. This morning …” He tasted the first tortello.
“What happened to you this morning?”
“I was making for the hills when, on an impulse, I changed direction. I made a choice, there and then. If I’d gone the way I first intended, I’d have spent the morning quite differently. For a start I wouldn’t be here talking to you, and instead of having a plate of tortelli di zucca I’d be having a plate of gnocchi ai funghi.”
Sbarazza made a sign to him to stop. “Don’t go down that path. It’d be an infinite process and finish up in complete nonsense or with the conclusion that everything you do is wrong because there’s always a more promising possibility.”
“So? Is that not true to life?”
“I prefer to believe that if a choice has been made, there’s a reason for it. You could call it providence, or determinism, but in both cases our will is only in part responsible. The rest is something obscure that we are not permitted to know, whether it’s transcendent or immanent,” the Marchese declared, in philosophical mood.
“I deal with much more banal but all too human causes: money, sex and the passions which spring from them.”
“Those are only effects. Don’t muddle them. If you think about it, that obscure, pre-eminent cause which directs our lives conducts itself in such a way that killing or loving are, when all is said and done, on the same level of potentiality, but then, in time, the balls cannon off each other in a certain way and produce now one outcome, now the other, or both.”
The commissario savoured another tortello, and then muttered his dissent: “Do you know why I enjoy your company? You make me feel an optimist. I can’t resign myself to the thought that we’re all machines controlled from long range. Neither one of us can rule out the possibility that we might become murderers, but the fact is that we are not. The majority of people are not.”
“From fear, only from fear. For a minority there’s also an element of awareness.”
“What is this awareness? Morality?”
“A conquest, a point of arrival. When someone in thought or deed falls to the very lowest point of humanity, he begins to be aware. Then and only then, after dabbling in evil, can he choose. Other people draw back from fear of the reaction which wickedness arouses, but life with its limitless sequence of possibilities could entice them to say yes to even the most nefarious acts.”
“Are you one of the fellowship of the aware?”
“Don’t you know I’ve done all sorts of things? And you too are a member of the fraternity, after all you’ve seen.”
The commissario smiled and got up. “I do see so much that is appalling,” he said, thinking of his most recent meeting. “And I see no end of it.”
“Seize every opportunity. You know what to do.”
“Well …” Soneri said. “I’ll go and face whatever the afternoon brings.”
*
The first thing was the authorisation to interview Medioli. Soneri arranged to see him in the evening, and hoped he had decided to talk. He was seeking some enlightenment on the world of the Romas. All those years spent in the caravans could not have been in vain.
The second thing to arrive was news brought by the beguil
ing policewoman who had made such an impression on Musumeci.
“There’s someone here who wants to talk to you. Looks like a gypsy,” she told him.
In the commissario’s mind, the Roma camp and the man asking to see him fused into one.
Gold, Frankincense and Dust Page 21
