Gold, Frankincense and Dust

by Valerio Varesi

  “Send him in.”

  The man was dressed like the old peasants in the Apennines, in the modest but dignified elegance seen in ageing prints. He said his name was Floriu and he must have been in Italy for some time, for his Italian was fluent.

  “You’ve come from Suzzara?”

  The man nodded. “From the camp.”

  “If it’s about the gold, you’ll have to go and talk to the carabinieri.”

  “I know, but that’s not why I’m here. I’ve come about those two boys.”

  “The ones in the B.M.W. stolen from Soncini?”

  He nodded once again. “I wanted to tell you they had nothing to do with it. They were just showing off.”

  “Are you the father of one of them?”

  “No, but I’ll take responsibility for what has happened. I stole the car. I came to give myself up, provided you let the boys go free.”

  “I doubt if it really was you who carried out the theft, and anyway the legal system does not allow exchanges of that sort.”

  “They had nothing to do with it,” the man repeated forcefully. “The car was in the camp to be dismantled and sent off to Romania. There are lots of our people going there and back. They would have reassembled it over there. It’s the safest way, but those two pinched the keys and went out for a run. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Are you telling me this to get revenge on some family enemy? Why otherwise would you give me a tip-off like this? To save two boys who’d be let out soon in any case?”

  Floriu straightened up, betraying his embarrassment. “No vengeance, and no tip-off. It’s the first car we’ve handled. I know others do it, traffic in cars, but in our camp it’s the first time it’s happened.”

  “Why should that be? You’ve decided to branch out?”

  “No,” the old man stammered. “There’ll be no trafficking in cars.”

  “Well then, explain yourself more clearly.” Soneri was growing impatient. “None of what you’ve said so far makes any sense to me.”

  “It was those four. They did it.”

  “Which four?”

  “The ones who were involved in stealing the gold. They took the car, even if they’ve never done it before. I don’t know why. One night they came back with it. There are honest and dishonest people among us. Like among you Italians.”

  “Now you’re making more sense,” the commissario said. “The four found by the carabinieri with the gold are the same ones who stole the B.M.W. Is that what you’re saying?”

  The Romanian nodded, but without much conviction.

  “But you insist you’ve never stolen a car?”

  “No, never.”

  Soneri said nothing for a few moments. He was trying to understand, but the whole matter was beyond him.

  “In your opinion, why did it happen?”

  The man shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them.”

  Floriu’s attitude had changed, and now he seemed keen to get away. Perhaps he was disappointed at the way the interview had gone.

  “You do know why it all happened,” Soneri insisted.

  “I’m here to state that those boys had nothing to do with it, but if you don’t believe me, I have nothing more to add.” He stopped there. It seemed as though a shutter had been pulled down. The Romanian’s grim expression was distrustful, so much so that when he had gone, Soneri felt he had not been up to the challenge. Perhaps subconsciously he had believed the case was all but closed and he had failed to pick up the signals the Romanian was giving him. He had not remained open to every possibility, as Sbarazza would have said.

  “Juvara, do you remember that text relayed from the mast at Cortile San Martino, the one to Nina saying that everything was ready?”

  “Yes, from the stolen mobile.”

  “What do you think it meant?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” the inspector said. “On the other hand we have found something interesting among Soncini’s papers.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There was money deposited in a current account in Iliescu’s name at the Savings Bank.”

  “What’s so extraordinary about that?”

  “That she had 750,000 euros in that account.”

  “Do you think the money was hers?”

  “No. Aimi has access to the account as well.”

  “The accountant?”

  “Commissario, if there’s one thing in this whole story I just don’t get, it’s the bomb at Golden. Everything up to that point has a logic of its own, but not that explosion. And now there’s this account.”

  “I know. If only these Romanians would talk. The guy who came today seemed to want to tell me something.”

  “They’re releasing the two teenagers. This morning they were let out of the Young Offenders prison and now they’re with Marcotti at the magistrate’s office.”

  Soneri jumped to his feet at once, as though his desk was on fire. Juvara watched him walk briskly across the courtyard in the direction of Via Repubblica and disappear through the gate.

  Ten minutes later he was in the investigating magistrate’s office. The young men had the same hostile expression as before.

  “Commissario, don’t waste your breath. These two have made up their minds not to speak. They must have been ordered on pain of death to keep their mouths shut,” Marcotti said.

  The commissario pulled up a chair and sat facing them. “We know you didn’t kill the girl, and we know the B.M.W. was stolen by other people, in fact by the four men arrested at Suzzara,” he began.

  The two exchanged glances and for a moment it seemed their hostility softened a little. “You’ll be out in a short while. All I want to know is why you took the car when you knew that the men who had stolen it planned to send it to Romania bit by bit to make some money on it. You knew that you risked being stopped and that would wreck the whole scheme.”

  The two said nothing, staring straight ahead with the same impassive expression.

  “Isn’t it odd?” Soneri said to Marcotti. “There’s a car which is really hot and two boys with no licence take it out for a ride. They say they were framed, but they framed themselves. A right pair of idiots, amateurs.”

  The last words struck home with the pair, who were apparently unwilling to be taken as fools in what they considered their line of work.

  “That car no stolen,” the older of the two burst out. “That car given.”

  Soneri continued to look at Marcotti. “Given by whom?”

  “By Italian man. No know name.”

  “Soncini?”

  “No know name,” the Romanian repeated, raising his voice slightly.

  The peremptory tone indicated that there would be no further dialogue. After a few minutes more, Marcotti cut proceedings short. “Let’s take it slowly,” she said, handing the two boys over to the officers who would take them back to the Suzzara camp.

  “Commissario, you should be pleased,” the magistrate said. “You’ve learned one important thing. It seems the car was not stolen as Soncini claimed.”

  “Do you think they’re telling the truth?”

  “Do you think someone who does my job could risk putting her hand in the fire? But if you really want my opinion, I do believe it,” she said, winking at Soneri. “Why should they make up a story? People only do that when they have some reason for it, but in this case they’ve nothing to fear, don’t you agree?”

  The commissario nodded. “That means the Romas and Soncini were in business together.”

  “Cocaine?”

  “I thought of that,” the commissario said. “But in that case, what are we to make of the bomb at Golden?”

  “Maybe it was directed at Soncini.”

  “If you’re in business with somebody, you know nearly all about them. Anybody doing business with Soncini must have known that he and his wife wielded quite different levels of economic power,” Soneri said.

  “And who’s to say, in spite of that, that the
y were not united when it came to business?”

  He was about to reply, but he stopped himself. Marcotti’s hypothesis suddenly shed a new light on the case.

  “Who knows? You might be right.”

  When he emerged from the magistrate’s office, night was falling and he had still not seen Medioli. He was grateful for the fact that this man who had lived in exile from the world had been caught up in the whirlwind of events. “Our infiltrator”, Soneri had called him as he took his leave from Marcotti.

  “I’d put my money on him,” she had replied, winking at him once more.

  20

  AS HE DROVE along Via Mantova in the direction of the prison, he felt like Fabrizio del Dongo fleeing towards the Po, on the same road and perhaps in the same state of mind. His instinct was that this was the final round and there would be no second chance, whatever Sbarazza might think. Capuozzo had made him a lengthy speech, in his customary woolly style, strewn with vague suggestions. The murderer was behind bars, the motive was clear enough, Nina’s relatives would soon forget and public opinion was pacified. Why waste more time? There was no shortage of work in the questura, and anyway digging too deep often resulted in bringing to the surface questions no-one really wanted spend even more time confronting.

  Nonetheless, Soneri pressed on. He was aghast at the prospect of dealing with bureaucratic matters, signing papers or pursuing half-witted drug addicts who had held up tobacconists with a dirty syringe. And of contemplating life without Angela. The reasons for deciding to persevere with Medioli were professional pride and curiosity, but also vanity with regard to Angela. For some days, his name had been on the front pages of the papers she read. It was his way of keeping his profile up, even if there was only one reader who interested him.

  *

  He was escorted through a dozen doors and gates before he got to the interview room. Nothing had changed – same rattling locks, same low ceiling, same stifling atmosphere, same off-white paint. However, Medioli appeared in better shape, more healthy and more at peace with himself than when they had last met.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” was his promising opening. “But I was beginning to think that you didn’t care anymore to hear what I had to say. As the days went by, I was more and more convinced that the law wasn’t interested in probing too far beneath the surface. I presumed that extended to me. I thought of sending a message to the magistrate saying that I was ready to cooperate, but I never got round to it. I’m fine here. I’ve a good relationship with everybody and I’ve been teaching these unfortunate lads in here how to fix engines. I gave them hope and I’ve found a purpose in life. That helps, doesn’t it?”

  Soneri nodded gravely, but he preferred to get away from this subject. “I should have come sooner. I had the explanation to so many things within reach.”

  “I don’t know about ‘so many’, but some, yes. From what I read in the papers, you’re already very well informed.”

  “No, not ‘very’. For instance, I don’t know what kind of deal the Romas and Soncini had with each other.”

  “Soncini?” Medioli started to snigger, but immediately pulled himself together. “You know that in a camp there are all kinds, honest and dishonest, the same as anywhere else. But you must also know that the Romas have a weakness for gold.”

  Several different thoughts coalesced in Soneri’s mind to form one unbroken thread – Golden, Soncini’s deals, the Romas’ gold and Marcotti’s idea that Nina’s murderer and Soncini’s wife were partners in business and not only to keep up appearances.

  “Are you saying that Golden used gold stolen by the Romas and that Soncini was the go-between?”

  “You’re missing one item: Nina Iliescu.”

  “She was an intermediary?”

  “What I reckon is that at the beginning she was put under pressure by her fellow countrymen, used as a means of recycling all that gold. With the Romas as with everybody else, nothing is like it used to be. They’re as greedy for money as the next man. There was a gang in the camp who could never get enough to keep them satisfied. They even started robbing churches, and that’s when the friction broke out. There are some things you just don’t touch, and in their world tradition still counts. That’s why the Romanians moved out, because the feuding was turning into an ethnic war.”

  “So Iliescu was caught in a web?” Soneri said. He still clung to the belief that Nina was a victim of the clan.

  “In my opinion, yes. Don’t forget that her family was related to the Romas.”

  “In the end they hated her. Maybe she had managed to crawl out of the dunghill?”

  “Maybe that’s what happened, maybe she was already condemned, but from the night of the accident, when you arrested me, I don’t know anything more.”

  “What about Mariotto? Why did they beat him up?”

  “Because in spite of the alcohol, he’d seen what really happened. The B.M.W., I mean. Without that information, you’d have had a hard job of it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Razzini’s B.M.W., the same model as Soncini’s,” the commissario said, as though talking to himself.

  “I don’t know who this Razzini is,” Medioli said. “What I do know is that Soncini dumped the body there that night because it was the safest place. Nobody ever climbs down the slope beside an autostrada, and the Romas were there to guard it. But with all he’d been up to beforehand, it all back-fired on him.”

  “But Nina really was one of them … ?”

  “You said it yourself. In the final stages they hated her. There were nasty rumours circulating about her.”

  “Why?”

  “I think she’d breached some code. Or as you were implying, probably she wanted to get out, which in the eyes of the community came to the same thing. I believe the Romas had agreed to eliminate her, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of them was there on the night of the murder. Business was going well with Soncini, if you see what I mean. Nina was a loose cannon and knew too much.”

  “So it wasn’t just about the baby?”

  “That was a matter for her lover’s wife, but Signora Martini herself didn’t do too badly out of the arrangement: access to cheap gold, you understand? And if Soncini hadn’t been such a brainless cocaine addict, it’d all have gone smoothly. Mariotto was beaten up because he blurted everything out and that was no good to anybody, but it was really meant as a warning to Manservisi. He hates the Romanians like poison and told you what Mariotto had seen. He wanted to give you a tip-off, but he couldn’t say too much because he was afraid.”

  “But then Soncini, when he reported the theft of his car, tried to double-cross the Romanians …”

  “No, not at all! As I just said, Soncini is a moron who fucked up even his own swindles. His wife used to pass him the cash to pay off the Romas for the gold, but he pocketed it to feed his cocaine habit. When they came looking for their money, he had to hand over his car to keep them quiet. Then his wife found out, and I suppose she went crazy. She ordered him to report the theft to the police. Just imagine what would’ve happened if a B.M.W., property of Golden, had turned up in a Roma camp with no report submitted! That car was hot! So a deal was struck with the Romas. The vehicle would be theirs, but they would make it disappear when the time was right, perhaps by taking it apart. And that’s not all. Soncini, to keep up appearances, got hold of another car of the same kind from some friend he’d made while they were snorting together. So you see, Soncini was the weak link in the whole chain.”

  “In other words, Soncini had no wish to put the blame on the Romanians. He did use that car for the murder, but he’d been driving about in it for a while, and he was doing so so as not to arouse suspicions about his gold deals,” the commissario reflected, thinking that once again the coincidences were multiplying.

  “Apart from anything else, it’s a very fashionable car in their world. He would never have had the guts to dupe the Romanians. He’s too much of a coward. You’re attributing to him a bigger brain th
an he has. He simply got himself entangled in his own lies, in the games a prick like him gets up to and in his craving for cocaine. When you act like that, you’re on a slippery slide and there’s no way back.”

  When Medioli fell silent, he and the commissario sat staring at each other.“You don’t look convinced,” Medioli said.

  “I see everything from a new perspective. I’d better get used to that.”

  “Reality has many faces. We get accustomed to one and think that’s all there is to it. Maybe it’s just laziness, but the others seem unbelievable. It happened to me when I entered the Roma world, and my previous life just melted away.”

  “Now I too …” the commissario began, but he stopped because he was beginning to think about Angela again.

  “What a shit heap!” Medioli said. “Get out while you can, or you’ll end up stinking as well.”

  “I’m more likely to go mad,” Soneri corrected him as he was about to leave.

  “Commissario, do you think what I’ve told you will be enough to get me some time off my sentence?”

  “I’ll do my best,” he assured him.

  *

  It was only when he was walking to his car, in the centre of a square covered with a mist which made the lamplights seem to quiver slightly, that he realised how utterly he had lost his bearings. Reality kept losing its outlines in spite of all his efforts to impose some shape on it. Soncini was unquestionably a killer, but he was also a victim – his wife appeared to be in charge, but she was overwhelmed by unhappiness. The Romas suffered a life of exploitation while searching for prosperity; Nina’s lovers seemed to be winners but ended up losers; and Nina? She was the only one who had lost everything, dead in her early twenties while pursuing the dream of a normal life.

  As he drove, he gripped the steering wheel tightly and trembled with rage. To calm himself down, he took out his mobile and dialled Marcotti’s number.

  “That Martini woman is in it up to her neck,” he said. “She was turning out jewellery and sacred vessels with gold stolen, even from churches, by a gang of Romas.”

  For a few moments the investigating magistrate made no reply, and the commissario imagined her shaking her blonde mane in indignation.