Shadows on the Lake

by Giovanni Cocco

  “Why would there be a door, Inspector, if it’s underground?”

  Piras directed the beam of light along the mildewy walls.

  “There’s nothing here. It’s all rocks, earth, and roots.”

  “Where did you find the remains?” the sharp voice of Prosecutor Arisi cut in.

  “Over there,” said the marshal.

  Piras pointed the light towards the ground. “You’re right. You can see some bones. But not very many.” A moment of silence. “Now I can see the head,” he continued. “Oh my God! He’s still got his hair, poor guy.”

  “It’s all been photographed, and the doctor has already been in there,” Arisi said impatiently. “Let’s get going and take that stuff out of there. What are you waiting for?” he continued, addressing those standing around him.

  “Two workers from the site are already here with a box,” said the marshal.

  What’s with him? thought Stefania. Has he got a plane to catch in Milan or something?

  She felt a pang in her stomach, and only then remembered that she hadn’t had lunch. She looked at her watch. Three thirty. Camilla.

  Her daughter would be getting out of school in an hour. And she wouldn’t manage to pick her up in time.

  “Piras, you keep an eye on what they’re doing. This shouldn’t take long.”

  She stepped aside and started making phone calls. First to her sister-in-law, then the babysitter, then the woman next door.

  In the end she had to take a different tack, the very one she would rather have avoided.

  “Sorry to ask a favor of you, but I don’t know what else to do. Signora Albonico doesn’t feel up to it, and Martina is in Milan for an exam. I’m still here in Lanzo. I realize I’m calling at the last minute, but . . . Yes, okay, I can wait. Thanks.”

  She distractedly watched her colleagues in action.

  “Okay, I’ve managed to get free,” said her ex-husband, returning to the phone. “I’ll pick up Camilla myself. I had some other appointments, but I’ve postponed them. And since I don’t have the keys to your place, I’m going to take her to the office. She can do her homework there, and then we’ll go to the movies. I phoned the school to tell them I’ll be picking her up ten minutes late. They put her on and she said she wanted to see Harry Potter. Just let me know if you’ll be back by dinnertime—let’s say eight o’clock. Okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Stefania stood there staring at the display of her cell phone, feeling uneasy. It was always like this when she asked a favor of Guido, Camilla’s father. He always managed to resolve a problem in less than fifteen minutes; he thought of everything, and it was a sure bet that if he’d had ten more minutes he would have managed to pick up Camilla right on time. The whole faculty would surely honor him with their usual smiles. He was always so authoritative.

  She hoped with all her might that Camilla’s clothes, parka, and stockings were spotless that day, and that her blouse was buttoned correctly. Then she heaved a big sigh.

  Recovering the human remains took longer than expected, despite the fact that the two workers placed at their disposal had worked hard, collecting the bones one by one along with the stones and the soil that had covered them after the vault had collapsed.

  Stefania, Lucchesi, and Piras stayed behind to oversee the operation after Arisi had left in a hurry with the marshal. The assistant prosecutor had, in the meantime, granted the site foreman the authorization to resume operations.

  Sacchi, the doctor from medical administration, also stayed behind, more than anything to make sure that the bones recovered constituted an entire skeleton. He didn’t say much, limiting himself to pointing out, every so often, what was needed: “We’re missing another of these.” Or: “There should be another three of this length.”

  Stefania asked the workers to collect everything else they found around the bones. The two young Maghrebians only looked at each other and said nothing.

  But there was indeed something there: it might be some fabric or perhaps some bits of rusted metal. Or maybe it was only dirt. By the time they were finished, the wooden crate with the remains had become very heavy.

  The curses were flying—made all the more comical as they were uttered in the laghèe dialect by the two foreign laborers—when they had to carry the crate all the way back to the worksite. Then it wouldn’t fit in the four-by-four, and so Valentini Roadworks made one of its own vehicles available.

  “Tell us where you want us to take it,” the director of human resources said over the phone. “It’s always a pleasure to work with law enforcement,” he concluded.

  Right, as long as it’s not the customs police, thought Stefania.

  At five o’clock the crate with the evidence was in the van made available by Valentini Roadworks and ready to go. The driver was in a hurry. The other workers, in the meantime, had peeled off one at a time. What was left of the cottage would be gone by the following morning, and the construction company’s infernal machine would resume inexorably chewing up other trees, other walls, and other grass.

  The sun had set. The wind was blowing.

  Stefania stood there contemplating the open pit at her feet and the boulders around it. She couldn’t tear herself away. Perhaps because she felt as if she couldn’t grasp what she saw. She went back down into the nevera. She shone the beam of the flashlight again on the walls, then focused her attention on one point right above the floor of beaten earth. The stones that made up the rest of the wall were not the same as the others. Even with the naked eye one could see that they’d been at least a little squared. Then there were some remains of chiseled solid rock, some smaller stones, and then dirt, together with some darker fragments that were almost black. They looked like coal, or wood. It was anybody’s guess what it was. Earlier she’d had a sample collected and put in a bag.

  She remembered how as a child she often liked to collect “special” stones that were different from the rest. She would set them aside and catalog them, always in the hopes of finding something extraordinary, maybe a treasure, a vestige of an ancient civilization, something that nobody had ever discovered before. She liked to think that her specimens were rare things, precious or unknown substances. After cleaning them carefully she would arrange them in a corner of the garden, making sure that nobody saw her.

  Who knew what had become of her stones? she wondered as she climbed down the steep slope to rejoin the rest of the group.

  “We’ll take it to the Lanzo cemetery,” Stefania said to the last two workers remaining, referring to the crate. “We’ll leave it in a locked room next to the mortuary chamber. I’ve already informed the parish, and the sexton will be waiting for you. Dr. Sacchi, I’ll expect your report by tomorrow afternoon,” she added.

  The doctor came up to her and took her aside.

  “Inspector,” he said, “if you think it would be useful, I’ll come back up here tomorrow morning to look things over calmly, and of course I’ll prepare the report you want. But if you really want to open an investigation, as you seem to be indicating, then perhaps it’s better to have everything examined by someone professional, a coroner or specialized institute.”

  Stefania gave him a questioning look.

  “It’s true,” the doctor continued, “in my opinion that man was shot. In fact, there’s no doubt about it. There’s a hole in his skull. And he looks to me like a young man, a lad, tall and healthy but for his right leg.”

  “His right leg?” Stefania asked.

  “Yes. He probably broke it. I think he must have limped a little.”

  Camilla was very excited. She hadn’t stopped talking since her father dropped her off outside the front door.

  “So we went into Papa’s office to do homework. But I did it fast and then we played a little on his computer and then we had a snack of chocolate and pastries. And then we went to see Harry
Potter and Papa bought me popcorn and then—”

  “And then you need to take a breather, Cami. If you keep on talking like that you’ll die. Now go and start your bath, and I’ll come and help dry your hair. Meanwhile I’ll start making something for dinner.”

  “I’m not very hungry, Mama. Can’t we just have fish sticks and ketchup?”

  Fine, Cami. After a box of popcorn at six thirty, how are you going to be hungry at eight?

  Stefania was starting to get in a bad mood. Not for any precise reason. On the other hand, yes: she felt upset. Over a box of popcorn.

  Later, after Camilla had fallen asleep in the big bed, Stefania lay there watching her. It always ended up this way. The little girl would come in, “but only to say good night for just a second, then I’ll go back in my room.” A second under the duvet would become ten and more minutes, until she fell asleep. Finally Stefania would take her in her arms and carry her back to her little bed. And so it was that night, too. Ron, their ginger cat, slept at the foot of the bed in a comfortable quilted basket.

  Stefania woke up a little past four in the morning. It was pouring outside. The worksite was going to be a bog. But she had to go back there just the same.

  That morning there was a brawl between three drug dealers in the area around the stadium; some illegal squats of apartments reported in the former industrial quarter of Ticosa; and a break-in of a tobacco shop in the center of town, behind the Broletto. But all in all, Como was a quiet town asleep on the lakeshore.

  “So, what else is there this morning?” asked Stefania.

  “Marshal Bordoli of the Lanzo station called, Inspector. He wanted to let you know that he’s already received the report from the doctor, that guy who was at the site. They’re asking what they should do with it.”

  “Have them fax it here, Lucchesi, and tell them I’ll get back to them. As soon as the report comes in, bring it to me upstairs in my office.”

  When the report arrived, Stefania shut herself in her office after dismissing Lucchesi and Piras with the usual “Okay, guys, everybody out of here for the next half hour.” Then she lit her first Muratti Light of the day.

  She quickly read the seven-page report and then started ruminating over the details.

  Catalog of bones found. Skeleton almost entirely reconstituted and well preserved: a tall man, six feet, maybe more. Young, perfect teeth, fair hair, blond or reddish.

  Two holes in the skull, one at the nape, the other in the forehead. Two vertebrae and several ribs damaged, probably by falling stones when the vault collapsed. Or maybe not. Fracture in the right leg that had healed poorly, resulting in a shortening of the limb by well over an inch.

  The bones—according to the doctor’s report—were then cleaned and stored in a sealed crate that was turned over to the sexton.

  She carefully reread the other list as well: four pieces of heavy fabric, probably gray in color; a belt buckle, two shirt buttons; five metal buttons; a flat metal fragment, ten by five centimeters in size; part of a thin, probably silver chain, eighteen centimeters long; other unidentifiable metal fragments, one of which was longer and bent at one end. And then a great many fragments of blackened wood, perhaps burnt. And all deposited in a second crate.

  She stood there thinking, looking outside the window. A few minutes later she called the courthouse directly.

  “This is Inspector Valenti, I’d like to speak with Prosecutor Arisi. Yes, thank you, I’ll be in my office until noon.”

  When her two subordinates returned to the office she was still scribbling something on a piece of paper.

  “So, how do you two think that guy ended up under all those rocks?” Stefania asked them point-blank.

  The two policemen looked at each other as if they didn’t know what she was talking about, but before they could open their mouths she added: “That bit of wall I saw still standing was on the hillside facing the valley, and there certainly was nothing else on that side because it’s too steep. Whatever there was on the opposite side, if there was anything at all, must have already been torn down by the scraper. In front, on the lake side, there was nothing left, and therefore whatever there was had to have been in back, on the northern side. And there might have been something, theoretically speaking, since, among other things, there’s never any sunlight on that side. And then, if, over the years, the land had crumbled over it, it might look like a natural slope. That makes sense, doesn’t it? It gets covered over with grass and nobody imagines there might be anything under it. Assuming anyone was interested.”

  While Lucchesi and Piras were still mulling the first question, a phone call came in from the courthouse.

  “Good morning, sir. About our inspection of that site yesterday in San Primo . . . yes . . . I called you to let you know that, according to the initial findings, we might be looking at a crime, and I also wanted to know whether . . . Yes, of course. Thank you.”

  After hanging up, Stefania looked perplexed.

  “He didn’t let me finish. He said only to follow Carboni’s instructions, whom he talked to this morning. Needless to say, boys, I’ll keep you posted. Please tell Marino to send the newspapers up to me.”

  She put the sheet of paper in a folder and wrote on it: Unknown man: San Primo, March 19, 20**.

  2

  “Naturally we’ll open a case file against unknown persons—that’s the correct procedure. But the state’s attorney’s office is expecting a careful but quick investigation—and, above all, a confidential one.”

  Carboni spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully, with a cadence that was rather irritating, to say the least. Stefania watched him attentively without saying anything, but the questioning expression on her face must have been so visible that Carboni added: “In Lanzo they’ll give you all the support you need concerning information gathering at the site, but you’ll be the one leading the investigation. From here. And you’ll report back to me alone.”

  An awkward pause.

  Stefania decided to cast the bait to see if the fish would bite. She looked Carboni straight in the eye: “A confidential investigation? Who on earth would ever be interested in such a story? Tell me, Inspector, have I missed something, or are we in danger of finding the Monster of Florence hiding out in our mountains?”

  Carboni, deep down, was not only a good person but an honest cop. He was surely no genius, but Stefania admired him just the same. And she worked well with him.

  “That’s right: confidential, just as I said. It’s the same word Arisi used. That land, the woods above, the houses, the cottages, and everything else belong to the Cappelletti family.”

  So the truth comes out at last, Stefania thought.

  “So what?” she asked, throwing up her hands in a gesture of disapproval.

  “So we have to act with discretion, Inspector Valenti. The senator has every reason to want to avoid any more controversy after what the papers have been saying the last few months.”

  “How should we proceed?”

  “Political issues are of no interest to us. You just try to figure out what happened, and then report to me. The rest is of no concern to us. We’ll do what needs to be done, but without any brouhaha. And now you’ll have to leave, because I’m busy.”

  Carboni just wanted, in one way or another, to end the discussion. The whole thing irritated him. Maybe he simply felt put out. The lot of them counted as much as the two of clubs in a game of briscola between retirees. The big game was being played higher up. She said, “Okay,” and went out without further comment.

  Descending the stairs lost in thought, she remembered the image of Senator Cappelletti from the posters of the last elections: tanned, good-looking, long well-groomed hair, blue blazer. “United for Progress” or something similar. Stefania didn’t much follow politics in general, let alone local politics. She found it boring, of no interest.

 
On the other hand, she well remembered the Cappellettis’ big house on the lake, Villa Regina, with its park climbing up the mountainside in terraces. So many years ago it was the dream of all the little children, including her, to scale the high walls and go in there, because of the aura of mystery that had always surrounded that magnificent house.

  Her nanny, Zia Lucia Canzani, who used to do the ironing at the villa ever since she was a girl, would tell of embroidered tablecloths of fine linen for twenty-four settings that were changed daily for guests who would stay for weeks at a time. Translated into normal language, this meant that, in her opinion, those people were real sciuri.

  “Inspector, I’ve put the newspapers on your desk.”

  “Thank you, Marino. You’re an angel,” said Stefania. She was terribly fond of that simple, awkward man, who spent his whole day on the ground floor in the guard booth.

  Closing the door to her office, she lit a Muratti and cast a quick glance at the local newspapers: nothing in the Corriere di Como, nothing in La Provincia, a few lines in Il Confine: “Human Remains Found During Excavation for New Tunnel to Switzerland at San Primo Pass.”

  Following the intervention of the Carabinieri of the Lanzo station, coordinated by Assistant Prosecutor Arisi, the mortal remains were brought together and taken to the mortuary chamber of the local cemetery, awaiting identification. No leaks thus far concerning the ongoing investigation. Work at the site, by Valentini Roadworks Inc., has since resumed.

  On the same page, not far from this, another article attracted Stefania’s attention, mostly because it was accompanied by a large photograph of the worksite from a few weeks earlier: “Valli’s Intervention in the Province Will Not Halt Tunnel.”

  The journalist wrote:

  A stormy session of the Provincial Council yesterday evening. Councillor Luca Valli, known for his commitment to the environment, harshly criticized the work in progress at the San Primo Pass. It is “a useless, pharaonic project,” the young councillor said, “that will forever change the face of our mountain.”