River of Shadows cs-1

by Valerio Varesi

  “Do you know Professor Gandolfi?”

  “Everybody in Casalmaggiore knows the professor.”

  “What are his politics?”

  Father and daughter exchanged glances, wondering at the point of the question, before the daughter, with an abruptness which might have been taken for scorn, said: “At the university, he was known as the Red Baron.”

  Her father gave her a reproachful look in which Soneri read the reluctance of the trader to voice a judgment.

  Professor Gandolfi lived in a most elegant villa, which appeared to have been only recently restored. It had a definite air of local nobility. He no longer practised in a hospital, and since his retirement had limited himself to making private visits to elderly, needy patients and to some impoverished comrades sent to him by the Party.

  “I work in the voluntary sector,” he joked. “For people who cannot afford the fat fees demanded by my more grasping colleagues,” he added, in a more serious tone.

  He was of little use to Soneri, who had no way of establishing whether he was sincere or merely a gifted liar. He explained that Melegari had asked for a prescription for a drug for high blood pressure and that he had written it out without giving much thought to the matter, since he knew that Dinon suffered from hypertension.

  “He eats and drinks too much,” he said.

  The commissario got up, taking a good look at the professor as he did so, but he could not make him out. He was well dressed and lived in a house furnished with taste. In the courtyard below, Soneri had noted a big Mercedes with a recent number plate. As he opened the gate, he thought how much he had always disliked Mercedes communists, for whom being left-wing was no more than a snobbish affectation.

  Walking along with his cigar in his mouth, he became aware of a restlessness, a bothersome itch like a nettle sting all over his arm. He felt an old feeling hovering over him but he could not identify what it was. It occurred to him that he was like a hunting dog with the scent of game in his nostrils, but who has no idea which direction to take because the same smells are all around him. Perhaps that was why he set off towards San Quirico. Certain stray thoughts had taken possession of his mind. He sat at the wheel of his car with no real intention of driving off, but then, mechanically, he started the engine and turned on to a side road, more a makeshift track in the countryside, which veered away from the embankment and the river. He had not gone far before “Aida” rang out and he had to stop in a clearing where the grey curtain of the mist had lifted a little.

  “Do you remember Maria of the sands?” It was Arico, sounding unduly serious.

  “Of course. Anteo Tonna’s woman.”

  “Something odd has occurred. Last night, somebody tried to force the window on the ground floor in the hospice where she now is. Fortunately, the window bars did their job.”

  “Were they after her?” Soneri said. He knew the reply in advance.

  “In my view, yes, but they didn’t get very far. They gave up, partly because the grille was strong enough and partly because one of the night nurses looked out of the upper floor.”

  “Did they see anything?”

  “Only a shadow. But we found footprints in the frost. A man with large feet.”

  In the commissario’s head various ideas formed, superimposing themselves on those which were already there and reinforcing them. A lorry narrowly missed him as he was coming out of the clearing where he had stopped. For a few seconds, with no roadside verge to keep him right, he lost his bearings, and when he got back on to the road he realized it was a different one, a narrower road which cut across the plain, it too heading away from the Po embankment. In the thick fog, it took him some time to realize that, like the other, this road too led to San Quirico. Fate must have been taking him there.

  He drove around a dozen or so houses sunk in the clay of the Plain, before finally making out the veranda of the old man’s home. From the half-closed garden gate, he saw him behind the windows, staring into the grey emptiness ahead of him, still crouched over his walking stick. When Soneri was no more than a few feet away, the old man gave a start and began searching him out, turning his eyes this way and that, like a torch. Soneri spoke, allowing the man to locate him and to calm himself. On this occasion, he had his legs wrapped in a blanket and had a soft hat on his head.

  “Is it iced over already?” he said straight off, avid for news.

  “Yes, around the riverbanks.”

  “Tonight it will get thicker and will reach a few metres further out. They’re all blocked, aren’t they?”

  “For normal boats, there’s no way they can sail,” Soneri said.

  The old man looked disappointed. He would rather have been on the banks to see for himself the Po turn to ice, but even if they had taken him there, he would not have been able to see a thing.

  “You’ve been down?”

  “I have.”

  The man remained closed in a painful silence for a moment or two, then said: “It’s been a good twenty years since it iced over.”

  His wife appeared at the doorway, looked over in the direction of the veranda and then, recognizing Soneri, withdrew.

  “The last time it happened,” he started up again, “I was still out and about with my boat.”

  He seemed on the point of giving way to the onset of melancholy, but then he stared keenly at the fog outside with an urgency which continued to surprise Soneri. At that point, a car could be heard passing beyond the garden, beyond the dark spot that was all that could be seen of the hedge. The old man raised a hand and pointed to some imprecise spot among the white wisps of mist floating about. Soneri remained silent until that gesture pregnant with meaning found expression in words.

  “That…that noise,” he repeated, like a man with a stutter. “I’ve never heard it before.”

  “I thought you were a bit hard of hearing,” the commissario said, taken aback.

  “I can make out certain noises very clearly and others less so. The doorbell, for example.”

  “But you were very sure about that one?” Soneri insisted.

  “Yes, it’s new. Last night and then now. I know the sound of all the cars from around here, and I can tell you that one is new.”

  “A foreigner?”

  “There have never been any here.”

  “Could one of your neighbours have changed cars?”

  “There are only old folk with no licence here.”

  “A relative…”

  The old man shook his head. “Nobody comes here on weekdays. Not in this season…only the baker or door-to-door salesmen.”

  Something unusual about the sound had made a deep impression on the old man, and it was now beginning to intrigue the commissario as well.

  “When it comes to engines, I know what I’m talking about,” the old man said, in a tone that brooked no contradiction. “On the river, I could tell who was coming and going from the pitch of the outboard motor, long before they were in sight. Sometimes I would greet another craft as it passed without my even seeing the outline of its hull.”

  They stood in silence, broken by Soneri saying: “Have you heard other unusual noises lately?”

  “No, there’s never anything out of the ordinary here. I could draw up a list of all the noises you hear by day and by night. I don’t sleep much. I live in darkness nowadays.”

  “Who could it be?” the commissario said, thinking aloud.

  The old man stretched out his arms. “Sometimes people go off the road in the fog and end up in this God-forsaken place, but that never happens twice in a row. The second time, they must be coming here deliberately.”

  The commissario thought back to the road: a narrow, raised track running from the main road and ending at San Quirico. Someone must have known his way to one of the summer residences scattered here and there in that tangle of a village, but it could not have been, in the old man’s view, someone who came regularly. Soneri walked along the path to the road on the other side of the hedge wher
e the car had passed. On the thin white of the frost, he saw the treads left by the tyres and followed them. They led to a low villa, with chubby, plaster-cast angels in the garden. The house seemed completely shut up. The lower part of the door was even barred with a metal guard. At the side of the house, under an overhanging roof, a camper van had been parked.

  Soneri made his way back, being careful to tread on patches of the roadway free of frost to avoid leaving any footprints. He was back in front of the house with the veranda when his mobile struck up with its laboured version of the triumphal march.

  “Commissario, the questore asked me where you were.” Juvara.

  “And it was you he asked?” Soneri said, with some annoyance.

  “He said he’d been trying to reach you himself, but he always found your mobile switched off.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He’s upset because he’s found out that you knew about the illegal traffickers and the inquiry has ended up in the hands of the carabinieri. And he doesn’t understand why you’re still out on the Po instead of being at your desk. He even asked if you were away on your holidays.”

  “Tell him that tomorrow or the day after there will be developments on the Tonna case,” Soneri cut him short. When he put his mobile back in his pocket, he was amazed at the self-possession with which he had spoken.

  “Who’s the owner of that low-roofed villa with the statues of the angels in the garden?” he asked the old man who had heard him return.

  “The Ghiretti family. The sons and daughters live in Milan, but the older members of the family live in Cremona. They come here three times a year.”

  “There’s a camper van under the shelter. Would that belong to the family?”

  “A diesel? The car that went along the road a short while ago was a diesel.”

  “I think so, but it’s been there a while.”

  “Ah then, I don’t know. I don’t think it belongs to the family. They must have rented the place to someone or other.”

  “The car, the one you heard, finished up there at the same house.”

  The old man stopped to think things over, but then repeated several times: “Strange, all very strange, it seems strange…”

  The commissario went to stand beside him. “When exactly did you hear the car last night?”

  “It was late, maybe eleven o’clock.”

  Soneri wrote out in large print the number of his mobile and handed it to the old man.

  “Tell your wife to call me the moment she hears the car get back. It’s very important.”

  The old man clutched the paper and nodded.

  By now he should know the road, Soneri thought, but it was not easy in the fog, and perhaps he would have to return to San Quirico later that night.

  It was around 8.00 when he made his way into Il Sordo and he immediately felt himself enveloped by the atmosphere of warmth and beguiled by the scents from the kitchen. As he passed the open entrance to the cellar, his nostrils were filled with the mildly mildewed aroma of salame hanging from the beams below.

  The landlord himself passed among the tables in the imperturbable silence in which he chose to wrap himself, heedless of the powerful strains of “Falstaff” echoing from the salame — coloured walls. When he came to Soneri, he stopped a moment to look closely at him, watching as the commissario rolled his cigar in his lips with a certain voluptuousness. He then picked up the menu, put it in his apron pocket and took out a notepad on which he had written in large letters on a lined sheet of paper: La vecchia.

  Soneri was puzzled for a moment. La vecchia: the elderly woman? The old girl? The ageing female? His first thought was of Maria, Maria of the sands, but immediately he stopped himself: it was too easy to be distracted by professional concerns. His host simply wanted to let him know that he had some vecchia al pesto, minced horsemeat flavoured with a peperone sauce. Childhood memories came flooding back, and he nodded enthusiastically. The landlord kept his best dishes for those whom he considered most likely fully to appreciate them. The commissario was now of that company.

  The vecchia lived up to every expectation and Soneri nodded gratefully to the landlord who must have cooked it especially for himself and his wife. It was like being invited to his home for dinner. Around 9.00 the osteria began to fill up. Barigazzi and Ghezzi came in, but when they saw the commissario, they took a table at the far side of the room. Soneri, untroubled, turned towards them, staring at them with a look which was also a challenge but at the same time keeping half an eye on the mobile which, unusually for him, he had laid on the table.

  To wash down the vecchia, he ordered some Bonarda which bubbled like Fortanina but had more body. The bottle on offer in Il Sordo had so much tannin that it looked like ink. He drank it in little sips to help loosen the powerful mixture of peppers and minced horsemeat which lay heavily on his stomach. All the while he was waiting. He looked at the Christ with folded legs, at the marks of the levels reached by the floods, at the ceiling of the same colour as chopped pork and at the heads of the customers in the room, moving like the spherical blooms of onions blowing in the wind.

  The jibe made by his superior, “Is he away on his holidays?”, came back to him. At certain times his job did resemble a holiday, mainly in the periods of inactivity in the course of an investigation when there was nothing to do except wait for something to happen. His was the kind of work which could sometimes be indistinguishable from idleness. His father had never liked his choice of profession. As a good peasant, the man had concluded that “for the most part, you lot do nothing all day long”. Furthermore, he had no taste for all that questioning, that sticking your nose into other people’s affairs…

  It was 10.00, and Soneri’s patience was wearing thin. The unceasing hubbub in the osteria was making everything a blur and made him feel as though he were on the point of dropping off. Perhaps the old man had fallen asleep and not heard the car pull up? Or maybe, after all, it had not come?

  The landlord reappeared and once again produced his notepad. This time he had written polenta fritta, “fried polenta”, a fresh reminder of childhood days and one Soneri found irresistible. The man must have studied him deeply on the occasions he had eaten there and had calculated his tastes precisely. Even more, he had chosen to serve him with a deliberate slowness which seemed rather in keeping with the skills of a theatre director. Did he know that the waiting time was still likely to be lengthy? By 10.30, some diners began to rise from their tables and move to the door. The principal topic of conversation was the freeze and several of the guests seemed to be leaving the osteria to go down to the riverbanks and check the spread of the ice. Barigazzi, very much the centre of attention, went with them.

  The deaf man then tried to communicate with the commissario, using signs the latter could not interpret. Was he referring to the food or to something else? The fried polenta was undoubtedly exceptional and Soneri replied with a sign indicative of deep gratitude, but the landlord displayed some surprise before responding with a brief shake of his head, giving the commissario the impression that there had been some misunderstanding. Shortly afterwards, the landlord came back with a liqueur glass and a large jar of cherries in alcohol. As a final course, it was somewhere between a special treat and a medicine guaranteed against all ailments, but it too brought back memories from other days.

  The osteria was almost empty. The only ones left while the last act of “Falstaff” blared out were Soneri, whose glass was almost filled with cherry stones, and the landlord who was seated sideways at the bar, staring into the middle distance. In that pose, he resembled the old man in San Quirico, and the commissario’s thoughts returned to the tedium of waiting when, quite suddenly, everything happened as in a scene in a melodrama. Verdi’s music ended on a long drawn-out sharp and a fortissimo of brasses, sinking the osteria into silence and leaving Soneri and the landlord staring at each other intently. Just as “Falstaff” was replaced by “Aida”, the commissario pressed the answer but
ton, said “hello” and heard a whisper at the other end as the old woman passed the telephone to her husband.

  “I’ve heard it,” he said.

  Soneri did not speak for some seconds and just as he was about to reply, the old man hung up.

  As was his habit, the commissario rose immediately to his feet, and the landlord seemed to understand exactly what he was about to do. He gave a good-bye wave, and the look he received in reply seemed to convey an awareness of what was going on.

  Outside the cold was as intense as ever, but the Bonarda countered it quite satisfactorily, filling him with a lucid euphoria indispensable for nights like the one ahead. In the fog, it was as ever a struggle to find the way to San Quirico. The road he had chanced on in the afternoon now seemed impassable in the wall of mist that the bonnet of his car had to plough into. After a while he found himself suspended over the countryside, and for a moment had the impression that he was motoring among the clouds. He crawled along in second gear, his fog lights incapable of picking out the verges, and every curve brought the fear that he was about to plunge down the slope.

  He left the car not too far from the old man’s house, thinking of him lying in his bed listening to the sound of the engine being switched off at the roadside, seeing everything in his mind’s eye, as he was now obliged to follow every scene in life. The commissario wondered if the old man had heard his footsteps on the road as he passed under one of the few lamp-posts in San Quirico. He certainly could not have heard him when he almost bumped into the gate of the house opposite the spot where the mysterious car’s tyre marks stopped.

  Soneri took out his torch to examine the tracks to make sure they were fresh. The sharp definition left him in no doubt. The old man’s hearing was very keen. The house was as silent as a graveyard. There were no footprints in the pathway leading to the front door, which was still barred by a metal guard to protect it from the damp. The shutters too looked as though they had been closed for some time. He inspected the camper van but there was no sign of any movement, so all that remained was to check the back of the house. It gave on to a kitchen garden with some fruit trees overgrown by creepers. And then he noticed some ten steps leading down to a cellar door.