Black August

by Timothy Williams

  “You’re late.”

  “This place is a pigsty.”

  “I made food for you, Piero Trotti.”

  “That’s very kind but it wasn’t necessary.” The saucepan slipped between his fingers and the metal handle burnt his fingers. He threw the saucepan into the sink, where it sizzled angrily. A brief cloud of steam rose towards the ceiling.

  “Don’t lose your temper.”

  Trotti said, “I never lose my temper.” He turned away, poured more cold water into the sink.

  “I’ve been waiting here all day. You could have phoned, Piero.”

  Trotti did not answer.

  “I was worried about you.”

  “I told you not to answer the phone. My colleague rang and you answered—you shouldn’t have. If the phone rings, I don’t want you to answer it. Nobody must know you’re here.” He noisily washed the remaining plates, banking them on to the draining board. “For your sake, nobody must know you’re here.”

  “There’s spaghetti in the refrigerator.”

  He threw the dishtowel over his shoulder and turned to face her. “Eva, you will have to leave.”

  She had managed to light the cigarette and she now sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. The folds of silk fell between her smooth black legs. “You’re going to throw me out?” The scars of the cigarette burns on her chest were just visible, above the lapel of red silk.

  “You can’t live here, Eva.” Trotti spoke without taking his eyes from hers.

  “You’re throwing me out?”

  “I never invited you, Eva.”

  “Where can I go?”

  “You can go back to Uruguay. Back to your son.”

  “I’ve got no money. I need somewhere to stay.”

  “You can’t stay with me. I am an old man, Eva. I can’t help you.”

  She sat with her elbows propped on the plastic top of the table.

  She had dyed her short, woolly hair blonde. The roots were black. She mumbled something inaudibly in Spanish. She smoked the cigarette down to the filter.

  (Boatti had said, “No such thing as a free screw. A woman knows you desire her body. She will always want something in return. She opens her legs, you open your checkbook. Or worst still, you open your front door, your soul and your life.”)

  Sitting down at the table opposite her, Trotti placed his hands on the plastic surface.

  The parish news sheet—at least eight months old and left there by Pioppi—had been tucked behind the alarm clock on top of the refrigerator. The clock ticked softly.

  “Give me a cigarette—I’ve used all mine.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “Christ.”

  Trotti fumbled in the knife drawer. There was an old packet of Benson that Nando had forgotten there last Christmas. The packet contained three filter cigarettes. “You can’t stay here, Eva.” Trotti handed her a stale cigarette.

  “What am I going to do?”

  “I can’t help you anymore.”

  “If I go back to Uruguay, they’ll find me.”

  “You think they won’t find you here?”

  She nodded. “I need you.” She sniffed. Self-pity. Trotti knew she was going to cry. “They’ll come looking for me. They’re looking for me now. They’ll want their money.”

  “I tried to help you before. You didn’t have to come here, Eva.”

  “What else was I supposed to do?”

  “I got you a passport. And a ticket. You could’ve returned to your son. You said you’d get a job.”

  “In Uruguay?” Eva shook her head.

  “You could’ve gone back. You could’ve got a job to be with your little boy.”

  “He’s happy with his grandmother.” She seemed to have forgotten about the unlit cigarette in her mouth. “Nobody’s ever cared for me in Italy the way you cared for me, Piero Trotti.”

  Trotti felt angry. “Why didn’t you take the plane back?”

  “Don’t abandon me now.”

  Angry because he was trapped.

  “The only person who has ever given without asking for something in return.” Her eyes were red when she looked up. The unlit cigarette trembled between her thick lips. Her face was puffy, the pillow had left creases on her skin.

  “I can’t help you.”

  Eva Beatrix Camargo Mendez, twenty-eight years old, from Cerro Largo state, Uruguay, mother and prostitute, started to cry. Without another word, she stood up and pulled Agnese’s dressing gown close to her body. To her young, lithe dark body.

  She was wiping at a tear with the back of her hand as she went out of the kitchen.

  Commissario Trotti, soon to be a grandfather, resented his desires.

  Peace of the senses?

  25: Neuroleptics

  Wednesday 8 August

  The Questura seemed almost empty.

  Maserati, now plump from marriage, gave Trotti a hurried, perfunctory wave and disappeared into the newly refurbished bureau of Scientifica, a plastic cup of instant coffee in his hand.

  Trotti took the elevator.

  Inside the elevator—with its permanent smell of old cigarette smoke and the hammer and sickle scraped into the aluminum paint—he pressed the button for the third floor. The elevator moved slowly. Since the renovation, there had been piped music, muffled and indistinct, from a speaker in the ceiling of the elevator.

  On the third floor a blonde woman—he could not be sure if it was the same woman as the previous day—gave Trotti a bright “buongiorno” and a smile of glossy red lipstick. Trotti mumbled a reply without looking at the woman and went down the corridor to his office.

  It was a new office, smaller than the old one, with a view on to the courtyard and the facing wall of grey pebble dash. With the renovation of the Questura, Trotti had been shunted here, to the end of the corridor, out of harm’s way. Since his was the last door people rarely dropped by, and when they did, it was because they wanted something.

  Persona non grata.

  Nobody had thought of renovating the telephone—or even cleaning it.

  “Put me through to the director of the Casa Patrizia home in Garlasco.”

  He had been given a new desk. There were no cigarette stains or carved graffiti. The surface was bare except for the telephone, a photograph of Pioppi when she was a child and a couple of sweet wrappers that had stuck to the artificial teak for over a week.

  (The cleaning women rarely ventured into Trotti’s office.)

  Trotti sat down, holding the telephone to his ear—the same telephone he had always had, with a ponderous dial that hid most of the grubby green plastic and an ancient sticker advertising Columbus cycle frames.

  (Status in the Questura was revealed in the allocation of the telephones. Those in the odor of sanctity had cellular phones and fax. Lesser beings had digital phones and answering machines.

  Trotti had to go through the operator.

  The chair, on the other hand, was new. Tubular black metal that had already begun to chip and which had never been either comfortable or aesthetic. Trotti could still remember with nostalgia the greasy canvas armchairs. Like everything else he had grown fond of, the armchairs were to disappear with the renovation. Like Gino and his dog, Principessa.)

  Another hot day.

  It was not yet half past nine. The pigeons were already cooing among themselves.

  “Putting you through, Commissario.”

  “Pronto.”

  “Pronto.”

  “Signor Carnecine?”

  The voice was doubtful. “This is Dottor Carnecine.”

  “Commissario Trotti speaking.”

  “Ah.” Hesitation and the muffling sound as a hand was placed over the mouthpiece. “I hope you’re well, Commissario.”

  “No worse than yesterday. T
ell me, Carnecine, she’s on medication, isn’t she?”

  “Who?”

  Trotti did not try to hide his irritation. “What is Maria Cristina Belloni on? You said that she was allowed out to work in Garlasco. In the town.”

  “That is correct.”

  “I imagine you put her on some sort of tranquilizers.”

  “Tranquilizers?” Carnecine pronounced the word as if meeting it for the first time.

  “What is she on?”

  A long pause. Trotti stared out of the window, without even focusing his glance on the pebble dash opposite. “Carnecine, is the Belloni woman on neuroleptics?”

  “We have our doctor here, Commissario. I don’t have much direct contact with the pa—with our guests. I must check with Dottor Rivista.”

  “Check now.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “Check now, Carnecine, and phone me back immediately. Within the half hour.”

  “Commissario Trotti . . .”

  “Within the half hour—if you want to hang on to your license. If you don’t want the Finanza and the Antisofisticazione on your doorstep and the place closed down before lunch time.” Trotti banged the receiver back into its cradle.

  Almost immediately, the red light started to blink. Trotti—in the process of unwrapping a sweet—reached out again for the telephone.

  “You get around for an old man, Trotti.”

  Trotti laughed. “Maybe I’m not as old as you think, Maiocchi.”

  “Do you want to come over?”

  “What have you got to offer me?”

  “You still believe there may be a connection between the drowned Snoopy woman and the Belloni affair?”

  “I haven’t yet located the younger sister. She’s out of the home and she’s probably not been taking her tranquilizers.”

  “So you’re still working on the Belloni affair, Trotti?”

  “The questore has taken me off. I told you that yesterday.”

  Maiocchi laughed his casual, youthful laughter. Trotti could imagine him on the other end of the line looking more like a student than a commissario of the Polizia di Stato, an unlit pipe between his teeth, a hand in his long hair.

  A shame that Maiocchi’s marriage was coming apart.

  “I’ve got somebody, Trotti, you ought to see.”

  “Who?”

  “Luca.”

  “Who’s Luca?”

  “The Luca in question. The boy our drowned Snoopy lover was so in love with. He says he’s just got some photos.”

  “Photos of the woman?”

  “Trotti, I’m driving down with him to Broni in half an hour.”

  Trotti clicked his tongue. “Good of you, Maiocchi—and I appreciate it. I appreciate the collaboration. But this morning I have to be at the autopsy. I think . . .” He looked up.

  Without knocking, the questore had entered the small dingy office.

  “I’ll ring you back, Maiocchi.”

  Slowly Trotti replaced the grubby receiver back in its cradle. He stood up and smiled with the sincerity of a Pavlovian reflex. “Buongiorno, Signor Questore.”

  Despite the heat of another hot, dry August day, despite the fact that the city was almost empty and that the Questura was on tick-over, the questore was wearing a linen jacket, a club tie and a soft cotton shirt. His face was closely shaven and he was accompanied by the strong smell of his eau de cologne.

  “What is all this shit, Trotti?”

  “Shit?” Trotti repeated, taken aback.

  His face taut with anger, the questore threw the morning’s paper onto Trotti’s desk. One of the cellophane sweet wrappings, after a week stuck to the desk, at last floated to the floor.

  “Low profile, Trotti?” An angry snort.

  Provincia Padana, 8 AUGUST

  Has the mysterious Snoopy really committed suicide by throwing herself into the Po? The Vigili del Fuoco of our city will probably renew their search today. There are many strange aspects to the disappearance of the young woman from Milan, and the possibility of a well-mounted hoax cannot as yet be excluded.

  Let us try to reconstruct the story from its beginning.

  An anonymous phone call to 113 is made yesterday at dawn. A woman’s voice says that she has seen clothes left at the river’s edge, in Borgo Genovese, near the statue of the Washerwomen.

  A 113 patrol car, immediately dispatched to the area, finds nothing.

  A few hours later, at about 7:30 a.m., there is a second anonymous call. At the other end of the line, the same female voice says, “On a floating pontoon, near the Ponte Coperto, you will find a packet.” The officers of Pronto Soccorso, following the instructions of the mysterious caller, will this time find a corduroy bracelet, a black plastic bag and two small furry Snoopies. There is also a note, “Luca, I love you.” In the bag is a letter that talks of suicide, contemplated because of an unreciprocated love affair. The letter commences, “Feelings are not to be thrown away, like a discarded toy . . .”

  The letter is not signed.

  From the address scribbled on the envelope, the investigators, under the leadership of one of our city’s finest detectives, Commissario Gustavo Maiocchi, have been able to identify the young man for whom the tragic letter was intended. The Luca in question is a twenty-five-year-old man resident in Broni (Pv), who was truly stunned to learn that the woman he had met in a Redavalle nightclub and with whom he had a brief adventure could have made an attempt upon her own life by throwing herself into the waters of our river.

  The events recounted by Luca to the officers of the Polizia di Stato are strangely reminiscent of the Hollywood film Fatal Attraction, which not so long ago was being shown on the screens of our cinemas.

  “One evening late in July, along with a friend, I met a woman who said her name was Beatrice. She claimed she was from Milan and at first said that she was thirty-one years old. Later, she admitted she was older. She said she was separated from her husband, who was impotent and had been unable to give her any children.”

  A story of true love—or simply a midsummer adventure?

  After an evening spent dancing, Luca drives Beatrice back to his parents’ villa in Broni, and makes the most of his parents’ absence.

  The following morning he accompanies the young woman to Garlasco, where she intends to catch the train for Milan. A brief kiss on either cheek, a little present of twenty thousand lire—and the adventure seems to be over. Luca leaves Broni to join his parents on the Adriatic coast. And in his absence, Beatrice sends him a long letter every day, stating how much she is in love with him.

  Understandably, Luca, who is engaged to be married, never replies to Beatrice’s letters.

  “Ten days ago, I had to return to the villa for personal reasons. Beatrice appeared on my doorstep in Broni. She had been weeping, and between her sobs, she told me that she had poisoned herself. Of course I did not believe her. I brought her into the house and I managed to calm her. Later I called a taxi and I paid for her return journey to Milan.”

  The following day, Beatrice contacts Luca again, this time by telephone. She tells him that she has to see him because she has something to give him. The rendezvous is at the railway station of our city. Beatrice turns up, carrying a large shoulder bag. She is very pale and appears nervous. Luca explains to her in no uncertain terms that he cannot go on meeting her, and that she must leave him alone. Beatrice, before turning away, mutters under her breath, “You’ll soon be hearing from me, Luca.”

  The frogmen of the Vigili del Fuoco will continue their underwater search today.

  Commissario Maiocchi will no doubt be aided by Commissario Trotti—the same Commissario Trotti who won national and international fame several years ago in solving the Anna Ermagni kidnapping case and more recently in the discovery of a masonic lodge in our city
. Commissario Trotti is also coordinating the enquiry into the tragic murder of Sig.na Rosanna Belloni, the ex-headmistress of the Gerolamo Cardano elementary school (see page 3). Neither Commissario Maiocchi nor Commissario Trotti was available yesterday for comment.

  26: Ceausescu

  “Cult of the personality.”

  Trotti frowned. He lowered himself back into the chair.

  “Low profile—that’s what I asked for. And instead you get yourself into the newspaper, you get journalists to write about you, you get . . .”

  “What journalists, Signor Questore?”

  “How should I know?” The questore was standing by the desk and with the back of his fingers he angrily tapped against the newspaper spread out before Trotti. “I don’t know who wrote this stuff.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Cult of the personality, Trotti, cult of the personality—and I won’t have it. Not here, not among my men.”

  “I know nothing about it.”

  “You allowed yourself to be interviewed. You seek the limelight.”

  Trotti replied hotly, “The article says I wasn’t available. Nobody interviewed me.”

  For several seconds the two men looked at each other. There was the hint of perspiration along the questore’s brow. His eyes held Trotti’s as he made his, quick, silent calculations. “You don’t seem to understand,” he said, his voice now soft, sounding more aggrieved than angry. He adjusted the silk tie.

  “Understand what?”

  The questore shook his head in exaggerated disbelief. “You’re not a stupid man.”

  Trotti gave a shrug. “You never know.”

  “The older you get, Trotti, the more determined you seem to put your private spanner in the works. A good policeman—I’ve always said that.” Again the shake of the head. “Can’t you see?”

  “See what?”

  A glance towards the window and the shadowless wall on the far side of the courtyard, as if the questore were seeking external support. “This cult of the personality, that’s what. Commissario Piero Trotti, the best policeman this city has ever known.”