Black August

by Timothy Williams

  “What do you want us to do with the luggage?”

  Trotti frowned. “I beg your pardon.”

  “What do you want us to do with the luggage?” The man on the end of the line talked in the hard Emilian accent. “She said she was going away for three days in the delta, your Signorina Belloni, and she left her luggage. She has not been back. Nearly five days. Of course, she’s paid for the room, but, if she’s not coming back, I’d like to have the use of it. It’s the Ferragosto and . . .”

  Trotti asked, “You haven’t seen her for five days?” He glanced at his watch.

  “Signorina Belloni is a very good client. I’ve never had cause for complaint. She’s paid for the room until the sixteenth but . . .”

  “She hasn’t been back to the hotel in five days?”

  “In Lombardy you are all deaf? Or just daft?” A muffled, derisory laugh. “I’ve just been telling you . . .”

  “She went off by herself?”

  “Did I say that?”

  “When did you last see Signorina Belloni? Was she by herself?”

  The unpleasant laughter.

  “A murder enquiry—it is possible that Signorina Belloni has been murdered.”

  A brief hesitation. “Your Signorina Belloni went with a man in a Fiat—one of those four-wheel-drive things. None of my business, of course. They seemed very friendly. He picked her up early one morning. None of my business—free country, this is a Republic and people can do as they please. None of my business. She’s a nice lady, your Signorina Belloni, very good customer. I wouldn’t like anything to have happened to her. Very nice lady. Always been a good client. None of my business.”

  “Registration? Did you notice the registration on the vehicle?”

  “I’ve got work to do.”

  “You didn’t notice the number plate?”

  A sigh. “Ferrara registration.” The man hung up.

  “Ferrara registration,” Trotti repeated absentmindedly, handing the dead phone back to Pisanelli.

  “Ferrara—isn’t that where the Roberti girl’s boyfriend lives?” Pisanelli asked. “Gian Maria.”

  33: Chinotto

  Boatti had invited them home for lunch.

  “What are you going to do?” Pisanelli asked.

  Trotti shrugged. “Other than putting out a general alert, there’s not much we can do . . . short of going down to Scacchi.”

  Pisanelli grinned, running his hand through his hair. “I’m having lunch with Anna.”

  “Anna?”

  “My fiancée.”

  Trotti shrugged again. “Rosanna will turn up. We can assume she doesn’t know what’s happened to her sister.”

  “Unless she killed her sister.” Pisanelli looked at his watch.

  “Stop looking at your watch, Pisanelli.”

  “I’m looking at the date.”

  “I’ve got to pick up my car at the hospital,” Boatti said.

  Pisanelli counted on his fingers. “Five days, Commissario—that means Rosanna could well have been here in the city at the time of the murder.”

  “Well done,” Trotti said drily.

  “It would also explain why the flat was so tidy. If it was Rosanna who killed her sister, she’d have had time to clean the place up.”

  Trotti nodded. “And, unexpectedly, Boatti comes barging into the flat.”

  “Commissario,” Boatti said, leaning forward in the back seat, his round face glinting with sweat, “you don’t really think that Rosanna killed her sister, do you?”

  Trotti glanced at the journalist. “Rosanna wasn’t expecting you. She knew you had the key to her place—but she thought you were in Vercelli.”

  Pisanelli nodded. “Commissario, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a date.”

  “Stay with me. I need you with me, Pisanelli.”

  “I’m meeting my fiancée for lunch.”

  “You’ll have time enough to meet her.”

  “You said that about all my other girlfriends.”

  “You’ll have time enough.”

  “When?”

  “When I’ve retired.”

  Boatti looked unhappy. He wiped his forehead with a paper handkerchief. He said, “Pisanelli, you can run me back to the hospital?”

  “You don’t want me to get married, do you, Commissario?”

  “I don’t want you to make a mistake.”

  Pisanelli drove to San Teodoro. He had removed the revolving lamp from the roof. Occasionally he gave a sideways glance at Trotti, who appeared strangely relaxed and who whistled under his breath. I Puritani: “A te, o cara.”

  “You honestly believe Rosanna is capable of killing her sister, Commissario?” Boatti asked.

  “We’re all capable of killing—if the conditions are right.”

  At San Teodoro Pisanelli parked in front of the church; a dog sleeping in the shadow of the high portals opened one eye and watched the three men get out of the Lancia before returning to its midday slumbers.

  The policeman at the front door had disappeared, no doubt for the Ferragosto.

  Boatti rang the downstairs bell and preceded the two policemen up the stairs. His wife met them at the top of the last flight.

  “I’d run you to the hospital, Boatti, but Commissario Trotti seems to think he’s lost without me.”

  They entered the flat, to be met by the warm smell of Mediterranean cooking, olive oil, tomatoes, basil and thyme.

  Boatti hurriedly presented the two men to his wife.

  “Of course there’s enough food for everybody, Giorgio,” his wife said happily.

  Signora Boatti appeared older than her husband and already had white streaks in her short, black hair. The face was thin and, despite the smile, rather hard. She shook hands with Trotti and Pisanelli. Leading them into the apartment, she invited them to sit down.

  The blinds of the study were closed. An air conditioner on wheels wheezed asthmatically in the middle of the room.

  “If you gentlemen would care for a drink . . .” She spoke with a Tuscan accent, transforming her Cs into Hs. “Or a Hoca Hola? A Hinotto?”

  Between the fingers of her right hand she held a smoldering cigarette.

  Several books, open and face down, were scattered across the settee. The cat appeared to be sleeping, his black fur rippled by the breeze of the conditioner. The computer screen had been turned off.

  Boatti phoned for a taxi and then left the flat quietly, a nod towards his wife and the visitors. The intelligent, pale face was taut, anxious.

  The echo of his shoes as he went down the stairs.

  “An apéritif, perhaps?” Signora Boatti asked.

  Rather than accept her invitation, Trotti said that he would like to go downstairs for a few moments. He added that he had not been into Rosanna Belloni’s apartment since the night Signor Boatti had discovered the body.

  “My husband was very fond of Rosanna Belloni,” she said and Trotti wondered whether he detected a note of reproach.

  Signora Boatti accompanied them to the door. “Back in fifteen minutes, please,” she said and it was difficult to say whether the slightly hectoring tone was humorous or not. “I’ve made a focaccia with sfrizzoli.”

  “Sfrizzoli?”

  “Nothing very fancy, mind. What you people in Lombardy call ciccioli—fried pork scraps.” A tight smile as she stood with her hand on the iron balustrade. The two policemen went down the flight of stairs to Rosanna’s apartment and the scene of the crime. Signora Boatti’s dark eyes followed them, while a thin, blue wisp of smoke danced from the cigarette to the stained ceiling of the stairwell.

  34: Zani

  The police tape was still up and when Trotti tapped at the open door—the brass nameplate announced in engraved script, Sig.na Belloni—it was Zani who answered. “Ah,” he said. />
  “I see your colleague at the front door downstairs has left for the coast.”

  “Can I help you, Commissario Trotti?”

  “Come to have a look around.”

  Zani frowned. He had the red, sly face and small eyes of a peasant and he seemed ill at ease in a uniform that was too small for his chunky body. A taciturn man in his late forties, he had joined the police on leaving the army, and had returned to his native city after nearly a decade spent in the Marche. He had the reputation of being uncommunicative. He did not have many friends, and when he took his morning coffee laced with grappa in the bar opposite the Questura, he normally stood by himself at the counter. He had the reputation of being a drinker, a solitary drinker.

  “Commissario Merenda is in charge of Reparto Omicidi. I take orders from him,” Zani said, more an accusation than a statement.

  He had been reading a local newspaper. Beside the chair was a bottle of wine.

  Trotti placed a hand on Zani’s bulky shoulder. “Rosanna was a personal friend of mine.”

  Agente Zani bit his lip hesitantly. The round face was more flushed than usual. “The questore said—and he insisted . . .”

  “Zani, you know me.”

  “Of course, Commissario.”

  “You have nothing to worry about.” Trotti glanced around the small room. “You and I have been friends for a very long time.”

  (Zani had a son who worked in a bookshop in the city center. On various occasions the twenty-four-year-old Alberto Zani had been arrested with other young men for disorderly or threatening behavior. It was no secret in the Questura that Alberto, despite his aggressive behavior, his air of virility and the many girls who accompanied him at different times on his Ducati motorcycle, had several homosexual lovers.)

  The apartment window gave on to a panorama of terracotta roofs that ran down to the AGIP hotel and the river. The hot breeze pulled at a curtain. Scientifica had been thorough in its search for contact traces. Several surfaces were hidden beneath sheets of plastic. The bedsheets removed. The blood stains, now black, remained on the floor, staked out by a barrier of small flags.

  Rosanna Belloni’s flat was both a living room and bedroom. The kitchen sink had served also as a bathroom. A mirror was attached to the cream-painted wall and various toiletries stood on the glass shelf—shampoo and skin lotions. On the wall above, Rosanna had pinned a linen dishcloth, with the word Bewley’s.

  “A shop in Dublin,” Pisanelli said, translating the English. He held an unlit cigarette between his lips.

  “Dublin?” Trotti repeated.

  “A town in Ireland.”

  “I know that,” Trotti snapped. “I wonder who gave her that.”

  “As a school teacher she must’ve built up a lot of friendships over the years—children who had grown up.”

  Trotti glanced at Pisanelli. “I didn’t know you could speak English, Pisa.”

  “Once went out with a Canadian girl—French Canadian from Montreal. She spoke English.”

  “She taught you English?”

  Pisanelli folded his arms against the chest of his suede jacket. “She wanted to marry me. Couldn’t resist the animal magnetism.”

  Zani said, “Commissario Trotti, the questore was quite categorical.”

  “Don’t worry about the questore.” Trotti gestured to where Zani had slid the bottle of wine into the small gap between the bed and a tall bookcase that also served as a desk. “He won’t know of anything.”

  Zani nodded unhappily.

  “What do you think, Zani?” It was Pisanelli who spoke, glancing again at his watch.

  Zani was in the process of lighting a cigarette. Like Gabbiani, he was able to get hold of filterless Nazionali. The smell of the black tobacco filled the small room. “What do I think?” Zani held out the light to Pisanelli and then closed the gold lighter.

  “Who killed the Belloni woman?”

  He folded his arms against the rumpled uniform shirt. “Sexual, wasn’t it?” The lips turned downwards in disapproval. “Sexual crime.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Why else kill a woman?”

  “Money.” Zani snorted two brief clouds of tobacco smoke. “If Belloni had any money, she didn’t keep it here. And her will all goes to her nephews and nieces.”

  Pisanelli smiled behind his unlit cigarette. “How do you know that, Zani?”

  He looked glumly at Trotti and Pisanelli. “I’m merely repeating what I’ve heard.”

  “Heard?”

  “Even a flatfoot on door duty gets to hear things.” Zani brushed ash from his shirt. “No—not money. There are easier ways of getting money.” The corner of his lip turned downwards. “Sex, Commissario.”

  “Sex,” Trotti repeated and went to the tall bookcase. There was a frame, glass with rusting clips. Trotti picked it up. It contained three photographs. “Seen this, Pisa?”

  The largest photograph was of a young woman sitting on a scooter—one of the old Vespas with the handlebars separate from the rounded faring. The laughing head of a cowboy—the long forgotten advertisement for Eldorado ice creams—had been stuck on to the paintwork of the faring. A fanion was attached to the chrome headlamp. The girl leaned forward, her dark head to one side, smiling into the camera. Long, thin, tanned arms held the handlebars. The girl—Maria Cristina, Trotti decided, with the same features as Rosanna, but slightly coarser, despite the long eyelashes—was wearing a lightweight summer dress, with a neckline that dropped to where the full, youthful breasts began to swell.

  The second photograph was of a young adolescent girl, her gloved hands together as if in prayer. She wore the white dress of a communicant or a maid of honor at a wedding. Forget-me-nots in the gossamer veil of her headdress. She was smiling, showing irregular teeth and irrepressible optimism.

  The third photograph was of Rosanna.

  Rosanna held a young baby in her arms. Rosanna appeared to be in her late twenties, and on inspecting the photo from close-up Trotti thought he recognized a wall portrait of President Gronchi in the background. The photograph had probably been taken in a town hall. Rosanna, wearing a tight-fitting black sweater over a rigid brassiere à la Gina Lollobrigida, smiled cheerfully at the camera, while the baby, dressed in frilly bib, a bonnet and booties, seemed to be fascinated by something on the ceiling, out of the picture.

  “What do you make of this?” Trotti turned to show the photographs to Pisanelli.

  Pisanelli had disappeared.

  Zani sat by the door, his hands clasped between his knees, pensively smoking his cigarette.

  “Where’s Pisanelli?”

  “Sex—or revenge. Mark my words, Commissario.”

  “Where the hell do you get your Nazionali from, Zani?”

  35: Spinster

  “Sex and revenge,” Trotti said under his breath, ringing the bell and opening the ground-glass door.

  “Ah, hommissario. Where is your young friend?”

  Signora Boatti was in the dining room, setting a white cloth on to a walnut table. The window was open but the wooden blinds were closed to the blaze of the street below. It was cool and dark, cooler and darker than in the adjoining study. The asthmatic conditioner had been wheeled into the dining room and now hummed beside the sideboard.

  The cat had migrated to the low settee.

  Trotti asked for the bathroom and Signora Boatti, a cigarette in her mouth, accompanied him to a cupboard-like room that had been transformed with bright tiles. “Bit small, I know, hommissario, but these houses were never built for the bodily functions.”

  He smiled. “Like me.”

  She pointed to a neat pile of towels. “If you’d like to shower, there’s hot water.”

  “Cold water’s what I need.”

  She left him and, stripping to the waist, Trotti washed his face
, hands and body, finally dipping his hair into the chill, sulfurous water. Refreshed, he opened the glass cabinet, searching for a comb.

  Looking at his reflection, he combed the thin, black hair. Pulled backwards against his skull, it made Trotti look older. The hollow eyes stared back at him humorlessly. “You need a holiday, Piero. Forget about Rosanna. Time now to go and see Pioppi and the baby.” He removed the hairs from the plastic teeth and replaced the comb in the cupboard. On the other shelves there were toiletries—children’s toothpaste, Atkinson’s talc but, Trotti noticed, no eau de cologne or perfume—and a couple of jars of pills. The cupboard smelled of sweet, dry chalk.

  Sleeping pills.

  “Hommissario, you’d care for the aperitif now?” Signora Boatti asked from the kitchen.

  Her Tuscan accent made him smile. “Mineral water, signora.” He returned to the dining room and lowered himself on to one of the chairs. Trotti propped his arms against the walnut table. There was a bowl of fruit, a square wicker basket of fresh bread and several packets of grissini. Two bottles of mineral water. Signora Boatti had set out two plates of sliced salami and a bowl of olives.

  “Your husband isn’t back?”

  She came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a cloth. She was considerably older than Boatti, Trotti realized, in her early forties. Her body was thin and her frame angular. “Carbonated?” she asked, and, without waiting for a reply, opened a bottle of mineral water.

  “From Tuscany?” He smiled as she poured the water into his glass.

  “From France—they were selling it cheap in the supermarket. The wonders of the EEC.” She placed a plastic cap on the bottle of mineral water and then served herself two fingers of William Lawson, which she drank without water or ice. “Good whiskey is one of my lesser vices.”

  “You knew Rosanna well, signora?”

  The woman sat down on the settee, a few feet from Trotti. In the penumbra, it was hard to see her face. Sunlight from the kitchen fell across her knees and the hand which held the glass of amber liquid. With the other hand, she caressed the cat. She was wearing a polo shirt.

  “I do translation work,” she said. She lit a cigarette. “For the publishing houses in Milan, I translate books from Chinese—and now a bit of Japanese, too.”