Black August

by Timothy Williams

  The garden gate was open.

  “Let Merenda get on with the enquiry. Learn to relax, Commissario.”

  “Maiocchi’s holding the Luca man.”

  “Why?”

  Trotti went up the stairs. No lights came from the house.

  “Why don’t you just take a holiday, Commissario? Rosanna’ll turn up. Get away, go and see your daughter. Enjoy yourself.”

  For nearly twenty years Trotti had lived in the detached building, above the garage. When Pioppi was growing up, the house had seemed very small; now it seemed empty.

  “Maria Cristina was pumped full of addictive substances. Goodness knows what they were giving her at the Casa Patrizia. Carnecine was supposed to tell me what she was taking. He’s left no message. We’ll have to get back to him.”

  “You, Commissario, you’ll have to get back to him—I’m on holiday.”

  “Probably get the Casa Patrizia closed down—strange that Finanza hasn’t already put Carnecine out of a job. The man’s a charlatan—Christ, I’d like to know why he was feeding her with all those chemicals.”

  There was an outside staircase, an iron banister and potted plants, geranium and cyclamen, to each concrete step. With the drought, the plants needed frequent watering. A couple of pots had been overturned. Eva, Trotti thought irritably, taking his keys from his pocket.

  The door was not locked.

  Surprised by his own reflexes, Trotti flattened himself against the wall. He pulled Pisanelli with him. Pisanelli almost fell.

  “Visitors,” Trotti whispered harshly.

  In the feeble light the wood of the door jamb showed signs of splintering.

  “I hope you’ve got a gun, Pisa.”

  52: Visitor

  It was stupid to risk your life at sixty-two, when you were about to become a grandfather for the first time and when you had not been back to the training school in Padua for fifteen years and when you were unfit and out of training and when the effort of going up a single flight of stairs put you out of breath for half an hour. When you were just three years from retirement and from the house in the hills.

  But this house in via Milano was Trotti’s house. This is where I live, Trotti told himself. He had no choice. A territorial imperative. Consequently he was very relieved when he saw Pisanelli draw a gun from the holster in the small of his back.

  In the flickering light from the street lamps along via Milano, Pisanelli’s face appeared haggard. He clasped the light Beretta in his right hand; his left hand gave support to the clenched right fist.

  There were no lights on in the house.

  “Do you ever get that feeling of déjà vu, Pisa?”

  “Déjà vu comprà?” Pisanelli crouched down. “Ready when you are, Commissario.”

  With an outstretched arm, Trotti pushed the front door inwards. It creaked unpleasantly. Trotti stopped, waited. Then he pushed some more.

  The door came open.

  Pisanelli put out his head and glanced along the hallway. Then bent double, close to the right wall, he moved indoors.

  Silence.

  “Behind you.” Trotti had a walking stick in his hand—he was scarcely aware of picking it up from the umbrella rack. He went along the hall, following Pisanelli, moving slowly, the smell of Pisanelli’s hair cream in his nostrils, his shoulders against the wall and trying to remember what the English instructor in Padua had tried to teach him. About surprise, about keeping the eyes adapted to the dark, about not presenting a target.

  “Open the door and at the same time turn the light on,” Pisanelli whispered. “Make sure you shade your eyes.”

  Trotti found the switch.

  “Now.”

  Trotti turned on the switch and threw the door open, standing out of the doorway, allowing the hall light to flood into the bedroom.

  Beside him Pisanelli waited a fraction of a second, then moved.

  Pioppi’s old bedroom appeared empty.

  Pisanelli butted hard against the inner wall and in a fast arc swung his arms upward, the gun outstretched.

  “Shit.”

  The myopic teddy bear stared down from where he was perched on the top of the wardrobe. The glass eyes were dusty.

  Pisanelli was sweating. He ran the back of his hand along his forehead. The two policemen went back into the hall.

  Lavatory and bathroom were empty.

  Carefully Trotti opened the bedroom door.

  The bedside lamp had at some time fallen but was alight, casting an intimate pink glow across the lower part of the room.

  Pisanelli still held the Beretta with both hands. He tried to grin. His face remained pale. “A tornado.” He let out a sigh of relief and allowed himself to relax.

  Drawers had been pulled out and emptied of their contents. Agnese’s clothes lay scattered everywhere. Trotti noticed the stole he had bought her more than thirty years earlier. It had been ripped apart. Spilt coffee, cigarette burns in the carpet, curtains pulled down.

  “Looks as if your visitors have left, Commissario.” Pisanelli dropped his hands to his sides. “After enjoying themselves.”

  “Eva,” Trotti said simply.

  “Your house guest?” Pisanelli laughed.

  “Uruguayan prostitute.”

  “You choose your friends carefully, Commissario.”

  “I never said you were my friend, Pisanelli.”

  The mattress in the bedroom had been dragged from the bed and sliced with a knife. The pillows had been gutted and small feathers danced into the air as Trotti moved around the bed. He bent over and picked up the cracked frame of a photograph.

  Agnese, Trotti and Pioppi at the Villa Ondina on Lake Garda, a happy nuclear family smiling into the camera. The summer of 1967. (Wurlitzer juke box, Bobby Solo, Fausto Leali.)

  “I met her a few months ago.” Trotti shook his head as he looked down at the spilled sheets, feathers and clothes. The telephone had been ripped from its socket. “She said she came to Italy because she had been offered a job when she was in Uruguay. She thought she’d be teaching in an aerobics center in Milan—and that she could send money back to her little boy.”

  “Some aerobics.”

  They went into the kitchen.

  Plates and utensils were scattered over the floor. The faucet was running. The kitchen smelled of vinegar. Incongruously, the clock continued its ticking, untouched and faithful on the top of the refrigerator.

  “Place is empty,” Pisanelli said. “Whoever they were, they’ve left.”

  Trotti stepped on a broken plate as he went towards the sink. He closed the running tap.

  “I wonder how they found her—poor cow.”

  “She used the phone.” Trotti suddenly felt very tired. He put down the walking stick and slumped on to a kitchen chair.

  “Why Uruguayan, Commissario?”

  “The Sicilians have moved on. On and up into narcotraffic, narcodollars, high finance. The Uruguayans have taken over much of the prostitution in Milan. In Genova it’s the Chinese and the Nigerians—new Mafias moving in where the Sicilian Mafia is no longer around.”

  “You met her in Milan?”

  Trotti was breathing heavily, still out of breath. “What a mess.”

  “I didn’t know you went to Milan for your pleasure, Commissario.”

  “Think what you want, Pisanelli.”

  “You thought you could help her? You thought you could save a whore?”

  Trotti shook his head. He was still holding the photograph of the Villa Ondina. He stood up and placed it on the refrigerator, beside the clock.

  Pisanelli was amused. “Commissario Trotti goes to Milan and uses the services of exotic prostitutes.”

  Trotti had got his breath back and was leaning against the sink. “Eva wanted to go back to South America and she thought I cou
ld help her.”

  “Good screw?”

  “Pisanelli, a man’s not thirty years old forever.”

  “What are you going to do now, Commissario?”

  “Nothing—at least not now. A meal with you and Anna—and then tomorrow, I’ll have to change all the locks. If Eva had really wanted to go back to South America . . .” Trotti fell silent.

  A figure appeared in the door.

  Pisanelli instinctively raised the small, ineffectual gun.

  “Don’t shoot me.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  The southern face smiled in condescension. The dark eyes did not leave Trotti’s. “Commissario Trotti, Polizia di Stato?”

  The man was tall, with a swarthy skin, and was wearing a black beret and a leather jacket.

  53: Helicopter

  The helicopter banked. Looking through the dark dome of perspex, Trotti saw the lights strung out along the Adriatic coast. Over the clatter of the motor, the pilot shouted, “Comacchio.” He gestured with his thumb downwards.

  The helicopter banked again, dropped height and soon the pilot was bringing it down. On the ground there were headlamps that lit up a stretch of dyke. The pilot spoke into his microphone while Trotti found himself gripping the aluminum bars of his seat, concentrating his attention on the bank of glowing gauges. The aircraft seemed to sway sideways, hanging beneath its rotor in the empty night. It projected a beam of white light down towards the land.

  They touched down and somebody opened the door beside Trotti, inviting him to step out on to the ladder. The white letters carabinieri stood out on the dark fuselage. Overhead, the vast rotor was losing speed, its whine gradually becoming less acute. Instinctively Trotti bent down. The air pulled at his hair.

  “Colonello Spadano is waiting for you.”

  “Colonello?” Trotti said.

  The wash of the rotor blades tried to blow away his clothes. Trotti walked along the dyke accompanied by a Carabiniere in a track suit.

  Several official cars had been parked on the dyke. Small searchlights had been set up and they pointed downwards. Incandescent beams shone on to the murky tea-colored waters of the canal. Men were sitting in two cars, several whiplash aerials rising into the sky. The sound of distorted voices over metallic radios.

  Trotti found himself admiring the organization of the Carabinieri. A purposefulness and efficiency he had never known in the state police. A purposefulness that was impressive and slightly frightening.

  There was a mobile crane, partly in the shadow. A man within the cabin was manipulating the controls. Opposite him, on the other side of the canal, a Carabiniere was giving directions into a walkie-talkie.

  “Good to see you, Trotti.”

  “Ah, thank goodness.”

  Physically Spadano was small. He was not wearing a uniform but evening dress, a starched white shirt and a red bow tie that now hung loose at the open collar. He had put on a pair of Wellington boots over the dress trousers. The oblique light of the lamps was caught in his grey eyes. The hair was cut very short and brushed backwards; it was turning white at the temples. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I was about to go for a meal when your man appeared. Thanks for the ride.”

  “Part of the Carabiniere service.” A tight smile. “I hear you’ve been quarreling with your girlfriend in via Milano.”

  Trotti gestured to the canal. “What’s happened, Spadano?”

  Spadano glanced at the river and frowned, as if he were surprised by the question. He then raised his shoulders. “You must forgive the clothes. I was having supper in Venice when they informed me of the car. I came straight over.”

  “By helicopter?”

  Spadano took a packet of Toscani from his dinner jacket and lit a stubby cigar. A pungent cloud of smoke. “One of the advantages of rank. Believe me, Trotti, I’ve been in enough helicopters to last me a lifetime.”

  “I thought you were in Sardinia fighting bandits.”

  “I am in Calabria fighting bandits.”

  “Then what are you doing in Venice? What are you doing here in the Comacchio?”

  Behind the foul-smelling cigar, Colonello Spadano grinned with pride. “A married man is allowed to spend time with his family.”

  There was a shout on the far bank and people began to move down the wet grass and mud to the edge of the canal. For a moment the radios seemed to fall quiet; the chain hanging from the crane went taut. Drops of water danced in the air and fell in a rhythmic cascade.

  Like frogs, two divers broke through the surface of the dirty water and clambered on to the bank, helped by the Carabinieri, actors in the circles of bright light.

  Trotti laughed softly. “You’re married, Spadano?”

  The man with the walkie-talkie gestured with his free hand and the motor on the crane began to move. Within his cabin, the crane driver released the long handbrake.

  The chain was run upwards slowly.

  A bump, like the back of a big fish, broke through the surface of the water. The bump grew larger and larger until Trotti could recognize the rear of a car. For a moment the chain ceased to mount, even though the crane engine continued its whining.

  “I thought this might interest you, Piero Trotti.”

  Turning on the axis of the chain, the entire car drew clear of the water. Water poured from the open windows, from beneath the bonnet, from under the glistening wheels and cascaded back into the canal.

  Both front doors were open, giving the car the appearance of a small fish with enormous gills.

  A four-wheel-drive Fiat Panda. A brown Fiat Panda.

  The car that Rosanna had disappeared in.

  54: Marriage

  “I can remember your words, Spadano. ‘One thing’s certain—I’m not going to find a wife in the Sopramonte. Just sheep, wind and rain—and foul-smelling Sardinian peasants and murderers.’”

  “You don’t seem very excited about discovering the Panda.”

  “The insignia and the pips of the Carabinieri tattooed into your flesh.” A small laugh. “When does a captain—sorry, when does a colonel of Carabinieri find the time to get married?”

  “If you really want something in life, you work for it.”

  “How long have you been married, Spadano?”

  Spadano had to wipe the satisfied grin from his face. “Eighteen months now.”

  “Pity your wife hasn’t made you quit smoking those things.” Trotti held out his hand. “Congratulations—even if it does mean you’ve put on five kilos.”

  Then as the two men shook hands, simultaneously they both seemed to change minds and they hugged each other. “Good to see you again, Spadano. And thanks.”

  “Good to see you, Piero. Good to see you haven’t changed—as prickly and irascible as ever. Don’t tell me you’ve given up your boiled sweets.”

  The two men laughed as they walked along the dyke. They got into a civilian car and sat in the dark. Spadano smelled of Toscani cigars and sweet eau de cologne. “In Venice for an Interpol convention. In the last three years, it’s only the second time I’ve been north. And for my wife it was time to get away for a break. Even if Venice is full of tourists.”

  “Why Calabria?”

  “Working on kidnappings in the Sila.”

  “Can’t be worse than staying on in our provincial backwater.”

  Spadano shook his head. “In 1968, there were two cases of kidnapping in Italy. In 1985 there were 265. It’s all Mafia. Or rather the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta, but much of the actual work is done by Sardinians. That’s my job. Trying to locate the Sardinian kidnappers.” Although Spadano had lived in the north for most of his life, he had not lost his accent. Palermo. “And trying to release their victims.”

  “You’re at home in the south, Spadano. You should be happy.”

  “You a
lways choose to forget the Carabinieri were a creation of Savoy. A pure product of the north.” Spadano paused. A muscular body and a thick neck. Hair that showed no sign of thinning. For a man of sixty, Spadano had aged well. “You know, Piero Trotti, I’ve always maintained you’re jealous of us.”

  “Carabinieri or Polizia di Stato—it’s the same thing. If we’d had the choice when we were young, this isn’t the career we’d have chosen. I imagine that like me you joined up because it was a job—and there was not much choice for a young man from the countryside with ambition but little schooling . . . This is why you fetched me down here to the Comacchio?”

  Colonello Spadano said, “You don’t sound terribly excited at finding your Panda car. Or even grateful.”

  “Time I thought about retiring, Spadano.”

  “Retirement? You’d be bored stiff. You like to moan—but without your job, you’d have nothing to do.” The tip of the cigar glinted as he inhaled. “I saw there was a search out for a Fiat Panda. Your people put out a general alert.”

  “Why contact me? Merenda’s running this enquiry.”

  “Merenda’s not a friend of mine.”

  “The prickly, irascible Piero Trotti is a friend?”

  “I still have a lot of contacts in the city.”

  “Including your wife?”

  “Including my wife. I have you to thank for that.”

  “I believe you’re blushing, Spadano.”

  “It’s too dark. You can’t see.”

  “Signora Bianchini?”

  “Signora Spadano.” Light from one of the cars lit up the windscreen and, for a moment, the two men could see each other’s face. Spadano could not hide his pride. “And how’s your wife, Piero?”

  “My wife’s in America.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “In Bologna, expecting a baby any day.”

  “My congratulations. Perhaps being a grandfather will make you a little less irascible.”

  “Being married to the lovely Signora Bianchini has made you fat.” Trotti switched on the yellow light inside the car. He gestured to the anthracite telephone installed between the two seats. “Does that thing work?”