“SHALL WE GO VISIT D’INTINO?” ASKED ITALO AS they walked down the hospital stairs.
“What is this craze everyone seems to have about going to visit him?”
“He doesn’t have family here in Aosta. We take turns bringing him water and cookies.”
Rocco stopped. “And do you usually go with Caterina or on your own?”
Italo blushed. “Listen, Rocco, this thing with Caterina . . .”
“You want the whole story? I originally planned to take some serious revenge. Like put a note of demerit into your file and ask the police chief to have you transferred. But then I took a good look at you. You’re just a pathetic loser with a mouth that belongs on a piggy bank, and when are you going to find another girlfriend?”
“And so?”
“And so I forgive you. In the name of the Father . . .”
“Oh go fuck yourself, Rocco.”
“But at least once you need to tell me what she’s like in bed.”
“That’s personal.”
“Have you ever heard of a place called Scampia? Or Macomer? How about Sacile del Friuli?”
“Shall I start from when we got undressed?”
“Good idea. While we head into town, because we have somebody to go see. And even if it’s technically strictly a pedestrian zone, we’re going to take the car. Are we or are we not the police, for fuck’s sake!”
“You’re not going to add a note of demerit to my file because without me who do you have left at headquarters?” said Italo, with a wink and a smile.
“Well, I’d have Caterina. And believe me, she’d be plenty.”
“What a bastard.”
“You have no idea. Come on, start talking. Let’s start with her nipples.”
OFFICER ITALO PIERRON WALKED INTO THE TOMEI clothing shop, following his boss like a bloodhound at the heels of a hunter. The only difference is that a bloodhound knows what it’s doing; it knows its job. Find the birds and scare them into the air. Instead, all Italo could do was look around in bewilderment and check the price of a pair of Church’s shoes.
In his impeccable Prince of Wales tweed suit, Signor Tomei, proprietor of the Very English menswear shop that bore his name, hurried toward the two policemen with tiny steps. “Dottor Schiavone! I’m so happy you dropped by. As I told you on the phone yesterday, my wife has something to tell you.”
And with a theatrical gesture he brought his wife, Finola, onstage. A woman with the most prominent chin Rocco had ever seen. This wasn’t a chin, Rocco thought: it was a downspout.
“Buongiorno, Commissario.” The English accent gave away her origin.
“Deputy Police Chief,” said Rocco.
“Yes,” said the woman. “I wanted to speak with you. Because . . . I remembered a very important thing.”
“I’m all ears.”
“My husband told me . . . and I started thinking. I thought and I thought and in the end I remembered.” She looked Rocco in the eye and delivered her showstopper, but in English: “A tie!”
“I don’t understand.”
“The lady that is dead . . . she came to buy a necktie for her husband. A tie. That’s what was in the bag.”
Rocco looked at Italo, who wasn’t understanding much but who was pretending to take interest in the conversation. “Can I see one?”
“Certainly. She bought a regimental tie. A very nice one. Cashmere and silk.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but are regimental ties the ones with diagonal stripes?”
“Exactly!” said Finola, who had in the meantime pulled three gleaming ties out of a display case. “You see? This is what they look like . . .”
“And if I asked you to identify that tie, would you be capable of doing that?”
“Certainly,” Signor Tomei immediately butted in. “I could spot one of our ties from a mile away. You know why?” he smiled connivingly. He picked up one of the ties and turned it over. “You see? On the back we’ve added the logo of our store. Nothing could be easier!”
A small white label, also made of silk, was stitched to the back of the tie, and it bore the name “Tomei,” embroidered in an oval of laurel leaves. “That’s our trademark. These ties are exclusive to us. They come from Ireland. Oh, Lord, they’re actually made in India, but the design and everything else is pure Irish.”
“Wait, is Ireland part of Great Britain, or is it Ireland?” were the only words to emerge from Italo’s mouth; it was unclear why he’d felt called upon to vocalize his presence, which was otherwise entirely unnecessary in the shop. All he got in response was a scornful glare from Rocco, and another equally contemptuous glance from Finola, who couldn’t let the question go unremarked. “Ireland is Ireland, Officer, and it’s officially called Eire. Ulster, that is, Northern Ireland, is part of Great Britain. The capital of Ireland is Dublin. For Ulster, it’s Belfast. If you want to know more about it, you’d need to read a book about Michael Collins.”
Rocco brought the conversation back to the tie. “One last thing. Can you tell me the price?”
“For that tie? It’s not for the weak of heart . . .” said Signor Tomei.
“Well?”
“About seventy euros. But you know, it’s made of silk and it’s practically a one-off, handmade. You see, cashmere-silk blend is a process that requires . . .”
“You don’t need to talk me into buying one, Signor Tomei. All I need is the information.”
“Sorry. Force of habit.”
“Don’t think twice. Signora Finola, you’ve been extremely helpful.”
Finola Tomei smiled and revealed a spacialist array of teeth. Spacialist in the sense that in the upper arch a canine was missing, and in the lower arch, two incisors. If you added to that fact the consideration that her teeth were enormous and stuck into her gums with no particular rhyme or reason, Finola Tomei’s mouth seemed like the result of a frontal collision with a trolley. Rocco stood there, captivated, gazing at her. It was Italo who brought him back to earth. “Very good, Dottore, shall we go now?” he asked, shaking Rocco by the arm. Rocco smiled, winked at the husband and wife, and left the shop, escorted by Officer Pierron.
“A GARGOYLE. DID YOU SEE THAT, ITALO? SHE LOOKED like a gargoyle, one of those statues on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.”
Italo smiled: “Pretty amazing. But more than one of those gadgets, those gargoyles, if you ask me she looked like one of those deepwater fish, what do you call them, abyssal fish. You know the ones: translucent, with tiny bodies and huge mouths?”
“You know, you’re right?”
“I’ve seen ones on Animal Planet that are truly frightening.”
“It’s true, an abyssal fish. This is the first time it’s happened to me.”
“What?”
“The first time I’ve found a resemblance between a woman’s face and an animal. It’s never happened to me before.”
“That’s because you’ve never seen my aunt,” said Italo. “Someday I’ll introduce you. But you’d better brace yourself. Just imagine: she’s eighty-two years old and she hasn’t left her house since 1974.”
“Can’t she walk?”
“No, no, she can walk, and how. It’s just that one day she decided she didn’t feel like going out anymore. She says that everyone out in the world is crazy these days. Aunt Adele, that’s her name. She’s four foot eleven and she only talks at night. One look at her and your jaw would drop.”
“And why should I meet her?”
“Because there’s no better cook in the whole valley, believe me!”
“Then you know what I say, Italo? I say let’s go have dinner at the Pam Pam, you and me. It’s my treat. And bring Caterina too.”
“And just what reason do you have for being so generous?”
“Because I’m depressed, because it’s March twenty-first, the first day of spring, and it’s an important date and I don’t feel like eating alone. Is that enough for you?”
IN THE END THIS IS HOW HE ALWAYS WOUND UP FEE
LING. Tired and disgusted. Dinner with Italo and Caterina hadn’t helped much. He’d laughed, he’d drank, he’d done his best to take his mind off it. But it hadn’t worked. When all was said and done, the vacuum of death weighed on him worse than any other preoccupation. Because by this point Rocco Schiavone knew who was guilty of the murder. It had taken him just a few days to figure it out, to chase down and catch the killer, the idiot, the person who had chosen to upset the natural balance of things. Who had extinguished a human life—for what? Personal conceit? Anger? Madness?
But in order to understand whatever it was—conceit, anger, or madness—Rocco had had to plumb the depths of it, the way a good actor does before portraying a character. And in order to enter into the role, he’d have to go into the diseased head of those people, put on their filthy flesh like an overcoat, camouflage himself, and drop into the depths, the sewers, searching with a flashlight for the most indecent, the filthiest parts of a human being. And he’d have to stay down there, in the sewers, in the swamp, lying in ambush until the murderer, the bastard wandered into range. Then he could finally surface into the fresh air and try to get clean again. Only to get all that filth off him, it would take days, even months. And some of it always stuck to his skin, impossible to scrub away.
He knew that if he continued in that profession, he’d never be able to get the filth off him.
“YOU KNOW WHAT? I WENT BY THE APARTMENT. THE furniture is all covered up. With sheets.”
Marina laughs heartily. “The wood worms can get in all the same,” she said and leaned against the window glass.
“And I even went to visit you.”
She looks at me and says nothing.
“I brought you daisies. The big ones, the kind you like.”
“You ran into them, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I tell her, but after a while, not right away.
“Were they both there?”
“Both of them.”
“They wouldn’t speak to you, would they?”
“No, Marì, they won’t speak to me. Or if they do, it’s only to make it clear that they’ll never speak to me again.”
Marina nods and goes over to sit on the couch. “You have to understand them.”
“Oh, I understand them. I’m not stupid. Still, I hoped. I mean, after five years.”
“How was Rome?”
“I wasn’t there long. I don’t know. It stinks.”
“What did you go there for?”
“There were problems with the accountant.”
“How many times have I told you? You’re good at spotting lies but terrible at telling them.”
Really, can’t I just once get away with hoodwinking Marina? “Well, okay, it was just something with work.”
“The double life of Rocco Schiavone!” She burst out laughing.
“What kind of double life are you talking about? It’s life, and nothing more, Marì.” I pour myself some white wine. These days, since Ugo first let me sample it, all I ever drink is this Blanc de Morgex.
“How are Mamma and Papà?”
“Skinny.”
Marina nods. “Just remind me of one thing. That July seventh . . . what time was it?”
“Three thirty in the afternoon.”
“Three thirty. Was it hot out?”
“So hot. It was cloudy, but it was still terribly hot.”
“And where were we?”
“On Via Nemorense, outside the pastry shop.”
“And what were we there for?”
“To get a gelato.”
She gets up off the couch and goes into the bedroom. “Marina?”
She stops. She turns around and looks at me. “I’ll come to bed too. I don’t feel like staying up.”
“You won’t get a wink of sleep.”
“Then you just go on talking to me.”
HE WAS TURNING OFF THE LIVING ROOM LIGHT WHEN his cell phone rang.
“Schiavone, this is Dottor Trevisi, at the Parini Hospital in Aosta. Sorry to call you so late.”
“Don’t worry about it. What time is it, actually?”
“It’s midnight.”
“And you’re still at the hospital?”
“I told you that Wednesday is always a nightmare. Listen, it’s not a simple matter. But here’s what we were able to find out. If nothing else, we had Esther Baudo in the emergency room, twice in 2007 and once in 2009. The second time, she was admitted to the trauma ward.”
“All right.”
“Then in 2010, again in the emergency room, where she was given stitches on the inside of her mouth and . . . I read here that in 2011 she came in with a fractured cheekbone.”
Rocco sighed. “And it never struck you as odd?”
“Look, I’ve only been here since 2010, and the truth is that the woman always explained these fractures as the result of car crashes. Except for the last time, which at least is filed as a result of a domestic accident.”
“Domestic. Yes. That sounds like a pretty good description. Thanks very much, Dottor Trevisi. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Don’t mention it, it’s my job.”
“WELL? ARE YOU COMING TO BED?” MARINA ASKS.
Tonight I’m not going to get a wink of sleep. Like so many other nights.
THURSDAY
He found himself standing outside the Baudos’ apartment. Someone had removed the seals from the door, which stood ajar. All Rocco had to do was push it open.
In the living room, squatting behind a sofa, his back to the door, was a man.
“Did you take the seals off the door?” asked Rocco.
The man turned around. It was Luca Farinelli, the deputy director of the forensic squad. “Actually, no. It must have been one of your officers.”
“Or one of yours. My officers haven’t set foot in this place since the first day.”
Farinelli stood up, dusting off the knees of his trousers. “And it’s a good thing!”
“Mind if I ask what you’re doing here?” Rocco asked.
“I’m working. What about you?”
“I’m looking for a tie.”
“My men took all the ties to Fumagalli.”
“Then they must have been the ones who broke the seals.”
“My men don’t pull mistakes like that. That’s the kind of thing your people do. When are you guys going to learn the basics of handling a crime scene?”
“How’s everything going? Is your wife doing well?”
“Why do you ask about my wife every time I see you?”
“Because I’m hoping that one day you’ll say to me: she’s not my wife anymore. We broke up.”
“That’ll never happen.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
The whole question of Farinelli’s wife remained a mystery to Rocco Schiavone. She was spectacular. When she walked down the street, every head turned—men and women. Luca was an unsightly toad, and the only thing he made turn was Rocco Schiavone’s stomach, and the stomachs of all the officers who reported to him.
“What a mess you guys made in here . . .” said Farinelli. “Like always.”
“I know you were looking for me. So get to the point because I have no time to waste and I don’t like being in this place.”
“I’ve got to hurry back to Turin. Double homicide, stuff that would make your hair stand on end.”
“That is, if you have any . . .” said Rocco, looking at the clearly thinning hair that Farinelli had been battling for years.
“I dropped by your office. I left a box for you. Take a look, you might find something useful in there. I’ll say only two things. First, you pulled down the corpse before my men got there, and you touched the cable without gloves. Someone even went into the bathroom and took a pee.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because we tested the urine. This is the second time that we’ve run into Officer Casella.”
That idiot, Rocco thought to himself. Already, the month before, up in
Champoluc, Casella had marked a crime scene by pissing everywhere, like a German shepherd. “I know. Casella must have bladder problems or something. What’s the second thing?”
“There was a cell phone, half-crushed. It’s useless now. And we couldn’t find the SIM card. Just think, it might be stuck to the bottom of one of your men’s boots.”
Rocco helplessly threw open his arms. “Give me a break!”
“You move through these crime scenes like a herd of rhinoceros.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. I intend to ask the police chief for permission to hold a three-day seminar for your men. I’m sick and tired of running around fixing the stupid mistakes they make. They don’t have the first notion of how to work a crime scene.”
“Are you going to teach the seminar?”
“Certainly.”
“Consider me enrolled. Anyway, this case is cracked. There’s just one missing detail.”
“Mind telling me which?”
“A tie.”
“That again? We took them all to Fumagalli.”
“All but one.”
Then Rocco looked at Patrizio Baudo’s bicycle, the Colnago worth more than six thousand euros. He walked over to it. He stood there, looking at it.
“Are you looking for it there?”
“No. But . . . something occurs to me.”
He turned the bicycle upside down. The rear wheel spun freely. Rocco stopped it. He carefully examined the structure, the brake pads, the seat. Then he stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out his Swiss Army knife.
“What are you doing, puncturing his tires?” Farinelli asked.
The deputy police chief said nothing, focused as he was on selecting the right tool. Then he opted for the saw and set to work on the bicycle seat. He carved through the rubber. He pulled out a spring. Then a piece of padding and finally a small cloth label. With a smile he showed it to his colleague from the forensic squad: “Look at that!”
“What is it?”
Rocco handed it to him. Farinelli inspected it. It was a small white label, with a logo stitched on it: two laurel branches surrounding a name, Tomei.
“So?”
Adam's Rib Page 20
