The Dark Valley cs-2

by Valerio Varesi

  Soneri nodded his agreement and set off down the path with Dolly at his heels. She had made herself his shadow, and this worried him because he did not want the dog to grow too fond of him. Dolly had already lost one master and he had no wish to inflict more pain on her, but nor did he wish to hurt himself, since he had already become fond of her. With animals — as with people — his principal aim was to avoid inflicting hurt. He walked briskly down the track, too briskly, he decided, when he stumbled and almost fell. In a grove of fir trees, under whose canopy it seemed still to be night, he almost bumped into a detachment of carabinieri making their way up to Pratopiano, panting under the weight of the implements they were carrying. He stepped aside to let them pass, but as he did so, he felt a pang of anxiety and a lump in his throat. There were more carabinieri at Boldara. The whole of Montelupo seemed now to be crawling with them, and their presence brought back stories told by his father about the round-ups along the Gothic Line in ’44. He recognised a group of journalists assembled alongside the reservoir, but he kept away from them.

  He sought quiet to allow him to deal with the sense of melancholy which now pervaded his being. He also needed time, much as does the soil on the Apennines when saturated by too much rainfall. He felt this need all the more keenly when he came in sight of the village and became aware of the hubbub, a state of constant, agitated motion which from a distance resembled the fermentation of grape must. He imagined that the news of Paride’s death must have reached the piazza, but as he approached he could identify no clear purpose in all that bustle. The scene reminded him of a pack of drunks staggering about. He crossed the piazza where bewildered, disconcerted people were standing around, seizing eagerly on any snatches of rumour. He took the Campogrande road which led to Villa del Greppo. In all his years in the village, he had never gone close to that intimidating place, but now he had a reason to go there. Dolly trotted along at this side, obviously very familiar with the path.

  The closer he got, the more the villa disappeared behind the surrounding wall and the thick vegetation. One of the bolder pranks they would get up to as boys was to ride past on their bicycles, fire a couple of stones over the wall from their slings and then make off down the slope, leaving the Rodolfi dogs barking furiously in their wake. Now it seemed as though silence had fallen definitively on the villa. Even when he rang the bell he did not hear any sound within. Soneri allowed some time to pass before he tried again. As he waited, he lit a cigar and turned to observe the sunlit valley and Dolly wagging her tail, as excited as on the first day of the hunting season.

  At last the gate was pulled back and a small Asian man with an expression of great melancholy appeared in the opening. He stood quite still, looking at Soneri without seeming to breathe.

  “I came to bring back the dog,” the commissario said.

  The man glowered at him for a few moments, then turned his attention to the dog.

  “Not know dog,” he said in low voice.

  “It belonged to Signor Rodolfi.”

  The Philippino made no reply, but he appeared to be surprised.

  “Could you call the Signora?” Soneri said.

  The man, still silent, walked in tiny steps across the courtyard in the direction of the house and disappeared inside. The commissario took advantage of his absence to move inside and look over the place which had been forbidden territory to him for so many years. He had expected to see signs of more conspicuous wealth than was on display. It was an old country house, with the barn and stables still recognisable even if now transformed into living quarters. The entire complex retained the unembellished, rustic style which reflected old Palmiro’s peasant tastes.

  The door opened and a middle-aged woman, whose severe beauty was tinged with sorrow, appeared. The long black hair which came down over her shoulders seemed to have been ruffled by the wind, and when he saw her from close up, Soneri had the feeling that a different kind of disorder resided in her inner being — or so he deduced from the clash between the haughtiness of her eyes and the brightness of her lips, her imperial bearing and certain listless gestures which were redolent of a languid sensuality. Traits of the abbess and the whore competed in her soul, combining without merging in the way she conducted herself. Even her immediate reaction was idiosyncratic and irrational. Her glance fell only fleetingly on Soneri, but she gave a more intense stare at Dolly, seated at his feet, moving only her tail. The woman’s face lit up with the merest trace of a smile, quickly replaced by an expression of pain which she concealed by placing both hands over her face.

  The commissario understood that there was no need to explain anything to her. The presence of the dog was sufficient. “I thought it right to bring her back,” he said.

  She nodded, her hands still covering her face. “My husband was very fond of her,” she said.

  “She watched over him.”

  “She was better for him than any wife,” she said, half laughing and half weeping, in words of bitter self-reproach.

  “It’s easier for dogs,” Soneri said, by way of offering her a measure of comfort. “Life or death, love or hate. We get swamped by half measures. We are not as simple as they are.”

  The woman made no reply, but took her hands from her face, revealing an expression of suffering and resignation.

  “However, I believe you were not unprepared…”

  Her expression changed in an instant, as though she were removing one mask and putting on another. And in that instant, the haughty, almost arrogant, expression she had earlier worn, returned.

  “We haven’t even introduced ourselves. I am Manuela.”

  “Soneri,” the commissario replied, shaking her outstretched hand. He noted that her body had stiffened and that she was now observing him more coolly.

  “You’re a policeman. I’ve heard talk of you in the village,” she said, standing back.

  “My family is from these parts, but I’m here for a holiday, not to carry out enquiries. I am just bringing back the dog,” he concluded, with some embarrassment.

  The woman did not share his embarrassment. “Did you find her?”

  Soneri could do no more than nod.

  “Where?”

  “At Pratopiano.”

  Manuela seemed to be running over in her mind the various places in the valley that were known to her. “I don’t know where that is, and I don’t care. As far as I am concerned, all these places are the same — ” She stopped all of a sudden, with a contemptuous sneer, but immediately, in another abrupt shift, she reverted to the gentle tone and asked timidly, “What state was he in?”

  Soneri waited for a few moments before replying in a whisper, “You can imagine.”

  She lowered her eyes and looked at a clump of weeds at her feet. “Had it been long since…”

  “A couple of days, judging by the condition of the body.”

  Manuela swallowed hard and stared once more into the distance. Her cheeks turned a gentle pink.

  “Did he never speak to you about debts?”

  She gave a sigh which swiftly became a scoff. She looked Soneri straight in the eye, and for a moment he thought she was about to faint.

  “I’m going to escape from here,” she said, in the tone of someone reciting a litany. “At long last I’ll be free of these mountains…” — her voice rising to a hysterical scream — “I’ve lost everything: husband, inheritance, reputation and, what matters most, my life. My life. I threw it away when I chose to bury myself in this backwater. I played my cards badly,” she said, with lucid cynicism.

  Soneri could no longer meet Manuela’s gaze, behind which he glimpsed an abyss of ugliness. He realised that many years devoted to detective work had not yet inoculated him against the sheer nastiness lurking beneath such a great variety of surfaces. It was in many ways a comforting discovery.

  “Was it you that made them put up those posters on San Martino?” he said, coldly.

  Manuela looked at him with a smile of distrust. “No, I know no
thing about any posters. I was as surprised as anyone, but what does it matter? We’re ruined and you can throw any accusation you like at us. You couldn’t care less about knowing what really went on.”

  “Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  The response was a fresh peal of laughter that sounded more like a lament, but the woman quickly reverted to the expression of pain. “I found out only recently about the situation we’re in. Palmiro told me when he realised there was no way we could get back on our feet. He was dignified in defeat. He was the only real man in this family. I was dragged towards ruination as ignorantly as a moth drawn to a flame,” she said, with another cackle.

  “When did your husband disappear?”

  Manuela raised her hands, palms upwards to indicate that she did not know. “I hadn’t seen him for two weeks, but I believed he was travelling somewhere. Anyway, when he was here, he spent nearly all his time in the other house in the woods.”

  “You were separated?”

  “Astonishing! How on earth did you work that out?”

  Only then, when his temper was aroused, did he realise that he was interrogating her as though he were on a case. “Nothing to do with me,” he mumbled. “I only came to bring you the dog.”

  Manuela was clearly surprised by this, and shouted in the direction of the villa, “Chang!” The Philippino appeared almost at once, deferential and anxious to do her bidding.

  “Take the bitch and put her with the others,” she ordered, in a tone of contempt which could have been directed either at the man or the dog. The Philippino summoned Dolly, who made no attempt to move. He grabbed her by the collar and dragged her towards the house.

  “Treat her well. She deserves it,” Soneri said.

  The woman shrugged. “She was treated better than me.”

  “Things have not gone too badly for you so far. You are still young and can make a life for yourself somewhere else. Would you rather have broken your back working in the stables?” he said acidly.

  She looked at him with scorn. “They’re all so concerned about the plight of the poor little peasant girls! Do you think ordinary people are pure of heart? You should see these peasant girls drool over their line managers for promotion or a pay rise. They’d happily let themselves be laid on a workbench if it would get them one more grade. And then there are all these pathetic males who used to line up to lick Paride’s or Palmiro’s arse if that’s what it took to get a job for their sons or for some relative. And don’t get me started on politicians, coming cap in hand. And not to forget the bankers, elegant pimps, sticky with sweat running down their starched collars. That’s the sort we’ve had to deal with.”

  The sun was up and its brilliance assaulted them as they stood on the lawn. It was in Soneri’s face, blinding him. Its dazzling light and the crudeness of Manuela’s speech left him stunned.

  “You’re no better,” he managed finally to say.

  “No, we’re no better, but we’re no worse either. That lot, if they were in our shoes, who knows how they would have behaved.”

  “They’re ruined as much as you,” he reminded her.

  “It was their greed that caused their downfall. Do you know why they gave us all that money? Because of the interest my father-in-law promised them. All this stuff about trust in the firm, or that we were all in it together… bollocks! Money, that’s what they were after. They’d never have parted with as much as one cent if it hadn’t been for the mirage of easy riches. They never gave a damn about the firm, and neither were they so stupid as to believe there was no risk. In the last couple of years, they were being promised rates of interest that would have shamed a usurer and not one of them stopped to ask: what’s going on here?”

  “Their trust was genuine.”

  Manuela shook her head vigorously, and her reply was scathing. “Once perhaps, but nowadays there are people here playing the stock market, and they know that trust gets you nowhere.”

  She took from her pocket a bottle of pills and swallowed a couple without any water. Soneri remembered being told in the village that she lived on tablets and pills. “It’s time for me to be on my way,” he said. He wanted to be gone as quickly as possible from that house and that woman.

  “Off you go, Commissario, off you go. Back to those honest souls.”

  He decided not to answer, because he recognised a touch of despair in that injunction, but he had not gone very far when more harsh, unfriendly words reached his ears. “Just remember that your father came to see us as well.”

  The commissario stopped in his tracks, but as he was on the point of turning, he saw the Philippino scuttle inside and the gate close. As he walked towards the village, he wondered what Manuela had meant. Had she intended to put his father on the same level as the wretches who came begging for work, or was she pleading for clemency? He could not get the idea out of his mind. He had no time for the woman, but neither could he free himself of the doubt she had planted. She had polluted his memories. All the way to the town, he was troubled by feelings which the bright sunshine and the clear air could only partially lift, and when he reached the piazza, his unease grew stronger as he saw the coming and going of the carabiniere trucks and the chauffeur-driven cars from the Prosecutor’s office carrying men whom he recognised. There were also vans with television cameras and satellite dishes and packs of journalists ferreting about the village in search of someone to interview. A crowd had gathered round the Comune, chanting slogans. That was where the carabinieri were headed, since their colleagues were having a hard time holding back people pushing and shoving at the main entrance.

  Other patrols were moving in a column for the salame factory where the only smiling face was that of the pork butcher on the Rodolfi label. Soneri looked up at the road running alongside the works and saw a mass of people there, carrying banners and being harangued by someone speaking into a megaphone. These must have been the striking workers protesting against the halting of production, but the whole thing had tumbled into a chaos where every law had been suspended. Once again Soneri had a flashback to the worms devouring Paride. There was the same frenetic activity in the village, and perhaps in a short time it would lead to the worms devouring one another. Soneri was trying to avoid the crush when he was interrupted by the ringing of his mobile.

  “I tried ten times to contact you this morning,” Angela began.

  Soneri looked at his watch. One o’clock. He thought of his partner getting up from her desk after hours of work, adjusting as she did so the skirt which had climbed half way up her thighs. He experienced a thrill of desire, but her voice had a calming effect. It was primarily the voice of someone friendly and complicit, someone he could hold onto to avoid sinking in the quagmire. She noticed this. “Commissario, what’s happening to you? You’re like a seminarian at prayer.”

  Soneri blushed, annoyed at having revealed a hidden side of himself. “I’ve had a bad morning. I saw Paride eaten by worms.”

  Angela gave a snort of disgust.

  “It was revolting, but we may as well resign ourselves to the end that’s coming to us all,” he said, donning his customary, tough exterior.

  “The company has been declared bankrupt,” she said, changing the subject.

  “Not just the company, the whole village and maybe the council as well.”

  “There’s a degree of sadness in your voice, Commissario. Didn’t you say you were going to stay out of it?”

  “It’s not so easy. It seems everybody is caught up in it.”

  “But not you, and yet…”

  “Angela, it’s hard to remain indifferent when you’re faced with the ruin of people you’ve known, people who speak the same dialect.”

  “Tell the truth. It’s the idea you had of the place that’s ruined. That’s what’s so upsetting.”

  Soneri refrained from telling her about the doubts concerning his father planted in him by Manuela. He said nothing for a few moments, then said, “The mistake was to come back.”
>
  “Maybe it would be different if I were there.”

  “Maybe,” Soneri said. She had contacted him at the very moment when he was at his lowest ebb, and before he had the chance to change his mind, she grabbed at his half-invitation. “I’ll turn up one of these evenings.”

  “I should tell you that the Scoiattolo is a fairly basic sort of place. There are cabinets beside the beds and a San Martino over the headboard, and that’s the lot.”

  “I’ll do my best to carry out an exorcism.”

  “Try to speak to the Rodolfis’ lawyer.”

  “I’ll try, but he too seems to have disappeared.”

  The commissario switched off the phone and walked towards the piazza. From a distance he could distinguish the yellow outline of the carabiniere H.Q., where there seemed to be a great deal of movement. As he approached, he recognised the journalists hanging about waiting for someone to invite them in. In front of the Rivara, he ran into Maini.

  “It’s all coming to the boil, but it’s not quite at boiling point yet,” Soneri said.

  “There’s still some way to go. I doubt if they know where to start,” Maini said, nodding in the direction of the police station.

  “They can hardly interrogate the whole village.”

  “Where would you start?”

  The commissario shook his head. “I don’t know. Every single person is a potential suspect, and each one of them could have more than one motive. There are all kinds of hatreds, passions… I’d want to talk to those who know about the skeletons in the various cupboards.”

  “In fact they’ve been to see Don Bruno.”

  “Of course, the priest. They always know a great deal, priests, but I’m not sure he’s the most helpful starting point.”

  “They can’t even find a wall to bang their heads against.”

  “Who’s in charge of the interrogations?”

  “The new man. Bovolenta I think he’s called.”

  “There’s a unpleasant atmosphere about the place,” Soneri said, looking around at the stalls scattered across the piazza. “Do you think something’s going to explode before the day is out?”