by Marco Vichi
‘Ah, he’s a perfect boor, I tell you! Never says hello, always humming something through his teeth … and he puts out his cigarettes in the stairwell … and he spits, I’ve seen it with my own eyes … And he’s always chewing that American filth … and he whistles at women …’
‘Well, I think I’ll go and have a chat with him,’ said Bordelli, feigning disapproval. He was at the end of his tether.
‘And when will you do that, sir?’
‘I’ll do it straight away, if he’s in.’
Signora Capecchi blanched, shuffling her slippers again on the floor.
‘Please, don’t ever say it was I who sent him to jail,’ she whispered, her eyes open wide.
‘Don’t worry, nobody will ever know.’
‘Ah, thank God!’ said Signora Capecchi, crossing herself. And then she thanked Bordelli endlessly, saying how really very nice he was, for a carabiniere, extremely nice, in fact she’d never met a carabiniere so nice. Bordelli crushed his fag-end in a little dish from Lourdes and got up to leave.
‘Will you keep me informed, Marshal?’ she asked, sliding along the floor as she saw him out.
‘The moment I’ve got any news, I’ll give you a ring.’
‘Soon, I hope.’
‘That depends,’ said Bordelli, glad to be leaving.
‘Don’t let that oaf intimidate you, Marshal. Put him in his place,’ the old woman said as she opened the door.
‘Don’t you worry.’
‘Don’t pull any punches, Marshal. The hooligan may be big and fat, but you’re a carabiniere, aren’t you?’
‘More or less.’
‘Let me know when the trial date is set, I shouldn’t want to miss it.’
‘Goodbye, signora. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.’
‘Thank heavens. You have no idea how happy that makes me.’
At last Signora Capecchi closed the door, and Bordelli heard the sound of a hundred bolts turning. Shaking his head, he started up towards the top floor. He felt like an idiot. With all the things he had to do, here he was, doing the bidding of a crazy old woman. At the top of the stairs, he lit a cigarette. On the door on the right-hand side of the landing there was still a little plaque with the name Meletti. Bordelli knocked without conviction, but nobody came to the door. He knocked again. Nothing.The nasty fellow wasn’t there. He descended the stairs at a leisurely pace, but before heading down the last flight he heard the front door open and close. Accompanied by a gust of cold wind, someone came in whistling a famous tune. Bordelli tried to remember the title, but it wouldn’t come to him. The man took the stairs like a horse, and when he was face to face with Bordelli, he stopped whistling. He was tall and fat, and must certainly be him, the terrible Nocentini. He looked to be just over twenty years old, with clear eyes and a likeable face.
‘Evenin’,’ he said, thrusting his hands in his pockets and continuing on his way.
‘I beg your pardon, but what were you whistling?’ Bordelli asked him.
The young man turned round and gave him a funny look, then smiled faintly, amused.
‘I don’t know, something French, I think,’ he said, shrugging.
‘Was it perhaps a song by Yves Montand?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Are you Nocentini?’
‘Yes. Why do you ask?’ the man said, no longer smiling.
‘Could I talk to you for a minute?’
‘And who are you?’
‘Inspector Bordelli. Let’s go upstairs for a minute. I just need to ask you a couple of questions.’
‘All right,’ said the lad, frowning.
They climbed up to the top floor and went into his flat. It consisted of a narrow hallway with a room at each end, dirty walls, crates yet to be unpacked, rags strewn about, and a musty, closed smell that made one want to cough.
‘I’m still getting settled,’ said the young man, standing in front of Bordelli.
‘Are you the one making all the racket at night?’ the inspector asked.
‘It was the old hag on the first floor who told you that, wasn’t it? What the hell is her name …?’
‘Couldn’t you try to be a little quieter?’
‘I am extremely quiet, but the minute the lady hears a fly buzz—’
‘What about that record player?’
‘I keep it turned down low.’
Bordelli went over to see what records Nocentini was listening to. Celentano, Carosone, Rita Pavone …
‘Have you got a job?’ he asked.
‘I work at the central market. At five a.m. I’m already there unloading.’
The inspector looked up from the stack of records and headed towards the door.
‘Well, I have to go now. Try not to make too much noise at night, or Signora Capecchi will keep bugging me.’
‘Okay.’
‘And see that you don’t put out your cigarette butts in the stairwell.’
‘I’ll be careful not to.’
‘It’ll be better for everyone,’ said Bordelli, knowing how annoying old ladies of that sort could be. He shook the lad’s hand and went away trying to remember the title of that song by Yves Montand.
Ever since he had seen little Casimiro folded up inside the suitcase, Bordelli had felt guilty. But now all he could do was find who had killed him, and this he swore he would do.
Forensics had examined Casimiro’s flat but found no fingerprints other than those of Bordelli and the Beast. The killer had taken great care not to leave any traces. Which was rather strange for the murder of a poor dwarf from the Case Minime.
Late the following morning, around midday, Bordelli got into his car with Piras and headed off towards Fiesole. On the way he gave his assistant a thorough account of everything he knew about the case, from the not-quite-dead man Casimiro had seen in the field to his last phone call to the inspector.
They left the car in the usual spot and walked as far as the olive grove. Bordelli had no clear sense of what they were doing, but Casimiro’s last words led them to that villa, and that was where they should start. When they got to the buttresses, they noticed a great many torn ivy leaves on the ground. It looked as if someone had tried to climb up one of the buttresses by grabbing on to the vines’ strongest branches.
‘I like this story less and less, Piras.’
Bordelli was thinking of Casimiro, his wretched life and horrific death. It would have been better if he had never been born. At that hour maybe Diotivede had already opened up his belly.
Piras was looking carefully at the ground. At a certain point he spotted something in the grass and got down on his kness.
‘Come and look, Inspector.’
Bordelli came closer and bent down to look.
‘Shit,’ he said. It was Casimiro’s little plastic skeleton. He picked it up and turned it around sadly in his hand.
‘Why did you say shit, Inspector?’
‘Because this belonged to Casimiro.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Piras.
‘Quite sure. It was a sort of talisman. He was always fiddling with it.’
‘Couldn’t he have dropped it the night you came here together?’
‘No, I remember specifically that he had it in his hand when I drove him home.’
‘Shit,’ said the Sardinian.
Bordelli put the little skeleton in his pocket and resumed looking around. He took a few steps back to get a full view of the villa. As usual, the shutters were closed and there was no sign of life within. Piras kept searching along the ground, looking for footprints, but it was no use. The dense carpet of grass didn’t hold an impression for very long.
‘Let’s go up to the villa, Piras,’ Bordelli said out of the blue. They returned to the car and, a few minutes later, pulled up at the big rusty gate. They went up to it and looked through the bars. In the daylight the garden looked even more neglected. The small stone fountain was dry and covered with moss, the weeds growing freely beyond the limits o
f the old flower beds.
‘It looks like one of those haunted houses,’ said Piras. If Bordelli hadn’t seen the German woman come out with his own two eyes, he might have thought the same thing. He tugged the chain to the bell. They heard it ring inside the house, but nobody came out.
‘Miss Olga!’ Bordelli shouted. Again he had the feeling that someone was spying on them through the slats of the shutters.
‘Are they watching us?’
‘You can read my mind, Piras.’
The wind gusted and stirred up the dry leaves on the villa’s patios. The effect was rather like a Sunday at the cemetery. Piras and Bordelli carefully checked all the windows one by one, trying to determine whether someone really was watching them, but they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. They only heard the rustle of the windswept leaves.
They got back in the car and returned to the city by way of the old road, so steep it was almost perpendicular. Bordelli kept thinking of the man with the black mark on his neck. Where had he seen that sort of mark before? Perhaps he was mistaken …
‘Piras, a man with a dark spot on the neck from here to here,’ said Bordelli, running his finger across his throat, ‘does that ring a bell for you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said the young man.
‘So, what do you make of all this?’
‘Well, we know for certain that Casimiro was in that field and had perhaps tried to climb up the buttress, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the villa had anything to do with the murder …’
‘Quite so …’
‘But I do wonder: where, exactly, was Casimiro murdered? At home or somewhere else? And if he was killed away from his home, why did they carry him all the way back there inside a suitcase? It would have been easier to dump him in the Arno or bury him out in the country somewhere.’
‘Good question, Piras. Have you got an answer?’
‘I’d really rather you didn’t smoke, Inspector,’ said Piras, seeing Bordelli reach into his jacket pocket. The inspector merely made a face that meant such things couldn’t be helped, and lit a cigarette. Piras opened the window at once.
Diotivede heard him come in, but he kept his eye pressed up against the eyepiece of the microscope.
‘What are you doing up at this ungodly hour?’
It was barely half past seven.
‘Well, I know you start work early,’ said Bordelli.
‘But you don’t.’
‘I haven’t been sleeping well lately.’
‘I’ve already done your dwarf, but haven’t written the report yet,’ said Diotivede, turning a knob on the microscope.
‘Tell me in person.’
‘I know you knew him.’
‘I first arrested him just after the war.’
The pathologist ceased combing through the cilia of bacteria and sat up straight. Every time Bordelli looked at him he was amazed. Diotivede was over seventy, but his face still had something childish about it.
‘He died two days ago, between one and two o’clock in the morning.’
‘From a crushed skull?’
‘Wrong.’
‘How, then?’
‘He was poisoned,’ said the doctor.
Bordelli’s eyes widened.
‘What about that blow to the head?’
‘They did that later, almost certainly with a hammer.’
‘What could it mean?’ asked Bordelli, shaking his head.
‘I was wondering myself. Perhaps your little friend had some muscle spasms as he was dying; that can happen with poisoning. And the killer, perhaps fearing he wasn’t going to die, finished him off with a hammer.’
‘Anything else?’ asked Bordelli, feeling a keen desire to light up.
‘His fingernails were broken, except for the thumbs. He seems to have scraped them against a very rough surface. The fingertips are also a bit chafed.’
‘Could he have done it against a stone wall?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Go on.’
‘His stomach was full to bursting. Want to know what he had eaten?’ the doctor asked.
‘Poor guy, I can guess … Black cabbage, beans …’
‘You’re on the wrong track.’
‘What do you mean?’
Diotivede picked up a wrinkled sheet of paper from the table and read:
‘Crayfish, gilthead bream, shrimp … there was even a fair amount of langoustine, and a lot of mayonnaise. The wine was a Gewürztraminer or something similar. I won’t list the desserts, or you might gain weight.’
‘You’re joking, of course.’
‘No,’ said the doctor, a little smile on his face.
‘Shit!’ said Bordelli.
‘There was no lack of cognac, either, though it was cut with cyanide.’
‘Was it a painful death?’
‘I’d say so,’ said Diotivede, adjusting his glasses on his nose.
‘Poor bloke …’ Bordelli muttered.
‘But there’s another curious fact: it was rather unusual cyanide.’
‘In what sense?’
‘Old stuff, fashioned into very small tablets.’
‘How old?’
‘Very old,’ said the doctor.
‘From the last war?’
‘Even before.’
‘Can it keep for so long?’
‘Depends on how you store it.’
Bordelli nervously fingered his chin.
‘Anything else?’
‘I don’t think so. And now I’m sorry, but I have to finish the girl,’ said Diotivede, pointing towards a gurney at the back of the laboratory. A cascade of blonde hair poured out from under a sheet, and at the opposite end, two very white, slender feet pointed upwards.
‘Is she the one who was found in the dump?’ the inspector asked.
‘She is. That fathead Rabozzi’s handling the case.’
‘A prostitute?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Raped?’
‘I was just going to check.’
‘Could I see her?’
‘Go ahead.’
The inspector approached the gurney and raised the sheet a little, then lifted it completely. He looked sadly at the girl. She was barely twenty years old.
‘Beautiful girl,’ he said.
‘She looks Parisian,’ said the doctor.
‘Do you know Paris well?’
‘Almost as well as I know human intestines. I lived there for five years.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘You don’t have to know everything,’ said the doctor.
Bordelli lowered the sheet. He too had been in Paris, in December 1939. He had met a beautiful woman and fallen in love with her like a teenager. Her name was Christine. Their three weeks together had been like a dream, and returning home hadn’t been easy. They had started writing to each other. She, too, seemed in every way in love with him, and almost ready to come to Italy. Then Hitler’s divisions entered Paris, and he never heard from her again …
Bordelli shook his head free of those memories and put a cigarette in his mouth, which he wouldn’t light until outside the laboratory.
‘I’m going. Once you’ve typed up your report, send it to me,’ he said.
‘Goodbye,’ said Diotivede, getting back down to work.
When he reached the door, the inspector stopped.
‘Sorry …’ he said, turning round.
‘Don’t ask me if there’s anything else, because there isn’t,’ the doctor interrupted him without looking up from the microscope.
‘I just wanted to know if you know a cognac called de Maricourt.’
‘Of course I do,’ said the doctor.
‘Oh, really? I didn’t know it.’
Diotivede looked up from his microorganisms with a sigh and put his hands in his pockets.
‘Nobody in Italy knows it. It’s never been exported and hasn’t even been produced for at least twenty years. The distillery was destroyed d
uring the war and never rebuilt. The last reserves were carried away by the Nazis during the American advance.’
‘Is it good cognac?’
‘The best.’
‘Diotivede, you amaze me. How do you know these things?’
‘Culture.’
‘Tell me something, how can you distinguish cognac from whisky or Calvados? In a dead man’s stomach, I mean.’
‘Don’t think I taste it,’ said the doctor, expecting another of those idiotic quips he’d been putting up with all his life.
‘No, I mean it seriously,’ said Bordelli. ‘How do you tell them apart?’
‘There are chemical tables of all the different kinds of alcohol, and each has its own characteristics.’
‘I guess it doesn’t get any easier than that …’
‘’Bye, Bordelli,’ said the doctor, turning his eye back to the microscope.
But Bordelli wasn’t leaving. He had started pacing back and forth, the unlit cigarette still in his mouth.
‘Do you think you could also determine the brand of cognac that Casimiro drank?’ he suddenly asked.
‘That’s asking too much,’ said Diotivede.
‘Forget I asked,’ said Bordelli, who muttered goodbye and walked out of the laboratory, leaving the pathologist in peace at last.
He returned to headquarters with his mind in a state of confusion. Climbing the stairs, he ran into Rabozzi. The big lug was wearing his usual mastiff-like grimace, which screwed his face up.
‘Hello, Bordelli.’
‘Hello. I’ve just seen the girl they found in the refuse dump.’
‘Beautiful, no?… What’s wrong? You look glum.’
‘I can’t get over what happened to Casimiro.’
‘Your little dwarf friend?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What are you going to do if you find the person who killed him? Shoot him in the head?’ Rabozzi asked, chuckling.
‘Let me catch him first,’ said Bordelli.
‘If you send him to jail, between one buggering and another, he’ll already be out in five years.’
‘I’m going upstairs.’
“Bye, Bordelli.’
Rabozzi strode off with his avenger’s swagger, and Bordelli went up to his office. He lit another cigarette. He had started smoking a lot again, blaming it on the hard times. The murdered child and Casimiro’s death kept him in a state of constant tension. Despite the time of day, he opened a bottle of beer, flipping the cap off, as usual, with his house keys.
