Death in Sardinia

by Marco Vichi

  ‘You’ll have all the time in the world to admire her. Take one photo each and don’t make any copies. I want only you two to look into this; you mustn’t tell anyone else. Understand?’

  ‘We’ll do our best, sir,’ said Rinaldi.

  ‘Try the schools, too, but nobody must know why we’re looking for her. Invent some excuse, if you have to.’

  ‘Why are we looking for her, Inspector?’ Tapinassi asked.

  ‘You don’t need to know, for now. When you find her, don’t approach her, don’t do anything at all … Just report to me at once.’

  ‘Very well, sir,’ said Tapinassi, eyeing the photos in his colleague’s hand. Bordelli slapped him on the back.

  ‘But don’t take a week. We’re not in New York, after all,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll manage, sir,’ said Rinaldi, standing to attention.

  ‘Maximum discretion,’ the inspector reiterated, heading for the door. Before leaving he dropped into his office, for no real reason. Maybe just to have a look at the room. Every time he went in there he felt at home, and this worried him. It was very hot. He touched the radiators; they were boiling, at public expense. He put an unlit cigarette between his lips and left the matches on the desk. Leaving the room, he headed for the stairs, determined to smoke only if he ran into someone with a light.

  He crossed the courtyard, pulling his trench coat tightly round his body. Passing Mugnai’s booth, he waved a greeting. Mugnai bolted out and came up to him.

  ‘Need a light, Inspector?’

  Bordelli sighed and lit the cigarette on Mugnai’s match. His strategy hadn’t worked, but in truth this was what he’d wanted.

  Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone around the station with an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, blowing the smoke far away.

  ‘You can keep ’em,’ Mugnai said, slipping the box of matches into the inspector’s coat pocket.

  It was hopeless. If he wanted to quit smoking, he had to rely on himself.

  ‘I’ll buy you another box,’ Bordelli said.

  ‘No need, Inspector. I don’t smoke.’

  ‘How did you manage to quit?’

  ‘I never started.’

  ‘I think you and Piras would get on well together,’ Bordelli said.

  ‘How’s he doing, now that you mention him?’ Mugnai asked.

  ‘He can’t wait to get back to hunting down killers.’

  ‘Give him my best.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Bordelli got into his Beetle and drove away, imagining Piras with his crutches and his father Gavino with only one arm.

  He glanced at his watch. Just three o’clock. Before returning to Badalamenti’s apartment he wanted to drop in on Diotivede.

  He turned on to the Viali and tried to smoke the cigarette as slowly as possible, to make it last. Driving past the Fortezza da Basso he saw a man in the distance talking to a little girl near the pond in the garden. At first he paid no heed. But when he approached the intersection with Viale Milton, he stopped the car and threw it into reverse, ignoring the horns blasting in protest. He parked the Beetle between two trees and got out. He thought he’d recognised Lapo, the thirty-year-old son of a couple of businesspeople in the centre of town. Lapo had been convicted several times of sexual harassment of minors. His parents were wealthy and always managed to save him by hiring expensive laywers who tried to pass him off as insane. But Bordelli was not a judge. Crossing the busy avenue in a hurry, he walked towards the pond. The young man had his back to him and was on his knees, talking to the little girl.

  ‘Is there a problem here?’ Bordelli asked gruffly. The young man snapped his head around, saw the inspector, and stood up.

  ‘You scared me, Inspector.’

  It was indeed Lapo, with his coat-hanger shoulders and hips as wide as a woman’s. He was trembling lightly from the fright.

  ‘It’s you who scare me, Lapo,’ the inspector retorted. The girl looked about ten years old. Long blonde hair and carrying a red satchel.

  ‘Are you the man with the toys?’ she asked Bordelli, looking him seriously in the eye.

  ‘Of course I am … Aren’t you going to introduce me to your daughter?’ the inspector said to Lapo.

  ‘He’s not my daddy,’ the little girl said.

  ‘She’s not my daughter,’ the young man stammered. He had a gaunt face, eyes too big, and his skin was always shiny. Bordelli approached the girl, smiling.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Beatrice. And you?’

  ‘Franco. What are you doing outside all alone at this hour?’

  ‘I was playing with my friend … she lives over there,’ she said, pointing a tiny finger in the direction of Via dello Statuto.

  ‘And where do you live?’

  ‘In that building there,’ said the little girl, pointing to a door across the avenue.

  ‘Come, I’ll walk you home,’ said Bordelli offering her his hand.

  ‘And what about the toys you promised me?’ she asked. The inspector shot a glance at Lapo, who looked away.

  ‘I forgot them at home.’

  ‘Ohh! And when will you bring me them?’

  ‘We’ll talk it over with your mamma,’ Bordelli said, to wriggle out of the bind. Then he went up to Lapo.

  ‘I’m going to take her home and come back. If you move even an inch, you’re in big trouble,’ he whispered.

  ‘I’ll wait right here, I promise,’ said Lapo, averting his eyes.

  Bordelli took the child by the hand and escorted her to the front door of her building. Ringing the buzzer, he told the girl he wanted to talk to her mother about the toys. The mother came downstairs to meet them. The woman listened to him attentively and thanked him, then started saying a few words to her daughter, who looked at her in astonishment. Bordelli waved goodbye, and as the big door closed behind him, he could hear the little girl complaining that the toy man had tricked her.

  He walked calmly back to the park. Lapo was huddled up on a bench, green greatcoat pulled tightly around him, smoking a cigarette. The inspector sat down beside him. He remained silent for a moment, gazing at the dark silhouettes of the oaks in the park and the naked branches of the plane trees lining the avenue. Cars drove by fast, as the volume of traffic increased.

  He turned towards the young man and extended his arm over the back of the bench.

  ‘I was going to give you a little lecture.’

  ‘Of course, Inspector,’ Lapo said, still looking down. He stank of sweat and eau de cologne. Bordelli sighed with irritation.

  ‘I want you to listen very closely, because I don’t like to say things twice.’

  ‘Of course, Inspector,’ Lapo repeated. Bordelli turned round to face the avenue.

  ‘From now on I’m going to have my men follow you, day and night. If I find out that you’ve come within ten yards of any little girl, I’m going to come and get you personally and take you straight to the Murate and charge you with rape. I’ll have forty-eight hours to investigate and establish the facts. But rumours travel fast in jail, and you know what the other prisoners do to people like you? They cut their balls off. So do me a favour now and repeat what I just said … word for word.’

  Bordelli had seen something similar in a Western whose title he couldn’t remember. He had to admit that it had made an impression. Lapo took a deep breath and started speaking.

  ‘From now on I’m going to have you followed … and if I hear that you’ve approached a … a little girl …’

  ‘Well done. Now finish the sentence.’

  ‘… I’m going to come and get you and … take you to the Murate …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘…and in jail …they’ll …cut off …’

  ‘What’ll they cut off? Come on, it’s easy.’

  ‘… m … my balls …’

  ‘Good, now I know you understand. And do you know what happens when someone cuts off your balls?’

 
‘No,’ said Lapo, pale as a corpse.

  ‘Well, if you want to find out, just try to bother another little girl and it’ll all be clear to you. Think you need any more explanations?’

  ‘No,’ said Lapo, and a second later he covered his face with his hands and burst into tears like a child. His shoulders shook as if they had an electrical current running through them.

  ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ Bordelli asked. The young man passed him a packet of HB without raising his head. He continued whimpering and sniffling.The inspector took a cigarette and put the packet back in the man’s pocket. Then he stood up and headed for the Beetle. Had he remained a second longer he might not have been able to refrain himself from boxing the ears of that rich, sick kid. But he’d never liked beating people up, and so he’d left. Getting into the car, he imagined Lapo with his hands on a little girl and lit the cigarette with Mugnai’s providential matches.

  He took the last drag at the bottom of Via Alderotti, and after flicking the butt out the window, he left it open to get rid of the smoke. It was bloody cold outside. He hadn’t noticed when sitting in the park with Lapo.

  Before it got dark, Piras wanted to go another couple of kilo-metres towards Santu Lussurgiu. It was a beautiful route, and there was still an hour of daylight left. His house was at the edge of town, almost directly in front of the crossroads for Seneghe, and to go to Santu Lussurgiu, one first had to cross all of Bonarcado. There was a bit of wind, but it wasn’t too bad. The sun was warmer than in Florence.

  Walking with crutches was hard, but he could feel himself getting closer to recovery and managed to enjoy the effort.

  Every day that went by he felt a little steadier on his feet. He wanted to be the way he was before, and soon … Hunting for killers and making love with Sonia.

  A donkey brayed as though suffering. It must have been one of the Perra family’s animals. Through the windows of the houses, Piras could see Christmas trees with coloured baubles. There were children playing football in the middle of the street with a deflated ball. They ran about like mice and raised smoke from the ball every time they kicked it. He himself had once played in these same streets, not too many years before.

  He walked past the church of Santa Maria, which was large and massive, almost too big for such a little town. It was made of dark stone, and the bell tower made a fine impression. The façade was on the other side, looking on to the woods covering the hill. The church looked as if it was turning its back to the town. When he was a little boy his parents used to bring him to hear mass every Sunday. He still remembered how bored he felt during those moments, with the village elders singing, the priest speaking a strange language, his mother always telling him to go to confession, the gnarly candles dripping on to the terracotta floor, the smell of dead flowers, the round eyes of the Christ looking at him from behind the altar … Whenever he left that place he felt reborn, and he wondered why everyone in town went and did something so sad every Sunday. At age fifteen he finally rebelled, and in the end his parents stopped taking him there. The only time he ever went back inside the church was for funerals. The last time was three years before moving to Florence, when his grandmother, Maria Serena, passed away. Back then the priest was Don Beniamino, a fat tub of lard who always smelled of grilled pork and wine. His homilies were unending, and his funeral orations even longer. He had a shrill voice and always said things that made one feel anxious. Then one day Don Beniamino did something he shouldn’t have done: he started secretly selling the land traditionally attached to the church of Bonarcado. When somebody found out, the rumour spread in barely half an hour. Everyone in town took to the streets, even women and children. That land belonged to Bonarcado, and must never be touched. They all went to the church to get the priest, and then tied him to his donkey with a sign around his neck, l’ainu asub‘e sa bestia: ‘the ass riding his beast’. Then they whipped the poor animal and sent the priest down the road to Paulilatino, following behind and shouting at him never to come back. And that was the last they ever saw of Don Beniamino.

  Piras was forcing himself to keep up an almost normal pace, but the road to Santu Lussurgiu was all uphill and the effort was tiring him out. Every so often he would stop to catch his breath. It was shortly before sunset. He wanted to get as far as Morgiu’s stable, and so he sped up. Many years before he was born, something had happened along this road. One morning at dawn, in early summer, a stranger was found sprawled out in the dirt like a wretch, eyes open to the heavens, killed by a blast from a sawn-off shotgun that had ripped through his neck. He must have been over seventy years old and had almost no teeth. When they lifted him off the ground his head came detached from his body and rolled down the road. Nobody ever found out who he was or who had killed him. The priest held a mass for him, and then he was buried. A blank tombstone was laid over his grave. People talked about the affair for a long time afterwards, and a few years later the legend of a headless man, combing the countryside in search of his killer, began to spread. Mothers often used that story to make their children behave.

  ‘If you don’t go to bed at once, the headless man will come and take you away.’ Piras’s own mother had said that to him many times, and little by little the story had worked its way into his brain, rather like the sharp point of a nail. For years he had gone to sleep every night thinking that one day he would become a policeman and solve the mystery of that old man’s murder. By now, of course, he understood that the headless ghost who roamed the countryside would never find rest.

  Bordelli parked under the plane trees on Viale Pieraccini and slowly began to climb the stairs that led to the forensic medicine laboratory. When he got to the top, he stopped for a moment to look at the sky. He wished it were white and full of snow.

  He wanted his skin to feel the dry cold of certain winters he’d experienced as a child. But these clouds were dark and promised only rain.

  He went into the building. Even in the corridor one smelled the sickly-sweet, acrid odour typical of such places. Pushing open the door to the lab, he saw his friend, the pathologist, standing in the middle of the room staring at the wall. In his hand he had a test tube half filled with dark liquid, but wasn’t paying any attention to it.

  ‘Diotivede, what’s wrong?’

  The doctor shook his head and went and set the test tube down near the microscope.

  ‘I’m retiring in three years. I just found out today,’ he said drily.

  ‘You can’t do this to me.’

  ‘One life is not enough. You barely manage to understand two scraps of rubbish and it’s already time to feed the pigeons.’

  ‘If you go on I’m going to start crying,’ said the inspector.

  Diotivede walked over to a gurney. With the ease of habit he pulled back the sheet covering a corpse, then folded it up like a housewife and put it away on a shelf. Bordelli immediately recognised Badalamenti’s face, which was disagreeable even in death. The corpse’s abdomen had already been opened. Diotivede calmly put on his gloves and then got down to work with the forceps. The inspector approached the gurney.

  The loan shark’s eyes were clamped shut with two pins. Diotivede didn’t like to work on a corpse whose eyes were open.

  Bordelli studied the stocky, hirsute body of Totuccio Badalamenti. He had short, almost dwarf-like thighs. It looked as if he had grown only from the waist up. The tip of each finger was stained black with ink. De Marchi had already come and taken the corpse’s fingerprints.

  ‘Any news?’ Bordelli asked, gesturing towards the body. The doctor didn’t answer.

  ‘Diotivede, can you hear me?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Have you got any news about Badalamenti?’

  ‘I just opened him up a short while ago. I was very behind in my work.’

  ‘Such delicacy …’ said the inspector.

  He stuck a cigarette between his lips but didn’t light it. In the fiefdom of forensic medicine, smoking was forbidden.

  ‘Diotived
e, have you ever done this stuff on a friend? Must be strange, no?’

  The doctor said nothing. He seemed quite engrossed. He had both hands inside the corpse and was talking to himself.

  ‘Damn it all …’ he muttered. He was clearly in a bad mood and even looked slightly dishevelled, though this was only an impression. The hair that stood straight up on his head could never be dishevelled. Bordelli sighed.

  ‘Three years is a long time, and anyway, you can always keep working in one way or another afterwards, don’t you think?’ he said, twirling the unlit cigarette between his fingers.

  ‘You’re right. I could start dissecting dogs and chickens to find out how they died.’

  ‘Why not? You could set up your own private morgue.’ Diotivede gave a slight, cold hint of a smile, then stuck his forceps farther into Badalamenti’s belly. The physical effort made it look as if he was repairing a bathroom sink.

  ‘Anyway, retirement’s not such a bad thing,’ the inspector continued.

  ‘I found out today … I don’t know, it’s had an unpleasant effect on me … But where the hell did that thing go …?

  ‘Looking for the heart? Don’t bother; this model hasn’t got one.’

  Diotivede wasn’t paying much attention to Bordelli. He carried on searching the usurer’s intestines and at last found what he was looking for.

  ‘So I wasn’t mistaken after all,’ he said in satisfaction, holding the forceps up in the air. Between their pointed tips was a small metal ring covered by a dark patina. The inspector drew near, curious to know what it was.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ he asked.

  Diotivede didn’t answer. Holding the forceps before his eyes, he went over to the sink with the inspector following behind, turned on the water and let it run over the mysterious object. The patina faded and the mystery was revealed: it was a gold ring.

  ‘Excuse me a minute,’ Bordelli said, taking the forceps out of Diotivede’s hand and bringing them close to a lamp. It was not a wedding band. On one side the ring narrowed to where it was barely thicker than a thread, and on the broader side a tiny little diamond was set. Inscribed inside the band was a name: Ciro.