Death in Sardinia

by Marco Vichi

  At midnight he turned everything off and put on his overcoat. Before leaving, he poked his head inside the living-room door, to see whether the inspector was still asleep. Hearing him snoring, he closed the door and left. Out in the street it was cold as hell. The pavements were covered with frozen sleet. He headed home with his hands in his pockets, whistling a song by Rita Pavone.

  24 December

  The inspector woke up very gently. He thought he could hear pigeons on the roof, but it may just have been a drainpipe upstairs. The room was completely dark, and there were no signs of life outside. He remained immobile for a few minutes, bogged down in sleepy, useless thoughts. He yawned so broadly that he nearly dislocated his jaw, then stretched and heard his bones crack … Only then did he realise that he was fully dressed and not in bed. And then he remembered he’d fallen asleep on the couch with an empty stomach. He’d collapsed like an idiot. Apparently he’d really needed some rest.

  He stood up, groped his way to the window and opened the shutters.The street lamps were still on, raindrops streaking like flares in the cones of light. It was pretty cold, but he remained at the window, elbows on the sill.The street was wet and shiny. There was nobody about. It was a wet December morning, but it was also the 24th. The schools and many offices were closed.The only people working on Christmas Eve were shopkeepers in the centre of town and grocers, taken by storm by last-minute shoppers. There was a mad desire to spend in the air. Everyone wanted everything, even if they had to pay in instalments. Only fools get left behind: this seemed to be the message. The eyes of the young were full of desire, while the elderly tried their best to shake off the smell of the past. But everyone was anxious to shake a leg and get busy in any way possible. The cities seemed like gigantic but not very wellorganised ant colonies. The mere thought of ants made Bordelli’s body itch all over. He stopped thinking about it and went into the kitchen to make coffee. There were a number of pots lined up on the table, with a large sign on top: Attention: do not touch. He searched for the coffee pot and put it on a burner. While waiting for it to bubble up, he peeked into one of the pots. What he saw and smelled seemed not bad at all. He looked around for the wine. In a corner was a large cardboard box, but he didn’t look at the labels. He would rather be surprised, same as when he was a child. He still remembered certain Christmas dinners with all the relatives together and a feeling of solemnity that no longer existed, not even in church. The presents were different in those days … Useful things for the grown-ups and a few wooden or cloth toys for the children. But the best toys were the ones he built himself out of pieces of wood, nails, scrap metal and string …

  The coffee pot started whistling, spewing steam through the spout. Maybe it was time to change the gasket. Following the gospel according to Botta, he put the sugar in an empty espresso cup, then poured the coffee. No spoon, of course. He took a sip. Indeed, it was something else altogether.

  He was already in his office before eight. The first thing he did was to summon two officers and assign them the task of returning all the remaining promissory notes to Badalamenti’s debtors. He enjoined them to use the utmost discretion and to turn the envelopes over only to the persons in question, and quietly. The patrolmen left and Bordelli started drumming his fingers on the desk. He thought of ringing Odoardo and asking him straight out whether he was right- or left-handed, but didn’t want him to realise that it was an important detail. No, it was better to find out some other way … But now it would have to wait till after Christmas, he thought. He tried to think of a cheap ruse that would enable him to find out, with minimum effort, whether the lad was left-handed or not. And what if he was? It obviously didn’t necessarily mean he was the killer. Raffaele was also left-handed. The world was full of left-handed people …

  He sat there, glassy eyed, for a good half-hour, engrossed in these rather abstract thoughts, then finally bestirred himself. Sticking a cigarette between his lips, he got into the Beetle and left police headquarters, heading for the Viali. There was a good bit of traffic for that time of day.

  ‘Are you ready for this evening?’ Bordelli asked.

  Diotivede was lovingly cleaning his microscope, and the whole lab stank of disinfectant. It was time for the Christmas clean-up.

  ‘And the onion soup?’ the doctor asked without looking up.

  ‘Not to worry. Ennio did time in a Marseille prison.’ Little brush in hand, Diotivede stopped what he was doing.

  ‘Is onion soup a Marseillais dish?’ he asked gravely.

  ‘Never fear, Ennio knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Just wondering,’ the doctor said, going back to cleaning the tools of his trade.

  ‘You spend all your time face to face with corpses. What do you care where onion soup originally comes from?’

  ‘Don’t start with your usual rubbish.’

  ‘Just wondering,’ said the inspector. Diotivede paid no attention. Having finished cleaning the microscope, he took off his smock.

  ‘I’m done here. I have to go into town to buy a present for my granddaughter,’ he said.

  ‘You have a granddaughter?’ Bordelli asked, surprised.

  ‘In a way. She’s the daughter of my sister’s son.’

  ‘You have a sister?’

  ‘I’ve got two. Haven’t I ever told you?’ The inspector was dumbfounded.

  ‘How long have we known each other, Diotivede? It must be fifteen years …’

  ‘Fourteen and a half.’

  ‘Precisely …’

  ‘So what? Do you think I know whether you have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘But I haven’t.’

  ‘That’s a hypocritical answer,’ said Diotivede.

  ‘How old is your “granddaughter”?’

  ‘Five, but she’s already in school … And she learned to read a long time ago. She’s quite intelligent.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, with the blood she’s got.’ Diotivede put on his overcoat.

  ‘Cut the comedy,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not joking. I consider you a sort of genius, you know.’

  ‘Shall we go?’asked Diotivede, buttoning the top button on his overcoat and then turning out the lights. It was raining outside, but not too hard. Diotivede opened his umbrella, and they stopped in front of the Beetle.

  ‘Need a lift into the centre?’ asked Bordelli.

  ‘No thanks, I’ll take the tram.’

  ‘See you later.’

  They said goodbye on the pavement, and the doctor headed for the tram stop. The inspector drove off, turning left at the end of the avenue and passing through the entrance gate of the hospital. He wanted to see Baragli and wish him a happy Christmas. The lanes were completely full of parked cars and motorbikes.

  He climbed the stairs in leisurely fashion, getting ready to put on a serene face for the dying sergeant. He was about to enter the room smiling, but at the last minute it seemed too insincere and he dropped the pretence. As soon as Baragli saw him he raised a trembling hand in greeting. The other patients also had visitors, and a murmur of voices filled the room. The sergeant had taken a serious turn for the worse. The morphine killed the pain, but his body was drained of reserves. He was lying down, with the usual tube in his arm.

  ‘Inspector, I’ve started reading that book you brought me,’ Baragli said in a faint voice.

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘It takes my mind off things.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I can’t breathe.’ The sky outside was a slab of darkness. There was a rumble of thunder, and a few seconds later the rain started coming down hard. Bordelli suggested a game of cards, but Baragli wasn’t up to it.

  ‘Any news of your son?’

  ‘He arrived two days ago. He comes to see me often.’

  ‘Give him my regards, and best wishes to your wife as well.’

  ‘Thanks, Inspector. Any news about that murder?’ Baragli asked in a weak voice.

  ‘Nothing important �
� Come on, let’s play a round.’

  ‘All right.’ The inspector picked up the deck and shuffled it.

  ‘Briscola?’

  ‘Briscola,’ said Baragli. Bordelli dealt him his cards, and the sergeant picked them up, then discarded one.

  ‘Have you gone back to see that boy, the one who’s always angry?’

  ‘Which of the two?’

  ‘The one who lives out in the country.’

  ‘I’ve seen him another couple of times.’

  ‘How’d it go?’ Baragli asked, looking him in the eye.

  ‘We chatted a little,’ Bordelli said vaguely. He didn’t want to tire the sergeant out with too much detail.

  ‘Tell me everything, Inspector. It’ll do me good, I can feel it,’ said Baragli.

  ‘There’s really nothing of great importance to tell, Oreste. I did, however, discover something that put a flea in my ear.’

  ‘What was that?’ The sergeant’s curiosity was growing.

  ‘There are left-handed people who write with their right hands, thanks to the nuns,’ said Bordelli.

  ‘The left hand is the devil’s hand …’

  ‘Exactly.’ Baragli raised a hand and let it fall back down on to the sheet, shaking his head faintly.

  ‘How could I not have thought of that? I even knew it … I’m getting soft in the head,’ he said.

  ‘Me more than you.’

  ‘Whose turn is it, Inspector?’

  ‘Mine, I think.’

  Piras went out early that morning. He’d woken up and been unable to fall back asleep. When he set out, the sun was still below the horizon, the street lamps still on. A few lights shone inside the houses. To the east the sky was beginning to lighten. He took the dirt road that descended towards Paulilatino, to go and meet the rising sun. Passing by the cemetery, he thought again of Benigno’s coffin being lowered into the hole, and for a moment he felt that nobody would ever know what really happened that Sunday.

  A short distance past the cemetery there was a miserable little stream where the women still went to wash linens in the warmer seasons. They would rub their sheets against the great stones lined up at the water’s edge. Soap and elbow grease. When Piras was a little boy his mother used to take him with her to the river, and as she beat the linens along with the other women, he would play in the water with the other children.

  He walked by with his head full of memories, like an old man. The sound of the crutches was a music he knew well by now and was anxious never to hear again. He felt a little apprehensive and breathed deeply to calm himself. The previous evening he’d phoned Engineer Pintus, introducing himself as a close friend of Benigno and the family.

  ‘I heard the sad news,’ Pintus had muttered in a hollow voice. ‘Please give the family my condolences.’ Piras had told him that Benigno Staffa’s heir had given him the task of resuming negotiations over the sale of the land.

  ‘I’m sorry to call you at Christmas, but I don’t live in Sardinia and will be leaving after the holidays,’ he’d said. Pintus wasn’t the least bit bothered by this, and even seemed pleased that he could now continue the negotiations. They’d agreed to meet at the engineer’s home at half past eleven the following morning. With some effort Piras had managed to persuade Ettore to lend him the Fiat again, and he already had the keys in his pocket. Obviously Pina knew nothing about any of this.

  At nine o’clock he returned home and sat down in the armchair by the fire. He’d walked for over two hours. His parents were already out, working.To make the time pass more quickly, he tried reading but was unable to concentrate. Shaking his head, he let the book fall to the floor. He turned on the television with his crutch, and a moment later a man appeared, writing something on a large blackboard. Piras watched the images but didn’t follow. He closed his eyes, trying to calm down, but reopened them every other second to check the alarm clock on the mantelpiece.

  In the end he gave in to impatience. He got up and went out of the house. Turning left before the church, he climbed up the narrow street to Ettore’s house. There he entered the old stable. The first thing he did was look at the dent in the car’s door, and he couldn’t help but smile. The tyres seemed to have exactly the right amount of air in them. He got into the car and left.When he reached the high street of Bonarcado, it was only half past ten. Even if he drove slowly, he would still arrive early.

  Heading south, he drove past the orange groves of Milis and then turned towards Tramatza. When he got on the Carlo Felice highway, he accelerated to 45 mph. The little Fiat’s engine was whirring nicely, and he thought he’d look into buying one himself when he got back to Florence. As for the colour, he would ask Sonia, since women were better at that sort of thing.

  Some twenty minutes later he was already in Oristano. He turned on to Via Sardegna, drove all the way to the end, through the intersection with Via Ricovero, and entered Via Marconi. He stopped the car near number 33 bis and got out. Pintus’s house was a small, contemporary villa, and there were two cars parked on the lawn: an Alfa Romeo convertible and a black Fiat 1100. There was also an old Rumi motorcycle near the front door. Piras glanced at his watch. He was early. To kill a little time he took a walk in the neighbourhood. There was hardly anyone on the streets. He was walking better and better and thought he would soon hang the crutches up in the shed. He turned down Via San Marco and walked round the block. A cold wind was blowing, but the sky was blue.

  At half past eleven he was back in front of Pintus’s house. He rang the doorbell. Two German shepherd dogs appeared out of nowhere and rushed to the gate, barking and spraying spittle. Pintus came out of the house, called the dogs and chained them up. He came towards Piras with a strange smile on his face. He was short and burly, with a head that looked too big.

  ‘They make a lot of noise but they’re really two big puppies,’ he said, opening the gate. He had thick, moist lips and a strong Veneto accent.

  ‘They may be two big puppies but they’re pretty scary,’ said Piras.

  The engineer smiled coldly and escorted him in. His eyes seemed to reflect a sort of disdain for everything, but deep down he seemed like a rather untroubled chap. It was too hot inside the house, and there was a smell of cooking in the air. They went into the living room. A modern bookcase, two brown leather sofas, a fancy television and a record player set inside a wooden chest. Outside, the dogs continued to bark.

  ‘Please,’ said Pintus, gesturing to the sofas. They sat down facing each other. Everything seemed a little dusty, but every object spoke of wealth. There were even a few paintings hanging on the wall, though they were nothing special.

  ‘You have a Sardinian surname but a Veneto accent,’ Piras said to break the ice. Pintus told him in a few words the same thing he’d said to Musillo the lawyer about his Sardinian parents having emigrated to the Veneto and then dying during the war, and his own decision to return to his native land. It was clear he didn’t really feel like talking about it.

  ‘Were your parents from Oristano?’ Piras asked, like someone wanting to make small talk.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was born in Bonarcado. Do you know it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should come and see it some time. There’s a beautiful medieval church in town, with the sanctuary of Santa Bonacatu right beside it … There are a lot of nice things to see,’ Piras said with a friendly smile. A vertical furrow had formed in the engineer’s brow. He sighed and closed his eyes for a second, and when he reopened them, he had a different, less cordial look.

  ‘I don’t want to take up too much of your time, Signor Piras. My offer for that land remains the same as what I proposed to Signor Staffa,’ he said in a rather brusque tone.

  ‘Thirteen million five hundred thousand lire …’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I know that Benigno wanted five hundred lire more per square metre.’

  ‘You see, Signor Piras, when I decide to make this sort of investment, I don’t like to
leave anything to chance. I make precise calculations to determine the maximum amount I can pay for a plot of land. Even one hundred lire more per square metre means an increased risk for me, and I can’t afford that. If I want to keep building houses I have to set rules and limits for myself.’

  ‘That makes perfect sense. And what about the payment?’

  ‘Half upon agreement and the remainder six months later, upon the signing of the deed. Those are excellent terms. Normally, for land suitable for building, one makes a down payment of twenty per cent, with the finalisation of the contract hinging on approval of the construction project. I assure you that you don’t see an offer like this very often,’ said the engineer, pleased with his little speech.

  ‘It must mean your business is doing well,’ Piras said with a smile.

  ‘Don’t make me wait too long, Signor Piras,’ Pintus said coldly.

  ‘It’s not my decision to make. I need to discuss things with the heir.’ Pintus flashed another of his bloodless smiles.

  ‘A son?’ he asked.

  ‘A cousin.’

  ‘Please tell this cousin that I can only wait one more week,’ said Pintus, rocking his crossed leg with an untroubled air.

  ‘I shall repeat your offer and let you know.’

  ‘If I haven’t heard from you by the New Year, you can consider my offer null and void,’ Pintus insisted. He had nothing else to add.

  Piras put his crutches under his arms and stood up. ‘I’ll ring you right after Christmas,’ he said.

  Pintus walked him to the gate without saying another word, ignoring the barking dogs. He shook Piras’s hand by way of goodbye and stood there watching as he got into the Fiat 500.

  A short distance outside the city, Piras got on the Carlo Felice highway in the direction of Macomer. Engineer Pintus certainly wasn’t the most likeable person he’d ever met, with his cold, pragmatic way of talking, but, all things considered, he’d been cordial. Out of habit, Piras tried to imagine that Pintus was indeed Benigno’s killer, then formulated some conjectures. As far as the land for sale was concerned, Pintus would have had no interest whatsoever in committing murder. Benigno’s death was in no way advantageous to him. But the strange meeting between the two men in the lawyer’s office led Benigno to think he was looking at someone he’d met before and would rather never have seen again. And so he’d got up and left. Pintus must have realised he’d been recognised … There he was, wealthy and leading a peaceful life, but he had a past he needed to keep secret, a past which, if it ever came to light, could cause him great harm. And so, for fear of being unmasked, he killed Benigno, making it look like a suicide.