“Why on earth shouldn’t I?”
“Because you’re too easily hoodwinked,” Poldi said drily, and the other two aunts nodded. “How many stray cats and dogs have you taken in over the years, just because they gazed at you in a heart-rending way?”
“Eight,” Aunt Luisa said meekly. “No, ten counting Max and Luna.”
Teresa and Caterina rolled their eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Poldi said like the fat, ugly chief in a crime series, “but you’d be easy meat on a mission like this. You’re too easy to see through.”
“Me? Since when?”
“Since always,” sighed Teresa.
Silence descended on the courtyard. The aunts sipped their Crodini. Teresa glanced at Caterina.
“You’re not serious,” said Caterina.
Yes, she was.
“I can’t do it because of my heart,” said Teresa.
Caterina sighed. She took another sip, then said, “All right, Poldi, tell me again.”
“There’s virtually no risk,” Poldi resumed promptly. “You call Patanè and introduce yourself, say you got his number from Dr Tannenberger and that you’d like your house prettified with some old tiles and antique features.”
“My house?”
“Well, mine, of course. Patanè doesn’t know I live here. If he takes the bait, arrange to meet him here, see what he’s got to offer and ask him to quote you. Say you’d like a nice old lion sculpture, too. If he quotes you a price, haggle a bit or he’ll smell a rat.”
“And then?”
“Then nothing. We just wait. If Patanè can deliver the goods and Valérie’s other lion goes missing, he’ll have as good as convicted himself. Vito will do the rest. ‘Click’ go the handcuffs.”
“But I’ll be incriminating myself as well.”
“How? You’ll ask Patanè where his treasures come from and he’ll naturally have an explanation ready. He’ll assure you everything’s above board. That puts you in the clear.”
“You reckon so?”
“Of course.”
“And where will you be all this time?”
“At the Bar Cocuzza. If you need help, I’ll be here in a flash.”
Caterina looked unconvinced.
“We’ll all wait in the bar,” Aunt Teresa put in. “Martino as well, and Totti will remain in the house with you.”
“Is that supposed to reassure me?”
“I’d do it,” Aunt Luisa volunteered again.
Poldi ignored her and concentrated on Caterina alone. “That’s the best plan I could think of,” she said.
“It’s absolutely crazy. Hare-brained.”
Poldi nodded. “Utterly insane, I know.”
“So when do I call him?”
Poldi produced a phone like lightning and handed it to Caterina, together with Patanè’s business card. “Right away would be best.”
With her sisters and her sister-in-law looking on, Caterina took the phone, squared her shoulders, drew a deep breath and dialled the number. Poldi could hear the ringtone, then an irritable “Pronto?”
“Good afternoon, this is Caterina Mancuso of Mancuso Mobili. Is that Signor Patanè?… Good. Signor Patanè, I got your number from a dear friend and associate, Dr Tannenberger of Munich… Yes, the very same. He strongly recommended you to me. If anyone can assist you in this matter, he said, Corrado Patanè is the man. He intimated – in the strictest confidence, of course – that you’ve been shortlisted for the cultural centre in Taormina.”
Poldi signalled to Caterina to tone it down a bit, but Caterina ignored her and pressed on regardless.
“Mancuso Mobili has recently acquired a house in Torre Archirafi, No. 29 Via Baronessa. Our intention is to use it as a showroom in the future, but it’ll need revamping first. I envisage converting it into a miniature palazzo with antique paving and some baroque decorative features, the aim being to present our furniture collection in a stylish manner. Would you be interested?”
The answer was clearly yes. Although Poldi couldn’t catch what Patanè was saying, his voice oozed with obsequious greed.
“Fine,” said Aunt Caterina, very calm and composed. “In that case, shall we say eleven tomorrow morning?”
“You did it?” Poldi asked incredulously when Caterina rang off.
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised.”
Poldi smiled at Caterina and raised her glass. “No, actually I’m not. You were great. We’ve got him by the balls now. Cheers.”
At eleven the next morning, Poldi, Teresa, Luisa and Martino were seated in the Bar Cocuzza, soothing their nerves with coffee, cornetti and granitas, staring at Poldi’s mobile phone on the table, and evaluating Caterina’s text messages from the Via Baronessa.
Not here yet.
Still not here.
Where is he?
Doorbell.
Operation “Trapdoor” was under way. Poldi had prudently unscrewed the doorbell nameplate and slipped it into her handbag. She had also readied her house in other respects for Patanè’s visit by stowing all her clothes in the wardrobes and putting away any telltale letters, documents and photos. Above all, she had taken down the corkboard in her bedroom and eliminated every pointer to the true owner of No. 29 Via Baronessa. Nothing could really go wrong.
Not really.
Midday came, then one, and the suspense mounted. Poldi checked her mobile every other minute, but Caterina gave no further sign of life. Poldi’s phone did beep once, but it was Montana.
I’ve got something. When can we meet?
Poldi texted back at once:
Drop in this evening.
Montana’s response:
I could make it right away.
Poldi thought for a moment. Then:
But I couldn’t.
That sounded more brusque than she intended, but my aunt was rather worried about Caterina at that stage and wanted to keep the line open. Half past one came, and she couldn’t stand it any longer. She was on the point of going back to the house when Caterina called at last, an alarming undertone in her voice.
“He’s gone; you can come.”
“Are you all right, Caterina?”
“Just come.”
They paid and left in a hurry. At the front door they were jumped up at and licked by a good-humoured Totti. Caterina, too, seemed wholly unscathed. Poldi looked around suspiciously for traces of a struggle, but there was nothing to be seen.
“So how did it go?”
“He took the bait,” Caterina reported. “But then something odd happened.”
One thing at a time, though, because this is a bit like Chinese whispers. I got the story from Poldi, who got it from Caterina.
It seems that Patanè turned up three quarters of an hour late, trailing an aura of BO and stale tobacco smoke.
Caterina nonetheless welcomed him politely without betraying her instant repugnance, ushered him inside, offered him a coffee and some water, and permitted him to look around the ground floor, which he did with the mistrustful curiosity of a cat at the vet’s.
“How did Totti react?” asked Uncle Martino.
“He was a dead loss,” said Caterina. “He even licked Patanè’s hand, then retired into the shade and didn’t show his face again.”
So much for Totti’s watchdog qualities. Uncle Martino was extremely satisfied with the results of Totti’s test, however, because he hated watchdogs. It should be mentioned that Uncle Martino is a convinced and incorrigible philanthropist, pacifist and Slow Foodist. But I’m digressing again.
According to Caterina, Patanè’s mistrust was as slow to evaporate as a dense autumn mist dispersed by the November sun. He wanted to know how long Caterina had owned the house, and Caterina, as arranged, sold him the story that Mancuso Mobili had recently acquired it from a deranged German woman who’d found the Sicilian climate too much for her and hightailed it back to Germany – hence the decor, all of which would soon be ripped out. Patanè swallowed this myth, but he didn’t r
eally thaw until Caterina had detailed Mancuso Mobili’s imaginary expansion plans and made several references to her associate and good friend Dr Tannenberger. Then, with a flourish worthy of a stage magician, he opened a portfolio of photographs of mosaics, stone figures, plasterwork and whole staircases, all of which Patanè could supply and all, of course, entirely legally acquired. The pieces allegedly came from dilapidated country mansions and palazzi – absolute ruins which would sadly have to be demolished in the near future. It was his dearest wish to preserve at least a modicum of the magnificent Sicilian craftsmanship of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and transplant it to places where it would live on. It was, he said, a form of organ donation by brain-dead old buildings.
Everything had its price, of course. Patanè had no wish to disguise this, but nor did he wish to talk actual figures – for the moment. He suggested that Caterina examine the portfolio at her leisure while he made a little tour of the house in order to absorb its atmosphere and ignite the vital spark of inspiration. Because (to quote him verbatim) “The house must speak to me and whisper what it needs.”
While Patanè roamed the house like a sniffer dog in customs, Aunt Caterina had time to study all the photographs closely and even photograph them with her mobile phone. There was no gate lion, though. Caterina heard Patanè climb the stairs to the roof terrace. Moments later he came back down in a hurry. She just had time to put her mobile away. Looking suddenly nervous, almost alarmed, Patanè grabbed the portfolio, said a hasty goodbye and left the house as if his coat-tails were on fire.
“Peculiar, wasn’t it?” Aunt Caterina concluded. “Then I called you straight away.”
“Didn’t he say anything else?” Poldi insisted.
Caterina shook her head. “He said he’d forgotten he had an urgent appointment with the dentist and would be in touch, that’s all. Then he was off.”
Poldi looked at the stairs that led to the roof terrace. It was some time since she’d been up there because of her knee. “Besides, it’s your domain now,” she had magnanimously informed me on my last visit. “I must respect your privacy. I’d sooner sit out on the esplanade.”
But now she was curious as to what could have given Patanè such a toothache.
“Let’s take a look,” she said, and went toiling up the stairs with Teresa, Caterina, Luisa, Martino and Totti in her wake.
And discovered the gate lion.
Poldi gave me quite a telling-off later – why on earth had I never said anything about it? – but somehow I’d never associated the lion on the roof with the lion missing from Femminamorta. I swear it. I had simply never registered the thing. When I first spent a week at Torre in August, just after Poldi moved in, I was far too preoccupied with my novel – in other words with ruminating, head-scratching and nail-chewing. Besides, I seldom visited the terrace because it was too hot up there during the day and I preferred to listen to Poldi in the evenings. In any case, I mistook the lion behind the head of the stairs for an ornament that had always been part of the house, especially as it was firmly cemented to the terrace wall.
“But not up there,” Poldi cried in bewilderment when she was giving me an earful. “Good God, it must have struck you that that was a totally daft location for a gate lion. For one thing there’s no gate, and for another no one can see it there.”
What could I say? She was right. I shrugged sheepishly.
“Know something?” Poldi sighed. “Before you write another line, shut your eyes and ears and switch off all your other senses and let a bit of life blow in.” On which note, she poured me another whisky.
So, firmly cemented to the terrace wall and partly obscured by the head of the stairs, Femminamorta’s missing lion guardant contemplated Poldi rather sullenly and with a hint of reproach. Unlike me, she recognized it at once.
How had it got there?
There was only one explanation: Valentino.
Now Poldi came to think of it, she had left Valentino alone in the house on the morning of his last day’s work for her, his job being to repair the leaky roof. She also remembered the half-full sack of cement he’d brought.
“That’s when he must have cemented the lion into place. I remember him mixing the stuff.”
“So why didn’t he say anything?” asked Aunt Teresa.
In Poldi’s opinion, there was only one plausible explanation for that as well.
“Why, because he wanted to hide the thing up here. He knew I could hardly make it up the stairs, and I hadn’t met Valérie at that stage. Besides, he certainly didn’t know he was going to be killed soon afterwards. I suspect he only intended to park it here for a short time.”
“Why?” asked Aunt Teresa.
“Why, in order to sell it, of course.”
Poldi’s belief that Valentino had stolen the lion was now set as firmly as the cement. The only question was, on whose behalf had he stolen it?
“That’s obvious,” said Aunt Caterina. “Patanè.”
But Poldi felt suddenly doubtful, given that the stone lion hadn’t featured in Patanè’s catalogue. This aroused a suspicion she kept to herself for the moment.
“What are we going to do with it?” asked Aunt Luisa.
“Nothing whatever,” said Poldi. “It’s staying where it is for the time being. Not a word to anyone.”
“What about Montana?”
Good question.
Poldi decided not to tell Montana about the lion either, at least for the moment. This went against the grain, because she always liked to be honest with the men she slept with. On the other hand, the lion’s discovery might well have put her a step ahead of him. And besides, what difference would a day or two make? She did, however, intend to inform Valérie the next day. She felt she’d been rather neglecting her friend lately, and Valérie would be bound to welcome the lion’s return.
That evening, as arranged, the commissario appeared in the Via Baronessa sans gelato but this time with red roses. He obviously hadn’t come straight off duty, because he smelt of shower gel and had exchanged his grey suit for black chinos and a black polo shirt. Poldi wasn’t too keen on that kind of leisure look, but she overlooked it in the case of Italians, especially when they wore black. Having trimmed the roses and put them in a vase, she towed Montana into the bedroom and undressed him.
“Hungry?” she asked a few pleasurable sighs later, when they were sharing a cigarette in bed.
Montana shook his head. “Don’t bother.”
“Of course you’re hungry. I’ll make us something.”
“No, really not. I…” He cleared his throat.
Poldi caught on. “You’ve got to go?”
“Afraid so. Got a call from headquarters earlier.”
“I see. But there’s always time for a bit of rumpy-pumpy, eh?”
“Please don’t be sour.”
“Who’s sour? Duty’s duty and sex is sex.”
Montana sighed and sat up in bed.
“I get it,” said Poldi. “Now I’m sounding like your wife.”
“Ex-wife. Poldi, listen, I —”
“No talk of relationships, for God’s sake,” said Poldi. “Everything’s fine, Vito, honestly. Did you find Valentino’s mobile?”
“Afraid not,” said Montana, relieved to change the subject. “It’s probably somewhere on the seabed, but we have the connection details. Valentino was on the move quite a lot just before his death. We can trace his route roughly with the aid of the radio cells his mobile was logged into.”
“And where was it logged into last?”
“Here. The radio cell around Torre.”
“Praiola beach, in other words?”
“I suspect so.”
“But that wasn’t the crime scene?”
“Exactly.”
“So the murderer came across Valentino’s mobile there and destroyed it or threw it into the sea.”
“I assume so.”
Poldi cogitated.
“Who did Valentino sp
eak to on the phone before his death?”
“I’m not at liberty to tell you that, Poldi.”
Poldi looked at him. “Oh, Vito.”
“Okay, okay, but I have to be professional… Not to Russo, anyway, nor to Tannenberger. I had the latter’s alibi checked, by the way. He really was in Munich.”
“So Valentino spoke to Patanè.”
But Montana shook his head again. “No.”
Poldi was quite surprised.
“No? Who was it, then?”
Montana hesitated, and when Poldi saw the look on his face, the sudden, bitter taste in her mouth was like the aftermath of a monumental binge.
“Vito?”
Montana sighed and straightened his shoulders. “Your friend Valérie Belfiore.”
10
Tells of the poison of mistrust, of old batteries, sugared almonds, kitsch, love, and the magic inherent in lists. Poldi tries to discover who called Valentino from Valérie’s phone and receives a surprising invitation. She suffers a disappointment at the old mineral water bottling plant, however, and abandons herself to melancholy and wine. She also observes all kinds of things, interprets gestures and feels pessimistic.
I picture Valentino’s mobile phone lying somewhere on the seabed in the wide, warm Gulf of Catania. I see it bobbing to and fro in a gentle current, pawed by inquisitive octopuses that mistake it for a species of crab to be cracked open. I picture the mobile acquiring a build-up of algae and little sea snails in the course of time – even, perhaps, becoming encrusted with corals. I visualize it in the distant future as part of a wonderful coral reef. But little would remain by then of its plastic and electronics. Those, I imagine, would all have dissolved in the seawater, together with any fingerprints and traces of DNA, all the information in its memory, all the selfies, snapshots, GPS coordinates and text messages. All of them would have dissolved and dispersed into briny infinity, the homoeopathic ne plus ultra. I picture the truth itself dissolving, slowly but irresistibly.
Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions Page 16
