The Dark Valley: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 2)

by Valerio Varesi

  The commissario thought of the third-generation decadence, corrupted by wealth from birth. “Who found him?”

  “His daughter-in-law. She used to go up to his room every morning to check that everything was alright. She loved him like a father.”

  “So where was his son?”

  “It seems it was he who cut him down.”

  “Seems?”

  The mayor spread out his hands. “That’s what I’ve heard, but whether that’s exactly what happened…”

  “Have the carabinieri questioned Paride?”

  “The maresciallo told me that by the time he got there, Paride had already left. They’re looking for him, but there’s no sign of him yet. His wife says that he’s gone to their cabin in the woods, distraught.”

  “Did anyone see him?”

  “Apparently so, but I couldn’t tell you who.”

  Soneri lit a cigar to give himself time to think. The mayor had the same vaguely embarrassed expression he had noted on Sante, but perhaps it was really fear. “So what can I do? I don’t get the impression that there’s anything to investigate, except why did he do it.”

  “That’s the question everybody’s asking,” the mayor said.

  “In other words, it’s a matter for priests or psychologists. Not my line at all.”

  The mayor made no move. The fog continued to swirl behind him on the far side of the piazza.

  “Perhaps you are better informed than I am,” Soneri said.

  “No, no. I don’t know a thing,” the mayor said, but he spoke in the guilt-ridden tone of voice the commissario had heard countless times during interrogations in the questura. “All I am asking you to do is consult the maresciallo. I’m not asking you to make any commitments. A courtesy call, that’s all.”

  “A soul in torment,” Maini said, indicating the mayor as he walked off, with his crumpled, outsize raincoat flapping around him.

  “I don’t understand what he wants me to do,” the commissario said.

  “Everybody in the village wants to understand.”

  “Understand!” Soneri shook his head in bewilderment. “It seems to me you already know quite a lot. Maybe you’re all simply afraid,” he said, realising as he did so that he had made a distinction between himself and the rest. He had been aware of the limits of his relationship with them, but now it seemed like a barrier he could not cross. In some ways, he felt liberated from an ambiguity which had become increasingly cumbersome.

  Maini pretended not to hear the commissario’s words, the common reaction of mountain people to complicated sentiments. Everything would take its course, but every word spoken could be translated into another element of distrust. “He killed himself like the shopkeeper, Capelli,” he said at last.

  Soneri had heard about the case, but he could no longer remember the details. His amnesia reinforced his sense of being an outsider.

  “He too hanged himself from a wooden beam,” Maini said.

  “He was a ruined man,” the commissario said, grasping at some vague memory.

  “It was the gambling. After the war he made some money, but it went to his head.”

  “Did he and Palmiro know each other?”

  “That’s the point. They were good friends.”

  At that moment, the commissario’s mobile rang. “Angela, could you call me back in five minutes?”

  The poor reception meant that he heard no more than a metallic murmur as he switched off his phone. Without either of them suggesting it, Maini and he moved into the Rivara bar. Rivara himself watched them take a seat, and joined in the conversation. “He took his own life in the same way as Capelli,” he said, and then, turning to the commissario as though to a casual stranger, he added, “you know who I mean, the owner of the cheese shop.”

  Soneri felt the barrier between him and the villagers grow ever more impassable. “Even the letters they left say the same things,” Maini said.

  “Nobody knows who was the first to read Capelli’s letter. Everyone knew he couldn’t read or write, and that made it child’s play for them to cheat him with the invoices,” the barman said.

  “At that time the maresciallo said he believed that Capelli had had it prepared some time before he hanged himself, but there are others who think that it was his creditors who wrote it.”

  “What does Palmiro’s letter say?” Soneri said.

  Rivara stretched out his arms, then leant forward and lowered his voice. “One of my regulars who knows a police officer says it was pretty succinct. ‘Bury me up on Montelupo, under a juniper bush. That’s where I want to be.’ Not another word.”

  “The same as Capelli, who wanted to be taken up to Montelupo, but his wife had him buried in the cemetery, partly because the Comune got involved, and partly because love of money was the only love that kept them together,” Maini said.

  “Both men loved Montelupo. It was for them the whole world. They used to take their sheep to graze up there, up as far as the big house at Becco. The two of them and the guy known as the Woodsman.”

  “Ah yes, the famous Woodsman. Now he’s the only survivor of that trio,” Maini said.

  “Because he didn’t make any money. Money has been the downfall of so many people,” Rivara chimed in.

  “Capelli, on the other hand…” Maini said, seemingly rummaging about in his memory, “Capelli started out collecting milk from the farms in his hand cart, then he became a producer of cheese and got other people to do the hard work while he drove about in a Fiat 1500, wearing a tie and selling whole cheeses in the city. It was a huge risk, but he pulled it off.”

  “The fact is when you come into money all of a sudden, it can be the ruination of you. You think it’ll never stop coming,” Rivara said.

  “It wasn’t gambling that did for him so much as the paperwork and his sheer incompetence at it,” Maini said. “He knew how much he could afford to lose and he stuck to that, but when they invited him to sign for things instead of paying in cash, he trusted them and they stripped the shirt off his back.”

  “Downright ignorance is always at the root of it,” Rivara said. “Once upon a time they cheated you with phoney invoices, now it’s with promissory notes from the bank, shares and bonds, that kind of thing. They tell you to buy and you end up with drawers full of waste paper.”

  “It’s the same old story, the same swindle over and over again,” Maini agreed.

  “The fat cats devour the mice. Let’s not forget that Capelli in his day –”

  “Right after the war,” Maini nodded.

  Rivara threw back his head. “That wasn’t the only time. He did a deal with the Fascists so no detachment of Blackshirts ever went without parmesan to sprinkle on their minestrone. In return, he was left in peace to work the black market, selling his goods to anybody and everybody.”

  “And he made money hand over fist.”

  “It was a dirty business, but it always is,” Maini said. “With money and the right friends, you can stuff justice.”

  “What about the Woodsman?” Soneri said.

  Rivara laughed. “He had no head for business, and still doesn’t. He’s at home among the trees with his axe and rifle. That’s how he came by the name. He has never moved away from the Madoni hills. He lives there on his own – in abandoned houses that are slowly falling apart. They’ll come down altogether one of these winters.”

  “The original owners all moved away, to Turin, Milan or Parma,” Maini said.

  “Now he’s as wild as the boar. The other two were as bad as he was, but their instinct was to go after money instead of wild animals. They made their fortunes, but then they hanged themselves.”

  Soneri lit another cigar, while the other two stared at him as though he were performing a conjuring trick.

  “Capelli was the sharpest of the three. He was already a rich man at thirty. In the retail market in Parma, he would shift cheese by the ton, all deals done in advance. He had a nose for the business, had the patience to wait for the r
ight moment to buy and sell,” Maini said.

  “In the last years,” Rivara said, “he never actually touched cheese. He had his flunkeys to see to that side of things. He stuck to his office, but when you move away from the world you know and handle nothing but paperwork, you’re done for.”

  “That’s right,” Maini said. “It was all that form filling that finished him.”

  Stefano, Rivara’s son, came in, nodded in their direction and sat apart, on his own. He had nothing to say, it seemed, but all of a sudden he jumped to his feet and exclaimed, “That lorry, the one that was apparently lost yesterday evening, it loaded up after all, and went off this morning in the direction of the autostrada.”

  Rivara stopped wiping the bar and said, “He must have been held up by the weather, and no doubt had a deadline to meet.”

  Stefano shook his head doubtfully. “What about the other two? Were they in a rush as well?”

  Rivara and Maini looked at each other in puzzlement, but said nothing.

  “This story of the lorries, it’s an odd business,” the commissario said, in an attempt to keep the discussion going, but no-one had any inclination to break the silence until Maini changed the subject. “How did you get on? Did you fill a basket?”

  “I only got a few ‘trumpets of death’.”

  “I don’t like them.”

  “Mushrooms in general or ‘trumpets of death’ specifically?”

  “Neither.”

  “I can understand why, with a name like that. But they’re very good,” the commissario said.

  “Things that grow in dark places, in the shadows,” Maini said.

  “Somebody must like them, considering the trouble I had to find any at all.”

  Maini shrugged. He had nothing else to say.

  The mobile rang, relieving the embarrassed silence which had fallen over the group.

  “I’ve waited a quarter of an hour.” Angela sounded annoyed.

  “We were talking about Palmiro.”

  “Again? Were you not supposed to be out looking for mushrooms?”

  “He’s hanged himself.”

  Angela did not speak for a few seconds. “I would never have expected that. It does not seem in his nature.”

  “Nobody expected it. It’s a very odd business, and I can’t make head nor tail of it.”

  “Well, if you don’t understand it, and you’re from there…”

  “I used to be from here,” the commissario corrected her. “So much has changed, it’s as if I’d never lived here.”

  “It must be terrible to feel like an outsider in the place you come from. What about the people you know, your friends?”

  A sudden, deep unease and a sense of utter futility so overwhelmed Soneri that he found himself lost for words. Angela’s questions led him to reflect on the distrust he aroused among those he still considered his own townsfolk, and on the gulf that now existed between him and them. It was as though all those years of friendship and companionship had been snuffed out, even if their common interest in the affairs of the Rodolfi family could briefly disguise that unpleasant feeling of alienation.

  “I would have been better escaping to a seaside resort where no-one knows me. I only like the sea in winter when there’s nobody there apart from those who really love it.”

  “It’s going to be hard not to get involved now,” Angela said.

  “The mayor is on at me to go and see the maresciallo, but I’m going to stay away from him at all costs. The fact is that there’s nothing to investigate. Palmiro hanged himself and his son, so they say, has shut himself up in the house in the woods where he goes to be alone. Actually, it doesn’t seem at all likely to me that he’s there, otherwise the carabinieri would have been able to locate him. Anyway, these are hardly criminal acts, and if they were serious crimes, they would not be left to a mere maresciallo. Some high-flyer in the carabinieri would have been sent in forthwith.”

  “The whole thing stinks,” Angela said.

  “Like a rotting carcass. I expect developments.”

  “I could work on the lawyer who looks after the Rodolfi affairs, and pass any information on to you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘work on the lawyer’?”

  “How do you work on a man? You ought to know.”

  “Like you’re doing just now, to make me jealous.”

  “A waste of time. You never fall for it. However, I have a good relationship with the lawyer in question and I could get him to tell me something. Tomorrow the papers will be full of Palmiro’s suicide.”

  “Exactly, and your man of the law will button up.”

  “If he stays buttoned up, you’ve no reason to be jealous,” Angela said slyly.

  Soneri had no time to put his mobile away before seeing the maresciallo coming towards him. His first thought was to slip back into the bar and pretend he had not seen him, but the maresciallo gave him a wave, compelling Soneri to stop and wait for him.

  The officer introduced himself with a jovial smile. “Maresciallo Crisafulli,” he announced with an officer’s precision and a cadet’s stiff pose. He was the same height as the commissario, had dark skin, black hair and bright, sparkling eyes. “They tell me you’re the only man who can find mushrooms in this season,” he said.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Soneri said with a smile, unsure of whether to interpret the remark as friendly or ingenuous.

  “I know nothing about them. I can hardly tell the difference between lettuce and tomatoes. I’m a city man, from Naples.”

  “So how did you end up here?”

  “If you want to get on and earn a bit more, you’ve got to put up with some time in Purgatory. At least it’s quiet round here, and you don’t run risks. Apart from the climate!”

  “It’s become a bit more risky of late, has it not?”

  The maresciallo glanced over his shoulder before saying, “I am a bit worried about this situation.”

  “You’ll know more about it than me.”

  “Not at all. When I was talking to the mayor, it occurred to me that I ought to ask your advice, seeing you’re from these parts and you’re off duty at the moment. After all, even if they all respect me, I’m still a carabiniere officer from the south of Italy. You get my point?”

  Soneri nodded. “Don’t imagine I’m any better off. The only advantage I have over you is that I understand the dialect and I know the names of the mountains and some of the places. I’ve been away from here too long.”

  Crisafulli pointed to the Rivara. “Would you like a coffee?”

  Soneri gave a distracted nod before asking, “Have you seen Paride?”

  “I haven’t personally, but my colleagues are out looking for him. The family say he’s in his house, but that he’s too upset over his father’s death and won’t answer either the door or the telephone.”

  Soneri made no reply as the barman placed a cup of espresso before each of them.

  The maresciallo started up again. “What worries me is not so much what has happened to the Rodolfis. It’s all the rest.”

  “The village has the feel of a place awaiting sentence,” the commissario said, lighting upon an image connected with the work of both men.

  Crisafulli allowed a smile to flicker briefly on his lips. “They’re all scared shitless. They’re afraid of anything that might happen to the Rodolfis; and their well-being is tied up with the fate of the Rodolfi family.”

  “They’re in deep trouble now that the old man has hanged himself.”

  “Palmiro hasn’t been in charge for some while now. It’s his son who’s been running the business.”

  “And once he gets over the shock, he’ll pick himself up and it’s business as usual, isn’t that right?”

  The maresciallo drank his coffee in one gulp, put down the cup and looked out at the dying day. “Commissario, maybe it is as you say, but you know perfectly well that it doesn’t add up. Don’t those posters make you wonder? And wasn’t it strange how the old
man disappeared, then turned up, and then hanged himself from a noose he made for himself? And what about those gunshots? We’re not deaf.”

  “I was witness myself to one of those shots only yesterday. It missed me by a couple of metres.”

  “Where?” said the maresciallo in evident alarm.

  “Above Boldara,” Soneri said, noting that the maresciallo had no idea where Boldara was.

  “You see? And each time we’ve investigated, we have not been able to find one single clue. Never even an empty shell.”

  “Listen, Crisafulli, I agree with you that the whole business is troubling, but you know as well as I do that all this is just so much hot air until you have got proof that someone is actually committing a crime.”

  “Of course I know that, and that’s exactly why I am asking you for advice, maybe even to give a hand. I am afraid that something really serious is going to happen here, do you understand?” He spoke in a whisper to prevent anyone overhearing. “Prevention is better than cure, don’t you think?”

  Soneri nodded. “If you’re sick, you go and consult a doctor, but who is there for people around here to consult?”

  “No-one. Maybe I worry too much, but if you could see your way to…”

  Soneri finished his coffee, pushed the cup out of his way, put his elbows on the table, leaned over towards Crisafulli and said in a low voice, “What do you know about the Rodolfis?”

  “I have been hearing that for a good while salaries have not been paid on time, but each and every one of the people who works for them denies that there’s anything amiss. They say it’s always been that way, that there’s more work than ever, both in the abattoir and in the meat-curing plant. There was talk of speculations on the stock market going badly, but nothing has turned up in reports from colleagues who operate in the financial sector.”

  “What about Paride’s son? They say he’s a complete wastrel.”

  “People exaggerate. He’s a spoiled brat who squanders money on cars and gets up to various kinds of mischief, but I don’t think he’s any different from other rich men’s sons.”

  “Well then, what is there to investigate?” Soneri said, with a touch of relief in his voice. “I said as much to the mayor. It looks to me like a familiar situation. A village where gossip is rife and now it has a couple of mysteries to feed on.”