Death in Sardinia (23 page)

‘That boy, Odoardo,’ he said, ‘made a very strange impression on me.’

‘But he’s not left-handed.’

‘No, but the other one is, Raffaele,’ said Bordelli. Baragli distractedly threw down a card.

‘Whatever the case, Diotivede can’t be wrong,’ he said, shrugging.

‘If you say that again I’m going to start thinking you don’t really believe it.’

‘Your turn, Inspector.’

‘Three and four makes seven,’ said Bordelli, picking up the seven of diamonds.

‘
Scopa
…
¹⁵
And how old is this kid?’ Baragli asked.

‘About twenty, I’d say.’ The sergeant looked lost in thought, eyes staring at the bed opposite. The empty one.

‘Shall we stop playing?’ Bordelli asked.

‘No, I’m sorry … Whose turn is it?’

‘Yours.’

At that moment the brunette nurse came in and greeted the two policemen. It must have been time for more morphine.

‘Sleep well, Sergeant?’

‘Very well, and I even had a dream about you,’ said Baragli, turning on to his side and exposing a buttock.

‘About me? And what did you dream?’ asked the nurse.

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you.’

‘Ah, I get it,’ she said, shaking a finger at him. Baragli was like a child in the woman’s hands. She rubbed some cotton on his bottom and administered the injection.

‘We’ll be eating shortly,’ she said.

‘Can I invite you to dinner?’ asked Baragli, grabbing her wrist.

‘I never dine without champagne,’ she said, then left humming to herself.

‘If your wife could see you, she’d drag you home,’ said Bordelli.

‘With my feet tied to the rear bumper,’ Baragli said, laughing. For Bordelli it was a relief to see him smiling, though his good humour had something macabre about it. They finished their card game and immediately started another.

‘You know what I think, Inspector? I think you’re planning to go and see that boy again, whether or not he’s left-handed.’

‘You mean Odoardo?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re right.’

‘And I know why.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘Because,’ said Baragli, and he burst out laughing.

Bordelli woke up in the middle of the night wanting a drink of water. He’d fallen asleep with the light on and a book lying open, face down, on his belly. He could hear a light rain falling in the street. As he sat up, the book fell off the bed. He was rereading Beppe Fenoglio. He liked listening to another tell stories about partisan fighters and things that were happening at the same time as he was fighting the same enemy in another part of the country. He often wondered how certain Italians could remember the Nazis so well and the Fascists so poorly.

His throat was parched. He had forgotten to fill the basin on the radiator, and now the air was too dry. But it was also the fault of those delicious anchovies
alla piemontese
he’d eaten in Totò’s kitchen. He always kept a bottle of water beside the bed, and he set upon this avidly, drinking almost all of it.Then he lay back down and turned off the light.With a little patience he would soon be asleep again …

Actually, he himself had encountered very few Fascists during those years, from ’43 to ’45. All in all, he was happy he had never shot an Italian, but if he’d found himself in a situation where he had to, he would not have hesitated. One October morning in ’44, he was out on patrol with three of his comrades in a mountainous area in northern Tuscany.They were all very tense, and nobody breathed a word. They’d been hearing terrible things about the Nazi retreat. A few days earlier there had been rumours of a massacre in the Apennines. They told of some two thousand civilians killed by the Nazis, but nobody in the San Marco camp wanted to believe it.

They were advancing abreast of one another, about a yard between them. There was some sunshine, and a few birds were screaming in the treetops. When they came out of the dense wood, they heard a burst of machine-gun fire and immediately fell down flat into the high grass. A cluster of bullets slammed into the trunks of the trees over their heads, throwing up a rain of splinters. Dragging themselves along on their elbows, they crawled quickly back into the woods. A strong smell of resin and fresh wood lingered in the air. But the shooting had stopped. A minute went by.

‘Come out with your hands on your heads,’ a voice shouted in the local accent. It sounded about a hundred feet away, and seemed to come from a long strip of low shrubs dotted with a few isolated trees. But nobody was visible.

‘Are you Italian?’ Bordelli shouted, trying to buy time.

‘You can’t get any more Italian! Who are you?’ the same voice called out.

‘San Marco.’

‘Shit, so are we!’ cried a shrill voice. Bordelli exchanged a glance with his men.

‘Who’s your commander?’ he shouted towards the clearing.

‘Who’s yours?’ shouted another voice. Nobody wanted to be the first to answer.

‘We’re with the king,’ Bordelli said at last, winking at Gennaro, who lay on a bed of moss beside him. Nobody replied. A couple of more minutes passed. Then a fourth voice said:

‘We’re coming out, don’t shoot.’

‘Okay,’ Bordelli shouted.

A few seconds later six men rose up from the earth like ghosts and started walking towards the wood. They came forward with their machine guns under their arms, pointing downwards. They were wearing clean uniforms and the same black berets that Bordelli and his men had on. It seemed sort of eerie. Bordelli and the others stood up, their machine guns pointing down, fingers on the trigger, and came out into the small clearing. The other six were still advancing, and they all looked rather young. The shortest one must have been the captain. He had a round face and eyes too small for even a child. But his gaze was sharp and alert. The others followed him like chicks.

‘The little midget can go fuck himself ! Italy belongs to Mussolini!’ he said, with the passion of one whose only consolation lay henceforth in words. Bordelli waited for them to come nearer.

‘Let’s forget about that,’ he said calmly. The Fascists stopped about twenty feet away. One of them was tall and fat and looked like a woodcutter. He had a gentle face. Another, tall and hollow cheeked, had a blade of straw in his mouth and was chewing it nervously. Four against six, thought Bordelli. They all looked each other in the eye, studying one another like animals. One of the six Fascists was smiling, and it wasn’t clear whether he was afraid or just wanted to start shooting.

‘Your king is a traitor,’ the short one said, and spat on the ground beside him. Deep down, however, he seemed untroubled. Bordelli put on the safety catch on his weapon, then slung the gun over his shoulder. He turned towards his men and gestured for them to do the same. He waited till all their guns were at rest, then turned back towards the six Fascists.

‘So why do you like the Germans so much?’ he asked. Nobody answered. They didn’t even change expression. But, one by one, they slung their machine guns over their shoulders. The short guy lowered his head.

‘And yet you look exactly like us,’ he said, ‘from the outside.’ The other five punctuated the quip with some throaty laughter.

‘Disappointment is part of life,’ said Bordelli.

‘So is death,’ said the other, rather dramatically. Bordelli didn’t reply. The whole situation was very unpleasant and dangerous, actually like the whole shitty war itself. On one side stood those who were about to lose everything, and on the other were those who had nothing left to lose. Somebody could get seriously hurt. Bordelli looked at the Fascists’ boots; they were clean and fairly new. He hadn’t seen such shiny boots in quite a while.

‘We’re going to go now,’ he said, looking their commander in the eye, ‘and we’re going to forget we ever saw each other …’ Everyone remained silent for what seemed a long time, staring hard at one another … When he thought about it now, it reminded Bordelli of the final scenes of one of those Westerns he’d seen at the Aurora cinema … After a few bars of music and some extreme close-ups, the biggest bastard would draw his pistol and a slaughter would take place.

But the commander only smiled in the end, even though he had the face of someone about to howl in pain.

‘That’s fine with me,’ he said.

‘Let’s hope we don’t meet again,’ said Bordelli. He wanted to head back to the woods, but before turning his back on them he wanted to be sure he could trust them. They might be Italians, but they were still Fascists allied with Nazis. He continued staring at the short one. He hoped he wouldn’t have to start shooting. He was used to doing so against Germans, but this situation seemed strange. And yet they were the same people, he kept repeating to himself. Whether Nazis or Black Brigades, it made no difference. But if he had any say in the matter, he would rather leave and forget he’d ever seen them. The commander cleared his throat and spat again.

‘We made Italy, and we’ll take her back, that much is certain … But I don’t shoot at Italians in uniform,’ he said.

‘Goodbye,’ said Bordelli, his thumbs hooked into his belt.

‘
Viva il duce!
’ said the commander, making the Fascist salute, but it came off as a rather lifeless gesture. It seemed less an affront than a habit. Bordelli nodded one last time, then turned and started walking back towards the cover of the forest, flanked by his men. They walked calmly, without turning round, but with their ears pricked. And they were in a cold sweat. After they’d walked about a hundred yards, they heard the captain yell again.

‘Give my regards to your dickless king!’ They heard the other five laugh.

‘The bastards are right,’ Respighi said in a low voice, frowning.

‘Let’s first get the hell away from those buffoons, and we can worry about the king later,’ said Bordelli. At that moment he couldn’t imagine what would happen in Italy after a defeat was transformed into a victory. Because one thing alone was certain: the Allies were going to win the war, and it wasn’t going to take them very long, either.

‘Go and suck Kesserling’s arse!’ yelled Gennaro at the top of his lungs. But there was no reply.

The telephone rang. Bordelli took a few moments to emerge from his dream, then reached out in the darkness and picked up the receiver.

‘Yeah …’

‘Inspector, it’s me. Did I wake you up?’

‘Piras … what’s happening?’ Bordelli asked, pressing his eyes with his fingers.

‘I’m sorry, but I had something to tell you.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Eight o’clock, Inspector.’

‘So what is it?’ said Bordelli, yawning. It wasn’t really so early, but he’d slept poorly and felt tired. Piras, on the other hand, was wide awake and talking too fast for the inspector’s foggy head.

‘That person I know who shot himself … I went back to his house, because I suddenly remembered to check for the shell …’

‘The shell …’ Bordelli muttered, trying hard to grasp the concept.

‘I searched the room from top to bottom, Inspector, but there was no shell.’

‘That’s not possible,’ said Bordelli, finally awake.

‘I searched Benigno’s clothes, and I even asked the
carabinieri
who wrote up the report. No shell. It’s vanished. I thought about it all night, Inspector, and I could think of only one possible explanation …’

‘Murder?’ Bordelli interrupted him, sitting up.

‘Find me another and I’ll change my mind,’ the Sardinian said. Bordelli turned on the light and put his feet on the floor.

‘I won’t say you’re wrong, Piras.’

‘Bullet shells don’t just fly away, Inspector.’

‘What do you plan to do?’

‘What would you do?’ asked Piras, breathing hard into the receiver.

‘If you’re really convinced of what you say—’

‘I’m convinced,’ Piras interrupted him.

‘Then carry on,’ said Bordelli, standing up.

‘For the moment I’d rather not say anything to the
carabinieri
, but I want you to agree,’ said Piras.

‘Do what you think best, Piras, you have my full support.’

‘I was very fond of Benigno, Inspector. And if someone killed him, I want to find them,’ said Piras.

‘Just be sure not to do anything stupid, and keep me informed.’

‘All right.’

‘Good luck, Piras.’

‘Thanks, sir.’ They said goodbye, and Bordelli dragged himself into the bathroom. He washed his face in cold water and then looked at himself in the mirror. Piras’s phone call was still echoing in his head. A pistol is fired and the shell can’t be found. It wasn’t normal, in any sense. If someone had actually shot this Benigno, hoping to make it look like a suicide … getting rid of the shell could not have been part of his plan. He brushed his teeth and spat the night’s bitterness into the plughole. Looking at himself again in the mirror, he saw something dark trickling from one nostril. He thought it was blood. He blew his nose and looked at the results. There were black spots on the handkerchief. But it wasn’t blood. The tar in his lungs was beginning to break up. Smoking less was starting to bear its first fruits … Even if they were disgusting to look at.

He went out and got into his car. A few clouds floated lazily across the sky, but the night’s rain was gone and the sun showed its face from time to time. Every time his thoughts turned to Odoardo, he heard a great big fly buzz in his head. Actually it was a bee in his bonnet, to be more precise. He had to go back soon and have another little chat with the lad. Let’s wait for Christmas to be over, he thought, and then I’ll go back. When he got to the office, he sent Mugnai to fetch him some coffee. He put an unlit cigarette down on the desk and looked at it from time to time. But he was able to resist. Around mid-morning there was a knock at the door. It was Mugnai again. He had in his hand a couple of letters for the inspector and a cardboard box with a slot on top.

‘What’s the box for, Mugnai?’

‘Signora Attilia’s Christmas bonus, Inspector. It’s your turn.’ Attilia was the woman who’d started cleaning the offices a few months before, following old Rosalia’s retirement. She came every morning by train from Vicchio. Bordelli pulled out a couple of thousand-lira notes and slipped them into the box.