Death in Sardinia (52 page)

Poor Diotivede, he thought. Three more years and they would put him out to pasture. It was anybody’s guess who would take his place. Perhaps an obnoxious young doctor full of himself, whom Bordelli would have to put up with for, well, not that long, really. Only five years … Shit, this hadn’t ever occurred to him before. There were only five years left before he became a pensioner with a passion for gardening.

He tried to imagine Diotivede sitting in a public garden, crumbling stale bread for the pigeons and wearing big brown slippers. He couldn’t picture it. Perhaps the old maniac really would set up a laboratory in his house so he could carry on studying bacteria in motion, and Bordelli would visit him every Sunday to bring him something rotten to squash between two slides for the microscope. A couple of old nitwits who couldn’t make up their minds to get out of the way.

When he entered the laboratory, he found the doctor sitting in a corner, one arm propped on the test-tube counter, in what looked like a very uncomfortable pose. He was staring at the bare white feet of a corpse on the other side of the room, covered up to the head. Bordelli marvelled. He hardly ever saw Diotivede seated. Drawing near, he noticed that the doctor had a hand on his stomach and looked as if he was suffering.

‘You feel okay, Diotivede?’

‘Terrible, but it’ll pass.’

‘Is it Maria Conchita?’ Diotivede shook his head.

‘I ate too many chestnuts.’

‘My interpretation was much more poetic.’

‘And a lot less painful, I assure you.’

‘Anything I can do for you?’ The doctor gestured towards the corpse on the gurney.

‘If you really want to help, you can cut that gentleman over there in two, so I can get a headstart,’ he said.

‘You don’t say! I’ve been waiting all my life for this opportunity.’

‘The knives are on the table over there.’ Bordelli stuck a cigarette between his lips and started puffing on it as if it were lit.

‘You know, I just got a postcard from Uruguay … from a woman I liked very much,’ he said.

‘Oh really? And what did she say?’

‘Nothing special. But she did write to me.’

‘It’s a start,’ said the doctor, raising his eyebrows.

‘I don’t know why I told you that.’

‘Don’t worry, I can keep a secret.’

‘Go ahead and mock me, but I really did like that girl a lot.’

‘Eat some chestnuts and you’ll get over it, I promise.’

‘Thanks, you’re a real friend.’

‘If you’ve got nothing to do, why don’t you come with me to say hello to Baragli?’

When Bordelli got home, he filled the bathtub. He wasn’t hungry. He’d gone with Diotivede to see Baragli, and they’d stayed for a good half-hour. In spite of everything, the sergeant looked well. Or so it seemed.

He immersed himself up to his neck in the hot water and closed his eyes. He liked boiling himself in the tub, memory adrift … And from the tide of recollection surfaced a morning in ’44 when he was looking out over a valley through binoculars and saw some large black birds circling round the same point. They were cawing then swooping low, gliding over the meadow. It wasn’t hard to tell that they were feasting, and Bordelli decided to go and find out on what. He took two of his men and went down into the valley. They found the corpse of a smartly dressed English officer. He lay face down with his legs together and his face in the grass, one hand digging into the ground. His back was perforated by a high-calibre bullet. The birds had already started eating his ears, and they had to shoot to scatter them. Bordelli grabbed the officer’s hand and turned him over. The man’s disintegrating, blackened flesh oozed through his fingers like custard. He’d probably been dead for at least two weeks. Bordelli removed his ID tag and attached it to his belt. He would send it to British headquarters with the exact coordinates of the body’s position. The stench of death had stuck to his hands for a very long time afterwards …

The burst of a firecracker woke him up. The water had turned cold, and he had to get out of the tub. Whenever his thoughts turned to the war, time started passing very fast. As he was getting dressed he wished he could have a quiet evening, without spending the whole time rehashing this or that or thinking about Milena. Things would turn out however they turned out, and the same was true for everything. As he was putting on his shoes, the telephone rang. It was De Marchi.

‘I’ve just finished, Inspector.’

‘And?’ said Bordelli, holding his breath.

‘The hair you gave me and the hair found in Badalamenti’s flat belong to the same person.’

‘Ah …’ said the inspector.

‘But I haven’t written anything up yet, as you asked.’

‘Good, thank you so much. Now go and get some rest.’

‘Have a good evening, Inspector.’

Bordelli hung up and ran a hand over his face.
The hair you gave me and the hair found in Badalamenti’s flat belong to the same person.
This was no small matter. He returned to the bedroom to finish getting dressed. If Odoardo had admitted having been in Badalamenti’s flat at least once, then it might mean nothing. Shedding hair is not unusual. But Odoardo had lied, and clearly had his reasons for lying. Of course, he could have gone to Badalamenti’s just to pay off his mother’s IOUs or to try to get back the photographs and had lied only for fear of being considered a suspect …

Bordelli heaved a sigh. Aside from the hair that had betrayed him, there wasn’t any hard evidence against Odoardo. All the same, from the very start, he’d had the distinct feeling that the lad was lying to him. Whereas Raffaele had always given him the opposite impression: a difficult, instinctual young man, even a bit of a blowhard, but as transparent as glass in sunlight. He had to go back to see Odoardo. It would almost certainly be the last chapter of an unamusing novel. Perhaps he would go back the following morning. Perhaps. He no longer was in such a hurry. Before going out, he remembered the ballistics test and rang Piras.

‘I tried calling a little while ago, Inspector, but your line was busy,’ said the Sardinian.

‘Any news?’

‘The arrest has been upheld. The shell under Pintus’s shoe was fired from the same gun that killed Benigno Staffa.’

‘That sounds a lot like something someone told me just a minute ago.’

‘What’s that, Inspector?’

‘Nothing. I’ll tell you when you get back. I wanted to let you know I called up an old friend with the Secret Service and gave him all the information on Frigolin. We’ll see if anything turns up …’

‘Pintus has changed his story. Now he says he went to see Benigno to try and persuade him to sell that land, and he found the door open, went inside, found him dead, and ran away because he didn’t want any trouble.’

‘With a good lawyer, he might even get off,’ said Bordelli.

‘Pintus is the Fascist Frigolin, Inspector, I’m sure of it. You should have seen his face when I provoked him …’

‘Being sure doesn’t help, Piras. You need proof.’

‘If that son of a bitch wriggles out of this, Benigno will turn in his grave.’

‘Talk to Stella. Send a photograph of Pintus express to the RAI and ask them to broadcast it on the evening news. Maybe somebody’ll recognise him as Frigolin and we can nail him for war crimes.’

‘Shit, Inspector, I hadn’t even thought of that.’

‘It would have come to you tonight, Piras.’

‘Can you imagine, Inspector? All Frigolin had to do was look once at the sole of his shoe, and he would have got off scot free.’

‘As far as that goes, he would have got off scot free if nobody had shot you in the legs.’

‘I suppose I have to admit that every cloud has a silver lining … Be sure to watch the news on Thursday,’ said Piras.

‘You’re very optimistic.’

‘No, I’m Sardinian. Goodnight, Inspector, I’m going to go and read a little Maigret.’

‘Give him my best.’ They hung up. Bordelli went into the kitchen to make a cheese sandwich and drink a glass of wine. By the time he left the house it was already half past nine. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still choked with clouds. On the other side of the street the little boys sat on the kerb in the dim light of a street lamp. They were lighting firecrackers. As soon as they saw Bordelli, they all got up and ran towards him.

‘Have you arrested the killer?’ asked Mimmo.

‘Not yet.’

‘There’s only four days left. You’re not gonna break your promise, are you?’

‘I never break a promise,’ said Bordelli, walking towards his car.

‘If you don’t get us a new football we’re gonna ring your doorbell every single day,’ said Rabbit-teeth. Bordelli got into the Beetle and rolled down the window.

‘Actually I think you’d better all get ready to wash my car.’

The little boys giggled with delight. They waited for the inspector to set off, then hurled firecrackers after his car before retreating to their territory.

Bordelli crossed the bridge and turned down Via Tornabuoni. There was some traffic, and at moments the cars ground almost to a halt. Despite the cold, there was a good deal of bustle, and more than a few foreigners. The shop windows were already full of Epiphany stockings and sweet coal. Every so often one heard firecrackers popping. He crossed the centre of town and came out on the Viali. Holding the steering wheel with his knees, he lit a cigarette. He only wanted to take a few drags, he told himself, and then he would throw it out. He drove through Piazza delle Cure, and when he got to the end of Via Maffei, he still had the fag in his mouth. Turning left, he arrived at the Mugnone and parked the car. He got out and started walking down Via Boccaccio. He wanted to have a quiet stroll undisturbed. Dogs barked in the dark gardens of an immense villa. He continued down the dark road with his hands in his pockets. The asphalt was still wet, and there was nobody about. He could see the bluish light of televisions filtering through a number of windows. At that hour there must have been a film on. Here and there he heard dogs growling behind locked gates.

He was almost at San Domenico. On the ground floor of an ancient building that gave on to the street was a lighted window through which came some highly rhythmical music. Bordelli went up to it to look through the bars. Behind a thin curtain was a large, smoke-filled room with some thirty or more young men and women dancing and shaking their heads. Those not dancing had drinks in their hands. A lot of bare legs and childish faces. A blonde in a miniskirt jumped up and down as if suffering from tarantism, hair tossed about in the air. He could never jump around like that, he would feel too embarrassed … even in the privacy of his home, with nobody watching. He felt a twinge of envy for those kids’ light-heartedness and continued spying on them. When at last he pried himself away from the window, he could think only of his own youth spent under the watchful eye of Mussolini. He returned towards Le Cure. When he got back in the car, it was almost eleven. He started it up and drove off. He didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t feel the least bit hungry. There was a present waiting for him at Rosa’s, but at that hour her friends would still be there, rehearsing the play. He didn’t feel like being with other people. He would go to Rosa’s the following day before supper time, when she was alone. He was curious to see his present. She always got him very unusual things. When he’d turned fifty, she’d given him a beautiful stone, scaly and shiny.

‘It grows like a rose in the desert,’ she’d said, laughing, lips red with lipstick. ‘Even the desert has its flowers, as you can see.’

It was a beautiful stone, and he’d put it in the kitchen, using it now and then to crush walnuts. He drove on slowly, headed nowhere in particular. Maybe he could take a spin up to Fiesole, turn towards Montebeni and then come back down by way of Settignano. Or he could take the Chiantigiana and just roll along nice and slow all the way to Siena if he felt like it. The third possibility was to go home and watch the late-night news broadcast.

He woke up early that morning, left home without shaving and went straight to the office. The previous evening he’d fallen asleep in front of the telly almost at once and woken up a while later in front of a blizzard of static on the screen.

He sent Mugnai to fetch him some coffee and then got some bureaucratic stuff out of the way. He had to pay a call on Odoardo, there was no getting round it. And he would do it one of these days, just not today.

Behind him he could
feel
the presence of that postcard. It was just a view of Montevideo, but it had a hold on the back of his neck. At a certain point he got up and threw it into a drawer.Adieu, Milena, he thought.Then Marisa came to mind, the little girl who already looked like a woman. He felt he needed to clear things up a bit, but it wasn’t easy and so he put it all off till a more propitious moment.

Around eleven o’clock, a phone call came through from the General Staff of the Navy. A young woman’s voice told him that Admiral Agostinelli was on the line.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve already found something,’ said Bordelli.

‘Not just something … we’ve found out everything there was to find out, just as you asked.’

‘In less than a day?’

‘We’re not the police, you know,’ the admiral said.

‘
You
are starting to frighten me.’

‘In a little bit I’ll have an official telex sent your way, but I wanted to give you advance notice personally.’

‘I’m all ears,’ said Bordelli.

‘I quote: “… Ruggero Frigolin, born 18 July 1913, at Martellago, Verona province, where his parents resided. The Frigolin family moved to the city of Milan on 21 May 1922. His father died in Africa in April 1943, shortly before the capitulation. His mother is still alive and a patient at a hospice on the outskirts of Milan, suffering from a degenerative disease that has left her non compos mentis. With the creation of the Operazione Nazionale Balilla
⁴⁵
in 1926, Ruggero Frigolin joined the association of the Avanguardisti di Milano. In 1928, he became a member of the Avanguardisti Moschettieri; in 1930 became a Giovane Fascista, and in 1934 entered the Fasci di Combattimento of the National Fascist Party. He attended the Istituto Superiore Agrario in Milan for one year with lacklustre results. On the other hand, within the ONB, and later in the Fascist Party itself, he distinguished himself with his tenacity and ability to command and was appointed to a variety of positions of increasing importance. These qualities soon won the admiration of Alessandro Pavolini, who wanted him at his side for the constitution and organisation of the Black Brigades. In September of the same year, Pavolini again recommended him to Mussolini for the post of Second Commandant of the Luigi Viale Brigade of Asti, which Frigolin was promptly granted. He immediately became known in the region for his cold ferocity, which earned him the nicknames of ‘Lucifer’ and ‘the Kappler of Venice’. He surrounded himself with personally hand-picked men and carried out bloody actions that never left any witnesses behind, not even women or children. He devoted himself with vicious intensity to hunting down Jews, arresting whole families who were later deported to Poland, and saw personally to the confiscation of their possessions. He actively participated in the preparation and execution of the Langhe round-up alongside his Nazi colleagues. His name came up in many of the war-crimes trials of Salò officials, but he was never personally indicted. Ruggero Frigolin officially died on 4 April 1945. His dead body was found in a stable near Mondovì with its face disfigured by machine-gun fire. It was identified by the documents found in the corpse’s pocket. Many believed that this death had been staged and that Frigolin managed to escape under a false name, but there is no proof of this. Ruggero Frigolin did not like to be photographed and indeed there are no extant photos of him …” He was a true gentleman, in short,’ Agostinelli concluded.