Gold, Frankincense and Dust (2 page)

He inched forward, and rolled down his window a little. He decided to follow the smell, as do animals on heat, as the bulls were doing at that moment in pursuit of the invisible. Shortly afterwards, over to his right, patches of more intense brightness appeared. The autostrada was indeed there, a long stretch of road indifferent to its burden of tragedies.

Soneri turned onto a track running alongside it and drove towards the fires. There was a little space on the footpath and he parked there among piles of rubble, broken tiles, waste paper and used handkerchiefs. Juvara too got out, but he stayed close to the car and kept the door open.

“Now what?” Soneri asked himself as he looked at the
slope strewn with rubbish on the other side of the barrier. The inspector, continuing to look cautiously about him, made no reply.

The commissario walked a little further along the path. The flickering light of the fires, the dome of mist tinted with yellow, the bellowing of the stricken animals and music in the distance made the whole scene somewhat surreal. The countryside behind him was swarming with life not native to it, and he knew that ahead of him lay rows of crashed cars, and hanging over them was the pall of death, disturbed only by the coming and going of breakdown trucks and the sirens and flashing lights of the emergency services.

He turned back. “Call headquarters and tell them we’re on the spot. Ask them what we should do next.”

The inspector was only too pleased to get back to the car. “Sir, that fire …” he asked, leaning out the window and pointing to a bonfire on the far side.

“The gypsies, obviously,” Soneri said.

“They’re telling us to be patient and stay put until the police cars turn up,” the inspector told him. “Can you hear the fairground?”

“What fairground?”

“The one they’ve put up at the shopping mall behind the service station.”

“Ah, so that’s where the music’s coming from.”

“That’s right. A lot of people are going there.”

At that point, the barking of a dog could be heard above the animal chorus. The mist made it difficult to tell if the sound was coming from the slope or from ditches on the far side of the barrier.

“Another lost soul,” Soneri said.

“It must have been in one of the cars caught up in the crash,” Juvara said.

There was a call on the radio. Pasquariello, the head of the flying squad, wanted directions to find the commissario. A sudden gust of wind made the column of smoke change direction and the stench of burning tyres came through the open window. Juvara started coughing and threw open the car door to get a breath of fresh air.

“That’s how they flush out foxes,” Soneri said. He saw the inspector leap back into the car with unexpected agility. He turned and became aware of a bull’s head a couple of metres away. The beast’s snorts made it seem like a cartoon caricature, but this effect vanished when it opened its mouth, let its tongue hang out, arched its back and gave a roar that made the mist vibrate. The commissario was unsure if it was looking for food or wanted to mark off territory of its own, but Soneri remained there rooted to the spot, while Juvara, already inside the car, shouted to him to get in.

It all seemed to him unreal, a fairground scene like the one in the distance with the blaring musical background. There he was, confronting his own Minotaur, enveloped in a mist which had taken on the improbable colours of a showground. He heard Juvara’s imploring voice, but he stayed where he was, staring at the motionless beast, watching his own reflection in its large, resigned eyes. It lasted no more than a second; the bull lumbered away and vanished into the mist.

“Your shouting nearly got me gored, Juvara.”

“You take too many risks. It was about to charge you for real.”

“Always remember that animals are much less dangerous than human beings. A policeman is always more likely to be killed than a vet.”

Meanwhile the dog went on barking, the sound growing more shrill and irritating. “He’s really scared,” Juvara said.

“He’s afraid of the bulls, just like you.” As he spoke, headlights shone out ahead of them.

“Here come the police cars,” Juvara announced.

“We turned into a half dozen farmyards,” one of the officers said, getting out of his car.

“You’ve seen nothing yet. Your real troubles will start when you try to find your way back,” Soneri said, intending to be facetious but succeeding only in unsettling them.

“Where’s that dog?” snapped the man who seemed to be in charge of the detachment.

The commissario made a vague gesture, raising his hand and waving it about.“There’s no sign of gypsies,” the officer said.

In reply, Soneri pointed to the fire on the opposite side of the road. The officer in charge mumbled something before putting a cigarette in his mouth and lighting it. The commissario did the same with his cigar. They stood facing each other in silence until a loud moo came from very close by and another stray animal appeared, this time little more than a calf, as the commissario understood from the short horns.

“Fuck me!!” The commanding officer leapt to one side, pulling his Beretta from its holster.

“No need for that. It’ll do you no harm. Anyway, with this mist, there’s no knowing where the bullets will end up.”

The officer moved back towards the safety of his car. The bullock pawed the ground as though it was considering charging, but then changed its mind.

“If it sees you’re afraid, it might be tempted to rough you up a bit.”

The officer lowered his pistol only when he saw the beast trot off, but his hand was trembling as he replaced the weapon in its holster.

“Will I take the M12?” one of the policemen said,
referring to the semi-automatic they had been issued with. His superior officer said no, but he appeared badly shaken. Soneri stared at him. “First time you’ve seen a bull?”

The officer shook his head. He was young, one of a generation who had received all its training in a police academy. Soneri was conscious of belonging to a different age, when a peasant world still existed and a bull did not seem such an alarming, extraordinary rarity. Before he had time to feel superannuated, the headlights of the second car shone on them.

“Will someone tell me why the fuck we’ve been sent to this godforsaken place?” shouted the new arrival.

“Because of the gypsies, Esposito,” his colleague reminded him.

“This is a jungle. We’ve got pigs, bulls, cows …”

“The world is full of pigs and cows,” a policeman said.

“But not of bulls,” Soneri said, cutting short the conversation.

“Commissario, can you tell me what we’re supposed to do even if the gypsies
are
looting things? I can’t even see the tips of my shoes,” Esposito said.

“You’d better ask Capuozzo,” the commissario said, plainly annoyed. “Drive up and down this road with the headlights full on, just so they know you’re here.”

The officer in charge was struggling to make out what was being said, because the dog was barking wildly.

“Fuck that bloody dog,” Esposito cursed. A new chorus of moos struck up, muffled by the mist.

“We should continue patrolling until fresh orders come through,” Soneri said.

The officers got back into their cars. In the yellow-streaked darkness, the disco music continued to blare out while the firefighters were in all probability dragging the dead
and injured from the twisted metal. Soneri watched the flickering blue lamps of the police cars until they were swallowed up by the darkness. He was left on his own, a cigar in his mouth. From the direction of the autostrada he could hear a constant racket occasionally interrupted by the sound of a car accelerating away. From time to time the plain around him would come alive with some sudden agitation, animals running, chasing and perhaps facing blindly up to each other.

“Commissario!” He heard Juvara call out.

“What is it?” Soneri moved back to the car.

“I thought I heard someone running from the autostrada into the fields.”

Soneri stretched out his arms. “What are we supposed to do? Unless they run into us …” He stopped when he saw one of the squad cars coming towards them too quickly for a routine patrol. Esposito jumped out and ran towards the commissario, waving his arms in the air. “We’ve found a body, a badly burned body. I think it was one of those involved in the pile-up.”

Without saying a word, Soneri got into his car and followed them along the road. When he got out, the dog was barking nearby. Esposito switched on his torch and turned it onto a body, disfigured and mutilated by the flames, lying on the other side of the metal fence. There was a little Pomeranian of an indefinable colour two steps away, yelping loudly.

“Do you think he was its master?” Juvara said.

The commissario shook his head. “Normally they keep watch in silence. This one is trying to tell us something.”

“The accident happened right here. He must have been thrown from the car,” said one of the officers.

Soneri looked up towards the autostrada. He struggled to make out the wrecked cars, still in a long line, each one
concertinaed into the one in front. A little further on, a burning tyre was giving out black smoke. “Maybe,” he said, but he did not sound convinced. He took the torch from Esposito’s hand and went over to the barrier, staring at that dead body whose features were now only vaguely recognisable as human.

“I don’t believe he was one of the motorists. We’d better call in the forensic squad. Be careful not to trample on anything. Cordon off the area around the body.”

Juvara trotted at his side as he made his way back to the car. “Do you really think … ?”

Soneri nodded. “That body was dumped there, but was burned somewhere else.”

He took out his mobile and dialled Nanetti’s number, leaving the inspector consumed with curiosity. “At the toll booth, go in the direction of the Asolana … you know, where Guido’s
osteria
used to be. No, before you get to the grain store,” he explained to his colleague, listing places which were no longer there.

When he hung up, Juvara tried to question him, but Esposito butted in. “We’ve taped the site off. Pasquariello is in the office and he says one car is enough if the situation is under control, but he said to check with you first.”

“One will do. Apart from anything else, if there was anything to steal, they’d have gone off with it before we turned up. Besides, it’s a secondary matter now,” he said gravely.

Juvara remained silent, reflecting on those last words. “Are you saying we were called out on a routine matter and discovered a murder?”

“Most things are a matter of chance,” Soneri said. “You ought to know that by now, seeing the number of years you’ve been with the force.”

They went back to where the corpse was and at that
precise moment they heard a high-pitched cry, something between a scream and a groan, from a field nearby – enough to unnerve Esposito and his colleague. “Good God, what’s that?” Juvara exclaimed. “Not even in the wilderness …”

Soneri alone remained calm. The cry caused him no anxiety but reawoke in him old experiences of farmyards, frost and horseback rides at Christmas. It was a sound he recognised from his childhood and which at that moment resurfaced from the depths of his memory as a recognition. “It’s nothing to be alarmed about. There’s another death, but this time it’s only a pig.”

Esposito and Juvara looked incredulously at each other. “So who did it?” they said, almost in chorus and in the stern tones of an interrogating policeman.

“By a process of simple deduction, I’d say it must have been the gypsies. There’s no-one else in the vicinity.”

“I thought they were all Muslims,” Esposito said.

“The majority are one hundred per cent Italian,” Soneri said in a tone of reproof. The ignorance of fellow officers on issues on which they should have been properly briefed always astonished him, but just then a car drew up to take their minds off pigs and gypsies. The forensic squad had arrived.

“One day you’re going to get in touch with some good news,” were Nanetti’s first words as he got out his car. “You’re lucky I know this zone, otherwise we’d have been looking at this corpse tomorrow morning.”

“We’re the only ones who know this territory,” the commissario said, as though confiding in an old comrade.

“I know what you mean. We’re ready to be put out to grass.”

“The correct term is care home,” Soneri laughed. “That’s what Capuozzo calls it, and he means care of the mind.”

“His,” Nanetti shot back, giving him the V sign. “Anyway,
are you sure this isn’t somebody who got battered about in the crash?” he asked, pointing to the autostrada.

“First a car crashes, then it catches fire. If someone is thrown onto the road, he escapes the fire, doesn’t he?”

Nanetti nodded, but he could not hide a certain exasperation at the commissario’s ostentatious display of logic.

“Perhaps the car went up in flames, and perhaps this poor soul tried to escape from the fire which was already engulfing him and ended up here. But in that case, he would have rolled about on the grass and there would have been some traces. Those paper hankies and those bottles, for instance, they would have been blackened or at least there would be some mark on them, no? And the grass would have been scorched, wouldn’t it?”

Nanetti ran his torch up and down the slope and had to agree that there was no trace of all the things the commissario had listed. He let out a groan and said, “I’m afraid you’re right. O.K., let’s cut the fence and search the ground, then we can carry off the body when we get authorisation from the magistrate. The autopsy will be the real test.”

“By the way, who’s the on-duty magistrate?” Soneri asked.

“We’re in luck: it’s Dottoressa Marcotti. You know how good she is.”

“Excellent. We’ll not have to waste time spelling out the totally obvious.” Soneri went towards his car, signalling to Juvara to follow him. The two men were walking along the autostrada barrier when they heard a deep groan, sounding as though it were produced by bronchial tubes clogged up with catarrh. The sound was accompanied by something frantically pawing the ground, and they found themselves face to face with an enormous, rotating mass topped by a majestic pair of horns. A bull and a cow were coupling on the road, almost knocking down the iron railing of a little bridge.