Gold, Frankincense and Dust (26 page)

“Agitated in what sense? Terrified?”

“No, no. Highly emotional. Excited. She seemed happy and afraid at the same time. When we met, she threw herself into my arms, like a teenager, and told me … well, she told me she was expecting a baby. She’d just got the results from one of those kits you can buy in the pharmacy.”

“And you were none too pleased.”

Soncini looked at him with the ghostliest of smiles. “No, I didn’t take it well at all. You can understand that. I’m a married man.”

“That doesn’t seem to have stopped you playing about,” Soneri said bluntly.

“No, but there were no babies involved.”

“You mean there was always a clear agreement?”

“Nina had always told me there would be no problems. And then with the life she led … I couldn’t even be sure it was mine,” he said indignantly.

“So, you could take any liberty you wished, provided your affairs remained out of sight. It’s a sad old story, a little bit of philandering on the side. Even your wife went along with it, I imagine. From what I’ve picked up, there was nothing much between you.”

Soncini nodded slowly. “The fact is that Nina wanted to keep it,” he burst out as though this was the greatest monstrosity imaginable.

Once more Soneri had to make an effort to contain himself. The interview was touching more than one open sore, and he was tempted to punch Soncini’s face. “Do you think it’s easier for a woman to have an abortion than to keep the baby? For a woman like Iliescu, I mean, with the life she was leading?”

“She wanted us to get married. She wanted me to throw everything up,” Soncini sobbed. That too seemed an outrage in his eyes, that she would ask him to give up exclusive clubs, luxury holidays, moneyed friends.

“So you made up your mind to be done with it all, mother and child in one fell swoop,” Soneri cried, cutting the air with his hand like a guillotine falling.

“No, I keep telling you it was all an accident,” Soncini protested. Even the lawyer began to show signs of impatience.

Soneri made a sign to both of them to remain calm. “Explain to me how it happened.”

“We’d been talking a long time and it got quite heated. Nina would not budge. She said she was tired of living that way, that she was young and wanted a normal life. I told her she had cheated me and that it took two to produce a child. Then she started insulting me, saying that I’d taken advantage of her, that I had a good life while she was struggling to get by. We both lost our tempers and people in the bar started giving us funny looks. Next thing we got into the car and drove around a bit until we found an out-of-the-way place, not far from Lemignano. I gave her an ultimatum: either she had an abortion or else it was all over between us. She could say the child’s father was one of the other men she’d been seeing, or else she could say, for instance, she’d been raped by Candiani. What did it matter to her? She could take him to court and make herself a bit of money. Everybody knew she’d been seeing him. But she wouldn’t have it. She wanted me. She wanted to ruin me. Well, I started hitting her, not too hard, just enough to keep her under control and make her see sense. But she jumped out of the car and started running away, shouting in the mist that the whole city would find out because she was going to tell everybody. She seemed to have gone off her rocker. I ran after her. I thought I’d never catch her, but next thing I found myself on top of her. We had both run into a fence which you couldn’t see in the mist. She kneed me in the balls, and I lost it. I won’t deny that I went too far that evening. It was pure instinct and maybe I lost it. The fact is I landed a punch on her, the sort of punch you would give a man, and she seemed to fly backwards, as though she’d been carried away by the wind. I’d got her full on, under the chin. She fell with her neck against an iron railing. It had all happened so quickly that when I stopped to draw breath it
seemed unbelievable, in the stagnant mist, the utter silence … I knew right away she was dead. I was scared out my wits. I had a couple of grains of powder with me and I took them. What did it matter any more? I was done for. There was no hope. However, the cocaine cleared my head and I started to think. I dragged the body into a field. Then I went to the workshop and got a container used for solvents and a sheet of canvas used for packing. I filled the container with petrol at a self-service garage, and went back to get Nina. After about a quarter of an hour I bundled her into the boot of the car. I returned to the workshop and went round to the yard at the back. It gives onto a ditch there where they often light fires to burn the crates used by a transport company. I had an hour before the arrival of the night guards on their midnight round. The petrol makes quick work of everything. It flares up quickly, burns a few minutes and then dies down. With all that mist around, there wasn’t much chance of anyone seeing me. I waited for the corpse to cool down before I could wrap it up in the canvas again. That didn’t take long with the temperature what it was. I laid the body on the back seat and drove onto the autostrada. I knew there was an encampment of Romanian gypsies at Cortile San Martino, and since Nina was an illegal, I thought of leaving the body there. An autostrada is the most anonymous place in the world. The whole world uses the autostrada! However, I couldn’t have foreseen that there would be a pile-up at exactly that point. But for that, the body wouldn’t have been discovered for ages.”

Soncini collapsed on a chair as though he were on the point of fainting. He appeared more distraught and unnerved than before. Soneri allowed the silence to emphasise the gravity of the confession, but his mind went back to the farce played out in front of him a few days previously by Soncini, his wife and daughter, and his fury increased. In comparison,
Nina, no matter how casual with men, seemed to him like a lost soul trying to stay afloat in a sea of filth. The thought of her helped him nurture a little hope that he would not sink into that slime.

“It would have been better for you to keep the baby and pretend to be a caring partner. Perhaps even, for the first time in your life, you would have assumed responsibility for something. And you wouldn’t be where you are now.”

“Please,” the lawyer intervened, “avoid making judgments. It’s not your role.”

The commissario threw a contemptuous look in his direction. “You’re quite right. It’s up to the judge to do that.” He turned once more to Soncini. “You forgot to add one thing.”

Soncini looked up, giving him a quizzical look.

“You’d have had to resign your position as a kept man.”

Soncini bowed his head again and said nothing.

AFTER HE HAD
signed his confession, they took him away. Soneri watched him being led off by two officers followed by the lawyer, done up like a mannequin, and wondered why at that stage murderers appeared to him always so banal, so bereft of all pride, even of the pride of malice. He invariably found himself confronting unremarkable faces or insignificant people who were nothing out of the ordinary. It was impossible to see them in the role of killers. He recalled substantial mafiosi who looked like pensioners, serial killers with the appearance of admin staff, rapists who could have passed for seminarians and pitiless female poisoners with the features of a doll. Never had there been one with the surly expression of a cut-throat, the menacing eyes of a basking shark or the insolence of arrogance.

As he reflected on this, he felt his disquiet grow. There was something artificial in Soncini’s submissiveness. He might have been playing a part. If it all went well for him, he might indeed be able to show it had been an accident and perhaps even get off with a sentence of a couple of years’ imprisonment. He might claim he had acted under the influence of cocaine, and that burning the body had been a reaction of fear produced by the drugs.

All these doubts were swept aside for the time being by a
flood of congratulations, starting with those of Capuozzo, who knew that this way he was guarding his back against public opinion and laying the groundwork for the parade of the following morning’s press conference. The newspapers were guaranteed to write that the investigators had done their job, and the political bigwigs would express their renewed faith in justice. Even Esposito phoned him from his car: “Well done, Commissario. We’ve pulled it off. You’re the pick of the bunch.”

Soneri was pleased, but he found it hard to show his satisfaction in public. He was uncomfortable with compliments because he never knew what to say. Fortunately the investigating magistrate, Marcotti, who was very like him in this way, restricted herself to a vigorous handshake and an eloquent look which said it all. The thought occurred yet again to him that if they had been contemporaries, he could easily have fallen in love with her. Juvara, who had been gazing into the middle distance for a while, apparently wrapped in thought, attempted to bring him back to earth. “Don’t forget your promise, commissario.”

“What promise?”

“The computer, remember? If we’ve solved the case, it was all down to the hard disk.”

“It was down to chance. And self-interest. Young Sauro thought he could make a bit of money from a machine he should have put out. He did it because some guy had asked for a computer at a giveaway price, so he was acting in his own interests.”

“That’s a very reductive analysis. Sauro could have kept quiet, told us he’d thrown everything out and fitted the hard disk to another computer,” Juvara objected.

“He had just opened up and needed customers. He might have decided it’s always a good idea to stay on good terms
with the police. Anyway, what did he care about Soncini? You’re a much better customer.”

The inspector surrendered. “You’re always too pessimistic. Anyway, the case is solved and that’s what matters.”

“Solved? Mmm … You know what bothers me? That note, the one at Nina’s house, covered with insults. Whoever wrote that must have known Nina’s intentions regarding Soncini, and presumably before finding out about the baby.”

Not knowing how to reply, Juvara threw up his hands helplessly, but at that moment the telephone on Soneri’s desk rang.

“Commissario, Dottor Capuozzo has called a press conference for tomorrow morning at ten and would like to invite you to come along,” the usual secretary announced.

“Unfortunately I can’t be there. Please give the questore my apologies,” Soneri said perfunctorily.

The secretary was by now accustomed to Soneri’s refusals, and acting almost mechanically she assured him she would tell her superior.

“I’m going out for a breath of fresh air,” he told Juvara.

He wandered about in the city centre and dropped in to a couple of tobacconists to buy cigars and the wooden matches he continued to use in preference to a lighter. He detested those bright little implements which produced fire with no smoke, these being two elements which should always go together. He made his way back to the questura, but when he was in the courtyard under the fir trees, he realised he had no wish to shut himself up in an office, so he got into his car. He had a vague idea of where he would like to go. He would like to drive across the plain towards the first of the Apennine slopes and from there climb above the mist. On the road towards the hills, the skies would gradually clear, the sun would begin to peep out, but then he would briefly plunge
once more into the last of the white mist before everything would finally brighten and the world would change. At times it was only a matter of a couple of metres. He would be happy to warm his bones over lunch in a trattoria on a hillside, looking down at the plain under its sheet of chilly mist.

Such thoughts were in his mind as he got to Via Spezia but instead of proceeding in the direction of Cisa, he turned at Lemignano towards the industrial zone. He did not know what had made him abandon the idea of an outing to the hills, but he soon understood as he parked in front of Golden. He was missing Angela. Once in the hills, he would be reminded of their days away from the city, and that was what had made him turn back. He had no wish to invite pain. Better to face the hostility of Giulia Martini, who was even now staring resentfully at him. The commissario preferred to tussle with another person rather than with himself.

“Did you manage to visit your husband in jail?” he said.

“No, and I don’t care to. As far as I am concerned, you can keep him. That man has been my ruination.”

“You could have left him, if you hadn’t been slaves to a
bella figura
.”

“All my life I’ve had to put up with his affairs. The man is an inveterate womaniser,” she said, without restraint. “After a while, I told myself I didn’t care about him anymore and he could do what he liked. Once my daughter had grown up, she understood. However, I could not tolerate the idea of him breeding a litter of bastards. There is a limit.”

“Don’t go any further. That unborn baby had very little to do with it. What mattered was your self-interest. You’re not defending respectability, just business.”

The woman seemed about to assault him. The commissario savoured his own mordant lucidity and was indifferent to any offence he gave. He stood in front of her, throwing
down the gauntlet with words she had never wanted to hear, words which stripped her naked.

“For years the two of you were happy to play the part of the united couple, just so long as it kept the business turning over. It was of no concern to you if your husband went after other women in nightclubs, because the thing that mattered was to put on a brave front for the people who placed the orders, the ecclesiastical curias. A fine marriage, a flourishing company, a daughter who marries into the Dall’Argine family, a veneer of dutiful Catholicism … a model family,” he said sarcastically. “And all to display an irreproachable image, a guarantee for the bishops and traditionalist clients who buy the gold and jewellery from you. And then a Romanian girl turns up and it all gets serious. She wants a family. You know perfectly well she’ll not back off and so you threaten her, you send her threatening letters, but the girl holds fast. At that point, you take to blackmailing your husband: either you stop seeing her or I’ll cut off your allowance. No more
dolce vita
as kept man, no more women, no more clubs and expensive cars. And when you find out she’s expecting a child, you deliver your ultimatum. He’s got his back to the wall, forced to choose between the playboy life and giving up Nina, and he opts for the second, but he didn’t reckon with her sheer grit. She really did want an ordinary life with the man she loved most of all of them. So she had to be got rid of. After all, what was she but an illegal immigrant from Romania? Who’s going to go looking for her? And in fact nobody did go looking for her, except one old grandparent who set out for Italy to act as peacemaker between the girl and the gypsy community, but the bus journey finished him off. End of story.” By the end of his story, Soneri found himself trembling with rage.