River of Shadows: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 1) (17 page)

Vernizzi joined them to say that the dredger and the excavators were placed sideways across the river to close off the floodplain. Barigazzi spat on the grass and that seemed to be his verdict.

“They want to go back to their houses,” Soneri said.

“Do they really believe that merely getting the water out will solve their problems? The walls are soaked, so when it freezes, they’ll crack. Houses don’t dry out here in the Po valley in winter.”

“Wouldn’t you do the same?”

“If you buy a house on the flat lands, you’ve got to allow for the fact that things will not always go well. Sooner or later, the Po’s going to come and pay you a little visit.”

Aricò was perspiring. He had pushed his cap to the back of his head, exposing the beads of sweat on his forehead. The crowd who clustered round him, pacified by seeing the pumps at work, had allowed him a moment’s peace. The people forced out of their homes had moved on to the embankment to watch the water being drained out litre by litre and poured back into the riverbed. Soneri too made his way up to the elevated road, leaving the town centre behind him. Having reached the same point where he had been the previous evening, he crouched among the branches which had been so damaged by the current. He moved to halfway down the embankment and studied the poplar trees with the water lapping around them.

In the silence, the inlet looked like an immense pot from which thin streaks of vapour were beginning to rise, as invisible as the lines used in fishing for barbel. The Canadian poplars made the autumnal twilight draw in more quickly. Squatting on his heels, he waited, rolling the extinguished cigar around his mouth. He lit it, but held the glowing end towards him, as his grandfather had done at the front. He took wartime precautions, but he did not expect to see a warship with cannons, only a solitary boat in a strip of dead water. The light faded at the same pace as the mist thickened. It seemed to him that the time had come.

Soneri became aware of its presence, hearing it before he saw it. He heard the low swishing sound, as when water is poured from a bucket over gravel, then made out the profile of a boatman rowing with few, slow strokes in a rhythm mastered by long familiarity with the oar. Undoubtedly it was the same man as the night before, and if he was coming back, it was a sign that he had not noticed anything on the previous occasion. The commissario let him approach until the boat was in line with the stone-crusher. A few more strokes and he could have called out to him, maybe even have looked him in the face, but suddenly the man shifted his oar to the other side of the boat and changed tack. He seemed to want to go back, even if he was only making for the centre of the poplar wood. The tree trunks stood in geometrically regular lines and diagonals, dividing equally all that water between the two embankments.

Soneri kept his eyes fixed on the boatman, who gave the impression of circling round like a buzzard on a warm afternoon in summer but then, unexpectedly, he jabbed his oar against a trunk to stop the boat, which stayed where it was, swaying slightly. He looked as though he were peering hard into the flood water which, in the absence of any current, was completely still. Soneri looked too and noted that the stagnation, by freeing the water of the clouds of sand, had caused it to lose its iron-grey colour as well.

The man dipped his oar to the right and set off again in the direction of the riverbank where Soneri was waiting. When he was ten metres away, the commissario rose to his feet and called out, causing the boatman to turn rapidly. He remained very still from the neck up. The boat swayed slightly without making him lose his balance. Soneri had the impression that for a few moments the boatman was undecided whether to flee or draw alongside him. When he realized that he was
close enough to be recognized, he gave a couple of energetic strokes to direct the boat towards the great embankment. The commissario walked a few steps in the squelching mud, keeping his feet well apart to avoid tumbling into the river. The boatman drew closer, until he was almost on the grass.

He said not a word, restricting himself to jerking his chin in a way that implied a question. He was elderly, but still full of energy and pride. His enormous hands were like Barigazzi’s, in whose fist glasses could disappear. He now observed Soneri from the shell of the boat, his eyes grey and piercing, with the strong hint of a challenge.

“A strange hour to be out between the embankments.”

“Every hour is a good hour. The thing is to know where you are going.”

“And where were you making for?”

“I’m here to see how well the pumps are working. I’ve put some stakes in the ground.”

“Has it dropped much?” Soneri said.

“Five centimetres. Nothing much. But the water is still coming in over the barrier upstream of the port. I’ll have to adjust it.”

“Where do you moor your boat?”

“At the port. Where else with the waters this low?”

“How about if we arrange to meet in
Il Sordo
?”

The man thought it over for a moment, the intensity of his stare obscured in the gathering dusk.

“No, not there. We can meet in the
Italia
in thirty minutes.”

“You think you can make it in that time?”

“Listen, policeman, I know the Po better than you know the inside of your police station.”

Being in the large, single room of the restaurant felt like being inside a refectory. The loud voices, the smoke and the crush made the meeting oddly discreet. There was too much going on and too much to overhear to allow people to take notice of anything. The commissario made his entrance and occupied one of the few free tables no bigger than a window recess. Only when he was sitting down did he see that the boatman was waiting for him at the bar, where he had already ordered a white wine. He caught sight of Soneri and made his way over, followed by someone else, evidently a colleague. When they arrived at the table, Soneri eyed them up and down as training required, then gave them a sign to sit.

“This is my lawyer,” the boatman said.

Soneri took in his bulk and the skin made leathery by the sun on the Po. He did not look like a lawyer.

“What made you think I was a policeman?”

“Your type is easily picked out,” the man said. “I’ve a lot of experience of them.”

The second man stretched out a hand with the dimensions of a small shovel. “Arnaldo Fereoli, but everyone around here calls me Vaeven. It’s dialect for someone who comes and goes.”

“I know the dialect. Do you have a barge too?”

“A
magano
.”

Soneri turned to the first man who, without offering his hand, said: “Dino Melegari, or Dinon to the people around here.”

Melegari was built on a monumental scale. Soneri had not appreciated the sheer bulk of the man when he was in the boat, but now that he was there in front of him, he seemed as overwhelming as the statues of Hercules and Antaeus outside the questura. “Will you join me? A drop of wine?”

“I never say no to another glass.”

They were served by a tiny, silent, serious-looking girl who seemed just out of school.

“Will they do any good?” Soneri asked, meaning the pumps, which were still droning away on the other side of the embankment.

Dinon stretched out his great hands so wide that he almost touched his neighbours. If he closed them too suddenly he might crush the table. “The plain is low and the water is going down. They had to do something to satisfy the people who were evacuated from their homes.”

“What is the level now?”

“Can’t you see from the poplars? A couple of metres.”

Vaeven had pulled up the sleeves of his pullover, revealing a hammer and sickle tattoo on his forearm. It was the right time to ask: “Did you know Tonna?”

The two men exchanged glances. Their expressions implied that they thought they were being tricked. “By reputation,” Dinon said.

“As a boatman, or because of his Fascism?”

“What do you think?” Dinon said, pushing back the rim of his beret with his knuckles. “Will one or the other not do for you?”

“I know he has left some painful memories.”

“A number of widows and orphans,” the boatman said sardonically. “But nowadays people have short memories.”

“But you remember very well.”

“We’re old enough to have known him.”

“I believe it’s all ended badly for him.”

“Maybe he set off with the engine not running to take advantage of the wind, lost control of the barge and ended up running aground against the embankment. He would have been deeply ashamed. His reputation as a fine sailor was all he had left.”

“He had nothing else but the barge,” Vaeven said. “He
couldn’t have lived with the idea that he’d made a mistake that would make a novice cringe.”

Soneri thought this over for a few moments as he sipped his Malvasia. The notion of his having fled out of shame had not occurred to him. It might even be plausible. After all, it could just have been the way out he had been searching for. But if that was the truth, what was he, the commissario, doing there on the Po, hunting down a phantom when a real crime had been committed in the city? The jeering face of Alemanni – all skull-like features and receding white hair – was imprinted on his mind.

“Who was ‘the Kite’?” he said, shaking away these jarring thoughts.

The two looked at each other. “We’re not actually under arrest, I take it,” Dinon protested. “Tell us what you want and we’ll save a lot of time.”

He was staring at Soneri with those clear, piercing eyes. Soneri took his time lighting his cigar. He wanted to let the accumulated animosity evaporate. “I’ve told you I have reason to suspect that Tonna is dead. They’ve already got rid of his brother.”

“What’s all that got to do with the so-called ‘Kite’?”

“We found a note on Tonna’s barge which referred to some decision concerning him.”

“Must have been one of the partisans. But there were so many of them,” Vaeven said.

“If that’s true, you would have known him,” Soneri said firmly.

“We weren’t here then. We were too well known and they’d have picked us out immediately. In ’43, we were up on Monte Caio.”

“Have you ever heard tell of this ‘Kite’?”

“There were all kinds who passed this way,” Dinon said, to
quash any further discussion. “There were followers of General Badoglio, as well as members of the Garibaldi Resistance group. They came from Lombardy, from the Veneto or up from the Gothic Line. And then there was the other lot, the G.A.P., and nobody had any idea who they were. They wouldn’t have given away their undercover names even to their own families.”

“Perhaps Tonna had killed—”

“Nothing more likely,” Dinon interrupted him. “And it wouldn’t have been the only time.”

Soneri signalled to the waitress to bring another bottle and when he had refilled the glasses, he confronted them: “I believe you both know exactly who this ‘Kite’ is.”

Vaeven now pushed his hat to the back of his head with his knuckles, put one elbow on the table and leaned forward, causing the table to tilt to one side: “Listen, Commissario, I got to know lots of you police types back in 1960 when we took to the streets to stop Tambroni becoming prime minister. So you’re not going to catch me out.”

Soneri said nothing and the other took it as a surrender, but instead of attacking, he retreated, relaxing against the back of his seat. They remained in that position until the commissario decided to drop the subject. The equilibrium underlying their exchange was as precarious as the currents of the Po.

“You’ve stayed in the party?”

“Always. We’ve never changed our banner. Ours has the hammer and sickle,” Vaeven said forcibly, pulling up his sleeve to show off his tattoo.

“Are you saying that others …”

The man raised his right hand as though he were going to toss something over his shoulder. “The majority has changed. Nowadays they’re cosying up to the priests and the churchy lot. They’ve got their co-operatives and strike deals with the bosses.”

“Barigazzi as well?”

“He’s getting on now, but the people he has around him …they’ve watered everything down. They used to be Lambrusco, but they’re very thin wine now.”

“Do the two of you still sail?”

“We do some fishing as a hobby. I’ve got an old
magano
which is holding up well.”

“What did Tonna transport?”

“They say he carried odds and ends, but what was really below, nobody knows. There are no borders or customs along the Po.”

It was dark now, nearly time for dinner, and the bar was emptying. Dinon rose to his feet, slowly stretching his giant body. Each of his movements was deliberate, as though he were keeping his balance on a boat on the river. “Commissario, what are you looking for?” he asked, when the conversation seemed over.

Soneri was thrown by the question. He had lowered his guard and that question reopened the door on all his doubts, because he was not sure himself what he was looking for. For a second time he felt lost, and all the while the boatman kept his steely gaze on him. There was in him a certainty which had probably never faltered. There was no trace of doubt in his eyes. Soneri felt a twinge of envy.