The Dark Valley: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 2) (13 page)

“I doubt if there is much to be done tonight,” Bovolenta said. “We have neither the equipment nor the appropriate lighting. Crisafulli, have the area sealed off and leave two officers on guard. Call for reinforcements from another company, to give the men here a break. To keep everything right, telephone the duty magistrate, but I think he’ll agree with these measures. Tomorrow morning, at first light, we’ll
resume work. And get in touch with the Special Forensic Unit.”

The captain issued his orders calmly and precisely, in a tone which brooked no contradiction. Before setting off, he turned back to the maresciallo. “Don’t forget about the magistrate.”

He addressed Soneri for the first time since Crisafulli had introduced them. “Are you coming back with us?”

The moment Soneri said yes, Bovolenta was off down the path with his torch lighting the way. The commissario set off after him but he had not gone ten metres before he heard Dolly’s paws scrabbling on the rocks behind him. She followed him as far as Boldara and hesitated only when they reached the truck, as though she distrusted men in uniform. Soneri settled her in the back of the vehicle. As the truck moved off, Bovolenta turned to ask, “What do you think?”

“What everyone believed would happen, has happened,” was Soneri’s enigmatic reply.

“Everyone was convinced he was dead?”

“For some time, no-one would claim beyond peradventure that they had seen him alive. There was no shortage of rumours, but you know full well that…” Whatever was to be known full well petered out in a wave of the commissario’s hand.

“His wife said he had gone abroad. She was lying,” the captain stated with some emphasis.

“Perhaps Paride had lied to her, and never did leave.”

The captain nodded, staring out at the countryside over which the moon spread a phosphorescent light.

“Tomorrow we’ll find out how he was killed,” Bovolenta said. “Have you any idea?”

Soneri shook his head. “I can’t be sure. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say gunshot. It seems to me the most obvious thing.”

“Because of all the gunshots people have been complaining about? You think it was one of those?”

“Could be, but around here they use large-calibre hunting rounds. There was no sign I could see on the body of a bullet having passed right through.”

Bovolenta grunted his assent, then leaned over towards Crisafulli who was driving in silence but listening intently. “Will you inform the family?”

“As you wish, Captain.”

An owl hooted in the woods. Dolly got to her feet behind the seats and started growling.

“What are you going to do with her?” the captain said.

“I’ll take her back home and see if she still has a master.”

“Is there one left?”

“Paride’s son, but he’s crazy,” the maresciallo said.

“What about the wife?”

“Yes, there’s the wife,” Crisafulli said, without further explanation.

“Anyway, they’ve got other dogs. They loved going hunting, as did their master,” Soneri said.

“Dogs have an important part in this story. One was slaughtered in case it might turn out to be an inconvenient witness,” Bovolenta said.

“If dogs could speak, we’d have solved the case already.”

They arrived at the village. “Will you join me for dinner?” the captain proposed.

“Thank you, but I haven’t told the
pensione
where I’m staying, and they’ll have kept something for me. They make me at home there.”

“You’re from here, I was told,” Bovolenta said, glancing at Crisafulli in the driving seat.

“Yes, but it doesn’t feel like it. I still know the district and I have some memories of my own, but that’s all,” he said, overtaken by a sudden onrush of bitterness he could not manage to contain.

Bovolenta looked at him intently before replying. “I understand,” he said, in a tone intended to convey some insight into Soneri’s state of mind, but he changed the subject immediately. “Was there really no-one in the village who knew how bad things were for the Rodolfis?”

“If they knew, they found it convenient to keep their mouths shut. The bonds between the villagers and the Rodolfis are very close.”

The captain nodded thoughtfully. Soneri shook his hand. “See you soon,” he said, as he got out of the truck.

“Tomorrow,” Bovolenta said. “We’ll be up there at first light.”

“It’s nothing to do with me. It’s your case.”

“Well then, consider yourself summonsed as a witness. It was you who found the body, was it not?”

Crisafulli switched on the ignition and drove off before the commissario had the chance to reply. The captain sketched a quasi-military salute and the truck speeded up, but twenty metres up the road, it stopped. The maresciallo got out and opened the back door. Dolly jumped out and raced down the street towards Soneri. As he caressed the dog, he thought that she too had forgotten all about Paride Rodolfi. Life goes on, after all.

He was in the dining room well before dawn, and shortly afterwards was out in the chill of the morning. The shadow of the mountains made mornings seem duller than evenings, and that day the moon had gone down some time ago, leaving only the feeble light of the stars. Dolly picked up his scent immediately and galloped over to him with an enthusiasm which he found touching. He was surprised to hear Sante’s voice from the doorway. “I gave her last night’s leftovers,” he said.

He went back inside to find his table set for breakfast, and Sante standing alongside it. “It’s not shaping up well,” he said, as the commissario took his seat. “Those lorries have been coming and going regularly for a couple of days now, carrying off anything they can before it’s too late.”

“The seasoned
prosciutto
?”

Sante nodded. “And the rest. Anything they can manage to take to pay off the debts. I’m told that includes the cars.”

“It’s an unfortunate business,” Soneri said.

“I’m not going to get my money back. Nor is anyone else. I mean those who gave him loans,” he said, in a tone which wavered between the tearful and the enraged.

“You won’t see Paride either.”

“He’s dead, is he? I thought so, ever since they put up those posters.”

“Killed up at Pratopiano.”

“Pratopiano? What was he doing there?”

“No idea. He’d been dead for some days and the body was already stinking.”

Sante stopped to reflect, then murmured, “It was bound to end up that way.” The tone in which he uttered those words implied that Paride’s death was in some way a substitute for the revenge he would never have. For the first time, Soneri grasped the depth of hatred Sante felt over the money lost, the deceit suffered and the trust betrayed.

“Don’t say anything to anyone. It’s up to the carabinieri to inform people. They’ll carry out a full investigation.”

“I saw a lot of to-ing and fro-ing yesterday, and I knew there must be something up.”

“When did you see the lorries?”

“It was late, around midnight. They finished about four.”

“You were still up at that hour?”

“How could I sleep with all that’s going on in my head? Do you have any idea what it means to lose your life’s savings?”

Soneri understood well enough, but he was lost for words. He never knew what to say when faced with life’s misfortunes. The only expressions that came to him were meaningless or banal. He let a few seconds go by then picked up the basket and handed it to Sante.

“I found a fair number of russolas and chanterelles,” he said, in an attempt to get off the subject. “Give them to Ida and see if she’d like to cook them.”

Sante emptied the basket and filled it with Soneri’s picnic lunch: salame, cheese, bread and fruit.

“You’ll have no problem finding water at Pratopiano, and it’s really good.”

Soneri said goodbye and set off into the dark with Dolly at his heels. She would occasionally disappear into the undergrowth in pursuit of some trail, but would then make a sudden
reappearance. He was well up the mountainside when he heard the noise of a truck coming up behind him, but by then he was almost at Boldara, from where there was no choice but to proceed on foot. Crisafulli brought the vehicle alongside and Captain Bovolenta leaned out of the window as he had done the previous evening. “You’re strong on your feet, I see.”

“You need strong feet for police investigations.”

“I am afraid that’s not true nowadays.”

“On second thoughts, you might be right there,” Soneri said, thinking of his assistant Juvara, who was forever glued to his computer. “But it’s the case round here,” he said, waving his hand in the direction of the woods and the rocky summit of Montelupo, where the rising sun offered the promise of another clear day.

As he continued on his way, he heard the roar of a four-byfour from further down the valley. Crisafulli announced, “That must be the magistrate. I got in touch with the ambulance service as well, for the removal of the body.”

The two officers left on guard greeted Soneri and their colleagues with relief. They reported hearing strange noises during the night and said that on several occasions they had taken the safety catch off their weapons.

Soneri smiled at the two fresh-faced youths from the city, reared on dark tales of the forest. Finally the Special Forensic Unit and Percudani, the magistrate, turned up. The magistrate complained of having drawn the short straw, but he was from those parts and Soneri enjoyed good relations with him.

“Who’s in charge here?” he asked, in mock bewilderment.

The commissario pointed to the carabinieri. “I was out hunting for mushrooms and I noticed the smell.”

“What a coincidence!” Percudani said, without much conviction.

The first enquiries confirmed Soneri’s suspicions. The dark
patch near where the body was lying was indeed blood, and the corpse had been dragged there by some animal.

Percudani gave the order to turn the body over and it was immediately evident that Paride Rodolfi had been killed by a bullet in the chest. Between the sternum and the stomach there was a little cavity with a mixture of coagulated blood, mud and fragments of clothing. The body, as rigid as a statue, was then wrapped in canvas. The stretcher-bearers struggled to lift it out of the hollow and carry it along the track. From time to time, those who remained could hear branches brush against the metal of the stretcher.

When the group disappeared down the slope, Bovolenta, Soneri, Crisafulli and the magistrate were left standing in a circle around the outline of body in the mud. Only then did they notice in the slime, which was still giving off an intolerable stench, the repulsive, writhing tangle of wax-coloured worms now deprived of their sustenance. The maresciallo turned his eyes away in disgust, while Percudani feigned interest in papers relating to the case, and engaged the agents from the Special Forensic Unit in conversation. The only one who remained undisturbed by that vision was Bovolenta, erect in his starched collar, eyes staring coldly out from under the peak of his cap.

“So this is death,” he finally said. “It’s even uglier than we imagine.”

The commissario remained silent, continuing to stare at the worms wriggling about where the corpse had been.

“Just as well the cold…” the captain said before adding, either from cynicism or in an attempt to reduce the tension, “Remember this spot, Commissario. You’ll get some fabulous mushrooms here.”

Some other members of the Special Forensic Unit arrived, kitted out like speleologists and commanded by a bespectacled
man who looked more like an accountant. They embarked on a finger-tip search of the sides of the hollow and the surrounding undergrowth.

“Any mushrooms that grow here will taste of fat,” Soneri said bitterly, but he was overwhelmed by a deep sadness which affected his every thought.

“He met the same end as a street-corner drug pusher,” Bovolenta said.

The commissario’s mind filled with images of himself as a boy, of Palmiro Rodolfi distributing gifts from the company on the feast of the
Befana
, of the awkward display of gratitude from his father, and of the whole village united in admiration for a family which had shown the enterprise to create a flourishing business able to dispense such largesse.

“Could you have imagined anything like this?” Bovolenta said, his anger beginning to break through his attempts at restraint.

Soneri shook his head. “I told you, I’m a stranger here now. Everything has changed.” He uttered the last words with a vehemence which disconcerted the captain. “My father worked for the Rodolfis, as did everyone else in the village.”

“Met the same end as a small-time pusher,” Bovolenta repeated quietly. “When there’s that level of debt, the motive is clear, but there are so many potential killers. That’s the problem.”

The commissario made no reply. The question of motive was the last thing on his mind. He had never before been so close, physically, to a corpse and yet so mentally distant from an investigation.

“Found anything?” Bovolenta said to the head of the forensic squad.

“Not so much as half a shell. A few footprints,” he said. The offhand tone made it clear he attached no importance to that discovery.

The stench was becoming overwhelming. Soneri watched the daylight spread through the leafless trees, each coloured in a different shade, but all he wanted was to get away from that stinking spot.

“If you need me, you know where to find me,” he said.

Bovolenta stood up and shook his hand, but before Soneri had a chance to move off, he shot him a glance which was perhaps meant as confidential but which came over as merely embarrassed. “I’d like to invite you to have dinner with me one evening.”

Soneri nodded his agreement and set off down the path with Dolly at his heels. She had made herself his shadow, and this worried him because he did not want the dog to grow too fond of him. Dolly had already lost one master and he had no wish to inflict more pain on her, but nor did he wish to hurt himself, since he had already become fond of her. With animals – as with people – his principal aim was to avoid inflicting hurt. He walked briskly down the track, too briskly, he decided, when he stumbled and almost fell. In a grove of fir trees, under whose canopy it seemed still to be night, he almost bumped into a detachment of carabinieri making their way up to Pratopiano, panting under the weight of the implements they were carrying. He stepped aside to let them pass, but as he did so, he felt a pang of anxiety and a lump in his throat. There were more carabinieri at Boldara. The whole of Montelupo seemed now to be crawling with them, and their presence brought back stories told by his father about the round-ups along the Gothic Line in ’44. He recognised a group of journalists assembled alongside the reservoir, but he kept away from them.