The Dark Valley: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 2) (8 page)

“You told me you still had trust. Have you lost it now?”

“As long as Palmiro was there … He was the same as us. He spoke in dialect. But now …?”

“And we can’t rest for thinking about how he died,” Ida broke in. “We would never ever have dreamed that a man like Palmiro would have hanged himself.”

“That’s what they always say about suicides.”

“Yes, but you didn’t know the man! He was as much a ladies’ man as when he was in his twenties. Some people would swear that he and his daughter-in-law…”

“Shut up!” Sante tried to interrupt his wife. “What are you saying?”

Ida stopped, but her expression was of out-and-out malice, and this was the most telling of judgments.

“Who was it who asked you for the money, Palmiro or Paride?”

“Paride keeps well away. It was Palmiro who came. It was his job to do the rounds. He’d kept in touch from the days when he started up the dairy business.”

“What guarantees did he offer?”

Sante gave another shrug. “I told you. It’s all to do with trust. We wrote the transactions and the dates down in a notebook and he added his scribble and that was that.”

The commissario’s expression must have shown his concern, because he saw Sante bow his head. “You do know that a mark like that is not worth a thing?”

Sante nodded.

“How long has this been going on?”

“Many years now,” Ida said, accompanying the words with a wave of the hand which was meant to say that it was a long established practice.

“If it’s been going so well for all this time, what makes you so scared now?” the commissario said.

Sante’s expression lightened for a moment, but his dark mood returned as he started speaking. “As I’ve explained, because of Palmiro’s death. Nobody thought … and that son
of his who’s never here … the few times we’ve actually seen him he would speak in big words we couldn’t understand. He is used to discussions with bankers and financiers who handle money all day long. Many of them turned up at his villa and we were expected to bring them food we had made ourselves. We didn’t get on with them.”

“I can understand the question of trust, but to lend money blindly like that…”

Sante heaved a deep sigh and looked at his wife. It seemed that merely talking about it made him the more fearful of impending ruin.

“Palmiro had a way of convincing us. He repeated always the same thing. If we grow, you grow, the whole village grows. Who could quarrel with that? After the war, the poverty here was terrible. He made us feel like traitors if we refused him.”

“Tell him about the interest,” Ida hissed, without looking at her husband.

Sante sighed once more. “Well, he paid more than the banks.”

“Much more?”

“It depends. You had to bargain with him as though you were buying a batch of cheese. If you seemed to hesitate, he would increase the rate he was offering, then he would do the sums in his head and tell you how much you would gain after five, ten or fifteen years. It was hard to resist.”

“He was a right sly one in business,” Ida said, cutting the air with her hand.

“Did you ever see any returns?”

“If you insisted, Palmiro would settle up. It did happen a few times, but in the majority of cases, he wouldn’t let go. ‘If you give me the money for five years more, I’ll raise the rate by half a per cent,’ he would say. Then he would churn out numbers that made your head spin.”

“So you’re saying that no-one withdrew their money?”

“Virtually everyone round here can manage, so the money they gave him was money they were putting by for their children, or to keep themselves in comfort in old age, or just out of prudence. In this village, they’re great savers. They might live in hovels, but having some savings makes them feel more secure.”

Soneri could hear his own father talk of his fears for some “tomorrow” when anything might happen. The peasants always feared hailstones, or drought, or an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. “I’m sure Paride will do the right thing,” were the only words the commissario could find to reassure his hosts.

“Well, let us hope so,” Sante groaned, without conviction.

Soneri rose to go to bed, but Sante’s almost imploring look detained him a minute longer. “What can I do?” he said.

Sante murmured, “Nothing.”

Even before daybreak, the skies seemed to have shed their earlier heaviness. Soneri left the road between the houses, keeping Montelupo, still cloaked in a thick mist, directly ahead of him. He walked past the shuttered houses in Groppo and turned off to start his climb towards Croce, hoping to find some ceps in the more shaded areas which would be still damp with the dew falling from leafless trees. He came in sight of the chapel of the Madonna del Rosario, a place of pilgrimage in the month of May, and proceeded through the tangled vegetation which flourished in the clay of the lower valley and gave off the pungent scents of the wild. Before moving into the hornbeam woods, he stopped to get his breath. The last houses were now out of sight, and within the woods he felt himself both hunter and prey. When he looked up, he could make out wisps of mist clinging so closely to the peaks as to resemble smoke from a fire. Above the path, a sandstone balcony had crumbled under the pressure of the mountain streams and had slipped down into the valley, creating a deep scar in the woods.

If he had had sufficient strength in his legs, he would have already been at the mountain huts and perhaps even at the bar on Lake Santo which was not far from the peak, but first he wanted to reconnoitre the hillside and the watery gullies where the weak winter sun could not penetrate. He gripped the trunks of trees as he clambered down, trying to recall
movements he had learned so many years earlier in outings with his father. The third time he fell, he saw them: a colony of “trumpets of death” seeming to intone a
miserere
in the shadow of an enormous oak.

Sante’s words rang in his ears, but he refused to be put off. His principal concern was finding someone able to cook those mushrooms the right way. He left them where they were when he heard the sound of something crashing about in the undergrowth close at hand, knocking into the lower branches of the trees. He decided it must be a wild boar, sniffing the air and detecting his presence. Soneri stood stock still, listening, and then, straight in front of him, he saw a strip of land which gave the appearance of having been ploughed. He swept aside the leaves and uncovered a second family of “trumpets of death”, crushed into tiny pieces by blows from a club. Evidently there was someone who did believe they were omens of ill fortune. Shortly afterwards, he heard the brushwood breaking as the boar made off. Once he was sure the beast was well away, he returned to the path, from which it was now impossible to see down into the valley.

A thick blanket of mist came down, turning the countryside grey. The huts could not be far off, but he was fearful of getting lost, and afraid too of those shots fired at some target, whatever that target was meant to be. At last he saw the outlines of the stone buildings, sheds for climbing equipment and summer dwellings in the mountaineering season when the passes echoed with the many languages used in that borderland between sea and plain. Inside one of them rubbish was scattered all around – empty cans, broken bottles, plastic bags and the remains of tinned food – but the ash in the fireplace and the crumpled bedclothes on the wooden bench were evidence of some recent presence.

When he stepped back outside, the mist had lifted and this made him resolve to carry on. It was eleven o’clock, so he would have time to reach Lake Santo, see if the bar was open and make his way back, even if this meant another day without a single cep being picked. He quickened his pace along the mule path, coming out into the pure air of the clearing with the bar, high up the mountainside, beyond the point where the wood gave way to moss and stone. It was cold, and it occurred to Soneri that the first snows of winter could not be far off. This thought and the sight of the remote bar made him think of his father with that lurching gait of his, as if he were pushing himself forward by putting pressure on one leg, a habit which spoke of experience gained over a lifetime of grim, debilitating hardship.

Even in the dying days of autumn, the bar was open. Baldi, the owner, was still behind the counter, not yet ready to close up for the season. He was short and sturdy, with white hair and moustache.

The two men exchanged greetings, before Soneri said: “Are there still many hunters around?”

“The season’s nearly over.”

“What about the roe deer?”

“Not much doing. They’ve got cleverer and go down the valley into the reserve.”

“And the trout in the lake?”

“They’re not biting any more. You would swear they feel winter coming on.”

“Same as us. When do you shut up shop?”

“Any day now. Or at the first snow fall – which is more or less the same thing.”

“You think the snow’s nearly here?”

“Feel the air. There’s frost every morning now.”

Two shabbily dressed men came into the bar. One of
them, in a heavy foreign accent, asked for two coffees and two grappas.

“Nowadays we have to put up with all kinds of foreign wildlife,” Baldi said contemptuously, but speaking in dialect so that he would not be understood.

“What do they do here?” Soneri said. “I saw that other people had been down at the huts.”

“Everything and nothing. They come from Liguria and Tuscany with all kinds of stuff. I’ve even seen some of them struggling up here with suitcases.”

“Are the carabinieri aware of this?”

Baldi shrugged his shoulders. “Occasionally they come to make checks, but by the time they get here, everything seems to be in order. These people bury whatever they have in the woods.”

“Who do they sell it to?”

“Well, you hear so many stories. They pass it on to other people who take it to the cities. Some of it’s given to the kids in the village. They’re at it now too.”

“Drugs? Around here?”

Baldi gave another shrug. “Everything’s changed. They get bored. The winters are long, there’s nothing to occupy their minds, so they look for something different. If they’d ever known hunger, like this lot…” Baldi said, indicating the strangers with his chin.

Soneri’s thoughts went back to his father, setting off for work with three pears and a crust of bread for his midday meal. He changed the subject. “Do you see the Woodsman from time to time?”

“He hasn’t been here for a while. The woods are his world. Here, it’s too open for his tastes. When you reach a certain altitude, the mountain’s no good for keeping secrets. You can see everything that’s going on, even if there are very few people watching.”

Soneri took his time to decipher those words, the time needed to light a cigar, but he still failed fully to grasp their sense.

“What does he do that anyone might watch?” the commissario said, instinctively, without thinking.

Another shrug. “Nothing, but he wouldn’t find out here what he finds in the woods.”

“You mean the wild boar?”

Smiling, Baldi looked at him and murmured, “Yes, the boar.”

Soneri understood there was more to it, but he chose not to ask. It would have been in vain, but he was left with the disagreeable feeling of having been outwitted.

“Nobody knows Montelupo like him. He reckons he owns it. Who’s going to get the better of him? Delrio? Volpi?” Baldi spoke with a sneer in his voice.

The two foreigners got up, paid their bill and were gone. The commissario had watched as the one who had done the ordering took out a thick wodge of notes and peeled one off, as the fixers and middlemen who had once been active in those parts used to do.

“There’s no telling who’s coming and going on these mountains nowadays,” Baldi said.

“Are you sometimes afraid?”

“I’ve got my gun under the counter, and my aim’s as good as ever.”

A light haze was hanging over the lake, like steam from a pot coming to the boil.

“Have you heard what’s going on in the village?” Soneri said.

“Palmiro? It’s terrible. I would never have thought of him hanging himself. Did you know that he and the Woodsman were good friends?”

The commissario shook his head. “I knew he was a friend of Capelli’s, and he too ended up with his head in a noose.”

“The only one of the trio left is the Woodsman. They were all from the Madoni hills, raised in the poorest families in the valleys. They knew what it was to go hungry, and they were all desperate to get out.”

“Do you think the Woodsman too could kill himself?”

“Not unless he’s cornered. When his time comes, he’ll lie down in the woods and the worms will get to him before the dogs do. He’s happy in his world and he’s never cared for money.”

“Where can I find him?”

“Somewhere on Montelupo. He only goes home when it’s dark, that is, unless he decides to rough it in some hideout for the night. Your only hope is that you’ll bump into him on some path. If he’s in the mood, he’ll talk to you, and if not he’ll slip away the moment he catches sight of you.”

“How does he live?”

“He’s never short of meat,” Baldi chuckled. “Apart from that, he sells firewood and charcoal. He’s the only one left who can make it.”

“Did he stay in touch with Palmiro?”

“I don’t think there was much contact. They would run into each other on Montelupo, but they had grown apart. Money creates boundaries that aren’t easy to cross. It’s true that once they were inseparable, but then Palmiro married Evelina. The Woodsman and Capelli both had their eye on her, so the friendship between them was bust.”

“The same old story, women…”

“There’s more to it than that. Palmiro’s money was what made up her mind. Not that Capelli was short of cash, but he spent it on whores.”

“Was this Evelina really so beautiful?”

“They were all after her in those days, and the Woodsman completely lost his head over her. They say she was quite keen on him too. He had more of a spark to him than the other two, but then her parents persuaded her to make the most of her good looks. Was she really going to go off and live in a den in the woods when she had the chance of marrying a man who could show her the good life?”