The Puppeteer (10 page)

Trotti looked out of the window. The exterior of the station was splattered with pigeon droppings.

May in Milan. The trees had already pushed out the green buds into the air and the petrol fumes.

“Near Senigallia,” Magagna said, and turning on the engine started to drive. They went down via Buenos Aires and then turned left on to one of the ring roads.

“How did you manage to find her?”

“Nobody knows about the photograph, Commissario?”

Trotti shook his head. “Unless, of course, it has been found in the Opel.”

“You realize that you could be getting me into trouble?”

“Have I ever gotten you into trouble before?” Before Magagna had time to reply, Trotti asked, “Where did you find her?”

“Milan is off limits for you—and you know it. You haven’t got anything to worry about. Your career is behind you. But
if it’s discovered that I have been helping an out-of-city officer in making enquiries without the Questor’s permission …” He turned to look at Trotti. “My career could go up in smoke.”

“Maltese died in my arms.”

“Your feelings of guilt or responsibility have got nothing to do with me.” He braked at traffic lights and for a moment the high gothic spires of the Duomo were visible above the rooftops. Then the lights changed and Magagna took a left turn. “Your guilt won’t get me a promotion.”

“If you have any doubts about helping me, Magagna, turn round and take me back to the station.” He added, “And light up a cigarette—perhaps that will help you relax.”

Magagna lit a cigarette but he did not relax.

A few minutes later they were at Porta Ticinese. Magagna bumped the Fiat up onto the sidewalk. A tram went clattering past. The afternoon passengers took no notice of the two police officers.

They got out of the car and walked along the street. To the right there was an open space where sparse grass and bushes tried to grow beneath the detritus of the city and a vast billboard, a billboard advertising blue jeans
—“If you love me, follow me.”

The sun had come out.

“You want something to drink first, Commissario?” Magagna had stopped in front of a bar, where the smell of coffee and hot bread wafted out onto the sidewalk.

“I want to see her and then get the six o’clock train back home.”

Magagna said nothing; he merely nudged at his glasses.

The shop was down a side turning. A row of old buildings that had once been on the edge of the city. Some were in a state of advanced decay but others had been recently restored and repainted and the shop fronts had been modernized.

“You can buy anything here—a flea market.” Magagna smiled. “Jeans, American clothes, antique furniture—and whisky taken from the TIR trucks. All part of our submerged economy.”

Trotti laughed. “Submerged economy.”

GRAFFITI
—the neon letters blinked bravely in the sunlight.

“This is where she works.”

Without bothering to look at the shop front, with its display of sweaters and shirts, Trotti entered the premises. A bell rang.

“Can I help you?”

There was a lot of piping—quite pointless and painted a vivid red—and a lot of mirrors. Overhead lights were directed down on the racks of secondhand clothes. The carpet was of coarse jute. A smell of incense hung in the air and piles of neatly ironed shirts and slacks had been placed along the shelves. The shelves formed a checkered motif; behind them more mirrors.

“Can I help you?” the woman repeated. She was middle-aged and smoked a cigarette that drooped from lips as red as the piping.

Moving sideways, she came down the three steps and smiled at Trotti. The eyes were less welcoming.

“I would like to talk to Signorina Guerra.”

She took the cigarette from her mouth and placed her hand on her thigh. “I know of nobody with that name.” There were traces of lipstick on the large teeth.

Magagna said, “The girl who works for you.”

The woman looked at Trotti in silence.

Magagna showed her his card.

“I’ll get her for you.” The woman turned and moved away on her gold high heels. There was the design of a horse’s head on her jean pocket. The tightness of her jeans did not suit the matronly hips.

Magagna raised his sunglasses and winked at Trotti.

“Signori?”

The girl came down the three steps and Trotti saw how much she had changed. She recognized Trotti and her face fell. “What the hell do you want?” she asked, her voice low and angry.

“How are you, Signorina Guerra?”

“Go away.” She glanced at Magagna. “Leave me alone and go away.”

“I must ask you a few questions.”

“I work here.” She looked about the shop hurriedly. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“That’s why I needed to see you.”

“What does he want?” She nodded towards Magagna.

“Signor Caiazzo works with me.”

Her eyes turned back to Trotti. “Go away—you’ve done enough damage as it is.”

Trotti held up his hand. “Perhaps we could speak. Just for a few minutes. Signorina, I merely want to ask you for your help.”

The other woman was standing at the top of the flight of three stairs, a hand on her hip and her eyes squinting through the tobacco smoke.

“Alone,” Trotti added.

The older woman heaved a sigh that caused her ample chest to heave. “There’s a stockroom at the back.” She gestured with her thumb. “Try not to steal anything.”

Trotti took Lia Guerra by the arm. Magagna opened the door—painted the same deep red—and they found themselves in a dusty room little bigger than a cupboard. Lia Guerra turned on the overhead light. The naked bulb threw shadows on her hard face.

An old telephone—without a dial—was screwed to the wall.

“Well?”

“Maltese is dead.”

For a fraction of a second there was no reaction. Then the face seemed to change. She caught her breath. Moisture formed at the corner of her eyes.

She had changed—in the photograph taken by the Nucleon Politico she had been wearing a handkerchief round her neck and the young face had an intense proud beauty as she pulled back her arm in the act of hurling a missile. Now she was older, the face worn and slightly waxen. The prettiness had not gone, but it was going.

“Dead, shot through the heart.”

The wet eyes looked at him.

“Here.”

She shook her head.

“Here,” Trotti repeated, holding out the pistol that he had taken from his pocket. “The gun that Maltese was shot with.”

“Why?”

“Take it.”

She looked at the pistol in horror.

“Take it, feel it, have a good look at it—the gun that killed him,” Trotti said and he thrust the P38 into her small hands. “The gun that murdered Maltese.”

A tear ran down her cheek.

“I haven’t seen him for …” A sob stopped her.

“And now you won’t see him again.”

Lia Guerra glanced at Magagna.

“Where did you meet Maltese? You were living together, weren’t you?”

“Not satisfied with … not satisfied with having already ruined my life, you’ve come here to insult me and to taunt me.” The eyes flared with anger. “And to soil his memory.”

“You ruined your life—nobody else.”

Magagna said, more softly, “Please understand, Signorina. We need your cooperation.”

“I can’t help you.”

“I think you can,” Trotti replied.

“I haven’t seen him—I haven’t seen Maltese for a very long time.”

“Very strange.” Trotti took a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully lifted the gun from her loose grasp. “You haven’t seen him but your fingerprints are all over the weapon that you used to kill him.” He wrapped the handkerchief round the gun and dropped it into his pocket.

The girl had visibly paled.

“What can you tell me about Maltese, Signorina Guerra?”

She hung her head.

“What do you know about Maltese? Or did he call himself Ramoverde?”

“Go away. Just go away and leave me alone.”

“Tenente Caiazzo, do you have the cuffs? I don’t think the young lady is going to cooperate.”

She continued to hold her head down. A couple of tears fell to the dusty floor.

“Where did you meet him?”

“You think you’re clever, don’t you?” She looked up, tossing back her hair and she was no longer crying. “You think you know everything, don’t you, Trotti? And you think you can manipulate people just as if they were animals.”

Magagna produced a handkerchief and handed it to her.

“For God’s sake, Trotti, what d’you want of me?”

“I want to know why Ramoverde was murdered.”

“And you think I can help you?” With the handkerchief she wiped her eyes. “But I’ve got my life to live. I’m twenty-seven years old and I’m not going to go back to prison.”

Trotti looked around the room. “So instead you sell secondhand clothes?”

“What the hell am I supposed to do? You want me to throw bombs? You want me to fire bullets into people’s legs?” She gesticulated.

“Keep your voice down,” Trotti said sharply and he caught hold of her wrist. The girl was wearing a checked shirt and with his other hand Trotti rolled back the sleeve.

“An expensive habit.”

The arm was scarred and hard where needles had pierced the skin.

“A temporary arrest, Signorina Guerra,” Trotti said. “Then you’ll be sent to a center for detoxification.”

She pulled her arm free, fell backwards and crumpled onto the floor. “You bastard,” she muttered and she scratched at her arm.

T
HERE WERE THREE
locks and the girl fumbled with the keys, while Trotti and Magagna waited on the dusty, foul-smelling landing. The apartment was on the top floor of a building that gave onto a courtyard. Three stories below them, children were playing between the washing lines.

The housing estate was near Piazza Lodi and the sound of rumbling trains came from the shunting yards.

“My home.” Lia Guerra opened the door for them.

The small room smelt of dirt. A mattress lay on the floor, the bedsheets were pushed back and had not been straightened. There was no cover to the pillow. On the floor, a lid served as an ashtray and was brimming over with burnt-out stubs.

“Did Maltese live here?”

“No.” The girl sat down cross-legged on the mattress.

“Were you lovers?” Trotti asked.

“That’s got nothing to do with you.”

The ceiling had been painted but the plaster was beginning to flake.

A carnation placed in an old wine bottle had started to wilt. Its tight petals and its deep red color were out of place in the room.

Magagna moved carefully from the door to the sink and then to a cupboard and then back to the sink.

“Why did he have your photo?”

“I knew Maltese,” she said. “Does that make us lovers? You think I must spread my legs for every man I meet?”

“There was a time when you preferred women.”

The girl said nothing but her face flushed.

Magagna was at the sink. He called Trotti over. Magagna was sniffing. “Where’s the lavatory?” Magagna asked the girl.

“On the landing.”

“Can you smell it?” he said softly to Trotti.

“Smell what?”

“Urine—or rather uric acid. Somebody’s been pissing down the sink.” He looked over his shoulder at the girl. “A man’s been living here. That’s a man’s trick—she’s more likely to empty her chamber pot in the lavatory on the landing.” Then Magagna moved away. He reminded Trotti of a dog following a scent.

“Signorina Guerra, where did you meet Maltese?” Trotti returned to the girl. He pulled up the only chair and sat down opposite her.

She looked up at him, was about to say something, but her voice was stifled by the rumbling of a train. The entire building shook for a few seconds.

“Where did you meet him?”

“In a bar. L’Orchidea Bianca—a bar in the Brera.”

“Just like that?”

She shrugged.

“And you became lovers?”

She stood up and Magagna, who was looking through a pile of old newspapers, put down what he was looking at and followed her. The young woman approached the sink and poured herself a glass of water. She turned and leaned against the sink. “Do you enjoy bullying people, Trotti?”

“Maltese is dead—and I want to know who killed him.”

“And that’s why you blackmail me? That’s why you get me to put my fingerprints on the murder weapon?”

“Signorina Guerra, I need your cooperation—and that is something that you can give me of your own free will. Or else I will have to force you into giving it.” He paused. “What was Maltese doing in Milan?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did he talk to you about?”

“About things which do not concern you.”

“Did he mention the name Novara to you?”

She shrugged and looked away.

“Signorina Guerra—be reasonable. You are making life difficult for me—and for yourself. Or perhaps you don’t care that he was murdered?”

“I thought I was your number one suspect. I thought that was the purpose of your performance with the gun.”

Magagna was looking through the cupboards—old wooden cupboards that had never been varnished. He was removing the contents and placing them in neat piles upon the floor.

“You sent me to prison once, Commissario. Isn’t that enough?”

“I never forced you into being a terrorist. And you were lucky—your friend Gracchi is still inside.”

“Gracchi,” she repeated disdainfully.

“You once risked your life for him.”

“When I was a kid,” she said softly, almost talking to herself, and still not looking at Trotti. “I used to screw up my eyes and pray that my real mother would come and find me. I never wanted to believe that the woman who shared my father’s bed was my real mother. I prayed, hoping that Jesus would hear me. But there is no Jesus.” She looked at Trotti. “And there is no revolution. Gracchi and his ideas—he fooled me just as the priests had fooled me. The working class? The working class doesn’t need me—they never did.”

“Four bottles of contraband whisky,” Magagna said. He placed the bottles on the floor. “And two cartons of Kent cigarettes—also contraband.”

“At least Maltese did not want to win me over to some empty cause. Nor did he want to climb over me, use my body while telling me that he respected my intellect.”