The Puppeteer (5 page)

“The Carabinieri will have been there ever since Maltese was shot.”

Trotti replied sharply, “Don’t talk to me about the Carabinieri—I don’t want to know what they’re doing and I don’t care. But I want you to get to the paper. Find out what Maltese was working on. See if you can locate the girlfriend before the Carabinieri get to her.”

“How am I going to set about finding her? Milan is a big place—and you haven’t got the photograph.”

Trotti did not reply. He did not speak again until they had reached the Po.

“Washington?”

“Leonardelli?” Magagna laughed. “He’s always had powerful friends.”

“A bastard.”

Magagna skirted the sleeping provincial town—the towers were lit up and pointing towards the sky. He turned into via Milano.

There were no lights on in the house.

Magagna got out, opened the door for Trotti and helped him climb out of the car. Trotti had the impression of being an oversize baby—or a war cripple.

“You’ll go to the
Popolo d’Italia
for me, won’t you?”

Magagna rang the bell on the gate. “I don’t work for you anymore.”

“You still owe me a couple of favors.”

A light came on in the kitchen.

“Well?”

Magagna did not reply.

“Finding the girl should be a challenge for you.”

Magagna frowned.

“I recognized the photograph,” Trotti said softly. “I don’t like coincidences and it was a big coincidence. The girl in the picture—your friend Lia Guerra. The same photograph that we have in the Questura.”

O
N THE AFTERNOON
of 2nd August 1960, the postman rang the bell at the Villa Laura. He had
Il Tempo
, several bills and a registered letter to deliver. The bell echoed emptily within the villa and there was no reply. The Fiat 600, however, was parked on the drive.

“The professor has gone to the sea. He’s taken the train and he forgot to inform the post office,” the postman muttered under his breath and left.

He returned at the same time the following day. Still no reply to the bell. He cautiously stepped around the villa. At the back of the house, he discovered that one of the window blinds had not been properly closed but was stuck a little way from the sill.

Behind it, the window was open. There was a black mark on the sill.

The postman contacted the police and, later that same day, two men arrived on bicycles and saw that the black smear on the sill was in fact dried blood. The Pretore was summoned and in his presence, the two officers of the Pubblica Sicurezza made their way through the window into the Villa Laura.

A building of the late nineteenth century, it had thick walls to protect it in winter from the chill of the nearby Po and in summer from the stifling heat that would lie like a plague across the plain. Despite the heat outside—it was one of the hottest summers in living memory—the interior of the house was chill.

The floor was of marble and there were three flights of stairs leading to the second floor.

Belluno’s body was on the first flight. He wore a cotton singlet and lay with his head pointing downstairs. A pair of underpants had been stuffed into his mouth and suspenders—of the old-fashioned, pre-war type—had been pulled tight about his neck. The battered head lay in a pool of blood; the tongue lolled.

At the top of the flight of stairs, one of the policemen found Belluno’s shattered dentures; he also found another corpse.

Eva Bardizza had been wearing pajamas when she died. Like Belluno, her body was covered with lesions; she sat, part immersed, in a bath of blood and water.

The length of the stairway, along the walls, by the window frames, along the doors, even in the bathroom, there were broad smears of blood that had dried and turned black.

Ismaele Belluno was sixty-nine years old at the time of his death.

Born in Laterza, he had moved north after the Great War and had founded a political club in Piacenza. It was in the same city that he had met his wife—a woman of solid middle-class background—and had launched a small publishing firm. Politically, Belluno was a disciple to Mazzini; aesthetically, he admired d’Annunzio.

With the rise of Mussolini, Belluno had moved away from politics and had started specializing in textbooks. Well-written and intelligent, they were nonetheless flattering towards the regime and towards the person of the Duce. Understandably they won favor with the Ministry of Education.

Belluno became a rich man. He bought an apartment in Piacenza. He also bought Villa Laura—possibly because it was nearer to Milan—and then in 1933, he bought another house on the Ligurian coast, near San Remo, which he called La Ca’ degli Ulivi—the House of Olives; it nestled between the olive groves and had a splendid view of the Mediterranean.

His wife died in 1952 after a long illness. By this time, both his children were married. He went to live at Villa Laura, where a housekeeper, Signorina Fava, looked after him until her marriage
in 1957. A few months later, answering an advertisement in the local press, Eva Bardizza became the new housekeeper. She had once worked in a factory and then as a maid in Turin before returning to her native city and the job at the Villa Laura. Intelligent, slim, with blue eyes, she could drive and cook. For Belluno, she soon became more than a mere housekeeper.

At the time of her death, she was not yet twenty-eight years old.

Provincia Pavese, 8th August, 1960

The dual murder at the Villa Laura continues to be a pole of interest not only in the city and the province but throughout the Peninsula, despite the more pleasurable activities that the continuing good weather offers to our compatriots
.

The officers of the Questura, under the leadership of Commissario Bagnante, and in regular liaison with the investigating judge, Dottor Giacomo Dell’Orto, continue in their ceaseless quest for clues that will help them identify the heartless assassin of Prof. Belluno and his young housekeeper, Eva Bardizza
.

Three aspects of the nature of the crime have already made themselves evident to the investigators:

The forensic medical officer has studied both corpses and in a signed statement states his conviction that while the unfortunate Belluno died as a result of the blows he received to the head, the young woman came to her untimely end in the bath where she was drowned. The officer goes on to say that both victims were battered with more than one blunt object. A heavy onyx paperweight has been identified and the blood traces belong to the victims
.

It has also been revealed that the investigators found no signs of struggle in Belluno’s bedroom. On the other hand, violence occurred in Bardizza’s bedroom, where ample bloodstains were left on the wall, the floor and along the frame of the large window that gives on to the garden. Also on the window, the investigators have identified the fingerprints in blood of the poor woman
.

Furthermore, it was discovered late Tuesday night that a certain Sig.na Scabini of Borgo Genovese (Pv), twenty-three years old and a primary-school teacher, has informed the investigating officers that on the night of the murder (1st—2nd August) she was awoken from her sleep by a scream; she has stated that the scream occurred just after three o’clock in the morning. Sig.na Scabini lives with her parents on the edge of Borgo Genovese. Their house is 300 meters from the scene of the crime
.

“P
APA, YOU SHOULD
be sleeping.”

Trotti turned. “You’re up early.”

“I’m going to Mass.” Pioppi wore a nightdress that hung loosely from her shoulders, revealing the angularity of her thin body. Her neck was narrow, the tendons taut, the skin pulled tight against the bones of her neck and chest. “Would you like some coffee?”

There were several folders open on the bed: pages of sloping handwriting that had turned from blue to mauve with the passing of time. There were also old newspaper cuttings.

Pioppi sat down beside her father. “What on earth was that hideous jacket you were wearing last night?”

“I borrowed it.”

“You could have borrowed something a bit less scruffy.” Her hand went to his forehead. “Your bruises are going down. How do you feel?”

“Better.”

“Last night, I scarcely recognized you—you were like some monster out of a film.”

“Thank you, Pioppi.”

She picked up one of the cuttings. “Ramoverde.” She frowned. “Why are you going through all these dusty folders?”

“Let’s have breakfast, Pioppi.” His hand touched hers.

“Who’s that?” She pointed at a picture of Ramoverde.

“Are there any croissants?”

She shook her head. “I can make some toast.” She nodded towards the photograph. “He’s got small eyes.” She turned to her father. “Who is he?”

“An old friend.”

“An old friend in handcuffs!” She laughed—almost gaily—and stood up. “Be ready in five minutes.” She went out of his bedroom and later he heard the sound of saucepans and plates coming from the kitchen.

Trotti looked at the photograph.

A friend?

At the time, Ramoverde was not even forty-two years old, but the picture showed him as tired. He looked straight at the camera and the reporter’s flashing bulb. Beside him, head down, a police officer was accompanying him to the waiting car. Ramoverde’s hands were handcuffed.

Small eyes, a lopsided face that revealed no emotion and hair that was fast thinning. Yet despite the flashbulb, despite the humiliation of the handcuffs, despite the fatigue in the eyes, there was something attractive about Douglas Ramoverde. He could have been a film star.

His mother was a rich Argentinian from Buenos Aires who died a few months after bringing her only child into the world in 1918. Ramoverde’s childhood had been spent partly in South America, partly in Milan where he later went to university. Douglas Ramoverde gave up his studies in 1941 to marry Signorina Belluno. For a year he was posted to the military hospital in Piacenza and it was not until after the war, in 1946, that he finally acquired his degree in medicine. By then, his son was two years old.

Trotti looked up.

The same son was now dead, lying in the morgue in Salò.

On his father’s side, Douglas Ramoverde had an uncle, a member of parliament and a major shareholder in the Società Sicula per l’Elettricità, who helped him find a well-paid job in his company.

Ramoverde was sent to Palermo but within three months,
the uncle had denounced his nephew to the police, accusing him of embezzlement. Soon afterwards, Ramoverde returned to Piacenza.

He found work in the municipal hospital but was suspended in 1952 following various accusations. Perhaps it was his good looks that had got him into trouble. It was rumored that Douglas Ramoverde had been carrying out abortions—and making a lot of money for himself.

It was in 1952 that Douglas Ramoverde set up his dental practice. He had no qualification in dentistry, his clientele was limited to old ladies who succumbed to his matinée-idol good looks, and had it not been for the financial help from his father-in-law, Ramoverde would have found it difficult to maintain the standard of living which he enjoyed—a Fiat 1100, an apartment and a surgery at 700,000 lire per year, a maid, weekends at the Villa Laura, long summer holidays at San Remo.

“Papa!” Pioppi called from the kitchen.

The muscles had become stiff. It hurt Trotti just to stand up and put on his dressing gown. Walking slowly, one hand using the wall as a support, he made his way to the kitchen.

The air was thick with the smell of fresh coffee.

“I phoned on Friday night, Pioppi, but you didn’t answer.”

“I was with the Nonna.” She poured coffee into two cups.

“Your mother phoned from America.”

“Two sugars, Papa?”

“She wanted her diplomas.”

A distracted laugh. “I sent them off years ago.”

Trotti lowered himself on to the chair. “You never told me.”

“You’re hardly ever at home.”

“You should have let me know. You know how your mother gets angry.”

“She likes getting angry with you—it makes her think she’s still a young woman in love. Toast?”

The clock on the refrigerator ticked noisily. It was not yet six o’clock and Trotti watched his daughter as she took the toasted bread from the oven and placed it on a plate. She looked very thin.

“Did you tell anybody I was going to the lake?”

“The lake?” She frowned. “Why should I tell anybody?”

“You and the Nonna were the only people who knew I was going to Gardesana.”

“Well?”

Trotti shrugged. “Perhaps it was me they were aiming at.”

She sat down and took his hand. “Papa,” she said and her eyes reminded him of the little girl she had once been. She shook her head.

“A coincidence, then.”

“Look after yourself, Papa. You take risks.” She shook her head again, this time more violently. “You mustn’t, do you understand. I don’t want to lose you.”

“You’re having breakfast with me?”

“A cup of coffee—I’m not hungry.”

“You must eat.”

When she shook her head this time, it was like a willful child. Her hair, once dark and glowing like her mother’s, seemed to have lost its gloss. “I can’t concentrate when I eat.”

“Concentrate on what, Pioppi? You’ll die of starvation.”

“I’ve got my exam on Wednesday.”

“Be reasonable. You’ve already sat your urbanistica exam once and the professor wanted to give you twenty-six. Twenty-six out of thirty, Pioppi—it’s a good mark. Nothing to be ashamed of. When I was at the university, I was pleased to get twenty-six—I don’t think I got it more than twice in all my university career. But you—you turn twenty-six down?”