Big Italy (19 page)

“You were going to marry him?”

A distant smile. “Marry him, get pregnant and have his children.”

There was more knocking at the door. The sound of muffled voices, both male and female.

“And you, signora?” Pisanelli asked. He looked tired and his eyes were bloodshot.

She moved her head. She propped her body with her hand against the desktop. Her chin now touched her shoulder. The position gave her an innocent, demure air. “What about me?”

“In the will?”

“It’s yet to be applied.”

“What do you get?”

“More than enough.”

Pisanelli raised his eyebrows.

“The house in Segrate and a lot more.” She shook her head. “Don’t think for a minute I wanted Carlo dead.” Her glance went back to Trotti. “Carlo was a lot older than me—but that’s what I needed. Someone to look after me and someone I could care for.” She breathed deeply. “And now I have nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing but memories.”

Trotti asked, “You’re sure Turellini was killed by his ex-wife?”

“As sure as anyone can be.”

“Carlo Turellini had enemies.”

“Of course.”

“Enemies within the medical world. People who were jealous of him.”

“Carlo wanted the professorship at the university. He ran for it in 1991, but as you know, he failed. The cards were stacked against him. A lot of people didn’t like him.”

“He was interested in power?”

“He wasn’t interested in politics. He’d dabbled a bit with the Destra Nazionale. Carlo was interested in his job. That’s why he wanted to run the new university clinic.”

“Why?”

“Everybody agreed Carlo was competent. Even his enemies. If he were to become director of the Sant’Eusebio, he would have been a thorn in the flesh for several colleagues and rivals who coveted the post.”

“There were people who wanted him dead?”

“Dead?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Out of the way, perhaps—but not dead.”

The thumping was now imperious. Someone was shouting.

“Signora, did you meet Fabrizio Bassi?”

“Who?”

“A private detective—Fabrizio Bassi.”

“You mean the man who never straightens his tie?” She smiled. “A couple of times. He was working for the Turellini woman, wasn’t he? Why do you ask?”

“When did you last see him?”

Louder banging.

She raised her shoulders, “A year ago—perhaps even more.” A shrug of exaggerated nonchalance.

More hammering outside. Trotti nodded and Pisanelli turned the key and opened the door.

It was already evening on a cold December night in Milan, yet Magagna was wearing his American sunglasses.

“Ciao, Pisa,” he grinned happily. “You’re with the old man?”

“M
Y WIFE
.”

They sat in the car while the engine softly hummed, allowing the heater to warm the cold air. Occasionally a taxi hooted but Magagna ignored it. The right wheels of the Alfa were up on the curb and the taxi drivers had only to look more carefully at the registration plate.

“What about your wife?”

“She said you’d rung, commissario. Not often you come to Milan.”

Pisanelli sat in the back. He started to light a cigarette but Magagna told him to put it out.

Pisanelli spoke in an aggrieved voice. “You smoke.”

Magagna shook his head. “Not in the car.”

Trotti asked, “When did you get back from Turin?”

Magagna seemed puzzled. “I was at Segrate.”

“Your wife said you were in Turin.” Trotti added, “She calls you Gabri.”

“After Gabriele d’Annunzio,” Magagna replied, emphasizing the Pescara accent that had almost disappeared beneath the Milan overlay.

“Did you find out about Turellini?”

“What exactly did you want to know, commissario?” Magagna had pushed the sunglasses up on to his forehead and he looked through the windshield as he rubbed his eyes with his balled hands.

Advertisements for the wax museum blinked in neon.

They were parked in the forecourt of the Stazione Centrale, between the Fascist façade and the station. Only the central escalators were now working, carrying people up to the main platforms. The rush hour was over and most commuters had already returned to the suburbs or the villages of the Milan hinterland.

“Very helpful.”

“Nothing from the Palazzo di Giustizia.” Magagna turned to face Trotti. “There are several floors that are virtually impenetrable to the rest of the human race. And since the bombs in Rome and Florence they’ve increased security.”

“What about the judge? About Abete?”

“You want me to go into Abete’s office with a spy camera? Force the locks on his filing cabinets? Is that what you want?”

Either Pisanelli was sulking or he had fallen asleep.

“I want to know why Bassi was warned off the Turellini case. And I want you to help me, Gabri.”

“Nobody likes private detectives.”

“Not everybody murders them.” Trotti paused, catching his breath. “Pisa pulled me out of bed this morning and took me to where Bassi had been murdered.”

The aviator sunglasses slipped from his forehead back on to Magagna’s nose. “Murdered?”

“A bullet in the head and the body dumped in a tributary of the Lambro outside Melegnano. Where he was found by Milan Pollution Control unit.”

“How did Pisa find out?” Magagna gestured to the back seat where Pisanelli had started to snore.

“Over the radio.”

Magagna lowered his voice. “That’s why you’re getting Pisanelli to run you about Milan? Running you about when he works for Omicidi?”

Trotti shrugged. “He likes helping me, Gabri.”

“Never seen him look so haggard. And he doesn’t have a wife at home nagging him.”

“Pisa seems to think I’m the reason he’s not married.”

“Why do you think I left the city to come to Milan? And please don’t call me Gabri.”

Trotti made a movement of irritation. “You’ve got nothing from Abete?”

“Tighter than a rat’s arse.”

“Why come looking for me in the English school?”

“You make me feel so loved, commissario. I could’ve gone straight home to Sesto, you know, to my wife and my children and instead I chose to come into the center of the city, just to be insulted by you.”

“What were you doing at Segrate?”

“I spoke with Gamberi.”

Trotti frowned and from behind the Alfa came a sudden, brief blare of a hooter as a yellow taxi pulled out. A screech of tires.

“Gamberi’s been at Segrate for more than four years. There at the time of the murder. He got to Turellini’s place some twenty minutes after the killing.” Magagna grinned. “The Englishwoman’s okay, isn’t she? Nice solid chassis.”

“Signora Coddrington?” Trotti said, pronouncing the name with difficulty. “You saw her, Magagna?”

“Not really. She didn’t speak to me.”

“You’re a married man. Why do you need to look at other women?”

“You don’t look at women?”

Trotti raised a shoulder. “I put my desires to sleep a long time ago.”

“Yet you still eat those terrible sweets.”

“I’m entitled to some pleasure in life.”

Pisanelli grunted in the back seat. He was gently snoring through his nose.

On the other side of the road, opposite the station, the double arch of the McDonald’s neon sign lit up its share of the Milan sky.

“I don’t ask much of life—just sweets and giving Pisa a hard time.”

“You and Pisa …” Magagna smiled. “You’re like a married couple.”

“Heaven forbid.”

“You could do worse, Commissario Trotti.”

“I haven’t got the transvestite nipples that you get so excited over.”

“Not doing enough to impress me,” Magagna laughed. Then the smile vanished. “Gamberi considered her a potential suspect at one point.”

“Who?”

“The Englishwoman.” Magagna adjusted the sunglasses and
Trotti wondered how he could see anything through the dark lenses. “The Carabinieri and Abete now seem to favor money as a motive. Perhaps a disgruntled colleague or rival of Turellini’s at the university.”

“That’s what Bassi thought. But Turellini led an active sex life. There were a lot of women.”

“Gamberi maintains the sexual thing doesn’t hold water.”

“Cherchez la femme.”

“The dialect of the OltrePò? Your poor chickens.”

“Look for the woman
. It’s French.”

“What woman?” Magagna shook his head. “There are three possible suspects—but none had any reason to kill him.”

“Who told you?”

“You don’t think Gamberi and his pals are pissed off at seeing their hard work gathering dust in Abete’s office?”

“What did Gamberi tell you?”

“Three women, commissario. The Englishwoman you’ve just seen. She had no reason. There’s proof she’d been trying to have a child. She’d even been on several cures. Endometriosis, I think it’s called. Something to do with the walls of the uterus. Signora Coddrington was already thirty years old. She was desperate to have a baby. You don’t kill off the potential father when you need to get pregnant.” Magagna tapped his thumb. “Too big a drop in the sperm count.”

Trotti popped a sweet into his mouth.

“As for the ex-wife …”

“Signora Lucchi.”

“Both she and the daughter were accounted for in the will. Perhaps Lucchi was frightened there could be a change in the will. But at the time of the divorce, there was a written agreement over what she and her daughter Carla would get.”

“I went to see Signora Lucchi this afternoon. She’s rich—one of those bourgeois families living in a big apartment on the via Montenapoleone. She accused Quarenghi.”

“The doctor’s wife.” Magagna pulled at his index finger. “Signora Quarenghi’s unbalanced. She had once been attractive, according to Gamberi.”

“Signora Quarenghi was seen near the scene of the crime within half an hour of the murder.”

“That’s true,” Magagna nodded. “It’s also true she made
accusations against her husband. But Dr. Quarenghi was in Rome at a congress at the time of the murder.”

“He could’ve paid someone to shoot Turellini.”

“Precisely the direction the Carabinieri inquiry took. According to Gamberi, although they were associates at the clinic, there was no love lost between the two men—Signora Quarenghi had been Turellini’s lover. And Quarenghi, as a Socialist and as a close collaborator at the Ministry of Health, was in a position where his wife had to be above all suspicion.”

“Why don’t the Carabinieri think it was Signora Quarenghi?”

“The Carabinieri don’t exclude anybody. They just don’t favor the crime of passion thing. There’s no motive.”

“Signora Quarenghi was jealous,” Trotti said. “Turellini had been receiving phone calls in the middle of the night. That’s the sort of thing a jealous and unhinged woman might do.”

“She was taken to the barracks at Segrate and agreed to have the paraffin test. Negative. She hadn’t used a firearm that morning.”

“Perhaps there’s another woman.”

“Perhaps,” Magagna said, “but that’s not the line of inquiry the Carabinieri favored.”

“It’s the line of inquiry Bassi favored. And now he’s dead.”

“Bassi had spoken to the Carabinieri. He’d spoken to Gamberi—but, unlike Bassi, Gamberi had been into the house at Segrate.”

“So?”

“There’s more of a case against Signora Coddrington than Turellini’s other women.”

“What case?”

Magagna lowered his voice. “The sheets on Signora Coddrington’s bed.”

“What about them?”

“She’d been teaching at her language school the previous evening. She’d got home late and tired. In her statement she said she’d gone straight to bed and was already asleep when Carlo Turellini joined her in bed.”

“So?”

“The sheets had been thrown back and ruffled. But they were not creased. They were clean sheets and Gamberi knew nobody’d slept on them. Neither the Englishwoman nor Turellini.”

Trotti shrugged.

“That’s not all. According to various neighbors, the relationship
had been going through very bad times. She’d been heard screaming and threatening Turellini. Reliable witnesses, Trotti—friends and even the maid.”

“She told me she loved him.”

“Your delectable Signora Coddrington was lying.”

“W
HERE ON EARTH
have you been?”

It was past nine o’clock. Trotti smiled sheepishly at his cousin, and behind him he heard the noise of the Citroën as Pisanelli turned back into the via Milano.

“I was in Milan.” He brushed past her and he noticed immediately the sweet smell of perfumed cleaning liquid.

“I made food,” Anna Maria said, more an accusation than a statement. Closing the front door behind Trotti she followed him into the kitchen. “That was an hour ago.”

Fifty years earlier in the hills, it had always been Anna Maria who ran the small house. She had slipped naturally into the maternal role when her own mother, Trotti’s aunt, had been taken mysteriously ill and confined to bed.

“Hardly anything in the cupboards.”

“I don’t get time to go shopping.”

“You’ve got a cleaning woman,” Anna Maria said testily.

“She doesn’t cook.” Trotti hung up his coat on the back of the door and went into the bathroom to wash his hands and face.

Everything was unexpectedly neat. There was a new flannel by the hand basin and it smelt of lavender.

His face looked back at him in the mirror.

A balding dinosaur?

He smiled quizzically and ran a comb—it had been cleaned and placed in the cabinet—through his hair. His hair might be thinning, but it was still black. Or at least was black on top.

He returned to the kitchen, pleasantly warm, and turned on the television.

“I never allow the television during meal times in my house.”

He went through the different channels but returned to RaiTre and the end of a local news bulletin. Despite the end of lottizzazione, the control of television by the political parties, he still found the news boring.

“You could at least turn the volume down, Pierino.”

He slumped into his old armchair, setting his feet on the stool. His cousin lit the gas and soon water was boiling on the stove.