Death and the Olive Grove (29 page)

‘The boy's nervous, isn't he?' Rivalta said, smiling. He took a cigarette and lit it, blowing the smoke out through his nostrils.

Piras snatched the cigarette from his lips, threw it on the floor and crushed it with his shoe.

‘Smoking gets on my nerves,' he said.

‘I didn't know you were so impolite,' Rivalta said, amused.

‘If it wasn't you, then why did you need to leave the house on the sly?' Bordelli asked with seeming calm, clenching his fists in his pockets.

‘I like to play cops and robbers,' said Rivalta, taking another cigarette.

‘Where is the secret passage?' asked Piras, increasingly upset.

‘Well, if I tell you, then it's not a game any more.' Rivalta lit his cigarette and blew the smoke upwards, making a show of his desire not to bother the young Sardinian.

‘Why did you kill them?' Bordelli asked again.

‘I'm a bit tired, you'll have to excuse me. I really don't feel like talking just now,' Rivalta said calmly. From that moment on, he didn't say another word. He limited himself to looking the two policemen in the eye and smiling coldly.

In the end Bordelli got fed up, called for a car and turned Rivalta over to two officers, ordering them to take him to headquarters and to keep an eye on him at all times. Then, with Piras's help, he resumed looking for the secret passage. After half an hour of vain attempts, they discovered a hidden door in the tiled wall of the kitchen. They set about looking for the device to open it, and after a brief search Piras discovered a tile on the opposite wall that served as a push-button. The door opened inward with a groan, and behind it lay a passage.

‘Shit!' said Piras.

Looking into the darkness through the doorway, Bordelli saw a staircase leading underground.

‘Let's go,' he said.

He switched on Rivalta's torch and they began to descend. At the bottom of the stair was a tunnel carved out of the earth and reinforced with wooden framing, as in old mines. One could walk through it standing, and it seemed very long. They advanced slowly, for fear of booby-traps, and every so often saw the silhouettes of large rats scampering away.

‘What direction do you think we're going in, Piras?'

‘I think we're heading away from the front of the villa, which would be behind us.'

‘Doesn't it seem like we're walking uphill?'

‘Yes.'

A few minutes later they reached the end of the tunnel, where they encountered an iron door. Luckily it was open. They found themselves in a room with a floor of beaten earth and a vaulted brick ceiling. It looked like a wine cellar, but there were no bottles. At the opposite end was a staircase leading up, at the top of which they found themselves in front of a solid wooden door. It was locked, but there was a button on the wall to the right. The door opened slowly, again inwards, like the other. They went through, as Bordelli shone the torch about the space. It was an almost empty room whose floor was covered with dust. Piras went up to the far wall, turned on the switch, and the light came on.

‘I want to see where we are,' said Bordelli. They went down a long corridor full of spider's webs half an inch thick and reached a large door. Opening this, they found themselves in a rather neglected garden. Next to the enclosure wall, under a canopy of sorghum, was a cream-coloured Fiat 600 Multipla, a rather ordinary car that wouldn't have attracted much notice.

They looked up to the house behind it, a small, two-storey villa from the early twentieth century, vaguely art nouveau. After crossing a half-yellowed lawn, they opened the gate and went out on to the street. They were in Via Sant'Ilario, another cross-street of Via Senese, about a hundred yards from Villa Serena. Bordelli shook his head.

‘He came and went whenever he pleased.'

‘But that doesn't prove that he's the killer,' said Piras, biting his lips.

‘Let's go back inside.'

They went back into the house and started inspecting the rooms. There was little furniture, and everything was filthy. It was clear that, aside from the spiders, nobody lived there. In a first-floor room they found a few changes of clothes in a wardrobe. There were also several pairs of shoes, as well as some boots with fresh mud on them. Bordelli lifted one boot with two fingers.

‘If the mud is the same as in Siena …'

‘I'll bet my bollocks it is,' said Piras, smiling wickedly.

*  *  *

It was past two o'clock. Rivalta was seated in front of Bordelli's desk, a venomous smile on his lips, ignoring what was happening around him.

Piras sat motionless in front of the typewriter. His face looked tired, his eyes bloodshot. He'd gone to Siena alone to see Bonechi and returned around midnight with a few specimens of mud collected from the ground near the scene of the crime. The girl's name was Chiara Benini; she was seven years old.

The inspector paced back and forth across the room, slowly, a cigarette between his lips and his shirtsleeves rolled up past the elbows. He'd had De Marchi, a forensics technician, dragged out of bed and was expecting the results of the mud analysis at any moment. He'd also rung up Diotivede to inform him that he was almost certain they'd caught the killer and that he was waiting only for the final proof to declare the case officially closed. The pathologist had responded with one word alone, a word he almost never used: ‘Fuck.'

‘Why did you kill those little girls, Rivalta? And what's the meaning of that bite on the tummy?' Bordelli asked for the umpteenth time, without ceasing his pacing.

Rivalta didn't answer, didn't even look at him, but only spread the four-fingered hand over his thigh and started studying it. He acted as if he were the only person in the room.

‘Why do you refuse to speak?' Bordelli asked.

Nothing. No answer, not even a raised eyebrow.

‘Do you want a lawyer? It's your right, you know.'

Rivalta kept ignoring him, then began humming a song through his closed mouth. In the silent pauses, Piras dozed in a seated position, hypnotised by the sound of the inspector's steps. His head would bend slowly forward, then fall all at once, and he would wake up with a look of alarm. Bordelli kept on pacing back and forth, increasingly nervous. Suddenly the phone rang, and Piras leapt in his chair. Bordelli ran to pick up. As he'd been hoping, it was De Marchi.

‘I've just finished now, Inspector. The mud matches up,' the technician said sleepily, with a furred tongue. Bordelli felt a shiver in his face.

‘Go and get some sleep,' he said.

‘I can't wait,' said De Marchi.

Bordelli hung up and shot a glance at Piras. Then he walked towards Rivalta and stopped behind his back.

‘I'm afraid it's all over for you,' he said.

Rivalta had picked up a pen and was playing with it. He was clicking the tip in and out, and looked as if he was concentrating very hard.

‘Why did you kill them?' the inspector asked again.

No reply. Rivalta's thoughts seemed somewhere else entirely. Bordelli put his cigarette out in the ashtray and ran a hand through his hair. He, too, was very tired. He circled round behind the desk and, without sitting down, leaned forward, resting his hands on the wooden desktop. He started staring at Rivalta.

‘Tell me why you killed them,' he said yet again, restraining an urge to pummel the man's face. He wanted to know what had driven a man like Rivalta to strangle those little girls, and he realised he wanted to know at any cost. He could feel it becoming an obsession.

Rivalta seemed untroubled, though every so often a vertical furrow appeared on his brow, as if he were thinking of something. He put the pen back in its place, grabbed Casimiro's little skeleton, and couldn't hold back a smile. Bordelli stared hard at him and thought he glimpsed, behind those lively, violent eyes, a crippled soul.

‘I'm asking you for the last time … Why did you kill those little girls?' he said harshly, practically yelling.

Piras woke up with a start and ran a hand over his face. Bordelli went up to Rivalta again, a strange expression in his eyes. He looked very pissed off, too pissed off, and Piras started to get worried. Rivalta, for his part, did nothing. He was shut up in a world all his own. Then the inspector raised the suspect's chin with one hand and raised the other hand as if about to punch him in the face. Piras shot to his feet and grabbed Bordelli's arm.

‘Calm down, Inspector,' he said. Rivalta wasn't the least bit flustered.

‘Take him away, Piras,' said Bordelli, lowering his fist, then running his hand through his hair. He went and sat down. Piras grabbed Rivalta by the shoulder.

‘Let's go,' he said.

Rivalta calmly put the little skeleton back on the desk and stood up listlessly. He let the Sardinian handcuff him, and without a sound he left the room, towed by Piras.

Bordelli sat there staring at the wall, frowning darkly, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. He simply couldn't accept it. Why did Rivalta kill those children? How much hatred must he have inside him, and why? Dante Pedretti's words came back to him: ‘If a wretch kills little girls, there must be, at the source of his crime, an even greater wrong …'

After a short spell he heard the sirens of a couple of squad cars leaving the courtyard of Via Zara with tyres screeching. He pressed his eyeballs hard with his fingers. The commissioner's words of congratulation came back to him, and those of the others as well, but none of it gave him any satisfaction.

MONSTER CAPTURED
, said the poster for
La Nazione
in big block letters. Mugnai was having trouble holding back the journalists who wanted to talk to Bordelli.

‘Calm down!… Please, calm down … The commissioner will tell you everything you want to know at eight o'clock this evening,' he kept saying, pushing back the herd. But nobody made any move to leave. They all wanted to talk to Inspector Bordelli, to get more details on the arrest, and they wanted to know why he wouldn't show his face.

Bordelli wanted only to be left in peace. The killer had been caught; he had nothing else to add … Especially since he didn't know much more than this himself, and it was eating away at him.

Early that morning Rivalta had been examined by a handful of psychiatrists, all of whom judged him to be in full possession of his faculties. For fear he might be killed by other inmates, he'd been put in a solitary confinement cell. Normally, those who attack children come to a bad end in jail. Bordelli still remembered a certain Bonanni, a man with an accountant's face who had raped a ten-year-old girl just after the war. They'd put him in a communal cell. That night, the three men sleeping in the same cell had cut his balls off and let him bleed to death. The guards had heard him screaming endlessly, but paid no attention. It was one of those rare occasions when inmates and warders were in agreement.

The inspector slipped out of the police station through the usual back door, without anyone noticing. There was a bright sun shining, and it felt pretty hot outside. He took off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt collar. Feeling like taking a walk, he headed towards the trattoria Da Cesare on foot, and in no hurry. There were a great many flies about, and they buzzed round his ears as he walked.

Crossing the Viale Lavagnini, he entered the restaurant, which was packed, as usual. Almost everyone sitting at the tables was avidly reading the newspaper, letting the food on their plates get cold. Bordelli raised a hand in response to Cesare's and the waiters' greetings, which were warmer than usual and full of tacit understanding. Then he slipped into Totò's kitchen.

The moment he saw the inspector, the cook waved a copy of
La Nazione
in the air:
MONSTER CAPTURED
. He thumped his forefinger against the newspaper with obvious satisfaction.

‘You finally caught him, Inspector … Lunch is on me today.'

‘When did you get back, Totò?'

‘Last night,' said the cook, hanging the newspaper from a hook as if it were a placard.

‘Get rid of that, Totò, there's no reason to celebrate,' Bordelli said, sitting down.

‘Out of the question, Inspector. In my kitchen I hang up whatever I like.'

‘Then forget I said anything.'

The inspector noticed that Totò had dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn't slept for three straight days, and imagined the long, sleepless nights spent at his dying grandmother's bedside.

‘How's your grandmother?' he asked with concern, expecting Totò to trace a cross in the air.

‘Ah, the poor thing …' the cook said in a loud voice. Then, coming up to Bordelli, he whispered in his ear: ‘Actually my grandmother's just fine, Inspector, she'll end up burying us all …'

‘But wasn't she at death's door?' Bordelli whispered.

‘She's never been better, Inspector. Eats like a horse and drinks like a fish. I was just feeling a little homesick, that's all … And there was also the feast of the patron saint. But I couldn't very well say that to Cesare …'

‘So, did you have fun?'

‘Hell, Inspector, you have no idea what holidays are like back home. You sing and dance till dawn, you drink like mad and just about anything can happen.'

‘Sounds nice …' said Bordelli.

‘Up here in the north you're all sulkers. You like making sport of others, but you really don't know how to have fun … It's like you're afraid of your own feelings, for Chrissakes.'

‘Maybe one of these days I'll go down with you to see your grandmother,' said Bordelli.

Totò winked at him in agreement.

‘A nice little
ribollita
,
¹⁸
Inspector?' he said loudly.

‘
Ribollita
it is.'

Totò gave him a slap on the shoulder and went to fill a bowl. He added a drop of olive oil, one fresh hot pepper chopped fine, and a dusting of Parmesan cheese. Then he pulled out a large goblet, filled it with red wine, and put everything in front of Bordelli.