Death and the Olive Grove (3 page)

‘So what are the police doing about this?'

Bordelli stiffened and started looking for the imbecile amid the herd of onlookers. He wanted to grab him by the collar and bash his head against a tree trunk. What were the police doing? Come forward, jackass! What do you want the police to do? Piras saw he was upset and squeezed his elbow.

‘Forget about it, Inspector,' he said.

The ambulance entered the park, turning off its siren. Bordelli and Piras stared at the ground. Five men got out of the ambulance and started climbing the grassy incline, carrying a stretcher. Bordelli scratched his head.

‘What are they doing?' he said to himself. He went up to the doctor, a fat man climbing up the hill with a black bag in his hand.

‘Nobody can touch anything before the medical examiner gets here,' Bordelli said. The fat man stopped in front of him, happy for the rest.

‘And who are you?' he asked.

‘Chief Inspector Bordelli. Tell your men not to touch the girl.'

‘I'm sorry, but we're here for a woman.'

‘A woman? What woman?'

‘Somebody called us about a woman who collapsed. How do you do? I'm Dr Vallini.'

The inspector shook his hand and turned round to look at the stretcher-bearers, who were walking towards a small group of people. He saw them lay a woman down on the stretcher. Then they came back, and the doctor began at once to examine the woman. He felt her pulse, looked inside her mouth, then opened her eyes and shone a light into her pupils with a small pocket torch. Bordelli got close to have a better look at her. She seemed very young. Her face was pale, and rested on a cushion of black hair. A beautiful girl. Her mouth was half open, and she gently batted her eyelashes at regular intervals, about once per second. One of her arms slid slowly off the stretcher, and the doctor put it back at her side.

‘It's nothing serious; she just fainted,' he said.

‘Who is she?' Bordelli asked.

‘The little girl's mother,' said one of the stretcher-bearers. The inspector bit his lip … The mother, of course. How could he not have thought of it? He leaned over her for a better look, and at once the young woman opened her eyes wide, found Bordelli's face right in front of hers and stared at it as if it were something amazing. Then she raised her arms and grabbed his hand. Ten small cold fingers wrapped around his own.

‘Valentina … Valen …' she whispered, staring at him with empty eyes. Dr Vallini was already preparing an injection of sedative.

‘Please be brave, signora. It's better if you sleep a little now,' said the doctor, and he stuck the needle in her arm and pressed the plunger down. The woman opened her mouth to speak, but it was too late. Her eyes rolled back into her head and her arms fell. The doctor gestured to the orderlies, and the group trudged off.

Bordelli pointed at the woman.

‘Where are you taking her?' he asked.

‘To Santa Maria Nova.'

‘When could I talk to her?'

‘Try phoning the hospital in two or three days, and ask for Dr Saggini.'

‘All right. Thanks.'

‘Goodbye, Inspector.' The doctor began his difficult descent down the slippery grassy slope, balancing his massive body with the help of his medical bag. Bordelli lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. The white face of Valentina's mother, as delicate as that of her daughter, remained etched in his mind.

The siren of the Misericordia ambulance suddenly blared and just as suddenly stopped, as if it had been turned on by mistake. The vehicle then glided slowly and smoothly away into the darkness, engine whirring gently. Bordelli stood there watching it until it passed through the park's gate, then looked up over the roofs of the city, then down, lost in thought. Piras's voice shook him out of it.

‘Inspector, can you hear me?'

Bordelli ran a hand over his eyes.

‘What is it, Piras?'

‘Dr Diotivede is here.'

Bordelli wasn't surprised he hadn't seen him arrive. Diotivede was as sly and silent as a beast of the forest.

‘Come,' Bordelli said to Piras. They began to walk towards the doctor, whose almost phosphorescent shock of white hair was visible from a distance.

Diotivede was kneeling down over the little girl's body, his knees on a newspaper. He was studying her from very close up, touching her from time to time. His gestures were those of his profession, but he wore an offended expression on his face, as if he had just been slapped.

Bordelli and Piras stopped a few yards away so as not to disturb him. People were finally starting to leave, pushed away by the uniformed cops. The inspector smoked one cigarette after another, impatient to speak to Diotivede. A light wind was blowing, spreading a scent of dead leaves through the air. It was April, but it felt more like a nice November evening. The clouds were thinning out, and in the black sky a few stars were beginning to appear, along with a yellowish sliver of moon.

Bordelli kept an eye on the pathologist, trying to guess where he was in his examination, not daring to disturb him. He well knew that at such moments Diotivede didn't want anyone bothering him. One had no choice but to wait.

A few minutes later Diotivede had finished examining the corpse and, still kneeling, began to write in his black notebook, lips pouting like a schoolboy's. At last he rose and came towards the two policemen.

‘Strangled. And she has a nasty bite on her belly, which probably happened after she died.'

The inspector tossed his fag-end far away.

‘Nothing significant, in other words,' he said.

‘For the moment, no. But I'll let you know after the postmortem. You never know, something might turn up.'

‘Let's hope so,' said Bordelli, disappointed. He went up to the girl's body again and lit his umpteenth cigarette of the day. He knelt forward and looked closely at that now grey little face spattered with mud. He saw an ant walking along the sharp edges of the little girl's lips and flicked it away with a finger, very briefly touching the dead flesh. She must have been a beautiful child. She looked a little like a woman he had once loved, many years before … He shook his head to banish the thought. Who knew why he thought of such things at moments like these? He took a last glance at the girl, her naked little feet looking as if they'd just sprouted from the ground— and then he turned towards the others. Diotivede was clutching his briefcase tightly against his stomach with both arms, ready to leave. Behind the thick lenses his eyes looked as if they were made of glass.

‘I hate to say it, but this crime looks like the work of a maniac who may strike again,' he said.

‘Unfortunately, I agree,' said Bordelli, tossing his cigarette to the ground.

‘Unless it's a vendetta,' Piras mumbled, teeth clenched, thinking of the cruel feuds of his homeland.

‘Need a lift, Doctor?' the inspector asked.

‘Why not?'

The inspector gestured to Rinaldi to say that the body could now be taken away. Rinaldi raised a hand, and two policemen laid a cloth down beside the little girl, picked her up and laid her down on it.

‘We can go now,' Bordelli said with a sigh, heading towards the park exit without waiting to see the body being taken away. The three descended the wet, grassy slope, taking care not to lose their balance. Piras was quiet, staring into space and looking sullen. He climbed into the back seat of the VW, letting Diotivede ride in front. Bordelli started up the car and drove off slowly, an unlit cigarette between his lips.

‘Shall I take you home, or do you want to go back to the lab?' he asked, turning on to Via Volta.

‘You can take me home, thanks,' said Diotivede. He remained silent the rest of the way. They dropped him off in Via dell'Erta Canina, in front of his little house and garden. Piras came and sat down in front like an automaton.

‘What do you think of this murder, Piras?'

‘What was that, Inspector?'

‘Nothing.'

They returned to police headquarters and got down to work. Bordelli sent a few officers out to question people who lived in the neighbourhood of the Parco del Ventaglio. With a little luck they might find someone who had seen or heard something of interest, though he didn't have much hope of this. He drafted a communiqué for the television and radio to broadcast the following morning, to put the whole city on alert. And with Piras's help, he organised the shifts of plainclothes officers to patrol the city's parks, which were always full of mothers and children. But these were general measures that gave no assurance at all. The killer might strike again in another way and another place, as Bordelli well knew. In the meantime, however, there wasn't much more that could be done.

The in-house telephone rang. It was Mugnai.

‘There are more journalists here, Inspector,' he said.

‘Send them to Inzipone. I don't feel like talking to anyone.'

‘Commissioner Inzipone told me to send them to you.'

‘Then send them away. And the same goes for the next few days.'

‘As you wish, Inspector.'

Bordelli hung up. He had nothing to say to the journalists. He massaged his eyes with his fingers. They burned as if he hadn't slept for three days.

To avoid being seen by anyone, he left headquarters through a side door that gave on to Via San Gallo. He got into his Beetle and, head full of thoughts, drove to the trattoria Da Cesare. Gesturing in greeting to the owner and the waiters, he slipped into Totò's kitchen, as he always did. He greeted the cook and plopped down on the stool that had been his place for years. He couldn't get the image of that little girl on the ground out of his head.

‘What's the matter, Inspector? Y'oughta see your face …' said Totò, coming up to him with a wooden spoon in his hand.

‘I'm just a little tired,' said Bordelli, knowing that the news of the little girl's murder hadn't yet spread.

‘Just tell me how hungry you are.'

‘Give me whatever you want, Totò. I don't feel like deciding.'

‘Don't you worry, Inspector. I'll set you right,' said the cook, who went and started fiddling at the cooker. He soon returned with a steaming plate of fried chicken and artichokes, a speciality of his. Bordelli poured himself a glass of wine and set to his food. Totò was loquacious as usual and started talking about politics and love against a backdrop of sauté pans, never once losing the rhythm of his cooking. The uneducated cook knew how to get to the heart of things, even if his way of getting there was all his own.

‘People getting married, people breaking up … I have this idea, Inspector … If a man and a woman want to work things out together, they can remake the world; but if they want to make war, then a plate of overdone spaghetti's enough to bring out the knives.'

Bordelli was gorging himself, washing it all down with wine and nodding in agreement with Totò. He had no desire whatsoever to talk. He finished off his fried chicken and artichokes to the sound of the shrill, sharp voice of the cook, who talked about everything from the bloody vendettas of his home province to the recipe for pork with myrtle.

‘Coffee, Inspector?' he said in the end.

‘Make it nice and black, Totò. You've made me eat like a Pig.'

‘Then you'll need a little of this grappa I've got,' said the cook, looking on a shelf for the right bottle.

‘You're shortening my life, Totò.'

‘But making it better …'

‘I can pick my poison …'

‘No poison, Inspector – here, have a taste of this,' said Totò, filling his glass.

‘Sit down with me a minute, Totò, you've been on your feet the whole time.'

Bordelli left the trattoria around eleven o'clock, feeling fatter and more tired, and swore he would not set foot in that kitchen again for at least a month. But he knew he would break his vow. After he got into his car, it started to rain, but in drops so tiny it wasn't worth the trouble of turning on the windscreen wipers. He drove slowly, smoking, and every so often a sigh escaped him. He stopped to have another coffee in Via San Gallo and went back to police headquarters. The rain was starting to fall harder as he ran inside. Entering his office, he collapsed in his chair, wishing he could go to bed. But the night was not over yet; there was one more ball-ache to attend to.

The round-up had been planned some weeks before and couldn't be postponed any longer. Bordelli hated this sort of thing, especially when he had a case as serious as the child murder on his hands. He had tried to talk Commissioner Inzipone out of it, even pulling out the excuse that, on top of everything else, it was pouring outside. But it had been no use.

‘It's only sprinkling, Bordelli. Let's not have any tantrums. Every now and then these things have to be done. We have orders from the Ministry. Please don't make life difficult for me, the way you always do.'

Fine. If the round-up had to be carried out, Bordelli preferred to be there for it.

Shortly past midnight, a number of police cars and vans full of cops pulled up in Ponte di Mezzo. It was common knowledge that those low-rent blocks housed a clandestine gambling den for the poor and a couple of brothels of the lowest grade, and that a great many receivers and smugglers lived there alongside countless petty thieves who could open any door in the world. Ponte di Mezzo was one of the poorest quarters in town, reduced to rubble during the war and rebuilt mostly on hope, and full of disillusioned, pissed-off people. Bordelli often thought that in some respects the first twenty years of the Republic had done more harm to Italy than the Fascists and Nazis combined. Such districts were a necessary and even useful scourge of the great mechanism of a society so fashioned—badly, that is—and it was extremely unpleasant to go and give a bollocking to a whole army of people who scraped by to survive.

It was still raining hard. Bordelli, Piras and four uniformed officers ran through the downpour and slipped into a building in Via del Terzolle. Throughout the block there were underground tunnels and passages that in wartime had served several times to make fools of the Germans during round-ups. Bordelli and his men went into the basement and broke down a door. They entered a smoke-filled cellar where someone had managed to turn out the lights just in time. The policemen turned on their electric torches and put everyone up against the wall. The faces were the usual ones. Bordelli made gestures of greeting to a number of old acquaintances, then left the uniformed cops to check their papers, as he and Piras went up to the third floor of the building.