Gold, Frankincense and Dust (17 page)

“Did you sack her? In such cases, that’s generally the outcome …”

“Not at all!” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve told you. She disappeared. Anyway, as far as work went, she always performed well. Her defect was to be very pretty and I believe that if she stopped turning up, it was to avoid distressing consequences.”

“Your husband has no hand in running this business, do I understand correctly?

“No. He’s one of our employees,” she stated firmly. Just then, with remarkable timing, a door opened behind her and there appeared a slender girl with long chestnut hair and a dark dress reaching below the knees. She too had a severe appearance. She approached Soneri, holding out her hand coldly. “Micaela Soncini.”

Perhaps because the walls were lined with sacred objects, Soneri thought that there was something nun-like about the girl.

“Micaela, the commissario is here about the death of the Romanian girl who worked here for a time,” Signora Martini
said, throwing her daughter a look of complicity and then proceeding swiftly to change the subject.

“I was explaining that my daughter and I are the sole owners of the company.”

The girl had gone over to the armchair where her mother was seated and had placed her arm on the back of the chair, taking up a fashion magazine photo shoot pose. “I am responsible for the day-to-day running of the business and for customer relations,” Signora Martini explained. “My daughter deals with the economic and financial side of things. She studied at Bocconi University.”

“And your husband does the sales …” the commissario butted in, attempting to bring the conversation back to where he wanted it to be.

“Exactly,” the woman confirmed, raising her voice.

“He gets a fixed salary and commission, I suppose.”

“He spends money like water.” This time it was the daughter who spoke. “My mother …” she said, glancing at her before going on, “will no doubt have explained to you that if it’d been left to him, the company would have gone bankrupt long ago.”

“The mobile from which the calls were made to Ines Iliescu is for your husband’s use alone?” the commissario asked, turning back to her mother.

“Yes, but for that phone we have a pay-as-you-go contract,” she said.

“Now if there’s nothing more we can do for you …” Micaela interrupted.

Soneri got up, aware of the full force of their hostility. He had the feeling of being somewhere between the crypt and the sacristy, and this made him uneasy. Even the rows of workshops and villas facing him as he came out seemed more welcoming. He climbed into his car and turned back towards
the city. On the way, he tried to contact Angela, but without success. He got her voicemail both at her office and on her mobile.

“Do a bit of research on these two,” he told Juvara when he got to his office. He handed him a sheet of paper with the names of the mother and daughter, the joint owners of Golden. He then asked: “Has all the fuss over the arrest of the monster died down?”

“They’re interrogating him. If you ask me, Musumeci will be completely insane by midnight.”

“And he might end up raping Capuozzo,” Soneri said, riled by Angela’s silence.

“Listen, commissario, I’d do anything I could to help you, but I can’t make head nor tail of this entire business.”

Soneri almost felt a surge of tenderness. Every so often, with the impetuous spontaneity of a young hunting dog, Juvara surprised him with one of these generous outbursts.

“Neither can I,” he replied with a smile. “We need a stroke of luck. In this case, coincidences have been important, and maybe there’ll be one more. When all’s said and done, Parma is a small city, isn’t it? Sooner or later, you bump into everybody.”

“Well,” Juvara muttered, “I’ve been around for a while, but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

“That too is a matter of coincidence, you know. However hard we try to construct our lives for ourselves, there’s not much we can do against chance. This poor Romanian girl was pursued by men because she was exceedingly pretty. She could have had a good life if she’d given herself to the highest bidder, but she wanted to build her own future, even if that meant breaking her back cleaning toilets and offices. She wanted an ordinary life, a husband, children … and along comes some madman who murders her.”

“Are you certain that’s how it went?”

“What else?” Soneri raised his voice. “Do you think a woman takes on work as a servant light-heartedly? Washing underpants, making beds and changing pillowcases?”

“I meant to say that sometimes … in other words, in certain cases, I’ve had occasion to see things change so quickly that I was left dumbfounded.”

“I know, but for the moment I see it in those terms, and that’s what makes me so furious with myself for not yet getting my hands on whoever killed her.”

The inspector stared at him, partly intimidated and partly sympathetic. After a while, he said: “You’re forgetting about the text.”

“What text?”

“The one here in the printout. Didn’t you see it?”

There were several texts, all except one with the numbers of Nina’s ex-partners. He had not read the list thoroughly enough, and had taken too much for granted. He immediately attempted to make a call, but the reply was the usual recorded reply. “Do you know whose phone this is?” he asked.

“I’ve written it out for you underneath,” Juvara said. “It seems to have been stolen about a fortnight ago from a certain Giorgio Pagni during a burglary at his house. He’d left the mobile in a drawer when he went to the seaside for a couple of days and he only noticed the theft when he got back, so there was a delay in blocking the account. It’s all set out in the statement I got the people in the crime report office to forward to me.”

“And in those two days, only one text was sent.”

“Just the one you see.”

“Yes …”

“Come, everything’s prepared,” Soneri read aloud. Then he added: “What mast is the phone connected to?”

“You were talking about coincidences, so here’s the funny thing. The text was sent from a telephone transmitted by the mast at Cortile San Martino.”

“This really and truly is a step forward,” Soneri exclaimed.

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Juvara cautioned. “All the conversations from a good stretch of the autostrada and from a huge swathe of the Po Valley, not to mention the local hypermarket, go via that relay station. And remember the fairground was operating at that period and the text was sent at half past six on a Saturday evening.”

Soneri groaned and his enthusiasm drained away. As though by magic, what had seemed a promising lead turned out to be a dead end. The same dead end as before. Once again, anguish overwhelmed him. It had been dark for some two hours, the days were slipping past and the investigation was making no progress. He took out his mobile and dialled Soncini’s number. He should have done so earlier, he realised, when the other answered, in no way put out by the call he was receiving.

“I know you’ve already seen my wife and daughter.”

Soneri noted with alarm he was losing his touch. He had not paid heed to that different number in the printout, he had failed to read Juvara’s notes and now he realised that Soncini had already been alerted by the two women to the possibility of an interrogation. In all probability they had agreed on their stories so as to ward off suspicion. His mind was not focused, as the magistrate Marcotti had gently suggested.

“I need to talk to you,” the commissario said. “Could we meet at the wine bar in Via Farini in an hour?”

“Alright,” Soncini agreed. He showed a surprising degree of compliance. Only when he had rung off did Soneri realise that he had fixed the meeting for dinner time. Out of scruple,
he tried to call Angela. He very much wanted to go round to her place but would have preferred to receive an invitation from her. The mobile was switched off, but the office phone rang. Just as he was beginning to fear hearing the recorded message, she picked up the receiver. “You got me by pure chance. I was on the way to the prison.”

“Can we meet later?”

Angela hesitated a few moments before answering. Soneri detected an embarrassment which was now becoming all too familiar.

“I think I’m going to be tied up for a bit, and I’m already feeling very tired.”

He did not know whether to believe her or to view her reply as a diplomatic lie. It would have been easy to check up since each had the keys of the other’s house, but he had no wish to go snooping and he was in any case afraid of what he might discover.

He was about to ask her what she was doing in the prison when she said: “Anything new on the Nina story?”

Now it was his turn to remain silent for a few moments. He wanted to talk only about the two of them, but he felt so low that he launched into an account of his visit to Golden.

“It can’t have been nice talking to those two harpies,” Angela said.

“Do you know them?”

“Signora Martini found making money her only raison d’être after her husband’s many betrayals. She takes revenge on him by making him aware he’s nothing more than a hired hand.”

“Why doesn’t she dump him?”

“You must be joking! They’re a deeply Catholic family and she works with priests. If she was separated or divorced, she could kiss goodbye to her dealings with the bishop. She cares
more about her business than anything else. She’s turned her daughter’s wedding into a commercial deal.”

“Why? Who’s she marrying?”

“The eldest boy in the Dall’Argine family. You know, the ones who manufacture engines and hydraulic pumps.”

“Ah!” Soneri said distractedly. He did not understand why they were talking about weddings.

“I see my information fails to interest you,” Angela said. “I don’t know when I’ll get back but send me a text before you go to bed.”

“I wanted to talk about us,” the commissario mumbled. “We should be making decisions, shouldn’t we? How long do you intend to keep me dangling?”

“I am not keeping you dangling.”

“You’re still seeing that other man. You can’t make up your mind.”

He heard a snort from the other end of the line. “Listen, we’ll talk about this later. I’m not up to it at the moment.”

As the conversation ended, the commissario felt short of breath and experienced the now customary agitation which made him feel he needed air. He left the office to seek relief from that state of quasi-asphyxiation but found his lungs filling with the dead miasma of the mist.

He dragged himself to the wine bar where he had arranged to meet Soncini, but he noticed his rival’s Mercedes parked with two wheels on the pavement, and when he approached the door of the bar he made out, in the half light of the portico, a tall, trim figure. The other man slowed down, but when he saw Soneri turn the door handle to go in he changed direction slightly, with the gentle movement of a boat in a regatta, and walked on towards the far end of the road.

The commissario was sure that he had been making for the wine bar, and that his being there had made him change
his mind. Perhaps that was where he was to meet Angela and he preferred to avoid unpleasant encounters. Soneri watched him move off, speaking into his mobile phone. Suspicion prompted the idea that he was calling Angela to change their rendezvous.

He had no more time to think about it before Soncini arrived. He recognised him instantly even though he had never seen him before. The idea he had formed of him corresponded perfectly to the man he now found standing before him – long hair, greying, smoothed down with gel, dark moustache, tall, lean, slightly stooped, skin suggesting exposure to a multiplicity of tanning lamps, all combining to give the impression of fragility, like a crumbling tower. He told him he had once been employed as a model and had worked on the catwalks in Milan. Perhaps it was there he had met his wife, a woman with money and anxious to show if off.

“Were you recently Nina’s lover?” Soneri adopted the inquisitorial tone from the outset.

“Our relationship had been ongoing for some time, with ups and downs,” Soncini replied, with irritating detachment. “We separated several times but always got back together again.”

“Did you get to know her when she was working at Golden or earlier?”

“No,” he said with an ironic smile. “Earlier. It was she who wanted me to find her a job. Ines was very keen on her independence and wanted a normal life. She spoke a lot about marriage and children.”

“You were in no position to guarantee her these things.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “But she was young and she had time on her side. And we were very close. She went off with other men, but in reality we never separated from each other.”

“Indeed,” the commissario murmured, thinking of his own situation. “In the last few weeks, had you got back together?”

“Yes. She said she’d never have hesitated about getting married to me if I’d been free. She didn’t care about the difference in age. Believe me, we were very much in love.”

“Why was Ines not with you on the night of the crime?”

“I was busy. I was with a lawyer friend. There was a problem over an order for some goldsmith’s work. Then we went to a bar on Lake Como. I don’t know what Ines was doing that evening. She told me she’d be going out with some Romanian friends I didn’t know.”

“What’s the name of your lawyer friend?”

“What’s going on? Do you want verification?” Soncini sounded astonished. “Look, I’m not telling you lies. But you can call him, he’s Arnaldo Razzini. Check with him.”

“It’s my job to double-check.”

“Then go ahead,” Soncini declared brazenly. “I’m an entrepreneur. I don’t go around assaulting women the way these foreigners do. Ines told me all about what goes on in Romania.”

“You say you are an entrepreneur, but your wife might take a different view,” Soneri said maliciously. “She tells me an employee paid by commission …”

Soncini glowered at Soneri with deep resentment, but he could not hold that look for long. He was obviously a spineless human being, a man of straw.

“Well then, say that I’m a manager, will that do? I’m a good salesman, and nobody can take that away from me. Not even my wife.” He spoke of her as though she had the right of life and death over him.