Gold, Frankincense and Dust (20 page)

The moment he saw him, Juvara gave a start as though he had been caught in the act of committing some crime. “There you are at last! Dottoressa Marcotti has called several times. She needs to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“The carabinieri have caught up with the Romanian Romas who were camped at Cortile San Martino.”

“Where are they now?”

“At Suzzara. That’s why Marcotti was looking for you, but in the end she had to decide for herself. I explained to her that you were running late and that …”

The commissario cut him short with a wave of the hand. “Get over there as soon as you can. With Musumeci. He’s half gypsy and he’ll take no nonsense from these people.”

“Yes, but Marcotti also ordered the carabinieri to identify the two car thieves.”

“We’ll see if the Romas will talk. There’s no way of knowing if this pair belong to the same group. And who cares anyway? This is our investigation and the bold boys in the carabinieri have no idea what’s behind it all.”

Juvara got up, a picture of confusion. Soneri was already on the way out and took no notice.

The inspector called him back. “One thing, sir. I’ve found out who owns the flat in Via Cavallotti.”

The commissario gave him a quizzical look.

“It’s an accountant, name of Gino Aimi.”

“The name doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“Nor to me, at first, but then I checked up Traversetolo on the company list at the Chamber of Commerce and discovered he’s chairman.”

“You see where coincidences lead?”

“There are getting to be a lot of them,” the inspector said.

“That’s a good sign.”

A moment later he was in his Alfa and heading for Golden. He needed to speak to Soncini, and more so to his wife.

The countryside around the city looked strangely like a black and white photograph. Even the wheat, which was past time for harvesting, was so soaked by the rain that it had a grey cast. The plane trees lining Via Spezia seemed turned upside down, with the bare branches dissolving into the mist and looking more like roots exposed by running water. The last trace of colour vanished totally when he turned into the street leading to the industrial zone of the city. Every time he ended up in one of those places, he wondered how it had been possible so totally to eliminate every hint of beauty.

The sight of the pyxes, chalices and crucifixes in the offices of Golden did nothing to raise his spirits after such ugliness, particularly since he also found himself confronted by Signora Martini’s decidedly unwelcoming expression. However, the woman herself was too conformist to allow herself to voice her displeasure. She restricted herself to coldness and to that blank expression she must have put on in response to setbacks in a dull life.

“I trust you are not the bearer of bad news,” she said with a scowl. “Policemen …”

“Good news. We’ve found your car. A bit scraped but intact.”

She showed no emotion other than a forced smile. “Where was it?” was all she wanted to know.

“It was being driven by two teenagers: two of the Roma community.”

As had happened on the previous occasion, the daughter came in and took up position alongside her mother in a prearranged pose under the portrait of the Pope.

“Who had the use of that car?” Soneri said.

“My husband. He’s the one who does the travelling. My daughter and I have smaller cars.”

“Is your husband available?”

“Micaela, go and call your father.” Signora Martini gave orders in the tone of one accustomed to being obeyed.

“We’ll get rid of that car,” she said. “The lease was nearly up and we’d have changed it in any case.”

At that moment Soncini came in, followed by his daughter, meaning the whole family was now lined up in front of the commissario. Each one wore a different expression, as though they were passengers thrown together by chance on a tram. Soncini looked nervous and bereft of the
bon viveur
self-certainty he had previously displayed, his wife gave the impression of keeping the situation under control while waiting patiently, and the daughter glowered at the commissario with unconcealed malevolence.

“I’ve read the witness statements about the B.M.W. It was stolen from Via Cavallotti some time after ten o’clock at night. At that hour I presume that it was not there for reasons connected with work …” Soneri began.

“You presume? My clients do not necessarily see people during office hours.”

“Priests go to bed after Vespers, or else are at their prayers,” Soneri said.

Soncini was about to reply when his wife interrupted him.
“He was with his lover.” She cut him short so peremptorily that there followed a few moments of silence which no-one dared to break. “That’s what you were getting at, weren’t you, commissario?” she went on. “They already know the Romanian girl had a flat in that street,” she said, throwing a reproachful look at her husband.

Soncini said nothing. He seemed relieved to let his wife take the initiative.

“You didn’t report the theft until ten o’clock the following morning,” Soneri continued, in an inquisitorial tone.

Giulia Martini turned to her husband with what seemed like a challenge. She appeared to be inviting him to get himself out of trouble.

“I only noticed the following morning when I went to pick it up,” Soncini said.

“Commissario,” his wife intervened with her customary brusqueness, “it seems to me that we have cleared this matter up, don’t you think? The car was stolen two months ago, and what happened thereafter is no concern of ours.”

She was in charge, as was evident from the subservient expressions of husband and daughter. It was her task to defend the family, the business, the veneer of respectability.

“Do you know Gino Aimi well?”

“Of course,” Soncini replied. “He’s a good friend. I don’t see what …”

“Was it through him that you found the house for Iliescu?”

The man was at once embarrassed and his wife looked on, savouring the spectacle.

“It’s logical to turn to friends …”

The woman gave a devious smile, but her attitude upset Soneri more than it did her husband. It announced that she feared nothing and that his questions in no way unsettled her.
He, on the other hand, was aware of having no other weapons in his armoury.

“The good old-fashioned male complicity,” she remarked sardonically.

The commissario ignored her. “However, it’s very curious that your lover was tossed into a ditch after being hauled out of a car similar to yours.”

Signora Martini’s face darkened slightly.

“You did say ‘similar’,” Micaela intervened determinedly. “We’re hardly the only ones in this city who have a B.M.W.”

Soncini stopped her going any further. “Commissario, there’s something important I haven’t told you. Nina was burning her bridges with her relatives. She wanted a life of her own, where she wouldn’t have to be accountable to any family members. Do you understand me? One side of the family was mixed up with the Roma people, and I don’t have to tell you what that means. They never leave you alone. They’re always trying to screw cash out of you. Over and above that, they were trying to decide her future for her, arrange a marriage. She rebelled, and they made her pay. They tried so many times. To them, I was a thief, someone who took the community’s women away. For that clan, Nina was a licence to print money. Like her sister.”

What left Soneri most dumbfounded was observing Soncini’s wife listen impassively to her husband’s account as though it involved a complete stranger. Micaela likewise betrayed no emotion. They were the real clan, untouchable, calculating, hardened to a state of indifference. Thinking of his own anguish over Angela’s betrayal, Soneri envied that tough-minded woman.

“Commissario,” Soncini’s voice interrupted his reflections, “I have no way of proving it, but I am pretty sure that those Romanians tried to frame me too. What could be better than
to steal my car and then use it to murder the woman with whom I’d been having an affair? Maybe they wanted to do it immediately after the theft but had to put it off because …”

“How could they know you wouldn’t report the theft?”

“They’ve managed to put me under suspicion. Proof of that is your presence here.”

“You have a poor opinion of us, but our sins are not a matter for criminal law,” Giulia Martini said, once again throwing an accusatory glance at her husband.

“As for your sins, you can attend to them yourselves.” Soneri was curt because he was tired of the conversation. The whole range of Golden’s sacred objects lying nearby made the room look like a sacristy. He felt nauseous as he rose to his feet and observed the triumphant expression on Micaela’s face. As before, when he went out he felt the mist to be a comforting and friendly presence. It was good not to see too far ahead and to lose himself in it as though in sleep.

He drove back to the city with a vague, troublesome ill humour weighing down on him. En route, he received a phone call from the prosecutor Marcotti to inform him that the two Romanians arrested for car theft were still taking advantage of their right to remain silent. As for the camp they came from, she was still waiting for the report from the carabinieri. In due course, he would receive fresh news from Juvara and Musumeci, who had gone to Suzzara to find them in their new campsite.

When he got to the office, he found the membership list of the equestrian club at Traversetolo left for him by Juvara. It included the majority of the people most involved in the case, and Nina seemed to be the focal point around which the whole lovers’ comedy rotated. The slightest change of perspective could give a new slant to the whole story, which was itself as changeable as its participants, who in their
turn differed every time in their continual denial of their role.

There was no knowing what angle would be revealed by that receipt for Elettronica Sauro found in the B.M.W. by Nanetti. He had decided to stop at the shop when he noticed that it was gone one o’clock. Getting up late meant drifting through the day, as his father had always warned him. Right on cue, the mobile rang.

“So, are you coming or have you had second thoughts?” Angela took him by surprise.

“You’re like a cat. You decide when to purr.”

“Do hurry.”

It was yet another very intense encounter, and Soneri abandoned himself to it with the bitter conviction that the ardour was not really aroused by him. But soon all thought faded away and everything was transformed into pure instinct and desire, with all rationality irrelevant. Sex could have the same narcotic effect as sleep, with the difference that it did not last as long.

Then the reawakening, followed by the return of the familiar spectres. It was no doubt the same for someone coming round after taking drugs: the same withdrawal symptoms after the injection-induced high.

“Angela, have you made up your mind about us?”

He heard a brief snort at his side. “Why must you always ruin every beautiful moment?”

“I have a need for certainty, an absolute need.”

“You know there can’t be certainties, don’t you?”

“I would be happy with the illusion.”

“Even if I spoke reassuring words, even if I were to tell you that I’ll stay with you always, you would still leave here as doubtful as ever,” Angela whispered to him. “One moment later, you’d have forgotten what I said. And you know that’s
true, you’re sure of it, so I don’t understand why you go on like this. I don’t want to deceive you and show contempt for what you are and have always been. Your own rationality rebels against yourself. Haven’t you always claimed that you detest people who allow themselves to be dominated by instinct? Haven’t you always said you’d never let yourself go that way?”

“Goddammit, Angela, I only want to know if you want to stay with me or would rather go off with the other guy. I’m not asking for an everlasting pledge!”

“You know perfectly well that things have to be constructed day by day.”

“Constructed day by day? What drivel is that! Everything has fallen apart, Angela. Everything I believed in since I was a boy – my profession, my marriage, the son I never saw, my dreams … and now you and I are going to pieces as well. I’m broken up inside, and I can’t take it any more.”

Angela gave him a hug, but in that gesture he thought there was more tenderness than real feeling.

“If we feel all this, it means we have still a lot to give each other,” she murmured in his ear, all the while holding him tightly and communicating a pleasing sense of warmth.

“At least I’m happy about one thing,” Soneri said. “There’s no sign of that pity for the other that sometimes comes out with two people who have been together a long time.”

Angela pulled back to look at him more closely and more intensely, then said simply, “No, no pity.” Somehow a phrase which could have been wounding sounded, on the contrary, gentle.

Shortly afterwards, as he was on the doorstep, the commissario felt a moment’s confusion. “You were supposed to talk to me about Candiani,” he said.

“I can ask about him if you like, but maybe you’d rather not.”

“Why not?”

“The other man,” she said with evident embarrassment, “he’s a great friend of his. If you want, I’ll call him and try to ask him … He wouldn’t refuse.”

“Forget it. I’ll see to it myself,” Soneri said, before dashing down the stairs to escape the anguish which threatened to overwhelm him yet again.

ELETTRONICA SAURO OCCUPIED
some thirty square metres, divided between display space and workshop. Giorgio Sauro, the young man in his thirties who was manager, seemed to have wagered everything on it. He was plainly a courageous individual since, apart from anything else, he had not given his shop an English name. This was enough to make Soneri take to him immediately.

“I do know Signor Soncini. He’s been here a couple of times and I’ve added his name to our client list. I keep him up to date by e-mail.”

The commissario produced the till receipt which Nanetti had given him. “Could you identify what this referred to?”

Sauro examined the date and the amount. He opened a drawer and pulled out a sort of ledger. He was exceedingly punctilious, and it crossed Soneri’s mind that he and Juvara would get on well.