Gold, Frankincense and Dust (21 page)

“It’s to do with the repair of a laptop, a Sony. He had problems accessing the internet from it.”

“Would that be Signor Soncini’s own laptop?”

“That I couldn’t say. If it was his, he must have another one seeing as he’s never come back to collect it.”

“Have you still got it?”

“Yes. He paid me and then said that a friend of his, a girl,
would come and pick it up, but she never turned up. I called him a couple of times and he always said she’d be along soon. As you can see, I’m a bit short of space and I can’t keep too many things.”

“Has Soncini been here on other occasions?”

“A couple of times in the last few months,” Sauro replied after consulting his ledger. “The last time was a few days ago.”

“What was he here for?”

“Problems with the hard disk on his office computer.”

Soneri registered this information without having any idea what it might mean, and when Sauro tried to explain, he said: “Save yourself the time. I won’t understand the first thing.”

“I thought the police …”

“Not all of them, not the older ones, not me.”

“It’s all a question of familiarity. I’ve got a customer in the police force who could teach me a thing or two.”

“Is his name Juvara?” Soneri said, with no doubt in his mind.

“You see? You guessed right away. You might not understand much about computers, but you’ve got a feel for things.”

“It’s very famous, that feel,” Soneri said as he was leaving.

In the short time he had been in the shop, the afternoon light had faded. Darkness was advancing between the houses of the
borghi
, but there was still the bustle of daytime. Soneri turned into Via Farini and came out on Piazza Garibaldi. The clock on the Palazzo del Governatore showed ten past four, but the lights in the windows on Via Repubblica had already been switched on. The gathering dusk strengthened his sense both of the importance of his investigation and his remorse towards Nina, due to more than the desire to find the truth. At certain moments, the thought of this young woman – pregnant,
murdered and consumed by fire – moved him deeply, and each time the thought came back to him it set his nerves jangling. Something similar had been happening in the city since the papers had screamed out the news of Candiani’s arrest. Parma, a hive of gossip and rumour at the best of times, was already beginning to take the development on board, partly relieved that the Monster had been identified and partly already exorcising the memory by picturing Candiani as a deranged outsider in an upright, hard-working community.

The city was digesting everything with a smile and a satisfied belch, he thought to himself as he walked through the door of the police station. Juvara, however, had the expression of a man whose lunch was lying heavily on his stomach.“Were there bulls running free at Suzzara as well?” Soneri enquired.

“Commissario, those Romas are not the most friendly of people. There were two of us against seventy of them.”

“I didn’t expect you to challenge them to a pitched battle.”

“They don’t like us! They’d rather see a herd of bulls than have a visit from us.”

“Who does like us? We get sour looks even from people who come whimpering to us when their pockets have been picked. The Left accuses us of being too right-wing, and the Right accuses us of being too soft.”

The inspector made a resigned gesture. “Well, the upshot is that we didn’t find out very much.”

“Still, it was worth trying.”

“The carabinieri went one stage further. They searched the camp. Maybe that’s why the Romas were so pissed off.”

“What did they come up with?”

“Gold. They’re specialists in thefts of gold.”

“That’s hardly news.”

“Not true. Thieves today go in for copper. The price has gone through the roof, and it’s not hard to find – building sites, warehouses and even electrical wires. I saw some statistics on the internet …”

The commissario silenced him with a wave of his hand. “Find anything else?”

“That they hated Iliescu.”

“Hated her?”

“The moment we mentioned her name, they went berserk and started spitting on the ground. ‘Whore’ was the mildest epithet they used.”

It all fitted in with Soncini’s story. Nina must indeed have been lonely and desperate in her effort to defend herself, fought over by her various lovers and by a ruthless community, but for precisely that reason the girl seemed to him all the more admirable. For him the investigation was breaking down more and more barriers and becoming more than a simple act of duty.

“Listen, Juvara,” Soneri said, changing the subject. “What’s this Sauro like, the guy with the computer shop? I know you’re one of his clients.”

“I’ve only been there a couple of times,” the inspector said.

“Juvara! You’re a policeman! You’ve no need to be so defensive. If anything, it’s your job to put the questions other people have to answer.”

“I thought for a moment he’d been up to some funny business.”

“Not at all. One of his other customers is Soncini, who’s been to him a few times with some problem with his laptop and with something else I couldn’t understand. Anyway, he never went back for the laptop. He told the guy that a female friend would be along for it, but she never turned up. It might be Nina, but you can’t be sure with a man like Soncini.”

“You see now that computers can be excellent leads?”

“Don’t kid yourself. If there’d been anything compromising on that laptop, do you really think they’d have left it with your friend?”

“He’s not a friend, but he’s good at his job. And I believe he’s honest into the bargain.”

“O.K., could you work on him a bit? You know, one expert to another? By the way, I liked him too.”

Just then the telephone on his desk rang.

“Commissario, at long last.” It was Dottoressa Marcotti.

He was about to defend himself but the investigating magistrate came straight to the point. She was a woman with no time for small talk and invariably in a hurry, another reason why she and Soneri got on so well.

“I have requested authorisation to tap the phones of all of Iliescu’s lovers. I hope the judge will agree in all cases. Meanwhile, your colleagues have sent me an account of the C.C.T.V. footage shot near where our car thieves were operating. Not much help, I have to admit. The only worthwhile thing is that the older one turns to the younger and says they’d been set up. It’s a sentence that could mean everything or nothing.”

The commissario gave a groan and nodded, but before he could say anything, she put him on the spot: “Tell me, have you by now come up with a theory about what’s been going on here?”

He did not know what to say. Each time he began to develop a hypothesis it was overturned a moment later, and he had failed to translate that complex of impressions continually whirling about in his head into anything coherent. “Not yet,” was all he said.

He heard a laugh at the other end of the line. “We’re doing a great job! Neither one of us has a clue!”

“It won’t be like this for long,” he said.

“I do hope not,” Marcotti said. “With every case, you have to go through a period of darkness when you don’t know which way to turn, but we’ve cast so many nets that sooner or later some fish will get tangled up in them, you’ll see.” The prosecutor was an incurable optimist.

At that very moment, Soneri would have happily asked her to marry him. Having a woman like that at your side was the equivalent of a transfusion of ginseng. Angela was made of the same stuff, and that was one of the things he liked about her – always assuming she chose not to leave him.

He lit a cigar and decided to go out. It was rush hour, the time when employees left their offices, the admin staff and managers all dressed in the standard, starched-and-scented uniforms. He felt a pang of nostalgia for the sight of housewives carrying shopping and shouting in dialect to each other from opposite sides of the road, or workmen with cloth coats thrown over their overalls as they cycled home from factories still located inside the city and not ten kilometres into the hinterland, like Golden.

His mind was still on the squalor of those lots out at Lemignano, where the asphalt and the factory buildings had devastated fields and vineyards, when he came across a noisy procession of cars decked out in white ribbons. He watched the parade as it turned into Via Cavour, opened specially. He was going in the same direction, as far as the junction with Strada al Duomo. Just ahead, he saw the square overflowing with vintage cars and the cathedral precint crowded with people done up in all their finery. Security guards manning the barriers prevented onlookers from drawing too close to the festivities. Official cars and company limousines swarmed busily about, as though the Duomo were the Grand Hotel.

The mystery was solved when a woman’s voice squealed
out: “It’s the wedding of the eldest of the Dall’Argine family.”

That name clarified everything. The eldest of the Dall’Argine line was marrying Soncini’s daughter. The wily, emerging dynasty was forming a union with a scion of the patriciate, thereby ennobling their line. Soneri moved off, in search of fresher air he could breathe in solitude. Never till that moment had he felt himself so proudly anarchist, with a will for freedom and the purity of a young wolf.

He wandered about aimlessly until hunger and curiosity brought him back to the wine bar. He went into the dining room and looked from table to table, simultaneously fearful and hopeful of spying his rival, but Sbarazza was already seated at the table where he had last seen him. He got up and with an elegant gesture invited Soneri to sit beside him.

“So now you’re laying on receptions,” the commissario said.

“It’s getting harder and harder at the
Milord
. Too busy. I have to adapt. This evening I had no appetite for tinned tuna,” he whispered confidentially.

“No problems here?” Soneri said, pointing to the bar.

“Bruno knows me. A good man, like Alceste.”

“But they’re nearly all men here.”

“Not so. There were several couples.”

“Was there a couple sitting here?”

“Yes, having a light meal.”

“Do you mind if I ask what they looked like?”

Sbarazza stared at him, clearly taken aback. “You want a description? He was tall, distinguished-looking, well turned out. She seemed very lively, not exactly beautiful but with character, if you get my meaning.”

Soneri hesitated for a moment, and as he was about to answer he became aware of Sbarazza’s baffled expression fixed on him.

“What is it? Does that correspond to the identikit of two suspects?”

“No, not at all. I was just thinking how vulnerable we all are.”

“Ah,” Sbarazza smiled. “We are eggs with fragile shells, or better, we are fragile, full stop. We don’t even have a shell.”

“Rather than having no shell, right now I feel as if I have no gravity,” Soneri said.

“That might be an advantage.”

“Like being in water without fins or in the air without wings.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist. The mistake we make is to be always engaged in a search for certainties. We need certainties, we demand them, we never resign ourselves to being what we are. If we were to face up to our condition we’d be more serene and might even see opportunities rather than frustrations.”

“Facing up to what we are is itself a certainty, is it not?”

“Alright, I grant you that, but it’s the only one: the certainty of not having certainties. That has to be our starting point.”

“That’s very much the reasoning of a police officer, you know. They teach exactly that to beginners: given a case, never start out with a preconceived idea. But in fact a commissario has the facts in front of him.”

“You know better than me that facts are never objective! Take history. What we are convinced of today will have no value tomorrow, and the day after that something different will come along. We die each evening and wake up afresh the following morning, and so the world renews itself minute by minute. The essence of our being is changeability, not stability, and every man who aims at coherence is nothing but a self-deluding fool. The point is to accept what we are and
open ourselves to the great flourishing of possibilities which time continually offers us. The acceptance of the world, that’s the secret. Do you remember Nietzsche?”

Fortunately Bruno came over to the table at that moment. “What can I get you, Commissario?”

“I’ll have some
culaccia
and Parmesan shavings.”

“Marchese, would you like something else?” the waiter asked with absolute seriousness.

“I’ll borrow something from the commissario. He’s the only man with whom I would share a plate.”

“And bring us some red Lambrusco,” Soneri said. He needed a drop of strong wine to wash away his thoughts. As he was being served, he raised a slice of
culaccia
to his mouth as though officiating at some rite. “These are my certainties,” he announced, his tone doleful.

“I see you’ve understood. Life is like a game of cards: you must always wait for something good to emerge from the pack. Look at me. I once had a mansion and a family endowed with coats of arms and emblems evoking battles won and honours received. The most absurd thing is to imagine you can actually leave something behind you. They drummed this into me ever since I was a boy by showing me portraits of my forefathers in the corridors of our ancestral home. The genealogical tree is a load of bollocks.”

Sbarazza seemed to be on the edge of delirium, but Soneri could not dispute the force of his logic. His thoughts went back to Angela and those passionate lunchtime rendezvous, but for the moment he had drawn from the pack the card he had, and to ask for anything else for the future was futile.

He poured himself a glass of Lambrusco the colour of black pudding. “That couple, the one that was here …” he began hesitantly, with the unpleasant feeling of possibly occupying the seat recently occupied by his rival.

“You haven’t got it, have you?” Sbarazza interrupted him with good-natured authority. “You’re still after the confirmation I do not wish to give you. What does it matter to you if you know or don’t know? All it would do is poison your evening. Have you any idea how many things are happening at this moment in your favour or to your disadvantage? Dozens, but you don’t know. We live in a constant state of unawareness, and this is both our salvation and our damnation. It leaves open the doors of our emotions but makes us as volatile as an alcoholic scent.”