Gold, Frankincense and Dust (8 page)

“You know those photographs of the girls? The ones the old man who died on the bus had in his bag?” Nanetti blurted out.

“Of course. I have them here.”

“Well, they’re of the same person.”

“They look similar, but I assumed they were only related, sisters or something.”

“I’m telling you they’re the same. These are the results of the analysis carried out by the forensic squad when they scanned the faces. The only difference is the age at which the photos were taken. The first is a teenager, the second a young woman, but they are one and the same.”

The commissario studied the photographs he had pulled out of his duffel coat, and gave a grunt.

“If you look closely, the younger one has no make-up and her hair hasn’t been done, while the other has taken some care over her appearance. That’s what’s misled us.”

“This could mean a lot,” Soneri said, even if he was not sure exactly what.

“What it does mean is that the old man had not seen the girl for some time. If she was related to him, either she’d been in Italy for quite a while or else they had not seen a great deal of each other in Romania.”

“Quite right,” the commissario said, his mind elsewhere. “Is the name of the photographer on the back?”

“Dimitriescu. We found it while we were examining the photos.”

“Where’s he from?”

“Do you think I wouldn’t have told you if it’d been written somewhere?”

The commissario made no reply. At that point, he felt like the old man who, with no more than a few coins in his pocket and the feeble clue of a couple of photographs, had been searching for the girl. The turn of events with Angela had made him hypersensitive, as though his skin had been peeled off.

“Anyway,” Nanetti continued, “these are only the preliminary results. We’ll do the autopsy on the roast today and we’ll see if anything else emerges.”

As soon as he hung up, Soneri made another attempt to call Angela, but once again she failed to reply. He felt rising inside him an anguished frustration which produced a tightening sensation, but at the same time he was aware of a renewed flow of life. He rebelled against the idea of surrender and against submitting to any sense of finality which might result from the passing years. He had no wish to give up, because that would have been similar to encountering one of the many faces of death.

On his return to the office, he found Juvara once more on the telephone speaking English, but this time with greater fluency. Soneri sat down, but immediately jumped to his feet when the mobile in his coat pocket began ringing. “I was in court,” Angela said. “I see you’ve called me a couple of times.”

He was astonished that a phrase of such banality could be of importance to him. “I needed to hear your voice,” he confessed.

“You sound like a little boy who’s just been told off.”

“There are people here,” he said by way of excuse, and in an attempt to conceal his state of mind.

“Is that what it is?” she said mischievously.

“No, I also wanted you to know …”

“Don’t say it. There’s no point. I understood everything from your voice and that’s enough for me,” she whispered.

“Yes, maybe it’s as well if I don’t talk. I’ve never been any good at finding the right words for moments like these. I feel ridiculous and I’ll just end up ruining everything.”

“Exactly. Anyway, both of us know what this telephone call is really all about.”

He felt his hopes rising. He looked up to see Juvara staring at him incredulously. He smiled at him and Juvara pulled himself together. “We know a lot more about Dondescu,” he told Soneri. “He worked for years as a peat digger, but he came down with something and the state gave him a sickness pension. When the regime fell, he was evicted and found lodgings for a while in some institute. He then lived without any fixed abode in various camps with travelling people, drinking too much and getting by as best he could. His pension was revoked some months ago, and it seems it was this decision which induced him to seek his fortune in Italy.”

“So we have to feel nostalgic for the communist regime,” Soneri said. “At least everybody had something to live on. Any relatives?”

“They told me he had a sister who was a lot younger. She was a dancer, but they’ve no idea what’s become of her.”

Soneri gave a gesture of impatience, and opened the newspaper to see a reproduction of the photographs the old man had had with him.

“Capuozzo wasted no time getting this news out.”

On the opposite page there was an article about the
discovery of the body. “That was a real field day for the journalists and T.V. cameras, wasn’t it?”

“If I may say so, commissario, I still don’t see what connection there could be between a death by natural causes and a woman’s burnt-up body,” Juvara said, with some hesitation.

“I don’t understand either, but I prefer to carry on believing in coincidences.”

“THERE IS NO
such a thing as coincidence. There is destiny,” Sbarazza corrected Soneri. He was speaking about himself and about the particularly fortunate day he had enjoyed, and was saying it must have been written in some inscrutable horoscope of whose existence he was convinced beyond all question. On this occasion, he was seated in a place which had been occupied shortly before by a woman who emanated sensuality and good health: perhaps a bank manager. She had taken
anolini in brodo
and a little Parma ham. “It’s rare for me to be able to have a first course,” Sbarazza confessed. “Generally it’s the main course that’s left.”

He was dressed elegantly and yet there was a nonchalance to his appearance, as though his clothes had been chosen carelessly from the recesses of a cupboard.

“What a woman,” Sbarazza said dreamily. “The quintessence of femininity, voluptuous but with no loss of harmony, lovely hair, exquisite breasts, sensual in voice and manner. It was wonderful to make love in my imagination while her perfume floated around.”

“A different one every day,” Soneri smiled.

They were standing facing the church of the Steccata, under the monument to Parmigianino who was peering down on them with marmoreal irony.

“She was even kind enough to leave today’s paper,” Sbarazza said, showing it to Soneri, who glanced at the page with the two photographs. “Are these the two you’re looking for?”

“By land and sea.”

“That woman knew one of them. I heard her talking about her to the man lunching with her.”

At that moment, the sun made a faint appearance through the mists and a ray of light glimmered in the sky. That too was a coincidence, or a sign of destiny, as Sbarazza would have put it.

“I must find this woman,” the commissario said.

“I’ve no idea who she is, but if I saw her again, I’d recognise her. You can’t get a woman like her out of your mind,” he said, as though lost in a dream.

“Have you ever seen her before?”

“No, never. I trust she will come back here if it is written that we should meet again,” he went on, still carried away by his private ecstasy.

“What happens if on that happy day she’s starving and wolfs the lot?” Soneri wondered.

“Please!” Sbarazza spoke imploringly. “Spare yourself these banal thoughts. Have the courage to dream because therein alone lies our salvation. Take me. What would I be were I not able to play a part each and every day? A good policeman must know how to release the imagination and gain some insight into what might be.”

“If that’s what you mean, there’s no shortage of people intent on making what doesn’t exist appear.”

“There you are mistaken,” Sbarazza said reprovingly. “There’s no lack of those who desire to be what does not exist, and so they prosaically imitate a model. On the other hand, the dream is life. It is a parallel universe, more noble
than the world of things and of the multitudes that go about masquerading. Alceste’s restaurant is always filled with such individuals. Trash …” he concluded with a dismissive, irreverent gesture.

“And what is your dream?”

“To be myself. I play the part of the man I was and can no longer be. I feel like a puppet abandoned at the bottom of a basket. I am poor and noble in a world of wealth and vulgarity. A splendid hoax, is it not?”

The commissario’s silence implied agreement.

“Take my word for it, you will find that woman. I too long to see her again, but I’d be afraid of disappointment. It is we ourselves who make certain moments magic, not what we see. The same thing can bring either joy or sadness,” he concluded with an elegant wave as he turned away.

Soneri watched him as he made his way slowly down the street which was illuminated by sickly shafts of sunlight. The commissario turned towards Alceste’s restaurant, feeling like a hound in the wild on the trail of a strong scent.

“A bit late for lunch,” Alceste said.

“It doesn’t matter …”

“There’s something left over …”

“You’re taking me for Sbarazza?”

“He was up to his usual tricks again today, but with such a gentlemanly air that no-one bothered.”

“It’s because of him that I’m here.”

Alceste became serious. “Has he done something stupid?”

Soneri shook his head. “He picked up something of great importance.”

“In here?” Alceste, polishing off a plate of gnocchi, sounded amazed.

“I mean … the woman whose place he took.”

“A real beauty.”

“She knows the girl whose picture was in the paper today.”

“The photograph found on the dead man in the coach?”

Soneri nodded. “I’ve got to find out who that client of yours was.”

“I don’t know her name. She comes here from time to time, but …”

“If she paid with a credit card, she can be traced.”

“The man who was with her paid the bill.”

“Makes no difference.”

Alceste was drying his hands as the commissario was already on his way.

“What about the gnocchi?”

“I never say no to gnocchi. I’ll have them in Sbarazza’s usual place,” he said, indicating the now empty restaurant.

*

“I’ve found someone who knows the girl in the photograph,” Soneri announced later as he entered his office.

Juvara looked up in amazement. “How did you manage that?”

“I’ve already told you. I believe in coincidences. You can call it gut feeling if you like.”

“I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Fine, but first we’ve got to trace a certain Giuseppe Pianfarini. He was having lunch with the woman who knows the girl. He paid with his credit card, and his name is even written on the receipt.”

The euphoria of his discovery had made him forget everything else – the woman whose body had been burned, his gloomy mood, and above all Angela. The moment she came back into his mind, something choked inside him and he became again prey to fear.

“Here you are, sir.” Juvara surprised him with the news he
had to offer. “He lives at 15 Via Montebello and these are his various telephone numbers.”

He passed a sheet of paper over to him with studied nonchalance, but in his attitude Soneri detected a trace of peevishness.

“We’ll have a chat when you find the time,” the inspector added.

“Yes, of course,” the commissario said, as he dialled the number.

The man at the other end had the hoarse voice of a smoker.

“Commissario Soneri,” he announced. “I urgently require to trace the woman you had lunch with today at the
Milord
… no, no, nothing very serious … just a bit of information … you know those girls whose photographs were in the paper … calm down, maximum discretion guaranteed.”

When he rang off, he became aware that Juvara was ostentatiously displaying a lack of interest in that line of enquiry. “At least we’re getting somewhere with one mystery,” Soneri said, in self-justification. “I’m going to pay this Signora Robutti a visit. It seems she’s a marketing director with some food company. I want to know how she got to know this girl.”

“Talking about these girls,” the inspector cut in, “the one who died was twenty-one or twenty-two years old and was three months pregnant.”

An unpleasant sensation, like a symptom of the recurrence of a disease, assailed the commissario.

“Pregnant?” he stuttered.

“Nanetti was in touch a short time ago. He said your mobile’s been turned off.”

Soneri dived into his pocket for his telephone, which had indeed run out of battery, as happened often with him. He
plugged it into the socket beside his desk and a few moments later a barrage of messages began to show up, accompanied by a symphony of identical notes. One was from Angela:
I see you have already forgotten everything we said
… He felt a second stab in the heart within a matter of seconds. The news that the girl was expecting reopened a wound that had never really healed. For him, that girl was Ada, that child his unborn son, and the burned corpse represented the irreversibility of things, like his lost youth and all that might have been but was not. He was for a moment overcome by an emotion which quickly turned to rage. He had to find who had killed her. It was the only way to exorcise his pain.

“You’re right, Juvara. We must concentrate on this dead body. This must be our principal objective.”

The inspector stared at Soneri in surprise as he flopped heavily into an armchair. He was so pale that he seemed on the point of fainting, but his telephone rang and brought him back to himself.

“I’ve been searching for you for hours,” Nanetti said reproachfully.

“So Juvara has been telling me.”

“I think this changes everything. Even if the fact that she was pregnant doesn’t mean she couldn’t have been a streetwalker, my nose tells me …”

“I would rule it out. Prostitutes take precautions.”

“And what woman does not take precautions?”

“O.K., but it makes it less likely she was on the game. Anything else turn up?”

“Confirmation of what we suspected. She was killed by a very brutal blow, or else by a violent push. Four teeth knocked out and a broken jaw. She died instantly of a shattered skull. The body was burned and she was abandoned not more than one hour after the assault.”