woman in the field beyond the fence.
Cola was a good worker, a serious man, and so the foreman believed him and called the police immediately without going outside himself to check and see that Cola was telling the truth. But others had seen Cola come into the building and came to ask what it was, what had he seen? The foreman snarled at them to get back to work: the refrigerated trucks were waiting at the loading docks, and they didn’t have time to stand around all day and gabble about some whore who got her throat cut.
He didn’t mean this literally, of course, for Cola had told him only about the shoe and the foot, but the fields between the factories were well-known territory to the men who worked in the factories – and to the women who worked in those fields. If she’d got herself killed there, then she was probably one of those painted wrecks who spent the late afternoon standing at the side of the road that led from the industrial zone back into Mestre. Quitting time, time to go home, but why not a quick stop at the side of the road and a short walk back to a blanket spread beside a clump of grass? It was quick, they expected nothing of you except ten thousand lire, and they were, more and more often now, blondes come in from Eastern Europe, so poor that they couldn’t make you use anything, not like the Italian girls on Via Cappuccina, and since when did a whore tell a man what to do or where to put it? She probably did that, got pushy, and the man had pushed back. Plenty more of them and plenty more coming across the border every month.
The police cars pulled up and a uniformed officer got out of each. They walked towards the front of the building, but the foreman reached them before they got to the door. Behind him stood Cola, feeling important to be the centre of all this attention, but still faintly sick from the sight of that foot.
‘Is it you who called?’ the first policeman asked. His face was round, glistening with sweat, and he stared at the foreman from behind dark glasses.
‘Yes,’ the foreman answered. ‘There’s a dead woman in the field behind the building.’
‘Did you see her?’
‘No,’ the foreman answered, stepping aside and motioning Cola to step forward. ‘He did.’
After a nod from the first one, the policeman from the second car pulled a blue notebook out of his jacket pocket, flipped it open, uncapped his pen, and stood with the pen poised over the page.
‘Your name?’ asked the first policeman, the dark focus of his glance now directed at the butcher.
‘Cola, Bettino.’
‘Address?’
‘What’s the use of asking his address?’ interrupted the foreman. ‘There’s a dead woman out there.’
The first officer turned away from Cola and tilted his head down a little, just enough to allow him to peer at the foreman over the tops of his sun-glasses. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’ Then, turning back to Cola, he repeated, ‘Address?’
‘Castello 3453.’
‘How long have you worked here?’ he asked, nodding at the building that stood behind Cola.
‘Fifteen years.’
‘What time did you get here this morning?’
‘Seven-thirty. Same as always.’
‘What were you doing in the field?’ Somehow, the way he asked the questions and the way the other one wrote down the answers made Cola feel they suspected him of something.
‘I went out to have a cigarette.’
‘The middle of August, and you went out into the sun to have a cigarette?’ the first officer asked, making it sound like lunacy. Or a lie.
‘It was my break time,’ Cola said with mounting resentment. ‘I always go outside. I like to get away from the smell.’ The word made it real to the policemen, and they looked towards the building, the one with the notebook incapable of disguising the contraction of his nostrils at what they met.
‘Where is she?’
‘Just beyond the fence. She’s under a clump of bushes, so I didn’t see her at first.’
‘Why did you go near her?’
‘I saw a shoe.’
‘You what?’
‘I saw a shoe. Out in the field, and then I saw the second one. I thought they might be good, so I went through the fence to get them. I thought maybe my wife would want them.’ That was a lie: he had thought he could sell them, but he didn’t want to tell this to the police. It was a small lie, and entirely innocent, but it was only the first of many lies that the police were going to be told about the shoe and the person who wore it.
‘Then what?’ the first policeman prompted when Cola added nothing to this.
‘Then I came back here.’
‘No, before that,’ he said with an irritated shake of his head. ‘When you saw the shoe. When you saw her. What happened?’
Cola spoke quickly, hoping that would get him through and rid of it. ‘I picked up one shoe, and then I saw the other one. It was under the bush. So I pulled on it. I thought it was stuck. So I pulled again, and it came off.’ He swallowed once. Twice. ‘It was on her foot. That’s why it wouldn’t come off’
‘Did you stay there long?’
This time it was Cola who suspected lunacy. ‘No. No. No, I came back into the building and told Banditelli, and he called you.’
The foreman nodded to confirm this.
‘Did you walk around back there?’ the first policeman asked Cola.
‘Walk around?’
‘Stand around? Smoke? Drop anything near her?’
Cola shook his head in a strong negative.
The second one flipped the pages of his notebook and the first said, ‘I asked you a question.’
‘No. Nothing. I saw her and I dropped the shoe, and I went into the building.’
‘Did you touch her?’ the first one asked.
Cola looked at him with eyes wide with amazement. ‘She’s dead. Of course I didn’t touch her.’
‘You touched her foot,’ the second policeman said, looking down at his notes.
‘I didn’t touch her foot,’ Cola said, though he couldn’t remember now if he had or had not. ‘I touched the shoe, and it came off her foot.’ He couldn’t keep himself from asking, ‘Why would I want to touch her?’
Neither policeman answered this. The first one turned and nodded to the second, who flipped his notebook closed. ‘All right, show us where she is.’
Cola stood rooted to the spot and shook his head from side to side. The sun had dried the blood that spattered down the front of his apron, and flies buzzed around him. He didn’t look at them. ‘She’s at the back, out beyond the big hole in the fence.’
‘I want you to show us where she is,’ the first policeman said.
‘I just told you where she is,’ Cola snapped, voice rising up sharply.
The two policemen exchanged a glance that somehow managed to suggest that Cola’s reluctance was significant, worth remembering. But they turned away from him and from the foreman and walked around the side of the building, saying nothing.
It was noon and the sun beat down on the flat tops of the officers’ uniform caps. Beneath them, their hair was sopping, their necks running with sweat. At the back of the building, they saw the large hole in the fence and made towards it. Behind them, filtering through the death squeals that still came from the building, they heard human sounds and turned towards them. Clustered around the back entrance of the building, their aprons as red with gore as Cola’s, five or six men huddled in a tight ball. Used to this curiosity, the policemen turned back to the fence and headed towards the hole. Bowing low, they went through it in single file and then off to the left, towards a large spiky clump of bush that stood beyond the fence.
The officers stopped a few metres from it. Knowing to look for the foot, they easily found it, saw its sole peering out from beneath the low branches. Both shoes lay just in front of it.
The two of them approached the foot, walking slowly and looking at the ground where they walked, as careful to avoid the malevolent puddles as to keep from stepping in anything that might be another footprint. Just beside the shoes, the first one knelt down and pushed the waist-high grass aside with his hand.
