treading on delicate turf. Not that Diotivede was a touchy sort, but he did have trouble tolerating certain things. All jokes and cliches about those who made their living cutting corpses open irritated him. People had been trying his patience with such rubbish for decades. He felt that his job was like any other and, moreover, he liked it. He thought he was no different from a carpenter or a painter, and it irked him that others didn’t realise this. Bordelli knew this and liked to rib him about it, just so he could see the vaguely childish vexation on the doctor’s face. But he also knew when to stop, and so he immediately changed the subject.
‘Have you got anything for me yet?’ he said. The doctor continued to fiddle with his slides.
‘Do you need to know right away or can you wait for the report?’ Diotivede asked.
‘You know I don’t like to wait.’
The doctor sighed, abandoned his labours and came towards him, removing his gloves.
‘The lady died about nine o’clock, from a violent asthma attack that triggered cardiac arrest. But the best part is that there was definitely Asthmaben in the Asthmaben bottle, but no trace in the drop I took from the glass.’
‘Listen-’
‘And that’s not all. There was no trace of the medicine in her blood, either, nor in her stomach. Whereas there was a great deal on her tongue.’
‘As if someone had poured the medicine into her mouth after she was already dead …’
Diotivede gave one of his rare, brief smiles, a sort of puckering of the lips that was decipherable only to those who knew him well, but wasn’t necessarily the prelude to an amusing statement. Indeed, he said only:
‘It’s up to you to discover whether that’s true.’ He seemed glad not to have to concern himself with it.
The inspector snorted.
‘Fingerprints?’ he asked.
‘A great many, all belonging to the deceased.’
‘Have you analysed the pages of the book?’
‘Nothing of interest.’
Bordelli bit off a fingernail. It had broken halfway and kept getting caught on the fabric of his pocket every time he stuck his hand in.
‘Anything else?’ he asked. The doctor went and washed his hands at the laboratory’s tiny sink.
‘At the moment, no, but I haven’t finished yet.’
‘Keep me posted. Now, I need to buck up and go back down to Africa.’
Diotivede gave a sly smile.
‘Is it really so hot in your offices?’
‘We’re training for hell.’
‘Well, in that case, I’ll drop by from time to time.’ Then he returned to Signora Pedretti’s slab with a scalpel between his fingers. The inspector left him to his beloved work and climbed back into his Beetle to return to the office. He had a long, useless afternoon ahead of him. The only sure thing was his appointment with Piras at half past nine that evening, to discuss and take stock of the situation. When he pulled into the courtyard at headquarters, he was bathed in sweat. There wasn’t a breath of wind; clothes stuck to the skin like leeches. Still, spending the month of August in the city also had its advantages: the corridors were less noisy, and Dr Inzipone was on holiday with his family.
Bordelli pulled up in front of Botta’s place. The sky was becoming overcast; the humidity was unbearable. The only hope was that it might rain. Botta lived in Via del Campuccio, in a basement flat a few blocks from the inspector’s. They had known each other for almost fifteen years. Bordelli wasn’t yet forty years old at the time. Ennio Bottarini, the burglar known as ‘Botta’, had been caught lowering himself down the outer wall of a villa. Two policemen on bicycles happened to be passing by at the same moment, and Botta jumped down right in front of them. A case of very bad luck. They had found a bit of everything in his pockets: necklaces, a gold watch, a bronze statuette of a naked Venus, and even a glass ashtray.
At the station the thief had started philosophising, holding forth on certain injustices that nobody understood, and since he couldn’t get so much as a dog to listen to him, he set his sights on Assistant Inspector Bordelli. He asked for him with such insistence, and with so many words, that in the end they gave him his way just to be rid of him. Even back then, Botta already bore the signs of a hard, wretched life on his face. Small and agile, he had the eyes of an ignorant genius, which won Bordelli’s sympathy at once.
‘Mr Inspector, I am pleased to meet you in person at last.’
‘I’m still an assistant inspector.’
‘Not for long, Inspector, not for long.’
‘Why did you want to see me?’
‘I’m called “Botta”, Inspector. I just know you’ll be able to understand me. My friends have told me that you’re someone who sees things straight.’
‘Which of your friends?’
‘Gino Gamba and “the Beast”.’ Two smugglers.
‘Go on,’ said Bordelli.
‘Look at me, Inspector. Do I look like a criminal? I haven’t even got a jackknife on me. I break into the villas of millionaires, rich people whose knick-knacks could feed me for a year. And so I go in and take a couple of these stupid gewgaws just to get by; but if I’m caught, I get five years. Now, you tell me if that’s fair.’
The assistant inspector knew that the little burglar was right.
‘How many times have you been locked up, Bottarini?’ he asked him.
‘Not very many, at least not in Italy.’
‘So you’ve worked abroad as well?’
Botta gave a start in his chair.
‘You see, Inspector? You said “you’ve worked” and not “you’ve robbed”… I knew you would understand.’
‘Not so fast, Botta, not so fast …’
They kept on talking a while longer of this and that. Botta started describing the peculiarities of various European prisons, the differences between Spanish warders and Turkish warders; it was a kind of anthropology lesson, an enriching experience. This was not just any common thief. In the end the assistant inspector had taken him home, and they dined together, tripe and onions, washed down with a foul wine that Botta knocked back by the pitcherful.
At the trial Bordelli had done everything possible to have him given the minimum sentence. In the end he got ten months, but was released after four for good behaviour. Ever since, they had remained friends of a sort. Sometimes they would dine together at Dal Lordo, in Via dell’Orto. Or else they would spend an evening together on the banks of the Arno, exchanging stories about the war. Every so often they would fall out of touch and then meet back up again. It was only a year ago, at Christmas time, that Bordelli had discovered that Botta was a born cook. The little thief had put together a French dinner that was hard to forget.
Bordelli tapped on the windowpane of Botta’s basement with the keys to his Volkswagen.
‘Are you there, Ennio?’
The window opened slightly.
‘Inspector!’
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘I’ll be right with you.’
A good minute later, the front door giving on to the street opened up, and Botta appeared wearing a housewife’s apron.
‘Hello, Inspector, I was just making coffee.’
Descending the stairs into Botta’s lair, Bordelli noticed a strange burnt smell.
‘What are you cooking?’ he asked.
‘Nothing edible, Inspector. I’m doing a little job for a friend.’
‘A “little job”?’
‘Ancient coins. I boil them in mud to age them.’
‘A swindle, in other words.’
‘No, no, it’s a way to make the tourists happy.’
‘Well, when you put it that way …’
