fingerprints on it are his. But Anna had been there, too, and Beppe had his mattock and his torch and all his truffle- hunting equipment with him. Why bother with that, if he’d meant to kill himself? And why bring his shotgun if not?’
He sighed.
‘And then the technical people have been on to me with some problems they’ve been having.’
‘Like what?’
‘I won’t bore you with the details. For that matter, I don’t really understand them myself. But when you fire a shotgun, it discharges nitrate on to your sleeve and hand. Now there were traces of nitrate on Beppe’s body and clothing, but they were apparently too weak and old to have been done that day. There was also something about the “angle of scatter”, or some such thing. They say that for the pellets which hit Beppe to have spread out the way they did, the end of the barrel must have been at least half a metre away, which would have been too far for him to reach the trigger.’
Minot knocked back his wine.
‘But what has this to do with me?’
His guest stood up and stuck his thumbs under the black belt of his tunic.
‘We have a witness who claims to have seen a truck like yours parked off the road a short distance from the wood where Beppe died.’
Minot turned on him in an instant, his body tensed, ready to spring.
‘Who’s that? Someone with a grudge against me, I’ll bet. They all hate me, God knows why. I’ve never done them any harm, but they treat me like a leper!’
Pascal did not lose his composure.
‘Not in this case, Minot. The witness in question was on his way into Alba early yesterday morning when he saw a vehicle parked in the copse to the left of the road, a red Fiat truck. He recognized it as yours, assumed that you were out after truffles and thought no more about it. Then he heard the news about Beppe’s suicide and called me to say that you might have heard or seen something.’
He stared fixedly at his host.
‘So now I’d like to hear your side of it.’
Minot sat down again. There was no point in trying to dominate the situation physically. Minot chit, they’d used to call him as a child — ‘Little Guglielmo’ — to distinguish him from another boy of the same name, a swaggering brute and bully known as Minot gross. The distinction ceased to have any meaning when the latter Guglielmo broke his neck while exploring the roof of an abandoned farm just outside the village, but somehow the mocking nickname had stuck.
‘I said I wasn’t there,’ Minot told Pascal. ‘I didn’t say anything about my truck.’
The maresciallo raised one eyebrow and waited.
‘I was out with friends that night,’ said Minot, after a pause. ‘They brought the dogs, and they drove. When I got back my truck was here, but not where I’d left it. There was mud on the paintwork, too, fresh mud. Someone must have taken it while I was out. The key was in the ignition. I never bother to take it out. No one around here wants to steal an old crock like mine.’
Enrico Pascal considered this.
‘And who were these friends?’ he asked.
Minot shook his head decisively.
‘I’m not going to drag them into the shit.’
Pascal twitched at the seat of his uniform trousers. He sat down again, drumming the fingers of one hand on his knee.
‘You’re making this very difficult for me, Minot,’ he said mildly.
The answer was a laugh.
‘You haven’t always made things that easy for me, marescia! I’m finally getting my own back for…’
He broke off abruptly. One of the rats had appeared on the back of the chair in which the Carabinieri official was sitting, and was now perched a few inches from his ear. Minot clapped his hands together loudly. The beast froze, then spun around in the air and vanished. Minot rubbed his palms together as though the slap had been a rhetorical gesture.
‘Here’s what I’ll do,’ he suggested in a conciliatory tone. ‘Let me have a word with these friends of mine. If there’s no problem, I’ll call you up and tell you their names.’
‘What makes you think there would be a problem?’
Minot shrugged.
‘You never know, do you? Look at Lamberto Latini. He didn’t want anyone to know where he’d been that night, did he?’
Enrico Pascal shook his head.
‘I don’t know, Minot. It’s very irregular. I mean, you could just go to them and work out a story together, construct an alibi for yourself…’
Minot laughed.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! Who’s going to take a risk like that for the likes of me?’
Pascal seemed not to have heard.
‘I should really take you in right now,’ he murmured, as though to himself.
‘You don’t want another mistake, though, do you?’ Minot returned maliciously. ‘First Manlio Vincenzo, then Latini. If you get it wrong a third time, people are going to start making jokes. “Maybe he should save time and just arrest us all!” I don’t think you want that, marescia. In the city you might be able to get away with it, but out here in the country you need people’s respect and cooperation. Lose that, and your job becomes impossible.’
Enrico Pascal stood up heavily.
‘You’ve got the whole thing worked out, Minot. I can’t afford another mistake, it’s true. On the other hand, I can’t afford to have two unsolved murders in my district either.’
‘What about this other policeman?’ Minot asked him. ‘The one who just arrived from Rome. He seemed to have some ideas about the Vincenzo business, at least.’
Enrico Pascal stared at him closely.
‘You’ve met him?’
Minot nodded and smiled.
‘Yesterday in Alba, at the market. The Faigano brothers and I were playing cards. He came over and introduced himself as a newspaper reporter from Naples. We pretended to believe him.’
The maresciallo seemed staggered by this revelation.
‘But how did you know who he was?’
‘Because I’d seen him earlier in the street with Dottor Legna, who was treating him with great respect. I knew then he must be this “supercop” they’ve been talking about in the press. When he turned up in the bar, I recognized him right away.’
He laughed.
‘So I started whistling the chorus to this old Fascist song! That’s what we used to do back in the war to tip each other off that there was an informer about. They couldn’t very well object, could they? We were just being patriotic.’
Pascal sniffed loudly.
‘Passing himself off as a reporter, was he? These Criminalpol types, I suppose they’re trained to do all that undercover stuff. Well, at least you’ve seen him and spoken to him. He hasn’t bothered to get in touch with me. But then why would he? I’m just a country bumpkin trying to keep order here in the village.’
He nodded to Minot.
‘Well, I’d better be going.’
They walked together to the front door.
‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ said Pascal, turning on the threshold.
He took something from his pocket.
‘I think this is yours.’
Minot stood looking down at the knife lying on Pascal’s outstretched palm.
‘Where did you get that?’ he said.
