lading drawn up by some compliant wholesale merchant. Officially he was transporting grain, but in fact he was carrying people who had to be kept out of sight. The ideal cover, the more you think about it: from the Adriatic, where the ships dock, to the industrial heart of the country where it is much easier to get fixed up. The whole thing done by a mode of transport which is much less risky than lorries or trains. No-one checks anything on the Po.”
“He’d found a way of living and maintaining his barge,” Nanetti said. “I’ve also made some other discoveries which I’ll tell you about later.”
As he put his mobile back in his pocket, Soneri wondered what the trafficking in illegal immigrants had to do with the disappearance of Tonna. He was still gathering information about him and his life without managing to make headway over where he was or who had killed his brother. He walked over to the embankment. Now that the floods had subsided and the Po was growing less turbulent day by day and settling back into its own riverbed, gangs of workmen were removing the sandbags.
The boat club was as feverish as a building site. Ghezzi, Vernizzi and Torelli were hard at work carrying buckets back and forth, while Barigazzi stood leaning on a shovel, observing the river. Soneri came up behind him, catching him unawares. “I bet that once you would have seen me when I was still on the embankment.”
The old man turned round, his expression a mixture of anger and apprehension. “Why do you have to rub salt in the wound? I’m still lucid enough to know that the years are catching up on me.”
“It’s only lack of exercise,” Soneri said in an attempt to play things down. “There are no more threats now.”
Barigazzi looked at him in puzzlement and from his eyes the commissario understood that he considered him a threat.
“The floodplain’s not really visible yet,” he said, changing subject.
“You’re wrong there,” Barigazzi said, pointing to a longitudinal wrinkle across the current. “The floodplain is no more than half a metre under.”
“So tomorrow it will appear and part the waters,” Soneri ventured.
“Some time tonight, around four o’clock. The level of the water is dropping by nearly ten centimetres an hour. The cold reduces it.”
“How long will it take for the floodplain to dry out?”
“If they get the water pumps started up to drain the water from the houses, it should take less than a week, but it’ll be springtime before they’re really dry. Otherwise, we’d need about a month of freezing weather,” Barigazzi said, continuing to look out over the slow-moving current.
“You’ve already cleaned up your club, I see.”
“Almost. The walls are still soaking and we’ll have to wait for the air to do its work for us. Unfortunately,” he said, pointing into the distance towards the bank on the Lombard side, “the fumara, the mist, is drawing in.”
The sky over the river appeared swollen and the air heavy. Barigazzi, with one hand still on the handle of the shovel, seemed to be waiting for the mist to arrive, an event which had occurred thousands of times, but which had not lost its power to surprise.
“I’d like to know where it’s born,” Soneri said.
“Everywhere and nowhere, like those of us who move in the heart of it.”
The faint autumn sun clouded over, making it possible to stare at it directly. The river blended with the sky, as does the winter snow on the hills, and it was at that moment that a long, dark shape made its appearance, forcing its way upstream and beginning the slow manoeuvre of mooring. As it passed in front of them, a solid stretch of bank concealed its outlines. The engine spluttered quietly with a noise similar to cooking polenta.
“He’s mooring against the current,” Barigazzi told him, answering a quizzical gesture the commissario had made with his chin. “He’ll go a bit further up and then manoeuvre sideways into the port.”
After a few minutes, with the movements of some lazy, languid fish, Tonna’s barge began slowly to turn, showing its side. Finally it made its approach crabwise until the hull came to rest against the cushion of old tyres hanging from the coping stones. Two men emerged from the cabin, threw the hawsers on to the land, disembarked and made them fast to the iron rings.
“The final journey,” Soneri suggested.
Barigazzi’s glance was eloquent, but he said nothing.
“Who are they?” asked the commissario, pointing to the boatmen.
“People from Luzzara,” Barigazzi said evasively. “And they know their business. A perfect bit of manoeuvring. Tonna himself couldn’t have done better.”
It began to get dark, and Gianna appeared at the door of the club.
“I’ll see you at the bar, in Il Sordo,” Soneri said as he turned to go, seeming to confirm a previously made appointment. Barigazzi did not move or utter a word, but he raised his free hand in assent.
Smoking his cigar, the commissario passed along the colonnades in the town. The offices of the carabinieri were wrapped in mist, but on the first floor he saw a light burning at the maresciallo’s window. The guard at the door showed him into the two duty rooms, heavy with the smell of reheated minestrone. Arico was chilled to the bone and cursed the mist and the Po, while every so often the radio transmitted some communications from the radio car.
“They’ve brought the barge into the port,” the commissario said.
“So that’s that, then. Thank God!”
Soneri would have liked to tell him that it was his duty to investigate the disappearance of Anteo, but he held himself back because Arico’s lack of interest afforded him more liberty of movement.
“Any news?”
“None,” the maresciallo said in his nasal voice. “I’m afraid he’s come to a bad end.”
“I never believed he’d simply fled.”
Arico sighed deeply. “Neither did I.”
“Do you have any idea what Tonna carried in his various cruises up and down the river?”
Arico was plainly taken aback. “Grain and various other assorted goods. The barge was not equipped for containers.”
“That was not all.”
“And what else, then?”
“Have you ever heard word of illegal immigrants being landed along the river?”
“Not around here. Near Cremona and Piacenza perhaps.”
“Did you ever check up on Tonna?”
“What was there to check up on? An old man with a barge that had seen better days?” the maresciallo protested. He had taken Soneri’s questions as a criticism. “Do you really think he put in here with a crowd of people in the hold? He would have disembarked them further down, wouldn’t he? Certainly not at a landing stage.”
“I’m only asking you to make inquiries with your colleagues in the stations along the Po. You do understand, Arico,” Soneri said, drawing close to the other as though in complicity, “this is a nasty business, and I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the motive may be found here…seeing as we’re both convinced he didn’t run off.”
The maresciallo, reassured, was still nodding his head as the commissario left his office. A few seconds later, as he was crossing the mist-covered town, he went over that hypothesis in his mind and felt it crumble away bit by bit. He didn’t know why, but something about it did not convince him. Principally, he didn’t understand what Decimo could have had to do with the whole business.
The niece was behind the bar as usual. She had the familiar, slightly down-at-heel look of middle-aged women who have let themselves go. Her clinging skirt drew attention to her broad, flabby, matronly hips, while her hair would have required bleaching if it was ever again to be viewed as blonde. She came over to the commissario, placing her folded arms on the bar as though she were leaning out of a window. The gesture caused her to push up her breasts, making them bulge out of her low-cut blouse. Soneri could not avoid looking at her. In spite of everything, she gave the impression of a woman in the rude health of a mare.
“I would like to talk to you about that phone call.”
She stared at him vacuously.
“I mean the one from the guy who was looking for your uncle, Barbisin.”
Something seemed to light up in her face: a faint, vague light. “I don’t know anything apart from what I’ve already told you.”
“When he came off the boat, did he just bring you his dirty clothes to wash or did he spend time in the
