“Been there already.”
“What do you think?”
“It’s never happened before that they set fire to a bar or restaurant. When something new happens, there’s something sinister behind it,” the man muttered, making no effort to disguise his pessimism.
“Is the niece’s family clean?”
“They go about their own business, same as everybody else. Money is the only religion here nowadays. The husband of Tonna’s niece is a right-wing councillor. I mean the new right wing, the shopkeepers’ right wing, one which has taken off its black shirt and put on a tie.”
Barigazzi spat on the road as he always did when he disapproved of something, expressing unease at living in a world which was too deeply changed. All that remained for him was the Po, his landscape, the mist and that little corner of his past which opened up inside the doors of Il Sordo.
“I met Dinon sculling among the poplars,” Soneri said. “He said he was checking how far the water had gone down.”
The old man looked at him in amazement. “No, he would have been checking on the memorial to the partisans. The river damages it every time.”
“Do you mean to say there’s a memorial on the floodplain?”
“Always has been. A monument to the comrades who fought along the Po.”
“And Dinon takes care of it?”
“Him and that group of his who call themselves orthodox communists, and who believe they’re the only ones with the right credentials for the custody of the monument. In fact, we do it too. We’re well mannered towards each other and choose different days.”
“How many are there besides Dinon and Vaeven?”
“Very few now,” Barigazzi said in a derisive tone. “A tiny group of nostalgics who meet every so often in an old shoemaker’s shop to adore the bust of Stalin.”
“So much the better for them. At least they’ve lived their lives hoping for the revolution. It was worse for Tonna who had only memories and frustrations to live on.”
“Tell me the truth,” Barigazzi said. “He was in deep trouble, wasn’t he?”
“How do you know that?”
“Along the Po everybody knows everybody else, word gets around. From what I hear, he didn’t carry very much grain. However, he did a lot of boating and a barge like that costs a lot of money. In other words, the money must have come from somewhere.”
“I have to agree with you,” Soneri said. “This mist covers more and more mysteries.”
“The valley is wide and there are fewer and fewer people about. There are houses where nobody knows what’s in them, nor even who lives there.”
The commissario turned away. “How much water is there left on the floodplain?”
“A metre and a half. You’ll see the bottom by this afternoon.”
Even where they were standing, the air was still heavy with the smell of burning. The smoke had mingled with the mist and together they formed a cloud which hung over the village. What had happened to the bar had galvanized everyone and this made things easier for the commissario. The questore would spend days chairing meetings and the press would pay no more heed to the toxic leaks from Alemanni.
“What would you say to going out over the floodplain in your boat?”
“We’d risk getting stuck in the middle, or beached on a sandbank or banging into a tree trunk. It’s a fishing boat that I’ve got…” Barigazzi said.
“If there were two of us, we could manage.”
“What has brought on this appetite for a bit of tourism?”
“You started it. Did you not tell me to wait until the waters were less muddy?”
Barigazzi fixed a sharp, penetrating look on him, but he said nothing. Only when the commissario was ten steps away did he shout after him, “Come immediately after lunch, before the waters drop too far.”
Soneri walked towards Il Sordo, through air still rank with the stench of the embers which swept up the streets and under the arches. He was passed by large saloon cars, their lights flashing. He recognized the chauffeurs from the prefettura. He too had been summoned to a meeting in the questura, together with the questore, the prefetto and the mayors of the towns on the plain. Official anxiety had returned to the levels it had been at when the Po was threatening the houses.
Before going into the osteria, he called Juvara. “Have they left you all on your own? They’re all here.”
“More or less… Is this fire going to help clear things up?”
“Yes, but only up to a point.”
“What does that mean? The questore is persuaded that it’s the work of the gang that did for the Tonna brothers.”
“If they had killed them, why would they have torched his niece’s bar?”
“Maybe she was mixed up in it too…”
‘Tonna was carrying illegal immigrants from the delta up to the cities on either side of the river. Some hours before they burned the bar down, they came looking for him on the barge. That means they thought he was still alive and double-crossing them. They didn’t destroy the boat because it might still be useful. There’s no safer or easier way to deliver immigrants into the heart of the industrial zones than by transferring them from one vessel to another offshore in the delta without the inconvenience of berthing. Minimum risk and maximum profit.”
“Commissario, you have to go and tell this to the questore. They’re all convinced that this means people- trafficking has arrived in these parts and that the two brothers were bumped off by a bunch of gangsters.”
The ispettore was right. He knew the kerfuffle that they could get into at headquarters every time something out of the ordinary, like this, happened. There was the risk of them opening a new, useless line of inquiry. In addition, he thought that Arico would certainly have sent in a report on Anteo Tonna’s trafficking and at that point the circle was closed. He kept his mobile in his hand for a few minutes, unsure whether to call the questore immediately or to wait. The meeting in the questura was at 4.00 that afternoon. Perhaps he would manage to get down to the floodplain and back in time.
The landlord in the bar was wearing his hearing aid, but the means of communication were not much different. Soneri had to make use of the sign language he had learned from Barigazzi. There was no-one in the osteria and perhaps that was why the owner had his hearing aid switched on. Watching him shuffle between the tables, it occurred to Soneri that he must know a great deal about life in the town, about Tonna and about the past. Perhaps he even knew the Kite. It was for this reason that he had asked Barigazzi to take him out on the floodplain. He wanted to examine the monument and read what was inscribed on the marble.
As he made his way to the jetty, the Fortanina wine was still bubbling in his stomach. Barigazzi was waiting for him.
“We’d better get a move on,” the old man said. “By this evening the water will be too low and I might not manage to get the boat back to the jetty.”
They stepped aboard and, as a precaution, Soneri sat down while Barigazzi set his feet wide apart on the bottom boards, a position which allowed him to manoeuvre without moving his upper body one centimetre. They arrived at a point a little beyond the pumps, disembarked, raised the boat with the winch and lowered it carefully on to the other side, into the waters of the flooded plain.
“You see? The undergrowth is beginning to appear,” Barigazzi said, pointing to the first branches emerging from the water.
“There’s enough to keep us afloat,” the commissario said.
“Not everywhere. The land on these plains is irregular and there are no navigation lanes.”
The light was very faint, even though the poplar trees were totally bare. The mist seemed to be trapped in that spiderwork of branches, or perhaps the shade was caused by the embankments which shut off that stretch of flooded land. They passed the great outline of the stone-crushing plant, with its gantries and enormous skips, a kingdom of rust and mud on which the water had spread the fresh stain of its passage. With a few quick strokes, Barigazzi rowed through the trees which would remain damp until the first foliage appeared. The thrusts of the oar made the boat skim along smoothly, and when necessary, the old man turned the oar on its side behind the stern, using it as a rudder to give more precise direction.
At a certain point, Barigazzi stopped rowing and, standing quite still, without uttering a word, raised his arm
