words, the one thing that counted, as Nanetti always insisted.
“Tomorrow you’re going to have a horde of journalists on your back, and Alemanni will be in a rage,” Nanetti said before getting into his car.
The commissario gave a forced smile, clenching his extinguished cigar between his teeth. If he had paid heed only to the facts, he would never have set foot near the Po.
9
The freezing fog had left a fine film of frost on the car roof. Clouds of minute crystals floated through the air, while the drop in temperature had caused the grasses and plants in the fields to stiffen. Alongside him, the little villas with their overhanging roofs reminded Soneri of Christmas cards. As he was going along a stretch of completely white road, his mobile rang.
“I didn’t see you at the meeting,” the questore began, in a tone which was intended to convey a reproach, but he was too weak a man to make it felt.
“I was stuck with a corpse,” Soneri said.
The silence was so long that it seemed for a moment as though they had been cut off. “I would have liked to speak to you about that, among other things.” The questore was attempting to make up lost ground. “Tomorrow we’re going to have the press on our backs.”
“I’d prefer to steer clear of that.”
“We’ll have to give them some account of this new turn in the investigation,” the questore said with greater feeling.
“Yes, sir,” the commissario said. “But you know how to deal with these things much better than I do. Anyway, there’s not a lot to say. We fished the body up this afternoon. Its skull had been cracked open in the same way as the brother’s, and he was probably killed on the same day as he disappeared. The body had been secured underwater, next to the monument to the partisans on the floodplain beside the stone-crushing plant, not very far from the jetty. That’s all there is to it.”
From the long pause, the commissario guessed that his superior was taking notes on one of those sheets of notepaper headed QUESTURA which he kept in front of him at every meeting. He could even picture the pen with the pointed stem which he kept propped upright like an aerial in a kind of inkwell on his desk. He was equally sure that the questore would not pursue the topic. No-one ever appealed in vain to his vanity. Soneri did not have anything against journalists, who after all did the same sort of job as he did, but he never knew how to deal with their questions, so he evaded them by claiming judicial confidentiality and appealing to the complexity of the investigation. They would certainly want to know how he had worked out where the corpse was hidden. What could he say? That it was a matter of intuition? Or a hunch? Would he be able to transform something so fleeting and complex into a coherent answer? In his head, clouds without form and without geometry were blowing about. He could not squeeze them inside any rational perimeter — not that he had ever tried. It seemed to him as impossible a task as giving shape to the mist. There he was, splashing about like a gudgeon in the Po, and that was enough for him. It was all he needed to be able to get on with his job.
Now he felt drawn by the same inexplicable force towards the submerged village, and it was already in his mind that the freeze, with the dry days which accompanied it, would lower the water level to a point where the walls of the old San Quirico would be uncovered, making it possible for him to wander along a kind of Venetian calle surrounded by the ghosts of houses. The investigation was moving in time to the rhythms of the Po, of waters which rose and fell, endlessly changing the outline of the riverbank.
The car almost skidded on a stretch of road which was like a sheet of glass. He was badly shaken and this stopped him hearing the strains of “Aida” which had been ringing out for a few moments in his duffel-coat pocket.
“Where did you end up?” Angela said.
“I almost ended up in the ditch.”
“You must be very distracted…”
“The ice and the tyres are as smooth as each other.”
“Do you know that the carabinieri have mounted a huge inquiry into the trafficking of illegal immigrants?” she asked him.
“How do you know that?”
“A colleague is defending an Albanian pimp who’s been bringing girls here to work on the streets, and he let me read the report. It seems they’ve uncovered a sizeable trafficking racket, and they even know how the girls are brought here.”
“Did you see if Maresciallo Arico was involved?”
“He’s quoted frequently, but with all the big egos in the provincial command, if he’s looking to get any credit, he can forget it. He’ll be left with the crumbs at best.”
The commissario let out a cry of fury. The maresciallo had been beavering away on his own initiative for some time, but he had been leading the commissario astray, either by acting the fool, or by spinning his tale about the lack of resources.
“Don’t forget that you’re in my debt over a certain discovery which has turned out to be very important for your inquiry,” Angela warned him in a mock-threatening tone.
“So what?”
“So, Commissario, debts must be paid. Or would you rather I let the information leak out to your rivals in the carabinieri?”
“Fair enough,” Soneri said, with a touch of resignation in his voice, “but don’t ask for the impossible.”
“The impossible! Quite the reverse, I promise you. Only the most possible of things. In fact, we’ve already achieved it!”
“You mean on the barge again?”
“I liked it very much.”
“It’s too risky. We got away with it once, but a second time…”
“You just don’t get it, do you? No risk, no fun. Be prepared. As soon as I have a free moment, that is. It’s one date you had better not forget…and when it comes to collecting dues, I’m completely unscrupulous.”
“I’ll take you for a drive along the embankment, down the river.”
He heard a kind of shriek down the line. “You can’t rise above banalities. The people who write those little sentimental ditties in chocolate wrappers should consult you. What you’re talking about is the antechamber of conjugal love, a quick screw on a Saturday night in the double bed with freshly laundered sheets. I promise you, I’ll never do it between your two loathsome bedside tables,” she hissed.
It had, in fact, never happened. There was the one occasion when Angela had suddenly had the urge to reprise a situation from one of Boccaccio’s stories, which had her chatting from a window with a friend below and the commissario behind her, invisible from the street.
Later, at home, in the half-light of his rooms, he thought that it was his good fortune not to be pursued by one of those clingy women who aspire to the role of wife. Perhaps that was why he was so fond of Angela.
He woke in the same half-light as the night before. The freezing fog had transformed the trees into white lace, the only vivid tone in the part of the city he could see from the kitchen window. With the blanket of clouds covering the skies, there was not much difference between the shimmering light of day and the light coming from the lamp-posts at night: it all resembled a northern dusk. He drank his caffe latte and then began to assemble in his mind the things he had to do. The central heating pipes, filling with warm water, gave a gurgle and a noise like the sound of digestive fluids, which made him think of the water pumps on the Po. Was everything dried out? By the time he put his coffee cup in the sink, he had already taken his decision. He wanted to return to the Po and at that time in the morning he would not encounter much traffic in the city.
He called Juvara when he was at the wheel, and instructed him to go to the mortuary where, in a couple of hours, they would be doing the post-mortem on Anteo Tonna. He did not expect much to emerge from that examination. What he had deduced from observing the corpse was not likely to be very different from what would be obtained by cutting it open. He tossed his mobile on to the seat beside him and concentrated on his driving. The
