man.”
“Did he ever tell you why he would come here to see the patients?”
“He never did, but I believe I worked it out. He had a deep need to make himself useful, and he was very lonely. His family weren’t interested in him. His brother spent all his life on the Po.”
“We have reason to think he may be dead.”
Sartori’s expression grew dark.
“What did you talk about?”
“Oh, many things. He seemed to feel a need to communicate and could find no better way than coming here, being among people in pain. Out of a missionary spirit, I believe.”
In view of the advanced age of the man, Soneri asked him: “Did you speak about the past?”
“No, never. If the conversation ever tended in that direction, he was off. He preferred the present. He said that the past was a series of years of misery which he had no wish to revisit. Which said, it was not so easy to avoid these subjects altogether. You can see that nearly everyone here is elderly, and old people talk about their own younger times, the days when they were happier.”
“Ah, indeed,” the commissario said. Instinctively he thought back to his own days at university, of his first meeting with his wife, of the happy years they had spent before she died and he found himself struggling with a wave of painful memory.
“He came here regularly, but sometimes he seemed to keep himself to himself,” Sartori was saying. “There were days when he appeared not even to breathe, and was content simply to listen to others. It’s not that the conversation here was particularly deep. Most of the time people here just go on about their medical problems.”
Soneri fell silent and must have assumed a strange, self-absorbed expression because when he looked up again, he saw the man staring pointedly at him, with just the suggestion of a grin. “Who knows why he came here instead of going to the park to play bocce? Or to the bar? There are so many clubs…”
“I have wondered that myself,” Sartori said. “What I think is that he was not at ease with himself. I mean, some people are like that. Here, on the other hand, he would meet suffering people to whom he could bring a measure of comfort and even, sometimes, practical help. Or maybe he just came for the pleasure of being in company. He used to sit in that seat,” he said, pointing to a chair in the corner. “He would watch the patients coming in and out. Whenever someone he recognized came in, he would raise his hand shyly to greet them, but he never took the lead in conversation.”
“Did he stay for long?”
“He did. Until the last person had left. The nurses would find him alone in the waiting room and had to more or less throw him out.”
“‘This was not the only unit he came to, I gather.”
“No. He would turn up at other consulting rooms and surgeries. It depended on who was doing the consultancy and on their shifts. He would arrive in the morning, and still be here in the evening. Ten hours without a break. For meals, well, he had become friendly with the nurses, and they would put a tray aside for him at lunchtime and for supper.”
“Did he tell you which departments he went to?”
“This one and the surgical wards, of which there are four, all in the same building. There might have been other places too…”
The dialysis machine buzzed in the background, purifying Sartori’s blood drop by drop. Other patients gathered round to listen in to the discussion with the commissario, just as Tonna had done.
“Little by little,” the man said, “we had become friends, those of us who come here three times a week. We’ve known each other for years now. The difference was” — he paused — “that Tonna was not ill, anything but.”
“So that was what you talked about, only your health?”
Sartori raised the arm which was free of needles and waved it as though displeased. “When the conversation moved to other topics, Tonna would fall silent. It was not obvious how to get him involved. Sometimes he would pretend not to hear, or he would get up and go to the toilet.”
“Some years back, he was ill himself. A mental illness, I mean,” Soneri said.
“We knew that. We didn’t know each other then. Somebody told me something about a depressive fit and the risk of self-harming. Perhaps,” Sartori said, alluding to the fall from the window, “it was all down to a return of that illness.”
“Possibly,” the commissario said.
“Had anyone seen the two of us together, they would certainly have said that I was the one nearer to death. But instead…”
“Death walks side by side with all of us and sometimes assumes the most innocent of guises,” Soneri said, rising to his feet. “Who could know that better than I do, I whose job it is to deal with crime?”
Sartori smiled. “Who indeed, commissario?”
In the hospital yard, it was turning dark and the only sound was the incessant rain falling on the withered leaves. One large drop made a direct hit on the tip of Soneri’s cigar, extinguishing it with a hiss. Only at that point did he decide to put up his umbrella. As he walked, he wondered why Tonna had thought to spend his time in a hospital. What did he find there that he could not have found elsewhere? Alternatively, what did he not find there?
His mobile rang. He had, as always, to rummage in his pockets. He never had any memory of where he had put the thing.
“My sense is that our friends the carabinieri are not unduly concerned about the disappearance of the bargeman,” Juvara said. “At Torricella, they sounded exasperated even being asked. I thought at one point they were going to invite me to get lost.”
“Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
“Commissario, are you going to launch into a sermon?”
“Not at all, I just think that this business is turning ugly and that our good friends the carabinieri don’t seem to be getting it.”
He turned a corner into the old town. The houses had lost the pale, straw-coloured joy of their sun-lit days and seemed drenched in a sticky sweat, as though they were newly beached from the swollen torrent that flowed nearby. The streets seemed to him to have taken on the appearance of a soaked sponge.
Back in the police station he found the administrators scurrying about preparing for a meeting on the river emergency. No-one stopped to ask about Tonna, and Alemanni could still not be found.
“It won’t be long before the carabinieri turn up here to evacuate us too,” Soneri thought, as he looked at the river, now almost over the columns of the city’s bridges. And then the mangled snippet of Verdi’s opera rang out once more.
“You were supposed to call me, remember?”
“That opening was not quite tuneful. You came in at least three notes too high.”
“One of these days you’re going to be in big trouble! You haven’t forgotten about this evening?”
“Certainly not. It’s all fixed, isn’t it?”
“Has no-one ever told you that appointments should be confirmed?”
“I’m sure that’s the way it is with lawyers, but in the police everything is always subject to…” He got no further before the connection was abruptly terminated.
He hated scenes, but he was only telling the truth. He never could plan his days, and when he tried he invariably found his plans come crashing down around him. Who would have guessed that the Tonna case, for instance, would turn into a murder inquiry? He thought of the call he had taken that morning: a suicide at the hospital, could they send along a police officer, routine investigation. And now…
He had just decided that it would be a waste of time to call Angela back when she was in a rage — she would switch off all the telephones — when he bumped into Juvara at the door.
“Two dyed-in-the-wool Fascists, real fanatics,” his assistant said with no preamble.
The commissario picked up the reference, but he made no comment. He felt very much alone in the face of a mystery which instinctively attracted him but which at the same time appeared to carry the threat and promise of deeper trouble. “Did you come up with anything else?”
