that she was now observing him more coolly.
“You’re a policeman. I’ve heard talk of you in the village,” she said, standing back.
“My family is from these parts, but I’m here for a holiday, not to carry out enquiries. I am just bringing back the dog,” he concluded, with some embarrassment.
The woman did not share his embarrassment. “Did you find her?”
Soneri could do no more than nod.
“Where?”
“At Pratopiano.”
Manuela seemed to be running over in her mind the various places in the valley that were known to her. “I don’t know where that is, and I don’t care. As far as I am concerned, all these places are the same — ” She stopped all of a sudden, with a contemptuous sneer, but immediately, in another abrupt shift, she reverted to the gentle tone and asked timidly, “What state was he in?”
Soneri waited for a few moments before replying in a whisper, “You can imagine.”
She lowered her eyes and looked at a clump of weeds at her feet. “Had it been long since…”
“A couple of days, judging by the condition of the body.”
Manuela swallowed hard and stared once more into the distance. Her cheeks turned a gentle pink.
“Did he never speak to you about debts?”
She gave a sigh which swiftly became a scoff. She looked Soneri straight in the eye, and for a moment he thought she was about to faint.
“I’m going to escape from here,” she said, in the tone of someone reciting a litany. “At long last I’ll be free of these mountains…” — her voice rising to a hysterical scream — “I’ve lost everything: husband, inheritance, reputation and, what matters most, my life. My life. I threw it away when I chose to bury myself in this backwater. I played my cards badly,” she said, with lucid cynicism.
Soneri could no longer meet Manuela’s gaze, behind which he glimpsed an abyss of ugliness. He realised that many years devoted to detective work had not yet inoculated him against the sheer nastiness lurking beneath such a great variety of surfaces. It was in many ways a comforting discovery.
“Was it you that made them put up those posters on San Martino?” he said, coldly.
Manuela looked at him with a smile of distrust. “No, I know nothing about any posters. I was as surprised as anyone, but what does it matter? We’re ruined and you can throw any accusation you like at us. You couldn’t care less about knowing what really went on.”
“Why don’t you explain it to me?”
The response was a fresh peal of laughter that sounded more like a lament, but the woman quickly reverted to the expression of pain. “I found out only recently about the situation we’re in. Palmiro told me when he realised there was no way we could get back on our feet. He was dignified in defeat. He was the only real man in this family. I was dragged towards ruination as ignorantly as a moth drawn to a flame,” she said, with another cackle.
“When did your husband disappear?”
Manuela raised her hands, palms upwards to indicate that she did not know. “I hadn’t seen him for two weeks, but I believed he was travelling somewhere. Anyway, when he was here, he spent nearly all his time in the other house in the woods.”
“You were separated?”
“Astonishing! How on earth did you work that out?”
Only then, when his temper was aroused, did he realise that he was interrogating her as though he were on a case. “Nothing to do with me,” he mumbled. “I only came to bring you the dog.”
Manuela was clearly surprised by this, and shouted in the direction of the villa, “Chang!” The Philippino appeared almost at once, deferential and anxious to do her bidding.
“Take the bitch and put her with the others,” she ordered, in a tone of contempt which could have been directed either at the man or the dog. The Philippino summoned Dolly, who made no attempt to move. He grabbed her by the collar and dragged her towards the house.
“Treat her well. She deserves it,” Soneri said.
The woman shrugged. “She was treated better than me.”
“Things have not gone too badly for you so far. You are still young and can make a life for yourself somewhere else. Would you rather have broken your back working in the stables?” he said acidly.
She looked at him with scorn. “They’re all so concerned about the plight of the poor little peasant girls! Do you think ordinary people are pure of heart? You should see these peasant girls drool over their line managers for promotion or a pay rise. They’d happily let themselves be laid on a workbench if it would get them one more grade. And then there are all these pathetic males who used to line up to lick Paride’s or Palmiro’s arse if that’s what it took to get a job for their sons or for some relative. And don’t get me started on politicians, coming cap in hand. And not to forget the bankers, elegant pimps, sticky with sweat running down their starched collars. That’s the sort we’ve had to deal with.”
The sun was up and its brilliance assaulted them as they stood on the lawn. It was in Soneri’s face, blinding him. Its dazzling light and the crudeness of Manuela’s speech left him stunned.
“You’re no better,” he managed finally to say.
“No, we’re no better, but we’re no worse either. That lot, if they were in our shoes, who knows how they would have behaved.”
“They’re ruined as much as you,” he reminded her.
“It was their greed that caused their downfall. Do you know why they gave us all that money? Because of the interest my father-in-law promised them. All this stuff about trust in the firm, or that we were all in it together… bollocks! Money, that’s what they were after. They’d never have parted with as much as one cent if it hadn’t been for the mirage of easy riches. They never gave a damn about the firm, and neither were they so stupid as to believe there was no risk. In the last couple of years, they were being promised rates of interest that would have shamed a usurer and not one of them stopped to ask: what’s going on here?”
“Their trust was genuine.”
Manuela shook her head vigorously, and her reply was scathing. “Once perhaps, but nowadays there are people here playing the stock market, and they know that trust gets you nowhere.”
She took from her pocket a bottle of pills and swallowed a couple without any water. Soneri remembered being told in the village that she lived on tablets and pills. “It’s time for me to be on my way,” he said. He wanted to be gone as quickly as possible from that house and that woman.
“Off you go, Commissario, off you go. Back to those honest souls.”
He decided not to answer, because he recognised a touch of despair in that injunction, but he had not gone very far when more harsh, unfriendly words reached his ears. “Just remember that your father came to see us as well.”
The commissario stopped in his tracks, but as he was on the point of turning, he saw the Philippino scuttle inside and the gate close. As he walked towards the village, he wondered what Manuela had meant. Had she intended to put his father on the same level as the wretches who came begging for work, or was she pleading for clemency? He could not get the idea out of his mind. He had no time for the woman, but neither could he free himself of the doubt she had planted. She had polluted his memories. All the way to the town, he was troubled by feelings which the bright sunshine and the clear air could only partially lift, and when he reached the piazza, his unease grew stronger as he saw the coming and going of the carabiniere trucks and the chauffeur-driven cars from the Prosecutor’s office carrying men whom he recognised. There were also vans with television cameras and satellite dishes and packs of journalists ferreting about the village in search of someone to interview. A crowd had gathered round the Comune, chanting slogans. That was where the carabinieri were headed, since their colleagues were having a hard time holding back people pushing and shoving at the main entrance.
Other patrols were moving in a column for the salame factory where the only smiling face was that of the pork butcher on the Rodolfi label. Soneri looked up at the road running alongside the works and saw a mass of people there, carrying banners and being harangued by someone speaking into a megaphone. These must have been the striking workers protesting against the halting of production, but the whole thing had tumbled into a chaos where every law had been suspended. Once again Soneri had a flashback to the worms devouring Paride. There was the same frenetic activity in the village, and perhaps in a short time it would lead to the worms devouring one another. Soneri was trying to avoid the crush when he was interrupted by the ringing of his mobile.
