“I tried ten times to contact you this morning,” Angela began.
Soneri looked at his watch. One o’clock. He thought of his partner getting up from her desk after hours of work, adjusting as she did so the skirt which had climbed half way up her thighs. He experienced a thrill of desire, but her voice had a calming effect. It was primarily the voice of someone friendly and complicit, someone he could hold onto to avoid sinking in the quagmire. She noticed this. “Commissario, what’s happening to you? You’re like a seminarian at prayer.”
Soneri blushed, annoyed at having revealed a hidden side of himself. “I’ve had a bad morning. I saw Paride eaten by worms.”
Angela gave a snort of disgust.
“It was revolting, but we may as well resign ourselves to the end that’s coming to us all,” he said, donning his customary, tough exterior.
“The company has been declared bankrupt,” she said, changing the subject.
“Not just the company, the whole village and maybe the council as well.”
“There’s a degree of sadness in your voice, Commissario. Didn’t you say you were going to stay out of it?”
“It’s not so easy. It seems everybody is caught up in it.”
“But not you, and yet…”
“Angela, it’s hard to remain indifferent when you’re faced with the ruin of people you’ve known, people who speak the same dialect.”
“Tell the truth. It’s the idea you had of the place that’s ruined. That’s what’s so upsetting.”
Soneri refrained from telling her about the doubts concerning his father planted in him by Manuela. He said nothing for a few moments, then said, “The mistake was to come back.”
“Maybe it would be different if I were there.”
“Maybe,” Soneri said. She had contacted him at the very moment when he was at his lowest ebb, and before he had the chance to change his mind, she grabbed at his half-invitation. “I’ll turn up one of these evenings.”
“I should tell you that the Scoiattolo is a fairly basic sort of place. There are cabinets beside the beds and a San Martino over the headboard, and that’s the lot.”
“I’ll do my best to carry out an exorcism.”
“Try to speak to the Rodolfis’ lawyer.”
“I’ll try, but he too seems to have disappeared.”
The commissario switched off the phone and walked towards the piazza. From a distance he could distinguish the yellow outline of the carabiniere H.Q., where there seemed to be a great deal of movement. As he approached, he recognised the journalists hanging about waiting for someone to invite them in. In front of the Rivara, he ran into Maini.
“It’s all coming to the boil, but it’s not quite at boiling point yet,” Soneri said.
“There’s still some way to go. I doubt if they know where to start,” Maini said, nodding in the direction of the police station.
“They can hardly interrogate the whole village.”
“Where would you start?”
The commissario shook his head. “I don’t know. Every single person is a potential suspect, and each one of them could have more than one motive. There are all kinds of hatreds, passions… I’d want to talk to those who know about the skeletons in the various cupboards.”
“In fact they’ve been to see Don Bruno.”
“Of course, the priest. They always know a great deal, priests, but I’m not sure he’s the most helpful starting point.”
“They can’t even find a wall to bang their heads against.”
“Who’s in charge of the interrogations?”
“The new man. Bovolenta I think he’s called.”
“There’s a unpleasant atmosphere about the place,” Soneri said, looking around at the stalls scattered across the piazza. “Do you think something’s going to explode before the day is out?”
“Might do, but I wouldn’t put money on it.”
Both men observed the village in the bright light of the autumn sun. The fine vapour rising from the dampness of the woods gave the countryside a mellow haziness, but it seemed as though a menacing rumble, the first sign of an impending storm, could be heard in the background.
“Who has managed to save themselves from the disaster?” the commissario wondered. Maini failed to understand, so he went on, “I mean, who brought up the vehicles to empty the factory?”
“Who do you think? The banks. Who else would have the power to get the place opened? It’s not likely to be a simple peasant or any one of those who bought the bonds. They tell me there’s not a single cotecchino left inside.”
A siren blared out and seconds later a carabiniere car, travelling at high speed, raced across the piazza. Some people came from the same direction, walking in small groups as though after Mass. Delrio, in plain clothes, was among them.
“The mayor has handed in his resignation,” he announced, with a hint of nervousness in his voice.
“Was that him in the police car?”
Delrio nodded. “He’s been receiving threats.”
“Because of that rumour?” Maini said.
Delrio nodded again, leaving Soneri once more with the disagreeable feeling of being an outsider which had haunted him since his arrival in the village. “What rumour?”
“A bit of nonsense,” Maini said. “They say he has managed to get back the money he had lent the Rodolfis. There’s also a story that he’s had one of the flats in the new development assigned to him, but in his daughter’s name.”
“Mere gossip,” Delrio said. “In this village, every passing rumour immediately becomes a gospel truth.”
“It’s not only the mayor. There are others, some councillors, people in the same party as the mayor, who are supposed to have got their money out in time,” Maini said.
“Aimi acted as a lightning conductor. They needed someone to blame, so they chose him as being a public figure. Nowadays, anyone in politics is automatically considered a thief,” Delrio said.
“The real thieves are the bankers. Right up till yesterday, they were telling us the Rodolfis were in great shape, and they carried on selling bonds with a promise that it was good deal.”
“People have piles of them this high,” Delrio said, holding his hand about a metre off the ground. “Cartloads of waste paper.”
“Are we supposed to believe it’s pure chance they’re closed today?” Maini said. “This morning there was a queue of people demanding their money back. Some of them still believe they’re going to get it.”
“I’d like to see any of them having the courage to show their faces in public now,” Delrio said.
“Oh, they’ll show their faces alright, only they won’t open their mouths,” Soneri said, lighting another cigar.
The other two remained silent, contemplating the truth in Soneri’s words. “I suppose that’s right,” Maini said. “The majority will say nothing — out of a sense of shame. They’ll prefer to face their ruin in silence rather than protest and let everyone know they’ve been duped.”
The image of Sante, with all that repressed venom and resentful silence broken only by occasional snarls, sprang into Soneri’s mind. He feared that years later the accumulated hatred would, like some toxic liquid corroding its container bit by bit, break out as an illness.
A few minutes later, when he found Sante standing beside his table, Soneri looked at him more closely than usual. Sante noticed this.
“My face is a mess. I haven’t slept for a week,” Sante said.
Soneri was tempted to say that his health should always come first, but he desisted.
“Ida cooked the russolas you picked. She’s got plenty of time on her hands.”
It was only then that Soneri realised that the dining room was empty. He felt uncomfortable in that large room full of tables with no guests. Only half the lights were on, and the semi-darkness of the environment made it resemble an establishment in a seaside resort at the end of the holiday season, as the first storms were
