“Who says he didn’t try? Who else could have been responsible for all those shots fired in recent days? And anyway, Palmiro did away with himself.” The captain dipped his spoon deep into the plate and picked out some of the anolini from the soup. He must have gone without his lunch, since only hunger could have made him forget military etiquette to that extent. After a few minutes, he cleaned his mouth and looked Soneri in the face. “You’re not convinced, are you?”
The commissario, his mouth full, shrugged.
“I came here to ask you for some advice,” Bovolenta said.
“I don’t really know much about it.”
“We cannot continue to move about in a herd, as we did today. Gualerzi would hear us from a long way off and he’d have all the time in the world to hide until we got within range. We’ll have to use his tactics, hit and run. The problem is we don’t know where to find him.”
“There I can’t help you. There’s not a man around here, even if he knows the woods, who would know where to find the Woodsman.”
“He must have enemies.”
“That may be, but no-one would dare stand up against him. Anyway, everybody in the village is on his side.”
“He’s mad and he has to be stopped,” Bovolenta said, stretching across the table to grab the bottle of Gutturnio, an act of rudeness which definitively ended any pretence at good manners. “A desperate lunatic who’s playing his last card.”
“Gualerzi’s always been like that. He’s a savage with a code of honour.”
“I don’t believe he has the slightest interest in honour. He’s desperate and capable of anything.”
“You’re wrong there. Granted he can be ruthless, but he’s not the bastard you make him out to be.”
“In the past, maybe not, but he’s got cancer. Did you know that?”
Soneri stopped and would have liked to say that was the only thing which would make him surrender, but he had no wish to irritate the captain further. “How do you know that?” he said.
“We searched his house and we found the tests.”
“If that’s so, what’s the point of trying to ambush him? All you have to do is wait.”
“If we were monks, we could, but we’re carabinieri.”
“I don’t see any other way out. Don’t kid yourselves that the Woodsman is going to let himself be captured like a common criminal. That’s one thing he’s not.”
“He shot at us.”
“If you carry on pursuing him, he’ll take one of you out. But he’ll keep the last bullet for himself.”
Bovolenta appeared deep in thought. For a few seconds there was a brightness in his eyes, before weariness made them cloud over again.
“Listen to me,” Soneri said. “Scale down your operations to patrolling Montelupo. Leave him in charge of the territory, and he might even come round. Otherwise it’s going to end badly. He’s not a man for compromises, not even with himself.”
“If it were up to me… Headquarters have decreed… I obey orders.”
The commissario felt some sympathy for Bovolenta. He was subject to the unsubtlety of higher command, to a primitive vision which divided the world into two, friends and enemies, victories and defeats. “Tell your superiors that to wring one chicken’s neck there’s no need to knock the whole hen-run down,” he said, in an attempt to reduce the tension.
“There may be no way out for the Woodsman, but there isn’t for me either. How will he cope with that? That last bullet you were talking about might be for me.”
“I’m afraid that’s true. If your life’s at stake, stand up to them. This time the game is worth the candle.”
“I can’t.”
The commissario let his impatience get the better of him. He had never had any sympathy with irrational conduct, even when he understood its origins. “One of the things I have learned is that there are times when you have to say No, because otherwise there’s no difference between us and the peasants here who knew what was going on but put up no fight. In their own way, they too were obeying orders, orders of self-interest. They ended up ruined.”
Bovolenta sat bolt upright against the back of the chair, saying nothing, facing the bottle he had emptied almost by himself. There was real humanity under the uniform, but it was the uniform which carried the day. Soneri felt disappointment rise from deep inside him.
“God save us all,” murmured the captain, and it occurred to Soneri that he was as well to put his trust in the Almighty since he lacked the will to make use of reason.
Bovolenta put on his cap with the silver flame, symbol of the carabinieri, at the front. He held out his hand to the commissario. “I’m grateful to you. You’ve been my guest, even if this is your home.”
Soneri followed him to the door. He intended to take a walk before going to bed. They walked side by side for a little way, in silence, until they reached the piazza. The captain said goodbye once more, but he stood facing him, plainly pursuing some line of thought. “Among the Woodsman’s papers, we found your father’s name. I didn’t know he’d been a partisan.”
Soneri nodded, doing his best to conceal his agitation. “What paper was that?”
“A chart giving the names of the Garibaldi brigade in this locality. Your father was political commissioner.”
“He was anxious to keep well away from gunfire.”
“You’re the first police officer I have met whose parents were Communists.” Bovolenta smiled. “Did they not make things difficult at H.Q.? Not so long ago, it would not have been easy with a background like yours.”
“I’ve had my problems. Was there anything else about my father?”
The captain realised he had opened a subject of some importance, and indicated to Soneri that he understood. “I’ll get my men to have a look. Or maybe I should attend to it myself. Yes, I think that would be better.”
He walked off and Soneri, although confused, realised that, in spite of everything, he had formed a favourable opinion of Bovolenta, and that was something that did not happen too often. His thoughts turned to the papers the captain had found in the Madoni hills. They were not likely to contain anything he did not already know, but then again there might be something new. Perhaps they would provide the key to his father’s relations with the Rodolfis.
He did not realise that he was walking towards Villa del Greppo until he became aware of the deepening darkness on the road leading to the fields. He turned and saw beneath him the roofs of the village, beyond which the vast, empty spaces of the valley stretched into the distance. He looked closely at the piazza, deserted at that hour, the lighted window of the Rivara and the lamp-posts lining the narrow streets. Anyone chancing upon the village without knowing what was going on there would have decided that it was a tranquil enough spot in which to spend a week searching for mushrooms. He lit a cigar, took out his mobile and dialled Angela’s number.
“I’ve just had dinner with Bovolenta.”
“Whom do you prefer, him or me?”
“He told me that the Woodsman is on his last legs.”
“Is he surrounded?”
“No, he’s got cancer.”
Angela sighed. “A person in that condition is capable of anything.”
“Precisely. I think that’s the case with him. So far the shots he’s fired at the carabinieri have only been to scare them, but if they go on hunting him down…”
“If he no longer cares what happens to him, why should he care about other people?”
Soneri changed the subject abruptly. “The captain has found some papers concerning my father in the Woodsman’s house.”
“Are you back on that hobby-horse of yours?”
“Don’t you want to know what he said?”
“Maybe that woman was talking nonsense. Maybe she made the whole thing up.”
“So much the better if she did,” Soneri said, cutting her short.
At that same moment, he heard a dog bark, and the bark was familiar. He interrupted the conversation with
