The commissario patted Dolly as they went out. “Unfortunately I can’t be keeping her. She’s not mine and, besides, I haven’t the space.”
“If you want her, just keep her. What’s the widow going to do with a dog? She’s certainly not going hunting, and nor is that Philippino she’s got in her house,” he said, without hiding his contempt.
“Latterly it was Palmiro who took Dolly out.”
“His own hound was getting on a bit. He couldn’t even catch a bitch on heat.”
In the piazza they passed some carabinieri from the Special Forensic unit with a pack of journalists and photographers at their heels. “What with the Woodsman, the Romanian, the fires and the stabbings, they don’t know where to turn,” Rivara said.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t drag on too long,” Delrio said. Soneri detected a longing for normality and a desire to get back to a peaceful life lived in an out-of-the-way place in the shadow of the mountains. Even if he could see the advantages of the “take life as it comes” mentality, Soneri failed to understand how anyone could aspire to that kind of narcosis, and it occurred to him that perhaps it was that same unbearable emptiness which had forced his father to leave. There comes a point when wandering in the mountains is not enough, and when the discontents of middle age highlight only a series of disappointments.
He went out into the ice-cold air to chase away those thoughts, but he thought of Angela, who was perhaps at that very moment getting ready for the office. He looked too at Dolly with her heart-warming devotion and decided it was time to stop being miserable.
He climbed towards Greppo and then turned onto the Croce path. Bright sunlight alternated with the shade of less exposed stretches where the stagnant damp and cold were a warning of the imminence of the first snows. He searched for confirmation that someone had been there the previous night, but since the mule-track was covered by a layer of frost there were no footprints. He continued on to the hollow where he had found Paride’s body. He saw signs of the work done by the forensic experts and remembered that access had been permitted in that area only the day before. He called Dolly and let her sniff around, even if the frost had sterilised the smells on the ground. The commissario was aware that he was roaming aimlessly, following Dolly anywhere her sense of smell happened to take her. Only for her was there any purpose to that wandering in the undergrowth among the trees.
He walked on, persuaded that exercise would clear his mind. He felt alive climbing up and down slopes, as when he was searching for mushrooms, but there was something else at the back of his mind, the beginnings of a thought, if less than an idea. He decided to put himself in the shoes of that mysterious person who had been walking after dark with Dolly towards Croce. In the distance, he could hear the shouts of the carabinieri on the trail of the Woodsman, followed by the rifle shots which rang out along the hillside.
He heard Dolly, at the bottom of a ditch, bark in the highpitched tone of dogs confronted by a larger animal. He ran to find her and, without being aware, found himself back on the pathway. Dolly went on growling, but Soneri drew up, seeing Baldi appear ten metres ahead of him.
“She’s found something interesting,” he said, pointing into the ditch.
The commissario nodded. “She’ll have to deal with it by herself. As you can see, I don’t have a gun.”
“I think she’s standing still. If it was a boar or a deer, she’d be off after it.”
“What about you? Have you shut up your place?” Soneri said.
“It doesn’t thaw during the day any more. It’s time to get out before I’m buried by a storm.”
“So now all you have to do is wait for spring. Will you back by the Feast of the Liberation in April?”
Baldi stood in silence, looking in the direction from which Dolly’s barks were still coming. “I doubt it,” he said quietly.
“So what about the bar?”
Baldi shrugged, but he said nothing. Soneri was once again overcome by melancholy.
“It’s no longer a world I know,” Baldi said, still talking in a low voice. Leaving the place where he had worked all his life evidently caused him some distress. “I was born among shepherds, cows and the smell of cheese. Once, I used to live up there among people I knew, not crooks, smugglers and drug dealers who don’t speak my dialect. Sundays used to be feast days for the villagers themselves, not like nowadays when people arrive from the city scowling, with big boots showing off the brand name, people who don’t take even a drop of wine, who are on diets and who sit out in the sun all day long. No, that’s not my world any more. The only one that’s left is the Woodsman and look what’s happening to him, hunted across his own lands like a boar. And then this illness,” he interrupted himself to cough. “Those carabinieri…” he spluttered, before running out of words.
“It’s not their fault. If only he’d turned himself in, everything would’ve been cleared up, but now, this way, he makes himself look guilty.”
Baldi frowned. “You obviously don’t know Gualerzi.” His tone was designed to make the commissario aware how much of an outsider he was. “What chance was there of him surrendering to the carabinieri? In his whole life, he has never taken orders, not from anyone. Do you think a couple of carabinieri would be going to change that?”
“But they won’t give in either.”
“Then it’s going to end in disaster. The Woodsman’s got nothing to lose. He’s done for, so’s his wife, and his daughter will have to look after herself.”
Other shots rang out, and this time they were closer.
“They’re coming from this side. I don’t understand where he’s leading them,” Baldi said.
“He’s not firing.”
“Who knows what’s on his mind? Maybe he thinks it’s going to be a long battle and he’s saving his ammunition.”
Dolly had stopped barking and from the rustling in the undergrowth near the path it seemed she was coming back. When she emerged, she bristled, looking in the direction from which the shots were coming. At that moment, the shouts of a detachment which had come down across the Macchiaferro on the Malpasso side could be clearly heard.
“They’re somewhere above us,” Baldi said, mildly alarmed. “They’re at Fontanazzo,” he added, referring to a place unknown to Soneri.
“I think we’d better get out of here,” Soneri said.
“You’re right. We could end up as sitting ducks.”
The commissario called to Dolly, who was caught up in the thrill of the hunt and growing more excited by the minute, and they set off swiftly. The voices pursuing them seemed to be getting closer.
“I wonder where the Woodsman is,” Soneri said as they emerged onto a clearing from where in the distance, beyond a thicket of chestnut trees, they could see Greppo.
“If you ask me,” Baldi said, “he’s leading them over to Badignana so he can take up a position on the ridge. And if he gets there, it’s going to be tough for the carabinieri.”
“He’s going to do something else stupid,” Soneri said.
Baldi’s expression turned serious and this time he agreed with the commissario. “I fear you’re right. By now he must be sick and tired of being hunted.”
“Do you mean he’ll fire wildly, and to hell with the consequences?”
“The fact that he’s not returning fire makes me fear the worst. At first he was trying to scare them off, but now since they’re still pursuing him…”
Another volley crashed into a cliffside, causing the brittle Apennines sandstone to crumble.
“They’re firing out of fear,” Baldi said with derision. “They see a shadow and they shoot at it. They have no balls.”
“That’s another reason for getting out. That lot’ll fire at you the moment they set eyes on you.”
They hurried down to the small plateau at Campogrande. As they ran through the trees, they heard the whistle of a stray bullet as it passed high over the branches, followed by shouts which seemed to come from close by. Their fear was that they had ended up between the pursuers and their prey, and Soneri thought of squatting down in a gulley so as not to offer a target. Finally they reached a clearing not far from Greppo. Without warning, Ghidini’s dog ran out towards them.
“Are you mad? You’re going to get a bullet in your skulls!” Ghidini shouted at them. “I heard the Woodsman pass by up at Pietra. I was there an hour ago. Maybe he saw you and that’s why he led the carabinieri this way, to put them off his trail and put them onto yours.”
It was true that the carabinieri seemed to be making for the point where Baldi and Soneri were. The yells of
