killed one carabiniere and has wounded two others,” he told her.
“In the state he’s in, why should he care about anything?”
“He knows he hasn’t long to live, and he’s not going to give up. Palmiro took the woman he loved, and took his money as well. Now the carabinieri want to take Montelupo from him, and into the bargain he has cancer and he reckons he has nothing to lose.”
“You still don’t believe that he murdered Paride, do you?”
“I don’t believe he had anything to do with it.”
“So why is he shooting at the carabinieri?”
“They want to take him in. They’re convinced he’s guilty. They think he’s responsible for all the shooting on Montelupo after the Rodolfi bankruptcy. It’s possible that he was responsible for some of it.”
“So what now?”
“He wasn’t the only one firing off shots, I’m sure of that. There have always been poachers wandering about up there, and one of them was Palmiro.”
“A poacher doesn’t shoot a man in the stomach from close range, if what I’ve read about it in the newspapers is accurate.”
“That’s true, but the Woodsman would have shot at Palmiro. He went out on the higher ground every evening with his dogs,” the commissario said, looking at Dolly. At that moment, a new suspicion, something more urgent than a doubt, came into his mind and required him immediately to put everything else aside until he had checked it out.
“What are you thinking?” Angela said, accustomed to his sudden silences.
“I’m thinking about the sort of person who would go for a walk with dogs at night time.”
“At night time? Do you have a suspicion of who it might be?”
“No, but there’s not a very wide choice.”
“Remember you’re supposed to be on holiday, and going into the woods where they’re shooting on sight…”
“I’ve already run that risk, but at night it’s harder for them to shoot.”
“You want to go out at night?” she said in alarm.
“You’re safer in a wood at night than you are in a well-lit street in a city.”
“I’ll phone you later to find out how it went,” she said, but remained unconvinced.
Soneri left the Rivara and crossed the piazza, where the light was now sepia-coloured, as though filtered through a dark shade. He walked through the streets up to the Rodolfi factory, where a crowd of workers, some still in their white overalls, were milling about at the gates. He asked for Signorina Gualerzi and being told she was still inside, he decided to wait for her. She was one of the last to leave, on her own. The commissario watched her come towards him with the graceless, heavy gait of the mountain folk, dressed as she had been when he had first met her: flat shoes, thick stockings and long coat, perhaps adapted by an unskilled seamstress. He imagined that her imposing bulk intimidated men.
“Finished for the evening?” he said.
She looked at him distrustfully. “For all we get, we could’ve left earlier.”
“It might have been better for you to have left earlier, but it would’ve been better still if you’d stayed at home. You might have been able to convince your father not to do all these crazy things.”
The woman stopped in her tracks when she heard these words. “What’s happened?” she said anxiously. “He only wanted them to leave us in peace.”
“Today he killed one carabiniere and injured another two.”
Lorenza Gualerzi bowed her head and said nothing. She must have been used to her father’s acts of folly, but this was of a different dimension. “I can’t do a thing about it. No-one can give him orders. All you can do is try and convince him as well as you can. When my mother was well…”
“Your father is sick too.”
She nodded. “What kind of future do I have? Without money, without work and without my parents.”
The commissario found it hard to fight back feelings of pity for that unfortunate woman who was out of place, out of time and so ill-equipped for a life alone. She faced a lonely life, derided behind her back by her peers because of her ugliness. She was perhaps the perfect image of the village falling back into poverty and isolated in the harshness of mountains where no-one would any longer wish to live.
“Why did he run away? With his condition, nobody could have done anything to him. At least, they would have given him some treatment,” Soneri said.
“You can’t force him to do anything he doesn’t want to. It’s never been possible. He’s got no respect for authority. He grew up without parents, and now he feels these people are doing him a wrong. He says he knows nothing about Paride’s death. If anything, his quarrel was with Palmiro, because he felt betrayed.”
“Because of the money…”
“He left us ruined. We haven’t even enough money to pay for my mother’s treatment.”
“Do you really believe he’s got nothing to do with it?”
Lorenza summoned up all her courage. “I don’t know. I believe him, but…”
The commissario used the pause in the conversation to light his cigar, then he looked at her once more, signalling to her to go on.
“I know he fired some shots on Montelupo, and at strange hours. My father was never one for the subtle approach. How am I supposed to know if he was hunting a boar, or something else?”
“He went looking for Palmiro, isn’t that right?”
Once again she trembled and seemed overcome by awkwardness. “As I said, he ruined us. What my father really couldn’t bear was the fact that he’d cheated him, of all people, putting him on the same level as all the others. They had grown up together and in spite of all that had happened between them, they carried on seeing each other. Sometimes, when old Rodolfi came up to the Madoni hills, I would watch them talk and I got the impression that the years had rolled away. At times my father would laugh uproariously in a way I never saw him do with anyone else.”
“Palmiro never went out without his gun either,” Soneri said, deep in thought.
“And he used it. He knew Montelupo well. When it came to getting things done, my father and Palmiro were equally single-minded. Sometimes they acted like savages, but when I thought of their childhood and the poverty they’d suffered, I was able to understand.”
“How long do the doctors give your father?”
“Six months, perhaps a bit more. He’s already lost a few kilos. But he won’t live that long, because he’s said from the start that at the first spasms of real pain…”
Lorenza burst into tears very suddenly. She covered her face with her hands and bent forward until the commissario reached out to support her. He had the impression she was looking for a shoulder to lean on, but Soneri, who was shorter than her, did not feel able to draw her close to him. “I’d like to prevent that happening,” he said, in an attempt to console her, “but your father will never be captured. No-one will get near him.”
“He wouldn’t listen to anyone in the village and he’s always hated the carabinieri on account of their support for the Fascists. He’ll not change his mind now. It would take a man like your father. He had a lot of time for him, ever since they were together in the partisans.”
“Do you think I should try?”
“Probably you’re the only one who could.”
“I’ll go to Badignana and if he’s still there, I’ll try and persuade him to come down.”
“At the very least, I’d get to see him during his last days,” Lorenza sobbed.
10
It was dark when Soneri returned to the piazza. The crescent moon, its outline blurry in the mist, was rising over Montelupo. The commissario’s stomach was protesting, demanding nourishment. Delrio was standing outside the Rivara, smoking a cigarette. “What was it like when the Woodsman shot the carabiniere? They told me you were there,” he said.
