Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions (18 page)

“Fine,” said Aunt Caterina, very calm and composed. “In that case, shall we say eleven tomorrow morning?”

“You did it?” Poldi asked incredulously when Caterina rang off.

“Don't tell me you're surprised.”

Poldi smiled at Caterina and raised her glass. “No, actually I'm not. You were great. We've got him by the balls now. Cheers.”

At eleven the next morning, Poldi, Teresa, Luisa and Martino were seated in the Bar Cocuzza, soothing their nerves with coffee,
cornetti
and granitas, staring at Poldi's mobile phone on the table, and evaluating Caterina's text messages from the Via Baronessa.

            
Not here yet.

            
Still not here.

            
Where is he?

            
Doorbell.

Operation “Trapdoor” was under way. Poldi had prudently unscrewed the doorbell nameplate and slipped it into her handbag. She had also readied her house in other respects for Patanè's visit by stowing all her clothes in the wardrobes and putting away any telltale letters, documents and photos. Above all, she had taken down the corkboard in her bedroom and eliminated every pointer to the true owner of No. 29 Via Baronessa. Nothing could really go wrong.

Not really.

Midday came, then one, and the suspense mounted. Poldi checked her mobile every other minute, but Caterina gave no further sign of life. Poldi's phone did beep once, but it was Montana.

            
I've got something. When can we meet?

Poldi texted back at once:

            
Drop in this evening.

Montana's response:

            
I could make it right away.

Poldi thought for a moment. Then:

            
But I couldn't.

That sounded more brusque than she intended, but my aunt was rather worried about Caterina at that stage and wanted to keep the line open. Half past one came, and she couldn't stand it any longer. She was on the point of going back to the house when Caterina called at last, an alarming undertone in her voice.

“He's gone; you can come.”

“Are you all right, Caterina?”

“Just come.”

They paid and left in a hurry. At the front door they were jumped up at and licked by a good-humoured Totti. Caterina, too, seemed wholly unscathed. Poldi looked around suspiciously for traces of a struggle, but there was nothing to be seen.

“So how did it go?”

“He took the bait,” Caterina reported. “But then something odd happened.”

One thing at a time, though, because this is a bit like Chinese whispers. I got the story from Poldi, who got it from Caterina.

It seems that Patanè turned up three quarters of an hour late, trailing an aura of BO and stale tobacco smoke.

Caterina nonetheless welcomed him politely without betraying her instant repugnance, ushered him inside, offered him a coffee and some water, and permitted him to look around the ground floor, which he did with the mistrustful curiosity of a cat at the vet's.

“How did Totti react?” asked Uncle Martino.

“He was a dead loss,” said Caterina. “He even licked Patanè's hand, then retired into the shade and didn't show his face again.”

So much for Totti's watchdog qualities. Uncle Martino was extremely satisfied with the results of Totti's test, however, because he hated watchdogs. It should be mentioned that Uncle Martino is a convinced and incorrigible philanthropist, pacifist and Slow Foodist. But I'm digressing again.

According to Caterina, Patanè's mistrust was as slow to evaporate as a dense autumn mist dispersed by the November sun. He wanted to know how long Caterina had owned the house, and Caterina, as arranged, sold him the story that Mancuso Mobili had recently acquired it from a deranged German woman who'd found the Sicilian climate too much for her and hightailed it back to Germany – hence the decor, all of which would soon be ripped out. Patanè swallowed this myth, but he didn't really thaw until Caterina had detailed Mancuso Mobili's imaginary expansion plans and made several references to her associate and good friend Dr Tannenberger. Then, with a flourish worthy of a stage magician, he opened a portfolio of photographs of mosaics, stone figures, plasterwork and whole staircases, all of which Patanè could supply and all, of course, entirely legally acquired. The pieces allegedly came from dilapidated country mansions and palazzi – absolute ruins which would sadly have to be demolished in the near future. It was his dearest wish to preserve at least a modicum of the magnificent Sicilian craftsmanship of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and transplant it to places where it would live on. It was, he said, a form of organ donation by brain-dead old buildings.

Everything had its price, of course. Patanè had no wish to disguise this, but nor did he wish to talk actual figures – for the moment. He suggested that Caterina examine the portfolio at her leisure while he made a little tour of the house in order to absorb its atmosphere and ignite the vital spark of inspiration. Because (to quote him verbatim) “The house must speak to me and whisper what it needs.”

While Patanè roamed the house like a sniffer dog in customs, Aunt Caterina had time to study all the photographs closely and even photograph them with her mobile phone. There was no gate lion, though. Caterina heard Patanè climb the stairs to the roof terrace. Moments later he came back down in a hurry. She just had time to put her mobile away. Looking suddenly nervous, almost alarmed, Patanè grabbed the portfolio, said a hasty goodbye and left the house as if his coat-tails were on fire.

“Peculiar, wasn't it?” Aunt Caterina concluded. “Then I called you straight away.”

“Didn't he say anything else?” Poldi insisted.

Caterina shook her head. “He said he'd forgotten he had an urgent appointment with the dentist and would be in touch, that's all. Then he was off.”

Poldi looked at the stairs that led to the roof terrace. It was some time since she'd been up there because of her knee. “Besides, it's
your
domain now,” she had magnanimously informed me on my last visit. “I must respect your privacy. I'd sooner sit out on the esplanade.”

But now she was curious as to what could have given Patanè such a toothache.

“Let's take a look,” she said, and went toiling up the stairs with Teresa, Caterina, Luisa, Martino and Totti in her wake.

And discovered the gate lion.

Poldi gave me quite a telling-off later – why on earth had I never said anything about it? – but somehow I'd never associated the lion on the roof with the lion missing from Femminamorta. I swear it. I had simply never registered the thing. When I first spent a week at Torre in August, just after Poldi moved in, I was far too preoccupied with my novel – in other words with ruminating, head-scratching and nail-chewing. Besides, I seldom visited the terrace because it was too hot up there during the day and I preferred to listen to Poldi in the evenings. In any case, I mistook the lion behind the head of the stairs for an ornament that had always been part of the house, especially as it was firmly cemented to the terrace wall.

“But not up there,” Poldi cried in bewilderment when she was giving me an earful. “Good God, it must have struck you that that was a totally daft location for a gate lion. For one thing there's no gate, and for another no one can see it there.”

What could I say? She was right. I shrugged sheepishly.

“Know something?” Poldi sighed. “Before you write another line, shut your eyes and ears and switch off all your other senses and let a bit of life blow in.” On which note, she poured me another whisky.

So, firmly cemented to the terrace wall and partly obscured by the head of the stairs, Femminamorta's missing lion guardant contemplated Poldi rather sullenly and with a hint of reproach. Unlike me, she recognized it at once.

How had it got there?

There was only one explanation: Valentino.

Now Poldi came to think of it, she had left Valentino alone in the house on the morning of his last day's work for her, his job being to repair the leaky roof. She also remembered the half-full sack of cement he'd brought.

“That's when he must have cemented the lion into place. I remember him mixing the stuff.”

“So why didn't he say anything?” asked Aunt Teresa.

In Poldi's opinion, there was only one plausible explanation for that as well.

“Why, because he wanted to hide the thing up here. He knew I could hardly make it up the stairs, and I hadn't met Valérie at that stage. Besides, he certainly didn't know he was going to be killed soon afterwards. I suspect he only intended to park it here for a short time.”

“Why?” asked Aunt Teresa.

“Why, in order to sell it, of course.”

Poldi's belief that Valentino had stolen the lion was now set as firmly as the cement. The only question was, on whose behalf had he stolen it?

“That's obvious,” said Aunt Caterina. “Patanè.”

But Poldi felt suddenly doubtful, given that the stone lion hadn't featured in Patanè's catalogue. This aroused a suspicion she kept to herself for the moment.

“What are we going to do with it?” asked Aunt Luisa.

“Nothing whatever,” said Poldi. “It's staying where it is for the time being. Not a word to anyone.”

“What about Montana?”

Good question.

Poldi decided not to tell Montana about the lion either, at least for the moment. This went against the grain, because she always liked to be honest with the men she slept with. On the other hand, the lion's discovery might well have put her a step ahead of him. And besides, what difference would a day or two make? She did, however, intend to inform Valérie the next day. She felt she'd been rather neglecting her friend lately, and Valérie would be bound to welcome the lion's return.

That evening, as arranged, the commissario appeared in the Via Baronessa sans gelato but this time with red roses. He obviously hadn't come straight off duty, because he smelt of shower gel and had exchanged his grey suit for black chinos and a black polo shirt. Poldi wasn't too keen on that kind of leisure look, but she overlooked it in the case of Italians, especially when they wore black. Having trimmed the roses and put them in a vase, she towed Montana into the bedroom and undressed him.

“Hungry?” she asked a few pleasurable sighs later, when they were sharing a cigarette in bed.

Montana shook his head. “Don't bother.”

“Of course you're hungry. I'll make us something.”

“No, really not. I…” He cleared his throat.

Poldi caught on. “You've got to go?”

“Afraid so. Got a call from headquarters earlier.”

“I see. But there's always time for a bit of rumpy-pumpy, eh?”

“Please don't be sour.”

“Who's sour? Duty's duty and sex is sex.”

Montana sighed and sat up in bed.

“I get it,” said Poldi. “Now I'm sounding like your wife.”

“Ex-wife. Poldi, listen, I —”

“No talk of relationships, for God's sake,” said Poldi. “Everything's fine, Vito, honestly. Did you find Valentino's mobile?”

“Afraid not,” said Montana, relieved to change the subject. “It's probably somewhere on the seabed, but we have the connection details. Valentino was on the move quite a lot just before his death. We can trace his route roughly with the aid of the radio cells his mobile was logged into.”

“And where was it logged into last?”

“Here. The radio cell around Torre.”

“Praiola beach, in other words?”

“I suspect so.”

“But that wasn't the crime scene?”

“Exactly.”

“So the murderer came across Valentino's mobile there and destroyed it or threw it into the sea.”

“I assume so.”

Poldi cogitated.

“Who did Valentino speak to on the phone before his death?”

“I'm not at liberty to tell you that, Poldi.”

Poldi looked at him. “Oh, Vito.”

“Okay, okay, but I have to be professional… Not to Russo, anyway, nor to Tannenberger. I had the latter's alibi checked, by the way. He really was in Munich.”

“So Valentino spoke to Patanè.”

But Montana shook his head again. “No.”

Poldi was quite surprised.

“No? Who was it, then?”

Montana hesitated, and when Poldi saw the look on his face, the sudden, bitter taste in her mouth was like the aftermath of a monumental binge.

“Vito?”

Montana sighed and straightened his shoulders. “Your friend Valérie Belfiore.”

10

                  
Tells of the poison of mistrust, of old batteries, sugared almonds, kitsch, love, and the magic inherent in lists. Poldi tries to discover who called Valentino from Valérie's phone and receives a surprising invitation. She suffers a disappointment at the old mineral water bottling plant, however, and abandons herself to melancholy and wine. She also observes all kinds of things, interprets gestures and feels pessimistic.

I picture Valentino's mobile phone lying somewhere on the seabed in the wide, warm Gulf of Catania. I see it bobbing to and fro in a gentle current, pawed by inquisitive octopuses that mistake it for a species of crab to be cracked open. I picture the mobile acquiring a build-up of algae and little sea snails in the course of time – even, perhaps, becoming encrusted with corals. I visualize it in the distant future as part of a wonderful coral reef. But little would remain by then of its plastic and electronics. Those, I imagine, would all have dissolved in the seawater, together with any fingerprints and traces of DNA, all the information in its memory, all the selfies, snapshots, GPS coordinates and text messages. All of them would have dissolved and dispersed into briny infinity, the homoeopathic
ne plus ultra
. I picture the truth itself dissolving, slowly but irresistibly.

I also picture Poldi, who couldn't sleep that night for various reasons, all of them connected with the truth. Valentino's truth, Montana's truth, Valérie's truth. The truth, Poldi imagined, was like a button holding an expensive dress together at one particular point. It was stupid not to undo it. Enough to drive one crazy. Insufferable. Intolerable. Plain unacceptable. Or so Poldi felt.

That was why she drove to Femminamorta next day with a heart like stone and numerous questions on the tip of her tongue. She couldn't simply ask Valérie about the phone call, because Montana oughtn't to have told her about it, so she would have to proceed more subtly. And, to be honest, my Auntie Poldi wasn't the soul of subtlety.

At the gate with the solitary lion she was stopped by a young man sporting a smart suit and gelled hair.

“I'm sorry, signora, you can't drive in at present.”

“Why not?”

“They're shooting a film.”

This was something altogether new. Having been in the trade, though, Poldi didn't argue.

“But I can go in if I leave the car here, can I?”

“Of course, signora.”

Parked sideways-on in the inner courtyard of the old country house was a brand-new Lamborghini Aventador. As glaringly orange as an overripe mandarin at sunset, it was a squat, sleek, 700 hp nightmare whose manufacturer employed the adjective “merciless” to advertise it.

“Which tells you all you need to know about the drivers of such monstrosities,” Poldi told me later. “Peppe had a friend like that named Toni. I know there's no comparison, but Toni owned a white Porsche. Special, wickedly expensive mother-of-pearl paintwork – sperm white, we always called it. Peppe was a bit envious until Toni let him drive the thing. And what did Peppe do? He crashed it on the B11 between Garching and Mintraching – but then, Peppe smashed up nearly every car anyone lent him. Understandably, that put paid to their friendship. Anyway, Toni always wore white trousers. White was his colour, and I always used to say, ‘White Porsche and white pants equal no brains and a limp dick.' I didn't need to study psychology; one look was enough, and where Lamborghini drivers are concerned, my maxim applies in spades. On the other hand, this one was only rented.”

Valérie was nowhere to be seen. A young woman in a strapless wedding gown was lolling on the rented Lamborghini while two young men took stills and videoed her. Italians get married with a vengeance, and staging weddings has become an entire branch of industry in itself. One absolute essential is grandiose photographic and video documentation. For this purpose, bride and bridegroom are carted off to picturesque locations where they have to pose for hours, walk up and down a beach, gaze into each other's eyes, exchange a kiss, and then pace the beach again. Sports cars or powerful motorbikes are standard props, and wedding photography is a recession-proof profession for which no cripplingly long apprenticeship is necessary.

The photographer circled the Lamborghini like a hyena hovering around a pride of lions at their picnic, panned and swooped with his camera till Poldi became dizzy just watching him, and told the young woman to follow his every movement and keep looking into the lens. Not an easy task. The young woman was no photographic model; Poldi could tell that from the desperate way she tried to reproduce the erotic poses struck by pin-ups on car calendars. She was a real-life bride wearing far too much cream silk, lace and tulle. The gown seemed to flow from her upper body and melt on the Lamborghini's orange paintwork like vanilla ice cream. Her legs were completely hidden, so she looked like a mermaid whom some fortunate fisherman had hauled out of the Gulf of Catania and was now putting on public display.

The fortunate fisherman himself was standing a little to one side with a handful of friends and relations, his expression a mixture of pride and embarrassment.

Then came his turn. He had to join his bride on the bonnet and look cool, which was something he signally failed to do. The bridal pair seemed more irritated than amused by the palaver going on around them.

“
Mon Dieu
.”

Poldi heard Valérie's voice coming from the garden, then her laugh.

“Hearty congratulations, all the best and lots of children,” Poldi called to the bridal pair before disappearing behind the house, where she found Valérie chatting with Russo and Mimì Pastorella. Russo, who was wearing a pale blue suit with a flower in the buttonhole, clearly belonged to the wedding party. Despite the heat, Mimì had donned a dark, ancient three-piece which some tailor seemed to have moulded out of a solid bale of cloth a century earlier. Hölderlin had curled up at his master's feet, stumpy tail twitching occasionally, and was chewing a small plastic lion. All in all, not a sight to gladden my aunt's heart. She would rather have spoken with Valérie alone. Conversation ceased as soon as the trio caught sight of her.

“Donna Isolde!” Mimì cried out delightedly.

“Poldi.
Mon Dieu
, I was just talking about you.”

With a sigh, Poldi subsided on to a plastic chair. “In what connection?”

Valérie offered her some coffee. “Mimì and Signor Russo were asking after you, but –
mon Dieu
– what could I tell them? I haven't heard from you for days.”

“Well, here I am again.”

Mimì promptly seized the opportunity to grasp her hand and quote some Hölderlin in his habitual whisper. The Dobermann at his feet pricked its ears.

Poldi made no comment, either on the quotation or its sequel, a kiss on the hand. She turned to Russo. “Who's getting married?”

“My eldest daughter.”

“Oh?” Poldi had genuinely thought Russo younger than he was. “I mean, how wonderful. You must be very proud.”

Russo's smile was noncommittal. “The man's an idiot. A dentist from Florence, and like all Tuscans he hates us Sicilians. But what the hell: Stella loves him.”

“There's going to be a big party tonight,” said Valérie, turning to Poldi. “Would you like to come?”

“No thanks, not if it's a family occasion.”

Valérie gave Russo a meaningful look.

“It isn't as family as all that,” he said. “I'd be delighted if you could make it, Signora Poldi. You're warmly invited.”

“I shall keep a place beside me free for you, Donna Isolde,” whispered Mimì.

“God Almighty,” Poldi exclaimed when she told me about the episode a month later. “I was in a real bind. If I refused, Russo would be offended. Why? Because – get this – you can decline any invitation except a wedding invitation. But if I accepted, I'd be landed with Mimì the whole evening. Plus Hölderlin. And anyway, how was I to get through a wedding party sober? On the other hand, I told myself, this might be my
one chance to penetrate the inner circle of the organization, if you know what I mean?”

“It would also,” Russo added, “be a good opportunity to bury the memory of our unpleasant former encounters once and for all.”

“In that case,” Poldi said graciously, “I'd love to come.”

Having received a signal that the photographer was through, Russo took his leave of Valérie with a friendly kiss on both cheeks.

Poldi waited for Mimì to leave too, but it didn't even seem to cross his mind. Unwilling to depart without settling the matter of the phone call, she broached the subject with her usual subtlety.

“Tell me, Valérie, where were
you
the evening before Valentino was murdered?”

Mimì, who was patting Hölderlin, did not appear to be listening.

Valérie didn't even blink. She merely gave a little sigh.

“Your boyfriend the commissario asked me the same question yesterday.”

“He isn't my boyfriend.”

“
Mon Dieu
, Poldi, what is all this? I didn't call Valentino – I already told the commissario that.”

“It's true, Donna Isolde,” Mimì chimed in. “I was here the whole time.”

“It was the day after the dinner at Mimì's,” Valérie added. “I wanted to invite you over, but I couldn't get hold of you.”

“Yes, I was a bit below par that day,” muttered Poldi, remembering her fall from grace after the ghastly Hölderlin evening. “Who else was with you?”

“Russo dropped in with Patanè in tow to make me an offer.”

“What sort of offer?”

Valérie exchanged a glance with Mimì. “He's after the house and grounds, of course. He offered me a million.”

“You don't say.”

Valérie laughed and made a dismissive gesture. “He could offer me ten million and I wouldn't sell. The two of them soon left. I told the commissario all this as well.
Mon Dieu
, Poldi, you don't seriously think
I
murdered Valentino?”

Now it was Poldi's turn to sigh. “Who knows? Perhaps you were jealous of Herr Tannenberger.”

“Who's that, and why should I have been jealous of him?”

“Or Valentino tried to sell your lion back to you, and you didn't want to pay.”

“Aha. So I naturally took my lupara, shot him in cold blood and dragged him down to the beach. All by myself, and all because of a stone figure.
Mon Dieu
.”

Mimì said nothing, just continued to fondle his Dobermann and contemplate Poldi's perplexity. He might have been looking at a cute but bedraggled mongrel puppy he couldn't help. Or wouldn't.

Poldi knew from Montana that it had only been a short phone call, barely two minutes. She also knew Valérie's phone, which she was forever misplacing somewhere in the house, an antiquated model with big keys and an asthmatic battery that kept running out. This didn't worry Valérie, because she generally used her mobile for making calls. Poldi had persuaded Montana to disclose that Valérie's mobile number had not appeared in Valentino's list of calls.

It was quite possible, therefore, that someone in the house had spoken with Valentino unobserved, especially as the doors were usually left unlocked. Even when they weren't, most people knew there was a spare key beneath the little plaster Madonna in the votive niche beside the front door. Valérie wasn't afraid of burglars. She had once told Poldi that Femminamorta was a place charged with positive energy. My aunt, who knew a thing or two about positive energy, had needed no convincing of that.

“All the same,” she told me several weeks later, when explaining her train of thought, “I couldn't help wondering why anyone else would have used Valérie's phone. Explanation A: he or she didn't want to use their own mobile because they already planned to kill Valentino. Explanation B: he or she doesn't own a mobile. Are you with me?”

“You bet,” I said. “So that ruled Valérie out.”

“Whoa. Positive energy or not, once suspicion has you by the scruff of the neck, you don't shake it off so easily. An investigator must never exclude the possibility of an Explanation C; that's just the tricky part.”

My aunt suspected that she'd been thoroughly bamboozled, and bitter personal experience had taught her a thing or two about that as well. On the other hand, she had no wish to lose a friend. She never wanted to lose anyone she'd taken to her heart.

“Do you remember where the telephone was that afternoon?”

“I know it was lying on the chest of drawers in the passage when I went to bed that night. But the battery was flat again.”

“You remember that, do you?”

Valérie shrugged her shoulders. “It's always flat.”

After a moment's thought, Poldi made two decisions. First, not to let mistrust poison their friendship, and, secondly, not to be bamboozled any more.

“Will you still take me with you to the wedding party?”

“Why even ask?”

“I mean, because I suspected you just now.”

“But it's your job.”

“My job?”

“
Mon Dieu
, Poldi, you're a detective now. You can't rule anyone out. It's hard on your friends, but you're faithfully obeying the call of justice. How does that sound?”

Poldi hadn't looked at it like that before.

“Lousy. But you're right.”

Anyone who heaves a pensive sigh at the idea of a Sicilian wedding and pictures Dolce & Gabbana models of all ages seated over pasta and wine at a long table in an olive grove, happily singing and playing mandolins while the newlyweds dance a passionate tarantella, has never attended any such function. Poldi hadn't either, so the reality hit her like a punch in the solar plexus. A Sicilian wedding takes the following form: umpteen guests assemble in a
sala di ricevimento
, usually some barn of a multifunctional building with a tiled floor, where they sit on plastic chairs and eat immoderately for hours on end. That's the prime essential. For drink there'll be one bottle of wine per table, and that's enough because, as already mentioned, Sicilians don't drink much. They make up for that by eating, and that they do without a break. Meanwhile, the young newly-weds sit by themselves at a table of their own with a view of the whole wretched proceedings, which are over by eleven-thirty at the latest. Music? Only from the band, if any. Dancing? No way. High jinks? Forget it. A Sicilian wedding is about as amusing as detention. Its sole object is to impress the friends of the bridal pair's parents and, more especially, their business associates, by filling them to the gunwales with food.
Only when they can't say “phew” any more is that mission accomplished. The
bella figura
principle applies here too. The last thing anyone wants is to look like they're hard up, like business is bad and the future anything but rosy, even if the general economic situation says otherwise. One gauge of the parents' prosperity is the
bomboniera
presented to each guest by the bridal pair: little china, glass or even silver containers produced in a wide range of prices by an industry of its own and filled with white sugared almonds, these being the traditional talismans at Italian weddings. From a sober, Protestant point of view, of course, they're the worst kind of superfluous kitsch. One must, however, adopt an oriental mode of thought, for the
bomboniera
, like the bride, is a sweet thing robed in splendour. And that's the whole point: what the bridal pair are sharing with all their guests is something wholly useless and, depending on one's point of view, tasteless but nonetheless sweet: love.