Death in Sardinia (54 page)

Rosa blushed with delight. It was easy to make her happy.

‘Do you like my hat? I made it myself, with a panettone box.’

Under the veils one could read the name
Motta
.

‘Beautiful … Aaaah!’ said Bordelli.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘One of my vertebrae hurts. Perhaps a storm is on the way.’

‘I guess you need a Bertelli plaster like the old folks.’

‘Aaaah …’

‘You’re always so tense … Want one of my little cigarettes?’

‘Not today, thanks.’

‘Then I’ll make you some herbal tea with honey.’

‘With honey?’

‘Leave it to me,’ Rosa said with a maternal expression and then left the room. Bordelli tried to relax.

He looked out at the rooftops with their chimney-pots and antennas. Rosa was bustling about in the kitchen, rushing from cooker to sink in her spiked heels. Moments later she returned with a steaming cup and a plate of teacakes. Bordelli sat up and took a sip of tisane. Rosa was watching to see whether he liked it.

‘That’s good. What’s in it?’ Bordelli asked.

‘Lemon balm, marigold, passion-flower, corn poppy and hawthorn … all mixed together.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Soon you’ll feel all your muscles relaxing.’

‘I can already feel it, I swear.’ Bordelli finished the tisane and stood up, back still sore. His headache had also intensified, but it certainly wasn’t the fault of Mamma Rosa’s herbal tea.

‘I’m going to go,’ he said, moving his neck to feel where it hurt most.

‘Why don’t you stay? My girlfriends are coming in a little while for a rehearsal.’

‘I can’t. I’m expected at headquarters,’ Bordelli lied.

‘Oh, rot …’ said Rosa. Then she dashed into her bedroom and returned with her hands behind her back.

‘Surprise!’ she said, bringing one hand forward, a golden ribbon dangling between her fingers. Bordelli gave her a kiss on the cheek. He was about to unwrap the present when she snatched it back out of his hands and put it in his jacket pocket.

‘Open it later,’ she said.

‘Whatever you say.’ The cat was still asleep, and on his way out Bordelli stroked his head. Gideon moved his tail but didn’t open his eyes.

‘Don’t overtax yourself,’ Bordelli said to the cat.

‘All he ever thinks about is eating, and chasing girls,’ said Rosa.

‘I think he’s discovered the meaning of life,’ said Bordelli, heading for the door. In the doorway he kissed Rosa’s hands, which she loved, then started down the stairs with the distinct feeling that his headache was getting worse.

‘Will I see you before 1966?’ Rosa called down the stairwell.

‘I can’t promise.’

‘If I throw a party, will you come?’

‘I can’t promise.’

‘You’re such a shit!’ she said, blowing him kisses. Bordelli reached the bottom of the stairs and then ran into Princess Doralice’s daughters, all dressed in veils, in the entranceway. They made a big fuss over him and covered him up to the ears with lipstick.

‘Ciao, Inspector, you coming to see us on Thursday?’

‘Unfortunately I can’t, I have to work.’

‘Oh, bollocks!’ said one of them. Even in their present get-up, they still hadn’t lost any of their whorish manners. The one called Cristiana got her hair all tangled up in the letterboxes and let out a stream of rapid-fire obscenities. Then they raised their swishing skirts all together and ran up the stairs, laughing and calling each other tarts and sluts at every step. It would have been interesting to see how Rosa was going to persuade them to pipe down and rehearse …

The sky was black and laden with clouds, but it still wasn’t raining. Bordelli opened Rosa’s present while driving, steadying the steering wheel with his knees. He read the note and smiled:
To the handsomest monkey in the kingdom, from your Rosita
. The square little box contained a great deal of pink cotton, at the bottom of which was a tiny heart made of jade. It was smooth and sparkly. He pulled over to the side of the road and hung Rosa’s heart from the little chain he wore round his neck.

After dessert, he poured a drop of grappa into his glass and lit a cigarette. His headache had subsided a little. During the entire meal Totò had done nothing but talk about violent crimes from his home town in the south … Hands chopped off, tongues chopped off, goat-tied corpses, dead bodies with rocks in their mouths … all the while turning juicy, dripping steaks over on the grill.

The inspector downed his grappa and got up to leave, patting the cook on the shoulder by way of goodbye. He walked out of the still-full trattoria and got in the Beetle. It was barely nine o’clock. He didn’t feel like going home. Putting an unlit cigarette between his lips, he let the car take him where it would. When he found himself driving through Piazza Alberti, he suddenly had an idea. He parked in Via Gioberti and ducked into the first bar he encountered. The shelves inside were full of panettoni. Sitting at two small round tables were four motionless codgers, staring at their empty glasses and cigar butts. Over their heads was a television blaring at high volume. It looked like a film. Near them were some children playing pinball. The telephone was just inside the entrance, in one of the quieter spots. Bordelli bought a token and phoned the home of Fontana the barrister. A woman answered, probably the governess.

‘Casa Fontana,’ she said.

‘Good evening, I’d like to speak with Signor Guido please,’ the inspector said, covering the speaker with his hand.

‘Who’s calling?’

‘This is Inspector Bordelli.’

‘Please wait while I call him.’

‘Thank you.’ He could hear a television in the background, broadcasting the same film as in the bar. A good minute passed, then he heard some footsteps approaching the telephone.

‘Hello?’ the young man said in a low voice.

‘Hello, Guido …’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m calling because I’d like to have another little chat with you and Raffaele.’

‘Oh,’ said Guido, not the least bit surprised.

‘Is Raffaele there with you now?’

‘No.’

‘Will he be coming later?’

‘No.’

‘You won’t be seeing each other tonight?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes in what sense?’

‘We will be seeing each other.’

‘Where?’

‘Not here.’

‘Guido, please, try to speak in complete, comprehensible sentences … This is starting to sound like an interrogation.’

‘I thought it was.’

‘Don’t be silly … So you’ll be meeting Raffaele somewhere else tonight, if I’ve understood correctly?’

‘We’re playing music,’ said Guido. Prising a few consecutive words out of him was an achievement.

‘Ah, I see, and where?’ Bordelli asked.

‘Via de’ Bardi.’

‘Then I’ll meet you there. Number?’

‘Thirty-two.’

‘What’s the name on the buzzer?’

‘No name.’

‘How will I recognise it?’

‘There’s just the number.’

‘What time will you be there?’

‘Ten.’

‘Wait for me before you start playing, otherwise you won’t hear me.’

‘All right,’ said Guido.

When Bordelli hung up he felt tired, as if he’d just done some heavy lifting. Talking to Guido was thoroughly exhausting. He went over to the counter and asked for a coffee. He drank it slowly, watching one of the elderly men in the mirror. The old codger was asleep in a sitting position, hands on his legs. He had a small head, a sallow face furrowed with wrinkles and two oval leather patches on the elbows of his jacket. Not even the noise of the pinball machine could rouse him from his slumber. The barman glanced lazily at him several times while rinsing cups.

It was almost half past nine. The inspector left the bar and got back in his car. He drove slowly, smoking a cigarette. He felt strange, as if he were on his way to a party where he didn’t know anybody. Then there was the fact that he really hadn’t been straight with the lad. There was no need to talk to Raffaele or Guido. For the moment there was no longer any need to talk to anyone … except Odoardo, that is. Whereas he’d gone and made up that story. Perhaps it was only out of curiosity, to see the two youths one more time from up close.

There was still half an hour to go before his unlikely appointment, and luckily it hadn’t started raining yet. He crossed the Arno and left the Beetle in Via dei Renai. He went through Porta San Miniato on foot and started climbing the staircase that led to Viale Galileo. There were no street lamps, and he could barely see. The last stairs were the steepest, and he reached the top out of breath. Crossing the Viale he went all the way up to the basilica of San Miniato, which to him was the most beautiful church in Florence. The façade of white and black marble was decorated with fine inlay and geometric figures reminiscent of oriental textiles. At the top, in the place of the cross, was an eagle whose talons clutched a roll of fabric, symbol of l’Arte dell Lana, the wool guild of medieval Florence … Even back then, money was more powerful than faith.

He stood there looking at the thousand-year-old church with the monumental cemetery of the Porte Sante around it. He knew some of his great-grandparents were buried in there, but he’d never managed to find them. One day he would have to go and calmly search the graves and family chapels, and read the inscriptions one by one. Once, when he was about six or seven, one of his relatives had taken him for a stroll through the tombs, and they’d shown him the grave of the man who had written ‘Pinocchio’. He hadn’t gone walking in a cemetery for a very long time. Some years back, he used to do it rather often, just to relax. He knew all the ones around Florence, from Pratolino to Gli Allori. He’d even gone a couple of times to the American cemetery at Falciani and walked for hours through those thousands and thousands of white crosses lined up like rows of vines.

Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was already ten o’clock. As he headed back down the same dark staircase, he noticed two shadows at the bottom coming towards him. A man and a woman. When they got closer, he heard them speaking German and stiffened instinctively. The language still made him shudder, there was nothing he could do about it. When the couple walked past him he looked at the man’s face. He must have been over forty. Bordelli realised he could easily be one of those Nazis who’d fled Florence in August ’44 when the Allies entered the city, and had now returned with his wife to see the bridges he’d blown up before leaving. Or maybe not. Maybe he was just a former Wehrmacht soldier who’d come to visit the city of Michelangelo and Leonardo.

Reaching the bottom of the staircase he told himself that the war had ended over twenty years ago, and he had to stop looking at the world through its prism. He turned to the left after Porta San Miniato. Via San Nicolò was dark as usual. When he reached the end and turned down Via de’ Bardi, a freezing drizzle started to fall. A bit farther on, he spotted Guido’s BSA and Raffaele’s Solex in the distance, parked along the pavement.

He walked past number 30 and, a few paces on, found himself in front of number 34. There was no number 32. Maybe Guido had taken the piss out of him. He turned round to have a better look, and between two majestic front doors he noticed a camouflaged door in the façade. There was only one buzzer, as Guido had said, enclosed in a carved marble setting. The doorbell was more precious than the door.

He listened hard but couldn’t hear any music. He tried pushing the buzzer, but heard no ringing within. He pressed again. It was quite cold outside. He stuck a cigarette between his lips but didn’t light it. He had a ticklish feeling in his stomach, like a child afraid to be caught doing something forbidden. Who knew whether those two had even heard the doorbell. He was about to ring again when the door opened. Guido invited him inside. The dark entranceway smelled of damp plaster and septic fumes. Behind the door were two staircases, one ascending, the other descending. Guido took the down staircase, with Bordelli following behind. It was a rather long, stone stairway. Some soft recorded music came from below, a sad sort of lament accompanied by a guitar. The inspector would have liked to ask who the singer was, but he refrained. He didn’t feel like being treated like an old fogey again.

They entered a large basement room with brick vaults, illuminated by a pair of light bulbs with red plastic shades. Raffaele was sitting on a mattress, changing the strings on a black electric guitar. Seeing the inspector come in, he put the guitar down and got up to greet him. The air smelled of stale smoke and you could practically sink your teeth into the humidity.

‘I hope you’ll leave us a little time to play,’ Raffaele said, shaking his hand. Bordelli smiled and looked around.

‘So this is your lair,’ he said, glancing at the record player on the floor and two amplifiers as big as refrigerators.

‘Call it whatever you like,’ said Raffaele. Guido sat down on the mattress and resumed the operation of changing the guitar strings.

‘Are there only two of you?’ Bordelli asked.

‘We’re looking for others.’

‘Do you play stuff you can twist to?’ the inspector asked, choosing at random a modern term that seemed appropriate. Raffaele and Guido exchanged an amused glance.

‘The twist is for snot-nosed mummy’s boys,’ said Raffaele.

‘What kind of music do you play?’

‘Satanic stuff … we climb walls and drink the blood of virgins,’ said Raffaele.

‘I guess you don’t like giving straight answers either,’ said Bordelli. It felt like an encounter between two tribes that had never met before. The sad music kept playing on the gramophone, and it wasn’t at all bad. It entered one’s ears and stayed there.

‘I only try to avoid saying things you wouldn’t understand,’ said Raffaele, thumbs hooked into the pockets of his jeans. Guido watched the scene in silence, all the while fiddling with the guitar.

‘It used to be old people who said that sort of thing to children,’ said Bordelli.

‘They still do, I assure you … but our ears have changed.’

‘Grown longer and hairy?’

‘We don’t need your rules any more,’ Raffaele said with a serious face.

‘You always speak in the plural,’ Bordelli observed, pulling out a cigarette.