Death in Springtime (4 page)
By three-thirty it was raining so pitilessly that the sky had turned black and all the street lights were on. The helicopter pilots reported in by radio. They were coming in. They could see absolutely nothing and were wasting time and fuel. The dog-handlers struggled on for another hour but then they, too, gave up. The Alsatians, their thick pelts soaked and steaming, had sniffed with some certainty around a little icon of the Virgin which stood by the roadside, sheltered from the rain by a stone arch, but after that they had rambled unhappily this way and that and returned whining to their handlers, who were knee-deep in mud, soaked to the skin and cursing roundly.
The Captain waited, dealing patiently with the routine paperwork with which he was constantly burdened, and diplomatically with an influential gentleman who wanted an impossible favour to do with the son's military service.
The patrols searching the first group of farms around the village of Pontino were the only ones to bring the Captain anything when they returned, muddy and exhausted, after their double shift. They tipped on to his desk their haul of three shotguns and a pistol for which the respective owners had no licences, and one dose of heroin. They also reported other stolen goods which they found but left to be collected later: a stolen Fiat 500, eight sheep and a donkey.
The Captain telephoned the American Consulate.
'A case for galoshes,' remarked the Substitute, tossing a cigar end out of the jeep and looking around at the steam rising slowly from the wet earth. The sky above them was blue, the air sweet and the spring sunshine warm.
The Brigadier and the Captain sank their cavalry boots deep into the clay soil and began looking about. The Substitute dodged from stone to stone until he gained the hardened ground in front of the farmhouse where stone steps led sideways up to the front door. He ran up the steps and knocked but no one answered.
Hens and geese were picking around in two small haystacks and fleets of tiny yellow chickens were half hidden beneath some planking and under the foundations of some rickety sheds. The boggy sheepfold was empty. Strands of wool fringed all its fencing. On the glistening horizon two black dots appeared, separated, and became helicopters roaring low overhead and scattering the distracted fowl. The Substitute knocked again smartly, but the Brigadier appeared in the doorway of the stable and called up: 'There'll be nobody in the house at this hour!'
'Well then?' What on earth were they here for?
The Brigadier set down a fat puppy that he had been holding and squelched towards the yard, driving a dozen pullets before him.
'I'd hoped he'd still be grazing that pasture there.' He waved an arm at an empty green field with mist rising from the cropped grass. 'He was last year about now but Easter's late, I hadn't thought on, and he'll not move down until Palm Sunday like as not, and if he's still over on the mountain he'll be up Three Valleys Pass and that's an hour and a half of a walk for him, going as the crow flies, but longer for us in the jeep because there's no direct road—and then to get at him we'd have to take a cart track that'll be more like a river bed after yesterday's rain. The thing is, he'll likely not move till Palm Sunday, I should have thought on—we'll take the old road over to Demontis's farm and come back here at six this evening when Piladu will be milking. His wife'11 be back then which is just as well—she cleans for the factor's wife over at "II Cantuccio" in the mornings. We'll get on over to see Demontis. I should have thought on about Easter being late.'
'Ah.' The Substitute accepted this jumble of incomprehensible information equitably. 'Every blade of grass,' the man had said, and he evidently meant it. They climbed back into the jeep and went on along the rutted lane, lurching and splashing through deep puddles, the Brigadier worrying audibly all the way because 'things weren't as they should be.' This remark did not, as his passengers might have thought, refer either to the condition of the road or to his not having thought on about Easter, but to the problem of where the other two were going to eat lunch. He hoped fervently that they would go back to Florence and had dropped several hints in the hope of getting this information out of them, but the Captain was always concentrating on the job in hand as if nothing else mattered and the magistrate only smiled and nodded distractedly, his mind apparently elsewhere.
Outside the Demontis farm a little dog shot out of a barrel and came to be petted by the Brigadier. A short round woman in a big flowered apron, her long grey-black pigtail wound into a thick bun, came out of her cheese room and sent the Captain and the Brigadier along the edge of a muddy, sprouting cornfield to a distant pasture, leaving the Substitute to keep his shoes dry near the farmhouse. They couldn't see the shepherd until they crossed the last rise but they could hear the sheepbells on the clear air. The shepherd was on his feet, jacket slung over his shoulder, gazing skywards, his cap pulled low to shade his eyes. He was watching the circling helicopters.
'What are they looking for?' he asked them without any preliminary greeting.
'We thought you might tell us.'
He told them nothing. The three men stood together for some time while the long-faced sheep ambled around them, sometimes coming close to examine them but scuttering away at the slightest of their movements, sending a ripple of bells through the whole flock.
The Captain had no illusions about being able to guess what Demontis knew or didn't know. The old shepherd's face was lined and brown. His deep-set eyes roved slowly over his flock, over them, over his flock again, with no change in his expression. He might have been watching over all of them for a century. There was no infecting him with their urgency. The newpaper sticking out of his jacket pocket carried last Sunday's date.
'If you hear anything . . .'
If he heard anything he would not dream of doing anything about it but would go on gazing indifferently over the heads of his sheep. They left him looking up at the sky again. He didn't turn his head to look after them and he was so still that even at a short distance they could no longer distinguish him from his surroundings.
When they got back to the farmyard the Substitute had vanished. They could hear his rapid speech and then the fat shepherdess's delighted scream of laughter. They appeared in the doorway of the house, the woman red in the face and still chuckling. The Substitute said goodbye to her and ran lightly to the jeep carrying a polythene bag.
'Ricotta,' he explained, opening the bag for them to inspect the fluffy white mound with the whey still running out of the cheese paper.
'The lady informs me,' said the Substitute as they drove away and the Captain reported the husband's silence, 'that his brother is a bad lot, the bane of her life, that she would never have married Salvatore—who, I should tell you, is a saint, a veritable saint, when considered on his own—if she had known she'd be stuck with the terrible Antonio as well. Among his worst crimes are not being married, not turning up at milking times and stealing food.'
'I know,' the Brigadier said, 'Especially as he bets. He's not above stealing a few of her mature cheeses and selling them. They're worth quite a bit of money.'
'Yes . . . but recently he's been stealing other things from the house, too . . .'
'He has?' The Captain looked up.
'Yes. I thought you might be interested.'
'I am. We'd better stay away from here for the moment.'
'You think so?'
'If he turns out to be a feeder for the kidnappers,' explained the Captain, 'he'd be too easy to replace if we showed any interest in him.'
'And if we leave him alone he'll lead us somewhere.'
'Not far, I'm afraid. Feeders are small fry, though they're well paid if the ransom's high. There will be at least two of them, but even if they know each other they won't know anybody else except the one man who took them on and will eventually pay them. Meantime they're given money to buy food.'
'But the person they pass the food to . . .'
'Will be one of those guarding the victim, but they may never meet. The food is often left in a given place and collected later. The only man who knows everyone concerned is the base-man.'
'In that case we surely are talking about professionals, despite your doubts earlier.'
'I still have doubts.' The Captain frowned. 'I still don't like that letter and I don't like the timing. It's only four months since I got one of the big boys from the Sardinian gang that operates here.'
'The Donati kidnapping. Yes, I remember. He was shot getting away with the ransom.'
'And two others got away by the skin of their teeth. I'd be surprised to hear they were still in the country, and if they are they should be lying low.'
The jeep was bouncing them about mercilessly as the Brigadier tried to get back to the village in time for the Captain and the Substitute to go back to Florence and eat.
'But if they're given money for the food . . .' the Substitute was trying vainly to put a bouncing lighter to his cigar.
'As his sister-in-law said, he's a bad lot. He's also stupid and thinks he's clever. He'll have been gambling the money away and then stealing the food from her.'
'Not just food.' He finally managed to light up as they reached the main road, and he blew a sidelong stream of blue smoke behind the Brigadier's head. 'There were other items . . . of a very personal nature that he couldn't be selling, if you see what I mean.'
'She really wants him put away, then . . .' The Captain wondered at this hatred which was stronger even than family loyalty.
'He may have other faults,' pointed out the Substitute, 'that she didn't care to mention. It's a lonely spot and the husband seems to be away all day with his sheep.'
'Mmm. Well, we'll have him watched but keep our distance. I have hopes of Piladu's telling us something this evening. He's got a stolen donkey to account for so we've got more leverage there.'
'And is there' the Substitute pursed his lips in a smile and drew on his cigar 'a brother in the case?'
'No, but there's a wife who won't be too pleased with her husband. There are two sons but the elder one's no good and won't work on the farm. If Piladu gets put away for stealing that donkey his wife will be left in a real mess.'
'Then we can offer to negotiate.'
'Quite. If you've no objections . . .?'
'None at all. I told you, I shall leave everything to you. Well, here we are. I'm beginning to get quite fond of this little piazza. What we need to know now is what the Brigadier here is going to give us for lunch. After that I have to leave you and get back to Florence.' The Brigadier's red face began to sweat. 'We can start with my ricotta and a flask of good Chianti. What about sending one of your boys across to that overflowing grocer's there to get us a fine Tuscan loaf? I don't eat much at lunchtime myself but we must think of the Captain here who's doing all the work . . . perhaps a string or two of those wild boar sausages—do you think they're local? If they are we must sample them, be an insult not to. Well, Brigadier?'
'Well?'
'Well, it must have wandered in here by mistake.'
'Wandered in ... ? That donkey was stolen fifty kilometres away!'
'Must have fancied a walk—keep still, blast you!
Keep
still!'
The milk sprayed into the bucket in a few short spurts and Piladu pushed the animal forward, let two heavily pregnant ewes push past him and reached out to grasp the wool of a lamb that was trying to jump the rail where the Captain and the Brigadier were leaning. 'Down, you bugger, down! Come here!' He pulled its hind legs towards him, turning on his stool to call to his younger son who was milking invisibly somewhere behind him, 'Leave her! Leave her for me, she's too tricky for you, I'll see to her! And shift that dog!'
The two hundred sheep jostled and complained and tried to jump the queue that stretched deep into an olive grove. The young dog, new to the job, ran about excitedly causing more confusion; the old one, who was an expert, was so very old that he continually rolled over and fell asleep. Every now and then Piladu turned and barked at him to encourage him. The Captain and the Brigadier were getting nowhere.
'That donkey has to be explained,' shouted the Brigadier over the racket of the baaing sheep and the barking man.
'Woof! Ruff! Get up, you lazy sod! You'd better have a talk to it, then. Let the ram through! Gianni! Let him through, he's causing havoc back there! Ho! Ho! Wake up, ruff ruff, Fido, blast you!'
Even so, Piladu knew that once milking was over the facts had to be faced, and faced in the kitchen where his wife would be listening. It was going dark by the time the shepherd and his son shed their ragged leather milking jackets and carried two buckets each up the stone steps to the kitchen, followed by the two carabinieri. Piladu's wife, peeling artichokes in the gloom at the kitchen table, put down her knife and accepted the milk without a word. The kitchen smelled of sour milk and woodsmoke.
'Do you mind if we sit down?' the Captain asked the woman. She nodded towards the far end of the table and then turned her back on them, pouring the milk into two big cauldrons by the fire. Two tiny children appeared from the shadows.
'When are we going to eat?'
'Get out, or else help with the artichokes.'
They got out.
The shepherd poured some wine from a tattered straw flask into four greasy tumblers and the men sat at the oilcloth-covered table. The woman dropped rennet into the two cauldrons, stirred them, and then went on peeling the mound of artichokes in silence.
'Your eldest son's not here?' began the Brigadier.
'Him!' The shepherd drained his glass and reached for th*e flask. 'He's never here.' He had lost his cheekiness now that they were indoors and under the eye of his wife.
'Lucky you've got a good lad like this one, then.'
The second boy was a cheerful replica of his mother, his high, red cheeks almost burying his slanted dark eyes. He looked from one to the other of their faces but knew better than to open his mouth. The only sounds came from the other end of the room where the woman was splitting the artichokes and tossing them with a splash into a big plastic bowl. A big log settled in the fire with a shower of sparks and began to blaze fiercely, brightening the room and darkening its shadows.
'There's a girl missing.'
None of the family spoke or looked at the others. The woman, tight-lipped, turned her back on them and began to slap the milk vigorously with a peeled wand spiked at one end where smaller branches had been lopped off.
'Perhaps she's wandered here by mistake,' went on the Brigadier, determined to provoke an answer.
'You know better than that,' the shepherd mumbled.
'All right, I know better. We know all your tricks and kidnapping isn't one of them . . . The only thing is, we're not so sure about your son.'
Piladu slid a sidelong look at his wife's back. She had thrown the artichoke leaves into a bucket and turned to slap and stir the milk again.
Has he found work in Florence?' asked the Brigadier innocently.
'Florence!' Piladu spat the word, and then, as if to distract them, he snapped at his wife, 'when are we going to eat?'
'The woman said, more to herself than to him, 'How many things do you think I can do at once. Maria!'
A girl appeared from the next room. She couldn't have been more than thirteen or fourteen but her face was thickly painted and her clothes were frivolous, brightly coloured things. A long, glittering scarf was draped round her neck. She began setting out plates and glasses, walking round the two carabinieri as though they weren't there. Her cheap, strong perfume mingled with the sour milk and woodsmoke. When the table was ready she filled a deep pan with water and put it on the cooker, her movements slow and simpering in contrast to those of her mother, who quickly poured olive oil into a big black frying-pan, threw in the artichokes, covered them and rinsed her hands and arms before drawing a chair up to one of the cauldrons and sliding into the curd up to her elbows.
