Gold, Frankincense and Dust (3 page)

Juvara looked on, in part troubled and in part excited by the sight. The commissario was amused to see that Juvara was so engrossed that there was no trace of fear on his face.

“Cheers!” Soneri said to the inspector, who seemed hypnotised. He could not tear himself away even when the bull got down from the cow’s back, quivering, his head lowered, his great detumescent penis dangling and almost touching the surface of the road.

“Is that the same one we saw before?” Juvara wanted to know, finally getting a grip of himself.

“Of course it is. Can’t you tell from its balls?”

“Seriously?”

The commissario gave him a nudge. “How the hell should I know? It certainly doesn’t look like a limousin. It lacks class.”

At that moment, the cow arched its back and peed loudly on the road.

“Usually it’s the male who does that afterwards.” The inspector had a beatific smile on his face, as though it was he himself who had just been making love.

“So, I hope you picked up something there. Anyway, it’s time to go.”

The two beasts had disappeared. The mist was still all around them and Juvara seemed hopeful that another miraculous vision would emerge. On Soneri, however, that unexpected juxtaposition of past and present created in him a kind of alienation. He was in the Lower Po valley and in a familiar mist, but somehow it all seemed unreal to him, a caricature of what was imprinted on his memory.

He started up the engine and inched forward into the dense wall of mist. “And they called this road the Autostrada del Sole,” muttered Juvara at his side.

FOR ABOUT A
quarter of an hour they circled round the bonfire which was blazing in the distance like an unattainable sun.

“Where is this road?” Soneri said, growing impatient.

“You’re not really planning to go to the gypsy place, are you?” Juvara said in alarm.

“Why not? Calm down, they’re not as bad as the bulls.”

“But there’s only the two of us …”

“Nothing’s going to happen. These are not aggressive people.”

“If you say so.”

“How come you’re so prejudiced? You’re scared of animals, but bodies burned by the roadside have no effect on you. You’re afraid of gypsies and yet you hang out in discos filled with thugs with knives in their pockets, drugged to the eyeballs.”

The inspector gazed at him as though the thought had never occurred to him. “I suppose it’s a matter of habit …”

“No, it’s simply that people are fearful of the unknown. Anyway, let me introduce you to them.”

He drove on for a few minutes but the camp and the fire seemed to keep changing position. After a bit, he turned the car round and went back the way he had come. Thirty
seconds later, the headlights lit up a white, rusting sign on which it was just possible to make out the word:
DUMP
.

“This has to be it,” the commissario said, turning into the site.

Juvara remained silent and impassive as he watched Soneri manoeuvre the car and drive up towards some huge metal dustbins filled with rubbish. A group of children emerged and ran off in all directions. The two men drove on towards the fire, around which at least twenty people were seated, feasting. A side of pork with some meat still on the bones was hanging from a kind of trestle.

“You see now who is more dangerous?” Soneri asked ironically, pointing to the slaughtered animal.

Their appearance among the caravans had brought the barbecue to a halt. All eyes were trained on the commissario and inspector. An age-old distrust was evident on the faces of all those present, giving a chill to the scene. For a few seconds the only sound to be heard was the crackling of the fire, but then a middle-aged man with a floppy Borsalino cap and a tight-fitting jacket came over to them, stopping a few feet in front of Soneri and making a enquiring gesture with his chin.

“Police,” Soneri said, with every appearance of calm. Juvara took up a position one step behind, watchful and wary.

“If you’re here about the pig …” the gypsy began, but stopped as he saw the policeman shake his head.

“I couldn’t care less about the pig,” Soneri said. “God rest his soul,” he added, smiling over at the remains attached to the hook.

“Well then?” The gypsy stretched out his arms.

“How long have you been here?”

The man turned towards the others to seek help. “Must be a couple of months now. Look, we’ve got nothing to do with any thefts. We killed this pig because it was already injured.
It was losing blood and would have died in any case. It was trying to force its way in everywhere, even into our caravans.”

“Served it right, then,” Soneri said sarcastically. “Anyway, I’m not accusing you of having stolen …”

“You always do. Every time something goes missing, it’s always our fault.”

Soneri turned and saw that a group of boys had gathered round his car. The man shouted out something in an incomprehensible dialect and they all scarpered.

“Someone was burned to death by the autostrada …” he began again, approaching the topic warily.

“Two people. That’s what we heard. We went along to take a look, but the traffic police told us to go away. We only wanted to see if we could give a hand, but we got the usual stuff – only there to rob and steal, and all that. So they can get on with it themselves. There were other people doing the stealing,” he said with a snigger.

“I wasn’t talking about those who died when their cars went up in flames after the accident. There was a burned body at the side of the road, but that one had nothing to do with the pile-up.”

The man turned back to the group with an expression of bewilderment. “And what does that have to do with us?”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with you, but you might have seen something.”

“In this mist?”

“It was light during the day.”

“Yes, but if someone’s going to commit murder, he’s not going to do it in broad daylight.”

Some of the group had started eating again, having lost interest in the conversation. Mandolin music, evoking a distant land, came from some of the caravans.

“I mean, maybe a car drew up, opened its boot and …” Soneri insisted.

The man stretched out his arms again. “I didn’t see a thing.”

“Make one more effort. Ask them all. There’s always somebody who sees something, but pays no heed to the one thing that turns out to be really important for us.” As he finished, the commissario stretched out his hand and gave a smile of understanding.

The gypsy leader shook hands, relieved the visit was going to be over without too many complications. “I’m Omar Manservisi,” he said, but his voice was drowned in the roar of a clapped-out car shooting off at speed down the road away from the camp. All the gypsies exchanged glances which Soneri could not interpret. Manservisi too became suddenly serious, but only for a moment.

“Did you catch sight of that car?” he asked Juvara as they set off.

“I only got the first half of the number plate, AB 32. There was another figure and two letters.”

“Do you know the make?”

“An old Citroen XM, at least twenty years old.”

“It seemed in a hurry.”

“And in this mist …”

They passed the bins again and turned onto a side road. The commissario took a wide turn and one wheel bumped against the kerb, making the car shudder. The inspector jumped too. “Apart from the mist, they go and build these raised roads along the side of the canals,” he said uneasily.

“It’s because of the flooding; it lets you move about.”

“Maybe so, but it’s like a rodeo.”

“There’re bulls there too.”

“Are you sure this is the right road?” the inspector said shortly afterwards.

“No,” Soneri replied with a touch of anxiety in his voice, leaving the inspector in suspense. He realised as he spoke that he was not on the road he had taken on the way there. He had made a turning to follow the wheel tracks of the car which had sped out of the camp. It was all a matter of instinct.

“So where are we going?” Juvara asked.

“Let’s go on a tour of the Lower Po Valley. Is that not a lovely idea? Try to imagine there’s a girl here beside you instead of me.”

The inspector made no reply and for a moment Soneri was afraid he had offended him. He would rather Angela had been there. It would have been more amusing with her and he would have enjoyed needling her.

“You see that?” said the inspector, pointing ahead.

“What?”

“Someone went onto the grass and nearly ended up in a ditch.”

A wavy line in the mud marked the way forward for about a hundred metres.

“Do you think it happened only recently?”

“Looks like it.”

“One of those bulls was most likely involved.”

The commissario said nothing, but accelerated slightly, cutting confidently through the mist. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, ready to swerve. Shortly afterwards, the flashing blue lights of a police car made him draw up.

“A police cordon,” Juvara said, relieved that Soneri was forced to brake.

When they came closer, they saw a car balanced precariously between a ditch and the side of the canal. It was the Citroen from the campsite.

“An evening full of surprises,” Soneri said.

The patrolman was standing beside an elderly, somewhat dishevelled man. “He’s drunk,” the officer said.

The commissario nodded. “I did notice,” he said, referring to the skid marks he had seen further back, but leaving the officer puzzled. “Who is he?” he asked, indicating the old man but not taking his eyes off the policeman.

“We’re checking him out,” the officer replied, pointing to his colleague on the car radio.

The man stayed silent, prepared for the worst.

“Is this your car?” the officer said.

There was no reply. The man continued to stare ahead into the mist in the background, as though he would rather lose himself in that nothingness.

“These are false documents,” reported the other police officer who had been communicating the data to the control centre. “And the car is registered in the name of one Omar Manservisi, of no fixed abode.”

“Oh great! Let’s get this one along to the station,” the patrol leader said.

The old man’s attitude was surprising. For a few moments, he stood stock still in the same position, then turned towards the policeman who had taken him by the sleeve and stared at him with the expression of a bewildered child.

“Manservisi … Manservisi … I’ve heard that name, but I can’t remember where,” said the officer.

“He’s one of the travelling people camped up by the dump at Cortile San Martino,” Soneri informed him.

The officer looked at him in surprise. “The ones who lit the fire?”

“The very same. Manservisi is a kind of chieftain. I believe the old guy here took the car a short while back.”

“Stole it? He stole something from gypsies!” The officer’s tone was incredulous.

The commissario stretched out his arms, looking again at the old man who, judging by his expression, seemed sunk in a state of drunken depression. “What about the car? We can’t just leave it here in case someone crashes into it.”

The patrolman raised his visor and snorted: “Suppose not …”

“He’s coming with us. You stay here until the pick-up lorry arrives,” Soneri said.

This time it was Juvara who took the old man by the arm, and as he did so the man turned towards him with the same expression as before.

“You go into the back seat with him,” Soneri ordered. “He looks like the sort who could do all kinds of crazy things. Keep your wits about you.”

They set off and within a quarter of an hour they saw the milk-white glow of the first lights in the city. Ten minutes later they were turning into the courtyard at the police station.

*

“So, how come you took the chieftain’s car and were going around with forged documents?” Soneri began wearily, reflecting on the bizarre conduct of this unknown figure.

The old man looked down at a point in the centre of the desk, avoiding Soneri’s gaze.

Juvara cut in. “Would it not be better for us to leave him to Musumeci? He’ll be here in about twenty minutes. We’ve got that other business to attend to.”

The commissario shrugged. “The main thing is to get him to make up his mind to talk,” he said impatiently. Just then, another officer came in to take the man’s fingerprints.

“Look, it’s in your own interests to put an end to this, eh!” Soneri said, raising his voice in growing exasperation at the
man’s indifference. “Could you tell us who the fuck you are?” he went on, tossing the false identity card on the table like an ace of spades. “That way we can clear this business up. You’ll be charged with possession of forged documents, car theft and drunk driving, but you’ll be treated lightly.”

Nothing seemed to make any impression on the man, who was now sunk in a comatose stupor. The more the interrogation dragged on, the more absurd his behaviour seemed to Soneri. He was just concluding that he had a madman on his hands when the telephone rang.

“Not making much headway here,” were Nanetti’s opening words.

“Not surprising, with all that mist.”

“It’s not a laughing matter. This burned-out stump of a human being has nothing on him to identify him. He looks as though he’s been on a spit.”

“Have you searched around? On the grass verge?”

“You can forget the grass verge. It’s been ploughed up by the emergency services. We’ll come back tomorrow and comb the slope. The torches are no good in the dark.”

“Alright. We can only hope you come up with something.”

He was about to resume questioning the old man when Juvara and the officer who had taken the fingerprints came in.

“Commissario, there’s a warrant out for this man. His fingerprints match those of Otello Medioli. He killed his wife twenty years ago. We’ve been on the computer and there’s no doubt.”

“This is some night for coincidences,” Soneri said.

He turned to face the man: the suffering appearance, the watery eyes and the weary pallor made him an improbable murderer. He looked like an ordinary old-age pensioner, but no-one was more aware than the commissario of how
misleading impressions could be when dealing with criminals. It was one of the pitfalls of the trade. And in the case of Medioli, twenty years on …