Persona Non Grata (13 page)

“That’s what he said—but that was nearly ten years ago.”

“And you think that the knifing in Piazza Castello was Galandra’s revenge?”

“Why not? He was released from jail three months ago. After serving the full term. In Verona.”

“And he had made threats at the time of the trial?”

“Yes.” She hesitated; her voice changed. “Commissario Trotti …”

“Well?”

She shook her head.

“What is it, Signorina?”

“No.” She was staring down at her hands. “It’s got nothing to do with Galandra—or with the case.”

He smiled. “Tell me.”

“It’s about your retirement.”

“My retirement?”

“Yes.” She raised her eyes. “Are you serious?”

“Serious about retiring? But of course. In just over a couple of years I’ll be sixty.”

“Serious about adopting a child?” Again she lowered her eyes. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Ciuffi repeated.

“I would love to adopt.” He paused. “But I doubt if it is really possible.”

“You’d really adopt a child?”

“I have a grown daughter—but I have always dreamt of having a son. But I don’t suppose it’s possible. I’m old—and now I live by myself.”

“But you are a man,” Ciuffi said. Her young face gradually turned a deep scarlet. “You don’t need to adopt. Men aren’t like women, there’s no age limit to parenthood for you. If you really want a child, you can easily have one of your own.”

T
ROTTI WAS OUT
of breath by the time they reached the third floor.

With the morning light coming through the window, the small room was less depressing. A room that looked lived in, with a heavy chest-of-drawers, a wooden table. The bedsheets had been removed and Trotti sat down on the bulky folding settee. Everything was clean and neat.

The thin traces of splashed blood across the stone floor had been scrubbed and now there was just the slightest discoloration. A light, warm breeze came through the window and rustled at Frate Indovino’s calendar on the wall.

Ciuffi took a chair and placed her elbows on the table.

Trotti smiled. “Where’s your husband, signora?”

“He has gone fishing.”

“A strange time to go fishing.”

“What else has he got to do? He sits in the house and he gets miserable.” She shrugged. “Would you care for a drink?” Signora Vardin used the polite form, addressing Trotti and Ciuffi as “they”
—would they care for a drink?
In her mouth, the expression sounded servile—a lifetime of humility, of limited expectations.

“We have just had a late breakfast.” Trotti brushed at imaginary grains of sugar on his lapels. “I would like to talk to your niece, signora.”

“To my niece? To Bettina?”

“I think that she might be able to help us.”

“You have already talked to her.”

Trotti shook his head.

“Not you, Commissario—but the other policeman. The nice young man.” She touched her forehead. “He is losing his hair.”

“I would like to speak to her personally.”

“She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

A slight sigh. “She is in Piemonte … at Ovada.”

“Your husband told me that she was staying with you for a week. That her parents had gone to the funeral of Zio Moisè.”

“Bettina said she wanted to go home.” A resigned shrug. “And so we took her to the station.” A plain, dull face, used to the monotony of hard work. “She is a good girl—but the doctor told me that it would be better for everyone if she went home.” She sighed again. “The doctor has given me these pills. For my nerves, you see, because I worry about Laura. Laura is her father’s favorite and even though she is going to get better, I can’t help worrying.” A hand to her forehead. “And I feel so tired. I love Bettina, but it is better for her to be out of the way.” She raised a hand. “And the way that the newspaper is talking about us—Bettina said that she had to go home.”

Trotti gave her a smile. “I understand.”

“You are a good man, Commissario.”

Trotti turned his head away, looked at the table. Then he stood up, moved towards the sideboard and picked up a red cardboard box. On the packet, there was the printed sketch of a dog’s head; between its jaws, a dead duck. “Your husband has a gun, signora?”

“A gun?” She shook her head. “My husband is a good man, he has never harmed anybody.”

“He keeps a gun in the house?” Trotti raised the empty box of cartridges. “A thirty-two caliber.”

For a moment the eyes looked at him without understanding. Then she nodded.

“Can you show it to me?”

“Why? There is nothing illegal. He has a permit.”

“Of course, signora,” Ciuffi said, giving a reassuring smile. “It is only normal that your husband should want to protect his family.”

She turned back to face Trotti. “My husband uses his gun for hunting—and now that he is unemployed … He hasn’t been out with it more than twice in the last two years.”

“Then what is this packet doing here?”

She tapped the ample slope of her chest. “With my heart troubles, he can ill afford small pleasures. We are not rich.”

“Your husband has received strange letters lately, signora?”

The woman said nothing.

Ciuffi’s voice was gentle. “Signor Vardin should have told us if he was receiving threats.”

In silence Signora Vardin wrung her large, pale hands.

“It is our job to protect you,” Trotti said.

“I know nothing about threats.”

“In your opinion, who attacked your daughter, signora?”

“Laura is getting better. Soon she will be out of the hospital.” The face tried to smile, while the eyes went from Ciuffi to Trotti, looking for understanding. “And that nice doctor told me that there will be nothing to pay.”

“Who attacked her?”

“Laura?”

Trotti nodded and gave a sideways glance at Ciuffi.

“A madman, I suppose.” She pronounced her words with difficulty. “A sexual maniac.”

“Nobody ever threatened you, signora? You or your husband? Or the girls?”

The eyes were brown—like those of a cow at pasture. Signora Vardin shook her head.

“And the name Galandra means nothing to you?”

“Galandra?” Signora Vardin thought for a moment. She frowned and looked down at her shapeless slippers on the cold, stone floor. Then she nodded slowly. “A long time ago. That was when my husband was working at the AVIS.” A pause. “It was a good job at the AVIS—he got it because the
priest helped him. And with his lungs he could no longer work in the quarries.

Ciuffi said, “Galandra came out of jail earlier this year.”

The light of understanding began to dawn upon her face. “You think my husband has been receiving threats from Galandra?”

“Galandra has spent the last seven years in prison. In Verona. Sent there thanks largely to the testimony of your husband.”

“My husband is a very proud man,” she said simply.

“Signora Vardin,” Trotti said, “I think you’d better show me the gun.”

The chair creaked as the woman placed her hands flat on her thighs and wearily stood up. She was wearing a black blouse and beneath it her body was shapeless. She wore ankle socks.

An old body battered by a life of hard work. Difficult to believe that not much more than a decade earlier she had been fertile, that she had given birth to Laura.

Signora Vardin left them and, walking heavily, she went into the bedroom.

The sound of traffic came from Piazza Castello.

Ciuffi said in a quiet voice, “You haven’t asked about the girls, Commissario.”

Trotti glanced at Ciuffi and grinned. “You believe the older sister took a knife to Laura?”

“Unlikely—particularly since the cousin Bettina was there. But it is just possible that as a stepfather—” She lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. “Stepfathers aren’t always very nice people.”

“Vardin seems a kind person.” He placed his hand on the table. “These are good people—from the Friuli, country folk, undemanding and honest. And proud. The backbone of Italy—its only true wealth.”

Ciuffi raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t forget that it was his blood-daughter—not Vardin’s stepdaughter—who was attacked.”

“Strange how Vardin’s identikit of the attacker was so much like Riccardo.”

“Perhaps it was Riccardo.”

Ciuffi shook her head.

“Or perhaps Vardin chose to make him look like his stepdaughter’s boyfriend.” He frowned. “What makes you think Riccardo couldn’t have attacked the little girl?”

The sound of cupboards being opened and closed in the next room.

“Riccardo’s not the type.”

“We are all the type at some time or other. We are all capable of criminal behavior if the temptation is great enough.” Trotti unwrapped a boiled sweet and placed it in his mouth. “It’s possible Riccardo attacked her—just as it’s possible he attacked Signorina Podestà.” He took the belt buckle from his pocket and played with the sliding clasp. “But I’m not sure Riccardo is the type to wear army surplus. Lacoste and Enrico Coveri seem to be more his style.”

Ciuffi laughed. “I didn’t realize you knew so much about clothes …”

Trotti raised his shoulders. “A wife and a daughter—and magazines hanging round the house …”

“Now you believe Signorina Podestà was raped, Commissario?”

“A boy whose father has run off. A boy who has been smothered by his mother—and who is perhaps afraid of his own sexuality.”

“A sweet boy.”

“Don’t trust your emotions, signorina.”

“Yet you trust Vardin, Commissario—just because he’s hard-working and from the Friuli.”

“Don’t trust your emotions—and don’t trust appearances. I was once a sweet boy.”

Ciuffi stretched out her hand, and ran the index finger lightly across his knuckles. “Hard to believe.” Her eyes—no longer tired—watched his. There was a smile at the corner of her lips.

Signora Vardin appeared in the doorway.

Ciuffi quickly removed her hand.

The plump, white arms hung at her side. “I don’t understand,” Signora Vardin said. In one hand she held a cheap
canvas case—a case for holding a rifle. “He keeps it in this but the gun is not there.” The cow-like eyes looked at Trotti and the young police woman. “I didn’t see my husband take his gun this morning.”

“W
E
’
RE NOT GOING
to look for Vardin?”

The lift doors opened before Trotti could answer.

Gino slowly raised his head. “Two love birds,” he said and from behind the desk gave his tired smile. “Ciao.”

“Ciao, Gino.”

The smell of death as they stepped out of the lift. Ciuffi put her hand to her face, her fingers against her nose.

The corridor was empty on the third floor and although the windows gave on to Strada Nuova, the sounds of outside traffic were muted. The blind man gave a little wave of his hand. At his feet Principessa slept her mid-morning siesta.

“Where’s Pisanelli?”

Ciuffi began opening several of the windows.

“Only creates a breeze,” Gino said irritably. “These women always wanting to organize.”

“A woman,” Trotti said lowering his voice, “but a good policeman, Gino. Believe me.”

“Still a romantic, Commissario?”

“Gino, have you seen Pisanelli?”

“Merenda was looking for him a minute ago.”

“Pisanelli works for me, not for Merenda.”

“Must’ve been about ten o’clock.” A muffled voice, as if the dentist had anaesthetized his mouth. “Said he was going to see the Vardin man.”

“Pisanelli’s probably gone off to see one of his girlfriends.” Trotti clicked his tongue. “We’ve just been to the apartment in Piazza Castello.”

“Commissario, I am not party to Pisanelli’s methods of enquiry. I am just the old man who answers the phone.”

Trotti placed a hand on Gino’s shoulder. “You know, you’re really beginning to sound like an old man.”

“Old enough, Piero, to see that you’re too hard on your men. That’s how you lost Magagna—and, if you’re not careful, Pisanelli’ll go the same way.” He added, “Not all your men can be pretty girls in uniform.”

“Trouble with you, Gino, is you’re a phallocrat.” Trotti took a packet of Charms from his pocket. “You and all the men in this Questura. Here, have a sweet. Fennel flavor—it should sweeten you up. If I didn’t know you so well, I would be tempted to think that you are brooding. The male menopause, Gino?”

“Piero, I’m retiring at the end of the year.”

“And you should be glad to be getting out of here. A lucky man, Gino.”

“I’ll miss you all.”

Trotti asked, “And Principessa?”

“The vet says …” Gino began, then shook his head quickly. The stained teeth worried at the lower lip.

“We’ll get you another dog.”

“Another dog after fourteen years?” The sightless eyes peered from behind the thick lenses. “A dog isn’t like a wife. You can’t just change like that when the first one gets to be too old.”

Ciuffi had gone into Trotti’s office.

“You must cheer up. Retirement—you’ll be able to get out, to meet your friends. And you know you’ll always be welcome here, among us.”

“Pazienza.” Gino raised hands in an Italian gesture of resignation.

“You’ve always been like a father to us, Gino.”

“Father? There can’t be more than two years’ difference between us, Piero Trotti.” He laughed. “There was a phone call for you.”

“Who from?”

“He said to ring Gianni in Santa Maria.”

Trotti sighed. “A priest who has been reading too many detective novels.” He gave Gino a friendly slap on the shoulder. “You’d better give me a line,” he said.

“I hear the
Provincia
is stirring up trouble.”

Trotti left the old man and went into his office.

“You must do something about that wretched dog, Piero.”

He looked at Ciuffi as he stepped past the files cluttering the floor. A raised eyebrow. “Christian name, Brigadiere?” He found himself smiling as he picked up the telephone and dialed.

“If you don’t want to do anything, I’ll kill the dog myself—the smell is unbearable.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to call me by my Christian name.”

“You said we were friends.”