River of Shadows: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 1) (11 page)

“He had no dealings with anybody. He never exchanged more than twenty words a day.”

“Sometimes that can be enough …”

“The only person he spoke to was Maria of the sands,” Ghezzi said.

The others glowered at him in a way that seemed to the commissario to convey the dark shadow of a reproach.

“Who’s she?”

Once again the most fleeting of eye contact between the men gave Ghezzi authorization to proceed.

“She’s a woman of about Tonna’s age who has spent most of her life on an island in the Po, digging sand.”

“So where does she live now?”

“In Casoni, two kilometres inland,” the man said, pointing in a direction which was meant to indicate the plain. “She was the only one, apart from his niece, who made him welcome. And when the Po was high and the island was flooded he paid her back by going and rescuing her possessions.”

“Does she manage to live far away from the river?”

“She’s paralysed. She couldn’t live on her own in the cabin any more. When she was younger, she was a kind of savage who spoke only dialect,” Ghezzi said. “Now the island’s not there any more. With all the dredging, they diverted the course of the stream and the river ate it up bit by bit.”

“Even the Po devours what it has created. Everything is changing all the time. In the party, no more than twenty years ago, they taught us that history is on the march, towards a better future. Now, not only has optimism disappeared, but so has the party. Don’t ask me to say that things are getting better. Just like the Po, we’re marching towards the filth of some stinking sea,” Barigazzi said.

He gulped back the last drops of Fortanina, slammed his bowl noisily down on the table and rose swiftly to his feet. He was on his way out when the other three got up to follow him, in silence.

THE MOBILE RANG
while the Alfa was travelling through the mists of the lower Po at the speed of a horse-drawn carriage. This time, Angela’s voice did no violence to his eardrums, and this of itself was sufficient to put him in a state of alarm.

“You need to keep your finger in the hole in the dyke and can’t get away, is that it?”

“I’m doing my level best to get back, but the fog is so thick you could lean your bicycle against it.”

“Don’t worry. If you do get lost, the worst that could happen is that you’d end up in a fast food joint.”

“I’d rather end up in a ditch.”

“Don’t overdo it.”

“I’ll content myself with a glass of Fortanina and some
spalla cotta
.”

“Poor thing! They’ll hear your tummy rumbling all the way to the Alps. Do you know that Juvara has been searching high and low for you all day?”

“In some areas you can’t get a signal. But how did you know that?”

“I was down at the police station. I’ve been handed a public defence case.”

“When will I see you?”

“Forget it, it’s almost ten o’clock. I don’t like being kept
hanging about by men. It’s better the other way round. But if you’d asked me earlier …” she teased, leaving the suggestion hanging in the air.

“I was late because I had to question the men at the boat club. Today I went to the barge where I found a note that said something about a partisan. Perhaps that’s the key to understanding the motive, but it’s all very puzzling.”

“I’ve never been on board a barge. Anyway, if you’re in your office tomorrow, I’ll see you there.”

“Will you be defending anyone I caught?”

“No, calm down. It’s a small-time dealer picked up by the drugs squad.”

“Just as well.”

“Pity. I’d have made you squirm,” she said, mischief in her voice.

As soon as Angela was gone, he dialled Juvara’s number.

“At long last!” the ispettore exclaimed. “I was about to send a search party along the Po.”

Soneri peered into the mist which made it impossible for him to put on any speed. He was afraid he had completely lost his way, not only on the road but in the investigation he was leading. The sensation was heightened as he listened to the words of his assistant: “Nanetti and Alemanni were both looking for you. Nanetti says he has further results from the analysis of the blood found on the windowpane. It doesn’t belong to anyone in the ward.”

“And Alemanni?”

“I think he was after you for the same reason.”

He felt his stomach tighten with the unpleasant sensation of having got it all wrong. He had set off along the Po searching for the ghosts of times past and for a missing man, while in the city that man’s brother had unquestionably been a murder victim. “Did you tell them where I was?”

“Yes,” Juvara said, with a tremble in his voice.

That tone told him all he needed to know and was in its own way more eloquent than any reproach. He had no wish to go on with the conversation. In annoyance, he pressed the accelerator, but then had to step smartly on the brake when the rear lights of a car suddenly loomed out of the darkness ahead of him.

When he got home, he chose to remain in the half dark in his kitchen, smoking his last cigar, his elbows on the table. Before he fell asleep, with the taste of the Fortanina still in his mouth, he remembered that this was the position often assumed by his father.

Alemanni did not detain him for more than a quarter of an hour. He informed him of the outcome of the tests on the broken window with a degree of pedantry worthy of an infant school teacher, which irritated Soneri, but he refrained at least from making comments on the conduct of the investigation. For his part, Soneri made no reference to the magistrate’s earlier scepticism, but on the telephone Nanetti had set out in detail his impressions. The man must have been at least unconscious before being ejected from the window. There was no sign on the windowsill or on the radiator of any struggle, nor were there any fingerprints, a clear indication that he had not grabbed hold of anything or been able to resist. The only sign of any struggle was the indentation on the steel cabinet where there was the imprint of the rubber sole of one of Decimo’s shoes. Furthermore, no-one had heard the thud, nor had they noted any unusual coming or going. Soneri was curious about the way the killer had struck the blow and how he had stunned his victim. Everything had gone smoothly until the impact with the windowpane and the sound of
breaking glass. Then the escape through the ordinary hospital exit. The murderer was plainly a cold-blooded individual, so much so that he had moved off without conspicuous rush, merging in with patients and visitors.

“Juvara!” he yelled.

The ispettore arrived as the secretaries were putting forms in front of him for his signature.

“Interrogate the patients and the nurses in the wards frequented by Decimo Tonna,” he said without raising his eyes from the clerical assistant’s index finger as she showed him where his initials were to go. “I want to know all his movements in the last fortnight and anything he was talking about.”

He was now in the grip of an unhealthy frenzy, and only somewhat later, in the peace of the half-deserted
Milord
, behind the smoke screen of his own cigar, calmed by the prospect of a plate of
tortelli
stuffed with herbs and
ricotta,
did he come to recognize that his anxiety was the product of curiosity aroused on the banks of the Po and capable of being satisfied only there. He brought to mind the faces of Barigazzi and the others, with that slightly contemptuous look they had. He was already aware of a pressing urge to return when his mobile rang. He hated having it ring in the middle of a meal, but he had forgotten to turn it off. The few other diners, hearing the strained tones of “Aida”, turned in mild irritation in his direction. He uttered a peremptory “Hello” to silence it.

“Commissario, I’m in a consulting room at the hospital,” Juvara stuttered.

“Have you broken your leg?” Soneri said, finding Juvara’s preambles more and more tiresome.

“No, but the nurses on duty are telling me something I can’t make sense of …”

“What can you not make sense of?” he said, stuffing a whole
tortello
into his mouth.

“They say that recently Decimo was extremely nervous and would stare suspiciously at everyone who turned up, and that once they saw him rush off when he noticed someone or other walk down the corridor.”

“Did you get any idea who that person might have been?”

“No, nobody remembers. It was only a brief appearance.”

Juvara’s account had distracted his attention from the
tortelli
, and when he turned back to it, the dish had gone cold. He could not bear butter and cheese once they formed into lumps and lost the warmth of soul acquired in the oven.

Alceste stared at the plate as though he had espied a beetle on it. “It’s what I always say. The sound of the mobile telephone turns good
ricotta
bad,” was all he said.

By this time, Soneri was in a state of agitation. Juvara’s report had created for him such a mêlée of competing scenarios that he could have been in a puppeteer’s workshop. So as not to give way to mere conjecture, he got up and made his way to the hospital. He found the ispettore perched on a high stool in the canteen.

“When you get down from your roost, they’ll take you straight off to the treatment room and case you in plaster,” Soneri said, mildly mocking the ispettore’s less than agile figure.

“I’ve been here all morning,” Juvara said, “and I haven’t broken a single bone yet. But something or someone is breaking my balls.”

“It goes with the job. Who else could I annoy if I want to find out about the worries of the townee Tonna?”

“The sister’s name is Luisa. She finishes her shift at two.”

She was a pleasant woman, solid inside and out. “Was what I told your colleague not enough?” she said with a laugh.

She had received him in the off-duty room, where the odour of disinfectant hung heavy in the air.

“Did he seem anxious recently?”

The sister stared at him a few moments before replying.

“I would have said so, yes.”

“What gave you that impression?”

“Normally,” she said, “he stayed the whole morning but in the last couple of days he came and went as though in a state of distress. He spoke less than ever.”

“Did you form any idea of what was on his mind?”

“I asked around. They told me there was some anniversary, some date looming, but they didn’t know what it was for. Not even if that was what was bothering him.”

“They didn’t tell you anything else?”

“No,” the sister said, “I would have preferred to go into it a bit more deeply, but the man who knew most about it died a few days ago.”

“Was there any explanation of all that popping in and out several times a day?”

She stretched out her arms. “He would go away then come back. I don’t know why. I got the impression he felt someone was pursuing him and that he was keeping on the move all the time so as not to be caught up with.”

“Whereas normally, how did he behave?”

“He was much more calm. They’ll have told you that he would stay here until the last patient had left, and sometimes he even waited till we were all leaving the consulting rooms and he would go out with us. We would often find him in the waiting room reading magazines, and it would take the cleaning ladies to persuade him it was time to go. The nursing staff thought of him as one of the family.”

“What did he talk to the patients about?”

“He comforted them, he listened to them and at times took
a real interest in them, taking advantage of the fact that the doctors all knew him. There are a lot of elderly folk who come here and they never have anyone to talk to, but with Signor Tonna they were quite at ease.”

“You say he had an anniversary coming up?”

“So it seems, but it might not have had anything to do with him.”

As he took his leave of the sister, the commissario remembered Sartori. He walked along the wards in the direction of the nephrology unit, where he found the man he was looking for half asleep, needles in his arm and the machine buzzing. He appeared even more yellowish and wizened than before, but he turned a tired smile on Soneri.

“Any news?” he said, opening his eyes wide.

“Your friend Decimo didn’t throw himself from the window. He was pushed.”

Sartori, although plainly moved by the news, did not stir. He lay there in silence, staring at the ceiling.

“Is it true that he’s been highly agitated recently? I mean in the last few days,” the commissario said, in an attempt to rouse Sartori from his silence.

He watched as the old man moved his head very slightly in a sign of assent. Then, just as Soneri had resigned himself to not receiving an answer, he made out a feeble voice. “Forgive me, but I am deeply troubled.”

“Did you know that there was some anniversary coming up for him?”

“He had spoken to me about it, but when I tried to discover more, he found a way, as he always did, of avoiding giving an answer to my questions. He was like that. If he didn’t speak of his own accord, there was no way of getting anything out of him.”

“What did he tell you about this anniversary?”

“It was plainly not something he was looking forward to. He referred to it with fear. All he told me was that he had received a letter.”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know. I do know that it had shaken him to the core. He became gloomy. The last time I set eyes on him, he asked if I had noticed any new faces around the ward. I told him that in addition to us long-term cases, there were always new faces in a hospital. I was joking, but he took it the wrong way. He didn’t say anything, he went and sat beside the exit, where he could see anyone coming down the corridor.”

The following day, Tonna had been defenestrated from the General Medical section on the third floor. Everything pointed to the likelihood that someone, perhaps the murderer, had been tailing him from department to department. Soneri was lost in his own train of thought, heedless of Sartori stretched out on his bed, and when he turned back to him, he found he had drifted off to sleep. He got out of the room just in time to avoid waking him with the triumphal march from “Aida”.