The Puppeteer (3 page)

Rope had been tied from chair to chair to prevent access. Guerino had taken in the tablecloths and the bar looked empty. Trotti wondered why Guerino had not washed the bloodstain away.

A sole Carabiniere stood there. He was smoking and his rifle was slung from his shoulder. From under the peaked cap, his eyes followed Trotti.

The Opel was where he had left it in the morning. Trotti unlocked it—his head ached from too much coffee, and the back of his throat was sore—and turned on the engine.

A slight deflection of the barrel and it would have been his blood smeared across the ground.

He drove to the Villa Ondina. The Opel ran silently along the viale Rimembranza, while the head beams moved along the smooth tarmac between the cypress trees. He drove past Mussolini’s villa, now hidden behind a copse of trees.

A day wasted and then Mareschini had said, “Can you stay in Gardesana for couple of days?” With a sly smile, he had rubbed at his chin and, not even looking at Trotti, had added, “Nucleo Investigativo seem to have been held up in Brescia. They’ll be here tomorrow.”

At the Villa Ondina, Trotti climbed out and pushed open the iron gates. The stiffness of his bloodstained trousers pulled against the hairs on his legs. He took the Opel down the gravel drive and parked in front of the main door. The plastic Madonna was alight. The door was unlocked and he let himself in.

Trotti turned on all the lights.

The interior, still warm from a day of spring sunshine, smelled of floor polish and moth balls, and Trotti realized it was his first visit to the Villa Ondina since the previous summer. He turned on the television to give himself company.

Signora Baccoli—the contadina—had made supper for him. In the kitchen he lifted the inverted dish and smiled. Ham, melon, salad and gnocchi, which needed heating. Suddenly he felt very hungry.

The Villa Ondina had belonged to Agnese’s father, who had made a fortune in pharmaceutical products for cattle. An unsmiling man, he had died ten years earlier. His wife, equally unsmiling and a devout Catholic in her last years, had waited seven years before following him to the family grave in Brescia.

Trotti undressed. His clothes were stiff with blood. He put them all in a plastic bag and tied the bag with a piece of string.

(Trotti had recognized the photograph.)

He could hear the mumble of the immersion heater. Signora Baccoli had turned it on.

(A coincidence, perhaps, that Maltese had a photograph of
the girl in his pocket. The same photograph that Trotti had seen in the Questura.)

Trotti shaved and then showered, letting the scalding water run against his skin until he began to feel the heat penetrate his body and the coldness within him.

The shower was still running, and the water was still hot, when the telephone rang. He had forgotten to take a towel and, in his haste, pulled the cover from the bed the contadina had prepared for him. He left a trail of wet prints down the marble stairs. “Where’ve you been?”

“Who’s speaking?” Trotti asked and immediately regretted his own stupidity.

“Where’ve you been?” Repressed anger in her voice. “I’ve been trying to get through for the last twenty-four hours.” Agnese’s voice—her anger—was as clear as if she were phoning from the village.

“Where’re you phoning from?”

“You tell me you’ll be at the Villa and then you keep me waiting. Twenty-four hours, Piero.” A slight echo along the line—or between the telephone and the satellite somewhere over the Atlantic. “You are really very inconsiderate at times.”

“I was in the village.”

Agnese laughed one of her unpleasant, mocking laughs. “With one of your women friends?”

“I was at the Carabinieri barracks.”

“What on earth for?”

“It’s not important.”

“Of course not, Piero. After all, I’m just a silly woman. Why should you have to tell your wife what you’ve been doing? But that’s the way it’s always been, hasn’t it?”

Trotti did not reply.

“Piero?”

“Did you get my letter?” he asked.

“Perhaps. I can’t remember.”

Not even the decency to lie.

Without stopping to catch her breath, Agnese went on, “I imagine you’re enjoying yourself.”

“I needed a rest.”

“You never needed a rest when your wife wanted you to go to the Lake.”

“Is your American company paying for this phone call?”

There was a silence during which he could hear her breathing.

“You’ve got a nerve, Piero.”

“Is that what you phoned to tell me?”

“I need my diplomas.” Her voice was brisk. “It’s now two weeks since I asked you for them.”

“I’ll send them.”

“Now, Piero, now.”

“I’ve already got them out.”

“I need them immediately—my university degree and my specialization diplomas. The Americans are in a hurry and you can’t be bothered …”

“I’ll post them on Monday.”

“I’d ask Pioppi to do it for me—she’s more reliable than you. But like you, she doesn’t answer the telephone.”

“Perhaps she’s with the Nonna. She’s working hard for her exam next week.”

“Well, will you phone her and tell her to post them? I can’t keep on wasting time and money on these phone calls.”

“When do you think you’ll be coming back, Agnese?”

Her brisk, efficient businesswoman voice. “Pack them properly. At Bertini’s in via Stradella you can buy a plastic roll container. I don’t want them arriving here in a thousand little pieces. Don’t forget, Piero.”

He did not reply.

“Well, can you do that—can you do something for your wife?”

“Pioppi’s still not eating.”

“She’s got Nonna—and she’s got you.”

“She’s refusing to eat.”

“I know you can look after her. Listen, I’m going to hang up. I kiss you, Piero, and I kiss Pioppi. And remember, buy the container at Bertini’s. Send everything airmail and registered post—I don’t trust the Italian postal services.” A sudden click and the receiver went dead.

The bedsheet was damp. Trotti shivered and set the phone down. But even when he got upstairs, found a towel and rubbed himself down, his hand was still shaking.

Half past seven—it was now dark outside and in Pearl River, New York, she was just back from lunch—lunch with her wealthy, American colleagues. Well-dressed men with tiepins and an impressive casualness about their easy wealth, their business accounts and their sleek, American cars.

He was cold.

Trotti found an old sweater in a cupboard. He put it on, along with a pair of corduroy trousers that smelled of moth balls.

The phone rang again.

“Sorry to bother you, Commissario. Pintini of the Brescia Nucleo Investigativo has just contacted me, saying he’ll be here tomorrow with a team of investigators.”

“What time?”

“I’m sorry to inconvenience you.” There was no apology in Mareschini’s voice. “I can send a car to pick you up at eight.”

“I have my own car.”

Mareschini hesitated; then his satisfaction won over his professionalism. “There’s been a bit of difficulty with the prints.”

“Prints?”

“After the photographs, the body was sent to the morgue in Salò. Routine prints were taken and checked on the computer.” He added sententiously, “The Carabinieri central computers.”

“And?”

“They were identified.”

“Maltese had a criminal record?”

“I know nothing about Maltese—but the prints belong to a certain Ramoverde—Giovanni Ramoverde.”

Trotti said nothing.

“Does that name mean anything to you?”

Still Trotti was silent.

“Giovanni Ramoverde was arrested in 1972 at the University of Milan.”

“Arrested for what?”

“Rioting—impeding the forces of law in the course of their
duty. A suspended sentence.” A humorless laugh. “You’re sure you don’t know the name, Commissario Trotti?”

Trotti did not reply.

“Then I’ll see you here in the morning, Commissario?”

Trotti put the receiver down. Immediately, he picked it up again.

He dialed his home number. The distant telephone rang eight times.

Trotti went into the kitchen and without bothering to use a knife and fork, he hurriedly devoured the ham and melon. He ate some of the cold gnocchi.

He tried phoning Pioppi again. Then he turned out all the lights, turned off the television and left the Villa Ondina.

He climbed into the Opel.

T
HE LAKE, SILVER
beneath the moon, was hidden by long sections of tunnel. Then the road opened out. The mountains fell behind. The silhouette of the cypress trees. The smell of the orange groves, the gentle hiss of the tires along the fast road. And in the distance, like another, distant country, the twinkling lights on the far side of the lake.

Trotti found a packet of Charms in the glove box, unwrapped one of the sweets and placed it in his mouth. Aniseed.

He skirted Salò, where already the corpse was cold in the hospital morgue; he took the Brescia road, turning right at the intersection with the Verona highway, and soon the lake was behind him, a silver reflection in his driving mirror, and then lost to sight behind the dark foothills. He drove past the marble quarries hacked into the hills. He felt that he was returning to Italy, leaving the lake behind him and coming back to the ugly, industrial plain. He glanced in the mirror. Nothing. He had the feeling that he was being followed.

Later, the head beams caught the sign post
Ai laghi
and he turned on to the main Milan/Venice highway. There was a smell of malt in the air; above the brewery on the outskirts of Brescia, white vapor poured from the stacks into the night sky.

The man was reluctant to take his money, reluctant to take his eyes from a small television set that he had installed in the toll booth. Without even glancing at Trotti he handed
him the ticket and the Opel surged forward onto the autostrada. Eighty, ninety kilometers an hour, Trotti picked up speed.

From time to time, there were lights in his rear mirror. No car overtook him.

He turned on the radio.

The autostrada was empty. A few articulated trucks traveling ponderously towards Milan, and on the other side of the barrier there was the occasional set of yellow headlights—French trucks or perhaps tourists heading for an early holiday on the Adriatic.

La Forza del Destino
. The radio crackled but it did not matter because Trotti knew the music. He had once taken Agnese to see it at the Verona arena. She was pregnant with Pioppi and she had fallen asleep on his shoulder. The moment came back to him with a brief, intense feeling of happiness. It was only a few days later that Dottor Belluno was found murdered.

1960—Trotti smiled to himself. He could still remember the dress that Agnese was wearing that night. He was still smiling and his fingers were following the rhythm of Verdi’s music when he pulled into a service station just beyond the Bergamo exit.

The music had become an incomprehensible sound and he switched it off. PAVESI stood in bright neon letters, spanning the concrete bridge of the autostrada. He suddenly felt tired, all the fatigue of the last weeks coming back. He turned off the ignition, climbed out of the car.

Away from the lake, the air still held the chill of winter.

No other vehicle entered the car park.

“A strong coffee, please.”

A bright bar, full of shadowless light, red and black plastic. The girl behind the counter nodded. She was wearing a uniform, with a cap on her bleached hair. She did not smile. The rims of her eyes were red as if she had been crying.

The bar was empty except for a couple of tourists—lovers, perhaps, who were quarrelling at a corner table. Two motorcycle helmets stood on the table beside the empty glasses. The boy wore heavy leather boots.

At the counter, Trotti took a cake from the revolving stand;
English plum cake in a hermetically sealed packet that advertised Mundial 82.

He sat down and waited for the girl to bring his coffee. His eyes felt gritty and he stared out at the passing traffic beyond the window.
La Forza del Destino
—the overture ran through his head and he could see in his own reflection on the glass the familiar, enigmatic smile of Ramoverde.

It had been on the day of the verdict and Ramoverde had come down the steps of the Palazzo di Giustizia supported on one side by his wife and on the other by his son. He had an angular face that the long trial had made weary. Before stepping into the waiting car he had looked up and seen Trotti. He had raised his hand in an almost imperceptible salute and the lips—until then devoid of any emotion—had broken into a thin smile of victory.

The same face.

Trotti drank the coffee after having emptied three spoonfuls of sugar into the small cup. Then he stood up, brushed away the crumbs of the plum cake, paid the girl and went out to the antiseptic lavatory. He felt less tired.

Outside, the air seemed to have grown colder. He pulled the old jacket about his shoulders and pulled up the collar. Then climbing into the car, he turned on the heater.

Mist had already formed on the windscreen.

“Turn right.”

Something cold pushed against the back of Trotti’s head.

“W
HAT D
’
YOU WANT
?”

Trotti wondered how he had failed to notice the smell—bitter sweat, old tobacco and rancid wine.

“Keep your eyes on the road.” The slow, slurring accent of a Sardinian peasant.

“What d’you want from me?”

The man struck him; a blow to the back of the head that surprised Trotti more than it hurt him.

“Drive—and keep quiet.”

He did as he was told.

The lights of the autostrada fell behind and the car went along the narrow country road. The flat fields were empty. One or two hamlets, a church, a large farmyard with tractors naked beneath the sodium lamps, and then the countryside. Clouds had come up, and sometimes the moon revealed the lines of poplar trees.

“Turn here!”

“What d’you want?” His eyes had started to water.

“Turn here.”

The headlights moved and held the image of an unsurfaced country road. Trotti drove slowly and the car bumped across the uneven surface.