Big Italy (40 page)

It was strangely quiet. A fog was slowly rising from the river, beyond the window.

“In a way I regret not going to the service, Magagna.”

“It would have been the decent thing to do.”

“I imagine they’re all there. Our Lega Lombarda mayor and his councillors. And of course the ex-mayor. And all Viscontini’s Socialist friends.”

“You’re bitter, commissario.”

“I’ll be going to the hospital on my way home.”

“Why are you so bitter?”

“About the Questore?”

“About Viscontini.”

“I would have enjoyed seeing Viscontini and his friends bowing
and scraping and crossing themselves. They must be shitting themselves. They’re scared out of their wits.”

“Dr. Quarenghi’s scared. Why the others?”

“I doubt if Quarenghi’s been able to skim all that money for himself. Most of it was going to the politicians, I imagine.”

“What politicians?”

“To the Socialist party.”

“Why?”

“That’s the only explanation to the Questore’s suicide. He was compromised and he saw no alternative.”

“There’s always an alternative to death.”

“Perhaps the Questore wanted to think of himself as an honorable man. Goodness knows why. He’s as much responsible for Pisanelli’s coma as if he’d been driving the Volvo himself.”

“That’s why he killed himself with a plastic bag?”

“Goodness knows what drove him to kill himself. Who can know what’s going on in somebody else’s head? He realized he’d soon be facing charges of gross misconduct. Once the socialists get kicked out of power in the new elections.”

“You really think he was responsible for Pisanelli?”

Trotti took a deep breath. “It was because slush funds were being recycled for the Socialist party that the Questore had to intervene. That’s why he had Maluccio thrown into jail in Alessandria.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“What need would Quarenghi have to distribute his money? Why not keep it for himself?”

“Of course Quarenghi kept a lot of it for himself. As much as he could. All the siphoning of money to the political parties passes through various private pockets. Lining those private pockets.”

“Why give the money to Viscontini and the city’s socialists?”

“Not all the money, Magagna.” Trotti sat back in the canvas armchair. It was cold in the small room and mist rose from his mouth as he spoke.

“Why give any?”

Trotti laughed. “You think he wanted to lose his position on the CIP? If he’d been given the job in Rome, it was because Quarenghi was in the odor of sanctity with the Socialists. Or rather, odor of Mafia. Not just with the local Socialists but also the Socialists in Rome. He had to pay them back. That was the tacit deal.” Trotti put
his head back. “Tangentopoli, Magagna. Your problem is, you’re dealing with Brazilian transvestites and whores. You know all about nipples and nothing about the seamier aspects of human nature.”

“The greed’s the same.” Magagna lit a cigarette. “Just the manifestations that are different.”

“Ah! Enjoy the memorial service?”

Magagna turned in the greasy armchair.

Maiocchi had entered the office. Beneath the overcoat, he was wearing a dark suit and a black tie. For once his unruly hair had been neatly brushed. Out of his habitual corduroys, Maiocchi looked a lot older, less like the perennial student.

“You saw the photos, commissario?”

Trotti gestured him to take the free armchair. “Photos?”

Stepping forward, Maiocchi placed a friendly hand on Magagna’s shoulder. The unlit pipe was clenched between his teeth. He picked up the large envelope. “Take a look.”

Trotti undid the clip and removed three large photographs.

Glossy black-and-white photographs.

The first was of a car wedged against a tree. Trotti could not recognize the make of the car because it had burned. There were no tires, no paint, no windows. The doors had been knocked inwards. The steering wheel appeared bent.

The second photograph was of a carbonized corpse. Or rather, part of a carbonized corpse.

“Who?” Trotti asked, repressing a shudder and raising his eyes to Maiocchi.

Maiocchi shook his head and pointed to the third photograph.

A human hand, partially burned but with a wedding ring encircling the scorched skin of a finger.

“Who’s this, Maiocchi?”

“A woman’s hand. A woman’s wedding ring.”

“Pavesi?”

Maiocchi nodded. He appeared tired. “A hiker found the car yesterday. In Switzerland. In the regional park near Pontresina.”

“This is Pavesi?”

“Signora Pavesi,” Maiocchi corrected him. “No autopsy as yet, but it looks as if the car had been there for ten days at least. Italian plates, probably stolen.”

“Signora Pavesi? What was she doing in Switzerland? In a stolen car?”

“She was in the boot. Probably dead before the car was driven from the track thirty meters up the slope.” He shrugged. “The lid of the boot opened as the car crashed against the trees.”

“And Signor Pavesi?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that.”

“Me?” Trotti tapped his chest.

Maiocchi said slowly, “Hoping you’d be accompanying me to Venezuela the day after tomorrow.”

“Venezuela?”

“The daughter’s already identified the wedding ring. No fingerprints but the Swiss’ve asked for Signora Pavesi’s dental records.”

“You think I can really be of use to you, Maiocchi, in Venezuela?” Maiocchi’s face broke into an unexpected grin. “What need do you have for cloudless skies, sunny beaches and palm trees, commissario? I imagine you enjoy the fogs of the Po valley too much.” With the stem of his pipe, he gestured to the thickening darkness outside the empty Questura.

S
IGNORA
S
COLA HAD
left a message asking him to ring her, but a china was what Trotti most needed now.

A china before supper, he told himself, and then the walk to San Matteo. Trotti, who loathed hospitals, told himself it was time he went and sat with Pisanelli. He had been avoiding his duty for too long. He had scarcely spoken to Anna Ermagni other than over the telephone. He needed to tell her that she was always welcome to stay with him and Anna Maria in via Milano.

He needed to tell Pisanelli so many things.

Trotti came out of the main entrance of the Questura.

“You don’t want to come to the hospital?”

“Another time, commissario.”

“A drink?”

“I’m driving back to Milan. I’ve got to get home before the children go to bed. They like me to read them their bedtime stories. Or tell them about Pescara.”

“Get a posting here, Magagna. I’ll be out of your hair after September.”

“That’s what frightens me.”

“Leave Milan before you start falling in love with all your South American transvestites.”

They shook hands. “Love to Giovanna, Magagna. Tell her I’ll be up to see you all in the new year. And take care. I don’t want you being driven off the road.”

A debonair wave of his hand. “Unlike Pisa, I drive an Italian car—not a French can of sardines.” The burly policeman saluted
briskly. “Buona sera, Signor Commissario,” Magagna said, and went down the granite steps of the Questura and disappeared into the night.

“Ciao!”

Trotti pulled on the zip of his English jacket and turned into Strada Nuova.

It was dark and the overhead lamps cast their tinted light into the foggy Street. Trotti pulled his scarf up to his chin and headed towards the Po.

His last winter in the Polizia di Stato.

He softly whistled to himself. “Un bel dì di maggio.”

Rush hour and the municipal buses rumbled past, heavy with their load of passengers and misted glass. Passengers going home to minestra, Berlusconi and bed.

The Questore was dead.

(
“Piero, Piero—I honestly think I’ve never met a man like you to take offence. And bear grudges.”
)

Trotti took the turning right and heard the voice of a woman. “Commissario!”

He stopped and turned.

She came towards him, small in her overcoat, the sound of her heels dulled by the wet cobblestones. “You didn’t get my message?”

“What message?”

“I was hoping to see you at the service, Piero.”

“Other things to do.”

Bianca Poveri, the youngest female prison director in Italy, slipped her arm through his and fell into step beside him. “You never could stand the man.”

“I’m not a politician. They didn’t need me at the service.”

The fog dulled every sound, dulled Trotti’s voice, dulled the fall of their shoes as they walked, almost in step.

“Your cousin eventually arrived at Linate?”

“Anna Maria took a different plane. She came via Zurich.”

“And your cousin Sandro?”

“Anna Maria came for the funeral.”

“Another funeral?”

“Sandro’s dead,” Trotti said flatly. He could feel the damp fog working into his trousers and he longed for the dry cold of the hills. Perhaps there could be no dry cold of the hills for Trotti, after all. “Dead? You told me Sandro was your age.”

“Sandro died,” Trotti said, not wishing to elaborate.

“I’m so sorry.”

They turned into Piazza Vittoria and along the empty, echoing porticoes.

Bianca asked, “What about your place in Santa Maria? Weren’t you going to retire in the hills with Sandro?”

“Gone.”

“What’s gone?”

“Sandro incurred a lot of debts,” Trotti replied. “More of a gambler than I ever realized.”

The door of the Bar Duomo was misted and twinkled with the light beyond. Trotti pushed the brass handle and opened the door for Bianca Poveri to step past him. He noted her musky perfume but it was immediately lost to the other, familiar smells of the bar.

“Accompanied tonight, commissario?” the barman asked cheerfully, catching sight of Trotti through the crowd. “A beautiful lady, I see.”

The mirror behind the bar threw back Trotti’s smiling image.

A couple of heads nodded an evening salutation as Trotti and Bianca Poveri went to the far table where nobody was sitting.

On the pink cloth of the table lay a discarded copy of the morning’s local paper, stiffened by a wooden rod.
SUICIDE IN THE QUESTURA
. Even without his glasses Trotti could recognize the nowfamous photograph of the Questore shaking Bettino Craxi’s hand, at the time of the prime minister’s visit to the small, hardworking provincial town.

“A drink, Signora Direttrice?”

“Don’t you dare call me that.” She was wearing pearl earrings and beneath the coat, a black woolen dress that accentuated the youth of her face.

Trotti offered to help her remove the coat but Bianca Poveri shook her head.

Trotti lifted two fingers and mouthed the word two for the waiter.

“I can’t stay. Got to get back to Anna Giulia.”

“And Alcibiade,” Trotti added as he unzipped his jacket. He rubbed his hands, the warmth quickly returning.

“What are you going to do, Piero? About your retirement.”

He shrugged. “It’s not important.”

“And your chickens and your goats?”

“My cousin’s staying with me. Last time Anna Maria and I lived together was over fifty years ago when she was a young fiancée, waiting for her man to come back from the wars.”

“What are you going to do about your place in Santa Maria? The animals? The rustic life you keep talking about?”

“Don’t worry about me. Anyway, September’s still a long way off.”

“You’ll live here in the city?”

“I won’t be lonely, that’s sure. Anna Maria says she might stay on in Italy after all. She’s a widow now. In Holland she rarely sees her grandchildren. I’ve got my daughter I can see in Bologna. And, as long as I remain married, there’s always Agnese’s villa on Lake Garda.”

“That’s what I wanted to see you about.”

“About Lake Garda?”

Silent and discreet, the barman had moved from behind the bar and was now transferring a saucer of cashew nuts and two glasses of steaming Elisir di China from a steel tray on to the table. A slice of lemon had been clipped to the rim of each glass.

Bianca Poveri looked at the glass of china and smiled gratefully at Trotti. “Better than a funeral.”

The waiter turned on the wall light. “Anything else you need, commissario?”

Trotti shook his head.

“And the lovely lady?”

“I need to get home to my family.”

The waiter smiled philosophically, shrugged and picked up an overflowing ashtray. He went away with the crumpled
Provincia Padana
beneath his arm.

“I’ve been getting a lot of faxes from Trieste, Piero.”

“Why?”

“Your Uruguayan friend thinks you can help her.”

“I don’t think I can help anybody at the moment.”

“She’s sent a couple more letters.”

“I tried to help Eva once. In the end, I had to change all the locks in via Milano.”

“They’re going to send her back to Uruguay. I gather she was counting on you. She seems to think you can get her a residency permit.”

“You were right, Bianca. Like snails and they carry their shells
on their backs for the rest of their lives. There’s not much that you or I can do about that.” He sipped the hot china. “Not much I can do for Eva. Anyway, there’s another woman in my life now.”

Bianca could not hide her surprise. “A woman? After all these years.”

He said nothing.

“A woman, Piero?”

“The longer Anna Maria stays the better. She’s a battle axe but she’s kind. Proud and stubborn, like all mountain people.”

Bianca laughed. “Can I presume to think, Piero Trotti, now you no longer have a place in the hills, now the Questore’s left for that other Questura in the sky, and now that your cousin’s helping you rediscover all the charms of family life—can I hope you’re going to stay on in the Questura?”

“Presume whatever you want.”

Bianca Poveri seemed to catch her breath. “They need you, Piero.”

“Nobody needs me. Nobody’s indispensable.”

“Before it’s too late. Before the shell grows on their backs and there’s nothing you or I or anybody else can do to help them.”

Trotti was about to speak.