Persona Non Grata (4 page)

The house was at the end of an unsurfaced road. A German car in the garage. Trotti and Ciuffi got out of the Lancia and the young policewoman rang at the front door.

It was a while before a woman answered.

“Signora Bianchini?”

She was wearing a skirt and a loose white blouse. Her dark hair had a blue glint, as if it had just been dyed and set. The lips of the large mouth were carefully made up. Neatly applied mascara.

“Commissario Trotti, Pubblica Sicurezza.” A flat voice.

The woman looked at Trotti for a moment without understanding.

“And this is Brigadiere Ciuffi.”

“Police?” The woman stepped back and Trotti could not tell whether the surprise was real or feigned.

“Is your son at home, Signora?”

The woman said, “Has Riccardo done something wrong?”

“I would like to speak to your son.”

“He has done something wrong.” It was no longer a question.

Trotti gave her a brief smile. “Routine enquiries, Signora Bianchini.”

“He has done something stupid again.” She did not try to hide the resignation in her voice.

Signora Bianchini was an attractive woman, with fine features and good bone structure. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, Trotti thought. There was no brassiere beneath the blouse.

“My son is a good boy.”

Ciuffi spoke reassuringly. “He may be able to help us—that is all, Signora.”

“He has been working for his exam. I thought that perhaps …” Signora Bianchini gave a hesitant shrug. “This way, please.” She turned and led them into the house.

The living room was dark and smelt of varnish; an antique grandfather clock in one corner and a vase of freshly-cut flowers on the polished table. There was an old painting on the wall: a portrait, perhaps, of a long dead relative.

Expensive furniture, dark antiques that had been carefully restored and polished, a Venetian chest-of-drawers.

She squeezed one small white hand in the other. “Can I offer you a drink?” She tried to smile.

“Not while on duty.” They sat down on the high-backed chairs. “Your son will be home soon?”

“Perhaps.” An apologetic gesture of the two hands: long, well-kept nails. “You see, Riccardo has a motorbike—and he leads an independent existence. I am afraid he doesn’t feel he needs his mother anymore.”

Trotti frowned.

“My son is … he is like his father, a headstrong person. It is not always easy to argue with Riccardo.” A smile that reminded Trotti of another woman. “There are times when Riccardo doesn’t sleep at home.”

“Where was your son last night?”

The dark eyes blinked.

Trotti waited.

“He was here,” she said. “With me.”

Trotti looked at her in silence. “And your husband …?”

“Commissario, it is a long time since I last saw my husband.”

“He’s dead?”

“A dead man who pays the bills.” She smiled, more for herself than for Trotti. “As far as I’m concerned, my husband died ten years ago.”

“Where does he live?”

“Riccardo?”

“Your husband, Signora Bianchini. Where is he?”

“On Lake Como.”

“And you live here alone with your son?”

“It is not always easy to bring up a son single-handed.” She looked at Trotti as if seeking sympathy in his face. “Riccardo has always been an affectionate boy. But headstrong.”

Trotti glanced at his watch.

“Are you quite sure that I can’t offer you something to drink?” It was not yet five o’clock yet already he felt tired. “A cup of coffee, perhaps, signora.”

“A glass of wine—and some truffles from the hills?” The nature of the smile suddenly seemed to have changed. “I think I can recognize that accent. Surely you won’t say no to a glass of real wine? Wine from the OltrePò.” The woman stood up. Her body was trim and the well-cut skirt showed the flatness of her belly.

“Just a cup of coffee.” The muscles in his face had relaxed.

Ciuffi pursed her lips and crossed her arms against her chest. Her dark eyes were puzzled. “One other thing, Signora Bianchini …”

Signora Bianchini looked at Ciuffi, “Yes, signorina?”

“We shall need a photograph of your son.”

E
VENING HAD BEGUN
to fall.

“You think it is a good idea to eat truffles and drink wine in the middle of the afternoon?”

As they approached the river, more and more insects were battered against the windscreen. Cellophane wings and viscous body fluids that gave the world beyond the car a brown and dirty cast.

An uninterrupted flow of traffic in the opposite direction coming from the city and the emptying offices.

“You can get more information from people when they’re relaxed—and when they think you’re relaxed.”

“Commissario, I thought you didn’t approve of drinking while on duty.”

“I am nearly fifty-eight years old. An old man, and the only thing I’m interested in is getting results. How they’re got doesn’t bother me.” Trotti paused. “What is more, the wine was good. And Signora Bianchini is a charming person.”

“Very charming.”

He turned to look at Ciuffi. “I think I am old enough to decide when and where I can take my pleasures.”

For a few minutes there was silence while the car ran along the smooth road. Ciuffi was a good driver.

“I’m no longer a young man, signorina.”

“You’re not an old man.”

“Of course I am.”

“I don’t think of you as being old.” Ciuffi smiled then, and the smile—a mixture of concern and an unavowed fondness—reminded Trotti of his daughter.

“But you are right,” he said, folding his arms and leaning back in the seat with a slight sigh. “I shouldn’t drink.”

A girlish laugh that took him by surprise. “And the photo, Commissario?”

“Photo?”

“Compared with Vardin’s description of the attacker?”

“The photo and the identikit certainly look alike. The hair is just a bit longer in the identikit.” Trotti shrugged. “But the photo was taken some time ago.”

“You believe that the man with the knife was Riccardo?”

“Netta lied to me. I showed her the identikit and she said it was nothing like Riccardo.” Trotti paused. “I don’t know what to think. Being young and being in love …” He raised his shoulders. “All that happened to me a long time ago. Long before you were born, Brigadiere. And a time when everything was a lot simpler.”

Ciuffi gave him a questioning glance.

“Things that people seem to take for granted these days—pornography and homosexuality and sadism …” His voice trailed away.

“Well?”

“It must have existed, but I was never aware of it. I think that, when we were young, we were too busy wondering where the next meal would come from to be bothered with all those … all those strange pleasures.”

“You think that Riccardo is a sadist?”

The city was up ahead, the dome of the Cathedral catching the last light of the failing evening; to the east there was a thickening band of darkness. To the west, the sky was red.

“Unruly and spoiled. His mother is a divorcee and Riccardo is probably given too much money by a father he hardly ever sees. I can easily imagine him fixing up a rendezvous with the girl.”

“Which girl?”

“The older sister.” He shook his head slowly. “But a knife … I can’t understand the knife.”

“An insurance.”

“What?”

“Perhaps Netta sometimes left the door on the latch. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they slept together, Netta and Riccardo. The knife—it could have been a way of threatening her. The way a man has of forcing a woman to give her body to him.”

“Laura was on the settee—not Netta.” Trotti clicked his tongue. “Why was the door left on the latch? Why wasn’t it bolted?”

“Commissario,” she said, mockingly.

Trotti looked at Ciuffi. “You are a very cynical young woman.”

She took her foot off the accelerator. A traffic cop stood by the roadside and with his stick he was flagging the traffic to slow down. Ciuffi brought the car to a stop a few hundred meters before the Ponte Imperiale; fifty meters ahead, a policeman in leather boots and a helmet was holding up the flow of traffic with one hand while with the other he beckoned on a white ambulance coming from the city. It turned, crossing the road and taking the unsurfaced track that ran down to the plane trees and the River Po.

“Wait for me here.”

Trotti got out of the car and hurried down the sloping path.

The air was losing its warmth.

He recognized the strong smell of the river. The Po was turning a bloodshot red in the evening light. The flowing water was low in the riverbed after the long, dry summer.

He pushed his way through a narrow fence of bushes and came onto the short expanse of grass. There was an Alfa Romeo and one or two men in uniform on the far side of the field. He broke into a run, aware of his weight, aware that he had not done enough exercise, aware that lately he had been drinking too many coffees and eating too many sweets. The taste of the wine washed at the back of his throat.

He also recognized the silhouette: Pisanelli’s stooping shoulders. Insects flew into his eyes and into his nostrils.

Pisanelli was taking off his jacket.

Five or six men from the Questura Trotti recognized: Merenda, Schipisi, Mangiavacca, standing on the far edge of the field. Near the clump of stunted bushes. Out of sight from the road.

Something on the ground; something dark, like a packet. A bomb, Trotti thought, as he approached them, running with difficulty and a sense of foreboding in his belly.

Commissario Merenda was giving orders and now Pisanelli was crouching. The ambulance had taken the side road and it began to bump over the grass, coming to a halt on the footpath. A couple of men jumped out. The siren lost its force and whined into a dying silence.

“Dead—it’s dead.”

“How do you know?”

Trotti reached Pisanelli, placed a hand on his sleeve, knelt down, out of breath and sweating beneath his arms. “Who found it?” He looked down.

Commissario Merenda took a couple of steps back.

It was hard to distinguish the face in the dusk. A small, ugly face that was brown from exposure to a relentless sun. Eyes wrinkled shut, glued together by dried mucus. Stains in meandering diagonals across the minute cheeks. Small dark shapes that moved, oval shapes.

Maggots that were crawling across the dirty flesh.

A naked body, smeared and dark.

The long severed umbilical cord snaked from the belly on to the grass.

A minute, motionless body.

Pisanelli took his jacket and now carefully wrapped it round the small baby. It appeared lifeless.

The two ambulance men came running from the footpath.

Trotti stretched out his hand.

“It moved!”

Movement and then something fell from the nose. A worm—a maggot that vanished in the grass and dry leaves.

Trotti touched the skin. Chill and the softness made coarse with dirt and dried blood.

One of the ambulance men picked up the child.

Trotti watched in silence, unthinking and numb.

Merenda gave a couple of orders. The two men hurried back to the waiting vehicle. With a squeal of tires on the track, the ambulance drove away beneath its reawakened siren.

“My God,” Pisanelli said.

The ambulance disappeared, hidden by the cloud of rising dust.

“B
RING THE
B
IANCHINI
boy in tomorrow. I want to talk to him.”

Trotti got out of the car opposite the bicycle shop. He felt drained of emotion.

Ciuffi nodded, smiled and said, “Buona sera, Signor Commissario.” The Lancia did a sharp U-turn and disappeared along via Milano, heading back towards the Questura.

Trotti walked slowly home. Beneath the bright lamps, the street was empty. The air was still warm, but not as warm as it had been the previous weeks. The first hint of autumn.

Trotti pushed open the garden gate and went up the steps. Lost in thought, he glanced absentmindedly at the potted plants that needed watering. Eight o’clock in the evening and, as he turned the key in the lock, he closed his eyes and made a silent prayer. He felt the temptation to return to the hospital. By being there, perhaps he could help.

Trotti let himself into the house and immediately recognized the reassuring, familiar smell. A smell of floor polish and emptiness. He pulled the door shut behind him.

Pioppi’s bear was there, sitting on the wardrobe and staring down at him with its dusty glass eyes.

He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Cheese from the hills, milk. There was lasagne the housekeeper had made him and which he had not touched. Trotti was not hungry.
The wine and truffles still lay heavy on his stomach. He poured himself half a glass of chilled mineral water and turned on the television. Cold bubbles jumped from the glass onto his hand.

When he closed his eyes, he saw again the small, sunburnt face.

He tried to concentrate on the television program. Maggots and dried blood.

Half an hour later the front door bell rang.

“Do you still go to church, Piero?”

Trotti said nothing, but held out his hand. “Come in.” He smiled and led the man into the kitchen.

“More than forty years ago, Piero. You had a lovely voice.”

“Have you eaten, Fra Gianni?”

“Turn the television off,” Fra Gianni said peremptorily and sat down. “And give me a glass of wine.” He nodded to the bottle of wine that stood beneath the sink. “You always said, Piero Trotti, that you were going to become a priest.”

Trotti switched the television off. “And instead I became a policeman, for my sins.”

“You have done well.” Fra Gianni took the glass and raised it to his mouth. “You still go to church?”

“My wife has left me, you know.”

The dark eyes stared at the younger man and there was a smile at the corner of his lips.

“She wants a divorce.”

“What do you want, Piero?”

“Agnese was never very happy with me.”

“Other things to marriage than happiness—I don’t have to tell you that, Piero. There is a home, there are the children.”