Poisonville (12 page)

“Giovanna was murdered by her lover, after a sexual encounter. That’s the only truth. The sperm they found in her body proves it,” I shot back in an unpleasant tone of voice.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“No,” I replied decisively. “And there was never any plot. You were guilty as hell.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“My father told me. He also told me that you were a whoremonger and a gambler.”

He smiled bitterly. “Good old Antonio. He never really tried to win my case. He was even embarrassed to be my defense lawyer.”

“Your case was a lost cause from the outset. If you had just confessed, the court would have gone easy on you.”

He seized the lapels of my coat. “I never did a thing. I’m innocent, do you hear me?”

I grabbed his wrists, freed myself from his grip, and stood up. “Don’t get worked up. I don’t care either way,” I said flatly. “But I do want to know one thing: did Giovanna ever tell you she was getting married?”

“No.”

“That’s strange too, don’t you think? She calls you repeatedly, but she never provides you with a single piece of evidence from the investigation to clear your name, and she even forgets to tell you that she was about to get married.”

He shook his head dejectedly. “That’s how it went.”

“Go to the cemetery and put a flower on your daughter’s grave. And show your face around town, nobody cares about that old story anymore. It doesn’t make any sense for you to keep hiding, living like a hobo.”

A nervous giggle issued from his chest. “I am a hobo. I can’t be anything but a hobo here.”

I turned and walked to the door. “I need your help,” he begged. “I can’t uncover the truth by myself.”

I didn’t even bother to answer. That man was just pathetic.

I went to Prunella’s house. I hadn’t found anything at the law firm or in Giovanna’s house. Now I wanted to try Giovanna’s old room in her mother’s house. The investigators hadn’t searched there yet. Maybe Zan didn’t want to cause Prunella any new pain by searching her house. Or, more likely, he hadn’t thought of it yet. I hoped she would be alone. I was lucky. She came to the door wearing a pair of old rubber gloves.

“I’m cleaning the silver,” she explained.

On the kitchen table were a couple of pieces from an antique set of silverware. I wondered where the rest of the silver had gone. The radio was turned up high, and was tuned to the religious broadcaster, Radio Maria. “I was wondering if I could take a look at Giovanna’s room,” I said, “maybe there’s something in there I’d like as a keepsake . . .”

“Sure, go right ahead.”

It was still the room of an eighties teenager, with a few souvenirs from childhood. Her favorite doll and her old posters. There were no photographs of Alvise. I plunged into the netherworld of old memories, and I started poking around with a melancholy curiosity. On the desk was her digital camera. I turned it on, and the first image that appeared on the little screen showed Giovanna and me, smiling, wrapped in an embrace. A weekend in Paris, I recalled. I switched the camera off with a sigh, and I started pulling open drawers. I immediately found the file of documents from her father’s trial. As I leafed through it, I realized that Giovanna had scribbled comments on various pages and had underlined certain names. In particular, she had underlined the name of Giacomo Zuglio, frequently, with a blue pencil. I was surprised. Giovanna shut herself up in that room to study the record of the trial. A lengthy and meticulous study, to judge from her notes. On the last page of the file I found a yellow sticky note: “Test samples. Remind Carla.”

I slipped the digital camera into my pocket and the file under my arm. I couldn’t wait to read it.

Carla Pisani lived in a recently built apartment house on the edge of town, a hundred yards from the railroad tracks. Not far off was the industrial area that had been built a dozen years ago. The one that sprang up after the war was in the opposite direction, by the river. It was nine in the morning on a Sunday, and I was sure that I would find her at thome. The architect had clearly meant to make the three-story apartment building resemble an old granary, newly renovated. The dish antennas on the roof, however, gave quite a different impression. As I walked up to the front door, I met a young woman pushing a stroller. The child swathed in a red down playsuit waved hello to me with one little hand.

The mother recognized me immediately. “I used to see your fiancée here often,” she said. “She would come to see Carla. I’m sorry about what happened.”

I gave her the standard sad smile. I no longer had the patience to listen to useless chatter.

“Carla’s not in,” she told me. “I saw her leave ten minutes ago, on her bicycle.”

“You don’t know where she went, do you?”

“She generally goes out for breakfast at the café, and to buy the morning newspapers. She should be back soon.”

I got back in my car and drove around, looking for her. I saw her bicycle leaning against the wall of an old building that housed a
latteria
, a milk bar. Actually, the latteria was long gone. All that remained was the sign. Now it was an absolutely standard Italian small-town café and tobacco shop, and most of the customers were factory workers from the adjoining industrial area. When I was a boy, I used to come to this latteria often during the summer. The woman who ran the place made excellent fruit frappes. My favorite was the sour black cherry frappe. I parked outside and went in. Aside from a couple of drunks who were sipping their first shot of hard liquor, the only customer was Carla. She was seated at a little café table, reading the newspaper. The barista stepped around from behind the counter to serve her a cappuccino and a pastry.

“An espresso with a little steamed milk,” I ordered.

When Carla heard my voice, she lowered the newspaper she was reading and stared hard at me. “I thought you only frequented the piazza café,” she said sarcastically. “This is hardly up to your usual level.”

I ignored her and sat down across from her. “What do you want?” she asked in a serious tone of voice.

I pulled the yellow sticky note out of my pocket and placed it in front of her. “What does this mean?”

“Nothing you’d be interested in.”

“Fine. I’ll take it to Inspector Mele. He’ll be sure to come ask you about it.”

Carla turned pale. “No, don’t do it.”

“Then answer my question.”

“Who else has seen it?”

“No one else. But what’s all the mystery about?”

She bit her lip. She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of her heavy jacket. Then she remembered that she couldn’t smoke indoors and cursed under her breath.

“Well?” I insisted.

Carla didn’t answer. She seemed frightened.

“I didn’t kill Giovanna. You have to believe me,” I said quietly and very calmly. “I want to find out who did. If you know something, you have to tell me.”

Carla tore open a sugar packet and poured it into her cappuccino. She slowly stirred it. Then she bit into her pastry.

“Frozen. It’s disgusting!” she blurted out. “There was a time when cafés got their pastries from local shops. Those were real pastries. Nowadays, they buy them by the bag, frozen, and pop them into the microwave. Just so they can earn an extra euro here and there.”

I nodded in agreement. Carla was stalling to try to figure out if she could trust me. I decided not to push her. My espresso was served, and I gulped it down.

“Even the milk is different now,” I said. “It used to taste of hay.”

“Giovanna didn’t like it.”

“She couldn’t even stand the smell of milk. She drank fruit juice for breakfast.”

“Pear juice.”

“Or lately, mixed carrot juice, other things like that.”

She stared at me yet again. “I didn’t kill her,” I repeated.

She pulled her coin purse out of her handbag and paid for breakfast. “Let’s go,” she said.

After about ten minutes of driving she told me to stop the car. Until then she had only uttered terse instructions on which way to turn.

“Get out,” she said.

We were parked by the river bank. She pointed to an irrigation canal that flowed into the river through a huge cement pipe that ran through the levee that formed the river bank here from one side to the other. Then she gestured to me, and set off. I followed her. We walked through the fields for ten minutes or so, following the line of the canal; then we climbed to the top of a low hill. My shoes and the legs of my trousers were spattered with mud. I still didn’t understand the point of that hike through the countryside, but I was afraid to ask any questions. I was afraid she would change her mind.

When we got to the top, Carla stopped and pointed to an enclosed area, surrounded by high walls topped with barbed wire. Aside from a couple of large dogs running back and forth inside the walls, it seemed deserted.

“That’s where they hide it,” she said.

“What?”

“The toxic waste.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” I asked impatiently.

Carla lit a cigarette. She took a deep drag and then, finally, decided to talk.

Giovanna had called her a year ago. Carla had just broken up with her fiancé. He had persuaded her to move down to Caserta with him; now Giovanna asked her if she wanted to come back to live in the Northeast. Carla told her she was willing, there was no longer anything to keep her down south in Campania. She wanted to start over in new surroundings. Giovanna found her a job in town, at the local health board as a lab technician. Carla was happy with her new situation; she couldn’t have asked for anything better. Her mother was happy too. After her husband had died, she was alone in the world, and it was a consolation to have her daughter living nearby. As soon as she returned to town, though, Carla understood that Giovanna hadn’t helped her to return home out of friendship alone. She wanted something in exchange. And she told Carla so in no uncertain terms. She suspected that there was a massive fraud involving the disposal of industrial wastes, and she was pretty sure that a number of officials of the local health board were implicated. According to Giovanna’s plans, Carla would try to investigate from within. Carla didn’t want to do it. Giovanna took it pretty hard, and to save their friendship, Carla agreed to keep her eyes wide open and her ears to the ground. At the local health board, she hadn’t discovered anything solid, but a sudden fish kill reported by some fishermen a couple of months earlier had persuaded her to do some tests on the water. The fish had been poisoned by chromium and other substances that had washed into the river from the canal that we’d walked along before climbing the hill.

“The tests that Giovanna was waiting for had to do with several soil samples that I had dug up around the fence,” she explained. “There is no doubt, the chemical substances come from that dirt, and the lot is nothing other than an illegal dump for toxic waste. Giovanna was right. The fraud exists, and it’s well organized.”

“Why didn’t you report this to the Carabinieri?”

“I used the laboratory secretly, the very same night that Giovanna was killed. After that, I had other things on my mind.”

“How does the fraud work?”

“It’s really very simple. Instead of disposing of the waste as required by law, the companies save money by handing it over to unscrupulous individuals who get rid of it. No questions asked.”

“And why was Giovanna investigating this fraud?”

“I don’t know why,” she replied, crumpling up her empty packet of cigarettes. “She wouldn’t tell me, but I think it had something to do with her father’s case.”

“Alvise? How did he fit in?”

Carla pointed to the walled-in area with a quick flick of her hand. “That’s where his furniture factory once stood. You know, the one that burned down.”

I thought it over. Alvise had told me the truth. Giovanna was digging into the old story, and somehow she had found a link with the toxic waste fraud.

“Alvise is here,” I told her.

“Really?” she exclaimed in surprise.

“He’s hiding in an abandoned villa,” I added. “He believes that Giovanna was killed to keep her from uncovering the plot that sent him to prison.”

Carla shook her head skeptically. “I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“Giovanna was killed by her lover. It was a crime of passion,” I pointed out. Carla nodded, with a trace of sadness in her eyes. “Take me to Alvise. I want to meet him.”

* * *

Hush, little baby, little baby of mine

I’ll stitch you a smock of cambric fine.

I’ll stitch it with thread of pink and of white

To your bride I will give it, ’twill be her delight.

It was the only nursery rhyme that Filippo could remember.

His aunt Adelina, his father’s sister, used to sing it to him; she was an elderly woman, and he remembered the way she smelled of vanilla, as well as the crocheted shawl she used to pull around her shoulders to ward off the chill of old age.

Of his early childhood with his mother, however, all that he could recall was the sensation of her lifting him up to hand him over to grandma, a ritual that was repeated every evening. She had never spent time with him, reading him fairytales or pretending to sleep to lull him into slumber. She had always been dressed in an evening gown; she was always impeccably elegant.

That was the image that he was trying to shape in wax. The image of an unattainable woman.

It had taken a lot of insistence to persuade her to model for him. His mother had understood that there was a sarcastic edge to that request. Selvaggia used to model for the students of the Venice Academy of Fine Arts.

She understood that with his sculpture, Filippo wanted to remind her of who and what she had once been.

Moreover, all that gouging with a red-hot iron into a wax face that was beginning to resemble her in an unsettling fashion was making her feel quite uneasy.

Once she had tried to change his mind about using wax, suggesting that he do a plaster bust of her, but he had mischievously explained that plaster wasn’t suitable, that it was an unrefined material, and that for plaster first you had to use a clay model which, after the moulding, had to be split in two. And that he didn’t think he could bring himself to split her head in two.