The Dark Valley: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 2) (12 page)

“Nothing else?”

The man, holding the cigarette, now no more than a length of ash which he gripped between his thumb and index finger, indicated he had nothing more to add. He took one last draw and tossed the stub under a stone.

“Say to the Woodsman I do need to see him,” Soneri told the man, as if he were one of his staff. The man did no more than briefly turn towards him, which Soneri took as a sign of assent.

“I will come back up to meet him. Will you be in these parts a bit longer?”

The man stretched out his arms tentatively. “That’ll depend on the weather,” he said. The commissario held up his hand in farewell and turned to go, but before he had taken a couple of steps, the man drew himself upright. “Go to Pratopiano right now. If you take the Malpasso path, you’ll be there today before it gets dark.”

There was a note of urgency in his voice, giving Soneri the feeling that he knew more than he was letting on. He looked at him for a few seconds, but decided there was no point in asking any more questions. The man moved off, springing nimbly over a cluster of rocks off which the rays of the midday sun seemed to be bouncing.

Soneri set off in the direction of Malpasso, trudging over stretches of stony ground behind peaks which crumbled away year after year at the onset of the winter freeze. Out of the wind in the valley, the heat of the sun was strong enough to make him believe that, after the days of mist, they were about to enjoy an Indian summer. Above, he saw a bright, clear sky with no more than traces of light clouds tossed about by the winds, and for a short time he felt at one with that sky, and as joyous and playful as a hawk swooping through the air. The solitariness – and the violence of the light – cleansed his mind of every thought, leaving it free to entertain only a primitive sense of belonging to those places.

As afternoon drew on, the light began to fail. The sun had passed its peak, its rays giving way to the rapidly falling November dusk. He passed below the summit of Monte Matto from which, on a bright winter day, it was possible to see the blue of the sea at La Spezia, and turned onto the steep path which snakes quickly down Malpasso. Half an hour later, he found himself in the woods, and calculating that there was no more than one and a half hours of light remaining, he quickened his step. He was still imbued with a sense of wellbeing and for the first time he realised he was free of all the petty annoyances of life in the police station. He reached the Macchiaferro stream which flowed over the path, and crossed it, jumping from rock to rock. He bent down and dipped his hand in the clear, ice-cold water purely to experience the sensation he had felt as a boy when, warm from his climbing and
with the urgent desire to see and conquer the summits, he had wandered in those mountains.

At the end of Malpasso, he turned to take in the imposing bulk of Montelupo and the other peaks whose grey, rocky faces stood out against a sky which was growing darker by the minute. He could never be sure where the boundary lay between the hostile barrenness of the heights and the area where life flourished, even if it were only the timid life of the moss. The border was fluctuating, like the snows in late winter, or like that message passed on by the Woodsman at Badignana. From where he was, he could see the chestnut trees at Pratopiano, still given a gentle colouring by the last husks hanging on the branches. Everything was vague on the mountains, where a named place never had a precise location but drifted between dimensions traced out by the eye and the mind.

He was in the woods where the trees were already damp with the evening dew. As he stared around him, he wondered what he was supposed to find or look for in that place. He looked up at the sky and saw the swift dusk bringing to an end a day as short and as filled with light as a straw fire. He was startled to hear barking from somewhere below. From the edge of the path, he peered through the trees, which gave off the moist scents of dead leaves, but there was nothing to be seen. He heard a rustling in the bushes and someone summoned the dog with a precise, rhythmic whistle, clearly a recognised signal. It seemed the dog was coming up the slope, thrashing the undergrowth as it went, and his first thought was of Ghidini, but he could not see anyone. He continued his way down to Corticone, from where the path climbed from the west over Montelupo, and after a few minutes he was aware of following the sound of the barking but without having paid heed to the direction he was taking. When he realised he had lost his way, his nostrils were filled with a stench carried by a gust of
wind. It was a stench he knew only too well from having many times in his career smelled it from locked apartments, from the boots of cars or from watery ditches littered with stones and rubble. He walked more quickly, and his nostrils dilated as he sniffed the air, like a setter. The growing strength of the smell guided him infallibly towards a point where the ground fell away to an almost inaccessible hollow where wild boar would shelter from the sun’s heat on a summer afternoon. The air seemed heavier and damper, as though thickened by a veil of tiny drops of water issuing from a nearby waterfall. He climbed cautiously down into that freezing enclosure, holding on to protruding branches. When he was almost at the bottom, he saw it. Between two boulders which had rolled off the mountain, lay a decomposing and slightly swollen corpse, its face half-hidden in the slime. It seemed the earth wished to claim it and deny it any further burial. Judging by the number of pawmarks around it, dogs and wild boar must have mauled it and tugged at its arms and legs.

Holding his nose and balancing as well as he could on the rocks so as not to contaminate any possible clues, the commissario made his way over to the body. He could make out only a few of the victim’s features, not the whole face, but clearly he had been a man who dressed with care and who had been equipped for an excursion on the mountain. His windcheater jacket had been ripped by animal teeth, and goose feathers, immobile in that windless hollow, lay scattered all around. Fangs had bitten into some parts of his legs, but there was no blood on the ground – a sure sign that the animals had only arrived on the scene a considerable time after death. When he completed his inspection of the body, Soneri regretted not being able to call on Nanetti, the head of his forensic squad. A metre away, behind a bush, he noted a dark patch where several animals had plainly clawed at the ground. He deduced
that the patch was blood, and that after rolling down the slope the body had come to rest there. As he tried to remove the wallet from the hip pocket of the trousers he had a premonition, and when he opened it and saw the face of a woman and child, his fears were confirmed. The posters on San Martino had lied. Paride Rodolfi had not disappeared. He was there in the Pratopiano woods, dead, already swollen and rotting, like an ageing animal which had crawled into the darkness of its den to wait for its end.

The wallet was intact but there was no money in it, not even a coin. As the commissario studied the area around the body, darkness fell rapidly in the hollow. It would take an hour from there to the village, so he would not arrive before nightfall. He stood alone over the corpse, the fetid smell growing more and more offensive, and looked out at the dying light to the west. He felt the role of investigator thrust upon him once more, but he was determined to decline it, since he had no wish to deal with the troubles of a case as complex as this one threatened to be. He took out his mobile and called the carabiniere office. “Put me through to Maresciallo Crisafulli,” he said to the operator, realising with a certain dismay that he had assumed the tone of voice of the officer on duty.

Crisafulli came onto the line, speaking in weary tones. “What can I do for you, Commissario?”

“I’ve found the body of Paride Rodolfi.”

“Jesus!” Crisafulli said, before putting his hand over the mouthpiece to communicate with the people in the office. “And where is it?”

“In Pratopiano. Do you know the chestnut grove?”

The only response he received from the other end of the line was a groan. He remembered the advice given to him years before by an instructor in the police college: the most
important thing is knowledge of the territory. In a place like that, everything now took place in the woods.

“You get there from the forest path to Boldara?” the maresciallo said.

“That’s right, but you’ll have to come by foot. It’ll take about an hour.”

“How are we going to manage in the dark?”

“I’ll do my best to give you directions, but get a move on. The smell is unbearable.”

“Alright. I’ll need to inform Captain Bovolenta and the magistrate, but the magistrate will no doubt come in his own time.”

Soneri moved some distance away to avoid the smell. There was a bitter, eerie chill at the bottom of the hollow, and in the silence it was impossible to miss the obscene swarming of insects as they fed on the corpse. He gave himself over to reflections on the fate of the human being who had been the richest man in the valley, a powerful industrialist whose word was law for politicians, financiers and bankers, categories of human being even more obscene than the insects buzzing in the dark. It was not the first time he had been affected by the presence of death, but it was the first time it had happened to him in the woods in his home town. There was more to it than pity. He felt inside himself a deep emptiness and an overwhelming bewilderment. Paride was dead, that gloriously splendid day had faded in the rapidly falling dusk, and all that remained to him was a useless weight of memories. Living for the moment, taking delight in the sun on the day of San Martino on the deserted plain of Badignana had filled him with joy, but only for a fleeting moment. Happiness had briefly blossomed but immediately withered, like a late-flowering bud. Fortunately, the moon was appearing behind the crags of Montelupo.

He clambered out of the hollow on all fours to put as much distance as possible between himself and the stench, and to be able to see down the valley. He made out the Boldara road and watched the carabiniere truck begin its ascent, its headlights reflected on the slopes on either side of the road. The wind carried the smell even to where he was standing. He focused on the branches swaying slightly under the moon as it rose in the star-filled sky. Suddenly he heard something rustling at the foot of the hollow where the body lay, but again there was nothing to be seen. He went down cautiously, stopping some twenty metres short, but from that distance all that could be seen were shadows, murky outlines to which the most fantastical identities could be attached. He stood waiting for the moon to light up the darkness, and then he saw a dog crouched beside the corpse, continuing a vigil which must have begun at the moment of death.

He approached the dog cautiously, stopping when it rose to its feet and stared at him. It was a bloodhound of medium height, lean and very dirty. Soneri crouched down and tried to call it. The dog wagged its tail with every appearance of friendliness and did not react as the commissario inched closer. It was a bitch. She sniffed at him from a safe distance, and allowed Soneri to pat her. She was wearing a collar with metal links and a medal with the name, Dolly. Soneri studied the dog, thinking she was the only living creature who had remained faithful to Paride. He took a sliver of parmesan from the pocket of his duffel coat, offered it to her and watched as she swallowed it whole as though it were a tablet. She went on sniffing him, and followed him when he moved to another spot to answer his mobile. It was Crisafulli asking for directions.

“From Boldara, you take the road to Malpasso,” Soneri said.

“It’s pitch black,” came the complaint. “How are we to
identify the said road,” he said, falling into the jargon of the military communiqué.

“I’ll wait for you on the said road. There’s no other way to go, and no doubt you’ll be dying to see me,” Soneri said, with heavy irony. “Anyway, I’ll make out the torches, won’t I?”

“You will. We’re not attempting an ascent without lights.”

Obviously Crisafulli was determined to show no weakness in the presence of Captain Bovolenta, who must have been right behind him. Other voices could be heard over that of the maresciallo, who was panting as he walked. After a while, Soneri saw the torches flickering in the more open spaces, but they were going as slowly as day trippers. The commissario sat down and felt Dolly’s wet nose rubbing delicately against his neck. He took the bag with the cheese from his pocket and laid out what was left on the ground. The dog devoured it all in a few seconds. It must have been her first food in days, and that gave the commissario another means of measuring how long the body had been lying there. His mobile rang once more.

“Is there far to go?” the maresciallo wanted to know.

Soneri looked down and could see the torches swaying not far off. “You’re nearly there. Another five minutes or so.”

He heard a curse somewhere in the background, mingled with another “Jesus!” uttered by Crisafulli, whose breathing was growing more tortured.

The first men arrived a few minutes later, but Soneri could not make out how many, because the maresciallo shone the torch in his face. Soneri gestured to him to move it, but just then Dolly began to bark and growl. He calmed her with a caress, but the carabinieri drew back.

“What are you doing, Commissario? Is this a hunting trip?” Crisafulli asked.

“She was on a hunting trip,” Soneri said, pointing to the dog. “That is, she was when her master was still alive.”

“So you’re saying that…”

“She was at his side.”

The maresciallo looked at the dog, accidentally turning his torch into her eyes and causing her to start barking again. The commissario calmed her once more, and turned back to the carabinieri, recognising Crisafulli and the policeman he had seen previously. In the midst of them stood a small, neatly uniformed man who gave the appearance of having come straight from a barber’s shop. This was Captain Bovolenta.

Soneri guided the group down to the hollow, and took some pleasure in noticing how gingerly they tackled the descent, taking hold of branches as they went down and slipping several times. Halfway down, Crisafulli was unable to restrain a cry of disgust at the stench when suddenly it hit him. When they reached the bottom, the torches lit up the area between the roots and the dead leaves. The commissario took the maresciallo’s torch and shone it on the body. In the light, he noticed various details that had escaped him in the semi-darkness. The wounds inflicted by the bites of the wild animals were deeper than he had realised, and marks on the ground made it clear that the body had been hauled and dragged. Captain Bovolenta took the torch quite brusquely from an officer and ran it slowly along the corpse and the surrounding ground. When a ray of light illuminated the face half-sunk in the mud and slime, one half-opened eye stared sombrely back at them, showing death in all its obscenity.