The Dark Valley: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 2) (21 page)

“So all in all, it wasn’t too bad, considering the number of shots that were exchanged.”

“He’s mad. He seemed to be everywhere at once. He was out to kill us all.”

“Mad he may be, but he didn’t want to kill anyone. He was deliberately firing into the air.”

Sante came over to ask what they wanted to eat. Bovolenta chose the
anolini in brodo,
and Soneri did the same.

“We’ve lost face over this.”

“Don’t look at it that way. It’s not a duel, and your honour’s not at stake. The Woodsman’s on his home ground and Montelupo is difficult terrain.”

“A lot of them don’t want to go back up there. They’re scared stiff. A couple of my men went completely berserk and started screaming. I think he heard it.”

Soneri tried to think back to when he had been in a similar position, with bullets whistling around him and not much cover. He remembered an armed robbery in Milan when huge bullets pierced the doors of his Alfa Romeo, leaving the shattered metal looking like a cheese grater. The shots had missed him by a whisker. Half a degree more one way or the other and he would not be there now addressing an angry policeman.

“You’re not likely to take home any prizes from this hunting trip,” the commissario warned him.

Bovolenta looked at him and was close to agreeing, but he said, “I have no choice.”

“Are you quite sure it was the Woodsman?”

“His wife’s seriously ill with diabetes and he needs to get back the money he lent the elder Rodolfi to pay for her treatment. Does that not seem to you motive enough?”

“Then why didn’t he kill Palmiro?”

“Who says he didn’t try? Who else could have been responsible for all those shots fired in recent days? And anyway, Palmiro did away with himself.” The captain dipped his spoon deep into the plate and picked out some of the
anolini
from the soup. He must have gone without his lunch, since only hunger could have made him forget military etiquette to that extent. After a few minutes, he cleaned his mouth and looked Soneri in the face. “You’re not convinced, are you?”

The commissario, his mouth full, shrugged.

“I came here to ask you for some advice,” Bovolenta said.

“I don’t really know much about it.”

“We cannot continue to move about in a herd, as we did today. Gualerzi would hear us from a long way off and he’d
have all the time in the world to hide until we got within range. We’ll have to use his tactics, hit and run. The problem is we don’t know where to find him.”

“There I can’t help you. There’s not a man around here, even if he knows the woods, who would know where to find the Woodsman.”

“He must have enemies.”

“That may be, but no-one would dare stand up against him. Anyway, everybody in the village is on his side.”

“He’s mad and he has to be stopped,” Bovolenta said, stretching across the table to grab the bottle of Gutturnio, an act of rudeness which definitively ended any pretence at good manners. “A desperate lunatic who’s playing his last card.”

“Gualerzi’s always been like that. He’s a savage with a code of honour.”

“I don’t believe he has the slightest interest in honour. He’s desperate and capable of anything.”

“You’re wrong there. Granted he can be ruthless, but he’s not the bastard you make him out to be.”

“In the past, maybe not, but he’s got cancer. Did you know that?”

Soneri stopped and would have liked to say that was the only thing which would make him surrender, but he had no wish to irritate the captain further. “How do you know that?” he said.

“We searched his house and we found the tests.”

“If that’s so, what’s the point of trying to ambush him? All you have to do is wait.”

“If we were monks, we could, but we’re carabinieri.”

“I don’t see any other way out. Don’t kid yourselves that the Woodsman is going to let himself be captured like a common criminal. That’s one thing he’s not.”

“He shot at us.”

“If you carry on pursuing him, he’ll take one of you out. But he’ll keep the last bullet for himself.”

Bovolenta appeared deep in thought. For a few seconds there was a brightness in his eyes, before weariness made them cloud over again.

“Listen to me,” Soneri said. “Scale down your operations to patrolling Montelupo. Leave him in charge of the territory, and he might even come round. Otherwise it’s going to end badly. He’s not a man for compromises, not even with himself.”

“If it were up to me … Headquarters have decreed … I obey orders.”

The commissario felt some sympathy for Bovolenta. He was subject to the unsubtlety of higher command, to a primitive vision which divided the world into two, friends and enemies, victories and defeats. “Tell your superiors that to wring one chicken’s neck there’s no need to knock the whole hen-run down,” he said, in an attempt to reduce the tension.

“There may be no way out for the Woodsman, but there isn’t for me either. How will he cope with that? That last bullet you were talking about might be for me.”

“I’m afraid that’s true. If your life’s at stake, stand up to them. This time the game is worth the candle.”

“I can’t.”

The commissario let his impatience get the better of him. He had never had any sympathy with irrational conduct, even when he understood its origins. “One of the things I have learned is that there are times when you have to say No, because otherwise there’s no difference between us and the peasants here who knew what was going on but put up no fight. In their own way, they too were obeying orders, orders of self-interest. They ended up ruined.”

Bovolenta sat bolt upright against the back of the chair,
saying nothing, facing the bottle he had emptied almost by himself. There was real humanity under the uniform, but it was the uniform which carried the day. Soneri felt disappointment rise from deep inside him.

“God save us all,” murmured the captain, and it occurred to Soneri that he was as well to put his trust in the Almighty since he lacked the will to make use of reason.

Bovolenta put on his cap with the silver flame, symbol of the carabinieri, at the front. He held out his hand to the commissario. “I’m grateful to you. You’ve been my guest, even if this is your home.”

Soneri followed him to the door. He intended to take a walk before going to bed. They walked side by side for a little way, in silence, until they reached the piazza. The captain said goodbye once more, but he stood facing him, plainly pursuing some line of thought. “Among the Woodsman’s papers, we found your father’s name. I didn’t know he’d been a partisan.”

Soneri nodded, doing his best to conceal his agitation. “What paper was that?”

“A chart giving the names of the Garibaldi brigade in this locality. Your father was political commissioner.”

“He was anxious to keep well away from gunfire.”

“You’re the first police officer I have met whose parents were Communists.” Bovolenta smiled. “Did they not make things difficult at H.Q.? Not so long ago, it would not have been easy with a background like yours.”

“I’ve had my problems. Was there anything else about my father?”

The captain realised he had opened a subject of some importance, and indicated to Soneri that he understood. “I’ll get my men to have a look. Or maybe I should attend to it myself. Yes, I think that would be better.”

He walked off and Soneri, although confused, realised that,
in spite of everything, he had formed a favourable opinion of Bovolenta, and that was something that did not happen too often. His thoughts turned to the papers the captain had found in the Madoni hills. They were not likely to contain anything he did not already know, but then again there might be something new. Perhaps they would provide the key to his father’s relations with the Rodolfis.

He did not realise that he was walking towards Villa del Greppo until he became aware of the deepening darkness on the road leading to the fields. He turned and saw beneath him the roofs of the village, beyond which the vast, empty spaces of the valley stretched into the distance. He looked closely at the piazza, deserted at that hour, the lighted window of the
Rivara
and the lamp-posts lining the narrow streets. Anyone chancing upon the village without knowing what was going on there would have decided that it was a tranquil enough spot in which to spend a week searching for mushrooms. He lit a cigar, took out his mobile and dialled Angela’s number.

“I’ve just had dinner with Bovolenta.”

“Whom do you prefer, him or me?”

“He told me that the Woodsman is on his last legs.”

“Is he surrounded?”

“No, he’s got cancer.”

Angela sighed. “A person in that condition is capable of anything.”

“Precisely. I think that’s the case with him. So far the shots he’s fired at the carabinieri have only been to scare them, but if they go on hunting him down…”

“If he no longer cares what happens to him, why should he care about other people?”

Soneri changed the subject abruptly. “The captain has found some papers concerning my father in the Woodsman’s house.”

“Are you back on that hobby-horse of yours?”

“Don’t you want to know what he said?”

“Maybe that woman was talking nonsense. Maybe she made the whole thing up.”

“So much the better if she did,” Soneri said, cutting her short.

At that same moment, he heard a dog bark, and the bark was familiar. He interrupted the conversation with Angela to listen. It came from the mountain, from the path which led from Greppo to Campogrande. He stood still for a few moments, keeping his mind clear as though he were afraid his thoughts might make a noise. Everything was peaceful, apart from the hoot of an owl in the depths of the woods.

“You still there?” Angela said.

“I thought I’d picked up a sound in the trees.”

No sooner had he spoken than he heard the dog bark again, this time from lower down. The animal was coming closer. Just a few paces more and, if the wind was in the right direction, it would pick up his scent.

“Where are you?” Angela said.

“Near the Rodolfis’ place. I think there’s something going on down there.”

This time there was no possible doubt. A dog was racing in his direction.

“I am glad I called you,” Soneri said, already guessing which dog it was.

“I always bring good luck,” Angela said, but without any idea of what was going on.

The dog emerged from the brush a few moments later and came bounding down the road. Soneri felt its tongue lick his hands, and when he bent down to rub it behind the ears, he had all the confirmation he needed that this was Dolly. There was no way of knowing why she was on the road which led from Campogrande to the uplands of Croce. He walked
on until the villa appeared ahead of him. He committed to memory the position of the mule-track, but he could not see the whole track from where he was standing, since it turned into a small gorge before climbing up to Greppo. It was then that he heard a low whistle. Dolly heard it too and stiffened, making no movement, standing as still as a hunting dog about to put a flock of partridges to flight. So she had not run away. Someone was with her. The commissario looked in the same direction as Dolly and noticed she was staring down the path. Shortly afterwards, a faint light appeared – perhaps a torch – and moved about. Then it disappeared and the whistle was blown again.

Someone was searching for Dolly further along the path, but she had heard Soneri talk on the phone and had come looking for him, or perhaps she had picked up the scent of his cigar. The commissario thought of going over to the mule-track but he worried that whoever was there might hear him. He was also constrained by memories of tales he had been told in his childhood about that path, where “strange things” could be seen and “stranger things” heard. At night-time, the path was lit by lights which appeared and disappeared, while indistinct whispers and laments were carried on the wind.

He decided to wait close to the villa. He struggled to keep Dolly quiet, as she whined and tried to snuggle under the hem of his duffle coat. He hoped to see someone emerge along the path, even if he was not clear who that someone might be. For a while he thought it might be Manuela, but the more he pictured her with all the airs and graces of a
gran signora,
the less plausible did it seem that she would be out in the woods at night. So he remained where he was, in the company of Dolly in the pitch black of a moonless night, the stars invisible above the dense, damp air.

An hour later, when it was evident that no-one would be coming, he set off. He wondered what had become of that nocturnal presence, made manifest in whistles and faint lights, which seemed only to confirm the truth of the old legends. He walked into the village, escorted by Dolly, stopped in the piazza and took a seat on the wall. The dog stood facing him, looking up and wagging her tail. Her eyes were shining with a trust and devotion which he found deeply affecting. He tried to imagine what life would be like with Dolly at his side. The very thought was a novelty, but all of a sudden he saw a custard coloured brightness in the form of a huge candle swell up before him.

A bright light and the acrid smell of burning rubber came from the lower part of the village. Out of the darkness, an enormous funnel of smoke ascended into the night sky, then stretched like a giant mushroom as it moved in the direction of Montelupo. Soneri raced down the deserted streets until, in the square overlooking the new town, he saw a car in flames. There was no-one there to make any attempt to extinguish the fire – although there was nothing that could now be saved. Behind the shutters, whispered voices and the sound of bolts being drawn could be heard, but as the fire died down, silence again fell on the village. The commissario stood watching as the flames turned to glowing embers. Only the rubber of the tyres and the plastics were still burning. Finally the carabinieri arrived.

Crisafulli had the dishevelled look of a man who had fallen asleep at his desk. “After a day like the one I’ve had, this was all I needed,” he moaned in Neapolitan.

“It must have been half an hour ago,” Soneri told him. “It could have been a slow fuse in a petrol can. The whole thing was over in a couple of minutes.”