Big Italy (37 page)

“Forget Quarenghi, Trotti. Forget about him. Look what happened to Bassi—when finally he got elbowed into the right line of inquiry. For the time being, just forget about him. Forget the whole damn affair.”

“And if I can’t, Abete?”

“If you can’t wait for the elections, Trotti, you’ll be putting my inquiry on the line. My inquiry—and inevitably the ensuing trial.” There was a long pause. Finally, Trotti said, “I’d be grateful if you could run me home.”

“Have faith, Trotti.”

“I gave up having faith a long time ago. Having faith’s the best way to be exploited, manipulated and discarded. A lesson the Church taught me when I was an adolescent.”

“If you can’t have faith in human justice—sooner or later Quarenghi and the others at the CIP will face trial, God willing. That I promise you.”

“Your promises don’t satisfy me.”

“Just supposing our frail, crippled justice never reaches Dr.
Quarenghi—just supposing that my colleagues and I never get him into court.”

“Supposing?”

“You don’t think Quarenghi will have all eternity to regret his wickedness?”

“Y
OU
’
RE COMING TO
the funeral?”

“I want to catch the eleven twenty to Milan.” Trotti dropped the packet of sweets on to the desk. “Funeral?”

“In the cathedral—a memorial service because the Bishop won’t accept a funeral. Not for a suicide.” Maiocchi leaned against the door jamb. “You can’t postpone your trip to Milan? Your presence would be appreciated. And politically wise.”

“A woman I need to see. A woman who lied to me.”

“The Bassi thing?”

Trotti now stood up. “That’s right.”

“I don’t understand why you bother so much.”

“Bassi worked for me.”

“Let Reparto Omicidi get on with it.”

“Merenda wanted me to help.”

“As if you could give a shit about Merenda.”

“I don’t give a shit about anybody or anything at the moment. Other than Pisa.”

“How is he?”

“No change,” Trotti said and looked away.

A silence.

Pushing away from the door, Maiocchi entered Trotti’s small, uncomfortable office. “You know, Trotti, you ought to do something about the radiators.”

“Help me by closing that door.”

“It’s freezing in here.”

“The winter’s nearly over—my last winter.”

“Another four months, you mean. That Barbour’s not going to keep you warm.”

“That what?”

“Your English jacket. Very fashionable a couple of years ago. It’s not going to keep you warm enough. You need a quilted anorak.”

“Perhaps my daughter will find me something for Christmas. American shoes, English jacket. Perhaps she’ll get me a Spanish sweater. She knows all about these things.”

“Of course you could come to Venezuela.”

Trotti started rummaging in one of the grey filing cabinets. “What about Venezuela, commissario?”

“What about it, Maiocchi?”

“If you want, there’s a third ticket. I’m sure Signora Scola could come with us.”

“Come with you, Maiocchi.” Trotti turned and smiled over his shoulder. The movement caused him to wince with pain. “Why don’t you ask her?”

“I thought you had.”

“Why should I invite Signora Scola to Venezuela? I told you what I want to do over the next few weeks. Tidy up this office and then get down to Bologna to be with my daughter and my granddaughter.”

“And the Pavesi inquiry, Trotti? The missing parents?”

“That’s your baby.” Trotti added, “I didn’t get the opportunity to thank you for helping Signora Scola yesterday. With the little Priscilla. You were good.”

Maiocchi grinned. “As an agente?”

“You know, she was very grateful.”

For a moment the young face brightened. “I like her.”

“And your daughters?”

Maiocchi’s features clouded. “Still no news.”

“You want to go off to Venezuela on a wild goose chase? Why not spend Christmas with your children?”

“I want to get away from here, commissario. I haven’t taken any holidays for sixteen months because of the wretched state exams. I know I haven’t been much fun to live with. I don’t hold anything against my wife or the girls. It’s just that my existence has been too complicated lately. I’m tired and I need to rest.”

“You could start by giving up that foul-smelling pipe.”

“I was thinking we could go to Venezuela. Santa Margarita.” He shrugged. “Looking for Pavesi shouldn’t take up all that much time.”

“We?”

“You, me and perhaps Signora Scola.”

“If she accepted the offer to go.”

Maiocchi shrugged. “Even if it’s a false trail, even if Pavesi’s dead and is floating down the Po, it’d still mean my getting out of here. Getting time to think. Getting my life in perspective.”

“Ask Scola. Maybe she needs to get her life in perspective, too.”

“I doubt if she’d accept without you.”

“You can always ask her.”

“Perhaps you could ask her for me, Piero.”

“And then have you reproaching me for making your existence even more complicated?”

“You’d be doing me a favor.”

“I don’t do favors, Maiocchi.”

“Never?”

Trotti rubbed his chin. “If I do, I do them for my friends.”

“What friends?”

“Precisely,” Trotti said.

T
HE TRAIN STOPPED
and Trotti looked up from the
Provincia Padana
that he held open on his knees. He looked out of the window at the backs of humdrum houses, at minute gardens and, wedged between two brick walls, at a bowling alley, now empty beneath the dull, grey sky.

Then the train started to move again and a few minutes later, it pulled into the suffused light of the station. Magagna was at the end of the platform standing beside a service truck. He looked up through his sunglasses and smiled as he caught sight of Trotti.

For once Magagna was well-shaved. “What news of Pisa?”

On the locomotive, an alligator had been painted on to the vast casing. The animal appeared to be running in the wrong direction, as if it were in a hurry to return to Genoa, Savona, Ventimiglia and the warmth of the Ligurian coast. As if it wanted to escape the cold and the damp of Milan.

“No developments.”

There was disappointment behind the sunglasses. “What do the doctors think?”

“Very little. Anna Ermagni hasn’t left Pisanelli’s side.”

“True love.”

Together they pushed through the crowds—there were always crowds at the Stazione Centrale—and took the escalator.

“You think it’s my fault, Magagna?”

“What?”

The car was parked on the forecourt, among the yellow taxis. The right wheels of the Alfa were up on the curb. Two
taxi drivers were standing on the pavement, peering peevishly at the plates.

Magagna gave them a toothy, vulpine grin and flashed his ID. Trotti climbed into the car.

“Pisanelli’s known you for years, commissario. He knew what he was letting himself in for.”

Neither man spoke.

While Magagna drove along the Corso Buenos Aires, Trotti looked at the city, deadened under the winter sky. The snow had disappeared, melting before a warmer front from the south. Milan appeared shabby.

“Over there, commissario. You can get out. I’ll find somewhere to park.”

Trotti climbed out of the car at Porta Nuova. He banged his bruised arm against the door frame and gently swore as he crossed the road.

The London School was on the sixth floor of a nondescript building in via Manzoni. Trotti took the lift and stepped out into the vestibule. A woman looked up when he buzzed. She pressed a button and he stepped through the revolving glass doors.

“Commissario Trotti for Signora Coddrington.”

“I’m afraid Signora Coddrington is not here.”

“Signora Coddrington is expecting me.”

The woman seemed surprised. With an embarrassed smile she gestured for Trotti to sit down on the sofa. With the other hand, she punched numbers on her telephone.

“Pisanelli was sulking.”

“I beg your pardon.”

Trotti looked up at the woman. “I’m sorry.” He smiled sheepishly. “I was talking to myself.”

She nodded understandingly. “Signora Coddrington will be along in a few minutes. Perhaps you’d like to wait for her in her classroom. This way.” Moving briskly away from her desk and telephone, she led Trotti down a corridor that smelt of paint and into a small classroom.

The same classroom Pisanelli and he had visited on Friday.

There were no windows. The room was well lit by concealed overhead lighting. Trotti lowered himself on to one of the classroom seats.

“You’d care for a cup of tea?”

Trotti nodded. “And if you have any of that ginger cake …”

Trotti waited for over five minutes.

For somebody who gave little importance to the niceties of legal parking, Magagna was taking his time.

“Ah!” Mary Coddrington exclaimed as she bustled into the room. With a theatrical sigh she set down the pile of books that she was carrying. She shook Trotti’s hand and slid on to the desk in front of the blackboard. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.” She was wearing jeans.

Trotti shook his head.

The English teacher was pretty, despite the wrinkles of fatigue at the corner of her eyes. Pleasant, even features. The face had managed to keep a childish innocence. Innocence and a strange buoyancy.

Trotti said, “You should never have lied to me, signora.”

“E
VERYBODY LIES
.”

“A wretched, medieval country. That’s what you called Italy, signora.”

She smiled sardonically. “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive. So patriotic.”

“Can I suppose, signora, you don’t lie in your own country?”

“It all depends.” She made a gesture of exasperation. “I lie when I need something. Or when I’m scared.”

“I don’t see what you needed from me.”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“I certainly find it difficult to believe I scare you—a pretty, intelligent woman like you.”

“What lie are you talking about, commissario?”

“You loved Turellini. It’s what you said and I was quite happy to believe you.”

“I didn’t lie. Not about Carlo.” Her face softened and the corners of her lips were pulled by regret. “I loved Carlo—I loved him more than life itself.” She added, “I still do, if it’s of any interest to you.”

“How do you explain your lies?”

She shook her head in incomprehension. The blonde hair—the rain-washed mousy blonde hair of the English, strangely beautiful in the way it set off Mary Coddrington’s features—danced with the sudden movement.

“That last night with Turellini. You remember?”

“Of course I remember.”

“You never slept with him. That was a lie, signora. You merely
ruffled the sheets for the benefit of the Carabinieri at Segrate. All very moving, of course. Romeo and Juliet, May and September. But you didn’t fool anybody.”

“Other than myself.” The Englishwoman made a brief gesture. “I didn’t lie. I couldn’t lie about Carlo because his memory’s too precious. May and September but for us both it was like June. It was like—”

“Why the pretence? And why couldn’t you sleep in the same bed as the man you supposedly loved?”

“We quarrelled.”

“That night?”

“Every night—and most of the time we were together. Those last three months, Carlo and I weren’t together very much. The quarreling became unbearable.”

“That doesn’t sound quite like Romeo and Juliet.”

The smile was sorrowful. “Unless I’m mistaken, it was a compatriot of mine who wrote Romeo and Juliet. A compatriot who knew all about love.” She then said something in English.

Trotti frowned unhappily.

“I think, commissario, you should enroll in one of our courses. A knowledge of the language of Shakespeare could be profitable. Even for a policeman.”

“Why did you quarrel with the one man you loved? Can Shakespeare explain that?”

She gave him a sad glance and then tapped her belly. “The pharmaceutical companies should be able to tell you.”

“What pharmaceutical companies?”

“I told you—endometriosis.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve aways had problems—from the moment my body started changing.”

“And?”

“There’d been another man. A man that I loved almost a much as I loved Carlo. When I was a lot younger, when I thought I had all the time in the world. But in the end, it was no good. You see, a child’s the cement that keeps the bricks of a marriage together. Do you have children, commissario?”

He allowed himself a brief, proud smile. “My daughter’s expecting her second some time in the spring.”

The Englishwoman nodded approvingly. “For Carlo’s sake, just as much as mine, I knew there had to be children.”

“That’s why you didn’t sleep with him?”

“I was taking a certain drug for my problem.”

“I don’t speak the language of Shakespeare.”

“I’d tried almost everything else, commissario. There was a time when I spent more time in doctors’ waiting rooms or flat on my back, with my knees apart, in their hospital surgeries, than I spent at home. It’s true, I did say Italy’s a medieval country—but after all these years of a pregnancy that refused to come, it was an Italian doctor who finally identified my problem as endometriosis. It was he who put me on the drug treatment.”

“Carlo Turellini?”

She shook her head. “A gynecologist near Rho.”

“You still haven’t told me why you didn’t sleep with Carlo Turellini the night before he was murdered. You lied to the Carabinieri and you lied to me.”

“I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“To an outsider, it might’ve appeared our affair was on the rocks. I’m surprised the maid didn’t say anything.” A soft smile. “What a sweet girl. I don’t think I was very pleasant to her, either. In all fairness, there’s a lot that can be said about this country.”

Trotti nodded and speaking in English, said, “Big Italy.”

“Not least the warmth of the people. It’s true I come from a country where the police are unarmed, where people stand in queues and where nobody’ll hoot at you if you take time in crossing the road. But in Italy, I have found something very special.”