Death and the Olive Grove (33 page)

‘Thanks for Strüffen, but I wanted him alive,' he said.

‘You can't always have what you want,' she said.

‘Is that why you wanted to see me? To tell me that?'

‘I needed to tell you a story.'

‘You're already with someone?'

‘No, it's not about that.'

‘Then what's it about?'

‘Davide Rivalta,' said Milena, eyes flashing.

‘What's Rivalta got to do with any of this?'

‘His real name was Davide Rovigo … He was Jewish.'

‘Did you know each other?' asked Bordelli, increasingly surprised.

‘He was one of ours until a little while ago,' Milena said with a bitter smile.

Bordelli's eyes popped out.

‘That's really something … And why did he stop being one of yours?' he asked, staring at her.

Milena sighed and leaned her back against the wall.

‘He'd started doing things that were against our principles,' she said, lowering her eyes. She seemed very tense.

‘For example?'

‘Last year … when we were supposed to liquidate a Nazi in the Madrid area, Rovigo tried to eliminate his companion as well, a young Spanish woman who had nothing at all to do with the crimes of our target. We don't do that kind of thing. Our organisation is not interested in vengeance. We only execute the sentences passed at Nuremberg.'

‘Of course.'

‘After that episode, Rovigo was expelled from the Dove, and he took it very badly. When he left he threatened to throw a wrench into our plans and reveal everything he knew about the organisation, and we couldn't allow that. We spend a great deal of money and time locating a person, and we abhor waste. We cannot run the risk of getting any grains of sand in our engine. We'd been keeping an eye on him for some time, but he hadn't done anything unusual.'

‘Were you aware the police had him under surveillance?'

‘We realised it only a few days ago and were trying to find out why.'

‘You could have asked me …'

‘I decided against it,' she said. Bordelli nodded. He didn't know where to dump his ash, and in the end he let it fall to the floor.

‘Did any of you know that Rovigo could leave his house without being seen?' he asked.

‘Nobody knew about that passageway. It must have been made during the war. Rovigo seemed to have calmed down. We were becoming convinced he would never carry out his threats against us, and that he'd only been letting off steam. I never imagined—'

‘Was it your organisation that killed him?' Bordelli interrupted her.

‘Yes … because of the little girls,' she said, biting her lip. And she walked slowly to the window and started looking outside. Bordelli took a few steps towards her and stopped behind her. Even then, at such a moment, he could not help but admire her figure, whose beauty showed through her clothing. Milena kept on talking, without turning round.

‘Rovigo spent seventeen months at Auschwitz. He suffered unbearable humiliation. He lost a finger there. It was torn off with pliers by camp guards. He managed to survive because he has a degree in chemistry, they'd put him to work in a laboratory. By the time the Russians arrived, he weighed sixty-five pounds. He lost almost all his family in the camps: father, mother, grandparents, cousins, brothers, his wife and … his daughter Rebecca, a little girl of eight whom he was madly in love with. He killed those children out of revenge, only because they had German fathers …'

‘Jesus Christ,' Bordelli muttered.

‘He'd become a monster, and we hadn't realised it …'

The inspector shook his head.

‘He certainly was good at finding those children. In some cases it couldn't have been easy to know they were daughters of Germans,' he said.

‘For someone who's worked with us it's easier than you think,' Milena whispered. They remained silent for a moment, not moving. She was still looking down at the street, as he looked at her.

‘Why did he bite them on the belly?' Bordelli suddenly asked.

‘Somebody'd told him that some drunken SS men had set a German shepherd on Rebecca just before they sent her to the gas chamber, and he probably wanted to avenge that as well. He took it out on little girls who were not to blame for anything, exactly as the Nazis had done. The organisation felt it had to treat him like one of them …'

‘And so you had him hanged.'

Milena nodded, and then brushed a lock of hair away from her face.

‘I took care of it myself,' she said.

‘Why you, of all people?' Bordelli asked, sensing something. Milena turned round; her eyes were wet.

‘Rovigo was my mother's second husband,' she said.

‘Don't leave,' Bordelli said, staring at her.

‘I can't do anything about it.'

‘Bloody hell, don't leave,' he said again, hands pressing hard into his pockets.

Milena just looked at him stubbornly and said nothing. She was shaking, as if fighting an indomitable remorse, but her eyes were dry again. She drew near to Bordelli and kissed him violently on the mouth, thrusting her tongue forward as if wanting to reach the back of his throat. Then she suddenly pulled away, took his head in her hands and bit his lip, hard, practically making him bleed.

‘I have to go now,' she said, staring into his eyes from very close up. Bordelli opened his mouth to say something, but she shook her head as if telling him not to, and then caressed his mouth.

‘Did I hurt you?' she asked, taking his face in her hands again. Her fingers were cold. Bordelli didn't reply. He could feel the girl's heart beating chaotically against his chest. He wanted to kiss her, but did nothing. He merely removed Milena's hands calmly from his face and, without saying anything, headed for the door.

*  *  *

‘What are you brooding about, monkey?'

‘Nothing.'

‘You seem sad.'

‘I'm not'

‘You should be happy.'

‘I
am
happy.'

‘Liar. I know you too well.'

‘I'd rather not talk about it.'

‘All right, then, I'll leave you in peace … Would you like a little of that cognac you brought me?'

Bordelli nodded and flopped down horizontally on the sofa. He'd hardly slept a wink the previous night, tossing and turning the whole time with a stupid pillow in his arms, and now he was unable to relax. Feeling something poking into his side, he dug into his pocket and found Casimiro's little skeleton. He held it in his hand for a moment, sending a greeting in his mind to the poor little man.

Rosa sat down in front of him and poured some de Maricourt cognac into two snifters.

‘To the best policeman I know,' she said.

‘How many do you know?'

‘Just you,' she said, laughing.

‘What do you think of this cognac?'

‘Oh, it's delicious,' said Rosa.

That morning Bordelli had gone back to Karl Strüffen's villa with Piras and, stripped down to their shirtsleeves, they had filled the Beetle with bottles. They didn't leave a single one behind. As they were driving back down to the city, Piras had started voicing a barrage of questions he had about the murders, but it was clear he was doing it to provoke Bordelli. There were a number of things he was unable to tie together, the young man said, and other details where he hadn't understood a bloody thing. It was as if he was missing a few important pieces to the puzzle …

‘Have you finished reading Simone's story?' Bordelli had asked him, pretending not to notice his agitation.

‘Of course.'

‘Did you like it?'

‘He writes well,' Piras limited himself to saying, without even mentioning the coincidence between the story and the case of little girls. It was obvious he was on tenterhooks. He was dying to know everything about the murders, including that of the Nazi.

They had sat for a while without talking, and Bordelli had started humming a song by Modugno.
²¹
In the end, Piras couldn't hold back any longer.

‘I haven't understood a damn thing about any of this, Inspector … But I have the feeling that everything is perfectly clear for you,' he'd said decisively, seeing that Bordelli was still playing dumb. The inspector was unable to repress a mischievous smile, since he'd been expecting such a challenge for a long time. Someone like Piras couldn't accept not knowing.

‘I'll explain everything, Piras, but first you must swear you'll never tell anyone.'

‘Of course I swear,' said the Sardinian, drooling with curiosity.

Bordelli felt he could trust him. He'd lit a cigarette and, driving slowly along, told him everything he knew, leaving nothing out. He'd even told him about the White Dove, but without naming any names. Piras had listened to the whole story and hadn't even complained about the smoke. When it was over, he'd shaken his head.

‘Shit, Inspector!'

‘It wasn't easy …'

‘And the upshot is two killers who can't be brought to trial.'

‘Well, not quite.'

‘Why not?'

‘I believe that a beautiful Sicilian girl has come out of this, too …'

‘What's Sonia got to do with this?' Piras said with a cocky grin on his lips.

‘If you ask me, you two have already had sex,' Bordelli ventured in a rather wicked tone. He was bitter over Milena's departure and felt like needling someone better off than him. Piras had given him a dirty look, a single, nasty stare, and shut himself up in the most nuragic of silences for the rest of the drive.

‘Come on, Piras, I was just kidding,' Bordelli had said, trying to make up. But Piras needed time to work it off, and kept on wearing a long face. His silence was stony and arid, like his native land.

When at last they got to the station, the inspector had a couple of officers unload the bottles confiscated from the Third Reich, and they'd divvied them up, with everyone getting something or other. Bordelli immediately thought of bringing his share to Rosa's, since it was a lot nicer drinking with her than sitting in front of the telly at home and filling his glass alone. Piras had disappeared for the rest of the day. No doubt he'd gone out again with Sonia, and Bordelli thought of him with a tinge of envy. A Sicilian and a Sardinian, an unpredictable combination …

Gideon was asleep, curled up in an armchair, sated with food and travel across the rooftops. Rosa was knitting away. That evening she, too, was rather quiet. She was still working on Bordelli's sweater. She'd made a lot of progress, and every so often would measure it against his person.

Bordelli was thinking of Milena and felt his stomach tighten. He ought not to think of her, didn't want to think of her. Closing his eyes, he let more distant memories carry him away … He found himself near Colle Isarco in April of '45, just after the war had ended. He and what remained of his men had stopped a train on its way back to Germany, loaded with stolen goods. One wagon was chock-full of French cognac, and it had taken them several hours to unload it. There were forty of them, and they decided that each man was entitled to three cups of cognac a day: one in the morning for breakfast, one after lunch and the third in the evening. They finished all the bottles in a couple of weeks. It was one of Bordelli's better memories of the war years.

‘You still haven't told me your girlfriend's name,' Rosa said suddenly, still working her knitting needles.

‘She's not my girlfriend any more,' said Bordelli.

‘Poor boy … So she's already dumped you?'

‘Would you give me a little more cognac?'

As Rosa refilled his glass, Gideon suddenly raised his head, as if he'd heard something. He jumped down from the armchair and went out on to the terrace, tail straight up in the air. It was the night of the new moon, a night as dark as Bordelli's mood … Milena had come into his life like a pimple on his skin and had vanished as quickly. But in the end it was better this way. Much better. Thirty years' difference. It was too ridiculous. On the street, people would have taken him for her father, maybe even her grandfather … And anyway, it would never have lasted. She was too young, and so beautiful, so dark, with the eyes of a creature of the forest … What the hell was she doing with someone like him? Who knew what had initially attracted her?… He was just one of many, no doubt, between one White Dove assignment and the next. She'd come into town, slept with a police inspector, and left. What the hell could a girl of twenty-five know about things such as love?… But, when you came right down to it, he didn't really believe in it all that much himself – in love, that is. He knocked back a mouthful of cognac and felt it burn in his stomach. Love didn't really exist, he thought. It was only one way, like so many others, to hope that something would never end. An all-too-human delusion, he thought, but not a very intelligent one. Nobody truly loves, nobody really knows what the hell he's talking about when he pronounces the bloody word. Much less a girl of twenty-five as beautiful as her, with coal-black eyes and raven hair, and a slightly roguish mouth that curled up ever so faintly on one side when she spoke … Come on, Inspector, thirty years' difference! You're already old and want to play the schoolboy … You're ridiculous … No, it's much better this way, better it should end immediately … Otherwise, one ends up dreaming … And he didn't feel like dreaming any more. It was enough to have made love with that dream five or six times … He didn't want anything else from her … It made no sense to love and dream … What the hell was the use? In the end you just die anyway, and nothing is left, not a goddam thing …

‘What did you say, Rosa?'

‘I didn't say a thing, darling.'

‘I thought …'

‘What is it, love? Are you hearing voices?' she said, giggling.

‘I think I'll go home to bed. I'm a wreck.'