Gold, Frankincense and Dust (22 page)

The mention of alcohol made Soneri throw back a glass of Lambrusco in one gulp, looking for that mild euphoria which would keep him afloat. “It may be destiny that I have some very unforthcoming witnesses,” he said.

“I think I understand your situation. It’s one I’ve been in many times myself.” Sbarazza had assumed a more serious tone. “If the person you’re fond of has already decided to leave you, there’s nothing you can do to convince her otherwise. If on the other hand she is unsure, the only thing you can do is be gracious. The only salvation lies in graciousness towards your neighbour because what all humans, even the most atrocious criminals, seek is to be loved. We are all orphans, after all, are we not?”

Soneri nodded thoughtfully, going over in his mind the criminals it had been his lot to encounter in his work as commissario. Yet again, Sbarazza was not wide of the mark.

“It may seem not worth much to you that all we can do is exchange feelings of unhappiness. I’m aware it’s a bad deal, but that’s all there is. Unless …” Sbarazza broke off abruptly.

“Unless what?”

“Unless you turn to God.”

“That’s a different matter altogether,” Soneri said. “In any
case, He does not seem to take much interest in human affairs.”

“Please! Don’t come out with bar-room arguments. I expect better of you.”

“It’s just that not even by having recourse to God do I find any sense in things.”

“You are an incurable rationalist. You search for meaning in things so as to draw some reassurance, but God is beyond the boundaries of our reason. We dance on the edge of a waterfall, waiting to be finally washed away, ignorant of where we’ll end up. We can’t choose: life overwhelms us. Others have written the script and if it’s a question of God, then it all comes back to what I was saying a moment ago. Listen, pick a card from the pack and resign yourself to your choice. At the end of the day, we’ll all get the same pay-off.”

“I’m playing more than one game,” Soneri said.

“I understand. One is that girl whose body was burned, is it not?”

“I’ve been drawing cards from the pack for some time now, but I never get the right one.”

“Sooner or later you will. You’ll see. My advice is still the same. Let events follow their own course and take every opportunity as it presents itself. All you have to do is recognise the opportunity when it comes.”

The commissario heaved a deep sigh and again sought refuge in wine. It would have been good to end the evening on that note, with the right flavours in his mouth, but he knew that any time now the bar would fill with noise and laughter loud enough to exasperate him. In addition, Sbarazza had not entirely endeared himself to him for the reticence he had shown earlier. He still had a lingering doubt over whether Angela and the other man had really been there, but the descriptions fitted. Here too his policeman’s
frame of mind was becoming a burden. Events were getting on top of him in spite of his obstinate determination to put them in order.

“I must go and see my old ladies and gentlemen. It’s dinner time at the hostel, and that will be followed by a bit of socialising,” Sbarazza said, with that light irony which marked his detachment from the world.

“You’re not going to the wedding feast then?” Soneri asked, referring to the Dall’Argine–Soncini ceremony.

“Money provides no remedy against vulgarity,” commented the old man with a smile of kindly commiseration.

THERE WAS SOMETHING
profoundly vulgar about the profanation of the night which had transformed Piazza Duomo into an
haute couture
bonanza. In clothes alone, the wedding must have cost thousands of euros, before taking jewellery and limousines and vintage cars into account. The chatter among Benedetto Antelami’s marble sculptures clashed with the notes of the organ as they swelled out through the wide-open doors of the Cathedral. Perhaps the chalice used to give communion to the newly-weds had been manufactured by Golden.

Soneri detested solemn ceremonies. He found them phoney and was always afraid of laughing out loud when faced with such pantomimes, but what he saw unfolding before his eyes outdid anything he had ever previously seen. It verged on being a display of ostentatious marketing, degenerating into a senseless replay of society functions of the sort recorded in glossy magazines in a hairdresser’s salon. In spite of that, he stood there, leaning against the wall of the old Fiaccadori bookshop, staring, glued to the spot, incapable of dragging himself away. He was, as Sbarazza had advised, letting events take their course.

And events did indeed take their course. As the couple emerged to a flurry of rice and flashbulbs, the noise rose in
volume, the cheers bounced off the noble stones of the Duomo rising in a crescendo until they deafened the golden angel on the cusp of the belfry somewhere beyond the curtain of the mist, and even awoke Correggio’s little
putti
in the neighbouring church of St John. But then in a sudden diminuendo the piazza fell silent and the commissario was aware of the shudder which precedes movement, as when a train is about to depart. He realised that something must have happened to change the evening’s programme, and he felt no displeasure at seeing that exhibition disrupted.

Pasquariello’s voice on the mobile brought him up to date with what had happened. “A bomb has gone off at Golden.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No, it wasn’t a big bomb, but if it had gone off when the workers were around …”

“Yet another problem!”

“Two idiots. The carabinieri picked them up in the vicinity. They’re Romanian.”

Soneri could not help thinking that this was another point in favour of Soncini’s hypothesis. The Romanians really were out to take revenge on him.

“How did they find them?”

“The idiots didn’t notice the security guards doing their first round. The guards heard the explosion and raised the alarm, and our two lads ran straight into a carabiniere patrol.”

The piazza was emptying. With the occasional explosion of back-firing engines, the vintage cars made a juddering start one after the other. A different sort of explosion ten kilometres away had brought the festivities to a premature end.

Juvara called shortly afterwards. “Do you want me to come and get you, Commissario?”

The thought of returning to Lemignano was dispiriting, but he hoped the mist would have blanked out the ugliest
parts of the district. “Alright. I’ll meet you in Via Cavour, but watch out you don’t crash into the Nuvolari car.”

“Commissario, the days of the Mille Miglia are long past.”

A few minutes later, the police Alfa Romeo flashed its lights from Via Pisacane. “These people are mad!” the inspector shouted. “They nearly ran right into me. What’s going on? Is this some costume drama?”

“Nearly,” the commissario laughed. “The party’s been ruined and that’s why they’re going off their heads. Tomorrow they’ll be on to the Chief about law and order and dangers to public safety. And you can be sure that blame will be laid at our door. Again.”

“What party was ruined?”

“You obviously don’t keep abreast of the goings-on in high society in this city! It was the wedding of the century.”

“Don’t tell me those cars were there for the Dall’Argine …”

“You see, you knew after all. You obviously read the glossies in the hairdresser’s.”

“You’re kidding. It was in the papers today. Two whole pages.”

“Instead of printing something serious …”

“Now I get it,” Juvara said. “The Dall’Argine boy was marrying the Soncini girl and that’s why they put a bomb in the Golden workshop. At about the very moment the daughter was saying ‘I do’.”

“Right,” the commissario said.

“A terrible business,” Juvara said as they got out of the car in the darkness at Lemignano, but it was not clear if he was referring to the dynamic of events or to the large black mark on the factory wall where a fire had briefly blazed, shattering the windows.

The investigating magistrate, with her blonde, flowing locks standing out in the headlights as clearly as the
phosphorescent jackets of the carabinieri, arrived within minutes. Maresciallo Santurro of the carabinieri had taken charge because of the success of his detachment in making the arrest, and he directed operations like a little Napoleon. Soneri had little to do except observe what had happened and absorb any suggestions of the kind invariably prompted by a crime scene. While Marcotti went to speak to the maresciallo, the commissario turned in the direction of the Golden offices, and there he found Soncini gazing at the burn marks on the wall with the concentration with which another man might have looked at a painting.

“I was right,” he muttered without turning round.

“The facts are on your side,” Soneri said drily. “Thus far, at least,” he added, reminding himself of the changeability he had discussed with Sbarazza. “Anyway, they’ve got them in custody, so you can relax …”

“With those people, you can never relax. They never give up and there are so many of them. This is a warning shot. Next time …”

“There won’t be a next time.”

“You should’ve done something when I told you they were threatening me,” Soncini said angrily. “I have the right to protection. And then … the business …” Soneri could have sworn he all but said “my business”.

“They’ll not try again for a while. They’re not that stupid,” the commissario reassured him. “To change the subject, I know you came to the station to identify your car. It seems there are no doubts, is that right?”

Soncini nodded. “It’s mine alright. They wanted the blame to fall on me.”

“Where are your wife and daughter now?”

“Where do you think!” exclaimed Soncini arrogantly. “At the reception. They could hardly walk out on the guests!
What would the Dall’Argine family have thought? These things make a lasting impression. Even if we were the victims, mud sticks.”

The commissario began to feel so exasperated with Soncini that he was tempted to give a brutal reply. What did he have to be afraid of? The wedding had taken place and it was too late for the Dall’Argine family to have second thoughts. However, he remembered his position as a public servant and merely said: “People forget very quickly.”

Marcotti came over and took him aside. “Did you know the judge has refused permission to tap the phones of Iliescu’s lovers? He said there were not sufficient grounds.”

Soneri stretched his arms wide, all the while thinking that had he been in the judge’s shoes, he too might have been cautious. There was nothing concrete to point to them as likely murderers. They had gone to bed with Nina and had left part of their hearts with her, but nothing more.

“What do you make of this bombing?” she asked Soneri.

“It’s another piece in the jigsaw, but we don’t know where it fits.”

She laughed. “We’re still pulling in the nets and something will come to the surface. However, I have to warn you that tomorrow the newspapers are going to go wild. This time somebody has trodden on the toes of the high and mighty. It’s no longer just about some poor Romanian girl.”

As he went back to the car with Juvara, Soneri reflected on that obscure threat. “We’re going to have the questore breathing down our necks,” Juvara said.

“The city demands an explanation of the disturbing events occurring all around us,” Soneri said in a sing-song voice, mimicking Capuozzo and the next morning’s headlines. “As long as everything’s covered up they’ll all sit tight, fooling themselves they’re in the best little city in the world, but the
moment the dirty washing appears in public, they start screaming about it all being a terrible scandal,” the commissario bellowed.

Juvara said nothing until Soneri had calmed down.

“Tomorrow,” Soneri said, changing tack, “pop along to that friend of yours who sells computers and make him give you Soncini’s P.C. Take it home and have a good look inside it – although you’d better talk to Marcotti first. If you can’t get hold of her, try to persuade that Sauro.”

“Do you think there’ll be anything interesting in the laptop?”

“No, but you never know.”

“A couple of days ago you told me Soncini needed something for his office computer. What was wrong with it?”

“You know perfectly well I never remember these things. It must have broken down or something …”

“Forgive my saying so,” Juvara began timidly, “but I think you should get to grips with this field. It’s fundamental for our work to—”

“I know, I know,” Soneri interrupted in annoyance more than anger. “But I’m too old now to learn new tricks and I’m going to carry on with the tried and tested.”

“What do you mean? You’re still young. You’re suffering from nothing more than mental laziness. Did you know that even Capuozzo is taking a course?”

“Well I never! He should really be taking a course to raise his I.Q., but unfortunately there’s no such course available.”

“And it would be a good idea for you to learn some English.”

“Juvara, that’s enough. You’re getting on my nerves. You know what you’re going to do next? You’re going to come with me on a visit to the Campo San Martino Romas to see if the bulls have all been rounded up.”

“In this mist? And it’s nearly ten o’clock,” said the inspector hesitantly.

“They can have a long lie-in tomorrow.”

*

They took the narrow roads along the Lower Valley, as they had done the time before, when it was all starting up.

“If this is a punishment, it seems to me over the top,” Juvara grumbled.

“Don’t talk nonsense. I want to hear what Manservisi has to say. I think we might be given the right cards by our good friends, the Italian gypsies.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s a coded language I learned from Sbarazza, a highly eccentric aristocrat.”

Juvara made no reply. He was relieved the commissario was not angry with him.

Soneri missed the signs to the dump and the U-turn he executed brought the inspector out in a cold sweat. Nothing much had changed in the clearing apart from the fact that there was more rubbish than ever and now it was piled alongside the huge bins. The encampment was deserted and the fires almost out. All that remained were a few tongues of flame on a bed of ashes. Some televisions flickered inside caravans. The commissario parked and walked over, with Juvara at his heels. The heads of several children appeared at windows and some doors were hurriedly opened and just as hurriedly closed. A moment later Manservisi, cap on head, came to meet them with the relaxed gait of a man without a care in the world.