Death and the Olive Grove (11 page)

‘Smells good,' said Bordelli, a scent of the sea regaling his nostrils.

‘Totò's own invention … When you're done you can tell me if you like it.'

The inspector tasted the pasta. It was excellent, of course.

‘You're a great chef, Totò. And you can tell your mother I said that,' he said, raising another forkful in the air.

‘You're too kind, Inspector, too kind.'

‘No, I mean it …'

‘And you haven't even tasted the
baccalà
yet,' said Totò.

‘One thing at a time … And, anyway, you still haven't told me how your uncle makes his wine,' said Bordelli, fearing that Totò would start in again with his stories about the monsters of Apulia.

The cook looked up and resumed explaining to Bordelli how his father's brother made wine. He went into great detail, completely forgetting the story of the two slaughtered sisters, to the inspector's immense satisfaction. And, going from theory to practice, they drank several more glasses of the wine.

Bordelli left Totò's kitchen after a bowlful of
however I want it
, two platefuls of
baccalà
, one black coffee, a great deal of wine, and several grappas. Feeling he had eaten and drunk too much, he decided to go for a stroll along the Mugnone.
¹¹
He walked slowly, cigarette dangling from his lips so he wouldn't have to take his hands out of his pockets. He started watching people passing by along the road. There wasn't much movement. A freezing woman, a few bored old men, some stray dogs. He liked walking along these empty roads with the cold stinging his face. It helped him to think …

He remembered a moonless night in March 1944. The cannon-fire echoed without cease from the Allied rear lines, and the Germans answered in kind. Gennaro had started singing the Neapolitan songs of his homeland, making everyone cry. Poor Gennaro, with his big, oval face and childish eyes. He was out of his element among the scoundrels of the San Marco squadron. Only a few days later he was thrown high into the air by an anti-tank mine. His body flew like a rag doll some thirty feet away, falling back down with a thud into the bushes. The rest of them went and recovered it. His legs were all mangled. He looked like a chicken carcass, and was bleeding like a fountain. Raising his head, he looked at Bordelli with eyes already dead.

‘Isa … bel … la,' was all he said. He coughed twice, spraying blood from his mouth. Then he died at once, without so much as a shudder. His eyes remained open, and Bordelli closed them. They wrapped him in a blanket and carried him back to camp. Poor Gennaro. Poor Isabella …

The inspector stopped a moment to light another cigarette. A very fine drizzle started to fall, so light it swirled like snow. It landed on his hair without seeming to wet it. He kept on walking aimlessly, leaving each block behind without noticing. Then he suddenly thought of Valentina's mother, seeing her again in the chair, circles of grief under her eyes and that strange smile on her face. He took his time returning to the station, then spent the afternoon smoking, locked in his office.

The following morning, at about ten o'clock, a woman phoned police headquarters. She was very agitated and stammering, and impossible to understand. Only after a few minutes did she manage to say something comprehensible about a dead little girl, and so she was put through to the inspector's office.

Bordelli charged out of his room, cursing, then yelled Piras's name. Doors opened, heads peered out all down the hallway, but nobody said a word. A moment later Piras arrived on the run, and as soon as he saw Bordelli's face, he knew what it was about.

They got into the Beetle and raced off to the Parco delle Cascine, engine roaring. They drove over a grassy meadow that already had a number of squad cars on it with lights flashing. A strong wind was blowing, but it was a sirocco, and it felt almost hot. At the far end of the grassy expanse, before a grove of oak trees, was the usual crowd of rubberneckers being held back with difficulty by the police, as well as a few journalists.

Rinaldi spotted the inspector and immediately came up to him, face glum.

‘Where's the child?' Bordelli asked.

‘Over there, Inspector,' said Rinaldi, pointing towards the oak wood. As he walked alongside Bordelli, he whispered to him that a lady had said she had seen the killer. It was the same woman who had called the police.

‘She's a bit upset,' he added.

‘Try to calm her down, and I'll be there straight away,' said Bordelli, shuddering and exchanging a glance with Piras. The idea that he could now start a proper investigation electrified him.

‘And the photos?' he asked, still walking towards the wood.

‘They've already been taken, Inspector,' said Rinaldi.

‘What's the girl's name?'

‘Sara Bini. Five years old.'

‘Is her mother here?'

‘The little girl was with her grandmother, Inspector. She's the one crying down there.'

‘Has the mother been told?'

‘Scarpelli's taking care of it.'

‘Did the grandmother see anything?'

‘No, Inspector. She had started talking to a friend on that bench over there, and kept on turning round to keep an eye on the little girl, who was playing near that tree down there. At a certain point she noticed that the child was gone, and so she called her name, but the girl didn't answer. And so she went looking for her but was unable to find her. Then she heard a woman scream and went in that direction …'

‘Send all these people away, including the journalists.'

‘Straight away, sir.'

Rinaldi headed quickly towards the crowd thronging the grass. Bordelli and Piras went down the small lane that cut the oak wood in two, passing through dense, untended vegetation, and fifty yards later were at the scene. Two policemen stood guard over the girl's dead body. Bordelli answered their salute with a nod and bent down to look at the child. She was laid out behind a bush at the edge of the lane, amidst the dead leaves. Blonde, with green eyes gaping wide to the heavens. Her neck bore the same red marks found on Valentina's. The buttons had been torn off her little red overcoat, and there were marks of a human bite on her belly.

‘The same bite, Piras.'

‘It's like some kind of signature.'

‘Maybe he wants us to know he's the killer.'

‘Here comes Diotivede, Inspector.'

The old doctor approached them with the light step of a child, his overcoat flapping in the wind. He looked grim. He made a single hand gesture and got right down to work. Bordelli left him in peace and, followed by Piras, returned to the policemen at the edge of the oak wood, where only a few journalists remained, scribbling furiously in their notebooks.

‘Where's the witness, Rinaldi?'

‘It's that lady down there, Inspector, the one in the brown coat.'

She looked to be about fifty and was well dressed. She was pacing back and forth in front of a bench. Bordelli made a gesture to Piras, and they walked towards the woman. After they had introduced themselves, she grabbed hold of Bordelli's jacket.

‘I got a good look at him – it was him all right! I knew he wasn't normal, I knew it … I'd always said he was a degenerate, but nobody would ever believe me!' Then she crossed herself two or three times. Piras looked at her with some suspicion.

‘Please calm down, signora,' said Bordelli. The woman was made up and well coiffed. Not unattractive, though there was something unpleasant about her, and she had a grating voice.

‘He bent down over that poor little girl and started kissing her head, the swine! And when he saw me he took to his heels in a hurry! But I recognised him just the same, I did!'

‘You must calm down now, signora,' Bordelli repeated, glancing over at Piras. The Sardinian sighed, resigned to putting up with the woman.

The sky was hopelessly overcast, despite the strong wind. Bordelli lit a cigarette, protecting the flame for a long time with his hands. He was stalling. He was in a terrible rush, but he was stalling. He wanted to prolong as much as possible this moment of feverish hope and the electrifying feeling of already having the killer in his hands.

‘Meanwhile, please tell me your name,' he said, to slow the pace.

‘Cinzia Beniamini,' the woman said, raising her chin as she said it, as if everyone was supposed to recognise so famous a surname. The inspector turned again towards Piras, to see whether he was ready to start writing. The Sardinian already had his notebook in his hand, and with a look of disgust on his face he wrote down the woman's name. Bordelli took a deep drag on his cigarette, then blew the smoke far away.

‘Now, Signora Beniamini, tell me calmly what you saw. And please start at the beginning.'

‘The beginning?'

‘The beginning,' Bordelli repeated. The woman rolled her eyes, as if at a loss. She tried to collect the impressions in her memory and set them in order. She shot a glance at Piras, then again at the inspector, clearly the more important of the two. She looked at his face, but not directly in the eye. She seemed to focus on his lower lip.

‘I was talking to a friend,' she began, ‘over there, where those benches are. Then at one point we got up to walk a little …'

‘What time was it?'

‘I don't know. It must have been half past nine or so, perhaps a bit later … Does it matter?'

‘Go on.'

‘As I was saying, I was chatting with my friend, Marcella. We were sitting on that bench down there. We sometimes meet here early in the morning, to have a little walk before we go into town to do our shopping. At one point we stood up and went in that direction, just to stroll a bit. We wanted to go as far as the Arno and then back to the car, as we often do. And so we turned down that little lane over there, the one through the trees, and from a distance we saw the silhouette of a young man in sporting clothes walking ahead of us.'

‘Was he coming towards you?'

‘No, he too was going towards the Arno. He was moving his arms about the way they do in gymnasiums.'

‘How far was he from you?'

‘I don't know … More or less as far as those trees over there.'

‘Write “about thirty yards”,' Bordelli said to Piras, then he turned back to face the woman.

‘Were there other people around?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Go on.'

‘At a certain point the young man stepped off the path and bent down to the ground. We couldn't tell exactly what he was doing, because it's always very shady under those trees, even during the day. So we continued on our way, and when we got closer, we saw that he was on all fours, hunched over something colourful that we hadn't noticed until then. Marcella got scared and stopped, but I was curious, and so I went on ahead. When I got fairly close to the man – perhaps fifteen paces or so – he was still on all fours, but he seemed to be vomiting. I thought he was unwell – what else could I think? And so I called to him. “Are you unwell, sir?” I said. Until that moment he hadn't noticed us, because he shot to his feet like a spring … And I recognised him at once. He's a misfit, a maniac who lives not far from me …'

‘And where do you live, Signora Beniamini?'

‘In Via Trieste.'

‘What happened next?'

‘The young man ran off like a rabbit. And so I went up to look at that red thing on the ground, and saw that it was a little girl. I let out a scream to signal for help, but nobody came … And the lad disappeared at the end of the path.'

‘How old is this person?' asked Bordelli, who had noticed a furrow of disappointment on the woman's brow.

‘About twenty-five, I'd say,' she said.

‘What's his name?'

‘Simone Fantini. He also lives in Via Trieste, at number thirty-two.'

The inspector sighed and tossed his cigarette butt aside.

‘Does he live with his parents?' he asked.

‘No, he lives alone.'

‘Tell me, signora, are you absolutely certain that the young man you saw was Simone Fantini?'

‘What do you mean? I see him almost every day, I'd recognise his sick face anywhere!'

‘Why do you say he's sick?'

‘You should see the way he looks at women.'

‘How does he look at them?'

‘It's as if he wants to eat them alive. And he does it to my daughter Ottavia. You should see how pretty she is …'

‘If she's pretty, then everyone must look at her,' the inspector commented.

‘Not the way
he
looks at her, I tell you,' said Signora Beniamini, eyes narrowing in contempt.

‘Has this Fantini ever bothered your daughter?' Piras asked provocatively.

‘He wouldn't dare …' the woman said without even looking at him.

‘Have you anything else to add?' the inspector asked her, feeling rather discouraged.

‘Why, haven't I told you quite a lot already?' said the woman, looking offended.

‘Thank you, Signora Beniamini, I'll send for you if I need anything else,' said Bordelli, cutting things short.

‘He killed her,' the woman said, staring hard at the inspector.

Piras closed his notebook and looked at the woman as if he wanted to make her disappear.

‘Goodbye, signora,' said Bordelli.

‘He's a monster,' she continued, goggling her eyes, then she turned and walked away, ladylike, towards the lane. Piras shook his head and exchanged a glance of disappointment with the inspector.

Diotivede had finished jotting down his initial observations on the corpse of Sara Bini and was waiting for the inspector with medical bag in hand, standing motionless in the middle of the path. The wind was gusting straight into his frowning face, which was as pink as a child's, despite his seventy-one years. Seeing him from afar, Bordelli and Piras quickened their pace and got to him in a hurry, anxious to know what he'd found.