Death in Sardinia (7 page)

Piras was forcing himself to keep up an almost normal pace, but the road to Santu Lussurgiu was all uphill and the effort was tiring him out. Every so often he would stop to catch his breath. It was shortly before sunset. He wanted to get as far as Morgiu’s stable, and so he sped up. Many years before he was born, something had happened along this road. One morning at dawn, in early summer, a stranger was found sprawled out in the dirt like a wretch, eyes open to the heavens, killed by a blast from a sawn-off shotgun that had ripped through his neck. He must have been over seventy years old and had almost no teeth. When they lifted him off the ground his head came detached from his body and rolled down the road. Nobody ever found out who he was or who had killed him. The priest held a mass for him, and then he was buried. A blank tombstone was laid over his grave. People talked about the affair for a long time afterwards, and a few years later the legend of a headless man, combing the countryside in search of his killer, began to spread. Mothers often used that story to make their children behave.

‘If you don’t go to bed at once, the headless man will come and take you away.’ Piras’s own mother had said that to him many times, and little by little the story had worked its way into his brain, rather like the sharp point of a nail. For years he had gone to sleep every night thinking that one day he would become a policeman and solve the mystery of that old man’s murder. By now, of course, he understood that the headless ghost who roamed the countryside would never find rest.

Bordelli parked under the plane trees on Viale Pieraccini and slowly began to climb the stairs that led to the forensic medicine laboratory. When he got to the top, he stopped for a moment to look at the sky. He wished it were white and full of snow.

He wanted his skin to feel the dry cold of certain winters he’d experienced as a child. But these clouds were dark and promised only rain.

He went into the building. Even in the corridor one smelled the sickly-sweet, acrid odour typical of such places. Pushing open the door to the lab, he saw his friend, the pathologist, standing in the middle of the room staring at the wall. In his hand he had a test tube half filled with dark liquid, but wasn’t paying any attention to it.

‘Diotivede, what’s wrong?’

The doctor shook his head and went and set the test tube down near the microscope.

‘I’m retiring in three years. I just found out today,’ he said drily.

‘You can’t do this to me.’

‘One life is not enough. You barely manage to understand two scraps of rubbish and it’s already time to feed the pigeons.’

‘If you go on I’m going to start crying,’ said the inspector.

Diotivede walked over to a gurney. With the ease of habit he pulled back the sheet covering a corpse, then folded it up like a housewife and put it away on a shelf. Bordelli immediately recognised Badalamenti’s face, which was disagreeable even in death. The corpse’s abdomen had already been opened. Diotivede calmly put on his gloves and then got down to work with the forceps. The inspector approached the gurney.

The loan shark’s eyes were clamped shut with two pins. Diotivede didn’t like to work on a corpse whose eyes were open.

Bordelli studied the stocky, hirsute body of Totuccio Badalamenti. He had short, almost dwarf-like thighs. It looked as if he had grown only from the waist up. The tip of each finger was stained black with ink. De Marchi had already come and taken the corpse’s fingerprints.

‘Any news?’ Bordelli asked, gesturing towards the body. The doctor didn’t answer.

‘Diotivede, can you hear me?’

‘Eh?’

‘Have you got any news about Badalamenti?’

‘I just opened him up a short while ago. I was very behind in my work.’

‘Such delicacy …’ said the inspector.

He stuck a cigarette between his lips but didn’t light it. In the fiefdom of forensic medicine, smoking was forbidden.

‘Diotivede, have you ever done this stuff on a friend? Must be strange, no?’

The doctor said nothing. He seemed quite engrossed. He had both hands inside the corpse and was talking to himself.

‘Damn it all …’ he muttered. He was clearly in a bad mood and even looked slightly dishevelled, though this was only an impression. The hair that stood straight up on his head could never be dishevelled. Bordelli sighed.

‘Three years is a long time, and anyway, you can always keep working in one way or another afterwards, don’t you think?’ he said, twirling the unlit cigarette between his fingers.

‘You’re right. I could start dissecting dogs and chickens to find out how they died.’

‘Why not? You could set up your own private morgue.’ Diotivede gave a slight, cold hint of a smile, then stuck his forceps farther into Badalamenti’s belly. The physical effort made it look as if he was repairing a bathroom sink.

‘Anyway, retirement’s not such a bad thing,’ the inspector continued.

‘I found out today … I don’t know, it’s had an unpleasant effect on me … But where the hell did that thing go …?

‘Looking for the heart? Don’t bother; this model hasn’t got one.’

Diotivede wasn’t paying much attention to Bordelli. He carried on searching the usurer’s intestines and at last found what he was looking for.

‘So I wasn’t mistaken after all,’ he said in satisfaction, holding the forceps up in the air. Between their pointed tips was a small metal ring covered by a dark patina. The inspector drew near, curious to know what it was.

‘What the hell is that?’ he asked.

Diotivede didn’t answer. Holding the forceps before his eyes, he went over to the sink with the inspector following behind, turned on the water and let it run over the mysterious object. The patina faded and the mystery was revealed: it was a gold ring.

‘Excuse me a minute,’ Bordelli said, taking the forceps out of Diotivede’s hand and bringing them close to a lamp. It was not a wedding band. On one side the ring narrowed to where it was barely thicker than a thread, and on the broader side a tiny little diamond was set. Inscribed inside the band was a name:
Ciro
.

‘Can you tell me how long it was before he died that he swallowed it?’ Bordelli asked.

‘Not long before – not more than half an hour.’

‘Are you sure?’ the inspector asked distractedly. Diotivede stopped dead in his tracks and looked him hard in the eyes.

‘I always speak only when I am sure of something; otherwise I keep quiet,’ he said curtly.

‘No need to get upset.’

‘I should think you would have learned that by now.’

‘It was just an offhand question.’

Bordelli kept studying the ring as if the killer’s name were somehow written on it. The doctor removed his gloves and went to wash his hands. Three times, as usual. He already seemed to have calmed down.

‘I’ll be done with this one fairly soon,’ he said, drying his hands carefully.

‘But don’t expect any big surprises. The cause and time of death are already pretty well established.’ The inspector put the forceps down.

‘Stabbed to death with a pair of scissors in the neck,’ he said, stating the obvious.

‘That’s right,’ said the doctor, half closing his eyes like a schoolmaster pleased with his pupil.

‘When did he die?’

‘Almost certainly last Friday, but as I said, it’s impossible to say at what time of day.’

‘Too bad,’ said Bordelli, thinking that this made the whole thing more difficult.

‘I’m almost positive the killer is left-handed, but I still need to check a few things.’

‘
Almost positive
doesn’t sound like you,’ said Bordelli.

‘Actually I wasn’t even going to tell you,’ said Diotivede, taking his glasses off to clean the lenses. He did this dozens of times a day. It was a long process that he executed very methodically.

It was through those lenses that he saw the world, and he wanted them always immaculate. Bordelli brought the ring into the light again and examined it for a few seconds more. Then he walked towards Diotivede, holding the forceps in the air.

‘I’m going to keep this,’ he said.

‘As you wish.’

‘Will you wrap it up for me?’

‘There are some small envelopes in that drawer.’

The inspector put the ring in an envelope, which he then put in his pocket.

‘And please don’t ask me to go to the pointless trouble of reporting this. Since, at any rate, only you and I know about it,’ he said.

‘I trust you … but if you sell it, we go fifty-fifty.’

‘Absolutely. Then we can open a Swiss bank account.’

‘I think I’d rather stuff the money into my mattress than give it to those milksops,’ said Diotivede with a sneer.

‘You doing anything for Christmas?’ Bordelli asked.

‘I think I’ll go to bed early,’ the doctor said, still wiping his lenses with a piece of cloth. When he took his glasses off, his face changed; it looked empty, almost funny.

‘Aren’t you going to see your relatives?’ Bordelli asked

‘I’m invited for lunch on the twenty-fifth, as always.’

‘If you like, we can have dinner at my place on the evening of the twenty-fourth. We’ve known each other for so long and we’ve still never spent Christmas together.’

The doctor put his glasses back on.

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

‘But don’t expect any presents.’

‘You could have let me get my hopes up,’ said Diotivede.

‘We’ll have a nice big dinner, like two years ago. We’ll drink a little wine and talk about women … What do you say?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Well, let me know soon. Christmas is just around the corner.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ the doctor said for the third time.

‘All right, then. If you have any news about our friend Badalamenti, ring me immediately.’

‘There won’t be any news.’

‘You could have let me get my hopes up,’ said the inspector.

‘I’ll give you a ring when I’ve finished with him.’

Diotivede nodded goodbye, and as Bordelli was heading for the door, the doctor started putting the instruments he’d used in a tub of disinfectant.

Around half past four, the inspector parked his car in Piazza del Carmine, right in front of Badalamenti’s building. The sun was setting and the street lamps were already lit. The dark sky had been threatening rain for hours, but nothing had happened yet.

Entering the usurer’s building, he climbed the stairs without haste. He was determined not to leave the flat until he found what he was looking for. If necessary, he would comb the place inch by inch. There had to be something there. If not, he would feel defeated and would have to admit that Judge Ginzillo had been right. That would be a hard pill to swallow. Rat-face Ginzillo couldn’t possibly be right.

Bordelli stopped to catch his breath on the landing of the last floor but one. He’d eaten and drunk too much, and he wasn’t a kid any longer. He would have to start going to the gym now and then, maybe to see his friend Mazzinghi and do a little sparring, as in the old days.

Having climbed the last flight of stairs, he went into Badalamenti’s flat. Aside from the smell of death, there was also an unpleasant feeling that came over him as it had every other time he’d entered the place. He went straight into the sitting room, opened the glass-fronted cabinet and poured himself a cognac. He took a sip. It was very good, but not in the same league as De Maricourt.

He picked up the can of grey putty he’d seen before lunch and sat down in an armchair. For the moment it was the only odd thing he’d found in the flat. Sipping the cognac, he tried to fathom why Badalamenti kept that putty in the living room, among the glasses in the liquor cabinet. There was no real point in knowing the reason, but he was used to paying close attention to little details, even those that appeared insignificant.

He set the can down on the low glass table and began to study it. In reality he was amusing himself, rather as he used to do as a child, during treasure hunts at the home of his cousin Rodrigo. What had become of Rodrigo, anyway? He hadn’t seen him for a good while, and hadn’t even had the honour of meeting his new girlfriend, the woman who had succeeded in changing the curmudgeonly Rodrigo’s life … Assuming, of course, that they were still together. He had to remember at least to give him a ring to wish him a happy Christmas.

Drinking his cognac in little sips, he continued to contemplate the can of grey putty. He began with the most elementary things. He looked around. There was no other furniture in the room that Badalamenti could have put it in, if for some reason he wanted to keep it in the living room. But why do that?

Drinking the last sip, he felt like smoking a cigarette but tried to resist. Perhaps Badalamenti often had need of the putty in that room and didn’t feel like always going and fetching it from another room. But why would he have needed it so often in the living room? Normally you spread it out and leave it for a while. This was getting interesting. Bordelli got up and looked at the windowpanes. There was no trace of fresh putty round the edges. He poured himself another cognac and collapsed into the armchair again. Putting his feet up on the glass table, he leaned his head back in the chair. Putty … He was almost there, he could feel it. He closed his eyes and remained that way for a few minutes, in danger of falling asleep.

All at once he sat up, a smile on his face. He’d figured it out, maybe. He finished his cognac in one gulp and stood up. He went into the kitchen and started opening the cupboards and drawers until he found a little box of toothpicks. Taking two, he went back into the sitting room, got down on all fours, and started scratching the grout between the tiles, one after another. The floor was made up of old terracotta tiles, about ten inches square. He carried on like this crawling like a child at play, not minding the dust. He couldn’t stop smiling.

At last, in a corner by the window, he found what he was looking for: the grout around one tile was still soft. He scraped it all away with the toothpick and tried to lift the tile with his fingers, but couldn’t. He went back to the kitchen to get a knife and, using the tip as a lever, was able to raise the tile without effort. He found before him a cement cavity about the size of a shoebox. There were a number of different things inside. A small black accordion purse, a large, bulging yellowish envelope, a small round box covered in blue velvet, and a bundle of white cloth. Taking it all out of the hole, he noticed that the bundle was heavy and opened it. Inside he found a Glisenti 7.65 Parabellum with the serial number sanded off. Pretty clever, our little Totuccio, thought Bordelli. He wrapped the pistol back up in the cloth and opened the blue velvet box. It had a number of gold rings inside, mostly wedding bands. Almost all of them had the spouses’ names and wedding dates inscribed inside:
Argia Ferdinando, 2 October 1902
;
Nora Goffredo, 14 August 1897
, and so on.