“I’ll never understand what made you come to this place,” Angela said, as she got out of her car and looked around, still unsure of herself in the dark.
“It wasn’t a wonderful idea, I have to admit,” Soneri said.
“So move on. You’re on holiday, not in custody.”
At which the commissario, plainly uncomfortable, stretched out his arms.
“Oh God, is this you at it again, struggling with ghosts from the past? You manage to get free of the big chief in the office, but fetch up under an even more thuggish boss.” Angela gave him a hug, but Soneri remained impassive. “When I first met you, you never thought about the past. You were too caught up in your work.”
“Maybe that’s why the past weighs so heavily on me now. I feel the years grinding me down. Sometimes I think I’m without memory and I’ve wasted too much time on pointless things.”
“You’ll waste even more if you go on thinking that way. It’ll do you no good at all.”
“I regret everything I didn’t say, and all the time I could have spent with my father.”
Angela sighed but, guessing at what lay behind Soneri’s mood, she went on, “Never mind all these rumours. They’re nearly always malicious lies.”
This time it was Soneri who embraced her, with feeling, holding the cigar away from her. But as he was kissing her, Dolly’s wet nose rubbed against the hand at his side with the cigar between his fingers.
“Don’t tell me you’ve acquired a dog. You’re getting more and more like a maiden aunt.”
“It was she who acquired me. She was Paride’s dog.”
“It’s either her or me,” Angela said, in a tone of playful jealousy.
“I’m going to take her back to her owner tomorrow. It’ll be the second time.”
“She obviously adores you.”
“I’m not the right man for her. She’s already suffered one loss, and I don’t want to put her through another one.”
“Definitely not, but she ran away to be with you again.”
Soneri determined not to grow too fond of Dolly, but he could not help patting her gently.
“Anyway, Angela, tell me about the Rodolfis’ lawyer.”
“The situation is more serious than anyone realised.”
“Isn’t every situation?”
“Paride and his accountants have been getting away with false accounting for years. The balance sheets were just so much fluff. In some cases, they invented credit by fabricating phoney documents and then using them as collateral for more borrowings. The thing came unstuck when they couldn’t redeem a parcel of bonds that fell due. They won a little time by making out that there was a fund where they had assets stashed away, but when that turned out to be a fiction, the whole house of cards collapsed.”
“And nobody had a clue. Not even the banks,” Soneri said sarcastically
“They couldn’t care less. They’ve loaded the majority of the debts onto the savers by selling them junk bonds.”
“Who’s investigating this mess?”
“The guardia di finanza, but it’s hard to find the way through an accountancy labyrinth where legal and illegal operations overlap. There’s no telling how big the final black hole will be. Add to that the fact that before they threw in their hand, the directors shredded the archives and wiped the computer files.”
“Who are the accountants?”
“Friends of Paride from school days.”
“A village gang! And nobody could stop them in time?”
“It’s been going on for at least ten years. They thought they could cheat everybody ad infinitum. They believed they were omnipotent, but that’s often the way with these get-rich-quick people.”
The commissario bowed his head. Although they were by now frozen to the bone, they were still sitting on the wall alongside the street, watching the moon travel across the sky. Dolly was lying at their feet, looking up hopefully from time to time to see when the next caress was coming. They walked towards the village until they drew level with the Monicas’ barn, now reduced to a gigantic, smoking ember.
“An act of revenge,” Soneri said.
“Has it got something to do with the fraud?”
“It belongs to the Monicas.”
Angela gave a start. “The son is another one of Paride’s friends.”
“Feuds new and old are passed on. I’m sorry to say it’s an old custom.”
“Like setting fire to barns.”
“Sooner or later the past falls on top of you.”
“If anything’s going to fall on top of me, I want it to be you,” she said, snuggling close to him.
They returned to the Scoiattolo, where Angela smiled at the dull ornaments and plain furniture in a pensione where rustic bad taste was the order of the day. Soneri was hard put to it to convince her of the cleanliness of the bathroom and the sheets, and had to make three separate searches of the bedroom to get rid of spiders, beetles and other insects. He then ruined the effect by informing her that this was the season for bedbugs, awakening a fresh round of alarm. In spite of all this, he was secretly proud of how true he had remained to his country origins in comparison to Angela, who had perhaps never spent one entire day away from the city. Possibly on account of these apprehensions, she fell asleep holding him close and when he awoke in the morning the commissario had various aches and pains caused by that lengthy contact. His thoughts, however, were still where they were the night before.
“The fraud is clear enough,” he announced at breakfast. Sante served them in silence, seemingly intimidated by Angela’s presence. “But the murder of Paride is anything but clear. Neither is Palmiro’s suicide, although he had every reason to kill himself.”
“Revenge, the same as with the barn.”
“Perhaps, but we have to find out what manner of revenge.”
“You’ve always told me that human actions are prompted by very simple motivations: first money, then power or sex. It’s not hard to guess which one it is in this case, is it?”
“That’s what the carabinieri think too.”
“Who wouldn’t? But there’s some personal factor at work here. For you, I mean.”
“There always is, in any investigation. I’ve got to imagine myself into the mind of the murderer, and then the victim. It’s indispensable for me to get under their skin, to relive the state of mind of each one.”
“Have you managed that with Paride?”
“No. There was one sentence spoken by his wife. An unfortunate choice of words about my father.”
“What did she say?”
“That he had been to knock at their door, the same as everybody else.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“No, but it almost makes one an accomplice. Everybody knew and everybody exploited the situation for their own ends. In a certain sense, that’s the whole story.”
“But you knew nothing about it?”
“I was away at college in the city. My father never spoke about his work and I never asked anything about it. We didn’t have deep conversations, although we got on well, especially when we were out hunting or searching for mushrooms. Later the whole family moved to the city. As far as I knew, it was because my mother was unwell and had to be near a hospital. Now what I think is that something must have happened between my father and the Rodolfi family, but I have no idea what.”
“And that’s what’s been bubbling away inside you?”
“No, it’s more than that. I’m afraid Papa was in cahoots with that bunch of swindlers. Or maybe he was one of those who knew everything all along but found it convenient to keep his mouth shut, like the rest of them in this village. Don Bruno told me my father was on good terms with Palmiro. It’s one of those phrases that might mean everything or nothing.”
Angela gave him a look which was both affectionate and reflective. “An investigation for you is like a visit to a shrink.”
“I’ve got to do everything by myself,” were his final words as Angela got into her car.
They went their ways in opposite directions, Angela along the twisting road down the valley and Soneri towards the slopes of Montelupo. Just beyond Boldara, he ran into Volpi coming up from the Croce path, the one which crossed the red jasper rocks over to the west. He had a rifle slung around his neck, leaving his hands free. Soneri kept his eyes on him until they were face to face. He was wearing corduroy trousers with green, knee-high wellington boots.
“Found any poachers?” Soneri said.
“There’s no shortage of them. They’re not the problem. Hunting has started up again.”
“For the wild boar?”
“If only. For the Woodsman.”
Just at that moment, from near Montelupo they heard men shouting and calling out to their dogs. Dolly, who had followed Soneri, cocked her ears.
“It’s a big hunting party. There must be at least thirty carabinieri scattered through the woods,” Volpi said.
Soneri thought of Bovolenta, who had obviously only been pretending to consult him while going the way he had already decided to go. “They’re going to have a hard time of it with the Woodsman,” he chuckled, realising that his exasperation with the captain had put him on the Woodsman’s side.
“They’re out of their depth,” grunted the gamekeeper with contempt. “They’ll end up injuring themselves or else they’ll get shot if they have the misfortune actually to locate the Woodsman. He doesn’t fool about.”
“He’ll play with them for a day or two, till they get tired. Montelupo is too big for people who don’t know it.”
Once again they heard whistles and once again Dolly bristled.
“Have they got dogs with them?”
“Three or four, but out in the wild there are scents all round them, so they don’t know which one to follow and they go dashing off in all directions,” Volpi said. He pointed to Dolly. “You shouldn’t take dogs out with all this going on.”
“She belongs to the Rodolfis. She was standing watch over Paride when I found her, and since then she’s been following me everywhere.”
“You’re going to have the devil of a job getting rid of her. When hunting dogs attach themselves to a master, they’d get themselves killed rather than leave him.”
“I’ve taken her back to the villa once.”
“They’re all on the run from there now.” Volpi looked through his binoculars in the direction of the woods where the shouting was coming from.
“Did Palmiro still go in for poaching?” Soneri asked when he found Volpi facing at him again.
“Easier to say who didn’t go in for poaching. Palmiro and the Woodsman both come from the Madoni hills and felt they were masters here, in their woods.”
“What was he hunting, the wild boar or roe deer?”
“As far as I know, he preferred to shoot birds. He put them in his polenta, Venetian style. But if some other animal crossed his path…”
“You need a different sort of ammunition.”
“Certainly, but there are rifles equipped for all kinds of charges.”
The voices were drawing closer. Some carabinieri, wearing camouflage, passed them in a treeless clearing. It looked like a wartime scene.
“They asked me to accompany them as their guide, but I told them I hunt poachers and I’m not a policeman,” Volpi said.
“Then what happens to the Woodsman should be your business.”
“That’s not what they had in mind. I’m not a spy.”
“Just as well. It seems everybody in the village supports the Woodsman.”
Volpi shrugged. “That captain can attend to his own affairs. Gualerzi must have had a good reason for doing what he did, if it was him. And so would have many other people.”
They heard whistles again as the dog-handlers tried to rein in their dogs, but this time the echoes came from higher up, where the terrain was more harsh and rocky.
“They’re going all out,” Soneri said, as he attempted to restrain Dolly.
“They’d be better off holding back and thinking it through. They’re flapping about like grouse. Do you know they’ve staked out his house?”
“They must be hoping to wear him down.”
“That’ll be the day! He’ll have seven or eight refuges dotted about in the woods, and that man can hunt with or without a rifle.”
“You seem to know a lot about him. Is that because of your job?” Soneri said, smiling.
“Laws have to be applied with common sense. Men like the Woodsman or Palmiro Rodolfi were used to going hungry when they were growing up, so poaching was a matter of survival for them. It’s in their blood and they’re too old to change now,” Volpi said.
The conversation was interrupted by a burst of rifle fire, followed by other gunshots.
“Has the battle begun?”
“The wrong kind of weapon,” Volpi said, listening intently.
“Someone must have got a boar.”
“They’ve never gone hungry, but they’re out shooting just the same. You’d be as well to ignore it this time as well.”
“No,” Volpi replied calmly, still listening to the sounds. “They must have gone too close to the den of some female with her young, and she attacked them. They’re a fierce sight when they charge.”
Soneri nodded and turned to continue his ascent towards the mountain bar. His path would take him through the chestnut grove in the direction of Malpasso, but away from the shooting.
“Take care,” the gamekeeper shouted after him.
“I run risks for a living.”
Montelupo looked different to him today. The whistles and shouts in the distance all seemed part of a tension throbbing in the shadows or springing from unseen life in the undergrowth. He hurried on, impelled by an anxiety to which he could give no name. His path took him past the deserted, rubbish-filled huts and out onto the small clearing in front of the bar. The sun had been up for some time, and in areas free of vegetation the rocks felt warm. Baldi was busying himself with the stove, and had placed the heavy beech chairs upside down on the tables. Soneri waved to him and pointed questioningly at the bar-room.
“It’s over for the season. Maybe for good, I’m not sure,” Baldi said.
“You’re on the young side to be thinking about retiring. Your best days are still ahead of you.”
Baldi looked at him doubtfully. “Was it the Woodsman they were firing at this morning?”
“No. They seem to have blundered on a female boar who then charged at them. You could hear the yells.”
“They’ve obviously got the firepower, but they’ve got to hit the right spot to bring down an animal that size.”
Soneri nodded. “Do you think he killed Paride?”
Baldi looked up and held Soneri’s gaze, shaking his white hair. “He’s capable of it, but the whole thing seems strange to me.”
“Maybe he owed him money.”
Baldi lifted up the round lids over the stove, releasing a burst of flame and a cloud of sparks. “It’s possible. He’s not a man who’d peacefully put up with any injustice done to him, but somehow it doesn’t add up.”
The commissario kept his eyes fixed on Baldi, who was on his feet now and stood facing him, as bulky as a haystack. “It’s more likely he bumped off Palmiro. It was him who collected the cash in the village, while the son dealt with the banks. And then he’d grown up with Palmiro. They were like brothers, Palmiro, the Woodsman and poor Capelli. What a threesome!”
“That might be why he felt betrayed.”
“Well…” was all Baldi could say. “Anyway, what does it matter what I think? The only ones that matter are the carabinieri. It’s them who have to change their minds, isn’t it?”
“That’s true.”
“They’ll never catch him. They don’t know the kind of man they’re dealing with. The Woodsman’s got more cunning than a wildcat. Even the S.S. never managed to trap him, so do you see a handful of carabinieri succeeding? In a couple of days, their teeth’ll start chattering with the cold, they’ll get lost in the mists and they’ll end up whining into their walkie-talkies for someone to come and take them home. The mountain is hard and pitiless. You need a tough hide.”
The wind carried the sound of dogs barking in the distance on Monte Matto and, outside, Dolly started growling. Even Baldi stopped for a moment to listen to the chorus from the hunting pack.
“They’re over at Bragalata. They’ve been moving very fast, so they’ll get tired of it quickly.”
There was only one table without upturned seats, and Baldi sat on top of it. “The one good thing to come out of this is that all those foreigners who used to go up and down to La Spezia have cleared off. They’re afraid of being picked up.”
Baldi got to his feet and took two glasses and a bottle from the bar which now had nothing on it. He poured a measure for himself and one for Soneri. “Your father had a tough hide. He liked the mountains. He applied for a job in the woods, but it didn’t work out. You needed someone to put in a word for you, so they ended up with people from the Veneto or the South.”
“You needed the party card, or else a letter from the parish priest,” Soneri said.
“And your father was a red, and not only that, a partisan in the Garibaldi brigades.”
“Didn’t the Rodolfis care about these things?”
“They certainly did! They were always hand in glove with the priests. Every sacristy or church in need of restoration could count on their support. It was all bluff, of course. Palmiro was only interested in money, and Paride was even more of a phoney.”
“So how come my father…”
“I’ve never understood that.”
“Paride’s wife gave me to understand that…” The commissario could not go on. Anger gripped him by the throat.
“She’s mad,” Baldi cut in. “She married for money, but the moment she discovered it was all coming crashing down, she went right off her head. And then Palmiro’s death…”
“Did she get on well with him?”
Baldi burst out laughing, his eyes sparkling with malice. “Get on well with him! Everybody for miles around knew she was in his bed. Paride was living up at the Boschi house, leaving Villa del Greppo to her and Palmiro. It was obvious it was going to end up that way. A woman like her needs to feel reassured and protected, and Palmiro gave her all she wanted. In spite of his age, he was still full of vigour. Paride could hardly give her security. He didn’t feel secure in himself.”
“But he knew?”
“Of course he knew, but he didn’t give a damn. When he felt the urge, he’d pick up one of those women available in rich men’s clubs. A quick encounter, no time wasted.”
Soneri was about to ask more about his father, but he was interrupted by a shot. Others followed in quick succession, like an irregular burst of machine-gun fire. Each shot was separate and distinct.
“That’s a real battle now.” Baldi rose to his feet and went to the window looking out towards Bragalata. “They must have found the Woodsman, but he fired first.”
“Are you sure?” Soneri said, coming to join him. He looked over the grey wasteland of rock, below which a green undergrowth of myrtles flourished, with the beech wood further down.
“The first shot was from a Beretta. Then there was rifle fire.”
Silence fell again for a few moments, then another round of shots rang out from somewhere among the tangle of beech trees.
“Rifles. Like in the war.”
“Have they got him, do you think?” Soneri said.
“It’s strange that he fired fist.”
“They probably told him to surrender and he reacted.”
“Could be. He wouldn’t think twice. Or maybe he’s got one of the carabinieri.”
“Why would he do that? He has to keep out of the way. If he shoots one of them, it’ll make them the more determined.”
Dolly came to the window and sought out Soneri’s hand.
“She’s agitated, and that tells you there’s electricity in the air. Animals sense these things before we do. They can smell our fear,” Baldi said.
There was not another sound to be heard. Even the dogs had stopped barking.
Baldi was unnerved by the sound of the gunfire and moved away from the window, but the commissario remained, listening intently. Dolly was sitting beside him, but she was clearly uneasy and even looked as though she wanted to run away.
“The dog senses something,” Soneri said, looking anxiously around the room.
“Maybe she’s picking up a voice, or the noise of the carabinieri moving in the undergrowth. We’ll never see them in the woods from here.”
The commissario moved back from the window. The sun was high enough in the sky to melt the frost on the roof, so water was dripping steadily. Baldi, still shaken, was staring into his glass with the expression of a man in a drunken depression. He got up and started packing away things which were still lying about. The commissario was making an effort to interpret the deep silence which had fallen after the shots, but failed to make sense of it. He was on the point of rising to his feet, even if only to escape the sense of impotence which had come over him, when Dolly, starting to bark, stopped him.
“Someone’s coming,” Baldi said. He relaxed when Ghidini appeared in the doorway.
“They’re on friendly terms,” Ghidini said, grinning at Dolly and his lagotto. “Is she on heat?”
Soneri shrugged to indicate that he had no idea.
“Where have you been?” Baldi said.
“Where the battle is raging.”
Baldi could not hide his curiosity.
“The Woodsman has fucked them all up, good and proper,” Ghidini said. “I was over at Groppizioso, on the slopes looking out over Bragalata, when I saw the carabiniere detachments coming up. I got my dog to stay quiet and moved off the path. They stopped to have a bite to eat near the drying plant at Pratoguasto, sitting in a neat circle like school kids, each one with his picnic box open between his legs. At that point, who should appear from behind the Macchiaferro waterfalls but the Woodsman himself? He didn’t want to pick them off there and then. He fired at a beech tree and the splinters flew all over the carabinieri. Then he disappeared up the gorge and out of sight.”
“But they must have fired thirty or forty rounds.”
“Yes, but at mosquitoes. They had no idea where he was.”
“That was a stupid thing for him to do. Now they’ll call in reinforcements,” Soneri said.
“That’s the Woodsman for you,” Ghidini said. “He’s in a rage because they’ve put guards on his house in the Madoni. They even smashed one of the huts where he kept all the cheese he’d got in August.”
“This is going to end in disaster,” Baldi said.
“One of the carabinieri has been taken to hospital already,” Ghidini said.
“Who?” Soneri asked.
“God knows, but he was shot by one of his own men. They’re not well trained and don’t know about the use of firearms. In the chaos, one of them must have slipped and the gun went off.”
“Is he seriously injured?”
“I don’t know. He was holding his arm, and then he must have fainted. A rifle shot could go right through you.”
The commissario got up. The sun was shining through the window, and had formed a halo round the Bragalata peak. It was a call which Soneri was, as ever, incapable of resisting. He bade farewell to Baldi and shouted to Dolly who was fighting off the amorous approaches of Ghidini’s lagotto. Ghidini himself followed Soneri out, and when he turned towards him, the commissario could not help noticing Ghidini’s embarrassment.
“There’s something I’ve got to tell you. I should’ve told you ages ago, but it seemed too trivial.”
The commissario took out a cigar and matches.
“It was something the Woodsman said about your father.”
Soneri’s attention was so concentrated that he allowed the match to burn out in his hand.
“He said that Palmiro was very grateful to him for resolving some question during the war, but he didn’t want too many people to know about it. It was to be a secret between the two of them and only a few others. The Woodsman was one of those few.”
“Something to do with the partisans?”
“Perhaps. I never really understood. Gualerzi is one of those people who never gives a straight answer to a question. If you ask him things directly, he clams up.”
Soneri experienced another wave of impotence. He felt like dropping it all and leaving, but this mood dissolved on the instant. He had no choice but to continue with this bizarre investigation. Ghidini went back into the bar, and Soneri turned towards Malpasso.
He stopped at the stables next to the summer grazing lands, hoping to meet the man who had acted as messenger the day before, but he found the doors locked and bolted against drifting snow. He was about to take the path down the mountain when his mobile rang. Angela seemed flustered, or perhaps she had some important information to communicate.
“Monica, the one whose barn they burned, he’s put all the blame on the banks and on the Rodolfis.”
“So?” Soneri said, sitting on a rock to savour the heat of the sun.
“He says the banks had been perfectly aware for some time of the company’s plight, and for that reason should never have advised their customers to buy the bonds, nor should they have sold them themselves.”
“That’s true as far as it goes, but if the company had never run up all those debts…”
“You could equally say that about the savers. They knew, and continued to invest in junk bonds because the rates of interest were much higher than usual.”
“They all knew and they all went along with it, hoping it would all turn out right in the end. There wasn’t a single one with the courage to dig his heels in, or just say no!”
“It wouldn’t have resolved anything. There were too many snouts in the trough. You’re always digging your heels in at the police station, and what have you got to show for it?”
“I’ve got an ulcer. But at least I’m at peace with my conscience. Do you think it’s enjoyable eating shit and then having to say how lovely it was? I choose the lesser evil.”
Angela snorted and, pretending not to have heard, carried on. “As regards the hole in the company’s accounts, Monica puts the whole blame on the Rodolfis, and specifically on his former friend, Paride. He says he made a lot of mistakes. He was guilty of selling at too narrow margins, with the result that he ended up with a gaping chasm in the balance sheets. So as not to go bankrupt, he asked him to cover the debts with fictitious operations, or with false, offshore financial instruments in phantom companies.”
The commissario grunted something to imply he could not take any more. He felt depressed, weighed down by a deep sadness. He thought back to his carefree childhood on the streets of the village, and reflected that there had been more happiness when everyone was poor. He found himself, by some obscure mechanism, recalling philosophical precepts he had learned at school, and particularly a definition of happiness as the cessation of suffering. That said it all; people are happy when they no longer suffer.
He heard Angela calling out to him repeatedly. “Did you roll off the path?”
“No, I was just thinking of suffering and happiness.”
“You’re a great one for contradictions. Maybe that’s why you’re such a bitter-sweet man.”
After he switched off his phone, he decided that basically she was right. He was quite downcast, but at the same time he was relishing the straw-coloured, autumn sunshine. Before plunging into the shadow of the woods, he waited till the light took on a copper hue as the sun set behind Bragalata.