Persona Non Grata Read online

  “I told you—I presented him to Papa.”

  “Has he been to the house when your parents weren’t there?”

  She said nothing.

  “Well?”

  Her face now was very pale. The freckles had lost their color.

  “When your parents weren’t there?”

  She nodded reluctantly.

  “And you kissed?”

  Brigadiere Ciuffi cast Trotti a worried glance.

  “You kissed, didn’t you?”

  Antonetta gave a shrug of admission.

  “On the settee. On the same settee where your sister was attacked. That is right, isn’t it, Antonetta?”

  “We did nothing wrong.”

  “And Riccardo knows that at night that is where you normally sleep. It wasn’t the first time, was it?”

  “We did nothing wrong.”

  Trotti waited. “It wasn’t the first time.”

  Brigadiere Ciuffi looked as tense as the young girl.

  “He had been to your house before, hadn’t he? Not during the day—but at night, when your parents were asleep. That is why the front door was left on the latch, wasn’t it?” Trotti laughed, aware of the unkindness in his voice. “Only last night, it wasn’t you who was warm and curled up and waiting for him. It wasn’t your body …”

  “No.”

  “Not you—but the body of your little sister.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you, Signorina. You’re not quite the innocent little girl you pretend …”

  “You don’t understand, Commissario …”

  “I think I am going to require a medical examination from you, Signorina Vardin.”

  Then she broke down.

  “No,” she shouted, “no, no, no.” She started to cry and her crying shook her young body with hysterical sobs that seemed to echo through the Questura.

  6: Bianchini

  BENEATH THE SILENCE, Trotti could feel Ciuffi’s anger.

  “You are angry, Brigadiere.”

  They drove across the Ponte Imperiale.

  Ciuffi did not reply.

  “It’s because of Pisanelli?”

  She turned and there was a smoldering light in her eyes. “Pisanelli and everything else.”

  “Everything else?”

  “You told Pisanelli to stay with me—and, when he goes off, you say nothing. Just a silly little mistake, an oversight, but it doesn’t matter because you are men, because there is a tacit agreement between you. But when I—the first female police officer in the Questura—when I fail to find out what’s happened to the child, you attack me. At the hospital, in front of everybody. Because I’m not a policeman, am I? It’s my job to run and get the coffee—or buy you your damn rhubarb sweets.”

  “I never attacked you, Signorina.”

  “It’s because I’m a woman, isn’t it? You think that all women are stupid and that we can’t—”

  “Signorina Ciuffi, you don’t seem to realize—”

  “I realize only too well, Signor Commissario. You are insensitive.” She snorted. “Like all men.”

  “Keep your eyes on the road.”

  “I don’t like the way you treated Netta.”

  “I’ve got a job to do.”

  “A seventeen-year-old girl and you treat her like a whore. I thought you were a good man—a kind man. Don’t you have a daughter of your own?”

  “My daughter is in Bologna.”

  “You can be very cruel at times,” Ciuffi said. “As if it weren’t already enough for Netta to know that her sister is lying in bed, her body covered with wounds that were perhaps meant for her.”

  “So you think that Netta Vardin knew the attacker?” He gave Ciuffi a sideways glance.

  A dismissive shrug. “It makes no difference. The fact is a man entered the house during the night and with his knife—”

  Trotti corrected her, “With an instrument that was perhaps a knife.”

  “A man attacked Laura on the dining-room settee. It didn’t have to be Laura—it could well have been Netta. She realizes that and she feels guilty. Anybody would feel guilty—it’s only normal: her sister taking the suffering that was meant for her. But that doesn’t seem to bother you, does it, Commissario? Other people’s feelings and …”

  “I have a city to think about.”

  “A city is made of people—and people have feelings.”

  “The only thing I’m interested in is catching the man who did those things to a little girl.”

  A laugh. “The only thing you’re interested in?”

  “I have to stop him before he thinks he can do it to any other woman sleeping in her bed.” He turned and looked out of the window. The river was now behind them and the buildings grew more scattered as they reached the open countryside. It was hot and a thin haze hung over the fields. The car gathered speed.

  Ciuffi fell silent, but Trotti could feel her hostility. She kept her eyes on the road.

  A few minutes later Trotti spoke. “You’ve been in the PS for three years, Brigadiere Ciuffi, and you still think that you can act according to your emotions?” He lightly touched her forearm.

  “Emotions are important.”

  “Not when you have a city to protect.”

  At Gravellino they turned left and, glancing at his companion, Trotti saw she had pressed her lips together.

  The mixture of determination and innocence touched him. “Emotions,” Trotti muttered under his breath.

  They drove through the village and soon found themselves in the new residential area that had grown up in the last few years: houses for the professional people who had moved out of the city, houses with white walls and sloping roofs of tiles. A couple of villas were of two stories but most were low buildings that imitated the style of the farmhouses they had usurped. Gardens hidden by high privet hedges and cypresses that demarcated well-kept barriers between neighbors.

  The air still retained the smell of the countryside—a bittersweet mixture of grass, dung and fertilizer. Above the haze, the afternoon sky was a deep, saturated blue. Swallows wheeled overhead to a secret choreography.

  The house was at the end of an unsurfaced road. A German car in the garage. Trotti and Ciuffi got out of the Lancia and the young policewoman rang at the front door.

  It was a while before a woman answered.

  “Signora Bianchini?”

  She was wearing a skirt and a loose white blouse. Her dark hair had a blue glint, as if it had just been dyed and set. The lips of the large mouth were carefully made up. Neatly applied mascara.

  “Commissario Trotti, Pubblica Sicurezza.” A flat voice.

  The woman looked at Trotti for a moment without understanding.

  “And this is Brigadiere Ciuffi.”

  “Police?” The woman stepped back and Trotti could not tell whether the surprise was real or feigned.

  “Is your son at home, Signora?”

  The woman said, “Has Riccardo done something wrong?”

  “I would like to speak to your son.”

  “He has done something wrong.” It was no longer a question.

  Trotti gave her a brief smile. “Routine enquiries, Signora Bianchini.”

  “He has done something stupid again.” She did not try to hide the resignation in her voice.

  Signora Bianchini was an attractive woman, with fine features and good bone structure. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, Trotti thought. There was no brassiere beneath the blouse.

  “My son is a good boy.”

  Ciuffi spoke reassuringly. “He may be able to help us—that is all, Signora.”

  “He has been working for his exam. I thought that perhaps …” Signora Bianchini gave a hesitant shrug. “This way, please.” She turned and led them into the house.

  The living room was dark and smelt of varnish; an antique grandfather clock in one corner and a vase of freshly-cut flowers on the polished table. There was an old painting on the wall: a portrait, perhaps, of a long dead
relative.

  Expensive furniture, dark antiques that had been carefully restored and polished, a Venetian chest-of-drawers.

  She squeezed one small white hand in the other. “Can I offer you a drink?” She tried to smile.

  “Not while on duty.” They sat down on the high-backed chairs. “Your son will be home soon?”

  “Perhaps.” An apologetic gesture of the two hands: long, well-kept nails. “You see, Riccardo has a motorbike—and he leads an independent existence. I am afraid he doesn’t feel he needs his mother anymore.”

  Trotti frowned.

  “My son is … he is like his father, a headstrong person. It is not always easy to argue with Riccardo.” A smile that reminded Trotti of another woman. “There are times when Riccardo doesn’t sleep at home.”

  “Where was your son last night?”

  The dark eyes blinked.

  Trotti waited.

  “He was here,” she said. “With me.”

  Trotti looked at her in silence. “And your husband …?”

  “Commissario, it is a long time since I last saw my husband.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “A dead man who pays the bills.” She smiled, more for herself than for Trotti. “As far as I’m concerned, my husband died ten years ago.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Riccardo?”

  “Your husband, Signora Bianchini. Where is he?”

  “On Lake Como.”

  “And you live here alone with your son?”

  “It is not always easy to bring up a son single-handed.” She looked at Trotti as if seeking sympathy in his face. “Riccardo has always been an affectionate boy. But headstrong.”

  Trotti glanced at his watch.

  “Are you quite sure that I can’t offer you something to drink?” It was not yet five o’clock yet already he felt tired. “A cup of coffee, perhaps, signora.”

  “A glass of wine—and some truffles from the hills?” The nature of the smile suddenly seemed to have changed. “I think I can recognize that accent. Surely you won’t say no to a glass of real wine? Wine from the OltrePò.” The woman stood up. Her body was trim and the well-cut skirt showed the flatness of her belly.

  “Just a cup of coffee.” The muscles in his face had relaxed.

  Ciuffi pursed her lips and crossed her arms against her chest. Her dark eyes were puzzled. “One other thing, Signora Bianchini …”

  Signora Bianchini looked at Ciuffi, “Yes, signorina?”

  “We shall need a photograph of your son.”

  7: Discovery

  EVENING HAD BEGUN to fall.

  “You think it is a good idea to eat truffles and drink wine in the middle of the afternoon?”

  As they approached the river, more and more insects were battered against the windscreen. Cellophane wings and viscous body fluids that gave the world beyond the car a brown and dirty cast.

  An uninterrupted flow of traffic in the opposite direction coming from the city and the emptying offices.

  “You can get more information from people when they’re relaxed—and when they think you’re relaxed.”

  “Commissario, I thought you didn’t approve of drinking while on duty.”

  “I am nearly fifty-eight years old. An old man, and the only thing I’m interested in is getting results. How they’re got doesn’t bother me.” Trotti paused. “What is more, the wine was good. And Signora Bianchini is a charming person.”

  “Very charming.”

  He turned to look at Ciuffi. “I think I am old enough to decide when and where I can take my pleasures.”

  For a few minutes there was silence while the car ran along the smooth road. Ciuffi was a good driver.

  “I’m no longer a young man, signorina.”

  “You’re not an old man.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “I don’t think of you as being old.” Ciuffi smiled then, and the smile—a mixture of concern and an unavowed fondness—reminded Trotti of his daughter.

  “But you are right,” he said, folding his arms and leaning back in the seat with a slight sigh. “I shouldn’t drink.”

  A girlish laugh that took him by surprise. “And the photo, Commissario?”

  “Photo?”

  “Compared with Vardin’s description of the attacker?”

  “The photo and the identikit certainly look alike. The hair is just a bit longer in the identikit.” Trotti shrugged. “But the photo was taken some time ago.”

  “You believe that the man with the knife was Riccardo?”

  “Netta lied to me. I showed her the identikit and she said it was nothing like Riccardo.” Trotti paused. “I don’t know what to think. Being young and being in love …” He raised his shoulders. “All that happened to me a long time ago. Long before you were born, Brigadiere. And a time when everything was a lot simpler.”

  Ciuffi gave him a questioning glance.

  “Things that people seem to take for granted these days—pornography and homosexuality and sadism …” His voice trailed away.

  “Well?”

  “It must have existed, but I was never aware of it. I think that, when we were young, we were too busy wondering where the next meal would come from to be bothered with all those … all those strange pleasures.”

  “You think that Riccardo is a sadist?”

  The city was up ahead, the dome of the Cathedral catching the last light of the failing evening; to the east there was a thickening band of darkness. To the west, the sky was red.

  “Unruly and spoiled. His mother is a divorcee and Riccardo is probably given too much money by a father he hardly ever sees. I can easily imagine him fixing up a rendezvous with the girl.”

  “Which girl?”

  “The older sister.” He shook his head slowly. “But a knife … I can’t understand the knife.”

  “An insurance.”

  “What?”

  “Perhaps Netta sometimes left the door on the latch. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they slept together, Netta and Riccardo. The knife—it could have been a way of threatening her. The way a man has of forcing a woman to give her body to him.”

  “Laura was on the settee—not Netta.” Trotti clicked his tongue. “Why was the door left on the latch? Why wasn’t it bolted?”

  “Commissario,” she said, mockingly.

  Trotti looked at Ciuffi. “You are a very cynical young woman.”

  She took her foot off the accelerator. A traffic cop stood by the roadside and with his stick he was flagging the traffic to slow down. Ciuffi brought the car to a stop a few hundred meters before the Ponte Imperiale; fifty meters ahead, a policeman in leather boots and a helmet was holding up the flow of traffic with one hand while with the other he beckoned on a white ambulance coming from the city. It turned, crossing the road and taking the unsurfaced track that ran down to the plane trees and the River Po.

  “Wait for me here.”

  Trotti got out of the car and hurried down the sloping path.

  The air was losing its warmth.

  He recognized the strong smell of the river. The Po was turning a bloodshot red in the evening light. The flowing water was low in the riverbed after the long, dry summer.

  He pushed his way through a narrow fence of bushes and came onto the short expanse of grass. There was an Alfa Romeo and one or two men in uniform on the far side of the field. He broke into a run, aware of his weight, aware that he had not done enough exercise, aware that lately he had been drinking too many coffees and eating too many sweets. The taste of the wine washed at the back of his throat.

  He also recognized the silhouette: Pisanelli’s stooping shoulders. Insects flew into his eyes and into his nostrils.

  Pisanelli was taking off his jacket.

  Five or six men from the Questura Trotti recognized: Merenda, Schipisi, Mangiavacca, standing on the far edge of the field. Near the clump of stunted bushes. Out of sight from the road.

  Something on the gr
ound; something dark, like a packet. A bomb, Trotti thought, as he approached them, running with difficulty and a sense of foreboding in his belly.

  Commissario Merenda was giving orders and now Pisanelli was crouching. The ambulance had taken the side road and it began to bump over the grass, coming to a halt on the footpath. A couple of men jumped out. The siren lost its force and whined into a dying silence.

  “Dead—it’s dead.”

  “How do you know?”

  Trotti reached Pisanelli, placed a hand on his sleeve, knelt down, out of breath and sweating beneath his arms. “Who found it?” He looked down.

  Commissario Merenda took a couple of steps back.

  It was hard to distinguish the face in the dusk. A small, ugly face that was brown from exposure to a relentless sun. Eyes wrinkled shut, glued together by dried mucus. Stains in meandering diagonals across the minute cheeks. Small dark shapes that moved, oval shapes.

  Maggots that were crawling across the dirty flesh.

  A naked body, smeared and dark.

  The long severed umbilical cord snaked from the belly on to the grass.

  A minute, motionless body.

  Pisanelli took his jacket and now carefully wrapped it round the small baby. It appeared lifeless.

  The two ambulance men came running from the footpath.

  Trotti stretched out his hand.

  “It moved!”

  Movement and then something fell from the nose. A worm—a maggot that vanished in the grass and dry leaves.

  Trotti touched the skin. Chill and the softness made coarse with dirt and dried blood.

  One of the ambulance men picked up the child.

  Trotti watched in silence, unthinking and numb.

  Merenda gave a couple of orders. The two men hurried back to the waiting vehicle. With a squeal of tires on the track, the ambulance drove away beneath its reawakened siren.

  “My God,” Pisanelli said.

  The ambulance disappeared, hidden by the cloud of rising dust.

  8: Home

  “BRING THE BIANCHINI boy in tomorrow. I want to talk to him.”

  Trotti got out of the car opposite the bicycle shop. He felt drained of emotion.

  Ciuffi nodded, smiled and said, “Buona sera, Signor Commissario.” The Lancia did a sharp U-turn and disappeared along via Milano, heading back towards the Questura.