Valerio Varesi - Gold, Frankincense and Dust

“Will someone tell me why the fuck we’ve been sent to this godforsaken place?” shouted the new arrival.

“Because of the gypsies, Esposito,” his colleague reminded him.

“This is a jungle. We’ve got pigs, bulls, cows …”

“The world is full of pigs and cows,” a policeman said.

“But not of bulls,” Soneri said, cutting short the conversation.

“Commissario, can you tell me what we’re supposed to do even if the gypsies are looting things? I can’t even see the tips of my shoes,” Esposito said.

“You’d better ask Capuozzo,” the commissario said, plainly annoyed. “Drive up and down this road with the headlights full on, just so they know you’re here.”

The officer in charge was struggling to make out what was being said, because the dog was barking wildly.

“Fuck that bloody dog,” Esposito cursed. A new chorus of moos struck up, muffled by the mist.

“We should continue patrolling until fresh orders come through,” Soneri said.

The officers got back into their cars. In the yellow-streaked darkness, the disco music continued to blare out while the firefighters were in all probability dragging the dead and injured from the twisted metal. Soneri watched the flickering blue lamps of the police cars until they were swallowed up by the darkness. He was left on his own, a cigar in his mouth. From the direction of the autostrada he could hear a constant racket occasionally interrupted by the sound of a car accelerating away. From time to time the plain around him would come alive with some sudden agitation, animals running, chasing and perhaps facing blindly up to each other.

“Commissario!” He heard Juvara call out.

“What is it?” Soneri moved back to the car.

“I thought I heard someone running from the autostrada into the fields.”

Soneri stretched out his arms. “What are we supposed to do? Unless they run into us …” He stopped when he saw one of the squad cars coming towards them too quickly for a routine patrol. Esposito jumped out and ran towards the commissario, waving his arms in the air. “We’ve found a body, a badly burned body. I think it was one of those involved in the pile-up.”

Without saying a word, Soneri got into his car and followed them along the road. When he got out, the dog was barking nearby. Esposito switched on his torch and turned it onto a body, disfigured and mutilated by the flames, lying on the other side of the metal fence. There was a little Pomeranian of an indefinable colour two steps away, yelping loudly.

“Do you think he was its master?” Juvara said.

The commissario shook his head. “Normally they keep watch in silence. This one is trying to tell us something.”

“The accident happened right here. He must have been thrown from the car,” said one of the officers.

Soneri looked up towards the autostrada. He struggled to make out the wrecked cars, still in a long line, each one concertinaed into the one in front. A little further on, a burning tyre was giving out black smoke. “Maybe,” he said, but he did not sound convinced. He took the torch from Esposito’s hand and went over to the barrier, staring at that dead body whose features were now only vaguely recognisable as human.

“I don’t believe he was one of the motorists. We’d better call in the forensic squad. Be careful not to trample on anything. Cordon off the area around the body.”

Juvara trotted at his side as he made his way back to the car. “Do you really think …?”

Soneri nodded. “That body was dumped there, but was burned somewhere else.”

He took out his mobile and dialled Nanetti’s number, leaving the inspector consumed with curiosity. “At the toll booth, go in the direction of the Asolana … you know, where Guido’s osteria used to be. No, before you get to the grain store,” he explained to his colleague, listing places which were no longer there.

When he hung up, Juvara tried to question him, but Esposito butted in. “We’ve taped the site off. Pasquariello is in the office and he says one car is enough if the situation is under control, but he said to check with you first.”

“One will do. Apart from anything else, if there was anything to steal, they’d have gone off with it before we turned up. Besides, it’s a secondary matter now,” he said gravely.

Juvara remained silent, reflecting on those last words. “Are you saying we were called out on a routine matter and discovered a murder?”

“Most things are a matter of chance,” Soneri said. “You ought to know that by now, seeing the number of years you’ve been with the force.”

They went back to where the corpse was and at that precise moment they heard a high-pitched cry, something between a scream and a groan, from a field nearby — enough to unnerve Esposito and his colleague. “Good God, what’s that?” Juvara exclaimed. “Not even in the wilderness …”

Soneri alone remained calm. The cry caused him no anxiety but reawoke in him old experiences of farmyards, frost and horseback rides at Christmas. It was a sound he recognised from his childhood and which at that moment resurfaced from the depths of his memory as a recognition. “It’s nothing to be alarmed about. There’s another death, but this time it’s only a pig.”

Esposito and Juvara looked incredulously at each other. “So who did it?” they said, almost in chorus and in the stern tones of an interrogating policeman.

“By a process of simple deduction, I’d say it must have been the gypsies. There’s no-one else in the vicinity.”

“I thought they were all Muslims,” Esposito said.

“The majority are one hundred per cent Italian,” Soneri said in a tone of reproof. The ignorance of fellow officers on issues on which they should have been properly briefed always astonished him, but just then a car drew up to take their minds off pigs and gypsies. The forensic squad had arrived.

“One day you’re going to get in touch with some good news,” were Nanetti’s first words as he got out his car. “You’re lucky I know this zone, otherwise we’d have been looking at this corpse tomorrow morning.”

“We’re the only ones who know this territory,” the commissario said, as though confiding in an old comrade.

“I know what you mean. We’re ready to be put out to grass.”

“The correct term is care home,” Soneri laughed. “That’s what Capuozzo calls it, and he means care of the mind.”

“His,” Nanetti shot back, giving him the V sign. “Anyway, are you sure this isn’t somebody who got battered about in the crash?” he asked, pointing to the autostrada.

“First a car crashes, then it catches fire. If someone is thrown onto the road, he escapes the fire, doesn’t he?”

Nanetti nodded, but he could not hide a certain exasperation at the commissario’s ostentatious display of logic.

“Perhaps the car went up in flames, and perhaps this poor soul tried to escape from the fire which was already engulfing him and ended up here. But in that case, he would have rolled about on the grass and there would have been some traces. Those paper hankies and those bottles, for instance, they would have been blackened or at least there would be some mark on them, no? And the grass would have been scorched, wouldn’t it?”

Nanetti ran his torch up and down the slope and had to agree that there was no trace of all the things the commissario had listed. He let out a groan and said, “I’m afraid you’re right. O.K., let’s cut the fence and search the ground, then we can carry off the body when we get authorisation from the magistrate. The autopsy will be the real test.”

“By the way, who’s the on-duty magistrate?” Soneri asked.

“We’re in luck: it’s Dottoressa Marcotti. You know how good she is.”