Valerio Varesi - Gold, Frankincense and Dust

“Do you know the make?”

“An old Citroen XM, at least twenty years old.”

“It seemed in a hurry.”

“And in this mist …”

They passed the bins again and turned onto a side road. The commissario took a wide turn and one wheel bumped against the kerb, making the car shudder. The inspector jumped too. “Apart from the mist, they go and build these raised roads along the side of the canals,” he said uneasily.

“It’s because of the flooding; it lets you move about.”

“Maybe so, but it’s like a rodeo.”

“There’re bulls there too.”

“Are you sure this is the right road?” the inspector said shortly afterwards.

“No,” Soneri replied with a touch of anxiety in his voice, leaving the inspector in suspense. He realised as he spoke that he was not on the road he had taken on the way there. He had made a turning to follow the wheel tracks of the car which had sped out of the camp. It was all a matter of instinct.

“So where are we going?” Juvara asked.

“Let’s go on a tour of the Lower Po Valley. Is that not a lovely idea? Try to imagine there’s a girl here beside you instead of me.”

The inspector made no reply and for a moment Soneri was afraid he had offended him. He would rather Angela had been there. It would have been more amusing with her and he would have enjoyed needling her.

“You see that?” said the inspector, pointing ahead.

“What?”

“Someone went onto the grass and nearly ended up in a ditch.”

A wavy line in the mud marked the way forward for about a hundred metres.

“Do you think it happened only recently?”

“Looks like it.”

“One of those bulls was most likely involved.”

The commissario said nothing, but accelerated slightly, cutting confidently through the mist. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, ready to swerve. Shortly afterwards, the flashing blue lights of a police car made him draw up.

“A police cordon,” Juvara said, relieved that Soneri was forced to brake.

When they came closer, they saw a car balanced precariously between a ditch and the side of the canal. It was the Citroen from the campsite.

“An evening full of surprises,” Soneri said.

The patrolman was standing beside an elderly, somewhat dishevelled man. “He’s drunk,” the officer said.

The commissario nodded. “I did notice,” he said, referring to the skid marks he had seen further back, but leaving the officer puzzled. “Who is he?” he asked, indicating the old man but not taking his eyes off the policeman.

“We’re checking him out,” the officer replied, pointing to his colleague on the car radio.

The man stayed silent, prepared for the worst.

“Is this your car?” the officer said.

There was no reply. The man continued to stare ahead into the mist in the background, as though he would rather lose himself in that nothingness.

“These are false documents,” reported the other police officer who had been communicating the data to the control centre. “And the car is registered in the name of one Omar Manservisi, of no fixed abode.”

“Oh great! Let’s get this one along to the station,” the patrol leader said.

The old man’s attitude was surprising. For a few moments, he stood stock still in the same position, then turned towards the policeman who had taken him by the sleeve and stared at him with the expression of a bewildered child.

“Manservisi … Manservisi … I’ve heard that name, but I can’t remember where,” said the officer.

“He’s one of the travelling people camped up by the dump at Cortile San Martino,” Soneri informed him.

The officer looked at him in surprise. “The ones who lit the fire?”

“The very same. Manservisi is a kind of chieftain. I believe the old guy here took the car a short while back.”

“Stole it? He stole something from gypsies!” The officer’s tone was incredulous.

The commissario stretched out his arms, looking again at the old man who, judging by his expression, seemed sunk in a state of drunken depression. “What about the car? We can’t just leave it here in case someone crashes into it.”

The patrolman raised his visor and snorted: “Suppose not …”

“He’s coming with us. You stay here until the pick-up lorry arrives,” Soneri said.

This time it was Juvara who took the old man by the arm, and as he did so the man turned towards him with the same expression as before.

“You go into the back seat with him,” Soneri ordered. “He looks like the sort who could do all kinds of crazy things. Keep your wits about you.”

They set off and within a quarter of an hour they saw the milk-white glow of the first lights in the city. Ten minutes later they were turning into the courtyard at the police station.

*

“So, how come you took the chieftain’s car and were going around with forged documents?” Soneri began wearily, reflecting on the bizarre conduct of this unknown figure.

The old man looked down at a point in the centre of the desk, avoiding Soneri’s gaze.

Juvara cut in. “Would it not be better for us to leave him to Musumeci? He’ll be here in about twenty minutes. We’ve got that other business to attend to.”

The commissario shrugged. “The main thing is to get him to make up his mind to talk,” he said impatiently. Just then, another officer came in to take the man’s fingerprints.

“Look, it’s in your own interests to put an end to this, eh!” Soneri said, raising his voice in growing exasperation at the man’s indifference. “Could you tell us who the fuck you are?” he went on, tossing the false identity card on the table like an ace of spades. “That way we can clear this business up. You’ll be charged with possession of forged documents, car theft and drunk driving, but you’ll be treated lightly.”

Nothing seemed to make any impression on the man, who was now sunk in a comatose stupor. The more the interrogation dragged on, the more absurd his behaviour seemed to Soneri. He was just concluding that he had a madman on his hands when the telephone rang.

“Not making much headway here,” were Nanetti’s opening words.

“Not surprising, with all that mist.”

“It’s not a laughing matter. This burned-out stump of a human being has nothing on him to identify him. He looks as though he’s been on a spit.”

“Have you searched around? On the grass verge?”

“You can forget the grass verge. It’s been ploughed up by the emergency services. We’ll come back tomorrow and comb the slope. The torches are no good in the dark.”

“Alright. We can only hope you come up with something.”

He was about to resume questioning the old man when Juvara and the officer who had taken the fingerprints came in.

“Commissario, there’s a warrant out for this man. His fingerprints match those of Otello Medioli. He killed his wife twenty years ago. We’ve been on the computer and there’s no doubt.”

“This is some night for coincidences,” Soneri said.

He turned to face the man: the suffering appearance, the watery eyes and the weary pallor made him an improbable murderer. He looked like an ordinary old-age pensioner, but no-one was more aware than the commissario of how misleading impressions could be when dealing with criminals. It was one of the pitfalls of the trade. And in the case of Medioli, twenty years on …

“So, you’ve made up your mind?”

All of a sudden, the old man burst into life. He raised his eyes and looked rapidly around as though afraid someone was spying on him.

“It’s all true,” he said, with a sigh which seemed to come from deep inside him.

“At last! We’ve made the first step,” Soneri said, with a gesture of his hand which was an invitation to Medioli to continue. Meanwhile Juvara, with perfect timing, had activated the recorder and attached a microphone to the computer.