Valerio Varesi - Gold, Frankincense and Dust

“But then Soncini, when he reported the theft of his car, tried to double-cross the Romanians …”

“No, not at all! As I just said, Soncini is a moron who fucked up even his own swindles. His wife used to pass him the cash to pay off the Romas for the gold, but he pocketed it to feed his cocaine habit. When they came looking for their money, he had to hand over his car to keep them quiet. Then his wife found out, and I suppose she went crazy. She ordered him to report the theft to the police. Just imagine what would’ve happened if a B.M.W., property of Golden, had turned up in a Roma camp with no report submitted! That car was hot! So a deal was struck with the Romas. The vehicle would be theirs, but they would make it disappear when the time was right, perhaps by taking it apart. And that’s not all. Soncini, to keep up appearances, got hold of another car of the same kind from some friend he’d made while they were snorting together. So you see, Soncini was the weak link in the whole chain.”

“In other words, Soncini had no wish to put the blame on the Romanians. He did use that car for the murder, but he’d been driving about in it for a while, and he was doing so so as not to arouse suspicions about his gold deals,” the commissario reflected, thinking that once again the coincidences were multiplying.

“Apart from anything else, it’s a very fashionable car in their world. He would never have had the guts to dupe the Romanians. He’s too much of a coward. You’re attributing to him a bigger brain than he has. He simply got himself entangled in his own lies, in the games a prick like him gets up to and in his craving for cocaine. When you act like that, you’re on a slippery slide and there’s no way back.”

When Medioli fell silent, he and the commissario sat staring at each other.“You don’t look convinced,” Medioli said.

“I see everything from a new perspective. I’d better get used to that.”

“Reality has many faces. We get accustomed to one and think that’s all there is to it. Maybe it’s just laziness, but the others seem unbelievable. It happened to me when I entered the Roma world, and my previous life just melted away.”

“Now I too …” the commissario began, but he stopped because he was beginning to think about Angela again.

“What a shit heap!” Medioli said. “Get out while you can, or you’ll end up stinking as well.”

“I’m more likely to go mad,” Soneri corrected him as he was about to leave.

“Commissario, do you think what I’ve told you will be enough to get me some time off my sentence?”

“I’ll do my best,” he assured him.

*

It was only when he was walking to his car, in the centre of a square covered with a mist which made the lamplights seem to quiver slightly, that he realised how utterly he had lost his bearings. Reality kept losing its outlines in spite of all his efforts to impose some shape on it. Soncini was unquestionably a killer, but he was also a victim — his wife appeared to be in charge, but she was overwhelmed by unhappiness. The Romas suffered a life of exploitation while searching for prosperity; Nina’s lovers seemed to be winners but ended up losers; and Nina? She was the only one who had lost everything, dead in her early twenties while pursuing the dream of a normal life.

As he drove, he gripped the steering wheel tightly and trembled with rage. To calm himself down, he took out his mobile and dialled Marcotti’s number.

“That Martini woman is in it up to her neck,” he said. “She was turning out jewellery and sacred vessels with gold stolen, even from churches, by a gang of Romas.”

For a few moments the investigating magistrate made no reply, and the commissario imagined her shaking her blonde mane in indignation.

“We’ll have to pay a visit to the Signora,” she said finally.

“It won’t be easy to find anything at this late stage, but it’s worth a try.”

His next call was to Juvara. “Get in touch with Musumeci. Organise a search at Golden. Maybe Martini will move from being a plaster-cast saint to a she-devil.”

“What are we looking for there?”

“They’ll have got rid of anything compromising. Get hold of balance sheets, order forms, movements into and out of the warehouse, and pay special attention to deliveries to the various curias.”

Juvara tried to say something, but Soneri cut him off. “See if you can find a member of staff who’s willing to speak. There might be an employee who’s got a grudge against Martini, somebody who got sacked. Talk to the trade union. With a temperament like hers, she must have made a fair number of enemies.”

All of a sudden he felt tired and a little afraid. He would have liked to stop and end the investigation there because he feared he had not yet got to the bottom of it. Every probe took him one more step further down.

He drove aimlessly around the city streets without knowing where he wanted to go, but when he was advised that the search was already under way he made for Lemignano. He avoided Signora Martini, fuming with rage inside Musumeci’s car together with her daughter, who was just back from her honeymoon and was in all probability, after the clamour of recent days, facing an early divorce. It was unlikely in the extreme that the Dall’Argine dynasty would tolerate their new daughter-in-law figuring so prominently in such a scandal.

He went into the now familiar office and found Juvara standing under the portrait of the Pope. The inspector was examining the sacred vessels one by one. Soneri joined him, and when he saw him pick up a chalice, he smiled contentedly.

“Commissario, I noticed this one because it seemed so out of place. When I took a closer look, it reminded me of something.”

“You’re improving all the time,” the commissario told him, still smiling. “I’d have started from there myself. Very often clues are so obvious that it’s easy to overlook them.”

“No, I’m being serious. This chalice reminds me of an object I saw in the office on a website featuring reproductions of stolen goods. You see the engraved image of Christ? It’s strange because it’s a clean-shaven Christ, whereas normally he has long hair and a beard.”

Soneri turned serious. “Where was it stolen from?”

“From the parish church at Pedrignano.”

“Is there a parish priest there still?”

“No, but an aunt of mine who lives nearby says that the priest from Sorbolo goes there to say mass.”

“Bring the chalice. We’ll go now.”

They drove again through the mist, with Juvara clutching his seat belt, scared out of his wits by Soneri’s carefree driving and by all the plane trees looming suddenly and menacingly out of the mist.

The parish priest, Don Mario Baldini, was having dinner, and the housekeeper was taken aback when the two men told her they were police officers. The priest himself, a napkin still tucked into his collar, came to the kitchen door.

“We’ve got something for you,” Soneri said, handing him the chalice.

Don Mario took it in his hand with respectful delicacy, walked over to a sideboard and put on his glasses to examine the object. After a very few moments examining it, he said: “It’s the one that was stolen.”

The commissario and Juvara let out a sigh of relief. A priest had just handed down a sentence on the Martinis, mother and daughter. Perhaps the prison chaplain would give them absolution.

*

On his return, Soneri called Marcotti and told her about the chalice and its identification.

“See if you can get in touch with Musumeci,” he suggested. “He can carry out the arrests.”

“This story’s got everything, hasn’t it? The only thing missing was a chalice used for holy Mass but manufactured in mortal sin,” the magistrate chortled.