Valerio Varesi - Gold, Frankincense and Dust

“For once I’m going to take Capuozzo’s advice. I’m going no further with this case.”

“We’ll have to see about that, Commissario. Don’t forget that I’m the one who makes the decisions on investigations.”

Soneri drove Juvara back to the office, and decided he had done enough for the day. Hunger was calling him to the wine bar. Bruno laid out a mixed plate of torta fritta, spalla cotta, coppa and prosciutto , together with shavings of Parmesan and a bottle of Bonarda. This was his psycho-medicine of choice, and he was confident he would feel a new man after downing such delicacies. When his feelings of euphoria were at their height and the wine had quite gone to his head, his mobile rang.

“Commissario …”

“Angela!”

The tone of both voices was already reconciliation enough.

“If you’re calling to give me bad news, you couldn’t have chosen a better moment. I’ve still got half a bottle of Bonarda on the table in front of me …” Soneri babbled.

“I can’t say if it’s good or bad news, but I was wondering if you’d like to come round.”

The commissario hesitated.

“Assuming you’ve no other commitments, work or whatever …” Angela went on.

“You can’t be serious.”

“No, never more serious. But you’d be fully entitled to …”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

He left half his meal on the table and ran out. Bruno, unaware of what was happening, shouted after him: “Man labours for food, but if man doesn’t eat …” But Soneri was well on his way and did not hear him.

*

Once they were face to face, they gazed at each other intensely. Neither knew where to start, both deeply embarrassed, Angela restrained by a sense of guilt and Soneri by a feeling of insecurity. The relationship they hoped to rekindle appeared to both of them fragile, and each feared rupturing it with an ill-judged word or move. As often happened between them, they communicated by looks while their rambling words served to ease tension.

“You’ve done brilliantly,” Angela said.

The commissario picked up in her tone of voice something more than a compliment. They were indirectly exchanging words of love, while pretending to speak of other things.

“The poor girl!” Soneri said. “All she wanted was to enjoy life like anyone else. She wanted a partner to spend her life with, but all she found were wealthy men on the prowl.”

Angela looked at him affectionately and tenderly. “Are you sure that’s the way it was?” she asked, laughing warmly as she spoke. “If there’s one thing I like about you and have never found in any other man, it’s that you manage to combine the naivety of a boy with the cynical pessimism of an old man.”

“Everyone has their contradictions.”

She shook her head. “That’s not the point. You see the vilest aspects of this world and you accept them with pragmatic resignation, but you never give up thinking like a dreamer. Or a child. In spite of everything, there is a spring of hope in you. It’s this quality that makes me love you.”

Soneri was thoroughly confused. Angela had left him naked to the point where he had no idea what to say. He felt defenceless but happy to be so in front of this woman who, he now felt sure, was deeply attached to him.

“And that’s why you’re so wrong about Iliescu,” Angela said.

He might have succeeded in finding the culprits, but he had not understood anything. He felt inept. His partner’s words were both wounding and confusing.

“Are you determined to extinguish the hope that remains in me?”

“No. I’ve just said it’s the thing I most admire in you. But that girl really was a pernicious person.”

“How do you know?”

“You won’t lose your temper if I tell you?”

The commissario shook his head.

“The other man, the one …”

“I understand.”

“Well, he’s defending Candiani …”

“… who can now say anything he likes.”

“No, there’s only one version. The other man knows all about the cocaine deals.”

“And what does all this have to do with Nina?”

“Quite a lot,” Angela assured him. “The other man convinced Candiani to come clean, and in a couple of days he’s going to hand over a memorandum to his defence team in which he’ll detail all the various moves in the cocaine trade. Nina was more than a pawn.”

Everything was falling apart around Soneri. His reality was evaporating into the mists.

“She worked for Aimi, and the Cerreto club was one of the distribution centres for ‘snow’ in Parma. She even had an account which was used to transfer the money raised by the drug deals. She took a percentage on the quantities ordered and she got a cut on any new clients she recruited.”

Soneri turned a quizzical look on her, while the outlines of the affair shifted yet again, sinking to ever lower depths.

“Franco, it’s the truth!” she smiled. “Iliescu was no more than a whore — a high-class whore, if you like, but a whore nevertheless. Her role was to seduce men who had money to burn. Or bored, empty-minded people searching for excitement. She had a real gift for that. Once she’d ensnared them, she talked them into taking a little of the stuff until she made them users. And you thought she was a victim?”

“She was. After all, she was murdered,” Soneri insisted.

“She went too far. The Romas saw her as a traitor because she bowed out of the gold deals. They probably threatened her, and she thought she was in a stronger position than she actually was. She most likely threatened to blow the whistle, and so the Romas, Soncini and his wife decided to do away with her. But even with Aimi, according to Candiani, she carried on raising the stakes. She was pretty, she had them all at her feet, but there was no satisfying her. Greed is so often a factor.”

“All this could well stand up, but what about the baby?” Soneri objected, thinking of his dead wife and his own sorrows. These were matters which had perhaps confused him all throughout the investigation.

“You have no idea what some women are like. Passion can go hand in hand with cynicism and calculation with emotion. Just possibly Iliescu really was in love with Soncini, maybe she did want to have that baby. She wanted the lot, but when you no longer experience hunger, you risk contracting indigestion. She wanted money and a comfortable life as well as a man and children. She never had time to bring all her hopes together and put them in order. She wanted them all, right away, in one go.”

“I could go along with that as an investigator, but I’m still a very poor psychologist.”

“That’s not the point,” Angela said. “It’s that you are a better person than the people you have to deal with. And I’m not just talking about down-and-out criminals, but about the wealthy middle class of this city. That’s where you find real criminals.”

“You’re speaking like a woman in love.” Soneri tried to make light of the situation, but Angela took him seriously and nodded.

“Yes, I am,” she said.

They embraced with raw urgency, like two old comrades-in-arms.

“I had given you up for lost, but now you’re back,” Soneri whispered. “I don’t know how this has happened.”

“I needed time to reflect. I knew I was hurting you badly, because I know you love me, but there were a lot of things going on. Let’s say it’s all down to Providence,” Angela said with a touch of irony.

“You’re not the first person to be lecturing me about that. I’ve been stumbling over it for some time now.”

“We all trip over it. We try to make plans, but often something turns up that blows us off course, like scraps of paper in the wind.”