Marco Vichi - Death in Sardinia

For the first time, Bordelli felt all the violence of a real transformation in the air, even though it was hard to say exactly what it consisted of. The forces heating up across the country were diverse and numerous. In a sense, everything was being renewed. New wealth, new poverty. The word ‘freedom’ was being used in new ways, and the prisons to be destroyed had names never heard before …

More and more people were abandoning the countryside without regret. The old peasant houses and villas outside the cities were being sold at cut rates behind closed doors, furnishings and all. More than once during those months, Bordelli had wandered about with the idea of buying a ruin with a bit of land and growing old there, but he continually postponed acting on his desire. Before taking such a step, he had to think it over very carefully.

And so the months went by. December had arrived. Christmas was approaching with its coloured lights and stacks of fir trees on street corners. All that was missing, as usual, was snow.

Ennio might call at any moment, and Bordelli was ready to do what he’d been planning for months. But fate had decided otherwise. Someone had killed Badalamenti. The body was discovered that Wednesday, but the murder had occurred a few days earlier. The building’s other tenants had been smelling a sickly-sweet odour in the stairwell for some time and, sniffing around one morning, traced it to Badalamenti’s flat. Only then did they realise they hadn’t seen him for several days, and that his red Porsche hadn’t moved from the square for a while. They all agreed they should call the police. The report was passed on to Bordelli, who immediately got down to work. The firemen were summoned, and they broke down Badalamenti’s door with the solemn imprimatur of the law. The stench of death immediately assailed with full force the nostrils of everyone present. Bordelli had smelled that sweetish odour many times, too many, perhaps, and had never got used to it. He went in first, handkerchief pressed firmly against his mouth and nose, and opened all the windows. Badalamenti’s body lay face down on the floor of a small room done up as an office, halfway down the central hallway. His hands were curled, and he had one eye wide open, the other at half-mast. His half-open mouth rested against the tiled floor, and there were two dark spots of dried blood beside it. His eyeballs were already in bad shape. The scissors were stuck deep inside the flesh beneath the neck.

Bordelli immediately sent for the assistant public prosecutor. A police officer took a number of snapshots of the corpse from a variety of angles. The chief of forensics, De Marchi, and his assistants pulled out their tools and started searching the flat for fingerprints, cigarette ash, and anything else that might be of use, taking care not to move anything. De Marchi was just over thirty years old and had the face of a nerdy schoolboy, but was a real bulldog when it came to his work.

Bordelli had a great deal of confidence in him. Even though he knew him only on a professional basis, he addressed him in the familiar form, since the forensic expert was young enough to be his son.

The apartment had been visibly and thoroughly ransacked without compunction. It had a number of rooms, all furnished in more or less the same fashion — that is, with a lot of money and little taste. Faux-antique dressers and wardrobes next to green Formica tables, huge mirrors with modern gold-plated frames, ugly but flashy paintings, and imposing beds intended for much larger rooms.

Half an hour later the young assistant prosecutor, Cangiani, arrived. Standing in front of the corpse, he visibly gagged several times, then called Bordelli aside.

‘I’ve already seen what there is to see. Once the forensic team and the pathologist are done, you can go ahead and take the body away,’ he said, and then rushed out of the apartment.

Bordelli wanted to inspect the flat in his own good time, and alone, after everyone else had left. Possibly even the next day.

He was in no hurry. Phoning the station, he asked for Rinaldi.

‘I want you to come here with six or seven men and interrogate everyone in the building, and all the tenants in the buildings on Piazza del Carmine,’ he said.

‘Very well, Inspector.’

‘And try to find out if Badalamenti had a cleaning lady. I want a detailed report of everything.’

‘That’s a lot of work, sir, but I think we can manage,’ said Rinaldi.

Dr Diotivede, the police pathologist, arrived shortly thereafter, black leather bag in hand, wearing his seventy-two years like an ornament. He still had the face of a child not yet fully formed, and not even the bifocal lenses of his spectacles managed to make him look old. As he came in, he greeted everyone with an icy smile.

‘Who’s the victim?’ he asked, looking at Bordelli.

‘His name was Badalamenti. A loan shark …’

‘Ah, I see.’

Diotivede loved his work. Whenever a dead body turned up, he wanted to be informed at once, because he always insisted on seeing the victim at the scene of the crime.

As the others covered their noses with handkerchiefs or ran off to vomit, the doctor knelt down beside the corpse without so much as a grimace, and brought his face, and therefore his nose, close to the wound, which was already ringed with maggots, squinting with the same expression as a collector examining the fine toothing around the edges of an antique stamp. The only thing that flustered him was a murdered child, and he’d had to look at several of them the previous spring, when a madman strangled four little girls …

Cold gusts blew in from the open windows, and in the end they decided unanimously to close them all except for the one in the study, where the body lay.

Diotivede spent a whole minute studying the scissors planted in Badalamenti’s neck. Then he pulled his little black notebook out of his pocket and started making his first notes. Every so often he would stop, looking thoughtful, and run a hand through his snow-white hair. He bent down again. He touched the dead man’s face with a finger, prodded his shoulder, then resumed writing. Nobody dared disturb him. When he had finished he stood back up and put the notebook away, looking satisfied.

‘What can you tell me?’ Bordelli asked, going up to him.

‘He must have died at least five days ago, maybe six. I’ll try to be more precise after the post-mortem, but don’t bother asking me the exact time of day … Too much time has passed.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I didn’t see any signs of a struggle. No bruises or scratches, no torn clothing.’

‘Caught by surprise from behind?’

‘Most likely. If the adrenalin tests confirm it, I’d say he had no idea, until the very last second, that he was about to be stabbed in the neck.’

‘What would you prefer, Doctor? Would you rather know or not know you were about to die?’

‘I think being stabbed with scissors like that must be a pretty nasty way to die,’ the doctor said with a chilly smile.

Bordelli grimaced, unable to stand the stench any longer.

‘Can we take the body away?’ he asked as two cowled stretcherbearers from the Misericordia came in.

‘I’m all done,’ said Diotivede, raising his hands.

‘When are you going to work on him?’

‘Are you in such a hurry?’

‘Less than usual.’

‘I have to finish up an elderly lady, then I’ll do this one for you,’ said the doctor, looking down at the corpse at his feet.

Bordelli gestured to the two men in black frocks.

‘You can go ahead,’ he said.

The two cowled figures approached and without a word lifted Badalamenti on to a stretcher and carried him away.

The lads from forensics were also done. De Marchi whispered to the inspector that they’d combed the place very carefully and taken a few specimens. But they hadn’t found much, he said, shaking his head. At any rate, he would send over the results as soon as possible.