Valerio Varesi - River of Shadows

“You were supposed to call me, remember?”

“That opening was not quite tuneful. You came in at least three notes too high.”

“One of these days you’re going to be in big trouble! You haven’t forgotten about this evening?”

“Certainly not. It’s all fixed, isn’t it?”

“Has no-one ever told you that appointments should be confirmed?”

“I’m sure that’s the way it is with lawyers, but in the police everything is always subject to…” He got no further before the connection was abruptly terminated.

He hated scenes, but he was only telling the truth. He never could plan his days, and when he tried he invariably found his plans come crashing down around him. Who would have guessed that the Tonna case, for instance, would turn into a murder inquiry? He thought of the call he had taken that morning: a suicide at the hospital, could they send along a police officer, routine investigation. And now…

He had just decided that it would be a waste of time to call Angela back when she was in a rage — she would switch off all the telephones — when he bumped into Juvara at the door.

“Two dyed-in-the-wool Fascists, real fanatics,” his assistant said with no preamble.

The commissario picked up the reference, but he made no comment. He felt very much alone in the face of a mystery which instinctively attracted him but which at the same time appeared to carry the threat and promise of deeper trouble. “Did you come up with anything else?”

“They lived completely isolated lives, cocooned away from everybody else.”

“I knew that already.”

“I did an internet search to see if in those years…”

The commissario felt a surge of irritation. He seriously disliked Juvara’s weakness for technology, even if he perfectly knew that the younger generation of policeman had to spend more time confronting a computer screen than confronting criminals.

“Do you really think you’re going to get anything worthwhile out of that gadget?”

Juvara watched silently while Soneri once again dialled Alemanni’s number, once again to no avail. He had at all costs to get authorization to extend his inquiries to the banks of the Po. When he looked up, the ispettore had gone. Their personalities fitted impeccably. Juvara knew at once when it was time to leave Soneri alone.

He was thinking of the Po, of the flooding, of Tonna the bargeman who had left his barge in the care of an unskilled accomplice so as to slip off into the city to murder his brother for who knows what motive. Could it have gone that way? Or had the two men both been murdered a short time apart by a single assassin? Or then again, was it pure chance, mere coincidence? He ran over a catalogue of possibilities in his mind, that catalogue which every time confronted him with the anxiety of choice and changed the routine of his days. He had an instant illustration of this very point when Angela appeared menacingly before him.

“Get your things together, commissario, and follow me.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“You should be so lucky… It’s much worse.”

In the courtyard, Angela put up her umbrella and Soneri took her by the elbow to keep himself dry. She made a show of pushing him away. “What an uncommon display of affection! That it should take a downpour to persuade you to get so close to me.”

Soneri made to turn back, but Angela took hold of the hem of his duffel coat. He tried to tug himself free under the startled gaze of a returning patrol, but gave up. Any such skirmishing, more playful than angry, would have made him look ridiculous.

“I’m not letting go, don’t imagine that I will…”

Soneri grinned in his turn. “A pity, I had so deluded myself.”

She took his arm, elbowing him in the ribs as she did so. “You’re going to see stars, even in this weather.”

When they reached the Milord, Angela glowered at Alceste, as she always did. He returned the look when he received her usual order for grilled vegetables and a bottle of mineral water.

Soneri, however, had noticed a pencilled-in addition to the menu. “Fried polenta with wild boar sauce,” he said, as he heard his mobile ring.

It was Alemanni, in his customary strained tones. “I have been tied up all afternoon in meetings about rivers. I understand you’ve been looking for me.”

“I have, and to say that I no longer think we are dealing with a case of suicide. I think our inquiries will have to be extended.”

“Could you spell that out a bit more clearly?” Alemanni said, after a lengthy pause.

“In the first place — and my colleagues in the forensic unit agree — we have identified some factors which lead us to believe that there were two people involved and that there was some kind of struggle before the victim fell from the window. Furthermore, there is a second Tonna who has disappeared while his barge went zig-zagging down the Po, the brother of the dead man.”

This second fact seemed to make a deeper impression on the magistrate than the first. “So you are requesting that we join up the investigation into the barge with the inquiry relating to the death at the hospital?”

“You know better than me that it is highly probable there’s a connection.”

There followed a long pause covered by noises which resembled those produced by a slack set of dentures.

“Very well,” Alemanni said at last. “You understand that if you are wrong about these conjectures, we will have to abandon the investigation, and I will retire leaving behind me the memory of this failure? However, permit me to await the results of the post-mortem which will be made known to us tomorrow morning before proceeding to issue the authorization now requested.”

That final statement troubled the commissario. Twenty years’ experience had made him bitterly aware of the difficulties of dealing with an elderly magistrate. He hung up in a foul mood, and out of pique switched off his mobile altogether.

“Do I have to remind you, commissario, that you ought to be reachable at all times?” was Angela’s ironic observation.

He threw her a hostile look. “You always know where to find me, and you always come in person.”

“Would you prefer a telephone call from a magistrate?” she teased him.

“When you set your mind to it, you can be a lot worse than any magistrate,” he said, moving his legs to one side in case she aimed a kick at his shins under the table.

In fact nothing happened, and she looked at him contentedly. “Don’t get upset. Zealots never get along with the complacent.” But soon she turned rancorous once more as she thought back to that near kidnap in his office. “It’s a dismal state of affairs that the only thing that really gets your attention is your work.”

His agitation had him awake well before the alarm clock did. He sat up in bed to the sound of the relentless rain on the roof. It was still dark and the weight of the clouds seemed to be pressing down on the air below. The volume of water now flowing along the gutters had washed all colour from the city, and left it as pale as a body recovering from a haemorrhage. He groped about for the coffee pot without switching on the light. The blue flame of the gas hypnotized him, setting his thoughts racing once again. The prospect of visiting the barge held greater appeal for him than did the post-mortem scheduled for that morning. Perhaps it was all that rain.

He took delight in the semi-darkness which preceded the first play of the ash-coloured, morning light on the roof tops. He left the house and started out towards the mortuary, even if he was much too early. The rain continued without relief. The clouds hanging low over the city seemed to fray at the edges in a way which somehow reminded him of the woolly interiors of mattresses pulled apart by the narcotics squad during a house search. The only dry spot was the glow of his cigar. Even his bones, as he walked in the early morning light, had grown soft, like the handles of shovels left out in the rain.