Antonio Manzini - A Cold Death

Patrizio’s pale legs were trembling slightly. He clutched at his thighs with both hands. He’d loosened the Velcro wrist fastenings of his bike gloves, but he still wore them.

“Signor Baudo, how was your wife this morning?”

“I didn’t see her. On Fridays I only work afternoons, so I get up at six and go out for a nice long ride. Do you ever ride a bike, Dottore?”

“No. Not me. I played soccer.”

“When I was twenty I was on a team. I wanted to become a professional cyclist. But that world is just too hard, too dirty. You might just wind up being second banana, in the middle of the pack during the final sprints, nothing more than that. Maybe I wasn’t really all that good. Every now and then I go out for amateur races.”

Italo stopped at the light. Patrizio sniffed, but with his face turned to look out at the street, so Rocco couldn’t tell if he was crying or just coming down with a cold.

“You’re the last person to have seen Esther. So last night …”

“Right, last night. The usual. She went to bed around ten, maybe ten thirty. I stayed up to watch a little television. There was a movie about some guy who brought salmon to Yemen. So that people could fish for them. Have you seen it?” Rocco said nothing. He knew that Patrizio was just giving voice to a jumble of disconnected thoughts. He was concealing behind words the pain and grief that hadn’t yet clearly surfaced in his heart, and in his head. “It wasn’t bad. The movie, I mean. What I can’t understand is why a person would sit in front of the television set channel surfing without actually watching anything. Do you do that?”

Patrizio sniffed again. But this time his shoulders were trembling. And this time Rocco understood that he was crying.

When they got to Via Brocherel, the van of the forensic squad was already parked outside. Two officers were unloading equipment. A third officer, fair-haired and short, was putting on his white jumpsuit. Italo had double-parked the car and the deputy police chief was walking toward the street entrance, followed by Patrizio Baudo. The press wasn’t there yet, which struck Rocco as odd. But evidently the meeting of the regional assembly to decide on an amateur bicycle race was considered hot news. Just one less pain in the ass, thought Rocco.

The young fair-haired officer went over to Rocco. “Dottore! Special Agent Carini, forensic squad …”

“Welcome to the crime scene. Is your boss with you?”

“No, Dottor Farinelli will join us later. He’s working on a murder down in Turin.”

This was the first time that Rocco had ever heard the expression “down in Turin.” As far as he was concerned Turin had always been “up.” I’m going up to Turin. But “down to Turin”—that’s the way they said it in Aosta. Sort of like when you’re south of the equator, where the water goes down the drain spinning counterclockwise.

“We need to enter the apartment, Carini. This is the victim’s husband.”

The special agent looked at Patrizio Baudo, still dressed in his biking gear. “I should actually talk to my boss … let me call him right now and—”

“You don’t need to talk to anyone. Give us some shoe protectors and latex gloves and stop busting my chops.”

The special agent nodded. “Certainly. Wait here, I’ll bring you everything you need.” He walked over to the van, where his colleague was all ready with briefcase and biohazard suit.

Patrizio looked at the building as if this were the first time in his life he’d seen it. “Is … is my wife still upstairs?”

“I don’t think so, Signor Baudo.” Rocco turned to a young officer standing guard outside the ground floor entrance. “Has the morgue truck been by already?”

The young man nodded.

“Who’s up in the apartment?”

“Scipioni, I think.”

Rocco looked at Patrizio. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“Certainly. It’s my home.”

Patrizio couldn’t seem to make up his mind to enter the apartment. He just stood there, with the paper cap on his head, wearing latex gloves and plastic overshoes, looking at the front door from the landing while the policemen readied their gear. Officer Scipioni, who was standing sentinel outside the apartment, was engaged in a conversation with a very elderly woman, pale as a sheet with blue hair that matched her dressing gown. There were punks on the King’s Road in the late seventies who wouldn’t have dared to try out her look, Rocco mused as he considered her hair. The woman was nodding her head, holding both hands to her face.

“Shall we go in?” asked Rocco.

Patrizio opened the door and the hinges creaked.

“There’s been a break-in!” exclaimed Officer Carini as he studied the lock.

“No. That was me, the first time I went in,” Rocco replied. Next came the master of the house.

Baudo walked slowly, unspeaking, his eyes focused and sad. He shot a glance at the French door that led onto a small balcony. Someone had put his bicycle out there. The first thing he did was bring the bike in and lean it against the credenza in the living room. Rocco’s alert eyes caught every detail: the man seemed to be caressing a daughter, not a piece of athletic equipment. “It’s a Colnago … more than six thousand euros,” he said, as if that was justification enough. “Where … where did you find her?” Rocco pointed to the den. Patrizio silently moved toward the room, softly as a ghost. He opened the door. The cable dangled from the lamp hook. He stood in the doorway, gazing silently. It seemed as if he was sniffing the air. Then he heaved a deep sigh and went back to the bedroom. “We only have one thing of real value in the apartment,” he said as he walked by the deputy police chief.

As soon as he saw the room, he jerked in alarm. “They’ve been in here too …” He went to pull open the drawer of a small side table under the window. Then his eye lit on the blue velvet box that Rocco had set on the tabletop. He looked inside, with a bitter smile. “So they found it.”

“What was in it?”

“It’s where we kept our gold.”

“Your gold?”

“Yes. Nothing much. A watch, a few bracelets, my cuff links, and a brooch that my mother had given Esther. A pretty pin, with a peacock. With green and blue stones. It belonged to my grandmother, just think.” He sat down on the bed. Tears poured from his eyes like an open faucet. “Is that all my wife’s life was worth?”

“You did all right, my wife’s wasn’t even worth a euro. Just the price of a nine-millimeter round,” Rocco felt like saying to him, but he said nothing.

“Esther always was unlucky,” Patrizio said, looking at the floor and stroking the bed as if his wife were lying on it, fast asleep. “She always had bellyaches. You know what I used to call her? Estherichia coli ,” and he started chuckling under his breath. “ Estherichia coli instead of Escherichia coli … but all she needed was a massage and she’d get over it. It was a nervous disorder, if you ask me.” He dried his tears. Then he looked up at Rocco. “I’m a believer, Commissario, but I swear to you that right now I just couldn’t say. Where was God when someone was killing my wife? Can you tell me where God was?”

There was probably no question that Rocco Schiavone was less suited to answer.

“Please, take me to my mother’s place. I just can’t take this anymore … I can’t take it anymore.”

The deputy police chief had been sitting in the district attorney’s waiting room for more than half an hour, looking at the wood grain on Judge Baldi’s door. Funny how he managed to see different shapes in it every time.

On that chilly March day, what popped out of the grain was a dolphin and a rose, though the rose actually looked more like an artichoke than a rose. But if he looked at it the other way around, it became an elephant with just one ear. The door swung open and the imaginary wood-grain fresco disappeared, replaced by Judge Baldi’s face. “Well hello there, Schiavone! Have you been waiting long?”