Death in Springtime Read online

  'I want to know about any girls reported missing since yesterday. Message to all stations.'

  'In Tuscany?'

  'Yes . . . No, throughout the country. Relay it to General Command.' As soon as he put the phone down it rang:

  'Sentry room here, sir. Substitute Prosecutor asking for you.'

  It was one o'clock precisely.

  'Tell him I'll be down immediately.'

  One o'clock precisely. 'A real northerner, then,' muttered the Captain as he switched off his desk lamp. 'But they overdo it.'

  'Oh! Let's not overdo it!' Fusarri opened an accusing hand at the restaurant owner who was wheeling up a trolley laden with fifteen different hors d'oeuvres. 'You know I can't touch this stuff with the liver I've got—and I barely eat at lunchtime.'

  'Then it's time you changed restaurants,' retorted the Florentine owner, evidently considering this an unlikely eventuality.

  'Give me a bit of that stuff there.' The cigar waved in the general direction of half a dozen kinds of salami and some boletus mushrooms. 'Serve the Captain—what's this stuff you've given me? What is it?'

  'Crostini. Florentine pate. Homemade.'

  'No, no, no. Give it to the Captain, he's Florentine. I can't eat it.' He flicked open the attache case on the chair beside him. The left side contained neatly arranged papers, the right contained stacks and rows of pipes, tobacco tins, cigarettes and cigars and a large selection of tablets and capsules. He chose four different coloured capsules and tucked them discreetly beneath his plate. 'Liver,' he explained. 'It's these things that do it.' He looked accusingly at the cigar between his slim fingers, stubbed it out quickly and attacked the salami which, in the Captain's opinion, couldn't be the ideal food for a bad liver, but the expected complaint didn't come. The accusations seemed to be fairly random. The Captain got on with his crostini which were excellent. This wasn't a restaurant he could afford to eat in and he was enjoying himself.

  'Well then.' Fusarri whipped his plate to one side, swallowed a red capsule and selected a fresh packet of cigarettes from his case. 'Tell me about kidnapping.'

  'You've never had a case before?'

  'Can you imagine?' He snapped his lighter, 'I've only been down here six months. Before that, five years in the Alto Adige practising my German. Every problem but. Tuscan speciality, it seems, like that stuff you're eating. I apologize; I tend to eat too fast—you can't imagine what it does to my liver.'

  'More of a Sardinian speciality, to be precise. In this area, at least.'

  'Why Tuscany?'

  'Two reasons: first, because they moved here, the Sardinians, to find pasture when the land they had grazed for centuries was taken from them for development—the Costa Smeralda, etcetera. They were forced into a system of apartheid, driven off the good grazing land up into the mountains. It happened just at the time when the Tuscan peasants were abandoning their land to go and work in the factories. Those Sardinians who had any money at all were able to buy up land for practically nothing and get rich pasture for their sheep. They do very nicely.'

  'So what's the problem?'

  'The ones who came later and are still arriving all the time. They're fairly poor—in any case, land here costs a fortune now. The easy days are long gone. These shepherds live wild, most of them on the same mountain just outside Florence, in abandoned houses which often have no light or running water. Their families, if they come over too, live down below on the edge of the city in a sort of ghetto. It's usually a case of one shepherd and his meagre flock having to support a wife, God knows how many children, plus brothers and sisters and aged relatives. Don't get me wrong—sheep are profitable, very profitable, but if it's cheeses you rear them for then one man can only deal with a few. The trouble is their sons don't want to know; they're not prepared to live that sort of life but they can't find other work. The result is that they hang around the city and most family incomes are supplemented by crime of one sort or another. The other result is a lot of prejudice against them in the city. People only see the good-for-nothing sons who hang around bars getting into fights and pushing drugs; they don't see the real shepherd, the man who spends almost all of his life alone, spends his days making the cheeses they take for granted and his nights sleeping sometimes only for a couple of hours because it's lambing time.'

  'You like them?' There was no hint of irony in the Substitute's voice.

  'Yes. And I respect them. They're a proud race. Disinherited.'

  'What's the other reason for Tuscany being rife with kidnappings? You said there were two.'

  'Our Sardinian colleagues. They know their job, they know their people and they know their territory. There isn't a spot left on the island of Sardinia where they can hide a victim, despite the difficult and practically inaccessible terrain. Five years ago there were over two hundred kidnappings there—the pickings were rich along the Costa Smeralda for those who were sticking it out on the hills above—but last year there were only three, and one of those a complete failure. So the big organizers have moved here. Tuscany's full of rich residents, Italian and foreign, and there's no shortage of recruits among the poorer shepherds and their families.'

  'You discount any other suspects?'

  'No. I just look for the obvious first.'

  'Mm. Oh! Cesare!'

  'I'll be right with you!'

  'I suppose we'd better eat something.'

  They ate pasta, the Substitute continuing to ask rapid questions while winding rapid forkfuls, his eyes always fixed on the Captain's.

  'What happens next?'

  'We're looking for the base-man, the person who suggested the victim. It has to be somebody who knows, is connected with or in a position to observe the victim and the family.'

  'And what do we know about the family?'

  'Nothing as yet, as I'm sure you've realized. We need the information the injured girl can give us when she comes round. The surname, and the message she was to telephone—it's very abnormal indeed for any personal message from the victim to be sent so soon. There's usually just a ransom demand and then a longish gap to put the parents in a panic.'

  'And we don't seem to have any parents.'

  'Exactly. What's really worrying me is that we may be dealing with amateurs.'

  'Worries you? Surely that would make your job easier?'

  'If you mean we'll catch them, yes it will, but it will also, almost certainly, mean the girl's death. Amateurs are incompetent, and then they panic. Professionals are well organized, never seen by their victims, and they don't kill. It's bad for business. If people weren't sure of getting the victim for their money they wouldn't be so willing to pay up. With amateurs there's no point in paying, they're likely to kill the victim off anyway, out of fear. I'd rather deal with professionals.'

  'But how can you get panic-stricken parents to understand the difference and cooperate with you?'

  'It's my job,' said the Captain quietly.

  The Substitute looked at him closely. There was no doubt that the Captain radiated calm and confident seriousness. The parents would cooperate all right, so long as nobody else interfered. The Substitute made up his mind that nobody would be allowed to interfere.

  'Do you think the family might be here on holiday?'

  'It's possible. Especially if they have a villa and come every year. If it's a professional job they will have been observed over a long period and their habits and financial status will be known.'

  'Ah . . .!' This exclamation was directed not at the Captain but at the aromatic roast loin of pork that was steaming towards them, propelled by Cesare.

  'Serve the Captain first—and don't give me any, you know it's bad for me, not more than a taste, one slice— that's enough! How anyone can eat all this stuff at lunchtime I'll never know!'

  When Captain Maestrangelo got back to his office he realized he had eaten far too much too quickly in an effort to keep up with the Substitute. The latter had vanished as punctually as he had appeared. 'Due in court at two-t
hirty— have to run—Cesare! call me a taxi! I'll give you a lift back. You will telephone me if there's any news? Here . . . between eight and eight-thirty at this number.'

  Watching the traffic and the rain swallow up the departing taxi, the Captain wondered how the man stayed so thin if he ate that way every day. Must take a lot of exercise, was his conclusion, and he turned his mind to more important matters. On his desk there was a message from the Sub-lieutenant at the hospital. The girl had not regained consciousness and she had a very high fever. He would stay on through the night although the local doctor had said it was probably useless.

  By three-thirty it was raining so pitilessly that the sky had turned black and all the street lights were on. The helicopter pilots reported in by radio. They were coming in. They could see absolutely nothing and were wasting time and fuel. The dog-handlers struggled on for another hour but then they, too, gave up. The Alsatians, their thick pelts soaked and steaming, had sniffed with some certainty around a little icon of the Virgin which stood by the roadside, sheltered from the rain by a stone arch, but after that they had rambled unhappily this way and that and returned whining to their handlers, who were knee-deep in mud, soaked to the skin and cursing roundly.

  The Captain waited, dealing patiently with the routine paperwork with which he was constantly burdened, and diplomatically with an influential gentleman who wanted an impossible favour to do with the son's military service.

  The patrols searching the first group of farms around the village of Pontino were the only ones to bring the Captain anything when they returned, muddy and exhausted, after their double shift. They tipped on to his desk their haul of three shotguns and a pistol for which the respective owners had no licences, and one dose of heroin. They also reported other stolen goods which they found but left to be collected later: a stolen Fiat 500, eight sheep and a donkey.

  The Captain telephoned the American Consulate.

  CHAPTER 4

  'A case for galoshes,' remarked the Substitute, tossing a cigar end out of the jeep and looking around at the steam rising slowly from the wet earth. The sky above them was blue, the air sweet and the spring sunshine warm.

  The Brigadier and the Captain sank their cavalry boots deep into the clay soil and began looking about. The Substitute dodged from stone to stone until he gained the hardened ground in front of the farmhouse where stone steps led sideways up to the front door. He ran up the steps and knocked but no one answered.

  Hens and geese were picking around in two small haystacks and fleets of tiny yellow chickens were half hidden beneath some planking and under the foundations of some rickety sheds. The boggy sheepfold was empty. Strands of wool fringed all its fencing. On the glistening horizon two black dots appeared, separated, and became helicopters roaring low overhead and scattering the distracted fowl. The Substitute knocked again smartly, but the Brigadier appeared in the doorway of the stable and called up: 'There'll be nobody in the house at this hour!'

  'Well then?' What on earth were they here for?

  The Brigadier set down a fat puppy that he had been holding and squelched towards the yard, driving a dozen pullets before him.

  'I'd hoped he'd still be grazing that pasture there.' He waved an arm at an empty green field with mist rising from the cropped grass. 'He was last year about now but Easter's late, I hadn't thought on, and he'll not move down until Palm Sunday like as not, and if he's still over on the mountain he'll be up Three Valleys Pass and that's an hour and a half of a walk for him, going as the crow flies, but longer for us in the jeep because there's no direct road—and then to get at him we'd have to take a cart track that'll be more like a river bed after yesterday's rain. The thing is, he'll likely not move till Palm Sunday, I should have thought on—we'll take the old road over to Demontis's farm and come back here at six this evening when Piladu will be milking. His wife'11 be back then which is just as well—she cleans for the factor's wife over at "II Cantuccio" in the mornings. We'll get on over to see Demontis. I should have thought on about Easter being late.'

  'Ah.' The Substitute accepted this jumble of incomprehensible information equitably. 'Every blade of grass,' the man had said, and he evidently meant it. They climbed back into the jeep and went on along the rutted lane, lurching and splashing through deep puddles, the Brigadier worrying audibly all the way because 'things weren't as they should be.' This remark did not, as his passengers might have thought, refer either to the condition of the road or to his not having thought on about Easter, but to the problem of where the other two were going to eat lunch. He hoped fervently that they would go back to Florence and had dropped several hints in the hope of getting this information out of them, but the Captain was always concentrating on the job in hand as if nothing else mattered and the magistrate only smiled and nodded distractedly, his mind apparently elsewhere.

  Outside the Demontis farm a little dog shot out of a barrel and came to be petted by the Brigadier. A short round woman in a big flowered apron, her long grey-black pigtail wound into a thick bun, came out of her cheese room and sent the Captain and the Brigadier along the edge of a muddy, sprouting cornfield to a distant pasture, leaving the Substitute to keep his shoes dry near the farmhouse. They couldn't see the shepherd until they crossed the last rise but they could hear the sheepbells on the clear air. The shepherd was on his feet, jacket slung over his shoulder, gazing skywards, his cap pulled low to shade his eyes. He was watching the circling helicopters.

  'What are they looking for?' he asked them without any preliminary greeting.

  'We thought you might tell us.'

  He told them nothing. The three men stood together for some time while the long-faced sheep ambled around them, sometimes coming close to examine them but scuttering away at the slightest of their movements, sending a ripple of bells through the whole flock.

  The Captain had no illusions about being able to guess what Demontis knew or didn't know. The old shepherd's face was lined and brown. His deep-set eyes roved slowly over his flock, over them, over his flock again, with no change in his expression. He might have been watching over all of them for a century. There was no infecting him with their urgency. The newpaper sticking out of his jacket pocket carried last Sunday's date.

  'If you hear anything . . .'

  If he heard anything he would not dream of doing anything about it but would go on gazing indifferently over the heads of his sheep. They left him looking up at the sky again. He didn't turn his head to look after them and he was so still that even at a short distance they could no longer distinguish him from his surroundings.

  When they got back to the farmyard the Substitute had vanished. They could hear his rapid speech and then the fat shepherdess's delighted scream of laughter. They appeared in the doorway of the house, the woman red in the face and still chuckling. The Substitute said goodbye to her and ran lightly to the jeep carrying a polythene bag.

  'Ricotta,' he explained, opening the bag for them to inspect the fluffy white mound with the whey still running out of the cheese paper.

  'The lady informs me,' said the Substitute as they drove away and the Captain reported the husband's silence, 'that his brother is a bad lot, the bane of her life, that she would never have married Salvatore—who, I should tell you, is a saint, a veritable saint, when considered on his own—if she had known she'd be stuck with the terrible Antonio as well. Among his worst crimes are not being married, not turning up at milking times and stealing food.'

  'I know,' the Brigadier said, 'Especially as he bets. He's not above stealing a few of her mature cheeses and selling them. They're worth quite a bit of money.'

  'Yes . . . but recently he's been stealing other things from the house, too . . .'

  'He has?' The Captain looked up.

  'Yes. I thought you might be interested.'

  'I am. We'd better stay away from here for the moment.'

  'You think so?'

  'If he turns out to be a feeder for the kidnappers,' explained the Cap
tain, 'he'd be too easy to replace if we showed any interest in him.'

  'And if we leave him alone he'll lead us somewhere.'

  'Not far, I'm afraid. Feeders are small fry, though they're well paid if the ransom's high. There will be at least two of them, but even if they know each other they won't know anybody else except the one man who took them on and will eventually pay them. Meantime they're given money to buy food.'

  'But the person they pass the food to . . .'

  'Will be one of those guarding the victim, but they may never meet. The food is often left in a given place and collected later. The only man who knows everyone concerned is the base-man.'

  'In that case we surely are talking about professionals, despite your doubts earlier.'

  'I still have doubts.' The Captain frowned. 'I still don't like that letter and I don't like the timing. It's only four months since I got one of the big boys from the Sardinian gang that operates here.'

  'The Donati kidnapping. Yes, I remember. He was shot getting away with the ransom.'

  'And two others got away by the skin of their teeth. I'd be surprised to hear they were still in the country, and if they are they should be lying low.'

  The jeep was bouncing them about mercilessly as the Brigadier tried to get back to the village in time for the Captain and the Substitute to go back to Florence and eat.

  'But if they're given money for the food . . .' the Substitute was trying vainly to put a bouncing lighter to his cigar.

  'As his sister-in-law said, he's a bad lot. He's also stupid and thinks he's clever. He'll have been gambling the money away and then stealing the food from her.'

  'Not just food.' He finally managed to light up as they reached the main road, and he blew a sidelong stream of blue smoke behind the Brigadier's head. 'There were other items . . . of a very personal nature that he couldn't be selling, if you see what I mean.'