A Cold Death. Antonio Manzini

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?”

      Rocco stood up and shook hands.

      “Come in, have a seat.”

      Standing next to the bookshelf, a young man in jacket and tie was gathering a series of enormous file folders full of documents. “Let me introduce you to Judge Messina. Aldo, this is Deputy Police Chief Schiavone, who’s been working with us for just a few months but has already solved one case brilliantly. Am I right?”

      Judge Messina was obliged to set down his armful of folders so he could shake hands with Rocco. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said, with unmistakable emphasis.

      “And you still shake my hand?”

      Messina smiled. “I wouldn’t refuse to shake anyone’s hand. If you’ll excuse me.” He gathered up his folders again and left the room. The first thing that Rocco Schiavone noticed was that the photograph of the judge’s wife was now gone from the desktop. The last time he’d seen it, the picture had been lying facedown. Now he felt certain it was tucked away in one of the desk drawers. That’s always a bad sign. The magistrate’s marriage was on its way out. The eve of the final breakup. Baldi swept his blond bangs out of his eyes with a quick flick of the hand and sat down at his desk. “Now then, what news do you have for me about what happened on Via Brocherel?”

      “It was a murder. I’m sure of it. Esther Baudo—that’s the victim’s name—was beaten and then strangled. The hanging seems to me to have been staged. Plus, the room where we found the corpse was dark, with the shutters down. But when I walked in and I turned on the light, there was a short circuit. Which means that the woman hanged herself in the dark …”

      “Or else, after she hanged herself, someone lowered the blinds. Right?”

      “Exactly.”

      “So what’s your theory?”

      “I don’t have one, Dottore. I’m still just sniffing around.”

      Baldi stretched both arms in the air. “And do you like what you smell?”

      “Smells like shit, as usual.”

      “The husband?”

      “He’s a sales representative, works in athletic equipment. Clean record, no run-ins with the law, a traffic ticket or two. But something was stolen.”

      The judge nodded, thoughtfully. “Burglars caught in the act who then decided to stage the whole thing?”

      Rocco shrugged. “Why not? Maybe they did it just to throw us off the trail. Still, there’s something about it I don’t like.”

      “Do tell.”

      “Actually, two things. The first thing, you see, is that we have a kitchen that was turned literally upside down, like there’d been a tornado. A real authentic mess. But the bedroom, where the valuables were hidden—in a small velvet box containing the family gold—was searched scientifically. They might have opened a couple of drawers, at the very most.”

      “As if they knew where to look. So what about the mess in the kitchen?”

      “Exactly. It doesn’t add up. Plus, I think the burglars had been in that apartment before.”

      “Why do you say that?”

      “There was no sign of breaking and entering on the door or on the windows. If they got in, either it was because Signora Baudo knew them or else because—”

      “Because they had the keys,” concluded Judge Baldi, getting to his feet. He was hyperactive: he couldn’t sit listening for more than five minutes at a time. He walked over to the window and stood drumming his fingers on the glass. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to work solo, Schiavone. I’ve got some problems on my hands.” Immediately an image flashed into Rocco’s mind: the wife’s picture dumped into a drawer, if not actually tossed in the trash. Baldi stopped drumming and started whistling