A Cold Death. Antonio Manzini

the window and walked over to the woman’s body. Her bony, skinny feet reminded him of the feet of a Christ on the cross. Pale, faintly greenish. All that was missing were the nail holes; otherwise those feet could have come straight out of a painting by Grünewald. The knees were scraped, like the knees of a little girl coming home from her first bicycle ride. She wore a nightgown. Sea green. One of the shoulder straps had torn free. The stitching had come unraveled under the armpit and a small gap revealed a patch of flesh and the rib cage beneath. Rocco avoided looking her in the face. He turned on his heel and left the room. As he went past Officer Pierron, he grabbed the packet of Chesterfields out of his pocket and yanked out a smoke, just as Italo finally managed to get the hospital on the phone. “This is Officer Pierron … put me through to Fumagalli. It’s urgent.”

      “Come smoke a cigarette, Italo; otherwise the sight will get etched into your retinas and you won’t be able to see anything else for the next two weeks.”

      Italo followed Rocco like a robot, the cell phone in his left hand, his pistol in his right. “And holster your piece,” Rocco added. “Who the fuck are you planning to shoot, anyway?”

      Esther Baudo and her husband were the subject of every framed photograph arranged on the top of an upright piano. There was a wedding picture, pictures on a beach, pictures under a palm tree, and even a picture in front of the Colosseum. In a single glance Rocco saw it had been taken from the corner of Via Capo d’Africa, where there was a seafood restaurant that he and Marina inevitably chose when they had something to celebrate. The last time—and it had been more than five years ago—was when they’d completed the purchase of the penthouse in Monteverde Vecchio. Esther Baudo was smiling in every picture. But only with her mouth. Never with her eyes. Her eyes were always lackluster, dead, dark, and deep, never sparkling with laughter. Not even on the day of her wedding.

      Her husband was just the opposite. He always smiled into the lens. Happily. The hair had vanished from the top of his cranium and now adorned only the sides of his head. White, straight teeth gleamed in his small, rosebud mouth. He had small jug ears.

      Rocco left the living room and went to look at the kitchen. Right at the threshold of the kitchen door was a shattered cell phone. He picked it up. The screen was chipped, the battery was missing, and who could even say where the SIM chip had wound up. Then he looked around the rest of the room. Italo was right. The place really was a mess. It looked like a herd of buffalo had trampled through. The ground was a crazy hodgepodge of boxes, tin cans, packages of pasta, silverware, and a bread knife. He placed the shattered cell phone on the marble countertop, next to a plastic scale.

      He turned to look toward the room at the end of the hall: the den. And slowly, inexorably pulled toward it, as if by a magnet, he walked back to it. The woman still hung there. Rocco was tempted to lower her to the ground. To see her dangling there like a butchered animal was more than he could take. He bit his lip and stepped closer. The first thing that caught his eye was the swollen face. It was puffy, with a split lip from which the blood had flowed. One eye was open, staring; the other was shut and swollen to the size of a plum. The cable around her neck was a metal clothesline. The woman had run it over the hook that held up the ceiling lamp and then anchored it to the floor, tying it to the foot of an armoire. Like a ten-foot guywire, to make sure it would support the weight. Actually, though, it hadn’t—her weight had torn loose the electric wiring and caused a short circuit. There was a stool lying on the floor. A three-legged stool, like a piano stool. When it overturned, the cushion had torn loose. Maybe Esther kicked it in the last instant of her life, when she made up her mind that her time on this planet Earth had come to its logical conclusion. The skin on her neck was pale, but not around her throat. There a purple band ran, a little less than an inch across. Purple like the stain on the hardwood floor.

      “It’s the third damned suicide this month,” said the medical examiner from behind him, snorting in annoyance. Rocco didn’t even bother turning around, and both men, faithful to the routine they’d developed over the months, exchanged no greeting.

      “Who found her? You?”

      Schiavone nodded. Alberto stepped closer and stood, surveying the body. They looked like a pair of tourists visiting MoMA, admiring an art installation.

      “A woman, about thirty-five, probable cause of death strangulation,” said the doctor. Rocco nodded: “And they gave you a medical degree for that?”

      “I’m just kidding.”

      “How can you kid about this?”

      “With the work I do, if you can’t kid around, you’re done for,” and Alberto tilted his head toward the corpse.

      Rocco asked, “Are you going to take the corpse down?”

      “I’d say so … I’ll wait for a couple of your people and then we’ll take her down.”

      “Who was coming upstairs?”

      “The young woman and a fat guy.”

      Which meant Officer Deruta and Inspector Caterina Rispoli.

      Rocco left the room and went to meet the two of them.

      Deruta was already in the front hall, sweaty and panting. Caterina Rispoli, on the other hand, was still out on the landing. She was talking to Italo Pierron and twisting her police-issued gloves.

      “Did you come up the stairs, Deruta?”

      “No, I took the elevator.”

      “Then why are you out of breath?”

      Deruta ignored the question. “Dottore, I was just thinking—”

      “And that right there is a wonderful piece of news, Deruta.”

      “I was thinking … don’t you feel the sight of all this is a little too harsh?”

      “For who?”

      “For Inspector Rispoli?”

      “The sight of what, Deruta? The sight of you at work?”

      Deruta grimaced in annoyance. “Of course not! The sight of the dead body in there!”

      Rocco looked at him. “Deruta, Inspector Rispoli is a police officer.”

      “But Rispoli’s a woman!”

      “Well, she can’t help that,” said the deputy police chief as he walked out onto the landing.

      The minute he walked out the door, Caterina took a look at him. “Deputy Police Chief …”

      “Go on in, Rispoli. Don’t leave me alone with Deruta; next thing you know, he’ll hang himself too.” Caterina smiled and walked into the apartment. “Ah, Dottore?”

      “What is it, Rispoli?”

      “I did come up with an idea for that gift.”

      “Perfect. Let’s talk in ten minutes.” As Caterina disappeared into the living room, Rocco turned to look at Italo. “Let’s go get ourselves a cup of coffee.”

      “If you don’t mind, Dottore,” said Italo, moving from a first-name basis to a more official term of respect, “I’d just as soon stay right here. My stomach’s kind of doing belly flops.”

      Shaking his head, Rocco Schiavone went down the stairs.

      Via Brocherel was crowded with people. People looking out their windows, people rubbernecking outside the front door. There was a muttering of conversation that sounded like a kettle on the boil. “A corpse? … There weren’t any burglars? Who is it? The Baudos …”

      There was a brief moment of silence when the front door swung open and Rocco Schiavone, wrapped in his green overcoat, emerged. Officer Casella alone was keeping the rubberneckers at bay. “Commissario,” he said, saluting.

      “It’s deputy police chief, Casella, deputy police chief, Jesus fucking Christ! You at least, seeing that you’re on the police force, ought to try to remember these things, no?”

      He