Читать книгу: «Black Run»

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

EPIGRAPH

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SATURDAY NIGHT

SUNDAY

MONDAY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

THURSDAY

The skiers had all gone home, and the sun, which had just winked out behind the craggy blue-­gray peaks that were shredding a few scudding clouds, was still tinting the snow pink. The moon was waiting for darkness so it could light the whole valley until the next morning dawned.

The ski lifts were no longer running, and the lights were out in the chalets at higher elevations. The only sound was the low muttering engines of the snowcats running up and downhill, grooming the pistes that twisted around boulders and stands of trees down the mountain slopes.

The next day marked the beginning of the long weekend, when the ski resort of Champoluc would rapidly fill with out-­of-­towners eager to dig their skis into the snow. The runs had to be in perfect condition.

Amedeo Gunelli had been assigned the longest run. The Ostafa. Stretching almost a mile in length, and about sixty yards wide, this was Champoluc’s main piste, and it was used by ski instructors with their beginner students as well as expert skiers to experience freeriding. This was the slope that took the most work, and it had often lost its snow cover by lunchtime. In fact, there were plenty of bare patches, unsightly stretches of rocks and dirt, especially at center piste.

Amedeo had started from the top. He’d only been doing this job for three months now. It wasn’t hard. All you had to do was remember how to work the controls on this treaded monster and keep calm. That was the most important thing. Keep calm and take your time.

He had his earbuds in, with Ligabue’s greatest hits blasting on his iPod, and he’d fired up the joint that Luigi Bionaz, the head snowcat operator and his best friend, had given him. It was thanks to Luigi that he had this job and a thousand-­euro paycheck every month. Perched next to him on the passenger seat were a flask of grappa and his walkie-­talkie. Everything he needed for the hours of hard work ahead.

Amedeo pushed snow in from the sides, spreading it and smoothing it over the barest spots, chopping it with the tiller while the rakes flattened it till the surface was smooth as a pool table. Amedeo was good at his job, but he didn’t much like working alone like that. Folks seem to think that mountain ­people prefer the solitary life of a hermit. Nothing could be further from the truth. Or nothing could be further from the truth as Amedeo conceived it. He liked bright lights, loud noises, and lots of ­people talking all night long.

“Una vita da medianoooo,” he sang at the top of his lungs, to keep himself company. His voice reverberated off the Plexiglas windows as he focused on the snow, which was turning a pale blue in the moonlight. If he’d stopped to look up, he’d have glimpsed a breathtaking spectacle. High above, the sky was dark blue, like the ocean depths. By contrast, all along the mountain ridges it was orange. The last slanting rays of sunlight tinged the perennial glaciers purple and the underbellies of the clouds a metallic gray. Towering over everything were the dark flanks of the Alps. Amedeo took a slurp of grappa and glanced downhill. A nativity scene made up of roads, houses, and twinkling lights. A dreamlike vision for those who hadn’t been born and raised in those valleys. For him, a squalid and heartbreaking diorama.

“Certe notti la radio che passa Nil Jàng sembra avere capito chi seiiiii …” He sang along to the words of the song by Ligabue: “Certain nights when the radio plays Neil Young as if it knew who you really we-­e-­ere …”

He’d finished the first run, a wall. He turned the cat to head downhill toward the second section and found himself facing a stretch of black piste—­a black-­diamond run. Like in karate, the black classification meant the most challenging kind of run. It was frightening. An expanse of ice and snow with no end in sight.

Only guys who’d been doing this work for years and who could spin the snowcat around like a tricycle would even dare to venture down that steep, twisting track, full of switchback curves and sheer drops, that led down to the main run. Anyway, that was a stretch that didn’t require grooming. It was supposed to be left the way it was. It was too tight, for starters. If you took it wrong, the treads would lose their grip, and before you knew it the snowcat would flip over, pinning you under tons of metal and hot grease. The skiers could groom it themselves, gradually smoothing the track as they descended. Someone had to go up just once a month, with a plow blade, and that was only when things had been pushed as far as they could go and the icy mounds that had built up absolutely had to be flattened out. Otherwise, on those blocks and slabs of ice, cartilage and ligaments, ankles and knees snapped and sprained regularly and unpredictably.

The light on the walkie-­talkie on the seat next to him blinked. Someone was calling him. Amedeo yanked out his earbuds and grabbed the device. “Amedeo here.”

The radio crackled, then the voice of his boss, Luigi, emerged through the static: “Amedeo, where are you?”

“I’m right in front of the wall at the top run.”

“That’s enough. Head downhill and do the section below, near town. I’ll take care of the top section.”

“Thanks, Luigi.”

“Listen,” Luigi added, “remember to take the shortcut down to town.”

“You mean the lane?”

“That’s right, the one that runs from Crest—­that way you don’t have to cross the piste that Berardo’s cleaning. So take the shortcut, you got that?”

“Got it. Thanks!”

“Forget about ‘Thanks.’ Make sure you buy me a glass of white before dinner!”

Amedeo smiled. “That’s a promise!”

He stuck the earbuds back in, shifted into the lowest gear, and rumbled off the slope.

“Balliamo un fandango … ohhhh,” he went on singing. “We dance a fandango.” Again, Ligabue.

Overhead, heavy cloud cover suddenly filled the sky, blocking out the moon. That’s how it always works in the mountains: before you know it, the weather veers around as fast as the winds at high altitude. Amedeo knew that. The weather forecast for the weekend was ugly.

The snowcat’s powerful headlights lit up the slope and the dark mass of fir and larch trunks lining it. Through the black branches he could still see the lights of Champoluc below.

“Balliamo sul mondoooo ohh,” he sang. “We dance on the world.”

He’d have to drive past the ski school and the snowcat garage, then head downhill toward town, and from there work the slope uphill.

He flicked the scorched filter of the joint out the window. Just then, the headlights of another snowcat blinded him. He lifted one hand to shield his eyes. The cat climbing the hill pulled up level with him. It was Berardo, another driver.

“Hey, are you high? You blinded me!”

“Heh-­heh …” Berardo snickered idiotically.

“Listen, Luigi’s taking care of the top. I’m heading down to do the bottom of the piste, near town.”

“Got it,” replied Berardo, whose nose was already bright red. “You want to get a glass of white at Mario and Michael’s tonight?”

“I’m supposed to treat Luigi, so I’ll be there anyway. I’m heading down to the end of the slope!” Amedeo shouted.

“Take the Crest lane—­I’ve already finished the run up above!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take the shortcut! Later!”

Berardo went on his way. Amedeo, on the other hand, turned toward Crest, as ordered. Crest was a small cluster of mountain houses above the slopes. Nearly all the houses were uninhabited except for a hut and a ­couple of villas owned by ­people from Genoa who loved skiing more than they did their own city. From there, he’d go through the woods to the shortcut, which would take him eight hundred yards downhill. He’d give the end of the run a quick groom and then finally came the glass of white wine and cheerful conversation and laughter with the Englishmen who no doubt were already drunk. He went past the few lights on in the village, then left it behind him. The lane that the snowcats used was clear and distinct.

“Ti brucerai, piccola stella senza cielo …” Hitting the high notes. “You’ll burn up, little star without a sky.”

He headed downhill, proceeding cautiously down the track, which was used only in the summer by off-­road vehicles heading for the village of Crest. The headlights mounted on the snowcat’s roof lit the shortcut brightly. There was roughly zero likelihood of driving over the edge.

“Ti brucerai …”

No problem. The treads were gripping perfectly. The cabin was tilted to one side like a thrill ride, was the only thing. But even that was fun.

“Ti bruceraiiii.”

Then the tiller hit something hard and the snowcat bounced on its treads. Amedeo turned to see what the vehicle had hit. Must have been a rock or a patch of dirt. Out the rear windshield, the lights illuminated the churned-­up snow on the lane.

But there was something wrong. He could see it immediately, right in the middle of the lane.

A dark stain stretching at least a ­couple of yards.

He braked hard.

He removed the earbuds, set the iPod aside, turned off the engine, and got out to check.

Silence.

His boots sank into the snow. In the middle of the lane was the dark patch.

“Christ, what the hell is that?”

He started walking. The closer he got, the more the stain in the middle of the shortcut changed color. At first it was black, but now it was purplish. The wind was whistling faintly through the needles of the fir trees, scattering down feathers in all directions.

Small, white, weightless feathers.

A chicken? Did I hit a chicken?! Amedeo muttered to himself.

He kept walking through the deep snow, sinking in five or six inches at every step. The down feathers covering the snow lifted into the air, spinning in tiny whirlwinds. By now the stain was brown.

What on earth did I hit? An animal?

How could he have missed it? With the cat’s seven halogen lamps? And anyway, the noise would have chased it away.

He’d almost walked right over it when he finally saw it for what it was: a stain of red blood, churned into the white blanket of snow. It was enormous, and unless he’d run over a whole henhouse, that was way too much blood to have come out of a single piece of poultry.

He steered clear of the stain and carefully edged around it till he got to the point where the red was brightest, almost shiny. He crouched down and looked carefully.

Then he saw.

He turned and took off at a run, but he didn’t make it to the woods. He vomited all over the Crest shortcut.

A cell phone going off at this time of night meant trouble, as sure as a certified letter from Equitalia, the Italian equivalent of the IRS. Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone, born in 1966, was flat on his back in his bed, eyeing the big toenail on his right foot. The nail had turned black, on account of the filing cabinet drawer that D’Intino had carelessly dropped on Schiavone’s foot while hysterically searching for a passport application. Dottor Schiavone hated Officer D’Intino. That very afternoon, after yet another idiotic move pulled by that cop, he’d sworn to himself and the entire citizenry of Aosta that he’d make sure he got that moron transferred to a godforsaken police station somewhere far from the sea, down at the opposite end of the Italian peninsula.

The deputy police chief reached out his hand and grabbed the Nokia that kept ringing and ringing. He took a look at the display. The caller number was police headquarters.

That rated an 8 on the scale of pains in the ass that ran from 1 to 10. Possibly a 9.

Rocco Schiavone had an entirely personal hierarchy up and down which he ranked the pains in the ass that life senselessly inflicted on him every day. The scale actually started at 6, which covered anything that had to do with keeping house: grocery shopping, plumbers, paying rent. The number 7 included malls, banks, medical clinics, and doctors in general, with a special bonus for dentists, and concluded with work dinners or family dinners, though all his living relatives, thank God, were down south in Rome. An 8 on the hierarchy began, first and foremost, with public speaking, followed by any and all bureaucratic procedures required for his job, going to the theater, and reporting to chiefs of police or investigating magistrates. At number 9 came tobacco shops that weren’t open when he needed a pack of cigarettes, cafés that didn’t carry Algida ice cream bars, running into anyone who wanted to talk and talk endlessly, and especially stakeouts with police officers who needed a bath.

Topping the hierarchy, the worst and the most dreaded, was a rating of 10. The top, the worst, the mother of all pains in the ass: the investigation he wasn’t expecting.

He hoisted himself to a sitting position on both elbows and pushed ANSWER.

“Now who’s busting my balls?” he barked.

“Dottore, this is Deruta.”

Special Agent Deruta. Two hundred and twenty-­five pounds of useless body mass vying valiantly with D’Intino for the title of stupidest member of police headquarters staff.

“What do you want, Michele?” roared the deputy police chief.

“We have a problem. On the slopes at Champoluc.”

“And where do we have this problem?”

“At Champoluc.”

“And where is that?”

Rocco Schiavone had been shipped north to Aosta from the Cristoforo Colombo police station, in Rome, the previous September. Four months later, all he knew about the geography of the city of Aosta and its surrounding province was the locations of his apartment, police headquarters, the courthouse, and the local trattoria.

“Champoluc is in Val d’Ayas!” Deruta replied, in an almost scandalized tone of voice.

“What’s that supposed to mean? What’s Val d’Ayas?”

“Val d’Ayas, Dottore, is the valley above Verrès. Champoluc is the most famous village in that valley. ­People go there to ski.”

“Okay, fine, so what?”

“Well, a ­couple of hours ago someone found a corpse.”

A corpse.

Schiavone let the hand holding the cell phone flop onto the mattress and shut his eyes, cursing through his teeth. “A corpse …”

That was a 10 on the scale of pains in the ass. Definitely a 10. Possibly 10 with a bullet.

“Can you hear me, Dottore?” the telephone crackled.

Rocco raised the device back to his ear. He sighed. “Who’s coming with me?”

“Your choice. Me or Pierron.”

“Italo Pierron, every day for the rest of my life!” the deputy police chief responded promptly.

Deruta acknowledged the insult with a prolonged silence.

“Deruta? What, did you fall asleep?”

“No, I’m at your orders, Dottore.”

“Tell Pierron to come, and to bring the BMW.”

“Do you think the jeep might be better for high-­mountain driving?”

“No. I like the BMW. It’s more comfortable, and it has better heating and a radio that works. The only ­people who take the jeep are those losers the forest rangers.”

“So should I tell Pierron to come get you at your apartment?”

“Yes. And tell him not to ring the bell.”

He dropped his phone on the bed and closed his eyes, laying his hand over them, palm down.

He heard the rustling whisper of Nora’s negligee. Then her weight on the mattress. Then her lips and warm breath in his ear. And finally her teeth, nibbling at his earlobe. At any other time, these were all things that would have aroused him, but right now Nora’s foreplay left him completely indifferent.

“What’s going on?” asked Nora in a faint voice.

“That was the office.”

“And?”

Rocco pulled himself up into a sitting position on the bed without even glancing at her. He slowly pulled on his socks.

“Can’t you talk?”

“I don’t feel like it. I’m working. Leave me alone.”

Nora nodded. She brushed aside a lock of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. “So you have to go out?”

Rocco finally turned and looked at her. “Well, what do you think I’m doing?”

There Nora lay, stretched out on the bed. Her arm, thrown over her head, revealed her perfectly hairless armpit. Her crimson satin negligee caressed her body, emphasizing with an interplay of light and shadow her generous curves. Her long, smooth dark hair framed her face, white as cream. Her black eyes looked like a pair of Apulian olives freshly plucked from the tree. Her lips were thin, but she knew just how to apply the right amount of lipstick to fill them out. Nora, a magnificent specimen of womanhood, just a year over forty.

“You could be a little nicer about it, couldn’t you?”

“No,” Rocco replied. “I couldn’t. It’s late, I have to drive up into the mountains, I have to kiss the whole evening with you good-­bye, and in a little while it’s probably going to start snowing, too!”

He stood up brusquely from the bed, went over to sit in an armchair, and put on his shoes: a pair of Clarks desert boots, the only type of footwear that Rocco Schiavone knew. Nora lay on the bed. She felt a little dumb, made up and dressed in satin. A table set for dinner, and no guests attending. She sat up. “What a shame. I made you raclette for dinner.”

“What’s that?” the deputy police chief asked glumly.

“Haven’t you ever had it? It’s a bowl of melted fontina cheese with artichokes, olives, and little chunks of salami.”

Rocco stood up and pulled on a crewneck sweater. “Nice and digestible, I gather.”

“Am I going to see you tomorrow?”

“How the hell would I know, Nora! I don’t even know where I’m going to be tomorrow.”

He left the bedroom. Nora sighed and stood up. She caught up with him at the front door. She whispered: “I’ll be waiting for you.”

“What am I, a bus?” Rocco shot back. Then he smiled. “Nora, forgive me, this is just a bad night. You’re an incredibly beautiful woman. You’re unquestionably the top tourist attraction in the city of Aosta.”

“After the Roman arch.”

“I’m sick and tired of Roman rubble. But not of you.”

He kissed her hastily on the lips and pulled the door shut behind him.

Nora felt like laughing. That’s just how Rocco Schiavone was. Take him or leave him. She looked at the pendulum clock that hung by the front door. She still had plenty of time to call Sofia and go see a movie. Then maybe they could get a pizza together.

Rocco stepped out of the downstairs door, and an icy hand seized his throat.

“Fucking cold out here!”

He’d left the car a hundred yards from the front entrance. His feet, in the pair of Clarks desert boots he was wearing, had frozen immediately upon contact with the sidewalk, frosted with a white covering of goddamned snow. A cutting wind was blowing, and there was no one out on the streets. The first thing he did when he got into his Volvo was turn on the heat. He blew on his hands. A hundred yards was all the distance it took to freeze them solid. “Fucking cold out here!” he said again, obsessively, like a mantra, and the words, along with the condensation from his breath, flew up against the windshield, fogging it white. He started the diesel engine, punched the defrost button, and sat there staring at a metal streetlamp tossing in the wind. Grains of snow fell through the cone of light, sifting through the darkness like stardust.

“It’s snowing! I knew it!”

He put the car in reverse and drove out of Duvet.

When he parked outside his apartment building on Rue Piave, the BMW with Pierron behind the wheel was already there with the engine running. Rocco leaped into the car, which the officer had already heated to a toasty seventy-­three degrees. An agreeable feeling of well-­being enveloped him like a woolen blanket.

“Italo, I’m hoping you didn’t ring the buzzer to my apartment.”

Pierron put the car in gear. “I’m not an idiot, Commissario.”

“Good. But you have to lose this habit. The rank of commissario has been abolished.”

The windshield wipers were clearing snowflakes off the glass.

“If it’s snowing here, I can just imagine up at Champoluc,” said Pierron.

“Is it up high?”

“Five thousand feet.”

“That’s insane!” The greatest elevation Rocco Schiavone had ever attained in his life was 450 feet above sea level at Rome’s Monte Mario. That is, of course, if you left out the past four months in Aosta, at 1,895 feet above sea level. He couldn’t even imagine someone living at 5,000 feet above sea level. It made his head spin just to think about it.

“What do ­people do at five thousand feet above sea level?”

“They ski. They climb ice. In summer, they go hiking.”

“Just think.” The deputy police chief pulled a Chesterfield out of the policeman’s pack. “I prefer Camels.”

Italo smiled.

“Chesterfields taste of iron. Buy Camels, Italo.” He lit it and took a drag. “Not even stars in the sky,” he said, looking out the car window.

Pierron was focused on driving. He knew that he was about to be treated to a serenade of nostalgia for Rome. And sure enough.

“In Rome this time of year, it’s cold, but often there’s a north wind that clears away the clouds. And then the sun comes out. It’s sunny and cold. The city’s all red and orange, the sky is blue, and it’s great to stroll down those cobblestone streets. All the colors are brighter when the north wind blows. It’s like a rag taking the dust off an antique painting.”

Pierron looked up at the sky. He’d been to Rome once in his life, five years ago, and it smelled so bad that he’d thrown up for three days running.

“And the pussy. You have no idea of the sheer quantity of pussy in Rome. I’m telling you, maybe only in Milan will you find anything comparable. You ever been to Milan?”

“No.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing. Go there. It’s a wonderful city. You just have to understand how it works.”

Pierron was a good listener. He was a mountain man, and he knew how to stay silent when silence was called for and how to speak when the time came to open his mouth. He was twenty-­seven, but you’d guess he was ten years older. He’d never left Val d’Aosta, aside from the three days in Rome and a week in Djerba, the island off Tunisia, with his ex-­girlfriend Veronica.

Italo liked Rocco Schiavone. He liked him because he wasn’t one to stand on ceremony, and because you could always learn something from a guy like him. Sooner or later he’d have to ask the deputy police chief—­though he insisted on using the old rank of commissario—­just what had happened in Rome. But their acquaintance was still too new, Italo sensed, and it was too early to delve into details. For the moment, he’d satisfied his curiosity by poking into documents and reports. Rocco Schiavone had solved a substantial number of cases—­murders, thefts, and frauds—­and had seemed to be well on his way to a brilliant and successful career. And then suddenly the shooting star that was Rocco Schiavone veered and fell, slamming to earth with a rapid and silent transfer to Val d’Aosta for disciplinary reasons. But just what the stain on Rocco Schiavone’s CV had been, that was something he never managed to find out. The police officers working at headquarters had talked it over among themselves. Caterina Rispoli argued that Schiavone had risen above his station. “I’ll bet you he stepped on somebody’s toes and that somebody had the power to have him shipped north; that kind of stuff happens all the time in Rome.” Deruta disagreed; he felt sure that someone as capable as Rocco Schiavone was an annoyance, especially if he lacked a political patron. D’Intino suspected sex was at the bottom of it. “I’ll bet he took somebody’s wife or girlfriend to bed and got caught.” Italo had a suspicion all his own, and he kept it to himself. His guess had been guided by Rocco Schiavone’s home address. Via Alessandro Poerio. High on the Janiculum Hill. Apartments up there ran to more than eight thousand euros a square meter, or a thousand dollars a square foot, as his cousin, who sold real estate in Gressoney, had told him. No one on a deputy police chief’s salary could afford an apartment in that part of town.

Rocco crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “What are you thinking about, Pierron?”

“Nothing, Dottore. About the road.”

And Rocco looked out in silence at the highway, pelleted by falling flakes of snow.

Looking up from the main street of Champoluc, he could see a patch of light in the middle of the woods. That was where the body had been found, and now it was lit by halogen floodlights. If he squinted, he could just make out the shadows of policemen and cat drivers working the scene. The news had spread with the speed of a high-­mountain wind. Everyone stood around at the base of the cableway, their noses tipped up toward the forest, midway up the slope, each asking the same question, which was unlikely to be answered anytime soon. The English tourists, drunk; the Italians with worried faces. The locals were snickering in their patois at the thought of the hordes of Milanese, Genovese, and Piedmontese who would find out tomorrow morning that the slopes were closed.

The BMW with Italo at the wheel pulled to a halt at the foot of the cableway. It had taken an hour and a half from Aosta.

Driving up that road, navigating the hairpin curves, Rocco Schiavone had observed the landscape. The black forests, the bursts of gravel vomited downhill from the rocky slopes like rivers of milk. At least one good thing, during that endless climb: around Brusson, the snow had stopped falling and the moon, riding free in the dark sky, reflected off the blanket of snow. It looked as if someone had scattered handfuls of tiny diamonds over the countryside.

Rocco got out of the car wrapped in his green loden overcoat and immediately felt the chill of the snow bite through the soles of his shoes.

“Commissario, it’s up there. They’re coming to get us with the cat now,” said Pierron, pointing out the headlights partially concealed by the trees halfway up the slope.

“The cat?” asked Rocco, his chattering teeth chopping his breath into little puffs as it fogged up in the cold air.

“That’s right, the tracked vehicle that works the slopes.”

Schiavone took a breath. What a fucked-­up place to come die in.

“Italo, explain something to me. How could it be that no one saw a dead body lying in the middle of the piste? I mean, weren’t there skiers on that run?”

“No, Commissario,” Pierron said, then corrected himself. “Excuse me, Deputy Police Chief. They found him in the woods, right in the middle of a road they use as a shortcut. No one takes that road. Except for the snowcats.”

“Ah. Understood. But who would go bury a body way up there?”

“That’s what you’re going to have to find out,” Pierron concluded, with a naive smile.

The noise of a jackhammer filled the cold, crisp air. But it wasn’t a jackhammer at all. The snowcat had arrived. It stopped at the base of the cableway with the engine running, dense smoke pouring out the exhaust pipe.

“So that’s the cat, right?” asked Rocco. He’d seen that kind of thing only in movies or documentaries about Alaska.

“That’s right. And now it’s going to take us up, Commissario! Deputy Police Chief, I meant to say.”

“Listen, just do this—­you’re not going to wrap your head around it no matter how hard you try. Call me whatever you want, I don’t give a damn anyway. Plus,” Rocco went on, looking at the treaded vehicle, “why do they call it a cat if it looks more like a tank?”

Italo Pierron limited himself to a shrug in response.

“Well, okay, let’s get aboard this cat. Come on!”

Rocco nodded. “Thanks for the advice.”

The magistrate looked Rocco in the eye. “I know you, Dottor Schiavone. I know lots of things about you.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “So let me warn you: avoid pulling any of your bullshit.”

“I’ve never pulled any.”

“I happen to have different information.”

“We’ll see you on the banks of the River Don, Dottore.”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

Without bothering to shake hands with the magistrate, Rocco went back to the car, where Pierron was waiting for him. Maurizio Baldi, on the other hand, walked to the base of the cableway. Still, under that fur hat, a faint smile had played briefly across his face.

“That’s Dottor Baldi, isn’t it?” asked Pierron. Rocco said nothing. He didn’t need to. “He’s half crazy, did you know that?” asked Italo as they got into the car.

“You feel like putting this thing in gear and getting me out of here, or do I have to call a taxi?”

Pierron obeyed immediately.

It’s forty-­five minutes past midnight. A person can’t come home half-­frozen at forty-­five minutes past midnight. The minute I open the door I realize that I left the lights on. In the hall and in the bathroom. Forty-­five minutes past midnight and I look down at my half-­frozen feet. Shoes and socks aren’t worth keeping. It doesn’t matter; I have three other pairs of desert boots. My big toe is still black. That idiot D’Intino. I’ll have to get him transferred, get him transferred as soon as possible. It’s a question of my psychophysical equilibrium. If I’ve ever had such a thing.

I turn on the water. I slip my feet into it. It’s hot—­boiling hot. Only it takes a good three minutes before I can even tell how hot it is. I run hot water over my ankles, between my toes, and even over my black toenail. At least that doesn’t hurt.

“Keep that up and you’ll get chilblains.”

I turn around.

It’s Marina. In her nightgown. I think I must have woken her up. If there’s one thing that annoys me (one thing? there are thousands), it’s when I wake up my wife. She sleeps like a rock, but she seems to have a sixth sense when she hears me up and about.

“Ciao, my love.”

She looks at me with her sleepy gray eyes. “You woke me up,” she says.

I know. “I know. Sorry.”

She leans on the doorjamb, arms folded across her chest. She’s ready to listen. She wants to know more. “We found a corpse in the middle of a ski run, buried in the snow. In Champoluc. A tremendous pain in the ass, my love.”

“Does that mean you’re going to be staying up there for a while?”

“Not on your life. It’s an hour’s drive. Let’s just hope it turns out to be a case of accidental death.”

Marina looks at me. I keep my feet submerged in the bidet, which smokes like a pot of spaghetti. “Sure, but tomorrow morning you’re buying yourself a pair of decent shoes. Otherwise, in a ­couple of days they’ll have to amputate your feet for gangrene.”

“The investigating magistrate said the same thing. Anyway, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s sensible shoes.”

“Have you eaten?”

“A piece of stale pizza on the way.”

Marina has vanished behind the door. She’s gone to bed. I dry my feet and go into the kitchen. I hate this furnished apartment. The kitchen is the only decent room in the apartment. I wish I could understand the way other ­people live. Most of their apartments and homes are furnished in a way that evokes pity, nothing else. Only in the kitchen do they spend vast sums, furnishing the place with electric appliances of all kinds: ovens, microwaves, and dishwashers like something out of the Starship Enterprise. Instead, in the living room, arte povera and paintings of clowns hanging on the walls.

It’s a mystery.

Every once in a while, I compare it with my home, in Rome. On the Janiculum Hill. I look out over the city, and on a windy day, when the air is clear, I can see St. Peter’s, Piazza Venezia, and the mountains in the distance. Furio suggested I should rent it out. Instead of leaving it empty. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t stand the idea of strangers walking over the parquet floors that Marina chose, or opening the drawers of the Indian credenzas that we bought years ago in Viterbo. To say nothing of the bathrooms. Strangers’ asses planted on my toilet, in my bath, strange faces admiring their reflections in my Mexican mirrors. It’s out of the question. I get myself a bottle of cool water. Otherwise I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a throat and tongue that resemble two pieces of sandpaper.

Marina is under the blankets. As always, she’s reading the dictionary.

“Isn’t it a little late for reading?”

“It’s the only way I can get to sleep.”

“What’s the new word for today?”

Marina has a little black notebook that she keeps in her lap with a pencil. She opens to her bookmark and reads. “Stitch—­transitive verb: To sew or embroider something. It can also be used of one who sews with no particular enthusiasm.” She sets down her notebook.

The mattress is comfortable. It’s called memory foam. A material developed by NASA for astronauts in the sixties. It envelops you like a glove because it remembers the shape of your body. That’s what it says in the pamphlet that came with it.

“Could you say that I’m stitching in Aosta?” I ask Marina.

“No. You’re not a tailor. I’m the one who knows how to sew.”

The mattress is comfortable. But the bed is cold as ice. I wrap myself around Marina. Looking for a little heat. But her side is as cold as mine.

I close my eyes.

And I finally put an end to this shitty day.

FRIDAY

The telephone drilled through the silence that double-­pane windows and the absence of traffic gave to Deputy Police Chief Schia­vone’s apartment on Rue Piave. Rocco leaped like a hooked bass and opened his eyes wide. Despite the scream of the cell phone on his nightstand, he was still able to gather his thoughts: it was morning, he was at home, in his own bed after spending the night out in the snow. He wasn’t actually lying underneath Eva Mendes, and she wasn’t actually wearing nothing but a pair of dizzyingly high stiletto heels and dancing like a sinuous serpent, tossing her hair to and fro. That image was nothing but a cobweb that the telephone had scorched with its deranged shrieks.

“Who’s busting my balls at seven in the morning?”

“Me.”

“Me who?”

“Sebastiano!”

Rocco smiled as he ran one hand over his face. “Sebastiano! How you doing?”

“Fine, fine.” And now his friend’s croupy voice had become recognizable. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

“I haven’t heard from you in months!”

“Four months and ten days, but who’s counting?”

“How are you doing?”

“Fine, fine.”

“What are you up to?”

“I’m coming up north.”

Rocco shifted comfortably on the memory foam mattress. “You’re coming up? When?”

“Tomorrow night. I’ll be on the seven o’clock train from Turin. Are you going to be around?”

“Of course I will. I’ll meet you at the station.”

“Excellent. Will it be cold up there?”

“What can I tell you, Seba? Bone-­chilling cold.”

“All right, then I’ll wear a down jacket.”

“And insulated shoes—­take my word for it,” Rocco added.

“I don’t have those. What kind of shoes do you wear up there?”

“A pair of Clarks desert boots.”

“Are they insulated?”

“No. Which is why I’m telling you to wear a pair of insulated shoes. My feet are like a ­couple of ice cubes.”

“Then why don’t you get yourself a pair?”

“I can’t stand the things.”

“Well, you do what you like. I’m going to swing by Decathlon and get a pair. So—­see you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow.”

And Sebastiano hung up the phone.

Rocco dropped his cell phone on his down jacket. If Sebastiano Cecchetti, known to his friends as Seba, was coming to Aosta, then matters were becoming distinctly interesting.

When Rocco walked into police headquarters at 8:15 a.m., Special Agent Michele Deruta walked up to him immediately. He was moving his tiny feet as fast as his two-­hundred-­plus pounds allowed him, and he was panting like an old steam locomotive. His chin was sweaty and his thinning white hair, combed specially to conceal his bald spot, was glittering, oiled by who-­knows-­what pomade.

“Dottore?”

Rocco stopped suddenly in the middle of the hallway. “Your face and hair are damp. Why damp, Deruta? Did you stick your face into a barrel of oil?”

Deruta pulled out his handkerchief and tried to dry himself off. “I wouldn’t know, Dottore.”

“But still, you’re damp. Do you take a shower in the morning?”

“Yes, of course.”

“But you don’t dry off.”

“No, it’s just that before coming to work, I help my wife at her bakery.”

Officer Deruta, getting close to retirement age, started talking about his wife’s bakery just outside of town, the work in the predawn hours, the yeast and the flour. Rocco Schiavone paid no attention to a word he said. He just watched his damp, loose lips, his hair streaked with white, and his bovine, bulging eyes.

“What’s surprising,” said the deputy police chief, interrupting his special agent’s monologue, “is not that you work at your wife’s bakery, Deruta. It’s that you have a wife at all—­that’s what’s truly extraordinary.”

Deruta fell silent. It wasn’t as if he expected special praise for his daily sacrifice of working a double job, but a kind word, something like “You’re wearing yourself out, Deruta. What a good man you are,” or, “If only there were more ­people like you.” Instead he got nothing. A scornful lack of consideration was all his superior officer could offer him.

“Aside from your double shift, is there anything important you need to tell me?” asked the deputy police chief.

“The chief of police has already called three times this morning. He needs to speak to the press.”

“So?”

“First he wants to hear from you.”

Rocco nodded and turned away, leaving Deruta there; still, the officer chased after him on his dainty feet. To watch the heft of his 225 pounds bounce along on his size 7½ men’s shoes, you’d expect him to roll headlong across the floor at any moment. “The chief of police isn’t in town, Dottore. There’s no point in you going up to see him. You’ll have to call him.”

Rocco stopped and turned to look at Officer Deruta. “I see. Well, now, listen to me and listen good. Two things. First of all, start getting some exercise and put yourself on a diet. Second: later on, I’ve got an important job for you.” He furrowed his brow and looked Deruta in the eye. “Very important. Can I rely on you? Do you feel up to it?”

Deruta’s eyes opened wide and became even bigger than usual. “Certainly, Dottore!” he said, and flashed him a bright, thirty-­two-­tooth smile. Actually, a twenty-­four-­tooth smile, because there were several gaps. “Certainly, Dottor Schiavone. You can trust me blindly!”

“Why don’t you find yourself a dentist!”

“You think?” asked Deruta, covering his mouth with one hand. “Do you know how much they cost? On my salary?”

“Tell your wife to give you the money.”

“That money goes to my daughter, who’s studying in Perugia to be a veterinarian.”

“Ah. I get it. You’re training your own family doctor. Good thinking!” and he finally walked into his office, slamming the door behind him and blocking out the baffled face of the officer, who stood there, still chewing over what the deputy police chief had meant by his last comment.

In his long-­ago high school days, Rocco had read that some philosopher, possibly Hegel, had described the newspaper as “the realist’s morning prayer.” But his version of the realist’s morning prayer was to roll a fat joint to put his mind at peace with the world and the fact that he’d been forced to live all this distance from Rome for the past four months. And the knowledge that there was no way to get back there.

Not that he had anything against Aosta. Quite the opposite. It was a lovely city, and the ­people were all nice and polite. But it wouldn’t have been any different if they’d stationed him in Salerno, or Mantua, or Venice. The end result would be the same. It wasn’t a matter of the destination. What he missed above all was his native city, his existential stomping grounds, his home base.

He pulled the key out from under the framed photograph of Marina on his desk and pulled open the top drawer on the right. Inside sat a wooden box with a dozen handsome fatties, all ready to go. He lit one and, as he twisted the key shut in the drawer lock, took a long, generous drag that went straight to his lungs.

Funny how this small everyday gesture helped to soothe his brain. With the third puff, he gained a sense of lucidity and started planning out his day.

First thing: call the chief of police.

Then the hospital.

And then Nora.

He laid the half-­smoked joint down in his ashtray. He was just reaching out for the receiver when the phone started to ring.

“Pronto, sì?”

“Corsi speaking!”

It was the police chief.

“Ah, Dottore, I was just about to call you.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“But this time it’s the truth.”

“Then you’re saying all the other times you were lying to me?”

“Sure.”

“All right, Schiavone, go ahead.”

“We still don’t know a thing. Neither who he was nor how he died.”

“So what am I supposed to tell those guys?”

It wasn’t that the chief of police had forgotten the word. It was just that he never named the city’s crew of print journalists. He always called them “those guys.” As if he weren’t willing to soil his lips with the common noun. He hated them. As far as he was concerned, they were a life form just one step up from the amoeba, the one flat note in the symphony orchestra of creation. That was how he felt about the print journalists. “Those other guys,” television reporters—­he didn’t even consider them to be living entities.

That hatred was rooted deep in his personal history. It had been almost eighteen years since his wife left him for an editorialist at La Stampa, and since then Corsi had been waging a senseless crusade against every member of the guild, irrespective of race, religion, or political creed.

“Dottore, that’s what we know. If they would be patient—­if the gentlemen of the press would be so good as to patiently await the developments of the investigation … Otherwise, unfortunately, I have nothing to add.”

“Those guys won’t wait. They’re lying in wait, eager to bite me in the ass.”

“That’s what you think, Chief. The press around here loves you,” Rocco said seriously.

“What makes you say that?”

“I hear what ­people say. They respect you. They need you.”

There was a pause. The police chief was mulling over what his underling had just told him. And Rocco smiled, delighted to go on tangling the threads of the relationship between his boss and “those guys.”

“Cut the bullshit. I know those guys. Listen here, Schiavone, would you rule out categorically the possibility that last night’s death might have been accidental?”

“With my luck? Yeah, I’d rule it out.”

Andrea Corsi took a deep breath. “When are you going to give me more comforting information?”

“In, let’s say, forty-­eight hours?”

“Let’s say twenty-­four!”

“Okay, we make it thirty-­six and not another word on the subject.”

“Schiavone, what do you think this is, the flea market at Porta Portese? If I give you twenty-­four hours, you have twenty-­four hours.”

“I’ll call you this time tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll believe it when my team Sampdoria wins the national championship.”

“If I haven’t called you back in twenty-­four hours, then I swear I’ll get you free tickets for the Genoa–Sampdoria match.”

“I’m the police chief. I don’t need your free tickets.”

And he hung up the phone.

“What a pain in the ass!” shouted Rocco, stretching his aching arms. He was looking at a mountain of work, work, work. That’s the way life was up here in Aosta. Serious folks, serious city, inhabited by serious ­people who work hard and mind their own business. And if they got high, at the very most it was with a round of grolle, local multi-­spouted mugs of grappa and coffee, passed around communally. The days of Rome were over, a city where dope was processed as if on an assembly line. The days of decent opportunities, lucky breaks—­those days were over. How much longer would he be forced to languish in this purgatory? He lived in the richest city in Italy, with a per capita income to rival Luxembourg’s, but after four months he had nothing to show for it. Then he thought about Sebastiano. Who would be coming up north tomorrow. And if Sebastiano was willing to take a plane all the way to Turin and then a train, in the middle of winter, there must be a reason, and a very good one.

That thought electrified him to the point that he found himself on his feet, rubbing his hands together. Only when his hand was on the door handle did he remember the joint with a homemade filter sitting in his ashtray. He went back, slipped it into his pocket, and finally left his office.

The streets were deserted. The cloudy gray sky promised more snow to come, and the black lava rock mountains seemed ready to swallow the landscape all around them. Italo Pierron drove, eyes on the road, while Rocco was on his cell phone.

“And yet it’s not that hard, D’Intino! Listen to me carefully.” Rocco spoke slowly and clearly, as if he were addressing a none-­too-­bright child. “Find out whether, in the city or province of Aosta, especially in Val d’Ayas, there have been any missing-­person reports, ­people who didn’t come home, you see what I mean? Not just since yesterday; let’s say in the past month.” Rocco rolled his eyes. Then, with infinite patience, he repeated the concept: “D’Intino, listen: for the past month. Is that clear? Over and out.”

He punched the OFF button and looked at Italo, whose eyes were glued to the road ahead. “Tell me, is D’Intino playing with me or is he really that dumb?”

Italo smiled.

“Where’s he from?”

“He’s Abruzzese. From the province of Chieti.”

“Doesn’t he have any pull down there? No connections? Couldn’t he go back down there and stop busting our balls?”

“I don’t know, Dottore.”

“Everyone in Italy has a connection. I had to wind up with the one brain-­damaged mental defective who doesn’t even have a relative or friend who can pull some strings for him.”

They left the car in a parking space at the hospital, even though a security guard had told them not to because that was the chief physician’s spot. Schiavone did nothing more than pull out his badge and shut up the zealous functionary of the Health Ministry.

They walked downstairs and past the laboratories until they finally reached the double glass doors where Fumagalli worked. The morgue.

“Dottor Schiavone?” asked Italo in a faint voice.

“What is it?”

“Do you mind if I wait here for you?”

“No. You come on in with me and enjoy the show. Didn’t you choose to be a policeman?”

“Actually, no, I didn’t. But it’s a long story.” He dropped his head and followed his boss.

There was no need to take off his coat, because the autopsy room was more or less the same temperature as outside. Under Fumagalli’s lab coat Schiavone could see a turtleneck sweater. He wore latex gloves and a sort of green apron spattered with brown splotches. “And to think I complain about my shitty job!” Rocco said to him.

As usual, Fumagalli didn’t bother to say hello, limiting himself to waving his hand in the two policemen’s direction and leading them to the second room, which was a small waiting room. There the doctor gave both policemen a surgical mask, plastic shoe covers, and a strange paper smock.

“All right, the two of you come with me.”

In the middle of the room was a nice big autopsy table, and on top of the table lay the corpse, mercifully covered with a white cloth.

In the room you could hear a faucet drip, along with the continuous hum of the recycling air vents, which were spreading a mixture of ferocious stenches as they circulated the air in the morgue. Disinfectant, rust, rotten meat, hard-­boiled eggs. Italo Pierron felt as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus, bent over and clapped his hands to his mouth, then hurried away to lose the breakfast that had just come surging up his esophagus.

“All right, now that we’re alone,” said Rocco with a smile, “have you had a chance to work on him?”

“I’ve tried to reassemble all the pieces. I’ve done easier jigsaw puzzles,” the doctor replied, and uncovered the corpse.

“Fuck!” came out of the deputy police chief’s mouth, clear and loud and straight from the heart.

There was no body. There was just a series of shredded pieces of flesh, more or less reassembled to form an object that only remotely resembled anything human.

“How can you work with this?”

Fumagalli cleaned his lenses. “Nice and slow. Like doing art restoration.”

“Sure, but those guys are fixing a masterpiece, and it’s a pleasure to look at.”

“This is a masterpiece too,” said Fumagalli. “It’s God’s handiwork, or didn’t you know?”

In the deputy police chief’s head, the suspicion that lengthy and involuntary interactions with human corpses had finally undermined the Livornese physician’s mental equilibrium finally became a certainty.

“Can I smoke in here?” asked Rocco, slipping his hand into his pocket.

“Of course. You want me to get you a whiskey, or maybe something a little lighter? Shall I put on some lounge music? Would you like that? All right, let’s get to work.”

The medical examiner pointed to a point on the corpse’s right pectoral: “He has a tattoo.”

Some writing and signs that Rocco couldn’t decipher. “What’s it say?”

“Maa vidvishhaavahai,” said Alberto. “Luckily, I was able to read it.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s a Hindu mantra. It means roughly: ‘May no obstacle arise between us.’ ”

“And how do you know that?”

Alberto smiled behind his thick-­lensed glasses. “I’m a guy who knows how to find out things.”

The dead man’s face was crushed. Out of the red-­and-­black mush, which reminded Rocco of a painting by a major Italian artist whose name he couldn’t quite recall, jutted teeth, bits of lips, yellowish filaments.

“This is the first strange thing,” Alberto began, lifting a piece of handkerchief that must once have been a bandanna.

“Indeed, how very strange,” said Rocco, “a piece of handkerchief. Never seen anything like it.”

“All right, let’s cut out the cheap irony, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay. But you started it when you brought up the whiskey and the lounge music.”

“So the dead man has this red handkerchief in his trachea.”

“In his what?” asked Rocco.

“In his trachea.”

“Is there any way that the snowcat shoved it in when it ran over his face?” Rocco hypothesized.

“No. It was crumpled up. And when I unfolded it, look at the treat I found inside.” Alberto Fumagalli pulled out a sort of metal cup in which a slimy purple thing lay, with what appeared to be two little mints beside it.

“What’s that? A piece of rotten eggplant?”

“The tongue.”

“Oh, Jesus fucking—­”

“And there were a ­couple of teeth to go with it. You see? They look like two Tic Tacs.” The doctor continued, “The snowcat crushed the poor man’s head, and the pressure pushed in this piece of handkerchief. It was in his mouth.”

“It made him swallow it?”

“Or else he swallowed it himself.”

“Sure, but if he swallowed it, then he was still alive!”

“Maybe so, Rocco. Maybe so.” Alberto took a deep breath. “So then I expressed the hypostases.”

“Translation, please.”

Fumagalli rolled his eyes in annoyance.

“Why are you getting pissed off? I studied law, not medicine! As if I were to ask you to define usucaption.”

“Usucaption is a Latin term for ‘acquisitive prescription,’ in which ownership of property can be gained through continuous possession thereof, beyond a specified period of time—­”

“Enough!” Rocco interrupted him. “Let’s get back to these hypotheses.”

“Hypostases,” Alberto corrected him. “Now then, hypostases form when the heart stops beating. Blood pressure drops, and the blood flows by gravity to the lowest areas of the corpse. And since the body was lying in a supine position … there, you see?” Fumagalli gently lifted the poor wretch’s torso. There was a squeaking sound, as if he’d dragged a jellyfish across the floor. “You see these reddish-­purple spots?”

They were barely visible. They looked like very faint bruises.

“Yes,” said Rocco.

“When the heart stops pumping, then what happens? The blood follows its most natural path, that is, wherever the force of gravity tends to pull it. Are you with me?”

“I’m with you.”

“Good. The body was lying supine, and therefore the blood flowed to the back. Yesterday when I got there, they were just starting to form.”

“Which means what?”

“These things form three or four hours after death. That means this poor sucker died more or less three hours before I got there. So I got there at about ten, and he died between six and seven. More likely seven than six, I’d say.”

“He didn’t die. He was killed between six and seven.”

“If you want to be exact. That’s right.”

Rocco Schiavone went on staring at those mangled remains. “Also in an attempt to be exact, could you tell me how someone killed him?”

“I’ll have to take a look at the internal organs. To rule out poisoning or suffocation. That’ll take me a little while. Come with me.” The doctor moved away from the autopsy table. But Rocco stood there a little longer, staring at the mass of flesh and blood that had once been a man’s face. “The more I look at it, the more I’m reminded of a painting by an artist—­doesn’t it remind you of that painter? The one who used to make black burn marks on a red background and who—­”

“Burri,” Alberto replied as he pulled open a drawer in a cabinet next to the door. “I was reminded of him myself.”

“Burri, that’s right. Exactly.” Rocco caught up with the doctor. “No, it’s just that if a person tries to remember a thing and he can’t quite get it, he might wind up killing a bunch of neurons. Burri. What’s that?” he asked the medical examiner, who was holding out another plastic bag.

“In here is the rest of the handkerchief. It was hanging out of his mouth.”

“Did the snowcat cut it? Weird. That seems pretty odd to me.”

“My job is to analyze corpses. Yours is to understand how they got that way.”

Rocco pulled away from the wall and grabbed the door handle.

“Wait! There’s one last thing that will interest you.” The doctor picked up two plastic bags. One contained a glove. The other held a pack of cigarettes. “Now, then. These were found in the inside pocket of the down jacket. An empty pack of Marlboro Lights, and this glove. Black. A ski glove. Colmar brand.”

“Ah. Okay, good. We’ve found one glove. What about the other?”

“No idea.”

“You know something, Alberto? This is a pain in the ass, number ten on the scale, summa cum laude.”

“Which means?”

“The mother of all pains in the ass!”

Cursing under his breath, Rocco walked through the door and left the doctor with his patients.

Italo was outside the hospital smoking a cigarette. Rocco walked past him. “You’re so damned helpful, Italo.”

The officer flicked away his cigarette butt and followed the deputy police chief. “It was because of the taste in my mouth.”

“Fine, but now that you’re sure to have the breath of a cesspool, do me a favor and don’t talk in the car.”

“I’ve got chewing gum.”

“Well, chew it,” Rocco ordered him as he got into the car.

They hadn’t gone fifty yards before Rocco’s cell phone started ringing.

“Who is it?”

“Dottore, it’s me, Officer D’Intino.”

“To what do I owe the honor?” asked Rocco, lighting yet another of Italo’s Chesterfields.

“Did you call me ‘your honor’?” D’Intino replied, in confusion.

Rocco sighed and, with endless patience, replied, “No, D’Intino, I didn’t. It’s just a figure of speech. What can I do for you?”

“Ah, yes, I didn’t think so. Well, I called you to say …” And with that the line went dead.

“Hello? D’Intino, hello?”

Static and sighs from the other end of the line.

“Officer D’Intino, hello?”

“Yes? I’m listening, Dottore!”

“You’re listening, my ass! What is it? Why did you call me?”

“Ah yes, in fact. I was looking, as you ordered me, to see if there were any missing-­person reports, ­people who fail to come home, in other words, that kind of thing.”

“And?”

“There was no need. Just a little while ago, Luisa came into the police station.”

Rocco, struggling to control himself, held in the curse of all curses he was about to utter. “Officer! Who is Luisa?” he shouted.

“Luisa Pec. She says that her husband never came home last night. Or this morning, for that matter.”

“So where is this Pec?”

“Who even knows where he is, Dotto’? Luisa says the man’s disappeared!”

“Where’s Luisa Pec! Not her husband!” shouted Rocco at the top of his lungs. Italo was barely able to stifle his laughter.

“Ah … she’s here … Hold on, should I put her on?”

“What are you talking about? Put who on, D’Intino?” Rocco stared at Italo. “I’m going to kill him. I swear to all the saints in heaven, I’m going to kill him. Listen to me, Officer D’Intino, are you there?”