‘Do you know where we’d find this Bar Aurora?’ asked Sacchetti.
‘Yes, turn right here, it’s quicker.’
Tagliavini sniffed his fingers. They smelled of blood. Twenty years in the police, the war, and he still couldn’t bear to smell it on him.
‘So, Sacchetti,’ he asked in a fatherly voice. ‘Death always leaves its mark on you, doesn’t it? Horrible business.’
Sacchetti nodded.
‘Yeah. Back in the war I suppose we got used to it, but it’s different now, wouldn’t you say? Just think that within a few years you will have young colleagues who have never seen a corpse. No bombs, executions, mines, assassination attempts. I guess it’ll be even worse for them.’
Sacchetti wasn’t the type to say much. To tell the truth he hardly said anything at all. That’s ideal when you have to get things off your chest after a chase. Tagliavini didn’t want to appear tense. He particularly wanted to be sure that the boy was calm. You never knew with Reds.
‘It’s this one, isn’t it?’ asked Sacchetti.
‘Yes, stop here.’
It didn’t look too busy. The chairs on the pavement were empty. Tagliavini peered inside. Old men playing cards, a bloke at the bar. Hardly enough to put up any resistance. They crossed the street. A moment before he touched the door, wrinkled faces looked up from their game, a cup of coffee hovered in mid-air, hands polishing glasses suddenly froze.
Pure Wild West. The bounty-hunter who has travelled from far away to gather information in the saloon. The music stops, and the clocks.
‘Are you Nicola Capponi?’ the policeman asked into total silence.
‘What do you want?’
Tagliavini chose a casual tone. ‘We’ve got to take a look at your cellar, Mr Capponi.’
The man studied them, one at a time. He ran his tongue over his lips. Tagliavini thought he could read his mind. He was weighing up the forces involved. He was assessing strategies.
About ten men in their sixties left their tables to lean on the bar. No one pretended to be doing anything else. No one pretended not to listen. They stared at the policemen’s uniforms, ears pricked.
The manager’s voice was a dusty old record. ‘I’m very busy today. Drop by again tomorrow, ok?’
Sacchetti gave a start. ‘Oi, you’re not to —’ A hand gripped his shoulder: shut up.
‘We need to act now, Mr Capponi, but if you cooperate it will only take half an hour.’ Inflexible and conciliatory in a single sentence. A masterpiece.
A young man appeared from the back of the bar. Glanced at the little crowd. Turned to the other man. ‘What’s up, Nicola?’
Tagliavini seized the opportunity. ‘We suspect that the cellar of this bar is being used as a warehouse for illegal goods. We have to proceed to a check.’ His tone had now switched to bureaucratic. The regulars started whispering for the first time. The young man intervened confidently.
‘Proceed away, then. We have nothing to hide, isn’t that right, Nicola?’
A sideways glance was the only reply.
‘Ok, then.’ Tagliavini grinned. They didn’t seem to be about to do anything stupid. ‘The sooner you come with me the sooner we’ll get it over with.’
As Nicola Capponi came out from behind the bar, one of the pensioners slipped through the door, with two others hot on his heels.
Tagliavini was clutching a paper towel. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, then rubbed it against his fingers. The smell of raw steak was giving him an appetite.
La Gaggia was hammering a heel on to a shoe. Bottone came in, completely out of breath. Garibaldi and Walterún right behind him.
He could tell by their faces that they weren’t there for a game of cards.
‘Capponi’s in trouble.’
‘Two cops at the Bar Aurora.’
‘They want to search the cellar.’
It took a moment for him to get the situation into focus. The cellar of the Bar Aurora. The niche behind the cupboard where they kept the dishes. The box hidden there after July 1948.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked, stroking his sideburns.
‘We were standing right beside him, and we heard him very clearly.’
‘They’ve invented some kind of check on illegal goods.’
‘Absolute balls. It’s obvious what they’re after.’
La Gaggia put down the shoe and his tools. A nail dangled from his lip. Could someone have talked? Didn’t only five or six people know about the niche behind the cupboard?
‘How did Capponi take it?’
‘Pissed off, as usual. But he’s going to take them down there.’
‘In my opinion he shouldn’t have given up,’ said Garibaldi. ‘He should just have called a few people in.’
‘He did the right thing,’ said La Gaggia approvingly. ‘I’d stay calm: there’s the cupboard, it’s very heavy, you’d have to take everything out to move it, and then there’s the plywood board nailed to the wall, and the old radio on top of that. We did everything properly, so either they know where to look already, which seems unlikely to
me, or they’re not going to find anything at all.’
‘I’d call Benfenati,’ suggested Walterún.
‘Benfenati? What’s Benfenati got to do with it?’
‘Well, doesn’t the Party always give a hand in these situations? If it wasn’t for Benfenati, we’d be bringing Anselmo Lunardi oranges in chokey.’
‘Yes, but he killed three or four of them, that’s a bit different. Listen to me: we call Benfenati only if disaster strikes. Otherwise it’s better if he doesn’t know anything and we move the lot tomorrow.
‘In the meantime, aren’t we going to take a look?’ asked Bottone.
‘Let’s go.’
They went outside, leaving the stench of leather and rubber behind them. La Gaggia lowered the shutter. The bar was empty. Voices were being raised in the courtyard at the back. Opinions and observations rose above clothes lines laden with sheets, climbed buildings and balconies, echoed in the street, flew up and down the cellar stairs, from one doorway to the other on the legs of the little boys, rained down on cauliflowers and melons in the local market.
Anyone who had turned up just then would have known that Capponi had been arrested, that they had searched very hard, that much was clear; they had hidden something sinister among the junk just to frame him up, to throw mud at a true comrade, a hero of the 36th and Monte Battaglia, no, wait, maybe it was Ca’ di Malanca. And maybe Purocielo. It was a provocation. An insult, that was what it was. Typical Scelba. You couldn’t stand and watch.
The four tarocchino players pushed their elderly way down the stairs. A tiny amount of light filtered through the slits near the ceiling, supplemented by a few candles.
To anyone who knew him well, Nicola seemed rather tense. The usual hard expression, but the muscles in his jaw were contracted, fingers drumming on a thigh.
Pierre looked calmer. He was strolling about the room like a dancer. He moved tarpaulins, opened boxes, shone a light on hidden corners.
‘Do you want to look in here, officer? Look, there we are, nothing but cobwebs, you see?
La Gaggia remembered.
Pierre didn’t know anything.
La Gaggia understood.
That was what Capponi was worried about. Not the hiding place, which was as safe as houses. If the cops hadn’t found it straight away, it meant they had no idea where to look. Unless Pierre, with those itchy feet of his, those polite manners of a son of a bitch, went and caused trouble for everyone. You had to admit that he was good at it: serene, impeccable, more than willing to cooperate. The best trick of all. Without a doubt he was enjoying it. And most of those present were enjoying it as well, smug murmurs accompanied each affected nicety, each ‘After you, officer’, ‘Can I help in any way?’, ‘And what about this box, we don’t want to forget it, do we?’ and ‘Let’s do this properly, now that you’ve gone to all this trouble, let’s turn everything upside down, to eliminate any last doubts.’