‘The sister’s a dead end,’ he said. ‘She didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.’
‘Good,’ Duca said. He liked the Frascati the way it was now, almost warm, maybe more than Davide did. ‘For now, let’s concentrate on the address book,’ he took it from the briefcase and handed it over to Mascaranti. ‘Phone all those numbers and if anyone replies who had anything to do with Alberta Radelli or knew her, make a note of it and we’ll go and see them. Apart from this one,’ he took back the book and opened it at the letter U, made a note of the number and the address: Livia Ussaro. Ussaro like hussar. A nice pseudonym: maybe she even wore a jacket with gold braid. ‘Go and rest, we’ll start again tomorrow morning.’ He gave him back the book. ‘Remember we have to give it back as soon as possible.’
It wasn’t yet ten, but the silence in the two rooms was total, the penultimate noise had been that of Mascaranti closing the door as he went out, and the last noise that of the Frascati gurgling into the glass as Davide poured it. Now there was nothing, Davide certainly wouldn’t say a word, and Duca didn’t like silence. He went and opened the two windows: it might let in the heat, but also a bit of traffic noise from the Piazza Cavour.
‘Do you like playing the policeman?’ Apart from the general silence, there was also Davide’s silence, which ended up arousing the bizarre suspicion that he was alive only in appearance, that he continued to move, eat and drink, but as if by inertial force, being already dead.
He didn’t smile, and he needed time to respond. ‘But I’m not doing anything.’
‘You’re driving the car, you’re following us in our investigations, you’re doing errands. In the police, a driver is an important person.’ It was no use, he didn’t react, he didn’t accept either conversation or jokes: for all his goodwill, the Frascati didn’t sustain him like whisky. Duca continued speaking, as if he was alone: ‘I really like playing the policeman. My father didn’t like the idea of me following in his footsteps, but he was wrong.’ Of course, he couldn’t be a policeman even now, less now than ever. Especially in a case like this one. Carrua had been quite clear about this: ‘If you find something that isn’t right, don’t be afraid to come out with it, but do it discreetly, for two reasons, one is that you can’t be involved officially, otherwise we’ll all be in trouble, the other is that as soon as the press find out we’re taking an interest in the case, they’ll manufacture another Montesi affair. It has all the elements, at least in the wild imagination of some journalists. If it is a Montesi affair, if really big names are involved, if there’s something rotten behind all this, then don’t be afraid, as I said, but before making a fuss about it we need proof, otherwise the papers will have a field day, and it’s all over. Discretion, that’s the order of the day.’
Discretion. In other words, like looking for something in the dark. Alberta Radelli’s sister he had been able to tackle officially: we’re police, answer our questions. But with the others, he had to be carefuclass="underline" on what pretext, for example, could the police question this Livia Ussaro, a whole year after Alberta’s death, without being indiscreet, without risking kicking up a fuss? He looked for a pretext, but couldn’t find one that was sufficiently intelligent, and he didn’t like stupid pretexts.
But his desire to see Livia Ussaro was growing in him minute by minute, exacerbated by the aristocratic solitude of these hotel rooms, where you have everything you need to be comfortable, all the refinements you almost never get in your own home, and all that’s missing is what you find in even the poorest home, something you can’t define and which may not even exist, but everybody feels it as if it did exist. In a hotel room you move in a different way from the way you do in your own home, you look at things in a different way, maybe you even think in a different way. And so he made up his mind: these evenings at the hotel, with Davide there but not really there thanks to the decreasing supply of alcohol, weighed heavily on him. ‘At least we can have a nice talk over the phone,’ he thought, or predicted, as if he could see into the future.
He got up and went and sat down on the bed, next to the bedside table, where the telephone was, and asked the switchboard operator to get him the number of Livia Ussaro, then put down the receiver and waited. He saw Davide’s sad, anxious profile, and on the table the bottle of Frascati on a large silver tray, aesthetically wrapped in a fine napkin. It was actually quite late to be telephoning a private number, a person he didn’t even know, and after a year Livia Ussaro might have moved, or died, or emigrated to Australia: things go so quickly these days, oh, yes.
‘Could I speak to Livia please?’ he said as soon as he heard a middle-aged woman’s voice.
‘Who shall I say is calling?’
‘Duca,’ he said, simply. Among friends that was how people spoke on the phone.
‘Duca?’ the woman said.
‘That’s right, Duca.’ Silence. The woman had moved away from the phone, she hadn’t sounded very convinced by his name: Duca, as in duke. She wasn’t the only one, at school he had even got into punch-ups with his wittier classmates: ‘So what’s your big brother, then, a Grand Duke or an Archduke?’ The reply was always: ‘He’s this’-in other words, a kick in the kneecap or on the shin. His father had taught him that.
‘Hello?’ It must be her, the voice was low but quite girlish.
‘Livia?’
‘Yes, this is she, but I’m sorry, I don’t remember …’
It was her, she still existed, really existed. His desire to talk to Livia Ussaro was about to be satisfied. ‘I’m the one who should apologise. You couldn’t remember me because we’ve never met.’
‘Please, could you tell me your name again?’ There was such coolness and yet such energy in her voice.
‘Of course, but it wouldn’t mean anything to you. I wanted to talk to you about someone we both know.’
‘Either tell me your name, or I’ll hang up.’
What a world of obsessive bureaucrats, from Mascaranti, who wrote everything down, to this woman who needed to hear the four or five syllables commonly defined as a name, any name: he could easily tell her his name was Orazio Coclite and what difference would it make? ‘My name is Duca Lamberti, though you don’t know me. But we both knew someone in particular.’
She didn’t let him finish this time either. ‘Wait, I’ve heard that name before. Oh, yes, of course, you’re one of my idols! I was very innocent in those days, I used to have a lot of idols, I don’t have many left, but you’re one, except that my memory …’
He looked at the tip of his shoes, the shoes, with his feet inside, were real entities, and he had to convince himself that he was really talking to a woman who was telling him that he was her idol. In what sense? For what reason?
‘… Three years ago, in the courtroom I shouted, “No, no, no, no!” when the judge read out the sentence, they dragged me outside and held me in a room for two hours, asking me who I was and who I wasn’t, and I kept saying: “It’s shameful, shameful, shameful, they shouldn’t have sentenced him to prison,” and they’d answer, “Signorina, keep quiet, otherwise we’ll put you inside for causing a breach of the peace,” and I cried all the way home. I’d attended the whole trial, I’d told everybody they had to acquit you, that you weren’t guilty of anything, that in fact they ought to give you a prize, I’d quarrelled with people in the corridor outside the courtroom.’
Of course, she was talking too much, but her warm, low tone of voice didn’t have the same irritating effect on him as the shrill chatter of many women. And besides, she was saying things he would never have expected, things he could never have imagined anyone saying to him, not even his father or his sister had ever said anything like that. He was an idol. He had a fan. Probably the only one.
‘And now I didn’t even remember your name! I really feel ashamed, you can’t imagine all the arguments I’ve had about euthanasia, everyone’s against it, they have their principles, the principle of respect for life, the principle of putting on evening dress to go to La Scala.’