Rocco looked at the little cluster of houses hidden in the snow.
“Ah. There are people who live up there?”
“Yes.”
“In the middle of nowhere? Huh …”
“If you love the mountains, that’s the place for you, right?”
Rocco Schiavone grimaced in disapproval. “Maybe so, Caciuoppolo, maybe so. Nice work.”
“Grazie.”
“But he also could have died somewhere else and been carried up here. No?”
Caciuoppolo stood lost in thought.
“Even though …” Rocco added, “… that means they put the down jacket on him afterward. Because a person’s hardly likely to die indoors wearing a down jacket. Or else—why not? Maybe he was about to go out, and then he died? Or else he went to see someone, only had time to get his gloves off, and then died?” Rocco looked at Caciuoppolo without seeing him. “Or else no one killed him at all, he just died on his own, and I’m standing here spouting bullshit. No, Caciuoppolo?”
“Commissa’, if you say so.”
“Thanks, Officer. We’ll look into this, too. In any case, I don’t know if you read the memos that circulate, if you keep up with these things, but they’ve abolished the rank of commissario in the police force. Now we’re called deputy police chief. But I’m just keeping you informed. I really couldn’t give a damn, personally!”
“Yes sir.”
“Caciuoppolo, why would someone born in Naples, with Capri, Ischia, and Procida just a half-hour ferry ride away, along with Positano and the Amalfi Coast—why would you come up here to freeze your ass off?”
Caciuoppolo looked at him and flashed a southern smile, with all his gleaming white teeth accounted for. “Commissa’—excuse me, Deputy Police Chief, sir. What’s that old expression? There’s one thing that pulls a cart stronger than a team of oxen, and that’s …”
“Understood.” Rocco looked up at the black sky, where racing clouds covered and uncovered the stars. “And you met her up here in the mountains?”
“No. In Aosta. She has an ice cream shop.”
“An ice cream shop? In Aosta?”
“Sure. You know, they have summer up here, too.”
“I wouldn’t know that yet. I got here in late September.”
“Trust me, Dotto’. It’ll come, it’ll come! And it’s beautiful, too.”
Rocco Schiavone started walking toward the snowcat, which was waiting to take him back to town. By now his feet were like two frozen flounder fillets.
When the snowcat let Schiavone and Pierron out at the base of the cableway, the crowd of rubberneckers was smaller, thanks to the leverage of the snow and the cold. Only the Brits were still there, a small knot of people singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at the top of their lungs. The deputy police chief looked at them. Red-faced, eyes half shut from the beer they’d swilled.
Suddenly he couldn’t take it anymore.
He still remembered May 30, 1984, like it was yesterday. Conti and Graziani kicking the ball at random while Liverpool beat Rome and took home their fourth European Cup.
“Pierron, tell them to shut up!” he shouted. “There’s a corpse up there—a little respect, for fuck’s sake!”
Pierron walked over to talk to the Brits. They very civilly begged pardon, shook hands, and fell silent. Rocco only felt worse. First of all because now he was pissed off, and a nice rowdy brawl would have been just the thing. And second because Pierron spoke English. Schiavone barely knew how to say “Imagine all the people,” a phrase that was unlikely to be particularly useful, either in Italy or in far-off Albion.
“Do you speak English, Italo?” he asked him.
“Well, you know, Dottore …” replied the officer in an apologetic tone of voice, “in the valleys here, we all speak French, and they do a good job of teaching English in the schools. The thing is, we live on tourism. See, the schools in Val d’Aosta are first-rate. We learn languages, banking, and we’re pretty much in the vanguard when it comes to—”
“Pierron!” the deputy police chief broke in. “When you people were living in caves and scratching your fleas, in Rome we were already decadent faggots!” and he hastened over to the waiting car.
Pierron shook his head. “What are we going to do, head back to town?”
“I want to have a talk with the guy who found the corpse,” Rocco replied, and turned toward the cableway administrative offices. Italo followed him like a bloodhound.
The offices of Monterosa Ski were deserted at that time of night. Aside from a young woman in a skirt suit and a policeman dressed for skiing, both seated in the lobby. The fluorescent lights made their faces look worn. But while the policeman had the handsome tan of someone who spends hours on the slopes, the shapely young woman looked pale and exhausted. Slightly overweight, but not someone you’d kick out of bed, thought Rocco as soon as he saw her, coming in through the double glass doors with Pierron. The skiing policeman snapped to attention. At his feet was a small puddle of water, evidence that the snow clinging to his Nordica ski boots had melted. And an unmistakable sign that the officer had been sitting there for quite some time now.
“Officer De Marinis.”
Rocco looked him up and down. “So why aren’t you with your Neapolitan colleague, Caciuoppolo, guarding the scene of the murder?”
“I was here with Amedeo, the one who found the corpse,” the cop explained.
“What are you, a babysitter? Get your skis and go on up and lend a hand.”
“Right away, Dottore.”
With the loud clapping of ski boots on the floor, De Marinis left the building.
“Where is he?” Rocco asked the young woman.
“Come this way; Amedeo’s in there,” the clerk replied, pointing to a shut door behind her. “I brought him a cup of hot tea.”
“Good work … Margherita,” said Rocco, reading the name on the badge pinned to her lapel. “Good work. Could you bring a couple more for the two of us, please?”
The young woman nodded her head and left.
Amedeo was sitting in a Naugahyde chair. His eyes were puffy, and his hair was flattened to his head. He’d set his cap and gloves down on the table, and he was staring at the floor. Rocco and Italo grabbed two office chairs with wheels and sat down facing him. Finally Amedeo looked up. “Who are you?” he asked in a faint voice.
“Deputy Police Chief Schiavone. Do you feel up to answering a couple of questions?”
“Christ on a crutch. I still can’t believe it. I heard a crack and—”
Rocco stopped him with an upheld hand. “Do me a favor, Amedeo. Let’s take things one at a time. So, now, you work on the thingies, the … snowcats, right?”
“Yes, for the past few months. Luigi, my boss, got me the job. He’s a good friend of mine.”
“He’s the one who took us up, Dottore,” Italo added. Rocco nodded.
“I’d just finished doing the piste near the top. There was a wall and—”
“A wall?” Schiavone asked with a grimace.
“When the slope turns really steep, that’s what we call it. A wall. Or a black piste,”