“Who is it?”
“Darling, it’s me, Nora. Bad time?”
“Yes.”
“So am I bothering you?”
“Why do you insist on asking questions that practically demand a rude answer?” he asked.
“What’s going on? Something wrong?”
“You want to know? Then I’ll tell you. I’ve got a murder on my fucking hands. Satisfied?”
Nora paused for a moment. “Why on earth would you take it out on me?”
“I take it out on everyone. First and foremost myself. I’m heading back to the office. Hold on half an hour, and I’ll call you back from there.”
“No, you’ll forget to call anyway. Listen, I just want to tell you that I’ve arranged a party at my place. A few friends are coming over.”
“Why?” Rocco asked. The recent events in Via Brocherel had run over the blackboard of his memory like an eraser.
“What do you mean, why?” asked Nora, her voice getting louder.
The deputy police chief simply couldn’t remember.
“It’s my birthday today, Rocco!”
Oh, shit, the gift, was the thought that flashed through his brain. “What time?” he asked.
“Seven thirty. Can you make it?”
“I will if I can. That’s a promise.”
“Do what you like. See you later. If you can make it.” Nora hung up. The woman’s closing words had been colder than the sidewalk around Piazza Chanoux.
It’s a chore to maintain human relations. It takes commitment, determination, and willingness: you have to face life with a smile. None of these things were in Rocco Schiavone’s toolkit. Life dragged him rudely from one day to the next, yanking him by the hair, and whatever it was that drove him to live from one day to the next, it was probably the same force that was making him put his left foot, shod in Clarks desert boots, in front of his right foot, similarly shod. One step, another step, as the Italian Alpini used to say to themselves as they marched through the Ukraine in temperatures of 40 degrees below zero in the long-ago winter of 1943. One step, another step, Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone kept saying to himself—he’d been saying those words ever since that day, that distant July day in 2007 when his life had been snapped in half once and for all, when the boat had overturned, and he had been forced to change course.
It had been a hot, sticky Roman day. The seventh of July. A day that took Marina away from him forever. And with her, everything that was good in Rocco Schiavone. He’d spend the rest of his life with nothing to guide him but his instinct for survival.
The man walked up to the front door of the apartment building on Via Brocherel. Streamlined helmet and high-impact sunglasses, pink and blue skintight bike shorts and jersey in power Lycra, covered with advertising slogans, white calf-length socks, and shoes with the toe higher than the heel, making him walk like a circus clown.
Click clack click clack, went the iron plates on the toes of his shoes, as Patrizio Baudo walked his bike, stepping awkwardly to accommodate the padding in the seat of his bike pants. He observed the apocalyptic scene on the street outside his building. The police, rubberneckers, and even some guy with a TV camera.
What’s happened? he thought as he kept walking.
He walked up to a petite blond policewoman with a sweet face and big beautiful eyes, and expressed his thoughts aloud: “What’s happened?”
The policewoman sighed: “There’s been a murder.”
“A … what?”
“Just who are you?” asked the policewoman.
“Patrizio Baudo. I live here,” he said, and raised one hand with a fingerless glove to point at the windows of his apartment.
Inspector Rispoli focused on the man’s face, so that she could actually see her reflection in his sunglasses. “Patrizio Baudo? I think that … come with me.”
He hadn’t had time to change yet. Sitting in his cycling jersey and shorts across from the deputy police chief, Patrizio Baudo had however taken off his sunglasses and helmet. He’d handed his bike over to a police officer; you don’t leave a piece of fine equipment like that, easily worth six thousand euros, out on the street, even if you do live in Aosta. His face was pale, and there were two red stripes beneath his eyes. He looked like someone had been slapping him around for the past ninety minutes. He sat there in a daze, slack-jawed, staring blankly across the desk at Rocco. He was trembling, hard to say whether in fear or from the cold, and held his hands between his legs, still clad in leather cycling gloves. Every so often he’d raise his right hand and touch the gold crucifix that hung around his neck. “Let me get you something warm to put on,” said the deputy police chief as he picked up the receiver of his desk phone.
Phascolarctos cinereus. Commonly called the koala bear. Patrizio Baudo resembled nothing so much as the little Australian marsupial, and that was the first thing that had come into Rocco’s mind when the man walked into the room and shook his hand. The second thought was to wonder why he hadn’t already detected that resemblance from the photographs scattered throughout the apartment. The proportions, he replied inwardly. You can see them much better in person. The eyes are so much better than a camera lens at judging space and units of measurement. All it took was a quick glance at the jug ears, the small, wide-set eyes, and the oversize nose square in the middle of the face, practically covering the small, lipless mouth. To say nothing of the weak, receding chin. Every detail of that face shouted koala. There were, of course, differences. Aside from the differences in diet and habitat, what distinguished the animal from Patrizio Baudo was the hair. The little marsupial had lovely, cottonball hair, while Patrizio was bald as a billiard ball. This was a habit of Rocco’s, to compare human faces to the features of a given animal. Something that dated back to his childhood. It all started with a gift his father had given him when he turned eight: an encyclopedia of animals that had a section full of wonderful illustrations done at the end of the nineteenth century, depicting lots and lots of birds, fish, and mammals. Rocco would sit on the carpet in the family’s little Trastevere living room and spend hours poring over those drawings, memorizing names, amusing himself by finding resemblances with his teachers at school, his classmates, and people in his neighborhood.
Casella walked in with a black jacket and gave it to Patrizio Baudo, who immediately wrapped it around his shoulders. “How … how did it happen?” he asked in a faint voice.
“We still don’t know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Patrizio’s dead, dark little eyes suddenly flamed up, as if someone had lit a torch in the pupils.
“It means we found her hanged in your den.”
Patrizio put his gloved hands over his face. Rocco went on. “But the situation isn’t entirely clear.”
The man took a deep breath and looked at the policeman, his eyes filled with tears. “What do you mean by that? What isn’t clear?”
“It’s