d’you want me to do, Commissario Trotti?”
“There’s this veto on Bassi.”
“I just told you why, Trotti.”
“Bassi’s been told by the Milan magistrates—most probably by Abete—to drop his inquiries. That’s why Bassi went to
Vissuto
in the first place. There’s money in the Turellini case for him. It’s Turellini’s family who want to know why the doctor was murdered. Bassi’s trying to enlist my help because, as a private investigator, he’s being shouldered out. He doesn’t want the case to go cold on him before he gets paid.”
“Why are you getting involved?”
“I never said I was getting involved.”
Magagna asked, “You need the money?”
“You’re in Milan, Magagna.”
“You’re not getting involved but you want me to help you?”
“You haven’t got the Questore telling you to stick to rape victims and abused infants.”
“Sounds like good advice.”
“Approach Abete. See if you can find out why he’s calling Bassi off. Turellini looks to me like a crime of passion. There’s no reason for the PM to go slow—unless there’s pressure from somewhere; I think the problem’s there.”
“Why bother, commissario?”
“Find out if it really is political, Magagna.”
“Why don’t you ask Bassi?”
“Bassi’s a womanizer who’s best sticking to divorce work—the kind of stuff he can understand. He wouldn’t know how to solve a murder even if you gave him a confession in triplicate.”
13: Bianca
I T HAD SUDDENLY turned into a beautiful day.
Magically, the dampness had vanished into the air; to the south the sun shone bravely in a sky now cloudless. Overhead, a jet plane flew northwards, taking its encapsulated passengers over the Alps to Switzerland, Germany and beyond, to a land as cold and pure as the perfect sky.
Trotti walked with his hands in his coat pockets; the sound of his footfalls on the cobbled street echoed off the closed buildings.
A Tuesday morning in late November, and the city was strangely quiet. He crossed Piazza Carmine. Ochre walls, brown blinds and the morning smells of coffee and baker’s yeast. A fairytale city—except for the occasional car coming from behind and edging him towards the high, cold walls.
(The Lega Lombarda mayor wanted to abolish the pedestrian zone; he was allowing it to die away, ignored and unregretted. The Greens complained, of course, although they had done nothing to save the traffic-free zone or indeed anything else while they were sharing power with the Socialists.)
A woman was sluicing down the stone entrance to a building in via Tre Marie. Steam came from her mouth and from the head of the mop as she slapped it to the ground. Trotti could hear her singing. The song was in a Lombardy dialect that caused him to smile.
Old posters along the walls in the city center, advertising hearing aids, announcing the recent death of dear ones and inviting the people of the province to vote for the League. There was the helmeted silhouette of the Lombard warrior of Pontida, his swordheld way above his head, in a defiant stance against the new Barbarossa—Rome and the perceived ills of the South.
Trotti popped a banana-flavored sweet into his mouth.
He deposited the wrapper into one of the green bins that the city used for collecting recyclable paper.
“Barbarossa,” he muttered under his breath. Distant memories of primary school in the hills and the unsmiling, asthmatic war veteran who had tried to drum Fascist history into Trotti’s bony head. In those days, before the Axis, Barbarossa was Adolf Hitler. Alberto da Giussano, the helmeted Lombard warrior, was Benito Mussolini.
He reached via Mascheroni and stopped in front of the marble plaque. It was screwed into the bricks of a somber building, a seventeenth-century palazzo. The wall had blackened with age.
MINISTERO DELLA GIUSTIZIA, CASA CIRCONDARIALE DI CUSTODIA PREVENTIVA .
Then, as an afterthought, on another plaque, this time without the insignia of the
“There’s this veto on Bassi.”
“I just told you why, Trotti.”
“Bassi’s been told by the Milan magistrates—most probably by Abete—to drop his inquiries. That’s why Bassi went to
Vissuto
in the first place. There’s money in the Turellini case for him. It’s Turellini’s family who want to know why the doctor was murdered. Bassi’s trying to enlist my help because, as a private investigator, he’s being shouldered out. He doesn’t want the case to go cold on him before he gets paid.”
“Why are you getting involved?”
“I never said I was getting involved.”
Magagna asked, “You need the money?”
“You’re in Milan, Magagna.”
“You’re not getting involved but you want me to help you?”
“You haven’t got the Questore telling you to stick to rape victims and abused infants.”
“Sounds like good advice.”
“Approach Abete. See if you can find out why he’s calling Bassi off. Turellini looks to me like a crime of passion. There’s no reason for the PM to go slow—unless there’s pressure from somewhere; I think the problem’s there.”
“Why bother, commissario?”
“Find out if it really is political, Magagna.”
“Why don’t you ask Bassi?”
“Bassi’s a womanizer who’s best sticking to divorce work—the kind of stuff he can understand. He wouldn’t know how to solve a murder even if you gave him a confession in triplicate.”
13: Bianca
I T HAD SUDDENLY turned into a beautiful day.
Magically, the dampness had vanished into the air; to the south the sun shone bravely in a sky now cloudless. Overhead, a jet plane flew northwards, taking its encapsulated passengers over the Alps to Switzerland, Germany and beyond, to a land as cold and pure as the perfect sky.
Trotti walked with his hands in his coat pockets; the sound of his footfalls on the cobbled street echoed off the closed buildings.
A Tuesday morning in late November, and the city was strangely quiet. He crossed Piazza Carmine. Ochre walls, brown blinds and the morning smells of coffee and baker’s yeast. A fairytale city—except for the occasional car coming from behind and edging him towards the high, cold walls.
(The Lega Lombarda mayor wanted to abolish the pedestrian zone; he was allowing it to die away, ignored and unregretted. The Greens complained, of course, although they had done nothing to save the traffic-free zone or indeed anything else while they were sharing power with the Socialists.)
A woman was sluicing down the stone entrance to a building in via Tre Marie. Steam came from her mouth and from the head of the mop as she slapped it to the ground. Trotti could hear her singing. The song was in a Lombardy dialect that caused him to smile.
Old posters along the walls in the city center, advertising hearing aids, announcing the recent death of dear ones and inviting the people of the province to vote for the League. There was the helmeted silhouette of the Lombard warrior of Pontida, his swordheld way above his head, in a defiant stance against the new Barbarossa—Rome and the perceived ills of the South.
Trotti popped a banana-flavored sweet into his mouth.
He deposited the wrapper into one of the green bins that the city used for collecting recyclable paper.
“Barbarossa,” he muttered under his breath. Distant memories of primary school in the hills and the unsmiling, asthmatic war veteran who had tried to drum Fascist history into Trotti’s bony head. In those days, before the Axis, Barbarossa was Adolf Hitler. Alberto da Giussano, the helmeted Lombard warrior, was Benito Mussolini.
He reached via Mascheroni and stopped in front of the marble plaque. It was screwed into the bricks of a somber building, a seventeenth-century palazzo. The wall had blackened with age.
MINISTERO DELLA GIUSTIZIA, CASA CIRCONDARIALE DI CUSTODIA PREVENTIVA .
Then, as an afterthought, on another plaque, this time without the insignia of the
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