“Do you feel better now, Signora?” the commissioner asked politely.
“Yes... I think so. You came right away,” murmured Signora Belli as she lifted her eyes to see him clearer. He was a good-looking young man, thirty-five years old, with dark hair and intensely blue eyes, almost violet. He sat immobile in front of her, with his beautiful hands crossed over his knees as if he had all the time in the world. But his calm pose was contradicted by the intermittent pulsing of a vein in his neck that revealed a contained energy, a tension ready to explode.
He had said to call him D’Orso. Commissioner Tommaso D’Orso.
“Are you able to answer a few questions?”
Signora Rosa stiffened slightly in the old chintz flowered armchair in her sitting room and looked up at the ceiling. “Have they... have they taken her away yet?”
The commissioner looked up at the ceiling too. The girl’s body was surely still up on the next floor, above their heads. He could hear the heavy steps of Officer Sorrento and the rummaging of the lab agents who were examining every square centimeter of the pathetically pretentious living room, taking photos of the stuffed animals strewn about the house and searching the bedroom closet where cheap, gaudy clothes hung orderly next to inexpensive childish dresses.
“They’ve certainly taken her away by now...” he lied. “Would you please go over everything again, from the beginning?”
Signora Rosa nodded her head. “This morning I didn’t hear her come down,” she began. “I hear her every day, when she comes down the stairs in those stilettos, but not this morning. So I started to worry.”
“Why?” asked the commissioner. “Did she always leave at the same time?”
“No.” Signora Rosa squirmed in discomfort. “No, actually... you know how cinema people are, they never have regular schedules...”
“Was she an actress?”
“No... I don’t know,” Signora Rosa stuttered, blushing. “She just said she worked in the movie business.”
The commissioner looked at her perplexed, asking himself why the signora turned so red over such a simple question.
“Let’s go over it again,” he proposed. “Miss Sardi didn’t leave on a regular schedule and so you, not hearing her come down, didn’t have any reason to be alarmed. But, at a certain point, you went upstairs because you were worried. Why?”
Signora Rosa bit her wrinkled lips. “Because of the noises I heard last night, that’s why,” she snapped.
“What kind of noises?” the commissioner asked patiently. He knew from experience that some people were not forthcoming and you had to get things out of them little by little.
“An argument. An argument that woke me up suddenly.”
“What time was that?”
“Around midnight. It sounded like pandemonium. Shouting, things smashing on the floor, then heavy steps running down the stairs and a car squealing off in a hurry.”
“And then what did you do?” asked D’Orso. “Did you go to the window? Did you see anything?”
“No,” murmured Signora Rosa, shaking her head with a guilty air. “How could I have imagined what had happened? I rolled over and went back to sleep, that’s what I did... I had already given my advice to that girl. In vain, apparently. What can I do if people won’t listen to me? I told her that that guy, with his leather jacket and his black car, was up to no good. But Melina told me he was her boyfriend and that he was a producer. Nice boyfriend, I said. In my opinion, the one before was better, the one from her hometown. A good boy. She did nothing but fight with the new one. It certainly wasn’t the first time I had been awakened by these tremendous arguments, you know.”
“What is this boyfriend’s name?” asked the commissioner.
Signora Rosa shook her head.
“Can you describe him to me?”
“I only saw him in passing a couple of times. What can I say? He isn’t tall, he isn’t short, his hair’s not really brown or blond. The only thing that struck me was his, how do you say, vulgar look. Yes, vulgar, that’s it.”
“And do you remember the make or model of his car?”
“I don’t know anything about cars.” Signora Rosa shook her head. “I don’t even recognize the FIATs anymore, they’ve changed so much... but I know that there was some kind of disc with white and blue points on the hood.”
“So it’s a BMW...” murmured the commissioner. “And did you see him last night?”
“That guy? No. To tell you the truth, no. I only thought it was him.”
“I understand,” said the commissioner. “Let’s go back to this morning. This morning you thought about what you had heard and started to worry.”
“Yes, this morning I thought about it and I went to knock on her door. Just to see if she needed anything. No one answered. So I came back here and I got the key.”
“And why did you have the keys to Miss Sardi’s place?”
“She gave them to me when she rented the apartment, just in case. This is a really small building, Signor Commissioner. There’s only her apartment and mine. We don’t have a doorman and in my old age I don’t go out much. I got her mail for her, opened for the electric company... little favors like that. That’s all.”
“Did you see each other often?”
Signora Rosa had the impression there was a flash of sincere curiosity in Commissioner Tommaso D’Orso’s eyes. A curiosity that maybe made him wonder what an old widow like her and a young, vibrant girl who lived, who had lived, above her could ever have to say to one another. But this impression lasted for only a split second and Signora Rosa found herself staring embarrassed into the commissioner’s attentive blue eyes.
“Did you see each other often?” he repeated, with an absolutely professional tone.
“Just a little chitchat when we met on the stairs, or when I took her mail. She seemed like such a good girl... I invited her to lunch a few times, before...”
“Before what?” asked D’Orso, but Signora Rosa blushed again, stammered, and burst into tears.
Really, she hadn’t answered the question, the commissioner thought while gazing out his office window. Before him, beyond the trees and the road, the Coliseum suffered, majestic and indifferent, the carousel of automobiles that went around it to reach the wide boulevard that runs along the ancient Roman Forums. But Tommaso D’Orso didn’t even see it: he had his eyes fixed on the four little buildings just behind it, on the little two-story one with crumbling plaster walls, held up by the walls of the other structures. The apartment where Melina Sardi had been killed.
“I brought you an espresso, Commissioner.” Officer Sorrento’s deep baritone voice made him spin around suddenly. Strange, he hadn’t heard him come in.
“Another espresso. You’re spoiling me.”
The officer looked at his commissioner with affectionate deference and put the miniature mug on his muddled desk. If it were up to him, he would have brought him a slice of pizza too, maybe the hot, steamy white kind studded with coarse salt that the neighborhood bakery made, just like in the olden days. He was sure the commissioner had forgotten to eat lunch, just as he always did when he started investigating a difficult case.
“Some coffee can’t hurt,” he assured him.
Tommaso D’Orso drank his espresso without taking his eyes off Sorrento. He was a strange guy: He was nearing retirement age but was still a noncommissioned officer, even though he had seen all sorts of things and knew more than D’Orso did about the central database in headquarters. But he never complained, as if it was written somewhere that he would never be promoted, as if he had accepted his menial job as support and assistance a long time ago. And he did it the best he could, almost in self-sacrifice, happy to give his modest contribution to justice.