The danger was still clear and present, thought Rosa as she washed the dishes; but there was at least at little hope.
Ricciardi had retired to his bedroom, resolute that he wouldn’t look out his window, even by chance: he didn’t want to suffer the disappointment of once more seeing the shutters across the way closed. Of course, his determination faltered, and he sat in the dark watching the little corner of the Colombos’ drawing room that could be glimpsed from his bedroom window. He saw the infamous young man, by now comfortably ensconsed on the sofa, drinking an espresso; indignantly, he wondered whether the man ever planned to go home, if indeed he had a home. Across from him sat Enrica, hair neatly gathered in a bun, eyeglasses, hands in her lap. She was smiling at him, or at least that’s how it looked to Ricciardi.
Until recently, and every night for many months before that, he’d seen the figure of a woman who had hanged herself on the floor above Enrica’s apartment. Every night, as he looked at the sweet image of Enrica embroidering, he’d had to behold the chilling contrast with this body dangling lazily from a rope tied around the hook holding up the chandelier. Rosa had told him that the woman was a newlywed who’d discovered the truth about her unfaithful husband; when she’d furiously confronted him, he’d beaten her and then abandoned her.
Ricciardi had seen, all too clearly, the neck stretched out by the dislocation of the vertebrae, the blackish tongue, cut halfway through by the final spasm of the jaws, dangling out of her mouth, the bulging eyes, protruding from the sockets; the large stain of urine and feces released by the sphincter onto the white wedding gown, which she’d insisted on wearing for this last macabre dance with death. The woman had repeated to Ricciardi, every night, her invective against the woman who had stolen away her husband. Against the other woman, and not against the man who had betrayed her:
“You damned whore, you took my love and my life.”
She again came to mind now, nearly three months after she’d slowly dissolved into the night, leaving behind only an aura of sadness at first, and then, finally, nothing. She came to mind as he watched Enrica smile at her man and then look away, perhaps thinking of the future they might have together, their children and, someday, their grandchildren: the future that his fundamental nature, however, made impossible for him.
He felt the now familiar stab of pain in his stomach and a powerful surge of nausea. He thought of the hanged woman and himself, two fates not really as far apart as one might think. And the new pain, the dull and selfish suffering that now had a name he couldn’t even bring himself to utter.
The summer night was busy with the buzz of people talking in the street, sitting in front of the doors to their ground-floor bassi, to escape the heat. Somewhere a piano was playing, and he could hear singing, but he couldn’t make out the words. The music was heartbreaking, perfectly suited to Ricciardi’s sorrow. He looked at the man drinking coffee in Enrica’s home, unsuspecting, all smiles: and for the first time, he hated someone with every fiber of his being. He hated that man because the place he was sitting belonged to him, just as the woman that he was smiling at belonged to him; that life, and that normal world, those dreams and that future all belonged to him, too.
He coldly contemplated that hatred, as if it were a strange animal he’d never laid eyes on. A disease that could prove fatal. A disease that could make you kill.
Suddenly, in the heat of the night, surrounded by the sound of faraway music, Ricciardi understood who had killed Adriana Musso di Camparino. And why.
XXXVII
Capece felt the stabbing pain of jealousy as he dreamt of the young man who’d smiled at Adriana at the theater, and he woke up with a jerk. He looked around and for a long moment had no idea where he was: odd, considering he was in his own home.
My home, he thought bitterly. This isn’t my home. This isn’t my place. Everyone has a place of their own, he thought, the kind of thoughts you have when you first wake up, lazily, hovering between your last dream and the reality that filters in a little at a time: and this isn’t mine. My place is close to Adriana, close to my love: if she’s no longer part of this world, then I no longer have a place where I belong.
The night before he’d stayed out on the balcony for hours, until his wife figured out that he didn’t want to talk to her and retreated into her bedroom. Then he’d stretched out on the sofa and had fallen asleep, overcome by the rapid succession of events and the traumas of the past few days, plummeting into an unrestful, agitated slumber. He couldn’t remember what dreams he’d had except for the one right before awakening, the glance that he’d intercepted between his lover and her young admirer at the theater, the glance that had unleashed the last, furious fight. As dawn crept into the bedroom with its promise of another day of oppressive heat, Capece experienced for the thousandth time a stabbing pain in his stomach, a surge of blood to his head, and an uncontrollable wave of fury. A blind will to wreak havoc, to destroy and kill.
In the dim light, he looked at his hand. And he started to weep, silently.
As the first rays of sunshine extended across the piazza across from city hall and through the glass panes of his windows, flooding the office with bright light, Ricciardi was already sitting at his desk. He’d hardly slept a wink, with the crashing waves of conflicting emotions inside and the new understanding he’d gained of the Camparino murder; and so he’d risen from his bed while it was still pitch black out and had made his way to the empty police headquarters building, with the cop at the front entrance snoring away-he hadn’t even seen him go in; there was no one about but the two dead men on the stairs, engaged in their perennial portrayal of grief, greeting him as always; but he paid them no mind.
He was waiting for Maione, so that they could agree on a strategy. They couldn’t get this wrong: one reckless move would prevent him from obtaining the evidence they needed. The brigadier, too, was an early riser, though perhaps not to the same degree as his superior officer, and Ricciardi would have enough time to give him the instructions he had in mind.
He whiled away the time by catching up with the paperwork he’d been neglecting for the past few days; he was raptly compiling a report when he heard a knock at the door. At last, he thought. He called out:
“Avanti, come in!”
The door opened just a crack and to his immense surprise, Ricciardi found himself gazing admiringly upon Livia, even more seductive than usual, smiling at him from the threshold and holding up a brown paper package.
“Good morning. I’m here to bring breakfast to a certain Commissario Ricciardi, who I’m told is the most charming man at police headquarters. Would you be able to point me to his office, by any chance?”
She wore a light jacket that was reminscent of a sailor’s blouse, dark blue with white cuffs; the skirt echoed the same motif, rode tight around her hips, and hung knee-length, revealing the white-silk stockings that sheathed her legs. Her blouse, open at the neck, revealed the woman’s magnificent décolleté; her cunning little cloche hat partly concealed her short hairdo that framed her lightly made-up face, which, at that moment, was illuminated by a stunning smile.