‘Who took these?’ she asked in bewilderment.
‘My men had been stationed for a couple of hours in the garden. They had heard the rumour that the gang would turn up at the Polish woman’s villa to settle accounts.’
‘So why didn’t you intervene to set me free and get my boyfriend out of the clutches of those villains? You just stood there and watched while they beat him to within an inch of his life.’
‘No, no,’ said the sergeant. ‘We weren’t just watching. We managed to take quite a lot of photographs through the window of you being beaten up, and if we’d have arrested them that night, we’d have missed the chance to catch them with the cocaine! Think about it: for assault they’d have got a maximum of a couple of years, but for drugs they’re looking at a minimum of another ten. OK, we let them knock you about a bit, but now you can breathe freely for a good twelve years. You are as free to enjoy your lives together as chaffinches in spring.’
‘Thanks, sergeant, but seeing as you’ve gone this far, you don’t think you could put his mother, the Pole, inside as well?’
The sergeant gave a raucous laugh. ‘You’re not just a pretty face. You’re sharp-eyed and smart as well. But heed my advice. Keep well away from drugs if you want to live a long and happy life.’
CHAPTER 17. The Bindula Boys
Bindula is a dialect variation of the verb abbindolare, which means ‘to make fun of someone’. The Bindula boys were a group of idle smart asses, unsurpassable champions of the practical joke, totally ingenious in the diabolical capers they could think up and pull off.
They used to devise all manner of trickery at the expense of any poor simpleton in the valley or beyond. They had no regard for anyone, no pity for man or beast, but their favourite victim was an ex-soldier with the Arditi, known as ‘Pacioch’, a candid, credulous nincompoop. He looked like a tree trunk from which daisies might sprout: the classic, good-natured booby; the ideal scapegoat, in other words, for those good-for-nothing charlatans.
One of the leaders of the gang rejoiced in the name of Gratacu (Itchy-arse), the local word for a nettle. One day he was visiting a friend who ran a junkyard for cars above the town. In the workshop, they were dismantling an old car, a facsimile of the famed Bugatti, with the intention of using only some pieces and scrapping the rest. They had already removed the sides, including the doors, pulled out the dash board, hauled away the lid of the boot and stripped the engine down to a few bolts. The sight of the remains of that car gave Gratacu an outrageous idea: he asked his friend to lend him that wreck, just as it was, for half a day. Then, with the help of two fellow Bindula, he busied himself reassembling once more the glorious automobile. They put the engine to one side, then, like the master craftsmen-tricksters they were, the three of them made use of a roll of fishing tackle to secure each part to a rope under the chassis: they then let out the various lines, pulling them together and tying them up behind the boot. In other words, they had just stitched together the entire chassis.
Now that the trap was laid, they set off pushing the car, which was now held together by pieces of string, down the hill to the harbour, in front of the chalet housing the Mira-Lago bar. When they were in sight of the chalet, the two Bindula boys squatted down behind the boot and made it roll into the piazza. Gratacu was inside the car, pretending to drive.
When they reached the bar, all the customers got up in amazement to have a look at a vehicle which was a museum piece. The supposed driver got out and called over to Pacioch, who was quietly sitting outside, like a somewhat dim-witted cat.
‘Would you do me a favour, if it’s not too much trouble…’
Pacioch jumped to his feet at once. To be of service to one of the Bindula boys was for him an honour beyond compare.
‘There’s no water in the radiator, and the whole thing nearly seized up. Would you be good enough to go into the bar and ask for a bucket of water?’
The poor booby rushed off in a state of excitement. It was rare for them to show so much faith in him! He came dashing back with the pail of water and found the bonnet already up. Gratacu seized hold of the bucket: ‘Thanks, I’ll see to it, but if you could close the door for me. I’ve gone and left it open, and for goodness sake, it’s a very valuable, delicate car, so go easy, eh?’
Pacioch did his best to proceed as gently as possible, but as he pushed the door, it slammed shut with a loud bang. Behind the boot, the two accomplices pulled the trip wire: they tugged the lines fixed to the various bits of the car so that the whole structure crashed noisily to the ground. The doors collapsed, the dashboard was hurled into the air, the bonnet flew off and ended up on top of Gratacu. The swine let out a despairing groan and flopped to the ground as though dead. Like two jacks-in-the-box, the other pair suddenly appeared from behind the now-ruined car, making a great display of terror and horror: ‘Christ in heaven, Pacioch, what have you done?’ asked one.
‘Did you toss in a bomb?’ demanded the second.
Poor Pacioch was devastated. The customers outside the bar joined in. ‘Oh, what a disaster!’ was the cry.
‘I don’t know,’ stammered Pacioch, ‘I only closed the door … very gently.’
Some went over to help Gratacu, who was still playing the part of a recently expired corpse. When he came round, Gratacu went into a rage and attacked Pacioch like a bolt from a catapult. ‘You bloody fool, don’t you realise you have just wrecked a jewel fit for any collection? We had only borrowed it for an hour. Now who’s going to pay for it?’
One of the tricksters screamed, pointing at the inside of the bonnet: ‘Look, the engine’s gone! It’s disappeared!’
Everybody started poking around. A boy pointed his finger at the huge plane tree. ‘It’s up there in the tree! It’s got caught up between two branches.’
It is unnecessary to state that the organisers of the whole trick had put it there before the event.
‘Would someone like to tell me,’ interjected one of the group of friends, ‘what on earth kind of blow this creature must have delivered to shoot an engine up as high as that? He’s a force of nature. He has the muscles of a wild beast. We should only let him walk about with two circles of iron around his arms to restrain the propulsive strength of his biceps. Otherwise he’d be a public menace.’
Poor Pacioch looked about like a lost soul, swallowed hard in mortification … then quickly made up his mind.
‘All right, tell me where to go to get these two irons attached.’
‘To the blacksmith’s,’ came the chorus of reply. And so they all accompanied him in procession to the blacksmith’s to see him fixed up with real irons, which, as luck would have it, were all ready … and just the right size!
CHAPTER 18. Wedding in the Coptic Rite
A month went by and Stumpy was released from hospital. His mother, under the pretext that he needed time to recuperate, took him to Ascona in the Canton of Ticino, where the father’s side of the family had a house. He did not stay there as much as three days before making his way back to Porto Valtravaglia. He arrived on his motorboat, the one which had caused him to lose his hand. She, as beautiful as any pharaoh’s wife, had been there on the quay for God knows how long waiting for him. The boat moored, he jumped out, put his arms round her and led her off on a wild dance: round and round they went, and the upshot was that both of them ended up in the lake. All the folk on the foreshore rushed over, but the two re-emerged laughing, waving their arms and spraying water over all those who had come to help.