River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi

Author:Valerio Varesi [Varesi, Valerio]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus Prime Crime
Published: 2011-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Mantua always gave him the impression of land that had risen from a huge bog. It was said that graves there could not be dug deeper than one metre lest the bodies ended up buried in water. On the other hand, it seemed to him bizarre that with all the lands of the plain available, they piled the dead one on top of the other like stacks of Parmesan cheese.

He asked for information about the San Pellegrino section. It was quite a recent wing, with bouquets of artificial flowers and the marble still shiny. It occurred to him that although his job brought him frequently into contact with death, this was the first time that an investigation had taken him to a cemetery. He usually had to occupy himself with the crueller aspects of death, never with its more peaceful, silent side. The unseemly poses of corpses were invariably a yell of rage, and a commissario was called on to deliver the vengeance of law. Once the case had been neatly filed away, he had never had occasion to go and see where the victims ended up, not even those whose lives he had combed through with an investigator’s disrespectful zeal.

When he arrived in front of the smooth, marble plaque without name or date, he felt torn between surprise and disappointment, the same feelings he had once felt when his pistol jammed as he was about to fire on a man. The burial niche in the wall was empty. As was the one next to it. He checked again: square E, row 3, number 32. The crossword puzzle of the dead each time led him to the same conclusion, to the afterlife’s unfilled box. Then he looked over at one side and intuition provided him with the solution, as intuition can sometimes supply the correct word from the opening letters alone. There was a photograph of a woman with a severe countenance: Desolina Tonna of Magnani, and just below: “Husband, daughter, brothers and sisters.”

He reached the graveyard’s administrative office just before it was due to close. The clerk on the information desk was seated in front of a computer screen and over his shoulder the commissario could see that he was engrossed in a video game. The office was there to field enquiries about where the dead were buried, although the dead that Soneri was inquiring about were in all probability not there, or at least not yet.

“I’d like to know who owns the burial places thirty-two and thirty-three in square E, third row, the San Pellegrino section.”

He expected the official to object on the grounds of confidentiality, so without waiting for an answer, he held up his police identity card.

The man appeared to choke on the words he was on the brink of uttering, and turned to his keyboard. “Number thirty-two has been acquired by one Decimo Tonna and thirty-three by one Anteo Tonna.”

It was all he needed to know.

He did not go back to the police station. Once

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