The cicadas were chirping like crazy.
Matteo sat on a fallen tree near the construction trailer and tried to make sense of everything. He cast a thoughtful eye over all the people who had gathered in front of the willow fence to watch the police work. Word had spread quickly that a body had been found on the riverbank. Matteo wasn’t at all bothered by the fact so many onlookers had arrived. On the contrary. Santa Caterina was a small village. That meant there was a good chance people there had known the deceased personally. People were worried, and he could hardly blame them. He felt shaken, too. This was a small town in Tuscany, not a big city. How could someone commit such a heinous crime here, in his hometown? The hearse was already parked on the narrow gravel path in front of the property. The undertaker, smoking one cigarette after another, waited in the unrelenting heat for the body to finally be released. The thought made Matteo shudder. That body was Gaetano. It wasn’t that he had known him especially well. But he had always been nice to him. Jesus, everyone had liked this man, who always had a smile on his face, and earned his living playing people Bob Dylan songs. What vile creature was capable of doing something so awful to him?
“We’ll be done here in a minute.”
Startled, Matteo wheeled around. In front of him stood one of the two men from the forensics department, wearing a white full-body suit. His last name was Curello, if Matteo remembered correctly.
He wasn’t sure, because he still felt like he was in a trance. He could well have missed this or that piece of information.
Matteo looked at the backpack the man was holding. Curello was probably only slightly older than he was, but he displayed a hardiness as if he had been doing this job for decades. He was tall and had a round, friendly face that shone with sweat. Matteo couldn’t remotely imagine what an ordeal it must have been to work on a corpse in one of those suits, in a stuffy construction trailer covered in blowflies.
“Here are the deceased’s personal effects.” He held the sack out to him. “It’s not much, but I thought you might need it for your investigative work.”
“Uh, thanks.” Dazed, he allowed Gaetano’s duffel bag to be pressed into his hand. He attempted a confident smile, even though there was nothing to smile about at all. “And your initial assessment?” he asked.
Curello shrugged wearily. “Beaten to death with a blunt object, if you ask me. Judging from the marks, the blow was so powerful that death was instantaneous.”
Involuntarily, Matteo shuddered. He didn’t want to know what marks Curello was basing his judgement on.
“Which is really strange.” The man stopped moving and looked at Matteo. “There’s a smell of gunpowder inside the construction trailer.”
Matteo didn’t understand. “But you said Gaetano had been beaten to death.”
“He was. Without a doubt. We also found this.” He pulled out a transparent plastic bag containing a small metal cylinder.
“A bullet casing,” Matteo muttered.
“Exactly. From a rifle. I don’t know how this is all supposed to fit together, but apparently a shot was fired in there quite recently.”
Matteo blinked at the man, stunned. “But where’s the bullet?”
Curello shrugged his broad shoulders. “We didn’t find it.” He pulled down the zip of his overalls as he went on. “We’ll have to search the trailer thoroughly again for gunshot residue. But that won’t happen today. And as for the cause of death, we’ll have to wait for the autopsy to tell us more.” He paused and inspected the construction trailer. “But there are no signs of a struggle or anything else to indicate a scuffle. Actually, it looks like it all happened rather quickly and came as a surprise for the poor sap.”
Matteo nodded. A small mercy, he thought. At least it was quick. “You mean he didn’t expect the blow?”
“Exactly, yes. If he’d seen the blow coming, he’d have been in a defensive stance.” The giant reared up in front of Matteo and raised his arm as if to protect himself from something. “We should have also seen injuries to the forearms. But there was nothing there.”
“Hmm.” Matteo pondered the words, pulled his notepad out of his breast pocket and made notes while Curello awkwardly tried to free himself from the full-body suit caught on his shoe.
Matteo tried to recall the scene of the crime. There was hardly any need to climb back into the trailer, he thought.
At last, the man won his fight with the overalls. Matteo watched him stuff them into a ball.
“Can you say anything about the time of death yet?”
Curello shook his head. “Not exactly, no.” But from the rigor mortis and the condition of the larvae we found in the wound…”
With a firm gesture, Matteo silenced Curello, who grinned in amusement.
But then he became serious. “Without committing myself now, I’d say death occurred twelve hours ago.”
Matteo did a swift calculation in his head. “So around ten o’clock last night?”
Curello raised his arms defensively. “Don’t quote me on that. You asked for an initial estimate, and that’s what it is. I can determine a more specific time using forensics. You’ll have it tomorrow.”
“Good,” said Matteo. “But that’s a hint.”
He looked at the surroundings, tried to imagine the place at night. As soon as darkness fell, it was surely utterly quiet down here by the river. The perfect place for an unobserved crime. But something gave him pause.
“I know Gaetano to be a pretty neat and tidy man,” Matteo murmured.
“You mean the mess in the construction trailer?”
Matteo nodded in agreement.
Curello looked at Matteo urgently. “Everything indicates someone was looking for something.” He wiped his sweaty hair from his forehead. “I guess it’s up to them to find out what that was all about. Our work here is done for now. I’ll get back to you with the forensic results. And we’ll take care of the matter of the gunshot residue and the missing bullet shortly.”
Matteo nodded wanly, trying to process this information. But he could no longer concentrate because he had recognised a person waving at him from among the crowd of onlookers. Nina! His heartbeat accelerated.
The man offered his hand to Matteo, which he shook half-heartedly, and turned away without another word.
Matteo walked towards the fence where the crowd stood in the shade of two tall pine trees, watching everything. Nina stood apart from the others, looking a little alien; her immaculate appearance was completely out of place here.
“What are you doing here?” Matteo had to smile involuntarily when she looked at him.
She briefly narrowed her striking, long-lashed eyes. “I was on my way to my father’s house when I saw the commotion on the road. So I got curious and came to take a look.” She tucked a strand of auburn hair behind her ear and glanced around awkwardly. “They say there was a murder.”
Matteo swallowed dryly. The fear in her face made his knees go weak. Suddenly he felt an irrepressible protective urge.
“We have everything under control,” he said automatically, realising as he said the words how stilted and stupid he sounded.
Some of the crowd turned their heads to him.
“So there really was a murder down there?” he was asked by a small, stocky woman with rounded hips.
“We’re in the middle of investigative work, Angela. I can’t give out any information on that yet.”
Matteo pointed past Nina. “Come on, let’s go for a walk by the river.”
After they had moved far enough away from prying eyes, Matteo told her who the murdered man was.
Nina pressed her hand over her mouth. “Oh my! I knew him. Not well, but by sight.”
She seemed to be lost in thought, which gave Matteo the opportunity to examine her at length.
They strolled along the path, accompanied by the noisy chirping of the cicadas and the gentle murmur of the Serchio. But Matteo was unmoved by the beauty of nature. His eyes were fully focused on Nina. She was wearing a loose summer dress that hinted at the figure hidden underneath with every movement. Matteo couldn’t remember a woman ever turning his head like this before.
“And Caesar,” she finally said. “I knew the Saint Bernard when he was a puppy. Gaetano came back to the village to show him off.” She gave a painful sigh. “I can’t remember ever seeing him without that dog. They shared one heart and soul.”
Matteo joined in the sigh. “Yes, yes, Caesar’s a great dog.”
Suddenly he felt hot and cold as a thought set his brain ablaze. Where the hell was the dog?