10 October 1999
Beldoro
North Italy
A woman screamed.
The noise startled several pigeons dozing on the telephone wires that snaked between the buildings above the square. The birds took off, wings slapping, before lazily settling back where they had started. The streets had been hushed until then, the only sound the crackle of the dry leaves being chased in small circles by the brisk wind. It was autumn, after all, and the town of Beldoro was bedding down for winter. The large palm trees outside the big hotels on the lakeside had been wrapped in sacking material, to protect them from the chills of the coming months and the boats in the marina were wearing slick coverings. The wind was keeping people off the streets and the square was empty.
The scream was brief and ended abruptly, as if it had been silenced. In fact, its final moments were muffled and the sleepy stillness that had enveloped the square outside, before the scream had momentarily splintered it, returned immediately.
Above the square, Alfio Bonfadini had heard it, though. He had been on his way to the toilet when the sudden noise had stopped him in his tracks. He listened, unsure if he really had heard such a sound, pulling the lace curtains of his bedroom window to one side to see what was going on. His overweight body was naked, having just got out of the bed where the dozing, full figure of a woman still lay. She was called Silvia and the noise had failed to stir her, tired as she was after their lovemaking.
Alfio pulled the curtain across his face so that he could not be seen and watched as a grey van appeared from around the corner at the far end of the square and roared up to the pavement in front of the bar that occupied part of the ground floor of the building. His immediate thought was one of panic. What was going on? Christ! Maybe it was Silvia’s husband! She was the wife of a man named Ignazio Mazzini, but there was little love in their marriage. On the first occasion she and Alfio had crept upstairs, pulling at each other’s clothes, she had told him that Ignazio had not slept with her since the night of their wedding five years previously. Nonetheless, it was well documented – mainly in the files of the local carabinieri – that Ignazio could be a violent man with a temper that was easily roused.
My God, how could I be such a fool as to take up with such a woman? he thought, his heart beginning to pound and a sick feeling starting to worm its way into his stomach.
It had all seemed so easy and so comfortable. She worked part-time in the shop with him. In the middle of the morning, every couple of days, when the first rush of business – or, at any rate, such a rush as one could expect in a shop selling wool and ladies’ underwear – had died away, they would put a notice on the door and would sneak upstairs to his bedroom and make love for an hour. An hour and no more. On the stroke of twelve they would return to their chores and no one would be any the wiser. Or, at least, they thought no one knew, but it was common knowledge that there was no point trying the door of the shop between eleven and twelve on every second day. But, blissfully ignorant, once they were back behind the counter, Alfio and Silvia did not speak of it. It was as if it were two other people who made love in that room, with the lace curtains swaying gently in the breeze and the sound of mopeds and cars seeping in through the gaps in the window frames.
Alfio watched what was becoming frenzied activity down below. A man jumped out of the van and rushed round to its rear, throwing open the back doors, out of which two other men jumped and ran into the bar below, next door to his shop. Almost immediately, from the bar came a scrum of bodies. The three men re-appeared, half-carrying, half-dragging a blonde-haired woman whose legs appeared to have lost any of the properties that made them useful.
‘Madoooonna!’ whispered Alfio, his surprise elongating the expletive.
The men all wore black balaclavas, with holes for eyes and large, round holes for their mouths, just like the Basque Separatists or the IRA men in Ireland that he sometimes saw on the TV news. Not that there was anyone around to see them though. The square slept on.
They were struggling, but not because the woman was protesting. Rather, it was because she had become like a rag doll, arms flailing and legs collapsing underneath her. Finally, one of them grabbed her around the middle and threw her over his shoulders, running the last few steps to the van and dropping her in heavily, before climbing in himself. His colleagues followed and the doors slammed shut as the van sped off around the square, slamming through the gears, and down Via Costanza towards the mountains.
Bonfadini was confused as he hurriedly pulled on his trousers. He also felt a deep sense of relief that it had not been Ignazio. That could have been very bad. He resolved then and there to bring his relationship with Silvia to an end. He would tell her he could no longer afford her wages. Then he would wait a while and re-advertise the job. He could take on a widow or, better still, a younger woman with no husband. He could return to his mid-morning breaks without being concerned about having his kneecaps broken.
He fastened his trousers quickly and dragged a t-shirt over his head. Naturally nosey, he wanted to see what was going on. He ran downstairs into the backyard from where he could get to the street via a short alleyway, loudly shouting ‘Get dressed!’ to the stirring Silvia as he went. He just had time at the bottom of the steps to hear two police cars arrive from different directions, sirens wailing and blue lights flashing, before he ran into a wall, hearing his nose splinter and feeling it spread across his face. At least, it felt as if he had run into a wall. His body folded and crumpled to the ground, his eyes filling with water, and the pain beginning. It started somewhere at the back of his head, undertaking an inevitable journey towards the middle of his face where it would, he knew, explode into something memorable. As his body slumped to the floor, blood gushing from his smashed nose, he caught a glimpse of the tall figure of Ignazio, Silvia’s husband, stepping back into the shadows at the bottom of the stairs, a baseball bat hanging limply at his side and a slow, satisfied smile beginning to crease his dark features.