Tells again of hare and hedgehogs, ice caves, ninjas and body signals. Poldi gets her running water back, thinks things over and finally understands which way the hare went. She gets pricked and gets her cheek stroked, is treated impolitely and then, with the friendly assistance of the Fortschau Armoury, obeys her hunting instinct. The trouble is, she ends by overlooking an important detail and has to improvise. A few tears are shed.
“Okay, shoot. Where did you hide the mic?” I demanded when Poldi inserted a pause for me to express my admiration. “In your ear? In your mouth? Between your . . . er, never mind. Come on, where was it?”
“Nowhere! I was completely clean. You think I’d run such a risk when there was so much at stake?”
“Oh, so you really were in earnest?”
“Of course, what d’you think? In the long run, it was the only way to put a stop to that capo mafioso’s activities, I realised that at once. The end justifies the means, and you can’t afford to be squeamish in a murder inquiry. You have to get your hands dirty occasionally. And besides”—Poldi chuckled to herself—“I got rid of that idiot Torso. Everyone knew who he was inside two days, and the FBI called him off. Actually, I did him a favour, don’t you agree? Vito as well.”
“Have you told Montana about your deal with Russo?”
“Are you crazy? That remains my dear little secret, and I’m counting on your own discretion as well, you hear? But sooner or later, when I’ve gathered enough evidence, I’ll light the fuse.”
“You’re on thin ice, Poldi.”
A dismissive gesture. “Get on with you! Think I’d shit on my own doorstep?”
“What if Russo wants . . . well, more? It, I mean.”
“The rule that always applies in operations like this is, keep the ball in play but never shoot. It would be child’s play for me to make Russo sexually dependent on me, of course, but I’m a pro. I’m on the side of justice—I still know where to draw the line.”
That’s just what I was doubtful about. At the same time, I knew I was the last person to talk my aunt out of something, for despite her sixty years and wide experience of life, I was beginning to realise that Poldi had remained a child. One of those children who occasionally, when things are going too well and they’re feeling their oats, can’t resist looking over the edge of a precipice, only to give themselves a little shake and scamper home in relief. When that dawned on me, I vaguely sensed that I might not be so helpless after all.
That life might have had a particular reason for depositing me on Poldi’s sofa.
It was so that I might look after her.
Because I might be not only the last but also the only person who could save Poldi from falling into the abyss. It was the sort of task you could neither put off nor delegate to someone else. You simply took it on, said “Namaste” and hoped you wouldn’t blow it.
“Hey, what’s the matter, sonny boy? Why are you trembling like that?”
“I’m not trembling, everything’s fine.” I drew a deep breath. “Did Russo meet your conditions?”
“Don’t be so quick off the mark. Say, d’you have that problem with it as well? If so, no wonder you don’t have a girlfriend. Still, there are ways of curing it—you know that, don’t you? A bit of yoga can work wonders.”
More deep breathing. “Well, who are the Hedgehogs, and how do pheromone sprays come into it?”
She laughed. “Damned if I’m giving that away at this stage!”
“Come on, Poldi, thrillers always invite the reader to guess, so give me something to work on and then surprise me. Or, if I guess the murderer’s identity correctly, do me the favour of a spectacular showdown.”
Poldi looked at me intently. “My, my, so now we’re an expert on thrillers, are we?”
I remained adamant. “You’ve got to deliver, Poldi. So who were the Hedgehogs?”
“Hare versus hedgehogs, that’s all I’m saying. It kept going through my head when Vito and Torso nabbed me. Subconsciously, I’d already caught on. You know the story of the two identical hedgehogs that win every race because one of them is always at the winning post before the hare takes off? They’re in cahoots, that’s the secret, and the hoax can’t be proved as long as they don’t slip up. Mind you, everyone does in the end.”
When Poldi tried the kitchen tap the next morning, it spat out some rust-brown liquid. Soon afterwards, clear water once more flowed from every tap in the Via Baronessa. Its residents breathed a sigh of relief.
Satisfied with herself and reconciled with the world, Poldi had her first proper shower in weeks and brewed herself some coffee. Then, for the first time in ages, she braved her aching knees and climbed the steep stairs to her roof terrace, where she sat in the basket chair I’d recently put there for my cigarette breaks. It was still early, and Etna was being gilded by the rising sun. Poldi thought of her Peppe and softly asked him to watch over her.
“Namaste, Smoky,” she said, raising her coffee cup to the volcano. “Poldi contra mundum!”
Then she shut her eyes and deliberated. She knew who the Hedgehogs were, and she knew how much money had been involved. A lot of money. A very great deal of money. My Auntie Poldi knew quite a lot by now, but she still couldn’t prove it. She briefly considered calling Montana and telling him what Russo had said about the Hedgehogs. Then she remembered that she’d deleted his number, and besides, first she wanted to understand how Madame Sahara’s murder had occurred.
But no matter which way she looked at it, everything seemed quite cut and dried until she recalled what Montana had said about the results of his inquiries, and her neat little house of cards collapsed. Things simply didn’t add up. And then, like a derisive comment on the international situation, the nerve beneath her old crown started throbbing again. Poldi swore beneath her breath. A toothache was the last thing she needed for solving a murder.
Rising from my basket chair with a groan, she went downstairs and shuffled back into the kitchen. She considered aiding her concentration with a small bottle of beer, but she decided to take an ibuprofen instead and waited for it to work. This took time.
The tooth continued to throb away like a radio beacon pulsating for navigational purposes. Throb, throb, throb . . . And again: throb, throb, throb . . . So as not to be entirely idle, Poldi opened her laptop and re-examined the sad signora’s dossier, filtering the list of names according to various criteria. She clicked around purely for something to do. Throb, throb, throb . . .
And then she saw it.
The connection.
The hedgehog trick.
Throb, throb, throb . . . Two names with the same address. She hadn’t noticed it before, but that’s life. Fate has some odd ways of nudging us in the right direction. A toothache, for one.
“Namaste, tooth,” Poldi said softly, surprised to have suddenly grasped how everything fitted together.
She also grasped that a visit to the dentist was inescapable.
After a brief phone call to Russo, Poldi bravely set out.
She was scared, naturally. Who wouldn’t have been? I mean, dentist and murder inquiry—who but my Auntie Poldi would have had the nerve to venture into such a lion’s den?
She would never have believed that a drunk, neurotic young spouter of crude political slogans could be a dentist, but Dottore Enzo Rapisarda did in fact own a remarkably chic practice in Trecastagni. He also restricted himself to private patients, so she didn’t have long to wait. Moreover, in contrast to her memory of him at the vineyard that afternoon, Rapisarda made a thoroughly calm, composed and—above all—sober impression in his snow-white smock when Poldi’s turn eventually came. There was no trace of the fanaticism he’d displayed on that previous occasion.
“Oh, you’re German?” he said delightedly in German when Poldi introduced herself. “I love Germany. I studied in Bochum.”
“But Merkel is the Devil in disguise, wasn’t that it?”
Rapisarda frowned. “I’m sorry?”
“Don’t you remember me, Dottore?”
He stared at her for a moment, then blushed. “Oh yes, of course I do, signora. It was . . .” He stammered in embarrassment. “That’s to say, I was rather . . .”
“Loaded, but never mind, so was I. Let’s forget it.” Poldi sat down in the dentist’s chair. “After all,” she said with a broad smile, “we’re both professionals.”
Rapisarda smiled back shyly. He proved to be a remarkably sensitive and sympathetic practitioner. His injections were administered so skilfully that Poldi hardly felt a thing, and he stroked her cheek with his finger as if she were a child. It was a new experience for her.
“The crown will have to be replaced,” he told her. “For the time being, all I can do is treat the underlying inflammation. That will at least relieve the pain. We can begin the treatment proper in a week’s time, if you’re prepared to place yourself in my hands.”
Poldi mumbled an assent with her mouth open and surrendered. She had no choice in any case.
It was all over within half an hour. Poldi’s mouth was numb, but Rapisarda assured her that she would feel no pain when the anaesthetic wore off. He shook my aunt’s hand and prepared to show her out, but her fingers tightened on his.
“Thank you, Dottore, but I’m afraid we aren’t through yet.”
Rapisarda looked startled.
“Eh, what more can I do? All your other crowns look fine.”
“I want a word with you about your neighbours, the Hedgehogs. And about Madame Sahara and the money she collected for your party. Above all, though, about the way the Hedgehogs killed her and Elisa Puglisi.”
Rapisarda went red in the face. He prepared to say something, perhaps even to shout something, but Poldi, who was still gripping his hand, drew him a little closer and used her other hand to put a finger gently to his lips.
“Hear me out before you blow a fuse, Dottore. I can imagine you owe your neighbours a great deal. The interest-free loan for your smart practice, for instance. No, Dottore, don’t deny it. Signor Russo told me, and he got it from your neighbours themselves. In view of their generosity, you naturally made no great effort to discover how a furniture manufacturer on the verge of bankruptcy and a wine grower who had just renovated his entire winery managed to produce so much liquid cash. You were aware that Madame Sahara was collecting donations for your Five Star party, and you somehow discovered that the money never reached it, didn’t you? You should really have put two and two together, Dottore, but you didn’t. You’re a good dentist and you campaign for a just cause, but I’m afraid you’ve got your paws dirty. Gratitude is one thing, but what does your conscience tell you?”
She released Rapisarda’s hand at last. The young man was trembling. He collapsed onto his treatment stool like a punctured balloon.
“What do you propose to do now?” he asked in a whisper.
“It’s quite simple. I propose to ask you two questions, Dottore, and if your answers are satisfactory there’s just a chance you may get off cheaply. I don’t want to lose such a good dentist, and with a bit of luck some of the party donations may yet come to light. So what do you say?”
Rapisarda nodded.
“Chin up, Dottore. Look at me.”
The young dentist raised his head and looked at her.
“Ask your questions, signora.”
“Very well. First, what was the usual route Five Star party donations were supposed to take? Second, on the day after the grape harvest—in other words, the day after Madame Sahara was murdered and you woke up late with a god-awful hangover—did you by any chance find yourself in possession of something that didn’t belong to you?”
Rapisarda stared at my aunt as if she had second sight. “How did you know?”
“What was it?” Poldi asked, although she already knew.
The Hedgehogs had lost their last race.
“Carmelo Avola’s mobile phone,” said Rapisarda. “I took it to him at once, of course. I was so plastered, I must have pocketed it by mistake.”
“Believe me, Dottore,” Poldi said quietly, “you didn’t.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I took a paper napkin from the table and waved it in the air in a token of surrender. “I may be a complete knucklehead, Poldi, but I just don’t get it. Mobile phone? Hedgehogs? Party donations?”
“Well, it is a bit complicated, and I didn’t get it myself, not right away. The thing is, anyone who commits two such murders must suffer from a grossly overinflated opinion of himself, don’t you agree?”
“Sure.”
“And pheromones are thoroughly consistent with the image Achille adopted in order to seduce women. He was a nobody who wanted to be a Cyclops and wasn’t one. He was just a wine grower who robbed his political party of a tidy sum of money in order to finance his new winery, because Italian banks have become so stingy with their loans since the euro crisis. The same went for his brother Carmelo, who was on the verge of bankruptcy. The two of them needed money, lots of money, so they helped themselves.”
“So the Avola brothers were the Hedgehogs.”
“Exactly. That’s what they called each other as children, because, being identical twins, they enjoyed fooling their schoolmates. Hare and hedgehogs was a game they were good at, and a nickname like that can stick to you for life.”
“Why Elisa Puglisi?”
“Well, she was supposed to launder the cash donations Madame Sahara collected for the Five Star party. Also, she had an affair with Achille, who had used the pheromones on her. He somehow grasped that she was playing a double game with the water Mafia and blackmailed her. In other words, he pocketed the party donations in return for her silence.”
“And at some stage Puglisi had had enough and refused to play any more.”
“She was still a district attorney, that’s why. She felt safe enough to threaten to bust him, so he applied the emergency brake and hit her over the head with a bottle of Polifemo. Overinflated self-esteem, as I said.”
I was beginning to understand. “But she’d told Madame Sahara first, and since the fortune-teller knew who had murdered her friend, she had to die too.”
“Now you’ve got it. Cento punti!”
“But how could Achille get away with it?”
“The brothers simply played hare and hedgehogs—it was the only way. A bit risky, of course, but they virtually had their backs to the wall. And what was the other factor involved?”
“Overinflated self-esteem?”
“Spot on. Plus an ego problem. Well now, I knew from Montana that Achille had been seen in a bar in Trecastagni at the material time, and that was consistent with his mobile phone’s location data. Except that it was Carmelo in the bar, not Achille. Carmelo had Achille’s mobile on him, thereby providing his brother, who must just have killed Madame Sahara, with an alibi.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed. “So Carmelo foisted his mobile phone on Enzo, who was drunk and lives in the same building, so his mobile, too, registered an unsuspicious location for the time of the murder.”
“And Carmelo’s wife claimed her husband had been at home all night.”
“Pretty risky.”
“I’ll say so. Overinflated self-esteem again. Play hare and hedgehogs all your life and you automatically think you’ll win every race. It’s a routine you never get out of.”
“But why did Achille Avola confess?”
“Because it was a clever move. Because his DNA, fingerprints and so on were all over the body, and he knew that he and his brother had alibis. After the murder he even laid a false trail by writing ‘Etnarosso’ on Giuliana’s palm. Very risky again, but highly successful in the end. The touching story of the brother and the donated kidney, remember? In Vito’s defence it must also be said that Sean Torso was breathing down his neck at that time, and Torso didn’t give two hoots about the murder. It took a pro like me to grasp the tie-ups in their full complexity. The Avolas knew that Madame Sahara must have left a lead in her appointments diary, but they didn’t find it. Then, when they made a second attempt to do so, I got to her house before them. They didn’t dare do anything then because the padre was there. They waited till I was alone and on my way to Montana with the diary, and then they rammed me.”
“Wow!”
“Got it now? Ready for the showdown?”
“Forza Poldi!”
My Auntie Poldi was loath to waste any more time. However, she didn’t delude herself that her evidence was really watertight. It wasn’t at all. What she needed was a genuine confession, and for that, her experience of a narcissist like Achille Avola indicated there was only one way: brutal provocation.
Poldi was back on dangerously thin ice. It might easily go wrong—lethally wrong. She realised that she couldn’t entirely dispense with assistance.
When it came down to it, she needed Montana.
Since she’d deleted his phone number and didn’t know it by heart, she called police headquarters. A snooty telephone operator informed her that Commissario Montana was out somewhere, and refused to give her his mobile number. Although Poldi stated that it was a matter of life or death, the operator sounded as if she heard this every day of the week. She did, however, condescend to say she would leave a message for Montana.
Poldi hung up, cursing, and waited for an hour. And another hour. She waited until evening, but Montana never called back, and at nightfall the thrill of the chase triumphed over common sense. It’s like that when you’re overcome by the thrill of the chase: postponing things is out, as everyone knows.
Poldi decided to call someone else.
Alessia.
Yes, exactly, how did she come to have Alessia’s number? The fact was, she’d had it for some weeks, ever since yielding to a base instinct and secretly going through Montana’s messages while he was asleep. One doesn’t do things like that. Never. Ugh! Especially as what Poldi saw didn’t appeal to her in the least and robbed her of sleep. Nevertheless, she now had Alessia’s mobile number.
Unfortunately, only her voicemail replied.
“Per favore lasciate un messaggio dopo il beep. Vi richiamerò non appena possibile.”
A warm, friendly voice, not snooty at all, not a bit suggestive of airs and graces. A voice that could give good advice, dispense consolation, emit full-throated laughter. The voice of a woman who might under other circumstances have been a friend. A voice that made my Auntie Poldi feel sheepish. She rang off and had to rally herself for a moment before trying again.
“Alessia, it’s Poldi. I’m . . . well, yes, you know who I am, of course. I’m afraid I can’t reach Vito, and it’s important. It’s about the case, I mean. I’m just off to see Achille Avola at his vineyard and force him to confess. Achille Avola killed Elisa Puglisi and Madame Sahara. Please could you let Vito know. And . . . thank you.”
That evening, when Achille Avola walked into his cottage on the slope above the vineyard, after checking his steel tanks, tasting the young wine as he did every day and gently correcting the pubescent Polifemo with copper finings, he found a visitor waiting for him.
My Auntie Poldi was wearing full combat gear—tight black stretch pants under some tension, together with black sneakers and a tight black T-shirt—and had made herself at home in an old easy chair. Strapped to her tummy with sticking plaster beneath the T-shirt was a small recording machine, and loosely held across her lap was her father’s ancient muzzle-loader from the Fortschau factory, a 19 mm rifle with a walnut stock and a worn barrel. Deactivated, admittedly, but pretty impressive if you didn’t know that.
“Good evening, Achille.”
“Poldi!” The wine grower stared at my aunt and her antiquated firearm.
He didn’t look particularly surprised, she thought. That should have made her smell a rat, but it’s always the same: once the play has begun, all you can think of is remembering your lines.
“How did you get in?”
“Oh, Padre Paolo showed me a trick, and your lock is old.”
Avola shut the door behind him and came a step closer. “Listen, Poldi, it was only one night. I don’t know what you were expecting, but for me that was it, so put that gun away.”
Poldi burst out laughing. “Oh, Achille! Don’t worry, I didn’t come here to insist on a shotgun wedding. Sit down, then we can talk.”
“What about?”
Poldi pointed the gun at him. “Siddown!”
This time the wine grower complied. He sat in the nearest chair at a due distance from my aunt.
Scrutinising the man under the dim ceiling light, she found it strange that he should ever have had such an effect on her. He bore no real resemblance to her Peppe despite his lanky build, Adam’s apple and muscular forearms. “Hey,” she thought to herself, “maybe there’s something in these pheromones after all.” In a way, she thought that wasn’t such a bad thing.
She held up a small plastic aerosol can. “Look what I found in your bathroom: Cyclops, and there’s a little can of Maxlove as well. What do you use Cyclops for, you loser—really tough young nuts or old bags like me?”
“I can explain everything if you put that gun away.”
“Oh yes, you’re going to explain a few things. What it feels like to be a nobody, for instance. A failure in bed. A loser who can’t get it up any more. I may have passed out, but I know this much: you flunked it that night.”
This more or less summarised Poldi’s interrogation tactics—provocation and sarcasm directed at the subject’s amour propre. It always scored a direct hit.
Avola reacted according to plan. He sprang to his feet, but Poldi raised the rifle again.
“Sit down! You used me purely as an unconscious alibi, but you must explain how you managed to seduce Elisa Puglisi. I mean, how could a classy woman like Elisa bear to do it with a failure like you? The pheromones must have flowed in torrents. Do you spike your wine with them sometimes? And what about Madame Sahara? Did you already know you were going to kill her when we met that afternoon? Had you planned it long ago, you and your brother?”
Achille Avola had himself under control. He sat back in his chair.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Poldi.”
“I can prove it, Achille.”
“Really? So why are you sitting here all on your own? Why aren’t the police here?”
“They’re on their way—be here in a minute. I didn’t want to be deprived of the pleasure of hearing it from the horse’s mouth, that’s all. So, how did you plan it, you losers?”
And at that point everything went wrong. The interrogation crashed and the play took an unscheduled turn. Poldi should really have known better. Cue: hare and hedgehogs. Unfortunately, she didn’t notice her mistake until it was too late.
Achille sprang to his feet and hurled himself at her—not exactly what a nobody would do, but appropriate to someone with a full-blown personality disorder. Poldi pointed the useless muzzle-loader at him but didn’t even have time to shout “Bang!” Simultaneously, she sensed a movement behind her and, before she could call out, Carmelo Avola jabbed a hypo into the back of her neck, just as he’d done to Signora Cocuzza at Madame Sahara’s house. Poldi hadn’t considered that possibility.
All she had time for, before lapsing into unconsciousness, was resentment that the hedgehogs had tricked the hare once again.
The first thing she felt when she came round was pain in her wrists and ankles. No wonder, because they were tightly bound with zip ties. The Avola brothers had also gagged her with duct tape and were toting her across the vineyard by her hands and feet.
Not really the outcome Poldi had been planning.
“I underestimated the dose. She’s coming to.”
“Let her, who cares? It’ll all be over soon.”
That didn’t sound good, thought Poldi. Far from promising, in fact. She made desperate attempts to kick and struggle, but the brothers held her too tightly.
“Madonna, what a weight she is!”
“We’re almost there.”
Not being in the first flush of youth, they grunted and panted at every step.
From her position Poldi could see little more than shadowy rows of vines and a cloudless Sicilian night sky with a waning moon at the zenith. All was silent because nearby Etna had stopped erupting, as if it were breathlessly following the course of Poldi’s destiny.
After a while, Poldi saw where the brothers were taking her. It was a narrow shaft leading down into the mountainside, probably a bubble in a solidified stream of lava formed thousands of years ago. The Avolas dumped her on the ground in front of it and cut the zip ties. Needless to say, she instantly tried to stand up and make a run for it, but Carmelo put a knife to her throat.
“Keep still!”
Achille ripped the duct tape off her mouth.
Poldi now saw that he had the muzzle-loader slung over his shoulder.
“Scream as much as you like, no one’ll hear you up here.”
Poldi needed no further prodding.
“HEEELP!!! HEEELP!!!”
Unperturbed, Achille shone a flashlight down the shaft. “This is a natural refrigerator,” he said. “It’s pretty deep. Our grandparents and great-grandparents used to store Etna snow down there so they had something to cool their drinks with in August.”
It was chilly at an altitude of nearly a thousand metres. Poldi was trembling, but not because of that alone.
“Now the shaft is just a hazard for the grape pickers,” Carmelo added. “People fall in and end up in hospital. It’s high time we filled it in before someone else gets hurt.”
Poldi got the message. “Please don’t do this,” she said as bravely as she could manage.
But she realised there was no point in arguing or pleading with them. Resolute action was the only answer.
“Kneel down!” Achille told her, forcing her to the ground. “That’s right.”
“I’m not outis, not no one,” thought Poldi as she knelt on the edge of the shaft. She guessed what his plan was and knew this was her last chance.
Achille wiped the muzzle-loader with a cloth and pulled on gloves. “Open your mouth.”
Poldi complied. Achille thrust the muzzle of the old gun into her mouth. His finger curled round the trigger. Poldi saw Carmelo step back. Then Achille pulled the trigger.
Click.
That was the moment.
Taking advantage of Achille’s surprise, my Auntie Poldi grabbed the barrel with both hands and pushed him away from her with every ounce of strength she possessed. That, however, had been the full extent of her plan. How she was going to extricate herself from this unenviable predicament and get the better of two grown men, she didn’t know. So she improvised, because my Auntie Poldi knew a thing or two about men and improvisation.
I picture her wrenching the gun from Achille’s grasp and trying to roll sideways, ninja fashion. She didn’t get far, because (a) she was no ninja, and (b) Carmelo hurled himself at her, and he still had his knife. She swung the rifle and cracked him across the shins, causing him to yelp and stumble. She raised the gun again, but Achille tore it from her hands. She did her best to scramble up and away from the mouth of the shaft, but the brothers pinned her down.
I can picture my Auntie Poldi fighting for her life in that vineyard, advancing years and bad knees notwithstanding. She didn’t present a particularly dignified sight, spreadeagled on the ground in a clinch with the Avola brothers, but all that counts at such moments is sheer survival. It’s clear that my Auntie Poldi fought like a tigress. It’s also clear that a person’s strength multiplies tenfold in such a situation, and that Poldi might well have dealt with the two men single-handed.
Maybe not, though.
In any case, this is all idle speculation. The fact is that each brother uttered a yell in quick succession, twitched violently and then went limp.
Poldi was too nonplussed at first to grasp what had happened. She merely saw Alessia standing in front of her with a flashlight in one hand and a police stun gun in the other.
“Are you okay?”
“Uh, yes, I think so.”
“Quick, give me a hand, they’re coming round already.” Alessia produced a bunch of zip ties from her pocket and handed them to Poldi. “I’d never have found you if you hadn’t called for help,” she said as she swiftly pinioned Carmelo’s wrists and ankles.
Poldi did the same for Achille, who was surfacing with a groan.
“Where’s Vito?”
“You must call him. I came on my own, and I’m going to make myself scarce in a minute.”
“But why?” Poldi asked in surprise.
Both the Avola brothers were now lying safely immobilised on the ground.
Alessia straightened up, drew Poldi aside and pointed to Achille. “Because I don’t want Vito to find out about him. I don’t know what possessed me. He was so persistent, and I was angry with Vito and jealous of you, and there was something irresistible about the man. I didn’t go to bed with him, I’m happy to say.”
Poldi looked at Alessia, her face bathed in moonlight.
“Achille uses pheromones,” Poldi said. “He’d already outsmarted Vito. He was only interested in cuckolding him as well.”
“Yes, I thought as much. The worst thing is, he’s a murderer. I feel so . . . so dirty.”
She trembled and started to cry. Poldi put her arms round the policewoman and held her tight.
“Shh, it’s all right. You saved my life, Alessia. I’d be dead but for you.”
But Alessia couldn’t stop crying, and my Auntie Poldi, who also wept easily, cried too. She had reason enough to, after all.
So Alessia and Poldi held each other and wept together. Meanwhile, the Hedgehogs writhed around on the ground, panting and clearly mystified by the turn of events. At length the two women drew apart—carefully, as if at pains not to hurt one another’s feelings.
“He loves you far more than me,” Alessia said in a low voice, smiling bravely.
“Oh, I don’t know . . .”
“Yes, he does. Besides, it would never have worked with us. I’m going back to Milan, and Vito hates Milan. He’s a Sicilian through and through. All the best.” With a laugh, Alessia handed Poldi the Taser. “Here, take it. You managed this all by yourself, okay? Not a word about me to Vito.”
“I promise,” said Poldi, touched. She put her hands together and bowed to Alessia. “And . . . namaste.”