Black Run. Antonio Manzini

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СКАЧАТЬ a week in Djerba, the island off Tunisia, with his ex-­girlfriend Veronica.

      Italo liked Rocco Schiavone. He liked him because he wasn’t one to stand on ceremony, and because you could always learn something from a guy like him. Sooner or later he’d have to ask the deputy police chief—­though he insisted on using the old rank of commissario—­just what had happened in Rome. But their acquaintance was still too new, Italo sensed, and it was too early to delve into details. For the moment, he’d satisfied his curiosity by poking into documents and reports. Rocco Schiavone had solved a substantial number of cases—­murders, thefts, and frauds—­and had seemed to be well on his way to a brilliant and successful career. And then suddenly the shooting star that was Rocco Schiavone veered and fell, slamming to earth with a rapid and silent transfer to Val d’Aosta for disciplinary reasons. But just what the stain on Rocco Schiavone’s CV had been, that was something he never managed to find out. The police officers working at headquarters had talked it over among themselves. Caterina Rispoli argued that Schiavone had risen above his station. “I’ll bet you he stepped on somebody’s toes and that somebody had the power to have him shipped north; that kind of stuff happens all the time in Rome.” Deruta disagreed; he felt sure that someone as capable as Rocco Schiavone was an annoyance, especially if he lacked a political patron. D’Intino suspected sex was at the bottom of it. “I’ll bet he took somebody’s wife or girlfriend to bed and got caught.” Italo had a suspicion all his own, and he kept it to himself. His guess had been guided by Rocco Schiavone’s home address. Via Alessandro Poerio. High on the Janiculum Hill. Apartments up there ran to more than eight thousand euros a square meter, or a thousand dollars a square foot, as his cousin, who sold real estate in Gressoney, had told him. No one on a deputy police chief’s salary could afford an apartment in that part of town.

      Rocco crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “What are you thinking about, Pierron?”

      “Nothing, Dottore. About the road.”

      And Rocco looked out in silence at the highway, pelleted by falling flakes of snow.

      Looking up from the main street of Champoluc, he could see a patch of light in the middle of the woods. That was where the body had been found, and now it was lit by halogen floodlights. If he squinted, he could just make out the shadows of policemen and cat drivers working the scene. The news had spread with the speed of a high-­mountain wind. Everyone stood around at the base of the cableway, their noses tipped up toward the forest, midway up the slope, each asking the same question, which was unlikely to be answered anytime soon. The English tourists, drunk; the Italians with worried faces. The locals were snickering in their patois at the thought of the hordes of Milanese, Genovese, and Piedmontese who would find out tomorrow morning that the slopes were closed.

      The BMW with Italo at the wheel pulled to a halt at the foot of the cableway. It had taken an hour and a half from Aosta.

      Driving up that road, navigating the hairpin curves, Rocco Schiavone had observed the landscape. The black forests, the bursts of gravel vomited downhill from the rocky slopes like rivers of milk. At least one good thing, during that endless climb: around Brusson, the snow had stopped falling and the moon, riding free in the dark sky, reflected off the blanket of snow. It looked as if someone had scattered handfuls of tiny diamonds over the countryside.

      Rocco got out of the car wrapped in his green loden overcoat and immediately felt the chill of the snow bite through the soles of his shoes.

      “Commissario, it’s up there. They’re coming to get us with the cat now,” said Pierron, pointing out the headlights partially concealed by the trees halfway up the slope.

      “The cat?” asked Rocco, his chattering teeth chopping his breath into little puffs as it fogged up in the cold air.

      “That’s right, the tracked vehicle that works the slopes.”

      Schiavone took a breath. What a fucked-­up place to come die in.

      “Italo, explain something to me. How could it be that no one saw a dead body lying in the middle of the piste? I mean, weren’t there skiers on that run?”

      “No, Commissario,” Pierron said, then corrected himself. “Excuse me, Deputy Police Chief. They found him in the woods, right in the middle of a road they use as a shortcut. No one takes that road. Except for the snowcats.”

      “Ah. Understood. But who would go bury a body way up there?”

      “That’s what you’re going to have to find out,” Pierron concluded, with a naive smile.

      The noise of a jackhammer filled the cold, crisp air. But it wasn’t a jackhammer at all. The snowcat had arrived. It stopped at the base of the cableway with the engine running, dense smoke pouring out the exhaust pipe.

      “So that’s the cat, right?” asked Rocco. He’d seen that kind of thing only in movies or documentaries about Alaska.

      “That’s right. And now it’s going to take us up, Commissario! Deputy Police Chief, I meant to say.”

      “Listen, just do this—­you’re not going to wrap your head around it no matter how hard you try. Call me whatever you want, I don’t give a damn anyway. Plus,” Rocco went on, looking at the treaded vehicle, “why do they call it a cat if it looks more like a tank?”

      Italo Pierron limited himself to a shrug in response.

      “Well, okay, let’s get aboard this cat. Come on!”

      The deputy police chief looked down at his feet. His Clarks desert boots were dripping wet, the suede was drenched, and his feet were starting to get wet, too.

      “Dottore, I told you to buy a pair of suitable shoes.”

      “Pierron, stop busting my balls. I’m not putting on a pair of those cement mixers you ­people wear on your feet—­not as long as I’m still breathing.”

      They set off through snow piles and potholes created by the skiers’ power slides and oversteers. The snowcat, with the lights mounted on the roof, standing motionless in the middle of the snow, looked like a giant mechanical insect poised to seize its prey.

      “Here, Dottore, step up on the tread and get in,” shouted the snowcat driver from inside the Plexiglas cabin.

      Rocco obeyed. He took a seat inside the cabin, followed immediately by Pierron. The driver shut the door and pushed the gearshift forward.

      Rocco caught a whiff of alcohol mixed with sweat.

      “I’m Luigi Bionaz, and I’m in charge of the snowcats up here in Champoluc,” said the driver.

      Rocco just looked at him. The guy had a ­couple of days’ whiskers, and his eyes were lit up with an alcoholic gleam. “Luigi, are you okay?”

      “Why?”

      “Because before I go anywhere in this contraption, I want to know if you’re drunk.”

      Luigi looked at him, his eyes as big as the snowcat’s headlights. “Me?”

      “I don’t give a damn if you drink or smoke hash. But the one thing I don’t want is to be killed in this thing up at an elevation of five thousand feet.”

      “No, Dottore, everything’s fine. I only drink at night. The odor you smell is probably from some youngster who used СКАЧАТЬ