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СКАЧАТЬ snowcat made its way up the steep ski slope. Illuminated by the headlights, Rocco saw a wall of snow straight ahead of him, and he couldn’t believe that that pachyderm could successfully climb such a nearly vertical incline.

      “Hey, tell me something! We’re not about to go head over heels, are we?”

      “Don’t worry about a thing, Dottore. These behemoths can climb slopes steeper than a forty percent grade.”

      They took a curve and found themselves in the middle of the woods. The blade-­like beam of the headlights lit up the soft blanket of snow and the black trunks of the trees that were suffocating the groomed run.

      “How wide is this piste?”

      “Fifty yards or so.”

      “And on a normal day, how many ­people come through here?”

      “That’s something we’ll have to ask at the head office. They know how many daily ski passes they sell. So we could get a count, but it might not be all that accurate.”

      The deputy police chief nodded. He stuck his hands in his pockets, pulled out a pair of leather gloves, and put them on. The run was veering to the right. Pierron said nothing. He was looking up, as if searching for an answer among the branches of the larches and firs.

      They went on climbing, accompanied only by the engine’s roar. At last, in a broad clearing, they saw the beams of the floodlights arranged around the site where the body had been found.

      The snowcat left the piste and cut through the woods. It bounced over a few tree roots and hummocks.

      “Listen, who found the body?” asked Rocco.

      “Amedeo Gunelli.”

      “Can I talk to him?”

      “Sure, Commissario, he’s down at the cableway station, waiting. He hasn’t really recovered yet,” Luigi Bionaz replied as he braked the snowcat to a halt. At last, he switched off the engine. The minute he set his shoes down on the snow, Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone understood just how right his co-­worker had been to recommend he wear heavy boots with insulated soles, the kind of shoes that Rocco called cement mixers. Because they really did resemble a pair of cement mixers. The chill gnawed at the soles of his feet, which were already tingling from the cold, and the feeling jangled his nerves from heels to brain. He heaved a breath. The air was even thinner than it had been at the bottom of the hill. The temperature was well below freezing. The cartilage in his ears was pulsating and his nose was already dripping. Inspector Caterina Rispoli approached him, light-­footed.

      “Deputy Police Chief.”

      “Inspector.”

      “Casella and I went up to secure the location.”

      Rocco nodded. He looked at Inspector Rispoli’s face, which he could barely glimpse under the hat crammed down over her head. Her mascara and eyeliner were oozing down as if off a wax mask.

      “Stay here, Inspector.” Then he turned around. Far below, he could see the lights of the village. To his right was the snowcat that Amedeo had been driving, still parked in the middle of the woods where that poor devil had abandoned it hours ago.

      Walking through nearly knee-­deep snow, Rocco drew closer to the monster. He examined the front of the vehicle. He ran his hand over it, sized it up carefully, as if he were thinking of buying the thing. Then he squatted down and looked under the tracks, covered with fresh snow. He nodded a ­couple of times and headed over to the place where the body had been found.

      “What were you looking for, Dottore?” asked Italo, but the deputy police chief didn’t reply.

      A policeman with a pair of skis thrown over his shoulders came toward them, striding easily, even though he was wearing ski boots with stiff, heavy hooks. “Commissario! I’m Officer Caciuoppolo!”

      “Fuck, another native!”

      The young man smiled. “I secured the crime scene.”

      “Good for you, Caciuoppolo. But tell me, where did you learn to ski?”

      “At Roccaraso. My folks have a place there. Are you from Rome, Commissario?”

      “Yep, Trastevere. What about you?”

      “Vomero, Naples.”

      “Excellent. Let’s go see what we have here.”

      What did they have here? A half-­frozen corpse under five or six inches of snow. To call it a corpse was a euphemism. It might have been one once. Now it was a mess of flesh, nerves, and blood that had been pureed by the snowcat’s tillers. All around it, goose feathers. Everywhere. The deputy police chief wrapped his overcoat tighter. The wind, though it was light, penetrated beneath the lapel and caressed his neck, leaving a wake of hairs standing at attention like soldiers saluting a general. Rocco’s knee already hurt, the one he’d crushed when he was fifteen, playing the last match of the season with his team, Urbetevere Calcio. Bent over the dead body was Alberto Fumagalli, the medical examiner of Livorno, who was using a pen to poke at the hems of the poor man’s down jacket.

      The deputy police chief went over without saying hello. In the past four months, since the day they’d first met, he’d never said hello to him yet. So why start now?

      “What are all these feathers?” asked Rocco.

      “The filling of the down jacket,” replied Alberto, bent over the corpse.

      The poor man’s face was unrecognizable. One arm had been sheared off neatly, and his rib cage had popped open under the vehicle’s weight, spewing forth its contents.

      “What a mess,” said Rocco in a low voice.

      Fumagalli shook his head. “I’m going to have to do an autopsy in a proper facility. I’ll get a good look and let you know. Just by the sight of him … I don’t know! That thing crushed him. You can imagine the work it’ll take just to reassemble him! But right now, since I’m frozen and pissed off, I’m just going to head back down and get something hot to drink. Well, anyway, it’s a man—­”

      “I’d gotten that far myself.”

      Alberto glared at Rocco. “Would you let me finish? It’s a man, around forty. His watch says seven thirty. That’s when I think that tank must have run over him.”

      “I’m with you.”

      “He has no ID. He’s wounded, all cut up. Still, you know something, Schiavone?”

      “Why don’t you tell me, Fumagalli.”

      “There’s blood everywhere.”

      “Maybe even too much blood. So?” asked Rocco.

      “You see? Blood with all its components, water and cells, already freezes at zero degrees Celsius. But just to be safe, in the lab we keep it at minus four degrees centigrade. But the thing that should give you pause is the fact that up here, we’re at zero degrees, understood? Zero degrees centigrade. But this blood is still nice and liquid, I’d say. Which tells me that he hasn’t СКАЧАТЬ