Marco Vichi - Inspector Bordelli 04 - Death in Florence by Marco Vichi Read Free Book Online Page B

the forests of the Abruzzi, as he made his way up the Italian peninsula, biting the tails of the retreating Nazis. Luckily he had not figured among the dead, and when he returned to camp he’d marked the eleventh notch on the butt of his machine gun. He didn’t yet know that in the coming months he would add another sixteen. He had never felt guilty about having killed; there wasn’t anything else he could have done in those moments. But they weren’t good memories. He remembered the distress of a comrade of his in the San Marco battalion who couldn’t forgive himself for pointlessly killing a Nazi. During a rather tempestuous firefight, he’d seen this hulking German running towards him and instinctively cut him down with a burst of fire. A moment later he realised he’d riddled with bullets a wounded man who was collapsing to the ground. He never gave himself a moment’s rest, as if he’d killed an innocent …
    Bordelli recognised from a distance the hole in which the boy had been buried, and he gritted his teeth. Reaching the spot, he stopped in front of the loose earth, hands dangling at his sides. In his mind’s eye he could still see the small naked foot sticking out of the ground, the mud-smeared body, the worms writhing in the empty eye sockets. Not far away he heard a tree trunk creak in the wind, and at that moment it seemed the saddest sound on earth. He started walking around, looking at the ground, moving the leaves with his feet in the absurd hope of finding something. All he saw were the usual cartridges and a few shabby mushrooms. He was pointlessly wasting time, but what else could he do? Sit in his office warming his chair?
    He moved away from the makeshift grave, walking in a spiral motion, in ever broader circles, examining every inch of earth carefully. In spite of everything, he still had hope. It was a senseless illusion, but it was all he had. He wasn’t asking for much, for Christ’s sake. Just a button would have been enough, or a cigarette butt, a spent match …
    After half an hour of this, he stopped circling the grave and headed deeper into the woods. His hope had run out, and his search turned into a solitary walk. He wanted only to enjoy some silence undisturbed. He ambled along slowly, letting the beauty of the place fill his eyes. He didn’t even feel much like smoking. He felt good, there in the woods. It had taken Botta’s mushrooms to make him realise this. He had to come back to these hills more often. The best thing was letting his thoughts travel up unknown paths, or remain suspended in the air. Through the trees’ black trunks he saw a large hare race breathlessly away and disappear into a thicket. It was safe for now, but sooner or later a hunter would gun it down and it would end up as sauce for a pot of
pappardelle
.
    He kept on walking, breathing deeply, lost in his memories. Every so often he heard a shot ring out in the valley. He went down a hillside and found himself back on the trail. He was almost certain that if he turned to the right, he would end up back at the car, and so he went in the opposite direction. His mud-caked boots reminded him of the long marches with the San Marco battalion, blisters burning the soles of his feet, sweat saturating his uniform. He could still almost hear the extravagant curses of Mosti, a giant from Massa as big as a wardrobe, who hated walking. Bordelli would remind him that if not for the war, he would still be rotting in jail, and the beast would only sneer.
    He arrived in front of a small chapel that stood at the crossing of two trails. It must have been the fork mentioned by the hunter: to the left, Poggio alla Croce, to the right, Pian d’Albero. Bordelli went to the right and proceeded at a slow pace, his mind clouded by old memories. A light wind washed through the branches like an invisible sea, making the leaves fall and dragging a mollifying smell of death through the air. Here and there a secondary path broke off in