Death and the Olive Grove Read Free Page B

police cars with their headlamps on. Bordelli parked the car beside the gate and got out, blood pounding in his brain. Piras walked beside him in silence. Ever since the tough, intelligent lad had joined the force, Bordelli had been bringing him along on every investigation, and to avoid always having a uniform at his side, he’d told him to dress in civvies. He got on well with Piras, just as he had got on well with Piras’s father, Gavino, during the war.
    The moon was covered by a thick blanket of cloud, and the park was as gloomy as the sky. To their left was a grassy slope, steep and dark, and at the top of the hill shone the glow of the police’s floodlights, as a crowd of people gathered round. Bordelli and Piras began to climb. The soles of their shoes slipped on the wet grass, and the cuffs of their trousers were soaked after only a few steps. They heard a siren in the distance. When they got to the top of the hill, Bordelli started clearing a path through the crowd, advancing in long strides. Piras followed right behind him, stepping into the opening before it closed again. There were already some journalists scribbling in their notebooks, as well as a few photographers. The press were always the first to arrive on the scene, though it was never clear how they did it.
    The inspector kept elbowing his way until he got to the police cordon. And suddenly he saw her: under the white light of the police lamps, the little girl looked like a bundle of rags thrown on the grass. She lay face up at the foot of a big tree, legs straight and arms open, like a tiny Christ. The inspector went up to her, with Piras still following, and they both bent down to look at her. She must have been about eight years old. Her mouth and eyes were open wide, and she had jet-black hair tied in a braid that was coming undone. She was so white in the light that she seemed unreal. And on her neck were some red marks. Her jumper was pulled up, and her belly bore the traces of a human bite. Bordelli looked at her a long time, as if to burn that image into his memory, then turned towards his Sardinian assistant. They looked at each other for a few seconds without saying anything.
    Busybodies were falling over one another to get a look at the child, grimacing in horror and exhaling vapour from their mouths. A few women could be heard weeping and, farther away, someone was vomiting. But what most bothered Bordelli was all that commotion of legs and shadows around the little girl’s dead body. He pressed his eyes hard with his fingers. He felt very tired, though perhaps it was only disgust for what lay before him.
    The sound of the siren grew closer and closer, and the inspector wondered whether it was indeed coming towards the park, since, at this point, he thought, the blaring sirens were useless. The girl was dead, and nobody was to touch anything before Diotivede, the police pathologist, got there. Bordelli glanced at his watch. How bloody long was Diotivede going to take? He took one of the uniformed policemen by the arm.
    â€˜Rinaldi, do you know if anyone saw or heard anything?’
    â€˜No, Inspector, nobody saw or heard anything.’
    â€˜Then please send them all away.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    Suddenly a man’s voice was heard above the crowd:
    â€˜So what are the police doing about this?’
    Bordelli stiffened and started looking for the imbecile amid the herd of onlookers. He wanted to grab him by the collar and bash his head against a tree trunk. What were the police doing? Come forward, jackass! What do you want the police to do? Piras saw he was upset and squeezed his elbow.
    â€˜Forget about it, Inspector,’ he said.
    The ambulance entered the park, turning off its siren. Bordelli and Piras stared at the ground. Five men got out of the ambulance and started climbing the grassy incline, carrying a stretcher. Bordelli scratched his head.
    â€˜What are they doing?’ he said to himself. He