Read Online Death and the Olive Grove by Marco Vichi - Free Book Online Page A

doctor.
    â€˜Oh, really? I didn’t know it.’
    Diotivede looked up from his microorganisms with a sigh and put his hands in his pockets.
    â€˜Nobody in Italy knows it. It’s never been exported and hasn’t even been produced for at least twenty years. The distillery was destroyed during the war and never rebuilt. The last reserves were carried away by the Nazis during the American advance.’
    â€˜Is it good cognac?’
    â€˜The best.’
    â€˜Diotivede, you amaze me. How do you know these things?’
    â€˜Culture.’
    â€˜Tell me something, how can you distinguish cognac from whisky or Calvados? In a dead man’s stomach, I mean.’
    â€˜Don’t think I taste it,’ said the doctor, expecting another of those idiotic quips he’d been putting up with all his life.
    â€˜No, I mean it seriously,’ said Bordelli. ‘How do you tell them apart?’
    â€˜There are chemical tables of all the different kinds of alcohol, and each has its own characteristics.’
    â€˜I guess it doesn’t get any easier than that …’
    â€˜â€™Bye, Bordelli,’ said the doctor, turning his eye back to the microscope.
    But Bordelli wasn’t leaving. He had started pacing back and forth, the unlit cigarette still in his mouth.
    â€˜Do you think you could also determine the brand of cognac that Casimiro drank?’ he suddenly asked.
    â€˜That’s asking too much,’ said Diotivede.
    â€˜Forget I asked,’ said Bordelli, who muttered goodbye and walked out of the laboratory, leaving the pathologist in peace at last.
    He returned to headquarters with his mind in a state of confusion. Climbing the stairs, he ran into Rabozzi. The big lug was wearing his usual mastiff-like grimace, which screwed his face up.
    â€˜Hello, Bordelli.’
    â€˜Hello. I’ve just seen the girl they found in the refuse dump.’
    â€˜Beautiful, no?… What’s wrong? You look glum.’
    â€˜I can’t get over what happened to Casimiro.’
    â€˜Your little dwarf friend?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜What are you going to do if you find the person who killed him? Shoot him in the head?’ Rabozzi asked, chuckling.
    â€˜Let me catch him first,’ said Bordelli.
    â€˜If you send him to jail, between one buggering and another, he’ll already be out in five years.’
    â€˜I’m going upstairs.’
    â€œBye, Bordelli.’
    Rabozzi strode off with his avenger’s swagger, and Bordelli went up to his office. He lit another cigarette. He had started smoking a lot again, blaming it on the hard times. The murdered child and Casimiro’s death kept him in a state of constant tension. Despite the time of day, he opened a bottle of beer, flipping the cap off, as usual, with his house keys.
    On the desk was a brand-new report: during the night a prominent businessman had caught a burglar in the act of robbing his villa at Bellosguardo and shot him with his hunting rifle, gravely wounding him. Self-defence, the businessman had called it. Bordelli knew the burglar well: Bernardo, an unlucky wretch who had never harmed a fly. He had simply gone to pick up a crumb of prosperity in an Italy with a few very rich people and a great deal of poverty, and for this he was shot with a hunting rifle. There was something about this that didn’t make sense. Bordelli finished reading the report, shaking his head. He rang Mugnai on the internal line.
    â€˜Send me Piras, please.’
    At that moment there was a knock at the door, and Piras poked his head inside.
    â€˜Mugnai, don’t bother. He’s already here,’ said Bordelli.
    He set down the phone and stood up, looking the young Sardinian in the eye.
    â€˜You know what Casimiro had in his stomach, Piras?’ And he told him everything Diotivede had told him about the little man’s last supper. Piras scratched his head.
    â€˜What a stinking mess,’ he