Free Traitors to All by Giorgio Scerbanenco Page A

frozen chamber was wiped out by the counters of that venerable temple to confectionery and tea and ice-cream, where half – or all? – of Milan came whenever it could for the ritual of the aperitif, the boxes of pastries that husbands took home to their wives and children on Sundays, and the bottles of French, Greek, German and Spanish wine displayed, slightly tilted, in a window, liquid delights that were hard to fathom if your palate was accustomed to table wines.
    ‘Police.’ He flashed an ID, which was actually Mascaranti’s.
    The polite, well-built man looked at him uncertainly through his glasses, held his arm out, made a kind of bow and led him towards the back of the shop.
    ‘Are you the owner?’ Duca asked him. He was being excessively meticulous: after all, even he came here every now and again, and he recognised the man.
    ‘Yes, I am.’
    ‘I need some information. I’d like to know if a wedding cake was ordered here.’
    ‘We get lots of orders for wedding cakes.’ Through his glasses the man was looking at Duca without either fear or curiosity, but with refinement, a gentleman looking at another gentleman.
    ‘This is a wedding cake that was supposed to be sent to a little village near Milan.’
    ‘I’d have to look at the order slips,’ the gentleman said, his expression indicating that he was starting to get a little irritated. ‘Do you know who ordered it?’
    ‘No, the cake was supposed to be sent to Romano Banco, in the municipality of Buccinasco, near Corsico. It could have been ordered by anybody.’
    These geographical indications were a bit excessive,and the owner of the pastry shop continued to look at him coolly through his glasses, without saying anything.
    ‘I’m told it was a cake that cost two hundred thousand lire.’
    The expression behind the glasses was now one of incredulity. ‘Well, they might make a cake like that for the Queen of England.’
    Duca smiled: he liked this man, whose behaviour could not be faulted. ‘Maybe they were exaggerating. Let’s say a hundred thousand.’
    ‘As I said, we have to look at the order slips.’
    They looked, and they found the slip for the cake, which was in fact a cake for thirty-five thousand lire, because the girl who was now in a cold chamber in the morgue had had, when she was alive, a childlike tendency to exaggerate, which was how thirty-five had become two hundred, and the cake, which didn’t even weigh ten kilos, had been taken, three days earlier, in a Ricci’s delivery van, to Trattoria dei Gigli in the Via dei Gigli in Romano Banco, in the municipality of Buccinasco, and the cake had been paid for in advance by cheque, as was shown on the slip, a Bank of America and Italy cheque, number 1180 398, and it had been ordered by someone genuinely Milanese, at least to judge by the name, Ulrico Brambilla, who would have been the bridegroom if there had actually been a wedding, and who owned butcher’s shops in Milan, Romano Banco and Ca’ Tarino.
    Duca went back to his car and sat down next to Mascaranti, who was at the wheel. ‘The cake was ordered and sent.’ He would have liked to know what had happened to the cake, however modest, only thirty-five thousand instead of two hundred, it must have been a good solid cake of about ten kilos, only one one-hectogram slice per guest,with a hundred guests to eat it. But the wedding had not taken place.
    ‘Let’s go to Romano Banco,’ he said to Mascaranti. ‘We can go by way of Inverigo.’ It was a poor attempt at humour, but Mascaranti understood: to get to Romano Banco you don’t go by way of Inverigo because it’s in the opposite direction, but it was ten days since Duca had last seen his sister, ten days since he had last seen little Sara, ten days since he had last seen Livia with the M-shaped and W-shaped scars all over her face.
    The journey to the Villa Auseri was like advancing directly into the sun.
    ‘Is this it?’ Mascaranti asked.
    Yes, this was it: Lorenza