Free Poisonville by Massimo Carlotto Page A

against you because, in case you haven’t grasped the point, you have no alibi after two in the morning, and Giovanna was killed between one and three.”
    “The DNA test of the sperm doesn’t prove anything. I could easily have killed her after her lover left the house.”
    “Precisely. Which is why it is advisable to get rid of any elements that could make your position any worse.”
    I smashed the glass on the floor. “Instead of worrying about me, an innocent man, you should pressure Zan to find the man who killed her. All you need to do is pick up the telephone, and that incompetent fool would actually be forced to do some genuine investigating.”
    My father pointed to the shattered glass on the wet floor. “You see?” he said, in an exaggeratedly calm tone of voice. “You are incapable of dealing with the situation.”
    “I want to know why you don’t pick up that fucking phone.”
    “Moderate your language,” he warned me. “There’s a time for everything. First and foremost, I want to be absolutely sure that you aren’t implicated. Then we’ll think about the investigation. Giovanna was like a daughter to me. You know how much I loved her.”
    “This is only helping the murderer to get away with it.”
    He shrugged. “I can’t help it if Zan is incompetent,” he said in an irritated tone of voice. “And he can’t pursue multiple lines of investigation at the same time. Breathing down his neck would do no good at all. We must make the right moves at the right time.”
    “Then why not have him replaced?”
    He shook his head in disappointment at my naïveté. “That would be the worst possible move. Everyone would think that I had taken him off the case because he had you dead to rights.”
     
    * * *
    Adalberto Beggiolin was known in the circles he frequented by the nickname of “puddle shark,” a cold-blooded predator that foraged in shallow, filthy waters.
    He was hardly a sniper with a high-precision rifle. He was more comfortable working with a sawed-off shotgun. If you shoot into the crowd, you’re sure to hit something. He looked on newsgathering as an activity akin to carpet bombing. In his view, good reporting resulted in bleeding, screaming victims.
    He was therefore somewhat disconcerted when, following Giovanna Barovier’s death, he received no specific instructions on who to target, either from the station owner or his own producer. Left to his own devices, a predator of his caliber turned blind and stupid. His instinct had led him to savage the first red meat that bumped up against his snout, but this time he’d mistaken his prey.
    His reports on Francesco Visentin and Filippo Calchi Renier had increased the station’s ratings, but something told him that this time he’d fired into the wrong knot of bystanders.
    What Beggiolin lacked was prudence, discernment, and the gift of self-censorship. That was why he failed to make it up to the level of the national broadcast news; that was why he was still swimming in circles in the puddle of local society news; he had become a big fish in a small pond.
    When he was summoned for a meeting with the Contessa, he prepared himself for the worst; he knew that this time he had pissed on the Persian carpet.
    He gulped down the last bit of meatball sandwich that he’d packed for lunch that morning, and left the newsroom without a word to anyone.
    On his way over to the Villa Selvaggia, he tried to remember everything he knew about the Contessa.
    He remembered the things that everyone knew, including the fact that through the Foundation she controlled 70 percent of Antenna N/E.
    In particular, though, he recalled her exaggeratedly protective instinct toward her slightly deranged son.
    He had seen them together, about a year earlier, in the local prison.
    The Torrefranchi Foundation had announced a program for the reintegration into society and rehabilitation of convicts released from prison. The slogan was: “Let’s give them another