Death in Sardinia Read Online Free PDF Page A

irritation at that thousandth idiotic quip about his perfectly normal profession. Bordelli knew such comments irked him, but that was precisely why he enjoyed making them. It was fun to see Diotivede tense up for a second like an offended child.
    ‘I guess you’re right, Inspector. It’s much more fun to be a policeman. You have the pleasure of tracking a man down, slapping handcuffs on him … or maybe even shooting him in the back.’
    ‘Need a lift home?’
    ‘I’m happy to get some exercise.’
    ‘Forget I asked.’
    They calmly descended the stairs, side by side, without another word. Outside the front door was a throng of journalists, who immediately tried to get inside. Bordelli raised a hand and said nobody could go upstairs. Anybody wanting any information had to go to police headquarters and wait. The newsmen protested as usual, but in the end they left. Bordelli shook his head.
    ‘How the hell do they always find out so fast?’ he asked.
    ‘Maybe it helps that they’re not policemen,’ Diotivede quipped, then waved goodbye and went off towards Santo Spirito.
    ‘Thanks,’ Bordelli muttered, watching him walk away.
    A little boy on a woman’s bicycle bigger than he was came out from Borgo San Frediano, standing on the pedals. He’d attached a folded-up postcard to the frame so that it rattled the rear spokes and sounded like a motorbike. Passing by the front door of Badalamenti’s building, the child shot a glance at the inspector and started pedalling harder. Bordelli followed him with his eyes and watched him disappear beyond Piazza Piattellina. A thousand years ago he too used to put a postcard in his bicycle’s spokes, and hearing the sound now only made him feel old. He ran a hand over his face and pressed his eyeballs with his fingertips. He wasn’t that old, really, but he was certainly too tired to start searching the dead man’s home right now. He realised he wished he had Piras at his side for the investigation. Sticking a cigarette between his lips, he decided at last to put the whole thing off till tomorrow. It wasn’t the kind of murder that made one feel anxious to get things moving, he thought, blowing the smoke towards the sky.
    He woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream and instinctively turned on the light. He looked around the room to reassure himself. Everything was the same as it always was, but the dream left him with a feeling of precariousness that seemed to presage death. It was almost three o’clock. He’d only been asleep for about an hour. His heart was beating wildly. He turned the light off and lay back down. He’d retained no precise image of what he’d just dreamt, and remembered only that he was struggling terribly to free himself from a sort of spider’s web in which he’d got caught. He was hoping to fall back asleep immediately. But, try as he might to keep his eyes shut and not move, his tired brain was still busy thinking about unpleasant and dangerous things.
    He was imagining his heart imprisoned between the lungs, contracting and expanding, and it looked to him like a repugnant muscle that after years of spasms wanted only to burst or simply stop. His heart had broken many times, always because of women. The muscle had functioned quietly and well during the war, never asking him for anything. The years had gone by, and he’d suddenly found himself, at fifty-five years of age, feeling as if he’d never actually lived.
    Deep inside he never really stopped thinking about death. It was always on his mind, every minute of the day, and had become a sort of habit. At moments he found himself imagining his own death in a variety of different ways. There was no good reason for it; that was just the way he thought. Even at the best of times. Now and then he would become fixated on heart failure, especially when he felt tired, as now. The idea of dying suddenly, without having the time to understand what was happening to you, frightened him even