The Geneva Murders
[Chapter One of a police procedural I'm working on on and off.]
Bettina Viviani had two remaining passions in life, if “passions” isn’t too strong a word for an 83-year-old widow: the Italian game shows on television (especially Sesso A Gogo and Crazy? Anche Lei!) and the mongrel dog that had followed her back to her concierge’s apartment on the corner of Rue de Richemont and Rue Pradier one cold December morning ten years ago and had been, since then, taken in, christened Smetana—not after the Czech composer, but after Gianni Smetana, the eternally-tanned, forever-grinning host of Crazy? Anche Lei!—and fed with such regularity and robustness that he now resembled a small dirigible on stilts, a resemblance heightened by the goosedown parka Bettina made him wear on their brief excursions in cold weather, usually to the Italian bakery on the corner of Rue de Richemont, or to the lakefront to feed the gulls. With Aldo, her husband, long dead, and her two children back in Sicily, and her five grandchildren with their parents, Signora Viviani had made her peace with solitude; but she needed a companion to fuss over, and Smetana met the requirements admirably, being an affectionate but not overly-demanding dog who was satisfied with plenty of leftovers and the odd walk.
In the warmer months they walked more often, although never very far; and Smetana’s parka was stored in the closet, as it was on the night of May 3rd last, when Signora Viviani was relaxing as usual in front of the television in her diminutive living room with Smetana relaxing, also as usual, in front of her, in his hand-made wicker bed. The television was thundering at them like a small electronic Mussolini (whom the Signora recalled dimly and not without affection). The windows were ajar, to let in the mild May breeze, but they also let in the standard din of a Saturday night in the Paquis, Geneva’s red-light district, not only the nocturnal haunt of prostitutes and pimps and raucous students as well as of many a drunken United Nations civil servant and dissolute Middle Eastern diplomat, but also the home away from home of honest and desperate working-class immigrants, mostly from Europe’s Balkan fringes: Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria. There were few Italians, and almost no Sicilians. In the forty-odd years since Bettina and Aldo Viviani had arrived in Switzerland, their native Sicily had grown prosperous and was now importing, not exporting, cheap labor. All the Sicilians she’d once known had gone back, or were dead, and she had nothing in common with most mainlanders, not to mention Lombards, Piedmontese, and the like, never mind the Swiss; so, like so many of the lonely and old, she turned increasingly to TV’s glittery fantasyland which glittered brighter than ever, thanks to satellite dishes and the ten Italian channels beamed from just across the Alps.
That night, as Gianni Smetana bellowed his bonhomie from a soundstage in Rome, surrounded by pouting barely-legal barely-dressed beauties, anomalies entered the standard soundtrack of the real world, to which Signora Viviani had become mostly oblivious: the cars, the mopeds, the shouts of pimps and prostitutes. Overhead, where the retired policeman lived—where there was usually no noise at all—there were screams and shouts and a couple of very loud thumps. Signora Viviani thought at first it was all part of Crazy? Anche Lei! but the noises recurred with the unnerving dissonance of real life, unmodified by the sound technicians of RAI-TV. Then came a most unfamiliar sound, even in the heart of the seamiest district of the most international city in Europe: gunshots, at least one, maybe two or more. Naturally, at first she thought the sound was firecrackers, but it echoed inside the building, so if they were firecrackers they were being illegally set off on Signora Viviani’s own premises, and if they were gunshots the illegality was compounded, and someone might get killed; so she silenced Smetana the man with a flick of the remote control and sat listening. Smetana the dog, sensing the unexpected and awoken by the sudden silencing of the TV’s roar, raised his head with a gruff growl.
“Ma che c’é?” wondered Signora Viviani, aloud. As if in reply, heavy feet thundered across the ceiling of her flat. That retired policeman, she thought. She hardly knew him except to see him once a month for the rent. She hadn’t taken to him, but then she’d never liked policemen, anyway, not since one had shot at her dear papa in the fields outside Trapani, many years ago….
Smetana barked.
“Aie, Madonna.”
The old lady struggled to her feet and put on her slippers and stood there indecisively for a second or two. It was such a nuisance, this interruption, and of course it had to happen just when she was settling in for the evening, with the show halfway over already and the winner not even named…it was too frustrating.
But this was what the police were for, in principle, wasn’t it? She picked up the mobile phone her son, Nino, had forced on her during his last visit, and auto-dialed the local station.
“Yes,” she said. “Bang-Bang. And shouting. Maybe it’s someone’s television. But it’s after ten, and you know the law.”
“Yes, madame,” said young officer who answered the phone. “Noises upstairs? Of course. We’ll be right over.”
She heard the sarcasm in his voice. The moment she hung up she knew they’d do nothing about it. It was the Paquis; it was Saturday night; she was an old lady; she had a Rital accent….she tried to settle back into the cozy routine of Smetana the man and Smetana the dog, but the more she thought about it the more incensed she became. Heaving herself to her feet a second time, Signora Viviani snatched up her mobile, hit redial and reached the same young man.
“The noise is continuing, policeman,” she said, inaccurately, yet driven by righteous indignation. “And you have done nothing about it. Stupid police.”
“Now there’s no need to be abusive, madame. Please calm yourself and we’ll send someone over straight away, I promise.”
Young Patrolman Favre was going out for coffee anyway and needed to stretch his legs, so with the approval of the station sergeant he volunteered to stop in at Madame Viviani’s and spread around some of the reassurance and good cheer for which the Geneva Police Department was so justly renowned.
