Read The Dark Valley: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 2) for Free Online Page A

factory.”
    “He must have been picking up a load but was running late.”
    “The driver wasn’t on his own. There were three of them, and we watched them go up to the factory.”
    “All three of them?” Rivara said.
    The boy nodded, with the faintest of conspiratorial smiles. “If you want my opinion, they were planning to pick up a delivery right away.”
    “They must be in a great hurry,” Ghidini sniggered.
    “They certainly were. And why should that be?” the boy wondered aloud.
    Nobody dared to utter a guess, and once more a silence fell. The young man said goodbye to the group and opened the door to go out, but he was stopped in his tracks by the sound of gunfire. Everyone followed him out onto the street.
    “Was that from Greppo?” Delrio said.
    “Couldn’t tell. Either Greppo or Campogrande,” Maini said.
    “This is happening too often,” Rivara said.
    “At least we can all agree on that,” Soneri said.
    The mayor emerged from the Comune and strode determinedly across the piazza. Delrio went to meet him. The two men stood talking in the mist, then the policeman turned back and went into the bar.
    “The mayor has told the carabinieri to go and see what they can find. This time the whole village heard the shot.”
    “It’s high time they showed some interest,” Volpi said.
    “For all the difference it’ll make! By the time they get there, whoever fired the shot will be long gone,” Ghidini said, shaking his head.
    “In this mist, you could lose an army,” Rivara said.
    “You never know. They’re already in the right area,” Delrio said.
    Some twenty minutes later, the piazza was lit up by a flashing blue light which cut through the mist which was now even more treacherous. The carabiniere truck crossed the piazza and pulled up outside the Comune.
    “Is that them on top of the job now?” Maini said.
    No-one made a reply. Soneri was thinking only of the lorry parked on the main road and of the three people inside. He was keen to go and see whether or not it had gone to the salame factory, but once again his attention was diverted by Delrio’s radio. He drew close to overhear what was being said.
    “It was Palmiro who fired the shot,” Delrio eventually relayed the news.
    “Who at?” Rivara said.
    “At the dog,” Delrio said, but obviously he himself did not attribute much importance to it. There was another thought niggling him.
    “So he’s gone clean off his head,” Ghidini said. “He has always been extremely fond of that dog.”
    “He told the carabinieri it was too old and the exertion had weakened its heart.”
    “Ever the unscrupulous bastard,” Rivara said.
    “If he was old … He would not have wanted him to suffer,” Delrio suggested.
    “I think there’s more to it than that. He might have felt let down, if the dog had run off home leaving him on his own on Montelupo. There aren’t that many people he could count on,” Maini said.
    “There wasn’t much anybody could do. By the time the carabinieri got there, he was already burying it,” Delrio said.
    “All this trouble for nothing. Still, in the end everyone’s alive and back home safely – apart from Palmiro’s dog,” Rivara said.
    “What about the lorry at the factory?” said one of the young men who had stayed on after his companions had left.
    The only response was a collective shrug.

3
    It was still dark when Soneri came down for breakfast. The night before when he got back, he found the table still set. Sante had saved some vegetable stew for him, and when the commissario saw it arrive with an overturned plate on top to keep it warm, memories came flooding back of his mother in her dressing gown, of trains running late and of a house immersed in silence with the family already in bed. He had hoped to find the same peace and stability in the valley in the Apennines where his forebears had lived season after season, enduring the snows of winter and heat of summer, clearing the juniper bushes