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

from the land and hauling timber down from the woods.
    “In middle age, everyone yearns to return to the place they left when they were young to make their way in the world,” Sante intoned.
    For Sante, the world was the city. Anyone who moved away from the valley was a displaced person, and Soneri was coming round to this point of view. That was why he had come back, and now, as he stood looking through the windows of the
Scoiattolo
at the wooded slopes of Montelupo capped by woolly mist, he felt the tug of that mountain which had been the focus of so much attention in recent days. In a short while he would set off and clamber up its steep spine like a tiny, exploring parasite. He was intent on taking full advantage of the daylight hours and was only waiting for dawn to break.Sante had prepared a box with a few slices of bread, some shavings of parmesan and a few thin slices of
prosciutto.
He put the box in a shoulder bag and got on his way, aware that he was retracing the steps of his father, his grandfather and of who knows how many others.
    The ascent up the path from the village left him out of breath, but he was soon enough at the reservoir. Patches of mist drifted around him and trailed off all the way down to the village. He took the Boldara path, walking for another half an hour through a tunnel of branches on a mattress of fallen leaves, not looking back until he came to an opening in the woods. The houses were far off now, in a deep crevice where it seemed that they had ended up after falling down the mountainside, like all the other things which had tumbled down from the heights. He left the path and ventured into the woods, struggling with the undergrowth and slipping on the leaves. He spent some time probing the trunks on slopes where the tree fellers had been active, but he found nothing to interest him. The ground still had marks of having been disturbed, so it was clear that someone had passed that way not long before. He followed the footprints of the roe deer and the tracks of the boar for almost two hours until, in the shadow of a trunk nestling into the mountainside, he discovered a colony of “horn of plenty” mushrooms. Dark coloured and with a tapering stalk, they had a sinister appearance, but they made good eating for someone who knew how they required to be cooked.
    All of a sudden, the light faded and the wood was shrouded in a dense mist. Soneri decided it was time to make his way back, but as he did so he became aware of the faint squelch of footsteps sinking into the damp leaves behind him. From time to time, the snap of a broken branch could be heard, seemingly from someone picking his way over dead wood in theshade of the beech trees. Soneri continued on his way, choosing carefully where to put his feet so as not to make the least inroad into the profound silence which seemed to amplify the slightest sound. He walked gingerly through a copse of oak trees, where the dry leaves still hanging on the branches made the surroundings even more gloomy. Somewhere lower down, he heard a sharp noise, the quick, alarmed movement of a prey that knew it was being hunted. He thought he made out the outline of a human being, barely glimpsed through the foliage. Perhaps someone had only just realised how close Soneri was and was vanishing into the mist, leaving no more than a tantalising shadow.
    Soneri followed the course of the Macchiaferro stream until he emerged into an area of hornbeam and chestnut, ripe for the autumnal pruning. His mind was still filled with the image of that figure, little more than a shadow distorted by the dampness, which had made a momentary appearance before being swallowed up by the mist. As he turned onto the Boldara road, he recalled what he had been told about Albanians and others who supposedly moved about the mountainside. People spoke of them as a menace, in terms which made them the modern equivalent of the ancient fear of wild animals, lightning and hailstones. He took