The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia

as he directed operations.
    When they were within earshot, the sergeantmajor called with an exultation out of keeping with the discovery of a corpse: 'He's here all right, sir! It'll be a job to get 'im up, but he's here!' But this was his work, and the finding of a murdered man was grounds in this case for satisfaction and rejoicing.
    It was there, the body; at the bottom of a thirty-foot cleft which had been sounded with a rope and stone as plumbline. The light of electric torches, filtering through bushes growing on the sides of the cleft, barely showed the bottom. But upwards wafted, unmistakably, the stench of putrefaction. To the great relief of the carabinieri, who were afraid the job would fall to one of them, a peasant had volunteered to go down tied to a rope and attach the body to other ropes so that it could be hauled up with comparative ease. A lot of rope was needed and they were waiting for the return of a carabiniere who had gone to fetch it from the village.
    The captain went back across the fields to the farmhouse where the path began. It seemed deserted. But, going round to the side facing away from the chiarchiaro, a dog suddenly sprang towards him to the limit of its rope; it hung there, nearly choked, by its collar, barking furiously. It was a handsome brown mongrel with little violet half-moons over its yellow eyes. An old man came out of the cowshed to quieten it. 'Down, Barruggieddu, down!' he said, and then to the captain: 'I kiss your hands.'
    The captain went over to the dog to stroke it.
    'No,' said the old man in alarm, 'don't touch 'im, he's wicked! He'll let a stranger touch 'im and be reassured, and then bite 'im ... He's a little devil.'
    'What d'you call him?' asked the captain, wondering about the strange name the old man had used.
    'Barruggieddu,' said the old man.
    'What does that mean?'
    'Someone who's bad,' said the old man.
    'I've never heard that one before,' the sergeant said; then in dialect asked the old man for an explanation. The old man said that perhaps the right name was Barriccieddu or maybe Bargieddu but, in any case, it meant 'evil', the evil of a man in a position of command. At one time the Barruggieddi or Bargieddi had lorded it over the townships and sent people to the gallows for their own cruel pleasure.
    'I've got it,' said the captain. 'It means the Bargello -the chief of police.'
    Embarrassed, the old man was mute.
    The captain had wanted to ask him whether, a few days previously, he had noticed anyone going towards the chiarchiaro or had seen anything suspicious in those parts; but he realized that there was nothing to be got out of a man who considered a chief of police as evil as his own dog. Perhaps he wasn't so far wrong, thought the captain; for centuries the bargelli had bitten men like him, bitten after reassuring, as the old man had said. What had the bargelli been but tools of invading tyrants?
    He took leave of the old man and set off down the path for the road. Straining at its rope, the dog barked its final menace. ' Bargello,' thought the captain, 'bargello like me, with my short length of rope, my collar, my mania,' and he felt more akin to the dog called Barruggieddu than to the historic bargelli of not so very long ago. 'Hound of the law,' he thought of himself; and then he went on to think of the 'hounds of the Lord', who were the Dominicans, and of the Inquisition, a word which conjured up a dark empty crypt and stirred gloomy echoes of history. He found himself wondering with anguish whether he, too, the fanatical hound of the law, had not already crossed the threshold of that crypt. Thoughts, thoughts born and melting in feverish self-destroying yearning for sleep.
    He returned to C. and, before going to his quarters for a short rest, called in at the Public Prosecutor's office to report on the progress of his investigations and to extend the detention of Arena whom he wanted to interrogate in the afternoon after marshalling and assessing all