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- Herausgeber: Bitter Lemon Press
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Pietro Fenoglio
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
The summer of 1992 had been exceptionally cold in southern Italy. But that's not the reason why it is still remembered. On May 23, 1992, a roadside explosion killed the Palermo judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three police officers. A few weeks later judge Paolo Borsellino and five police officers were killed in the center of Palermo. These anti-mafia judges became heroes but the violence spread to the region of Bari in Puglia, where we meet a new, memorable character, Maresciallo Pietro Fenoglio, an officer of the Italian Carabinieri. Fenoglio, recently abandoned by his wife, must simultaneously deal with his personal crisis and the new gang wars raging around Bari. The police are stymied until a gang member, accused of killing a child, decides to collaborate, revealing the inner workings and the rules governing organised crime in the area. The story is narrated through the actual testimony of the informant, a trope reminiscent of verbatim theatre which Carofiglio, an ex-anti-mafia judge himself, uses to great effect. The gangs are stopped but the mystery of the boy's murder must still be solved, leading Fenoglio into a world of deep moral ambiguity, where the prosecutors are hard to distinguish from the prosecuted.
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Award-winning, bestselling novelist Gianrico Carofiglio was born in Bari in 1961 and worked for many years as a prosecutor specializing in organized crime. He was appointed advisor of the anti-Mafia committee in the Italian parliament in 2007 and served as a senator from 2008 to 2013. Carofiglio is best known for the Guido Guerrieri crime series: Involuntary Witness, A Walk in the Dark, Reasonable Doubts, Temporary Perfections and A Fine Line, all published by Bitter Lemon Press. His other novels include The Silence of the Wave. Carofiglio’s books have sold more than five million copies in Italy and have been translated into twenty-seven languages worldwide.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BITTER LEMON PRESS BY GIANRICO CAROFIGLIO
Involuntary Witness
A Walk in the Dark
Reasonable Doubts
Temporary Perfections
The Silence of the Wave
A Fine Line
BITTER LEMON PRESS
First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by
Bitter Lemon Press, 47 Wilmington Square, London WC1X 0ET
www.bitterlemonpress.com
First published in Italian as L’estate fredda
by Giulio Einaudi editore, 2016
© Gianrico Carofiglio, 2016
English translation © Howard Curtis, 2018
This edition published by arrangement with Rosaria Carpinelli Consulenze Editoriali srl.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.
The moral rights of the author and the translator have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
eBook ISBN: 978-1912242-047
Typeset by Tetragon
Bitter Lemon Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Arts Council of England.
CONTENTS
Historical Note
Act One: Days of Fire
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Act Two: Società Nostra
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Act Three: The Wild Bunch
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Note
HISTORICAL NOTE
The summer of 1992 was exceptionally cold in southern Italy. But that is not the reason why it is still remembered. On 23 May 1992, Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo and three members of their police escort were killed by a massive bomb placed in a culvert under the A29 highway between Palermo and the international airport, near the town of Capaci. Then, on 19 July 1992, Paolo Borsellino and five members of his police escort were killed by a car bomb in Via D’Amelio in Palermo.
Falcone and Borsellino were the two most prominent anti-Mafia prosecutors in Sicily. Their investigations posed a major threat to the Sicilian underworld, especially to the most powerful and feared of the Mafia clans, the Corleonesi. Both murders aroused a massive public outcry throughout Italy and resulted in a major crackdown on the Mafia. Those responsible for the killings, both the bosses and the actual hitmen, were identified, tried and sentenced, with no possibility of parole. Many are still serving their sentences in maximum-security facilities, while others have died in prison. The summer of 1992 would turn out to be the beginning of the end for the Corleonesi clan.
At the same time, furious wars were going on in Apulia among the local criminal Mafia gangs, different from the Sicilian ones but equally ferocious.
This book is about the Apulian Mafia war.
ACT ONE
Days of Fire
1
Fenoglio walked into the Caffè Bohème with the newspaper he’d just bought in his jacket pocket and sat down at the table by the window. He liked the place because the owner was a music lover and every day chose a soundtrack of famous romantic arias and orchestral pieces. That morning, the background was the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, and given what was happening in the city, Fenoglio wondered if it was just coincidence.
The barman made him his usual extra-strong cappuccino and brought it to him together with a pastry filled with custard and black cherry jam.
Everything was the same as ever. The music was discreet but quite audible to those who wanted to listen to it. The regular customers came in and out. Fenoglio ate his pastry, sipped at his cappuccino and skimmed through the newspaper. The main focus of the local pages was the Mafia war that had suddenly broken out in the northern districts of the city and the unfortunate fact that nobody – not the police, not the Carabinieri, not the judges – had any idea what was going on.
He started reading an article in which the editor himself, with a profusion of helpful advice, informed the law enforcement agencies how to tackle and solve the phenomenon. Finding the article engrossing and irritating in equal measure, he did not notice the young man with the syringe until the latter was already standing in front of the cashier and yelling, in almost incomprehensible dialect, “Give me all the money, bitch!”
The woman didn’t move, as if paralysed. The young man held out the hand with the syringe until it was close to her face. In an impressively hoarse voice, he told her he had AIDS and yelled at her again to give him everything there was in the till. She moved slowly, her eyes wide with terror. She opened the till and started taking out the money, while the young man kept telling her to be quick about it.
Fenoglio’s hand closed over the robber’s wrist just as the woman was passing over the money. The young man tried to jerk round, but Fenoglio made an almost delicate movement – a half turn – twisting his arm and pinning it behind his back. With the other hand, he grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back.
“Throw away the syringe.”
The young man gave a muffled growl and tried to wriggle free. Fenoglio increased the pressure on his arm and pulled his head back even further. “I’m a carabiniere.” The syringe fell to the floor with a small, sharp sound.
The cashier began crying. The other customers started to move, slowly at first, then at a normal speed, as if waking from a spell.
“Nicola, call 112,” Fenoglio said to the barman, having ruled out the idea that the cashier might be in a fit state to use the telephone.
“Down on your knees,” he said to the robber. From the polite tone he used, he might have been expected to add: “Please.”
As the young man knelt, Fenoglio let go of his hair but kept hold of his arm, although not roughly, almost as if it were a procedural formality.
“Now lie face down and put your hands together behind your head.”
“Don’t beat me up,” the young man said.
“Don’t talk nonsense. Lie down, I don’t want to stay like this until the car arrives.”
The young man heaved a big sigh, a kind of lament for his misfortune, and obeyed. He stretched out, placing one cheek on the floor, and put his hands on the back of his neck with almost comical resignation.
In the meantime, a small crowd had gathered outside. Some of the customers had gone out and told them what had happened. People seemed excited, as if the moment had come to fight back against the current crime wave. Some were yelling. Two young men walked into the café and made to approach the robber.
“Where are you going?” Fenoglio asked.
“Give him to us,” said the more agitated of the two, a skinny, spotty-faced fellow with glasses.
“I’d be glad to,” Fenoglio said. “What do you plan to do with him?”
“We’ll make sure he doesn’t do it again,” the skinny fellow said, taking a step forward.
“Have we ever had you down at the station?” Fenoglio asked them, with a smile that seemed friendly.
Taken aback, the man did not reply immediately. “No, why?”
“Because I’ll make sure you spend all day there, and maybe all night, too, if you don’t get out of here right now.”
The two men looked at each other. The spotty-faced young man stammered something, trying not to lose face; the other shrugged and gave a grimace of superiority, also trying not to lose face. Then they left the café together. The little crowd dispersed spontaneously.
A few minutes later, the Carabinieri cars pulled up outside and two uniformed corporals and a sergeant came into the café and saluted Fenoglio with a mixture of deference and unconscious wariness. They handcuffed the robber and pulled him bodily to his feet.
“I’m coming with you,” Fenoglio said, after paying the cashier for the cappuccino and the pastry, heedless of the barman’s attempts to stop him.
2
“I’ve seen you somewhere before,” Fenoglio said, turning to the back seat and addressing the young man he had just arrested.
“I used to stand near the Petruzzelli in the evening when there was a show on. I parked people’s cars. You must have seen me there.”
Of course – that was it. Up until a few months earlier he had been an unlicensed car park attendant near the Teatro Petruzzelli. Then the theatre had been destroyed in a fire and he had lost his job. That was how the young man put it: “I lost my job,” as if he had been working for a company and they’d dismissed him or closed down. So he’d started selling cigarettes and stealing car radios.
“But you make hardly anything at that. I’m not up to doing burglaries, so I thought I could rob places with the syringe.”
“Congratulations, a brilliant idea. And how many robberies have you committed?”
“I haven’t committed any, corporal, would you fucking believe it? This was my first one and I had to run into you, for fuck’s sake.”
“He isn’t a corporal, he’s a marshal,” the carabiniere at the wheel corrected him.
“Sorry, marshal. You aren’t in uniform, so I had no idea. I swear it was my first time.”
“I don’t believe you,” Fenoglio said. But it wasn’t true. He did believe him, he even liked him. He was funny: his timing when he spoke was almost comical. Maybe in another life he might have been an actor or a stand-up, instead of a petty criminal.
“I swear it. And besides, I’m not a junkie and I don’t have AIDS. That was all bullshit. I can’t stand needles. If talking bullshit is a crime, then they should give me a life sentence, because I talk a lot of it. But I’m just an idiot. Put in a good word for me in your report, write that I came quietly.”
“Yes, you did.”
“The syringe was new, you know, I just put a bit of iodine in it to look like blood and to scare people.”
“You do talk a lot, don’t you?”
“Sorry, marshal. I’m shitting my pants here. I’ve never been to prison.”
Fenoglio had a strong desire to let him go. He would have liked to tell the carabiniere at the wheel: stop and give me the keys to the handcuffs. Free the boy – he still didn’t know his name – and throw him out of the car. He had never liked arresting people, and he found the very idea of prison quite disturbing. But that’s not something you broadcast when you’re a marshal in the Carabinieri. Of course, there were exceptions, for certain crimes, certain people. Like the fellow they’d arrested a few months earlier, who’d been raping his nine-year-old granddaughter – his daughter’s daughter – for months.
In that case, it had been hard for him to stop his men from dispensing a bit of advance justice, by way of slaps, punches and kicks. It’s tough sometimes to stick to your principles.
It was obvious he couldn’t free this young man. That would be an offence – several offences in fact. But similarly absurd ideas went through his head increasingly often. He made a decisive gesture with his hand, as if to dismiss these troublesome thoughts, almost as if they were entities hovering in front of him.
“What’s your name?”
“Francesco Albanese.”
“And you say you’ve never been inside?”
“Never, I swear.”
“You were obviously good at not getting caught.”
The young man smiled. “Not that I ever did anything special. Like I said, a few cigarettes, a few cars, spare parts.”
“And I guess you sell a bit of dope, too, am I right?”
“Okay, just a bit, where’s the harm in that? You’re not arresting me for these things as well now, are you?”
Fenoglio turned away to look at the road, without replying. They got to the offices of the patrol car unit and Fenoglio quickly wrote out an arrest report. He told the sergeant who had come on the scene to complete the papers for the Prosecutors’ Department and the prison authorities, and to inform the assistant prosecutor. Then he turned to the robber. “I’m going now. You’ll appear before the judge later this morning. When you talk to your lawyer, tell him you want to plea-bargain. You’ll get a suspended sentence and you won’t have to go to prison.”
The young man looked at him with eyes like those of a dog grateful to its master for removing a thorn from its paw. “Thank you, marshal. If you ever need anything, I hang out between Madonnella and the Petruzzelli – you can find me at the Bar del Marinaio. Anything you want, I’m at your disposal.”
This second reference to the Teatro Petruzzelli put Fenoglio in a bad mood. A few months earlier someone had burned it down, and he still couldn’t get over it. How could anyone even think of such an act? To burn down a theatre. And then there was the absurd, almost unbearable fact – God alone knew if it was a coincidence or if the arsonists had wanted to add a touch of macabre irony – of burning it down after a performance of Norma, an opera that actually ends with a funeral pyre.
The Petruzzelli was one of the reasons he liked – had liked? – living in Bari.
That huge theatre which could hold two thousand people, just ten minutes on foot from the station where he worked. Often, if there was a concert or an opera, Fenoglio would stay in the office until evening and then go straight there and up to the third tier, among the friezes and the stucco. When he was there, he could almost believe in reincarnation. He felt the music so intensely – that of some composers, above all baroque ones, especially Handel – that he imagined that in another life he must have been a kapellmeister in some provincial German town.
And now that the theatre was gone? God alone knew if they would ever rebuild it, and God alone knew if those responsible would ever be tracked down, tried and sentenced. The Prosecutor’s Department had opened a case file to investigate “arson by persons unknown”. A good way of saying that they hadn’t the slightest idea what had happened. Fenoglio would have liked to handle the investigation, but it had been entrusted to others, and he couldn’t do anything about it.
“All right, Albanese. Don’t do anything stupid. Not too stupid, anyway.” He gave him a slap on the shoulder and walked off in the direction of his own office.
At the door he found a young carabiniere waiting for him.
“The captain wants to speak to you. He’d like you to go to his office.”
Captain Valente was the new commanding officer of the Criminal Investigation Unit. Fenoglio hadn’t yet decided if he liked the man or was made uncomfortable by him. Perhaps both. He was certainly different from the other officers he’d had to deal with during his twenty years in the Carabinieri.
He had arrived only a few days earlier, bang in the middle of this criminal war that didn’t yet make sense to anyone. He came from Headquarters in Rome, and nobody knew why he had been sent to Bari.
“Come in, Marshal Fenoglio,” the captain said as soon as he saw him at the door.
That was one of the things that puzzled him: Captain Valente addressed everyone formally, always using rank and surname. The unnamed rule of behaviour for officers is that you use rank and surname towards your superiors and call your subordinates by their surnames, or even their first names. And of course, among those of the same rank, first-name terms are the rule. Among non-commissioned officers, things are less clear, but in general it’s rare to find the commanding officer of a unit being so formal with all his men.
Why did he behave in that way? Did he prefer to keep a distance between himself and his subordinates? Was he a particularly formal man? Or particularly shy?
“Good morning, sir,” Fenoglio said.
“Please sit down,” Valente said, motioning him to a chair. That combination of formality and cordiality was hard to make sense of. Then there was the decor of the room: no pennants, no crests, no military calendars; nothing to suggest that this was the office of a captain in the Carabinieri. There was a TV set, a good-quality stereo, a sofa and some armchairs; a small refrigerator and some pictures in an expressionistic style, somewhat in the manner of Egon Schiele. There was a slight perfume in the air, coming, in all probability, from an incense burner. Not exactly a martial kind of accessory.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you for the past two days. I’m afraid I’ve come to Bari at a bad time.”
“That’s true, sir. And with the lieutenant’s accident, you don’t even have a second-in-command.”
The lieutenant had broken a leg playing football and would be out of action for three months. So the unit had found itself with a new captain who had no knowledge of the city and its criminal geography and was without a second-in-command, all in the middle of a Mafia war.
“Can you explain what’s going on in this city?” Valente said.
3
“It all started on 12 April, with the murder of Gaetano D’Agostino, known as Shorty. He was shot dead in the Libertà district, where he’d gone to see his mother. He lived in Enziteto – a rather complicated area, to use a euphemism – and belonged to the organization of Nicola Grimaldi, known as Blondie, also known as Three Cylinders.”
“Why Three Cylinders?”
“Grimaldi has a heart defect, some kind of arrhythmia. I don’t know the exact medical definition. Anyway, the idea is that his heart functions on three cylinders instead of four. Although nobody would ever dare use that nickname to his face.”
“He doesn’t like it.”
“No, he doesn’t like it.”
“You were saying: D’Agostino was one of Grimaldi’s men. So the murder was committed by a rival gang?”
“Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that. I should say in advance that the investigation into this murder is being conducted by the police flying squad, as they were first on the scene, although we also have a file on the case. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any conflict at present between Grimaldi and other criminal groups in the city or the surrounding areas. If there were, we’d have seen losses on the other side, too, in places like San Paolo, or Bitonto, or Giovinazzo. But there haven’t been any. All the victims owed allegiance to Three Cylinders, and the rest of the city’s quiet.”
“So what’s going on?”
“The hypothesis is that there’s a conflict inside the organization. Since the 23rd of April there’s been no news of the whereabouts of Michele Capocchiani, known as the Pig, who’s one of Grimaldi’s lieutenants and a highly dangerous criminal. His wife reported him missing and a few days later we found his car burnt out, but with no body in it. On the 29th of April, there was the murder of Gennaro Carbone, known as the Cue —”
“The Cue?”
“Apparently, Carbone was a really good pool player. He was found dead outside the amusement arcade he ran on behalf of Grimaldi in Santo Spirito. A particularly violent attack, using automatic weapons. The hitmen had a sub-machine gun and a .44 magnum – the cartridges are unmistakable, even when they’re twisted. One bullet from the sub-machine gun ricocheted and wounded a passer-by. A few days ago, on the 9th of May, there was an attack with a similar MO on a man named Andriani – I can’t remember his first name right now, but anyway, another of Grimaldi’s associates. He had a miraculous escape. A further element, which we were tipped off about and have been able to corroborate, is the disappearance of Simone Losurdo, known as the Mosquito. Nobody reported the disappearance, but he was being kept under special surveillance and hasn’t reported to police headquarters since 21 April, in other words, two days before Capocchiani was reported missing.”
“What do his family say?”
“Losurdo’s wife comes from an old underworld family. People accustomed to not talking to us. We asked her where her husband was and she replied that he never tells her what he does, he comes and goes as he pleases. But she was very agitated: my guess is that Losurdo is dead. But the most significant element in this business is the disappearance of Vito Lopez, known as the Butcher.”
“Why the Butcher?”
Fenoglio smiled and shook his head. “The nickname has nothing to do with the murders he’s almost certainly committed. His father had a well-established butcher’s shop. Lopez is someone who didn’t really need to become a criminal.”
“You say his disappearance is the most significant element?”
“Like Capocchiani, Lopez is one of Grimaldi’s lieutenants, probably the most respected and certainly the most intelligent. There’s been no trace of him for several days now. The difference between him and the others is that we don’t have an exact date for his disappearance – all we know is that nobody has seen him since the end of April. Above all, his wife and son have also disappeared. That’s why I don’t think Lopez is dead. I think he’s gone away with his family. This would fit in with what we’ve heard from our informants: that there’s a rift within Grimaldi’s group. The killings and the disappearances could well be a consequence of this rift.”
The captain placed a hand on the desk and ran it across the wood, as if examining the texture. He opened a drawer, took out a cigarette case and held it out to Fenoglio.
“Do you smoke, marshal?”
“No, thank you, sir.”
“Do you mind if I do?”
“No, of course not.”
“Let’s open the window anyway.”
Fenoglio made to stand up, but the captain got there first. He opened the window wide, returned to his seat and lit his cigarette.
“What are you doing at the moment?”
“We’ve questioned a whole lot of people, without success. We’ve tapped a number of phones, but nothing has emerged. They’re mainly using mobile phones now, which, as you know, are difficult to tap. We should bug Grimaldi’s house, but it’s very difficult to get into. One possibility is to ask the telephone company to cooperate with us. We simulate a breakdown and when the residents call maintenance, we send our men in, disguised as engineers; they pretend to check on the nature of the problem and place a few bugs. If you agree, we could request authorization from the Prosecutor’s Department in the next few days.”
The captain made a sweeping gesture with his hands, as if to say: of course, whatever you need. It was a slightly over-the-top gesture, an unsuccessful attempt to play the part expected of him.
“Who’s the prosecutor involved?”
“There are a number of files: the absurd thing is how fragmented the investigations are. The Carbone murder, which we’re handling, has been assigned to Assistant Prosecutor D’Angelo, who in my opinion is the best, although she’s not always easy to deal with. In terms of character, I mean. But she’s hard-working and well prepared, and she’s been involved with this kind of case for a while now: I think her previous posting was in Calabria.” Fenoglio broke off, thinking that the captain was about to say something. When he realized that he wasn’t, he continued, “Maybe one of these days we’ll go and see her and I’ll introduce you.”
“Yes, of course, we’ll go together.” Valente looked like someone pretending to take an interest in a conversation while actually wanting to be somewhere else.
“I can also put together a memo summarizing the things I’ve told you today,” Fenoglio added.
“Thank you, there’s no need. You’ve been very clear and exhaustive. In the next few days we’ll go and see Dottoressa D’Angelo and talk about bugging the house and all the rest.” As he said these last words he got to his feet, with a slight smile on his face, as if apologizing for something.
4
At 1.30, Fenoglio shut the file he had been looking through, closed his notepad, took a book from the small library he kept in his office, and went to lunch.
The trattoria was in Corso Sonnino, five minutes’ walk from the Carabinieri station. It was busiest in the evening, which was what Fenoglio liked about it: there weren’t usually many people there at lunchtime, and he could always sit at the same table and linger as long as he liked, reading and listening to music on his Walkman.
He’d been having lunch in this little restaurant almost every day since Serena had left; that was two months ago now. I need to take a break, she had said, immediately apologizing for the clichéd words. They had taken too many things for granted, which is never a good idea, and after a while she had become aware of her resentment, like a stain on the skin: the day before, you didn’t know it was there, but it couldn’t have formed in a single night. She felt guilty about that resentment, she felt ashamed, she had tried to rationalize it, had tried to tell herself that it was an unfair reaction, but rationalizing is pointless in such cases. He had never asked her the reasons for that feeling, of which he himself had been aware in the last few months, although he had tried not to take any notice of it, tried to ignore it. Not the best strategy. He hadn’t asked her for the reasons because he guessed what they were, and at the same time because he was afraid of hearing them spelt out. Work, of course. The fact that he was always out, day and night, on Sundays and public holidays, didn’t make married life easy. But work hadn’t been the main problem, the sore point, the insoluble dilemma.
The main problem was simple and merciless, anything else was a side issue: he couldn’t have children and she could. The doctors had been clear and unanimous on the matter. That unexpressed biological window, getting smaller from year to year and about to disappear, was the crux of it, the source of the anger, the reason for a decision that, although meant to be temporary, already felt like a sentence for which there is no acquittal.
As she spoke, Fenoglio had felt a very strong urge to take her in his arms and tell her how much he loved her, to make promises, to beg her not to leave, but he hadn’t found the courage, and he hadn’t found anything to promise, and he hadn’t found the words. He had never been capable of showing his feelings, tending instead to withdraw into a pained silence, a reserve that might seem like coldness. Come to think of it, that might have been the most serious problem, even more than the inability to have children. She had said it herself: you mustn’t take things for granted. She meant: you mustn’t take emotions and feelings for granted. They should be shared, they should be expressed, made tangible. You mustn’t take love for granted.
So he had simply replied: all right, they would do what she wanted, he would leave as soon as possible. Serena had replied, in a tone that was a mixture of guilt, gentle sadness and unconscious relief, that she was the one who had to leave. The problem was hers: she had created it and she had to solve it, including from a practical point of view. She would stay in the apartment of a friend who was moving to Rome for work. Then in July there were the school leaving exams, and she was due to chair the examination board somewhere in Central Italy. Summer would pass, a few months would have gone by: enough time to figure things out and hopefully come to a final decision.
Do you have someone else? Will you have a child with another man and will the pain of it drive me crazy?
The same words that had appeared in his head, like a silent caption, that afternoon at home with Serena, now surfaced on his lips as he sat there at the trattoria table, the climax to this eruption of memories.
The waiter had materialized by his table: today’s special was mussels with rice and potatoes. Fenoglio hadn’t seen him coming, so in his embarrassment he said that mussels with rice and potatoes would be fine, without listening to the rest of the menu. Had he been talking to himself, and had the waiter noticed? Had he looked like a lunatic on day release from an asylum?
He recalled an episode a few years earlier. He had been in a bookshop, there weren’t many people about, and after a while he had noticed a woman in her fifties. She was alone and she was talking in a voice that, although low, was perfectly audible at close quarters.
“So, I’m a bitch, am I? I’m not a bitch, you’re a bastard. I look in your pockets because I have good reason. Aren’t you going to tell me why you had a receipt from that restaurant? Oh, I broke our pact of mutual respect, did I? Wasn’t it you who fucked that student? Oh, no, you can’t just tell me you’re walking out and leave it at that, it’s too easy after you’ve stolen almost twenty years of my life, all thrown away. Don’t you even realize what bullshit you’re talking? A man has needs a woman doesn’t understand? I should be happy to stay at home waiting for you while you fuck your colleagues and your students because you have needs? All that love, all that devotion, all that desire for beauty turned into a urological problem. You make me sick. You make me sick.”
This went on for a few minutes, with the word “sick” becoming ever more frequent. Fenoglio had stood there hypnotized by that soliloquy, that sudden, impressive insight into a desolate soul. He had gone to get a coffee, and while he stood at the counter had thought about what he had seen and heard and, commenting on it mentally, had looked for interpretations and alternatives. A habit that was almost a neurosis. Maybe the man wasn’t such a bastard after all. Maybe that receipt was for a business lunch and he had simply rebelled against an intrusion into his private domain and had considered it beneath his dignity to respond to the accusations. Maybe she was crazy – after all, she was talking to herself. God alone knew what the truth was, assuming there was just one truth.
In the midst of these reflections, which assumed the form of a genuine debate, with questions and answers and punctuation, Fenoglio was struck by a thought, like a stone on a window pane. He, too, was talking to himself, something which he did quite often. Perhaps on this particular occasion, he hadn’t moved his lips to accompany his inner dialogue, but in other cases he definitely had. Serena would point it out to him: you’re talking to yourself. Really? Oh, yes, you even change expressions, you gesticulate.
Just like the woman in the bookshop.
The border separating the mad from the normal seems clear, substantial, hard to cross. But in fact, it’s very thin and at some points – at some moments – it vanishes without our realizing it. We find ourselves in the territory of the insane without understanding how it happened – and besides, do even the insane know they’re in it?
He thought about reading a few pages of his book, but the waiter arrived with the plate of mussels and the usual beer. The food restored him to a reassuring material dimension, and by the time he left the trattoria the unease had subsided until it had almost vanished.
It had been a momentary thing, of course. But aren’t they all?
5
Getting back to the office, in a perfect reproduction of the scene a few hours earlier, he found outside his door the same young carabiniere, who said more or less the same sentence to him. The captain wanted to speak to him and asked him to join him in his office.
“Do you know Marshal Fornaro?” Valente asked.
“The commanding officer at the Santo Spirito station?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
“What do you think of him?”
“A good man, a very sound officer. A bit old-school, but he’s always done his job responsibly.”
“He phoned me a little while ago and reported a strange story.”
“What kind of story?”
“An informant of his told him that someone has kidnapped Grimaldi’s son. There’s already been a ransom demand.”
Fenoglio shook his head in an instinctive gesture of incredulity. “To be honest, I find that extremely unlikely. Who would do something as crazy as that, even with a war on? Is Fornaro sure?”
“He says the source is highly reliable.”
“Maybe we should go to Santo Spirito and find out more.”
Ten minutes later, they were on the road in the captain’s Alfetta.
At the wheel was Carabiniere Montemurro; beside him, in the seat reserved for the highest-ranking officer, the captain; Fenoglio sat in the back.
“Who could have done something like that?” the captain asked, turning to the back seat as they drove out of the city and onto the ramp leading to the northern ring road.
“Before taking it as read that there was a kidnapping, I’d like to speak to Fornaro and see how reliable the information is. Because – I repeat – it strikes me as highly unlikely. Kidnapping the son of someone like Grimaldi would be madness. It would be a declaration of total war.”
There was no traffic on the ring road and they got to Santo Spirito in ten minutes. They drove along the seafront with its two-storey turn-of-the-century houses and stopped for a coffee in the little harbour used by fishermen and yachtsmen. It was a fine, bright if unsettled afternoon, the sky furrowed with large white cumulus clouds, the air cool and dry.
They were driving back up from the sea towards the Carabinieri station when they had to stop because of a small tailback of three cars. The first one – the one blocking the traffic – was a black BMW, stationary in the middle of the street. The driver was talking to a man standing next to the window. There were no other cars in front.
Montemurro let about ten seconds go by, then sounded his horn, to no avail. Usually at this point, once one impatient driver has sounded his horn, the others follow suit. In this case, it didn’t happen. The drivers of the other two cars seemed to be in no hurry.
Montemurro hooted again, for longer this time. The man outside the BMW stopped speaking and walked to the second car in the line. There was a rapid exchange. The driver raised his arms, showing his palms: he wasn’t the one who had disturbed the conversation with that ill-timed use of the horn.
“Should I sound the siren?” Montemurro asked, as the man – a bald man in his forties without a neck – came towards them.
“No,” Fenoglio replied. He opened the door, got out of the car and walked over to the bald man. This action was followed by an almost rhythmical sequence of other movements. The man at the wheel of the BMW got out; the captain and Montemurro got out of the Alfetta; the bald man slowed down and his face – until then decidedly resolute and aggressive – seemed to change. The driver, walking quickly, reached him and pushed him aside. He was a thin-lipped, bespectacled man in a jacket and tie, and addressed Fenoglio in a tone midway between excitement and obsequiousness.
“Good afternoon, marshal. I’m sorry, we didn’t recognize you. We’ll get out of here right away.”
“You should have got out of here before. It’s too late now. Move your car over to the corner and clear the road.”
The man assumed a crestfallen, imploring expression. “Can’t you just drop it? Please, this is a difficult time. We didn’t see you.”
“I thought you were smart, Cavallo. Maybe I was wrong. Tell your friend to clear the road and stay in the car, and then join him there. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
The bald man seemed on the verge of objecting but Cavallo looked at him, a look that told him not to make the situation worse.
“Who are they?” the captain asked when the two men had walked away.
“The bald guy without a neck I don’t know. The other man is called Cavallo. He works for Grimaldi, without being a member of his organization as far as I know. He puts him in contact with businessmen and politicians and is also believed to launder money for him through loan sharking. His nickname is the Accountant.”
“Actually, he looks like one.”
“I think he did in fact qualify as an accountant. While we’re about it, let’s question him and see if he knows something. Cavallo, come here.”
The Accountant approached, a contrite expression on his face.
“I’m surprised. I wouldn’t have expected nonsense like this from you. Thinking you could just hold up traffic like this.”
“You’re right, marshal, it was stupid. We were talking about something important and I got distracted. You know me, I don’t usually do dumb things like this.”
Fenoglio didn’t reply. He glanced over at the BMW. “Who’s that fellow without a neck?”
“A good man, only not very bright. He’s a porter at Villa Bianca.”
“And who got him the job at Villa Bianca?”
“You know, marshal, I have contacts, so whenever I can help out …”
“Yes, why not? What’s all this about Grimaldi’s son?”
Cavallo seemed to involuntarily swallow a morsel of food he hadn’t yet finished chewing. “What … What do you mean?”
“I was right. You aren’t as smart as I thought. I think we should all go to the station.”
“Why to the station, marshal?”
“Because you were deliberately holding up the traffic, which counts as coercion. You might like to know that coercion is punishable by up to four years in prison. What we have to decide is whether or not to arrest you. With your record, I’m afraid we may have to.”
“Marshal, please don’t joke.”
“Do I look like the kind of person who jokes?”
With a mechanical gesture, Cavallo adjusted the knot of his tie, even though it was perfectly straight. He took out a packet of Dunhill and a gold cigarette lighter that looked for all the world like a Dupont. He smoked, holding the cigarette right in the middle of his lips and not so much breathing it in as sucking on it.
“What’s going on, Cavallo?”
Cavallo looked around, as if to make sure nobody was watching them. “Marshal, don’t make things difficult for me. The orders are not to say a word.”
“Just tell me what’s going on, and nobody will have to know.”
“Marshal …” Cavallo’s voice was almost a moan now.
“How long has the boy been gone?”
Cavallo threw down the half-smoked cigarette and stubbed it out with the tip of his shoe: he was wearing shiny new moccasins with tassels. “Since the day before yesterday. He left for school in the morning but never got there.”
“Is it true there’s been a ransom demand?”
Cavallo nodded.
“And has the ransom been paid?”
“I don’t know. I know they were getting the money together. Now please let me go. We’re in the middle of the street, everyone can see us. If Grimaldi finds out I told you these things, he’ll break my legs.”
“Go,” Fenoglio said.
Cavallo hesitated for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure he had quite understood. Then he turned and walked quickly away.
6
“So it’s true,” the captain said when they were back in the car.
“We have a huge problem,” Fenoglio said. “Let’s go and hear what Fornaro has to tell us.”
Fornaro was standing waiting for them at the front door of the station. He looked like a character actor playing a marshal of the Carabinieri in a 1950s comedy: thick salt-and-pepper moustache, uniform made rounder by a prominent paunch, a stern expression but with a good-natured undercurrent. He saluted the captain, shook hands with Fenoglio and nodded in Montemurro’s direction.
There was an unpleasant smell in the office, a mixture of mustiness, dust and rotting food, as if poor-quality dishes were frequently consumed there, the barred windows were never opened and a change of air only ever came from the corridor.
“Can I get you anything, captain? A coffee, a drink?”
“No, thanks, marshal. We’ve just had something. Could you repeat what you told me on the phone?”
“Yes, sir. A source who has proved reliable in the past, close to the circles around Nicola Grimaldi alias Blondie, informed me this morning that Grimaldi’s younger son has been kidnapped by persons unknown and that in order to restore him a considerable sum has been demanded.”
There were a few moments’ silence. Fornaro had spoken as if reading a report.
“When is this kidnapping supposed to have taken place?” Fenoglio asked.
Fornaro hesitated for a few seconds, perhaps made uncomfortable by the fact that the question had been asked, not by the captain, but by someone of the same rank as himself. When he replied, the tone was less bureaucratic.
“The day before yesterday, but I didn’t speak to the source until today.”
“Did he tell you if the ransom has been paid?”
Fornaro shook his head. “He didn’t know. All he knew was that the kidnappers had asked for a very large sum and that the family was getting the money together.”
“Did you do anything to corroborate the tip-off after you’d received it?” the captain asked.
“Yes, sir. Immediately after obtaining the information, my subordinates and myself proceeded to the school attended by the child, where, having been received by the principal, we were informed that the child had not attended yesterday. That same morning, the child’s mother had come to the school and requested to see him and had also been told that the child had not come to class.”
“Have you talked to the boy’s family?”
“No, sir. Having first verified the reliability of the information I judged it wise to inform you without carrying out any further investigative actions.”
Fenoglio reflected. The kidnapping had taken place, there was no doubt about it. Two converging sources and the statements from the principal couldn’t be a coincidence. It was unprecedented, something far from the usual patterns of criminal behaviour.
“Does your informant have any idea who it might have been? Are there any hypotheses, anyone suspected?”
“He hasn’t said anything. But the rumour that’s going around is that it’s connected with a rift between Grimaldi and Vito Lopez.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that if there’s a war between those loyal to Grimaldi and a group of rebels linked to Lopez, it’s possible the boy was taken by Lopez’s people. But that’s only a theory of mine.”
Once again Fenoglio noticed the different ways Fornaro spoke, depending on whether he was addressing him or the captain.
“Do you think your source can give us any other information?”
“I don’t think so, he doesn’t play an important role in the group. He reported to me the things that everyone in those circles knows, but Grimaldi certainly won’t confide in him.”
The captain took out his cigarette case, asked permission to smoke, lit a cigarette and seemed to reflect. “What do we do now?”
“We summon the boys’ parents here to the station,” Fenoglio suggested. “Obviously, they won’t want to cooperate, but they’ll have to tell us something to justify their son’s absence.”
“All right. Marshal Fornaro, send a car to pick up Grimaldi and his wife. We’ll wait here.”
A strange expression appeared on Fornaro’s face: something like embarrassment, as if he wanted to object but couldn’t find the right words to make the nature of the problem clear to the others. When you’re the commanding officer of a station on the outskirts of town, you have to find a balance between asserting your own authority and showing cautious respect for people who are prepared to do anything. When you live and work round the corner from the homes and territories of highly dangerous criminals, you have to find a modus vivendi, accept boundaries and limitations that it’s hard for those who come in from outside to grasp. Theoretical authority is one thing; the real world, where different rules apply, is another. Grimaldi wasn’t the kind of man you could just drag to the station with his wife, like any common bag snatcher. You had to find a way. Fornaro didn’t say any of this, but for Fenoglio it was as if he had recited these considerations out loud. He was about to say, “Montemurro and I will go and fetch Grimaldi and his wife, maybe with a couple of carabinieri from the station but only as backup, just so he sees who’s involved and that the orders came from higher up,” when a uniformed sergeant came into the room. He was breathless, and had the excited expression of someone with an urgent announcement to make.
“Begging your pardon, but a call has just come in. There’s a shoot-out in the street in Enziteto between the occupants of two cars.”
“How far is that from here?” the captain asked, with unexpected promptness and determination.
“Five minutes if we’re quick,” Fornaro replied.
“Let’s take the M12s and the bulletproof vests and go straight there.”
7
The two cars set off with sirens blaring, lights flashing and tyres screeching. Fenoglio checked the time and cocked his pistol. The captain had a sub-machine gun in his hand, already loaded, while Montemurro drove with a Beretta 92 between his legs. Nobody spoke. Ahead of them, the car from the station, with Marshal Fornaro and two corporals in it, sped on, jumping intersections and angrily running red lights. They drove through Santo Spirito, heading south, and turned onto the main road.
As they covered the mile or so separating them from the turn-off for Enziteto at a speed of over ninety miles an hour, Fenoglio found himself inevitably thinking of a very similar situation many years earlier, in Milan. He and two colleagues had been in a patrol car when they’d received a report of an armed robbery in progress, just a few hundred yards from where they were. They got there just as the robbers, still holding their guns, were coming out of the post office. There was a furious exchange of fire, at the end of which one of the robbers – a twenty-one-year-old – was dead and one of the carabinieri seriously wounded. A few weeks later, it emerged from the ballistics examination that the fatal shots hadn’t come from Fenoglio’s gun. Technically, he hadn’t been the one who’d caused the young man’s death, and the news had given him a sense of liberation. That had been short-lived. He had begun wondering if there was really any difference between himself and the colleague from whose gun the fatal bullet had been fired. If that other carabiniere had been the only one there, would things have ended up the same way? Dozens of bullets – in the end, they had counted thirty-two cartridges on the ground – had been fired almost simultaneously at the robbers, like a hard-edged mass of lethal metal. A web in which you couldn’t help but become entangled. The question wasn’t who had fired the shot that had reached its target; the question was who had participated in weaving that web. This had nothing to do with the legitimacy of the carabinieri’s conduct on that occasion. Shooting at those robbers had been legitimate and inevitable, the young man’s death the legitimate and inevitable result of a collective act. Fenoglio had wondered what he would reply if he was asked if he had ever killed anyone.
He would reply yes.
When they got to the scene of the shoot-out at Enziteto, there was nobody there. Fenoglio looked at his watch before getting out of the car: five minutes and a few seconds had passed. In emergencies, establishing the time is vital. It helps to counter the inevitable distortion of memories, their lack of consistency, the way they can be contaminated by imagination.
They turned off the sirens and the lights. The street was deserted, the windows barred as if the neighbourhood were uninhabited. There were many cartridges, concentrated in two spots, some twenty yards apart. Two groups had opened fire on each other with rifles and pistols, and if anyone had been hit, he hadn’t left any immediately visible bloodstains.
The silence was unsettling. This, too, gave the impression that the place had been abandoned. Which in a way was true, Fenoglio thought. Enziteto was a part of the city abandoned by everyone, although less than two miles from the sea, the restaurants, the bathing beaches, the airport. You take the little turn-off that leads to the neighbourhood from the highway, and from one moment to the next you find yourself somewhere unknowable. Somewhere abstract.
Yes, that was the right adjective. Abstract.
Enziteto, like so many strange marginal areas in the world, was an abstract place. He recalled a phrase by his fellow Piedmontese, the painter Casorati, which had struck him and seemed to him to contain a basic truth: “Painting is always abstract.”
God knows who had called 112. There really was nobody there: not a single car passed, not a little boy by chance, not a moped, not a bicycle.
A mangy dog crossed the road, slowly, as if to underline the concept. Then the silence was broken by sirens. More Carabinieri cars arrived, along with police patrol cars, even the head of the flying squad. The world regained a modicum of precarious concreteness.
