‘Yes, I know,’ Guarino said: ‘that I can trust you.’ He nodded, seemed to digest this new information, and then went on in a more sober voice, ‘My unit studies organized crime, specifically its penetration north.’ Even though Guarino spoke earnestly and was perhaps finally telling the truth, Brunetti remained cautious. Guarino covered his face with his hands and made a washing gesture. Brunetti thought of racoons, always trying to clean things off. Elusive creatures, racoons.
‘Because the problem is so multifaceted, it’s been decided to try to approach it by applying new techniques.’
Brunetti held up a monitory hand and said, ‘This isn’t a meeting, Filippo: you can use real language.’
Guarino gave a short laugh, not a particularly pleasant sound. ‘After seven years working where I do, I’m not sure I still know how to use it.’
‘Try, Filippo, try. It might be good for your soul.’
As if in an attempt to remove the memory of everything he had said so far, Guarino sat up straighter and began for the third time. ‘Some of us are trying to stop them coming north. There’s not much hope of that, I suppose.’ He shrugged, and went on. ‘My unit is trying to keep them from doing certain things after they get here.’
The crux of this visit, Brunetti realized, lay in the nature of those still undisclosed ‘certain things’. ‘Like shipping things they should not?’ he asked.
Brunetti watched the other man struggle with the habit of reticence, refusing to give him any encouragement. Then, as if he had suddenly tired of playing cat and mouse with Brunetti, Guarino added, ‘Shipping, but not contraband. Garbage.’
Brunetti returned his feet to the top of the drawer and leaned back in his chair. He studied the doors to his armadio for some time and finally asked, ‘The Camorra runs it all, don’t they?’
‘In the South, certainly.’
‘And here?’
‘Not yet, but there’s more and more evidence of them. It’s not as bad as Naples, though, not yet.’
Brunetti thought of the stories of that afflicted city that had filled the papers over the Christmas holidays and refused to go away, of the mountains of uncollected garbage, some of it rising to the first floor of the buildings. Who had not watched the desperate citizens burn not only the stinking heaps of uncollected rubbish but also their mayor in effigy? And who had not been appalled to see the Army sent in to restore order in time of peace?
‘What’s next?’ Brunetti asked. ‘UN peacekeepers?’ ‘They could have worse,’ Guarino said. Then, angrily, ‘They do have worse.’
Because the investigation of the Ecomafia was in the hands of the Carabinieri, Brunetti had always responded to the situation as a citizen, one of helpless millions who watched the news as trash smouldered on the streets and the Minister of Ecology reprimanded the citizens of Naples for not separating their rubbish, while the mayor improved the ecological situation by banning smoking in public parks.
‘Is that how Ranzato was involved?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes,’ Guarino answered. ‘But not with the bags in the streets of Naples.’
‘What, then?’
Guarino had grown still, as if his nervous motions hadbeen a physical manifestation of his evasiveness with Brunetti and there was no longer any need for them. ‘Some of Ranzato’s trucks went to Germany and France to pick up cargo, took it south, and then came back here with fruit and vegetables.’ A second later, the old Guarino said, ‘I shouldn’t have told you that.’
Unperturbed, Brunetti said, ‘Presumably, they didn’t go to pick up bags of garbage from the streets of Paris and Berlin.’
Guarino shook his head.
‘Industrial, chemical, or. .’ Brunetti began.
Guarino finished the list for him. ‘. . or medical, often radiological.’
‘And took it where?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Some of it went to the ports, and from there to whatever Third World country would take it.’
‘And the rest?’
Before answering, Guarino pushed himself upright in his chair. ‘The garbage gets left on the streets in Naples. There’s no more room for it in the landfills or the incinerators down there because they’re busy burning what comes down from the North. Not only from Lombardia and the Veneto, but from any factory that’s willing to pay to have it taken away and no questions asked.’
‘How many shipments like this did Ranzato make?’
‘I told you, he wasn’t very good at keeping records.’
‘And you couldn’t. .’ Brunetti began. He shied away from using the word ‘force’ and settled for ‘. . encourage him to tell you?’
‘No.’
Brunetti remained silent. Guarino spoke again. ‘One of the last times I spoke to him, he said he almost wished I could arrest him so he could stop doing what he was doing.’
‘Stories were all over the papers by then, weren’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’
Guarino’s voice softened. ‘By then we’d become, well, not friends, not really, but something like friends, and he talked to me openly. In the beginning, he was afraid of me, but towards the end he was afraid of them and what they would do to him if they found out that he was talking to us.’
‘It seems they did.’
Either his words or his tone stopped Guarino, who gave Brunetti a sharp look. ‘Unless it was a robbery,’ he said, dead level, signalling that the best measure of their friendship was in seeming trust.
‘Of course.’
Brunetti, though by disposition a compassionate man, had little patience with retrospective protestations of remorse: most people — however much they might deny it — had an idea of what they were getting into when they got into it. ‘He must have known from the beginning who, or at least what, they were,’ Brunetti said. ‘And what they wanted him to do for them.’ Despite all of Guarino’s assurances, Brunetti judged that Ranzato had known perfectly well what was being carried on his trucks. Besides, all this talk of regret was exactly what people wanted to hear. Brunetti had always been bemused by people’s willingness to be charmed by the penitent sinner.
‘That might be true, but he didn’t tell me that,’ the Maggiore answered, reminding Brunetti how protective he had himself become of some of the people he used as — and had forced into becoming — informants.
Guarino continued. ‘He said he wanted to stop working for them. He didn’t tell me what made him decide, but whatever it was, it was clear — at least to me — that it disturbed him.’ He added, ‘That’s when he spoke about wanting to be arrested. So it could stop.’
Brunetti forbore to suggest that it did stop. Nor did he bother to observe that the perception of personal danger very often set people on the path of virtue. Only an anchorite could have remained ignorant of the ‘emergenza spazzatura’ that had captured the nation’s attention in the last weeks of Ranzato’s life.
Did Guarino look embarrassed? Or was he perhaps irritated at Brunetti’s hard-heartedness? To keep the conversation going, Brunetti asked, ‘What was the date when you last spoke to him?’
The Major shifted to one side, and took out a small black notebook. He opened it and licked his right forefinger, then flipped quickly through its pages. ‘It was the seventh of December. I remember because he said his wife wanted him to go to Mass with her the next day.’ Suddenly, Guarino’s hand fell away and the notebook slapped against his thigh. ‘Oddio,’ he whispered.
Guarino suddenly grew pale. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. For an instant, Brunetti thought the man might faint. Or weep. ‘What is it, Filippo?’ he asked, pulling his feet back and putting them on the floor, leaning forward, one hand half-raised.