I realized I’d have to talk to Carmelo Tancredi.
Carmelo Tancredi is a police inspector who specializes in hunting down the worst dregs of humanity: rapists, sexual abusers, child traffickers.
He has the mild, slightly downtrodden appearance of a Mexican peasant in a B-western, the kind of intuition you usually only find in fictional policemen, and the grip of a crazed pitbull.
I’d talk to him and ask him what he thought of this whole business. If it was really possible that someone had planted the drugs in Paolicelli’s car in Montenegro with the intention of retrieving them in Italy. And I would ask him if he thought it was worth conducting an investigation to try and clear my client.
Then I would ask around to see if anyone knew this lawyer, Macri. To find out where he fitted into the jigsaw.
Assuming, of course, that there was a jigsaw. There could be a much simpler explanation: the drugs did in fact belong to Paolicelli and some unknown accomplices, the lawyer – as often happens in these cases – had been hired and paid by these accomplices, and his wife, of course, knew nothing about it.
The fact that I now had a plan – talking to Tancredi, inquiring about this Macri – gave me the feeling that I’d actually got somewhere. I looked at my watch and realized it was two in the morning.
For a moment, only for a moment, I remembered Margherita’s face. Before it dissolved into the photographic negative of that September afternoon, and then disappeared in the distance, somewhere to the west.
Great Friday night, I thought as I left the office and headed home.
7
On Monday morning, I asked Maria Teresa to call Signora Kawabata and tell her that I was taking the case and that I would visit her husband in prison before the end of the week. She – Maria Teresa – would have to go to the clerk of the court’s office at the court of appeal to check if a date had been fixed for the hearing.
At that point I hesitated, as if there was something else, something I’d forgotten. Maria Teresa asked me if she should tell Signora Kawabata to come to the office to pay an advance and I said yes, that was it, that was what I had forgotten. She had to tell her to come to the office. To pay an advance.
Of course.
Then I took the papers I needed for that morning’s hearings and left.
Outside, it was freezing cold and I told myself I didn’t have to take the bicycle every time, I could actually walk. I went into the bar on the ground floor of the building where my office was, had a cappuccino, and on the way to the courtroom called Carmelo Tancredi.
“Guido! Don’t tell me one of those maggots we arrested last night is a client of yours. Please don’t tell me that.”
“OK, I won’t. Who did you arrest last night?”
“A paedophile ring organizing holidays in Thailand. Vermin for export. We’ve been working on the case for six months. Two of our undercover officers infiltrated the ring, even went on holiday with these animals, and collected evidence by the barrel load. Incredibly, the Thai police cooperated.”
“And you arrested them last night?”
“Right. You can’t imagine the kind of stuff we found in their homes.”
“I can’t imagine and I don’t want to know.”
That was only half true. I didn’t want to know, but I could imagine only too well what they might have found when they searched the men’s homes. I’d occasionally been involved in paedophilia cases – always representing the victims – and had seen the kind of material taken from people like that. In comparison, photographs of autopsies are quite pleasant to look at.
“Since, fortunately, you’re not the lawyer of one of these maggots, why are you calling me?”
“I wanted to buy you a coffee and have a little chat. But if you worked all night and are just now going to sleep, it doesn’t matter. I realize you’re getting on in years, so…”
He said something in broad Sicilian. I didn’t really understand the words but I could guess that he was making a gently critical comment on my sense of humour.
Then he went back to Italian. He told me I had to wait until they’d taken statements from the people they’d arrested and done all the other paperwork. He said he’d have to check it all because the guys in his squad were very good when it came to working in the field – tailing suspects, stakeouts, knocking down doors, chasing people, grabbing them, maybe even manhandling them a little, which doesn’t come amiss sometimes – but you had to keep them under strict supervision whenever they got their hands on a computer, or had to deal with legal formalities. He would be finished around midday and so, if I wanted, I could come by and pick him up at police headquarters and buy him an aperitif.
OK, I said, I’d pick him up at twelve-thirty.
Then I went to the courthouse and pleaded my various cases. At my usual pace, in a kind of semi-conscious state.
During my first years in the profession – as a trainee and then when I was already a prosecutor – what I’d liked best was arriving at the courthouse in the morning. I’d arrive twenty minutes before the start of the hearings, say hello to a few friends, go and have a coffee, smoke a cigarette – in those days they let you smoke in the corridors. Sometimes I might also meet a girl I liked and make plans for the evening.
Little by little these rituals had become more sporadic and then disappeared. It was something physiological, the kind of thing that happens inevitably once you pass thirty. Over time, I’d gradually fallen out of love with that moment of entering the courthouse, the ritual coffee and all the rest of it. Sometimes I would look around, on the way to the bar. I would look at the young lawyers, often well-dressed, even too well-dressed. I would look at the girls – secretaries, trainees, even a few young magistrates on probation.
They all seemed a little stupid to me, and I’d think, tritely, that when we were young we were different, and better.
Not a very clever thought, but once you get started on something like that you can’t stop. If these people are so dumb, then there’s no reason to envy them, no reason to envy their youth, their supple joints, their infinite possibilities. They’re idiots, you can see that from the way they behave, at the bar, and everywhere. We were better, and we still are, so why envy them?
Why, damn it?
By twelve-twenty I was outside police headquarters. I called Tancredi to tell him to come down and join me. When I saw him, I thought he looked like someone who’s slept on a sofa, with his coat and shoes on. For all I knew, he probably had.
We hadn’t seen each other for a while, so the first thing he did was to ask after Margherita. I told him she’d been away for a few months on business, and tried to look as natural and as neutral as possible as I told him this. I could tell from his expression that I didn’t quite manage it. So I changed the subject and asked him about his thesis. Tancredi had already done all his psychology exams, and only needed to finish his thesis to graduate. He said he hadn’t been working on it for a while, and from the way he said it I realized I’d touched on a sore point, too.
We were quits. We could go and have our aperitif now.
We chose a wine bar a few hundred yards from police headquarters, run by a friend of Tancredi’s. It was a place that tended to be busiest at night. Right now, it was deserted, and an ideal place for a quiet chat.
We ordered oysters and a white Sicilian wine. We ate a first tray of oysters and both agreed we hadn’t had enough. So we ordered more, and drank several glasses of wine.
After his last oyster, Tancredi put his cigar stub in his mouth – he almost always had one with him, and almost never lit it – moved his chair back and asked me what I wanted from him. I told him the whole Paolicelli story, trying not to leave out any detail. When I’d finished, I said I needed his advice.
With the hand that was holding the cigar stub, he signalled to me to go on.