“First of all, have you ever heard of drugs being transported to Italy by being planted in cars belonging to people who didn’t know anything about them? Have there ever been any cases in which something like that has cropped up?”
“Oh yes, it’s cropped up. Turkish heroin traffickers used to use a system like that. They’d target Italian tourists who’d driven to Turkey by car. They’d steal the car, fill it with heroin and then make sure it was recovered before anyone went to the police to report it. And the person who recovered it even got a reward for his good deed. Then the tourists would set off back to Italy, and the Turks would follow them at a distance, to make sure nothing happened to the consignment. If the car was stopped and searched at the border, the problem was entirely the unsuspecting tourist’s. Once across the border, their Italian friends would come into the picture. At the first opportunity the car would be stolen again, the only difference being that this time it wasn’t given back. End of story.”
“How far back are we talking?”
“As far as I know, this modus operandi has definitely been established on two separate occasions. Once in a big investigation by the Prosecutor’s Department and Flying Squad in Trieste, and once in Bari by our own Drugs Squad. This was three, four years ago.”
I rubbed my face, against the direction of the stubble. So, theoretically, Paolicelli could have been telling the truth, even though he hadn’t said anything about the car being stolen. The story of the hotel porter made sense.
“And do you know about operations of this kind where the car hasn’t been stolen?”
“What do you mean? They plant the drugs and just leave them there as a gift?”
“Very funny. I meant, where they don’t steal the car to plant the drugs in the first place.”
As he replied, I got the distinct impression he wasn’t telling me everything he knew.
“I don’t know of anything like that, but it isn’t impossible. If you know where the car is and you have the time, you don’t have to steal it, you can take it and bring it back without the owner even realizing.”
“For the sake of argument: if you were a private detective and you were given the job of clearing Paolicelli’s name, what would you do?”
“For the sake of argument, right? First of all, I’m not a private detective. Secondly, I don’t think we’ve established that your new client is innocent. It’s possible someone’s car could be full of drugs that aren’t his, I grant you. But the fact that it’s possible doesn’t mean it happened in this case. The most realistic hypothesis-”
“I hate logical policemen. I know, the most realistic hypothesis is that the drugs were his. If someone has a car full of cocaine, the first thing you consider is that the cocaine was his. Having said that, if you were a private detective…”
“If I were a private detective, before I said a word or moved a finger, I’d make sure I got a big advance. Then the first thing I’d do would be to question our friend Paolicelli again. His wife, too. Who, I suspect, isn’t at all bad-looking.”
Tancredi was capable of reading a lot of things in a person’s face. Right then, I wished he wasn’t.
“I’d try to find out if there really is a reason to suspect the hotel porter. Though I don’t know how far we’d get.”
“What do you mean?”
“To find out anything definite about the porter, or any of the hotel staff, there’d have to be an official investigation. We’d have to ask the police in Montenegro for cooperation. I don’t know if you remember who we’re talking about. For years, some of the police chiefs over there, and a few of their ministers, ran the international trade in contraband cigarettes.”
I did remember.
“Anyway, I’d ask Paolicelli and his wife if they noticed anything strange during the holiday, especially towards the end. Even insignificant details. If they met anyone, a person who was very pleasant, tried to make friends with them. If they chatted to anyone, and this person asked a lot of questions. Where are you from, when did you arrive, and especially, when are you going home? And I’d ask them to tell me everything they remember about the porter, or the owners of the hotel, or anyone on the staff-a waiter for example – who caught their attention for any reason.”
“And then?”
“It depends on what they answer. If it does turns out that there was someone snooping on them in Montenegro, you’d need to check if by any chance this person also travelled back on the same ferry.”
“And how can I check that?”
He pretended to look downhearted. “That’s just it. You can’t.”
“Come on, Carmelo, please help me. I just want to know if he told me a pack of lies or if he’s really innocent. If he is, that’s really tough on him.”
He didn’t reply immediately. He rolled the cigar stub between his index finger and thumb, looking at it as if it were an object of great interest, ignoring me for a few seconds, as if he was wondering what to tell me. In the end, he shrugged.
“It’s possible your client is telling the truth. A few months ago an informant of mine told me there were some major consignments of cocaine coming in from Albania, Montenegro and Croatia, using precisely that method. Planting the drugs in a car without even stealing it.”
“Shit.”
“They fill the car, a day or two before their unwitting courier leaves. Then one of the gang gets on the ferry to keep an eye on the merchandise. Once past customs, they get to the final phase: at the first opportunity, their accomplices in Italy steal the car and recover the drugs.”
“Is there an ongoing investigation into all this?”
“No, at least not as far as I know. I passed the information on to the drugs squad. The only thing they said was that they’d like to know who my informant was so they could talk to him.”
He made a disgusted face. A real cop never asks a colleague to tell him the name of his informant. Only amateurs or rogues do that.
“And you told them to fuck off.”
“But very politely.”
“So the information was never used.”
“As far as I know. In any case that’s not what interests us. You need to talk to your client and his lovely wife and get anything from them that they can remember. Then, depending on what they tell you, we may be able to find some way of checking it out.”
“OK, Carmelo, I’ll talk to them and get them to tell me everything. But then you have to help me. For instance, we could get hold of the passenger list from the ferry. To see if there’s any name on it that matches your records. You won’t have to do much, just talk to some of your colleagues in the border police and-”
“Do you want me to wash your car windows, too? Just to make sure you get the full service.”
“As a matter of fact, it’s been a while since-”
Again, Tancredi said something in broad Sicilian. It sounded pretty similar to what he had said a few hours earlier on the phone.
In the end, though, he told me to call him after I’d talked to Paolicelli.
“If anything useful comes out of your chat, we’ll see if we can take it any further. Another thing you could do in the meantime is try and find out some more about that colleague of yours who turned up from Rome. If Paolicelli and his wife are telling the truth, this guy has a connection with the owners of the drugs. Knowing who this lawyer is could give us a lead.”
Right. Our little chat had borne fruit. I felt quite pleased.
I stood up and went to the cash desk to pay the bill, but the owner told me that no one was allowed to pay without Tancredi’s permission.
And I didn’t have his permission that day.
8
Natsu Kawabata came to the office on Tuesday afternoon.
She was wearing the same blue coat as the last time. She looked more beautiful every time I saw her.
It was obvious she was of mixed Japanese and European blood. As her name was Kawabata, I assumed her father was Japanese and her mother Italian. Otherwise, how could she talk such perfect Italian? She even had a slight Neapolitan inflexion. I had no idea if she’d been born in Italy or Japan. And that dark complexion must have come from her mother, as the Japanese are usually light-skinned.