“Of course I do. From time to time I look at it and wonder how you manage to create something like that out of pieces of paper.”
“Is there something I can help you with?” he asked.
“Yes, there is. I’d like to talk to you for half an hour. Could we meet somewhere?”
“What’s it about?”
“The disappearance of Manuela Ferraro. Her parents came to see me a few days ago and I’ve read the file. I’d like to discuss it with you if you have a minute.”
“Are you going to court today?”
“I don’t have any hearings, but if you’re going to be in court, we could meet there.”
“If you’re coming just to talk to me, then don’t go to the trouble. Let’s do it this way: I’ll go to my hearing, I’ll ask if I can testify first thing, and when I’m done I’ll give you a call and then I’ll drop by your office.”
I told him I didn’t want to impose on him; he replied that it was a pleasure for him to come and see me. He said that he liked me, which he couldn’t say for most of my colleagues, and that, in his opinion, I should have been a prosecutor. He liked the way I had argued on behalf of the plaintiff in a trial for usury for which he’d conducted the police investigations. He said that if it had been up to the prosecutor, the bastard who was on trial would have gotten off scot-free. If the judges sentenced that band of loan sharks to hard prison time, it was to my credit, he said. It would be a pleasure to come see me, he said again.
He called me earlier than I expected. His trial had been adjourned because of a failure to serve certain papers, so he’d been able to free himself up almost immediately. Twenty minutes later, he was sitting across from me.
“Weren’t you in a different office until recently?”
“Yes, we moved four months ago.”
“It looks sort of American. Nice. I’d like to make some changes, too. But it’s not so easy if you’re a Carabiniere. You’ve got a fixed income, and you can’t predict your schedule. I was thinking of going back to college.”
“You’d like to study engineering again?”
He looked at me in astonishment.
“Good memory. But no, not engineering. I don’t think I could get up to speed, especially in my spare time. I was thinking of literature, or philosophy. But maybe that’s a pipe dream. It’s just that once you pass age forty, you start to ask yourself some hard questions about the meaning of what you’re doing, and especially about time passing, which it seems to do more and more quickly.”
“A while ago I read a good book by a Dutch psychologist. It’s called Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older, and it talks about that very phenomenon. It’s really interesting.”
“Just hearing the title makes me anxious. There are times when I feel like I’m losing my balance and falling over. It’s not a pleasant feeling.”
I knew what he was talking about. In fact, it’s not a pleasant feeling. We sat in silence, with those words hanging in the air.
“All right, let’s forget about time rushing by and my midlife crisis. You said on the phone that you’re looking into the disappearance of Manuela Ferraro.”
“Yes. As I told you, her parents came to see me, accompanied by an old civil law colleague of mine. They asked me to examine the file and see if I could find any grounds for further investigation. Last night I read through the documents, and of course the first thing I noticed was that you were in charge of the investigation.”
He nodded, and said nothing. So I continued.
“I want to know what you think about her disappearance, aside from what you wrote in your reports.”
I refrained from asking him explicitly if he thought further investigation was merited. Even a well-balanced and intelligent person like Navarra can be touchy about certain things. I figured something might emerge if we just talked it over casually.
“It’s never easy to form any solid theory in a missing persons case. In my experience-and I think statistics back me up on this-once a certain amount of time has gone by the percentage of positive outcomes in missing persons cases is very low.”
He stopped as if he’d just thought of something important.
“You know that Detective Tancredi is a first-class specialist in this type of investigation, right? He’s built up an incredible body of experience with missing children. I think you know him, don’t you?”
“Yes, Tancredi and I are friends.”
“Well, if you’re a friend of Tancredi’s, I’d ask his opinion. I won’t be offended. In any case, aside from what happens in general, you want to know if I have any ideas of my own, above and beyond what’s written in the reports.”
“That would be helpful, in fact.”
Navarra pressed his lips together. He scratched the back of his neck. He rocked his head gently from side to side, as if he were weighing the wisdom of confiding in me what he really thought. Then he must have come down on the side of taking the risk.
“If I had been able to dedicate a lot more time to this case… no, let’s say if I had been able to dedicate all my time to this case, I would have looked into that young woman’s life in Rome. I had the impression that her two friends-Abbrescia and Pontrandolfi-weren’t telling me everything they knew, that they were covering up something, but I don’t know what. Let me be clear: the first target of my investigation was Cantalupi, Manuela’s ex-boyfriend. He’s a spoiled brat, a conceited and overindulged little playboy who just makes you want to slap him silly. But according to the phone records he was actually in Croatia when Manuela disappeared, and he didn’t come back to Italy until four or five days later. In other words, unless we’re willing to consider the possibility of teleportation, there was no way he could have been in contact with the girl when she went missing.”
“The fact that Cantalupi was in Croatia is proven only by the cell phone records.”
He looked at me with a smile.
“Believe me, I wasn’t happy to give up the idea that this guy was somehow involved in the girl’s disappearance. And I thought the same thing you’re thinking-though I hope you don’t mind my saying that it’s kind of crazy: Someone else could have used the phone. But the cell phone records show calls made to his phone from his home, so they must have been made by his parents. Anyway, since I didn’t like the guy, I went ahead and did some informal checking on my own. I talked to the captain of the boat that he took. I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it. On the days in question, that little shit was on the other side of the Adriatic Sea.”
While he was talking, I decided the theory that Cantalupi had given his cell phone to someone else in Croatia so that he could establish an alibi in advance before hurrying back to Italy to kidnap or murder his ex-girlfriend was silly. Why would he bother? I felt foolish having thought of it, even though a seasoned professional investigator like Navarra had entertained the same thought.
“But you were saying about her two friends?”
“Right, her two friends. Let me start by saying that I always try to be very cautious about my instincts on whether a witness or a suspect is reliable or sincere. You know a good way to tell if an investigator is a fool?”
“No, tell me. It might come in handy.”
“Ask him if he can tell when someone’s lying. The ones who say they can tell, who think it’s impossible to trick them with a lie, are the biggest fools around. They’re the ones a skilled liar can wrap around his little finger with the greatest ease and enjoyment.”
“I know a couple of prosecutors who claim that they know immediately if a defendant or a witness is lying. And in fact they’re the biggest idiots in the district attorney’s office.”
“They’re probably the same ones I’m thinking of. Anyway, that was a bit of a digression, but I’m trying to say that I take my impressions about the truthfulness of someone I’m interviewing with a grain of salt. That doesn’t mean that I ignore my instincts entirely. I think of the interview as an opening and try to explore more deeply.”