At that point I asked him if he would like a coffee or anything else. He said, yes, please, he had just been thinking how much he’d enjoy a cappuccino. I called the cafe downstairs, ordered two cappuccinos, then looked over at Navarra.
“So?”
“So, I had the impression that something wasn’t quite right when I talked to the two young women.”
“What wasn’t right, in particular?”
“That there were things they didn’t tell me. Let me give you an example. At a certain point, I asked Nicoletta, Manuela’s roommate in Rome, and then the other one, if Manuela used narcotics.”
“Yes, I read that in the statement. Both of them said no, as far as they were aware, except for the occasional joint.”
“Right, but the thing was how they said it. There was something about the answers both of them gave to that question that didn’t convince me entirely. I followed up on that line of questioning a little bit, and both of them shut down. I had nothing concrete to work with, so I had to drop the matter. But I was left with a very distinct impression that they hadn’t told me everything they knew. And the one who seemed most uncomfortable was Nicoletta Abbrescia.”
“So did you talk to your superiors or to the prosecutor about your concerns?”
“Sure I did. And by the way,” he added, as if he’d just remembered that he was giving me confidential details about an investigation that was officially still open, “the conversation we’re having right now never happened.”
“It never happened. So what did your superiors and the prosecutor have to say about it?”
“My captain shrugged it off. And all things considered, I can see why. What were we supposed to do with my suspicions in the absence of any concrete evidence? I tried suggesting that we follow the two girls for a couple of days. He looked at me as if I’d just morphed into the creature from Alien. He asked me where I wanted to act out this American detective movie. In Rome, obviously. And was I supposed to authorize my own mission to Rome? And while I was at it, would I be paying for it out of my own special reserve fund, since they’d just cut the budget for fueling our patrol cars? So I suggested tapping their phones, requesting their call records. And he told me to talk to the prosecutor about it.”
“So what did you do?”
“I went to the district attorney’s office and talked to the magistrate in charge of the investigation.”
“And what did the magistrate say?”
“He was pretty nice about it, all things considered. He asked me whether I was planning to justify a wiretap request by writing that Inspector Navarra is doubtful about the truthfulness of two people who have information about what happened. He asked me if I had any idea what the judge would likely respond. I told him that, yes, I could imagine, and we dropped the matter, meaning that I never even submitted a written request. Obviously.”
Just then, the delivery boy arrived, carrying our cappuccinos on a tray. Navarra held his cup with both hands when he drank, like a child. There was some milk left on his upper lip. He wiped it off carefully with a couple of paper napkins, the way a person might who knows what happens when you drink a cappuccino, and who therefore takes appropriate steps. Calmly and deliberately.
I really liked his simple, precise sequence of actions. All he did was wipe a little cappuccino foam off his lips, but I thought I’d like to be the kind of person whose actions are so careful and conscious.
Navarra crumpled up the napkins and then resumed speaking.
“So, in short, we did what we could. We’re so overworked, we have mountains of files on our desks, and we have to work our way through them. Among other things, technically, we don’t even have a crime report. I mean, the young woman…”
“Of course, of course. The young woman is no longer a minor, there’s no explicit evidence that her disappearance is directly linked to a crime, there is no way of ruling out the possibility that she simply wanted to get away from everything, and so on.”
“And so on. It’s unlikely, but she might have had a reason for leaving. She might not have wanted to be found.”
I looked him in the eye. He returned my gaze, then shrugged.
“Okay, okay, I don’t believe it either. But there was nothing more I could do. Unless, like I told you, I devoted myself to this case full time. And since I couldn’t do that, I was forced to close the case and work on other things. But maybe you can manage to uncover something I missed.”
He said it without a hint of sarcasm, at least as far as I could tell. But the idea struck both of us as fairly unlikely.
“So what do you plan to do?” he asked, as he pushed his chair back.
“You know better than I do that my chances are very slim. If you couldn’t find anything, I doubt very much I’ll be able to.”
“Don’t be so sure of that. Investigations work in mysterious ways. Sometimes, you do everything right, by the book, and you don’t find a damned thing. And then, when you’ve finally set your mind at ease that there’s nothing else to be done, something random happens and you’re handed the solution, all wrapped up and tied with a bow. With this kind of work, more than any other, there is no technique or planning or experience that’s half as important as a piece of dumb luck. And you might just have that piece of luck this time.”
I shrugged and shook my head, but I liked what he’d said. He’d encouraged me. I was an absolute beginner as far as investigating went, but where strokes of dumb luck were concerned, I’d always done all right.
“I think I’ll try to talk with Manuela’s two girlfriends, the ones who go to school in Rome. And I’ll talk to the guy you like so much, the ex-boyfriend. I don’t know whether it’s worth trying to talk to the girl who gave her a ride from the trulli to the train station in Ostuni.”
“Anita Salvemini. I’d definitely have a conversation with her.”
“Why?”
“It will almost certainly be a waste of time. But sometimes, very rarely, it happens that a person, interviewed again at a different time, maybe in a slightly less stressful setting, is able to remember details she forgot or overlooked the first time. It may happen that a shred of memory surfaces, and that it turns out to be the one detail that allows you to unravel the whole ball of wool. It doesn’t happen often, but it wouldn’t cost you anything to try talking to that young woman again.”
“Do you have any other advice for me?”
“The handbooks suggest proceeding in two phases when interviewing a witness. In the first phase, you should let the witness talk freely, without interruption, and you should speak only to make it clear that you’re paying attention to what he says. Then, when he’s done with this uninterrupted account, you should ask a series of specific questions, to clarify in greater depth. At the end, always leave the door open. You should tell the witness that in the hours or days that follow your interview, he is likely to remember some further detail. That detail may seem unimportant to him, and he will be tempted to keep it to himself. You can’t let that happen. You might find the key to the case in those seemingly insignificant details.”
“So?”
“So you should tell the witness that if anything else comes to mind -anything -he needs to call us. It’s important because it encourages him to provide you with any information he might have, but it also reinforces the witness’s sense of responsibility. If a witness feels responsible, he’ll keep an open and active mind, and that’s crucial to gathering new information.”
“With your interests and expertise, maybe you should study psychology, not literature.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought of that. But like I told you, whenever I think of going back to college, a minute later it strikes me as a stupid idea, at age forty-three, with no prospect of doing anything useful with that degree. And there’s a whole series of thoughts that follows, none of them particularly agreeable.”
Then, after sitting for a few seconds with a rapt, slightly faraway expression on his face, he said it was time for him to get back to the Carabinieri barracks.