Time Is a Killer

by Michel Bussi

  Cassanu looked out across the villages that clung to the Balagne. Montemaggiore. Moncale. Calenzana.

  ‘It took Cesareu Garcia a few months to reach the same conclusion I had. He asked one of his friends to carry out alternative forensic tests … Too late, far too late.’

  Clotilde stared at him, horrified, hoping that she hadn’t guessed what her grandfather was about to tell her.

  ‘You employed your own police? You carried out your own form of justice?’

  ‘My own form of justice? What other kind of justice would you expect? The one conjured up by bureaucrats from the mainland? Juries chosen by a lottery who aren’t even involved, and who are constantly being reminded of the presumption of innocence? In the face of the evidence? Acquittal because of a lack of proof? You’re a lawyer, my darling, you know what we’re talking about. I’ve taken part in that Punch and Judy show enough times to know. No, Clotilde, I’ve never had any faith in that form of justice. I’ve never trusted that version of the law, not that one, nor the laws of urban planning, nor the laws of commerce, least of all the penal law.’

  Clotilde staggered slightly. The almost perfect curve of the gulf of Calvi was laid out in front of her.

  ‘So you delivered justice yourself?’

  ‘Your mother had the right to a trial. As equitable as if it had been organised by the French justice system.’

  ‘Did my mother have a lawyer to defend her then?’ Clotilde said sarcastically.

  Cassanu looked her up and down. There wasn’t the merest hint of cynicism in his voice.

  ‘I’m sorry, Clotilde, but I’ve never understood the point of lawyers. I don’t mean you, don’t worry. You deal with divorces, child custody and maintenance payments. That’s fine, it’s all part of the times we live in, no one is good or bad, people just need a referee to sort such matters out. But this is a crime I’m talking about. What’s the point of a lawyer in such a case? There’s an inquiry, evidence, a file, you assess where the truth lies; and on the basis of the facts you punish, or you don’t. What’s the point of a lawyer except to push the evidence towards the wrong side? Why would a guilty party need a lawyer?’

  ‘And the innocent?’

  This time Cassanu laughed heartily.

  ‘The innocent? I know justice in this country, my darling. An innocent man is just a guilty man with a good lawyer.’

  Clotilde clenched her fists as her thoughts boiled in her skull. You are lucky, Papé, you’re lucky that I want to know how far you took your madness, because I have some things to say about your concept of justice, and I would also like to talk about your grandson, who is rotting away in prison at this very moment. You’ll be willing to pay the best lawyer on the island to get him out of there, if you don’t have any confidence in me.

  ‘Go on, Papé, tell me about this equitable process.’

  Cassanu stared at the tree in front of them and stopped. Clotilde remembered the old legend. It was here that the condottiere Sampiero Corso was said to have hanged the members of his family by marriage, who had betrayed him and sold him to the Genoese; he had shown the greatest mercy to his wife Vanina, and had merely strangled her with his own hands.

  ‘I assembled some friends, local people, to be the Arcanu jury. Reliable people, with a sense of honour, of family. People to whom the clan was important. About ten in all.’

  ‘Was Basile Spinello one of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who else? Cousins? People who had witnessed Salomé’s entrance on St Rose’s evening?’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Clotilde. You’re sure that your mother was already condemned from the start. But you’re wrong. I wanted a proper trial. I wanted the jury to be presented with the evidence, I wanted them to rule on the case in full knowledge of everything that was involved. To deliver their sentence on the basis of the facts and the facts alone. It was the trial for the murder of my son and my grandson. I wasn’t just looking for someone to blame, Clotilde. I was looking for a murderer.’

  ‘And you found Palma? My mother? Lying under our car and unscrewing a tight bolt? You found ten jurors who’d believe that?’

  ‘Your mother was an architect, Clotilde, that’s a man’s job, she knew her way around a car, and in any case I’d followed up other lines of enquiry. The Casaspranas, the Pinellis and the other clans assured me that they had nothing to do with it, on their honour, and I believed them. In Corsica, you don’t sort out family quarrels by sabotaging a car and killing the children; you kill your enemy directly, point blank. Think about it, only one thing in that file is certain: someone sabotaged the steering of your father’s car. Someone who knew that the Fuego wouldn’t survive a sharp bend in the road. Then, since it was a premeditated crime, everything comes down to two questions: who had a motive to kill your father; and who could know that he would get into that car? The answer, my darling, was obvious, even if you don’t like it. Only one person. Your mother. It was your mother who had refused to get into the Fuego that night. Your mother who had encouraged her rival to sit there, beside the man who no longer loved her, the man who was going to leave her, the man who was going to take away her children, because he would never have stayed in Corsica, with Salomé and Orsu, without you and Nicolas. The man who, if he asked for a divorce, would make her give up everything, including the Idrissi fortune which he would one day inherit. While if he died in an accident, and they were still married …’

  Cassanu looked up at the high branches of the tree where Sampiero Corso had hanged all those people.

  ‘That night, your mother ordered your father not to take you with him in the car. Not you, or Nicolas. She insisted, twice, and then she left.’

  They carried on walking, allowing a few seconds of silence as they climbed over some rocks. Another thirty metres in direct sunlight, then they plunged into the shade of the maquis again. Cassanu rested for a moment, cautiously placing his hand on the flat, hot stones. What if he was right? Clotilde thought. Cassanu had expressed his arguments so sincerely. And what if the only point of lawyers really was the dishonest demolition of evidence? Making the obvious look contingent? Undermining convictions with emotion?

  ‘I never had any doubt,’ Cassanu went on as if reading her thoughts. ‘Your mother was the only one who decided who would get into the car that evening and who wouldn’t. Your mother had a motive, several motives, in fact – love, money, her children. Your mother went to see her lover that evening. Your mother accused herself by trying to protect you, but she had no other choice.’

  He turned around and, for the first time, he took his granddaughter’s hand. Cassanu’s hand was light and wrinkled, as if emptied of flesh and blood. A piece of cork bark.

  ‘I assure you, Clotilde, I did look. I looked for other possible culprits, other explanations, but none of them was credible.’

  At last, Clotilde spoke her mind.

  ‘My mother’s guilt isn’t credible either.’

  Cassanu sighed. They were walking past a cleared field where some goats were browsing untethered.

  ‘And there you have it, Clotilde. That’s exactly why I didn’t want a lawyer. That was why I wanted real justice. The justice system of this country would have shared your reasoning. No tangible proof, so no culprit, no sentence. The justice of this country would have left the case there, unsolved and unpunished. The murderer of my son and my grandson would have carried on with their life peacefully and with impunity. How could I have accepted that? The Arcanu jury had to condemn the person against whom there was the most evidence. And the Arcanu jury had no hesitation. They voted unanimously, no one ever had any doubt.’

  My God … Clotilde felt her whole body shivering. Cubes of ice seemed to flood through her veins, while the sun at its zenith, through the thin branches of broom and arbutus, scorched her skin. They came to a meadow and Cassanu sat down on a granite cairn. Clotilde remembered coming here often as a child, to the plain of Paoli; it was said that the independence fighters had buried
a trove of gold coins here, coins struck at Corte just before the Revolution, when Corsica was no longer Italian and not yet French. A treasure trove that would come in useful when the island became truly independent.

  No one had ever found a chest or a single coin.

  A legend, a rumour, but no proof …

  ‘The Arcanu jury,’ Papé went on, ‘recognised your mother’s guilt. In other times, those described by Mérimée, the days of Colomba or Mateo Falcone, Palma would have been executed.’ His hand, like a dried-out sponge, tensed in Clotilde’s. ‘Twenty-seven years ago I would have sentenced her to death without hesitation, but others were opposed to that. Lisabetta first of all, Basile too. In spite of everything Palma remained a member of our family, an Idrissi, the mother of our grandchildren. Also, Lisabetta argued, your mother hadn’t actually confessed. What if we were to learn a different truth one day? Basile put forward another argument to save her; he claimed that we couldn’t be less civilised than the justice system of the French, who no longer had the death penalty even for the worst crimes. And so the sentence was decided: life imprisonment. There was no shortage of places above Arcanu, in the maquis, to lock someone up for a lifetime. Besides, your mother didn’t protest. Even though she never confessed, she never defended herself either. She never tried to get away.’

  Until today, Clotilde thought. At the time of that mockery of a trial, her mother had just lost her husband, and her son, in a car in which she should have been a passenger. Alone, traumatised, accused, cornered, racked with guilt, how could she have found the strength to defend herself?

  She had lost everything that evening.

  Everything but her daughter.

  Clotilde was going to speak, but Cassanu rested his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I am not a monster, Clotilde. Your mother lost only her freedom. That was all she could pay, the same price as any thief, any rapist or murderer. But otherwise, she hasn’t been badly treated. On the contrary, she has been treated better than any of the prisoners crammed into the jail at Borgo. I can assure you that the meals made for her by Lisabetta were better. That her guard, Orsu, was more respectful than the screws you get in jail. That his dog, Pacha, was more affectionate than Alsatians that are trained to kill. We aren’t monsters, Clotilde, we only wanted some justice.’

  Clotilde took a step back.

  ‘And now? Now that she’s fled? What will you have achieved? She’ll run to the police and report you.’

  Cassanu smiled, shaking his head.

  ‘If she had done that, the police would already be here. No, my darling, your mother hasn’t run to the station to tell them her outlandish story. Locked up for years in a shepherd’s cabin? She hasn’t gone to report us, and yet that’s what any hostage would have done, don’t you agree? Yet more evidence, Clotilde, yet more evidence of her guilt.’ His eyes darted around. ‘We’ll look for her, and we’ll find her. You’ll be able to talk to her. A Corsican can disappear into the maquis for an age, but not a foreigner, not a foreigner who hasn’t set foot outdoors for twenty-seven years.’

  For a moment, as their eyes met, Clotilde imagined that they were thinking the same thing. Perhaps Palma had simply set off again, as she had on 23 August 1989, to the place she had never reached, in the same direction, towards the same house, to find the man who lived there.

  Natale Angeli.

  After all, he still lived in Punta Rossa.

  ‘Come on,’ Cassanu said, ‘let’s get back to Arcanu.’

  They walked back in silence, past the hanging tree, the Federate Rock, respecting a moment of silence that Cassanu probably calculated would give her time to admit the inadmissible, to believe the unimaginable. Images paraded through Clotilde’s head. Her mother imprisoned, the friendship that grew little by little between her and Orsu, the silent boy assigned the task of delivering her food. The puppy that was born, and which she had named. Scraps of conversations that she must have caught, a few words exchanged with Lisabetta, perhaps, and after all those years of life in her dark room, lit only by Betelgeuse on certain evenings, she suddenly learned that her daughter was coming back to Corsica; she used Orsu as her messenger, she entrusted him with some scribbled words, enough to give her daughter proof that she was alive, then told him to lay a breakfast table identical to the one from twenty-seven years ago, then to lead her, at midnight, to her prison. To see her, just to see her, not to put her in any danger.

  What danger?

  What secret was her mother hiding?

  Her mother would never have slit Pacha’s throat. She would never have run away just as she was about to be found. She would never have touched the steering of that car. She could never have put the lives of her children in danger, or killed them, even by accident. Only one piece of information counted among all the others, each crazier than the last, that had been thrown at her today.

  Her mother was alive!

  Campa sempre.

  Now it was Clotilde’s turn to gamble. It was her job.

  To prove her mother’s innocence.

  Cassanu slowed down, perhaps because the path was sloping gently towards Arcanu, or because he had eased his conscience and was now contemplating the figatellu that awaited him.

  Not so fast, Papé, Clotilde thought. Not so fast. There’s a risk your granddaughter might take your appetite away.

  She rested a hand on her grandfather’s, the one holding the walking stick.

  ‘Papé … What if there was another trail? Another possible culprit?’

  Cassanu didn’t stop, in fact he now speeded up slightly.

  ‘I was right,’ he said simply. ‘It was better to sort the whole business out without a lawyer.’

  Clotilde tried to add a touch of irony to her voice.

  ‘And whose fault is it? You’re the reason I chose this vocation! You remember, twenty-seven years ago, at the top of Capu di a Veta. Perhaps it was all predestined, perhaps you gave me the idea of becoming a lawyer just so that, years later, I could prove to you that you’ve committed the biggest error of judgement in your life.’

  That didn’t even make Papé smile.

  ‘We’ve followed up on every other lead and suspect, Clotilde, believe me.’

  ‘Even Cervone Spinello?’

  This time, the rhythm of Cassanu’s footsteps fell out of synch.

  ‘Cervone Spinello? What has he got to do with anything? He was fourteen at the time.’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘Seventeen, if you like. But he was only a kid! How could he possibly have sabotaged the Fuego? Is that the way continental lawyers work? Choosing someone who’s been dead for a few hours and blaming him?’

  Clotilde didn’t react. They went on walking until they could see the top of the Arcanu oak tree. With her grandfather, as with all other men, you had to do some bluffing.

  ‘Cervone knew about my mother, didn’t he, Papé? About her trial, and her life sentence? Did Cervone blackmail you?’

  Cassanu raised his eyes to the sky.

  ‘It has nothing to do with the sabotage of the car, but yes, years later, Cervone heard Basile, his father, talking about it with another juror. That weasel Cervone was always listening in on everything. After his father’s death, in 2003, when he inherited the campsite, he didn’t blackmail me, as you call it, we don’t use words like that here – those are words that would leave you bullet-ridden on the terrace of a café. He just let me know that he was aware of what had happened. We didn’t even need to discuss it, we both knew the terms of the pact. If he spoke to the police, a journalist, anyone, I risked going to jail, and my whole family with me, and that would have meant abandoning Arcanu. Cervone simply asked me if he could build on a few hectares, renovate the Euproctes by enlarging the restaurant, providing additional shower blocks, Finnish chalets, and bungalows, and put a bar on Oscelluccia beach, some land that still belonged to me but which he wanted to exploit. As to the land for the Roc e Mare marina, he bought it but he asked for my protection, as you mi
ght say. When it came to protecting the family’s honour at the cost of some concreted hectares, he knew which choice I would opt for.’

  ‘If that isn’t blackmail, then what would you call it?’

  ‘A negotiation. Cervone knew he wasn’t risking anything with me. He was my best friend’s son.’

  ‘So it wasn’t you who had him murdered?’

  Cassanu’s eyes bulged from their sockets. They had reached the Arcanu courtyard, and the oak tree cast its shadow over them.

  ‘No. Why would I have ordered his murder? Cervone Spinello was ambitious, he was unscrupulous, with a keener sense of business than of the land, but he loved Corsica in his own way. A different way, the way of a different generation. Perhaps he was even right about all the concrete.’

  Clotilde didn’t pursue it. Her Papé was basically like everyone else. A man who had somehow abandoned his dreams, because the world was turning too quickly, a huge machine that swept away any chance of utopia. She hesitated, and for the time being she decided against telling him her version of events: Cervone Spinello unscrewing the bolt from the steering of the Fuego because he was sure that, that evening, Paul and Palma Idrissi wouldn’t be taking it, that they would climb along the path as planned and sleep at Casa di Stella. Because the one who was supposed to be driving the car that evening, even though none of the adults was aware of it, was Nicolas. Nicolas, with Maria-Chjara. They were the ones the murderer wanted to get rid of. Out of envy, jealousy, out of spite. Cassanu couldn’t have come up with that hypothesis – nor could anyone over the age of eighteen. The secrets of a group of teenagers are more difficult to penetrate than those of a Corsican village under the rule of omertà.