The Cold Summer

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  “Why Three Cylinders?”

  “Grimaldi has a heart defect, some kind of arrhythmia. I don’t know the exact medical definition. Anyway, the idea is that his heart functions on three cylinders instead of four. Although nobody would ever dare use that nickname to his face.”

  “He doesn’t like it.”

  “No, he doesn’t like it.”

  “You were saying: D’Agostino was one of Grimaldi’s men. So the murder was committed by a rival gang?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that. I should say in advance that the investigation into this murder is being conducted by the police flying squad, as they were first on the scene, although we also have a file on the case. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any conflict at present between Grimaldi and other criminal groups in the city or the surrounding areas. If there were, we’d have seen losses on the other side, too, in places like San Paolo, or Bitonto, or Giovinazzo. But there haven’t been any. All the victims owed allegiance to Three Cylinders, and the rest of the city’s quiet.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “The hypothesis is that there’s a conflict inside the organization. Since the 23rd of April there’s been no news of the whereabouts of Michele Capocchiani, known as the Pig, who’s one of Grimaldi’s lieutenants and a highly dangerous criminal. His wife reported him missing and a few days later we found his car burnt out, but with no body in it. On the 29th of April, there was the murder of Gennaro Carbone, known as the Cue —”

  “The Cue?”

  “Apparently, Carbone was a really good pool player. He was found dead outside the amusement arcade he ran on behalf of Grimaldi in Santo Spirito. A particularly violent attack, using automatic weapons. The hitmen had a sub-machine gun and a .44 magnum – the cartridges are unmistakable, even when they’re twisted. One bullet from the sub-machine gun ricocheted and wounded a passerby. A few days ago, on the 9th of May, there was an attack with a similar MO on a man named Andriani – I can’t remember his first name right now, but anyway, another of Grimaldi’s associates. He had a miraculous escape. A further element, which we were tipped off about and have been able to corroborate, is the disappearance of Simone Losurdo, known as the Mosquito. Nobody reported the disappearance, but he was being kept under special surveillance and hasn’t reported to police headquarters since 21 April, in other words, two days before Capocchiani was reported missing.” “What do his family say?”

  “Losurdo’s wife comes from an old underworld family. People accustomed to not talking to us. We asked her where her husband was and she replied that he never tells her what he does, he comes and goes as he pleases. But she was very agitated: my guess is that Losurdo is dead. But the most significant element in this business is the disappearance of Vito Lopez, known as the Butcher.”

  “Why the Butcher?”

  Fenoglio smiled and shook his head. “The nickname has nothing to do with the murders he’s almost certainly committed. His father had a well-established butcher’s shop. Lopez is someone who didn’t really need to become a criminal.”

  “You say his disappearance is the most significant element?”

  “Like Capocchiani, Lopez is one of Grimaldi’s lieutenants, probably the most respected and certainly the most intelligent. There’s been no trace of him for several days now. The difference between him and the others is that we don’t have an exact date for his disappearance – all we know is that nobody has seen him since the end of April. Above all, his wife and son have also disappeared. That’s why I don’t think Lopez is dead. I think he’s gone away with his family. This would fit in with what we’ve heard from our informants: that there’s a rift within Grimaldi’s group. The killings and the disappearances could well be a consequence of this rift.”

  The captain placed a hand on the desk and ran it across the wood, as if examining the texture. He opened a drawer, took out a cigarette case and held it out to Fenoglio.

  “Do you smoke, marshal?”

  “No, thank you, sir.”

  “Do you mind if I do?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Let’s open the window anyway.”

  Fenoglio made to stand up, but the captain got there first. He opened the window wide, returned to his seat and lit his cigarette.

  “What are you doing at the moment?”

  “We’ve questioned a whole lot of people, without success. We’ve tapped a number of phones, but nothing has emerged. They’re mainly using mobile phones now, which, as you know, are difficult to tap. We should bug Grimaldi’s house, but it’s very difficult to get into. One possibility is to ask the telephone company to cooperate with us. We simulate a breakdown and when the residents call maintenance, we send our men in, disguised as engineers; they pretend to check on the nature of the problem and place a few bugs. If you agree, we could request authorization from the Prosecutor’s Department in the next few days.”

  The captain made a sweeping gesture with his hands, as if to say: of course, whatever you need. It was a slightly over-the-top gesture, an unsuccessful attempt to play the part expected of him.

  “Who’s the prosecutor involved?”

  “There are a number of files: the absurd thing is how fragmented the investigations are. The Carbone murder, which we’re handling, has been assigned to Assistant Prosecutor D’Angelo, who in my opinion is the best, although she’s not always easy to deal with. In terms of character, I mean. But she’s hardworking and well prepared, and she’s been involved with this kind of case for a while now: I think her previous posting was in Calabria.” Fenoglio broke off, thinking that the captain was about to say something. When he realized that he wasn’t, he continued, “Maybe one of these days we’ll go and see her and I’ll introduce you.”

  “Yes, of course, we’ll go together.” Valente looked like someone pretending to take an interest in a conversation while actually wanting to be somewhere else.

  “I can also put together a memo summarizing the things I’ve told you today,” Fenoglio added.

  “Thank you, there’s no need. You’ve been very clear and exhaustive. In the next few days we’ll go and see Dottoressa D’Angelo and talk about bugging the house and all the rest.” As he said these last words he got to his feet, with a slight smile on his face, as if apologizing for something.

  4

  At 1.30, Fenoglio shut the file he had been looking through, closed his notepad, took a book from the small library he kept in his office, and went to lunch.

  The trattoria was in Corso Sonnino, five minutes’ walk from the Carabinieri station. It was busiest in the evening, which was what Fenoglio liked about it: there weren’t usually many people there at lunchtime, and he could always sit at the same table and linger as long as he liked, reading and listening to music on his Walkman.

  He’d been having lunch in this little restaurant almost every day since Serena had left; that was two months ago now. I need to take a break, she had said, immediately apologizing for the clichéd words. They had taken too many things for granted, which is never a good idea, and after a while she had become aware of her resentment, like a stain on the skin: the day before, you didn’t know it was there, but it couldn’t have formed in a single night. She felt guilty about that resentment, she felt ashamed, she had tried to rationalize it, had tried to tell herself that it was an unfair reaction, but rationalizing is pointless in such cases. He had never asked her the reasons for that feeling, of which he himself had been aware in the last few months, although he had tried not to take any notice of it, tried to ignore it. Not the best strategy. He hadn’t asked her for the reasons because he guessed what they were, and at the same time because he was afraid of hearing them spelt out. Work, of course. The fact that he was always out, day and night, on Sundays and public holidays, didn’t make married life easy. But work hadn’t been the main problem, the sore point, the insoluble dilemma.

  The main problem was simple and merciless, anything else was a side issue: he couldn�
��t have children and she could. The doctors had been clear and unanimous on the matter. That unexpressed biological window, getting smaller from year to year and about to disappear, was the crux of it, the source of the anger, the reason for a decision that, although meant to be temporary, already felt like a sentence for which there is no acquittal.

  As she spoke, Fenoglio had felt a very strong urge to take her in his arms and tell her how much he loved her, to make promises, to beg her not to leave, but he hadn’t found the courage, and he hadn’t found anything to promise, and he hadn’t found the words. He had never been capable of showing his feelings, tending instead to withdraw into a pained silence, a reserve that might seem like coldness. Come to think of it, that might have been the most serious problem, even more than the inability to have children. She had said it herself: you mustn’t take things for granted. She meant: you mustn’t take emotions and feelings for granted. They should be shared, they should be expressed, made tangible. You mustn’t take love for granted.

  So he had simply replied: all right, they would do what she wanted, he would leave as soon as possible. Serena had replied, in a tone that was a mixture of guilt, gentle sadness and unconscious relief, that she was the one who had to leave. The problem was hers: she had created it and she had to solve it, including from a practical point of view. She would stay in the apartment of a friend who was moving to Rome for work. Then in July there were the school leaving exams, and she was due to chair the examination board somewhere in Central Italy. Summer would pass, a few months would have gone by: enough time to figure things out and hopefully come to a final decision.

  Do you have someone else? Will you have a child with another man and will the pain of it drive me crazy?

  The same words that had appeared in his head, like a silent caption, that afternoon at home with Serena, now surfaced on his lips as he sat there at the trattoria table, the climax to this eruption of memories.

  The waiter had materialized by his table: today’s special was mussels with rice and potatoes. Fenoglio hadn’t seen him coming, so in his embarrassment he said that mussels with rice and potatoes would be fine, without listening to the rest of the menu. Had he been talking to himself, and had the waiter noticed? Had he looked like a lunatic on day release from an asylum?

  He recalled an episode a few years earlier. He had been in a bookshop, there weren’t many people about, and after a while he had noticed a woman in her fifties. She was alone and she was talking in a voice that, although low, was perfectly audible at close quarters.

  “So, I’m a bitch, am I? I’m not a bitch, you’re a bastard. I look in your pockets because I have good reason. Aren’t you going to tell me why you had a receipt from that restaurant? Oh, I broke our pact of mutual respect, did I? Wasn’t it you who fucked that student? Oh, no, you can’t just tell me you’re walking out and leave it at that, it’s too easy after you’ve stolen almost twenty years of my life, all thrown away. Don’t you even realize what bullshit you’re talking? A man has needs a woman doesn’t understand? I should be happy to stay at home waiting for you while you fuck your colleagues and your students because you have needs? All that love, all that devotion, all that desire for beauty turned into a urological problem. You make me sick. You make me sick.”

  This went on for a few minutes, with the word “sick” becoming ever more frequent. Fenoglio had stood there hypnotized by that soliloquy, that sudden, impressive insight into a desolate soul. He had gone to get a coffee, and while he stood at the counter had thought about what he had seen and heard and, commenting on it mentally, had looked for interpretations and alternatives. A habit that was almost a neurosis. Maybe the man wasn’t such a bastard after all. Maybe that receipt was for a business lunch and he had simply rebelled against an intrusion into his private domain and had considered it beneath his dignity to respond to the accusations. Maybe she was crazy – after all, she was talking to herself. God alone knew what the truth was, assuming there was just one truth.

  In the midst of these reflections, which assumed the form of a genuine debate, with questions and answers and punctuation, Fenoglio was struck by a thought, like a stone on a window pane. He, too, was talking to himself, something which he did quite often. Perhaps on this particular occasion, he hadn’t moved his lips to accompany his inner dialogue, but in other cases he definitely had. Serena would point it out to him: you’re talking to yourself. Really? Oh, yes, you even change expressions, you gesticulate.

  Just like the woman in the bookshop.

  The border separating the mad from the normal seems clear, substantial, hard to cross. But in fact, it’s very thin and at some points – at some moments – it vanishes without our realizing it. We find ourselves in the territory of the insane without understanding how it happened – and besides, do even the insane know they’re in it?

  He thought about reading a few pages of his book, but the waiter arrived with the plate of mussels and the usual beer. The food restored him to a reassuring material dimension, and by the time he left the trattoria the unease had subsided until it had almost vanished.

  It had been a momentary thing, of course. But aren’t they all?

  5

  Getting back to the office, in a perfect reproduction of the scene a few hours earlier, he found outside his door the same young carabiniere, who said more or less the same sentence to him. The captain wanted to speak to him and asked him to join him in his office.

  “Do you know Marshal Fornaro?” Valente asked.

  “The commanding officer at the Santo Spirito station?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “A good man, a very sound officer. A bit old-school, but he’s always done his job responsibly.”

  “He phoned me a little while ago and reported a strange story.”

  “What kind of story?”

  “An informant of his told him that someone has kidnapped Grimaldi’s son. There’s already been a ransom demand.”

  Fenoglio shook his head in an instinctive gesture of incredulity. “To be honest, I find that extremely unlikely. Who would do something as crazy as that, even with a war on? Is Fornaro sure?”

  “He says the source is highly reliable.”

  “Maybe we should go to Santo Spirito and find out more.”

  Ten minutes later, they were on the road in the captain’s Alfetta.

  At the wheel was Carabiniere Montemurro; beside him, in the seat reserved for the highest-ranking officer, the captain; Fenoglio sat in the back.

  “Who could have done something like that?” the captain asked, turning to the back seat as they drove out of the city and onto the ramp leading to the northern ring road.

  “Before taking it as read that there was a kidnapping, I’d like to speak to Fornaro and see how reliable the information is. Because – I repeat – it strikes me as highly unlikely. Kidnapping the son of someone like Grimaldi would be madness. It would be a declaration of total war.”

  There was no traffic on the ring road and they got to Santo Spirito in ten minutes. They drove along the seafront with its two-storey turn-of-the-century houses and stopped for a coffee in the little harbour used by fishermen and yachtsmen. It was a fine, bright if unsettled afternoon, the sky furrowed with large white cumulus clouds, the air cool and dry.

  They were driving back up from the sea towards the Carabinieri station when they had to stop because of a small tailback of three cars. The first one – the one blocking the traffic – was a black BMW, stationary in the middle of the street. The driver was talking to a man standing next to the window. There were no other cars in front.

  Montemurro let about ten seconds go by, then sounded his horn, to no avail. Usually at this point, once one impatient driver has sounded his horn, the others follow suit. In this case, it didn’t happen. The drivers of the other two cars seemed to be in no hurry.

  Montemurro hooted again, for longer this time. The man outside
the BMW stopped speaking and walked to the second car in the line. There was a rapid exchange. The driver raised his arms, showing his palms: he wasn’t the one who had disturbed the conversation with that ill-timed use of the horn.

  “Should I sound the siren?” Montemurro asked, as the man – a bald man in his forties without a neck – came towards them.

  “No,” Fenoglio replied. He opened the door, got out of the car and walked over to the bald man. This action was followed by an almost rhythmical sequence of other movements. The man at the wheel of the BMW got out; the captain and Montemurro got out of the Alfetta; the bald man slowed down and his face – until then decidedly resolute and aggressive – seemed to change. The driver, walking quickly, reached him and pushed him aside. He was a thin-lipped, bespectacled man in a jacket and tie, and addressed Fenoglio in a tone midway between excitement and obsequiousness.

  “Good afternoon, marshal. I’m sorry, we didn’t recognize you. We’ll get out of here right away.”

  “You should have got out of here before. It’s too late now. Move your car over to the corner and clear the road.”

  The man assumed a crestfallen, imploring expression. “Can’t you just drop it? Please, this is a difficult time. We didn’t see you.”

  “I thought you were smart, Cavallo. Maybe I was wrong. Tell your friend to clear the road and stay in the car, and then join him there. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  The bald man seemed on the verge of objecting but Cavallo looked at him, a look that told him not to make the situation worse.

  “Who are they?” the captain asked when the two men had walked away.

  “The bald guy without a neck I don’t know. The other man is called Cavallo. He works for Grimaldi, without being a member of his organization as far as I know. He puts him in contact with businessmen and politicians and is also believed to launder money for him through loan sharking. His nickname is the Accountant.”