“I’m just going out for a second, they’re pissing me off,” he said and made to get up.
Fenoglio shook his head. “Drop it, they’re going. They’re just kids.”
At that moment a waiter approached the car and said something, gesticulating towards the interior of the trattoria. The music was turned down and the car drove off.
“What were we saying?” Pellecchia resumed. “Oh, yes. Thinking too much makes people unhappy. It’s because people who think too much usually think too much about themselves. They end up like a guy I know.”
“Who?”
“This guy’s a municipal civil servant. His wife is a colleague of Agnese’s, sometimes we all go out together. He makes like he’s someone who’s figured everything out, namely, that life is shit. Now, I also know that life is pretty shitty, but repeating it every second isn’t going to make it any better. If you’re on a boat in the middle of the sea and you don’t like the boat, because maybe it stinks, or you don’t like the people who are with you, you could decide to throw yourself into the sea. But if you don’t want to throw yourself into the sea, it’s best not to piss off all the people who are in the boat with you. To cut a long story short, a few months ago we were in a pizzeria and the guy starts saying something like: ‘Antonio’ – the last person who called me that was the nun in catechism class, when I was nine years old – ‘have you ever thought about the time of life we’re in?’ I say, no, I’ve never thought about the time of life we’re in, and he says I should if I want to understand our situation.”
“Whose situation?” Fenoglio asked. He was enjoying himself: Pellecchia had an unexpected talent as a storyteller.
“Us, men in our forties. Not that I understood him. He had to explain.”
“So what about men in their forties?”
“Listen to his explanation: ‘We’ve already been through the best part, let’s say, between twenty and thirty-five. To be more specific: the average life expectancy of an Italian man is seventy-four. That means we have thirty years left, more or less. Of these thirty, the last will be unpleasant, obviously. But a whole lot of problems start round about now, if they haven’t already started. In other words, even if all goes well, we have at most ten good years left. It’s no fun living with the knowledge that you have so little time left.’”
“And what did you say?”
“Well, even though I thought he was a dickhead, it made me feel bad. I mean, it’s an argument that makes an impression on you. I’m forty-three. When I play football I realize that the guys who are twenty years younger than me, even if they don’t know how to kick a ball, run a hell of a lot faster than I do. When I dive, I’m still fine, but I see friends of mine who are a little bit older than me getting into difficulties and starting to feel scared. In other words, that dickhead’s argument isn’t wrong in itself. I mean, these are facts, right?”
“Yes, they are facts.”
“But almost immediately afterwards I started thinking it wasn’t right. Okay, I’m a poor son of a bitch, but I think that if you’re a man and you’re alive you have a right to live every moment.”
“You also have a duty, I’d say.”
“Yes, you have a duty. You’re right. Anyway, I think about this, about having a right to live, and I think that when it comes down to it, his argument is wrong. So I say to him: as far as I’m concerned, the only consequence of thinking like that is to throw yourself into the sea with a big block of concrete around your neck. That’s the only thing you can do. Turn out the light and leave. But I’m staying, because I like it and because it seems like the right thing to do. Fuck it.” Pellecchia broke off all at once, as if embarrassed. “Why are you looking at me like that? Am I talking bullshit?”
Fenoglio smiled. “No, I think you’re absolutely right.”
They sat there in silence for a few minutes. Then Pellecchia sniffed and called Franco, the Pirate.
“The bill, Franco.”
“It’s on the house.”
“No, it’s not,” Pellecchia said before Fenoglio could open his mouth. “If I don’t pay the bill, it doesn’t count.”
4
The Albino put his head round the door. “Good evening, marshal.”
“Vito, come in, sit down.”
Fenoglio motioned the Albino to one of the chairs in front of the desk and sat down on the other, leaving his usual seat empty.
“Have you found something?”
“I have three names.”
Fenoglio took the sheet of paper the Albino held out to him. “Have you talked to any of them?”
“No. I asked some friends I trust, people who don’t ask questions.”
“Do you know who they are?”
The Albino cleared his throat and shifted on his chair. He wasn’t at his ease here in the station. “No. Next to the names I’ve written where they’re from. The rest is up to you.”
“Fair enough.”
“But I think it’s unlikely they’ll tell you anything. When something like that has happened to you, all you want to do is forget. Why should you fuck things up for yourself – pardon the expression – by talking to the Carabinieri?”
Yes, why should you fuck things up for yourself? Fenoglio thought as he dismissed the Albino.
*
The next morning Pellecchia and Fenoglio got to the station at the same time.
“Did the Albino come last night?”
“Yes, he did. He brought me a paper with three names.”
“How do you want to proceed?”
“You locate them and then we go and see them together.”
Pellecchia took the paper and read it. “Do you think they’re going to tell us anything?”
“I don’t know. For now let’s locate them. One step at a time.”
Pellecchia left the room and Fenoglio decided to look at a few reports already available in rough draft and waiting for the captain’s signature. He worked for a few hours on old files, listening to music and enjoying the sense of satisfaction, pleasant and slightly mindless, that derives from getting through a not very demanding backlog.
He had just come back from a short walk when the telephone rang.
“Chief, this is Corporal Antonio Pellecchia, remember me?”
“You’re hard to forget.”
“I’ve found two. Will you join me?”
“Where?”
Pellecchia was waiting for him outside a bar in Japigia.
“What’s this one’s name?” Fenoglio asked.
“Patruno. He’s a jeweller and, I’ll warn you now, he’s strange. Two years ago, they took his daughter. He paid and they gave her back after two hours, in one piece. They hadn’t done anything to her. They hadn’t hit her, they hadn’t raped her. She didn’t like that.”
“Pardon me?”
“Wait till you see her.”
The jeweller’s shop was a few dozen yards from the bar. The decor was old-fashioned, and there was a smell of wax polish in the air. Behind the counter stood a man and a woman, side by side, as if posing for a photograph. The man might have been anything from fifty to seventy, and was tall, with long, bony arms. His hair was grey and sparse and he had a strangely prominent belly. It was as if the different parts of his body had been stuck together, creating a bizarre, inharmonious ensemble. Even his face showed a kind of programmatic disproportion: too broad, with bulging eyes and a mouth that was too small. The woman was his daughter. A female version, much younger, of the same inharmonious assemblage.
“Signor Patruno says he’s willing to talk to us, but he doesn’t want to make a statement. The same goes for his daughter. I told him we can accommodate that.”
Fenoglio held out his hand. The jeweller’s was flaccid and inanimate, like a creature without a backbone.
“Hello, Signor Patruno. I’m Marshal Fenoglio. Is there somewhere quiet we can talk? Maybe an office at the back?”
The jeweller and his daughter looked each other in the eyes. Then he came
out from behind the counter and led them down a narrow corridor to a little office.
On the desk and the shelves everything was in perfect, obsessive order. The typewriter, the calculator, the imitation leather document wallet, the pen holder with two well-sharpened pencils.
Patruno sat down in his seat and motioned the two carabinieri to two ugly chairs in front of the desk.
“Corporal Pellecchia has given me a rough idea,” Fenoglio began. “I’d be grateful if you could tell us what happened to your daughter.”
“I don’t know how you found out about it,” Patruno said in a neutral, nasal voice.
“In our work we get information from the most varied sources. Often from people belonging to the world of crime.”
“My daughter and I want to forget that business. They said that if we talked to anyone they’d come back. They know where we work, where we live. They know everything.”
“Don’t worry, Signor Patruno. What matters most to us is your safety. I’d like to explain the reason for our interest in what happened to you and your daughter. But first tell me something about yourself. How many are there in your family?”
“Just my daughter and me. My wife died of cancer five years ago. We used to run the shop together. My daughter was studying economics, but she didn’t like it much. When her mother died, she decided to take her place. I pay her salary. It’s all above board, with a pay sheet and contributions.”
“Of course,” Fenoglio said with a hint of a smile. “It’s obvious you’re a careful person who likes things to be straight.”
“Yes, I’m a very thorough person.”
“We’d like to know what happened to your daughter because it might help us with another case we’re working on.”
“As I said, marshal, we —”
“Don’t worry. You won’t be involved.”
Patruno looked at Pellecchia.
“It’s all right, Patruno. If the marshal says you won’t be involved, you can trust him.”
The jeweller adjusted his tie and cleared his throat, producing a strange sound, like the cry of a small animal. “That morning, I had an appointment with the doctor and my daughter had to open the shop. When I got back from the doctor’s, I found the shutter down and got worried. As I stood there wondering what might have happened, a young man passed on a scooter and told me to stay by the phone, because someone was going to call me.”
“Would you be able to describe this young man?”
“No. I mean, he passed, he said those things to me and he left. I was confused. I didn’t even look at his face. He was a normal person.”
“Had you ever seen him around?”
“No.”
“Did he speak in Italian or in dialect?”
“I’m not sure, but I’d say more dialect than Italian. He was a street kid. Yes, yes, now that I think of it: he spoke in dialect.”
“When did they call?”
“Immediately. Less than a minute later.”
Someone in the area had been watching him, Fenoglio thought. People from the neighbourhood.
“What did they say?”
“That they’d taken Fiorella, and that if I wanted her back I had to give them thirty million in cash by the afternoon, or they’d kill her.”
“Did they speak in Italian or in dialect?”
“Dialect. I mean, a mixture, dialect and Italian. But they were from Bari, I’m sure of that.”
“And then?”
“I asked who they were, and the man told me that if I asked him any more questions, they’d cut off one of my daughter’s fingers and send it to me. Then I told him I didn’t have thirty million in cash and he told me to go to the bank and get it out.”
In recounting these events, Patruno came to life a little, as if recalling such a fearful episode lessened the inertia of his face.
“And did you have that money in the bank?”
Patruno paused for quite a long time, as if suddenly realizing that what he was saying might be used against him.
“Signor Patruno, don’t worry. We’re not the Finance Police, we’re not interested in whether you pay your taxes or anything like that. We just want to understand how these people work. Did you get hold of the thirty million?”
“Yes. I have two accounts. I withdrew twenty million from one and ten from the other, then came back here.”
“Did they call you immediately this time, too?”
“Immediately, as soon as I got in. They ordered me to wrap the money in a newspaper, put everything in a shopping bag and go to the Bar Biancorosso, which is two blocks from here. Outside it, I would find a young man next to a Fiat Panda. He would open the boot for me and I would put the bag in it. Then I had to walk away without turning around. If I did as they said, Fiorella would be sent straight back to the shop.”
“Did you follow the instructions?”
“Yes.”
“The young man who opened the boot for you …”
“I don’t even remember what he looked like. I probably wouldn’t have remembered if you’d asked me half an hour later, because I really didn’t want to look him in the face, I didn’t want to run the risk of recognizing him.”
Fenoglio didn’t insist. “I don’t suppose you glanced at the car’s number plate?”
“I did look at it, accidentally. It was covered with a cloth.”
Banal, simple and effective. No real need to do complicated things.
“What happened after you delivered the payment?”
“I continued doing what they’d told me: I went back to the shop without turning around. Half an hour later my daughter arrived.”
“How was she?”
“Quite well. The biggest fright had been when they grabbed her: she thought they wanted to rape her” – Fenoglio had to make an effort to avoid Pellecchia’s eyes – “but in fact they didn’t do anything to her.”
Patruno kept his hands on the table, with the backs upward; a kind of expectant position. Pellecchia stood up, walked around the desk and placed a hand on the jeweller’s shoulder. The gesture was meant to be friendly, but it seemed like a threat.
“Listen, Patruno, we appreciate your help. But we have to ask you another favour. We have to talk to your daughter.”
Patruno looked at Pellecchia, then at Fenoglio. Then he searched for a space in that small room where his eyes could move without meeting the others’. An escape route.
“We’ll only ask her a few questions to get her point of view on the story, and then we’ll go,” Fenoglio said, leaning across the desk a little.
Patruno got up and went to call his daughter, who appeared in the office soon afterwards. Fenoglio motioned her to sit down and she did so, with stiff composure, like a badly built automaton. Looking at her like this, defenceless and mechanical, a diminished human creature, Fenoglio had a sense of sadness, almost of anguish. He could only vaguely imagine the existence of this ugly, solitary girl who lived with her father and worked with her father and would spend her days, one after the other, with her father as she got older, defending the wretched well-being of that life and that work: jewellers on the outskirts of town, sellers of little rings, little necklaces, earrings of poor-quality gold, tiny diamonds; small tax evasions, maybe a bit of fencing. Looking into people’s lives was starting to weigh on him, he told himself.
“Signora Fiorella —”
“Signorina.”
“I’m sorry, Signorina Fiorella. Your father has already told us about the unpleasant business in which you were involved. But we need a few more details, which only you can supply.”
“Go on.”
“How did the kidnapping happen? I’m referring to when they took you.”
“I’d driven to the shop in the car. I had to open up that day because my father had an appointment —”
“With the doctor, right?”
“Precisely. I parked the car and was about to close the steering lock when a young man got in on the other side —”
<
br /> “You mean in front, on the passenger side?”
“Yes. He just opened the door and sat down. He had a knife. He held it to my neck and said that I mustn’t look him in the face or he would cut my throat.”
“But you’d already seen him when he got in the car?”
“A little. He had a big plaster on his nose. The only thing I remember is the plaster.”
An old technique, but always effective. If you’re in a stressful situation and you see someone with a big plaster on his face, ninety-nine times out of a hundred all you remember is the plaster.
“What happened then?”
“I was told to start the engine again and drive on. I drove out into the country between Torre a Mare and Noicattaro. After a while, on a country lane, he told me to get out of the car, take two steps forward and not turn around. I obeyed and someone else put a hood over my head from behind. They took me somewhere indoors and made me sit down; I stayed there for maybe an hour. Then we got back in the car – they made me lie down on the back seat – and left. A quarter of an hour later we stopped, and the man who’d got into the car and was the only one who said anything told me to count to a hundred. Then I could get up and return home.”
“Did they leave the keys in the ignition?”
“Yes.”
“Where had they stopped the car?”
“Here in Japigia, at the end of Via Caldarola, in a side street I’d never been down, behind the petrol station.”
Professional criminals, calm, sure of themselves. In all probability, that kidnapping hadn’t been the first and, considering how composed they had been, they must have been people with experience of robberies.
“When did this happen?”
“The twenty-sixth of April, 1990.”
“We’ve almost finished. Could you describe the voices of the two kidnappers for me?”
“As I said, the only one I heard was the first one.”
“Didn’t they talk to each other at all?”
“No.”
“And how was this voice?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
“Let me give you some adjectives and see if any of them are appropriate to describe it. High or low?”
The Cold Summer Page 18