“That’s what he said?”
“Yes. He’s crazy about puzzles. He likes rebuses, anagrams, he reads words backwards. I’m like the Antichrist, he says.”
“Son of a bitch,” Pellecchia growled.
“After putting the boy in the well, what did you do?” Fenoglio asked.
“Savicchio said we had to carry on with the ransom. Not so much for the money, but because it would help us to stall for time. If we didn’t call them, anything might happen. Grimaldi might even bring in the police or the Carabinieri, who would start making searches and inquiries and might find witnesses. It could all get very dangerous. We had to make them give us the money, collect it as carefully as we could and disappear.”
Ruotolo lit another cigarette, rubbed his face, looked somewhere into space between Pellecchia and Fenoglio. He moved his head as if in time to a sentence he didn’t utter. His eyes were watery.
“I told him I’d had enough. He could do what he wanted, but I’d had enough. I had him drop me in the city and told him I didn’t want to hear from him again, didn’t want anything more to do with it. He asked me if I was planning to do anything stupid, if I was sure I wouldn’t immediately start squealing. I told him I was perfectly well aware that if I squealed I was done for. I just wanted to be left alone, I’d had enough.” He rubbed his eyes. “He took the money, didn’t he?”
“Don’t you know?” Pellecchia asked, incredulous.
“No. I mean, I assume he did, but he never told me straight out.”
“Have you seen each other since that day?”
“No. We spoke on the phone a few days after it happened. He asked me if we could meet. He said he had something of mine that he needed to give back. I thought it was my share of the ransom money. I replied that I didn’t feel up to meeting him. I think the reason for the phone call was to ask me if I’d been the one who’d tipped you off about the whereabouts of the boy, but he was very careful not to say anything compromising.”
“It was you who made that call, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I didn’t like the idea that the boy was down there and wouldn’t be buried, or that he’d be found … you know, the way bodies are when a lot of time has passed.”
“Have there been other phone calls since that one?”
“He’s been calling me every ten days or so. He’d say he wanted to know how I was. Or he’d say something like: ‘Whenever you want to come and get that thing …’ and leave the sentence hanging.”
“You think he meant the money?”
“I think so, although he’s never mentioned it specifically. What he was really calling about was to find out if I was cracking up and if there was any risk I’d talk to someone.”
“When was the last time he called you?”
“About three weeks ago. I told him not to worry, there was no problem, that if he was afraid of anything he could forget about it. I just needed to be on my own for a while.”
“And what did he say?”
“That if I needed anything I just had to call him.”
14
The captain seemed not to understand at first. Why this sudden development of the investigation – one that had come about by chance, Fenoglio had said – and above all, were carabinieri really involved?
Yes, sir, unfortunately yes, carabinieri are involved. Two of them. Yes, the officer decided to collaborate of his own free will – he heard the sound of his own voice as he uttered these words: a lie. No, I’d avoid bringing him here, I think it’s best to keep the matter confidential for as long as possible. Also to avoid the risk of the other officer guessing something’s up. Yes, we thought it was best to choose an isolated place for the encounter. I think the best thing we can do now is to take him straight to Dottoressa D’Angelo. All right, sir, I’ll inform her. If you’ll allow me, we need to advise the colonel, with all due respect, to exercise maximum caution. Savicchio works in the command unit; the problem is his physical proximity to the colonel’s office and the ease with which he can gain access to all important reports. If you agree, I’d avoid any written communication for the moment. Of course, I’ll let you know when we go to the Prosecutor’s Department and you can join us there.
Fenoglio was in Marshal Iannantuono’s office. Grasping how serious the matter was, Iannantuono hadn’t asked any questions and had let his colleague use his office so that he could talk freely on the phone, ordering his men not to disturb him for any reason.
Once his call to the captain was over, Fenoglio sat there for a long time with his hand on the keypad of the telephone. He wasn’t thinking about anything. The strangest thing, he realized later, was that he didn’t feel any satisfaction about the way the investigation had developed. Only tiredness, and an autistic interest in a few small cracks on the wall in front of him. The station’s new, God knows how come there are cracks, he thought just before dialling D’Angelo’s number.
There were four rings at the other end. He was about to put the phone down when he heard the assistant prosecutor’s voice.
“Dottoressa, hello, Fenoglio here.”
“Marshal, hello.”
“Are you busy?”
“Why?”
“We need to take a statement. It’s rather urgent.”
“Who is it?”
“One of the people responsible for the Grimaldi kidnapping. He’s here with us now and wants to make a statement.”
“Who is he?”
“A carabiniere,” Fenoglio said.
“What?”
“It was two carabinieri.”
“Where are you?”
“We can join you in an hour. With this individual.”
“Does he have a lawyer?”
“I took the liberty of telling him you’d find a lawyer who was immediately available and wouldn’t be anyone who’s had contacts with organized crime.”
“All right, I’ll see to it. I’ll wait for you in my office. Before starting the interview, I hope you’ll tell me what happened.”
They met with the captain at the entrance to the courthouse.
Fenoglio didn’t know what reaction to expect from Valente. What had happened was clearly the result of an investigation that had been conducted without his knowledge, and he would be perfectly within his rights not to take it well.
“Does this sergeant really want to confess to the Grimaldi kidnapping in front of the assistant prosecutor?” the captain asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“I assume it wasn’t a decision he made of his own free will.”
“No, sir,” Fenoglio replied, undecided as to how to continue and wondering how he would answer further questions about this unorthodox investigation. But there were no further questions.
“You’ve done an excellent job.”
“Most of the credit goes to Corporal Pellecchia,” Fenoglio said, unable to decipher the captain’s expression. “Before we go up to the assistant prosecutor’s office, tell me what I need to know, so that I don’t look like someone who just happened to be passing.” The tone was friendly, almost conspiratorial.
Fifteen minutes later, they walked into Dottoressa D’Angelo’s office. The captain told her everything – omitting the parts that might have caused embarrassment to a magistrate – in a sober and concise way, as if he had been kept informed of the investigation as it developed, but without taking any credit for himself. It struck Fenoglio that he had underestimated the man.
When D’Angelo said that there was enough information to proceed with an interview, Ruotolo and the court-appointed lawyer, who had been waiting with Pellecchia in the administration office, were admitted. There followed three hours of interrogation. When this was over, D’Angelo pushed a dozen sheets of paper across the desk towards the suspect.
“Read it, and tell me if there’s anything to be corrected, if there are any points where I’ve distorted what you said.” Ruotolo shook his head and made a gesture with his open hand. “I don’t need to read it. Just give me a pe
n and —”
“Please read it. It’s not a matter of trust. Check that everything corresponds to your account and your thoughts. At the end of the statement, there are the words: ‘Read, confirmed and signed.’ So read it, confirm it – or rectify it, if there’s anything to rectify – and then sign.” D’Angelo’s tone only appeared neutral. “You read it, too, please, Avvocato,” she concluded.
The two looked through the statement together, corrected a few inaccuracies in pen and finally both signed, page by page.
“When does your period of convalescence end, Ruotolo?”
“I have two more weeks, dottoressa.”
“Get a new certificate from your doctor. Another month, then we’ll see. Goodbye, Avvocato, thank you.”
“How do we proceed now, dottoressa?” the captain asked when Ruotolo and the lawyer had left the room. D’Angelo did not reply. She looked around as if she didn’t recognize her own office. She went to the window and opened it, as if seeking comfort in the noise of the traffic. She took a cigarette and lit it, leaning against the window. Outside, it was dark.
It was summer, but it didn’t feel like it.
15
The captain’s question was rhetorical. What needed to be done was clear and, from a conceptual point of view, simple: to find corroboration for Ruotolo’s statement so that it could be used against Savicchio. Just as with Lopez. Without corroboration, there was no arrest and no sentence.
D’Angelo wrote a detailed and meticulous proxy requesting:
1) that they identify the car dealer who had lent the car used in the kidnapping and obtain his statement in order to verify if he confirmed the circumstances reported by Ruotolo;
2) that they obtain statements from all the inhabitants of the apartment buildings and the owners of the commercial premises in the vicinity of the place where, according to Ruotolo’s account, the kidnapping had taken place;
3) that they investigate Savicchio’s assets – property, motor vehicles, bank statements;
4) that they acquire both Savicchio’s and Ruotolo’s mobile phone records;
5) that they tap Savicchio’s mobile phone, house phone and office phone and install bugs in his residence and the interior of his car.
Attached were warrants for acquiring the phone records and for the tapping and bugging. The proxy concluded with a recommendation for maximum confidentiality and a request to supply the Prosecutor’s Department with the names of those law enforcement officers either involved in the investigation or with knowledge of it.
They got to work, starting with the search for eyewitnesses who could confirm Ruotolo’s account of how the kidnapping had been carried out. It was immediately clear that knowing precisely where the boy had been kidnapped did not greatly change the situation recorded during the initial investigation. Or rather, it didn’t change it at all. Nobody had seen anything, and many of those questioned were not even aware that such a serious incident had happened so close to their own homes.
The problem – Fenoglio told himself after two days spent pointlessly pressing entryphone buttons, going in and out of apartments of all kinds, talking to old men and young boys, petty crooks and clerical workers, housewives and prostitutes – was that there was no way of knowing anything for sure.
It might even be true that nobody had seen anything. There are many things that happen right in front of our eyes which we don’t notice. Genuine tragedies or even historical events sometimes brush past us and we’re totally unaware of them.
Common sense tells us that if we find ourselves in the vicinity of a dramatic incident, we can’t help but notice it. That, at least, is the belief. The truth is that usually people mind their own business; that attention and perception are subjective; that the ability to catch changes in the ordinary rhythm of things depends on predisposition and opportunity. In short, it is not at all unusual for extremely important events to occur in front of everyone’s eyes without anybody noticing.
Then, of course, there’s the whole question of omertà, which depends on fear or, worse still, on the deliberate decision to mind one’s own business: to act any differently causes nothing but trouble. In any case, whatever the reason, talking to all the tenants and all the shopkeepers in the block where the kidnapping had taken place added nothing to the case file.
What came out of the phone records was what they already knew – but for obvious reasons had not been able to tell the assistant prosecutor – thanks to Pellecchia’s informal investigation. A small corroboration of Ruotolo’s statement, but nothing more.
Savicchio’s telephone conversations – both mobile and landline – were completely useless from an investigative point of view. Brief service calls, in the tone of someone who doesn’t have time to waste and who anyway, out of ingrained habit, talks as if his phones are always tapped. Nor did the bugging of the apartment yield any results, other than a poor-quality recording of hours and hours of heavy metal music.
Ruotolo had said that Savicchio borrowed the cars from friends of his who were dealers. One of these had his showroom on the outskirts of Bari, near the industrial zone; about the others they knew nothing.
The carabinieri located the dealer and questioned him. The man admitted that he knew Savicchio, that he had sold him a car years before, and had lent him others; in spite of the officers’ insistence, however, he denied that any had been lent in the last few months.
He seemed genuine, Fenoglio thought. So they questioned Ruotolo again, to identify some of the other dealers who were friends of Savicchio’s, but the sergeant merely confirmed what he had already said in his first statement: he knew just one dealer, he was aware there were others, but didn’t know who they were.
Financial investigations, especially into bank accounts, take time. From the first inquiries it emerged that Savicchio was the owner of his own bachelor apartment, that he paid a mortgage and that the instalments were completely compatible with the salary of a marshal in the Carabinieri. It also emerged that he had two cars and a current account – the one into which his salary was paid – without any suspicious movements of money. His standard of living was certainly a little higher than that of a normal non-commissioned officer in the Carabinieri and they would have to wait for the outcome of the other financial checks – accounts and shares in every bank in the country – but after ten days in search of corroborating evidence, the Carabinieri and the assistant prosecutor had to acknowledge an unpleasant truth. Almost nothing of what Ruotolo had told them had been confirmed by the investigations.
16
If someone accuses you of having committed a crime with him, his statement is not enough by itself to have you arrested, let alone sentenced, even if it appears highly credible and there is no reason to suspect that it is slander. The Prosecutor’s Department and the investigating body need to find corroborating evidence – in other words, evidence that confirms the validity of the codefendant’s accusations.
In the course of their meeting to take stock of the investigation, these were the things that D’Angelo told the captain and Fenoglio. Outside, stubborn, almost autumnal rain was falling.
The one concrete piece of evidence was the phone records, which had now been formally acquired. Ruotolo and Savicchio had spoken on the phone very regularly up to and including almost the whole of the first half of May. On some days there had been as many as ten calls. From 14 May, the day after the kidnapping, the phone traffic had abruptly dwindled. This was one element that confirmed Ruotolo’s statement, but in itself it was not unequivocal. There might be a number of reasons why their contacts had decreased; alone, the circumstance was not sufficient to justify custody.
On this basis, D’Angelo repeated, it was completely pointless and even counterproductive to request an arrest warrant. The judge at the preliminary hearing would not grant it; and if, making a grave mistake, he did so, the appeal court would release Savicchio. At that point, the investigation would be seriously, perhaps irredeemably, compromised.
“What?”
“As things stand, Ruotolo could be found guilty of kidnapping because his own statement, in other words, his full confession, is sufficient to justify a sentence. But on that same basis, Savicchio could get away scot-free.”
They were silent for a long time. D’Angelo smoked her cigarette with grim determination.
“Dottoressa, we’re working on it slowly but surely. However long it takes, we’ll find something.”
“We can’t afford to work slowly but surely. In a few days Ruotolo will have to be transferred and then suspended.”
“And then everyone will know.”
“Precisely. There’s no way of keeping it secret. When Savicchio finds out that Ruotolo has been transferred, the first thing he’ll do is get rid of any remaining evidence. Assuming there is any remaining evidence. Assuming there ever was.”
Fenoglio tried to process this. In reality, there wasn’t much to process: the investigation had led almost nowhere, and as soon as Savicchio found out about it, its inadequacy would be consolidated. And D’Angelo was right: he would get away scot-free. It made you want to break something.
“What if we tried sending Ruotolo to him with a wire? He provokes him in some way, catches him unawares, Savicchio admits to some things and we have our corroborating evidence.”
D’Angelo thought this over for about ten seconds. Then, even before replying, she started shaking her head, her lips pursed. “It can’t be done for two opposite and convergent reasons. Firstly, Ruotolo is still a law enforcement officer until he’s formally suspended. To all intents and purposes, he would be a law enforcement officer soliciting a suspect’s confession illicitly and without any legal guarantees.”
“But Ruotolo is also a suspect.”
The Cold Summer Page 25