“We looked behind all the posters, the mirrors and the furniture. There’s nothing. Why do you ask about that one in particular?”
Pellecchia sniffed. “It’s his name.”
“What?”
“The Wild Bunch. Italian title: Il Mucchio selvaggio. It’s an anagram of Guglielmo Savicchio. I told you, don’t you remember? The bastard’s obsessed with anagrams and words read backwards.”
“I remember.”
“He loved the fact that the title of that fucking film was an anagram of his name, although I can’t remember why.”
“You think the wall’s thick enough for a hiding place?”
“Yes, it’s the outside wall. At a guess, I’d say it’s at least a foot thick.”
“We have to look behind there again,” Fenoglio said, speaking slowly, articulating the words as if to compensate for the fact that his heart was beating faster.
They went back inside. There was a strange, almost metaphysical stillness about the scene. D’Angelo was sitting at the table in the living room. Savicchio was standing with his hands behind his back, looking as if he were handcuffed. Grandolfo and Montemurro were just finishing putting back the last poster, almost motionless, in a suspended gesture.
“How come you have this?” Fenoglio said, approaching the wall on which the poster for The Wild Bunch hung.
“I like the film. It’s an original poster, I found it in a secondhand shop.”
Fenoglio thought he caught a flash of fear in the man’s eyes, an imperceptible crack in his voice. Maybe it was only his imagination. Or maybe not. Maybe one of those moments was about to arrive, so rare in investigations, in which a clutter of useless, chaotic material all at once starts to move in unison, like a perfect machine.
He took the poster, placed it on the sofa and started rapping with his knuckles on the wall. D’Angelo stopped writing, and the other carabinieri turned to look. Savicchio was motionless, as if petrified. After four or five blows the wall gave back a hollow noise, then another and another still, right in the centre of the space that had been occupied by the poster.
“What’s in there?” D’Angelo asked.
“It sounds like a small, very well-hidden glory hole,” Fenoglio replied, articulating the words clearly.
She stood up, approached, and also tried knocking. The wall again produced that distinct hollow sound.
“Bring in a pickaxe.”
“What are you planning to do?” Savicchio said. The crack in his voice was unmistakable now, like spun glass about to shatter.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to damage your wall, unless there’s a less violent way of seeing what’s behind here.”
“You can’t … It’s not allowed … You can’t knock down a wall. Who’s going to pay for the damage?”
D’Angelo stared at him for a few moments, almost as if she wanted to imprint his face in her memory in order not to forget it. When she spoke, there was something fierce and inexorable in the line of her mouth.
“Sue us.”
Many things followed, one after the other, like a predestined series being performed in an orderly fashion. It does happen sometimes.
Fenoglio ordered Savicchio to hand over his pistol, because, as Lopez had pointed out, it’s good to trust people, but better not to. Other carabinieri arrived equipped with a pickaxe, hammers and bradawls. The captain came back at the same time. A few well-aimed blows with the pickaxe demolished a plasterboard panel, revealing a small cube-shaped cavity. Inside were three bundles of soft material and a small plastic bag.
They put everything down on the table and checked with torches that there wasn’t anything else in the cavity. Each of the three bundles contained a perfectly oiled pistol – a Colt .38, a 9 mm Sig Sauer and a Beretta 6.35 – along with the corresponding box of ammunition.
Savicchio was ashen and his lips had turned blue, like those of a dead man or someone who can’t breathe. Which, in all probability, was exactly the case here.
Fenoglio checked the weapons to make sure they weren’t loaded. Then he looked for the serial numbers, which, as expected, weren’t there: they had been filed off. Illegal possession of clandestine weapons and the corresponding ammunition means automatic arrest. He recited these words mentally, as if they were secret formulas to make sense of the abrupt turn that events had taken.
The small plastic bag contained money – a lot of money – and a transparent sachet of diamonds. D’Angelo, who hadn’t said a word since they had started knocking down the wall, took one of the stones between her thumb and middle finger and lifted it to the light to look at it.
“Very well cut, transparent, it must be at least two carats, maybe more,” she said in an abstract tone, talking to herself. There was something innocent, almost childlike, in that gesture and in the tone of her voice. The sudden manifestation of a female trait that was unusual in her.
“I think we’re going to have to rewrite the report,” she said, cautiously putting back the diamond.
“How much is there?” Fenoglio asked, pointing to the money.
Savicchio shook his head, like someone who doesn’t understand the language. “It’s mine, my savings.”
“It’s certainly not mine. I’d like to meet your financial adviser. He must be good.”
“Maybe it’s best if we move to the station,” D’Angelo said, rolling up the original report – almost complete and ready to be signed – into a ball.
“Do you have the handcuffs?” Fenoglio asked, turning to Pellecchia. The corporal looked at him as if to be sure he had understood correctly; then he nodded, slowly, and took them from a case hanging from his belt.
“Why do we need handcuffs?” Savicchio said. “We’re colleagues.”
Colleagues. Fenoglio articulated the word mentally, as if hearing it for the first time.
“Dottoressa, why do we need handcuffs?” Savicchio repeated, in an imploring tone that had something obscene about it.
“The procedures for arrest are the exclusive remit of the arresting officers. I can’t give any instructions relating to the question, Signor Savicchio.” She said this placing the emphasis on the word “signor”. Signor Savicchio, not Marshal Savicchio. Not any more.
Pellecchia approached. “Put your hands behind your back,” was all he said.
20
A few hours later, an Alfetta left the station and set off for Gaeta Military Prison. They had told Savicchio that he could choose – it was expressly allowed by the law – between that and an ordinary prison. He hadn’t hesitated. In a common penitentiary – in Bari or elsewhere – it would only have been a matter of time before someone plunged a sharpened spoon handle in between his shoulder blades or cut his throat with the lid from a can of peeled tomatoes.
The assistant prosecutor, the captain and the other carabinieri who had been present at the search and the arrest had left after completing the paperwork. The seizure report stated that in a “cavity carved out of an outside wall and concealed behind a plasterboard panel, the following were found: 57,300,000 lire in banknotes of 50,000 and 100,000; 11 diamonds with an overall weight of 26 carats and an approximate value of a hundred million lire”, as well as the three pistols and 150 bullets of various calibres.
Fenoglio and Pellecchia had remained alone. On the desk were the remains of a lunch of not very good sandwiches, pizza by the slice, and canned beer.
“What now?” Pellecchia asked. “Do we have enough to get him for the kidnapping, too? What did Dottoressa D’Angelo say?”
Fenoglio noticed a different tone in the way the corporal referred to the assistant prosecutor. A lot of things seemed to have changed.
“Right now, he’s inside for illegal possession of unauthorized weapons. Dottoressa D’Angelo says he’ll be committed for trial and there’s no danger he’ll get out. Apart from anything he actually did, the judges won’t like the circumstances of the discovery – the hiding place, the money, the diamonds. After which – she said – we ha
ve to take stock of the evidence on the kidnapping. Or rather, the kidnappings, given that Ruotolo also talked about those other two episodes. What with the discovery of the money and the diamonds, and the mobile phone records, we may already have enough corroborating evidence to keep him in custody. Then we’ll have to dig deeper, find the dealer who lent him the car and continue investigating his bank accounts. But anyway, she seemed quite confident.”
Pellecchia checked if there was any beer left in any of the cans, shaking them one by one. They were all empty. He seemed to be brooding about something. “So he’s not going to be out in a few months?”
“No. He’s inside for possession of three unauthorized weapons, which he actually hid in a wall like a criminal on the run. For that alone he’ll get at least six or seven years. Then there’s the money and the precious stones, which can’t be justified in any way. Let’s put it this way: we can be certain he’s going to be in prison for quite a while and that he’ll definitely be thrown out of the Carabinieri. As far as the rest is concerned, we can take our time. Even Al Capone was nabbed for tax evasion.”
“He died of syphilis in prison, I think?”
“Right.”
“Sometimes I think justice is strange.”
“You can say that again.”
“I’m going out in the dinghy tomorrow to do some fishing.”
“Good idea.”
“Maybe you’d like to come with me? The dinghy, a few hours of sea and fishing, and then a nice plate of spaghetti with clams and a bottle of chilled white wine.”
“Another time, maybe. On Sundays I like to take it easy. Laze around a little, go for a walk, read quietly.”
“All right. What do we do now? Shall we go?”
“I’d say it’s time.”
They threw the remains of their lunch in the wastepaper basket. Fenoglio closed the window and they left the room.
“Pietro?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
Epilogue
You achieve results you’ve been obsessing about for weeks, for months. It’s natural you should think about relaxing, reading in peace, listening to music. Sleeping for a long time without putting the alarm clock on.
It didn’t work out that way. After taking a walk, having dinner and reading for an hour, Fenoglio switched on the light and tried to get to sleep. He couldn’t. He tossed and turned for at least two hours: he was hot, even though it wasn’t. He pulled up the blinds to let the night air in and again tried to get to sleep. He couldn’t. So he got up, switched the TV on and saw part of an old black-and-white film with William Powell and Myrna Loy. He went back to bed, switched off the light and tried once again to fall asleep. He couldn’t. He lay there, wide awake, until the light of day entered with gentle determination through the half-open window.
He felt rested, even though he hadn’t slept a wink all night. It was 19 July, a Sunday, and he told himself that maybe the moment had arrived to go for his first swim of the season. So he got up when the radio alarm clock showed 5.58, made himself coffee and grabbed a pair of swimming trunks and a beach towel from the summer wardrobe, trying to ignore all those things of Serena’s that were still there. At 6.40 he started the car, and by 7.25 he was taking off his shoes on the very long, deserted beach at Capitolo. The sand was cool, the sea calm and transparent, the sky cornflower blue. On the foreshore, a few people were walking and some dogs were running. Nobody was swimming yet, and the horizon was dotted with motionless little boats.
Fenoglio spread the towel near the sea, undressed and looked at his own shadow, thinking, God alone knew why, that there was something both alien and friendly about it. He entered the water and walked, breathing in the breeze, looking at the schools of fish darting between his feet in perfect synchronicity. Then he dived in and swam for a long time, perhaps half an hour, perhaps more, alone, the private owner of that sea.
By the time he came out, the sun was starting to warm the air. He went and sat down on the towel and observed the beach, which was filling up: young families with small children; elderly couples, equipped with deckchairs, beach umbrellas and iceboxes; the first young men – those who hadn’t spent the night in a disco – with balls, rackets and radios.
He left before the place became something else and before the July sun started to eat at his skin. He stopped in Monopoli, where he took a walk and bought a bag of freshly made, still warm mozzarellas in a dairy. He drove back to Bari along the semi-deserted road while in the other direction the cars were lining up on the way to the beaches. In a total inversion of the rhythms of the day, he arrived home when the city was silent and unpopulated. Peace.
As he ate, he watched the television news, which was full of banal items. There was nothing about the arrest of Savicchio: the press conference was scheduled for Monday morning. A good reason to keep away from the station the next day.
The sleepless night, the long swim, the two cold beers he’d had with lunch started to make themselves felt. He decided to throw himself on the bed for half an hour. Half an hour, no more than that, otherwise tonight we’ll be back where we started, he said to himself, speaking out loud.
He woke up at 6.30, dazed, bathed in sweat and with that unpleasant sensation of anxiety and even of guilt that sometimes follows waking up in the afternoon. He was still lying on the bed when the phone rang. Something must have happened: they were calling from the station to ask him to go back. He was tempted not to answer. Then he cleared his throat, still thick from sleep, reached out his hand to the bedside table and picked up the receiver.
“Hello.”
“Pietro …”
He jerked upright and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Serena.” He almost hadn’t recognized her voice.
“Have you seen the news on TV?”
“The news on TV?” He thought there had been a leak and that they had talked about the arrest of Savicchio and everything else on television.
But why was Serena calling him about that? And why in a voice that sounded like glass about to shatter?
“They’ve killed Borsellino, too.”
“Borsellino? What are you talking about?”
“They blew him up along with his bodyguards, outside his mother’s place.”
As a child Fenoglio had often gone to the parish cinema. They had shown old films in terrible condition and, almost always, there had been an accident. The soundtrack of the film would all at once be replaced by the frantic noise of the projector jamming; the image would distort until it melted; the machine would stop and all that remained on the screen would be a large hole with burnt edges. That sequence appeared in its entirety in his head, as if from the effects of a hallucinogenic drug.
“It’s hopeless,” Serena murmured.
But then the projectionist would switch the light on, sort things out – he was very fast – and the film would resume. It always resumed.
“No,” Fenoglio replied. “That’s not true.”
They talked for a long time. She told him about the exams, and her colleagues, and the children. He listened, mainly. It was the thing he did best. In the bedroom, there was quiet and semidarkness, and their words now were light.
“Will you wait for me?” Serena asked finally.
Yes, he said, he would wait for her.
NOTE
The article by Italo Calvino, L’antilingua, quoted in Act Two, Chapter 7, was first published in Il Giorno, 3 February 1965, then in The Uses of Literature (Harcourt Publishers, 1987).
The quotation in Act Three, Chapter 1, is from Carlo Emilio Gadda, That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana (New York Review of Books, 2006).
The quotation in Act Three, Chapter 6, is from Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (Oxford University Press, 1961).
For the record, the police officers killed on 23 May 1992 with Giovanni Falcone and Francesca Morvillo in the Capaci attack were Vito Schifani, Rocco Dicillo and Antonio Montinaro. The police officers killed on 19 Ju
ly 1992 with Judge Paolo Borsellino in the Via D’Amelio attack in Palermo were Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina and Claudio Traina.
Gianrico Carofiglio is one of Italy’s bestselling authors. He was previously a member of the Italian senate and an anti-mafia prosecutor in Bari. His books have sold more than five million copies in Italy and have been translated into twenty-seven languages.
@GianricoCarof
Howard Curtis has more than thirty years’ experience as a literary translator from Italian, French and Spanish, and has translated the work of authors such as Georges Simenon and Luigi Pirandello, as well as a great deal of contemporary fiction.
PRAISE FOR GIANRICO CAROFIGLIO AND THE COLD SUMMER
‘Hard-hitting, morally complex, and highly entertaining. A fascinating look at the Italian mafia, and the police who battled them, in the early 1990s.’ Peter Swanson, author of The Kind Worth Killing
‘[A] fine police procedural…This standalone is sure to win Carofiglio, a former prosecutor who specialized in organized crime, a wider…audience.’ Publishers Weekly
‘Fenoglio is a sensitive, polished figure who has managed to keep his idealism intact in a career meant to break it; he is as comfortable philosophizing as he is citing the public safety code…Solving this case, Carofiglio shows us, requires a leap into the darkness.’ Kirkus Reviews
‘Carofiglio raises the standard for crime fiction. His stories are both literary and gritty.’ Jeffery Deaver
‘Italy’s best exports now include number-one bestselling writer Gianrico Carofiglio.’ Gay Talese
‘The author occupies a niche similar to Erle Stanley Gardner and John Grisham.’ Times Literary Supplement
‘As exacting and contemplative as any crime writer I can think of.’ Washington Post
‘What places him in a superior league is the portrayal of a slice of Italian society not normally encountered in crime fiction.’ The Times
‘[Carofiglio is] a storyteller brave enough to expose instants of truth in a sea of deep emotions.’ Internazionale
The Cold Summer Page 27