by Aidan Conway
“Did he give you a name?” Rossi enquired.
“Yes,” she replied. “Jibril. I didn’t press him for a surname as I had gathered that he was an illegal, but my conscience would not allow me to throw him out. I could see it in his eyes, Inspector. He was biting back the tears.”
“So you let him see the body, at his request?”
“Yes, but I first asked if there was anyone who could vouch for him. I had no reason to believe he himself might be criminally involved. Surely no criminal would go back to see the victim if he had been his killer.”
“Stranger things can happen,” said Carrara.
“Go on,” said Rossi.
“Well, I just felt that I would be more comfortable if there were someone who could corroborate his story. And that’s where Iannelli comes in,” she continued, with greater composure now.
Rossi knew that what she was saying tallied with his own recollection of events at that time – his old journalist friend’s investigation into high-level corruption, the mysterious attempt by some emissary of the powers-that-be to buy him off, and then the attempt on his life in Sicily, which had sent him into hiding and the life under 24-hour armed escort he now lived.
“The gentleman, Jibril, produced a business card – Dottor Iannelli’s business card – and said that he knew him personally. I assumed that it had come into his possession by pure chance and that he hadn’t the slightest idea who it might belong to. The card was professional, of course, and said Dottor Dario Iannelli, The Facet. Enough perhaps for a naive young migrant to think it could serve as some temporary passport to acceptance. I had also just heard that the journalist had been caught up in an ambush and was feared killed. I didn’t take it any further. I assumed it was a desperate last-ditch attempt to circumvent the obstacles that bureaucracy put in his way, and I could only feel pity for him, not suspicion.”
“And you then took him to view the corpse, I presume,” said Rossi.
“Given the circumstances, I waived normal practice. I followed my conscience, feeling that he and the victim had likely been acquaintances or even relatives. They were, as far as I could see, both of West African appearance and I deduced they could easily have been co-nationals.”
“And yet the identification was negative,” said Rossi.
“Well, that is the central issue here, Inspector. As I pulled back the cover, apart from the reaction of shock you might expect – you know, of course, how he was killed.”
Yes, Rossi knew. His throat had been cut, almost to the point of decapitation.
“The reaction I witnessed was consistent with recognition. I have seen it enough times to be reasonably confident. He was restrained, yes, but when I asked him to confirm whether or not he could positively identify the corpse he gave a firm ‘no’ and that was that. He then asked to leave and began to get rather agitated. I think he also feared that he might be detained or reported to the police. I let him out through a side door as I didn’t want him to have to face the other staff and I didn’t want anyone asking me awkward questions. I would be able to manage that better by myself. I’ve had plenty of practice.”
Rossi looked at Carrara.
“So, if he did recognize him, why didn’t he say so?”
“As I said, presumably fear of being detained, as an illegal, even if that hadn’t stopped him stepping into the lion’s den in the first place. He took a big chance.”
“Are you sure he was a migrant?” said Carrara. “How did you know?”
“I presumed he was. I suppose from his clothing. I mean he really wasn’t dressed for winter. He looked itinerant, tired, and he wasn’t streetwise yet, not in the Roman sense. He seemed fresh out of Africa. It was the impression I got, but I’ve met many such people in my work and in my voluntary activities too. I help out sometimes with a group providing assistance to refugees and migrants.”
“So,” said Rossi, “Iannelli was or wasn’t connected? You said you thought it was a ruse, the business card, a stratagem on his part. What makes you think differently now?”
“I just think that maybe there was something important, something more to it than I first thought. When I heard Dottor Iannelli had survived the attack in Sicily and when the stories began to emerge about corruption in the Detention Centres, I thought that maybe their paths could have crossed in some way. I didn’t give it serious thought at the time, but later I wondered if I’d been hasty in dismissing it out of hand. And then there was the fire on Via Prenestina. All those people. At least one of them was West African too. Call it intuition or instinct but it has continued to prey on my mind, every day – the thought that there could even be a connection. And when I heard you talking about him this morning, it seemed like I had to seize an opportunity to put things straight. I had thought about going to a police station but I was concerned for my position. I didn’t know what to do. It could have come out looking very bad for me. Do you understand?”
Rossi could see she was taking a chance, putting trust in him. It was courageous, a quality he admired.
“Well,” said Rossi, “as luck would have it, we were on our way to the hospital to pay a visit to the pathologist. Our paths may well have crossed anyway.”
His comment raised a more relaxed smile. She had a conscience, he reflected, but she didn’t look like someone who put much stock in fate. Compassionate but practical, realistic. She had to be.
“Did Jibril have an address for the person he was looking for?” asked Carrara.
“He gave me one but it was false. I checked it but I let it go. You have to understand how emotional and how trying all this can be. He needed to know and as far as I was concerned there was no ulterior motive, no other reason for his being there. You know, it did even occur to me that they might have been lovers.”
“Well,” said Carrara, “he was clearly covering all bases if he didn’t want to give a real address. He wanted to appear credible without leaving any trail. As you say, probably the illegal immigrant’s preservation instinct.”
“And his name?” said Rossi. “Do you think he gave you his real name?”
“Like I said, it was Jibril, but more than that I don’t know.”
“Well, it looks like we will have to get on to Dario,” said Rossi to Carrara. He turned back to Tiziana; she was taking restorative sips on her water like a witness granted time to collect herself during a cross-examination.
“What you must remember here, Tiziana, is that this is a murder investigation. Anything that could lead us to the killer could help save lives. We don’t have reason to believe that there have been other victims but we can’t rule it out either. But whoever killed him was ruthless and could do it again. This body was meant to be found. Others may not have been. Your biggest mistake here, if there is one, is not dishonesty or dereliction of duty but simply that of having let time pass. In our job, time is everything. It is a little late in the day.”
She first nodded with something like contrition but then rallied.
“What you say is, of course, perfectly true, Inspector, and I realize that I fell short of certain obligations. However, if I hadn’t intervened in the first place, if I hadn’t set aside normal practice, he would have walked out that door. He was being turned away by my colleagues. I too could have done the same. At least now you have something to go on, even if it is, as you point out, ‘a little late in the day’.”
Carrara was nodding his agreement while Rossi, taken aback first by the steeliness of her retort, couldn’t help then but smile. He sensed he might have the makings of a dependable ally in Tiziana, and allies were hard to come by at the best of times.
“Could you leave us your number, please,” Rossi said. “Mobile and office.” He slid his notebook and pen across the table. “I think we’ll need to be seeing more of each other, Tiziana. But you can rest assured that for now, at least, you have nothing to fear.”
Tiziana wrote down two phone numbers, then Rossi slipped the notebook back into his jacket pocket.
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“Perhaps we could accompany you to the hospital,” he proposed.
“Thank you, Inspector,” she replied. “If it’s no trouble.”
“Not at all,” said Rossi. “As I said, we were on our way there.”
Six
At the reception area, Tiziana waved them through the security checks despite the burly security guard’s evident displeasure.
“These gentlemen are with me,” she said. “They are senior police officers.”
The additional information seemed to make the necessary difference as the guard acquiesced and went back to studying his phone.
“I think we know the way now,” said Rossi.
“Wait,” she said, “let me ring ahead first. It will make things easier.”
She unlocked a door on her right in the dim, impersonal corridor in which they now stood. “My office. The back door.”
She emerged a moment later holding out a slip of paper. “Doctor Piredda. First floor, corridor 2, room 209. He’s not busy, so ask him as much as you want. He’s usually pretty straight up actually. Sardinian.”
They thanked her with firm handshakes all round and made their way along the eery passageways. While there was nothing to see, what lurked behind the doors and the nature of the traffic that went through the place was enough to overload the dark side of the imagination.
“Always prefer to come here in the morning,” said Rossi. “Gives me time to forget about it during the rest of the day.”
“Bad dreams?” said Carrara.
“Bad memories more than dreams,” Rossi replied. “I can deal with the dreams. You wake up from them.”
Doctor Piredda was sitting waiting, his hands joined on a writing pad in front of him, a clunky monitor and a computer keyboard yellowed to a soiled ivory colour to one side on his sparse, largely unencumbered working space. He reached across to shake hands with them both, his white-coated bulk straining against the edge of the desk.
“A bad business,” he began. “And still none the wiser, are we?”
Who we was supposed to be, Rossi couldn’t quite be sure.
“I went through it all, you know,” he continued, “with your colleague. He looked down then at his notes in an open Manilla folder. “Lallana.”
“Yes,” said Rossi. “He’s in homicide, specifically. We, Inspector Carrara and I, are from the Serious Crime Squad. We are investigating acts of arson in the city, and we were wondering if there was anything else that may have come to light in the intervening period. Apart from the identification, of course. Any anomalies, for example? We are fairly certain it was intentional. Could you give us something that might indicate intent?”
Piredda shook his head. Rossi knew the signs: that he wasn’t going to stick his neck out on the motive behind the fire.
“Death was due to asphyxiation in primis. The absence of oxygen. It would have been relatively rapid, in the circumstances, with the confined space and the volume of highly toxic smoke.”
“Even with the windows open?” said Carrara. “It was hot. There were locked bars on the windows but the windows themselves must have been open, for ventilation.”
“I think that’s beside the point. The oxygen coming in would only have fed the flames further. They would have quickly lost consciousness, in minutes, and the burns would then in a sense have been secondary factors. Horrendous though they were. I’m sure you know that most victims are not actually burnt to death. What’s more, they will have been asleep and the chances are they were already inhaling the fumes as they slept. They were, I believe, in all but one case found close to where they would have been sleeping. It was night. You can’t orientate yourself in such conditions, and the heat would have been completely overpowering.”
“The ethnicities?” said Rossi feeling already that it was going to be a wasted visit. “Age? Nothing you think you might be able to add?”
“I provided my estimates for age, considering a margin of error of around three to five years either way. I also provided the racial profile. Nothing has changed, Inspector.”
“You said African. Black African. And North African.”
“That is correct. Three black African corpses. One North African. The other victim, of course, was identified by his jewellery. His ‘dog tags’.”
“Could you hazard a guess as to a country, a more specific region?” Rossi asked. “South or West African? You see we’ve had very little in the line of witnesses who had even seen the occupants.”
“Seems like we’ve run into a bit of omertà,” Carrara chipped in. “No one’s saying a goddam word.”
The doctor gave a weak smile.
“That’s more difficult without DNA tests, but I’d venture that the two black Africans were likely sub-Saharan, possibly West African.”
“But we could run those tests,” said Rossi. “If necessary, and get something more definite on age. It could help narrow the search considerably. It might give us something more to work on.”
“Teeth can give excellent results. Carbon-14 dating and crown dentin analysis, without blinding you with the science, Inspector. Of course it takes a little time and it’s rather expensive and there are budget constraints to consider. But if it’s required …,” he trailed off without appearing to exude any great enthusiasm at the prospect.
Carrara meanwhile had whipped out his phone. He nudged Rossi.
“We’re going to have to adjourn, I’m afraid,” he said.
“Now, what?” said Rossi. “Another fire?”
“No. Look,” he said showing Rossi the screen on his wafer-like smartphone. Codice Rosso. Tutte le unità. A red alert. For all units.
“You will have to excuse us, Dottore,” said Rossi, rising with as much decorum as was possible but already making for the door. “Maybe we can talk about that DNA again soon, but it seems we have a major incident in the city. I think it would be a good idea to alert the hospitals. Perhaps all of them.”
Seven
The Libertas Language Centre was on a side street off the road running south away from the centre and parallel with the Brutalist concrete bulk of Termini station. Here, at only two or three minutes’ walk from the station’s buzz, it was already far enough away from the bars and shops to attract very few tourists. Just beyond the school, there was an improvised stall selling pornographic magazines and videos for the remnants of the pre-digital generation. Staff smoked and idled outside a Chinese wholesaler of knick-knacks and costume jewellery, and there was a knot of middle-aged men chatting intently outside a cut-price Indian takeaway. The language centre served as a focus, especially on hot afternoons in summer, for various nationalities who loitered on the footpath and against the railings on the raised walkway leading further away from the station. Some had improvised a marketplace underneath its slope where, on tarpaulins and rugs, they laid out second-hand clothes, shoes, kitchenware and dated household goods and furnishings.
Olivia Modena had already stacked up her books, the unmarked homework, and the register. The money a non-profit cooperative paid her for the few hours a week she taught Italian to immigrants was hardly worth the effort but she wasn’t there for that. She was there because she needed the experience, but also because she enjoyed making a difference. She enjoyed seeing the barriers between herself and the others coming down as their trust in her grew. She took pleasure too from seeing some of those same barriers crumbling between people who would never have had occasion to meet in other circumstances.
For some the dream of making something with their lives was still fresh and real, and their vigour and optimism could be uplifting, especially on mornings when the weight of her own existence sometimes dragged her down. Even when you liked what you did and couldn’t imagine doing anything else, getting up every morning, criss-crossing the city and juggling work commitments was draining.
For others it was not so easy. She saw the hope dwindling in their eyes as the obstacles they encountered day after day began to sap their energy and their belie
f. Work with anything like a decent contract was not easy to come by. For those who worked in agriculture, the gangmaster was king. A call could come in at the last minute and they would be expected at an often ungodly hour to get to the appointed meeting place on the outskirts of the city from where they would be picked up and driven to a remote destination. If they didn’t want to accept the going rate it was too late then to turn back. Take it or leave it – there’s a queue of workers outside the door. Add to that the back-breaking work under a searing sun for twelve hours or more, and maybe the promise of more of the same the next day. Maybe.
When they weren’t working, they were killing time, getting by, and other exploitative figures sought to draw them into criminal and other informal money-making ventures. Drugs, prostitution, the running of prostitution. Protection. Punishments. Contracts. There was always an outlet in a city with a hunger for sex and chemical oblivion that never wavered, and weed and coke were the best earners.
In front of her, in the cramped and stuffy improvised classroom, her adult pupils were either still grappling with, or else putting the finishing touches to, a grammar test. She was ready to go but knew she would probably end up hanging around outside to chat. In fact, today she wanted to chat.
One of the brightest of her students deposited his paper on the mounting pile of completed tests on her desk. As he did so, she raised her hands to indicate to the others that there were ten minutes left and she followed him outside. She knew a little of his story – that he was Nigerian, a Muslim, had come up from Sicily, like so many, that he was without papers but that he had plans.
“So, Jibril,” she said, once they were out of earshot, “are you coming to the intercultural picnic on Saturday?”
Jibril shook his head and smiled. A short distance away, Olivia glimpsed the various groups of non-students and occasional or former students who also chose to congregate outside the centre. It was handily near the centre but the police didn’t bother them much here.