by Aidan Conway
It was the first time she had used his professional title and he didn’t quite know what to make of it.
“You think I am going to drop Rosa’s husband in it? Is that it?” said Rossi.
“They know anyway. I told you. You’d be lucky to find one of the cops round here who isn’t getting a kickback or who hasn’t got his hands tied.”
“It’s a small world, then. I thought I was the only one who was kicking against the pricks. I mean, of course, in the biblical sense; not that they aren’t pricks either, some of them,” he added.
“So you’re the good apple in the barrel, are you?”
“Not the worst, I’d like to think.”
“You’re too modest, if you ask me.”
Rossi smiled.
“And that was the compliment you always fish for, wasn’t it?” she continued.
“If you say so.”
Judiciously, by Rossi’s standards, he’d set his phone to vibrate and a call was coming in. Deus ex machina. He excused himself and walked towards the water’s edge. It was Carrara.
“About those tapes, Mick, at the Wellness. Well, there’s only been a break in, hasn’t there? And guess what’s gone missing?”
“Christ! All of them?”
“No. Just the one pertaining to the day in question. Very professional job indeed, by all accounts. No one even noticed until they went to look for it. Replaced it with an identical blank one.”
“And the security guard? What’s his story?”
“Swears blind he doesn’t know anything. He takes the tapes out, puts them on the shelf and every seven days goes over them again. I reckon he pervs over them, by the state they were in but he swears he didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary.”
“So we don’t know when it was taken?”
“No.”
Rossi was thinking.
“Look, Gigi, the way things are going, I’m not sure we can even do this, talk on the phone anymore, I mean, do you follow? Listen, call me at this number from a call box in about ten minutes. Hang on.”
Rossi pulled a pen from his inside pocket and gestured to Laura to give him her phone number, which, to her credit, she duly did.
“Are you ready?”
Rossi reeled off the numbers using an improvised code. “The year we met, the last digit of your … etc.” It would at least give them time to talk without being spied on. Unless Laura’s line was already tapped but that was a chance he’d have to take.
“It looks like I’m going to need your phone,” said Rossi as soon as he had hung up. “Would you mind? It’s actually very urgent.”
“Feel free,” she shrugged with neither enthusiasm nor reluctance. “I suppose it’s a matter of life or death, isn’t it, Inspector?”
Through the deepening twilight, Rossi made his way back to the station where the bus had left him earlier in the afternoon. He had been able to give Carrara clear instructions to meet him at the airport that evening and to keep his movements as discreet as possible. He didn’t want anyone in on this except themselves and he had very clear ideas about how they were going to go about the whole operation.
There was no scheduled bus for two hours, so he had no option but to take a taxi. At least they were less expensive than in Rome and the driver seemed honest and polite, too, which was possible but not a given in the Eternal City. Once at the airport, he did the rounds of the airlines and with a bit of professional persuasion was able to change his ticket at minimal cost and then settle down with a paper and a coffee to wait for the call.
It had all been so fast and not at all as he had expected but then fantasy and reality rarely did bear any relation. What was imagined always became something else, quite new, quite different, though not always a disappointment. He was pleased, at least, to have tried to close that particular chapter of his life that had so unexpectedly re-opened. His policeman’s mind, however, was not comfortable with the versions of the facts he had received. For now he would leave them, as if in a mental ante-chamber, as he turned his conscious thoughts back to the more immediate realities of the case in hand.
All this cloak-and-dagger stuff, all this murder in the cathedral. It could only be a ridiculous hoax and he knew that falling for it would be if not a criminal then certainly a costly waste of his time. Yet he also had a hunch they might be onto something. The tape going missing, the botched attempt to murder Yana, the botched attempt to get at him. Perhaps it all suggested that the events were not random that there was a thread that he could pick up. And perhaps now there was a thread that someone wanted him to pick up. But why? And was it the one he was looking for?
For a while, he people-watched. The cabin crews crossed and re-crossed each in their own distinctive livery. The more up-market airlines had a commensurate advantage in terms both of their elegance and arrogance. A knot of American tourists plonked themselves down opposite him. Academics, by their conversation, perhaps on a conference or maybe friends from the same college. If academics could be friends. Publish or perish, that was the motto. And it was all pretty damn cut-throat and bitchy as far as he could gather. But there were always some good sorts, just like anywhere else, and for a moment he remembered with some fondness his old professors at the IAUR. He’d been asked several times to go back and give a speech or even teach a course on criminology, but he’d always declined. But maybe it wasn’t too late for him to go into academia. He was, after all, always learning. It could be a damn sight of an easier life too.
Thirty-Three
“And what if we find another one tonight?”
Salvatore knocked back his mid-morning coffee, corretto, laced with a shot of brandy, ostensibly against the chill but more to calm nerves shot to pieces like a mangled fishing net in need of constant repair. His brother was beside him. His face, too, showed the strain of having to work against hostile nature and even more hostile human realities.
“They deserve a Christian burial. A decent burial. It’s the least we can give them.”
“And the boats. Do you think they’ll come tonight? The weather’s to be fine, the forecast says.”
“Better for them. It’s when it’s rough it puts us in more of a fix, so it does.”
Then, in silence, they surveyed the sea before them. Despite its beauty and its familiarity, for them it was now a vast graveyard. Who knew how many souls had perished there. The ones that never made it on the hulks of rusting junk laughingly called boats that left behind them the dwindling lights of Libya for the promise of Lampedusa’s shores only to sink without trace and with all hands. And then, on dark nights, it befell men like them to haul in their nets believing the unexpected weight to be their good fortune only to find the curse of a bloated corpse staring back at them. It was down to these men and the rest of the hopelessly overstretched local community to give them decent burials while in Rome the politicians hummed and hawed and plotted how best to exploit events to their own advantage.
And then there were the boats in difficulty, drifting with neither fuel nor fresh water, their occupants pleading for help. But there was the law – the new government law, not the age-old law of the sea – which said anyone aiding illegal clandestine immigration could be considered an accessory to that same criminal illegal act. So, the desperate and hungry were criminalized and those who sought to provide humanitarian assistance risked the same fate.
But the boats that were not “spotted” by the radar, the ones that slipped through the security cordons to be met by intermediaries? The boats with hundreds of hopefuls, each of whom had coughed up three, four, five thousand euros, thus plunging themselves or their families deep into debt. Families who would wait and wait for news before finally having to let go, surrendering to their worst fears. Do the math, as the Americans said. There was money to be made whether they got through or not.
And there was yet more cash to be squeezed from the survivors as they were corralled and cajoled into what often amounted to forced labour, living and working as virtual
slaves without rights, without papers, and thus without an identity, at the mercy of their masters on the tomato plantations of the South, or the street corners, or in the illegal bordellos of Palermo, Rome, or Milan. Think about that when you’re making your pasta, thought Iannelli as he battled with his own inconsistencies, for he too had surrendered more than once to temptation – the promise and the comfort of firm, smooth bodies on lonely nights in the city. So, he was a hypocrite, a part of the system? Or only an end user, as they might say in mitigation? As everyone could say.
He was sitting at the next table, browsing a newspaper, but listening, straining sometimes to pick up the finer points of the fishermen’s conversation through their dialect. He’d managed to get a direct flight to save time, but for the return journey, his plan was to take the ferry to the mainland and hire a car to make the journey over land back to Catania. He wanted to get a feel for the place, to get a bit more of Sicily under his skin. Every now and again his eye would stray towards the TV screen over the bar. It was set to one of the commercial channels, one of the channels owned by the northern magnate whose stranglehold over Italian politics remained unrivalled. How the small screen could be filled with these near biblical images of a tiny island overrun with desperate, dark-skinned foreigners at their lowest ebb. Coming soon to your towns and villages. Anytime now. But it was an ill wind that didn’t blow anyone any good.
“Oh, Danilo!” the two fishermen exclaimed as a slim young man in faded jeans and a baggy sweater made his way through the tables to join them.
As the new arrival shifted chairs into a more agreeable arrangement, Iannelli sensed his opportunity.
“Lovely day,” he said catching the newcomer’s eye. The quick reply was presaged by a good-natured smile.
“Yes, it is. On holiday?”
“More work than pleasure.” He reached out a hand. “Dario Iannelli. I’m a journalist.”
“Ah,” said the older of the two fishermen, with more than a hint of cynicism. Iannelli was unperturbed. He was getting his story and that was that.
“I want to know what’s really happening here. Not just what they dish out on the TV.”
“Cristian,” said the youngest member of the triumvirate. “And allow me to present Salvatore and Francesco.”
“Perhaps you would like to join us,” said Cristian. “A friend of mine is coming. It could be perfect for you to see what we are doing here.”
Cristian signalled then with a wave to a tall man who had arrived at the entrance. He looked no more than nineteen or twenty, yet seemed confident and determined.
“This is Jibril. He’s an interpreter. We work together to sort out what problems we can. There are many but we try.”
Iannelli introduced himself. The young man’s eyes narrowed.
“There are many lies being written about us and what happens here.”
“I know,” said Iannelli, “and that’s why I am here. To discover the truth.”
“We are trapped here,” said Jibril, “with nothing to do and with little or no communication. We want only to be free. That is why we left Africa, to be free and now we find ourselves prisoners. We want to work, to have a future. We don’t want charity.”
Iannelli nodded his agreement. He came across immediately as determined, proud, and highly intelligent. Iannelli reached into his jacket pocket and produced cards for everyone then turned to Jibril.
“This is my number. Maybe I can interview you here before you leave the island, about the conditions, how you are treated.”
Cristian reached out to put a gentle restraining hand on Jibril before then addressing Iannelli.
“But perhaps you would like to come and help us,” he said. “We always need help.” He looked at his watch. “We will be serving lunch in a couple of hours and we’re a little short-staffed. We work without funding and without middle men. It’s all just the natural goodwill of the Sicilian people, the Lampedusan people. Then, after, maybe we can all talk. Con calma. No rush. Once you have lived a little bit of what happens here, on your skin, as we say.”
“Yes,” said Iannelli, “I would love to.”
Salvatore was smiling now.
“And how are your sea legs, Dottore? Perhaps a little run out in the boat afterwards? You don’t get seasick, do you?”
“And now, tell us all about you, Dario,” said Cristian. “What’s the news from Rome? We’ve been hearing terrible things about that city of yours …”
Thirty-Four
The day was splendid. The morning air tingled and the rising sun was casting long shadows and sparkling on the cars criss-crossing the piazza while it tried in vain to warm the white stone of the basilica. The huge statues of the twelve apostles with their long beards and flowing robes ranged along its uppermost heights seemed to be swirling with iron purpose and divine certainty. Rossi, too, felt fresh and vigorous. Despite his doubts regarding the veracity of the strange rendezvous they were about to put to the test, he felt anything could be possible today. In short, in one way or another, he sensed a breakthrough was coming from some direction and it raised his spirits about Yana’s chances too.
Yet the beauty of the scene, his upbeat demeanour, and the solid dependability of his colleague, Carrara, belied the terror that women across the city still felt, as if it crawled on their skin, every night after darkness fell. Going about their daily business bore no relation to their fearful and furtive nocturnal movements, if they even dared now to go out at night. The vicious slaying of a policeman in broad daylight, not half a mile away, had further compounded fears that criminals now operated with impunity, as if they were taunting the forces of law and order.
“Have we picked the wrong morning?” said Carrara indicating the streams of black and white clad female converging now on the basilica from all directions.
“Could be a big saint’s day. Or a beatification or canonization mass,” Rossi mused.
The sheer volume of nuns was overwhelming and, judging by their variegated ethnicities, they must have come from all corners of the globe.
“Maybe Saint Teresa of Avila? Saint Clare possibly?” he proffered.
Carrara, however, was intent again on his phone. As he checked, Rossi scanned the area. A silver Audi had pulled up at a vantage point by the Scala Santa and a figure seemed to be skulking behind it, talking theatrically on a phone to disguise his looking in their direction.
They were to wait inside the church until a message gave them further instructions.
“I’ll be next to the confessionals,” said Rossi, “and you take a vantage point wherever you can. Perhaps near the papal altar.”
Inside, too, the place was humming. There were nuns with video cameras, nuns taking selfies of themselves and each other, nuns praying, and a very considerable number lined up waiting to offload their sins. Rossi took a seat next to the row of dark wooden confessionals, each about the size of a seaside bathing booth, and which ran down the side of the northern transept. He knew it was the northern transept as Christian churches are always oriented East-West, something to do with facing Jerusalem, if he remembered rightly. He was explaining the fact to a not very interested Carrara as they checked that they had decent signals before he took up his position within sight of Rossi but not so near as to arouse suspicion.
It was like being ten years old again, Rossi reflected. Waiting. Waiting back then to get the dreaded thing out of the way for another month. It had always been such a relief, that absolution, as he would fly out of the side door of the spooky-quiet church on a Saturday afternoon, like a free bird. Still, the state of grace was always short-lived, perhaps not even as long as it took him to get home as before too long there would inevitably be a swear, an exchange of boots or fists, an impure thought.
From the signs hung on the confessionals he could see that absolution could be granted in English, French, Italian, and German today. He gazed up at the grand altar and its lavish baroque excess. Here only the Pope himself, who was first and foremost
Rome’s Bishop, could say mass. Rossi revisited what history of the place he could remember. The magnificent mosaic floor, the cloisters’ inlaid barley-sugar-twist columns. He gave a little laugh to himself. Once, right here, the authorities of the day had even put a corpse on trial then thrown it into the Tiber.
Should he pray? he wondered. He needed something, if it was forthcoming. But what if the answer was no? Would he have to live out his purgatory or would mercy descend like a dove from on high? Had he the right to ask for it? Did he even believe anything anymore? His reveries were interrupted by the message he’d been thinking would never actually come.
“Are you ready to hear my confession?”
Thirty-Five
“So,” said Rossi, “this had better be good.”
He was kneeling inside the confessional and addressing the copper-coloured grill obscuring his interlocutor’s face. “Or do you want me to say how long it’s been?”
He was speed-texting a message to Carrara.
Get between here and the door. Not too close.
“I think somebody’s gone and left their phone on?” said a softish female voice. Shit, must have picked up the interference in an earpiece, thought Rossi. A wire probably.
“Just turning it off. Ready. I’m all yours now.”
“Well,” the voice began, “as I said, I may be able to point you in the right direction, regarding the murder of the girl in the car park.”
“I believe you said you know,” Rossi interjected.
“I would know who it was,” came the reply, “if I saw him again. You see I was there. But the point is that I wasn’t there, if you follow.”
“Doing something you shouldn’t have been doing?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“And just how do you think you can help us by hiding in a confessional and saying you were somewhere and saw someone, but you weren’t actually there?”
“Well, I got a good look at his face. I was passing the garage, shortly after the murder, as I later learned, and happened to have a very close encounter with him. At least I believe it was him. He was leaving the garage in a hurry and had blood on his hands and clothes. We bumped right into each other, Inspector. I can tell you his height, his weight, the colour of his eyes and hair. I could probably tell you what kind of aftershave he wears. I have put together a full description but I cannot be implicated in this case in any way. As I said, I was not in the vicinity on the night in question but feel duty bound to tell you what I know, as a citizen, and as a woman.”