Big Italy

by Timothy Williams

  Then there were articles on mediums and clairvoyants and stigmata—after two thousand years, Trotti told himself, the Catholic church had been replaced by a new, secular obscurantism.

  The only difference between the magazine and the Domenica del Corriere of Trotti’s memory was the advertising for sexy phone calls, ribald jokes and soft-core titillation.

  “Bassi,” Trotti said under his breath.

  The chamomile was still hot as he did the True or False quiz. Turning to page ninety-four for the answers, he discovered with glum satisfaction that all his answers were wrong. Did he really need to know if the Doges’ boat was called bucefalo?

  Trotti took honey from the cupboard and ladled two spoonfuls into the hot chamomile. Then he drank noisily.

  (Agnese had always complained that he was a noisy eater.)

  Trotti was smiling to himself when he saw the article. It was the main article and flipping through the pages with his left hand, he came to it last.

  MISTER FBI SAYS, ‘CHERCHEZ LA FEMME.’

  6: Crime Passionnel

  FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT in Milan:

  Carlo Turellini, fifty-four, a university professor and one of the most renowned obstetricians in Northern Italy, was murdered on Friday, 23 October 1992, while leaving his villa in Segrate on the edge of the metropolis. More than a year has passed since that morning, yet the death of Turellini remains a mystery. Official inquiries have so far failed to find an answer to the two questions the people of Milan continue to ask: Who murdered Carlo Turellini and why?

  There is, however, somebody who has never ceased to trouble the turbid waters, to break through the thick curtain of silence surrounding the murder. Fabrizio Bassi is thirty-five years old. After a successful career in the Polizia di Stato, he left to become a private investigator (see photograph, center). His agency is named Fabrizio Bassi Investigations—or FBI.

  A name that speaks for itself.

  For over a year, Bassi has been following his line of investigation into the Turellini case. Yet several days ago he was forced to break off his inquiries because of an injunction from the Milan State magistrate. Fabrizio Bassi does not want his valuable work to be lost—and that is why he decided to speak to our journalist (see photograph, top right) about the mystery surrounding Turellini’s untimely death.

  Let us consider that fateful day at the end of October, 1992.

  At 7:52 in the morning, Dr. Turellini was leaving for work at the university and was going through the automatic gates of his villa, sitting at the wheel of his grey BMW, when the murderer burst out from behind a bush and, with a trembling hand, pulled three times at the trigger of an antiquated gun. Surprisingly, the assassin fired only two rounds from the 7.65-caliber pistol. The second round went into the door of the car—into the bottom of the door, proof indeed that the assassin was far from expert in his calling. The third and fatal bullet struck the doctor in the left temple.

  Dr. Turellini was found a few minutes later, in the throes of death, his bleeding head propped against the seat headrest, his left foot on the ground, the car door open.

  The details permit several interpretations.

  The first is that Turellini opened the door to the car only after he had been shot in the head. The doctor had been sitting behind the wheel and did not notice anything amiss until it was too late.

  Another possibility is that Turellini knew the man who appeared before the gate. Not suspecting anything, Turellini was in the act of getting out of the car to confer with him. The murderer did not give Turellini any time but took out his weapon and fired immediately.

  A third possibility is that Turellini realized the danger he was in and tried to escape from the car but the clumsy killer managed to carry out his treacherous act. Turellini did not have time to react. Fatally wounded, his strength deserted him once he put his foot on the ground.

  Professor Turellini did not die immediately. He was still alive when a workman found him slumped back in the BMW.

  It is clear the assassin was not a skilled killer. The unfired round that the police found later was a 7.65, an old, rusting bullet that had not been carefully maintained. The 7.65 must have jammed and the killer had to eject it before placing another bullet in the barrel. The unused and damaged bullet fell to the ground.

  Professional killers, it goes without saying, use high-quality equipment, not army surplus from the war in Spain.

  Fabrizio Bassi, the “Rockford” of Lombardy, relates his entry into the affair: “I was entrusted with the inquiry three weeks after the murder, through the offices of Avvocato Regni, acting for the wife and the sister of the deceased.”

  Often in this sort of case, once Polizia and Carabinieri have decided it’s not a Mafia killing, their inquiries lose much of their momentum—unless, of course, there’s pressure on them from the press.

  “My first job was to get the identity of the victim into sharp focus,” says Mister FBI, who recently returned from a specialized detective course in Quantico, in the state of Virginia. “On the professional front, there was nothing of major importance about the man. A highly efficient doctor, respected by his patients and admired by his colleagues, even if there were many people jealous of his success and high profile.”

  Of course, a successful career for an obstetrician will inevitably cause jealousy among rivals. Associate lecturer in the ancient university on the Po (see photograph and article on p. 37), to which he commuted the forty-one kilometers three days a week in his luxurious German car, Turellini had also an extremely lucrative private practice on Lake Maggiore—the Clinica Cisalpina that he had created in 1979 with his associate, Dr. Quarenghi, the renowned specialist in clinical medicine. Clearly there were many who must have been envious of Turellini’s success.

  The one-man FBI continues, “As for his private life, it had been fairly chaotic in the past. He divorced his wife, Luciana Lucchi, ten years ago. The couple remained on good terms, largely for the sake of their only child, Carla, twenty. For the last couple of years, Turellini had been living with Mary Coddrington, now thirty-two, a stylish Englishwoman who works in a language school in Milan. There was talk of marriage.”

  Fabrizio Bassi smiles. “There had been other women in the professor’s life—lots of other women. Most notable was a brief and fiery encounter with the beautiful, unbridled wife of a colleague. It’s possible that this relationship had not entirely died out at the time of the professor’s death.”

  Mister FBI pauses before continuing. “My two lines of inquiry have been into the professor’s professional life and into his private one. In both cases, Turellini’s world was peopled by doctors.”

  Let’s first look into the professional line of inquiry.

  “Turellini wanted a professorship at the university, but when he ran for it in 1991, he failed. He had long been a member of the Destra Nazionale and no doubt Carlo Turellini suspected the cards were stacked against him, for years a Socialist fief. At the time of his death he was looking into the offer that had been made to him to direct the new clinic at Sant’Eusebio. If he had become director of this private center, much larger than his own clinic on Lake Maggiore, Turellini would undoubtedly have been a thorn in the flesh for several colleagues and rivals who coveted the post. Was one of these rivals the person who ordered Turellini’s death? We can’t totally exclude this hypothesis.”

  The Rockford of Lombardy lights another American cigarette. “Let’s turn to the other line of inquiry—le crime passionnel. Turellini once had—and perhaps continued to have—a turbulent relationship with the wife of an ex-colleague. A doctor of world-class renown who travels from one continent to another, giving lectures in universities and hospitals, a man who’s close to several ministers of health, past and present. A man who quite clearly would not have readily accepted his wife’s alleged infidelities.

  “On several occasions, Turellini is believed to have received threatening phone calls during the night.” Immediately following Turellini’s death,
the police sighted his mistress at the wheel of her cream Jaguar in the vicinity of Turellini’s villa. Later that morning, she went to the Milan police and declared, “It was my husband who murdered Professor Turellini.”

  Bassi continues, “The inquiries, following the woman’s accusation, were largely concerned with her husband. However he was able to supply a waterproof alibi, being four hundred and seventyseven kilometers away in Rome for a medical congress on the day of the murder. Hundreds of witnesses can corroborate his presence in Rome.”

  Even if the assassin was not this man, there are people who believe that the cuckolded doctor may have paid a killer to carry out the murder.

  “I can neither confirm nor refute,” the private investigator says. “What’s needed is concrete proof and for the time being there is only conjecture. However I have been able to ascertain that the pornographic videos allegedly in the boot of the BMW were no more than the fruit of a fertile imagination. If there’d been anything, I would have found out.”

  According to Signor Bassi, the inquiries have come to a standstill. The crime passionnel theory is the one that has earned the greatest support among police investigators.

  Likewise, it is generally believed that the killer who could not shoot straight was recruited outside Milan and its hinterland, probably in the Mezzogiorno or Sicily where Turellini himself was born fifty-four years ago.

  And if the killer were a woman disappointed in love?

  Women tend to be less adept in dealing with firearms; this would explain why the first shot failed to go off.

  “I don’t think that’s very likely, even if for a long time that was the main thrust of my inquiry,” the private detective says. “I’ve been able to build up the recent past of the professor. Many years ago Carlo Turellini had lived through a tormented and tumultuous love affair. I believe at the time of his death he was leading a calm existence with his English lady friend. He worked a lot and frequently saw his twenty-year-old daughter, Carla, who is a student at the university Luigi Bocconi. Perhaps on occasion he met the woman in the Jaguar—but little else. Professor Turellini had become a tranquil and highly respected professional, working hard and leading a happy, domestic existence.”

  Mister FBI lights another American cigarette.

  “Other women in his life? It’s possible. A good detective must look everywhere. And as the French say, Cherchez la femme.”

  7: Radiator

  Tuesday, 30 November

  TROTTI USED TO be ambitious.

  Piero Trotti, the young man from the hills who had gone through technical school during the lean years of Reconstruction, was on the way to the top when he joined the Pubblica Sicurezza in 1954. He wanted the kind of success and recognition that had been denied to his own father. Older colleagues were seen as obstacles to his career, younger colleagues were seen as rivals.

  Twenty-five years later, after having finally attained the rank of commissario and after his wife had left him, Trotti lost much of his desire to succeed. He had done well, slowly working his way up through the hierarchy and now for the first time he started asking himself questions about his life.

  Asking questions after it was already too late for the answers to be useful.

  It was because he had failed his own family that Trotti allowed himself to be swayed by justice—or rather, by his idea of justice.

  “Justice,” Trotti said to himself. He now snorted as he stepped into the lift, with its permanent smell of old cigarette smoke and the hammer and sickle scraped into the aluminum paint.

  A vision of justice that allowed him for the first time in his life to question the values—and the authority—of the Questura. Of the Questura and beyond it, of the Italian Republic.

  Piero Trotti, who had grown up in the hills, who had been taught to obey and to serve—the old Fascist slogans were still visible beneath the grime fifty years later on their farm walls—Piero Trotti, who as a child had been a uniformed Figlio della Lupa, who had worn a black shirt and a fez, who had carried a wooden rifle, who had never really questioned power or those who wielded it, finally discovered himself to be refractory.

  The old arrogance of ambition was replaced by another, equally pernicious one—if he were to believe his colleagues and subalterns: the arrogance of knowing he was morally right.

  The lift came to a halt and he stepped out.

  The third floor of the Questura.

  Surprised, the blonde woman looked up from her desk, gave a brief smile of her rubbery lipstick. She pointed down the corridor to the Questore’s office. “He would like to speak to you.” Her reverential tone left no doubt about whom she was speaking.

  Without answering, Trotti went down the cold corridor to his own office.

  (A provincial city on the edge of the Milanese hinterland but largely untouched by the problems of the big metropolis.)

  Justice?

  (A small, quiet city, a provincial university city that simply wanted to get on with its existence. Work, study, commerce, the pursuit of happiness. A city that now voted solidly for the Lega Lombarda. A provincial city with a pedestrian zone and a by-law forbidding the use of English on the shop fronts.)

  Justice?

  Like ambition before, justice was simply a motivation that Trotti had to give himself in order to get up every morning in the cold, when the thick fog lay across the damp and dreary plain of Lombardy.

  A different kind of cheese in the mousetrap.

  Trotti sat down, holding the telephone to his ear—the same telephone he had always had, with a ponderous dial that hid most of the grubby green plastic and an ancient sticker advertising Columbus cycle frames. The printed colors, like everything else, had faded with age.

  “Signorina, could you put me through to Signora Scola, please, on 3030103.”

  The voice was censorious. “Commissario, the Questore wishes to speak to you.” A hesitation. “He said it was very important.”

  “Then perhaps you could ask him to come through. At about ten o’clock. I have an appointment with Signora Scola at the hospital. I intend to be back here after that.”

  The radiator suddenly grumbled to itself and Trotti put the phone down.

  Another ten months and he would be free. Free to go up into the hills, escape from the city. Escape from the younger, ambitious men.

  8: Baobab

  HER HAND TREMBLING, the woman raised a cigarette to the ill-applied lipstick of her mouth. She had long, thin fingers that were blemished with nicotine. The pale blue eyes watched Priscilla.

  Priscilla sat on the floor, legs outstretched at a right angle.

  Somebody had given the child a large book but she showed no interest in the grey elephants, the bright-eyed tigers, the luxuriant baobabs. The book had slipped from her hands on to the floor. Priscilla said nothing. Priscilla did nothing. She had the same pale blue eyes as her mother. Unlike her mother, Priscilla had long black lashes.

  Somewhere in the building someone shouted.

  Abruptly, Priscilla rolled on to her side, was still for a moment and then levering her weight on to her hands, she pushed her round bottom into the air. Priscilla tottered into a standing position. She went purposefully—more purposefully than the tottering legs—to the window.

  Outside, in the grey light of the morning, fog eddied about the lower trunks of the blackened trees. A small quadrangle, hibernating during the damp winter. Scarcely visible through the fog were the pediatric wards and the opaque windows.

  Priscilla looked out at the garden, then at her own reflection in the cold window pane. With a damp finger she traced a line on the glass. Abruptly she turned towards the sitting woman. “I want to go home.”

  “Not yet, tesoro.” Her mother took the cigarette from her mouth. She spoke with the aspirant sounds of the Val Camonica.

  Priscilla wore denim overalls and on her feet, miniature training shoes, unworn and stunningly white. Both mother and daughter wore thick jumpers. Priscilla’s unwashed hand went from the
damp window to her groin. “Mamma, I want to go home.” The hand began to rub nervously. “Where’s Papa?”

  Signora Scola entered the room.

  A necklace and matching earrings. A silk scarf. An elegant woman, late twenties or early thirties, in a woolen dress over aerobics tights. Under her arm she carried a box of toys, which she set down on the floor.

  “Ouf!” Signora Scola smiled brightly at the mother, waved at the girl, sat down on a chair and pulled off her shoes. “Priscilla, I’ve brought you some toys.” She slipped easily from the chair down on to the worn carpet.

  Priscilla had gone to her mother’s side.

  Without waiting for the little girl’s approval, Signora Scola began to rummage in the box. Conflicting desires on the small face. Priscilla’s eyes went from the woman, sitting cross-legged on the floor, to the box of toys.

  Signora Scola was engrossed in the toys. “I like playing. Don’t you?”

  The child slipped between her mother’s legs.

  Signora Scola looked up. She smiled, as if she had just thought of something agreeable. “Would you like to play with me, Priscilla?”

  “I’m a little girl.”

  “I’m a grown-up but I like to play with toys. Don’t you?” Signora Scola held out her hand beckoning to Priscilla who took the first hesitant step away from her mother, her leaning torso hindered by the reluctant feet. The left hand had returned to her groin.