Temporary Perfections

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  “Did the Carabinieri look into it?”

  “Yes, they did. And they realized almost immediately that this guy systematically calls police stations and Carabinieri barracks all over Italy to report sightings of dozens of missing people. Six or seven other people called in to say that they thought they’d seen a girl who looked like Manuela at the Ventimiglia train station, in Bologna, in Brescia dressed as a gypsy, in a small town near Crotone, and some other place that I can’t remember. All of them were interviewed and reports were filed, but nothing solid emerged. The Carabinieri explained to me that every time a missing person is discussed on television, they receive a bunch of phone calls from people who claim to have information but actually know nothing at all. They may not all be pathological liars, technically speaking, but they do it to get attention.”

  I let this new information sink in, and realized that at this point I was curious to take a look at the file.

  “All right, Sabino, let me take a look at the documents. I’ll see if there are grounds to consider a new investigation, and maybe to hire a private investigator. But if I don’t see anything, if I decide there’s no point in looking into it any further, you’re going to have to take back that check.”

  “Just deposit it for now. We’ll talk again after you’ve had a chance to examine the documents. And reading a file is work, in any case.”

  I was about to say that I’d take the money when I’d earned it. I was going to say it in a courteous yet firm tone of voice, one that would not allow him to answer. Then it struck me as a pretentious cliché. So I just told him to send me the documents as soon as possible. He said that I’d have a complete copy of the entire file that afternoon, and that was the end of our conversation.

  To whatever extent possible, it’s best to avoid pretentious clichés, I thought.

  That afternoon, someone from Fornelli’s law office came and handed Pasquale a sizable stack of files. Pasquale carried them into my office and reminded me that in about half an hour we had a meeting with the building commissioner from a small town in the surrounding province; our client had received a formal notification that he was under judicial investigation for malfeasance and illegal approval of subdivisions. For all I knew, the building commissioner was a perfectly law-abiding person, but in some small towns politics takes the form of anonymous accusations and complaints with the public prosecutor’s office.

  I let the half hour slide by as I leafed through the file without really focusing on it. More than anything else, I felt it. Those photocopies had an aura that planted a deep and terrible sense of unease in me. I thought about the girl’s parents and about how I would have experienced something as horrifying as the death of a daughter. I tried to imagine it, but I couldn’t. It was so staggering that my imagination failed to provide me with a specific depiction of it. I could barely guess at the nature and scope of that horror.

  Why would a normal young woman, with a normal life and a normal family, vanish from one moment to the next, without warning, without giving a sign, without leaving the slightest trace?

  Was it possible that she had simply left of her own free will and was so heartless as to abandon her family to its anguish and despair? I decided that wasn’t possible.

  If she hadn’t left of her own free will, two possibilities remained. Either someone had kidnapped her—but why?—or someone had killed her, intentionally or accidentally, and then arranged to conceal her body.

  Those were some brilliant ideas, I thought. Signore and Signora Ferraro and my colleague Fornelli had certainly made the right decision when they hired a latter-day Auguste Dupin like myself.

  The big question, though, was this: What could I do? Even if I read the file and managed to find a shortcoming in the investigation, what would the next step be? In spite of my conversation with Fornelli, I had absolutely no intention of hiring a private investigator. There must have been good investigators around, but I’d never been lucky enough to meet one. I had had only two experiences with detective agencies, and they had both been disasters. I’d sworn I’d never make that mistake again.

  Moreover, the notion that I might start investigating the matter myself was crazy, crazy but dangerously enticing.

  The only serious option, if I did manage to identify a plausible clue of any kind, was to request a meeting with the prosecutor and—very tactfully, because such people were quick to take offense—suggest that he investigate a little further before closing the case once and for all.

  When the building commissioner arrived, I was in the throes of this sort of speculation. Luckily, I now had to think about him and his problems with the law, which distracted me from my tortured logic.

  He seemed pretty upset. He was a high school teacher. This was the first time he’d held government office, and this was also his first brush with the law. He was afraid he might be arrested any minute.

  I asked him to explain the situation in general terms. I took a quick look at the official notice he’d received and read through a few other documents he’d brought with him. In the end, I told him he could relax: As far as I could tell, there was really no serious evidence of wrongdoing on his part.

  He seemed dubious, but relieved. He thanked me and we said our good-byes; I promised to meet with the prosecutor and inform him that my client was entirely willing to come in for an interview and felt sure he could clear up his role in the matter.

  One by one, my colleagues—oh, how I dislike that word—came into my office to say good night before going home. This ceremony always makes me feel like a doddering old fool.

  When I was finally alone, I called down to the Japanese take-out place a couple of blocks from my office and ordered a truly outsized meal of sushi, sashimi, temaki, uramaki, and a soybean salad. When the woman taking my order over the phone asked if I wanted something to drink, I hesitated for just a moment, then asked for a well-chilled bottle of white wine as well.

  “Chopsticks and glasses for two, I imagine,” the young woman said.

  “Of course, for two,” I answered.

  8.

  Forty-five minutes later, I was clearing a jumbled mess of plastic trays, little bottles, chopsticks, empty packets, and napkins off my desk. When I finished, I poured myself another glass of Gewürztraminer, stuck the plastic cork back into the bottle—I hate those plastic corks, but I have to admit that I haven’t had any corked wine since they were invented—and put it in the fridge. Every step performed slowly and very carefully. That’s how I always do things when I am preparing myself to begin a new task that makes me anxious. I do everything I can to delay the moment when I’ll have to begin, and I have to say, I’m pretty creative about it.

  They call it a pathological tendency to procrastinate.

  Apparently, this is a syndrome that is typical of insecure individuals who lack self-esteem; they continually put off disagreeable tasks in order to avoid being faced with their own shortcomings, fears, and limitations. I read something along those lines once, when I was leafing through a book called How to Stop Procrastinating and Start Living. It was a self-help book that explained the syndrome’s causes and then suggested about two hundred pages of crazy exercises to be used—I’m quoting verbatim—“to rid yourself of this disease of will and live a full, productive life, free of frustrations.”

  I thought to myself that I wasn’t all that eager to have such a productive life, that self-help books that tell you how to change your life give me hives, and that a certain amount of frustration really didn’t bother me. So I put the book back on the shelf where I’d found it—as usual I was in a bookstore reading for free—and I bought an Alan Bennett book and went home.

  After clearing away every trace of my Japanese dinner, after drinking a little more wine, after checking in vain for new e-mail, I realized the time had come.

  I decided to read the file in the chronological order in which the authorities conducted their investigations, beginning with the event in question and moving forward from t
here. That’s not usually how I go through a file.

  If I’m examining a file in which a warrant has been issued and my client is in jail, or under house arrest, the first thing I do is to read the court order for the warrant, which is the last document in the judicial proceedings. If I know the judge who wrote it, I immediately form an opinion about whether it’s a serious matter or not. After the judicial order, I read the other documents, working backward from last to first. I do the same thing if I’ve been hired after a trial verdict has been handed down, meaning first I read the court order that I’m being hired to appeal, and then I read everything else.

  But in the case of the missing Manuela Ferraro, I thought it would be best to retrace the investigation as it developed, through the documents, doing my best to intuit whatever I could about the story behind those documents.

  It was what’s called a “Form 44 file,” in reference to the papers filed in cases with unknown defendants. Printed on the cover were the name of the missing person, the date of her disappearance, and the classification of the crime—Article 605 of the Italian Penal Code, abduction. This is the only crime heading that can be invoked when a person disappears and there is no evidence to support other, more specific theories.

  The first document in the file was the report from the Carabinieri—signed by Inspector Navarra, a non-commissioned officer I knew and respected—informing the prosecutor’s office of the existence of the missing persons report filed by the parents and the transcripts of the investigation’s early interviews.

  I began with the statement of the young woman who had taken Manuela to the train station. Anita Salvemini—that was her name—had also been a guest at the trulli where Manuela spent the weekend. She’d given Manuela a ride because she was going to Ostuni to meet some friends, but that was the first and only time they’d met.

  During the twenty minutes of the short car trip from the trulli to the train station, they chatted about inconsequential matters. Manuela told her she was studying law in Rome and said she planned to return to Rome by train later that evening or the next morning.

  No, Anita didn’t know whether Manuela was planning to meet someone at the Bari train station, nor did she know if Manuela was seeing anyone, had a boyfriend, and so on.

  No, Manuela hadn’t seemed worried to her. Moreover, she hadn’t really observed her carefully for the obvious reason that she—Anita—was driving the car, and she therefore needed to keep her eyes on the road.

  No, she didn’t recall Manuela making or receiving any calls during the car trip between the trulli and the Ostuni train station. Manuela may have taken her cell phone out of her purse at some point. Maybe she got a text, or sent one, but Anita couldn’t really say with any certainty.

  No, she couldn’t remember exactly how Manuela was dressed that afternoon. She’d definitely had a large dark-colored bag with her, and a smaller purse, and she thought she might have been wearing jeans and a light-colored t-shirt.

  No, she couldn’t remember the exact time of their departure from the trulli, nor could she remember exactly when they arrived at the train station and she said good-bye to Manuela. They probably left a little after four, which would mean they got there around 4:30.

  No, she couldn’t say exactly when Manuela’s train was scheduled to depart. Probably shortly after they arrived at Ostuni, but that was a guess, because she had no memory of having talked about it.

  No, she had nothing more to add.

  Read, approved, and signed.

  After that deposition came the statements of the three friends—two young women and a young man—who’d been at the trulli with Manuela. These three statements were short and said basically the same thing: They’d planned to return to Bari on Sunday night. Then, because there was a party, the three friends had decided to stay until Monday. Manuela still wanted to go home on Sunday, as they had originally planned. She told them not to worry, because she’d found a ride to Ostuni, and she planned to catch a train there.

  The end.

  Then came the statement of the ticket clerk Fornelli had mentioned. The clerk recognized Manuela, though he didn’t know what time she’d come to his window to buy her ticket.

  From the report, it appeared that the Carabinieri had checked the schedule for trains departing the station of Ostuni. Manuela could have taken either a Eurostar, an express, or one of two locals between 5:02 P.M. and 6:58 P.M.

  The Carabinieri had been very thorough and had interviewed the conductors on all those trains: There were ten or so statements—all identical, nearly all useless.

  The conductors were each shown a photograph of the girl, and they answered that they couldn’t remember ever having seen her.

  Only one, the conductor on the 6:50 train, said that Manuela’s face was familiar. He thought he’d seen that girl before, but he wasn’t sure if it had been on Sunday afternoon or some other time.

  There followed a series of transcripts of the statements of the other young people who’d spent the weekend at the trulli. None of the statements was even remotely useful. Only one thing caught my attention: The Carabinieri asked everyone whether narcotics had been used over the weekend. Everyone interviewed ruled that out, but no one had been able—or willing—to say whether Manuela ever used drugs, even occasionally.

  Then there was the sketchy information obtained from two of Manuela’s friends who were also students in Rome: Nicoletta Abbrescia—the girl who shared an apartment with Manuela—and Caterina Pontrandolfi.

  The Carabinieri had asked them about drugs, too. Both admitted that Manuela might have smoked a joint every now and then, but said she never used anything stronger. Between the lines of the bureaucratic language, there were glimpses of embarrassment and perhaps even reticence, but that was probably normal and understandable, since the conversation was, after all, with the Carabinieri.

  But the most interesting part of their depositions concerned a certain Michele Cantalupi, Manuela’s most recent boyfriend. Both young women described a troubled relationship, marked by frequent fights, that came to a stormy end that included verbal and even physical violence.

  The Carabinieri reported that in the days immediately following Manuela’s disappearance they had not been able to track down Cantalupi. His parents told them that their son was on vacation, out of the country. The detectives were puzzled by their responses (in the report, they wrote that the parents’ attitude had seemed somewhat evasive), and they requested authorization to pull the records for Cantalupi’s cell phone, as well as those for Manuela’s cell phone and her ATM records. They wanted to see with whom they’d been in contact most recently and more importantly to determine whether Cantalupi really had been out of the country for several days.

  One week later, in another long report, the Carabinieri detailed a number of further steps that had been taken in the investigation. First, they had conducted an interview with Michele Cantalupi, who had returned from his vacation in the meantime. Cantalupi confirmed that he had been Manuela’s boyfriend for nearly a year; he confirmed that the relationship had ended badly, but he pointed out that it was all over many months prior to her disappearance, and that in fact they’d been on much better terms lately. The relationship had ended for a variety of reasons, and Manuela was the one who decided to end it. He admitted that there had been fights, some of them violent. He also admitted that on occasion those fights had taken place in the presence of friends. No, there had never been any assault, no punches thrown. He was informed that one of Manuela’s girlfriends said that during a fight, in her presence, slaps had been exchanged. He admitted that there had in fact been a slap, but said that it had been Manuela who slapped him, not the other way around. He admitted that he shoved her and said she reacted by slapping him. That was the end of it, and that was also the only time there had been any form of physical conflict. No, he didn’t have another girlfriend now. No, he didn’t know whether Manuela was seeing someone else in Rome. He admitted that he had asked her, but she to
ld him it was none of his business. Yes, they had met once, they’d had a cup of coffee together and chatted a while. This was in downtown Bari, in early August. No, there had been no conflict. They had said good-bye amicably.

  I found the transcript puzzling. Reading between the lines of the police report, you could see Cantalupi trying to make it all sound normal and peaceful, when, perhaps, it wasn’t completely peaceful, at least not according to Manuela’s girlfriends.

  On the other hand, the cell phone records seemed to rule out Michele Cantalupi’s involvement in Manuela’s disappearance. First of all, it was clear that for several days, his phone had been routed through foreign cell networks, so he really had been out of the country. Second, there was no contact—that Sunday or in the days before that—between Manuela and her ex-boyfriend.

  Manuela’s cell phone didn’t seem to get a lot of use. The cell phone records covered the week prior to her disappearance: only a few calls and a few text messages, all to girlfriends or to her mother. None of the numbers belonged to anyone outside of her small circle of friends. Nothing unusual, except perhaps for how few calls and messages there were. Taken alone, however, that was not particularly significant.

  That Sunday, Manuela had received only two phone calls, and she had exchanged text messages, again, with her mother and with a girlfriend. The last sign of life in the phone records was a text message she sent to her mother in the afternoon. After that, nothing. The cell phone went dead for good.

  Her friend was interviewed by the Carabinieri, but she’d been unable to supply any useful information. She’d called Manuela to say hello, since she had to go back to Rome and they hadn’t had a chance to get together in the previous few days. She had no idea what Manuela was planning to do that evening, how she would be getting back to Rome, much less what might have happened to her.