‘No, just the kid. Anyway, I think it could be more than one adult. But they’re men — definitely men.’
‘Ganza?’
‘Impossible to tell.’
Garramone drew breath, and swore some more. ‘This sick shit … Who are these people? Do you think we’re dealing with politicos, VIPs?’ He stopped to let the possibility sink in, to absorb it. ‘The connection to Ganza, it’s all too close. Chances are that we’re talking about government — if that was Arthur’s clientele, if he knew people like Ganza. Now I’m really wondering why Pino brought me in.’
It was the first time he had referred to the PM by his first name.
‘What’s the deal with you two anyway?’ Scamarcio knew the question would be unwelcome. But he felt he deserved some kind of explanation, given the turn of events.
Garramone seemed untroubled, his mind elsewhere, turning on all the implications. ‘We grew up together in Gela. Schoolfriends from way back when — that’s as far it goes.’
Scamarcio had thought the PM was from Como in the north. He knew Gela and what it stood for — knew what it meant if you grew up in Gela and then made it to prime minister.
‘But they say he was from Lombardy. No one ever mentions Sicily.’
‘He was there for a few years for his father’s business. They came down from Lombardy and then went back. Anyway, that’s not common knowledge, and I don’t want it spread.’
Scamarcio had been too lost in the phone call to realise that, yet again, he was stuck in traffic. The orchestra of horns tuning up for a fight broke his concentration. How could there be traffic on a Sunday afternoon? The Coliseum — the scene of so much suffering, such inhumanity — was on his right now, battered and ominous in the rain. Once, when he’d been inside, he felt sure the smell of fear still lingered there. Two thousand years on, and what had really changed? Maybe the location had just shifted half a mile up the road.
‘I think you need to talk to the friend again,’ said the chief. ‘See if she knows more. And we need to ID that second guy in the photo. Someone must know who he is. Call me when you have something.’
Scamarcio shut the mobile and eased back against the headrest. The rain was running in small rivulets down the window, morphing the world outside into a strange secondary reality, far removed from his own. He reflected on the circularity of it all: two of his colleagues blackmailed Ganza, then Arthur blackmailed him or someone else. Everyone was out for what they could get. Garramone had said the two police officers had been handed the photos by a man they had never seen before. Who was he, and who stood to gain from his actions? Scamarcio had wanted to speak to the officers; but, according to Garramone, they had fled Rome on news of their suspension, and gone back to their folks. He would need to pay them a visit, see if they’d tell him more than they’d told the chief. His thoughts flipped to Garramone and his position in it all. It seemed so odd that he had selected him, Scamarcio, with all his baggage, for this. There were countless other people he could have called on — people with lower profiles, people who kept their heads down. But again he reminded himself that he was probably the easiest option. He could be sucked up and spat out by this investigation, explained away by his conveniently inconvenient past, comfortably consigned to history as another failed social experiment. And who was to say it wasn’t actually better that way?
Scamarcio saw a cluster of Japanese tourists lining up like anxious starlings ready to have their photos taken in front of the Coliseum. This was the arbitrariness of history — these unlikely fragments the past left behind, and how we then chose to interpret them. And it was in this moment of watching that he sensed that he had perhaps misunderstood, that maybe there was a subtler explanation: the chief had chosen him because he was accustomed to the grey areas. He’d grown up with them. He’d never been able to see cases as being just black or white. He hadn’t had the luxury of that kind of upbringing, and that was why Garramone knew he was right for this. Scamarcio cursed him again.
10
He stands up from the desk, goes to the cabinet and pours a scotch, then asks them if they want one. ‘Of course,’ they say. ‘Let’s drink a toast.’
‘There will be no toast.’
‘No toast? Why ever not?’
Funny how Luca does all the talking now: he was always so silent as a boy, always in his brother’s shadow. He’d heard that Marco had been administered a beating, that it had made him soft in the head. Luca has stepped in, taken the reins, and is running his lieutenants hard.
‘I am satisfied with my life. I prefer to keep things as they are.’
‘You prefer?’ Luca drains his scotch, rocks back in the chair, and laughs. ‘Hear that, Marco? He prefers!’
The older brother grunts, and keeps his eyes on the pitch.
‘Pino, I think we need to teach you one of our life lessons: there are certain things that you can’t avoid, certain things that will always come back to find you, whether you want them to or not.’
SCAMARCIO HAD THOUGHT about calling Aurelia and inviting her over to make up for Saturday night; but when it came down to it, he was way too tired. By nine he was asleep, but that turned out to be a good thing because he woke on Monday ready to face the day, ready to pay her a professional visit.
The mortuary lay just three streets back from Flying Squad Headquarters, shaded by a wall of orange trees. It must have been one of the most attractive locations for such an establishment in the world, although the illusion ended as soon as you stepped inside: the paint was peeling from the walls, and the stained floor tiles probably hadn’t been washed since Mussolini addressed Rome from his balcony.
‘Aurelia in?’
The guy on the desk looked exhausted. He seemed to have lost even more hair since Scamarcio had last seen him, a month before.
‘She’s always in. It hasn’t stopped for a fortnight. Is there a serial killer on the loose that no one has told us about?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware.’ The joke made him anxious — a fleeting, paranoid notion that events were escalating silently, unbeknownst to him or the chief, running away from them to a place beyond their control.
The guy on the desk gestured to the autopsy room behind him. ‘Back there.’
When he walked in, Aurelia was dragging a body out of a tub, leaking blood and water everywhere, splattering the walls and flooding the floor.
She hadn’t seen him enter, and he watched as she manoeuvred the corpse onto the examining table, sliding it into place and spreading out its arms and legs. Luckily for her, the man was small and painfully frail — he probably weighed no more than fifty kilos.
She stopped for a moment and turned, sensing his presence.
‘Ah, Scamarcio, you always catch me at my best.’
He retreated towards the door, anxious about the reception she was going to give him. ‘Shall I come back later?’
She pushed her goggles up onto her head and used the wrist of her gloved hand to scratch below an eye. She looked tired, and seemed older than the last time he’d seen her — her skin was paler and less taut, and her eyes were lacking their usual shine.
‘No. It won’t be any different then — probably worse. What’s happening in this city? The last few weeks have been crazy.’
‘It’s the change of season; it has a strange effect on strange minds. Who’ve you got there?’
‘Not sure yet, but it seems like a reprisal.’
‘In the bathtub?’
She touched the head, and inclined it towards him. ‘There’s a tiny entry wound to the right — it must have been done from very close. And, as we all know, the closer you get, the more professional you are.’
‘The bathtub’s a bit way out there, isn’t it? What happened to the trusty drive-by?’
She yawned and almost covered her mouth with a bloody
glove, then thought better of it. ‘God knows, it’s changing all the time. When they lock up the old guys, and the young ones take over, you start to see all sorts of weird shit. Anyway, that’s not why you’re here, is it? I didn’t think this was one of yours.’
He felt relieved. Whatever she thought of him, she wasn’t going to hold it against him now. He stepped nearer, but not too close. The smell from the bath guy was overpowering.
‘No, I’m here for something else, but it’s not mine either.’
She raised a quizzical eyebrow.
‘Long story. Wouldn’t want to bore you.’
‘Don’t insult me. Whose case?’
‘Filippi’s. Filippi’s rentboy.’
She laughed, and almost broke into a cough. ‘I like that: “Filippi’s rentboy.” Poor Filippi would never have a rentboy — he’s far too henpecked.’
She turned towards the freezer cabinets behind her, searched for the correct door, turned a key, and pulled out the drawer. There was the usual luggage tag on the end of a blackened foot protruding from beneath a sheet.
She threw off the cover, challenging him to take a look. The body was worse now: He could see traces of tissue, and a gelatinous eye among the blood. It was more real this time — more human.
He tried not to seem affected. ‘Find anything of note?’
‘It was the obvious that killed him — no surprises there. But there was something, yes.’
He could tell that she was amused by him; that she understood he was struggling with the wrecked body right there between them.
‘Tell me,’ he said. He needed a glass of water, but didn’t like to ask.
‘He’d been injected with something before he died — morphine, to be precise.’
‘Morphine?’
‘Not enough to kill him, but enough to knock him out, to stop him from feeling pain.’
‘What? That doesn’t make any sense.’
She shrugged. ‘I can only tell you what I found.’
He thought for a moment and tried to take it in.
‘You mean like a mercy killing — like the killer didn’t want him to suffer?’
‘It would seem that way, yes.’
He breathed slowly. To his right, he saw the bathtub man’s rubbery arm now hanging from the exam table, the threadbare thatch of pubic hair, and the emaciated thighs, saw the watery blood slowly dripping onto the tiles below. It wasn’t adding up.
‘If someone had been injected with this dose of morphine and had been stabbed this many times, would they be capable for a moment of standing up, and retrieving a camera from the floor and placing it on a shelf?’ He realised how stupid this sounded as soon as it had left his lips.
Aurelia D’Amato shook her head and threw him a concerned look. ‘I suppose it’s possible — stabbing victims are capable of energetic actions before they collapse, and his brainstem was untouched. But it seems unlikely. I imagine that he’d have been out cold pretty quickly — although, like I say, the dose wasn’t enough to kill him.’ She tugged a stray strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Is that what happened? You found a camera?’
‘Yes — all smashed in. But we’ve drawn a blank; it hasn’t given us anything.’
She frowned. ‘Strange. Why not just take it away?’
‘I’m asking myself the same thing.’ He paused, and locked eyes with her. ‘Is Filippi pursuing this one?’
‘He’s got his hands full like the rest of us, and when was the last time any of you had time for a dead hooker?’
‘OK — just wondered.’
She pushed the drawer back into the cabinet. ‘The strange case of Filippi’s rentboy,’ she said, almost as a parting eulogy to see it on its way.
‘Filippi’s what?’
They both swung round. Filippi was in the doorway, and he didn’t look happy.
‘First, he’s not my rentboy; second, what the fuck are you doing, Scamarcio? Why are you following me around like a fucking shadow?’
Scamarcio raised both palms in a placatory gesture, and took a step towards him. ‘Sorry, Oscar, sorry. Fact of the matter is that I wanted to do one last check before finishing this favour for a friend. I didn’t want to bother you, as I know you’re up to your eyes right now. I was down here on another case, and just thought I’d ask Aurelia about this one while I was in.’
‘And what was this last thing you were checking up on?’ Filippi sounded sceptical now, like he wasn’t going to be a pushover this time.
‘Like I say, the vic was a friend of a friend. I can’t go into details. He was worried about him for a while — worried he’d got into drugs, and worse. He asked me to find out if there was anything in his system. Aurelia has just confirmed to me that there was, so now I have to break it to him that his worst fears were true. It probably would have been better if he hadn’t known, but there you are.’
Filippi blew the air out through his cheeks, like a baby in a pram, Scamarcio thought. ‘OK, I get it. But can you leave this alone now? Nothing personal, but I don’t like you treading on my toes. We’re all watching our backs these days — cuts are in the offing.’
Scamarcio smiled. ‘Understood. I’ll get out of your hair.’
Filippi waved a hand away. ‘Listen, this is not a huge case, and you’ve always seemed like a decent guy. I just don’t need any extra hassle, that’s all. Need to keep things sweet.’
Scamarcio took his hand, held it up, and grasped it in the Roman way. ‘Got you. You won’t see me again, I promise.’
He turned and threw a parting salute to Aurelia, who was now casting him a sideways look. ‘I’ll call you about the other thing.’
‘Make sure you do,’ she said.
‘By the way’, said Filippi. ‘You speak to that creature upstairs? Did she give you anything?’
‘No. She didn’t know of any enemies, didn’t know why anyone would want to kill him.’
‘I see.’ Once again, Filippi seemed unconvinced.
Scamarcio had settled into a café on Piazza d’Aracoeli, in need of some time out after the head-to-head at the morgue. He called Garramone.
‘I’ve got a problem with Filippi.’
‘Which is?’
‘I was with the ME this morning, talking about Arthur, and he walked in and started throwing a fit about me cramping his style, taking his case.’
‘Why does he care? It can’t be a major deal, this one.’
‘God knows, but he’s antsy. Maybe he thinks someone’s checking up on him — doesn’t trust him to do his job.’
The chief fell silent for a moment. ‘Let me think about it, while you stay away from him and follow up the other stuff — the other guy in the photo.’
‘And I want to talk to our blackmailing colleagues. Can you get me their details?’
‘Yeah, sure. I hope they give you more than they did me.’
‘Perhaps they’re covering for someone. Maybe they’ll say more if it’s just me, informal setting and all?’
The chief fell silent again. Scamarcio heard a pen tapping against a desk, a drawer being opened, the gentle beat of the clock on the office wall. He pictured the certificates beneath it, straightened out, all back to normal.
‘Now I think of it, I’m not sure it’s a good idea you leaving Rome.’
‘You just said I needed to get out from under Filippi’s feet?’
Garramone sighed, sounding like he was sinking beneath the weight of it all. ‘One of the officers is up north now, in Milan; I think the other has gone home to Naples, but I’ll check. I’ll call you later with the info.’
He hung up, and Scamarcio observed the passers-by making their way across the piazza. This was the diplomatic district: an army truck stood idle at the corner, chugging exhaust fumes onto the pavement, while
two soldiers in fatigues chatted inside. Opposite was the Syrian embassy — another one of Pino’s friends. He tipped back his espresso, felt the anxiety build, figured the coffee wasn’t helping. His mobile buzzed almost in step with his addled brain: it was an unknown number this time.
‘Scamarcio.’
‘It’s Maria, from the other night.’ It was a strange voice, affectedly feminine, but too low. ‘From McDonalds in Testaccio. You asked me about Max.’
Scamarcio sat up straighter. ‘Ah, of course. Sorry, I was somewhere else for a moment.’
‘Figured me for an old girlfriend?’
He laughed. ‘You know how it is.’
‘Sure do.’ It was sad the way she said it, as though she didn’t.
‘I’m glad you called. You remember anything?’
‘Maybe. But I’d like to talk to you in person. You know the Riviera café in Trastevere — Via delle Luce? Could you meet me there in an hour?’
Via delle Luce was quiet. She’d chosen a place away from the lunchtime throng. It was shirtsleeves weather, and Scamarcio caught an early promise of summer in the warm currents on the breeze. In a month, the heat would be uncomfortable; in two, the city would no longer be habitable, and they’d all be counting the days until they could flee for the coast or their second homes in Umbria. But that wouldn’t be his choice — he preferred to take his leave when no one else was around, when the angry shouts and self-pitying tears of stressed parents and spoiled children had finally left the beaches.
He tracked her approach: well-cut jeans, a diaphanous blouse, designer sunglasses. A young man stopped to look, and others in the café followed suit.
She tried a smile, displaying perfect teeth and a perfect jaw-line — maybe a too-perfect jaw-line?
‘Detective.’ They kissed on both cheeks in the formal manner, and she threw her bag onto the nearest chair.
He pulled out a seat for her, opposite. She sat carefully, fished out a packet of Camels and a lighter from the bag, lit up, and blew the smoke to her left, careful to avoid the table. He watched her for a while, trying to work something out; he wasn’t quite sure what. Maybe how it all hung together, why it all worked — aesthetically, that is.
The Few Page 5