Reasonable Doubts gg-3

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  “I’d like to have a child. Right now I’d say that’s a lot more unrealistic than the first wish.”

  She looked at me strangely. She didn’t seem surprised, though. It was as if she’d expected that answer, too. “And what colour is it?”

  I leafed through the book, then closed it. “Many, many colours.”

  This time she didn’t insist on having me say the exact colour and didn’t make any comment. I liked the fact that she didn’t make any comment. I liked that naturalness, I liked the way everything seemed right, at that moment.

  “The third one.”

  “You told me one of the wishes can be a secret.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is the secret one.”

  “All right. But you still have to tell me the colour, even if the wish is secret.”

  Right. The wish is secret, not the colour. OK. I took the atlas and opened it at the section on reds.

  Wine, crimson, vermillion, powder rose, red rose petal, modern coral, neon red, cerise, terracotta, garnet, flame, ruby, academy red, rust, radicchio, dark red, port.

  “Crimson. I’d say crimson. Now it’s your turn.”

  “I want Anna Midori to be happy and free. And that wish is leaf green.”

  There was something in the way she said it that sent shivers down my spine.

  “Then I’d like to know if Fabio is guilty or innocent. If he told me the truth or not. I’d like to know.” She hesitated. “This desire to know is brown, but it changes shade constantly. Sometimes it’s the colour of mahogany, sometimes it’s like leather, or tea, or bitter chocolate. Sometimes it turns almost black.” She looked me straight in the eyes.

  “And the third one?”

  “My third one’s a secret, too.”

  “And what colour is it?”

  She didn’t say anything, but leafed through the atlas to the end of the section on reds. My heart started beating slightly faster.

  Just then, we heard a prolonged, heart-rending scream. Natsu put down her glass and rushed to her daughter’s room. I ran after her.

  Midori was lying on her back, the sheets thrown off, the pillow on the floor. She had stopped screaming and was talking now in a laboured way, in an incomprehensible language, and trembling. Natsu put her hand on the girl’s forehead and told her Mummy was here, but she didn’t stop trembling, didn’t open her eyes, and kept talking.

  Not even realizing what I was doing, I took Midori’s hand and said, “It’s all right, sweetheart. Everything’s all right.”

  It was like magic. The girl opened her eyes, without seeing us. There was a look of astonishment on her face. She trembled one more time, said a few more words in that mysterious language, but calmly now, then closed her eyes again and let out one last sigh, like a sigh of relief. As if the malign force that had made her tremble had been sucked out of her at the touch of my hand. The sound of my voice.

  I had caught her as she fell. I had saved her. I was the catcher in the rye.

  If a body catch a body coming through the rye…

  The line hung there in my head, like a magic formula. I had a hunch as to what had probably happened: the girl had confused me with her father and that had driven away the monsters. Natsu and I looked at each other, and I realized that she was thinking the same thing. I also realized, very clearly and very insistently, that I had rarely in my life had such a feeling of perfect intimacy.

  We stayed there, in silence, for a few more minutes, just to be on the safe side. The girl was sleeping now, her face calm, her breathing regular.

  Natsu put the pillow back in place and tucked her in. We didn’t talk until we were back in the kitchen.

  “I told her her father had to go away on a business trip. A very long trip, abroad, and I didn’t know when he’d be back. I don’t know how, but she knew everything. Maybe she heard me talking on the phone to someone when I thought she was asleep. I don’t know. But one evening we were watching television and there was this scene in a film where policemen followed a robber and arrested him. Without looking at me, Midori asked me if that was how they’d arrested her daddy.”

  She broke off. Clearly she didn’t like to tell – or remember – that story. She poured herself another rum. Then she realized she hadn’t asked me if I wanted one. I did, and poured one for myself.

  “Obviously I asked her what she was thinking of. Her daddy was away on business, I said. She didn’t believe me, she replied, but that was the last time she asked about it. Since then, maybe two or three nights a week, she’s been having nightmares. The terrible thing about it is that she almost never wakes up. If she woke up I could talk to her, reassure her. But she doesn’t. It’s as if she’s a prisoner in a strange, frightening world. And I can’t enter it, I can’t save her.”

  I asked her if she had taken Midori to see a child psychologist. A stupid question, I thought, as soon as I’d asked it. Of course she’d taken her to a psychologist.

  “We go once a week. Gradually we’ve managed to get her to tell us her dreams…”

  “Does she dream that they’re coming to get you, too?”

  Natsu looked at me in surprise for a few moments. What did I know about what goes on in the head of a six-year-old girl? She nodded weakly.

  “The psychologist says it’s going to take a long time. He says it was a mistake not telling her the truth from the start. He says we should be able to tell her eventually that her father is in prison. Unless her father is released before that. We decided to wait for the result of the appeal before making a decision about exactly how and when.”

  When she said the result of the appeal I felt a hollow stab in the pit of my stomach.

  “It isn’t going to be easy. You do realize that, I hope?”

  She nodded.

  I remembered my own childhood nightmares. I remembered nights spent with the light on, waiting to see the daylight filter through the shutters before I could finally sleep. I remembered other nights when the fear was so unbearable that I spent all night sleeping on a chair outside my parents’ bedroom, wrapped in a blanket. I was eight or nine. I knew perfectly well that I couldn’t ask to sleep in their bed, because I was too old. So, when the nightmares woke me, I would get up, take the blanket, drag a chair from the living room all the way to the door of my parents’ bedroom, would curl up on it, cover myself and stay there until dawn, when I would go back to my own little room.

  The anguish of those nights came back to me, and I felt the same painful, helpless compassion for the child I was then and that beautiful, unhappy little girl now.

  I didn’t say all this to Natsu. I’d have liked to, I think, but I couldn’t.

  Instead, I stood up. It had got very late, I said. I’d better go, because apart from anything else I was working the next day. We walked out into the hall.

  “Wait a moment,” she said.

  She went back into the kitchen, and came back again a few seconds later with a CD.

  “It’s the one we were listening to tonight. Take it.”

  I held it in my hand, looking at the title, silently, trying to think of something to say. In the end, though, I just said goodnight and slipped out, as quick as a thief, and down the stairs of that quiet apartment block. Ten minutes later I was in my car, listening to the CD as I drove home along the cold, deserted street.

  Home was cold and deserted, too.

  15

  Tancredi’s call came as I was leaving the clerk of the court’s office, after a depressing look through a number of files.

  “Carmelo.”

  “Where are you, Guerrieri?”

  “In Tahiti, on holiday. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Be careful. With jokes like that, someone might die laughing.”

  He told me he had to see me. From his tone it was clear it was about something he had no intention of telling me over the phone, so I didn’t ask him any questions. He suggested we meet in a bar near the courthouse, and twenty minutes later we were sitting in front o
f two of the worst cappuccinos in the region.

  “Do you have the passenger list?”

  Tancredi nodded. Then he looked around, as if to check that no one was watching us. No one could have been watching us, because the bar was empty, apart from the fat lady behind the counter. The perpetrator of those delightful cappuccinos.

  “Among the passengers coming from Montenegro was a gentleman who’s quite well known in certain circles.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Luca Romanazzi, class of 1968. He’s from Bari, but lives in Rome. Twice arrested and tried for Mafia connections and drug trafficking, twice acquitted. Middle-class family, father a municipal employee, mother a nursery school teacher. Brothers normal. A normal family. He’s the proverbial black sheep. We’re sure he took part in a series of armoured-car robberies – according to various informants – and that he was involved in trafficking with Albania. Drugs and luxury cars. But we have nothing that’ll stick. The son of a bitch is good.”

  “He could have organized this whole operation.”

  “Yes, he could. He could also be an accomplice of your client’s, to take another plausible hypothesis.”

  “I need to show his face to Paolicelli.”

  “Of course.”

  “That means I need a photo, Carmelo.”

  He didn’t reply. He looked around again, moving only his eyes, and then took a yellow envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and gave it to me.

  “I’d be grateful if this stayed confidential, Guerrieri. And after you’ve shown it to your client I’d be grateful if you burned it, or ate it, or whatever you like.”

  I was listening to him with the envelope in my hand.

  “And I’d also be grateful if you put it away. For example, doing a complicated thing like putting it in your pocket before everyone in the bar realizes that Inspector Tancredi delivers supposedly confidential papers to a criminal lawyer.”

  I didn’t bother saying that “everyone in the bar” seemed to me a bit of an exaggeration, seeing that the lady behind the bar had been joined only by a little old man who was drinking a double brandy, completely uninterested in us or the rest of the world. I thanked him and put the envelope in my pocket. Tancredi was already getting up to go back to police headquarters.

  16

  Every job has its breaking points, its fault lines. Cracks on the wall of consciousness that make you realize – or should make you realize – that you ought to stop, change, do something else. If it’s at all possible. Of course it almost never is. And besides, you almost never have the courage to even think about it.

  I had many symptoms of a breaking point coming. One of them was the nausea I always felt when I had to visit the prison. It would begin as a creeping anxiety when I was still in my office, continue as I was on my way there, and turn to disgust when I was at the checkpoint and they were registering my name, taking my mobile phone, locking it in a cabinet, and opening the first of the many doors I would have to go through to get to the interview room.

  That day the disgust was particularly strong, and physical.

  As I waited for them to bring in Paolicelli, I asked myself what I would do if he recognized the man in the photo. I’d go back to Tancredi, and he would tell me that he couldn’t do anything else for me. Taking a photo from the Flying Squad databank was already a big favour. He could hardly start an investigation, based purely on the hypothesis that Luca Romanazzi had stuffed Fabio Paolicelli’s car full of drugs, either directly or through an intermediary. I didn’t need a policeman or a private detective for an investigation like this, I needed a magician.

  If Paolicelli didn’t recognize the photo, it was all a lot simpler. I had done my best – nobody could deny that – and all I could do now was limit the damage. My duty became much simpler. The appeal was completely hopeless and we had to plea-bargain. No dilemma – I’d had enough of dilemmas, even more so in this case than in others – no effort, nothing to study. Nothing.

  And into these reflections there crept, like some quick-moving, repulsive little animal creeping into the well-scrubbed kitchen of a house in the country, the idea that if things went that way, Paolicelli would be in prison for quite a long time.

  And I’d know how to make use of that time.

  “What is it?” he asked me as I held out the photo.

  “Take a look at it and tell me if you know this man or if you’ve ever seen him.”

  He looked at it for a long time, but, from the way he started to shake his head imperceptibly, I realized that my investigation was already over. The shaking became more marked and at last he looked up at me and gave me back the photo.

  “Never seen him. Or if I have, I’ve forgotten. Who is he?”

  I was tempted to reply that, since he didn’t know him, it didn’t matter. But I didn’t do that.

  “He’s a criminal. A top-level drug trafficker. At least the police suspect he is, though they’ve never been able to pin anything on him. He was on board the same ferry as you. My suspicion was that he had something to do with what happened to you.”

  “What do you mean, your suspicion was? Don’t you still suspect him?”

  It was an intelligent question, and I gave a stupid answer.

  “You didn’t recognize him.”

  “What does that mean? I didn’t see who put the drugs in my car. How could I recognize him? If there’s a reason to suspect this character had something to do with my case, what difference does it make if I don’t recognize him?”

  His reply annoyed me. I had to make an effort to restrain the impulse to give him a curt answer, to the effect that I was the lawyer and he was the client. I was the professional and he was the prisoner. I had to make an effort not to pay him back for the fact that he was right.

  “Theoretically, it shouldn’t make any difference. But in practice, even though we may suspect this man, we have no pretext to present this suspicion in court if you don’t recognize him. If you can’t say that you noticed this man hanging around your car, for example. Or that he was unusually interested in you, in when you’d be going back-”

  I broke off abruptly, realizing that what I was saying could be taken as a suggestion. I could be telling him that if he said these things, whether they were true or not, there was a glimmer of hope. It could be construed as an incitement to invent a false story, to pretend that he recognized him.

  “In other words, you didn’t see him, you don’t know him, and I can’t stand up in front of the appeal court judges and say, please acquit Signor Paolicelli because a man suspected by the police of being a criminal, a trafficker, was travelling on the same ferry.”

  “And what difference would it make if I recognized him?”

  I shook my head. He was right again. It didn’t make a damned bit of difference. I was starting to realize how stupid, amateurish and childish I had been to embark on an investigation like this without knowing in which direction I was going. An old marshal in the carabinieri once told me that the secret of success in an investigation lies in knowing what the real objective is. If you go into it blindly, you don’t achieve anything and may even make things worse.

  I felt very tired. “I don’t know. It was worth a try. If you’d recognized the man it might have given me something to work on. I don’t even know how we could have worked on it, but this way I don’t see any prospects.”

  “Show the photo to my wife. Maybe she noticed some detail that escaped me.”

  Right, once again. In theory.

  I would show the photo to Natsu but, for some reason, I was certain she wouldn’t recognize him. I was certain this whole thing would come to nothing and that Paolicelli would come to a bad end.

  I saw all this clearly, and felt like someone watching from a safe vantage point as someone else drowns. Like someone pretending, even to himself, that he’s saddened by what’s happening.

  But it isn’t true. Because in fact he’s pleased. Disgustingly pleased.

  As I le
ft the prison, I told myself that sooner or later I’d have to find myself an honest job.

  17

  Natsu came into the office the next day and, as I’d expected, didn’t recognize the man in the photo. She took it, asked me who he was, and looked at it carefully, for a long time. Such a long time that after a while I thought that, against all expectation, she had recognized him. Then, just as I was thinking this, she gave me back the photo, pursing her lips and shaking her head.

  We were both silent. She seemed to be looking for something, at some indeterminate point above her and to her left. Then her eyes changed direction completely, moving down and to her right. It seemed as if she was having a dialogue with herself. She wasn’t paying any attention to me, which gave me a chance to look at her for a long time, savouring her features, her hazel eyes. And vaguely thinking many things. Too many things.

  “There’s nothing we can do, is there?” She said this with a strange intonation in her voice. Hard to say if it was resignation, calm despair or something else. Like an unwitting hint of anticipation.

  I shrugged and shook my head. “I don’t know. This was worth a try. I can’t think of anything else that makes sense.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We wait for the appeal hearing, hoping we get a bright idea, or that something happens.”

  “It won’t.”

  “If nothing new happens, the only sensible thing to do is to plea-bargain. As I told you. As I already told him.”

  “In other words, he gets a reduction in his sentence and stays in prison.”

  “Theoretically, after the plea-bargaining we could try asking for house arrest. However…”

  I left the sentence hanging. It didn’t take me long to realize why. The idea of him coming home, even if he was under house arrest, was unbearable, unthinkable.

  “However?” Her question wedged itself into my thoughts and my shame.

  “Nothing. A technical matter. After the plea-bargaining we can try asking for house arrest. I wouldn’t hold out too much hope, because such a large quantity of drugs was involved. But we can try.”