The Second Life of Inspector Canessa

by Roberto Perrone

  ‘You should’ve waited for me to come back… What does “taking care of it” mean, anyway?’

  Salemme had been a magistrate before deciding that life would bring him more satisfaction, or just more money, really, if he set up his own firm. Yet he still had an authority that turned all conversations into interrogations. Especially when the other person got lost in small talk.

  ‘It’s going to happen in about half an hour. That’s why I’m here. We can still stop it.’

  The care and attention to detail, so out of character for Claudio, impressed him. ‘Give me a quick summary.’

  Claudio gave him all the details of the tailing, right up to the phone call. ‘I couldn’t reach you on your flight, so I had to put something together myself. It’s clear that he’s looking for a link with his brother, but whatever the case, this sudden visibility is worrying, don’t you think? I felt like the situation was getting out of hand and he might say or do something dangerous, so the threat to us might become real. But we still have time to call it off, if you want.’ He pulled his phone out of his pocket. ‘One call, and nothing happens.’

  Giannino looked at his son with sincere affection. He’d been prepared and cautious at the same time: sometimes his cruel efficiency, his heightened level of immorality, scared him – he wasn’t like that at Claudio’s age. For a brief period of his life, he’d had ideals. Nonetheless, no one could say he made bad decisions, even in his father’s absence.

  The lawyer ruffled his son’s hair and Claudio relaxed. He’d been fearing one of his father’s angry outbursts. Instead, he pulled a box of cigars out of his bag: he took one and used a pocket knife to make a hole in the end of the precious Partagas, the beginning of a ritual that never failed to excite him. He wet it with his lips and lit it, savouring it, puffing out a small grey cloud that elicited a glare from a woman in a fur coat standing next to the no smoking sign.

  Salemme senior didn’t care. In the sudden fog of tobacco, Claudio heard his father’s soothing voice: ‘No, you did the right thing. Let’s head home. I need a proper Italian coffee.’

  6

  The water was clear, and he could feel its icy grip through the black wetsuit. His lungs full of air, Annibale Canessa gave another push, and using his flippers, he reached the base of the Christ. He held on to it for the length of an Our Father, then let go, grazing the raised arms of the statue as he ascended. He shot out of the water, lungs burning, eyes filled with the blue of the sky and the green of the vegetation surrounding the small bay. He let himself be cradled by the sea, calm, smooth, and cold. Then he picked up his perfect crawl to the beach.

  The restaurant was fully booked for lunch and dinner. A group had hired a night boat to reach San Fruttuoso, one of the most beautiful spots on the Ligurian Riviera. ‘In the world, even,’ he’d say to his old aunt. She was cook and owner of one of the only three restaurants.

  His aunt had grumbled about another busy Saturday. She’d told him off, feigning disapproval. ‘Before you came, we got along just fine, even at this time of year. Now it’s a constant invasion. If you only knew how the other restaurant folks look at me!’ She was stereotypically, marvellously Ligurian, frugal even in her social interactions, despite her burgeoning income. She’d always had something to live on and that had been enough, no need for the novelties her nephew had initiated since he’d joined her as her business partner.

  Annibale Canessa looked over the peaceful town, his eyes level with the water. He liked that spot, and he liked San Fruttuoso first thing on a spring morning. It was a nice place to live: no traffic, no noise, far removed from everyone and everything.

  His aunt was a great cook, but she was satisfied with what she earned during the summer season. It would’ve been enough for him too, but he’d gradually started offering trips and buffets not just in the spring, but in the autumn and even the winter. He’d fixed up a sort of platform on the beach which he rented from the council, and set up the catering there, while the owners of the other two restaurants grumbled, pitched between laziness and envy. Then he’d started events in the old abbey: book launches, business conferences. People saw prestige, and they saw money. His aunt laughed every time they received bank statements for their business.

  ‘Now what? How am I supposed to spend all this at my age?’

  ‘Go travel! You never go anywhere. I’ll look after the bookings.’

  She’d mumble something and shake her head, going nowhere, day after day. Her greatest adventure was taking the ferry to Camogli, or if she was feeling more exotic, Rapallo.

  Annibale was happy. It had taken him some time to get used to life on the outskirts, to that beautiful, inaccessible village, which could only be reached on foot or by boat, or not at all if the day was stormy. He was still fascinated by the uncertainty of a sailor’s life on land, even now, eight years since moving there. He’d moved there at forty-five, after his second degree in philosophy. Back then he’d had a steady income with his consultancy, working with companies, security firms, and private clients with security issues. He was using his experience of fifteen years, and meanwhile he’d read, study, and build his new life brick by brick – though he still wasn’t sure what it might actually be.

  Zia Mariarosa wasn’t actually his aunt but his mother’s widowed cousin, with two sons in Genoa who had no interest in the restaurant. And so Annibale, exchanging loneliness for isolation, had decided to buy their shares and take over one floor of the old stone house that hosted his aunt’s home and restaurant.

  He looked at it as he walked up the beach towards the stairs leading back to town. Two windows: a bedroom, a study-cum-living room, one small bathroom. Those were his earthly possessions – the official ones, anyway. Everything else was stored in a warehouse on the outskirts of Rapallo, behind the San Pietro motorway entrance. A nondescript, industrial warehouse, hidden among the others. He kept books, furniture, and an old but extremely well-maintained Porsche 911 and a modified Fiat Punto, along with what he called the caveau, filled with old tools of the trade. There was also a sort of safe-haven where he could live if necessary, complete with kitchenette, a bed (a real one, not a cot), a toilet, an office. The warehouse was owned by a company, in its turn owned by a school friend who was part of the ‘Canessa network’. The network was a group of old friends who loved him, warts and all, or people who owed him something, usually their life or that of someone they loved. Once he’d fixed their ‘problems’, they inevitably uttered the same words: ‘If you ever need anything, please let me know.’ Canessa always warned them, ‘I’ll hold you to it. These are not things I take lightly, so I’ll understand if you want to back out.’ They’d stand there looking vaguely panic-stricken, but no one ever reneged. They helped him as best they could.

  The warehouse showed up as a rental for a German entrepreneur who used it for his yacht. And in fact there was a yacht (totally unseaworthy) which filled up the front of the space, shielding the rest from sight.

  It was a whim, a sliver of self-defence, cover, a holdover from his obsession with security and safe routes. You just never know.

  In the restaurant kitchen he found his aunt fussing with the coffee maker.

  ‘How was your morning swim?’

  ‘Water’s wonderful today.’

  ‘Good! We’re waiting for the co-op’s fish. With any luck they had a good catch. Do you want some coffee?’

  ‘Keep it warm for me. I’m going to take a shower.’

  He went through the restaurant – fifty covers – and headed upstairs. He took off his wetsuit and stood under the warm stream. All of a sudden, he felt a pang in his left side. Weird, he thought, that old wound usually pops up on cold, dark, damp days. This was a Saturday morning in April, and the sun was rising outside. The wound, however, served another function: it acted as a sort of sentinel’s call.

  Still in his robe, Annibale Canessa moved
to the window. The co-op boat was mooring. A man hopped on land and started taking crates of fish from the fisherman still on board. Annibale would usually head down to help, but this time he wanted to stay and listen to the sounds of the small town waking up and take in the scent of the maritime pines bent by the sea breeze.

  The pain wasn’t subsiding. So it wasn’t the weather. It was a portent of something bad to come, though with his new, hard-won equilibrium and in his state of controlled emotion, he couldn’t see what it was. He wanted to believe it was just an old bullet wound, a scar tickled by the cold, salty water.

  The aroma of his aunt Mariarosa’s dense, black coffee rose up from downstairs, drawing him from his observation point. His wristwatch read 7:34.

  7

  Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Petri almost felt like a free man. Not because of his sentence, or the parole that was coming to an end, but because he was about to finish his course. This was just one of the steps – the penultimate one, in fact.

  He stood under the wide concrete and steel arch of the Centrale train station, taking note of the departures and arrivals. They’d just announced the one he was waiting for: platform 13, a few minutes to go. Pino knew he’d done the right thing. This was the road that would lead him to the end of his own. He’d thought about it a lot in the past year, overcoming the old sense of loyalty that had always held him back and prevented him from talking. The institutions considered him a lost cause, but his refusal to reveal that corner of his life wasn’t founded on unwillingness to become a supergrass or some absurd loyalty to the cause. Though he’d probably never handle a weapon or kill anyone else – in fact, he definitely wouldn’t, even if they let him start all over again – he wanted to stay true to himself, despite the fact that everything he’d done had been wrong. He’d never sung, and he wouldn’t start at his age.

  In any case, he’d realised twenty years ago, the State and the institutions had more or less figured everything out. More or less. But there was still one detail niggling at him. He’d had to live with that, but it had become unbearable in the past year. No, he had some loose ends to tie up before starting his new life.

  It hadn’t been hard to find the phone number of the person he was about to meet. All he had to do was call the phone directory services. Nor had it surprised him that he still lived in the same city where they’d crossed paths the first time – and by chance – several years earlier. Pino had once studied faces as a survival mechanism. He’d scanned them intently, making the people around him uneasy, since they thought he was trying to look through them. No, he was just memorising details. The same face in two different places aroused suspicion. But he’d focused on the boy because someone had told him who he was, his surname.

  He suddenly felt he was being followed. Actually, he’d felt it for the past couple of days. He’d tried to work it out, tried to see something, but no luck. Then he figured it might be an age thing. He wasn’t used to it. There was no reason for someone to follow him, apart from a cop making sure he wasn’t messing up. So he dropped his guard. He looked around once in a while, but he never spotted anyone reminding him of anyone or anything, some other moment, something jarring with the rest of the tableau.

  Maybe I’m too old for this game, he said to himself.

  Next to him was a family, a mother and her kids. The youngest, in a red dress and red bobble hat, winked at him. She couldn’t have been older than three. He winked back and saw himself as a father for a second. Once this was over, maybe he could try having a family after all. He was old, but not too old to find someone, maybe a little younger, and have kids. Who cared if people saw the child as more of a grandchild? Maybe he’d follow up on one of the hundreds of letters he’d received since the news of his parole had come through, get in touch with one of them, try to meet someone. The majority were from women asking him for help, giving their advice, offering love, comfort, friendship. The sheer number of single women out there was impressive, though he suspected that a fair few of those writing were actually married and looking for a daring fling with a famous ex-killer. Chasing novelty and excitement, escaping their anonymous existence. Or maybe they just wanted to venture into the unknown. He smiled. Those women would be very disappointed. He wished he could live their lives and slip into anonymity, instead of the opposite.

  Giuseppe Petri yearned for an everyday kind of life: a flat in a block outside the city, a job that paid his bills, the morning commute, two headlights in the fog. Hell, everyone else kept trying to escape from that sort of thing, and here he was hoping to end up like that: one among many, happily forgotten, going through motions. He hadn’t done so for forty years. Sometimes, in the early days of his parole, he’d felt clumsy, even fearful. He was afraid of messing up the job they’d found him, of not being welcome. But in fact it had been easy enough to start again, to hope, to feel like everyone else in a world he’d tried desperately to change, to the point of almost destroying it. It had changed, enormously, but not in the way he thought. It had taken him months to realise that.

  He savoured every moment, every place. Even the rusty smell of the station, the coating on the tracks which invisibly settled over everything within the giant monolith, that barbarian invading the city.

  He didn’t feel like an old man, though technically he was one. At the moment, he was the kid he’d never been during his short, sharp childhood in the rocky South, poor and hungry. Or in his invisible teenage years in Turin, before the rays of revolution had broken through the clouds. At that moment he was a young boy who liked looking at women. And there was a young woman in the café outside the office who always smiled at him. She could’ve been his daughter. He’d joke, she’d laugh. Maybe one day he’d ask her out, once he no longer had to head back to prison every night. He’d never been more than average looking, and now he’d lost half his hair too. But Pino had a sort of charm. It used to be mothers who fell for him; now it was their daughters. He never figured out why. Maybe it was his air of mystery, the thought of his secret past, the stories he might tell…

  Yes, he would start living again. He just had to sort out this one last thing.

  The tinny recorded voice called his train, and he moved closer to watch it pull into the station. He moved back and stopped in the middle of the concourse to avoid missing the man he was supposed to meet. He didn’t notice the figure in an oversized coat standing three feet away: through a pair of fake reading glasses he was watching the first passengers get off the train, which was bang on time: 7:43.

  8

  Napoleone Canessa recognised him as soon as he stepped onto the platform. They’d met once at a radical political meeting. Petri was a fugitive, the terrorism phase was behind them, the troops dispersed. No one had recognised him, no one had paid any attention to him. Petri had shaved off his beard. But when the meeting was over, someone from the committee had spoken to Napoleone.

  ‘Come with me. There’s someone who’d like to meet you.’

  He’d ended up in a room with this man staring at him, and then he’d recognised him. He noted a flicker of fear. Petri, however, had looked at him with pity rather than anger. ‘You’re the cop’s brother,’ he’d said without reproach. Just to categorise him – a fact, pure and simple – but Napoleone had felt ashamed nonetheless. And later he’d regretted that. He still did. ‘It’s not my fault,’ he’d replied, his throat dry. Petri shot him a smile of resignation. ‘No, nothing we can do about it. Your brother is one hell of a bastard, but at least he’s honest.’ With that, he’d left.

  Here he was now, thirty years later, standing on the platform with sparse grey hair and a puffer jacket, corduroy trousers, and boots. Just like he used to dress back then: anonymously, simple, the exact opposite of the rest with their parkas and furrowed faces, instantly recognisable to the cops and the Carabinieri. Petri would blend in. He still did. When Napoleone reached him, he held out his hand and Petri shook it. A firm shake, re
spectful, neither too tight nor too loose. He looked Napoleone in the eyes, and Napoleone felt the need to break the tension. ‘It’s been a while.’

  ‘Too long,’ was the reply, and he knew Petri wasn’t talking about him.

  After the initial awkwardness, they headed down the escalators towards the station entrance along with a group of army boys on leave from Novara, ready for Saturday night in the city. ‘I know a small place close to via Vittor Pisani. Let’s get some coffee and talk. There’s a train in an hour. You can be home by lunchtime.’

  He was planning, like he used to, but no longer out of strategy, just concern.

  Napoleone walked beside him as he stepped into the large square in front of the imposing Fascist building. ‘This square wasn’t here last time I was in Milan,’ he said.

  ‘Everything’s changed,’ Petri replied, walking through a dozen young immigrants of all ethnicities, chatting around a bench.

  ‘How about you, have you changed too?’ Canessa suddenly asked as they crossed via Vitruvio and headed towards the centre.

  Petri turned towards Napoleone and smiled. ‘You have no idea.’ He was about to add more, but something caught his attention and he gestured towards the Gallia. ‘Do you like football? They used to talk transfers in that hotel.’

  And there he was, the man in the overcoat. Petri had spotted him earlier on the platform. It couldn’t be a coincidence. ‘Keep walking, we’re being followed.’

  But Napoleone stopped to look behind them. ‘What do you—’

  Petri grabbed his arm and forced him round again.

  ‘Keep going. Talk naturally.’

  ‘What do you mean, someone’s following us?’ Napoleone was clearly worried, suddenly realising the absurd irony of the situation.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe police. They like keeping tabs on who I see, who I talk to. I can’t think who else it could be. It’s okay. Relax.’