“Vasile’s left wrist,” Balistreri said.
Piccolo looked at him in surprise. Corvu said, “Colajacono sprained it, so what.”
Balistreri shook his head. “No, when Colajacono grabbed Vasile’s wrist, he squealed like a stuck pig. Vasile must have already been injured.”
“Maybe he sprained his wrist in the act of strangling Nadia,” Corvu said.
“Unfortunately, that’s not the case,” Piccolo said. “The doctor who examined him said the sprain was at least ten days old—you can tell by what’s left of the swelling. Vasile maintains that he injured himself playing soccer with some friends, and the other shepherd confirms it. He says that during the recent burglaries he had to do the driving and heavy lifting because Vasile couldn’t.”
“That’s not possible,” Corvu burst out. “That means Vasile didn’t kill her. Whoever picked the girl up killed her, too.”
“Yes,” Balistreri agreed.
Corvu was skeptical. “But, Captain, that would mean this hypothetical killer goes to great lengths to get himself a Giulia GT that can’t be traced to him, then he picks up Nadia without being seen. He takes her as a present to the shepherd so he can have sex with her. He waits there until the shepherd’s finished, and then strangles her?”
“Well, before he strangled her, he waited for Vasile to get good and drunk and fall asleep,” Balistreri said. “Does that remind you of anything?”
Piccolo and Corvu stared at him incredulously.
“I know who it was,” Piccolo said.
“Me too,” Corvu said.
“Not me, and I bet you two will come up with different names,” Balistreri concluded.
Our preconceptions, our certainties. Disaster’s taught me to be wary of them.
. . . .
Pasquali was less impeccably dressed than usual. The difference lay in the details. One shirt cuff protruded more than the other from his jacket sleeves. The part in his hair was crooked, as if he’d combed it hurriedly after a night of adulterous sex, thought that could almost certainly be ruled out in Pasquali’s case.
He listened in silence to Balistreri’s report, which omitted being tailed, the driver at the airport, Belhrouz’s promise of help, and the SUV.
“Are you asking to go to the Seychelles now, Balistreri?” He wasn’t sarcastic—just sour.
Balistreri shook his head. “It’s a dead end. We’ll never find out who the real ENT shareholders are.”
“It may not have any bearing on the crimes against Nadia and Camarà anyway,” Pasquali said.
Balistreri refrained from pointing out that there were three crimes. Talking about Samantha Rossi to Pasquali would only create more problems.
He changed the subject. “Pasquali, I know that this evening there’s an important council meeting and that you’ll be seeing the mayor and the chief of police. Could you please explain things to them?”
Pasquali nodded and made a face, as if he’d just bitten his tongue.
“The time frame in politics isn’t the same as the time frame for police work. To move Casilino 900 and the other camps would require a kind of bipartisan agreement that doesn’t exist right now. And the Vatican is opposed to it. Would you prefer us to take the Roma out to the middle of the Mediterranean and drown them?”
“Pasquali, it’s gone okay this time because the victims were a Romanian prostitute and a Senegalese bouncer. If it had been two Italian girls from good families we’d be in deep trouble.”
Pasquali brushed the image away with a brusque gesture, as if to exorcise it.
“That’s what we need men like Colajacono for. No one’s going to be lynching any Roma.”
Balistreri shook his head. Pasquali couldn’t possibly believe what he was saying. Another crime linked to the Roma would become a political football.
“Pasquali, with all due respect, I wouldn’t be too sure. Someone has an interest in stoking the fire of intolerance. And racism in Italy does exist. Take a tour of the schools or the tiers of certain stadiums.”
“Nevertheless,” said Pasquali, cutting him short, “the outcome of this evening’s meeting is truly in the balance. It only needs one vote more or less on one side or another.”
“Listen, Vasile did not kill Camarà. He wasn’t at the Bella Blu on the night of December the 23, he was with his three accomplices emptying the villas whose proprietors had left for the Christmas holidays.”
“And you believe people like that?”
“No one is going to lie for someone like Vasile and run the risk of being charged as an accomplice to murder.”
“But he killed Nadia.”
Balistreri told him about the sprained wrist.
“That doesn’t make a big difference,” Pasquali said. “They’re all in it up to their necks: Roma, Romanians, Casilino 900. You should be investigating those people.”
Balistreri felt a vague sense of unease. Pasquali was pushing the absurd. And when an intelligent person did that, it meant he had a hidden agenda.
Afternoon
The telephone call from Morandi came out of the blue. Hagi wanted to have an informal talk with him. They agreed to meet at Bar Biliardo immediately after lunch.
On the bus to Via Tiburtina, Balistreri realized that it had been less than a week since his first visit. And yet the neighborhood looked different. The Christmas decorations had been taken down, and the political posters had been put up in their place. He saw them from the bus as it drove past. Attacks on the council, the mayor’s labored and heartfelt defense. Everyone blaming each other, everyone saying that the integration model was the wrong one, no one coming up with a solution. They were even prepared to speculate about more deaths.
The strategy of tension was the product of lofty minds. This was a tactic of mediocre ones, a real mixture of the incapable, the profiteers and the common criminal.
He looked around him in the bus and saw only old people and non-EU immigrants. No one suspicious was tailing him. He concluded that they knew who he was going to see and that the trail had no interest for them. It was ENT that was the sensitive issue, certainly not the Bar Biliardo and Hagi and his acolytes.
There was a new bartender. Hagi was waiting for him with Morandi in the billiards room, which was closed to the public. He was coughing more than usual, but he looked happy. He made no mention of Rudi’s disappearance, and he offered Balistreri a coffee. They sat down by a billiard table.
“Do you play?”
“When I was a kid we played in Sunday school, but only with our hands—playing with cues was forbidden.”
“In my country, back in Galati, we thought playing with your hands was for queers.”
Hagi was in no hurry and Balistreri didn’t want to pressure him. Besides, the ENT trail having proved a dead end, they were waiting for the autopsy results and for Ramona Iordanescu to come back to Italy.
Hagi spoke first. “I’m worried about Mircea. You think he may have had a role in Nadia’s death. Can I ask you why you believe that to be the case?”
And can I ask you your motive for asking me? Is it part of your mission as protector of those two delinquents?
“First I want to ask you something. If you answer honestly, I’ll answer your question.”
“Fire away, Balistreri,” Morandi said, stroking his gold Rolex. “I’ll decide whether my client will reply or not.”
Balistreri turned to Hagi. “Mircea and Greg were accused of two murders in Romania the year before you brought them to Italy. Two retired employees of the ministry of the interior.”
Hagi remained silent.
“They were released from prison thanks to the best lawyer in Romania and then acquitted. I was wondering who paid that lawyer.”
Hagi didn’t wait for Morandi’s go-ahead. “Obviously it was me. As I’ve already told you, I owe my life to their parents. And when they asked me to help their sons it was my duty to intervene. It was a debt of honor that I had to pay.”
“Even if it meant he
lping two murderers?”
“There was no evidence against them. Only a witness who said he’d seen them near the farm and then retracted his statement. They would have been set free anyway, perhaps after ten years in jail. In Romania we don’t have any protection for what you call civil liberties.”
As he was shaken by a cough, Hagi’s eye peered into the soul of the special team’s boss.
Balistreri remembered the last encounter with Linda Nardi and the Romanian’s forbidden subject, so he asked: “Would your wife, Alina, have approved, had she been alive?”
Marius Hagi now wore a tougher expression. “I’ve already told you I don’t want to talk about that.”
“You’re the one who asked to see me. And now we’re no longer dealing with an investigation into a person’s disappearance, Mr. Hagi. There’s at least one murder involved.”
The man squelched of his mocking laughs. “And what does the death of my wife in 1983 have to do with the death of Nadia in 2006?”
There was something in Hagi’s feverish eyes that was difficult to decipher. It certainly wasn’t fear. It seemed more like a mocking threat. Balistreri rose to leave.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Hagi reminded him.
“And you didn’t answer mine.”
“Then I’ll just keep wondering. Good-bye, Balistreri.” He coughed and lit another cigarette.
“I’ll show you out, Balistreri,” Morandi offered.
On the pavement outside the Bar Biliardo, among harmless housewives carrying shopping bags, Balistreri received confirmation of what he had suspected.
Morandi was smiling, almost friendly, as he shook his hand. “It’s freezing here in Rome, Balistreri. You should have taken a vacation and stayed in Dubai a little longer.”
. . . .
Piccolo was waiting for him not far from Bar Biliardo. It was cold and almost dark, but her leather jacket was unzipped.
“I hope you haven’t been down in any basements,” he said.
“I did better than that and worse, sir. If we can step into a café I’ll tell you over a nice hot cup of tea.”
When they were sitting down she pulled out a notebook. “I wanted to double-check a few things.”
“About what?” Balistreri asked, feeling apprehensive.
“About Colajacono and Tatò.”
Balistreri was relieved. The important thing was to keep his deputies away from any risk, and after Morandi’s warning he was sure that those risks were serious. But they had to do with the investigation into ENT, not the world of prostitutes, pimps, Roma, shepherds, and violent, racist policemen. No one tailed them there; they could do what they wanted.
“All right, let’s hear it.”
“So, let’s start with that fateful December 24. Before they finished their shift at nine on the morning of December 24, Colajacono told his men, Marchese and Cutugno, that as a reward they could skip that evening’s shift. They accepted—a little surprised, but happy. Colajacono notified his right-hand man, Tatò, that they’d be standing in together for the two young policemen. Are you with me so far?”
“I have a few questions already, and I need a cigarette, but you can’t smoke in here, so I’ll just listen.”
“Right. But why does he want to take their shift himself? In order to set an example, he says—to show the young policemen that their higher ups make sacrifices for them. True? Let’s say it is—it fits Colajacono’s personality. But why force Tatò, his faithful sidekick, to work on Christmas Eve? Because the two of them are bachelors, he says. And we can go along with this as well. What do you say, Captain?”
Balistreri really wanted to go outside and smoke. He urged her on. “Fine, Piccolo. Let’s try another hypothesis. Colajacono has his own reasons for being on duty that night and also a reason why he wants Tatò there with him. However, we’d have to show that the reasons he’s given aren’t the truth, or find some evidence of the real reason.”
“When I questioned Tatò he was worried, then relaxed, and then worried again at the end of the meeting.”
“So you think he lied about something at the beginning and at the end of questioning?”
“At the start we were talking about Colajacono’s idea of their taking the night shift. I checked the registry office records. Actually, Colajacono lives alone in Rome—his parents are already dead and his closest relatives live outside the city. But not Tatò. He’s from the South, so his parents don’t live in Rome, but he has a younger sister in the city who lives by herself. She works as a cashier in a supermarket.”
“But we don’t know if they usually spend Christmas together.”
“We do now,” Piccolo replied triumphantly. “Since Tatò move to Rome they’ve spent every Christmas Eve together. I sent Mastroianni to the supermarket where she works. She was really upset when her brother told her that he couldn’t come over. They got into a fight.”
Balistreri said, “I need a smoke—let’s go outside.”
He had two cigarettes left because of the flight—and he really needed them.
Outside it was almost dark; the lights were on in store windows. The Roman neighborhood was swarming with people coming and going in the supermarkets, shops, and bars. There were a large number of immigrants in the area, and there was angry graffiti about the camps on the walls. That evening the city council was expected to reach a decision with a very narrow margin.
His train of thought was full of heavy consequences that Balistreri had no wish to discuss at that moment. He limited himself to asking a question: “Why did he choose Tatò?”
“Because the alibi’s false and only Tatò would go along with it,” Piccolo said.
“What alibi are you talking about?”
“The one Tatò’s giving Colajacono . . .”
“An alibi for what?”
Piccolo looked at him in surprise. “What do you think? For Nadia’s kidnapping and murder.”
“No, that doesn’t hold up. You said yourself that Tatò was relaxed while telling you about it, so according to your interpretation, he wasn’t lying.”
Piccolo showed her irritation. “Not necessarily. Suppose Colajacono was in the Giulia GT on Via di Torricola at six thirty in a hat and sunglasses.”
“That’s precisely why it doesn’t hold up.”
Piccolo finally saw his point. “Shit, you’re right. He would have said that Colajacono was at Mass too between six and seven to give him an alibi.”
He let her chew on that for a moment, then he said, “I think both of them are lying. But we still don’t know exactly what about. And we don’t know why.”
Piccolo looked as if she still had something important to say. She walked on in gloomy silence.
They found themselves outside the Torre Spaccata police station. “Did you bring me here on purpose?” Balistreri asked.
Now Piccolo avoided looking him in the face. “I’ve done something, Captain Balistreri.”
Balistreri was seriously worried, but the reality was worse than anything he could have imagined.
He listened with growing horror to the account of the exploits of Linda Nardi and Giulia Piccolo at the Marius Travel agency and then at Casilino 900. He was angry, but what could he do? Slap her? He risked getting hit back. Send her packing from the special team? He’d lose a formidable member of the team. Giulia Piccolo was just like the young Michele Balistreri. Besides, Linda Nardi was the one who was really at fault. She seemed so polite and gentle, but she had a spine of steel. Finally, he realized that he was angry not with the two women, but with Colajacono, for what he had dared to do to Linda Nardi.
That pig had no right to go anywhere near her.
. . . .
He sent Piccolo back to the office and went into the police station. Colajacono’s door was open. The deputy captain was sitting with his feet up on his desk; he was chewing an unlit cigar. He made no move to get up or offer Balistreri a seat when he appeared in the doorway.
Colajacono pointed at th
e piles of paper on his desk. “Look at this, Balistreri. More than one hundred crimes reported. Nothing a big shot like you has to worry about. Purse snatching, petty theft, a little breaking and entering, a few stolen cars. And in ninety percent of the cases the perpetrators are your friends the Roma.”
Balistreri didn’t respond. Colajacono swung his feet to the floor. “What do you want? I’m warning you right now, we’re on my turf here, so don’t piss me off.”
He was very sure of himself. He must have found a way to solve the problem with Linda Nardi and Piccolo.
Balistreri stood right in front of him. “Someone on the morning of December 24 was scared. A small object from a nightclub had disappeared. Nadia had stolen it. So this person asked you to stay in the station and slow down the investigation into Nadia’s disappearance. This person told you the girl had been with a politician as part of a blackmail scheme. You’d already helped out with something similar. But actually they were buying time to retrieve the object.”
Colajacono shrugged, unmoved. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Balistreri. If you have any proof, show it to me. Otherwise it’s all hot air. Business as usual for you bureaucrats.”
“By turning away Ramona Iordanescu, you held up the start of an investigation for several days. I have proof of that.”
“Doesn’t matter. Nadia was already dead. The autopsy report says she was killed before nine on the evening of December 24. It doesn’t change anything.”
“It might have made it easier to catch the killer,” Balistreri said.
But Colajacono didn’t bat an eyelash. “Vasile’s the murderer. We’ve caught him and he’s in prison. And it’s thanks to my informants, certainly not yours.”
He’s being sincere; they’ve made an idiot out of him and caught him in a trap. He really believes it was the shepherd.
Images of Colajacono tearing the clothes off of Linda Nardi were torturing Balistreri. It had taken him many years and much remorse to manage his anger and become a good policeman, sensible and prudent. But that thought was too much for him.
He looked Colajacono straight in the face and said, “Vasile did not strangle Nadia.”
Colajacono was taken aback for a minute by Balistreri’s tone of conviction. Then he pulled himself together. “Yet more conjecture from an intellectual policeman, Balistreri. Listen to me: go back to your office in the city and thank God I’m not decking you right now.”
The Deliverance of Evil Page 32
