But that evening I did nothing about it.
When the party ended I’d gone home and gone to bed. When I woke up after the usual four hours, Melissa was already far, far away, practically invisible.
Now, ten days later, she called me on my mobile to invite me to a concert by Acid Steel, who were playing in Bari. Or rather, near Bari. Just like that.
I had an odd feeling. For a moment I was tempted to ring back and say no, I unfortunately had another engagement. Sorry, it had slipped my mind, perhaps some other time.
Then I said out loud, “Brother, you’re going really mad. Really mad. You go to this bloody Acid Steel concert and let’s put an end to this nonsense. You’re thirty-eight years old and have a pretty long life-expectancy. D’you think you’re going to spend it all like this? Go to this bloody concert and be thankful.”
Melissa arrived punctually a few minutes after eight. She was on foot and her attire was an incitement to crime.
She said that her car wouldn’t start but that she’d come into the centre anyway, and was wondering if we had time to get mine. We did. We got the car and set off in the direction of Taranto.
The concert was in a small, disused industrial warehouse out in the country between Turi and Rutigliano. I’d never have been able to get there on my own.
The atmosphere in the place was semi-clandestine. Some of the audience looked clandestine without the semi.
Luckily, one was not forbidden to smoke.
One was not forbidden to smoke anything.
And in fact they were smoking everything and drinking beer. The air was dense with the stench of smoke, beer, beery breath and sweaty armpits. No one was laughing and many seemed absorbed in a dark, mysterious ritual from which I – fortunately – was excluded.
I began to feel uneasy, and the impulse to make a run for it grew and grew.
Melissa talked to everyone and knew everyone. Or maybe she was simply doing a repeat performance of Renato’s party. In that case, I thought, I was in the accountant’s shoes. The impulse to cut and run redoubled. Worry. Worry. I felt prying eyes on me. More worry.
Then, luckily, Acid Steel started to play.
I have no wish to talk about the two hours of uninterrupted so-called music, partly because my most intense recollection is not the sounds but the smells. The beer, the cigarettes, the joints, the sweat and I don’t know what else seemed more and more to fill the air of that gloomy warehouse. For a moment I even had the absurd notion that from one minute to the next it would explode, hurling that deadly cocktail of stenches off into space. The positive aspect of this eventuality was that Acid Steel – whose visible perspiration led one to suppose that they made a determining contribution to the fetor – would also be hurled into space and no one would hear of them ever again.
The warehouse did not explode. Melissa drank five or six beers and smoked several cigarettes. I am not sure that they were only cigarettes, because it was pesky dark and the source of the smells – including that of joints – was indefinable. At a certain point I seemed to see her wash down a few pills with her beer.
I confined myself to smoking my cigarettes and drinking the occasional sip of beer from the bottles Melissa handed me.
When the concert came to an end I refrained from buying the Acid Steel CD on sale at the exit.
Melissa greeted a bunch of characters with whom I feared we might have to spend the evening, but then she took my hand. In the darkness of the churned-up field that served as a car park I felt the blood rush to my face, and elsewhere.
“Shall we go and have a drink?” she gurgled in a strangely suggestive voice, meanwhile stroking the back of my hand with her thumb.
“Maybe we could eat something too.” I was thinking of the pints of beer already swilling about inside her and of the other unspecified psychoactive substances circulating in her blood and among the neurones.
“You bet. I really feel like something sweet. A crepe with Nutella or with cream and a dark chocolate sauce.”
We returned to Bari and went to the Gauguin, where they made very good crepes, were polite and nice, and had beautiful photographs on the walls. It was a place I had often been to when I was with Sara, and had not visited since. That evening was the first time.
No sooner inside than I was sorry I’d come. Familiar faces at every table. Some I had to greet, all knew who I was.
Between the tables, the owner and the waiters staring at us. Staring at me. I could hear the wheels turning in their heads. I knew they’d gossip about me now. I felt like a squalid forty-year-old who takes out teenagers.
Melissa, meanwhile, was relaxed and talking non-stop.
I chose a crepe with ham, walnuts and mascarpone, plus a small bottle of beer. Melissa had two sweet crepes, the first with Nutella, hazelnuts and banana, the second with ricotta, raisins and melted chocolate. She drank three glasses of Calvados. She talked a lot. Two or three times she touched my hand. Once, while talking, she suddenly stopped and gave me an intense look, almost imperceptibly biting her lower lip.
They’re shooting with a hidden camera, I thought. This girl is an actress, there’s a TV camera somewhere, now I’ll say or do something ridiculous and someone will pop out and tell me to smile at the audience.
No one popped out. I paid the bill, we left, reached the car and I started up. Melissa said we could round off the evening by having a drink at her place.
“No thanks. You’re an alcoholic and maybe something worse. I shall now take you home, I won’t come up, and then I’ll go home to bed.” That’s what I should have said.
“I’d love to. Maybe just a drop and then we’ll get some sleep because tomorrow is a working day.” I said exactly that: “maybe just a drop”.
Melissa gave me a kiss on the corner of my mouth, lingering over it. She smelt of booze, smoke and a strong perfume that reminded me of something. Then she said that she didn’t have much at home and so we’d better go to a bar and buy a few beers.
I wasn’t entirely easy in my mind but I stopped in front of an all-night bar, got out and bought two beers. To prevent the situation from degenerating.
She lived in an old block of council flats near the television studios. The sort of building populated by five or six foreigners living in one room, old council tenants (a species on the verge of extinction) and students away from home. Melissa came from Minervino Murge.
The entrance had a very dim bulb that shed no light whatever. Melissa lived on the first floor and the stairs smelt of cat pee.
She opened the door and went in first, with me following her into the darkness. Stuffiness and stale cigarette smoke.
When the light went on I saw I was in a minute hallway that gave onto a study-cum-bedroom on the left. On the right was a closed door that I took to be the bathroom.
“Where is the kitchen?” was my fatuous thought of the moment. And at the same instant she took me by the hand and led me into the bedroom/study/living room. There was a bed against the wall opposite the door, a desk, books everywhere. Books on shelves, stacks of books on the floor, books on the desk, books scattered here and there. There was an old radio-tape recorder, an ashtray containing two squashed filters, a few empty beer bottles and a nearly empty bottle of J amp;B whisky.
The books ought to have reassured me.
When I enter a house for the first time I check on whether there are books, if they are few, if they are many, if they are too neatly arranged – which is a bad sign – or if they are all over the place – which is a good sign, and so on.
The books in Melissa’s tiny home should have given me a good impression. But they didn’t.
“Do sit down,” said Melissa, pointing to the bed.
I sat, she opened the beers, handed me one and drank more than half of hers without taking the neck of the bottle from her lips. I took a sip, just to show willing. My brain was searching frantically for an excuse to escape. After all, it was nearly two o’clock in the morning, I had to work the following day, we had had a p
leasant evening, we would certainly be seeing each other again, don’t worry I’ll call you, and anyway I’ve got a slight headache. No, there’s nothing the matter except the fact that you’re an alcoholic, a drug addict, probably a nymphomaniac and I want to cry. I’ll call you, really I will.
While I was struggling to think up something less pathetic, Melissa – who in another single gulp had finished her beer – slipped off her panties (black) from under her skirt.
She didn’t want to waste too much time on preliminaries and other boring formalities. So much was obvious.
And in fact there were no formalities.
I stayed in that place, what with this and that, until nearly daylight.
While she smoked and finished the bottle of whisky she recited the difficulties of living away from home with next to nothing coming from her parents. Of paying the month’s rent, of eating – and of drinking, I thought – of buying cigarettes, clothes, paying for the mobile, having the odd evening out. And books, of course. The occasional job – hostess, public relations – hardly ever brought in enough.
That month, for example, she was already late with the rent, had an exam to prepare for, and the landlady waiting for nothing better than an excuse to chuck her out.
If she wouldn’t be offended, I could lend her a little. No, she wouldn’t be offended, but I had to promise that I’d make her pay it back. Of course, don’t worry. No, I haven’t got half a million in cash, but look, here’s 220,000 in my wallet, I’ll keep the twenty just in case. Don’t worry about it, you’ll let me have it back when you can, there’s no hurry. I really must go now, because tomorrow, that is today, I have to work.
She gave me her mobile number. Of course I’ll call you, I said, screwing up the slip of paper in my pocket, wrenching open the door and fleeing like a scalded cat.
Outside was a leaden dawn, a mouse-coloured sky. The puddles were so black they reflected nothing.
My eyes reflected nothing either.
There came to mind a film I had seen a couple of years before, The Ghost and the Darkness, a splendid yarn about big-game hunters and lions.
Val Kilmer asks Michael Douglas, “Have you ever failed?”
The reply: “Only in life.”
The next day I changed my sim-card and mobile phone number.
11
The days that followed that night were not memorable.
About a week passed, then we were notified that the inquiries were concluded.
At eight-thirty next morning I was in Cervellati’s secretariat to request copies of the file. I made the application, they told me that I could have copies within three days and I left the offices prey to pessimism.
On the Friday my secretary called at the public prosecutor’s office, paid the fees, collected the copies and brought them to the office.
I spent Saturday and Sunday reading and re-reading those papers.
I read, smoked, and drank big cups of weak decaffeinated coffee.
I read, smoked, and what I read I didn’t like a bit. Abdou Thiam was in a pretty pickle.
It was even worse than I’d thought when I read the detention order.
It looked like one of those cases without any prospects, in which going to the Assizes could lead only to a pointless massacre.
It looked as if Cervellati was right and that the only way of reducing the damage was to opt for the shortened procedure.
The thing that nailed my client most of all was the testimony of the barman. He had made a statement to the carabinieri the day before Abdou was arrested. He had been heard again, a few days later, by the public prosecutor in person.
A perfect witness – for the prosecution.
I read and re-read the two reports, on the look-out for any weak points, but I found almost nothing.
That of the carabinieri was a summary report written in the most classic police-station jargon.
On the 10th day of August 1999 at 19.30 hours, in the offices of the Operations Unit of the Carabinieri of Monopoli, before the undermentioned non-commissioned officers of the criminal police Sergeant-Major Lorussa Antonio, Sergeant Sciancalepore Pasquale and Lance-Corporal Amendolagine Francesco, all of whom are attached to the aforementioned Command, there appeared Antonio Renna, born Noci (Bari) 31.3.1953, resident in Monopoli, Contrada Gorgofreddo 133/c, who when properly questioned as to facts falling within his cognizance stated as follows:
Witness replied: I am the proprietor of the commercial premises denominated “Bar Maracaibo” situated in Contrada Capitolo, Monopoli. During the summer months my premises remain open from seven in the morning until nine at night. In the management of the aforesaid commercial concern I am assisted by my wife and two of my children.
Witness replied: I was acquainted with little Francesco Rubino and in particular with his grandparents, who are proprietors of a villa situated at a distance of approximately 300 yards from my bar. They have been spending holidays in Contrada Capitolo for many years. The grandfather of the child frequently visits my bar to purchase and consume a coffee and smoke a cigarette.
Witness replied: I am acquainted with the non-European citizen whom you inform me is named Abdou Thiam and whom I recognize in the photograph you have submitted for my inspection. He deals in counterfeit leather goods and passes nearly every day in front of my bar on his way to the beaches where he sells his wares. On occasion he visits my bar to take refreshment.
Witness replied: I recall having observed the aforesaid non-European citizen on the afternoon of the boy’s disappearance. He passed in front of my commercial premises without the bag which he habitually carries with him and he was walking rapidly as if in haste. He did not stop at the bar.
Witness replied: The non-European citizen was proceeding in a northerly-southerly direction. In effect, he was coming from the direction of Monopoli and proceeding towards the beaches.
Witness replied: The house of the missing boy’s grandparents is situated at about 300 yards south with respect to my bar. If I am not mistaken, it stands almost opposite Duna Beach.
Witness replied: I am unable to indicate with any precision the hour at which I saw the non-European citizen pass. It might be between 18.00 and 18.30 hours or perhaps even 19.00 hours.
Witness replied: I did not observe the non-European citizen pass on his way back in the opposite direction. That day I did not see him again at all.
Witness replied: If I remember rightly, I learned of the disappearance of the child the day subsequent to the fact. Before being summoned by you carabinieri I had not been aware of being in possession of information relevant to the inquiries, and that is to say it had not occurred to me to connect the passing of Thiam that afternoon with the disappearance of the child. If it had occurred to me, I would have presented myself of my own accord to collaborate with the law.
I have nothing more to add and in witness thereof I append my signature.
Cognizance is taken of the fact that the present statement, due to the unavailability of recording equipment, has been drawn up only in summary form.
Read, confirmed and undersigned.
The evidence given to Cervellati was complete, in the sense that it was recorded and stenotyped. Here the person in possession of the facts did not use improbable expressions such as “the aforesaid commercial premises” or “purchase and consume a coffee”. But the upshot was the same.
On 13 August 1999 at 11.00 hours, in the offices of the Public Prosecutor, and before the Prosecutor Dr Giovanni Cervellati, assisted in the drafting of the present document by legal clerk Biancofiore Giuseppe, there appeared Antonio Renna, whose particulars are already documented.
It is here noted that the present statement will be documented in full by means of shorthand typing.
Question: Well then, Signor Renna, some days ago you made a statement to the carabinieri. The first thing I want to ask you is whether you confirm it. You remember what you said, don’t you?
Answer: Yes, yes, sir.
Quest
ion: So you confirm it?
Answer: Yes, I confirm it.
Question: Let us, however, recapitulate what you said. In the first place, I take it you already knew the non-European citizen Abdou Thiam?
Answer: Yes, sir. Not by name, though. The name I learned from the carabinieri. I recognized him from the photograph they showed me.
Question: You know him because he often passed in front of your bar and on some occasions had something to drink. Is that so?
Answer: Yes, sir.
Question: Would you care to tell me about the day the child disappeared? That day, that afternoon or evening, you saw Thiam, didn’t you?
Answer: Yes, sir. He passed my bar between half-past six and seven.
Question: Did he have his bag of goods?
Answer: No, he didn’t have the bag and he was rushing along.
Question: Do you mean that he was running or that he was in a hurry?
Answer: No, he was hurrying. It wasn’t that he was exactly running, but he was walking quickly.
Question: In which direction was he going?
Answer: Towards the beaches, which is more or less the direction to take to the child’s grandparents’ house Question: All right, towards the beaches. That means from north to south, if I have understood correctly.
Answer: Yes, from Monopoli towards the beaches. Question: Did you see him pass on the way back?
Answer: No.
Question: You told the carabinieri that you knew the boy, and his family also, particularly the grandparents. Do you confirm this?
Answer: Yes, I confirm it. The grandparents have a villa 300 or 400 yards past my bar, more or less in the direction the young Moroccan was going.
Question: Moroccan?
Answer: Non-European citizen then. We use the word Moroccan for all these young niggers.
Question: Ah, I see. Do you recall any other detail, any other fact relevant to the inquiries?
Answer: No, sir, but in my opinion it absolutely must have been that Moroccan because Question: No, Signor Renna, you must not express personal opinions. If some other fact comes to mind well and good, if not we can bring this statement to an end. Does any other specific fact come to mind?
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