COMMANDANTE CAMILLO KNEW a great deal about asking questions. He knew there were times when it was important not to ask a question unless he already knew the answer. He knew there were times when it was important not to ask a question unless he really, really wanted to know the answer. He knew there were times to ask questions when no answer mattered, when the point was not to ask a question but just to have an excuse to hurt somebody—whatever answer they gave. He knew there were times when any answer would do because all he wanted was that moment of defeat and concession and admission and not the information it contained. But Commandante Camillo also knew that, if he wanted to find something out, then the best questions to ask were the shortest ones.
Before he went down to the university, Commandante Camillo closed the door of his office, sat down at his desk and placed a call to the capital. It took a long time to make the connection and, while he waited, ambulances and fire engines tore past his window in a storm of sirens.
Then the line gave a click and Commandante Camillo asked for an extension. Far away, on another desk in another police station, another telephone rang. The man who answered did not give his name, so the Commandante said: “This is Camillo. We’ve had an explosion. Yes, it’s a bomb. So what I want to know is; is it one of ours? Yes, I’ll wait.”
Commandante Camillo heard the man put the faraway telephone down. He was not certain that he heard the sound of footsteps walking away but he was sure of a heavy metal file drawer opening. A few seconds later he said: “Absolutely nothing to do with us? Right.”
He put on his jacket. This would make life a little more difficult. If the government had planted the bomb, there would have to be an investigation to prove that they had not planted it, to prove that the nation and its leaders, the guardians of the citizens’ hard-won liberty, were under attack. Such proof would be necessary to justify, however reluctantly, however unwillingly, another assault on the liberties of the citizens. Arrest without charge, perhaps for weeks at a time. Unpleasant but necessary. The times demanded it. Restrictions on assembly. A ban on the right to strike. All bitter pills which must be swallowed for the greater good, for the nation, for the economy, for the security of the whole community. There would have to be arrests, interrogations and severe punishments.
But, if the government had not planted the bomb, that made things harder. Commandante Camillo would still have to make arrests. There would still be beatings and interrogations and somebody would have to pay, only this way he would have to try to limit that to the people who were actually to blame. That would mean evidence. That would mean detective work—days and nights of it and raids and arrests and everything that went with that. Commandante Camillo was feeling his age and there were still two years left before he could retire.
The glass in the door rattled as it banged behind him. From the smoke of the Detectives’ Hall he walked out into the arched grandeur of the Palace of Justice with its gilded columns standing in groups of four and its meaningless mosaic frieze; women in nightgowns looking far away as they handed pieces of paper to grateful, cowering peasants all at arm’s length, at full stretch like relay runners. From the very first day he entered the building, Commandante Camillo had looked at those pictures and raged. He saw those grateful peasants and he wanted to shout: “Get off your knees!” He wanted to take out his pistol and fire into the ceiling and order them: “Take it. Whatever it is that she’s got, if you want it, take it. You are strong. You have worked all day in the fields. You have sickles, you have mattocks and she is weak and soft. Take it!”
But nobody, not even a man like Commandante Camillo, can stay angry for four decades and now, coming to work or going out, he forgot that the pictures were even there.
It was sunny in Plaza Universidad and the smell of blood, mixed with traffic fumes, drifted across the gardens as he walked, slowly, to the bombing. Halfway there, the Commandante spotted a hand which had plowed down a row of orange marigolds and come to rest in one of the formal flower beds. There were screams coming from the far side of the square.
Commandante Camillo noticed that everything had a shadow, the park benches, the rubbish bins, and as he got closer to the university entrance the shadows deepened. On one side, the side closest to the bomb, things were darker and behind them, behind the slim, cast-iron legs of the benches, behind the ice-cream stand, behind the lampposts, in the shadow, it was lighter. One side dry and clean, one side dark and damp, misted with a spray of blood and tissue, hair, clothing, rucksack, denim, the little copper studs from a pair of jeans, coins, a wallet, a plastic comb, it was all there, somewhere, shredded and minced and sieved as fine as dust and blasted out across the square in a shrieking, angry drizzle.
Crossing the square, the mist thickened into soup until, at the foot of the broad stone staircase that led up to the university entrance, it had clogged into ragout. And, as Commandante Camillo walked across the square the screams grew louder. Ambulances were jammed in at all angles. They choked the street. They were contaminating the crime scene. Some of them had already left for the hospital. There were tire tracks in the blood.
Camillo saw one of his detectives slamming the door on an ambulance and waving it out of the square. He raised a hand and beckoned him over.
“Boss.”
“You hurt?”
“No, boss.”
“You’re covered in blood.”
“Not mine.”
“How many dead?”
“I have no idea. We won’t know until we start matching up the bits but I think there’s about twenty on the way to the hospital and they won’t all live.”
Camillo was only pretending to listen. He had no need to know how many people were dead. It made no difference to the inquiry and, anyway, it made no difference. It simply made no difference. He took out a big white handkerchief and folded it into a wad and then, with a lover’s tenderness, he wiped it gently across the policeman’s face.
“Stand still.”
Over his eyes, across his broad cheekbones, down the long eagle-curve of his Indian’s nose, his mouth, the nub of his chin.
“Here,” Camillo folded the handkerchief in on itself to find some unbloodied cloth, “wipe your hands.”
The man obeyed like a child.
“Noticed anybody unusual?”
“I’ve been busy, boss.”
“Dozens of them. They stand and watch. They don’t come and help. They don’t rush off to the hospital to give blood. They just stand around here and watch.”
“Any freaks? Anybody laughing? Anybody standing with his hand down his pants?”
“Not that I noticed, boss. I was busy. Like I said, I was busy.”
The last of the ambulances was reversing out of the square. When it reached the junction with University Avenue, the sirens came on and it sped away.
“OK, son. Go back to the Hall. Get some coffee. Have a smoke.” Camillo patted him on the shoulder and sent him on his way with a gentle shove. He walked on, across the sticky, clotting cement, to where a fat inspector in a crisp uniform was standing, arms more or less outstretched, pretending to hold back the crowd. Camillo approached him stealthily, leaned close to his ear and said: “What are you doing?”
The man jumped. “Crowd control, boss.”
“Well, you can stop now. Do you see over there?” Camillo pointed to where the blood was thickest, where there was a black star burned into the concrete like the eye of a poppy, with petals of blood sprayed out from it in every direction, up the steps, across the square, washing the flower beds. “That’s where the bomb went off. I want tapes in a square, fifteen meters on each side. I want you to find a photographer and tell him from me that I want every picture he’s got with faces from the crowd in it. Tell him to take lots more of them until the last rubber-necking bastard has gone home. Don’t point into the crowd, don’t let them see he’s doing it, just make sure we get lots of happy snaps of happy citizens having a nice day out at the bombing. Got that?”
The man nodded. His jowls trembled a little and his eyes were watery.
“Good. Hurry it up and then, when you have done that, I want you to go to the,” Camillo pointed, ticking things off in the air, “go to the one, two, three, fourth flower bed along. You will find a hand in it. Pick it up and bring it back here to where the real policemen are working.”
The inspector threw a salute and waddled away.
“Run, man! Hurry.”
The inspector waddled faster.
Commandante Camillo went back to the bottom of the steps where a man in a suit was walking carefully backward and forward, head bent to the ground, stopping now and then to pick something up with tweezers and drop it in a plastic bag. These bags he numbered and placed in a knapsack and, for every numbered bag, he took out a piece of folded white card, like a name card on a dinner table, and placed it carefully on the ground.
Camillo stood respectfully a little way off, careful where he put his feet. “Got anything?” he said.
“There’s not much to get. Bits and pieces, but I don’t know yet what came from the bomb and what was here before. I need to take it back to the lab and wash the blood off it.”
“Is there nothing you can tell me?”
“I’m pretty sure it was an own-goal. It went off before it was meant to, while he was carrying it into the university—amateur stuff.”
“And you’re sure he was headed for the university?”
“Look at the shape of it. You can see where he was standing. The bomb was in his rucksack, on his back. He was right in front of it. The blast radiated out from there, he soaked it up in that direction. That’s mostly him on the steps. Out like a light.”
“Time runs more slowly in the dentist’s chair,” said Camillo. He lit up a cigar. “Got any ID?”
“Be serious. You want to know who he was, go and ask who didn’t turn up for class today.”
From across the square, four flower beds further back, the police inspector came shambling up. He trotted along with his hands held in front of him, cupped together. He was pale and sweating. His uniform was stained under the arms and creased across the chest.
He was cradling the severed hand, clipped clean off at the wrist, bled white and without so much as a broken fingernail, holding it flat in the basket formed by his knotted fingers and running with it, the way a child might run with an injured bird, to bring it home, to make it better.
But, when he arrived, he realized that he had no idea what to do. He stretched out his arms a little, offering the hand like a gift to Camillo.
The inspector said: “Sir?” and Camillo turned to the man with the tweezers and said: “Oh, for God’s sake, give him one of your bags.”
The inspector bent down and pulled his fingers apart so the hand fell, gently, to the ground. Then he took the bag, opened it carefully and threw up in it.