Cursing her age, Maggese’s widow struggled out of bed. Climbing out of that sarcophagus was even worse than getting into it. ‘I’ll get a new one tomorrow,’ she kept saying, ‘this is the last time I’m sleeping in that.’ The following night, of course, she’d be back, and every time she felt like she was jumping from an even greater height. Naturally, it was just an impression: the bed had been the same for the past thirty years. It was an old bed, dating back to the end of the 1900s, already too high to begin with. And then her poor late husband Aristide had put a mattress on it that was so tall it looked like a six-storey building. She’d tried to tell him that it was too high, and he, never domineering, had kindly replied that it was good for their health, and they’d come to love it over time. ‘Because it’s so far from the city smog?’
Aristide was a big man, and he never had to jump to get off. He just let his feet touch the floor. But she was so small that when they got together, their families said they’d have to use a ladder in order to kiss. In any case, she’d never complained and she never 14 changed the bed out of respect and nostalgia, not even after his passing.
Some of her students said cruelly, ‘Yeah, he died because she tested him on the Pythagoras theorem, too.’ Maggese’s widow had taught maths all her life. She only retired when they wouldn’t let her stay any longer. Had it been up to her, she’d still be teaching equations and geometry – pointlessly, for the most part. She was a widow and a grandma four times over, thanks to her sons, who lived in Bologna.
They didn’t live too far from her neighbourhood in Reggio Emilia, but she barely even saw them at Easter or Christmas. ‘Ah, young people these days,’ she thought, ‘they don’t observe the church festivals, they don’t even eat’ – and admittedly only her late husband had done justice to her impressive Christmas menu. Her sons, their wives, and her grandchildren just picked at the dishes – ‘They don’t respect their mothers and fathers.’ As a young teacher on the Po delta, she’d endured a hellish bus journey, crossing the whole of Emilia to get to her parents’ farm as soon as she could. A woman who often made the same journey once told her, ‘It’d be easier to reach America by steamer.’
‘Oh well,’ she cut herself off. ‘I should let it go, these are an old woman’s thoughts.’ She jumped off the bed, her landing as shaky as ever, and headed to the bathroom. On her way back, passing through what she liked to call the dinette, she shifted the curtain aside to look out, drawn by the light of a full moon. She nearly let out a surprised ‘Oh!’
Under the large orange tree that dominated the garden of a semi identical to hers, on a swing he’d built for his daughter, was her neighbour from across the road. Maggese’s widow looked at the bright kitchen wall clock. It was almost too bright – she hadn’t 15 worked out how to change the settings. Four-thirty a.m. What was he doing there at that hour, pushing himself gently on the swing? Had he and his wife had a domestic? Strange, they were such a kind and loving couple. All three of them very well mannered, the girl too: ‘Good morning Mrs Maggese,’ she learned to say, right after her first steps.
She stared at him a little longer, trying to make out his expression, but the moonlight made his features hard to read. He didn’t look like an adulterer.
‘I hope it’s nothing too serious,’ the widow concluded. She headed back towards her bed and prepared herself yet again for the ascent.
‘I was baptised and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith.’
Whenever he read the opening line of Tolstoy’s A Confession, he’d see himself a child again in a big church, holding on to a small ivory book. In shorts and long white socks, he frantically directed his thoughts towards the heavens, trying to be pure and close to God, as he’d been taught in Sunday School. Who knows why the only church he really remembered from his childhood was the baroque one in the centre of Genoa. He’d stand under the vault in a grey suit, his shorts barely grazing his knee, hands joined together, the bored uncle behind him playing godfather, and the small prayer book he kept happily turning in his hands because it was shiny and new. He’d always liked books, especially new ones.
Like Tolstoy, he’d also been raised within a faith. It had all ended quickly, not long after his confirmation.
He’d picked up that library book, compelled by an unsettling feeling he’d had ever since he’d grabbed the phone some time before, answering on the third ring. And so, for the four hours’ 16 train journey ahead, two there, two back, he’d chosen the reading that had always been, for him, a precursor to change.
It was a small edition, a youthful theft (back then they were called ‘proletarian expropriations’) from some occupied library: first edition, December 1979. The unsettling feeling got stronger when he read the date and linked it to the phone conversation and the period of his life it had unearthed. But he hadn’t been able to say no. He might have been good at omitting facts, but he couldn’t tell an out-and-out lie. If it had happened a day earlier, on Thursday, he could’ve used work as an excuse, blaming the impossibility of asking for leave at such short notice from the public library where he worked as a supervisor. A weird irony, really: he’d spent so many years removing books (illegally, he knew now, but not back then), that now in the second half of his life he looked after and defended them. But not today, not on a Saturday.
Sara would be taking their daughter to Scouts and he’d planned a long lazy day of reading. Then, at dinner, the phone call came and he found himself here, at four-thirty in the morning, swaying gently on the swing he’d built for his daughter under their wild orange tree.
On the other side of the street, a light came on. Maggese’s widow pulled her curtain aside.
Napoleone Canessa smiled and lit himself a cigarette. The light from the match flickered for a second in the darkness. He thought about the meeting, the reason the man wanted to see him in Milan just before eight. Why such a rush? as if time were slipping through his fingers. He sat there, thinking, uncertain, asking himself the same question that had been weighing on him for hours, and had kept him from enjoying a nice evening with 17 his wife and daughter. Why me? Then he realised. Maybe I’m just a middleman, a means to get to someone else.
The potential role of mediator worried him even more than the phone call, the journey ahead, the uncertainties raised by the voice from his past. If his suspicions turned out to be true, he would end up confronting the one person in the world he hoped never to see again, and hadn’t seen in thirty years: his brother.
Judge Federico Astroni became aware of the woman only when she was directly behind him. If she’d wanted to take him out – as he often imagined it going down: killed by a woman, a pasionaria, like Marat with Charlotte Conday in the consul’s bathroom – she could’ve done so at any moment. She was incredibly quiet and, of course, incredibly thorough. Though her world was so different to his she was always ahead of the game, a quality he shared and was glad to have found in her – and in his collaborators more generally – after searching long and hard.
The Filipina help placed the small tray on the desk and said, ‘Signor, your coffee.’
The magistrate smiled at that word. She never said signore, only signor. He’d once tried to convince her to finish the word, but no joy. Whenever she spoke to a guest, that signor would linger and the guests waited in vain for the addition of their name or surname: Signor… Rossi, Signor… Carlo. But no. Her signor would float in mid-air, and disappear along with her.
Astroni’s linguistic musings had been inspired by the work he was doing on that warm, bright morning in Milan. So, he 18 went back to his paperwork and took out the Tippex to remove the adjective indissoluble. He really didn’t like it. He grabbed the thesaurus and opted for indivisible, which was a better fit for the theory he was trying to get across: a real leader exercises power and doesn’t manage it; therefore, crucial decisions cannot be shared, or even worse, delegated. They fall on one person; therefore, one person had to be guilty.
Judge Astroni wrote his statements, speeches, and talks on the computer (well, he didn’t, his team did), later editing them by hand, polishing them with his enormous, black, phallic Montblanc and its silver tip. It was a precious gift from a Milan aristocrat. He made frequent visits to her salons, and cautious ones to her bed. ‘So when you send all those people to the stake,’ she’d told him with melodramatic flair, ‘I’ll be pleased to know I have a part in it.’
She was an attractive fifty-year-old. Back in the 70s she’d taken on the revolutionary aesthetic along with so many others. They’d marched around Italy wearing colourful fake jewellery, shapeless jumpers, long skirts, messy hair. Sworn enemies of cleanliness and tidiness, they now sought the priciest beauty salons. They were worse than the men, more extreme. They took part in assemblies, marches, okkupations, convinced that they were history’s heroes, instead of realising that it was a phase, a hobby, something they’d drop as they might drop fishing, crochet, restoring old furniture or yoga. Which is exactly what had happened. Admittedly, some of them stayed true to their youthful ideals, some to the clothing or the infrequent showers and baths. But they’d long since left the squats and communes in favour of mansion blocks and flats, the nice comfy houses their families could afford.
He smiled. In those days, Astroni would’ve pushed her away: he had actually tried bringing about the revolution. He hadn’t just 19 played a part. He truly wanted to believe that his struggle had not changed – the times had. And with them, above all, the means. He would never have thought back then that the State would be on his side, the same institutions he’d dreamt of overthrowing and was now serving, supported by adoring masses he wholeheartedly despised.
So he’d included her in his invisible harem, which everyone knew about, including the journalists at the courts of law, but no one was brave enough to reveal – one or two out of respect, but most out of fear. Because he was Judge Federico Astroni, the Office’s former enfant prodige, the protégé of the prosecutor himself. The real leader of the group, the best read, the best prepared, the man who had ‘fucked’ everyone (horrible phrase, but he did enjoy its crudeness), who broke the law, politicians, business people, small fry and big cheese in public office, political parties and private companies.
Playing both accuser and judge, he’d forgiven a few of those he’d led to his office in handcuffs blubbing, waving photos of their young children, old mothers, widows, and telling him of terminal illnesses in an appeal to his sentimentality. Others he’d simply destroyed, even for the smallest of sins. It depended on his role, the situation, sometimes a spur-of-the-moment thing. But there was one thing above all others that really sparked his cold, determined rage: resistance. That was the reason he had wanted to drag to court – successfully, too – the leader of the biggest opposition party, the only one who hadn’t come crawling but had challenged him outright, in public, claiming political persecution, calling him a ‘terrorist’, setting his journalist friends on him, taking refuge in private TV studios. Maybe Judge Astroni had started his investigation because he saw the remains of the country’s toxic 20 politics, an enemy of his own ideas and what he believed he stood for. But later, it was no longer for that reason. Even if he’d never admit as much, it had turned into pure, visceral hatred. It was personal. Me or him. Sure, the wealthy politician had some faults, but nothing that warranted that amount of effort or attention.
Everything in his life had led up to this, and it would destroy him in the end.
He recalled another man he’d hated in the same way, though for different reasons. He dismissed the memory, drank his coffee and headed over to the window.
Because of him, no one could park outside his apartment building, which was located in a square in the city centre. At the height of the corruption investigation, when the names of the presiding magistrates were on everyone’s lips and everyone saw them at home thanks to the papers and TV, talk shows, and live court reports, one of his neighbours had practically knelt before him on the street: ‘For you, I’d park my car in Beijing, even give you my home.’
That kneeling man was now behind a petition lying on a table at the building’s entrance, where the post accumulated. Essentially, they were requesting that life return to normal: no bans (especially the no-parking ban), no security checks, no more heavy police presence. If his safety was truly at stake, why didn’t he get out of there? They were tired of the tight security and having to park some blocks away.
He’d have felt disheartened if he had built his beliefs, convictions and work around these people. Serve the masses? Nonsense. Luckily, everything he’d done had been for his own benefit.
Astroni felt good. His reflection in the window showed a tall man with thick, curly hair. Behind golden glasses (used only for 21 reading, since his sight was pretty good otherwise) were the eyes he’d inherited from his father, a royal magistrate removed from his post for refusing to join the fascist party. Happily, the family had enough money for that not to have been a problem.
Downstairs were two parked cars, his own and the escort’s. One of the Carabinieri was leaning against the car, his gaze focused, scanning the rooftops. Their eyes met. The judge waved and the Carabiniere replied with a slight nod. Another loyal subject, chosen after many attempts.
But just then, a shadow fell over the bright day, the working weekend ahead of him and his general optimism. That wave had brought back some bad memories, even worse feelings. For someone who boasted an ability to predict almost anything, seeing that face on the way out of the courts two weeks earlier had been a real surprise. They’d been in the car at a red light – he didn’t like using sirens to weave through the streets unless it was actually necessary. ‘Impossible,’ he’d thought, and looked again. The person he’d glimpsed had vanished: perhaps a mirage, or if it actually had been him, just a coincidence. Milan was a big city. He could’ve been there for any reason at all. But then, the following Saturday, he’d headed into the office to pick up some missing paperwork, and there he was again, in the same spot: no crowd this time, so he couldn’t be wrong. He’d even used binoculars to make sure. There he was, on the paved area in front of the church of San Pietro in Gessate. He was alone, hands in his jacket pockets, thin grey hair, his icy blue eyes staring at the courts – and almost directly at him, even though it wasn’t actually possible from so far away. He was unmistakable, despite the years carved into his face. He’d casually looked into his current situation. No, there was no reason for him to be here, reawakening an old nightmare.
22 So he’d dialled a number with a heavy heart, and spoken with an even heavier heart to another ghost from the past, the legacy of a time he had erased from his life. Reservations had almost held him back: even touching the phone irritated him. But having talked to him and listened to him, he felt better.
Rocco finished his third Coke and threw the empty can into a non-recyclable plastic bag at his feet. In any other situation, he wouldn’t have hesitated to chuck it out the window, without a care for the city’s cleanliness or decorum, or onto the back seat. But he didn’t want to risk leaving any traces behind. Coke was his addiction, maybe because he’d always been too poor to buy it as a kid, and the colourful adverts full of happy people and jingles had made it even more of a success symbol. Now he drank litres of it every day.
Rocco had little regard for the police, especially forensics (‘We’re not on CSI, mate’) and he didn’t even believe in DNA testing (‘Anything can be disproved in this country’). But better not to leave anything lying around. He suddenly belched long and hard, before turning his fierce grin on the man in the driver’s seat of the blue Astra. They were parked in via Cappellini, on the corner of Vittor Pisani.
Nando Panattoni looked at Rocco in disgust, pulled out his phone and punched in a number. ‘Train here yet?’ he asked.
‘Two minutes,’ chirped the voice of his assistant Carletti. It was drowned out by the announcement of a freight train entering the station. ‘The fast train is right on time.’ 23
Panattoni glanced at the silent, empty street, and pulled on his baseball cap.
‘Don’t lose him. Try to follow those two when they meet up. I want to know what they’re saying to each other, so make good use of the mic. And don’t get caught.’ Nando put away the phone. He wouldn’t fail. This was the toughest, most delicate task of his life, his turning point. No more dirty jobs or secret missions. It was risky, but he had made up his mind; he couldn’t put up with that shit any more.
‘On your marks,’ he barked. Rocco looked at him, on the verge of replying to orders with some obnoxious profanity. Instead, he tilted his head slightly and patted the tennis bag on his lap. There weren’t any rackets in it – he’d never played that ‘game for sissies’. Instead, there was a short-gripped AK-47, loaded, clean, and checked: 40 shiny 7.62 bullets he’d personally modified to hold an explosive charge at their tip.
Nando Panattoni had met Rocco in his previous life, before he’d become a private investigator in a cushy office on via Bergamo in Milan, and was still a retired fascist enforcer, a former Lazio hooligan a little too old to beat up Rome fans (or anyone else, for that matter). He collected debts for a loan shark in Testaccio, a butcher who paid him in steaks and cuts of lamb. This one time, he’d had to pay a visit to a furniture maker in Formia who found himself priced out by the big furniture companies, the ones that were all the rage in the 80s. The ‘bastard’ – as the loan shark inevitably called all of his customers – had made the mistake of seeking out the butcher, but hadn’t paid him by the deadline. Despite repaying more than double the amount he’d borrowed, he hadn’t been able to pay the remaining interest, which meant there was no chance his debt would be cancelled.
24 And so the ‘bastard’ had called the butcher to say he considered the matter settled. Thanks, see you later. ‘Mate, you gotta break his legs,’ the butcher had ordered Panattoni, wrapping up a hundred quid’s worth of ribs. ‘Tasty, need cookin’ Milan style, bit o’ rocket, coupla tomatoes on top.’ Panattoni had taken his third-hand Fiat 128 (a car that struggled with first gear, and outright ignored second) and driven to the outskirts of Formia with some friends who needed the extra cash. When the furniture maker came out in the dark, Panattoni and his friends blocked his path. Just then, a skinny guy jumped out from behind the ‘bastard’ brandishing a butterfly knife. Twirling it around, up and down, left and right. It was hypnotising.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Panattoni had asked.
‘My bodyguard,’ the furniture man replied. He was small and ugly. Scary, and suddenly smug.
‘This punk?’ said one of Panattoni’s grunts. But his comment stuck in his throat as Rocco plunged the knife into his leg. At the sight of his friend on the ground, his calf oozing blood, the other man fled the scene. Rocco stared at Panattoni, daring him to follow suit, but Panattoni just stood there.
‘How much is this bastard paying you?’
The question threw the kid off.
‘Why?’
‘I’ll double it.’
Rocco gave him the first of many hideous grins and immediately switched sides. The furniture maker ended up with broken tibias and femurs.
And so their partnership began. Panattoni would find and plan the jobs, Rocco would execute them. Intimidation, collections, a couple of extortions. Then the hits started, but Panattoni was only 25 the go-between on those. He didn’t want to get directly involved in murder: petty crooks, loan shark victims who squealed too loud, nothing too dangerous. It was during the investigation of one of those crimes that he met his current employers. His existence had definitely improved, but over time he’d become increasingly uneasy. He moved to Milan, opened an investigative agency as a front and started working for his new bosses. He dealt with the dirty work as it got progressively dirtier. And it was all the more two-faced since the instigators were hiding behind a façade of respectable luxury. But there was money. Tons of money. Even more money for that last dirty job. At least, he hoped it would be his last.
‘This is it,’ he’d tell himself. ‘We’re going our own separate ways after this’. After all, they’d never been friends. Panattoni had stayed in Rome for a while before moving to Milan, and Rocco was still based in Naples. They used public phones, no mobiles, and only for work: rendezvous, timings, type of job. Harmless conversations, on the surface. No mention of their private lives, at least not from Nando.
Rocco was different. He’d confessed everything about himself, starting with his nickname: his legal name was Ciro D’Alletto. ‘Rocco’ was after Rocco Siffredi, the porn star.
‘Is it a size thing?’ Panattoni had asked.
‘I wish,’ was the answer. His awful boorishness somehow hid sparks of humour, even self-deprecation. It was his gigantic collection of porn, initially videotapes, then DVDs that had earned him his nickname. ‘Rare stuff,’ he’d say. He spoke as a connoisseur, as if he held a selection of ceramics and not hardcore films of a very specific kind: extreme sex, violence, rapes. All fiction, ‘Except,’ he’d say, lowering his voice, ‘for a dozen originals, from 26 the former Yugoslavia and Thailand.’ Snuff films, essentially. Though no one had ever seen them and very few of those privy to the fact believed that filth was real.
The only tangible, objective fact was that Ciro D’Alletto, aka Rocco, was a serial offender, and he’d pounce on women as soon as he could. That’s why he had to be kept on a short leash, as Nando Panattoni had always explained to his employers, who were convinced that day trips would arouse suspicion. He insisted that Rocco had to arrive in the morning and leave in the evening – or night at the latest, on the sleeper train. Keeping him around for longer or putting him up overnight would create inevitable security breaches. He was a ticking bomb: he might attack a cleaning lady in a hotel, molest a roommate or, perhaps worse, brutalise a prostitute as soon as he was alone.
Panattoni shook the thought away in disgust. The guy was a psychopathic maniac. Efficient, sure, but a psychopath nonetheless.
Rocco lived in Secondigliano with his grandmother: no father to speak of, and his mother would surface every now and then from some brothel where she was working to support her addiction. But she’d only show up to scrounge a meal, a packet of biscuits, a bed.
His first victim had been a twelve-year-old girl. That’s what had made him a killer. Or rather, that’s what had made him kill the first time. Panattoni was convinced that he’d have become a killer eventually no matter what. The girl lived in the building across from his, and their road was a type of Berlin wall, a border. Fewer than ten metres divided rampant crime and slums from honest, dignified poverty. On one side people lived in awful conditions by choice, on the other they survived with discipline, 27 clean houses, and everyone had a small job somewhere. She was the daughter of an Alfa Romeo employee – a good man and a card-carrying communist, like his wife. They’d go round the neighbourhood on Sundays selling the party newspaper, and Rocco used their absence to get into their house and rape their daughter. Her father lost his mind. Instead of reporting Rocco, he’d waited for him at the front door and gave him such a beating that he landed him in hospital. Rocco was in a terrible condition. He ended up in traction and they removed his spleen. But he never revealed the name of his attacker, nor did the police ask for it. They couldn’t care less who’d beaten up that piece of human garbage. In fact, they might’ve congratulated him if they’d known.
Rocco got out a couple of months later, and it took him three more to walk again. He waited. As soon as he thought he was ready, he stole a scooter and went to wait for the girl’s father in the employee car park of the Alfa factory. It was dusk, he was starting the night shift. Rocco approached with his hand out.
‘I’m not angry with you. You did what you had to do. In fact, you did the right thing. I deserved much worse.’
The girl’s father, who’d been wary as soon as he saw Rocco, lowered his guard and took his hand. Without breaking eye contact, Rocco plunged a bread knife into his chest, twisting as he pushed it into his heart. The man collapsed in front of him without losing a drop of blood. Methodical.
‘The only one I ever killed for free,’ he’d cackled to Panattoni.
As he thought of the girl and her father, murdered in a car park on a moonless night, Panattoni felt his phone vibrate through his shirt pocket. 28
Carla Trovati tossed and turned in her bed with a strange uneasiness. A sliver of light came in from the window on the other side of a wide room that effectively made up her entire flat, cleverly divided by screens and furniture. She looked at the clock: wake up, nyt never sleeps. The New York Times never sleeps, and tonight, neither did she – not after the evening before, which had ended her promise to herself: never get in bed with your managing editor.
Her anger was keeping her from sleeping, but was it because she’d slept with the legendary Giulio Strozzi – or because she’d kicked him out? Main reporter for the Corriere della Sera, lead journalist on the Mani Pulite case that uncovered mass scale political corruption, official biographer, friend and confidant of Judge Federico Astroni. He’d found a perfect match in Astroni at the time of the case that had placed the DA’s office in Milan at the centre of the universe. Strozzi had climbed that ladder, and he would climb even higher: he was attractive to both women and men, especially the powerful and the rich. It was no secret at the paper that the higher-ups loved him more than his colleagues.
Carla sat up in bed, going over what had happened. She wasn’t a prude or naive, but she wasn’t ‘easy’ either. And she especially didn’t want to be seen as ‘the reporter who sleeps with her boss’. Maybe a colleague, if she really liked them that much. Which was something she’d always carefully avoided – until now.
Catching sight of herself in the mirror, she saw a face she liked, despite the tangle of brown hair and the bags under her eyes. But what she liked most was what was behind it: her brains, her soul. 29
Carla Trovati was a beautiful woman, but even more importantly, she was good. She wasn’t where she was thanks to her arse – she knew many a mediocre colleague, male and female, who’d used their bodies to get promotions and raises – but because she put effort, sweat, and intelligence into her work. She couldn’t ignore the fact that someone like her was bound to receive attention on the main floor of the paper, especially with all the men there. But she had no time for those games. And in any case, she definitely didn’t care to join the long list of Giulio Strozzi’s lovers. After her law degree – honouring a promise to her father, a famous Milan lawyer – she’d studied journalism and started her internship at the Corriere.
Her breakthrough, the one every journalist dreams about, especially early in their career, had come when she’d been sent to the Town Hall for a city council meeting. Nothing special. A regular meeting. A normal, routine, boring reporting gig. During a moment of fatigue during the endless council session, she’d gone to the loo. In the corridor that led to the toilets, she’d found the deputy mayor in tears. He was a quiet, serious man in his forties, a physics teacher at the polytechnic, but politically engaged since youth. ‘Is everything okay?’ she’d asked him, sincerely worried. And he’d started talking like someone needing to let it all out, as if her formal gesture of politeness had been proof of kindness on planet Earth. He’d needed a shoulder, a confessor, a human being capable of listening. He told her his party was dropping him because he was gay. Of course, none of his colleagues, all parading as politically correct, had or would ever mention it. Too sly. The official reasons were something else entirely, but to him, the reality was plain and clear.
Carla hadn’t taken any notes at the time. The first rule her journalism teacher, a retired reporter for the late and venerable 30 Notte, had taught her was this: ‘Only use notepad and pens during press conferences, never when you bump into someone, never when you realise that someone is confiding in you. At that moment, they think you’re a good person offering them a shoulder to cry on, and not a stinking bastard, a cynical journalist who will jot down every last word.’
Carla had memorised every single word and as soon as the deputy had left, she pulled out her phone. The story was on the first page for a week, and the director had called her to his office, the ‘red office’. He’d made her sit on one of the famous worn leather armchairs while he, solemnly leaning against the bookshelf that housed the Treccani encyclopaedia, had told her she was hired.
Two years had passed since then. Carla had put serious effort into her work, staying at the office until the wee hours, standing in for anyone absent or sick, running back and forth in the archives when they needed to find an old cutting that hadn’t yet been digitised. ‘You know you have nothing to prove, right?’ old De Blasi would tell her. He was the established commissioner’s office reporter, worn out, scruffy, shrouded in a permanent cloud of smoke (he’d moved his office into the courtyard so he could keep smoking at work), the last of a dying breed of journalists. ‘This place is filled with total arseholes who should be licking the ground you walk on…’ he’d add, not entirely innocently. But Carla let some of his comments slide, realising he meant nothing by them. With everyone else, she was stony. Especially with Strozzi, though she clearly wasn’t immune to his charm.
Now she knew: he had been subtly wooing her, never crossing the line, never pressing for more than friendship. They’d gone for a drink several times after work, but always with other people. Only now was she noticing the trap she’d fallen into.
31 Giulio had made her feel comfortable, made her feel important as a journalist, special as a woman. He’d calmly waited for the right moment, and it had come the previous evening. They’d gone for dinner at the Navigli, this time just the two of them. It was a lovely night in mid-April when they could eat outside, her boss’s company was pleasant, the conversation stimulating. They drank together, laughed, joked, and locked hands, but especially gazes. Then he’d given her a lift home, without saying much more. When they’d reached corso Garibaldi, Giulio had got out to open her door, leaving the engine running, giving the impression that – for him – the evening was over, and they were both going home. That’s when she’d asked if he wanted to come upstairs.
She lived in one of those blocks with communal balconies, once council housing but now fully renovated and gentrified, and only for the wealthy. The daughter of Trovati, Esq., prince of the courtroom, could afford it. Her flat looked like a loft: not so spacious, but very New York.
‘This is a nice place. You’ve decorated it really well.’ Giulio ran his eyes over the flat, lingering over the brass bed in the corner.
‘It’s not that big, but it’s enough for me.’
He’d smiled mournfully. ‘I’d really like to leave via dei Missaglia. It’s too far out, and the area is depressing. But journalists’ houses are lovely and big, comfortable. For those of us with kids, space is important. Also, my wife hates the city centre.’
Mentioning his kids was part of his wooing, too: it set him apart from other men looking for an affair, the ones who hid their families, erased their other ties, played the teenager on a first date, slipped their wedding rings into their pockets. Not him. He was sly, kept his ring on display and talked openly about his family, letting a feeling of sadness come off him, as if staying 32 married to his wife – whom he’d married in the past, when he’d also been ‘just anyone’ – was a sacrifice, but careful of playing the husband who felt ‘no more spark in the relationship’. Giulio Strozzi was clever. He never cut things off when the subject came round to his family. Oh no, he always let others draw their own conclusions.
While they were having another drink, he’d told her that signing the kids up (a boy and a girl) for a private school had shown him the true joy of the weekend, when you could finally get up late. That was when she’d kissed him. She had no idea what had happened, or what had come over her. She pulled back immediately, regretting it, convinced that it would all end there, but the man who’d just been talking about his children with fatherly love had moved fast, as if he’d been waiting for it the whole time.
Of course, she thought now.
Giulio had followed her retreat, practically sucking her lips and tenderly reigniting the kiss. He’d caressed the back of her head, leaving his hand at the base of her neck – his way of preventing any further escape, something she hadn’t even considered, caught as she was in his web. Then, as if for the first time in his life, Giulio had run a finger down her entire spine. And there, as she was lost in the kiss, her mouth fully open, the poetry had ended. He’d grabbed her hips, throwing her onto the couch, and almost ripped her shirt open. Her breasts burst out of her bra and he sucked her nipples as he lifted up her skirt. He’d smiled, aroused, at the sight of her hold-ups. A moment later, he was fully naked. He’d got up from the couch, taken her by hand to the bed, and finished undressing her.
‘And then he fucked me, the bastard. Not bad, either. Vanilla, but satisfying.’
33 The thing that had angered her and left her with a sense of nausea had happened that morning, just before she carefully reconstructed every detail of the encounter for herself as a lesson for the future. At some point, half awake, she’d heard Giulio move. She’d opened her eyes, propping herself up on an elbow. She didn’t immediately understand what that thing pointing at her face was – and then she realised: it was Giulio Strozzi’s ‘tool’. He was standing by her side of the bed, watching her tenderly, as if what was happening were entirely natural. He’d touched her face with measured technique, grazing her lips with a finger, circling, letting her mouth open. Suddenly, he’d pushed with his other hand on the back of her head, bringing her to his penis, plunging it into her mouth. Carla, though she felt trapped, hadn’t resisted. But when he was coming – ‘Yes, good girl!’ – she fully realised what was happening and remembered her promise to herself, not to become one of his many conquests. Sure, Giulio would never say anything about them. That fake gentleman had never spilled anything about his affairs. Yet all they needed was a word, a look, a smile, and everyone at the Corriere would know that she’d been added to the list. Before she could react, he’d filled her up. Disgusted more by her own weakness than what had happened, she ran to the bathroom. When she came back, Giulio Strozzi was lying on the bed, eyes closed, happily convinced that he’d lounge there until ten and then walk the couple of blocks to via Solferino for their eleven o’clock meeting. She picked up his clothes, including his shoes, and threw them at him in anger.
‘Get out. You got what you wanted, now go sleep it off at your own place.’
That was the only moment in the entire encounter when she’d foreseen his next move. Giulio had been quiet and demure, no 34 lashing out, no obvious anger. A gentleman. He got dressed quickly. At the door, he poured oil on the fire by saying, ‘I’m sorry, I might have let myself go too far, but you’re special. In every way.’
An hour later, Carla was still there, staring at the blade of light coming in at the window, and thinking just what an idiot she’d been. She made her decision, pulled open the curtains and stared at the courtyard downstairs. The custodian was watering the flowers in the small communal garden. ‘I can’t sleep anyway.’
She made herself a coffee as the clock from the New York Times read 6.48 a.m. She’d willingly have gone to New York there and then in order to put an ocean between herself and the office.
His seat was wide and comfortable, and the service excellent, but lawyer Giannino Salemme was mourning the time when you could even smoke cigars on planes. Almost pre-history now. The legal consultant for a British chemical giant that had ‘made a mistake’ – some thousand dead in Pakistan from a toxic cloud at a disinfectant factory built in that multinationals’ paradise – had asked for help from their partners in the States, and he’d said that you could still smoke absolutely anything on Pakistani airlines. Was it true? He’d never checked, though he’d always been tempted to book a return ticket Milan–London–Islamabad to find out.
He’d spent the entire red-eye flight from Newark thinking about the packets of Partagas in his soft leather bag in the overhead locker: they were tucked in a chic travel humidor he’d found at a famous tobacconist on the Upper East Side. A gift from an American partner who knew his vices and carefully cultivated 35 them: Bacchus? hardly, but tobacco and Venus were pretty hardcore interests.
Salemme wasn’t one for whores, meaning he didn’t like to pay. He preferred to think of himself as the Latin Lover of forty years earlier, as if those times at the Capannina club and the hot summers in Versilia, when women were more open and less demanding than nowadays, weren’t gone for good. His wife, bless her soul, had been the one to introduce him to Forte dei Marmi, before swiftly passing on to a better life for both of them. Bland, shy and awkward, but with plenty of dosh. The daughter of the boomer middle class. Her father had got a gong, and made his money through construction. He’d bought houses everywhere, from Cortina to Montecarlo. Now all those houses belonged to him, Salemme, the Neapolitan lawyer, ex-magistrate. His father-in-law (God, the irony of a southerner like him marrying the daughter of an industrialist!) had looked at him askance until his dying breath, a magnificent sound, for what it meant: the release of all that wealth destined for his daughter. Salemme organised a yearly mass and rosary, two, in fact: one for his wife and one for her entire (late) family. His feelings for her were a mixture of brotherly love and profound gratitude. In life, she’d done two crucial things: she’d given him a son in his image (he’d worried during the pregnancy that the baby would be a girl or turn out to be as bland and insignificant as its mother) and she’d buggered off quickly. Not that she’d taken up much space or been clingy. Poor thing, not at all. But things were better like this. He was free.
And so Salemme – despite several suggestions of a second marriage – had ‘remained faithful to the memory of his late wife’ (as far as weddings went, anyway) and had been living his 36 second life to the full. At nearly seventy, he was still handsome. Maybe not to women under forty, but he liked them young and didn’t want to pay.
So the lawyer for foreign partners of an important American legal firm (even his closest affiliates were mystified about the link) had found him a good-looking girl, set her up in the Village and paid her rent and tuition fees. That way his Italian friend could have fun every time he crossed the pond with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. ‘Matters of productivity,’ he’d insist when the board of Harper, Johnson & Meredith of Madison Avenue queried the significant ‘rep costs’ in the books. However, what the book-cookers and Salemme didn’t know was that when the Italian partner wasn’t stateside – i.e. most of the year – it was the liaison lawyer who slept with the college student.
Salemme disembarked the Newark–Malpensa Continental flight with a feeling of satisfaction, thinking about his past week in the Big Apple and looking forward to the mossy flavour of the Partagas he’d light as soon as he left the airport.
He was a big man and, though the tight physique of his youth was only a memory, he’d retained some elegance. It wasn’t a matter of style. Sure, his grey suit from a famous Milan tailor hung perfectly despite the night spent at 30,000 feet over the Atlantic (bespoke, of course; he’d been a loyal customer since the beginning). But his elegance wasn’t a matter of his clothing alone.
He fetched his luggage quickly and used a trolley to wheel it to arrivals, scanning the crowd for Germano, his chauffeur.
Instead, among the dazed and sleepy faces waiting at the break of day, he spotted his son Claudio, waving at him. He felt a pang of worry: something was wrong. Claudio out of bed at dawn? Germano appeared behind his son and took the trolley. 37
‘Morning, sir. How was the flight?’
‘Not bad, thanks, Germano. Go to the car and wait there, please. I need a word with my son.’
The chauffeur disappeared discreetly, and the lawyer led his son by the arm towards a semi-deserted area of the airport.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked in front of a still-shuttered flower shop.
‘What do you mean? Can’t I just come see my good old dad?’
Claudio was tall, smart and handsome, but he’d been born arrogant, and that troubled Salemme. He’d built his power and wealth on silence, invisibility, and working under the radar. ‘Hidden power is a sure thing,’ he always said. ‘Visible power ultimately collapses.’
Claudio was efficient and precise, and presumptuous as well. He was a good student but lacked discipline, convinced anything could be solved by instinct and not by hard work. He tended towards arrogance, at times unpleasantly so, and that was dangerous, for him as well as for others since it led to brash decisions. When he was younger, his father had had to get him out of his fair share of troubles: unwanted pregnancies, beatings outside clubs, drink driving. ‘At least no drugs,’ Salemme senior sighed. It all slid off a spoiled rich boy who wouldn’t grow up.
Claudio was his only child and he’d been terrified of losing him, literally. Surprisingly, after the train wreck of his high-school years – he’d only graduated after hefty donations to private schools – and two years of a law degree, mostly hungover at his desk at university after rowdy nights out, he’d suddenly shifted gears. He’d actually started studying, given up his bad habits, graduated, and joined his father’s company.
The reason? He’d walked out of a literal car crash, almost unscathed. But his friends had died in it, a boy and an underage 38 girl. Fortunately, he hadn’t been driving, or Giannino Salemme would’ve had to struggle to get him out of a sentence, despite his past as a magistrate and the contacts he still had almost everywhere. He remembered the police phone call and the nightmare of that evening spent in the Magenta hospital, shrouded in January fog.
When the boy had opened his eyes after surgery and they’d been allowed to have a minute together, Salemme had stared at his son and said: ‘Read this, then sign it.’ He’d handed him a contract stipulating that he’d graduate within three years, taking the exams for all four years of the programme, and would pass the bar exam. Otherwise he’d be removed from the will – and that meant no pocket money, not even for a coffee. He would hand over receipts for every purchase. Salemme knew, however, that this wasn’t what had changed the kid’s path: he wasn’t afraid of losing money, but of having almost lost his life. Claudio had followed through on the agreement, but since then there’d been a cold light in his eyes that only warmed up when he was feeling arrogant. ‘Arrogance is a luxury you can only afford if you have solid foundations,’ Salemme often told him.
‘Don’t be an idiot. Why are you here?’
‘I told you about it on the phone.’
‘What about it?’
‘I’m taking care of it.’
‘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. 39
‘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.’ 40
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 41 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.
42 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?’ 43
‘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.
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 44 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 45 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. 46
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… 47
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.
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. 48
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, respectful, 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.’ 49
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.’
Petri’s words didn’t help.
‘Look, I don’t know why you wanted to see me, though I may be able to guess. And I’m telling you, we both made a mistake: you seeking me out, me agreeing to come here. I don’t think I can help you.’
‘I actually think you can, and I won’t take much of your time. Trust me.’
They came to the crossing on via Boscovich. The road was clear. On Saturday mornings in Milan, the whole business area practically empty. A car pulled over and a smiling face leaned out of the window.
A man with a Southern accent asked, ‘Excuse me, can you help?’
‘They’re coming towards you.’
Nando Panattoni slipped his phone back into his pocket and started the engine. Driving slowly, he circled the block to take via Vittor Pisani towards the station. Beside him, Rocco pulled out the AK-47 and started loading it.
‘I don’t like this. Can’t we wait until they’re somewhere else? Plan this out better?’ 50
Panattoni was furious with Rocco’s last-minute hesitation. ‘Now you say it, arsehole! Do your job, and do it well.’
Rocco saw them walking. The other guy, the one from the train, suddenly turned round.
‘They’re onto us. There’s no going back now.’
Panattoni pulled over on the corner of via Boscovich, cutting them off. Rocco leaned out the window and beamed his best fake smile. ‘Excuse me, can you help? We’re headed for viale Fulvio Testi.’
Napoleone Canessa moved closer to answer him and almost didn’t hear Petri’s scream: ‘Run! It’s a trap!’ A black weapon appeared in the man’s hands.
From where he was in the middle of the road, Napoleone saw flashes, but the shots weren’t for him. The volley was aimed at Pino Petri, who might have been able to save himself if he hadn’t grabbed Napoleone’s arm to get him to move. Napoleone heard Petri’s body thud as it hit the ground. Then, just like in a syncopated FPS game, the weapon swung towards him. It was the last thing he saw. He collapsed next to Petri, riddled with at least fifteen explosive rounds.
The silencer allowed the killers to leave the scene calmly. Panattoni accelerated only once they crossed the first traffic lights on via Vitruvio, disappearing on the roads leading to corso Buenos Aires. The following day the car, stolen just hours before the crime by Panattoni, was found burning at the Idroscalo. No one connected it to the murders.
While the killers were escaping unnoticed, a guy out for his Saturday morning jog on via Vittor Pisani almost stumbled over the corpses. 51
He called the emergency services and soon after, a couple of railway police officers hurried over from Centrale station. ‘Jesus, what a mess,’ the younger one said. His colleague contacted the police station. ‘Double murder on the corner of Vittor Pisani and Boscovich. Numerous shots, two dead.’ He hung up, looked at the victims and let out a long whistle.
‘Hey, have you seen who that is?’
‘Which one?’
‘The older guy. Don’t you recognise him?’
‘Should I?’
‘It’s Giuseppe Petri! Pino, one of the most famous terrorists in Italy. No one actually knows how many victims. What the fuck do they teach you in schools these days – ancient Egyptian history?’
Chief Magistrate Calandra was dreaming. A woman was calling him from below. He was somewhere up high but the location of the dream was hazy. A building maybe? or a villa. He pushed the heavy brocade curtains aside and leaned out of a window. The woman was in a pool, gesturing for him to join her. ‘Come down, the water’s great!’ Beyond the pool, he could see a scorched savannah with grassy patches and scattered boulders. Strange place for a villa. Calandra considered going back to his room to put on his swimming costume and join the woman. She did have a gorgeous face. But it was no longer a room – it was an office. His office. Before he could take a single step, the phone on his desk started ringing. He didn’t move. The phone kept ringing. But he 52wouldn’t move. Then the place where he was standing vanished, but the phone kept ringing.
He suddenly realised it wasn’t part of the dream. He reached out to his bedside table and grabbed the phone.
The display read 8:16 am. Why hadn’t his alarm gone off? Oh! it was Saturday, and he slept in as long as he could on Saturdays.
‘Yes?’
‘Sir, I’m sorry to disturb you…’
The voice, less attractive than the one in his dream, belonged to one of his assistants.
He cleared his throat, assuming his usual curt manner.
‘Don’t apologise. There must be a reason for your call.’
‘There’s been a shooting in Milan, and I believe it might have repercussions on the developments we’re following.’
‘Keep talking.’