Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi was of medium height, and slim. He had a dark complexion, striking green eyes, black hair slicked back with brilliantine: sometimes a strand or two came free, falling over his forehead, and he distractedly smoothed it back in place with an abrupt gesture. His nose was straight and thin, like his lips. His small, almost feminine hands were restless, always moving. He kept them in his pocket, aware that they betrayed his emotion, his tension.
He didn’t need to work, thanks to a family income that he didn’t care all that much about. And as some relative would remind him during rare summer visits to his hometown, he should frequent a society more suited to the name he bore. But he kept both the income and the title to himself, so he could remain as unnoticed as possible and go about the life he had chosen—or, rather, that had chosen him. You try it, he would have said if he could; you try to feel all that sorrow, relentless and unremitting in all its forms. Constantly, each and every day, seeking peace, demanding justice. He had decided to study law, completed a thesis on criminal law, then joined the police; it was the only way to acknowledge those demands, to lighten that burden. In the world of the living, in order to bury the dead.
He had no friends, he didn’t associate with anyone, he didn’t go out at night, he didn’t have a woman. His family ended with his old tata Rosa, now seventy years old, who served him with absolute devotion and loved him dearly, though she never tried to understand what it was he saw or what he was thinking.
He worked late, isolated from his colleagues who took care to avoid him. His superiors feared his qualities, his extraordinary aptitude to solve seemingly impossible cases, his total dedication to his work: features that made one think of unbridled ambition, a determination to stand out, to climb the ladder, to step into someone’s shoes. His subordinates didn’t understand his moroseness, his silences: never a smile, never a superfluous comment. His methods were unconventional. He did not follow procedures, but in the end he was always right. Those who were more superstitious—and in that city there were many like that—sensed something unnatural in Ricciardi’s solutions, as if his investigations proceeded backwards, as if he went over the course of events in reverse. It was natural that the officers assigned to work directly with the Commissario would react with a scowl of irritation. Moreover, his investigations did not rest: once begun, they ended only when the case was solved. Night and day, even Sundays, until the offender was in jail. As if, each time, the victim were a relative of his; as if he had known him personally.
Some appreciated the fact that he systematically refused the special monetary incentives awarded for the more important investigations, turning them down in order to benefit the squad. Also that he was always present, even giving up his days off. And he kept his subordinates’ mistakes from the eyes of their superiors, covering up for them himself, though he later confronted the responsible party bluntly, reminding him to pay more attention. Still, only one of his co-workers was genuinely attached to him: Brigadier Raffaele Maione.
Having recently turned fifty, Maione was very glad to be still alive and in good shape. In the evening, at the table, he was fond of repeating to his wife and five children: “Thank the Almighty God that you have food to eat. And thank your lucky stars that your father hasn’t been killed yet.” And his eyes would quickly fill with tears at the thought of Luca, his oldest son who had entered the police force like him, but who had not been so lucky. In service for a year, he had been stabbed to death during a search in the Rione Sanità district, in Naples’ old historic centre. The pain was still fresh, even though three years had passed. His wife no longer spoke about him, as if that strong, handsome son—who was always laughing and who would take her in his arms and make her go flying and who called her “my girl”—had never existed. And yet there he was, planted squarely in the centre of her heart and soul, displacing his brothers and sisters, and accompanying her throughout the day.
Maione had become attached to Ricciardi at the time of his son’s death. The then deputy of police had been among the first to arrive on the scene. Gently, he had asked Maione to leave the tavern where the boy’s body had been found, lying in a pool of blood, the knife protruding from his back. Ricciardi had then remained in there alone for a few minutes, and when he came out of the darkness his green eyes seemed to gleam with an internal light, like those of a cat, but they were full of tears. He went over to Maione. In the silence of those present, men embarrassed by the father’s anguish, Ricciardi reached out and squeezed Maione’s arm. Maione still remembered the unexpected strength he had felt, the warmth of that hand through the fabric of his uniform.
‘He loved you, Maione. He loved you very much. He called out to you, it was his final thought. He will always be with you, with you and with his mother.’
Even through the haze of his immense sorrow, Maione felt a chill down his spine and at the back of his neck. He had not asked, either then or later on, during years of surveillance operations or the long trips required by various investigations, how Ricciardi knew, why he had been the one to deliver his beloved son’s final message. But he felt that that was exactly what had happened, that the deputy had told him what he had seen and heard, that they were not the usual words of comfort that he himself had so often repeated to families of the deceased.
That’s when Maione had become attached to Ricciardi. In the terrible days that followed, without respite or clemency, nights and mornings and afternoons and evenings without eating, without drinking, without going home, he chipped away at the neighbourhood’s unbreachable wall of omertà, its code of silence, trading information, even promising to look the other way when it came to certain trafficking, just to get their hands on the vile murderer from the tavern. In the end, even Maione, though fuelled by rage, had to give in to exhaustion. But not Ricciardi, who was gripped by a fiery passion, as though possessed.
And they had caught the killer: in another neighbourhood, still in possession of the stolen goods, surrounded by his accomplices. He had laughed when they burst in. The lookouts he had stationed at the end of the alley were already bound and under guard. A twelve-man operation: there wasn’t one policeman who didn’t want to get his hands on Luca Maione’s killer. When the storeroom had been emptied of accomplices and stolen loot, the man, finding himself alone with Ricciardi and Maione, begged them to spare his life, whimpering and no longer the cocky thug he had been. Ricciardi watched Maione. Maione stared at the man and saw his son as a little boy, bringing him a ball made of old rags, laughing, his face dirty and his eyes shining. He turned and left the room without a word. It was then that Ricciardi had in turn become attached to Maione.
From that moment on, Maione was Ricciardi’s constant companion. Each time the Commissario went out, it was he who briefed the squad that was to escort him. He knew that during the first inspection of the crime scene Ricciardi had to be left alone. It was up to him to keep out the other cops, the witnesses, the sobbing family members and curious onlookers, during those first long moments when the Commissario was getting to know the victim, focusing his legendary intuition, and tracking down the fundamentals needed to begin the pursuit. Then too, he acted as counterpoint to Ricciardi’s silences and solitary nature, thanks to his innate affability and his ability to communicate openly with people. He was solicitous of the perils the Commissario went up against, always vulnerable, with a boldness that sometimes seemed reckless or even suicidal. Maione suspected that Ricciardi went in search of death, of its quintessential meaning, with an inquiring frenzy, as if to define it, to reveal it; with no particular interest in his own survival.
But Maione didn’t want Ricciardi to die. First of all because, in his good-natured simplicity, he was convinced that a part of his lost son lived on in the Commissario. Then too, because over time he had become fond of those silences, those brief smiles, the echo of sorrow that could be seen in the gestures of those tormented hands. And so he continued to watch over the Commissario’s well-being, on Luca’s behalf and in his memory.