Converging Parallels (13 page)

“Kindly be seated, signora.” Trotti helped her to a chair. “It is kind of you to come in like this. I am most grateful and I am sure that there are some points we can clear up.” He smiled as he returned to his desk. “Points of mutual interest.”

“We didn’t need any help.” Rossi’s tone was belligerent. He had lowered his large frame into one of the canvas armchairs; he looked both angry and apprehensive, like a man being sent
unjustly to his death. He had a large face and large, flat cheeks. A thin nose and a few strands across an almost bald head. His hair was the same color as his jacket.

“Are you sure?”

“I could have paid.”

“That is not the way to deal with kidnappers.” Trotti added, “And I’m afraid it’s illegal.”

“That’s our problem. Anna’s our girl—all that we’ve got left.”

Trotti sat back in his chair and let the tension slowly ease from the room. Again he smiled at Signora Rossi. She cast her eyes downward and looked at her old hands. Her only concession to fashion was a simple silver necklace.

“You’d care for a drink perhaps?”

Rossi said, “No.”

His wife looked up. “Commissario, we own a bar. We didn’t come here for a drink. We’re here because you asked us to come—and because we are worried about our granddaughter.”

“You have seen the article in the
Provincia Padana
?

“Of course.”

“The kidnappers have contacted you?”

The old woman looked down at her hand. Rossi answered, “Nothing at all.”

“Strange they should contact the newspaper without first contacting you.”

The large man moved forward in his chair. “What exactly did they say? Have they got her? She’s alive, isn’t she? Isn’t she?… Because if they’ve touched so much as a hair …” His voice was throttled by the prospect of his own rage. His wife calmed him, softly tapping the shapeless, clenched fist.

Trotti said, “She is quite well.”

He raised his head. “I don’t believe you.”

“She was in perfect health last night—you can hear for yourself.” Trotti opened the hatch. “Gino, is Magagna around?”

“Yes.”

“Get him to bring a recorder—and a tape of the message.”

They sat for a few awkward minutes waiting for Magagna to bring proof of the child’s continuing existence. When Magagna
arrived he placed the recorder on the desk, plugged it in and inserted the tape.

“It now looks as though it’s a hoax,” he whispered to Trotti.

Rossi glared. “What?”

“The communiqué from the Red Brigades. It’s not in their jargon and it’s been written out with a different typewriter.”

“You can hurry up,” Rossi said.

Magagna saluted. “I’m down the corridor,” he said and left.

Trotti pushed the button on the cassette recorder and the small reels began to turn behind their perspex barrier. Rossi and his wife leaned forward, staring at the machine as though it were a newborn baby, somehow both reassuring and—by implication—terrifying. The threat of responsibility.

Silence until the tape scratched with the beginning of its recording.

“The
Provincia
?” A man’s voice, slightly muffled.

“City desk. Angellini.”

“We’ve got the child—she’s with us and safe.”

“What child?”

“Ermagni’s daughter.”

“Who’s Ermagni? What child?”

“Anna Ermagni. We have her—the daughter of the taxi driver.”

“Who is she? Why have you kidnapped her?”

“Twenty million lire and she will be home with her parents tomorrow. She is quite safe. Twenty million in used notes by tomorrow morning. We will contact you again. Tell the parents. Tell the parents that if they want to see their daughter alive and well—if they want to see her again—they must pay. Twenty million.”

There was a short pause and then Angellini asked, “How do they know that she’s alive? How do they know that you haven’t killed her?”

“I am a man of honor.”

“Men of honor don’t kidnap children.”

“She is well.” A suspicion of irritation.

“I must speak with the child. How old is she? I must hear from her.”

“That is impossible.”

“The parents will not pay.”

Another pause, the muffled sound of hands about the mouthpiece. “Wait.” It sounded as though he was speaking through a stuffed cloth and that the cloth had slipped. The voice was clearer. “Here she is.”

“Hello.”

Again a long pause accompanied by the sound of movement.

“Hello.” A girl’s voice.

“Ciao.” Angellini sounded falsely cheerful.

“Ciao.”

“Anna?”

“Yes. Is that you, Grandpapa?”

“I am a friend of your father’s, Anna.”

An intake of breath. “I don’t like my papa.”

“You don’t like him? And your mama?”

“I like the nonna and I like my grandpapa. I miss them but I am very well. I want to …”

The voice was stopped as though against its will.

“Tell them to prepare the money.” The man again, with the loudness of false conviction. “Twenty million.”

Click and the hum of the phone died; the reels continued to turn but now in silence. Trotti stopped the machine.

“At least she is alive.”

“A bastard.” Rossi, now quite pale and his lips drawn. “A murderous, southern bastard.”

“Southern?”

“You can hear the accent.” He was almost shouting. “You can hear as well as I can, Commissario. A Calabrian—one of my own people.”

“Where are you from?” Trotti asked while at the same time taking a notebook from the drawer. He started to take notes, writing with a fifty lire ballpoint pen.

“Calabria—yes, I’m from Calabria. But I work, Commissario, I have worked all my life.” And he held up his hands as an objective proof. They were large and ugly, shapeless. “With these I have worked. We are not all criminals or bandits. I left school
when I was eleven and for twenty years I worked on the pylons. The electricity men came and I helped them. Mussolini said that in the twentieth century every Italian should have electricity in his house. We used to work with donkeys, we used to climb the hills and there were days when I’d travel twenty miles to work on a breakfast of dry bread and goat’s milk. It was hard work—but I have never been afraid of hard work.”

“Then you came here?”

Rossi’s face flared into a short-lived rage. “You ask me questions. Why aren’t you looking for Anna? Why do you waste your time?”

“She may have been taken in an attempt to harm you.” Trotti added softly, “I must know everything if I am to find her. When did you come here?”

The anger disappeared as quickly as it had come. “I wanted a better job and I was too old to climb the hills—even if the money was a lot better on the whole after the end of the war. I had a brother—God rest his soul—who was working in the textile factory—he died of lung cancer. I worked with him for five years. Then in 1952, I had put enough aside—with the help of Graziella, who worked in the factory too—I had enough for the bar.” He shrugged slightly and the collar of his jacket moved away from the shirt. “We’ve done well for ourselves but nobody has helped us. And we haven’t stolen. What we have got we have earned by our own efforts.” He leaned forward to tap at the tape recorder. “And I will lose it all—lose it happily—just so that we can have our Anna back. She is all we have—now that our daughter is gone. The rest—the house, the bar, the villa near Rimini, I’ll sell it all. I want Anna.”

Beside him, his wife nodded; she held a pale blue handkerchief to her mouth. “We will pay, Dottore,” she said softly.

Trotti wrote something on the paper, then looking up, gave a pale smile. “I understand. However, I have given orders to your bank. There can be no further transfer of money without my permission. You must understand that it is better this way. Give them money and they will want more—you know that.
They’ve made no agreement with you and there is no reason for them to respect your good faith. They are kidnappers—there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be thieves and murderers. We must protect Anna.”

“I will pay. I want to pay.” He moved clumsily out of the armchair.

“Sit down, Signor Rossi,” Trotti ordered calmly. “Sit down, please.”

Rossi sat down slowly; he glared at Trotti.

“Do you have any enemies?”

The question surprised Rossi and in his surprise he turned to look at his wife. Her face remained expressionless.

Trotti repeated the question.

“No, I don’t think so. There are people who don’t like me—and who I probably don’t like either. But enemies, no. When you own a bar, you can’t afford to have enemies.”

Trotti decided that Rossi was not lying—at least, not deliberately. But he had the impression he had put an idea into his head—an idea that had not occurred to him before.

“Listen again,” Trotti said and he rewound the tape. “Tell me what you hear.”

They listened to the recorded conversation; this time the static of the telephone was amplified and the tape scratched noisily. “You hear?”

“Hear what?”

Trotti stopped the machine, pressed the rewind button and they listened to the same section. “There.”

“What?” Rossi frowned with frustration.

“There are bells.”

“I can hear nothing.”

His wife said, “Please play it again.” And then, “Yes, I can hear them.”

“The Gabinetto Scientifico can’t identify anything for the moment. But they think they’re church bells. So I’ve had a copy sent to Milan and maybe the specialists there will come up with something more precise.”

Rossi’s excitement had drained away. “And perhaps they
won’t and all the time, Anna is alone in the hands of dangerous criminals.”

“You must have faith in us, Signor Rossi.”

“Faith, faith, faith.” He snorted angrily. “Faith in the police force when you allowed Moro to be gunned down in the street like a cheap gangster and his five bodyguards killed, without even the time to use their weapons. Faith! In the Pubblica Sicurezza and the Carabinieri and the Finanza when with all your money and all your equipment, your guns and your helicopters, you can’t protect the public. I want the child back, Commissario Trotti. I want her back alive.” He screwed up his lashless eyes. “Faith, how do you expect me to have faith in you?”

“Because you have no choice. No payment will be made to the kidnappers—now or later. That is out of the question.”

“Her blood will be on your hands.”

Trotti could feel that he was losing control of his temper. Intellectually he understood the man’s anger, yet at the same time, his bovine stubbornness was irritating to the point where Trotti felt that only physical violence would silence him. “I don’t have to remind you, Rossi, that Signor Ermagni is the father. All decisions about Anna must come from him.”

“A queer! An incompetent, lazy bastard. I never wanted her to marry him. And now look what’s happened. It’s his fault isn’t it? He left her alone, he went out into the street.”

“I know Ermagni—he used to work for me. He has his problems but then we all do. You have no right to criticize him. He is hard working, and he loves his daughter. Has it occurred to you that it’s because you have turned his child against him that she decides to go with strangers? Because that is what happened. Anna did not leave the gardens in via Darsena under duress.”

“He killed my daughter.”

“Absurd. I knew your daughter, Signor Rossi—you may not remember but I was at their wedding. She loved her husband and he loved her. Anna is the child of their union and you have no right—either moral or legal—to come between Ermagni and Anna.”

“I hate him.”

His wife caught her breath. “You mustn’t say those things.”

Trotti put the cap on his pen. “Listen carefully, Signor Rossi, if you don’t want to get into trouble. Go home and stay there. You don’t do anything, you don’t open the bar. You just sit by the phone and you wait. And you don’t get any clever ideas and you don’t consult any lawyer. You just sit quietly and you trust us to get—”

A knock on the door and without waiting, Magagna came in. He was not wearing his sunglasses and his eyes were slightly red.

“Go away,” Trotti said and gestured towards the couple. “You see I’m busy.”

Magagna remained motionless; he held a large envelope in his hand.

With thumb and fingers, Trotti made an Italian gesture of anger and incomprehension. “What do you want?”

“Another leg,” he said as he held out the envelope. “They’ve found another leg in the river.”

T
WO OLD MEN
sat in the sun on a painted bench; they wore loose coats over their striped pajamas and they both smoked, sharing the same stub of a cigarette. A thin trail of blue cloud hovered over their heads.

It was late afternoon and Trotti shivered.

He moved away from the window. It was cold in the morgue and the sweat on his body had dried. He buttoned the collar of his shirt and straightened his tie. His jacket he had left in the car.

“The same woman.”

Bottone looked like a priest, despite the white tunic and the stethoscope hanging from his neck. There was a pallor about his skin and he had pushed his steel glasses back onto his forehead while the long hands probed the dead flesh.

Magagna watched in silence, his mouth pursed beneath his mustache. He had not taken off his sunglasses even though the light was artificial in the long chamber.

“Without a doubt,” Doctor Bottone said without looking at either policeman. “And she was cut up some time after death. You see, there’s little sign of bleeding.”

Magagna remarked, “The left leg was found further upstream.”

“Probably got caught against something. A partly submerged root or a sandbank.”

Magagna turned to Trotti. “The disposal bags are identical. Nothing particularly interesting about them—they can be bought in any Standa or UPIM throughout the country.”

There were two steel trays and a limb lay on each—mauve-blue flesh with a jagged tear where the severing had taken place.

“Not a very neat job,” Bottone said, running a finger along the mutilated thigh. “They probably used—the people or persons who did the cutting—a professional instrument. But without skill. There are definite signs of hacking. You see?” A hurried glance in Trotti’s direction.