Converging Parallels (24 page)

She was back, thank God.

Magagna directed him, taking him by the arm, through the open doors onto the polished marble. Principessa did not move; only her sad eyes followed the unsteady movement of the Commissario Trotti and Brigadiere Magagna.

“Trotti.”

Not a question; with his developed sixth sense, Gino recognized him. The eyes moved languidly behind the distorting glasses; the mouth was hard set. “You’re wanted immediately.” He put out a hand looking for Trotti’s arm; finding it, he pulled
Trotti towards him. Magagna watched, his thumbs caught in the webbing trouser belt.

“The boss.” Gino whispered, the garlic competing with the rancid wine of his breath. “He’s in a bad mood. He came in half an hour ago, and he was angry when I had to tell him you were out.” The short-lived euphoria drained from Trotti’s body like rainwater. “He wants you.”

Somewhere along the corridor, a door opened noisily and Gino pushed Trotti away and let his unshaven old chin fall to his chest as though suddenly overcome by sleep. Principessa emitted a muted growl.

Trotti returned to his dingy office while his shoes squealed unpleasantly on the marble floor.

“Ah, Commissario Trotti.”

Leonardelli was walking briskly, an arm raised, along the intermittent light of the corridor, past the toilet and past the Faema coffee machine. A few paper envelopes that had once contained sugar had overflowed from the ashtray and now lay like large confetti on the marble floor.

“I really must talk with you.” He was slightly out of breath as he reached the two men and he adjusted his tie. He was as neatly dressed—double-breasted suit and a different pair of English shoes, the color of oxblood—as on a weekday. “And then I think you’ll have work to do.” The smile he gave Magagna was cold, brief and dismissive. “It is with you, Commissario, that I must clear up some points.”

Magagna nodded and went into Trotti’s office.

“I am not sure, either, that I like my men to wear civilian clothes.”

“My orders, Questore,” Trotti replied.

“Of course, of course. This way please.”

“And furthermore, today is Brigadiere Magagna’s rest day; his helping me like this is a personal favor.”

“We’re not Turin metalworkers, Trotti, and we are available at all times if our duty so requires.”

His mouth closed sharply and without another word he walked down the corridor to his office. He went through the
door without the normal courtesy of holding it open for Trotti. Nor did he ask Trotti to sit down.

“I am far from satisfied, Commissario.”

Trotti stood still in front of the desk; the dying taste of the whisky lingered like a bad idea on his tongue. He held his hands behind his back and looked at Leonardelli’s cold, symmetrical face. The features were sharply contrasted by the strong sunlight coming through the blinds, throwing zebra stripes on the desk and the white pile of the carpet.

Leonardelli’s fingers had intertwined above the empty desktop; the thumbs collided rhythmically. “You are not doing your job, Trotti.”

The sight of the mutilated corpse on the beach darted through his mind and for a second he thought he was going to be sick again.

“You are behaving like a fool, Trotti.”

Trotti looked at the nervous movement of the thumbs.

“If I didn’t know you well, I would certainly be tempted to ask for your resignation.”

Trotti waited; he felt a strange sense of indifference. Outside there was the muted sound of Sunday in the city. A child laughing. Through the blinds, he could see the Italian flag hanging from the monument to the dead. The red, white and green stripes were limp, unmoved by any breeze. Unimportant.

“You are a good policeman.” Leonardelli raised his shoulders to underline his own magnanimity. “A good policeman with a rare sense of devotion. I am not a fool, Trotti; every day, I must praise the devotion and self-denial of our officers, but do not think I am my own dupe. This is Italy and I know Italy. Where nothing works and where the state, the army, the forces of order are just names. Self-denial and devotion—they don’t exist. Most policemen do a job they hate for purely economic reasons—the pay packet on the twenty-seventh of each month. But you are different. You love your job and you bring to it an almost Germanic conviction. In a way, you are not Italian, you don’t allow yourself to be pushed away with appearances—because if you did, you would have got a lot further. Instead you have done
your job—and made enemies.” He raised his shoulders again. “Not least, I imagine, your wife, who would have preferred a husband with an important position in the Pubblica Sicurezza.”

“There is no need to talk about my wife.”

Leonardelli paused. “Please,” he said. “Please sit down.” He smiled and Trotti pulled up the low, white leather armchair. Leaning back in his seat, Leonardelli took a cigarette from his silver case. “A good officer and a devoted policeman. That is why I wanted you back from Bari. Oh, I know, you think I am a political animal—and perhaps you are not wrong. But above all, I want a quiet, peaceful town. No headlines, no scandal, just the quiet day-to-day routine of a small Italian city getting on with its business while the rest of the country”—he took the cigarette from his mouth and pointed towards the blinds—“lives through its hell of violence, armed robbery and kidnapping. A quiet city at all costs, Trotti, that’s what I want. And it is why I am having second thoughts about your usefulness here.”

“Why?”

Leonardelli inhaled again while his eyes looked at Trotti, looking for insolence behind the brusqueness of the question. Trotti’s face was devoid of emotion. He answered Leonardelli’s glance.

“You are not objective, Trotti. You are allowing yourself to get caught up because you are working among people you know and who are close to you. In short, you are not acting professionally.”

“Professionally?”

“This child—the Ermagni girl—she’s your goddaughter. The father is a friend of yours—goodness knows why, from what I’ve heard of him—and you are clearly allowing yourself to be blackmailed into helping. When it is no longer necessary. The child is back, she is safe and sound, there is nothing wrong with her.” With the cigarette between his two fingers, he pointed towards his desk. “I have the medical report. Nothing. No physical damage.”

“She was kidnapped.”

Leonardelli smiled understandingly. “You say that because
you are her godfather.” He then lowered his voice and continued, speaking more confidentially, “You are being emotive, Trotti, and I am surprised. It is the last thing any officer should indulge in and you more than anyone else should know that.”

“She was kidnapped,” Trotti repeated.

“Of course we have good reasons to believe in a criminal act. Anonima Sequestri—the Mafia organization that specialises in kidnapping. There’s no reason for their not working here as they work everywhere else in Italy—and believe me, if I thought that there was a real chance of this girl having being kidnapped by the Mafia, I would give you carte blanche and I’d tell you to go out and get them. A quiet city—I want a quiet city. This is a quiet place and I do everything to keep it so, but objectively speaking, we have our percentage of wealthy industrialists and manufacturers. People who don’t pay taxes and who are ready to sacrifice anything for the few people they genuinely care about. But Trotti,” the thumbs had returned to their nervous tapping, “kidnap the daughter of a taxi driver? I don’t think it’s really very likely.”

“It could be a mistake.”

“The Mafia doesn’t make mistakes, Trotti.” A brief, patronizing laugh. “Be reasonable, Trotti, be reasonable. The child—how old is she? Five, six? She’s not important to the Mafia—or to anybody other than her family. She probably went off with somebody—perhaps even a relative. I say perhaps—it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“It matters to her father.”

“A drunk, neurotic retired policeman.”

“My friend,” Trotti said softly. Outside, the flag had suddenly snapped into movement, caught by a breeze along Strada Nuova. Leonardelli brought his hand hard down onto the desktop.

“Damn it, Trotti, it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

Leonardelli stubbed out the cigarette. “Then I will have no choice but to ask for your transfer.” He was trying to control himself but his voice trembled slightly. He took another cigarette from his case. “You’re causing me a lot of trouble.”

“I am doing my job.”

“There are times when it is your job to do nothing.” He lit the cigarette and stood up; the back of his hand flicked at imagined dust on his jacket. Then he pointed at Trotti. “It is not your job to pester the mayor.”

Trotti felt tired; again the sense of déjà vu. His head ached and because of the whisky, he was now finding it difficult to concentrate. What Leonardelli was saying was important, very important. His career—his future—was in this man’s hands. Like the smoldering cigarette, Trotti could be dispensed with prematurely. Trotti breathed deeply, tried to concentrate.

“Something’s happening to you, Trotti. You are overreacting and you don’t seem to be concerned by anything other than your immediate—and mistaken—goals. This is Italy, Trotti, this is Italy. Nothing is simple and you know that. There are elections—or perhaps you haven’t seen the billboards and the soldiers in the street with the strange feathers in their hats. The meetings? The First Secretary of the Socialist Party? The papers? Or perhaps you don’t read them? Perhaps you’re too busy with your private vendetta to see these things?”

Trotti did not reply.

“Or the fact that Aldo Moro has been kidnapped? That this country is living through the worst crisis in thirty years? Then let me tell you. While you play your little games, the freedom and the democracy that we have built up, the freedom that has transformed Italy from a backward, third-world country into one of the major industrial nations, is being threatened. And you don’t care. You don’t give a damn. Or you are above such things.”

“Anna Ermagni was kidnapped. I have been trying to identify her kidnappers.”

Leonardelli sat down; he nodded with ironic sympathy. “Of course, of course. And that entitles you to take police procedure into your own hands? It entitles you to go and see the mayor on a Sunday and to ask him foolish and offensive questions. You have that divine right. It doesn’t matter if you make him angry, if you call into question the probity of this city’s first citizen.” He pointed at the phone. “I have to do the mopping up. I have
to come into the Questura on a Sunday. I have to apologize and explain to Mariani that you are a good policeman and a good officer.” He tapped his chest and ash tumbled from the cigarette without his noticing, “I have to carry the can.”

“I was acting in accordance with what I considered to be my duty.”

“It is neither your duty nor your right to take the law into your hands and to act unilaterally, without the spoken or tacit agreement of your superiors. You have never been officially charged with the Ermagni affair. You took it upon yourself—simply because Ermagni once used to drive your car. You had no right.” A long pause. “And now you must let the matter drop.” His voice softened. “Trotti, let us be reasonable. We are all overworked.” He looked down and caught sight of the ash; he frowned and brushed at it. “Let us be reasonable. Kidnapped or not kidnapped, the girl is back with her father, alive and well. The matter is over.”

Trotti looked at Leonardelli.

“I want you to get on with your job. Gracchi and the Guerra girl—I told you expressly that I wanted you to keep an eye on them and I discover that you’re wasting your time over an affair that is finished.”

“Pisanelli and di Bono are doing a good job.”

“Where are they?”

“By the river—at least, that’s where they were earlier. They haven’t been in touch because they’ve moved away from the car.”

“I want to know what’s happening. I’ve got to know and I don’t want the Carabinieri moving in. Not now, not with elections a week away. I want you on the job, Trotti, and I want you reporting back to me every four or so hours.” A brief smile. “I don’t think you understand politics—no doubt because you don’t think that politics are important. You are wrong, I am afraid. In Italy, politics is everything, because politics is where the power is. That’s the system and there’s nothing that you or I can do to change it. We have to play by the rules the politicians impose because if we don’t, we go under. I have got where I have got by being careful, by respecting all the little prides and
amour
propre
of the politicians.” A cloud of smoke. “I won’t have you destroying everything.”

Trotti stood up. “May I go?”

Leonardelli looked up and scrutinized Trotti’s face. “You are not a fool. And in a different context, I would have a lot of admiration for you and for your honesty.” He shrugged. “But this is Italy—and you are expendable. If you cause me any more problems, I shall ask for your reappointment elsewhere.”

Another world. Trotti could not persuade himself that what was being said concerned him—or that it was important.

“I’ll have you sent back to Bari. To the South. The Mezzogiorno, Trotti. And although it doesn’t appear to matter to you, I am sure your wife will be far from happy. And I know you care about your wife, Trotti.”

Trotti turned and went silently to the door.

“Forget the child, forget Ermagni,” Leonardelli said softly to his back.

A
SENSE OF
depression came over him. Depression and fatigue. Twice he picked up the phone and then put it down again. He knew he should be making enquiries about the gypsies—he had a promise to keep—but he could not be bothered. His head hurt; the effect, he knew, of drinking too much on an empty stomach. He now wished he had not accepted Guerra’s Chivas Regal.

Above, the pigeons continued their cooing and in the cloudless sky, the sun moved slowly westward; the shadow of the window frame crept across the dusty floor. He stood up and went to the door. “Magagna.”

Magagna did not come and when, ten minutes later, Trotti left his office to go to the reception desk, he was surprised to see that Gino and the Principessa had left. The soft cloth slippers lay neatly beneath the desk and the dark spectacle case was placed beside the telephone. A red button glowed, unheeded; a small padlock had been set through a hole in the dial.