The Cold Summer Page 22
“No.”
Pellecchia moved his hand up to Ambrosini’s neck and started massaging it.
“What do you want to know?” Ambrosini said.
“We’re working on the kidnapping of Nicola Grimaldi’s son.”
Ambrosini started moving his head from side to side. A slap from Pellecchia put a stop to the movement at its birth. “Don’t be a fool, Ambrosini. If you force us to go ahead and search, we’re bound to find something. And if things are the way I think they are, we’ll find something that’ll be sufficient for us to arrest you. And even if we find nothing, which we may only discover after several hours, from now on making you unhappy is going to be one of our top priorities. You know how you’ve worked in peace for all these years? Not any more. Game over.” Pellecchia took his chin in one hand and forced him to look him in the eyes. “You are following me, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anywhere we can sit, Signor Ambrosini?” Fenoglio said.
“There’s my office.”
“Good, let’s go there, if you don’t mind.”
They walked along a narrow, high-ceilinged corridor, at the end of which was the room Ambrosini called his office. Here, too, there were boxes and plastic containers of all kinds with toy soldiers, cars, tanks, little plastic animals, boxes of building blocks, train sets. There were even a few original boxes of Meccano, which had been Fenoglio’s favourite toy when he was a child. In among the toys was a desk cluttered with folders, registers and other papers.
“Do you have three chairs, Ambrosini?” Pellecchia asked.
Behind the desk was a torn fake leather armchair. Ambrosini plunged into the stacks of merchandise and came out with two folding stools.
“Mind if I smoke?” Pellecchia asked, lighting his cigar.
“Signor Ambrosini, we don’t want to waste your time and we don’t want to waste ours either. We have reason to believe that you can help us in some way with the investigation I just mentioned.”
Ambrosini looked at them. “If I do happen to know something and I tell you, what’ll happen then?”
“Let’s put it this way: if it’s something very interesting, we might be able to go away immediately and check it out. Which means we won’t have time to search and we won’t have time to take a statement. It’ll be as if we’d never even been here.”
“And what if I tell you about things I’ve done myself?”
“Then you’re an idiot, Ambrosini,” Pellecchia said. “You’re making me look bad in front of the marshal. I told him you were an intelligent man, someone with his head screwed on. Instead of which, you’re asking stupid questions,”
“Just tell us,” Fenoglio cut in. “We’ll find a way to use your information without involving you. I know that in the past Corporal Pellecchia has seen you with Savicchio. The corporal is fully part of this investigation, you don’t have to worry about a thing.”
Ambrosini seemed to ponder this for a few seconds. Then he said only: “All right.”
“First of all, tell us about Savicchio and your relationship with him.”
“We’ve known each other for many years. He’s often brought me merchandise for sale.”
“What kind of merchandise?”
“He was part of a group of carabinieri and police officers who stole from shops that had been broken into.”
“Can you be a bit clearer about that?”
“Suppose there’s a break-in at night in a shop. Clothes, electronics, sometimes even jewellery. The police or the Carabinieri are called, a patrol car arrives on the scene and finds the shutter off its hinges. The cars are filled with merchandise before the owner of the shop arrives, and it looks as if everything was stolen by the robbers.”
“So this happened when Savicchio was in uniform and was working the patrol cars?”
“Yes, several years ago. But he continued to bring merchandise even after he transferred to plain clothes.”
“Did he sell it only to you?”
“I think so, but I’m not sure.”
“How many carabinieri and how many police officers were involved?”
“I don’t know. Quite a few, I think. He mentioned a group, who were all in agreement. He never mentioned any names. But he liked to say that they were the real masters of the city and that he was untouchable.”
“Did you ever see him with anybody else? Apart from the corporal here.”
“Someone started coming with him a couple of years ago.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Ruotolo, Antonio Ruotolo. He’s also a carabiniere.”
Fenoglio looked at Pellecchia, who nodded, lips pursed. He knew him.
“All right, let’s continue. Do you remember the first time he came with this Ruotolo?”
“I was supposed to be delivering some jewels to Perugia. They came from a big robbery in a villa in Trani.”
“Why Perugia?”
“Because there’s a jeweller there who’s happy to buy things of great value and pays good prices for them.”
“How much was the merchandise worth?”
“The man in Perugia was going to pay 500 million. To transport something like that, I needed an escort. So I asked Savicchio.”
“Had he provided a service like that before?”
“Yes.”
“Why specifically a carabiniere?”
“Being escorted by a carabiniere or a police officer means you’re unlikely to be stopped. Or robbed. Anyway, this time he came with this other fellow. He introduced him to me as a colleague, a partner and a real friend. Those were his exact words.”
“So you delivered the jewels and everything went fine, I assume. How much did you pay them?”
“The usual fee was twenty million. This time, he said he wanted more because there were two of them. In the end we agreed on twenty-five. I gave him the whole amount. I don’t know how they divided it, but I don’t think it was fifty–fifty.”
“And after that?”
“We saw a lot of each other. This other fellow was nice, a really great guy. On the journey to Perugia and back we became quite friendly. Sometimes he’d drop by for no particular reason. We’d have coffee and chat. He always needed money.”
“Why?”
“He was separated, or maybe divorced, and paid a lot of money to his ex-wife. And he was with a girl, a model, who cost him a lot of money.”
“What’s the name of this girl?”
“I only know her first name: Marina. He showed me some photos. Quite a looker.”
“Did Ruotolo talk to you about what he and Savicchio did together?”
“No. He mainly talked about Savicchio. He said he was brilliant, but that he was also crazy and capable of anything. All of which I already knew.”
“Apart from these encounters, these chats, did you do other business together?”
“They both provided an escort for me on other occasions.”
Fenoglio was on the verge of asking for further information on these escort services. Then he told himself that this wasn’t the reason they were here, that he had to focus on the objective. “Is it fair to say that of the two of them, Savicchio is the leader?”
“No doubt about it. Ruotolo is an athletic young man, a martial arts champion, someone who can take care of himself. But the leader is Savicchio.”
“All right, Ambrosini, let’s get to the point,” Pellecchia said, after stubbing out his cigar butt on the floor. “Do you know anything that could link them to the kidnapping of the Grimaldi boy?”
Ambrosini closed his eyes, moved his glasses up and massaged the bridge of his nose with two fingers.
“One day when they were here, they started talking about these lightning kidnappings. Savicchio said it was a brilliant idea, kidnapping the wife or child of some criminal who was rolling in money. Someone who could pay immediately and would never report it because they couldn’t explain to the law how come they had that much money. He said it was something w
e should do ourselves.”
“Who did he mean by ‘we’?”
“He said it had to be the two of them and me. I would select the people to be kidnapped. Maybe people I’d done business with and who had large amounts of cash at their disposal. They would see to the rest of it. I didn’t like the idea, for various reasons, but I didn’t go into detail. I just said I thought it was too dangerous and that it wasn’t worth it.”
“And what did they say?”
“Ruotolo kept quiet. When Savicchio was around, he almost never said a word. But Savicchio insisted. He said that if he was involved, we were untouchable. He’d been in some pretty crazy situations before, and had always come out of them as pure as the driven snow.”
“Is that how he put it?”
“His very words. I told him again that I wasn’t interested. It was a good idea, I was sure they’d pull it off brilliantly, but I preferred to stay out of it.”
“Do you think they went ahead and did it?”
“Yes. We met again months later and Savicchio boasted that they’d already done two jobs.”
“Did he tell you the names of the people they’d kidnapped?”
“No.”
“This was before the kidnapping of the Grimaldi boy, right?”
“Yes, several months earlier.”
“Did you see them after the Grimaldi kidnapping?”
“No.” He paused for a few seconds, as if bracing himself to say the most important thing. “But I think it was them.”
“Why?”
“For two years, they came to see me at least two or three times a month. The last time was about ten days before the news about the Grimaldi boy came out. Since then, nothing. I don’t believe in coincidence. Do you believe in coincidence, marshal?”
“In coincidence? I don’t know. Didn’t you even talk on the phone?”
“No. A few weeks later, I thought I might need them for something and I realized that I hadn’t seen them or heard from them in quite a while. At that moment, I assumed they might have had something to do with the kidnapping of the boy. It wasn’t a very clear thought, it just suddenly occurred to me. And I haven’t called them since.”
“Why?”
“If it was them, I didn’t want them to tell me anything about it. With some things, the less you know, the better.”
Fenoglio got to his feet and took a few steps, measuring the room between the desk and the boxes. “And have you seen them again?”
“I ran into Ruotolo by chance a few days ago.”
“Did you talk?”
“He told me he hadn’t been well and that he’d taken a few days off sick. He actually did look ill. He’d got thinner, and had circles under his eyes.”
“Did he tell you anything?” Pellecchia asked, a tone of urgency in his voice.
“No.”
“Did you ask him about Savicchio?”
“No, but he told me they hadn’t seen each other in a while.”
They were silent for a few minutes. As motionless as figures in a painting. Ambrosini behind the desk, Pellecchia on the other side, Fenoglio on his feet, near a tower of boxes.
“How do you think we could persuade Ruotolo to cooperate?”
“I don’t know. He’s like a zombie, maybe he needs to break free. If you try to pressure him …”
“To break free,” Pellecchia said, “he’d have to confess things that’d lose him his job and land him in prison. If he thinks about it, he might prefer to keep feeling guilty and hold on to his job and his salary.”
Ambrosini shrugged. When it came down to it, getting Ruotolo to talk wasn’t his problem.
“Of course, if you agreed to wear a wire and have a little chat with Ruotolo —” Pellecchia started to say.
Ambrosini interrupted him. “You can’t ask me to do that. They’d all find out, I’d be known as a snitch and I wouldn’t be able to work in this city any more. Or rather, I wouldn’t be able to live in this city any more. You promised —”
“Okay, okay, you’re right,” Fenoglio said. “Forget about the wire. What if we tried bugging him?”
“Meaning what?”
“We place a bug somewhere where the two of you meet. We’ll need a court order to do it. The result is the same, but nobody will be able to say you cooperated.”
“Marshal, I’m sorry, but let’s not fool ourselves. If there’s a bug and I start asking strange questions about what he’s done or hasn’t done – assuming he answers me – everyone will know I was in cahoots with you when they read the transcript. Not to mention that if we start talking about crimes we’re bound to end up mentioning something we did together. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but what’s in a transcript gets to a judge, and then your promise to keep me out of it goes down the tubes.”
Fenoglio sighed. “I can’t argue with that.”
“Marshal, I’ve done what you asked me. I’ve told you all I know. Maybe you think it was because I was afraid you’d search the place. But it wasn’t. You can search as much as you like, the only thing you’ll find here is toys. This kidnapping business has been going around in my head for a long time, and I’ve been wanting to tell someone about it. And then today you showed up. That wasn’t coincidence either. Think how easy it was to persuade me, apart from that little bit of a scene I made. I wanted to help you, and I have helped you, but don’t ask me to do things that would land me in the shit.”
“You’re right,” Fenoglio said, exchanging glances with Pellecchia.
“Try to do what I suggested. Try to put pressure on Ruotolo. I think it’s quite feasible that he’ll break down.”
“What kind of education did you have, Ambrosini?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You’re quite well spoken.”
“For a fence, you mean?”
Fenoglio shook his head, although it was clear that was precisely what he meant.
“I qualified as an accountant. My school was close to your station.”
“The Vivante?”
“That’s right. Then I studied law. I took fourteen exams, including criminal law. I still had seven to go. I’d have liked to have been a magistrate. Then I started working. If you work and earn money, it’s difficult to stay focused on your studies.”
Fenoglio and Pellecchia looked at him closely, searching for any hint of irony. They didn’t find any. Ambrosini was serious. He merely added that often you don’t do what you would have liked to do in life, but that what you’d like to do isn’t necessarily what you would be good at doing.
Which, needless to say, is true.
10
“Well, what do we do now?” Pellecchia asked when they were some distance from Ambrosini’s shop.
“The first question is whether we should go straight to the captain with all this or wait.”
“If we tell the captain, two minutes later he’ll talk to the colonel and —”
“I know. Savicchio works at the command unit, in the office next to the colonel’s, he’s an intelligent son of a bitch and we have no guarantee he won’t guess something’s up if the news starts to circulate.”
“Precisely. Let’s wait a few days, Pietro. We’ll do a few checks, then decide when to tell the captain. I’m sure you’ll find a way to tell him.”
“I don’t know this Ruotolo fellow. Where does he work?”
“He’s in the prosecutor’s detective team on the seafront. He was on radio patrol for many years, then on the detective unit in Bari Central. He’s quite free with his hands, as far as I remember. Like Ambrosini said, he was a champion at some oriental crap, karate, judo, something like that. They call him Bruce Lee.”
Pellecchia calling someone “free with his hands” was really quite strange, Fenoglio thought fleetingly.
“Anyway, Ambrosini’s right,” Pellecchia continued. “If we go after anyone, it has to be Bruce Lee.”
“He said the same things about Savicchio as you did. The image of a psychopath.”
&nb
sp; “He must have got worse since I had dealings with him.”
“The problem is, even assuming Ruotolo’s as fragile as Ambrosini says, we don’t have anything concrete on him. Nothing to charge him with, nothing we can use to put pressure on him. What do we do, go to him and say: listen, Ruotolo, we think you were involved in the kidnapping of the Grimaldi boy? How about spilling the beans and throwing away your career, your freedom, everything in fact?”
“We have to work on him a little. Find something to throw in his face.”
“The problem is that without telling the captain we can’t report it to the Prosecutor’s Department. And without authorization from a magistrate we can’t acquire anything. No phone records, no bank statements. Not to mention bugs: no magistrate would authorize that on the basis of a tip-off. And right now that’s all we have.”
“Give me half a day to ask around. I’ll see if I can find anything and then we’ll talk again. I’ll make sure I’m free tomorrow morning, all right?”
Fenoglio said yes, it was all right, and felt a strange sense of relief.
Pellecchia reappeared early in the afternoon of the following day. Fenoglio had just got back from lunch and found him waiting outside his office.
“Can we talk?”
They went in and Fenoglio closed the door.
“Well?”
“First: Ruotolo has been off sick since May. The medical reports say: cluster headaches. You know what they are?”
“A particularly painful kind of headache, I think.”
“Precisely. I looked it up: they call it ‘suicide headache’. The problem is that there’s no objective way to verify it. In practice, the doctor takes the patient’s word for it. Anyway, the first certificate was issued six days after the boy’s body was found.”
“That’s quite a coincidence.”
“I agree. Secondly: Savicchio and Ruotolo both have mobile phones. But not like mine, which I only use to receive calls. Savicchio and Ruotolo spend a whole lot of money on theirs, up to 400,000 lire a month. They’re constantly on the phone, at all hours of the day and night.”
“You have a mobile phone?”