The Cold Summer Page 5

  “Why do you say ‘those people’? Was there more than one of them? Was it a different voice on the phone this time?”

  “No, I mean, she didn’t know. It was the husband who answered the phone, but she kept saying ‘the people who’ve taken Damiano’, which is the boy’s name.”

  “All right, I’ve got it. What did they tell her husband?”

  “That they’d taken his son and that if he wanted him back he had to get the money together.”

  “Did she tell you how much?”

  She hesitated for a few seconds, as if afraid she wouldn’t be believed. “Two hundred million lire.”

  Fenoglio realized he had thrown his head back in an involuntary gesture of astonishment.

  “The money had to be ready by the evening,” Urania went on.

  “What did Grimaldi say to this?”

  “He said he wanted to talk to the boy, and the man on the phone replied that if he asked one more time he’d find him in a rubbish bag, cut up into pieces.”

  “Carry on.”

  “They started getting the money together, because they didn’t have the two hundred million. They had a lot, but not that much.”

  “How did they manage to make up the full amount?”

  “They started asking her husband’s friends, and by the time these other people called again, they had everything. The man on the phone said the money had to be delivered by a woman on her own. If they saw anyone else around, they’d make themselves scarce and the boy would die. If they did as they were told, two hours later the boy would be returned.”

  “Who made the delivery?”

  “The other woman, the one who came here with the wife.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Two hours went by, it got dark and the boy didn’t come back. So the husband sent his men out again, but they didn’t find anything.”

  “Did she tell you if they suspected anyone?”

  “She said it was a man named Lopez, along with some others, who used to be friends with her husband but had then betrayed him.” She hesitated a few seconds, then added: “He said these pieces of shit would all be killed, that when they caught them they’d quarter them alive.”

  “How did it go?” Pellecchia asked in the office an hour later.

  “Better than bugging his house. She got the wife to tell her everything, and at least we now know what happened on the day of the kidnapping.” Fenoglio told him about his conversation with Urania, then asked: “What did the wife and the woman who was with her do? Have you identified her?”

  “They went back together to Grimaldi’s house. The other woman left straight away. We followed her to the hospital. Her name’s Maria Pia Scaringella, she’s a nurse in the orthopaedics department. We checked, she’s on duty tonight.”

  “Is she from a criminal family?”

  “No, and she doesn’t have a record either. She’s just a friend of Grimaldi’s wife.”

  Fenoglio scratched his head. He was very tired, and Pellecchia looked even more so.

  “All right, arrange for someone to pick her up at the end of her shift tomorrow morning. We’ll bring her in and see if we can get her to cooperate. Maybe she’ll tell us something useful about the way the ransom was paid.”

  “It has to have been that son of a bitch Lopez and his friends. There’s no doubt about it.”

  “Quite likely. But when we find them – if we find them alive – we’ll still need evidence if we’re going to make them pay for what they’ve done. It won’t be much use knowing it was them if we can’t prove it.”

  11

  When Fenoglio got to the station the following morning, the nurse was already there. They had left her waiting in one of the interview rooms.

  “Not the quiet type,” Pellecchia said. “At first she refused to go with the uniformed men I’d sent to pick her up. She raised her voice, even managed a few shoves. If she’d been a man, she’d have got a beating. She wanted a lawyer. It took them half an hour to persuade her. They had to threaten to charge her with resisting arrest. Now she’s here, and really pissed off.”

  “The morning’s off to a good start.”

  “Right. Shall we go?”

  “Let’s go.”

  They entered the room, which contained only an old desk and some equally old chairs. No windows, no natural light. The Scaringella woman had turned abruptly on hearing the door opening. From close up, she looked even more massive; her face was broad and flat (like a focaccia, Serena would have said), her nose small, her brutal eyes blazing with hostility.

  “Good morning, signora, I’m Marshal Fenoglio,” he said, holding out his hand to her. She took it after a moment’s hesitation, trying not to lose her resentful demeanour. “I’m sorry we brought you here straight after your shift, but unfortunately we’re dealing with an urgent matter and it wasn’t possible to put it off. You know why we’ve summoned you, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know anything. All I know is that I’ve just finished the night shift, I’m exhausted and you’re keeping me here. I want a lawyer.”

  “Why do you want a lawyer, signora? We’re not accusing you of anything.”

  “You arrested me.”

  “No, signora. You aren’t under arrest and you aren’t accused of anything. Perhaps there’s been a misunderstanding. We need to ask you a few questions, purely as a witness.”

  “A witness to what? I haven’t witnessed anything.”

  “Do you know Signora Grimaldi?”

  “Yes, I do, there’s no crime in that.”

  “Do you know her husband?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know her son, Damiano?”

  “I’m an acquaintance of Signora Grimaldi’s, so it’s only natural I should know the boy.”

  “You know he’s missing, don’t you?”

  “Why would I? They don’t tell me things like that.”

  “Things like what?”

  “The kind you’re telling me, missing children, that kind of thing. You may know there’s a missing child, I don’t.”

  Every time you think you’re used to it, Fenoglio told himself, every time you think nothing will ever again shock or surprise you, and every time you encounter someone who’s capable of setting your nerves more on edge than ever before. The woman had an irritating face and an attitude that was hard to swallow.

  “Your name is Maria Pia, is that right?” Pellecchia asked.

  “Signora Maria Pia Scaringella,” she said.

  “Listen to me, fucking Signora Maria Pia Scaringella. Listen to me carefully: don’t play games with us. Don’t fuck us around, because whenever anyone tries to fuck us around, we get really pissed off. Now I’m going to ask you a few questions and you’ll answer me and tell the truth. If you don’t, I swear we’ll go to your house and give it a thorough search, we’ll smash everything up and then we’ll arrest you for aiding and abetting. Then you’ll be able to talk to a lawyer before you get put inside. Have you got that?”

  She didn’t reply. Her facial expression had changed, every trace of certainty gone.

  “Have you got that?” Pellecchia repeated, almost shouting, and giving the woman’s back a violent slap. She jumped, then slowly nodded.

  “Signora, don’t force us to treat you badly,” Fenoglio said. “We know Grimaldi’s son was kidnapped, we know a ransom was paid. The family are refusing to cooperate with us. We know that you know everything. It’s pointless denying it, it just wastes our time. You have to help us. The information in your possession could be vital in identifying those responsible and, perhaps, in saving the child.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” Scaringella said, looking around as if searching for a way out.

  “We know that. You simply helped a friend. That’s an admirable thing. The best thing would be if those scoundrels had brought back the child after you took them the money. But they didn’t do that, and we n
eed help to find them and the boy.”

  “I can’t —”

  “Nobody will ever find out.”

  The woman sighed. She opened her bag, took out a paper handkerchief and wiped the sweat from her forehead with it.

  “Can I get you a glass of water, a coffee, anything else?”

  “A glass of water.”

  “Of course.” Fenoglio went to the door and opened it just as someone was about to knock. It was Montemurro.

  “What is it?”

  “Could you come outside for a minute?”

  The young carabiniere looked agitated.

  Fenoglio went out and closed the door behind him.

  “What’s happened?”

  “We’ve had an anonymous call to say the boy’s down a well in the countryside near Casamassima. They even explained how to get there.”

  12

  Fenoglio already knew the boy was dead. If you kidnap someone, demand a ransom, the ransom is paid and the kidnap victim doesn’t come home within a short space of time, it means only one thing: he or she is dead.

  There is no plausible reason for kidnappers to hold on to the person they’ve kidnapped – dangerous material to guard – once they’ve got what they wanted.

  He already knew it, and so he shouldn’t have felt that shock in the sternum, as if someone had punched him; he shouldn’t have been aware of that intolerable sense of anger, emptiness, futility; he shouldn’t have felt that shameful weakness in the legs, as if they were about to give way. None of this should have happened, he thought, pinching his chin and cheeks while the car, with its light flashing – but without its siren on – drove through the bright and strangely pale countryside. With him were Captain Valente and Pellecchia; Montemurro was driving; nobody spoke.

  When they reached the scene, a few cars and a fire engine were already there. Getting out of their own vehicle, they were enveloped in a primordial silence. There was no sound of motors – the main highway was a long way away – and nobody was speaking. Every now and again a gust of wind passed through the leaves of the olive trees, and the rustling was like the laboured breathing of time.

  To get to the well, they had to walk along a narrow path, a winding white strip between trees and clumps of brown, almost red earth. A lot of people had already walked along that path. Any possible trace of whoever had taken the boy there was irredeemably lost.

  The well was about three feet across, in the middle of a square of old concrete; against it stood a metal lid. Fenoglio wished he were somewhere else. He knew what he would be seeing in a few minutes’ time, and he had no desire to see it. He knew what the smell would be like, and he had no desire to smell it. He knew it would fall to him to inform the boy’s parents, and he had no desire to do that either.

  He approached the opening and looked down. It was dark. Black. Black, he repeated mentally, as if it were an important observation.

  All black.

  Someone said something that Fenoglio didn’t hear; someone aimed a powerful torch at the inside of the well. Now it was possible to make out what appeared to be a body, bent in an unnatural position. Of course he was in an unnatural position. He was dead. What’s more unnatural than death? Damn it.

  The firefighters were ready to go down. They were just waiting for authorization.

  “The prosecutor will be here soon,” Fenoglio said, and his voice sounded to him like somebody else’s.

  Just before leaving the station he had called D’Angelo to inform her, and had asked her if she wanted to be present. If she preferred, they could take care of everything. She had replied by asking him to send a car for her immediately.

  The duty pathologist arrived. He nodded at those present. There were no handshakes. He didn’t seem eager to take part in this process either.

  A few minutes later, D’Angelo arrived. She came along the white path between two very tall uniformed carabinieri, and the sequence helped to emphasize the tragically surreal tone of the situation. She exchanged a few words with the captain, whom she was meeting for the first time, and said they could proceed. The pathologist handed round a kind of balm with a strong menthol smell. It was to put under the nose, to overcome the stench of death. Fenoglio didn’t take it. He knew it was no use. In fact, it was worse. Afterwards, for hours or even days, the obscene odour you thought you had beaten stayed with you anyway. On your clothes, on your skin, in your head. So you might as well avoid the ointment, which was almost equally nauseating.

  A short, thin, dark-complexioned firefighter wedged himself into the well with a handkerchief covering his mouth and nose – like a bandit in a Western, Fenoglio thought incongruously – and with a harness for the corpse. He worked down there for a few minutes, then came back up. His face was grey; his dismayed expression said what he had seen at the bottom of the well. With the help of a pulley, his colleagues pulled out the body.

  The boy was curled in on himself, as if he had tried to embrace something or someone.

  They put him down, and he looked the way you’d expect a human being to look when he’s been dead for a few days and left in the country, in a place where there are rats, and other small predators, and flies.

  “My God,” D’Angelo whispered. Almost at the same moment, they heard a noise like the sound of a bucket of water being emptied onto the ground. A young uniformed carabiniere who had come too close had thrown up. Two others turned away, to avoid looking.

  Fenoglio had seen lots of dead bodies. If you do certain jobs, it’s unavoidable. You get used to it, obviously. You have to get used to it, it’s a matter of survival. That’s what any detective would tell you. But any detective, even the most hardened, would tell you that there’s one thing you never get used to.

  The violent death of a child.

  13

  The worst part isn’t seeing the bodies. That’s unpleasant, sometimes very unpleasant, but it isn’t the worst part. The worst part is breaking the news to the victims’ relatives. Especially if the victims are children and the relatives you have to break the news to are the mother and father.

  There is nothing more unacceptable than a child dying before its parents. When that happens, every semblance of meaning in the world collapses like the proverbial house of cards. The death of a child opens wide an abyss of pain and madness so deep you can’t see the bottom. Fenoglio didn’t know anyone who had really recovered from that experience.

  Breaking the news puts you in contact with the abyss. And yet it’s up to you, partly because you’ve seen how others do it and you think that those parents, whoever they are, deserve something more than phrases like: “Today we unfortunately discovered the lifeless body of your son …” and so on.

  For a few seconds, he stood there with his finger suspended in front of the entryphone. He lowered his hand and looked around. The large apartment block communicated desolation and danger. There were no colours, just shades of grey. The walls were peeling, the pillars in some places showing the iron reinforcement rods. Looking up, he could see bars at the windows and unauthorized aluminium verandas. Some children were playing football beneath the grim colonnade.

  “Wait for me here,” he said to the young carabiniere who had come with him: a newcomer to the team whose name he couldn’t remember. He pressed the button. A woman’s voice, raucous, heavily accented, filled with violence, replied after some thirty seconds.

  “Who is it?”

  “Carabinieri, please open up.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Are you Signora Grimaldi?”

  “I’m her mother.”

  “I’m Marshal Fenoglio. I need to speak to your daughter, we’ve been told she’s with you. Please open.”

  A few seconds went by, then the door opened with a buzz and a sharp click, like something snapping. The interior of the apartment block was as grim as the exterior, dense with unpleasant, solidly packed smells. From food to bleach to some kind of disinfectant or insecticide to the dampness of the walls, which looked like
poor-quality cardboard and wouldn’t last long.

  Grimaldi’s mother-in-law lived on the third floor. The door of the apartment, unlike the others, was white, with garish handles of gilded brass. There was something incongruous, funereal, almost obscene about it. It opened before Fenoglio could ring the bell. Two women appeared: they were mother and daughter, but looked like sisters, and not because the older woman seemed young. Grimaldi’s wife might have been about thirty-five but looked at least fifteen years older. The skin of her face was grey, dry and toneless. She had deep, mournful shadows under her eyes.

  “Have you found him?”

  “Can I come in?”

  The two women reluctantly moved aside, opened the door a little more and let him in. The inside of the apartment looked like a mad interior decorator’s nightmare. Fake Versailles chairs, armchairs and sofas; fake Murano chandeliers; a mosaic table top. A ceramic leopard; an alabaster copy of Michelangelo’s David. A huge black television set; a painting of a hunting scene. There was a smell of cheap deodorant and wax floor polish.

  “Where is your husband, signora?”

  “I don’t know. What’s happened?”

  Fenoglio took a few seconds to gather his strength. “Unfortunately, I have bad news. Perhaps you’d like to sit down?”

  The woman remained standing next to her mother, whose face was as motionless as a funeral mask. “Is he dead?”

  Fenoglio thought of the woman holding the newborn baby in her arms. She must have been happy then. Normally happy, and unaware. How can you ever imagine, at a moment like that, that one day someone will come and tell you that your child has been murdered; that he was found in a well, half eaten by rats; stripped of dignity, like all murder victims. How can you imagine that?

  “Yes, signora. Sadly, yes. I’m very sorry —”

  “Where is he?”

  Fenoglio had the impression she couldn’t breathe, like someone suffocating at night. “We’ve taken him to the Forensics Institute.”

  “I have to see him. I have to go there right now.”