The Silence of the Wave (22 page)

* * *

The next morning, he woke up in a changeable mood: a mixture of joy and slight anxiety. He did some exercise, took a shower, and then dressed, paying attention to what he was putting on, trying to concentrate on every single movement. Starting with the trousers, first one leg then the other, keeping his balance without looking for something to hold on to; taking a shirt he had ironed over the weekend, feeling smug for a few seconds because the ironing had been done well, putting first one arm and then the other in; sitting down on the edge of the bed and going on to the socks, after making sure they matched and didn’t have any holes; trying on the new shoes he had bought a few days earlier; doing up the belt and realizing he could push it to a hole he had never used; putting on the jacket, with a final glance in the mirror.

It was absurd, he thought, but he had liked getting dressed. Maybe because he had done it with due care and attention? He opened his wallet, took out his ID, and looked at it as if he had never seen it before. Obviously the question was the photograph. It wasn’t actually all that old, but it looked like someone else. Who was this guy in uniform, without a beard, without deep lines on his forehead, and with the cool gaze of someone who’s afraid of nothing? At what moment had he disappeared to give way to someone else? Where was he now? Because he must be somewhere, maybe in a parallel world to which you just had to find the door,
Roberto thought, taking an unreasonable and beneficial comfort from this absurd thought.

He left home with joy and anxiety whirling around together, and went and had breakfast in the bar where he had twice met Emma. He had a cappuccino and a croissant, smoked a single cigarette, and watched the people passing, enjoying the idleness for the first time in longer than he could remember.

It was a bright morning, but not hot. A perfect spring day, Roberto thought as he walked, calm and alert, looking around him,
seeing
what was around. Getting his eyes back in working order.

A few minutes before one he was outside the school.

* * *

The angry growl of the bell could even be heard on the street. About thirty seconds passed, thirty seconds of suspense during which it seemed as if the sound had had no effect, and then the children started pouring out of the building. Giacomo appeared almost immediately, walking next to a blonde girl, staying close to her until his eyes met Roberto’s. Then he stopped, with the slightly dismayed expression of someone who has performed his task and has no possibility of influencing what will happen next. Even if he wanted to. One moment you’re indispensable, the next you’re irrelevant. Roberto looked at him and guessed what he must be feeling. Then he turned and set off.

Ginevra was walking fast, glancing behind her every now and again. She came to a bus stop and joined the small crowd that was waiting. Roberto approached. Several buses stopped and left again. Then one arrived and the girl got on, and Roberto got on behind her. He didn’t have a ticket. If they stop me I’ll show my ID, he told himself. On the bus Roberto studied the girl. Pretty, but nothing amazing.

Ginevra got off after three stops, walked for a few more minutes, reached a posh-looking apartment block, opened the front door with a key, and disappeared inside.

Roberto checked the names by the bells, to make sure this was where the girl lived. The surname Giacomo had given him was there. Just to respect the rules of surveillance, he waited on the opposite pavement for half an hour. In that half-hour only one elderly lady entered the building and nobody came out. It was about two when Roberto decided it was time to go.

“Emma?”

“Roberto.”

“Er … how are you?”

“Fine, and you?”

“Fine. I went to Giacomo’s school.”

“Yes, he told me. Did you … did you find out anything?”

“I followed the girl home, but nothing happened.”

“Roberto?” She had lowered her voice.

“Yes?”

“What do you think of this story?”

Pause. Roberto did not know what to think. Not yet, at least.

“Roberto, are you there?”

“I don’t know. I’ll go back to the school tomorrow and see what happens. If anything happens.”

Emma was silent for a while, then: “Will you call me afterward?”

“Of course I will.”

Another silence. Was she asking him to call her only because she wanted to be informed about what had happened? Or was there another reason?

“Say hello to Giacomo for me. Tell him I’m dealing with it.”

“He’ll be pleased. He liked you. That doesn’t happen often.”

* * *

The following morning passed in the same way, at the same contradictory rhythm, both lazy and active. For no very clear reason, Roberto had brought a small pair of binoculars and a camera with him. They were unlikely to be needed, but taking them didn’t cost anything, he had told himself as he left home with an old khaki bag over his shoulder, feeling slightly ridiculous.

Giacomo came out of school almost running, and slowed down when he saw Roberto. They exchanged a rapid glance. Then the boy turned and went away.

Immediately afterward, Ginevra came out and the sequence was identical to that of the day before. Bus ride, getting off, a short stretch on foot, going into the building.

Roberto waited outside for a while, starting to feel stupid. What the hell was he doing? Why this ridiculous private investigation, like an amateur sleuth with his bag over his shoulder? He left, suddenly worried that someone might see him and ask him what he was doing there.

By the time he got home, he had decided he would make one last attempt, and then that would be it. If nothing happened, maybe he would refer the thing to his colleagues and let them deal with it. Assuming there was anything to deal with.

* * *

The next day he arrived slightly late, just in time to see the girl come out of school and hurry off in the direction of the bus stop. As he already knew the destination, Roberto kept himself at a greater distance, in such a way as to have a broader vision and—he thought—also to avoid anyone noticing him, a middle-aged man of somewhat dubious appearance following a schoolgirl.

The stream of kids and adults was the same as the two previous days. Roberto, though, thought he noted, in the regular movement of the people, a discontinuity, an element that didn’t fit the rhythm.

A detective’s instinct goes in search of the jarring note and sees what escapes others: small objects that are missing or in the wrong place, slightly odd postures, forced gestures, slight breathlessness, blushing, elusive glances or others that linger too long. Someone who’s somewhere he shouldn’t be; someone going slowly who should be going fast or going fast when he should be going slowly; someone who looks around and seems to be looking at nothing; excessive talkativeness or silence. An alteration in a routine. You concentrate on unusual
details instead of letting yourself be distracted by the apparent normality of the overall picture.

In some ways a good detective is like a good doctor. In both cases it is a matter of having an eye for details that other people don’t spot.

In that flow of people—adults, but above all kids—there was an element of irregularity that Roberto perceived as a phenomenon, as an alteration of the whole, even before he identified the cause.

The cause was a boy of about fifteen, unusually muscular for his age, who was walking fast and looking straight ahead.

He was walking as if he were following someone, Roberto told himself, all at once feeling his heart starting to beat more quickly and the instinct of the chase reawakening, intact and primeval.

They got to the stop just as the bus that the girl had taken two days previously was leaving. She tried to catch up with it but couldn’t. So she stood a little aside, close to a front door. Roberto kept his distance. He had lost sight of the muscular boy, then spotted him as he too arrived at the stop and looked around. Then a group of Africans got in the way and prevented him from following the scene. He went closer, and when he was about thirty feet away he saw the muscular boy standing next to Ginevra. A little farther on, there was another. He looked older but seemed less solid and less dangerous than the first one. Leaders and followers. It
always works like that, and age almost never has anything to do with it.

The muscular boy was talking, and the girl was shaking her head, but weakly, as if resigned. After a while, the other boy seemed to point at something. Ginevra tried to look away, and the muscular boy took her chin between his fingers and forced her to look somewhere else. At that moment another bus arrived. The girl made an attempt to get on it, but the boy barred her way and stopped her.

The second boy was keeping an eye on the situation. When Roberto saw him looking in his direction, he pretended to be looking in a shop window, counted to five and then again turned. The three of them had moved, the leader walking beside Ginevra, the other boy a few steps behind.

Roberto set off after them, trying to maintain a safe distance. The muscular boy made a call on his mobile as he walked. They didn’t look round again, but all the same, after a while Roberto took off his jacket, pulled his shirt out of his trousers and became another person. Soon afterward, the three met up with a thin, anemic-looking boy in glasses. Without a word, he joined the group.

Roberto followed them for seven or eight minutes until they came to the front door of a building. The leader had the keys. He opened and they all disappeared inside, closing the door behind them.

The first thing to do was get inside that building, Roberto told himself. Any other problem he would solve as it came up. There was the brass plate of a law firm on the door. Roberto rang the bell. A nasal, heavily accented female voice replied rudely.

“Carabinieri. Open up, we have to serve a summons.”

There was only a brief hesitation, then the lock buzzed like a hornet and the door opened. Roberto ran to the lift: the red light was still on and the car still in motion. It stopped on the fifth floor, the top floor of the building.

Waiting for the lift would make him waste too much time, Roberto thought. He ran up the stairs, two steps at a time, and by the time he reached the fifth floor his heart was throbbing like a piston. There were two doors on the landing and neither of them had a name on it. Trying to catch his breath, he rang the bell to his left. When it was opened—and depending on
who
opened it—he would decide what to do.

About a minute passed. Roberto had the distinct impression that someone was looking at him through the peephole. Then he heard a somewhat shaky elderly male voice.

“Who is it?”

“Carabinieri, signore. I need to ask you a few questions, could you please open the door?”

“A carabiniere? What do you want with me?”

“I just need to ask you a few questions. Would you mind opening?”

“And how do I know you’re really a carabiniere and not a criminal?”

“I’ll show you my ID, signore,” Roberto said, trying to control a touch of exasperation in his voice. “Can you see it through the peephole?”

“Let’s see,” the old man said, his tone filled with suspicion.

Roberto held the ID at the level of the peephole. Several more seconds passed, then from inside he heard a noise of locks and bolts, and at last the door opened. A very old man appeared, without any hair and with unusually smooth pink skin.

The most unusual thing about the image that presented itself to Roberto, however, was not the man’s appearance.

It was the fact that the man had a big revolver in his hand.

“Don’t worry about this. If you’re really a carabiniere I won’t need it. If you aren’t, and that ID is fake, you still have time to leave. The photo doesn’t look much like you.”

“Is that gun loaded, signore?” Roberto said, trying to get over his surprise.

“Of course it’s loaded, what a question. And if you really are a carabiniere, I’d like you to know I have a license for it.”

“I don’t doubt that, signore. The ID is genuine, though the photo’s a few years old and I’ve changed a bit since then. I’d be very grateful to you if you could
lower your gun. I just need to know who lives in the apartment next door.”

The old man looked at him with a strangely surprised and satisfied expression. The barrel of the gun was lowered, and the old man moved aside and gestured to Roberto to come in.

“At last you’ve taken notice. A lot of the phone calls were from me. You took your time but at last you’ve taken notice.”

He moved back inside, giving a cautious smile. The apartment was dark and stank of mothballs. Roberto had no idea what the old man meant but thought it was best not to tell him that.

“That’s always the way, signore. Unfortunately we have a lot of work, and it’s hard to keep track of everything. Can you tell me who lives in that apartment?”

The old man explained. The apartment belonged to a lawyer who had gone to live there after separating from his wife. Then he had found a new partner and had moved to her house. Now the apartment was used by his son, who was a delinquent, and his friends, who were delinquents like him. They came there often and played loud music at all hours of the day and night, shouting and yelling and drinking.

“Drugs too, if you ask me,” the old man concluded laconically.

Roberto seized the opportunity.

“As it happens, signore, we’ve had a tip-off that a group of young men are using and maybe also dealing
narcotics in an apartment in this building. That’s what I’ve come to check.”

“But do you do this kind of job alone? Shouldn’t there be a group of you, a patrol?”

The man was old but not gaga. Roberto felt like laughing, but tried to reply appropriately.

“Of course, signore, actually there are three of us. My colleagues are outside in the street, to stop anyone escaping and to catch the drugs if they try to throw them out of the windows or off the balconies. That’s what dealers often try and do when there’s a raid: they get rid of the drugs by throwing them out into the street. Now, signore, I’d like to ask for your help in order to proceed.”