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 gla.s.ses. 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 bra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sed, 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 mothb.a.l.l.s. 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."
Apparently convinced, the old man stuck the gun into the belt of his trousers and then looked at Roberto with a determined, expectant expression. His face was saying that now he was prepared to cooperate. It struck Roberto that this was one of the most comical situations he had ever come across in his career.
"Go on."
"Do you by any chance have an interior balcony that adjoins the balcony of the next apartment?"
"Yes, of course."
"Would you mind showing it to me?"
"What do you want to do?"
"I"d like to go from one balcony to the other in order to get inside that other apartment and take them by surprise. As I"m sure you"ll understand, if I knock at the door there"s a risk they"ll get rid of the drugs, maybe by flushing them down the toilet."
It was a convincing explanation. The old man asked Roberto to follow him and led him through the apartment, with the stink of mothb.a.l.l.s becoming ever stronger, as far as the interior balcony. The balconies were adjoining and it would be very easy to climb over the railing and go from one to the other. There were no bars or shutters on the windows. And the gla.s.s seemed normal, not shatterproof or anything like that. It would be easy to break.
The old man was happy to cooperate now, but maintained a vigilant att.i.tude. He was anything but gaga, Roberto thought.
"Don"t you need a search warrant?"
"Usually, yes, signore. But in cases of emergency-and this is a case of emergency-we can search premises on our own initiative, as laid down by article 103 of the code on narcotics. Naturally we have to request ratification from the prosecutor later."
"But don"t you have a gun?"
Another good question. I don"t have one because they took it away from me. They told me I"m almost mad and that"s why they took it away from me. Now I don"t have a gun and in all probability, given what I"m about to do, I"ll never have one again.
"No, signore, sometimes when we raid a premises we prefer not to carry weapons to avoid the risk of their going off accidentally. In this case we seem to be dealing with minors, so our operational protocol doesn"t allow the use of firearms."
Operational protocol. He certainly hadn"t lost the knack for talking bulls.h.i.t.
The old man told him to proceed, but to be careful because it could be dangerous.
Yes, it could be dangerous. For a few moments Roberto, who had never suffered from dizziness in his life, was seized with a touch of panic which-he realized immediately-could grow and paralyze him. You"re forty-seven years old, was the last thing he told himself before climbing over, walking for a few feet on the outside, holding on to the rail, then climbing over again and landing on the other balcony with his heart apparently about to leap out of his throat.
He looked inside. There was n.o.body in that particular room, but music was playing at a high volume somewhere in the apartment-house music of some kind-and the pane of gla.s.s was vibrating to the throb of it.
Roberto rolled his jacket into a ball and, using it to protect his hand, struck a single sharp but almost delicate blow. The gla.s.s broke around his fist, only as much as was necessary, and almost noiselessly-not that the noise would have been heard over the booming of the music anyway. He slipped his hand through the hole, opened the window and went in without thinking. He would decide what to do and say depending on what he found. He walked down a long, dark, bare corridor, guided by the relentless rhythm of the music.
29.
When Roberto entered the bedroom, he found what he had vaguely been expecting. The girl and the third boy to show up were on the bed. The other two were filming with their phones, from different angles, as if they were shooting a film according to rudimentary but specific directions.
In reality, Roberto would later be unable to recount with certainty what he saw at that precise moment. In his memories, those perceived images would become mixed with those seen soon afterward in the videos: a revolting, distressing, pitiless intertwining of undeveloped bodies.
"Carabinieri!" he yelled in order to be heard over the booming of the music. It was the third time in just a few minutes, after such a long interval. "Put your phones on the floor. You, get off the bed, and all of you get on your knees with your faces to the wall and your hands behind your heads."
The muscular boy tried to brazen it out.
"What the f.u.c.k do you want? Who are you? This is a private apartment, my father"s a lawyer and a friend of-"
Roberto went up to him and slapped him across the face.
"Turn off this f.u.c.king music and get down on your knees with your face against the wall and your hands behind your head. You two do the same and don"t make me repeat myself another time, or I"ll really get p.i.s.sed off."
The lawyer"s son appeared to be on the verge of saying something. Then he saw Roberto"s eyes and thought better of it. He threw the mobile phone on the floor, switched off the stereo behind him and then got down on his knees by the wall. The one who was on the bed stood up, naked from the waist down. His face was smooth, but his genitals were as hairy as a man"s. He put on his trousers, tripping over them. He seemed like a little boy about to burst into tears, and he too went and knelt facing the wall. The third one had remained on his feet, motionless, almost paralyzed, with the expression of someone who is only just realizing the enormity of the situation he has gotten himself into. Roberto looked at him and nodded. The gesture woke him up, and he handed over the phone and knelt next to the other two.
The silence that had suddenly taken the place of that deafening music made the situation even more unreal. The girl was on the bed, trying to get dressed. Her body was the mysterious, heartrending combination of two creatures: a woman and a child. Roberto"s feelings were in turmoil. Anger, sorrow, protectiveness, the urge to cry, violence that emerged in fits and starts and had to be kept under control. And lost pride. The pride of someone who has arrived late-you always arrive late-but not too late. He saw again the faces of those young Mexican girls so many years earlier, and it occurred to him that he was settling an old account.
"Your name"s Ginevra, isn"t it?" he asked her when she was covered enough to be able to respond.
The girl couldn"t open her mouth, just looked at him in terror, like a trapped animal.
"Finish getting dressed, go out there, and wait for me."
She obeyed. She left the room without looking at anything or anybody, her eyes lost in a void full of monsters that the others could not see.
The one who had previously been on the bed started sobbing.
"I didn"t mean to do anything wrong. Forgive me, I didn"t mean to do anything wrong. Let me go-if my mother hears about this she"ll kill me. I"m sorry, I"m sorry. They told me it was normal, that they"d already done it lots of times. She agreed to it, she took the money and-"
"Shut up, a.s.shole," said the muscular boy, who was clearly the leader and already a hardened criminal.
"No, you shut up," Roberto cut in, "and don"t let me hear another word from you. If I hear you talking without my permission, I"ll tear your head off. Is that clear?"
It was clear.
Roberto quickly searched the boys. In the leader"s pockets he found another two mobile phones, a few hundred euros, a hard rubber baton and two bunches of keys.
"Don"t move and don"t talk, any of you," he said, and walked out of the bedroom into the corridor, where Ginevra stood, pathetically out of place like a small, unhappy scarecrow. Roberto led her into the kitchen, told her to wait in there, and closed the door of the apartment with the key he had taken from the leader, just in case the boys got it into their heads to try and escape.
He glanced at the videos in the phones, but they made him so sick he decided there was no need to watch any further.
He let a minute pa.s.s, thinking about what he ought to say, and then phoned Carella.
"Roberto, great to hear from you!" Carella said, in the affectionate but at the same time not entirely genuine tone of someone talking to a sick friend who needs to be treated with kindness and circ.u.mspection. "So you finally called me! How are you?"
"Fine, thanks. Are you on duty?"
"Of course, why?"
"Then you need to get a couple of cars and some of your people and join me as quickly as you can. I"ve come across a little cesspool."
There were a few seconds of silence at the other end. Roberto gave Carella time to come around to the idea that this call was strictly business and that the man on the phone might again be the man he had known in his previous life.
"Can you give me a few more details?"
"Gang rape, prost.i.tution of minors, kidnapping. A nasty business involving kids. Bring along a female colleague, to take care of the victim."
"How did you get involved in all this?"
"How about I tell you everything in person? It"s best if you take over as soon as possible. The sooner you get here, the better."
Once again Roberto imagined his colleague"s mental activity, the many questions he must be asking himself. He waited. In the end Carella said all right, just let him get a team together and he"d be right there.
The tone of his voice was different now.
30.
He tried to talk to the girl, but there was only one thing on her mind.
"Can I go now?"
"Of course, in a little while I"ll make sure somebody takes you home."