The Second Life of Inspector Canessa Read online

  ‘That stuff isn’t in the archive. We’ve only got the headlines – the actual articles are on microfilm,’ Carla said, checking her watch. It was 2.30 a.m.

  ‘So?’ Canessa asked.

  ‘So I need to get the references and find the right reels.’ Alfridi gestured to the size of the archive. ‘It’s going to take some time.’

  At that moment, from somewhere in the building they heard a voice shouting, ‘Trovati?!’

  ‘Oh my God, it’s the doorman. He’s looking for me. I’ll go and buy us some more time.’

  Canessa listened as her heels clicked into the darkness.

  Alfridi kept working on the keyboard. ‘Switch that printer on for me, the green button,’ he directed Canessa. Above them, the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Alfridi had stopped typing and was holding his finger down on the Enter key. ‘Come on baby, wake up.’

  Canessa wasn’t sure who or what he was talking to, but before he could ask, the printer hummed and spat out a piece of paper. Alfridi was lightning fast: two taps and the computer was off. He put the printer back to sleep as he leapt to his feet, grabbed the paper and shoved it into his pocket. ‘Okay, we can go,’ he said triumphantly. Canessa closed the archive door behind them.

  Footsteps were moving down the staircase, putting him on alert.

  ‘This way.’

  It was Carla. ‘I told the doorman that you’re waiting for me on via San Marco. Quickly! We need to leave before he gets back to his post and checks the cameras.’ She led them down a series of corridors towards the underground car park. They met a couple of locked doors, but Canessa didn’t disappoint: he opened those too. They resurfaced behind the secondary exit, panting. They caught their breath and left while the other doorman was looking the other way.

  A giant moon seemed to be shining a spotlight directly over them. Carla felt like she was being watched by a thousand hidden eyes.

  ‘It’s really quite big,’ Canessa commented, taking in the Corriere building. ‘It was different when I used to work around here.’

  For a second, Carla thought she was dealing with an idiot. With everything we’ve just been through, he’s playing the tourist now? she thought, and then she noticed the doorman behind him. Canessa was playing a part for her.

  ‘Oh, you’re still here? Miss, I was worried you weren’t coming back, and I saw your stuff still in the office.’

  ‘I’m sorry, we lost track of time. We’re heading off now.’

  ‘Your guests left their IDs at my post. I brought them back for you.’

  Carla and Canessa thanked him. Once they were alone, Carla turned to her companions in that strange adventure. ‘Can you wait here for me? I’ll go and get my things.’

  As soon as she was gone, Alfridi pulled out the paper he’d printed and handed it to Canessa, who appreciated the IT expert’s discretion. He’d hidden it from the woman. Good idea, best not to risk it yet, Canessa thought. He gave Alfridi a friendly punch on the shoulder and looked at the results.

  11 November 1977

  7 February 1978

  10 September 1978

  9 January 1979

  18 June 1979

  13 December 1979

  21 April 1980

  Canessa looked at Alfridi. The dates meant nothing to him.

  ‘Those are the editions of the Corriere that Petri looked up. He was searching for something published on those dates.’

  ‘But we don’t know what?’

  ‘No, there wasn’t enough time. But I didn’t want to leave empty-handed. At least next time we won’t be driving in the dark.’ Alfridi smiled.

  Canessa stood looking at the piece of paper. ‘You’re right, this is already something.’ He pocketed it just before Carla reappeared, breathless, but happy to have survived a close shave.

  ‘Sorry, I had to chat to the doorman for a bit, to make everything seem normal. We don’t usually get visitors around the building this late. What’s on that paper?’

  ‘The key to access the system,’ Alfridi lied, proving himself an excellent ally. ‘I’m good with computers, not at remembering things. At least we’ll be speedier next time.’

  Carla hazarded a smile.

  ‘I hope there is a next time. If someone realises what we just did, there’ll be questions.’

  They left the vehicle entrance area and walked into the clear, cool, rain-washed Milan night. The air was crisp, and summer was on its way. A couple of cars ran up via San Marco. They heard cries and laughter.

  Alfridi shook Carla’s hand. ‘Maybe with the key and some extra info, you could try yourself, during the day,’ he told her, warming up and losing his formality.

  ‘Maybe, yeah.’

  Then he turned to Canessa. ‘You have my number if you need anything else.’

  ‘Do you need a lift?’

  Alfridi was already on his way, heading towards largo Treves. He didn’t turn around. ‘I like the walk; it’s good for me.’

  Annibale and Carla turned to look at each other.

  ‘Do you need a lift?’

  ‘I’m not that far from here,’ she answered, a little embarrassed. ‘I can walk too…’

  That man was a living piece of Italian history. She’d only seen him in books and newspapers, and he was barely a couple of years younger than her dad. She wanted to talk to him, to ask him about the past and the present. And yet she stood there, her wish hanging in the air because of the unusual reticence she felt just then.

  Canessa smiled, as if understanding her thoughts.

  ‘It’s late, but if you want to, we can go and grab a bite to eat, maybe some early breakfast.’

  Carla laughed.

  ‘Actually, I do know this place that shifts seamlessly from caipirinhas to cappuccinos.’

  22

  Gerardo Vicini watched them on the screen of the security camera for the entrance on via San Marco. He was one of the last on the night shift, and one of the last from the old guard, hired when the Corriere was still a family business. Everything was changing now, and the owners were outsourcing security to a different firm, a service, damn it. Vicini had come in when ‘la Signorina’, as everyone called the original owner, was still in charge. He’d felt personally recruited, a part of the company – despite continuing to vote for the Italian Communist Party – at least as long as she’d stayed on.

  He chewed on some liquorice, uncertain what to do, his right hand hovering over the phone. Maybe what was going on in his mind was just silly; after all, it was almost 3 a.m. It could wait until morning. On the other hand, Christmas might still be some time away, but if he turned out to be right, his end-of-year bonus would be definitely heftier if he showed himself as zealous, diligent, and vigilant. Sod it, he told himself. He grabbed the receiver and dialled a number he had scribbled down on a scrap of paper.

  ‘Sir, I apologise for the time, but you told me to call you no matter the hour…’

  They took her car. Carla drove him to one of those trendy pseudopubs in the Navigli area that are actually timeless and classic. It stayed open all night, especially when the days started getting warmer. She’d been here with Giulio Strozzi and a few other colleagues on one of those neutral evenings, until everyone else had drifted away. Now she was sure that that had been her boss’s plan all along, and she wondered if any of the others had helped him. Coming back here was a form of healing, a detox.

  Wooden tables, the atmosphere of an old train, a popular 1950s eatery. One day, Carla would write a book on Milanese trends, forgotten fads, the ones that persisted, clubs and places that were swallowed by nothingness and those that never went. This particular one was buzzing, even at this hour.

  Carla spotted an empty table and led Canessa through the crowd. Annibale couldn’t help looking at Carla’s
backside, and he wasn’t the only one. A man suddenly jolted up from his chair, hoping to chat her up, and as his chair shifted, he hit the colonel in the left side. Carla noticed his pained grimace, which seemed out of all proportion to the impact.

  ‘I’m sorry, did I hurt you?’

  Canessa waved him away – he was fine – before sitting down at the table with his back to the wall. Carla studied him again. He looked at least fifteen years younger than he was, and his deep green eyes drew her attention. He might seem like a puppy at times, but she knew that behind an expression that would’ve charmed many a woman, whether sincere or affected (she felt a little something herself, she had to admit), a dangerous man lay in wait.

  She noticed Canessa massaging his side. ‘Did he hit you hard?’

  ‘It’s an old wound. Every now and then I forget it’s there, but whenever I get closer to kissing it goodbye, it gets jealous.’

  She ordered a Greek salad and he asked for spaghetti cacio e pepe (‘with a caipirinha, before the cappuccino’). While they waited for their dinner-breakfast, they killed time with some rather leaden small talk. Carla, though, was dying to probe, and she couldn’t resist as soon as she finished her salad.

  ‘From via Gaeta? The wound, I mean.’

  ‘You’ve done your homework, I see, despite your age.’

  The man was somehow both attractive and unsettling. Carla waited in pained silence for a bit before continuing.

  ‘I was still a child at the time, but I read a lot. About the raid, the man behind it, and what came after that. For all intents and purposes, you brought down terrorism in Italy.’

  ‘Terrorism ended with the supergrasses and the 1980s, when supporters became entrepreneurs and armed groups became rock bands. Would you like to know the full story of via Gaeta, from a witness’s perspective?’ he teased.

  ‘You weren’t just a witness. But yes, I won’t pretend I’m not interested. Off the record, as it were, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She had the feeling Canessa was mocking her, especially when he suddenly said, ‘Stand up.’

  She stared at him in surprise. ‘Why?’

  ‘Please stand up. I’ll show you.’

  She did so. Someone in the place turned round to look at her. Annibale continued, ‘Turn around, full circle. Okay, you can sit down again.’

  Carla offered him a sly grin. ‘You didn’t get a good look earlier?’

  He didn’t react. ‘I did, but apart from never missing an opportunity, I also wanted to make sure you weren’t wearing a microphone.’

  ‘You’re pretty paranoid, huh?’

  ‘And I’m still alive. Give me your phone.’ She pulled it out of her bag and handed it over. ‘Okay, now put your arms on the table, palms down.’

  Completely enthralled by now, Carla followed his commands.

  He took out the BlackBerry, checked something, then placed it between them.

  She waited. ‘So?’

  ‘What I’m going to tell you – though not here – is the shocking truth. You can’t repeat it to anyone, not until this whole thing is over, and definitely not until I tell you so. Do you understand?’

  Carla, quivering in anticipation, raised a hand from the table. ‘I swear.’

  ‘Ah! Don’t move your hands, or the deal’s off.’

  ‘Okay, okay, but can I at least get a preview?’

  He gestured to the waiter to bring the bill over.

  ‘Yes, you’re allowed to check out the merchandise.’

  He leaned towards her and whispered, all in one breath, ‘The people who shot me in via Gaeta weren’t the terrorists – they were mostly dead – but someone from the Secret Service. I was shot in the back, and not in the stomach, as was reported. I’m not a hero, I’m a fool. Or, as you say in Milan, a pirla.’

  1980

  ‘I don’t like it, not one bit.’

  Amelia Ferri couldn’t look away from the window. She’d been fiddling with the curtain, shifting it as little as possible to look down on the narrow street filled with people. She didn’t want to be seen – accidentally or otherwise – by anyone.

  She’d been chanting that mantra for several days now, and her three flatmates had started mocking her. ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like that,’ Gennaro Esposito echoed to the tune of Funiculì funiculà and from the sofa, where he was indulging in his favourite pastime: a toothpick pedicure.

  The scene was disgusting enough to begin with, but Esposito had somehow managed to make it worse: at the end of each session, he’d take the toothpick, wipe it off on his trousers, and put it back in his mouth, where it stayed until the next pedicure.

  He obviously did it on purpose to tease her. The first time he’d done so, Amelia had rushed to the bathroom, gagging. When she realised that Esposito did it just to goad her, she’d mustered all the willpower and self-control that had made her – second daughter of the wealthy, famous cardiologist to Turin’s car-owning ‘royal family’ – one of the most ruthless and wanted terrorists in the whole country.

  At the sound of Esposito’s Neapolitan melody, she dropped the curtain and went over to the sofa, where her partner waved at her with the same hand holding the toothpick.

  Amelia stared at him with clear and obvious disgust. Esposito was her complete opposite. They would never have met had it not been for the war they were fighting on the same side. His parents were ‘nobodies’ (according to Corrado Perfetti, another member of the hit squad, former literature student from Florence and underground cabaret performer), his only residence was a cellar in one of the most derelict neighbourhoods of the Spanish Quarter, ‘even rats won’t go there’. Brown-noser (the only accusation he’d plead innocent to), thief, robber, killer, and terrorist.

  Whenever Amelia thought of herself with Esposito, she couldn’t help but remember The Persuaders!, a series she’d watched when she was younger, mostly because she liked Tony Curtis. The opening credits always showed the parallel lives of the main characters, who were as different from each other as possible. Just like her and Esposito.

  Amelia had had everything: money, private-school education, British tutors, nice clothes, skiing trips, coral beaches, jewellery, a white Spider for her twenty-first birthday. Gennaro was poor and desperate. His sister had died of cholera one summer and the streets had been his only form of schooling. She was beautiful and tall, her swan’s neck brushed by long hair (short now out of necessity); he was short, dark and dirty, even limped a little. But he was incredibly loyal to the cause, and no longer cared about money. He was fierce and obedient. He’d got involved in armed direct action during a prison stay from which he’d made a bloody escape, and had embraced the Idea without hesitation and without flaunting any intellectualism, unlike others. He was a cold-blooded killer.

  Amelia thought about the glory of the revolution that had brought them together: only their desire to bring down the imperialist state, only loyalty to their principles could have induced them to live under the same roof, her and that street rat. To Amelia, that’s what he remained. She still dressed with sombre elegance, which was why they called her ‘the Czarina’. She loved all the things she’d been given, and didn’t want to let them go – One day I’ll be taking them all back, with interest – but she always added that everyone would benefit from them because of what they were doing. The meaner comments were about her joining the cause so she could continue to dress well. Elegance was often useful for duping the dumb slaves of power, the police and the Carabinieri. ‘If you’d stopped at the autonomous stage,’ Perfetti would prod, ‘you’d’ve had to dress like the komrades. Ripped jeans, shapeless jumpers, parkas.’ The Czarina agreed: she wouldn’t have been able to.

  Gennaro had stopped looking at her mockingly. His eyes now spoke of something else entirely: pure lust.

  Amelia smiled.
She would exact her revenge for his mockery and teasing that evening when she did it with Adelmo Federzoni, a former Latin and Greek professor from Modena and the leader of their group. She’d enjoy it, too – Federzoni was a good-looking man and a decent lover – but she would make sure to add some extra noise to torture Gennaro who, Perfetti had told her, always put his ear to the wall to listen to her moans. The four of them had split the two bedrooms in the flat, with Federzoni suggesting that the men take one room so she could have her own space, but the Czarina had refused, both on ideological grounds and those of her own pleasure.

  The night she’d gagged over Gennaro’s pedicure, she’d been teasing him by telling him about how much she loved sex, how many people she’d slept with, and what her favourite positions were, until Federzoni took her aside.

  ‘Amelia, enough. Gennaro is crass and gross, but he’s not that smart. He doesn’t know you’re playing with him, and it could harm the balance in the group. He plays a crucial role in what we need to do. Leave him alone.’

  Amelia went back to the window. ‘I don’t like it, not one bit,’ she started saying again, tugging at the curtain. The street below was swarming with people wearing the AMGA uniform, the Genoa gas and water company, police and Carabinieri. All those cops were making her nervous. Via Gaeta was too narrow a street, running along the hill above Genoa’s Piazza Principe train station. To be fair, all the roads were narrow there. She was used to Turin’s large boulevards and she felt so clumsy in the car that she often refused outright to drive, letting the others do it for her.

  ‘I mean, this is just bad luck,’ she said, still looking out of the window. A shiver ran down her spine. Despite the heating inside and her heavy jumper, Amelia was feeling all of the effects of the season, which was turning out to be particularly harsh. Especially that early February: the city was in the grip of an icy wind blowing in from the forts to the north.

  ‘Amelia,’ Federzoni coaxed, ‘you need to learn to look at a situation from a different perspective.’