The Second Life of Inspector Canessa Page 18

  ‘I don’t know who you are, but you don’t know who I am either,’ he protested.

  ‘Oh, but we do know. And now it’s time for them to know too.’

  The fake colonel’s eyes widened in terror as the sofa man pulled a hefty file out of a briefcase.

  ‘You know this man as Carlo Rosconi, and that is his real name, yes. But that’s not his only name.’ He dropped several pieces of ID onto the glass coffee table: passports from different countries, national IDs, driving licences, credit cards.

  ‘Please, help yourselves, but don’t get too excited and make sure you take a good look.’

  The woman and the two teenagers started cautiously, moving more quickly through each new document. They’d pick one up, study it, pass it on, looking first at each other, then at Rosconi.

  ‘They’re setting me up! Those are fake, Manuela. Please don’t believe what this bastard is saying.’

  ‘Fake? I doubt it, in your line of work. Madam, isn’t your cousin in the Guardia di Finanza? Customs, if I’m not wrong, so he’s used to these documents. Take them to him for confirmation. I appreciate that you might not believe me, but he can confirm that what you’re holding is an authentic Greek passport, and so are all the others.’

  The woman seemed confused. Rosconi realised that she was starting to doubt him and soon, so would their children.

  ‘What do you want? Money, jewellery? I have a safe.’

  ‘Excellent, let’s talk about the safe…’

  He extracted more documents from an envelope.

  ‘These were in your fake insurance office. They show what you look like when you go by “Marco Baccini”.’ He handed the family a set of photos of a man dressed in a Carabinieri colonel’s uniform. ‘You own a loft in Parioli. Please, take a look. These are photos of him leaving the garage in a Mercedes Pagoda, a nice collector’s item. Antique.’

  The photos were clear, and showed a young, dark-haired woman with some impressive cleavage sitting next to Rosconi-Baccini, and wearing a black evening dress. She couldn’t have been much older than his daughter, and was holding on to Baccini’s arm with joyful abandon. The masked man with the revolver had omitted to mention her, and he got the reaction he wanted.

  Rosconi’s wife and daughter stared at the photos, in shock.

  ‘Dad, who is that? And who are you?’ Eva asked, her voice cracking. The man in black had known that the betrayal would hurt her the most.

  ‘He’s lying to you. Don’t fall for it! They’re clearly faked!’

  The man in black chucked another envelope on the table. ‘These are the films. We don’t care about them. We’re not here to blackmail anyone.’ He looked at Manuela, pulling out another file of photos.

  ‘The boy’s a minor, so you might not want him to see these. He can go to the other room with my partner.’

  The boy didn’t move, and stared straight at him. It was clear he wouldn’t be leaving. A minor, not a child.

  The man then handed over the explicit photos of Baccini and his Greek lover in bed. Uncensored. The daughter gagged and someone handed her a bucket.

  ‘Bastard! I’ll kill you!’

  ‘Shut up!’ his wife cried. ‘I don’t know who these people are or why they’re doing this, but this is something you caused, something you did. To us.’ She threw the photos in his face.

  ‘Manuela…’ He was grasping at straws now.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?!’ his daughter screamed in his face. The bucket was now full and reeking.

  ‘Go and take care of that,’ the man on the sofa ordered his partner. ‘I got this.’ His partner took the bucket and left the living room. The man on the sofa turned to the girl.

  ‘I’m sorry. We’ve been the bearers of unpleasant news, and I’ll be the first to admit my shame. But this man, who started out as a police inspector, is a traitor: of the State he swore to defend, of the people he swore to protect and of his family. Your husband, your father is a Secret Service agent of the worst kind, a sellout and a coward. He’s used State money to live the high life, and not just that. He’s bribed and killed.’ He handed Manuela the last of the envelopes, the bulkiest. ‘In there are more photos, encrypted bank accounts and access details, keys and addresses of the Parioli place and others outside of Rome, photos with other women. The flat in Parioli is the main one; there are too many others to keep track of. Plus newspaper articles on massacres and tragic events he’s dirtied his hands with in recent years. He’s always served the slimiest, most rotten side of the country. Of course, it’s my word against his. But I was telling the truth about everything else, so you’ll believe me on this. I’m sorry about the pain I’m causing. I wouldn’t have come here had you not been an intelligent, honest person. You had to know.’

  The man in black stood up. His job was done. Although it hadn’t cost him much effort to move, he still flinched with the pain from his left side.

  Powerless and fuming with rage, Rosconi-Baccini found an opening. ‘You fucker, I know who you are! You’ll pay for this! I’m not going to ruin your life – I’ll take it!’

  Annibale, unfazed, slowly aimed his gun at the man’s leg and shot him in the calf. All they heard was a plop and Rosconi collapsed to the ground. Someone yelled, and Manuela and the children jumped to their feet.

  ‘Silence, please. Sit down.’ Canessa moved closer to Rosconi-Baccini, who was writhing in pain on the floor, and removed his handcuffs. He stuck his face an inch away from the other’s and hissed: ‘I never want to hear anything else from you, Rosconi, Baccini, whoever you are. If I do, I’ll send all of this material, photos, accounts to your colleagues and to the prosecutor’s office. I believe the Secret Service are the ones who’ll be angriest with you since you opened a hole in their net. When you’ve finished dealing with your family, you’ll retire. Are we clear?’

  ‘You said no one would get hurt!’ Rosconi’s wife was less upset about the harming of her husband than she was about their broken promise. The man had, after all, destroyed their family.

  They would be quite comfortable, Canessa was sure, even without the flat and the swish life they led there.

  ‘It’s true, I did lie – to you, not him. I hurt you, and for that I’m truly sorry.’ He turned to Rosconi. ‘Quit whining. It’s nothing that disinfectant and some gauze won’t fix. The bullet came out clean. Speaking of.’ He used a pocket knife to dig into the hardwood floor and extract the bullet. ‘I also apologise for this damage.’ Once again to her husband: ‘You won’t even need the hospital. I didn’t shoot to kill, and I looked you in the eye when I did it. Unlike you.’

  Repetto only spoke once they’d left the ring road behind them and were driving on the Aurelia. They were chasing the blue and orange light of the sunset, with little traffic to hold them up. Major Canessa was driving calmly, half a Toscano between his lips, seemingly free of worries. Repetto, on the other hand, was full of them. He had to spit them out.

  He put as many as he could into a single question. ‘Annibale, do you think we did the right thing?’

  The major inhaled a mouthful of smoke and blew it into the night air, already swelling with the scent of the nearby sea. He face remained immobile.

  ‘Right has nothing to do with it. It was something we had to do, and we did it. And now, as the general said, we can finish our job.’

  Repetto settled into his seat and shut his eyes. He starting silently humming a song by Roberto Vecchioni, one of his favourite musicians.

  Oh Velasquez, if only I hadn’t followed you,

  With you there’s no turning back.

  3

  The Third Millennium

  1

  Can i, in all honesty, call myself a slut?

  Carla Trovati asked herself this question as she woke naked in her own bed with a man by her side. At
the sound of his light breathing, she’d rested her head on his chest, and was now gently caressing the bullet wound from the shooting in via Gaeta. The entry point was on his back. A coward’s shot.

  With Strozzi, she hadn’t really wanted it. She’d been naive and he’d duped her – she wouldn’t have been so yielding, so inept even if he’d drugged her first. But she’d wanted Canessa from the moment she’d met him. A strong attraction that she hadn’t even admitted to herself. Strozzi was predictable, really, while Canessa was the opposite: filled with secrets to uncover, distances to bridge, voids to fill. Strozzi hadn’t looked at her with a raging fire inside. He was insincere. Canessa had undressed her with his eyes from the first moment. Maybe not the very first one – at the morgue – but when they’d met again later. When he’d come along with that strange hacker, his gaze was like an x-ray.

  She absolved herself, eventually. Okay, I know I’ve got looks. But I’ve never used them as a weapon. I’m not a slut. I slipped, once, and allowed myself to have a petty, clever man. What happened last night was natural, organic, something we both wanted. Sure, the colonel has his own way with words, and he told me the story I wanted to hear, but god, what a difference. Strozzi was all fluff. Canessa’s stories are the stuff of real life, and an incredible one at that.

  And so she made peace with her own heart.

  They’d stayed in the club for half an hour, just enough time for the cacio e pepe that Canessa ruled ‘edible’, based on his experience as a restaurant owner. Right after the guy bumped into him and they’d sat down, the whole via Gaeta story had unravelled. Annibale had looked at her, his eyes once more boring right through her armour.

  The nightowls on that first summer’s night were chattering, drinking, laughing. Everyone was young, good-looking and carefree. Canessa, despite his age, had never had so much fun or lived so fully, and he felt strange acting like a thirty-year-old given that he was almost twice that. When he’d been Carla’s age, he hadn’t had the time or the chance – he saw himself with Giuseppina, in those fleeting, worried moments – but he was never that age at the time, and he never had been since then. Sometimes he thought he’d lived through a different Italy to everyone else. Or rather, he was the one preventing his reality – the one filled with terrorists, criminals, a corrupt Secret Service, all ranks of scum and villains, a reality where cruelty happened every day – from spilling into the other. In his parallel dimension, everyone was at risk – even those who didn’t know, didn’t care, couldn’t imagine… who read the news and thought it would never happen here, or to them.

  That was why – because not everyone knew, not even that beautiful woman who hadn’t even been born in the 1970s – he’d smiled at Carla’s professional curiosity, and asked her to ‘stand up’.

  2

  ‘We can talk while I take you home,’ Carla suggested as they left the club. The night smelled good. Summer was on its way.

  Canessa looked at her and slowly shook his head. ‘Better to talk indoors; it’s safer. I’d take you to my place, but it’s better for both of us if you don’t know where I live. I’d suggest your place, if that’s okay with you.’

  ‘But how will you get home?’

  ‘I’ll call the driver, or I’ll walk. I like walking.’

  She’d tried to figure out whether he was messing with her (‘the driver’?), but Annibale was unreadable.

  Once in the house, he didn’t make a beeline for the couch, like Strozzi, but sat down in a chair. Carla tried very hard not to look like an innocent child when he undid his ankle holster and removed the revolver.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘it was starting to rub. Are you okay?’

  Carla couldn’t know that it was a Ruger LCR .22, but she did know that this thing belonged to real life. She was shocked, but she wasn’t afraid or disturbed by it. They’d come to her place for a reason.

  She sat down on the couch, crossing her legs and hoping to catch Canessa taking a peek but he didn’t, absorbed as he was in his own thoughts.

  ‘You have a nice place here. Do you live alone?’

  ‘If I had a partner, I wouldn’t be here with you now, would I?’

  ‘I was thinking a friend, a colleague.’

  ‘No, it’s mine.’

  ‘It must have been quite the expense – just like those shoes you’re wearing. Sergio Rossi, right?’

  This time Carla couldn’t help showing her surprise. This guy was incredible.

  ‘You know your shoes too?’

  ‘Not really, but my aunt reads a couple of magazines and she leaves them around the place, so I pick them up every now and then. They’re fun.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought top inspectors went in for that kind of reading.’

  Canessa smiled wryly. ‘When you miss out on your youth by fighting a war, and spend most of your adult life in self-imposed exile, you end up wanting to have fun. You start looking at red carpet photos with all the latest celebrities. I don’t even know who they are, but it’s harmless trivia, keeps me busy. I know something will happen, eventually, like it did back then.’

  ‘Which was…?’ Carla had lost herself in the sound of his voice.

  He stood up, and walked over to the drinks cabinet. ‘Is that Laphroaig? It was all the rage back then. I always had a bottle in the car and wherever I was staying. Do you mind if I…?’

  ‘Please, help yourself. A friend gave it to me for my thirtieth and I’ve barely drunk any of it.’

  Canessa found himself a glass and poured some whisky. He took off his jacket and sat down again, closing his eyes with his first sip and letting his head drop back.

  Oh God, he’s going to fall asleep. Carla began to panic, but then he asked, ‘So, you want to know about via Gaeta? Stand up again.’ They went through the same show from the restaurant.

  ‘Do you need to pat me down?’ she teased.

  ‘No, I can tell if someone is wearing a hidden microphone.’ He gave her a swift and straightforward summary of the massacre on via Gaeta. His account contained nothing of the boring, bureaucratic report. He did go into the details, but he never got bogged down in them. His emotion came across, captivating her completely, as if his story were a fully immersive virtual reality game.

  With a bourgeois belief in the State handed down to her by her father, Carla was nonplussed. The story was shocking enough before the punishing strike against the fake Colonel Baccini. She couldn’t help asking, ‘Do you think you did the right thing?’

  ‘My marshal asked me that, and I’ll give you the same answer: I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. Sometimes the question isn’t whether something’s right, but whether it needs to be done. That did. I have no regrets.’ Without another word, he stood up, picked up the ankle holster and his jacket. ‘It’s late… actually, it’s early. You probably need to head to the paper, and I also have things to do.’

  Carla stood up then. She didn’t know what to say to keep him there, so she blurted out the first thing that came to mind, a journalist’s question: ‘What do you think about all this happening now? Do you have any thoughts on the big picture, any ideas?’

  ‘It won’t end well, and lots of people will get hurt. Thank you for the evening, your company, and the whisky.’ He made for the door, before suddenly turning back and flashing her another wry smile. ‘I don’t want you to be one of those who gets hurt. Please be careful.’

  ‘I think I would’ve preferred it if you’d said, “You won’t be one of them, since I’ll be there to watch over you.” Much more knight in shining armour.’

  Canessa stepped closer, and her spine tingled.

  ‘It would’ve been more romantic, but untrue. I’ve only made one promise in all my life, and it was a mistake.’

  ‘Because you broke it.’

  He objected. ‘No, I kept it, I really did. But these situa
tions don’t allow for promises.’ He paused. ‘I can’t protect you, not in the way I’d like to. But you’re right, I should’ve said something else.’

  ‘What?’ Carla was a blade of grass, swept away by her feelings.

  Canessa let the gun and his jacket fall to the ground and put a hand on her side, pulling her towards him. She melted into him.

  ‘I wish I’d met a woman like you in another life, a life I’ve never had but one I would’ve liked to live, if I had known you. It sounds complicated, but…’

  Carla kissed him, interrupting a train of thought that made no sense but which she understood perfectly.

  Flinging their clothes aside, they found themselves on the bed in a flurry of hands and lips, and she was only sorry that Strozzi had got there before Annibale.

  He was as she’d expected him to be: strong and tender, even when he turned her over and took her from behind, slowly at first, then harder, faster. He refused to remove her stockings, enjoyed caressing them, rubbing his fingertips against them before moving up her back and, finally, holding her breasts. She could feel his tummy pounding against her bum, his fingers on her nipples. She’d never had sex like this before, and when she came, she wanted it to last forever.

  3

  She fell asleep, her head on his chest, and when she woke up, Annibale was gone, though his scent lingered. Even on the note she found in the kitchen, next to the espresso pot he’d set up for himself and washed before leaving.

  You’re something else, and I really want to see you again soon. But please, be careful. A phone number, which she realised was Swiss. For emergencies only.

  What about for urges? she smiled to herself, and headed for the shower.