‘Don’t worry, Commissioner,’ Ferrara replied, although he would rather have done anything than tread carefully.

  ‘And keep me informed.’

  ‘Of course.’

  When he had put down the receiver, he fished another cigar from the leather case but, before he had time to light it, Fanti materialised quietly in front of him and placed a bulky envelope on his desk.

  ‘From Major Alibrandi, chief. It says Personal and Confidential.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  ‘Should I open it?’

  ‘No, thanks, you can go.’

  He wasn’t sure why the major was being so secretive. Anna Giulietti’s diary was a piece of evidence in a criminal investigation, not a personal and confidential matter.

  Puzzled, he opened the envelope.

  What he found inside hit him like a punch in the stomach with its anachronistic and almost paradoxical humanity: it was a hard-covered volume bound in beautiful green and cream marbled paper, with a light-coloured leather spine and a flap with a little lock to prevent access to the pages. A personal journal, a jealous guardian of intimate secrets, which made Ferrara think of a teenage girl’s diary. It was not something he would ever have associated with the image of Anna Giulietti, a self-confident, even cold woman, who once on a car journey had confessed to him her total devotion to work and her consequent sacrifice of a private life.

  The cover bore the word DIARY and a label with a decorative border on which Anna had written in green ink in a beautiful English cursive script the date June 2001 followed by a dash and an empty space to be filled in by the date when the diary was completed. Clearly, it was the latest in a series.

  The lock had been opened and a yellow Post-it marked the page the major had mentioned - a page that apparently contained a reference to him.

  October 3

  Mother had some difficulty getting to sleep but eventually spent a peaceful night. She’s better, thank God. BUT I

  CAN’T STAND IT ANY MORE!

  I’M TIRED!

  My back is broken and I feel swollen all over.

  I kept her company and read her The Glass

  Menagerie for the twentieth or thirtieth time. I wonder if her obsession with that play is a dig at me. She can be really wicked. And I’m stupid to be hurt by it! But it’s pointless telling her over and over that I don’t need a husband. What a bitch I am! She’s old and weak . . .

  A husband, no, but a man?

  A couple of days ago I looked at an old diary of mine, and reread the page for March 14, 1999. It was a

  Tuesday, we were on our way back from Certaldo, and Michele took me to have lunch at Latini’s. I wrote that I could feel my heart beating like crazy and I was terribly self-conscious because one of my stockings had a very noticeable ladder. What a fool, I should be ashamed at my age! Is it possible I wrote that?

  Yes, it’s possible!

  The truth is, I miss Michele, I miss him a lot! I hope he recovers soon, I need him beside me in this business, which is really starting to scare me. I’m so nervous that this morning, just after we left, and before we got to the Via Cassia, I heard a loud crack and immediately thought I’d been shot. My heart skipped a beat and my chest seemed to open up. Alessandro carried on driving as if nothing had happened, and when I asked him if he had heard anything he said it was probably hunters in the woods. I’M NOT CONVINCED. I’M NOT CONVINCED AT ALL. I hear hunters sometimes at dawn, or even earlier, but lately everything’s been perfectly quiet. I didn’t tell him that, though, in order not to scare him, too. I was still tense until we got to the Via Cassia. I thought of telling Rizzo, but then I didn’t, I had too much to do and it went out of my mind. Maybe I’m blowing it up out of all proportion. After all, no one actually hit us!

  But I would have told you, Michele, I’m sure of that.

  To feel protected? To make me feel important? To try and discover in a gesture, a look, a word, if you care about me, and if you do, how much?

  Ferrara went home feeling very troubled, with the diary hidden in a brown envelope between some papers from the office, and as self-conscious as a husband hiding porn magazines from his wife. He had decided not to tell Petra, at least not until he himself had fully absorbed that revelation. Not to give her another reason to feel anxious, he told himself to justify his silence, but, never having hidden anything from her before, he felt embarrassed and was unusually taciturn all evening.

  Petra had made tagliatelle with fresh, fragrant truffles, rabbit stewed in a tomato, wine and herb sauce, and a light, tasty strudel which she had adapted from a recipe of her mother’s to make it more delicate. Neither the food nor the excellent Rosso di Montalcino helped, though, to lighten his mood. Petra put it down to problems at work, and she knew he never liked to involve her in such things. But this added to her conviction that his work was a prison sentence from which she had to help him escape as soon as possible.

  Only after dinner, during which they exchanged such a limited number of words they could have written a haiku with them, did she feel justified in returning to a subject she was determined to pursue, gently but stubbornly.

  ‘I was at the bookshop, Massimo says hello. I told him you’re very busy but that you’ll drop by as soon as possible. Did you know he’s thinking of getting a manager in to run the shop and retiring?’

  They were sitting in the armchairs, she with her coffee and he with a glass of grappa and the inevitable cigar.

  ‘Can you imagine that? He could never do without his books!’

  ‘More than he could before. He says books aren’t what they used to be. Then he laughs and says neither are tomatoes, fruit, or fish. Or human beings, who are all barbarians now. Then he turns serious again and complains that everything’s going to pot, it’s time to let others get on with it. We’ve given all we can, he says, why don’t we retire and enjoy what little time we have left to us? That’s what he says, and it’s also what I think.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied, but it was obvious that he was lost in thought and had stopped listening to what she was saying.

  Petra sighed and went to bed to read one of the German novels, not yet published in Italy, which she always stocked up on whenever they went to visit her parents.

  Alone now, Ferrara took out the diary.

  August 11

  I went to see them in Marina di Pietrasanta. I like his wife, but why her? It’s true, she’s down to earth and probably gives him the solidity he needs. But when we’re together it’s as if she fades away, perhaps because he and I are united by interests that have nothing to do with her. BUT IS IT ONLY THAT? Every time I see him, even after a fight - or especially after a fight (like the one we had about Freemasonry, which I hope turns out to be a false lead because it could be very dangerous for him, and he’s so reckless and indiscreet) - I feel that the understanding between us is so . . . intense? Oh God, I hate going all soppy!

  He seems tense, he’s lost a lot of weight lately. He’s very worried about that friend of his, the bookseller, who he swears is innocent. How stubborn you are, Michele! Even when it comes to friendship. In that way you’re the quintessence of the true Sicilian - not like the ones with their omertà and their exaggerated sense of honour but the ones with a deep feeling for friendship.

  A sacred feeling - and that’s another thing I respect you for.

  But that Massimo of yours is in real trouble and unfortunately I can’t do anything to help him. I’ve promised, though, to unblock the request to see the victim’s medical records, and I’ll do it tomorrow, come what may.

  He’s a devil, that man: he looks at me with those hazel-green cat’s eyes and gives me the impression he’s playing with me like a cat (it really suits him, that nickname!) with a mouse . . . and the trouble is I like playing the part of the mouse when he’s the cat. If I can’t have anything else, I at least have that. A meagre consolation! If only . . .

  He closed the diary abruptly, then closed his eyes, too, and let his cigar die in the ashtray. He was angry and afraid at the same time.

  Had he really been so blind as not to see what others were perfectly well aware of?

  He suddenly recalled what Erminia Cosenza had said to him, with an amused look in her eyes: If I were a man I wouldn’t dare to pass judgement on what a woman fantasises about - she had been talking specifically about Anna! - it’s an area where you men are a bit out of your depth, especially you, Chief Superintendent! Or had he preferred not to see? And if that was so, had he taken advantage of it in some way? He wouldn’t continue looking for the answer in that diary. Doing that felt like desecrating secrets which Anna had now carried with her to the grave. It was better that they stay there. The only way to know was to examine his own feelings. What had he felt for her? How sorry had he been when he had heard about her death?

  He agonised for a long time, unable to come up with an answer. The further he dug, the dizzier he felt. A strange weakness took possession of him.

  When at last he opened his eyes he realised that they were moist.

  Petra had turned the light off in the bedroom. He thought of her with a mixture of tenderness and disquiet. She was the woman he loved, he was certain of that. What he wasn’t completely certain of right now was whether you could love only one woman.

  15

  In an apartment in Prato, Captain Somenti was telling Giulia that he had to return to Rome. She responded, not - as he had briefly, stupidly hoped after she invited him to dinner - with the kind of compliant submission that would lead to a night of love and reconciliation, but by wishing him, in a slightly sarcastic and not very friendly tone, a brilliant career.

  It was a suitable conclusion to a dinner that had been almost as silent as the Ferraras’. Throughout the meal, Somenti had been unable to get certain images out of his head: the ones he had found in the photograph album on the coffee table, which he had furtively leafed through while Giulia was in the kitchen getting ready and she had told him to ‘make yourself at home’. As luck would have it, the pages he stumbled across showed the unmistakable beauty of the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, mostly as background to her equally unmistakable beauty. Unfortunately, she was not alone in those photographs. With her, in poses which left no room for doubt, was a fair-haired young man, tall, cheerful and, he had to admit, decidedly handsome - almost certainly a bastard.

  He tried to tell himself the affair was over. She had said so herself. But it was useless: the images haunted him for the rest of the evening, and he had to make an effort not to let his jealousy show, even though it was eating him up inside. When she wished him a brilliant career, he was certain she had lied to him, and it wasn’t over at all, far from it. On his way out, he wondered if his career was really worth it after all.

  ‘Salvatore Laprua’s sons were killed last night. I just had a call from Trapani.’

  Ferrara had just finished the coffee Fanti had made for him as he did every morning when Rizzo had come running into his office, breathless.

  ‘Shit!’ Ferrara said. ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘Apparently, three men armed with shotguns burst into the Laprua house in Bellomonte di Mezzo and opened fire on the people in the living room. They mowed down the boss’s three sons and the wives of two of them. The third wife only escaped because she was upstairs at the time.’

  ‘Is she the one who talked?’

  ‘Yes, when she’d finished lashing out like a madwoman against everyone and everything. But hers is the only testimony they have about what happened. As usual, no one else saw a thing.’

  Yes, as usual. Apart from the woman, who had been directly affected and only saved by chance, no one in Bellomote di Mezzo would talk. There would be a chill over the place for ages. The massacre would be long remembered, and so would the truth which almost everyone knew but would keep to themselves, on pain of death.

  ‘So, farewell forever to the pax mafiosa. They were probably the same people who poisoned Zì Turi and almost certainly the same people who killed Anna Giulietti and planted the bomb in the Piazza del Cestello.’

  ‘Of course. To avoid retaliation. You told me the widow knows, so it’s likely she told her sons and they were getting ready to take revenge, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes. A pity she’ll never talk. Unless, now that they’ve killed her whole family . . . It may be worth another try, but not straightaway.’

  Rizzo looked at his watch. ‘I have to go, chief. I have an appointment with Don Santo.’

  ‘Go, on then. In the meantime I’ll try and find out more about this business, and I also want to talk to Alibrandi to see if there are any new developments on the Giulietti killing.’

  But he did not get the chance to do either of these things: no sooner had Rizzo left the office than Fanti came in, looking agitated.

  ‘What’s up, Fanti?’

  ‘This just arrived from Police Headquarters in Agrigento.’ He handed him a fax, which he read immediately.

  With reference to the request concerning Jan van

  Gorcum, born in Amsterdam March 10, 1975, we wish to inform you that the aforementioned was found dead this morning at dawn in the countryside near Canicatti. He had been strangled and his body had been put in a rubbish sack alongside another containing a second body, that of a young man identified as Marco Laprua, born in Bellomonte di Mezzo June 15, 1974, also killed by strangulation. Marco Laprua was the grandson of the well-known Mafia boss Salvatore Laprua, known as

  Zì Turi. On specific instructions from the local Prosecutor’s Department, which has been informed of your interest in this individual, we ask you to supply a detailed explanation of the reasons for your request for information and in particular to inform us whether Jan van Gorcum is implicated in one of your investigations and if so in what capacity.

  ‘Get me Venturi, Ascalchi and Sergi.’

  ‘Right away, chief.’

  When the three men arrived, Ferrara showed them the fax without any comment.

  ‘What do we do?’ Gianni Ascalchi asked.

  ‘As far as the explanation requested by the Prosecutor’s Department in Agrigento is concerned, I’ll talk to Deputy Prosecutor Cosenza: that’s a judicial matter and they can sort it out between themselves. But we need answers right now, we can’t wait for the bureaucrats. I want one of you to take the first flight to Sicily and make direct contact with the head of the Squadra Mobile in Agrigento.’

  Sergi and Ascalchi exchanged glances. Then Sergi asked Ascalchi, ‘Do you want to go?’

  ‘Sure, no problem. I’ve started to like being an accidental tourist, like William Hurt. I’ll catch the first plane I can find.’

  ‘Good,’ Ferrara said approvingly. ‘I’ll phone Agrigento. By the way, there’s been another development.’

  They all looked at him.

  ‘They also killed Laprua’s sons.’

  Silence fell like a stone curtain. The smile on Ascalchi’s lips froze.

  16

  Scandicci had expanded so much that it was now less a municipality in its own right than a kind of satellite town of Florence. Apart from the prison, it also housed the church where Don Santo, the prison chaplain, was the parish priest.

  Rizzo had preferred to meet him outside the prison.

  He parked his Alfa Romeo 156 in front of the church, got out, walked round to the side street where the priest’s lodgings were, and rang the doorbell. After a few moments, the door was opened by a short but quite well-built old woman with a lined face, dressed all in black. He took his badge from the inside pocket of his jacket and showed it to her.

  ‘Good morning, signora,’ he said. ‘I’m Superintendent Rizzo.’

  The woman looked at him with her dark little eyes. She seemed put out, but did not move and did not speak.

  ‘I’m looking for Don Santo,’ he went on. ‘I’d like to talk to him. Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious.’

  The woman’s face did not relax. To her, prisoners and policemen both meant the same thing: trouble. And trouble was something Don Santo seemed to go looking for.

  ‘I’ll go and fetch him,’ she said at last, reluctantly, in a voice that was strangely hoarse and shrill at the same time, and stepped aside to let him into a long, narrow corridor. At that moment, an elderly man appeared at the other end.

  ‘What is it, Betta?’ he asked.

  He was tall, thin and distinguished-looking, with white hair and a dark complexion.

  ‘This man is a police superintendent from Florence. He wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Let him come in,’ Don Santo said, coming towards him with his hand held out.

  ‘I already have!’ the housekeeper muttered shrilly, and walked away.

  Rizzo had the impression that Don Santo was not surprised to see him. He followed him into the study, where he sat down on a wooden chair while the chaplain collapsed into a time-worn old leather armchair behind a small walnut desk on which stood a statuette of the Madonna and an old silver candlestick with three candles.

  ‘So, Superintendent, to what do I owe the honour?’

  ‘This’ll only take a few minutes.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s not every day I get a visit from a senior police officer.’

  Rizzo gave a slight smile. ‘How long have you been the prison chaplain?’ he asked.

  ‘Practically forever, Superintendent.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Let me explain. When they opened Sollicciano in 1981, the bishop asked me to be the official chaplain, but before that, ever since the fifties, I’d been the chaplain in the old prisons, Murate and Santa Teresa. But why did you ask me that?’

  ‘I just wanted to know how much experience you have of prisoners.’

  The old priest smiled.

  ‘Basically I’m trying to understand how things work in prison,’ Rizzo added.

 

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