‘Yes.’
‘Do you know what it is?’
‘No. I thought it might be a sample of some kind of beauty product, but I don’t know.’
‘Have you tried to open it?’
‘I never even thought it could be opened.’
‘But you just said you thought it was a sample. A sample can be opened.’
‘I never thought too much about it. Just looking at it makes me feel bad.’
He understood. ‘I’ll tell you what it is: it’s a Minox cartridge.’ He saw that Davide didn’t know what a Minox cartridge was, so he explained it to him. ‘Inside here is a strip of film about fifty centimetres long and less than a centimetre wide, on which you can take more than fifty photographs with a miniature camera called a Minox.’ And having finished the explanation he forgot him, as if he no longer had him there in front of him, as if Davide didn’t exist and he was alone, in the air sickly with heat, in the soft, antiquated light of that lamp, a professional’s lamp, as the shop assistant had said to his father when he bought it for him. Only him and that cartridge.
A Minox wasn’t exactly a camera for amateurs. Little larger than a cigarette lighter, it had been used by spies during the war to photograph documents, as any reader of espionage novels knew. It could take photographs in fog and through smoke, which was why it had also been used a lot by war correspondents. But it required practice to take photographs with such a small camera, it wasn’t easy to frame the shots or keep the camera still. For an amateur, taking fifty photos with a single cartridge was too much, but for a professional it was ideal. And being so small, the film could easily be sent by post, and equally easily be hidden. He had once read a novel in which a spy had kept a Minox cartridge in his mouth when crossing a border and still managed to speak, though that could, of course, have been an exaggeration on the part of the writer-or maybe the character had a larger than average mouth.
He still felt nervous. He didn’t like pointless, infantile fantasies, but this cartridge came from a woman’s handbag and there weren’t many women so keen on photography that they’d use a Minox. Besides, the girl wasn’t exactly a normal, home-loving individuaclass="underline" every now and again she went out, let herself be picked up by a man and went with him, for financial reward. Superintendent Carrua would have defined such behaviour as prostitution, which might not have been very chivalrous, but was certainly accurate. In addition, this girl, for reasons she had not wanted to reveal, had intended to kill herself, and in fact had killed herself. He didn’t want to speculate, but he would have liked to know if this film had been exposed completely or partly-it must have been through a camera because there wasn’t a strip of film between the two spools, as there would have been if it hadn’t been used-if after a year it could still provide a sufficiently clear negative and, above all, what had been photographed. Of one thing he was sure: that these wouldn’t be holiday snaps, an old lady under a beach umbrella, a woman bathing on the rocks, a group of friends on a beach playing with a large ball.
And all these things he wanted to know immediately, he wouldn’t sleep or eat or think about anything else until he did.
He wrapped the cartridge in the handkerchief and put it in his pocket. ‘Excuse me a moment, I’ll be right back.’ The telephone was in the hall. The kitchen door was ajar and through it he could see Lorenza knitting a winter outfit for Sara and listening to the radio. He smiled at her and gestured to her to remain seated, he didn’t need anything. He looked at his watch: nine o’clock.
‘Superintendent Carrua, please.’
‘Who shall I say is calling?’
‘Duca Lamberti.’
A long wait, a few clicks, then Carrua’s voice, a little distorted. ‘Sorry, I’m yawning.’
‘I’m sorry, too, but I needed to talk to you urgently.’
‘You could have come here without phoning, I’m always ready to see you.’
‘I wanted to know if the photographic lab was open.’
‘The lab? Obviously it’s closed. They’re still doing a short week.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow morning.’ He couldn’t, he’d rather go and rouse some photographer from his bed.
‘If it’s urgent, I could have it opened and get hold of the technicians.’
‘It is urgent. I’ll explain when I get there.’
‘All right, I’ll be waiting.’
‘I’ll be bringing Auseri’s son with me.’
Ten minutes later, he and Davide were in the Via Fatebenefratelli, and by 11:4 °Carrua’s large desk was covered in photographs in 18×24 format: the enlargements from the Minox film. There were also two large bottles of Coca-Cola on the desk. Only Davide had not taken his jacket off: they had sat him down at the far end of the room, in front of the table where the typewriter was, and there he had stayed and there he was even now, while they looked at the photographs.
‘What are you thinking, Duca?’
‘I’m sorting the photographs.’
From a puritan point of view, they were obscene images. They were extremely clear, in spite of being enlarged, and technically excellent. Against a vague background of clouds, the kind you found in old photographic studios, stood the subject, a naked woman.
‘There isn’t much to sort: half are of the brunette and half of the blonde.’
That was true: there were about twenty-five photographs of the same dark-haired girl, and twenty-five or twenty-six of the blonde. It could have been claimed that these were artistic images, however daring, in fact the poses seemed to have a modicum of aspiration towards artistry, but that would have been splitting hairs. The poses of the two girls were openly alluring, it wasn’t just their nakedness, it was also the gestures of the arms, the position of the legs. In most of the photographs the girls were hiding their faces, but not in all of them. They couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old.
‘Where did you put the Radelli girl’s file?’ he asked Carrua.
‘Oh yes, it’s in the drawer.’ Carrua gave it to him.
It was a large yellow folder, quite creased, the dossier on the suicide of Alberta Radelli. It contained her photograph, the death certificate issued by the pathologist, a photostat of the letter the girl had written to her sister asking forgiveness for killing herself, an officer’s report, an overall report made by the appropriate office, three or four pages summarising the interviews conducted with a number of people: the suicide’s sister, the famous cyclist Antonio Marangoni, the caretaker of the building where the dead girl lived with her sister. There were stamps, signatures, words underlined in red, and large blue seals. Duca extracted the photograph of the girl, taken from her licence, and showed it to Carrua along with one of the photographs from the Minox.
‘It could be,’ Carrua said.
‘We can soon find out. Davide, come here a moment, please.’ Davide Auseri at last stirred himself and came towards Duca, who showed him the photographs from the Minox, those of the brunette and those of the blonde, but not the photo taken from the licence. ‘Is there anyone you know here?’
It was a nice office, large and quiet, a good place to work at night. Carrua had an apartment somewhere in the city, but even he might not have been entirely sure where it was, he only went there when he remembered the address and wanted to take a bath, but the rest of the time he preferred to sleep in the little room next to the office on the divan bed, with piles of newspapers and press releases on the floor, along with the telephone. His real home was in Sardinia, where he had been born, but he couldn’t get there more than once a year, for a few days. His other real home was this one here, his office, which was always full of things and people. Now there was this young man, looking at these photographs. Carrua was not a particularly sensitive man, but he felt sorry all the same to see Davide’s face as he looked at the photograph of the brunette.