He must be drunk and he was still thirsty. He wanted to see if she would get angry. ‘A woman also has the right to get married, at least so I’ve heard.’
She didn’t get angry, but she seemed disappointed. ‘Don’t turn nasty on me, I’m serious. For an intelligent woman, like Alberta, like many others …’
‘Like you.’
‘Yes, like me, too. It’s difficult to get married when you’re intelligent. Of course, in the end we all get married, but an intelligent woman wants to marry well, and it’s difficult to find the right man.’
He really wanted to make her angry. ‘That’s not a good reason to go out on the streets and let yourself be picked up by the first man who comes along.’
‘You’re doing this deliberately. I’m not saying she has to do that, I’m just asking, theoretically, whether or not she has the right.’
He had let her talk for a long time and had learned something usefuclass="underline" Alberta Radelli had indulged in private prostitution, a form of prostitution that seemed to be on the increase. But he needed to know more. ‘Listen, I like general topics very much, but for the job I’m doing I need details. Do you have any idea where Alberta went to pose for these photographs, and why?’
When she thought, her face took on an almost childish expression. ‘I don’t have a very good memory, but I do remember something about it because it was the reason I became disappointed in Alberta.’
‘What is it you remember?’ If he could find out who had taken those photographs, there was no stopping him.
‘I remember a number. Numbers are easier to remember, you know. For example, I remember they were giving her thirty thousand lire to pose for those photographs. I spent a whole afternoon arguing with her, she really disappointed me, although she realised those photographs were something different …’
Oh, no, enough philosophy for the moment. He interrupted her. ‘What’s the number you remember?’
‘The number is 78, it was a house number, but I don’t remember the name of the street. I asked her for the details, because I realised there was something that wasn’t right, that she was moving from private prostitution into something organised …’
No, no, he interrupted her again, he would take her to the Torre Branca one of these days, on a rainy weekday, and there he would let her talk about general topics, there in the deserted round bar a hundred metres above the Milanese plain, until the place closed, but now he needed to know about Alberta, and quickly.
‘Now please listen, this is very important. Can you remember anything more about these photographs? The number 78 isn’t enough, and we have to find the photographer, soon.’ Why soon? A year had passed since Alberta’s death, what was the hurry? Maybe he was telepathic or something, but he felt a sense of urgency.
‘I don’t remember anything else, she just told me she was going to see a photographer.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Oh, wait, she said something strange, now I remember, she said it was like industrial photography. What has industrial photography got to do with nude photographs?’
It did have something to do with it, but he didn’t tell her: it was a cover. So, at number 78 of one of the three thousand or six thousand streets in Milan there existed, or at least there had existed a year before, a studio for industrial photography, at which, discreetly, artistic photographs were also taken. It might take Mascaranti only half a day to find this studio, if it still existed, or even if it didn’t.
‘And did she tell you who had suggested she pose for these photographs?’
‘Yes, she did. It was a filthy business, I don’t like perversions.’ She looked at the barman, who was standing restlessly in the doorway of the bar, waiting to close: it was almost midnight. ‘There was a man who’d approached her, they’d gone in his car some distance from Milan, he was a middle-aged man, I think, he was very generous and very kind, but he’d hardly touched her. Then he’d confessed to her that at his age people had weaknesses, he was able to respond to female charms more in a beautiful photograph, if she wanted to pose for some photographs that would be sufficient for him, just photographs. She said yes, and he gave her the address of the photographer. Then he asked her if she had a friend who might also like to pose for photographs, each of them would be given thirty thousand lire.’
It was a lot of money just so that this voyeur could look at some photographs. ‘Let’s see if I’ve got this right. Alberta told you that a man she’d been with suggested she pose for some photographs and gave her the address of a photographer. In other words, Alberta had to go alone to this photographer, who already knew the work he had to do?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly it.’
‘But, in order to let the photographer know that she had come for that special kind of photograph, didn’t she have to tell him anything, give him some kind of password? She couldn’t just tell him, out of the blue, that she wanted to be photographed nude.’
‘No, she didn’t need to say anything, that was why I quarrelled with Alberta. I made her give me all the details because I wanted to understand what it was all about. All Alberta had to do was go to the studio and when she got there she didn’t have to tell him anything, the photographer already knew. She would pose for some photographs, the photographer would pay her, and that was it.’
For a moment he could hear sirens sounding the alarm, just like when he was a little boy during the war. ‘Try to remember: was the photographer supposed to hand over the exposed film to Alberta, or was he supposed to keep it for himself and send Alberta away? And are you sure, or do you have any doubts?’
‘I think I’m sure.’ Oh, that thoughtful little girl’s face of hers. ‘Alberta told me all she had to do was go to the studio, pose for the photographs, and that was it, she thought it was stupid to pass up all that money for a matter of principle and she was even going to take a friend of hers, Maurilia, and I told her that if she went and posed for those photographs I never wanted to see her again.’
It was time to go, the barman and a large man who had suddenly appeared told them they were going to close. So he took his Livia Ussaro outside, pushed her into the Giulietta, but didn’t switch the engine on. Once the shutters of the bar had been pulled down, that stretch of the Via Plinio was quite shadowy and discreet.
‘I’m not going to let you go home to sleep if you don’t explain one point,’ he said, perhaps a little too seriously. ‘In Alberta’s handbag on the evening before the day she was found dead in Metanopoli, there was a Minox cartridge that hadn’t yet been developed. Do you know what that means?’
‘I’m thinking about it.’
‘Let me do the thinking. It means the photographer gave the cartridge to Alberta.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Right. But what was Alberta supposed to do with it? Did she have to take it to that photosensitive middle-aged man?’ How witty he was!
Livia smiled, it was nice, talking like this in the semi-darkness of the car, the Via Plinio was more deserted than ever. ‘No, that’s not possible, I’m sure of it. Apart from anything else she couldn’t have known where the man who’d spoken to her about the photos lived; when a woman goes with a man like that he doesn’t normally give her his address. This one certainly didn’t.’
‘They may have fixed a place to meet so that she could hand the cartridge over to him to be developed.’ The hypothesis was almost ridiculous: when a photographer takes photographs, it’s normal for him to develop, enlarge and print them himself, without the person who wanted those photographs having to look for another photographer or make the enlargements himself, which would have been quite difficult for an amateur, given that the photographs had been taken on Minox film.