‘Second point: white slave trade on a large scale. We aren’t dealing with a couple of shabby local pimps who’ve made contact with a couple of shabby pimps from some other country, to exchange a few unfortunate girls. We’re dealing with an organised gang of people who’ll stop at nothing, who are prepared to kill to prevent their activities getting out. I think that, too, is clear.’
Fairly clear, even though Duca, as an apostle, did not believe in big organisations. There may well be a few rogues here, but good ones, and he already knew where Carrua was going with this. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you want to inform Interpol, that’s perfectly fine. In the end you’ll discover everything, but it’s going to take a long time because you don’t have a lead. These two girls weren’t professionals, they were amateurs, two girls working for themselves, two unfortunate girls, but of good family. Every now and again they went out on the streets, but they had no links to the world of prostitution, they didn’t have pimps. Their parents, their relatives, their friends don’t know anything about their activity, these were girls with jobs and even in the places where they worked everybody talks well of them: serious girls, decent, punctual, in fact they’d have had to have been that way or they’d have been found out after a few weeks. The only lead we have is that film, but we don’t know who the photographer was, he’s vanished into thin air, and the girls who posed for those photographs are dead. Yes, of course, you’ll get these people in the end, but it’s going to take a long time. I can’t wait that long.’
Another little laugh from Carrua. ‘Really? So how would you suggest we hurry things up?’
‘I’m not absolutely sure yet, but I’d like to start with a hypothesis.’
‘What hypothesis?’
‘That these men have started their work again. They got scared when the film went missing, killed the two girls, then probably laid low for about three or four months. Then, once it was obvious the police believed the brunette had killed herself and the blonde had had an accident, they started moving again. Milan must be very lucrative, you’d start again, too, if you were in their place.’
‘I’m not sure I like you associating me with that kind of work,’ Carrua said: being in a hotel, he was trying hard not to shout. ‘But yes, I’d start again.’
‘If you start working again,’ Duca went on, ‘even though he was sure Carrua had already understood, ‘you do the same things you did a year ago, the same things that proved to be very lucrative, that is, you go in search of new girls, who are only just entering the circuit, and you make them enter your circuit before the competition gets them. So we can start from that hypothesis: the men we’re interested in are working again, here in Milan, even now, this evening.’
Carrua was motionless, as if turned to wood, that was how he was when he concentrated. ‘All right, if we assume they are working again, we set the usual trap. We take a girl, send her out on the streets to do what the girls in the photographs were doing and at some point she’ll be picked up by one of these men, and once we’ve caught one, we’ll catch them all. It’s worth a try. What do we have to lose?’
It might not work out like that. ‘The girl could lose a lot. Who do you have in mind?’
‘Mascaranti has a personal archive of women who could do it.’
‘Think about it, Superintendent Carrua, you can’t use a professional. These people are looking for fresh fruit, just plucked from the branch. You can’t deceive them with a whore disguised as a semi-virgin. And I’m sorry if I said whore.’
‘It’s all right, don’t get angry.’
‘But I also have fresh fruit, just off the branch,’ Mascaranti said, the phrase had the syntactic tone of a salesman offering the best merchandise.
‘Mascaranti, you didn’t have to say it,’ Duca said, irritably but patiently: a doctor always knows how to keep his self-control. ‘I know you have your informants even in good families, you even have them in clinics, among nurses, to keep an eye on the use of morphine and other pleasures, but try to understand the work that this fresh fruit of yours would have to do: let herself be approached by a whole lot of men before finding the one we’re looking for, if she finds him. A girl who may be a virgin, who may have a boyfriend, won’t do this work for you just to please the police.’
Silence. Then Carrua said, ‘It seems to be raining,’ he stood up and went to the window and saw the neon signs in the Piazza Cavour reflected in the wet street. ‘Maybe you have the girl we need,’ he said without turning; he realised that it was raining softly, gently, summer rain without a storm.
‘Yes, if I were a criminal I would have one,’ Duca said, also standing up. ‘Maybe I am a criminal.’ He went and sat down on the bed, picked up the phone and asked the switchboard for a number. ‘Is it really raining?’ he asked stupidly. The other two had also stood up, they suddenly seemed extremely interested in the rain, and they turned their backs on him and started looking out of the other window.
‘Livia, please.’ A man’s voice had answered, a middle-aged man, he thought.
‘Do you want to speak to Signorina Livia Ussaro?’ the man said, stubbornly.
‘Yes, signore, please.’ It must be her father.
‘Could you please tell me who’s calling?’ The fellow clearly believed in the formalities, phone calls from men must annoy him.
‘Duca Lamberti.’
‘Luca Lamberti?’
‘No, Duca, D for Domodossola,’ he was starting to get annoyed, too. He heard Livia’s voice in the background: ‘It’s all right, dad,’ then in the foreground, warm, with nothing at all frigid in it: ‘I’m sorry, that was my dad.’
‘I’m sorry, too.’ How polite they both were. But was it really raining? ‘I need to see you, immediately. Is that possible?’
‘I’ve been waiting a long time for you to call.’
He wasn’t being very honest, he was virtually pimping. ‘I’ll come and pick you up in ten minutes. OK?’
‘Fine. I’ll wait out front.’
He put the phone down and looked at the three men standing in the middle of the room. Was it really raining? Then he’d be able to take her to the Torre Branca, Milan’s touching answer to the Eiffel Tower: in this weather there wouldn’t be anybody there. He stood up. ‘I should be able to tell you something tomorrow,’ he said to Carrua.
‘No, I’ll tell you now,’ Carrua said, as if letting fly at him. ‘You’re not to do anything. Drop it now, don’t get mixed up in our work any more. I absolutely forbid it.’
‘Why?’ he asked, almost respectfully: he was from Emilia Romagna, he knew how to keep a cool head.
‘Two girls have already been killed,’ Carrua said: he was from Sardinia, red-blooded and calculating.
‘I know that. I know it perfectly well.’
‘You’re a private citizen, not a policeman. A third woman’s corpse is not in your remit. I caution you against taking any further interest in this case.’
‘All right,’ Duca said, already by the door. He had been cautioned, seriously cautioned, Carrua was not joking. ‘Good night.’
‘Duca, be careful.’
He went out without answering. They were right, but they didn’t understand, they had to follow the law, and the law is strange sometimes, it favours criminals and ties honest men’s hands.
It really was raining, and in less than ten minutes he had already picked up Livia from outside her building, and in less than twenty, with the Giulietta, they got to the Torre Branca, and in another three minutes they were in the round bar of the Torre, more than a hundred metres above the Po Valley and in particular over the complex of Sant’Ambrogio. It was raining harder than ever, the summer drizzle was turning into a storm, and through the windows, as if from a plane, they saw the sky turn bright with streaks of lightning. The portable radio which the barman had kept on was like a pan full of chestnuts exploding. An unused film set, perfect for the dirty business he had to talk to her about.
‘Is it about Alberta that you wanted to see me again?’ Livia asked.