Part 1 (1/2)
The Silence of the Wave.
Gianrico Carofiglio.
1.
For the third time he pa.s.sed her outside the doctor's front door. It was on a Monday, at the same hour as usual. But he was certain he had seen her somewhere even before these encounters, although he had no idea where or when.
Maybe she was also a patient and had an appointment at four, he said to himself as he climbed the stairs to the doctor's office.
He rang the bell. After a moment or two the door opened, and the doctor let him in. As usual, they walked in silence down the corridor, between shelves filled with books, came to the office, and sat down, Roberto in front of the desk, the doctor behind it.
”So, how are things today? Last time you were in a bad mood.”
”I'm better today. I don't know why, but as I was coming up the stairs, I remembered an old story from my first years in the Carabinieri.”
”Tell me.”
”After finis.h.i.+ng the officers' training academy, I was posted as a sergeant to a station in a small town in Milan province.”
”Was that normal for a first posting?”
”Oh, yes, perfectly normal. It was a quiet place. Too quiet in fact; nothing ever happened. The commanding officer-an elderly marshal-was a peaceable character who always liked to sort things out in a good-natured way. I don't think he even liked arresting people. Not that there were many arrests anyway. A few petty crooks, a few small-time drug dealers at most.”
”How about you?”
”I'm sorry?”
”Did you like arresting people?”
Roberto hesitated for a moment.
”When you put it like that, it doesn't sound very good, I guess, but yes, I did. A real law-enforcement officer-and not all carabinieri, not all policemen are-lives for arrests. From a professional point of view, I mean. If you do your work well, in the end you want to see the result, and there's no point in denying that the result you're looking for is someone ending up behind bars.”
Roberto thought a moment longer about what he had just said. It was something he'd always taken for granted but, formulated as a coherent thought and uttered out loud, it acquired an unexpected, even unpleasant significance. He shook his head, and made an effort to get back to his story.
”One day I'm at the barber's when I hear shouts from the street, and I look out and see a woman running, dragging a child after her. I stand up and remove my towel. The barber's really alarmed and tells me not to do anything stupid. But we're in the North, I think to myself, why's he telling me that? Things like this happen in the South. I tell him I'm a carabiniere, though he already knows that, and then I run out and catch up with the woman.”
”What had happened?”
”There was a bank robbery in progress, about a hundred yards away.”
”I see.”
”I remember everything very well. I took out my pistol, slid the rack back to load it, lowered the hammer to avoid a shot going off accidentally, and moved. When I got to the corner, just before the entrance to the bank, I noticed a Volvo with its engine on, but n.o.body inside.”
”It was outside the bank?”
”No, it was around the corner. About thirty yards from the entrance, but on a side street. The bank was on the high street. I got in, switched off the engine and took the keys.”
”But why had they left the car unattended?”
”The two who had gone into the bank were taking their time, and the driver had gone in to tell them to hurry up. Obviously, we only found that out later. I'd just turned the corner when I saw them all come out. I tried to remember what they'd told us in training about what to do in such a situation.”
”What had they told you?”
”Not to do anything stupid. If there was a robbery, we had to call for backup and keep an eye on the situation, but avoid going in on our own.”
”So the barber wasn't wrong.”
”That's true.”
”And then?”
”At that particular moment, I forgot all about what I'd been taught.”
”They were armed, obviously?”
”Two guns. When I saw them come out I shouted 'Halt! Carabinieri!' I remembered that because I'd repeated it so many times to myself, waiting for the first opportunity to arise.”
It struck Roberto that he had almost never told this story before, and he had the feeling that behind this one memory were a whole heap of others. For a few moments he felt overwhelmed, and couldn't continue. He didn't think he could tell any story at all, because he'd be unable to choose which one to tell.
”So you said, 'Halt! Carabinieri!' And then what happened?”
The doctor's voice set the stalled mechanism back in motion.
”In their report, my superiors wrote that the robbers opened fire and Sergeant Roberto Marias responded with his service pistol. But I don't really know who fired first. All I know is that a few seconds later, one of them was on the ground, in front of the entrance to the bank, and the other two were running away. What happened immediately after that is the part I remember best. I knelt down, took aim, and fired off a full magazine of bullets.”
Roberto told the rest of the story. A second robber went down, hit in the leg. The third was stopped later. The one shot in front of the bank was seriously wounded but pulled through. A few days after the shootout Roberto was summoned by the commander of the criminal investigations unit, who congratulated him, told him he would certainly be decorated, and asked him if he would like to be transferred to Milan. Roberto accepted, and that was how, at not even twenty-three, he found himself doing the job for which he had joined the Carabinieri: detective.
”So that's how it all started?” the doctor said.
”That's how it all started.”
”And you say this story came back into your mind as you were climbing the stairs to come here?”
”That's right.”
”And before that you'd been thinking of something else to tell me about?”