The next day I called Tancredi again and told him about my conversation with Paolicelli in the prison.
He listened without saying a word until I’d finished.
“As I told you last time, if you wanted to identify the hotel staff, there’d have to be an ongoing official investigation. If there was, then we could go through Interpol and let the police in Podgorica fuck us around officially.”
“I was thinking about the man on the ferry. The one who was in the same hotel as Paolicelli, the one he saw again on the return crossing.”
“And what do you suggest we do? Oh, yes, the passenger list. We trace all the male passengers on that ferry – only a few hundred at most – and then we get hold of their photographs and take them to your client in prison. Look, is it this one? No? What about this one? No, it’s that one! Bingo! We’ve identified a dangerous tourist we can charge with aggravated international travel. You’ve practically won the case.”
“Carmelo, listen to me. I know perfectly well we’re not going to get anywhere with the people in the hotel or with what happened in Montenegro in general. But I must tell you this: the more I think about it, the stronger the feeling I have that Paolicelli is telling the truth. I know intuition and all that is mostly bullshit, but I talked to him and the way he tells it, the look on his face, everything-”
“Let me introduce Guido Guerrieri. No one can ever tell him a lie.”
But there wasn’t much conviction in his voice. It was a last skirmish. Carmelo knew I didn’t easily go overboard for my clients.
“All right, what would you like us to do?”
“The passenger list, Carmelo. Get hold of it, narrow it down to the Italian citizens – Paolicelli said the man was Italian – and then check your database to see if any of these people have a record for drug trafficking.”
I could just see him shaking his head. He said it would take him at least a day, he would have to waste one of his days off, and it wouldn’t lead anywhere anyway, but in the end he took the details of the boat and the crossing.
“After this, Guerrieri, you’ll be in debt to me your whole life.” And he hung up.
I spent the whole afternoon preparing my opening argument for a case due to be heard the following morning.
I was representing an association of people who lived a few hundred yards from a waste disposal plant. When the wind was blowing the wrong way – in other words, from the plant to the built-up area where they lived – the smell was revolting.
The delegates of the association had come to my office and explained the situation. Before they would agree to entrust me with the case, they had demanded that I take a little trip to where they lived so that I could be made directly aware of the nature of the problem.
As I entered the home of the association’s chairman, I could sense something slightly nauseous in the background. A smell that suggested something mysterious, unnameable, hidden in that apparently normal dwelling. The man asked me to follow him into the kitchen and sit down, and his wife made coffee.
After a while, I had the impression that the chairman, his wife and the other members of the association were exchanging knowing glances. As if to say, now we’ll show him.
They’re a Satanic sect, I told myself. Someone’s going to come up behind me now and hit me on the head. Then they’ll take me to a garage equipped for sabbaths and black masses and cut me in pieces with ceremonial knives acquired at the local discount store. Maybe before that, they’ll force me to have ritual sex with this priestess of Mephistopheles here. I looked at the chairman’s wife – five feet tall, weighing about twelve stone, a pleasant face and a moustache like a pirate – and told myself this would probably be the most Satanic part of the whole thing.
The chairman’s wife served the coffee and we drank in silence.
Then, without a word, they opened the window, and in a few seconds the air was filled with a smell so thick you could almost touch it. It was a mixture of rotten eggs and ammonia, with a strong pinch of essence of putrefying wild animal.
The chairman asked me if I understood their problem. I said yes, I understood it a whole lot better now. If they would excuse me, I really had to run – literally run – but they could rest assured I would give the case the attention it deserved. And I meant it.
They were very persuasive, I thought as I returned to my office. The smell was still on my clothes and in my stomach, and I knew it wouldn’t go away any time soon.