Gianrico Carofiglio - A Walk in the Dark

Strangely calm, in contrast to her face, which was distraught.

Tancredi looked at me as if he was seeking my opinion, but without asking me anything. I shrugged my shoulders.

“I have to ask him,” he said at last, nodding towards the deputy head of the Flying Squad, who was still wandering around with that useless megaphone in his hand. He went up to him and they talked for a few minutes. Then they both walked towards us and it was the deputy head who spoke first.

“Are you the nun?” he said, turning to Claudia.

No, I’m the nun. Don’t you see my veil, idiot?

Claudia nodded.

“Do you want to try and talk to him?”

“Yes, I want to talk to him and ask him if he’ll let me in. It could work. He knows me. He might trust me and if I go in I think I can persuade him. He knows me well.”

What was she talking about? They didn’t know each other at all. They’d never talked to each other. I turned to look at her, with a questioning look on my face. She returned my gaze for no more than a couple of seconds. Her eyes were saying, “Don’t open your mouth: don’t even think about it.” Meanwhile, the deputy head of the Flying Squad was saying it was worth a try. At least they had nothing to lose with a phone call.

Tancredi took out his mobile, pressed the redial button and waited, with the phone flat against his ear. In the end Scianatico answered.

“This is Inspector Tancredi again. There’s someone here who wants to talk to you. Can I pass her to you? No, it’s not a policewoman, it’s a nun. Yes, of course. We’re not even thinking of coming any closer. All right, I’ll pass her to you.”

Yes, this was Sister Claudia, Martina’s friend. She’d been wanting to talk to him for a long time, she had a lot of important things to say to him. Before continuing, could she say hello to Martina? Oh, she wasn’t feeling well. On Claudia’s face a kind of fissure opened up, but her voice didn’t change, it remained steady and calm. Never mind, I’ll talk to her later, if that’s OK with you, of course. I think Martina wants to get back together with you. She’s often told me that, even though she didn’t know how to get out of the weird situation you were both in. I can’t hear you very well. I said I can’t hear you very well, it must be this mobile. What do you say I come up and we have a little talk? On my own, of course. I’m a woman, a nun, you have nothing to worry about. Besides, I don’t like the police either. So shall I come up? Of course, you just look through the spyhole, that way you can be sure I don’t have anyone with me. But in any case you have my word, you can trust me. Do you think a nun walks around with a gun? OK, I’m coming up now. On my own, of course, we agreed. Bye for now.

Apart from the things she said, what almost hypnotized me was her tone of voice. Calm, reassuring – hypnotic, in fact.

“Do you want to put on a bulletproof vest?” Tancredi asked. She looked at him without even replying.

“OK. Before you go up, I’ll call you on the mobile, and you answer straight away and then leave the line open. That way at least we can hear what you’re saying and we’ll know what’s happening.”

He turned to two guys in their thirties, who looked like housing-estate drug dealers. Two officers from his squad.

“Cassano, Loiacono, you two come with me. We’ll go up together and stay on the stairs, just below the landing.”

“I’m going with you,” I heard myself saying, as if my voice had a will of its own.

“Don’t talk bullshit, Guido. You’re a lawyer, you do your job and let us get on with ours.”

“Wait, wait. If Claudia can get the negotiation started, I could go in after her, I could help her. He knows me, I’m Martina’s lawyer. I can tell him some nonsense – we’ll call off the trial, withdraw the charges, that kind of thing. I can be of help, if the negotiation goes ahead. If on the other hand you have to go in, obviously I’ll get out of the way.”

The deputy head of the Flying Squad said that in his opinion it might work. The important thing was to be careful. Great advice. He didn’t give any indication that he might come too. To avoid a bottleneck, I presume. His ideal policeman wasn’t Dirty Harry.

In my memory, what happened next is like a blackand-white film shot through a dirty lens and edited by a madman. And yet vivid, so vivid I can’t tell it in the past tense.

The three policemen are in front of me, on the last flight of stairs before the landing. As far as we can get without running the risk of being seen. We are very close, almost on top of each other. I can smell the pungent sweat of the taller one: Loiacono maybe, or maybe Cassano. The doorbell makes a strange, out-oftime noise. A kind of ding dang dong, with an oldfashioned echo that’s quite unsettling. There’s a voice from inside the apartment, and Claudia says something in reply. Then silence, a long silence. I assume he’s looking through the spyhole. Then a mechanical noise: locks, keys turning. Then silence again, apart from the sound of our held breaths.

Tancredi has his mobile stuck to his left ear. With his other hand he’s holding his pistol, like the other two. Against his leg, the barrel pointed downwards. I remember the action all three of them performed before coming in. Slide pulled back, round in the chamber, hammer cocked gently to avoid accidental firing.

I look at Tancredi’s face, trying to read in it what he can hear, what’s happening. At a certain moment, the face distorts and before I need to think what it means, he cries, “Shit, all hell’s breaking loose. Smash the door down, damn it, smash the door down right now.”

The bigger of the two officers – Cassano, or maybe Loiacono – gets to the door first, lifts his knee almost to his chest, stretches his leg and kicks the door with the sole of his foot, at the height of the lock. There’s a noise of wood splitting, but the door doesn’t yield. The other policeman does exactly the same. More splitting wood, but still the door doesn’t yield.

Another two, three, four very violent kicks, and it opens. We all go in together. Tancredi first, the rest of us behind. Nobody tells me to wait outside and do my job while they get on with theirs.

We pass through a number of rooms, guided by Scianatico’s cries.

When we get to the kitchen, the scene that meets our eyes looks like some terrible ritual.

Claudia is sitting astride Scianatico’s face: she’s gripped him between her legs, keeping him immobilized, and with one hand she’s pinned his throat, her fingers digging into his neck like daggers. With the other hand clenched in a fist, she’s striking him repeatedly in the face. Savagely and methodically, and as I watch, I know she’s killing him. The frame widens to include Martina. She’s on the floor, near the sink. She isn’t moving. She looks like a broken doll.

Cassano and Loiacono seize Claudia under her armpits and pull her off Scianatico. Once her feet are on the ground, she does what the two officers are least expecting: she attacks them so quickly they don’t know what hits them, they don’t even see the punches and the kicks. Tancredi takes a step back and aims the pistol at Claudia’s legs.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Claudia. Don’t let’s do anything stupid.”

She’s deaf to his cries and takes a couple of steps towards him. I don’t think she’s even seen me, even though I’m very close to her, on her left.

I don’t actually make a conscious decision to do what I do. It just happens. She doesn’t see me, doesn’t even see my right hand as it comes towards her and strikes her on the chin, from the side. The most classic of knockout blows. You can be the strongest man in the world, but if you’re hit by a good straight jab, delivered the correct way, right on the tip of your chin, there’s nothing you can do. Your lights go out and that’s it. It’s like an anaesthetic.