The Silence of the Wave (23 page)

Apparently convinced, the old man stuck the gun into the belt of his trousers and then looked at Roberto with a determined, expectant expression. His face was saying that now he was prepared to cooperate. It struck Roberto that this was one of the most comical situations he had ever come across in his career.

“Go on.”

“Do you by any chance have an interior balcony that adjoins the balcony of the next apartment?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Would you mind showing it to me?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I’d like to go from one balcony to the other in order to get inside that other apartment and take them by surprise. As I’m sure you’ll understand, if I knock at
the door there’s a risk they’ll get rid of the drugs, maybe by flushing them down the toilet.”

It was a convincing explanation. The old man asked Roberto to follow him and led him through the apartment, with the stink of mothballs becoming ever stronger, as far as the interior balcony. The balconies were adjoining and it would be very easy to climb over the railing and go from one to the other. There were no bars or shutters on the windows. And the glass seemed normal, not shatterproof or anything like that. It would be easy to break.

The old man was happy to cooperate now, but maintained a vigilant attitude. He was anything but gaga, Roberto thought.

“Don’t you need a search warrant?”

“Usually, yes, signore. But in cases of emergency—and this is a case of emergency—we can search premises on our own initiative, as laid down by article 103 of the code on narcotics. Naturally we have to request ratification from the prosecutor later.”

“But don’t you have a gun?”

Another good question. I don’t have one because they took it away from me. They told me I’m almost mad and that’s why they took it away from me. Now I don’t have a gun and in all probability, given what I’m about to do, I’ll never have one again.

“No, signore, sometimes when we raid a premises we prefer not to carry weapons to avoid the risk of their going off accidentally. In this case we seem to be dealing
with minors, so our operational protocol doesn’t allow the use of firearms.”

Operational protocol. He certainly hadn’t lost the knack for talking bullshit.

The old man told him to proceed, but to be careful because it could be dangerous.

Yes, it could be dangerous. For a few moments Roberto, who had never suffered from dizziness in his life, was seized with a touch of panic which—he realized immediately—could grow and paralyze him. You’re forty-seven years old, was the last thing he told himself before climbing over, walking for a few feet on the outside, holding on to the rail, then climbing over again and landing on the other balcony with his heart apparently about to leap out of his throat.

He looked inside. There was nobody in that particular room, but music was playing at a high volume somewhere in the apartment—house music of some kind—and the pane of glass was vibrating to the throb of it.

Roberto rolled his jacket into a ball and, using it to protect his hand, struck a single sharp but almost delicate blow. The glass broke around his fist, only as much as was necessary, and almost noiselessly—not that the noise would have been heard over the booming of the music anyway. He slipped his hand through the hole, opened the window and went in without thinking. He would decide what to do and say depending on what he found. He walked down a long, dark, bare corridor, guided by the relentless rhythm of the music.

When Roberto entered the bedroom, he found what he had vaguely been expecting. The girl and the third boy to show up were on the bed. The other two were filming with their phones, from different angles, as if they were shooting a film according to rudimentary but specific directions.

In reality, Roberto would later be unable to recount with certainty what he saw at that precise moment. In his memories, those perceived images would become mixed with those seen soon afterward in the videos: a revolting, distressing, pitiless intertwining of undeveloped bodies.

“Carabinieri!” he yelled in order to be heard over the booming of the music. It was the third time in just a few minutes, after such a long interval. “Put your phones on the floor. You, get off the bed, and all of you get on your knees with your faces to the wall and your hands behind your heads.”

The muscular boy tried to brazen it out.

“What the fuck do you want? Who are you? This is a private apartment, my father’s a lawyer and a friend of—”

Roberto went up to him and slapped him across the face.

“Turn off this fucking music and get down on your knees with your face against the wall and your hands behind your head. You two do the same and don’t make me repeat myself another time, or I’ll really get pissed off.”

The lawyer’s son appeared to be on the verge of saying something. Then he saw Roberto’s eyes and thought better of it. He threw the mobile phone on the floor, switched off the stereo behind him and then got down on his knees by the wall. The one who was on the bed stood up, naked from the waist down. His face was smooth, but his genitals were as hairy as a man’s. He put on his trousers, tripping over them. He seemed like a little boy about to burst into tears, and he too went and knelt facing the wall. The third one had remained on his feet, motionless, almost paralyzed, with the expression of someone who is only just realizing the enormity of the situation he has gotten himself into. Roberto looked at him and nodded. The gesture woke him up, and he handed over the phone and knelt next to the other two.

The silence that had suddenly taken the place of that deafening music made the situation even more unreal. The girl was on the bed, trying to get dressed. Her body was the mysterious, heartrending combination
of two creatures: a woman and a child. Roberto’s feelings were in turmoil. Anger, sorrow, protectiveness, the urge to cry, violence that emerged in fits and starts and had to be kept under control. And lost pride. The pride of someone who has arrived late—you always arrive late—but not
too
late. He saw again the faces of those young Mexican girls so many years earlier, and it occurred to him that he was settling an old account.

“Your name’s Ginevra, isn’t it?” he asked her when she was covered enough to be able to respond.

The girl couldn’t open her mouth, just looked at him in terror, like a trapped animal.

“Finish getting dressed, go out there, and wait for me.”

She obeyed. She left the room without looking at anything or anybody, her eyes lost in a void full of monsters that the others could not see.

The one who had previously been on the bed started sobbing.

“I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. Forgive me, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. Let me go—if my mother hears about this she’ll kill me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. They told me it was normal, that they’d already done it lots of times. She agreed to it, she took the money and—”

“Shut up, asshole,” said the muscular boy, who was clearly the leader and already a hardened criminal.

“No,
you
shut up,” Roberto cut in, “and don’t let
me hear another word from you. If I hear you talking without my permission, I’ll tear your head off. Is that clear?”

It was clear.

Roberto quickly searched the boys. In the leader’s pockets he found another two mobile phones, a few hundred euros, a hard rubber baton and two bunches of keys.

“Don’t move and don’t talk, any of you,” he said, and walked out of the bedroom into the corridor, where Ginevra stood, pathetically out of place like a small, unhappy scarecrow. Roberto led her into the kitchen, told her to wait in there, and closed the door of the apartment with the key he had taken from the leader, just in case the boys got it into their heads to try and escape.

He glanced at the videos in the phones, but they made him so sick he decided there was no need to watch any further.

He let a minute pass, thinking about what he ought to say, and then phoned Carella.

“Roberto, great to hear from you!” Carella said, in the affectionate but at the same time not entirely genuine tone of someone talking to a sick friend who needs to be treated with kindness and circumspection. “So you finally called me! How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. Are you on duty?”

“Of course, why?”

“Then you need to get a couple of cars and some
of your people and join me as quickly as you can. I’ve come across a little cesspool.”

There were a few seconds of silence at the other end. Roberto gave Carella time to come around to the idea that this call was strictly business and that the man on the phone might again be the man he had known in his previous life.

“Can you give me a few more details?”

“Gang rape, prostitution of minors, kidnapping. A nasty business involving kids. Bring along a female colleague, to take care of the victim.”

“How did you get involved in all this?”

“How about I tell you everything in person? It’s best if you take over as soon as possible. The sooner you get here, the better.”

Once again Roberto imagined his colleague’s mental activity, the many questions he must be asking himself. He waited. In the end Carella said all right, just let him get a team together and he’d be right there.

The tone of his voice was different now.

He tried to talk to the girl, but there was only one thing on her mind.

“Can I go now?”

“Of course, in a little while I’ll make sure somebody takes you home.”

“No, thanks, I can go by myself.”

That “No, thanks” brought a pang to his heart. Roberto had to make an effort to hold back his emotions, as well as any questions about what had happened and how it had started, and why. Those kinds of questions were someone else’s job.

“All right, we’ll see what we can do, you just have to be a little patient.”

And then, after a pause, lying and feeling ashamed of himself: “In a little while, you’ll be able to go back home, even alone, if you prefer.”

“But I have to go now. If it gets too late my parents start to worry.”

“Keep calm, we’ll inform your parents.”

But she wasn’t calm. She wasn’t calm at all, because gradually the situation was becoming clearer in her head.

“You’re not going to tell them …” She couldn’t find the words. “Please let me go home.”

Roberto would have liked to give her a hug and tell her not to worry, that her parents would understand and would help her, and that the world was not inhabited only by people like those three, or those two, or all those—God knows how many—who had handled her body.

Except that of course he couldn’t give her a hug and he wouldn’t even have the courage to give her any guarantees on how the world was populated, or on what her parents and all the others would understand.

“Don’t worry, there won’t be any problem with your parents. In a very short time you’ll go home and everything will be over.”

And then, thank goodness, Carella arrived with four other carabinieri, three men and a woman. They had been really quick, even though it seemed to Roberto that an interminable length of time had passed. Apart from Carella, the others were young, and there was something about their way of moving, of behaving, of occupying the space, that gave Roberto the clear sensation that he himself belonged to another time.

From that moment, things moved much more quickly.

Roberto explained what had happened. He told almost the whole truth, remaining vague only about the source of his information. He alluded to an informant inside the school but didn’t give any further details. His colleagues were professionals—you don’t ask a professional for details about his informant—and didn’t ask any questions.

The young woman carabiniere took charge of Ginevra and led her away. She seemed to know what she was doing, and Roberto felt relieved at that.

The others dealt with the boys. The one caught on the bed with the girl was still crying, the second one had a large dark patch on his trousers and stank of urine, and the leader was very pale. He was still putting on airs and trying to act in a way he thought appropriate to his role, but he too seemed on the verge of breaking down.

Carella informed the deputy prosecutor at the juvenile court. He said he had received an urgent and extremely reliable tip-off about the presence of a large quantity of drugs inside that apartment, and that he had proceeded to search it for drugs—on the basis of the very rule that Roberto had mentioned to the old man with the revolver—and had come across something more serious than a simple case of drug dealing.

When he had finished talking on the phone, he turned to Roberto. “So, Marshal Marías, you’re back at last?”

Roberto shrugged his shoulders and gave an embarrassed smile. Carella smiled too.

“Do you want to sign the documents? We need to find a way to justify your presence here, but we’ll think up something. This may be a good omen. When you get back on the force you can come and work with us.”

“No, let’s not cause needless problems. I’m going now. Maybe later we’ll talk on the phone and you can tell me what develops.”

Carella did not insist. “All right, when we’ve finished I’ll call you.”

* * *

When Carella called, late that evening, his voice sounded tired.

“We’ve finished now. The next time you come across something like this, please call the police.”

Then he told him how it had gone. Luckily, the deputy prosecutor was on the ball and had immediately ordered the boys’ homes to be searched. The result had been what might have been expected: porn videos and photos, hashish, a whole lot of money, and actual, if rudimentary, accounts with the names of the clients—all between thirteen and sixteen years old—the amounts paid, the services received. The three boys had been questioned that same afternoon and had confessed everything, or at least enough to reconstruct the modus operandi of the gang and identify the other members.
The girls were approached in discos or at private parties, the sexual acts—sometimes consensual, sometimes not—were filmed, and then the videos were used to blackmail them into prostituting themselves.