Temporary Perfections by Gianrico Carofiglio Page A

added, as if he’d just remembered that he was giving me confidential details about an investigation that was officially still open, “the conversation we’re having right now never happened.”
    “It never happened. So what did your superiors and the prosecutor have to say about it?”
    “My captain shrugged it off. And all things considered, I can see why. What were we supposed to do withmy suspicions in the absence of any concrete evidence? I tried suggesting that we follow the two girls for a couple of days. He looked at me as if I’d just morphed into the creature from
Alien
. He asked me where I wanted to act out this American detective movie. In Rome, obviously. And was I supposed to authorize my own mission to Rome? And while I was at it, would I be paying for it out of my own special reserve fund, since they’d just cut the budget for fueling our patrol cars? So I suggested tapping their phones, requesting their call records. And he told me to talk to the prosecutor about it.”
    “So what did you do?”
    “I went to the district attorney’s office and talked to the magistrate in charge of the investigation.”
    “And what did the magistrate say?”
    “He was pretty nice about it, all things considered. He asked me whether I was planning to justify a wiretap request by writing that Inspector Navarra is doubtful about the truthfulness of two people who have information about what happened. He asked me if I had any idea what the judge would likely respond. I told him that, yes, I could imagine, and we dropped the matter, meaning that I never even submitted a written request. Obviously.”
    Just then, the delivery boy arrived, carrying our cappuccinos on a tray. Navarra held his cup with both hands when he drank, like a child. There was some milk left on his upper lip. He wiped it off carefully with a couple of paper napkins, the way a person might who knows what happens when you drink a cappuccino, and who therefore takes appropriate steps. Calmly and deliberately.
    I really liked his simple, precise sequence of actions. All he did was wipe a little cappuccino foam off his lips, but Ithought I’d like to be the kind of person whose actions are so careful and conscious.
    Navarra crumpled up the napkins and then resumed speaking.
    “So, in short, we did what we could. We’re so overworked, we have mountains of files on our desks, and we have to work our way through them. Among other things, technically, we don’t even have a crime report. I mean, the young woman …”
    “Of course, of course. The young woman is no longer a minor, there’s no explicit evidence that her disappearance is directly linked to a crime, there is no way of ruling out the possibility that she simply wanted to get away from everything, and so on.”
    “And so on. It’s unlikely, but she might have had a reason for leaving. She might not have wanted to be found.”
    I looked him in the eye. He returned my gaze, then shrugged.
    “Okay, okay, I don’t believe it either. But there was nothing more I could do. Unless, like I told you, I devoted myself to this case full time. And since I couldn’t do that, I was forced to close the case and work on other things. But maybe you can manage to uncover something I missed.”
    He said it without a hint of sarcasm, at least as far as I could tell. But the idea struck both of us as fairly unlikely.
    “So what do you plan to do?” he asked, as he pushed his chair back.
    “You know better than I do that my chances are very slim. If you couldn’t find anything, I doubt very much I’ll be able to.”
    “Don’t be so sure of that. Investigations work in mysterious ways. Sometimes, you do everything right, by the book,and you don’t find a damned thing. And then, when you’ve finally set your mind at ease that there’s nothing else to be done, something random happens and you’re handed the solution, all wrapped up and tied with a bow. With this kind of work, more than any other,