‘I was under the impression that Cecilia and her daughter were asked here to identify Robert,’ he said. ‘Nothing more. If that’s the case, then I think this distressing, if necessary, appointment is concluded, isn’t it?’
Falcone glared at Santacroce.
‘No, sir. It is not. Mrs Gabriel, I would be grateful if you and your daughter joined me in my office. Alone. These are personal matters.’
‘I came here to identify my son,’ Cecilia Gabriel interrupted. ‘That is all I intend to do.’
‘Please. .’
‘You heard what Cecilia said,’ Santacroce interrupted. ‘If you’ve anything to say, then say it now.’
Falcone glanced at Teresa Lupo and she knew what he was thinking, understood how reluctant he was to take this step.
Then he walked over to the desk, removed the folder with the latest set of photographs, and handed it, unopened, to the mother.
‘I’m deeply sorry I have to raise this in such a way,’ he said. ‘But you leave me with no choice. Please. Look at them.’
SIX
Bedir Cakici was alone, bored, hungry and down to his last stick of gum. He’d been sitting in the immigration police’s interview room for four hours. It was a small, windowless cubicle with noisy air conditioning that didn’t work. The place was as hot as an oven and stank from the cooking fat of some nearby canteen drifting in from the single vent.
He shook his handcuffs and wondered again when there might be some avenue of escape. From here it was impossible. But they’d been making noises about the police wanting him, about a move to the city Questura. If he could make a phone call, get the right guy. If the men he knew were willing to take a couple of risks to spring an old friend from some sleepy cop car as it tracked down the Via Appia Nuova. Then he could do the smart thing, hide out for a while, work his way to the Adriatic, get across in one of the smuggling speedboats that brought in contraband tobacco from Croatia.
If, if, if.
He couldn’t believe they’d stopped him. Or that he’d been dumb enough to use one of the oldest fake passports he carried. Life had been a little hectic since Tuesday evening. Now he was paying the price.
One of the immigration officers, a man who looked like a prissy schoolteacher, walked back in followed by a couple of surly-looking individuals in shapeless suits who announced themselves as state police. He believed this. They had that nasty, suspicious look about them. Nevertheless they were the oddest couple of cops he’d seen in a while, one youngish, slim, good-looking with features that seemed as if they ought to be pleasant, smiling, but weren’t. He had dark hair and the kind of stance the Turk associated with sportsmen, football players and the like. The older one was tall, heavily built and ugly, a scary individual with a battered face that might have been through a windscreen once or twice. Yet the tough guy seemed strangely deferential around the younger man, as if he were the boss, not the other way round, as Cakici could have expected.
They didn’t show ID. They just yawned, pulled up a couple of chairs at the table, then stared at the immigration officer.
‘You want me to stay?’ the man asked. ‘I’m supposed to stay. That’s what the rules say.’
The big ugly one had his huge hands behind his balding head and was giving him a very nasty look.
‘I mean, I
‘Sir?’ the big one asked the cop with him.
‘No, we don’t,’ the younger officer told him. ‘Isn’t it your lunch time or something?’
The immigration man left, mumbling under his breath.
The one who’d ordered him out waited, then got up and walked round the room, examining things, ignoring Cakici entirely.
‘There’s a microphone here, sir,’ the big cop said, pointing at a little plastic stick in the middle of the table.
‘I don’t think we need that, do we?’
The big guy reached over with one huge arm and ripped the mike out of its housing, wrapped the cable round the body, then threw the thing into the corner of the room.
The other had stopped in front of a video camera lens set high on the wall above the table.
He turned, still ignoring the Turk, and asked the old cop, ‘Am I imagining this or is it chewing gum?’
Cakici’s head came up from the table. This had been a bad day. He deserved a little respect. He didn’t like being referred to as ‘it’.
The huge one stared at him, as if examining some foreign object, and said, ‘It is. Unbelievable.’
‘It? It?’ Cakici kept on chewing, all through his outrage. ‘What am I? An animal or something? How about some courtesy around here? I got a name.’
The young cop came and sat down. So the Turk had the big guy on his left and the shorter one on the other side, which didn’t feel good.
‘What name? Mickey Mouse?’
‘Minnie more like,’ the big one grumbled, staring at his pale linen designer suit.
‘Real Armani, muttonhead,’ Cakici told him, trying to stab a finger across the table, not that the cuffs let him do it properly. ‘Guess you can’t buy that on your wages.’
They went very quiet and then the young one said, ‘You’d be surprised what we could buy if we wanted.’
The big cop shook his head, as if this saddened him deeply.
‘I don’t know,’ he muttered in a quiet, mournful voice. ‘You get some dope dealer with a fake passport. It’s chewing gum. And it wants courtesy?’ He opened his hands in a gesture of exasperation. ‘Sir. This is so. . unreasonable.’
The Turk sighed, struggled in the cuffs but finally managed to take out the gum, placed the damp lump on top of the shiny plastic table and began to say, ‘OK. Do not call me “it”. I got rights, I got. .’
He fell quiet. The young cop, the boss cop, had picked up the gum in his fingers, stared at it with an expression of disgust. Then, as Cakici watched, bemused, he walked over to the video camera and placed the grey blob on the lens, patting it until the gum extended across the whole of the round glass eye, blocking the camera’s view completely.
No mike. No video. This was an unusual interview.
The big guy yawned, pulled his chair up very close to Cakici, placed a gigantic arm around his shoulders and squeezed.
It was a bone-breaking hug and the cop smiled at him, quite affectionately it appeared, throughout. His breath smelled of mints.
The Turk was starting to sweat.
‘First impressions count, you know. The gum was a bad start,’ the cop told him. ‘My
He squeezed harder. Cakici let out a little cry of pain and said, ‘I didn’t kill nobody. Honest, I didn’t. I was just going on holiday. There’s this girl. I didn’t want her to know. . Women. .’
The cop sighed, shook his head, removed his arm, shuffled the chair a short distance away and said, ‘It thinks we’re stupid now.’
The other one was patting his jacket absent-mindedly as if he’d lost something. The Turk watched, worried, unsure what to say.
‘I know I’ve got it somewhere,’ the young one said, still looking. ‘Oh, wait a minute.’
He reached into his side pocket and took out a black handgun, a Beretta 92. Cakici knew his firearms. He had one of these himself, in the little armoury he kept in a safe in the garage.
‘What is this?’ he asked, laughing nervously. ‘Some kind of a joke.’
