The Few by Nadia Dalbuono Read Free Book Online Page B

we’re talking about government — if that was Arthur’s clientele, if he knew people like Ganza. Now I’m really wondering why Pino brought me in.’
    It was the first time he had referred to the PM by his first name.
    â€˜What’s the deal with you two anyway?’ Scamarcio knew the question would be unwelcome. But he felt he deserved some kind of explanation, given the turn of events.
    Garramone seemed untroubled, his mind elsewhere, turning on all the implications. ‘We grew up together in Gela. Schoolfriends from way back when — that’s as far it goes.’
    Scamarcio had thought the PM was from Como in the north. He knew Gela and what it stood for — knew what it meant if you grew up in Gela and then made it to prime minister.
    â€˜But they say he was from Lombardy. No one ever mentions Sicily.’
    â€˜He was there for a few years for his father’s business. They came down from Lombardy and then went back. Anyway, that’s not common knowledge, and I don’t want it spread.’
    Scamarcio had been too lost in the phone call to realise that, yet again, he was stuck in traffic. The orchestra of horns tuning up for a fight broke his concentration. How could there be traffic on a Sunday afternoon? The Coliseum — the scene of so much suffering, such inhumanity — was on his right now, battered and ominous in the rain. Once, when he’d been inside, he felt sure the smell of fear still lingered there. Two thousand years on, and what had really changed? Maybe the location had just shifted half a mile up the road.
    â€˜I think you need to talk to the friend again,’ said the chief. ‘See if she knows more. And we need to ID that second guy in the photo. Someone must know who he is. Call me when you have something.’
    Scamarcio shut the mobile and eased back against the headrest. The rain was running in small rivulets down the window, morphing the world outside into a strange secondary reality, far removed from his own. He reflected on the circularity of it all: two of his colleagues blackmailed Ganza, then Arthur blackmailed him or someone else. Everyone was out for what they could get. Garramone had said the two police officers had been handed the photos by a man they had never seen before. Who was he, and who stood to gain from his actions? Scamarcio had wanted to speak to the officers; but, according to Garramone, they had fled Rome on news of their suspension, and gone back to their folks. He would need to pay them a visit, see if they’d tell him more than they’d told the chief. His thoughts flipped to Garramone and his position in it all. It seemed so odd that he had selected him, Scamarcio, with all his baggage, for this. There were countless other people he could have called on — people with lower profiles, people who kept their heads down. But again he reminded himself that he was probably the easiest option. He could be sucked up and spat out by this investigation, explained away by his conveniently inconvenient past, comfortably consigned to history as another failed social experiment. And who was to say it wasn’t actually better that way?
    Scamarcio saw a cluster of Japanese tourists lining up like anxious starlings ready to have their photos taken in front of the Coliseum. This was the arbitrariness of history — these unlikely fragments the past left behind, and how we then chose to interpret them. And it was in this moment of watching that he sensed that he had perhaps misunderstood, that maybe there was a subtler explanation: the chief had chosen him because he was accustomed to the grey areas. He’d grown up with them. He’d never been able to see cases as being just black or white. He hadn’t had the luxury of that kind of upbringing, and that was why Garramone knew he was right for this. Scamarcio cursed him again.

10
    He stands up from the desk, goes to the cabinet and pours a scotch,