Читать книгу Puppies - Maurizio De giovanni - Страница 20

What had happened was that Lojacono and Di Nardo had attempted to strike up one last fruitless contact with a small crowd of foreign women standing in a piazzetta, caught up in a rapt conversation in who knows what language.

The two police officers had figured out by now that they needed to plan their approach with care, because if they went over together, only the girl they’d spoken to at the beginning would stick around; the others would fly away like a flock of pigeons at the sound of a handclap. As for the one they had interviewed, she gave a couple of monosyllabic grunts at most, pretending she didn’t speak Italian, shrugging her shoulders in a show of innocence and hurrying away as quickly as she could.

And so they had come up with the following approach. Alex would walk over to the cluster of women, looking around wildly as if uncertain as to quite where she was. She’d ask directions, and then inquire as to whether any of them were interested in work as a housekeeper. Then Lojacono would show up, pretending to be Di Nardo’s husband who had finally found a parking spot for their car, and he’d say that a coworker of his had mentioned a young woman who was especially good at cleaning houses, only he just couldn’t remember her name, but what he did know was that she’d stopped working because she was pregnant. Did they happen to know who that was? Maybe she’d delivered her baby and now she was looking for a position.

With this little shuck-and-jive skit, they’d at least managed to stir a bland interest among the women, and to prevent them from taking to their heels the instant they sussed out their real identity. In spite of that, they hadn’t managed to dredge up any useful information. Not even their skills at reaching the innermost thoughts of their interlocutors, a talent they’d honed in many lengthy interview sessions with witnesses and suspects, had done any good. If that young woman was from around here, no one seemed to know her. Which was odd because the community of immigrant women from Eastern Europe seemed pretty tight-knit.

It was late afternoon by the time they decided to stop and get something to eat. They’d gone into a bar and taken seats around a tiny table, and now they were silently consuming a sandwich and an espresso. Lojacono reflected on their methods.

“If you ask me, we’re going about this wrong,” he said, at last. “We ought to be searching through the professional associations, the jobs offices, the placement agencies. After all, what do we know about this girl? That she’s from Eastern Europe and that she was pregnant.”

Alex chewed, swallowed, and said:

“That maybe she was pregnant. We can’t be certain, because the priest never saw her. Maybe she was asking on a friend’s behalf, or for who knows whom.”

Lojacono nodded.

“Or else she had simply been seized by a doubt of a theological nature.”

Alex played along.

“Maybe she was a nun, and she was just ashamed to let anyone know that she didn’t know the answer to the question.”

“Maybe it was the pope, in a really good disguise, out to test the priest’s knowledge.”

“Maybe the priest just fell asleep in the confessional and dreamed the whole thing.”

“Maybe . . . ”

“Excuse me, Lieutenant. But who is it you’re looking for?”

The two police officers turned around. The voice belonged to the woman who was sitting behind the cash register, a fat woman with heavy makeup and her hair pulled up in a towering beehive.

They were pretty far from the police station, in a place where Lojacono, personally, had never been before, so he was surprised that they’d been identified.

“Pardon me, but do we know each other?” he inquired.

A cunning expression appeared on the woman’s face.