Cocaine

by Massimo Carlotto, Gianrico Carofiglio, Giancarlo De Cataldo, Carlotto, Carofiglio, De Cataldo

Genres: International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

In Carlotto's The Campagna Trail, Inspector Campagna uses an old friendship with notorious drug dealer Roby Pizzo in a Machiavellian attempt to keep the peace. But when an interfering new police chief demands Campagna bring down the Mafioso who heads Pizzo's gang, Campagna must use every weapon he has to save his job - and his life. Meanwhile in Carofiglio's The Speed of the Angel, a writer in crisis strikes up an unlikely friendship with a mysterious woman he meets in a quiet seaside café. As their conversations deepen, and their obsessions darken, their drug-fuelled relationship begins to spiral, in this haunting tale of damnation and redemption. Finally in De Cataldo's The White Powder Dance, the city police are put on the trail of a baby-faced new graduate in the Milanese banking sector. As the pursuit accelerates through back streets and skyscrapers, it becomes clear that there is more to organised crime than getting your hands dirty.

Release date: May 7, 2015

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 135

Sample

Ispettore Giulio Campagna walked over to the members of the flying squad. Two officers from his unit were keeping an eye on the onlookers crowding around, trying to work out why on earth the cops had broken into that flat in Padua’s old ghetto during happy hour. Most of the crowd were students, young professionals and shop assistants sipping spritzers from big plastic tumblers. A moment before they had filled the surrounding bars, but the rumour had spread quickly. Ispettore Campagna had himself been having a drink with a few friends in a square not far away when he had got a call from Damiano Pinamonti, his colleague in charge of the operation.

“Giulio, we’ve only found 300 grams.”

“Have another look. My informer was absolutely certain.”

“Help me out here,” Pinamonti whispered. “Please.”

Campagna snorted and muttered a curse. Then he gulped down what remained of his wine and left the bar, followed by the jokes of his friends. The Paduans were masters in the art of taking the piss. The inspector didn’t need to be present during the search, and his arrival would make it clear that he had been the one who had served up the tip on a silver platter. That wasn’t good, because it could lead to people identifying his source. The thing that made Campagna force his way through the rubberneckers was that Pinamonti was racking up failures one after the other, and at this rate he would end up buried in an office somewhere. In fact, he was just a good policeman going through a bad patch. Everybody went through periods like this. The only difference was how long they lasted. In his colleague’s case, it was becoming an embarrassment.

One of the officers looked away from a girl’s cleavage.

“You’re always on duty, Campagna.”

“That way I’ll get my career over with quicker,” he replied, tossing his cigarette butt away.

The two policemen laughed heartily. Campagna had stopped caring about his career some time ago; he’d been in the force for so long that they would never fire him. On more than one occasion the head of the flying squad had had to advocate hard on his behalf. The inspector was prone to getting into trouble because he didn’t care about rules and hierarchies. But he was a good and honest man. And he didn’t let go until he had closed a case. The consensus was that he was eccentric, a bit crazy. That assessment happened to coincide with Campagna’s view of himself.

Winking at the officer guarding the door, he climbed the stairs, quickening his pace as he went.

The flat had been recently done up. It smelled of paint and floor wax, but the few pieces of furniture were in poor taste. Clearly no-one lived there. It was a base of operations for sales in the city centre, where the dealers took orders and picked up the quantities requested. There would have been constant coming and going. All Campagna’s informer had to do was follow them a few times to figure how the business worked. Campagna looked round, assessing things quickly as he always did. He stepped into the big, untidy sitting room. Two guys were seated on the only sofa with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Very tightly, judging by the expressions on their faces. The two dealers gave him an apparently cursory glance, but in their minds Campagna had been filed under the heading of “cop”.

“Here you are at last,” his colleague said nervously. He showed the inspector a clear plastic bag containing at least 300 grams of heroin. “These two bastards aren’t talking.”

“Who are they?” the inspector asked. In fact he knew very well who they were, but he wanted to go on playing the role of the ingénue to the very end.

The other inspector played along. “These two Tunisians have been going in and out of this flat,” he said. He walked over to the men and gave one of them a slap. “But they’re refusing to tell us where the rest of the stuff is.”

“There isn’t any more,” the other man stammered, immediately receiving a kick to the shins.

“Stop being a dick,” Pinamonti shouted.

Campagna took a look around the flat. In the course of the police search, the furniture and kitchen appliances had been smashed into tiny pieces. There was no sign of drugs, which meant that they must have been kept in some special hiding-place that had been created while the flat was being refurbished.

Taking Pinamonti aside, Campagna told him of his suspicions.

“I can’t take a pickaxe to the place,” Pinamonti said.

“Who’s the owner?”

“A girl. Milvia Tiso. She bought it and was having it refurbished so that she could rent it out. Eighteen hundred a month.”

“What do we know about her?”

“She has no record.”

“Married? Children?”

“A husband.”

“Have you checked him out?”

Pinamonti ran his hand over his head.

“Fuck, I didn’t think of that! Bugger, I can’t get anything right!”

Campagna gripped his arm tightly.

“Enough with the performance anxiety, Damiano. We’ll sort it.”

Taking out his mobile, Campagna called the station. After a few minutes he rang off.

‘The owner’s husband is Tunisian, and he was born in the same village as one of those two bastards on the sofa.”

Pinamonti walked over to the sofa.

“Which one of you is Abdessalem?”

The one on the left nodded.

“That’s me.”

“We’re going to get Dawoud, the guy from your village,” Campagna announced. “We’re going to have a competition to see which of you is smarter. The first one to talk gets a lighter sentence.”

It was the other man who won.

“By the front door, the wall on the right,” he said in a strong French accent. “I’m just a street dealer. It was the others who brought the gear.”

His mate stared at him in horror before deluging him with insults. The policemen had to hold them apart to keep them from headbutting each other.

The skirting board concealed a gap at least three metres long, containing a series of plastic tubes with screw caps on either end.

“Here we are!” Pinamonti exclaimed with relief. “It must be at least five kilos.”

“Six,” Campagna corrected him, clapping him on the shoulder. “Well done. Now organise a nice press conference for the boss and score yourself a few points.”

Pinamonti tried to find words to thank him, but Campagna was already on his way out. Passing among the onlookers, he went back to the bar to drink a few more glasses of wine.

Then he walked home to join his wife and daughter. Putting his gun and badge in a drawer, he pretended that he had left his work at the door of the flat. Giulio Campagna was not a tormented soul, or even a particularly worried one. He tried to maintain his dignity in a myriad of complicated situations, without kidding himself that things were ever going to get better. His family was one of those things. He really loved Gaia and Ilaria, the women in his life, but sometimes they were one massive ball-breaker that he had to escape from. He drank and cheated on his wife in the same way that he approached his work: in moderation. And without making too much of a fuss. He just got on with it.

That evening, after a dinner during which he enjoyed listening to his sixteen-year-old daughter’s stories about how she had survived a school trip to Venice, Campagna plonked himself down in front of the T.V. with Gaia, resolving to leave work crap behind and allow himself a good night’s sleep.

Instead his mobile started ringing. The ringtone was the one reserved for his colleagues. His wife did not move a muscle; she knew what it meant to be married to an officer in the drugs squad. But Campagna looked at his mobile for a long time before answering.

“That Iranian guy’s here,” area officer Annina Montisci said. “He’s just come into the Chinese restaurant on the industrial estate.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Get a move on.”

Campagna changed back into his uniform and twenty minutes later drove through the gates of a car park. Montisci appeared out of the darkness. She could have been one of a thousand students at the University of Padua. No-one would have guessed that she was a cop, not with that hairdo and those wire-rimmed glasses. In fact she was clever and ambitious. Unlike the inspector she would rise through the ranks. Campagna liked teasing her.

“Have you told your colleagues?” he asked.

“Are you joking? This one is ours.”

Campagna laughed and gave her a hug.

“I like you best, Annina.” She wriggled away from him.

“Not least because I’m the only one who’s willing to work with you.”

“What’s our friend doing?”

“Eating. Have you had dinner?”

“Yes. You?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll keep you company. That way we can see if the Iranian meets up with anyone.”

The restaurant was huge and full of people. It resembled a self-service restaurant in a South American city: the fixed price menu was reasonable, and you could fill your plate whenever you wanted to. Given the financial crisis, the place was doing good business, and the quality wasn’t appallingly poor. Montisci was hungry and took full advantage; Campagna had a beer. They found a table not far from the Iranian, who had already reached the pudding course. He seemed calm. Every now and again he would look around discreetly. He seemed to feel safe, and Campagna could not work out why, given that he was wanted for international drug trafficking and had dodged an eight-year sentence. He wasn’t a big shot, he was a repeat offender, and that was all he would ever be. The inspector had seen lots like him. As far as they were concerned, jail was a traffic accident, and once they had served their sentence they would start all over again.

“Are we going to take him out?” Montisci said.

Campagna jerked his head towards a family group sitting nearby.

“Do you want to scare the children?”

The policewoman shrugged.

“He’s a quiet type, our Mohammadreza; he’d let us take him away without too much of a fuss.”

Campagna hid behind his menu.

“Look who’s just arrived.”

“Of all the people . . .”

Thirty years old, tall, skinny, long hair, a bit tired-looking, he seemed like the kind of person who takes life as it comes and who would not turn his nose up at some gear if it came his way. In fact, Giacomo Floriani was a Chief Superintendent. And a good one, too. He was seldom seen at the station because he spent most of his time in the dodgiest parts of the city trying to catch drug dealers.

“Let’s go,” Campagna said.

“There goes our arrest,” Montisci muttered, disappointed. “And there goes my evening, too. A bit of departmental coordination wouldn’t go amiss.”

Campagna walked towards the till, followed by Montisci. Their colleague had not deigned to look at them, and now he was sitting at the jail-dodger’s table, chatting away.

They waited for him in Montisci’s car, smoking with the windows open. Spring was on its way and the nights were getting milder. The door of the restaurant opened and the light from the neon sign lit up Floriani’s face. Montisci got out of the car.

“You’re here for the Iranian, aren’t you?” Floriani said, slipping into the back seat.

“Exactly,” Campagna said.

“He’s all yours. I’m not interested anymore. He’s trying to sell a batch of opium.”

“Opium?” exclaimed Montisci. “That’s a bit niche, and I’m not sure there’s much of a market for it in Padua.”

“Mohammadreza is on the run and needs some cash,” Campagna said. “If he’s been reduced to selling unfashionable stuff like that, it means that he’s not as important as he once was.”

“That’s what I think, too,” Floriani said, opening the car door. “Once he’s gone down, people will stop trusting him. If we put him in the slammer, we’ll be doing him a favour.”

“Don’t you want to be involved?” Montisci said.

“I couldn’t give a stuff. He’s a second-rater,” Floriani replied contemptuously, before disappearing into the darkness.

“What does that make us? Refuse collectors?” Montisci commented acidly.

Campagna did not reply but sat in silence, thinking about his colleague’s attitude until they saw the Iranian leave and walk towards a bicycle, the favoured mode of transport of Padua’s drug dealers. The trafficker bent over to undo the lock on the chain; a moment later the police were s. . .