Going commando just because you haven’t done the laundry? That’s funny.
It’s not. And it’s true. Haven’t done the laundry in donkey’s years.
Many time you went commando just because.
Point taken.
I smiled and intertwined my hands behind my head, settling my back more comfortably against the chair. I observed the notes in front of me on the desk, the cornetto still wrapped in the bar napkins, and took a moment to contemplate my life. Going commando was just one of the many dickhead things I did and I blamed on being mixed race. Easier than admitting that I was a dickhead because I liked pissing people off. Bending the rules and pushing it past the breaking point was my bread and butter, being conventional and do what ‘other people my age’ do sickened me.
Being plain and boring might keep you out of trouble, though.
And where’s the fun in that?
Not everything has to be funny or a rush of adrenaline.
No, sometimes you need a joint to tone it all down. Or three. Speaking of which, is it too early for one?
The clock on the wall signed 8.56 on a Saturday morning. I had to wait for preliminary results on the body and the crime scene, Sergio was probably going to talk to more residents who saw nothing and heard nothing, there was no report to complete or overdue paperwork so sign; as annoying as bureaucracy is, it would have doubled as a distraction. Samia was on her way to work, if not there already, so, even if I called, no one was going to pick up.
What about strategizing and thinking about the resources you will need?
I could. Or I could take a nap.
It wouldn’t look very professional, but if you must.
Sleep. My reign for a pillow and a blanket! What a dream, close my eyes and sleep. In different circumstances, I would have gone to the beach and slept my hungover off on a sun-bed.
Instead, you are in your office, with a Jane Doe on her way to the morgue.
Must be my lucky day.
I walked to the window and grabbed my cigarettes from my jacket’s pocket. The packet was battered and almost empty, but I didn’t remember smoking that much.
How much do you actually remember about last night?
Anyway.
I lit one, thinking about the girl. I hated Jane Does almost as much as I hated dealing with underage and kids’ deaths. John and Jane Does were difficult cases, and too many of them remain unresolved. The idea that being in the police force meant bringing criminals to justice and preventing crimes was what the academy sold to any recruit. As soon as you got your uniform on, your superiors expected you to perform and get more bang for their buck in the shortest time possible. After a week Jane and John Doe stopped being a priority, unless someone came forward with a missing person report. I always found it unfair. John and Jane Does were people, with a life, family, friends, a job, dreams and feelings. They deserved extra care, before going six feet under, they deserved to be mourned and remembered, their beloved needed to bereave. Instead, more often than not, they ended up in a paper box in the archive, that got dustier by the minute and eventually became a cold case that a young officer or the original investigator reopened many years later, out of hope and years of remorse and self-despise.
A knock on the door made me jump.
“Come in” I answered, harsh. I hid my hand behind the outside wall, as if what I was doing wasn’t evident.
“Sorry ma’am” said Cosentino, the precinct corporal, with his teary voice. He was 22, came from a small village in Calabria and called mum every fucking day.
It’s lovely that he’s so close to his family.
He’s old enough to have one of his own! He doesn’t need mummy. To do what, by the way? Tell him how to wipe his ass?
You really get cranky when you don’t sleep.
“There is a lady that wants to talk to you. She is very persistent. She said it’s a matter of life and death.”
I rolled my eyes but managed to master my voice. “Let her in” I said, killing the butt and throwing it on the road below. Then I sat behind my desk, waiting for my karmic punishment. I was so sure that Poldo’s owner was going to cross the threshold, that I was willing to bet money on it.
What came through the door, though, was a miniature of a lady, and the only life and death matter she might have had was her Barbie doll not being invited to her best friend’s Barbie doll wedding with one of the many ominous copies of Ken.
I tried to blink her away, but the miniature woman didn’t budge. And so did my corporal.
“Ahm… yes.” I cleared my voice and tried again. “Thanks, Cosentino. You can leave us.
When he closed the door, I motioned to the two stuffed chairs in front of my desk and the little girl sat on one with a little jump, settling a leather messenger bag on her lap. I wasn’t in tune with the latest teenage fashion and it was a too grown-up thing to belong to her.
It could have been passed down from an older sibling.
That, or the lack of sleep is making me even more paranoid than usual.
“What can I do for you…” I peeped over the edge of the desk and her feet barely scraped the rug underneath her chair “…kid?”
“Miss Marinella” she replied, pushing her blossoming chest out.
She can’t be wearing a bra. Even the smallest size won’t fit her.
Don’t be mean.
“Miss Marinella” I corrected myself, crossing my hands in front of me and assuming the most neutral expression I was capable of.
“I am a woman now, you know?” she said, her voice full of pride.
‘Being a woman’ could only mean two things, and since I wasn’t keen on thinking that a schoolgirl had no better way to spend her Saturday morning in a police station
talking about her first menstrual period, I let the worse option wave as many red flags as it wanted.
“What do you mean with that?”
“Exactly this. That I am a woman now” miniature woman repeated.
“How is that different from being a child?”
“Because a child doesn’t have… you know…” the girl lowered her voice and leaned forward, finally putting her feet on the floor “you are a woman too. You know.”
“Did you get your period?”
“Shhh!” Marinella raised a conceited finger to her lips, shushing me. “No need to shout, Madam!”
The little brat was seriously talking about menstruations.
I clicked my tongue, took a deep breath and reminded myself why I wasn’t going to be a mother.
You would be a great one.
And willingly put up with something like that?
“I am extremely glad for you, young lady…”
“Miss Marinella!”
“Marinella” I conceded, my frustration rising like the tide “but why should I be interested in that?”
“Oh, but I didn’t come for that” said the girl, crossing her arms on her invisible chest. I noticed a thick string of bracelets on her left arm, lines and lines of colourful beads, and a water tattoo fading on her bicep. “I came because, since I am a woman now, I am a responsible citizen, and as such it is my duty to report a theft.”
“Again, you don’t bother the police chief with that. We do have a brilliant-“
“But you are the only woman! And there are things you don’t talk about with boys.”
My headache was going from pounding to full blast. I had to wrap it all up quickly and go home for a while, swallow a handful of painkillers, sleep a couple of hours in my bed and wait for the preliminary results in the chill of my house. I used the police oath as a grounding mantra. I swear to fulfil my duties in administering and protecting the public interest. A crime had been committed and, big or small, I had to treat it with the same respect.
“Tell me about it.”
“My bike has been stolen.”
“When did it happen and where did you leave it?”
“Aren’t you going to take notes?”
I made a big fuss of grabbing a blank sheet from the pile I kept beside my typewriter and a pen.
“Ready. Stolen bike” I wrote. “When and where?”
“Yesterday evening, I left it in the bicycle rack right off the muntagnon, the one in front of the roundabout on the way to the Lidi, and I went to meet my friends at the funfair. We decided to have our future read. I wanted to know if I will be Gianluca’s girlfriend.”
“Did you chain it?” I stirred the conversation back to its original topic. One Poldo’s owner a day was more than enough.
“No one ever does. The place is safe.”
“If it were, you’d still have your bike.”
“But I do.”
I slammed my hands on the desk and Marinella flinched.
“So why are you here!”
“For this” she replied, pushing the handbag on the table. “This is not mine. And I don’t know the girl who lost it. Inside she has…” she blushed “…her pill and a few…things. You know… for the boys… And her keys! When I lost my keys, my mom grounded me for a week and didn’t give me pocket money for a month to repay the new lock. What if her parents punish her too?”
I snatched the bag from across the table and gave it a good look. It was an anonymous crossbody messenger bag of brown leather worn out at the corners, the flap kept close by a turn-twist lock.
“Did you go through it?” Linda asked.
“What did you take me for?’ asked Marinella, scandalised.
“How do you know there are condoms inside?”
“Because it was open on the ground.”
I moved the bag around and clearly heard a bunch of keys rolling inside.
“Where and when did you find it?” I asked, fetching a pair of gloves from the first drawer of my desk.
“Not far from my bike.”
“Can you tell me the story start to end instead of bits and pieces?” I yelled, opening the bag.
“If you’d only stop interrupting me with all your questions…” I stared at her in disbelief and Marinella rolled her eyes. “Yesterday evening I went to the funfair, but you already know this. As I’ve already told you, me and my friend Giusi wanted to have our future read. But when we went to the fortune-teller tent, there was a girl inside. We waited for a while, but then Giusi got tired of waiting and said we were going back later. You know, it was Saturday night so we had permission to stay until 10. We went to the bumper cars ride, because that’s the spot where the boys hang out and we ended up forgetting all about the fortune-teller.”
“You didn’t care knowing about Gianluca anymore?” I asked, inventorying the content of the bag. The keys Marinella talked about were a massive bunch of at least a dozen and a long, heavy metal one that was probably opening the front door of a castle or a fortress, around a keychain shaped like an A.
“Nah. I am with Marco now. You know… we rode the bumper cars together four times. With his tokens. Then he bought me this” she pointed at the last bracelet of the line “and asked me if I wanted to be his girlfriend.”
I want to be a kid again.
And miss out on all the useless adulthood drama?
I hid a smile in a deeper perusal of the keys and rolled two fingers, signalling miniature woman to continue.
“It was already past 10 when I checked the time, so I rushed away to go back home, and that’s when I found out that my bike was gone. I started to cry because I knew I was going to be in big trouble with my mom, Marco tried to cheer me up, but I was really upset. All his friends helped me find it. Marco said that it wasn’t unusual to move a bike if it was in someone else’s way, but all I could think about was ‘they stole my bike and my mom will ground me again’. And I don’t really want to, you know, especially now.”
“Why not?” I asked. Mint. A packet of cigarettes with a plastic lighter.
“Because school is almost over, and I want to go to the end of the year party with Marco. You know, next year he will go to high school, while I have two more years to wait. I will not see him in school anymore.”
“Back to your bike. How comes it was lost and then you found it?” A pen. A compact mirror.
“Oh, right. It wasn’t lost. As Marco said, someone took it but didn’t go far, because the front tire went flat, and whoever took it threw it in the ditch right under the City Walls, right off Via Pomposa.”
Jane Doe was found less than 100 metres away from it.
It might be a coincidence.
And elephants might start flying in the next hour or so.
“Where did you find the bag?” Big, round sunglasses with a red frame.
She shrugged.
“The strap was wrapped around the handlebar. I called my mom and told her that I had a flat, so she came and pick me up with the car, but I asked Marco to keep the bag.”
“Why did you do it?”
Miniature woman – Marinella! – shrugged again.
“I didn’t want to get in trouble with my mom. But I am not a thief! I took it here.”
A note for a medical appointment at Villa Salus, a private clinic, dated 23 April. Tissues. A small purse with some cash in it. The pill blister had four missing, then one, then three more missing. She skipped one day. Nothing else, but most of all, no documents.
“Did you or your friends notice anything weird? People shouting? Boyfriend and girlfriend arguing?”
Marinella shook her head. “You do and you don’t, you know. There is always someone shouting or arguing, but then they make up. And with the hospital that close, you hear sirens all the time.”
I didn’t think about it. Coming from Via Pomposa, past the City Walls, there was an arch that led to Corso Giovecca, the long road connecting the City Walls to the Este Castle and continued until the train station. At the very beginning of Corso Giovecca there was the city hospital and the A&E, that served more than half of the territory. Quite often La Nuova Ferrara, the local newspaper, reported of accidents and collisions between ambulances that sped to unload their patients and bikers or drivers going their way. Every time that a new article hit the print, I was asked to do something, but every time I only received bland reassurances and vague deadlines for public projects that never saw the light of day. Ferrara was a medieval city adapted to modern life, or so it tried to be.
I made a mental note to check with the hospital too, now that I had a timeframe. Maybe an ambulance passed by and someone noticed something.
Look outside. There is a flock of elephants flying right in front of your window.
One can always hope, right?
“Is there anything else?” I asked, putting the content back in the bag. Marinella shook her head left and right.
“Don’t you want me to sign the report?” she asked, jutting forward on the armchair. I pressed my lips together, tight.
Think sad thoughts, think sad thoughts.
“Yes. Right. Sorry.”
“I can see you are the boss. You forgot the basics.”
I smiled, tight. Then I grabbed another blank sheet from beside my typewriter, scribbled that I, Linda Bonora, had received a bag with this and that inside on the 26th of Aprile 1986 and bla bla bla. Then I signed it and, in the spur of the moment, I even took out the Police stamp and the one with my full name and degree. Then I turned the page and presented it to Marinella who, below my scribbled signature, wrote in clear school-like letters Marinella Maccanti.
“Good. I think we are done here. How are you going home?”
“I’ll walk with Marco” she said, pride swelling up her chest again. “He’s waiting for me outside.”
Marinella jumped off the armchair, sorted her dress and reached the door, but before she could leave, I stopped her.
“With this Marco guy” I said. “Don’t do anything you don’t feel comfortable doing. And if you say no and he doesn’t respect your no, run away, come here and ask for me. Ok?”
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t let him kiss me. I don’t want to have a baby.”
What were you saying about useless adulthood drama?
Marinella was smarter than I thought.
