The Edge of the Horizon

5

The article in the Gazzetta del Mare was unsigned, a brief note on the front page leading the reader to the Local News section, where the story took up two columns: a modest space on an inside page. To compensate, there was a photograph of the dead man. It’s the photo the police took, Corrado managed to get them to give it to him, and anyhow, if they want to find out who the man is, it suits the police to have it published. Under the photo they’ve put the caption: “Gunman Without a Name.”

He opened the paper on the table, pushing aside the breakfast things, while Sara began to tidy up the other rooms. “See?” she shouted from the kitchen, “Seems nobody knows him. But the article can’t be by Corrado, it isn’t even signed.”

Spino knows it’s not by Corrado. The facts were dug up by a young and very enterprising reporter who a few months ago caused pandemonium when he wrote about corruption on the docks. Spino sticks to the main story, skipping the opening paragraph about the fight against crime, full of clichés.

“A tragic gun battle took place last night in the working-class Arsenale district in an apartment on the top floor of an old block in Via Casedipinte. Acting on a tip-off from a source which police are keeping strictly secret, five men of the Police Special Corps raided the apartment shortly after midnight. At the warning, ‘Open up! Police!’ an unspecified number of persons in the apartment fired repeatedly through the door, seriously wounding one policeman, Antonino Di Nola, 26, who has been stationed in our city for only two months. Di Nola later underwent what was described as delicate surgery. After the shooting, the gunmen barricaded themselves in a small room leading off from the entrance hall before escaping from a window across the rooftops. But before fleeing (and this perhaps is the most obscure part of the whole incident) they shot one of their own gang. The man was raced to the Old Hospital but was dead on arrival. His identity is unknown. It appears he was carrying false documents. Between twenty and twenty-five years old, brown beard, blue eyes, slim, average height, to all intents and purposes the dead man was a stranger to local inhabitants, despite having lived in the area for about a year. He went under the name of Carlo Noboldi and claimed to be a student, although inquiries made at university offices have revealed that he was not enrolled. Shopkeepers in the area say he was courteous and polite and always paid his bills on time. The apartment, which has two rooms and a loft, belongs to a religious order which took Noboldi in last year when he claimed he had just returned from abroad and was out of money. The Prior of the Order, to which Noboldi was paying a nominal rent, declined to make any statement to journalists. This new murder, which once again sees our city as the stage for violent crime, will intensify the fears of a population already deeply disturbed by recent events.”

Sara has now come up behind him and, leaning over his shoulder, starts to read the paper, her head beside his. She passes a hand through his hair, a gesture of understanding and tenderness. For a moment, engrossed, they stare at the photograph of the unidentified man. Then she lets slip a remark that leaves him shaken: “Grow a beard and lose twenty years and it could be you.”

He doesn’t reply, as if this observation were of no importance.