The Public Prosecutor (31 page)
Read The Public Prosecutor Online
Authors: Jef Geeraerts
He locked the door behind him without looking around, waded cheerfully into the ocean of the world, and strutted towards Viale Bruno Buozzi, his head held high and a grin of triumph on his face, where he stopped a taxi.
“
Piazza del popolo, per cortesia
,” he said to the driver. This was part of the ritual: the use of polite formulas that had long gone out of fashion.
Piazza del popolo, per cortesia
,” he said to the driver. This was part of the ritual: the use of polite formulas that had long gone out of fashion.
The traffic in Rome was exceptionally calm at that hour. The city was probably preparing itself for a heatwave after three days of heavy rain and serious flooding, which had resulted in the evacuation of the streets along the Tiber and an ensuing traffic chaos. Pla enjoyed the short drive in the yellowish sunlight for which Rome was so famous. He got out of the taxi at Piazza del Popolo, one of the finest squares, he thought, after Salamanca’s Plaza Real. He gave the driver a ten per cent tip. He produced a pair of dark sunglasses from his jacket pocket and put them on. He looked round as if searching for someone he expected to find, someone with whom he had made an appointment, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
He glared suspiciously at the terrace of the renowned Caffè Rosati from a distance of about fifty yards, where a few people were already enjoying breakfast. He found a table under the awning, took a seat and waited until an elderly waiter in a white waist apron appeared with a silver platter under his arm. He ordered breakfast, a large espresso and “
pasteles
”, in Spanish, in spite of his fluent Italian. The waiter handed him the silver platter and disappeared. Pla y Daniel sauntered inside to peruse the ample assortment of breakfast pastries with raisins, almonds, icing and whipped cream, arranged in glass display cabinets. He selected four items using a pair of pastry tongs, returned to his table and did not wait for his coffee. He gobbled one of the pastries, wiped his fingers on his napkin, and quickly lit a cigarette. He inhaled with evident pleasure, held the smoke in his lungs and leaned back in his chair. His recreation had started. He waited to see what would happen next.
pasteles
”, in Spanish, in spite of his fluent Italian. The waiter handed him the silver platter and disappeared. Pla y Daniel sauntered inside to peruse the ample assortment of breakfast pastries with raisins, almonds, icing and whipped cream, arranged in glass display cabinets. He selected four items using a pair of pastry tongs, returned to his table and did not wait for his coffee. He gobbled one of the pastries, wiped his fingers on his napkin, and quickly lit a cigarette. He inhaled with evident pleasure, held the smoke in his lungs and leaned back in his chair. His recreation had started. He waited to see what would happen next.
Caffè Rosati was known by every gay Roman of standing as a meeting place. Pla y Daniel hated gays almost as much as he hated women. His hatred had started almost fifteen years earlier in the Opus Dei house in Pamplona, where he had been responsible for training young candidate numeraries. Manolo, a twenty-four-year-old Madrileño of exceptional beauty, had been taunted by him to such a degree about his looks that the boy threw himself to the floor in tears one day, grabbed his ankles and started to kiss them. At that point, his hand shot upwards with lightning speed and he started to stroke Pla’s penis, groaning with desire. Pla was so taken aback he was unable to move for a few seconds, but when he came to his senses he began to kick and beat Manolo, and shower the boy with curses,
hijo de puta
and
mala leche
being among the least offensive.
hijo de puta
and
mala leche
being among the least offensive.
At the moment his espresso arrived and the pastries had been devoured, the reason for the Caffè Rosati’s reputation became clear. An elderly gentleman dressed in a black, raw-silk suit with purple stripes, a purple shirt and a heavy gold chain set with dark-blue precious stones instead of a tie, had been sitting at a nearby table for some time. A white Jaguar pulled up abruptly in front of the café and a tall, skeletal, yet strikingly elegant young man, wearing an enormous black hat, stepped out. He was dressed in a white silk suit with a black-and-white-striped breast-pocket handkerchief, a black shirt with white polka dots, black shoes with white tips, and wore a red-stoned ring on top of black gloves. He moved with feline agility towards the elderly gentleman’s table and offered him his hand. He kissed the ring. The young man sat down, produced a round hand mirror with a golden handle, and commenced a careful examination of his face. The elderly gentlemen beckoned the waiter and started to talk to him with rounded gestures.
Pla y Daniel stubbed out his cigarette, nervously finished his coffee and summoned the waiter. The irritating spectacle had elicited an allergic reaction, which he quickly suppressed by spraying Rhinocort in his nose. He knew exactly how much he would have to pay because he did the same thing every month. He gave the waiter a ten per cent tip and got to his feet.
The walk to the “captain’s castle” via the Corso and the Vittorio Emmanuele - and past the Gesù, which did not warrant a glance - took roughly half an hour. The shops were still closed and the terraces more or less empty.
The magnificent palazzo on Via delle Botteghe Oscure had a dreary grey-stone façade and a large, half-open entrance. It was impossible to imagine from the exterior that the building had been divided into luxurious apartments with an enormous variety of occupants, from drug dealers, successful artists and diplomats to the kept women of those who could afford it. The doorman was napping in his cubbyhole in the side wall of the overgrown courtyard, with fountains and pedestalled Roman busts sticking out of the shrubbery. He raised his hand and continued his nap. Pla climbed the wide marble staircase to the third floor - the building had no elevator - and turned, puffing and panting, into a lofty, dimly-lit corridor. He took out his key.
The spacious room was reminiscent of a monastic cell. Plain white walls, antique Castilian furniture, but not a single Catholic symbol in sight.
He lowered the white venetian blinds until the shadows faded, considerably increasing his sense of security. He removed his jacket, draped it over the back of a chair, yawned and stretched, lit a cigarette and started to pace around the room to the imaginary measure of a military march, humming to himself in the process. He stopped after a couple of rounds and knelt down in front of a TV with an enormous screen. He selected a video from a sturdy wooden box with iron mountings, which had once served to store food in a Basque farmhouse. He dragged an impressive, elaborately carved, high-backed chair to its regular place, where he would settle down for hours on end to watch the same videos of celebrated bullfights with toreadors from the classical school such as Paco Camino and El Caracol. He would intersperse his viewing with two films: Saura’s
Blood Wedding
and Mario Camus’s
The House of Bernarda Alba
. Every now and then he would give in to another element of his obsessive behaviour, the repeated recitation of ‘Romance Sonambulo’, which he believed to be García Lorca’s most beautiful poem:
Blood Wedding
and Mario Camus’s
The House of Bernarda Alba
. Every now and then he would give in to another element of his obsessive behaviour, the repeated recitation of ‘Romance Sonambulo’, which he believed to be García Lorca’s most beautiful poem:
Green, how I crave you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out at sea
And the horse on the mountain.
During the scene in which Bernarda Alba’s youngest daughter Adela masturbates, he would mutter an uninterrupted series of misogynistic expletives, which, according to ancient Spanish tradition, usually had something to do with animal organs, vegetables and fruit.
As ever, he would dine in a dark corner of the same unsavoury restaurant in the Trastevere district two nights in a row, where they served decent square meals at reasonable prices and allowed the customers to smoke at table. He would then wander aimlessly through the dark streets of the Jewish quarter and submit himself to a storm of historical associations full of pogroms and mass executions, after which he would return to the palazzo, stub out his last cigarette and climb into bed a satisfied man. Without prayer, without meditation, without even a quick sign of the cross, he would fall asleep like a child, undisturbed by his usual allergies.
At seven o’clock on Saturday morning, Ernst Jacobi awoke to the melancholic opening strains of Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, reverberating from a powerful pair of Bang & Olufsen speakers attached to the radio-alarm next to his bed. Jacobi did not move a muscle. At two minutes past seven, his paddle-like hand slowly emerged from beneath the Swiss crochet-work bedspread and started to pet the head of an Alsatian dog, which lay asleep on an artistically carved bed from Graubünden next to his. The twelve-year-old Alsatian bitch was named after Hitler’s dog Blondi. Jacobi took enormous pleasure in using the name Blondi in public. He blamed the lack of reaction to a deficiency in the Swiss teaching of history.
He listened to the music, a recording made by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Otto Klemperer, which he considered the best performance available. His adoration of Anton Bruckner had nothing to do with his love for music and everything to do with the fact that he was the Austrian composer’s double. A large photograph of Bruckner graced the hall of his house, and when visitors caught sight of the bald and double-chinned Swabian peasant face, read the name underneath and expressed their amazement, Jacobi would glow with pride.
At ten past seven he got out of bed with a groan, popped in the false teeth he kept in a glass by the bed, leaned forward and buried his nose in Blondi’s shaggy coat, without paying the least attention to the smell, which was due to his elderly companion’s poorly functioning kidneys. Blondi did not stir.
Jacobi put on a shabby dressing gown and a pair of equally shabby leather slippers and shuffled towards the bathroom, where he urinated with extraordinary vigour. The prostate operation he had undergone two years earlier had done its work. He shaved with a cheap Philips razor without washing.
In the musty dining room, with its pinewood walls and ceiling, heavy furniture and enormous table, he peered in passing through one of the tiny double windows at the geraniums on the balcony that surrounded the entire house.
The main feature of the room was a massive tiled stove, which ran like a pillar through each floor of the house, from the cellar to the attic. It was fired with pinewood logs and kept each of the rooms comfortably warm throughout the winter.
A red-and-white chequered tablecloth covered one half of the table. He sat down and blessed himself. His hand quivered as he poured milk on a shallow bowl of muesli, sprinkled it with sugar, stirred it and started to eat, slurping from his spoon and carefully chewing every mouthful.
At five minutes to eight, a shiny black 1975 Mercedes climbed the steep drive towards the house in first gear. Jacobi appeared on the veranda at eight o’clock sharp, and descended the wooden stairs with obvious difficulty. The chauffeur opened the rear passenger door.
“
Grüezi, Herr Doktor
,” he said.
Grüezi, Herr Doktor
,” he said.
“
Grüezi
, Heinrich, how are you?” Jacobi responded goodnaturedly.
Grüezi
, Heinrich, how are you?” Jacobi responded goodnaturedly.
“Excellent,
Herr Doktor
, thank you.”
Herr Doktor
, thank you.”
The chauffeur followed a country road, past meadows and crops of pinewood forest, onto the Zürich bypass and into the city. Before reaching the city centre, he drove into the car park of a Spar supermarket and Jacobi got out while the chauffeur remained behind the wheel. Half an hour later, Jacobi appeared with a trolley containing three plastic bags, which the chauffeur helped unload into a wooden wine case in the boot.
The Mercedes then continued to the headquarters of the Credit Suisse on Paradeplatz, the pompous façade of which was constructed from greyish-white sandstone from Ostermundingen and decorated with statues of heroes, warriors and robust women, symbols of the unshakeable traditions of the Swiss mentality, still known today as traditions without the least tolerance towards any form of critique considered “disruptive of our cultural affiliations”.
Jacobi stepped out of the car and disappeared behind the enormous wrought-iron gate, which was slightly ajar. The chauffeur drove off, aware that he had to return to collect him at five o’clock sharp.
Jacobi took the elevator to his office on the fourth floor of the empty building, where he hoped to spend the entire day working uninterrupted on a number of difficult accounts. This was his idea of the ideal Saturday. He never worked on Sundays. “Otherwise I’d grow horns,” he would laugh when friends teased him for his idleness. His grandfather, a wealthy farmer from the canton of Aargau, always said the same.
On Saturday morning at half past ten, Paul Hersch was so fed up with Leuven that he gave in to an urge for which he was renowned in Arenberg. He left his office dressed as he was (jogging outfit and trainers), told no one, jumped into his car and drove like a madman to the Hoge Venen, a fenland park near the border with Germany. His reasons were simple and, to a degree, understandable: he was angry with the entire world. For the first time in his life he had received an instruction from Hervé van Reyn that was little short of a reprimand: give Didier Savelkoul (or
junior
as he liked to call him) some space. It was obvious that the wimp had gone whining to his superior in Brussels. His suspicion that “the financial matter” had been settled had been confirmed: junior had been promoted. Van Reyn’s characteristic silence on the matter barely surprised him.
junior
as he liked to call him) some space. It was obvious that the wimp had gone whining to his superior in Brussels. His suspicion that “the financial matter” had been settled had been confirmed: junior had been promoted. Van Reyn’s characteristic silence on the matter barely surprised him.
When junior had asked permission the day before to spend the weekend at home, he had written a “
nihil obstat
” until ten o’clock on Sunday evening without saying a word. This was the first reason for his agitated state. The second was his dwindling interest in picking up a stack of cash from Savelkoul senior in the middle of the night in some miserable country village east of Antwerp. He had said nothing to van Reyn about his Monday appointment, in spite of Opus Dei rules to the contrary.
nihil obstat
” until ten o’clock on Sunday evening without saying a word. This was the first reason for his agitated state. The second was his dwindling interest in picking up a stack of cash from Savelkoul senior in the middle of the night in some miserable country village east of Antwerp. He had said nothing to van Reyn about his Monday appointment, in spite of Opus Dei rules to the contrary.
An hour and a half later he arrived in Eupen (a motorway camera had caught him speeding between Liège and Herve, but he couldn’t have cared less). He then drove from Eupen to Ternell, a forest keeper’s station in the Herzogenwald on the road to Monschau. When he got out of the car he breathed in the country air, angry with himself for not enjoying it as others would, put on a pair of rubber boots and started walking. Half a mile further on, he left the woodcutter’s path and jumped down towards a waterfall, where he sat on a tree trunk that had been cut down, ready for transport. He rested his chin on his clenched fists and set about what he called “autohypnosis”, a special technique he had developed to help him reach practical conclusions on problems he considered worth the effort. He cut himself off from the world around him, stared like a snake at an invisible point in space and emptied his mind.
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