A Walk in the Dark Read Free Page A

head against the back of my chair and stayed like that, looking up at some vague point on the ceiling.
    I don’t know how long I stayed like that. Then the phone rang.

5
    Maria Teresa answered as usual, after the third ring.
    After a few moments I heard the buzz of the intercom.
    “Who is it?”
    “Inspector Tancredi, of the Flying Squad.”
    “Put him on.”
    Tancredi was almost a friend. Although we’d never spent any time together outside work, I felt – and I think he felt too – that we had something in common. He was the kind of policeman you’d like to meet if you were the victim of a crime, the kind you’d avoid like the plague if you were the one who had committed the crime. Especially certain kinds of crime. Tancredi dealt with perverts, rapists, paedophiles, that kind of criminal. None of them had been very happy to have Tancredi on their case.
    “Carmelo. How are you?”
    “Hi, Guido, not too bad. And you?” He had a deep voice, with a slight Sicilian accent. Hearing him on the phone, without knowing him, you’d have imagined a tall, stocky man, with a paunch. Tancredi was only about five and a half feet tall, with rather long hair, always unkempt, and a thick black moustache.
    We quickly got through the civilities, and then he said he needed to see me. On a work-related issue, he hastened to add. My work or his? Mine and his, in a way. He wanted to come to my office, with someone. He didn’t say who this someone was, and I didn’t ask him. I told him we could meet after eight, when
I’d be alone in the office. That was fine, and we left it at that.
     
     
    They arrived about eight-thirty. Everyone had already left, and I went to open the door.
    Tancredi was with a woman about thirty, or a bit more. She was nearly six feet tall, had her hair tied in a ponytail, and was wearing discoloured jeans and a worn leather jacket.
    A colleague of Tancredi’s, I thought, even though I’d never seen her before. The typical masculine style of a policewoman from the street crimes squad or the drugs squad. She must have screwed up and now she needed a lawyer. By the look of her – the look of someone you wouldn’t want to mess with – my guess was that she’d beaten up a suspect or someone brought in for questioning. It happens, in carabinieri barracks and police stations.
    I showed them into my office, and Tancredi did the introductions.
    “Avvocato Guido Guerrieri . . .” I held out my hand, expecting to hear something like “Officer So and So” or “Inspector Whatshername”. Tancredi didn’t say that.
    “. . . this is Sister Claudia.”
    I looked at Tancredi, then looked at the woman again. He had the barest hint of a smile, as if relishing my surprise, but she wasn’t smiling. She held out her hand, looking me straight in the eyes, with a strangely fixed expression. It was only then that I noticed the very small wooden crucifix she was wearing around her neck, hanging from a thin leather cord.
    “Sister Claudia is the director of Safe Shelter. Have you heard of it?”
    I’d never heard of it and he told me what it was.

    Sister Claudia still said nothing, and kept her eyes fixed on me. She gave off a very slight scent, but I couldn’t have said what it was.
    Safe Shelter was a community, housed in a secret location – it was still a secret at the end of the conversation – which provided a refuge for women who’d been victims of sex trafficking, women who’d been rescued from abusive relationships, battered wives, ex-prostitutes, or women who’d turned state’s evidence.
    Whenever the police or the carabinieri needed to find accommodation for any of these women, they knew the door of Safe Shelter was always open. Even at night or on public holidays.
    Tancredi spoke, I nodded, Sister Claudia looked at me. I was starting to feel slightly uncomfortable.
    “So how can I be of service?” Even as I was finishing the sentence, I felt like a complete idiot. Like when I find myself saying