Traitors to All Read Online Free

all.’ It had been a nasty encounter, which smelt to high heaven, but he was in it now, in this kind of work, and he couldn’t hope to go back to the respectable world.
    ‘Mascaranti, tell the bar not to send me old olives.’
    ‘I already told them.’
    ‘They’re shameless, they sell rotten produce even to the police,’ Carrua said. Having finished the olives he started to nibble at the bread, and as he did so looked at the little heap of ten-thousand-lire notes. ‘Are you really determined to go down this road?’
    ‘I need the money,’ Duca said.
    ‘And you think you can make money by playing the policeman? You have some strange ideas.’ He drank a little white wine. ‘Mascaranti, get me the Sompani file.’ Another sip of wine as Mascaranti left the room. ‘You see, there’s something odd about this young man coming and offering you a pre-nuptial patch-up job, which is that he told you he’d been sent by Turiddu Sompani, because Turiddu Sompani died a few days ago, together with a lady friend of his. They were found in a Fiat 1003 in the Naviglio Pavese. Now I find it hard to believe that this young man of yours with the patch-up job didn’t know that Turiddu was dead, and I don’t understand why he introduced himself to you using the name of a dead man, especially as you might also have known that Turiddu was dead.’
    ‘Actually, I did.’ Duca got up and took the last battered olive that Carrua had left on the plate. He was hungry, he was alone in Milan, nobody was cooking for him, the restaurants were expensive. It didn’t taste too bad after all. ‘And I know something else, even without looking at Sompani’s file, which is that three and a half years ago, Turiddu leaves his car to a friend and this friend’s girlfriend, the friend can’t drive, he’s drunk, and he ends up in the Lambro, at the Conca Fallata. Repetitions bother me. Sompani’s friend and the friend’s girlfriend drown pathetically, if we can put it that way, at the Conca Fallata, inside a car, and a few yearslater, Sompani and a lady friend of his also drown pathetically inside a car, in the Naviglio Pavese. Don’t they bother you too?’ He meant repetitions.
    Carrua took another sip. ‘I think I’m starting to understand,’ he said, putting down his glass. ‘A doctor is the policeman of the body, a disease is almost like a criminal who has to be tracked down, you were a good doctor because you’re a policeman, like your father.’ A final sip of the wine. ‘Yes, repetitions bother me too, but if we’re right, then this could turn out to be something big, maybe even dangerous.’
    Then Duca got up. ‘All right, if you don’t want to give me a job, it’s up to you, I’m going.’
    At last the true Carrua, who up until now had spoken in an improbably normal voice, revealed himself by shouting, ‘No, I don’t even want to see you! You’re too highly-strung, you do even this kind of job with too much anger, too much hate. You want to eat up the criminals, you don’t want to arrest them, or defer to the authorities, or defend society. You have a sister and your sister has a child and you ought to think about them, instead of which you come here asking to put your hands on these unexploded bombs, “I’m here,” you say, “I’ll defuse the detonator, I don’t mind getting blown up.” ’ Angrily, he picked up the ten-thousand-lire notes and waved them in front of Duca. ‘Do you think I don’t know why you accepted this money from that piece of dirt? To join in the game. And if I find you in some ditch, with your throat cut, what do I tell your sister? And you know the State won’t pay even ten lire if you die, because all you are is an informer, that’s the highest rank I can give you, and do informers get a choice how they die? Why don’t you travel around Italy as a pharmaceuticals salesman, and earn some decent money?’
    Duca wasn’t really listening to him: he liked Carruawhen he shouted, but the