Traitors to All Read Online Free Page A

spring weather was making him impatient with everything. ‘Maybe you’re right, I’m too highly-strung to be a policeman. Not you, you’re calm.’ And he walked towards the door.
    ‘No, Duca, come here.’ Carrua’s voice was suddenly low, it almost moved him. He went back to the desk.
    ‘Sit down.’
    Duca sat down.
    ‘I’m sorry if I shouted.’
    Duca didn’t say anything.
    ‘How did things end up with that piece of filth? I don’t remember if you told me what his name was.’
    Mascaranti, who had come back in a minute earlier with Turiddu Sompani’s file, had heard this. ‘His name is Silvano Solvere. I already looked for him in records, there’s nothing on him. We could check the fingerprints, because the name’s a bit strange. But I did find the woman’s file, an interesting file:
verbal assault on a police officer, verbal assault, verbal assault, verbal assault, drunk and disorderly, drunk, drunk,
she was admitted to an asylum that time, then there’s
attack, with strikers, on the headquarters of a political party,
you remember the time they set fire to that place?’ He paused for breath. ‘Plus prostitution and vagrancy.’
    ‘What’s the name of this shrinking violet?’
    ‘Adele Terrini.’
    ‘Let’s go back to before. How did you leave things with Silvano Solvere? Strange name, it reminds me of Solvay soda.’ He was becoming an idiot too, Carrua thought, after spending so much time shut up in this office.
    ‘That he’ll come and pick me up and take me to see the young lady.’ Simple.
    ‘In other words, you have to go where he takes you.’ Obvious. ‘And when you’re with the young lady you have tooperate on her? By the way, is it a dangerous operation, does it take long?’
    Duca explained the operation, using technical terms, nothing vulgar: both he and Carrua hated gratuitous vulgarity. ‘Of course, as a doctor who’s been struck off the register, I can’t even apply a sticking plaster, but I could perform this operation with police consent.’
    ‘What if the girl gets an infection and dies, what do we do then?’ Carrua asked.
    ‘You know there’s an answer to that question,’ Duca said irritably. ‘Either you make contact with these people and take the chance of discovering something crucial, or else you leave the files on Turiddu and his lady friend in records, pretend you’ve never heard the name Silvano Solvere, and I go home.’
    ‘I was thinking of you,’ Carrua said very softly, ‘if the girl dies, or is seriously ill and the thing comes out, even if you did it for the police, it’s all up with you.’
    ‘Why, hasn’t it been all up with me for a long time now?’
    Carrua stared at the sun outside the window. When he spoke again, he actually sounded sad. ‘So you’ve made up your mind.’
    ‘I thought I’d already said I had.’ Even the most intelligent people, like Carrua, could be obtuse sometimes.
    ‘All right.’ He hated and admired Duca, just as he had hated and admired Duca’s father, for his doggedness and inflexibility. With no money, no career, with a sister and a little child to support, instead of minding his own business and sorting himself out, he was throwing himself into the most hopeless kind of work there was, the work of a policeman, an Italian policeman at that, an English or American policeman would have been another matter, but an Italianpoliceman gets it from everyone: stones from strikers, bullets or stab wounds from criminals, insults behind his back from the general public, reprimands from his superiors and not much money from the State. ‘All right, but do things the way I say. Mascaranti is coming with you.’
    He liked that idea.
    ‘And the car will have a radio.’
    He wasn’t too keen on that. ‘A car with a radio is too conspicuous,’ he said. ‘They gave me the money, so it’s quite likely they’re keeping their eyes on me, that’s why I came here on foot today. If they notice the radio in the car, that’ll be