The Day of the Owl Read Online Free PDF

of the law who only used the strong arm on the poor; the rich they protected and defended. It was like a barbed wire entanglement, a wall. The thief who had done time, was involved with the mafia, negotiated extortionate loans and played the informer asked only to find a hole in the wall, a gap in the barbed wire. If he did, he would soon raise enough capital to open his little shop; his elder son he would put into a seminary, either to become a priest or leave before ordination to become, better than a priest, a lawyer. Once over the wall the law would no longer hold terrors. How wonderful it would be to look back on those still behind the wall, behind the barbed wire.
    So, tortured by fear, he tried to find some consolation by fondly picturing his future peace, a peace founded on poverty and injustice. But for him the fatal bullet was already cast.
    Captain Bellodi, on the contrary, an Emilian from Parma, was by family tradition and personal conviction a republican, a soldier who followed what used to be called 'the career of arms' in a police force, with the dedication of a man who has played his part in a revolution and has seen law created by it. This law, the law of the Republic, which safeguarded liberty and justice, he served and enforced. If he still wore a uniform which he had first put on by chance, if he had not left the service to become a lawyer, the career to which he had been destined, it was because the task of serving and enforcing the law of the Republic was becoming more arduous every day.
    The informer would have been astounded to know that the man he was facing, a carabiniere and an officer too, regarded the authority vested in him as a surgeon regards the knife: an instrument to be used with care, precision and certainty; a man convinced that law rests on the idea of justice and that any action taken by the law should be governed by justice. His was a difficult and ungrateful profession; but the informer only saw him as a happy man, happy in the joy of being able to abuse his powers, a joy the more intense the more suffering can be inflicted on others.
    Like a shopkeeper displaying his lengths of cheap cotton to country housewives, Parrinieddu unwound his roll of lies. His nickname of Little Priest was due to the easy eloquence and hypocrisy he exuded. But, as a result of the officer's silence, his fluency began to leave him, his words began to sound tearful or strident, and the pattern he was weaving became incoherent, incredible.
    'Don't you think -' the captain quietly asked him after a while, in a tone of friendly confidence - 'don't you think it might be more useful to explore other possibilities?' The double-s of the Emilian accent left the word incomplete and vague and for a moment distracted the informer from his flow.
    Parrinieddu did not reply.
    'Don't you think that there's a chance that Colasberna was done away with for, let us say, a question of interest? For not having accepted certain proposals? For having continued, in spite of threats, to land all he could in the way of contracts?'
    Captain Bellodi's predecessors had been in the habit of questioning the informer in threatening tones with explicit alternatives of either internment by the police or a charge of usury. This, instead of frightening Parrinieddu, had given him a certain sense of security. The link was clear: the police were forcing him to some betrayal and he just had to produce enough information to keep them quiet and himself out of trouble. But with someone treating him kindly and taking him into his confidence, things were different. So he answered the captain's question with a disjointed motion of the hands and head: yes, it was possible.
    'And,' continued the captain in the same tone, 'do you happen to know of anyone who takes an interest in such matters? I don't mean those who work on contracts; I mean those who don't, who concern themselves with helping, with protecting ... It would be enough for me to know the name of