Esoteric Crimes

Chapter 1-3

The words of that distant conversation still rang in my mind, when the croaking voice of the speaker startled me.

«Thank you for choosing the company Nuova Alitalia. We would like to warn the passengers that in ten minutes, we will land at Cristoforo Colombo Airport in Genoa. It is 9.30 on the first of July 2009, the temperature on the ground is around 28 degrees, stable and clear weather is expected with rising temperatures and winds from the South-East. We wish you a nice stay. Thank you, and we hope to see you again on these airlines.»

Of course, it had taken another two years to set up the Dog Detachment at the Raffaello Sanzio airport. On the land that had belonged to the Air Force, the settlement has been built exactly as I had it in mind: twelve boxes closed on three sides a large training field. The fourth side was occupied by the service structure, obtained from an old Air Force building. On the ground floor, there was an equipped infirmary for dogs, supplied with a radiological device, an ultrasound machine, a medicine cabinet, as well as a surgical room for emergency operations. A couple of rooms were reserved for administrative procedures, while, on the upper floor, I had my accommodation, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small kitchen. For several years the place would become my home and my roof, as well as my working place, also because I was getting surer day by day that I would never tie myself to a man to a man.

I personally chose the dogs at the canine center of the Finance Police, in Castiglione del Lago, and at that of the State Police in Nettuno, near Rome, where I had followed the training course. I wanted perfectly trained dogs to cover all possible specialties. I had brought two German Shepherds to Falconara Marittima, to use as drug-sniffing dogs, and two other dogs of the same breed, flanked by a Rottweiler, as anti-riot dogs, and for public order interventions. As molecular and rubble dogs, that is dogs destined for civil protection interventions, I opted for a pair of Labrador Retrievers and a Samoyed. I then selected two Weimaraners to work with explosives, while another German Shepherd, a large male, had been chosen for attack and self-defense. A box left empty for other specialties would later be occupied by my Springer Spaniel, Furia. A dog completely denied for hunting, but with an exceptional sense of smell, and capable of following a trail and finding missing people starting from a simple object that belonged to those who had to be found. But Furia would arrive several years after the beginning of the detachment activity.

The men had been chosen among the most valid in force in the State Police of the Marche's various provinces. Each man was linked with a dog, as his handler. The men had to be not only experts in the same specialty as the animal but that they had to have the patience to train and take care of their dogs as if the latter were a child or part of them. I had some doubts about offering Inspector Santinelli to be my deputy. Usually, there is some difficulty in accepting to be subordinate to a person of which one was superior but he had accepted willingly, either for his passion for dogs or perhaps for a passion for me too, that I would never share back.

At the beginning of the summer of 1997, we were finally ready to begin. The inauguration of the detachment took place in the presence of important authorities, among whom there were the Prefect, the Mayors of Ancona and Falconara Marittima, and officials from the Ministry of the Interior. At the end of our demonstration of the work with the dogs, in simulated drug and explosives research and actions aimed at blocking criminals, the day ended with a performance by the Frecce Tricolori. To my great regret, the only sad note of the day was that I learned that that was the last public event that commissioner Ianniello would attend, as he was close to retirement.

In short, even at 26 years of age, I had a position of responsibility and great satisfaction. Stefano’s support, both as the doctor of our dogs and as a friend, has never failed. All the dogs chosen worked very well. Only concerning the Rottweiler, I did regret the choice.

«To keep the crowd in check,» Stefano had warned me, «you need dogs that make a scene, they need to inspire fear in those in front of them, whether they are the fans at the stadium or the demonstrators in a square. But dogs must never hurt people. The Rottweiler is a traitor. He looks like a good-natured, he’s there good and seated looking at you, he doesn’t seem to even care about you. But once you get within his range, without even warning you with a snarl, he is capable of tearing you alive. The strength of his jaw is superior to that of any other breed. Measured with the dynamometer, the force of its bite reaches 230 kg, against German Sheperd's 80 kg and Neapolitan Mastiff's 120 kg. He is basically a war machine. Never trust him!»

To my regret, after Thor, that was his name, had made himself responsible for a bad training joke against his conductor, it had been necessary to reform him. Usually, a dog is reformed at the end of his career, when he is too old to perform his duties and, in most cases, the handler, who by the time has developed a particular relationship with the dog, adopts it and keeps it close, considering that the animal has just a few years of life. If this does not happen, the reformed dog must be euthanized, because it is unthinkable for dogs trained like this to end up in the hands of untrusted people. I was aware that the end of Thor would be a lethal injection, and I could not give myself peace, but I looked at his handler, with his arm still bandaged, and I could not take responsibility for something like this happening again. Thor was soon replaced by another German Shepherd, this time chosen by me at a local farm. I raised him since he was a puppy, and I trained him up until the moment of assigning him to a conductor.

Aside from Thor’s unpleasant episode, the days went by fast. Every day the team was engaged in training for at least two or three hours, then there were the services, the drug control at the airport customs, the services during fairs and markets looking for possible pickpockets or drug dealers. Sometimes we were also called to distant places, for civil protection interventions, after earthquakes or other natural disasters, to recover any survivors from under the rubble, or to search for missing people in the mountains, not just after mudslides or avalanches, but just because maybe they got lost during an excursion. The fame of my team, over time, went beyond the Marche borders, and we were often called for services far away from our base. The team lacked a dog that could sniff a trail, follow one, and in short, help the policeman in an investigation, as well as in an action. It would arrive later, and it would have been my Furia, a Springer Spaniel, puppy of a dog of Inspector Santinelli.

The flow of my thoughts was, at that point, definitively interrupted by the braking of the plane on the runway and the consequent opening of the hold doors. A whole new chapter of my life was about to begin.