The first trace is just a turquoise dot. Then it’s up to pass and go to see if the deputies shoot cocaine, perhaps those who in public defend liberticidal laws on soft drugs and sniff the heavy ones indoors. Not at home or in their offices, but in the sanctuary of law itself. The clues have always been strong but the suspects are more so: the investigation of Hyenas of 2006 – one in three MPs positive on drug tests – was immediately blocked by Privacy Guarantor, the authors were later convicted of damaging the institution’s “public image and reputation”. After ten years, nothing has changed and this is demonstrated by the rejection of the agendas that were presented to introduce in this legislature dogs and drug tests in Parliament. So drivers and rescuers from Italy (and soon it will be the turn of doctors and teachers) are obliged to undergo checks, while those who impose them by law exempt themselves. Let’s try another way, the same one traveled by Sun in 2013, which started the “cocaine scandal in Westminster”.
They serve a mobile phone, latex gloves it’s a wipes kit based on cobalt thiocyanate purchased in a shop on the Cristoforo Colombo that sells devices for forensic investigations, from the kit for forensic entomology to the ballistic set. We order two packs of Nark II, one hundred single-dose sachets for the presumptive search for traces of cocaine. Cost: about 100 euros with invoice. Absolutely reliable, they say, but they also warn that “in order to have legal value it is necessary to carry out confirmatory tests in the laboratory”. For our purposes it is of little relevance, we do not prosecute anyone. The advantages are ease of use and immediate feedback. We have tested them in the editorial office: they are discarded and passed on a surface and if there is a trace, even not visible, of astonishment, just by contact. turn blue. Simple isn’t it? Yes, in the office or at home, but in Parliament?
Tuesday 28 March, Rome. Entrance from number 4 in via della Missione, reserved for the press. A clerk points out the limits of the blue pass for journalists. The bathroom of the deputies? “The first door on the left”. To get there, you have to leave the press room, pass the majestic Bernini staircase, go down four steps and take the long corridor that leads to the Hall. The door, however, cannot be seen, it is no coincidence. It is recessed into the dark wooden movable wall and there is no indication that it is the bathroom, not even the name plate. In short, we want it to remain inaccessible to outsiders.
The atrium is a lavish room like a living room: marble on the floor and on the walls, liberty windows on the ceiling, large mirrors and a row of four washbasins in style. In the center, the corridor leading to the men’s toilets arranged on the right and left (the women’s ones are at the top of an internal staircase). In all there are ten arranged on two sides, the first have the suspended and common Vespasians, the next eight, four on each side, have the door. Inside they are somewhat spartan. Each bathroom has a suspended wooden shelf five spans long. Only there, one thinks, could a consumer nailed to the classroom get a lead. In the first zero traces, nothing, and so the second and third. In the fourth a blue dot, something, perhaps a residue. The first day, however, served to “tune in” with the Palace.
Wednesday morning there is little movement but at the resumption it is a full house. On the agenda is the close to the robes in politics, a unique opportunity for the parties to settle old accounts with the other power. At the end of the session, 400 deputies were still present. To understand this, just the analog counter of the coats hanging as far as the eye can see along the corridor walls. Outside it is almost dark, the Cortile d’Onore semi-deserted where the salesmen in demobilization have already emptied the ashtrays for the next day. Journalists, too, who sometimes use the deputies’ bathrooms, are wild birds. The siren sounds in Transatlantic. It is the call to vote for the honorable members and also serves as a signal to outsiders: the area around the Chamber has been (in theory) off-limits from that moment on. It is like an eclipse, the moment that marks the maximum concentration of deputies and the minimum of external presences. Take the new blitz.
In the baths there is a procession of deputies like bees in the hive. The first on the right: gloves, wipes and off to polish the shelf. Nothing. We move on to the next. Someone turns the handle, but in the meantime the narcotest is giving an unexpected result: the pink towel turns an increasingly intense blue, in a few seconds I am spots, extensive spots. That shelf in the morning had been negative: something, in the meantime, must have happened. Second test, just to verify that it is not a “false positive”. The spots are smaller but they are there. They knock again. The lens resumes but then we throw away the towel: don’t say that we have taken biological traces from a member of parliament, as Hyenas. Leaving no films, not even secretly: do not say that we have violated privacy. The mission ends like this. 46 packs left for another round or for the Senate of the Republic. As long as they let us in after having harmed the “honor and decorum” of the institutions.