The Partisan Heart

by Gordon Kerr

  ‘So what kind of women does he usually go for?’ Michael smiled conspiratorially, humouring him.

  ‘Usually they are older, widows or spinsters who are just glad to have some tender loving care.’

  ‘What is it now then, Widow or spinster?’

  ‘Oh, it’s the widow Briganza. She’s fifty, lost her husband fifteen years ago. As I say, hungry for a little TLC.’

  ‘And how long before he opens for business again?’

  The barman looked at his watch. ‘He will be in for a coffee and a brandy on the stroke of twelve, signore. But, hey, who wants to know all this. You a journalist?’

  ‘Yes, I am. From London.’

  ‘Once, you know, that would have been some kind of big deal round here, but we’ve had them in here from all over the world – the States, Australia, Scandinavia, you name it. I’ve been on TV all over the world. My cousin in Sydney saw me being interviewed.’

  ‘So, you were on duty then, when the kidnapping …?’

  ‘Actually, no, signore, but most of you reporters really didn’t care. It was my brother Claudio who was on duty that day, but he is a little camera-shy, so I have been standing in for him.’

  The man at the end of the bar signalled for a refill and the barman went over to serve him. Michael picked up a copy of La Stampa from a nearby table and lost himself temporarily in the affairs of the world.

  It was fifteen minutes later, at exactly twelve, as the barman had predicted, that Alfio Bonfadini came in. It was not too difficult to work out that it was him because of the scaffolding of plasters and bandages that covered his nose.

  He was a plump, balding man whom Michael estimated to be in his early fifties. He had something almost feminine about him; his walk or his posture, Michael was unsure. Bonfadini ordered a coffee and a brandy and stood at the bar, lifting the tiny coffee cup to his mouth, a cigarette between the fingers of the same hand and his little finger crooked delicately like an English aristocrat.

  ‘Signor Bonfadini?’ Michael had gone to the bar and ordered a beer. He couldn’t drink another macchiato, as it generally played havoc with his digestion if he drank more than one cup of Italian coffee.

  ‘Maybe. Who wants to know?’ He changed the position of his foot on the chrome foot-bar that ran along the base of the bar, turning towards Michael.

  ‘Michael Keats of the London Evening Post.’ Michael extended his hand.

  ‘Un altro giornalista meschino!’ he said, ignoring Michael’s outstretched hand. ‘Look, I have nothing to say to the press. Nothing that has not already been said.’

  ‘But we would all like to know what you really saw of the incident, signor Bonfadini. You must have seen or heard something.’

  ‘Look, signor …’

  ‘Keats.’

  ‘Signor Keats. Most of the time during which this incident took place I was flat on my back with my nose spread across my face. I’ve already told the police a hundred times what I saw and heard. I heard the scream, then saw the van pull up, watched three guys get out …’

  ‘Hang on a second, Signor Bonfadini. You just said you heard the scream and then saw the van arrive on the scene. Is that right? That’s not exactly what you’ve been saying up till now, is it?’

  Bonfadini suddenly looked worried. He began to stammer. ‘Erm … I … I’m not sure … perhaps … perhaps not.’ And then angrily, collecting himself again. ‘I can’t remember. I was knocked senseless. My nose was smashed by that thug, Mazzini.’

  The barman returned to the bar from wiping some tables outside and Michael took Bonfadini by the arm, guiding him to a table in the corner where they could not be overheard.

  ‘Un altro cognac per signor Bonfadini, per favore,’ he called over his shoulder to the barman, pushing the other man into his seat and taking a seat opposite, both elbows on the table, looking hard into Bonfadini’s face.

  ‘Look, signor Bonfadini … Alfio … I am not concerned about whether your nose was broken by Ignazzio Mazzini or by a kidnapper. What is important is what happened just before that. So, concentrate. What came first – the scream or the van?’

  Bonfadini was visibly shaken, reaching nervously with a shaking hand to the bandages across his face as if their very presence provided him with confirmation that all was well with the world.

  ‘I … I am not sure. I was walking past the window,’ he was looking at the table, his eyes screwed up, going through his actions carefully in his mind. ‘I had to pee; you know how it is when you have been making love?’ Something approaching a leer crossed his face.

  ‘Yes, and …?’

  ‘Ah, signore, I remember now. Silvia – that’s the wife of that ignorant farmer, Mazzini …’ A faraway look came into his eyes. ‘Oh, Madonna, what a body, signore. The body of a …’

  ‘Okay, Alfio, I get the message.’

  ‘Sorry, signore. I heard the scream, as I say, as I was making my way across the room and I remember I pulled the curtain back to see what was going on. It was then that I saw the van come down the street and stop out there in front of the bar.’

  ‘So, you did hear the scream before you saw the van.’

  ‘I suppose I must have. I heard the scream and then looked out of the window to see what was going on.’

  Michael sat back to consider this. If the scream happened before the van arrived then surely it was obvious that one of the kidnappers was already in the bar. Why had the police not worked that out?

  Bonfadini threw back the cognac that Michael had bought for him and made as if to go.

  ‘Now I must get back to work, signore.’

  ‘Just one more question, Alfio, if you don’t mind.’ Michael grabbed his arm as he stood up.

  ‘Okay, but please make it quick.’ He looked at his watch.

  ‘How many men got out of the van when it arrived?’

  ‘Three. Definitely three. Two from the back and the driver.’

  ‘And how many dragged Teresa Ronconi out of the bar?’

  ‘Again three. But, look, signore, I have to go. My shop …’ He stood up, shrugging his shoulders at Michael and bustling off in that slightly effeminate way of his towards the door of the bar.

  So, the action had actually begun in the bar before the van arrived, Michael thought. However, according to what he remembered of the press reports he had studied, there had been no other witnesses apart from Alfio and the barman.

  ‘Your brother, is he around, signore?’ he asked the barman.

  ‘Claudio? Oh, no. All of this … he has taken it very badly. As soon as the media started to arrive in town he took off. He’s the delicate sort, you see.’ He smiled contemptuously at the thought of his brother’s delicacy. It was obvious to Michael that it was a source of some tension for the two men.

  ‘Oh, and where did he take off to then? Milano? Roma?’

  ‘Oh no, signore, he couldn’t go that far. I don’t think Claudio has been to Milano more than twice in his entire life– he certainly only went further than that when he did his military service in Firenze.’

  ‘So where …?’

  ‘He’s gone up the mountain.’

  ‘Up the mountain?’

  ‘Sì. Like a lot of people round here, our family has a little chalet up in the mountains. In the old days they took the cattle up there in the summer. These days we rarely go up there. I want to sell the damn place, but Claudio won’t agree. Anyway, at the first sign of a TV camera, he was off.’

  ‘So where exactly is this chalet of yours? How can I find it?’

  The other man smiled. ‘No, signore. You don’t quite understand. My brother doesn’t wish to speak to you or any other journalist. That’s why he’s gone up there, to get away from all of you.’

  His eyes fell to Michael’s hand, in which was clasped a wad of notes. Michael began to slide them across the bar.

  ‘There’s two hundred and fifty thousand lire for you if you’ll give me directions to the chalet. And the same for Claudio for a half hour co
nversation. Come on, how many macchiati do you have to pour to make that much profit?’

  ‘Look, signore, my brother and I may disagree about a lot of things, but I still would not betray him. You won’t find out from me where he is.’ He turned away from Michael and walked to the other end of the bar.

  Michael shrugged his shoulders, picked up the fistful of notes and walked out into the street. He was walking slowly in the direction of his hotel, wondering what to do next when he heard a voice behind him.

  ‘Hey, inglese, wait.’

  An elderly man whom he at first failed to recognise, was limping breathlessly behind him.

  ‘Ah, signore …’ He stopped in front of Michael, breathing heavily from his exertions and removing his cap to wipe his sleeve across his sweat-covered brow.

  ‘Signore, I was in the bar …’ Michael recognised him now. He was the man who had been standing at the other end of the bar. ‘… and I overheard your conversation with Franco, the barman. I wondered, is your offer open to anyone?’

  ‘Offer?’

  ‘I mean the two hundred and fifty thousand for directions to Claudio’s chalet in the mountains?’

  ‘It might be. Do you know …?’

  ‘Indeed, I do, signore. I am a friend of the family. I used to go up there hunting with the boys’ father.’

  The road was hardly a road at all. It switched back and forth up the side of the mountain. For a half mile or so the precipitous drop fell away on his right and then for the next half mile it fell to his left. The valley down below became increasingly distant and then disappeared from view entirely as he drove over a ridge, deeper into the mountains.

  Every now and then he would pass a track leading off the road with a small, usually hand-made sign announcing the ownership of whatever property lay through the trees at the end of the track.

  The air was very pure and he opened the car windows to let it circulate.

  The man with the limp had given him precise instructions as to which road of the several that led up into the mountains he should take. He had told him that the place he was looking for was at the very end of the road he was now on and that it was signposted ‘Casa Scatti’, Scatti being the surname of Claudio and Franco.

  ‘It is a long way up, signore, about three hundred metres beyond the end of the road. It’s the highest chalet. You have to leave your car and walk the last part. It’s a steep climb.’

  He had, indeed, been climbing for about thirty minutes on a track that became ever more precipitous and ever less smooth. The track began to narrow and branches began to brush against the sides of the car. Then up ahead he saw a scruffy, old, red Cinquecento parked against a wall of trees that signalled the end of the road. To the right, a footpath led off upwards through the trees and a wooden board nailed to a tree with a painted arrow underneath it told him that Casa Scatti lay at the end of the path.

  Michael took his shoulder bag, containing his tape machine and spare tapes and batteries, locked his car and set out on the footpath. It was clearly cut through the trees and bushes, but the grass and ferns growing across it showed how little used it was. Above him, the trees closed in and he was able to see only patches of sky between the overhanging branches. There was complete silence apart from the dull sound of his footsteps and his increasingly heavy breathing.

  At last, he broke out of the trees into a grassy clearing and there in front of him stood the Casa Scatti: a small, stone building with a wooden roof and a raised porch at the front, accessed by a wooden staircase of four steps. There was a deathly hush in the clearing; not even the movement or call of a bird shattered the silence. Above the house, the jagged peak of the mountain rose into the clear, blue sky, the first snow of winter clinging to its steep, rocky slopes.

  ‘Buongiorno!’ Michael paused at the foot of the steps up to the porch. No sound or movement came from within. ‘Claudio!’ He shouted now to the forest around him, thinking that perhaps Claudio was walking or climbing nearby. Still nothing.

  He waited a moment and then climbed the steps. Arriving at the door, he raised a hand to knock upon it, only to find that it was actually slightly ajar.

  ‘Hello!’ he called, more nervously this time, gingerly pushing the door open and peering into the darkness within. The curtains were closed. He stepped cautiously inside, his eyes becoming used to the dark. It was furnished very simply: just a table, some chairs, and a sofa, but the chairs had been upended and as he took a step forward, Michael felt and heard the crunch of broken glass beneath his feet.

  There was an odd smell. Like food gone rotten and left for a week. There was also a sound, a deep humming, seeming to come from behind the door to his right.

  His hand grasped the door handle and began to slowly turn it. At the same time, he said once more, but more quietly this time, ‘Buongiorno? Claudio?’

  The door opened and he was hit by a sickening stench that invaded his nostrils, seeped down his air passages and ended in the pit of his stomach, pushing up the coffee and beer that he had drunk earlier in the day.

  There before him, slumped in a bath, was the body of a man he presumed to be Claudio Scatti, bathing in his own slowly congealing blood. Around his head he wore a hood made up of hundreds of buzzing flies, frenziedly investigating a gaping wound in his neck, which he wore like a second smile. Claudio’s eyes stared sightlessly straight at Michael in the doorway and his mouth was frozen for all eternity in the midst of a silent scream.

  Michael’s legs momentarily began to fold under him, as the horror of the sight invaded his mind and the smell his senses. Then he turned and ran, gasping for air and gagging. He banged painfully into the doorjamb and then stumbled and fell down the four steps that led down to the lush grass of the clearing, landing on all fours at the foot. He retched dryly and painfully, inhaling great lungfuls of clean mountain air between each crisis of his body.

  ‘God!’ Tears ran down his cheeks, partly from the exertions of retching, but equally from the shock of the hellish sight that he had just witnessed.

  Clambering unsteadily to his feet, he staggered back into the shady comfort of the trees, plummeting through the branches and bushes that threatened to eventually swallow the path entirely. He reached the car, got in, locking the doors immediately and sat back, his head burrowing deep into the headrest, his eyes screwed tight shut.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ he squeezed the words like toothpaste between gritted teeth. ‘Jesus Christ!’

  *

  It had been a difficult few hours. He had driven back down the mountain recklessly, almost losing control several times on the steep, switch-back road. On returning to his hotel room he had locked the door and had drawn the curtains, peering out between them, as if expecting to see someone staring back up at him from the street outside.

  It seemed pretty obvious to him now that Claudio Scatti had been involved in some way in the kidnapping. If Alfio Bonfadini’s memory was right, and there was a scream from the bar before the arrival of the van, it could only be that Claudio, alone in the bar with Teresa Ronconi, had been involved, had begun the action.

  And now, he was dead.

  Michael realised it was foolish, but he had decided not to go to the police. He gambled that Scatti’s body would remain undiscovered for some time and that, in turn, would give him some time to investigate further and put together a more comprehensive story. And, anyway, there was not very much Michael could do for him now.

  It had not been difficult to find the Mazzini farm; the television news had given the name of the village near which it was situated. About five miles from Beldoro, having climbed even more switchback roads with precipitous edges, he came upon a group of houses – it could hardly be called a village – and had been directed along a dirt track road by an old woman who stood in the road watching him drive off, shaking her head at what he presumed she thought was the foolishness of Ignazio Mazzini getting his shame paraded on television and brought these foreigners to visit him.

  Not
far along, this track had widened into a small plateau and there in its midst stood the stone farmhouse to which an unwilling Ignazio had brought his equally unwilling bride, Silvia, five years ago. The house gave the impression of having grown out of the earth. Either that or it was tumbling back into it. It was difficult to make out if its walls were actually walls or just piles of large stones onto which a roof had been thrown. Old, rusting farm machinery added to the overall impression of disintegration and neglect.

  As he pulled up on the uneven ground, however, a snarling dog came running towards him, teeth bared and eyes red with fury. Foamy saliva now ran down the car window where the dog’s sharp-toothed mouth had jumped up. Michael instinctively pushed down the locks and leant inwards away from the muffled growling. The dog now stood about three feet away from the car, snarling and barking at him. Its fury showed little sign of abating until the door on the farmhouse slowly opened and a huge figure stepped out, a figure Michael recognised from the television as Ignazio Mazzini.

  ‘Hoh! Via!’ he growled at the dog which immediately started whimpering and backing away from the car, its tail between its legs.

  Ignazio stood at the door staring in Michael’s direction. He wore what appeared to be the same scruffy dark suit that he had been wearing as he walked into the police station on television and on his head was a small, trilby-style hat of the kind the men wore in these mountains. His dark face was etched with deep lines and his eyes sank deep into their sockets.

  Michael gingerly opened the car door and stepped out, but the dog was sufficiently cowed by Ignazio’s voice to do nothing but yelp in a shame-faced way, wagging its tail and looking at him with large eyes.

  ‘Buongiorno,’ he walked towards the house, more confident now that the dog had been ordered to leave him alone.