A Long Finish - 6

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘So why me? Or is it the police in general you have it in for? Did you just pick any officer at random?’

  ‘No, it was personal.’

  Their first course arrived with the same promptitude as the menus, a mound of homemade pasta buried under a fall of truffle flakes so thick as to almost overflow the bowl.

  ‘Personal? We met for the first time two days ago, signorina.’

  ‘Yes, but I already knew who you were, you see. And as soon as I saw a news report saying that you had been sent up here to investigate the Vincenzo murder, I decided that I had to act.’

  She paused.

  ‘No, “decided” is the wrong word. Something decided for me. Even at the time, I remember asking myself what I hoped to gain. But it was irresistible. So I booked a room next to yours in the hotel, and here I am.’

  Zen wound a portion of truffle-scented noodles around his fork and began to eat. At least the food made sense.

  ‘Amalia mentioned your name only once,’ Carla Arduini went on, her own meal still untouched. ‘We’d had a terrible row about nothing, one of those things that happens when you have an adolescent girl and her mother living too closely together. I understand now. that I just resented her control. I wanted to create my own nest, my own way. It’s a very basic instinct.’

  She pushed her dish of pasta away.

  ‘I can’t eat this.’

  ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘I just can’t eat it. I can’t eat anything.’

  Zen clicked his fingers. A waiter instantly materialized.

  ‘The signorina is feeling unwell. Please cancel her main course and offer this to my colleague over there.’

  He pointed to Dario, who had already cleaned his plate. The waiter looked around uncertainly.

  ‘The one with the …’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The waiter vanished.

  ‘So you and your mother had a row,’ Zen continued, pouring himself more wine. ‘I still don’t see where I come into it.’

  Carla Arduini pushed a breadcrumb around the white tablecloth.

  ‘She made me swear not to tell anyone, never to mention it, least of all to you. I think that she had decided never to tell me, but the truth came out the night we had that stupid argument. I said something cheap and cruel, taunting her with not having a man, with not being able to hold the father of her child. I even accused her of feeling jealous of me. Several boys were taking an interest in me at that point, and she seemed to disapprove. I realize now that she was just being cautions. She didn’t want the same thing that happened to her to happen to me.’

  Waiters arrived with more food. Zen waved them away.

  ‘And that’s when she told you?’

  A nod.

  ‘That’s when she told me about Via Strozzi, number twenty-four, in Milan, where she used to live. That’s when she finally revealed the pain and the shame she had been hiding all those years with no one to comfort her, no one to support her, no one to hold her at night …’

  Zen coughed awkwardly and lit a cigarette.

  ‘And that’s when she told me …’ Carla Arduini began, and then broke off, cradling her head in her arms.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Zen with an air of exasperation. ‘What did she tell you?’

  The young woman’s face rose from her arms like the eclipsed sun Zen had beheld that morning: vast, obscure and terrible.

  ‘She told me the name of my father.’

  And so, without warning, it all starts again. He had always known this, he realized now, ever since that morning out on the sandbanks of the Palude Maggiore in the northern lagoon. The trip, the longest he and his friend Tommaso had ever attempted, took a whole day’s hard rowing there and back, so they’d filched some blankets and an old army tent and camped out for the night on an island whose name, if it had one, he’d never been able to discover.

  At dawn the next morning, as the dull, exhausted light strained to heave the insensible darkness off the lagoon like an elderly whore trying to get out from under a drunken client, he had wandered down to the shoreline. Tommaso was still asleep, emitting the thin, raucous snores which had kept Zen awake for much of the night. Where the glaucous water met the liquid mud, marsh birds puttered about like mechanical toys, their beady eyes on the look-out for food. An aeroplane passed high overhead, its remote presence merely emphasizing his solitude. The only other sound was an irregular succession of splashes somewhere nearby, like fish leaping or a bird diving.

  When he first came on it, the stream seemed nothing much. Its gently flowing water, draining down from the marginally higher surface of the island, had cut a passage through the mudbank left by the receding tide, carving out a sequence of miniature bends, ravines and ox-bow lakes which had made him feel as though he were seeing the whole countryside from the plane which had just passed over. He had never been in a plane, of course.

  He settled down to watch his private River Adige, gradually peopling the banks and highlands, surveying towns and villages and connecting them by road and rail, when a vast region of this imaginary terrain – a whole mountainside, with half the plateau beyond – cracked off and, with a terrible, slow inevitability, tumbled into the stream with one of the loud splashes he had heard earlier. The fractured surface thus exposed, as rugged and dense as a split Parmesan cheese, was riddled with scores of tiny red worms twitching frantically this way and that.

  In the end he had stayed there so long that Tommaso started calling for him, warning him that they should start for home and the inevitable interrogations and punishments which awaited them. It hadn’t taken Zen long to work out that the landslides were the result of erosion by the stream, undercutting the cliffs it had created, but he was never able to predict where or when the next collapse would come. Outcroppings which looked shaky, worn and fragile seemed to survive for ever, while a fat chunk of ground you had just walked across with total confidence would suddenly reveal the tell-tale hairline crack, then slowly peel off and plunge into the current, damming it briefly before being scoured away.

  For a time he had tried to influence the outcome, protecting one stretch with clumps of rushes and pieces of driftwood, undermining another with a stick. It was only after he had almost fallen into the stream himself, when the bank he was standing on suddenly gave way beneath him, that he understood that this process had its own rules which he could no more understand or alter than the scarlet worms wriggling helplessly in the exposed innards of the mudbank.

  Which was how he felt now, hundreds of kilometres away and still more hundreds of years – or so it seemed – distant from that childish experience. Something had happened, that was clear, but he had no idea what it was, still less what it meant or might portend for the future. All he could do, as he rose at eight minutes past ten the next morning to address a meeting of the Alba police detachment in the city’s central Commissariato, was to try to remain faithful to this insight.

  ‘I have called you together to review recent developments in the Vincenzo case,’ he said in a speciously confident tone, ‘to explain my current thinking and outline the measures to be taken at this point.’

  He looked around the narrow table, meeting and assessing everyone’s gaze. Present, besides himself, were Vice-Questore Tullio Legna, Ispettore Nanni Morino, and the only woman to have attained the higher echelons in the Alba command, one Caterina Frascana.

  ‘Since my arrival here,’ Zen continued, ‘we have been groping in the dark, stumbling into unexpected obstacles and talking to ourselves in mirrors. There’s been nothing solid to go on, no leads which didn’t turn out to be equivocal, nothing but insubstantial theories and disturbing rumours which could never be put to the test. It’s as if we’ve been collectively dreaming, even hallucinating.’

  His audience sat in an awkward silence, as though at a concert of modern music, unsure whether it was over and time to applaud.

  ‘But that’s all in the past now!’ Zen exclaimed. ‘We can’t go on livi
ng with these doubts and uncertainties. The time has come to act, to put these nebulous suspicions to the test and determine the truth once and for all.’

  The three police officials looked at him oddly, as well they might, since his speech was not directed at them but at a young woman they had never met. Zen had spent so much time wondering what to say to Carla Arduini at their rendezvous later that morning that he had quite neglected to prepare his discourse to the colleagues whom he had summoned to this meeting.

  ‘Someone once remarked that while fruit flies seem eager to drown in the wine you are drinking, they never show any interest in the discarded dregs,’ he went on with an air of slight desperation. ‘Perhaps you’ve noticed the same thing in your own lives. I know I have.’

  The two men nodded sagely, but Caterina Frascana screwed up her face in a frown.

  ‘Fruit flies?’ she repeated.

  Zen gave her a haughty glare.

  ‘I was speaking metaphorically, signora.’

  ‘Oh.’

  La Frascana was clearly going to be a problem, thought Zen. The two men would sit there through any amount of bullshit, cowed into submission by Zen’s hierarchical eminence, but the woman’s eyes were lively and her sharp, alert face seemed predisposed to break into a mocking smile at any moment. With her around, he was going to have to try harder.

  ‘As a result of private initiatives I have undertaken, we now have a promising opening which with your support I intend to exploit to the full. I refer, of course, to the death of Bruno Scorrone. The autopsy and forensic examination I have ordered will, I believe, determine that Scorrone did not die accidentally, as everyone had assumed, but was in fact murdered.

  ‘According to Enrico Pascal, Scorrone went down to the winery that afternoon to pick up a delivery of wine. He didn’t say where it was from or who was bringing it. But when I inspected the site, I noticed a number of flagons of wine standing on a loading dock. They are unmarked, but Pascal tasted the wine and is of the opinion that it was made by the Faigano brothers.’

  Caterina Frascana finally released the laugh she seemed to have been struggling to repress.

  ‘I’d love to see someone trying to make that one stand up in court!’

  Her laughter died away in silence.

  ‘I mean, you can’t hope to make a case against anyone on that basis, dottore,’ she added in an exaggeratedly respectful tone.

  Zen gazed at her in apparent astonishment.

  ‘I have no interest in making a case against Bruno Scorrone’s killer. My task is to solve the murder of Aldo Vincenzo. I assumed that that was understood.’

  Tullio Legna recrossed his legs fussily.

  ‘But what’s the relevance of this Scorrone business to Aldo’s death?’ he asked.

  Behind a confident smile, Zen was thinking furiously. What was the connection? He knew there had seemed to be one the previous evening, as he sat in his room reeling from Carla Arduini’s revelations and trying to anchor himself by getting a grip on work.

  ‘I was reading in the paper the other day that the beating of a butterfly’s wings in a South American jungle can cause a hurricane thousands of miles away,’ he began.

  Caterina Frascana stifled another laugh.

  ‘Good thing we don’t have cc that size here!’

  ‘The fruit flies are bad enough,’ murmured Nanni Morino.

  Zen did not deign to glance at them.

  ‘The same thing applies to this situation. There’s no point in our sitting around here trying to do everything by the rules. That would be like a group of eighteenth-century philosophers struggling to understand a world which is only explicable in terms of chaos theory.’

  This time, the three officials exchanged a meaningful glance.

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind, dottore,’ said Tullio Legna, with an elegant little bow. ‘But what exactly is your point?’

  Alone at the head of the table, Zen gave a disappointed sigh.

  ‘I assumed that that was obvious to the meanest intelligence. Very well, then, I’ll spell it out for you. Three men have died. My interest is only in the first, but the other two appear to be linked to that event in various ways. The knife found at Beppe Gallizio’s house may well be the one used to kill Aldo Vincenzo. Bruno Scorrone was in turn an important witness in the Gallizio affair.’

  ‘The forensic tests on the knife are not complete,’ Tullio Legna objected. ‘As for Scorrone, he merely mentioned having seen a truck near the scene. He didn’t make a sworn statement, and the person implicated turns out to have an alibi. With all due respect, dottore, I don’t quite see what measures we can take on this basis.’

  Zen slapped the table with a force which startled even him.

  ‘We can stir things up! If we don’t understand the connection between these crimes, neither does anyone else. We can exploit that fact to crack this conspiracy wide open.’

  ‘Conspiracy?’ queried Nanni Morino with an incredulous grin.

  ‘Exactly! A conspiracy not of silence but of chatter. Down south, if you try to get people to cooperate with the police, they give you sullen looks and clam up. Here they smile and buy you a drink and you can’t shut them up, but the net result is the same. Everyone knows who killed Aldo Vincenzo, just like they knew that Lamberto Latini was sleeping with the tobacconist’s wife, and their response is to take refuge in garrulous evasiveness. They’ll tell you anything else you want to know, and a lot of stuff you don’t, but not that. Well, we’re going to dig it out of them just the same, and Scorrone’s death is the lever we’re going to use. Any questions?’

  This time, no one dared speak.

  ‘Very good! Now to the details. I want Gianni and Maurizio Faigano brought in for questioning. They are to be transported and detained separately, under armed guard at all times.’

  ‘On what charge?’ asked Tullio Legna.

  ‘Suspicion of illicit trafficking in wine without due permits and papers.’

  ‘But we have no proof.’

  ‘I’ll deal with that. As soon as the brothers have been taken away, I propose to institute a search under a warrant I applied for before coming here. I’ll either find something or fake it.’

  Tullio Legna frowned, then smiled nervously.

  ‘Is this how they operate down in Rome?’

  ‘It’s how I operate, wherever I may be, when the situation requires irregular measures. I take full responsibility for the means used and the eventual outcome. All I ask of you is prompt and efficient compliance with my orders. Do I have it?’

  ‘Of course, dottore!’ his cowed subordinates assured him.

  ‘Good. Let’s get going. I want an impressive show, the might of the state in action. Bring in some men from Asti if necessary. Put the fear of God into everyone concerned and give the neighbours something to talk about. I’ll return here as soon as the warrant is signed, and I’ll need a car and driver at my disposal. Any further initiatives will be decided after I have interrogated the Faigano brothers.’

  He surveyed the table.

  ‘Any questions?’

  There were none. Zen collected his overcoat from the hook near the door and left. In contrast to the shocked hush he had created in the room upstairs, the street was buzzing with activity and noise. Traffic was backed up by a builder’s truck attempting an almost impossible manoeuvre to reverse into the entrance to a building under renovation, and a variety of horns sounded at intervals like an orchestra warming up. The air was crisp and sunny, but distinctly colder than it had been, the first hint of winter’s rigour making itself felt.

  Zen walked briskly up the street to the main piazza, feeling well pleased with his improvised performance. He had been true to his insight. Something had happened. The psychic stalemate he had suffered from for so long had been broken. Life had returned and things were on the move again. What more could anyone ask?

  The far end of the piazza was closed off by the sober, restrained façade of the cathedral, a plain mass of brickwork bro
ken only by a rose-window and a few saints in niches. Zen searched the curved portal for Carla Arduini, but there was no sign of her. They had agreed to meet here at ten o’clock, and it was now almost a quarter past. Zen felt a sense of his former paralysis return, like a cloud skimming the sun. He could boss the Alba police detachment about as much as he liked, but if Carla decided not to go through with it after all, there was nothing he could do about that.

  He was about to turn away when she appeared from a nearby café, waving and calling out. Still some distance away, she stopped, confronting him.

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’

  Zen nodded decisively, his sense of energy and purpose flooding back.

  ‘Absolutely! It’s the only way.’

  He led her around the corner, into the sheltered, decrepit courtyard of the Palazzo Lucchese. As before, Irena answered the bell. This time she was fully dressed, but seemed flustered.

  ‘The prince is playing,’ she announced.

  The sweet clamour of some plucked instrument tickled the lugubrious silence of the massive hall.

  ‘How charming!’ exclaimed Carla Arduini, gliding effortlessly past Irena. ‘I just love music. Is he really a prince, this friend of yours?’

  She strode off down the hallway towards an open door at the far end. Irena watched with a look of panic.

  ‘Wait! You can’t go in now!’

  But Carla could and did, followed after a moment by Zen and the distraught Irena. It was a large corner room, spacious and completely bare except for an instrument like a small piano, with a painted lid and a Latin inscription on the body. But the sound which emerged was more like a band of gypsy guitarists than a piano: precise, sexy and urgent, with stabbing chords and rapid passage work in the high range and a dark, sonorous bass which rebounded off the walls and floor like gunshots.

  At the keyboard, Lucchese looked imperious and incisive, all his anachronistic airs and graces scorched away by the intensity of the music. There were lots of wrong notes, or what sounded to Zen as such, but they were lost in the sheer impetus of the playing, intent only on completing its preordained trajectory, impervious to flaws and lapses.