A Long Finish - 6

by Michael Dibdin

  The telephone woke him, a salvation as cruel as a harpoon descending fathoms to skewer a drowning man and haul him, gored but alive, back to the surface. Blind blunders with the lamp followed, then the brutality of light masking a tumbler of water which spread a glistening trail across the glass-topped table before rolling over the edge and landing on the ingrowing nail of his big toe. And when he finally got the receiver to his ear …

  ‘What’s going on? I heard screams. Are you all right?’

  He did not answer.

  ‘Hello? Are you there? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Yes, everything’s all right.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I woke you,’ the robotic voice went on, ‘but I heard what sounded like someone yelling and I was worried. I thought you might have set the bed on fire or something.’

  Zen took a succession of quick, short, shallow breaths.

  ‘Is it you, Carla?’

  ‘Of course it is!’

  ‘You sound funny.’

  ‘Do I? Oh, shit! Wait a moment …’

  Various clicks and grunts.

  ‘Sorry about that!’ Carla Arduini resumed in her own voice. ‘I’d forgotten to disconnect the attachment I was using. No wonder the man from room service has been giving me odd looks.’

  Zen glanced at the clock, marooned in the puddle of spilt water. It was twenty past five in the morning.

  ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you,’ he said. ‘I must have been having a nightmare.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Anyway, I hate discussing dreams. It seems to give them a credibility they don’t deserve, don’t you think? It’s like someone who mumbles things you can’t quite catch, and then when you ask him to speak up looks hurt and says, “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”’

  ‘Or those pieces of modern art entitled “Untitled”.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Zen, although he couldn’t really understand the connection.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Well, good night,’ said Carla.

  ‘Good night.’

  Zen hung up with a sense of disappointment and loneliness. Sleep was out of the question, at least for the moment. His facetious persiflage about the insignificance of dreams had been pure bravado. While it was true that he couldn’t remember the precise content of the nightmare from which he had been awakened, its malign aura informed his every thought like the memory of an ancient atrocity in which he was somehow implicated.

  His eye fell on the pile of papers he had brought back from the police station the night before. Confused memories of the case he was involved in surfaced like episodes from his dream, the events dimly recalled but their significance lost. When he outlined the whole thing to Nanni Morino, it had all made perfect sense, but now he had lost the connecting thread.

  Then it came to him. The Faigano brothers! That had been the insight he had suddenly but quite characteristically had the day before, the sensed presence of a pattern which abruptly made the hitherto disparate elements of the puzzle picture snap into place. Long ago, after the war, Gianni Faigano had been in love with Chiara Cravioli, but Aldo Vincenzo had raped her and thus forced a marriage to obtain ownership of the family’s land. That was motive enough for the killing, and it also explained the subsequent mutilations. The violator’s body had been violated, the offending parts cut away and destroyed.

  Lisa Faigano’s testimony showed that Gianni had made a phone call to the Vincenzo house that night, and had subsequently gone down to the cellar, from which he could easily have left the house without being observed. Manlio Vincenzo had testified that his father received a phone call at about the same time, and had then gone out for a walk claiming that he needed ‘to get some air’, had discouraged his son from accompanying him and finally provoked Manlio to return alone by an extraordinary and gratuitous display of brutal rudeness.

  Let us suppose, Zen had told Morino, that Gianni Faigano lured his loathed rival out to the fields under some specious pretext and stabbed him to death. Manlio Vincenzo is arrested for the killing and everything looks good for Gianni, until he discovers that Zen has been sent up from Rome to conduct a fresh investigation. Sooner or later, he knows, the love affair between him and Chiara Cravioli in Vincenzo must come to light. The time to act is now, but he needs a suitable scapegoat.

  He selects Minot, whose reputation as an odd and potentially violent recluse with dark secrets in the family cupboard makes him a perfect choice. Minot is also an associate of the Faigano brothers, so his movements are relatively easy to predict. One night when both Minot and Beppe Gallizio are out after truffles, Gianni enters the Gallizio house through the back door, which sticks slightly and is never locked. Using gloves to prevent fingerprints, he takes Beppe’s shotgun and leaves the knife with which he killed Aldo Vincenzo on the kitchen table. He then lies in wait for Gallizio …

  ‘What about Minot’s truck being seen down there?’ Nanni Morino had interjected.

  ‘I’m coming to that,’ replied Zen with a satisfied smile.

  With Gallizio dead, possibly by his own hand, and the Vincenzo murder weapon found in his house, either he or his assailant becomes the primary suspect in the earlier case. But now something unforeseen arises. Bruno Scorrone has noticed a red Fiat truck down in the hollow where Gallizio was shot, possibly belonging to Minot, who is questioned by the Carabinieri. To cover himself, he goes to the Faigano brothers and requests an alibi for the night in question. A less astute pair of conspirators might have refused, but Gianni and Maurizio realize that the same alibi also protects them, and that they can withdraw it at any time. So they agree.

  ‘As for that truck,’ Zen continued, ‘Minot is not the only person round here with a red Fiat pick-up. It’s a common enough model, and it so happens that the Faigano brothers own one too. I saw it at the market here in Alba on Saturday.’

  Nanni Morino nodded dumbly.

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  ‘So when Bruno Scorrone contacted the local maresciallo and mentioned the vehicle he had seen, Gianni Faigano realized that with one more murder he could complete his grand design. Scorrone had not testified under oath, so once he had been silenced his previous evidence would not be admissible in court. Even better, his death could be made to tighten the noose around Minot’s neck. The Faigano brothers – I’m still not sure how much Maurizio was involved – set up a sale of wine to Scorrone and arrange for Minot to deliver it. Then they kill Scorrone and heave his body into the wine vat, leaving a trail of evidence connecting all three murders and pointing straight to Minot, whose sole alibi depends on them!’

  He appealed to the younger man in triumph.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  Nanni Morino shrugged.

  ‘It’s ingenious,’ he admitted. ‘And it all makes sense. But what about Manlio’s evidence? He told the judges that his father was still alive in the middle of the night, that he heard him snoring. If that’s true, Gianni Faigano couldn’t have killed him after the supposed assignation he made by telephone.’

  ‘If it’s true,’ emphasized Zen. ‘But when he told the judges that, Manlio was trying to save his own neck. He repeated the same story to me, but he’s still a suspect, remember. There is no independent evidence to support his claim. He might easily be lying.’

  Morino nodded dubiously.

  ‘I suppose so. But there’s another thing.’

  ‘What now?’ snapped Zen testily.

  ‘If this was a crime of passion, a premeditated act of revenge for some alleged incident dating back forty years or more, why did Faigano wait so long? Why was he so patient? After all this time, you would think he might have resigned himself to the situation. Why didn’t he kill Vincenzo years ago?’

  Zen had had no reply to this the night before, and he had none now, but he felt sure that he was on the right track at last. The details would take care of themselves. What he had to do now was to hold on to the insight he had gai
ned, and to get this Minot in the palm of his hand. He was the key to the whole affair, of that Zen was certain.

  From behind the adjoining wall came a faint stirring and banging, then a sound of flushing water. Evidently Carla couldn’t sleep either. He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. He wished he could remember Amalia Arduini better, but she had faded to an impoverished set of fixed images, like worn snapshots endlessly reshuffled.

  What remained? A vision of her supine and naked, her large breasts lolling around on her chest like half-trained puppies with a mind of their own. He recalled her crying one day at a restaurant when he’d said something – he had long forgotten what – which upset her, and the pleasure with which she greeted him at the door of her apartment in Via Strozzi, as if perpetually amazed that he’d actually shown up. And he also remembered moments when she would drift away from him, when his spell no longer held, and she was sucked back into personal and familial labyrinths from which he was excluded.

  He sat up and reached for the phone.

  ‘Carla?’

  ‘Are you still up, too?’

  ‘It seems so.’

  ‘What are we going to do about it?’

  A pause.

  ‘I wondered if you might want to drop by,’ Zen continued. ‘Or I could come there. I mean, you know, just so as …’

  ‘So as not to be alone?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it exactly. So as not to be alone.’

  Another pause.

  ‘I’ll be there shortly.’

  He hung up and went to put on his dressing-gown. A door closed in the hallway, and then there was a knock at his. Carla Arduini was wearing a stylish orange track-suit and a pair of running shoes. Her hair was combed back and secured by a sweat band. Zen gestured her into the room.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is odd.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  She walked inside, looking around as though for a place to sit down, but in the end remained standing.

  ‘I was just thinking about your mother,’ said Zen, and immediately cursed his thoughtlessness.

  Carla gave a hard little snort.

  ‘You never thought about her while she was alive. Why bother now she’s dead?’

  Zen stared at her in shock.

  ‘Dead?’

  She tossed her head.

  ‘But of course! Why do you think I made my move now, when I’ve known about it for years? I could easily have come to Rome and tracked you down. But she forbade me to do so. She was poor and proud. Pride was all she had left, once her looks went. She didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of knowing how much you’d hurt her. So I had to wait until she died before doing anything about it.’

  Zen was now staring at her with manic intensity.

  ‘Until she died,’ he repeated.

  A curt nod.

  ‘Which was recently?’

  ‘Back in the spring. A stroke.’

  Zen looked away, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘So Irena was right. Of course!’

  ‘The doctor’s friend?’

  ‘Cherchez la femme,’ returned Zen. ‘I understand it all now. He had to wait until she died!’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, let alone how that bitch Irena comes into it.’

  Carla laughed maliciously.

  ‘She couldn’t get over the fact that I was able to spot what Lucchese was playing and to name the harpsichord! She obviously doesn’t care for competition.’

  Zen looked at her, frowning.

  ‘How did you know that, anyway?’

  ‘I used to have a boyfriend who listened to classical music a lot. Scarlatti was one of his favourites, and if you’ve heard one of those clattery, repetitive pieces, you’ve heard them all.’

  ‘And the instrument?’

  ‘Even easier! It was written right there above the keyboard. Andreas Ruckers me fecit. Latin was one of my best subjects at school. But you still haven’t told me what that Irena was right about.’

  Zen waved the subject away.

  ‘It’s not important. Take no notice of me, I’m still half-asleep.’

  Carla consulted her watch.

  ‘Why don’t we go and get a coffee? There’s a place I know which should be open, down by the station. I noticed it the morning you caught the train to Palazzuole.’

  ‘That was you?’ exclaimed Zen. ‘I remember seeing some woman standing there in the shadows.’

  ‘I heard you rummaging around in here, and when you went out I decided to follow you.’

  ‘And then phoned me later at the Vincenzo house. But how did you know I was there?’

  ‘I didn’t. But I heard you tell the guard to let you off at Palazzuole. I thought you might be going to the Vincenzo house, so I phoned up, pretending to be a reporter. To my surprise, the son himself answered, quite rudely, I must say. That confirmed my suspicions, so I kept trying until you showed up. It was a shot in the dark, but it hit the target. God, you must have been scared.’

  She smiled wryly.

  ‘How long ago that seems now! Like years, not days. To think that I was set on terrorizing you with anonymous phone calls. But it all seemed to matter so much to me back then.’

  Zen gazed at her expressionlessly.

  ‘And now?’

  A shrug, brief, almost irritable. Zen looked away.

  ‘I’ll get dressed,’ he mumbled. ‘Then let’s go and try this café of yours.’

  When they came for him, he was asleep, if you could call it sleep. Once again, there were two of them: one in plain clothes, the other a uniformed recruit cradling a machine-gun.

  That first time, the evening before, Minot had just finished eating a bowl of the lentil soup he made every Sunday, and which sat in its cauldron on the stove for the rest of the week. Eating lentils made you rich, his father had told him; every one you swallowed would come back one day as a gold coin. Minot still believed this obscurely, even though he knew that they didn’t make gold coins any more.

  He’d grated some raw carrot and onion into the warmed-up soup, poured in a fat slick of olive oil and then spooned it up, dunking in the heel of the day-old loaf he kept in a battered canister, where it was safe from his familiars. The lid was decorated with a faded picture of a smiling woman and the name of a once-famous brand of boiled sweets.

  When he’d finished eating, Minot sluiced out the bowl under the tap and left it to dry. Then he went next door, sat down and turned on the television, an old black-and-white set given to him by a neighbour who had changed to colour. He could only get two channels, and either the picture or the sound was often indecipherable, but Minot didn’t care. He wasn’t interested in any of the programmes anyway. He just liked having the set on. It made the room more lively.

  He was watching a film when the police arrived. There was heavy interference on the screen, with ghost doubles floating about and the picture skipping upwards repeatedly like the facial tic which used to afflict Angelin when things got tense. But the soundtrack was clear enough, and at first Minot thought that the noise of the jeep drawing up and the imperious knocking was part of the movie. It was only when the rat perched on top of the set swivelled towards the door, nostrils twitching, then leapt down and disappeared, that he had realized his mistake.

  He was taken by surprise this second time, but for a different reason. Ever since they had locked him into his cell the previous evening, the air had been throbbing with loud music from a radio which someone had left on somewhere close by. He had tried shouting and banging on the door to get them to turn it off, but all in vain. In the end he had lain down on the bench provided and tried to get some sleep.

  The bench made a primitive bed, but Minot was not fussy in this respect, any more than in others. The cot he slept on at home was no more spacious and hardly any softer, but the only time he’d ever had trouble sleeping was when the resident rodents used to scurry over the covers and tickle his face with their feet or whiskers. He’d solved that problem by f
ixing rounded wooden caps just below the frame, one at the top of each leg, so that the bed seemed to be resting on four giant mushrooms. The rats couldn’t climb past the caps, and after that Minot slept in peace.

  As he would have done that night, too, if it hadn’t been for that damned music! He hadn’t made any fuss when the cops told him they were taking him into detention. He’d been more or less expecting something of the sort anyway, ever since the maresciallo had taken to dropping in – and to dropping heavy hints. In any case, Minot wasn’t the type to give them any satisfaction by getting upset.

  But after being assaulted for several hours by that thudding, repetitive, tuneless barrage that he’d heard kids listening to in their cars or at the local café, he was finding it hard to remember the motto by which he lived: keep cool, say nothing, make them show their hand. In the end, he’d drifted off into a state which was neither sleep nor wakefulness, but seemed to combine the disadvantages of both. While in this stressful but disoriented condition, a succession of sounds detached themselves from the hellish cacophony with which he was being tormented, the light in his cell was turned on, and he awoke to find himself confronting the two policemen. The armed and uniformed one guarded the door, the other advanced into the cell.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said shortly.

  Minot stood up. Time to go, the man had said, but what time was it? Minot never wore a watch, relying on his knowledge of the seasonal and diurnal rhythms, with occasional data from a distant church bell floating past on the breeze. Now he had a panicky feeling of being completely lost. It might be midnight or midday. Both made sense, so neither did.

  The policemen gestured him out of the cell and escorted him upstairs. As the pounding of the music receded into the distance, Minot began to feel better. Passing a window on the stairs, he saw that the darkness outside the window, although still seemingly complete, had lost its inner confidence, sensing the inevitable defeat to come. Half-six to seven, he thought automatically, probably nearer seven. By the time the uniformed patrolman knocked at a door on the second floor, he was once again in control of the situation.