Dead Lagoon - 4

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘Is that you, Ellen?’ he asked tentatively.

  A burst of incomprehensible verbiage followed. He was just about to hang up when he heard a familiar voice speaking broken Italian.

  ‘Aurelio? What’s going on? Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘This can’t wait, Ellen.’

  ‘Five in the goddamn morning! Sunday morning!’

  ‘I think we’ve found him.’

  As in their earlier conversation, every pause seemed disturbing because of the acoustic flatness caused by the satellite equipment switching the circuits to more profitable use. It was as if the line had gone dead, yet the moment he spoke again the connection instantly resumed. The quality of silence was evidently meaningless in electronic terms.

  ‘I’m going to need his dental and medical records and anything else you can lay hands on which might assist in the identification of the remains,’ Zen continued. ‘Ideally a DNA profile, if one exists. Get on to this lawyer about it. What’s his name? Bill?’

  ‘That’s who you just spoke to.’

  ‘I’m so happy for you,’ Zen replied nastily. ‘He sounds a real fire-eater.’

  He lowered his voice.

  ‘But listen, cara. Tell him to keep this under wraps until further notice, all right? It looks as though there may be some powerful players involved, and my position is already extremely delicate.’

  Ellen spoke distantly in English. A disgruntled but incisive male voice replied. Zen didn’t understand a single word the man said, but he took an instant dislike to him.

  ‘Do you have a fax number?’ Ellen asked in Italian.

  Zen consulted the internal directory and dictated the number to her.

  ‘Bill wants to ask a few questions,’ she told him.

  There was a brief exchange in English off-stage before Ellen returned to translate.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  Zen tried to remember what Ellen looked like in bed. All he could call to mind were her nipples, large and dark and surprisingly insensitive, judging by how hard she liked them tweaked.

  ‘The person we found is certainly dead. Very dead.’

  Another off-stage buzz while this was translated for Bill’s benefit.

  ‘Where was the body found?’ Ellen asked in Italian.

  ‘On an island in the lagoon.’

  More whispering, then Ellen’s translation.

  ‘Have you any idea what happened and who is responsible?’

  Zen glanced at the window. It was no longer snowing, but the sagging sky looked ready to burst anew at any moment.

  ‘Nothing worth discussing at this stage. But if the case is going to break, it’ll do so in the next forty-eight hours. Until then I need a free hand. That means a press blackout and no interference from the family.’

  Ellen duly translated. There was a pause, then a brief male response.

  ‘Bill agrees,’ said Ellen.

  ‘Bravo for Bill.’

  He grinned maliciously.

  ‘Is he good news in other ways?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean, Aurelio?’

  ‘If you don’t know by now, it’s too late to learn.’

  ‘It’s never too late,’ Ellen retorted.

  Zen laughed.

  ‘I’ve discovered that too.’

  ‘So I gather,’ remarked Ellen primly. ‘Tania, isn’t it? Is she good news?’

  Zen’s smile abruptly disappeared.

  ‘All the best, Ellen,’ he said with finality.

  ‘And to you, Aurelio.’

  She breathed a long transatlantic sigh.

  ‘I’d like to see you happy, but somehow …’

  ‘Somehow what?’

  This time the synthetic silence went on so long that he began to think that they really had been cut off.

  ‘Somehow I just can’t imagine it,’ Ellen said at last.

  Zen instinctively touched his genitals in the gesture traditionally used to ward off bad luck.

  ‘Just make sure the material I requested gets here on time,’ he told her coldly, and hung up.

  Aldo Valentini arrived shortly before three o’clock, having been plucked from the bosom of his in-laws by helicopter and deposited at a landing pad in the hospital complex just north of the Questura. Despite these excitements, the Ferrarese looked poised and spruce in a Sunday leisure outfit which had evidently cost considerably more than the off-the-peg suits he wore to work so as not to upstage his boss Francesco Bruno, who prided himself on being a snappy dresser. Aurelio Zen was there to meet him, the soles of his shoes soaked from the melting slush all around, coat and tie flying in the mini-hurricane created by the rotors.

  ‘Did everything go all right?’ he asked as Valentini stepped out, ducking unnecessarily to avoid the spinning blades.

  ‘I just wish someone would lay on something like this every time we have to go over there! It’s only three or four times a year, but the prospect fills me with dread weeks before, and the memory lingers for months afterwards.’

  ‘What’s so awful about it?’

  Zen couldn’t have cared less – an only child, deprived of any close relations, he had always considered family life a sanctioned form of incest – but he needed to keep Valentini sweet.

  ‘It’s Virgilio,’ Valentini explained as they walked back along Calle Capello. ‘The guy’s a librarian and he’s envious of this glamorous and exciting lifestyle which he thinks I have. If I tell some anecdote about the job he accuses me of not being interested in his work, and if I suck up to him like he wants then he gets pissed off because he thinks I’m being patronizing. You can’t win.’

  Zen agreed that in-laws were notoriously a problem, and privately congratulated himself on not having any.

  ‘Anyway, this helicopter transfer certainly did wonders for my prestige,’ Valentini went on. ‘They were dying to know what it was all about, but I made it clear that my lips were sealed.’

  He glanced at Zen.

  ‘What is it about, anyway?’

  Zen kicked a mushy mound of snow out of his way and gave Valentini a rapid rundown on the progress of the Sfriso case. The wind had moderated and veered round to a mild sirocco with just enough easterly steel in it to keep off the rain. As a result, the city was filled with piles of snow like rotting garbage.

  ‘That’s a real coup!’ Valentini exclaimed with a low whistle. ‘Congratulations, Aurelio. But where do I come into it?’

  ‘I want you to take over the case.’

  Aldo Valentini stopped and stared at Zen.

  ‘Why would you give something like that away?’

  Zen clapped him on the arm.

  ‘Because underneath this cynical exterior I’m a saint!’

  He grinned at Valentini’s expression.

  ‘No, I didn’t really think you’d buy that. The truth is simpler. The case is going to be taken away from me anyway. My remit here only covers the Zulian affair. No one’s going to let me hijack a big breakthrough like this, and as long as it’s got to go to someone else, why not you? It was yours originally, after all.’

  Valentini sighed.

  ‘Thanks, Aurelio. I really appreciate it. But it won’t work.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If drugs are involved, it’ll go to Ruzza or Castellaro. It’s their area of competence, after all.’

  Zen shook his head decisively.

  ‘Their area of incompetence, you mean. Their boss was working hand-in-glove with the gang. Gavagnin had been bought and sold, and who knows how many of his colleagues with him? There’s no telling how far the rot may have spread, and it would only take one tip-off to ruin the whole operation. Bruno is going to give the follow-up to someone outside the Drugs Squad whether he wants to or not, just to cover his own back.’

  A slow smile spread across Valentini’s face as he acknowledged the truth of this. The stakes in a successful outcome to the Sfriso case could hardly have been higher. Even more than smashing the drug gang, it was a question of d
ishing the Carabinieri, who had lifted the Gavagnin killing from under the noses of the police. Their own colleague’s death being investigated by their hated rivals and sworn enemies!

  One of the many welcome innovations of the new Criminal Code had been provisions for greater cooperation between the various law enforcement agencies – five, if you counted the Border Guards, the Forestry Guards, and the enforcement arm of the Ministry of Finance – but this amounted to little more than fine words without any bearing on the realities of the situation they purported to describe. As long as the competing power bases at ministerial level were each allowed to maintain their own police forces, those forces were going to be in competition.

  In this case, the Polizia had opened a file of their own on Gavagnin’s death, but the military had all the relevant information and they were playing it very close to their chests, using every delaying tactic in the book. The result was a grudge match with huge amounts of ego and status at stake. Any police officer who succeeded in dishing the Flying Flames over this one would be guaranteed not just fast-track promotion but legendary status amongst his colleagues for the rest of his career.

  Having unloaded the Sfriso case on to the willing shoulders of Aldo Valentini, Zen phoned Marcello Mamoli. The Deputy Public Prosecutor was a good deal less amenable about being disturbed at home on Sunday than Valentini had been.

  ‘This continuing invasion of my private life is absolutely intolerable, Zen! I’m simply not prepared to go on living in a state of perpetual harassment.’

  Zen assumed his most ingratiating tone.

  ‘A hundred thousand apologies, signor giudice. I would not have presumed to disturb you at such a time if it were not that there has been a development which absolutely changes the scope and thrust of the investigation …’

  ‘Get on with it!’

  ‘The search of Sant’Ariano which you so wisely instructed me to undertake has been an overwhelming success. We have recovered not only the missing consignment of heroin, but also a corpse.’

  Mamoli was silent a moment.

  ‘Has the victim been identified?’

  ‘Not yet, signor giudice. It was however recovered in close proximity to the bag containing the heroin, and the presumption must be that it was this body, viewed by torchlight in the dark, which convinced Giacomo Sfriso that he had seen a walking corpse.’

  ‘But on Sant’Ariano!’ exclaimed Mamoli. ‘Why should anyone be killed there? Why should anyone be there in the first place, come to that?’

  ‘These are the very questions to which I hope to have answers shortly, signor guidice. Filippo Sfriso has named three men whom he suspects of having a hand in his brother’s death. They are Giulio Bon, of Chioggia, and Massimo Bugno and Domenico Zuin, both from Venice. I would like authorization to take all three into custody and question them separately about these events and related matters.’

  He had retailed this lie with complete assurance, but now he held his breath. Everything depended on Mamoli’s response. After a moment the magistrate sighed.

  ‘Very well, Zen. Seeing as it’s Sunday, I’ll let you run with this for now. But tomorrow I’m going to want a full accounting of the measures you have taken, and God help you if it doesn’t add up.’

  It took Zen the best part of an hour to organize the paperwork and logistics of the next part of the operation. This was the part of his work he had always disliked, particularly in a strange town where the staff were just names, their characters and capabilities unknown to him. In the end he divided the task between three separate teams, each with its own boat. He took charge of the first, and chose two names at random from the duty sheet to lead the other two.

  The three launches left just after half past four. The raids were synchronized to prevent any tip-offs, while the return to the Questura was staggered so that none of the detainees knew that the others were also being held for questioning. Giulio Bon and Domenico Zuin were both at home watching Milan play Juventus on television, while Massimo Bugno was picked up at a nearby bar where he had gone to play cards.

  At the Questura, the three were taken to separate offices which Zen had commandeered on different floors of the building, where he visited them in the course of the early evening. Zuin and Bugno both seemed bewildered by what had happened. When Zen offered them the services of a court-appointed lawyer, Zuin shrugged as though it had nothing to do with him, while Bugno protested incoherently that there must have been some mistake.

  ‘Too fucking right, son,’ Zen told him in dialect. ‘And you’re the one who made it.’

  Giulio Bon was an altogether stiffer proposition. The only statement he made was to demand the services of his lawyer. Zen nodded helpfully.

  ‘What was his name, again?’

  Bon frowned.

  ‘The same as before!’ he insisted. ‘The plump one with the beard.’

  ‘I’ve yet to meet an undernourished lawyer, and so many of them wear beards these days, particularly the ones who are losing the stuff on top. Unless you can recall the name of your legal representative, Signor Bon, I’ll have to select one off the rota.’

  Bon scowled but said nothing more. Leaving him in the charge of an armed guard, Zen returned to his office. He was in no hurry to proceed. The longer the three were left to soak in their own sense of anxiety, isolation and helplessness, the more likely one of them would be to crack when the time came. And one was all the leverage Zen needed to break the Durridge case wide open.

  He sat down and lit a cigarette. Mamoli had made it clear that the state of grace which Zen currently enjoyed was exceptional and must end with the start of the next working week. The next stage would be to apply for arrest warrants and turn the three men over to Mamoli for formal interrogation, but before he did that he would need either a confession or some substantial piece of evidence. There was no certainty that he would be able to obtain either, particularly with his official position under threat now that the Ada Zulian investigation had folded. Not only had he no authorization from the Ministry to investigate the Durridge case, but officially speaking there was no such thing. He was a phantom chasing a chimera.

  In short, it promised to be a stressful and exhausting twenty-four hours, and the first thing to do was to make sure that his emotional flanks were covered. He picked up the phone and dialled the Morosinis’ number. It was Rosalba who answered, and before he could get in a single word Zen had to sit out several minutes of being told off for not coming to Sunday lunch. His protests that he had not known that he was invited merely made matters worse.

  ‘What were you expecting, a piece of pasteboard with gold lettering? Do you think we would want to send an old family friend to eat Sunday lunch all alone in some miserable trattoria? Is that the kind of people you think we are?’

  Quickly trying a new tack, Zen started to explain that he had had to turn down an earlier invitation from the Paulons.

  ‘Fabia Paulon?’ exclaimed Rosalba indignantly. ‘That slut couldn’t cook an egg without …’

  ‘In any case, I’ve been at work all day.’

  ‘On Sunday?’ cried Rosalba, hardly pausing in her stride. ‘What are they thinking of? Let them get some of the younger men to do it. There’s no cause to drag an old man like you out of the house on his one day of …’

  ‘Is Cristiana there?’ Zen cut in.

  ‘I’ll call her. And listen, Aurelio, come to dinner tomorrow.’

  ‘If I’m free.’

  ‘Free? What is this, a prison? Make yourself free!’

  Zen smiled minimally.

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just call your daughter, will you?’

  ‘What’s it about?’ demanded Rosalba, suddenly suspicious.

  ‘I need to have a word with her about her husband.’

  Rosalba grunted and put the phone down. Zen stubbed out his cigarette and stared at the window. The winter dusk was gathering like a hostile mob. Footsteps crossed a distant floor a
nd then a cherished voice caressed his senses.

  ‘Aurelio.’

  ‘Hello, darling.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t make it last night, but I just couldn’t get rid of the people I was with.’

  ‘What about tonight?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Mamma said you wanted to talk to me about Nando.’

  ‘That was just to give me a reason for calling. I don’t want to put you in an awkward position.’

  ‘Or yourself,’ Cristiana added tartly.

  ‘That too. So, what about it?’

  ‘Would about seven be okay? Or earlier?’

  Zen’s heart leapt.

  ‘Earlier, earlier! Now.’

  She laughed.

  ‘I’m at the office now,’ he said, ‘but I’ll come straight home. Will you be there?’

  ‘Is this all to do with the dramatic development you mentioned last night?’

  ‘Very much so. I’ll tell you when I see you. Will you be there when I get back?’

  There was a brief pause.

  ‘Yes.’

  Zen smiled secretly.

  ‘Yes,’ he echoed.

  *

  What a pleasure it is to walk out of an evening, a nephew at each elbow lest she slip on the snowy pavement! They’re at her beck and call these days, dear Nanni and sweet little Vincenzo. She has only to suggest how nice it would be to take a walk and perhaps drop in on Daniele Trevisan for a chat and a cup of something warming, and before she knows it they’ll be ringing her doorbell, eager to oblige.

  Ada can remember a time, and not so long ago either, when things were very different. Weeks would go by without her seeing her nephews. Even worse, she was treated to midnight visits by mocking simulacra who borrowed Nanni’s clipped, high-pitched voice and Vincenzo’s stooping stance for their own malign purposes. They led her a merry dance for a while, these apparitions, but in the end she turned the tables on them – and with a vengeance!

  Nothing’s too much trouble for Nanni and Vincenzo nowadays. They call on her every day, run errands for her, do her shopping, bring presents and generally lavish attentions of all kinds on her. And if by any chance they happen to be forgetful or remiss she need only mention Aurelio Battista, son of her old friend Signora Giustiniana, whom she helped out with some cleaning work when her husband went off and got lost in Russia. ‘Dispersed’, they called it in the papers, but Ada knew what that meant. People used to vanish in those days. It was almost normal. A child here, a man there, a whole family …