by David Hewson
Still, unemployment beckoned. She had hoped for a position in Brussels: perhaps even the job of minor commissioner. Nothing had happened and the PR people she employed on a tiny retainer thought they knew why. It was the profile that was wrong. She remained, in the public eye, the lesbian from Bologna who had lied to get herself elected. True, she was bright, she knew how to navigate the system. She was, in many ways, a hardworking, dedicated Italian politician. Nevertheless the stain of her sexuality, and the way she had hidden her true self for personal gain, continued to taint perceptions. Without some more favourable press her hopes of a continued political career were unrealistic.
This was the reason, the only reason, why Alicia Vaccarini now sat at a table in a deserted Martelli’s, the restaurant in the narrow alley around the corner from the Parliament building which, during the week, was the workers’ dining hall for deputies, journalists and political hangers-on.
‘I didn’t even know this place opened on Sundays,’ she said, lighting a cigarette.
The journalist said he was from Time magazine. Now she was here, Vaccarini realized she should have checked. There were some jokers out there. People with hidden tape recorders who tried to embarrass you into making stupid comments then selling them on to the TV and radio stations. This was an oversight on her part but an understandable one. The pranksters had low horizons; they always claimed to come from minor, regional papers, not the bigger ones in Rome and Milan where their false identities would be transparent. To say one was from Time was different; it was too bold a claim, surely, to be anything other than genuine. And now she was here Alicia Vaccarini could believe it too. The man was about thirty, well dressed in a casual, Sunday fashion, with a pale rose shirt and blue trousers. He had an anonymous face, handsome in a vapid if somewhat exaggerated way, with dark, intelligent eyes and a quick, slightly nervous smile. Only one thing stood out: he seemed too big for his clothes. His muscles bulged against his shirt sleeves, he held himself in an awkward, stiff fashion. He looked like someone who endured work-outs in spite of himself, endowing a body that was meant to be more slight with a physicality that didn’t quite fit. And there was a smell too. Like some kind of liniment or a chemical that belonged in a hospital.
‘It doesn’t open normally,’ he said in a measured, educated voice. ‘You’re witnessing the power of the American media, Deputy.’
She laughed and looked around. There was only one other couple dining on the far side of the room. ‘I could almost believe that.’
‘I thought you’d like privacy,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she asked, heart sinking. ‘I told you on the phone. If you’re looking for some kind of dyke confession piece, if you think I’m going to pour my pink heart out in public, you’ve got the wrong person. That part of my story has been done to death and I’m very happy to leave it in the grave.’
He raised a glass of red wine. ‘Me too.’
She joined him in the drink. It tasted good. Alicia Vaccarini realized she felt like some wine. There was nothing else to do in the city that afternoon. It was too hot to think straight. The Parliament was closed. The private work which had kept her in the city was finished. She could afford to be lazy.
‘What I want is to talk about you. The real you. What you believe. What you want to achieve. Where you see your life going after your term as deputy is over.’
‘And this is going to make a story for Time magazine?’ she asked.
He frowned and poured some more wine from the carafe. The waiter came and placed two plates of pasta on the table. ‘You’ve got me there, Alicia. I’m a fraud. But only up to a point. Every story needs a tag. They want to do some piece about how being gay is no longer a bar to public office in Europe. I need some examples that show the real story. I need to ask the question: what would have happened to you if you’d been heterosexual? If you’d been married, with children, and put in the same kind of work you’re doing now?’
‘I see.’
He pulled out a small tape recorder and placed it on the table. Then he leaned over and placed his hand on hers. It was, she thought, a very powerful hand.
‘Alicia. People like us have to stick together.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You’re telling me you’re gay?’
‘You’re telling me you didn’t know the moment you set eyes on me?’
‘No. I mean yes.’ She didn’t know what she meant at that moment. He seemed a disconcerting person. When she thought about it she was able to think of him as gay. But it required effort and she couldn’t help wondering whether this was not some trick on his part; whether he was, in truth, some kind of chameleon who could change his shape, alter his appearance at will.
He pressed the button on the tape recorder. She watched the little wheels whirl.
‘Tell me about yourself. Only the things you want to talk about. Tell me how you became who you are. What you believe in. About your religion.’
‘My religion?’
‘Everybody believes in something, Alicia. We just have different names for it. You came from a Catholic family. I read that in the files. You must have believed once.’
She nodded. The wine helped her remember. There had been a time when she was convinced by all those old stories, when they gave her some comfort in the lonely, dark nights of childhood.
‘Of course. And then you get older.’
‘Wiser?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘And then you get older still, and sometimes it comes back.’ He paused. ‘Do you think that might happen to you?’
‘Who knows?’ she said lazily, feeling the wine go to her head, liking this strange young man, who was not really gay, she thought, simply very good at lulling an interviewee into believing whatever was appropriate for an easy conversation.
‘Doubt is a virtue,’ he said firmly as the meat course arrived: grilled lamb with artichokes. ‘It’s better to believe than to know.’
Alicia Vaccarini laughed. ‘Quite. Are you really a journalist?’
‘What else could I be?’
‘A priest, I think. I could imagine you in black. Taking confession. Listening.’
He stopped eating and considered this. ‘Perhaps I could be a priest. But not today. And I don’t want to hear confessions, Alicia. Confessions are tiresome, whining things, surely.’ He looked at her frankly. ‘Confessions won’t rebuild your career. Only the truth may do that.’
‘Only the truth will set you free!’ she said, deciding she would get a little drunk, because it was that kind of day.
‘Precisely,’ he said, suddenly very serious. ‘Now talk, please. Of yourself. Of what you wish to become.’
The carafe was refilled. After the meat there was zabaglione and grappa, though she felt she drank more than he did. Alicia Vaccarini began to talk, more freely than she had recently with anyone, in the media or outside it, not caring what the little tape recorder heard. This odd young man, with his considerate, priestly manner, was excellent company, a sounding board who listened closely to everything she said, criticizing when he thought it appropriate, praising when he felt praise was due.
The afternoon disappeared in a whirl of one-sided conversation. When he paid the bill it was approaching four o’clock. She felt wonderful, elated, released of some unconscious burden that had been haunting her for years.
They walked outside. The heat of the day was beginning to fade. This part of the city was empty. The day was so hot it shuddered in front of her eyes. She was reluctant to return to the cramped, stuffy apartment in the Via Cavour that was her solitary home.
Her companion pointed down the narrow alley adjoining the restaurant.
‘Alicia,’ he said. ‘It’s such a lovely afternoon. I have my car here. Let’s walk by the river for a while. Drink some coffee. Eat some ice cream. You’re such excellent company. Would you like that? Please?’
She nodded, liking him all the more, and followed as he entered the shade of the alley, disappearing into the dar
kness. The alley grew dark and unexpectedly cold. There was the smell of damp in the air. Finally she saw him, standing by his vehicle. It was not a car but a small van, with windows in the back, the kind used by tradesmen. He was not smiling.
She walked up to him, wondering what accounted for the change in his face, which was now very serious, now looking at her in a way – was this distaste? – she did not recognize.
This stranger put his hand into his pocket and pulled something out: a plastic bag containing a piece of white material. There was that smell again, the one which seemed to belong in a hospital.
She wanted to run but she was too drunk. She wanted to shout but there was nothing to say, no one to hear it.
The white cloth came up to her face and the hospital smell filled her head. Alicia Vaccarini wondered stupidly why all the oxygen had just disappeared from the world then felt the blackness start to creep into her head, steadily, with a rushing, roaring sound, in from the corners of her vision, devouring her consciousness.
When she awoke, after an unfathomable period of time, she was in a small, brightly lit circular room, tied to a chair, surrounded by images: photographs and paintings, some so strange she refused to look at them, not daring to let their content enter her head. Music was playing from behind her: hard bop, fast and edgy. Someone was humming to the long complex solo, note for note.
A cloth gag was tied tightly around her mouth. Her hands were bound behind her back. Her ankles were secured firmly to the legs of her chair.
She tried to speak. The words came out as a pathetic grunt. The figure emerged from behind her. In his right hand was a long butcher’s knife. In his left a sharpening rod which he stroked quickly and professionally with the blade.
‘You’re awake,’ he said, nodding to drive home his point. ‘Good. We have much to discuss, and much to achieve.’
TWENTY-THREE
Falcone glowered at the three names on the desk, names Nic Costa had provided in his report. He had assembled a team of sixteen for the investigation: all men. They sat in the briefing room smoking, drinking coffee, feeling uncomfortable. The air-conditioning was struggling to keep ahead of the heat. The atmosphere in the station was tense, unpleasant and desperate. They knew when they were grasping at straws.
‘Is this all?’ Falcone asked Costa.
‘How many are there supposed to be?’ Falcone had to learn that pressure wasn’t the only option. There were other ways of getting what you wanted, Costa thought. Perhaps more efficient ones.
‘I don’t know,’ Falcone grumbled. ‘Do you think she’s telling the truth?’
He thought about this. ‘I don’t think she’s lying.’ Sara had dictated the names very carefully over coffee, spelling out the addresses, giving a short rundown of the details of the relationships. Two of them were married. All were people she had met in some kind of professional capacity, as if she had no private life of her own at all. No relationship appeared to have lasted more than a few weeks. Most puzzling of all for Costa, she seemed nonplussed by this, as if it were normal to lead such an empty, two-dimensional existence.
‘That wasn’t what I asked,’ Falcone complained.
‘I know. What I was trying to say was that these people check out. We’ve spoken to them. They acknowledge what went on, even the married ones. They all have alibis for the period we can fix absolutely – those hours when he must have been in the church on Tiber Island. I’m not saying none of them is a suspect but they look more like possible victims to me. The way they leapt at the idea of protection certainly seems to suggest so.’
Falcone raised a heavy eyebrow at Rossi. ‘Are you going along with that? He’s doing a lot of the talking these days.’
‘He’s not saying anything I wouldn’t,’ the big man grunted. ‘I go along with it all.’
Falcone looked at the list again. ‘A judge. Some bureaucrat from the Finance Ministry. And this last one? It doesn’t even say what he does.’
‘Toni Ferrari,’ Rossi said, reading from his notes. ‘Creepy little stockbroker. Skinny string of piss. Believe me, he isn’t up for this. Almost wet himself when I said he could be next in line.’
Falcone grimaced. ‘What connects them? Why these men?’
‘They asked her out,’ Costa answered. ‘She said yes.’
‘Denney? Any connection there? These are just the kind of people he used to mix with.’
‘Nothing that we can see or they admit to,’ Costa replied. ‘There’s nothing like the link Rinaldi had. They’ve been near no judicial commission. As far as we can see they don’t have any connection with the Banca Lombardia.’
‘So that’s it? She just meets these people, sleeps with them for a while and then it ends?’
Luca Rossi stabbed the air with his finger. ‘At their insistence,’ he said. ‘Every one of them I talked to said that. It just got too freaky for them. She’d turn up on dates. She’d smile and talk all the way through. She’d sleep with them, and I get the impression that was no bad thing either. But it was as if there was something missing. Here. One of them said this …’
He searched through the notes. ‘The Finance Ministry guy. He said, after a while it was like taking out some woman from an escort agency. Just impersonal. Even a man gets to tire of that eventually.’
‘Guess he must have known what it was like though,’ Falcone said. ‘Could that be what she is? Some college professor who’s a high-class hooker on the side?’
Costa groaned. ‘Please. Why would she do that? The apartment’s hers, bought with her own money, no mortgage, from the inheritance she got from her parents when she turned twenty-one. If she doesn’t need the cash, what’s the point? Because she likes it?’
‘I’ve heard stranger things,’ Luca Rossi said. ‘Do you understand what’s going on in her head?’
Costa said nothing.
‘Check it out anyway. There are people out there who would know. What about one-night stands?’ Falcone asked. ‘Did she say anything about that?’
Costa hadn’t pressed the point. She didn’t want to go there; he didn’t want to hear the answers. ‘Nothing. I don’t think they happened.’
‘So what do we have?’ Falcone wondered. ‘A woman who sleeps around casually. Nothing unusual there. A good-looking woman, someone people want to be seen with for a while. And then they get bored, or they get scared, and just fade into the background. Except one of them remains obsessed, one of them doesn’t want this to end, or if he does he wants to make sure she remembers him. He’ll do anything to make his point to her. Kill people. Do it in a way designed to make her sit up and take notice because it ties in with what she does. But …’
‘She didn’t finish with people,’ Rossi said. ‘They finished with her. All of them. Isn’t that what she said?’
‘Yes,’ Costa admitted.
Falcone threw the sheaf of notes onto the far side of his desk. ‘Then she’s lying. She has to be. All of these men, the ones we know about, don’t want to go near her. There has to be more. She’s got to know. What about the apartment?’
Costa was lost. ‘The apartment …?’
Furillo, one of the men Falcone had brought in that morning at San Clemente, said, ‘Nothing to go whoopee about.’
‘You’ve searched her apartment? You did that while I was with her? That was the point?’
Falcone stared at him. ‘This is turning into a serial murder investigation, kid. We don’t have time for the niceties.’
‘If you’d asked her …’
‘She might have said no. And then we’d have got permission anyway. What makes you think we have time to wait around like that? Two days, four people dead. He could be back at work somewhere out there right now.’
Costa was silent. Falcone was right.
‘One thing,’ Furillo added. ‘We found a mobile hidden in a drawer in the bedroom. Not her normal phone. We called the number we had and checked. This thing didn’t ring and it’s locked by a code. Technical said they could
n’t crack it. Doesn’t store numbers either so we don’t know who she’s called or who’s called her. Neat, if you want to make sure no one knows who you’re talking to.’
Rossi was unimpressed. ‘A phone in a drawer? Maybe it’s just an old one she put away.’
‘It’s fully charged,’ Furillo said. ‘It’s still got the sticker on the back saying it came from Monaco. Why would you have a phone from Monaco in your bedroom drawer?’
Falcone grimaced. ‘That’s it? Nothing else?’
‘Nothing.’
Falcone watched them for a while and they knew what he wanted: suggestions. No one was willing to play the game. If Sara Farnese was keeping something from them there was precious little they could use to sweat it out of her.
‘I’m taking her into protective custody,’ Falcone announced eventually. ‘Get some safe house somewhere. Not a nice one either. I don’t want her comfortable.’
‘It won’t work,’ Costa objected.
‘Why?’
‘Because …’ He knew the answer. It was obvious. Falcone knew it too. ‘Because she will only tell us when she wants to tell us. She won’t break just because we pile on the pressure. She’s not like that.’
Luca Rossi agreed. ‘He’s right. I’ve been watching that woman since we first saw her in the library. She holds it all inside and she’s going to keep it there until she chooses to let it out. The tougher we make life for her, the harder it gets.’
‘Then what?’ Falcone demanded. ‘She can’t go back to that apartment. The media’s camped out in the street. And she is, like it or not, potentially under threat.’
Costa thought of his father, how the old man’s calm was perhaps what was needed. The house on the Appian Way had the room. There was privacy. It could be perfect.
‘You’re trying to drive this man to me, right?’