Escape

by Dominique Manotti

  According to statements made to the police, Andrea accuses Daniele of having slept with his sister Anna-Maria, without going into further detail, but I bet she ended up pregnant. Daniele offers to make amends by marrying the young lady, but Andrea replies that it’s impossible for a Tomasino to marry a hired hand and that’s what sets off the fight. Afterwards, the family saga continues, but there’s nothing further about Anna-Maria – vanished, swallowed up. But maybe that’s not of any interest to you.’

  Lisa hears Pier-Luigi, If you stray, you’re dead to your family. And what if, in Anna-Maria’s case, they had taken it literally? Pier-Luigi, a shy, deeply wounded man. I should have paid more attention to the guy from the start. A missed opportunity to get to know him. The curse of exile. I’m becoming hardened. No time to lose. Her attention reverts to Stefania.

  ‘No, it’s not. Did you find out anything else about Daniele Bonamico?’

  ‘A few bits and pieces. Only one photo, from 1974, where he’s in the background, hiding behind Andrea Tomasino who is showing off in the front row. Scary-looking, with eyebrows that join in the middle, a sinister air, a scar on his cheek that pulls his whole face downwards. Anna-Maria couldn’t have had much choice, or else she had strange taste. Girls from good families who have been a bit too sheltered sometimes rebel by falling for a bit of rough. I’m pretty certain that he was no longer in Brescia after 1976. I also dug up some information on his family.’

  ‘Keep going.’

  ‘The grandparents on both sides were farming families from the Po valley. His parents met and married in their village before coming to Brescia.’

  ‘Have you got the names of these families?’

  ‘Hold on a sec.’ Lisa hears her flipping through the pages. ‘Yes. Grandfather Bonamico married a Farione on one side, and on the other, an Ercoli married a Luciani.’

  There is a long silence. Lisa feels a mixture of excitement and incredulity. The young woman grows impatient.

  ‘So, have I got my scoop?’

  ‘Maybe. I think so. Daniele Luciani is the name of the surprise witness who popped up a few days ago in the case of the bank robbery of the 3rd of March 1987 at the Piemonte-Sardegna bank in Milan. He’s accusing an Italian writer, a certain Filippo Zuliani, a refugee in France.’

  ‘I know about it, I followed the news. He’s not exactly accusing him – he states he was present at the scene.’

  ‘According to a credible source, an eyewitness who knew the Brescia protagonists personally, Daniele Luciani is in fact Daniele Bonamico. In other words, Ordine Nuovo’s henchman implicated in the Brescia massacre. This suggests he could have left Brescia and changed his name, adopting that of his grandparents, with dates yet to be established, but it’s possible that he chose to remain in contact with the secret service.’

  ‘Yes, with a lot more delving, this could make a good story. I’ll take it.’

  ‘I can already see the headline: “Mystery witness turns out to be a Brescia man with a past”.’

  ‘No, that’s not a good headline. Leave me to do my job. I’ll call you back.’ And Stefania hangs up.

  Night of 2 July

  Stefania calls Lisa who is sound asleep. She gropes blindly for the phone and picks it up in the dark.

  ‘The Corriere di Brescia refuses to publish anything.’ A silence. Lisa is sitting up now, wide awake. ‘That’s not all. My editor hauled me into the office this morning, even though it’s Saturday and we were almost the only people there. The offices were deserted. He grilled me on my sudden interest in Daniele Luciani. I kept it very vague, and he ended up dropping your name, and asked me if I’d been in touch with you. Surprising, isn’t it?’

  Lisa groans.

  ‘More than surprising. I’d say worrying.’

  ‘I said no, no contact with you, and since he kept pressing me, I ended up giving my uncle’s name as the source of my information. After all, he acted as go-between, he can take the blame for it. I wasn’t sacked, but almost. In any case, the boss made it very clear that there was no question of the Corriere di Brescia getting involved in this story. Back to dogs being run over. So your rather far-fetched story is true, and it’s put the cat among the pigeons.’ Another silence. ‘I wanted to let you know and ask you not to call me again.’

  ‘OK. Thank you.’

  Lisa lies on her back, staring at the ceiling, fully awake now. What should she make of the reaction at the Corriere di Brescia? First of all, obviously, success. Pier-Luigi’s story is pretty much confirmed. I haven’t got the evidence yet, but I know it exists and where to look for it. And a failure too. With this aborted attempt to get the Corriere di Brescia to run the story, I’ve alerted our enemies, whoever they are, and they now know that we’re on to them and we’re getting closer. They’re going to be able to take precautions. And that’s not going to be good for us. Most likely they’ll eliminate Luciani. Serious? No, not very serious, the guy has already testified. All the papers are talking about it, impossible to erase, that’s all we need. More importantly, no point now trying to publish our story directly in Italy, the media have been muzzled. We’ll have to go via the lawyers and the League of Human Rights, here in France. And therefore through Filippo. Shit.

  Lisa gets out of bed and goes into the kitchenette to make a coffee. She paces up and down, half promises herself that she’ll do everything she can to put off the moment when she has to meet him. Roberto will say to her: Because you don’t want to share Carlo. Maybe. So what? I’m entitled to feel that way.

  She sits down at her desk. A shadow, a vague memory lurks in her mind, perturbs her, prevents her from considering the job done and closing the file. She goes back over her notes and begins to reread them. Very quickly lights on that little phrase of Stefania’s: the takeover of the Tomasino family bank by the Piemonte-Sardegna bank after the war. She recalls how the name Piemonte-Sardegna had struck her when the young journalist mentioned it. Then they had changed the subject. Was its appearance in a different chapter of the history of the bank involved in the hold-up and Carlo’s death pure coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. Best to start from the principle that there’s no such thing as chance.

  3 July

  It is Sunday. Lisa is moping around at home, unable to find a new avenue to explore in her investigation. If she were in Milan … the prospects probably wouldn’t be any better.

  The Piemonte-Sardegna bank has a Paris address. Rather than staying there doing nothing, why not use the time to go and check out the bank’s Paris headquarters. Imagination works better when it can draw on images, actual places, real people. And besides, a walk through Paris is always enjoyable, it’s a lovely day and at least she’ll have the feeling she’s doing something. She finds herself in the Opéra district, standing in front of a magnificent Haussmann building. A discreet copper plate in the entrance porch indicates that the bank’s offices are on the second floor. Lisa looks up, the piano nobile, a balcony running its length, high ceilings that she imagines covered in frescos. A fine example of nineteenth-century architecture. Of course. The kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, Napoleon III, Italian unity, the annexation of Savoy to France – she recalls a whole string of school essays. These offices testify to many strong links that must exist between French and Italian banks. And so … French historians might have taken an interest in this bank, one way or another.

  Lisa hurries back home to Rue de Belleville, grabs her address book and seeks out a contact in the academic world.

  It doesn’t take her long. She comes across the name of Vicenzo Rivola, very recently arrived in France, close to the Autonomia Operaria movement from which Lisa, as a good ex-Red Brigades member, keeps her distance. But French intellectuals have great respect for this movement, whose manifestos, journals, books and talks are of a reliably high standard. Vicenzo swiftly succeeded in finding some hours’ teaching in the sociology department of a major Paris university. Lisa picks up the phone and easily gets through to him. She explains what she is looking for: any
available information on the links between the Piemonte-Sardegna banks and Tomasino after 1945.

  ‘It’s a bit vague, but I can’t be any more specific. I’m groping in the dark and I don’t know what I’m looking for.’

  ‘That’s the best way of coming across something new. At my university we have an excellent historian of modern-day banks. A former communist, not too sectarian, an encyclopaedic mind. I don’t know him personally, but I can put you in touch. On the other hand, I warn you, it might take him a while to respond. Academics aren’t journalists – they’re in no hurry.’

  Early July

  For the last few days, each morning just before six, a man has come and planted himself beneath an awning around fifty metres from the rear façade of the Tour Albassur. He’s a sporty type in his mid-thirties, wearing a grey hoodie with no loud logos on it, jeans and trainers. He stands chain-smoking in the shelter of a low concrete wall, his hood pulled down over his face. He carefully stubs out each cigarette on the sole of his shoe, takes a matchbox out of his pocket, crams the cigarette butt in the box and puts it back in his pocket before lighting another one. He perks up when the Albassur security guards on night shift come out, between 6.05 and 6.10, two men in their fifties, chatting. They head for the Métro entrance, walking placidly, bags slung over their shoulders. He watches them until they disappear, then waits another couple of minutes, checks that there is no one near the approach to the tower before departing in the opposite direction, shoulders hunched, hood pulled well down over his eyes.

  On the fifth morning, when the two security guards come out of the building, the man peels himself away from the wall, hurries over and speaks to them.

  ‘Excuse me, gentlemen…’ The guards stop, wary.

  ‘…I’m sorry to bother you, and I don’t want to delay you. I’m a friend of Filippo Zuliani’s. I work at La Défense and I was told he works here too. I’m trying to find him…’

  ‘Too late, mate, he handed in his notice at least a week ago.’

  ‘And you don’t know…’ The two men have begun to move off, quickening their pace.

  ‘No, we don’t know anything. Sorry, mate.’

  One of them mutters, ‘Dodgy-looking guy!’ as they vanish into the Métro. Next morning the lookout is no longer there.

  Filippo has begun writing again, feverishly. In order to replay the aborted date at the Café Pouchkine, obliterate the disaster, conquer Cristina. Her magnificent copper hair is like that of the girl Carlo kissed in the mountains, and Filippo loves this game of mirrors and echoes. He wants her, he convinces himself that he needs her because she’s rich, beautiful and cultured. He still feels like an imposter in the world he has now entered, constantly playing a part, afraid of betraying a lack of taste or of suffering a memory lapse, liable to be thrown out at any moment. With her on his arm, he would be adopted as a member of the family, and so become truly legitimate. Today, because he has grown up since the Café Pouchkine, he has the strength to conquer – he is no longer the same man. Back then, he was still a petty crook, capable of little more than arousing in her a formidable and mortifying protective instinct. Now he is viewed as the accomplice of an almost legendary criminal, Carlo Fedeli. A much more fascinating character. That makes anything possible. Cristina is attainable.

  The best way to set about winning her back is to begin writing again. It is the only pretext he can think of for getting in touch. He works from home, at the kitchen table in his studio flat in Neuilly, barely going out. In front of him is a bottle of Mitsouko, which he caresses from time to time, occasionally removing the stopper and inhaling the fragrance until he feels nauseous. He has tacked Cristina’s note saying she’ll be away on to the wall, the reverse side facing him, but the message is still clear. When he is stuck, demoralised, can’t think of the right words, he contemplates it, and pictures himself in the empty apartment on the other side of the wall, ensconced in an armchair in the sitting room, a notepad on his knees and a glass of brandy close at hand, writing. Sometimes, that is enough to set the dream machine in motion again.

  Filippo spends hours wandering disconsolately around Paris, haunting the smartest and most expensive neighbourhoods. He strolls around, nostrils quivering, sniffing out sensations and chance encounters. He likes telling himself he is free to invent his life.

  Place Vendôme. He walks around the square, lingering before each shop window. This is the home of Paris’s most famous jewellers. He’s never been particularly interested in jewellery – he prefers perfume. He stops outside Guerlain. On the other side of the glass, a tall woman has her back to him. A customer. He’s mesmerised by her mass of coppery hair, pulled back into a precariously perched chignon, artificially casual, held in place by two big wooden hair slides. He stares at her intricate curls, dreams of caressing the wisps of hair on the back of her neck, of removing the slides one at a time, then burying his face in the cascade of flaming hair finally set free. The woman turns towards him. She has sprinkled a drop of perfume on the back of her hand and inhales it deeply. She hesitates, appears to be considering, takes a few steps, her eyes half-closed, then returns to the counter. She is Italian, he’s certain from the way she holds herself, walks and smiles. She picks up a bottle and holds it out to the sales assistant behind the counter. Mitsouko – he recognises the shape. In Rome, he had once furtively peddled dozens of cut-price bottles on the streets around Termini station. He loves little details that resemble echoes, or like signposts mapping out his path. Luciana’s coppery hair in the mountains and that of the stranger in Place Vendôme; the bottle of Mitsouko on the Rome streets and at Guerlain.

  The woman finishes paying and emerges from the shop. An Italian with coppery hair, that perfume. Don’t stop to think, go for it.

  He walks over to meet her, bows to her, grasps her hand and gives it a ceremonious kiss, without being over-insistent. He says to her in Italian: ‘Mitsouko, unless I’m mistaken. An excellent choice.’

  She laughs, surprised and amused. Her eyes are amber like her hair. She replies in Italian: ‘Yes, of course, Mitsouko. How clever! And how do you know that I’m Italian?’

  ‘Your entire body speaks Italian.’

  She cocks her head to one side, with a half-smile. She likes the expression. Filippo continues talking slowly, moving on a few steps.

  ‘Actually, to be completely honest, I’ve been looking for you in Paris for days…’ She follows close behind. Encouraging. ‘…I needed you, your elegance, your warmth. I’ve written a book, I wrote it for you, to make you look at me, listen to me, walk beside me, as you are doing now…’

  By now they have crossed the entire Place Vendôme. It’s in the bag. He stops. ‘…and so that you’d agree to have a drink with me.’

  She stops too, and laughs.

  ‘Around here? Out of the question. The Ritz is full of the wrong kind of people. Rue de Rivoli? Swarming with tourists.’

  She hesitates for a moment, torn between curiosity and prudence.

  ‘Why don’t we go to my place instead? I live around the corner – just above the Tuileries gardens. I’ve had a busy day. When you tried to pick me up…’

  ‘I’m not trying to pick you up…’

  ‘Oh really! When you tried to pick me up, I was on my way home. I’d love to go home. It’ll be peaceful, I’ll make you a tea, and you can tell me about your books.’

  When they reach the fifth floor she rummages in her bag. He waits while she finds her keys, opens the door and goes inside. He follows. It is a precious moment; he savours the invitation to enter her private world. Before him is a large, sparsely furnished room, airy and spacious; opposite, three French windows that must open on to a south-facing balcony. The sun filters through the closed louvered shutters, which she does not open. A magnificent, dark, highly polished wood floor, white walls, a few items of glass-and-steel furniture around a dining table. A sitting area with squat leather armchairs on steel frames, and a coffee table at the base of a vast bookcase that covers
an entire wall.

  ‘Sit down and I’ll make the tea.’

  She vanishes through the left-hand door into the kitchen. So the bedroom must be off to the right. He sits down, tense, on the alert for the slightest sound, the slightest indication of her presence. She moves around in the kitchen, opens a cupboard, closes it. A sound of cups rattling, water running, then a silence. What is she doing? The water boils. She comes back carrying a tray with two cups and a china teapot on it. She has kicked off her shoes and is walking barefoot on the dark wood floor. He watches her, fascinated by her relaxed manner. He desires her, his throat tight, his muscles paralysed. She sits down facing him and pours black tea into the two cups. He takes a sip of the scalding brew, rises and goes to kneel beside her, removes a slide from her chignon and the edifice slowly collapses – the second slide and her hair cascades down her back. She does not resist, her eyes are closed. He bathes his hand in the silky, slightly damp mass, the scent of warm amber. Can a person die of desire? He stands up, and gathers her in his arms. She is light, and he walks towards the bedroom door, which yields at his touch. In the half-darkness, he makes out the shadowy shape of the bed in the centre of the room, covered in a voluminous white duvet. He lowers her into the hollow of this whiteness and with infinite tenderness leans over towards the face, the mouth, the hair that he has always desired.

  He has the beginnings of a story.

  18 July