White Death (2011)

by Jones, Tobias

  Mauro’s place was all dark when I drove up. I looked at the clock on the dashboard and realised it was gone two now. The doorbell sounded unexpectedly loud. I rang it again and again until I saw a light going on.

  Mauro opened the door and we shuffled into the kitchen. He was used to these kinds of visits and put the coffee on without saying anything. I passed him my envelope with all the details of the case.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘If anything happens to me, give it to Dall’Aglio in the Questura.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to you?’

  I told him about my little delivery. That woke him up. He whispered a few of his finest expletives as he poured out the coffee.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Same as before. I’ll just look in my rear-view mirror more often.’

  He smiled, shaking his head.

  ‘The worst thing about it was I was on the verge of persuading a young woman to visit my flat.’

  He looked at me and blinked in slow motion. ‘Who?’

  ‘A girl. Her name’s in there.’ I pointed at my envelope. ‘Anything happens to me, make sure she’s OK.’

  He nodded, staring at me like he wanted to know more but didn’t want to pry.

  ‘She’s called Gaia,’ I said.

  We sat there in silence as we drank the coffee. I heard Giovanna going to the bathroom upstairs.

  ‘Sorry to have woken you up,’ I said.

  ‘I’m glad you did. I’m coming with you.’

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘There’s every need. Just let me go and get dressed.’ He stood up before I could even contradict him. He walked upstairs.

  We had never worked a case together, though we had often spoken about it. I didn’t really like the idea. Didn’t like the thought that maybe I did need an extra pair of eyes, or barrels, watching my back.

  He came down the stairs dressed in a flak jacket. He was carrying a long black bag.

  ‘What’s that?’ I said, nodding at the bag.

  ‘Back-up.’ He zipped it open and showed me enough firearms to overthrow a small country. There were a couple of rifles, two pistols and various long objects wrapped in rags.

  ‘That’s not the kind of back-up I need, Mauro.’

  ‘Sure it is. Fight fire with fire. That’s the only way. Talk to them in their own language.’

  ‘That’s not the way I work,’ I said firmly.

  He looked at me like he didn’t understand. ‘Sure it is.’

  I shook my head. ‘If you really want to help me out, keep an eye on Gaia. She never meant to get mixed up in this, and I want to make sure she doesn’t get hurt.’

  He stared at me as if he were struggling to disguise his disappointment. I told him where she lived and worked. He nodded, accepting defeat. I wrote down the addresses just in case he couldn’t remember. As I gave it to him, I reminded him to put my memorandum somewhere safe.

  ‘Take care,’ he said as I was going out the door.

  I found Santagata’s address easily enough. It was in a nondescript part of town. I walked around the block to get a sense of where I was: there was a park on one side and apartment blocks on the others. I passed a large, rectangular skip saying ‘urban waste’ about fifty metres beyond the entrance to Santagata’s block. Next to it were circular ones for glass and plastic with rubber triangles over their openings looking like slices of rubber pizza. I tried to look inside but couldn’t see anything. I took out my phone, held it in my right hand and put my arm inside to snap a picture. I looked at it: a dark array of plastic water bottles but nothing else.

  I stepped on the long pedal to open the big skip and peered inside. It was almost full. I looked all over but couldn’t see what I was after. There was nothing for it but to jump in. I sank up to my knees as I landed inside, ripping black bin-liners as I did so. As I tried to move bulging bin-liners out of my way, my fingers ripped through the thin plastic and my hands sunk into household waste. I tried not to think about it. I had to throw stuff onto the pavement to get closer to the bottom of the skip.

  After I had thrown four or five heavy black bags over my shoulder I saw, in the space between two others, a flat side of something green. I moved the bags apart and saw what I had been looking for: two dark green, plastic petrol cans. The barcode was still visible on them. I picked them up by their sides, in case there were still prints on the handles. I let them drop to the pavement and then crawled out of the skip. A couple of late-night passers-by looked at me as I did so, so I yawned and stretched to pretend I had just woken up. ‘Good morning,’ I said to them, and they hurried away.

  I put the bags back in the skip and put the two petrol cans in a metal box in my boot. Between them they took up almost the entire space. I locked the box and looked at my trousers. There were damp patches that smelt like sour milk and rotting potatoes.

  The roads were deserted and I was at the Questura within a couple of minutes. Dall’Aglio looked me up and down and frowned. I told him I had been paddling in a skip and he nodded, like it didn’t surprise him. I told him what I had found. I hadn’t expected congratulations or gratitude, but I did expect him to say something positive. He was merely shaking his head, looking at what he had written.

  ‘It doesn’t add up to much,’ he said. ‘A couple of receipts, a couple of eyewitnesses and petrol cans in a skip. It’s hardly the basis for a murder conviction.’

  ‘Dust the cans for prints,’ I said impatiently. ‘If they’re Santagata’s, then you’ve got enough to bring him in.’

  He shrugged, closing his eyes like he was politely trying to shut out the sound of my insistence. ‘Unless you’ve got anything else, I don’t think we’ll be bringing him in.’ He said it with a strange sort of conclusiveness, looking at me through his raised eyebrows to check I had understood. He leant forward and pushed himself up from his desk. He held out his hand.

  I hesitated before taking it. ‘What else do you need? Clearance from above?’

  ‘They don’t like surprises,’ he said cryptically. ‘If this case is, as you say, political, I need to understand it before wading in in the middle of the night.’

  We shook hands, looking at each other as if we were squaring up for one of our fights.

  It was still dark and the roads were almost empty. I got onto the motorway and flew past towns with familiar, flowery names: Fidenza, Fiorenzuola, Piacenza, Casalpusterlengo. The flat countryside looked all the same from the motorway: there were long, low warehouses and crumbling villas illuminated by the headlights of long-distance lorries.

  I stopped in a bar on the outskirts of Milan. I hadn’t slept all night and needed a shot of coffee. There was a blast of warm air as I walked into a narrow bar. It was full of people dressed for work. The barman had a never-ending supply of tidy, formulaic politeness – ‘a lei’, ‘tante cose’, ‘di nuovo’ – as he put people’s change in the concave plate on the counter. ‘Buondì,’ he would say cheerfully as the door opened to let another customer in.

  The handle of the tazzina was so small that the tips of my thumb and forefinger only just touched through the hole. The coffee was bitter, bitter but buono. I felt my arms coming alive again, like they were ready for a fight at last.

  I asked for the local business directory and found the address of Gruppo Sicurezza insurance. I threw back the last of the coffee and got back in the car.

  For one of the country’s insurance giants, the Gruppo Sicurezza building was surprisingly small, tucked away down a sidestreet away from the noise. I asked for the legal department at the front desk and was sent up to the fourth floor. I watched an air-bubble wobble up inside the water cooler as I took a plastic glass of water. People came in and out without noticing me for almost half an hour.

  Eventually a young, overweight man with hair like a soggy salad came out and introduced himself. We went into his office, a cramped little space he shared with a young woman.

  ‘Prego,’ he sa
id, indicating a chair. He was sweating from the effort of the walk to the front desk. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘I’m a private investigator.’

  ‘Investigating what?’

  ‘A case of arson.’

  ‘Aha,’ he said, as if he had understood already.

  ‘The owner told me he was insured with you.’

  The man looked at me sideways. ‘Right,’ he said, drawing out the word so that it lasted a couple of seconds.

  ‘He’s the victim in this,’ I clarified. ‘Along with a few others.’ So many arson cases are perpetrated by the owners that he must have expected it to be another case of the policy holder striking a match.

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘Where I come from quite a lot of people would like to prove this fire was just an accident. No arson at all. It’s a politically sensitive case it seems, and that means everyone’s happy for it to pass as a tragic accident. As always, that means you’re the one who will foot the bill.’

  He was nodding slowly. ‘What’s your interest?’

  ‘Justice.’

  He chuckled, thinking I had made a joke. Then saw me just staring at him. ‘Really?’

  ‘A young man died in the fire. You might have heard about it.’

  He was serious now all right. Staring at me and nodding slowly.

  ‘And how can we help you?’

  ‘I want to get to the bottom of this case, but someone’s taken my spade away. My client – your policy holder – has terminated my contract just as it was about to get interesting.’ He was still studying me, trying to work out where I was going. I came to the point. ‘The local authorities are under pressure to ignore the case. My former client looks likely to cut a deal with the people who destroyed his factory.’

  ‘I don’t get it. You’re asking us to employ you?’

  ‘Not only that. I need someone on my side. I got a warning in last night’s post, the kind of warning that only comes once.’ I looked up at him to check he was following. ‘I need some heavyweights on my side.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ he said patting his paunch, ‘you’ve come to the right man.’

  ‘I was thinking more of the company.’

  ‘The company’s pretty lean right now.’

  He was a strange one. He had let himself go, but wouldn’t let anyone else get away with anything.

  ‘Do you want to give me the name?’

  ‘Bragantini.’

  He rolled his head in my direction. ‘That rings a bell. Let’s see.’ He pulled himself up in his seat and waggled his mouse left and right to wake up the computer. ‘Come on,’ he said impatiently. ‘These computers are like women. Sensitive and complicated and expensive. But they’re getting cheaper by the day, and less reliable. They break down just when you’re least expecting it.’

  The girl at the other desk looked up and I saw her rolling her eyes. ‘And most users are typical men,’ she said under her breath. ‘Always looking for an upgrade.’

  ‘Here we are.’ He ignored her. ‘Bragantini. I’ve got a log of a claim going through yesterday.’ He whistled. ‘Big claim by the looks of it.’

  ‘I can save you the lot. I just need a small retainer.’

  He chuckled. ‘You’re quite a hustler aren’t you?’

  ‘Isn’t everyone?’

  He picked up the phone and asked for someone called Cavalieri. I listened to him explaining what was going on. We duly got summoned into Cavalieri’s office. I knew him from way back, when I used to do freelance work for him at another insurance company.

  ‘Casta,’ said Cavalieri with open arms as we walked in. ‘How did I know this would have something to do with you?’ He slapped his hand into mine.

  The fat man looked at the both of us. He looked a bit crestfallen that he didn’t have to do the introductions.

  ‘Prego, prego,’ Cavalieri pointed at two tan armchairs in front of his desk. ‘What’s this all about?’

  I gave him a brief summary, skipping the sensitive details. He took notes and tutted. When I had finished, he asked the obvious question.

  ‘You’re sure Bragantini’s not involved?’

  I raised my shoulders. ‘Seems very unlikely to me. He hired me before the fire. He hired the security guard, of sorts. He wanted to get to the bottom of it all.’

  ‘Only now he doesn’t.’

  ‘He’s under pressure. He’s facing bankruptcy and criminal charges. It’s hardly surprising the guy’s folding.’

  Cavalieri looked down at his desk and then at me. ‘He’s no longer your client, you say?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘Then if we employ you, he’s a suspect the same as all the rest, clear?’

  ‘Crystal.’

  He looked briefly at the fat man, who nodded slightly. They agreed to give me a small daily retainer. I expressed gratitude, but more for the unspoken support. I still felt exposed, but at least I wasn’t fighting the case entirely alone. Being employed by the insurance company didn’t offer much physical protection, but it was a kind of protection. The company’s lawyers, I knew from experience, were connected. They could pull more strings than a harpist.

  I got back in the car and headed towards the motorway. Horns sounded left and right in the mid-morning traffic. I inched forwards, through traffic lights and roadworks. People were walking faster than me on the pavements. Trams sped past in the middle of the road, their clatter reminding me how slowly I was moving.

  Eventually, I got onto the ring road and sped towards the motorway toll-booths. I watched the lucky drivers speeding through the telepass funnel, the arm rising automatically without them even needing to change down a gear. They sped off into the distance as I queued for one of the manual tickets. There were at least a dozen cars in front of me. I cursed my stupidity in not having a telepass installed in my car. I’ve often lost track of people I was tailing because I had to queue at the toll booth. It’s like trying to race someone with your legs tied together.

  The queue inched forward. My feet moved alternately up and down on the pedals like I was pumping an old-fashioned organ. I must have been thinking about organs, about air and traffic flow and what sort of legacy they leave: an organ concerto or a telepass bill. I suddenly stopped the car and pulled on the handbrake. Within seconds the cars behind me were honking, irritated that I had allowed a car’s length gap to appear in front of me. I stayed where I was and pulled out my phone. I looked at the snap of Santagata’s Fiat. I zoomed in on the windscreen, trying to see if I could see a telepass sensor. The image wasn’t clear enough to see that sort of detail. By now cars behind were pulling out and overtaking me, offering me their opinion of my driving skills as they revved past.

  I reversed out of there and headed back towards the city. Unless we always walk or whisper or use cash, there’s a slipstream of electronic evidence from the gadgets we use: a credit card transaction, a telepass receipt, a log of a call. There’s almost no part of our human interaction that isn’t mediated by gadgetry, and we’ve become so used to it that we don’t even realise it’s an interface any more. We get on with our lives without thinking that where we’ve been and what we’ve done can leave some kind of electronic fingerprint or footprint.

  After a couple of calls I found the Telepass offices. They were blue and yellow. The colours were everywhere: above the door, on the upholstery, on the front desk. No one was around, so I sat down and read about the company. It was a confident brand, boasting of how it had gone from humble beginnings in 1990 to having over six million users. Like many things, it managed to make me feel out of touch, like I had missed a boat and was left behind. I was still one of the motorway dinosaurs, scratching around for change at the booths where other, more modern drivers sailed through.

  I put the pamphlet down as a woman came into the reception area. She, obviously, was wearing the required colours and looked like an Ikea air-hostess.

  ‘Can I help?’ she asked.

  ‘I want to talk to the m
anager,’ I said, passing her the usual card.

  She looked at it and then back at me. She nodded and went off through a frosted glass door behind her desk.

  Eventually another woman came into the waiting room. She was obviously senior enough not to wear the uniform. Her trouser suit was black, as was her perfectly parted short hair. She was attractive in a foreboding kind of way. She held out her slender hand and shook my hand formally whilst her eyes swept round the foyer to make sure it was in order.

  ‘How can I help?’

  ‘Can we talk in private?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  She led me through the frosted glass door to her office. It was a small, functional room, surprisingly empty of anything other than a desk and a computer. She went out to get another chair and motioned for me to sit down.

  ‘I need the details on the movement of a car,’ I said.

  She smiled as if that was what she was asked all the time. ‘Jealous spouse?’

  ‘Murder.’

  Her smile froze. ‘We only give out details to the appropriate authorities with the necessary warrants.’

  I straightened my leg, leaning slightly in the chair to pull out my wallet. Before I had even opened it she was shaking her head.

  ‘We don’t sell information either.’

  ‘Signora, this is a murder case.’

  ‘I co-operate with the Carabinieri, not with some’, she looked at my card, ‘so-called private investigator. If it’s a murder, why aren’t the authorities here?’

  ‘They’re not quite so quick.’ I smiled.

  ‘I’ll wait for them to catch up then.’

  She was self-possessed and cold. She was the kind of person who was intriguing because you wanted to discover if they had any warmth inside them. I asked for her name and fax number and went and sat in the car. I phoned Speranza, the man in Milan who was supposed to be investigating the Tosti killing. I brought him up to speed with the case and told him about my suspicions regarding Santagata.