White Death (2011)

by Jones, Tobias

  I parked the car outside the bar where we had taken a coffee a while back. We walked across the lumpy no-man’s land towards the archway. The heavy blankets were still there, and we could smell woodsmoke as we got closer.

  ‘Permesso,’ I said out of habit as I pulled back the blanket.

  There were the same hollow faces as before. People struggling to survive against the cold and the hunger. I saw Rosaria taking it all in and it looked as if she were about to break down again.

  ‘I’m looking for François,’ I said.

  Someone thumbed over their shoulder to the far side of the archway. We stepped over empty cans and sodden plastic bags and I saw him sitting up in his sleeping bag.

  ‘Ciao Mister,’ he said enthusiastically.

  ‘You hungry?’

  He nodded eagerly and stood up. We went back to the same bar we had gone to before. He made Rosaria smile wistfully. She kept asking him questions with a combination of curiosity and pity. They seemed to have an immediate connection and I decided to leave them there together. They already looked close, almost thrown into intimacy by a shared sorrow. I wondered, if I ever saw them again, if they would have become mother and son.

  ‘You want a lift back home?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’ll hang around here for a while. I’ll get the train back.’

  I raised a hand by way of goodbye, and they both nodded back, Rosaria raising a hand which stayed there in the air as if there was still so much to say.

  I sat in the car feeling drained and disorientated. I had thought Carlo Lombardi was one of life’s good guys and, in a way, he was. He had done what he had because he was pushed to the limit by systematic malfeasance, by a sense that there was no other way to defend himself. He had seen his life’s work stolen from him by a mixture of threats and arson and sleight of hand and he wanted an apology. When he didn’t even get that, he went, in a moment of madness, for retribution.

  The tragedy was that he had merely targeted the weakest link. He had gone for the public face of the scam and the public face is always the least powerful of all the players. Tosti was nothing more than a pawn, a man who was put up to the job. He only gained what he did by trying to squeeze a better deal for his family.

  An hour later, I got a phone call from a voice I half recognised. He said his name was Cesare Carini. It rang a distant bell.

  ‘You left your card in my letter box a few days ago,’ he said.

  ‘Investimenti Emiliani?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  He was the man who had lent Tosti the money a year ago. The man who hadn’t opened his door to me.

  ‘I apologise if I was discourteous the other day.’ His voice sounded melliflous, not a quality I usually trusted in this land of smooth talkers.

  ‘I don’t mind discourtesy,’ I said. ‘You know where you stand with discourtesy. It’s courtesy I find unreliable.’

  ‘Quite.’ There was a brief pause. ‘I’ve got something you might be interested in.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was recently invited to join an ATI. You know what an ATI is?’

  This country has more acronyms than humans. At least Bragantini had already explained it to me. ‘A temporary association of companies.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the voice said formally. ‘I declined the invitation.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the costs are too high. I heard about the death of that African boy. Last year my name was dragged into the investigation into the death of Luciano Tosti. However high the returns are, I didn’t want to be part of that sort of association.’

  ‘So why are you calling me?’

  ‘Because I thought you might like to know the participants.’

  I reached for a pen quickly and pulled a piece of paper towards me.

  ‘The mandataria – you’re familiar with that term? It implies the senior partner in the enterprise – is Masi Costruzione. The mandanti, the junior partners, are the following. You have a pen? Good.’ He drew breath and then rattled them off as I scribbled down the names: ‘CGB Holdings. Picem Srl. TT Systems Srl. Lucana Enterprises Spa. You want the percentages?’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Because I’m an honest banker. These people appear to be profiting from human sacrifice.’

  It sounded noble but he must have had another motive. Perhaps he wanted revenge on people who had dragged his name into a murder investigation.

  ‘And who are these people?’

  ‘It’s not hard to find out. You’re the detective aren’t you? Buon lavoro.’

  The line went dead. I stared at the names I had scribbled down and then at the telephone. I went round to the Camera di Commercio, the local Companies House. It was almost closing time and the man wasn’t enthusiastic about being waylaid. With a bit of encouragement he eventually brought up the details of the companies involved.

  It was like percentages within percentages. There were individuals – Beatrice Bravi, Alessandro Santucci, Massimo Matteucci, Bruno Santagata – who owned percentages of certain companies. And those companies were then part of a ‘temporary association’ of companies, each with their own percentage of participation. The whole thing could go on indefinitely. That temporary association could then become part of a larger association, or those individuals might themselves be only fronts for other people, in which case their percentages of the companies within the association would be divided amongst the people they were fronting up for. My head was spinning. It was as if a rich cake had been reduced to crumbs and suddenly so many people were tucking in that none of it made sense any more.

  I called Giacomo, the die-hard left-wing politician I had seen at the rally the day after Tommy’s death. He, more than anyone, was likely to know who the people behind the cordata were.

  We met in an unfashionable bar outside the Cittadella with large blue and yellow flags flying from above the awning. It had a cold, bare back room where we could talk. I took out my piece of paper and read him the names one by one.

  ‘Massimo Matteucci,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘He’s the provincial head of some bank. Can’t remember which one. A major contributor to Italia Fiera locally.’

  I smiled bitterly and looked down at my list. ‘Alessandro Santucci.’

  ‘Santucci? Don’t know him. Might be a relative of the senator. You know Gherardo Santucci?’

  ‘Beatrice Bravi.’

  ‘Beatrice? She’s the daughter of …’ He stopped himself. ‘Have these people done something wrong?’

  ‘They’re just part of a consortium. They’re investors in a business. Who is she?’

  ‘She’s the daughter of a colleague.’

  ‘On your side of the fence?’

  ‘Sure. You’ve heard of Michele Bravi. He was there at the rally the other night. He was as incensed about the whole white death as anyone.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet he was. He wanted to pressure Bragantini so his daughter could snap up the land. She’s one of the biggest investors in this whole scam.’

  He was shaking his head. He pushed his thumb and finger under his glasses and rubbed his eyes, his glasses bouncing on his forehead as he did so. He adjusted them again and shook his head. ‘Who else?’

  I went through the other names and he told me what he knew. There was the owner of the local TV station. Someone from the board of the football team who was close to D’Antoni. One of the largest shareholders of the local paper.

  By the time we had finished I felt like steam was coming out of my ears. Half a dozen of the city’s finest had come together to double their money. They couldn’t lose and they must have known they couldn’t lose. By the time the next piano regolatore was published they could sell to whoever they wanted at double or treble the price. It was a stitch-up and what really incensed me was the fact that the cordata was what they call trasversale. It would have been bad enough if D’Antoni had just been using the system to pay back his donors and sponsors and allies, but other parties
were involved. The daughter of one of the leading left-wing politicians was in on it as if politics was nothing other than a charade, a little show put on at elections to pretend the electorate had some sort of choice. All that stoked indignation at the death of a poor immigrant was nothing more than a way to put pressure on Bragantini to make sure his little girl made some quick cash. The whole thing disgusted me and the worst of it was that the media would never report the story because the owners of the local rag and the local TV station were in on the deal.

  I went round to see Dall’Aglio in the Questura. I wanted to make sure the case wouldn’t be shut down, everything neatly tied up and any loose ends simply archived. I was ushered in immediately and welcomed with unusual warmth.

  ‘It’s quite a case you’ve got here Castagnetti,’ he said, coming round his desk to offer me his hand.

  ‘You’ve heard the latest then?’ I asked wearily.

  ‘I heard.’ He looked at me and bowed minimally. ‘For once, you’ve actually made us look good. My colleagues in Milan are on their way here right now and they’re full of praise for the professionalism of this city.’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Sit down. Sit down.’ He went back behind his desk. ‘I thought you said this whole case was political?’

  ‘It is.’

  He shook his head like he knew more about it than me. ‘It was just the usual disagreement between two private parties. Someone thought he had been ripped off and lost his cool. Took revenge. End of story.’

  ‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘Tosti wasn’t the only one to lose his life. What about Mbora, the lad who died in the fire?’

  ‘We’re working on it,’ he said distractedly.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  He must have felt my anger, because he shuffled paper on his desk. ‘We’ve got prints from those petrol cans. Both Pace and Santagata have had their hands all over them. We pulled in that girl from the petrol station who gave us a positive ID on Pace from the night of the fire.’

  He looked at me like he had done it all by himself and was expecting a pat on the back. I nodded, staring at the ground as I thought about Gaia. If she was the key to the prosecution case, she was in a dangerous position.

  ‘The trouble is’, he said, ‘there’s nothing illegal about buying petrol. We’ve no proof Santagata used it for what we think he did.’

  I growled with impatience. ‘Santagata’s nephew is part of the cordata trying to buy Bragantini’s land.’

  He bounced his head slowly, like he was weighing it up.

  ‘And Santagata’, I went on, ‘is from the same small village up in the mountains as Moroni.’ I stared at him and saw him closing his eyes. ‘Moroni?’ I asked, in case he had forgotten. ‘He’s the cowboy who muscled his way into the Masi operation. You know who else was from that village?’ He didn’t say anything. ‘Luciano Tosti.’

  He sighed heavily, like he was growing tired of my insistence.

  ‘There was a design to this whole operation. Two fires within a week don’t happen just by chance. Bragantini even got intimidating phone calls. He reported them, right?’

  Dall’Aglio looked down at a corner of his desk, flicking his thumbs outwards like it wouldn’t make much difference. The gesture couldn’t have been more eloquent if he had shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘You can’t not make the connections.’ I was raising my voice unintentionally. ‘Paolo D’Antoni is the assessore all’urbanistica. He knew which land was about to be redesignated. He knew which land was ripe for the picking. He couldn’t buy it himself so he started tipping off Moroni in return for his wife getting the contract to sell the flats a few years down the line.’

  Dall’Aglio by now was looking pained, like he didn’t want to hear it.

  ‘The only trouble was that 3 per cent was only good if it was 3 per cent of something. Three per cent of nothing’s not worth much. And with the housing market collapsing and flats not selling, he wasn’t happy with his wife’s commission. Things were going unsold and his family wasn’t making the cash. So he makes sure his wife gets a penthouse on the cheap as well. That way everyone was happy. The politician’s family gets thanked properly for the tip-off. The cordata that buys the agricultural land makes a nice profit when the magic wand turns it residential. The constructors make a tidy sum. The only losers are the people who get forced off their land. And the city in general, as we watch another green space disappear under concrete for evermore.’

  ‘Proof?’ Dall’Aglio said sharply.

  ‘D’Antoni’s wife is given the contract. She’s given the flat.’

  ‘Nothing illegal there.’

  ‘Moroni and D’Antoni are business partners. I saw them chatting merrily just a few hours ago.’ My voice was rising again and I could feel myself leaning forward as I spoke in an effort to force Dall’Aglio to see it. ‘A young man lost his life because of this scam.’ I was slicing the air with the palm of my hand in frustration. ‘He was burnt alive by a bunch of crooks who were only interested in making more money, so they could buy more cars or votes or whores. That boy was the victim of this whole, orchestrated operation and Paolo D’Antoni is director of the orchestra.’

  He raised his fingers to try and calm me down. He looked at me and nodded slowly again. ‘What you’re saying might be right. Sadly, it sounds plausible. But one can’t proceed without proof, without evidence. There’s nothing illegal about two grown men having a meal together. Nothing illegal about a politician’s wife being given a contract.’

  I growled loudly.

  ‘The trouble is,’ he said gently, trying to get me on his side, ‘we can know full well what’s going on, we can be convinced we know the story, but we have to persuade other people. And suspicions aren’t very persuasive. And these people are too sharp to leave facts lying around. They know the law better than we do. They don’t even commit a crime, not in their eyes. They’re just businessmen getting on with business. Prove a link between Santagata and D’Antoni and you might be on to something, but do you really think a fox like D’Antoni is going to be connected to a thug like that?’ He shook his head.

  ‘What about phone intercepts?’

  He snorted. ‘Intercepts? Politicians in Rome are doing everything they can to make them illegal.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘For years they’ve been just about the only way we could snare people and now they want to take that away. But even if you get authorisation and actually set up a wiretap, you’ll find they talk in code and the courts don’t want to learn the language. When these people ask if the tide has come in, what they really mean is whether an illegal package has arrived. You hear them talking about the quality of a horse, they’re talking about the purity of the product. They say they want a problem to go away, they mean they want someone sent to eternity. Everything’s in code, and it’s not enough to know the code, you have to persuade a court that you know the code, and that the people on trial know the code, and then you’ve got to teach the court the code. And, normally, it only takes a fresh-faced lawyer to plead that everything’s a whole lot simpler, that his clients really were just talking about the tide, or a stallion, or a little problem that’s now gone away. And the court sighs in relief, because that interpretation is a whole lot easier, and they dismiss the case. The crims end up looking as innocent as new-born lambs. That’s just the way it is.’ He looked at me with what seemed like sincere condolence. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I walked out and immediately phoned an acquaintance who worked on the local paper. He had helped me on a case a while back and I owed him a scoop. When I got put through to him I told him the outline, without giving him any names. He whistled and said ‘merda’ a few times.

  ‘You got anything to back it up?’ he asked once I was finished.

  I took him through what we had but he was even less impressed than Dall’Aglio. ‘Listen, Casta,’ he said quickly. I could hear phones constantly ringing in his office. ‘You know what they used to do to journalists in the old days? A
simple bullet to the temple. Remember Pecorelli? They don’t do that any more because it looks bad. So nowadays they start a libel case. A case for a few million euros. Any investigative journalist is bankrupted before they’ve even hit their thirties. Either that, or editors have all the courage of rabbits in the headlights.’

  I tried to persuade him, but he sounded dubious. ‘I’ll try, of course I’ll try. But I’ve got to say, it’s more likely we’ll be running a story about this summer’s bikini styles.’

  The walk home was depressing. I doubted that anyone, other than Lombardi, would ever pay. Santagata might spend a few nights behind bars, but if Davide Pace refused to testify, there was hardly much evidence against him. A couple of cans of petrol outside his house was hardly grounds for a manslaughter charge. I knew what had happened, but a court would want a lot more than that. Even if he did get charged, he would be suicided long before he could involve one of the city’s most important politicians in the scam. D’Antoni certainly wouldn’t get dragged into it at all. Even though his wife was creaming off the profits from selling flats. Even though he was connected to Moroni and, through him, to Santagata and Tosti. D’Antoni would stay where he was, no doubt about that. He would probably be mayor this time next year.

  I twisted the key in the ignition and headed back to the farm where I had left the swarm. By now the place was calmer. There were a few bees around the entrance to the skep, but the majority were quietly inside. I took away the brick and let the skep fall flush with the ground. I took the four corners of the sheet and threw them over the skep, tying them together so that the bees were closed inside and I could carry the whole bundle by the knotted corners. I put it in the boot of the car.

  The farmer was watching me with curiosity. I went over to thank him for this new colony and promised to bring him a pot of honey at the end of the summer.