A Cold Flame

by Aidan Conway

  “Anything I should be interested in?”

  “Just working on a lead,” said Rossi. “Or you might say we’re clutching at straws.”

  Iannelli’s escort were looking keen to get them off the street, despite the cordon extending around them for a kilometre in every direction.

  “Let’s go inside and see what we can get,” said Iannelli, taking the hint. Rossi followed. The name Jibril was not high on Iannelli’s agenda. He would try to jog his memory later.

  Eleven

  Francesco hurried down the fire escape and out of the university building with some of the other candidates and the various office workers and public servants who shared the ten-storey complex with them. For most of them, the drill provided a welcome chance for an unexpected break, and the bar across the road was already filling up. As false alarms were frequent, few seemed to be giving any credence to the idea of there actually having been a major incident, but Francesco took out his mobile and called Paola anyway. He was sure she would have done the same if she had heard the news; it was the way she was and some of her attitude had clearly rubbed off on him too. But there was no answer.

  There was a temporary lockdown in place in the building but hard news was still at a premium. He ordered a coffee, and as he half listened to the gossip and looked up at the rolling news on the small TV in the corner over the fruit machine, fragmentary accounts began to emerge of an explosion with possible loss of life at or near the Israeli university in Trastevere. So they at least were safe, but they had hit somewhere else, another university. Others were watching the screen now and the jocular tone dropped an octave or two. Then he heard a rumble of talk and a few low, hissed “murdering bastards”.

  When the all-clear came, Francesco darted back into the building to dot the i’s and the t’s on some outstanding administrative procedures. He exchanged a few quick words with the other candidates, most of whom knew each other in one way or another, either through work or the periodic ritual of the concorso. One of the candidates had unsettled Francesco. On his own admission, he’d only been in the university sector for some six months, was much younger than any of the other candidates, and yet seemed to exude an air of slightly embarrassed certainty about “the job” and what it would entail. All the others had CVs stretching back to the beginning of the previous decade and they exhibited the worn exteriors to prove it. But what worried Francesco more now was Paola.

  As he stepped back out of the building he tried again and as he did so he noticed her text.

  Going to see Mom then on my way home. Had a cancellation. Will ring later. XXX P.

  The timestamp meant it must have come through late. Network problems, probably, he reasoned. Everyone calling at the same time. So maybe that was why she hadn’t rung and why she wasn’t answering either. He tried again. Still nothing. He closed the phone and looked about and thought about getting a bus, and he was just slipping the phone into his pocket when a call came in. “DadP”. it said on the ID. It was Paola’s father, and he never called but Paola had insisted they swap numbers, just for emergencies.

  Francesco felt a sudden hot surge of fear as his thumb hovered over the icon. Her dad must be checking too, like he was. He must have seen the news. He took the call.

  “Yes,” said Francesco, ready to rise to the unlikely occasion.

  “Francesco,” came the reply, firm, familiar but in a tone he had never heard before. “It’s Paola, she’s not answering her phone. Have you seen the news? She was in Trastevere. Did you know? Has she called?”

  ***

  Francesco walked on in a daze. After the initial call, there had followed a to and fro of frantic phone conversations as Paola’s father had drawn on all his available contacts to get access to the crime scene and confirmation of what had happened. They had hoped that in the initial confusion the story might prove to be the fruit of a misunderstanding, but soon the evidence relayed back to them had been crushing. The formal identification would still have to be made but it was as good as there in black and white.

  Was he going in the right direction? What direction? What was the point? She was dead. There was no doubt. Her date of birth. Her height. Her hair colour. It was all there on the card she carried. The identity card they all carried like convicts in their own country. The card that said he was a citizen of the Italian Republic with its most wonderful constitution; the best in the world, so they said. The card they carried so that they could be stopped and checked and identified at any time of the day and night to ensure that they were not enemies of that same Republic, enemies of the patria. The card that could be used to trace them to their house, to their staircase, to their apartment so the knock could come in the middle of the night. So they could always be found.

  He wandered on up the incline of Viale di Circo Massimo. Past the fruit sellers. Past the teenage tourists playing in the middle distance with joyful abandon in the old amphitheatre. They were climbing on each other’s backs, playing at being charioteers, like Ben Hur, the Jewish prince who took on the might of the Romans in this very place. Their cries carried to him as they surged across an imaginary finishing line acknowledging fictional crowds and falling then to the ground in mock scenes of death and slaughter. Then, like parents giving children piggyback rides, they got up again. A joyous resurrection.

  He came to the crest of the hill from where he could look down to the Tiber. Behind him and towering above him was the monument to Mazzini, the father of the patria. High up in his chair, on his plinth, he seemed to be dozing in old age. Venerable, noble, yet atop his verdigris bronze head, the city’s seagulls perched one after another, as if to take their bearings, only then to foul his likeness with impunity.

  He had not been able to accept it. He was sure, first, that there must have been a mistake. Any number of women could have the same name. It was a common one in Italy. Paola Mancini. But with the same date of birth? But the details they gave him were final. He and her father had discussed the formal identification briefly, but it was a father’s job to identify his own daughter no matter how close they had been. The police said she had not been caught by the full force of the blast but that she had been “unlucky”. Already, he was appropriating the lexicon of disaster as his own.

  From the Municipal Rose Garden a rich, variegated perfume battled with the acrid summer smog of urban pollution. Good and evil, past and present, youth and age were tearing each other apart now in his own mind too, but beneath the surface. He wondered why he didn’t feel tired. He had instead a feeling of bizarre elation as though he had been chosen for something, been elected. Something was telling him that life now would be lived on a new level. The old life, like a bridge collapsing into a gorge, was still visible but gone for good. He moved nearer to the railings and sat down on the narrow wall. An ambulance approached from Viale Aventino, fleeing then past the Bocca della Verità in the direction of the Tiber. Maybe she was only injured. Maybe this ambulance was for her. Flowers protruded from between the railings above his head, and as a sudden light breeze lifted from over the Palatine Hill, it stirred a shower of petals, and he watched as one by one they fell to the ground before him.

  Twelve

  “So what about Maroni?” said Carrara, stirring his coffee. They were in the university canteen situated on the side of the building furthest from the Lungotevere, where the explosion had occurred. One corner had been transformed into an incident room until the usual suspects had finished clearing up outside and hosing down and gathering the necessary minutiae for Forensics. The university was an imposing building and while the bomb had torn through the soft tissue of passersby and disfigured the facade of the eighteenth-century palazzo, its structural integrity had not been compromised.

  Meanwhile, inside, all available officers had been charged with interviewing every imaginable person that had been inside or in the vicinity of the building.

  “He’ll be turning his boat around now, I reckon,” said Rossi. “And wherever he is, he’ll want to be
informed of the facts as they happen. You know he brings a satellite phone on holiday.”

  Carrara knocked back his espresso.

  “So I’ve heard. Prudent man.”

  “Likes to know. Doesn’t appreciate getting ridden roughshod over when he’s out of the picture.”

  “That’s a polite way of putting it. Better not to take a holiday.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Rossi, “there won’t be any for the foreseeable future.”

  Carrara scratched his head as he recommenced scanning papers and spreadsheets and maps of the building.

  “Are you sure there’s much point trying to interview all these kids and staff today without proper interpreters?”

  “I brought that up already,” Rossi replied, “but certain individuals are convinced of their language skills.”

  “You mean the ones whose evidence then gets torn apart when the lawyers get stuck into them?”

  “That sort of thing. Anyway, not my orders, Gigi. The call goes out and we answer. This is one major security shitstorm. You realize there’s an international summit coming up, and the word from very on high is that they want answers sooner rather than later. It’ll be the Americans. You can count on it. They’ve got a shedload of interests plugged in here.”

  “But you know as well as I do that the evidence is inadmissible without a lawyer present,” Carrara insisted.

  “Well, they want ‘facts’ that might help point us in the right direction. I don’t think they’re counting on the bomber still being among us. It’s intelligence gathering.”

  “Intelligence? They might perhaps have made a better job of gathering before it all kicked off, especially if they had agents in there.”

  Rossi nodded.

  “And he managed to plant a device without anyone checking? Either the guards were sleeping or they thought it was someone who studied or worked here.”

  “What did you make of the footage?”

  “You mean the footage they let us see?”

  “You’re saying Anti-Terror were being ‘selective’?”

  “Playing it very close to their chests,” said Rossi. “Like in any good story, it’s what you choose not to reveal.”

  “But the guy in the hat walking away a minute or so before the blast? Well covered up for the time of year, don’t you think?”

  Rossi shrugged.

  “Could be anyone. But from what I saw of it, it looked like a bike bomb. There was no other vehicle in the vicinity, no cars, only passersby and students, no visible packages. They should have found a few fragments by now, so they’ll be able to put some meat on the bones.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Carrara. “You can get a lot of plastic inside that tubing. At least a kilo, maybe two. And it only takes one to obliterate a vehicle.”

  “It was a taster, if you ask me,” said Rossi. “Small but nasty. Nails and bearings. But we’ve got six corpses in there and maybe more to come.”

  “A spectacular?” said Carrara. “In Rome? That’s turning the clock back forty years.”

  “Well, someone’s opened the betting. It all depends if the stakes rise. And who’s playing the game. Look,” said Rossi, “Bianco’s here.”

  The sergeant was approaching their table with his customary heavy tread now even heavier. He flopped down into a chair.

  “Relatives,” he said. “In the mortuary. What a fucking job.”

  He gave them the low-down on things. A temporary mortuary had been set up in a ground-floor classroom. The air-conditioning helped. Despite being August, the road diversions and massive security clampdown combined with a general heat-stoked hysteria was wreaking havoc on the city’s traffic. The scene-of-crime magistrate had agreed with the City Prefect to keep the bodies at the scene until things calmed down and until they could get next of kin informed, at least in the case of the local victims. Then they would see to the overseas students.

  “Dario’s forming his opinions already, isn’t he?” said Carrara, waiting then for Rossi’s reaction.

  “He’s going through hell! A guy like him cooped up 24/7 with an escort, as good as living on the run. There are Mafia scum who’ve got more freedom to walk the streets. The least he should be doing is concocting another conspiracy theory.”

  “As far-fetched as the last one wasn’t? I mean The Carpenter case turned out to be just about as fucked up and twisted as you could imagine. Faked deaths, suicides, triple bluffs. You couldn’t have made it up.”

  “Take every case on its merits, Gigi. Follow the facts until they prove you were right not to believe somebody’s wild theorizing, or until what you do see begins to eat away at your long-held notions of the rational and believable. Otherwise you lose your direction. There’s a place for instinct, for gut feeling but it’s the catalyst, not the constituent in the equation. Or the angle; the right kind of lighting that illuminates what you hadn’t noticed before.”

  “So how do you see this one shaping up? Us against the bad guys in a nice straight fight? Do you see a tall dark stranger?”

  Rossi gave a nervous look over his shoulder to the tables behind him in the canteen nearest to the coffee machines and the free food. They were all there. Known and unknown. Uniformed and non. Some friends and a sprinkling of well-seasoned foes. Yes, thought Rossi, it took events like this to really shake up the law and order establishment. It was like some sort of world cup and everyone was suddenly going for glory and sensing the opportunity to get their hands on the trophy.

  “Or another one where we’re watching our backs and wishing we were on traffic detail again?” Carrara added.

  Rossi flicked a used sugar sachet into his cup. “I predict interesting, Gigi. That’s what I see. As in very ‘interesting times’.”

  Carrara had set up a meeting with Dr Okoli. The professor was waiting in an interview room but without any of the accompanying security. Rossi noted that unlike the usual suspects they had to face across a desk in there, he seemed quite unperturbed by the surroundings.

  “So, it seems I am a lucky man,” he said with a broad smile as he rose to greet Rossi and Carrara with a powerful handshake.

  “I tend to agree,” said Rossi as he introduced himself. “We’ll keep this as brief as we can, Professor. I’m sure you have a lot to attend to.”

  Okoli nodded and sat down again. He had the relaxed air of a writer for whom ideas come easily and in abundance. No tortured soul here. Rossi was getting the feeling that this was a man who had probably seen worse on many occasions. Much worse.

  “Enemies?” said Rossi.

  “How long do you have?” the professor chuckled. “That part of the Nigerian establishment which is corrupt to its rotten core and in cahoots with the petrodollar touting rabble and the foreign ‘investors’.” He made his own inverted commas for Rossi and Carrara’s benefit. “Speculators, predators, depredators of our country would be a more accurate term. But investors is what they like to be known as.”

  He reeled off a list of names. Carrara took notes.

  “Some of these people have form as they say. Nothing proved, of course. There never is. But take it from me, they would like me out of the way. Ever since I resurrected the ghost of my old friend Ken Saro-Wiwa, when I called for his name to be cleared, for a state pardon and recognition of his innocence, and for his murderers to be finally brought to justice. I went too far for my own good it seems.”

  Rossi knew the story well. The writer who had championed the cause of the oppressed and exploited in the Niger Delta, where the oil companies and their friends in government were the kings. He had finished up on the end of a rope, widely believed to have been convicted on trumped-up charges. The whole thing stank.

  “So do you think they could be pursuing you?” said Carrara. “You may have heard we’ve had some race-related incidents in the city. Hate crimes we think. Far-right groups targeting foreigners. That kind of thing. Did you receive any threats? Any signs of intimidation?”

  The profe
ssor listened and pondered for a moment. He shrugged. Non-committal but open.

  “Someone let down the tyres on my car once. Someone else lets his dog shit outside my house every day. Maybe the same person.”

  “That could just be Rome,” said Carrara.

  “Apart from that,” Okoli continued, “the attack on me and my family was out of the blue, gentlemen, but not, shall we say, entirely surprising.”

  “Did you lose much?” said Rossi. “In the fire. Your work?”

  Okoli shook his head.

  “Some possessions, but I left Nigeria in rather a hurry, you know. The possessions I had I knew I would not have much chance of holding on to, so I sold or gave away what I could before leaving.”

  He put his hand in his pocket and took out a USB drive.

  “Everything else of real importance is on here,” he said. “My research. My sources. I never part from this. They’ll have to kill me first if they want it.”

  Their eyes locked for a moment in understanding before Rossi moved things along.

  “We’ll see to it that you get the right security. Do you have some work lined up?”

  The question had come out spontaneously and was inspired by goodwill, but as soon as he had said it, Rossi realized it made him sound like some sort of fake-casual immigration official.

  Okoli smiled.

  “I was thinking of selling my body, officer. I have heard it’s all the rage among the Nigerians in Rome. Haven’t you?”

  Thirteen

  Rossi stood on his balcony watching the cloudless sky as the sun’s first rays began to cancel night’s all too brief dominion. It was an implacable scene, like a Cyclops’s blank stare. The temperature gauge in his living room had dropped by two degrees overnight. Small comfort. No breeze. Nevertheless, as he drank his cool coffee and looked out at the still-sleeping metropolis, his mind felt fresh, at least for now, and he reflected on what had emerged from the previous day’s events.