A Cold Flame

by Aidan Conway

  Another message came in.

  “Shit,” said Rossi, slapping his forehead in full Neapolitan style. “I’m supposed to be helping Yana sort out the flat. Totally forgot.”

  “Sure she’ll understand, won’t she?” said Carrara with more than a hint of irony.

  But he could see that Rossi’s excellent mood, like the country’s credit rating, had just undergone a downgrade.

  Nineteen

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Promise. I’ll put a reminder on the phone.”

  Rossi had at least turned up at the flat to make good his excuses. She had been holding out since she answered the door to him without even looking him in the face.

  “So, what is it this time?” she asked, finally, while continuing to busy herself around the newly painted and still dust-coated apartment with a sweeping brush. “They’re supposed to tidy up after them, aren’t they? Look at this!” she said indicating a tide of white residue she was pushing down the hallway.

  “Dario,” said Rossi, feeling self-consciously useless and also knowing that time was running short. “He can’t make long-term plans because of the situation, the escort situation. He’s moving around a lot again since intelligence got wind of something, so I was lucky, really, to pin him down tonight.”

  “And what does he have to do with all this?” she asked, shaking more dust out of the ornaments lining the corridor. “He’s only a journalist, isn’t he?”

  “A very good journalist,” said Rossi. “And a sharp operator who may have information that could open up a breach in a cold case. Remember the fire at Via Prenestina? The migrants?”

  “That’s a cold case?” she said. “Wasn’t it only a month or two ago.”

  “Well, it seems they’d run into a wall before we got onto it. No one’s come forward. No real witnesses, no names except this Russian guy who hung on for the best part of a week in hospital.”

  She stopped for a moment to rub the back of her neck and the shoulder muscles. The cerise sports vest she had on revealed warm, honey-coloured triangles of flesh.

  “Allow me,” said Rossi. “Where’s the pain?” He stood behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders then worked his thumbs in small circles into the tense, resistant fibres. As he kneaded the flesh and muscles, they began to soften and then he felt the rest of Yana’s body responding. He leaned over her and began kissing her neck. His hands slid down her back, reaching around her waist, moving upwards then, as she half turned towards him and let the duster fall to the parquet.

  “I thought you were running late, Inspector Rossi?” she said, softer now and only teasing him.

  “Well, I suppose I’ll have to break the speed limit all the way, Signora,” he replied. “So, is it your place or mine?”

  Twenty

  He’d left Yana dozing in a wild tangle of sheets, her bronzed body forming a startling oblique contrast to the otherwise candid tableau. One hand hung down off the side of the bed, and her fingertips seemed to caress the wooden floor in a frozen, coquettish gesture. A couple of insubstantial silken garments lay in a casual pearly knot on the floor, and the deep red sun was reflecting off the many shuttered apartment blocks opposite, rendering everything in the room a rich glowing amber. Yet, as he’d stood at the door, showered and still exhilarated, while he’d tried hard to resist it, even then he couldn’t help thinking of the times he’d seen dead bodies assuming the very same pose.

  Rossi put his foot down again. He was running late, and Dario would be jumpy. At the lights on Via Merulana he sent a quick, terse message. He’d only got the address an hour earlier. He remembered that Dario had been in transit the day they had met at the bombing. That was the way it had to be now and he knew Dario couldn’t always count on staying in the same location for more than a few days at a time. If local people, neighbours, shopkeepers, or hoteliers realized who he was, he would have to move on immediately, regardless of the plans he might have made. Regardless of the consequences for his stability.

  So “his place” was, of course, relative and an ironic reference to his all too real situation. It could be a hotel room, it could be a police station, even a monastery that rented rooms to the public. If he was lucky, he could settle into a small, isolated apartment which would become home for a time. But always with limits. If he had to move, it could be at very short notice, depending on the level of the risk assessment. As such, he carried only changes of essential seasonal clothes, the books he was reading at any give time, his computer. The minimum. So, enforced reclusion had turned a natural hoarder into a minimalist overnight. As such, he had discarded former Luddite tendencies and now treasured his e-reader like a convert taking to his new faith and practising it daily with unfettered zeal.

  Balconies and windows, while important for his heightened sensory needs, were also considered high-risk. You could expose yourself, be a target for snipers or for the inquisitive. And people talked. Always. Information had a price tag, too. It was no kind of life, that was for sure. But he’d made the choice by his actions. He had obtained fame rapidly by way of his scoops and had been feted, rightly, for a period, in the media. Yet the gloss resulting from that season spent in the public eye had then begun to fade. The media was fickle, quickly bored, and in some cases, to squeeze extra mileage out of him, the narrative had taken a sinister and cynical turn. He was only in it for the money; if he was so at risk why had no one tried to kill him again? Was one journalist worth all this expense? He had drawn it on himself; he should have kept his nose out.

  As for Rossi, though weighed down by responsibilities, he knew that, in comparison with Iannelli, he was a free bird. His quarrels with the dark side were, paradoxically, relatively clean fights. But Dario had condemned them with his words and with his ability to sway public opinion. That was the unforgivable transgression for the dark lords who dwelt in the shadows from where they were accustomed to pulling the strings unseen. Iannelli had dared to throw back the curtain on their holy of holies; he had dared to let in the light.

  Rossi parked, turned off the engine then took out his phone.

  “Here,” he typed.

  On the other side of the road the front passenger door on a sizeable, but otherwise anonymous, black Lancia swung open, as if radio-controlled. The backup car would be nearby and both would be armour-plated, bombproof, weighed down by their second skins. The windows too would be built to resist the most concerted onslaught of any assassin’s bullets. A signal metaphor for the heavy burden of moral responsibility, Rossi reflected. Like some ponderous medal for your achievement in having spoken the unpalatable truth.

  One of the car’s occupants crossed and approached Rossi’s vehicle, all the time making discreet checks on human and vehicular movement. A thin and oblivious stream of traffic, meanwhile, threaded up and down the sun-dappled and tree-lined street.

  Rossi got out of the car, and his contact greeted him with a firm handshake.

  “Dottore, so glad you could make it. Our client is waiting. How was your trip?”

  Rossi went along with the necessary pantomime until they had climbed the steps to the front door and then closed it behind them. They took an old-fashioned lift barely big enough for him and the considerable bulk of his dark-suited companion. There was nobody outside the apartment. That would only have aroused suspicion. The door was opened by a less stocky but equally formidably focused-looking member of the team. In the well-appointed but inappropriate surrounds of a mock Regency room, sat Dario Iannelli. He was on the edge of a chaise longue, hunched over some papers and dressed in a crumpled linen shirt and light, casual trousers. A bottle and a couple of glasses were poised to one side, like mute attendant footmen.

  He rose to greet Rossi, as the officers comprising his escort briefly converged on each other and then dispersed to make more of the necessary checks at the points of entry or exit. Rossi too got a pat down. Admirable professionalism.

  “So, here we are,” said Iannelli. “Welcome to my world, Michael. My brave ne
w world.”

  Twenty-One

  “Of course, it’s not as if I’m the only one who has to live like this,” he said as he reached out to pour another generous measure of whisky.

  “I know,” said Rossi. “But you did a double whammy, what with the Sicilian encounter and then the local shenanigans, up here.”

  “But all in its way connected,” said Iannelli, raising a mildly admonishing finger and taking a sip as if the liquor were a necessary medicine about which he still held some professional doubts.

  “You weren’t a whiskey man before,” Rossi commented.

  “Everything changes, Michael. And everything has changed for me. It’s not like I couldn’t have seen it coming but reality bites, doesn’t it? This is another of my faithful travel companions,” he added wryly, patting the bottle as if it were a dog that might just as easily have been feeling the force of his boot.

  “It’s not your fault, Dario,” said Rossi. He could have murdered a cold beer in a bar but knew it would prove logistically tricky. The apartment they were in was Iannelli’s new home for now, though he had only arrived that evening. It was a short let and the landlord hadn’t even turned the fridge on in advance. So, no ice.

  Iannelli recounted how the security checks at his last residence had flagged an individual, albeit well into his sixties, with links to a Roman gang reputedly involved in any number of Italian “mysteries”, including the disappearance of a girl near the Vatican, never to be found, as well as unclaimed bombings attributed variously to far-right neo-fascist groupings or anarchist and Maoist revolutionaries.

  “So, time to move on, again,” said Iannelli, although Rossi perceived in his recounting of the tale something of his verve still emerging, that egotistical risk-readiness that characterized him and others like him. He was a kind of moral base jumper. Had he not weighed up the risks? Well it had to be the buzz. And it was the detail, the preparation required, the ritual, and then the accolades undoubtedly also played their part. There was though something of the wounded eagle about him now as he looked from time to time towards the window, the curtains drawn, the world beyond going on without him. Good and evil, right and wrong were out there in some long-term game at which, if you wanted, you could always be a spectator.

  “And it’s all getting so interesting now, isn’t it?” he continued. “The stakes are being upped as we speak, and I need to be on the ground, getting my sources, finding new contacts. But these days, going out for an ice cream is like conducting a minor state visit.” He almost laughed. “It’s practically impossible. But I have to sometimes,” he added. “I just have to. So, I’ve become a master of disguise.” He laughed and reached for a bag containing some of his props. “Of course, the problem is if someone is watching the apartment. They’re no fools, but if I reckon I can slip out and slip back in, where I then go is relatively safe for a time. I’m driving these guys nuts though,” he said gesturing to his suited companions.

  “Well it’s good to see you, Dario. Even if you are, shall we say, not in your natural environment.”

  He nodded his thanks before assuming a more businesslike demeanour.

  “Well, let’s hear it,” he began. “What is it you want to know about this character, this Jibril?”

  Rossi began to recount the details of his chance encounter with Tiziana.

  “First things first, did you meet the guy?”

  “Yes,” said Iannelli. “I did meet a young man called Jibril. He was in the centre for identification and expulsion, the CIE, in Sicily, and we were introduced, by a priest, I don’t remember his name. Cristian, I think.”

  “And you gave him your card?”

  “Yes, I generally do. Just in case there’s a chance of somebody coming up with the goods. But what’s the link?”

  “The link is that he may have known the guy whose body was found on the Tuscolana. Remember? Throat cut and a pig’s head thrown in for good measure. He, Jibril that is, went to identify the body. At his own risk, I might add, as an illegal, a clandestino.”

  “Yeah, a ‘wop’,” said Iannelli with a dash of bitter irony. “And to think that we were the guys without papers, once upon a time, in America. We’ve got short memories, we Italians. Selective ones.”

  “Well the Sicilians do us proud, at least,” said Rossi. “Hearts big as houses.”

  Iannelli was nodding and allowed a half-smile to break out as a wave of nostalgia washed over him momentarily.

  “And Rita?” said Rossi picking up on it straight away. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”

  Rita was the flame-haired beauty with an unshakable sense of justice who had captured Iannelli’s heart in Sicily. And whose father had subsequently put him onto the suppressed dossier that brought him his life-changing scoop.

  “No, no. Ask away. It’s still on, very much so, but as you can see, the dating arrangements aren’t really to my liking.” He laughed again. “Trust me to find a beautiful Sicilian girl with a truly modern approach and then it’s me who has to bring the chaperone.”

  Rossi laughed with him now. It wasn’t the old Dario but it was close.

  “Anyway,” said Rossi, “there’s something about this guy that doesn’t quite fit.”

  “Go on,” said Iannelli.

  “Well, he goes there to identify a body, endangering his own freedom. He says it could be his friend, and he slips through the bureaucratic hoops and then it turns out that it’s not his friend after all.”

  “So, he made a mistake. Where’s the rub, dottore?”

  Rossi took another sip of the bog-standard Scotch.

  “Well, Tiziana, my contact in the morgue, says he reacted as if he’d seen his brother, or someone he had been very close to, lying there on the slab. He held it back but she knew. She always knows. That’s what she does day in day out. You know a story, I know a crook, and she can spot pain a mile off.”

  Iannelli had left his drink untouched. He was getting interested.

  “So let’s run through the scenarios. I find that helps,” said Iannelli, grabbing a pen and a notepad. “Let’s say he is the guy’s murdered friend. What would you want to do in that situation?”

  “Give him a decent burial. Get him home. Inform his family,” Rossi replied.

  “But if you’re an illegal, with no money, with no guarantee of getting political asylum, at least not quickly. Then what? You know how it works, how long it can take.”

  “Leave him? To a pauper’s grave?”

  “Or get your hands on the bastards who murdered him,” said Iannelli.

  A dish best served cold? A dish that had to be served at any cost, be it cold or hot, thought Rossi.

  “So that could be on anyone’s agenda. It could be the priority. Payback,” Iannelli continued.

  “Depending on the person,” said Rossi. “There are plenty who wouldn’t dream of stepping up to the challenge. We don’t all want satisfaction, even if we might fantasize about it. There aren’t many who have the means and the will to obtain it.”

  They reflected on their half conclusions as Rossi refreshed both their glasses then went in search of water.

  “Where did she say she thought he was from?” Iannelli enquired.

  “West African, quite possibly.”

  “She could have asked.”

  “Didn’t seem the interrogating type. She’ll have wanted to win his confidence.”

  “West African,” said Iannelli. “The plot thickens. A whole lot of trouble going on in that part of the world, isn’t there? Always has been. The Ivory Coast, Liberia, in the old Niger Delta. Lots of oil, and our boys are there, by which I mean the big players of our petroleum industry.”

  “West African is pretty broad and, if I follow you, you’re saying he could be Nigerian. But I’m logging it all. You know I never rule out any colour, shade, or shape if there’s a chance it might fit into some hypothetical final mosaic.”

  “You exclude at your peril without first having exhausted all the logical hypotheses, r
ight?”

  “Correct,” Rossi replied.

  “But remember it’s the Nigerian guys over here who are the main men and pretty mean mothers, the narco boys and the organized crews.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Rossi leaning back into the plush velvet of his armchair. “And they’ve been taking on the Camorra at their own game of late. They don’t settle for a back seat, that’s for sure. So, we can’t rule it out. But what was your impression of this guy Jibril?”

  Iannelli reflected for a moment.

  “A bit ballsy, cocky, confident, fancied himself as a leader, I’d say. And probably with some justification. His English was excellent and his Italian was already commendable too, considering he’d only been on Italian soil a few weeks, maybe a month. And he definitely wasn’t Somalian or Ethiopian so he’d had no head start.”

  “Well it certainly takes guts to cross the Med in one of those deathtraps they use, and in winter too.”

  Iannelli nodded.

  “Well,” Iannelli continued, “he must have got himself out anyway, and found his way to Rome. And in pretty good time. What were the dates again?”

  Rossi reached into his jacket for his notebook. He showed Iannelli the relevant part of Tiziana’s testimony.

  “That’s good going, by anyone’s standards,” said Iannelli, settling back himself now into the corner of the chaise longue. “So, that’s my side of the story. Where are you thinking of going with this?”

  “Another sniff around the African communities could be profitable. It’s a big job, mind, and I didn’t see much willingness to cooperate last time we went looking. And it’s all hands on deck for other very evident reasons, which leaves us short of manpower, as usual. I’m also factoring in that Jibril is, presumably, a Muslim.”

  “Well,” said Iannelli, “he didn’t give me any obvious reason to believe he was particularly religious. Principled yes. And angry, possibly, with some potential for hard-line tendencies. There was the priest there, as I said, but it didn’t get heated or anything. He was contained but simmering a bit. Not an out-and-out fundamentalist, if that’s what you’re thinking. But if he is a Muslim, it’s not insignificant, given the historical moment, shall we say.”