A Cold Flame

by Aidan Conway

  Francesco’s family, despite its proud and honourable history, had not been one of those families that carefully looked after its silverware and antique chairs. While not bourgeois, they had standing and had exercised some influence not least because of its partisan history. His grandfather had been a dedicated anti-fascist and combatant for Italian freedom in the 1940s as the country had been plunged into a bitter and brutal civil war.

  He had passed on his beliefs to Francesco’s father, Maurizio, a mild-mannered but principled individual who had been active in the Communist Party in the 1970s. Though he had never embraced violence, he had never hidden their past either but rather wore it as a badge.

  It would, however, cost him his life when a neo-fascist murder squad followed him as he was leaving a Party meeting. He was slaughtered in reprisal for an equally cold-blooded assassination by far-left militants who had firebombed an apartment where a far-right collective had been meeting. Maurizio had been bundled into a car, strangled, then shot in the face and his body dumped on the street in his own quartiere, his own area. Francesco had been a baby and he had grown up knowing his father only from stories and fading photographs.

  The meeting was breaking up. They would be moving on to the pubs and clubs, getting something to eat, engendering further discussion, but away from indiscreet attention. There were spies, plants and informers to be wary of. It was exciting for some of them, the younger ones especially. But they had never seen an armoured car slicing through a peacefully protesting crowd then bearing down on them, the water cannon toppling grown men like skittles, the tear gas choking you and burning your eyes and throat. And there was always the fear, the feeling of being exposed as if naked, if they decided that today the shooting would start too.

  He made his excuses, saying brief goodbyes to friends who were busy in huddles and discussions around the hall.

  ***

  Outside, it had rained. September was here and with it the promise of thunderstorms but still many more long warm days and evenings to come. Summer’s extended lease was always a comfort, of sorts, in Rome.

  He made his way then towards Porta Maggiore’s busy tram interchange, following the towering old Roman walls that dominated the western side of San Lorenzo, and boarded the number 3.

  The short journey left him on Via Carlo Felice, off which, on a side street, the family house was located. He had come back to live there after Paola’s murder, handing all responsibility for it over to her family. Glad to be shot of them anyway. Let them do with it what they please, and her father, calculating even in grief, had been keen not to lose the rental contract.

  There was no sound. His mother was already in bed, and his grandfather too would be sleeping. The care assistants would have been in to see to his medical needs and to give him a sleeping pill. Francesco turned on only a small table lamp in the hall which cast enough light for him to see along the corridor and into his grandfather’s room. He opened the wardrobe and, getting down on his knees, reached in under the blankets and spare sheets until his hand touched what he was looking for.

  He removed the wooden box about the size of a hefty old leather-bound family bible. He put everything else back as he had found it, switched off the hall light and went into his own room, locking the door behind him. He checked that the blinds were down behind the curtains before switching on his bedside light. Only then did he open the box.

  The Smith & Wesson revolver lay nestled inside. He lifted it out, relishing its weight, its solid realness. He had handled guns in the carabinieri, and he remembered how a brand-new weapon when handled would shed the occasional drop of oil like a bead of perspiration, like a slow tear to be wiped away.

  The simple weapon in his hand had a story, one that ran parallel with the official history of the state and the law-upholding duties of a carabiniere. It was the weapon his grandfather had used to fight for freedom and for what he believed in when there was no other choice available. He had taken life with it, he had saved his own life with it too, all so that others might live free from oppression.

  The lamplight gleamed on the gun’s grooves and on the dark, sleek rod of the barrel, like he imagined moonlight must have gleamed on it when they waited ready to ambush fascists and Nazis in the mountains. Then he laughed to himself – his romantic idiocy. The gun, like their tunic buttons, their wedding rings and their grimly determined faces, would all have been blackened quite deliberately with grease or with handfuls of the very earth they marched upon.

  All then would have been as one with the night in which even the slightest glimmer could be enough to get you killed.

  Giancarlo’s hands were sweating as he put down his phone. He glanced at the time. Working into the evening again. Sweat was glistening too at his temples and running down his cheeks despite the powerful blast of the air-conditioning. It was as if he were running a fever but he wasn’t sick, only tormented. He dried his hands on his trousers and pulled open the desk’s top drawer then rummaged around for tissues and another pack of dexedrine. He wiped his face and neck and snapped out and popped another couple of pills, sloshing them back with water.

  He had first begun to use them as a prescribed medication when he had found his attention wavering in meetings and his ability to recall facts not quite what it might have been. His doctor had given him the once-over, advising him to cut down on his working hours, which he had tried to do but in vain. He had continued to return for repeat prescriptions until the same doctor had written out a phone number and pushed it back across the desk instead, advising him to seek professional help for his substance abuse.

  That had been some weeks ago. It seemed an age but it was in fact only a month or so. The job did that to you and everyone in his circle was popping something as if it were the pre-dinner aperitivo or the afternoon shot of coffee.

  But he had other worries and now he was buying the stuff anywhere he could. Because he hadn’t been sleeping much either he was knocking them back just to keep himself minimally focused during his waking hours at the office.

  He stared again at his to-do list. It was getting longer by the hour and he had been doing precious little to shorten it. He had put things off, delegated, and buried what wouldn’t be likely to surface in the short term. That could be someone else’s problem further down the line. It would all come out later, when he wasn’t working there, when maybe he wasn’t around anymore.

  He let out a powerful sigh of pent-up stress and anxiety, enough to let his blissfully serene leather-skirted secretary, Giada, raise her eyes from her keyboard for a second to take note. It was as if she were mocking him, flaunting the gold bracelets and jewels he had made sure she could choose for herself in return for her making his toil a more rewarding experience.

  He had already seen every inch of her body in every imaginable position on any number of work-related weekend and late-night escapades. All since he had hired her on a whim after making his life-changing deal with the President. How she had first wheedled her way into his world had all seemed so purely casual, but now he suspected she was there for a reason.

  The deal had seen him swimming in cash and comfort, wading through the riches promised for those destined for the mythical next level. The thousand-euro gourmet meals all over Rome and Milan. The private jets. The high-class escorts. It had been a whirlwind, in which, however, his responsibilities had continued to grow like a skyscraper being built at cartoon speed in the eye of a hurricane. Money brought more money and more money brought more risk. There was more to cover up, more to conceal and move around, more of everything. Yes, he had truly arrived.

  But all the bling and status meant next to nothing now because he had fucked up and fucked up big time and he could see no way out that was not going to cost him dear.

  “Anything I can do for you, Dottor Mondo?”

  Never use my first name at work. Never call my home. She was sticking to those rules at least.

  “No, Giada. No, thank you,” he replied and, after a seco
nd or two in which she appeared to be studying him for some extra sign, she went back to her slow typing, the tic-tic of her keyboard like water torture against the silence.

  He stood up and went to the window, looking back across the city in the direction of his home. He longed now to do ordinary, banal, boring things, to reconnect with his family, to make it work. But he had told Greta, his wife, nothing. It was just the work, he had said, just the pressure. He wondered where she was, and with whom. He snatched up his phone then thought better of it, especially with Giada in the room.

  Greta had already stopped working, on his insistence, ostensibly so that at least she could dedicate her time to the kids. But in his absence the cheques were now going to an increasing army of babysitters as Greta began pursuing her hobbies, her dreams, frequenting the chicest of the local gyms, taking courses, spending hours of her evenings making multi-tier cakes for new friends while he ricocheted around the peninsula and flew back and forth to one overseas appointment after the next. But then the photos had arrived.

  On his desk.

  Him and other women.

  Him and other men.

  And then the ultimatum. He had been left with no choice but to bring them on board – the bosses, the Camorra. He had grown up with some of them, so they knew him and his family inside out, even though early on in his life he had taken what he had thought to be an alternative route: ItalOil and corporate success. But all roads lead to the same destination when you’re rotten inside.

  He pressed his face against the plate glass, his breath clouding the clear view, the shadow on the X-ray of his life. And there were only those few centimetres between him and oblivion.

  He had put his trust in them as he had no choice and they knew he had no choice. It was the merry-go-round of malevolence from which he could not get off.

  And then they’d screwed him, hung him out to dry. They’d even sent him back the originals in a sign of some kind of mock chivalric gesture, but it was already too late.

  He stared at the city’s confusion and saw in it the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of his own dilemma. For the hundredth time he tried to analyse, like a balance sheet, the options open to him. He could run. He had funds where no one could reach them – enough to make a start, to begin again. But his family?

  Or he could turn himself in, flip, become an informer for the cops and disappear into the other system made for those like him, never to return.

  But time was running out.

  He sat down and grabbed the mouse then flicked between screens. His old touch had evaded him, but if he could make one big deal and pull it off he could at least meet them on something like equal terms. I can repay the money, every last cent.

  But the trust, Giancarlo? Can you ever repay our trust?

  And how they loved to use their clichés, loved them because they were so true.

  Twenty-Five

  Rossi was sitting opposite Maroni, who was surveying the paperwork to be forwarded to the magistrate. They had practically caught the student they believed to be responsible for the spate of incendiary attacks on car parks and motorbike stands that had left a trail of destruction but no fatalities. The other fires, however, were still frustrating them – both the Prenestina massacre, which he and Carrara continued to investigate secretly, and the arson attack on Professor Okoli and his family.

  Rossi was clutching a ragged copy of The Post folded to the local news section. As Maroni studied the report Rossi took another furtive glance. There was a short article about some other sporadic firebombing attempts – molotov cocktails thrown at a social club frequented by Senegalese immigrants and a mosque hit by youths – likely the hastily planned work of a far-right splinter faction. Thankfully none had done any significant damage, but he had also heard how traumatized the victims had been, something that had not made the headlines. The Roman Post was Torrini’s paper, and Torrini had long been a thorn in Rossi’s side. He couldn’t wait to see Rossi make a false move and if he did it would be front page material.

  The Post had also been ratcheting up the hysteria on a regular basis after the Israeli university attack and had fully bought into the anti-immigrant and ICE narratives.

  “Well, you got a result there, Rossi,” said Maroni looking up over his reading glasses. “I’ll give you that, and while we’re at it what are you managing to come up with on the other matters?”

  “It’s slow going, sir, as you know, but patience can bring its rewards.” As he continued to read, Maroni’s face softened into almost placid tranquility but that didn’t mean he had committed himself on Rossi’s theorizing about the ideological background. Rossi had already spent some time explaining to his superior how they had laid a trap using some GIS mapping strategies that Carrara had put together, in order to approximate where a possible next attack might come. Profiling had helped too. They had reasoned that the lack of witnesses meant he had been extremely careful and was not a random thrill seeker. He had avoided any areas covered by CCTV, so they had put some covert cameras in a few spots likely to fit the bill.

  “But maybe you just got lucky, Rossi. Have you considered that? Putting your surveillance op where you did? Do you ever gamble, by the way?”

  “Not anymore,” Rossi replied. At least not the gambling Maroni was alluding to. Maroni frowned again.

  “In any case, as I said, a result is a result,” Maroni continued, leaning back and stifling a yawn, “and it looks good on the percentages.” It was getting late and Rossi was also well aware of the ticking clock behind him. “But if this guy really is an anarchist, do you think it’s part of any concerted effort or is he just some bedroom crank? I mean he’s what,” he looked down again at the notes, “twenty-one. A student.”

  “Says he was making a statement about the petrol economy. Our dependence on oil. The wars waged in the name of the petrodollar. The rights of indigenous peoples. Bit of a mish-mash really.”

  “And he told you all that?”

  “There was stuff in his flat. A thesis of sorts.”

  “Sounds like a nut if you ask me. You don’t think there’s any network, do you?”

  “He’s a centro sociale guy. He hangs around with the radical crowd.”

  “The radical chic too, I wouldn’t wonder,” said Maroni with an air of evident exasperation. “You know my daughter’s gone and got herself one of those hipster-types who goes around on a bike your grandad wouldn’t have been seen dead on, and with juggling clubs for God’s sake!”

  “She’ll grow out of it,” said Rossi. “Or he will. What are his parents? Bankers?”

  “The father’s a bloody filthy-rich executive or something, in ItalOil! I’m surprised it wasn’t him doing the arson.”

  Rossi shook his head.

  “That would be too much like getting his hands dirty. Leave that to the foot soldiers. But this is no rich kid.”

  “Well you collared the squirt and that’s what counts.”

  Maroni leaned closer.

  “Now, tell me why you won’t leave that Prenestina case alone, or is there something you aren’t telling me?”

  He’d saved the best for last, thought Rossi. Better come clean. A bit. He told Maroni what they’d uncovered, leaving out only what might compromise Tiziana and only alluding to his half ideas concerning Jibril. Maroni heard him out.

  “Well no harm in trying, is there,” said Maroni. “I’m all for justice being done, Rossi, but don’t let it look bad on Lallana. It was his case after all.”

  Maroni gave him the look which Rossi interpreted as “better not to ask”. So Lallana was raccomandato, was that it? They were probably fast-tracking him for some ministerial job and didn’t want any trouble.

  “And,” Maroni continued, “I’m also getting a bad feeling about the whole Islamist side of things. Did you see that Caliphate publication about Italy being the next territorial target?”

  “The march on Rome?”

  “Looks as if they might be serious about rocking up in our
part of the world, like they’re doing across Syria and Iraq.”

  “It depends whether you take it as literal or not. The Koran mentions Rome but it’s interpreted in different ways by the scholars. Rome could just be a kind of umbrella term that means the West in general. I think it just fits in well with their propaganda to scare us with the threat of an invasion.”

  “Well Libya’s in our backyard, Rossi. Remember Gheddafi’s missile attack on Lampedusa? We could be the next port of call. Now, no one’s expecting them to come over in landing craft but what if they target tourist spots? Beaches with kids? They’ve done it elsewhere, why not here?”

  “As far as I see it,” said Rossi, “we can plug the holes but it also depends what’s going on in the corridors of power. Are we playing a straight hand overseas? What’s at stake? What’s up for grabs? It’s not as if we don’t still have a few colonial interests of our own, is it?”

  Maroni began to look uneasy.

  “Well that’s hardly our concern, Rossi. We catch ’em, we stop ’em, we find ’em. End of story. We don’t dish out the foreign policy, unless you had forgotten that.”

  “Of course, sir,” said Rossi. We never get involved. Ever.

  “But it’s just like we’ve run into a brick wall.”

  Rossi took a sip on his red wine while they waited for the first course to arrive. “But at the same time, I think there could be something behind it all. It was arson. It had to be murder, but why? For money? Drugs? The so-called agent’s evaporated and there’s no surname for him. The only guy whose name we have got looks to have been clean though. So we’re back to square one.”

  “You mean Ivan didn’t have a record?” said Carrara. “OK, so we’ve bust a gut trying to find something, but that doesn’t prove he was clean. You know as well as I do, he might just have been good, or lucky, or protected, or all three. We can go deeper, if you’re convinced there’s something in it.”

  They had already spent days that had become weeks trawling through the minutiae and sifting through half-leads and chasing up rumours and possible contacts only to find themselves left with next to nothing concrete to work on.