A Cold Flame

by Aidan Conway

  “I think I’ll manage,” said Rossi, brushing off the dig as he remembered first the slightly dowdy single lady who had welcomed them into her apartment in her dressing gown before changing into a rather more revealing number, which in turn made him reflect on his hangovers and their sometimes unpredictable effects on his libido.

  And didn’t someone once say that no woman can be written off as uninteresting until you’ve had the chance to be alone with her? Perhaps he would have to put the theory to the test.

  Forty-One

  They had moved to a safe house. It was a sumptuous villa but where it was exactly Jibril couldn’t say. He and Ali had gone the whole journey blindfolded, and they had quarantined their mobiles. He had slept well, as a guest of the President and had sat through a long and sumptuous dinner with him too. Conversation had ranged from the practical to the frivolous but Jibril knew his host was probing, checking, always. He wouldn’t trust him. Why should he? He didn’t know where Ali was. Officially, he had been whisked off to meet other potential recruits and to aid the President’s men in assessing their suitability. Jibril suspected otherwise; that he was getting a similar soft but thorough vetting. A going-over dressed up as an executive break.

  In the morning, new Italian clothes had been laid out for him. Nothing showy but of the best quality, so that he might blend in all the better. The President wore whatever he wanted and whatever was appropriate for his numerous appointments or his particular needs. “I have that many identities I need a team to manage them you know,” he said to Jibril over an abundant breakfast of fresh fruit and traditional Nigerian foods and specially imported coffee.

  “I have a lot of enemies, Jibril,” the President said. “I will tell you openly that there has been a price on my head for years. It is no big deal, as they say.”

  They were seated in a lounge beyond which a huge window and a view out on to a pool manned by the usual suited security guards. One of the President’s bikini-clad wives was traversing up and down, a metronome keeping cosmic time to their conversation. The President himself was taking evident pleasure in describing the elegance and simplicity of his business machine, the machine that would would soon feed Jibril and their cell with the means to make the infidel tremble and beg for forgiveness.

  “My wealth, Jibril, is very great. Fill that pool with banknotes of a fairly large denomination and you will begin to have some idea. But my outgoings are many. And wives like that do not come cheap,” he laughed as the metronome continued its predetermined course. “But more than this, I have a long list of employees, starting with the companies I collaborate with, the authorities, the police, the judiciary of numerous jurisdictions, generals, customs personnel. The list, Jibril, is endless and grows by the day. Until a name is crossed off, of course. So this, all this that you see, is like some great aircraft which must keep flying, refuelling as it does. I dare not let it touch earth for fear that it may not take to the air again.”

  He leant over the maps laid on the table between them. “This is but one of our routes and it was a stroke of genius on the part of our logistics man. His only error was to skimp on the intelligence, and that was his Achille’s heel.” He jabbed a finger onto the map indicating the port of Lagos. “You know these places well, Jibril. How long were you working in the Delta?”

  “Nearly four years,” said Jibril, “including my time with the rebels. And I saw enough to teach me that my mission lay elsewhere.”

  “Here, we were able to take delivery of the merchandise. It came on ships which could dock at ports which we had under our control. Otherwise we would make the exchange at sea and then, with fast boats, evade the customs police, those of them who were not our friends, and bring it ashore.”

  Jibril continued to listen. He could see he had at least gained the President’s interim trust but at what price? This man saw a transaction in all human affairs. There could be no limits, either ethical or other.

  “And then the master stroke. How do you get merchandise from here,” he said, indicating the west coast of Nigeria, “to here, Europe? The police in Spain and France and Italy have the most modern means to track consignments, and they are good at their job. It is always cat and mouse with the more traditional methods. But innovation too is our stock-in-trade.”

  He looked at Jibril with satisfaction. He shook his iced drink then as if to illustrate.

  “We liquify our merchandise, Jibril, and we put it in barrels and everyone thinks it’s petroleum. Liquid cocaine. Fifteen days at sea and then it’s offloaded in Spain and back on the road in Europe. The free market! We got a lot of merchandise through, until things went a little astray. We were very well up in terms of profit all the same, and the earnings are truly dizzying in this business, Jibril. Vertiginous. But somebody now is paying the price for their mistake. Someone who abused my trust and tried to steal from me.”

  The President got to his feet then and walked to the window. His metronome had stopped. She was at the poolside now, towelling her firm, lean body and then wrapping a flimsy thigh-length bathing robe about her before stretching out on a lounger. Jibril’s thoughts were elsewhere, imagining Olivia. She would be wondering what had become of him. He was wondering too what would become of himself. Yet this was what he had wanted. Being where he was meant that soon he would be within touching distance of his goal. He would have all the means at his disposal. He was close now. It would happen.

  “Isn’t she just a wonder to behold?” his host said, continuing to gaze at her as if she were a Ferrari behind a showroom window and only he with the wherewithal to possess her. “Can you even imagine that there exist men – so-called men – who cannot find such a sight erotic? Cannot burn with desire in the presence of such beauty? What value can they have, these homosexuals?”

  He was not, however, waiting on any response from Jibril. This theatrical performance required no applause. He was hardwired to a cool and uncompromising hate. A hate as quotidian as eating, sleeping, and drinking. And thus, hardly hate at all.

  “Now, we must leave this oasis of pleasures and you will come with me once more. I am going to show you what my money can buy for you and what hardware you will soon have at your disposal. Then we can begin to talk seriously of strategy and objectives and not just of pie in the sky.”

  Forty-Two

  Rossi was drinking more coffee at the bar and going over the memo on the energy conference faxed in from Bologna by Maroni.

  “So no specific duties. That frees us up,” said Carrara as they stood up and made their way back to the office.

  “Wants us to maintain a floating role,” said Rossi. “More like someone doesn’t want us sticking our noses in, given past experiences. How do you see it?”

  “I see it as a no-brainer,” said Carrara. “I’ve got a load of paperwork and you’ve got calls to make. Let’s press on until we get further instructions.”

  “Yes,” said Rossi, “but don’t you immediately get the urge to disobey?” he said, stopping mid-step to confront Carrara and give concrete emphasis to his point.

  “You mean your inveterate instinct to go counter to whatever they ask you to do?” said Carrara.

  “Or my hardwired tendency to try to pick up some points even when the odds are stacked against us?”

  Carrara rolled his eyes.

  “So you want to go down and take a look? Is that it?”

  “What harm could it do? Come on. But there’s also another idea I’ve been hatching.”

  “Apart from Rinaldi?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Who, more like.”

  “OK. Who?”

  “Marciano.”

  “Marciano? He’s six feet under.”

  “Long overdue though. Or his wife at least. Remember her? Linda Marciano.”

  “Unforgettable. What’s she doing now?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” said Rossi. “If Marciano was mixed up in art theft, fencing goods or whatever, and if
that painting is involved, I want to know how she’s getting to the end of the month. There could be paper trails or at least something to look into. She’s probably working that daughter of hers.”

  “What, farming her out to the highest bidder?”

  “That was hubby’s line. One of many.”

  “But not their own flesh and blood, surely!”

  Rossi shrugged.

  “I have also heard talk that there could be some sort of a media career being lined up.”

  “Same thing then,” Carrara quipped.

  “Whatever she’s in, it’s untapped potential. I think we need to put a bit of pressure on her.”

  “I’ll find her address.”

  “Got it already,” said Rossi.

  ***

  They were waiting in the car.

  “As soon as someone comes out we go in. Then we lean on the doorbell.”

  “Reckon she’s there? Even if she didn’t answer the bell?”

  Rossi looked up to the second-floor flat.

  “Windows open. Washing out. Good chance she’s up by now. Suspicious souls like her don’t leave any openings for opportunist burglars.”

  “There we go,” said Carrara as the front door opened and a mother and buggy began negotiating the step onto the street.

  Rossi jogged up to offer assistance, holding the door open so they could then make their way up the stairs.

  “We’ll say it’s a gas leak,” said Rossi. “Look.” He held up an ItGas photo ID. “These things come in useful when you haven’t got a warrant.”

  “Gas man,” said Rossi in his best Roman accent. “A strong smell of gas been reported in the building.”

  The light coming through the spyhole was briefly occluded. Then the door opened a crack as a dark-rimmed eye and a head of curly black hair made a furtive appearance. The only smell emanating from the apartment was that of skunk weed, and Rossi jammed a shoe in the gap before she could reverse her error.

  “Coming through,” said Rossi, giving Carrara the cue to add his weight in the albeit brief struggle.

  “You can’t come in here without a warrant!”

  Rossi sniffed the air like an expectant diner.

  “More where that’s coming from, is there?”

  Carrara closed and chained the door.

  “We just want some moments of your time, Linda. And then we’ll let you get back to whatever it is you do here.”

  The flat’s modern interior was neither in order nor disorder but the heavy smell of dope gave it an air of indolence and stasis. Unwashed breakfast things were still in evidence at one end of the dining table. There were items of clothing and black underwear draped over a chair. Linda retreated into the apartment flicking out her wiry arms to snatch up the more intimate items with understated urgency. She returned then to face the two officers. Late thirties and holding her own physically, she was wearing denim shorts, flip-flops and a tight vest top.

  She sat down at the dining table and resumed where she had left off with a cigarette still burning in the ashtray.

  “Legal tender, as you can see,” she said indicating with a flick of her wrist the filter-tipped king-size.

  “So you had guests, I presume?” said Rossi.

  “I have frequent guests. I’m popular. You can sit down if you want,” she added, sizing Rossi up as Carrara made an idle tour of the apartment. “You won’t find anything, if that’s what you think,” she said, as Carrara prodded around, picking up vases and other household objects.

  “So what are you living on now?” said Rossi. “Now that the breadwinner is no more. I would say I’m sorry, but I won’t. He was a worm.”

  “I get donations,” she said, “loans.” Oblivious, it seemed, to Rossi’s comment. “I have generous friends.”

  “C’mon!” said Rossi. “What did he leave you? You don’t exactly seem to be in dire straits.”

  “I don’t have a penny. Nullatenente. ‘In possession of nothing’. The flat’s mine by right but they can’t have it cos I got a kid. As for the bills,” she grabbed a handful of papers heaped on the table, “I don’t have to give ’em a penny and I’ll be fucked if they get any.”

  Rossi didn’t pursue the potential for irony.

  “Look, Linda,” he continued, “I don’t care about the money. Leave that to the residents’ association and the courts but don’t blame me if they come for your place. And that kid of yours won’t be a kid much longer. What I want is information.”

  She shook her head like a schoolgirl hauled in for smoking and reeking of the stuff despite the absence of proof.

  “I want to know what he had got involved in before he was killed. The official story is that he was working for one of the local N’drina and the Camorra, but I don’t buy it.”

  She stood up and made a few nervous paces first one way and then the other sucking hard on the near butt of her cigarette.

  “Either of you want a drink?” she said, without emotion, “because I need one. Now.”

  Rossi shook his head.

  “A little early for me.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said, tutting, and headed for the kitchen. She came back swigging from a bottle of Ceres Extra Strong.

  “So?”

  “So, what?”

  “What was he doing?”

  She threw her head back to drink again then reached for her cigarettes.

  “Why would I tell you anything? What’s in it for me?”

  “Well,” said Rossi, “next time we pick up that daughter of yours, or bust one of her parties, she might not be found carrying 20 grammes of coke.”

  “Sei un bastardo!”

  Rossi shrugged his shoulders and looked at Carrara, who could see no reason for such language. Rossi leaned a little closer.

  “This is not my usual style, Linda, but we all have to bend the rules a bit to get by from time to time. And if your dead ex-husband hadn’t been rumoured to be pimping fourteen year olds, I wouldn’t have to stoop this low either. Now, how is your daughter by the way?”

  “Making waves. And using her God-given talent.”

  “Sleeping her way to the top then?” said Carrara.

  “She’s getting into TV. You do what you have to do to get a foot on the ladder in this country.”

  “Look,” said Rossi, “I only want to know if the deceased was messing in the world of fine art.”

  She stubbed out her cigarette and finished all but a mouthful of the beer.

  “I got a warning, right?” she began. “I was told, in no uncertain terms, that if I gave any of you lot a single thing, we would suffer the consequences. Pietro had plenty on a lot of people and, who knows, one day all that might come out. But you can consider it dead and buried, like him. I didn’t tell you a word. You were never here, and I don’t want to see any of you in my house again because I won’t tell you anything else but this: Pietro was moving money around, laundering it, and running rent boys for all sorts. Right to the fuckin’ top.”

  “Where from?” said Rossi.

  “I told you. Nothing else.”

  “Just the country. Were they Italian or stranieri? I need to know.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Africans. Negri, right? They all wanted black guys. The big fuckin’ bamboo? Now, will you leave me alone!”

  “Who wanted them?” said Rossi. He knew he was pushing it but he needed more. “Give me a name.”

  She looked nervous. The arrogance and disinterest had been replaced by raw fear. He knew it. He’d seen it. Yes, he remembered fear.

  “Church,” she said. “The Vatican.”

  “That was impressive,” said Carrara as they left the building. “All the bad guy stuff.”

  “We’re in a corner, Gigi, and I need to get out of it,” Rossi replied.

  “So you’d have picked up her daughter?”

  “I had to make her think I would. She can’t afford that plan to go wrong. She’s her next meal ticket. Until she hooks another gangster, she’s inves
ting everything in her offspring. Just the thought of that going up in smoke was enough to get her to spill something.”

  “You believe it?”

  “Don’t see why not,” said Rossi. “There’ve been rumours aplenty about the skin trade in Saint Peter’s barque. And Okoli knew something too.”

  “Another reason for someone trying to take him out?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Where next then?”

  Rossi glanced at his watch.

  “The Energy Conference, lunch, and then Rinaldi. See who’s there and then see if it was her who called and if she’s got anything to say for herself.”

  “You don’t think she’s the attention-seeker type, do you? Likes having cops round for coffee and all that?”

  “Possibly,” said Rossi. “But it’s like panning for gold. A lot of sludge, back-breaking work and wasted time, maybe for that one little nugget.”

  “Or fool’s gold.”

  “Or fool’s gold,” said Rossi, in acknowledgment, though not wholly thankful for the levelling comment.

  Forty-Three

  He was still not answering his phone. When he hadn’t shown up for class she had assumed that he had been called for a last-minute work commitment. But in such cases he always let her know. This time there had been nothing. She had planned to use her free time to do some shopping around Termini station and then maybe hook up with Jibril for coffee. Now the idea had lost all its sheen. She looked around as if someone or something might clarify things for her, but the world went on the same, oblivious to an anxious-looking provincial language teacher standing in the middle of the footpath on the main thoroughfare. No one in the class had any news, and neither did they seem to care. She would have asked Jibril’s friends but they only ever waited outside for him. Today, there was no one.

  She had no rights over him but it was out of character. She began to contemplate her options. Was it too early to go to the police? She knew he was distrustful of them and of authority in general. That he had his documents in order had to be a plus point but she didn’t want to become another millstone round his neck. He had escaped the circumstances of his former life – a vague version of which she knew – in order to be free to come and go as he pleased.