End games az-11

by Michael Dibdin

  One of Aurelio Zen’s strengths was knowing when to shut up. He did so now.

  ‘One or both of those stories may explain why he did what he did,’ Maria concluded dreamily. ‘Of course he was mistaken about the identity of his victim. In any case, due punishment had already been inflicted.’

  Her odd, oblique, glassy gaze went everywhere except for the vast ruin across the piazzetta. Never once did she glance in that direction.

  ‘Punishment,’ Zen echoed vaguely.

  ‘The fire!’

  A long silence intervened. At length Zen nodded.

  ‘Of course. That terrible accident…’

  And then, finally, Maria turned her alienated eyes on him and the blackened palace behind.

  ‘It wasn’t an accident.’

  Zen nodded again, as though assessing a mundane fact which had just come to light.

  ‘Why did you kill her?’

  Maria laughed then, a rasping cackle that seemed to come from the ground.

  ‘ Perche? Perche! Because when I was a little girl my mother taught me how to lay and light a fire. Because every morning until I was sent away into service my duty was to rise before anyone else in the household, before it was light, and bring flames to life in the hearth. Because to make sure I woke in time I drank three cups of water before going to bed and my bladder never failed me. Because I stole a jerrican of petrol from the stores and spread it throughout the house and up the stairs to show the fire which way to go. Because la baronessa managed to clean up most of the blood but the smell hung in the air for days and the stains never faded. Because Caterina appeared to me night after night, her womb gaping open like an oven. Because I was lonely and terrified yet unafraid. Because to this day I don’t know where they buried her. Because of the baby. Because.’

  Zen considered this for some time.

  ‘You said that when Ottavia Calopezzati informed the authorities that the child she was claiming as her own had been born of no other woman, that statement was true.’

  ‘She strangled Caterina and did a Caesarian on her corpse with one of the kitchen knives. Miraculously, the boy survived.’

  She turned to Zen and scrutinised him.

  ‘There, pretino mio, I have made my confession. I swear to you, before God and as an honest woman, that everything I have told you is true. Are you going to absolve me or arrest me? Not that I care. This world is nothing to me now and the world to come will be far, far worse. But at least I have achieved something in my life. Yes, I’ll go to hell, but I sent that bitch there first. And not just in the after-life but on this earth, in her flesh, with all her sins on her head, unshriven and unblessed, and me standing out here in the piazza listening to her howls.’

  Unable to sustain her gaze, Zen looked away.

  ‘So now it’s your turn,’ said Maria. ‘Giorgio’s great-grandfather knew what he had to do when the Calopezzati seized his property. I knew what I must do when Ottavia Calopezzati murdered my friend and stole her baby. And you know what you must do.’

  Zen got to his feet.

  ‘I’m just a lone hawk, signora. Here in Calabria, it seems that the crows always win.’

  He turned and walked away, leaving her alone in that desolate landscape.

  ‘… unfortunately, but there are many other artefacts, inestimably rare, beautiful and precious, which we would be happy to offer for sale. It will take a little time to remove them from their secure place of storage and transport them to a suitable site for inspection, but assuming that your client’s interest in the merchandise is genuine and that he has sufficient funds…’

  ‘So you don’t have the candlestick?’

  Nicola Mantega would have put a slow loris to shame in the languidity of the gesture with which he indicated the pain, humiliation and infinite regret it cost him to confirm that, no, the sacred menorah from the Temple of Jerusalem, alas, did not figure among the items that his contacts had recovered from Alaric’s tomb.

  ‘Sure you do,’ Martin Nguyen replied.

  ‘He just said they don’t,’ Tom Newman interjected.

  ‘Shut up and translate, kid.’

  The setting was a fish restaurant down on the coast. Mantega had wanted to make a big-deal lunch out of it, but Martin had nixed that idea. He’d spent the morning at the airport, almost three hours wasted trying to get the replica menorah out of the hands of a bunch of customs thugs who seemed to think they worked for the KGB, and was in no mood for another lavish foodie-opera production with no surtitles. They ended up with a fish fry and salad. There were no other customers seated in the annexe at the back of the place, and the waiters, as if sensing the nature of the situation, kept their distance.

  ‘Okay,’ Martin continued weightily. ‘Before we go any further I need a verbal undertaking from both of you that nothing mentioned here today or resulting from it later will be disclosed to any other parties. Do you agree?’

  Tom Newman nodded and muttered something in Italian to Nicola Mantega. After a pensive pause, he nodded too. Martin Nguyen flashed them his horrifying smile.

  ‘You may wonder why your agreement to this condition is necessary. The answer is that the scheme which I’m about to propose will mean laying ourselves open to charges of fraud, conspiracy and, at least in my case, tax evasion.’

  He paused for the Italian translation — Tom seemed to have some trouble with the legal terminology — and then Mantega’s reaction. Everything seemed to be going smoothly so far, so he was amazed when Tom expressed an opinion.

  ‘I guess you can count me out, Mr Nguyen.’

  Martin laid down his knife and fork, sipped his glass of sparkling mineral water and stared out at the lazy waves breaking on a beach that seemed both endless and pointless.

  ‘I have to get back home, anyway. The police called me this morning. They’re all set to release my father’s body for burial, so I’ll have to see to all that, contact the relatives, fix the funeral, get the will probated…’

  His eyes clashed briefly with Martin’s as he speared a calamari ring.

  ‘Plus I don’t want to be involved in any criminal activities.’

  Not the least of Martin’s talents was an instinctive understanding of the odds at any given juncture and a willingness to obey them.

  ‘I completely understand. You must of course see that poor Peter is appropriately laid to rest. But I’m not asking you to commit any crime. All I need is for you to translate my conversation with Signor Mantega and keep quiet about it afterwards. Once we have reached agreement, I will give you the balance of your wages due plus a bonus of one thousand euros towards the expenses of repatriating your father’s body. What do you say?’

  The kid eventually settled for fifteen hundred, and Martin got down to business. He kept it brief and vague, partly because he suspected that Tom’s Italian wasn’t that great when it came to technical stuff, but mostly because he didn’t want him to know any more than the essential minimum even for the short period he had left to live.

  ‘The menorah which my employer wishes to buy is in fact in my possession,’ he announced. ‘However, it requires some work done before you, Signor Mantega, present it to the buyer at our agreed handover point. This process must take no longer than twenty-four hours.’

  Mantega looked wary.

  ‘What kind of work?’

  ‘Ageing. Distressing.’

  He caught Tom’s panicked glance and amplified his terms.

  ‘Making it look like it’s been around for ever and buried in a damp vault for the last fifteen hundred years.’

  Mantega digested this.

  ‘So it’s a — ’ he began.

  ‘It’s whatever my client believes it to be,’ Martin interrupted with a significant glance.

  Mantega thought some more, then nodded.

  ‘We can do this. But why do you need me?’

  ‘To clinch the sale, Signor Mantega. My client must believe in the provenance of the menorah that he will be offered for purchase.
He must believe that it originally formed part of the treasure hoard in the tomb allegedly discovered by your clients. Capito?’

  ‘ Ho capito.’

  ‘Excellent. Then I think we can dispense with our translator’s services.’

  He turned to Tom.

  ‘Run along and keep my chauffeur company. There’s a couple of matters I need to discuss privately with Signor Mantega.’

  ‘But you don’t speak Italian, Mr Nguyen.’

  ‘ Hablo il denaro. I speak money, kid. It’s a universal language. Beat it.’

  Once they were alone, he and Mantega got along famously. It even turned out that the pudgy wop spoke some English. They concluded the deal in twenty minutes, after which Martin went off to the washroom for a lengthy pee during which he called Jake.

  ‘It’s down to the price and delivery,’ he said.

  ‘No way!’

  ‘So they say. We’ll find out tomorrow. Only I’m worried about the price, Jake. I mean strictly speaking this stuff is priceless.’

  ‘It’s worthless?’

  ‘It’s invaluable.’

  ‘It has no value?’

  ‘No, like no one knows what the market price is because there’s never been any market. I’ll jew them down as much as I can, but from what I’m hearing it looks like we’re talking seven figures. Maybe one and a half, two?’

  ‘Wow, you don’t know what this means to me!’

  Martin Nguyen adjusted his dress before leaving.

  ‘I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what it’s going to mean to you,’ he said.

  ‘Congratulations on your demotion!’ Giovanni Sforza cried as Zen passed him in the corridor on the way back to his office.

  ‘What demotion?’

  ‘My spies tell me that the word in the bazaars and coffee houses is that Gaetano’s foot has been declassified from the list of species at risk of extinction. He’ll be taking over here on Monday, so prepare to be forcibly retired to your home in Tuscany. Beato te! Only wish I had your luck.’

  ‘Who’s Gaetano?’

  ‘Why, the man you’ve been standing in for! The silly ass who blew one of his toes off while fiddling around with the service revolver he hadn’t used in thirty years. Sometime chief of police in Catanzaro and now appointed Supreme Czar of all the Cosenzas, in which position he will no doubt wield the knout with a vengeance. Gaetano will wrap up that murder case that’s been baffling you in a matter of days. No disgrace for you, Aurelio. Down here it’s not who you are that counts, it’s who you know.’

  With a twinkly smile, the bergamasco vanished into his office while Zen stomped back to his. As he crossed the open-plan area in the centre of the building, Natale Arnone emerged from one of the cubicles.

  ‘Ah, there you are, sir! It looks as though things are finally starting to move. Instead of going straight to his office this morning, Nicola Mantega drove to the square by the bus station and took a large cardboard box into Fratelli Girimonti. He was inside just a few minutes, then proceeded to a residential building facing Piazza del Duomo up in the old centre, where he delivered an envelope to the mailbox of an apartment owned by Achille Pancrazi, Professor of Ancient History at the university. Further enquiries revealed that Professor Pancrazi left yesterday on a flight for Milan, accompanied by his teenage son Emanuele, and has not yet returned.’

  Zen lit a cigarette, as much for the symbolic warmth it represented as for the nicotine it contained. The Questura’s air-conditioning system had now been raised from the dead, so instead of his office being as sweatily airless as one of those containers in which illegal immigrants were found from time to time, it resembled the cold hold in a frozen-vegetable factory.

  ‘We’ll need to have a word with the professor at some point,’ Zen remarked, ‘but there’s no hurry. What did our Nicola do after that?’

  ‘He phoned the Americans and proposed lunch in a restaurant at San Lucido, on the coast just outside Paola.’

  ‘He used the phone we gave him?’

  ‘Yes. He appears to be co-operating in that respect.’

  ‘“Appears” may well be the operative word, Arnone.’

  ‘He and the two Americans, Signor Manchu and young Tommaso, proceeded to the restaurant, where they remained for approximately ninety minutes. Unfortunately the nature of the situation was such that it proved impossible for our surveillance team to record the conversation without the risk of disclosing their own presence.’

  ‘But Mantega presumably called in to report on these developments, as per the terms of his conditional release.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  A bomb exploded overhead, leaving their ears ringing and Zen’s office sunk in near-darkness as the electricity went out.

  ‘ Gesu Giuseppe e Maria cacciati a jettatura e ra casa mia,’ muttered Natale Arnone, making not the sign of the cross but the two-fingered gesture to ward off evil.

  ‘What did Mantega do next?’ Zen asked casually.

  ‘He… he, er, proceeded…’

  ‘Can’t you just say “went”, Arnone? You’re not in court, you know.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. He went to a village called Grimaldi, about twenty kilometres south of here, where he visited a famous goldsmith, Michele Biafora. His work has been displayed in Naples, even in Rome. Madonna, che pioggia! It never used to rain like this.’

  ‘Why did he go there?’

  ‘We don’t know. Mantega hasn’t reported in, and once again our people couldn’t get close enough to observe the encounter. But we could easily pull Biafora in and question him directly.’

  ‘No, no. This is not an operation that can be performed incrementally. When the time comes, it will be all or nothing. Afterwards we can pick up the pieces, such as il professore and this goldsmith, at our leisure.’

  They stood in silence for a moment, during which a dim, sickly, fuddled light made itself apparent in the room.

  ‘Ah, they’ve got the emergency generator working!’ Arnone cried with some pride.

  ‘Sort of,’ Zen replied. ‘Where’s Mantega now?’

  ‘Back at his office. Oh, one more thing. He also called young Newman, but not on his dedicated phone. He stopped at a service station on the autostrada and used a payphone. We picked up the intercept on Newman’s phone.’

  Another series of spectacular rumbles stunned their ears, as if the remaining weakened masonry from the shattered dam were now tumbling down into the flooded valley below.

  ‘He asked what Tommaso was doing this evening,’ Arnone added.

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘No, and the American didn’t ask. He told Mantega that he would be spending the evening with his girlfriend. That’s the Digos agent you assigned to that task, Mirella Kodra.’

  Zen noted the look on Arnone’s face.

  ‘Are you jealous?’ he enquired with a hint of malice.

  ‘No, no! Those Digos girls turn up their noses at ordinary cops like me. Besides, with a name like that she must be from one of the Albanian communities here. Those people are weird. It would never work out.’

  He stifled a laugh.

  ‘Apparently that guy she teams up with when they need a young couple is openly gay. I heard he stuck his tongue in her mouth during one of their fake clinches. Mirella spat in his face and told him to go and ram a gerbil up his boyfriend’s arse!’

  Arnone burst into further laughter, from the belly this time, then froze.

  ‘Sorry, sir. Don’t know what came over me.’

  Zen had a pretty good idea, but did not comment on this aspect of the matter.

  ‘Very good, Arnone. Now then, I need to trace all persons by the name of Fardella or some dialect version thereof who were either born or have ever been resident in San Giovanni in Fiore. Check our own records, then get on to the town council. But discreetly. Make it sound like a routine bureaucratic enquiry of some urgency but no real significance. Report back as soon as possible.’

  ‘ Subito, signore! ’

  Once
Arnone had left, Zen called his wife.

  ‘It looks as though I’ll be home soon,’ he said.

  ‘Shall I put on the pasta?’ Gemma asked.

  ‘Not that soon, silly. But I’ve been reliably informed that my temporary posting here has just about reached the end of its shelf life.’

  ‘Good. I’ve been rather missing you. You’re an awful person to have around, Aurelio, but when you aren’t here life seems a bit boring.’

  ‘Accidie is a mortal sin, my child, a wilful failure to delight in God’s creation.’

  ‘On second thoughts, can’t you get transferred somewhere else? Maybe Iraq.’

  ‘I imagine that one of the few things the Iraqis don’t have to worry about at present is feeling bored.’

  ‘What kind of sauce do you want on the pasta?’

  ‘Anything you like, my love, as long as no tomatoes are involved.’

  Mirella and Tom were walking up an inclined alley in the old town when the attack occurred. The evening had been a success so far, in Tom’s opinion, and he was looking forward to the rest of it. Mirella had suggested a restaurant he hadn’t known about, in the cellars of an ancient building in a mediaeval suburb called Arenella, outside the original city walls on the far side of the river. As soon as they entered the wide, low vaulted space, Tom realised that this was where he should have been eating all along.

  How does one tell, he thought as they were shown to a table at the centre of the action, yet just far enough away from the glowing bed of hardwood embers covered by a wrought-iron grill where gigantic steaks were sizzling. In some indefinable way everything just felt and smelt right. There was an air of seriousness about both the diners and the waiters, although neither were in any obvious sense taking themselves seriously. Whatever that quality was, it was as much taken for granted on both sides as the silverware and glasses on the tables, or indeed the vaccination scar on Mirella’s arm. Her hair was loose and frizzy this evening, and she was wearing a sleeveless black satin top which displayed her bosom and those magnificent arms, on one of which, high up, appeared a tiny pale star that would never tan: shiny, almost translucent, infinitely touching and lovely.