Blood rain az-7

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘I have two men in my office,’ Corinna told him. ‘They have identified themselves as Lessi, Roberto, and Ferraro, Alfredo. They claim to be working under your supervision on, quote, internal security, unquote, and want me to hand over the Limina papers to them. Can you verify that you are aware of this?’

  ‘My dear Corinna,’ the director replied in his most smarmy voice, ‘a woman as beautiful as you should never allow herself to lose her poise because the company is disagreeable. I apologize if these two young men have failed to make a favourable impression. But what they lack in charm, they make up for in efficiency.’

  ‘They are working for you, then.’

  ‘They’re working for all of us, my dear, as part of my constant attempts to make the lives of you and your colleagues safer and more productive. Speaking of which, I mustn’t detain you any longer. Just give your visitors the file relating to the matter which we discussed yesterday, and then you can get back to work.’

  Sergio Tondo hung up. After a moment, so did Corinna. The gum-chewing man was still staring at her, his eyes moving at intervals to another part of her body as if taking exposures for a composite photograph. Corinna stepped over to the tower of box files in the corner. She grasped one with her right hand, steadied the pile above with her left, and in one decisive movement yanked the file free. The tower teetered for a moment, then settled back into place. Corinna returned to the two men, holding the file against her bosom.

  ‘I’ll need a receipt,’ she said.

  Laurel frowned, as though Corinna had committed a minor lapse of good manners.

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t have anything like that,’ he said.

  ‘Then write one. “We, the undersigned, acknowledge receipt of file number such-and-such from Judge Corinna Nunziatella”, with the date and time. Spell out your names in block letters and then sign beneath.’

  Laurel sighed.

  ‘I’ll need to consult the director.’

  ‘He’s just gone into a very important meeting,’ lied Corinna. ‘He won’t be very happy if this file isn’t on his desk when he comes out, and I’m not handing it over without a receipt. Here’s some paper and a pen.’

  In the end the two men complied. Corinna took the receipt, read it through carefully, and only then handed over the file. Laurel and Hardy then left without a word, the latter breaking his sullen, intense scrutiny with apparent reluctance. Corinna Nunziatella listened to their footsteps receding on the marble floor outside. When they were no longer audible, she unlocked a drawer in her desk and removed another box file, identical to the one she had handed over except for the number marked on the spine.

  She stood there for a moment, breathing rapidly and shallowly, her eyes unfocused. Then she opened the door, gave a quick glance in each direction, and strode off down the corridor to the main staircase. She went down two floors, then turned sharp left down to an unmarked door beneath the staircase. Inside, a stuffy, narrow passage led to another door, at which Corinna knocked. A moment later, the door was opened by a florid, elderly woman.

  ‘Well?’ she snapped.

  A moment later, her face abruptly changed into a smile of welcome.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, my dear!’ she went on in Sicilian dialect. ‘Come in, come in. How nice to see you! I was just getting ready to give that empty room on the fourth floor a good going-over for these new people who’ve just got here. Lucia’s taking a few days’ sick leave to visit her son in Trapani, so I’ve got to do the whole thing myself. Not that they bothered to give us any notice, needless to say, just a phone call from His Royal Highness this morning telling me to…’

  ‘New people?’ asked Corinna, sitting down carefully on the cracked swivel chair which Agatella had scavenged from somewhere. It was perfectly comfortable and stable as long as you didn’t lean back too hard, in which case the whole thing tipped over while simultaneously spinning you around to land on your nose.

  ‘Arrived yesterday,’ the cleaning lady confided in hushed tones. ‘I was told in no uncertain terms to clean everything up by noon today, then clear out and never set foot in there again “under any circumstances whatsoever”.’

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘From Rome,’ she whispered. ‘I servizi.’

  ‘I servizi?’ repeated Corinna, repeating the common shorthand term for the alleged network of clandestine military agencies based in Rome, many of them tainted by scandals alleging their involvement in extreme right-wing terrorism. It may not have been coincidental that the word also meant ‘toilets’.

  Agatella shrugged expressively.

  ‘Who knows? But that’s what Salvo thought.’

  Salvo was Agatella’s son, employed at the Palace of Justice as a chauffeur.

  ‘He’s met them?’ asked Corinna.

  ‘He was sent to pick them up from the airport. Only not to the usual passenger terminal, but round the other side. You know that Fontanarossa used to be a military airfield? Well, it still is, and that’s where their plane came in, at the military buildings on the far side. Small jet, Salvo said, the sort millionaires have.’

  Corinna gripped the file in her hands more tightly. She seemed about to say something, then aborted the remark in a lengthy exhalation, and started again.

  ‘Anyway, Agatella, the reason why I’m bothering you…’

  ‘It’s no bother, my dear! I’m always delighted to see you.’

  ‘The thing is, I was wondering if I could borrow your coat and scarf for about an hour.’

  Agatella looked at her in astonishment.

  ‘My coat and scarf? Of course, but why, in heaven’s name?’

  Corinna smiled sheepishly.

  ‘I’m meeting someone. A personal thing. But because of all this security nonsense, they won’t let me leave the building without an armed escort. And if I go with them, it won’t exactly be a relaxed encounter, to say the least, and of course word of the whole thing will be all over the department in five minutes. But if I could just put on your coat and scarf and slip out the side entrance, no one will be any the wiser.’

  Agatella smiled radiantly.

  ‘Of course, my dear, of course! No one ever takes any notice of comings and goings at that door. Let me just fetch my things. Some nice young man, is it? It’s about time you settled down and started a family, my dear. None of us is getting any younger.’

  Ten minutes later, a woman of uncertain age with a satin scarf on her head, carrying a bulging plastic bag with the logo of the Standa department chain, entered a newsagent’s shop on Via Etnea which advertised in the window that photocopies might be made there. Twenty or so minutes after that she reappeared, the plastic bag even more gravid than before, and started back the way she had come. But after going a short distance she stopped, then started to cross the street, as though at a loss. Traffic swirled and shrieked around her, while the other pedestrians went steadfastly about their business, ignoring this hapless female who had obviously lost her grip on the realities of life.

  The woman walked down the street to a pasticceria, where she ordered a coffee. No one paid any attention there either. Even the barman who served her and took her money managed to convey the impression that the transaction hadn’t really taken place. The woman removed a large, thick manilla envelope from her plastic bag, sealed the flap and wrote something on the front.

  ‘How much to wrap this?’ she snapped.

  The barman looked at her with a frown.

  ‘Like you do the cakes,’ the woman explained.

  The barman cast a defeated glance at the other two male patrons in the bar, shook his head and started washing coffee cups.

  ‘Would two thousand do it?’ the woman demanded.

  ‘It might, if you had it,’ the barman replied in dialect.

  A banknote appeared in the woman’s fingers as the envelope slid along the chrome counter to stop in front of the barman.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked irritatedly.

  ‘A practical joke I’m playing
on a friend,’ the woman said. ‘I want it wrapped just like a cake, with a ribbon and all, and a little card. In return…’

  She pushed the two-thousand-lire note into an empty glass on the other side of the bar. Seemingly embarrassed, the barman glanced again at the two men, then shrugged and did as the woman asked.

  Five minutes later, she presented herself at the guard post at the main door of the police headquarters of Catania.

  ‘This is to be delivered to Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen,’ she told the officer on duty through the grille in the bullet-proof screen, placing an elegantly wrapped parcel on the shelf outside the access hatch, presently closed.

  ‘You know him?’ demanded the guard with a mocking air.

  ‘I’m a friend of his daughter, Carla Arduini. This is for her. A birthday present. All he has to do is give it to her on Saturday, understand?’

  The officer shook his head, picked up the phone and dialled.

  ‘Excuse the disturbance, dottore,’ he said into the mouthpiece. ‘There’s someone here with what she says is a birthday present for your daughter. To be delivered on Saturday. Does this make any sense to you? Oh, it does? All right, sir. I understand. Very good.’

  He hung up, and nodded vaguely at the woman.

  ‘Dottor Zen will pick it up on his way home.’

  ‘Mind he does, now!’ she replied. ‘And take good care of it meanwhile. It’s very precious, and you will be responsible if anything happens to it.’

  The officer nodded repeatedly in a way that said, ‘Let’s humour the bitch and get her out of here.’ After a further sharp exhortation, the woman shuffled off across the little square in front of the police station. A lifetime of humiliation and submission seemed to have made it impossible for her to look up, so she did not notice the tall, gaunt figure gazing down at her from a balcony on the second floor of the Questura.

  In all, almost an hour had elapsed before Corinna Nunziatella pushed open the obscure side entrance to the Palace of Justice, whose self-locking door she had propped open with one of Agatella’s wash rags. A few minutes after that, minus coat, scarf and plastic bag, she walked blithely through the checkpoint into the DIA section and along the corridor to her office. Opening the door, she found Laurel and Hardy in possession of her office, one lounging in her chair, the other inspecting the map of the province of Catania hanging on the wall.

  ‘Ah, there you are!’ cried Corinna with a touch of irritation. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. You know what? I gave you the wrong file! I’m so sorry. This is the one you want. No, no receipt necessary, thank you.’

  If it hadn’t been for the skateboarder, no doubt, everything would have been very different. In retrospect, it would have been almost reassuring to be able to believe that this too was part of one of the conspiracies by which he seemed to be surrounded. But there was not the slightest evidence to suggest that such was the case, any more than the periodic eruptions of Etna could be credibly linked — despite the ingenious attempts of the priests and believers of various religions, Christian and pagan — to divine retribution on the inhabitants of the city for exceptionally or exotically sinful behaviour in the preceding months.

  The fact of the matter was that there was this kid zipping down the pavement of Via Garibaldi at an amazing speed, avoiding the plodding pedestrians with even more amazing skill, a mere wiggle of the hips here and there sufficing to plot a curving trajectory through the obstacles thrown up in his path, until a woman ill-advisedly tried to take evasive action herself, forcing the skateboarder to make a sudden course correction at the last moment, which brought him into immediate and violent contact with a gentleman who had just crossed the street, carrying what appeared to be a cake carefully balanced on the palm of his right hand, and had now gained what he evidently thought of as the safety of the kerb, only to receive the careening skateboarder right in the gut, a full frontal encounter which left both lying winded on the ground.

  The youngster was the first to recover, and as the one with the most to lose from this encounter, he wisely grabbed his board and rattled off swiftly down a side-street. As for the man, several passers-by went to his assistance, checked that he was not injured, then helped him up, dusted him down and retrieved the parcel he had been carrying, which had gone flying into the windscreen of one passing car and then promptly been run over by another. The man thanked them for these ministrations, and then joined in the obligatory round of head-shaking and sighs accompanying a chorus of rhetorical questions about what young people were coming to these days.

  Once this ritual had been concluded, the participants went their separate ways, which in Zen’s case was home. No doubt due to delayed shock from his collision with the skateboarder, he did not at first notice that the supposed cake which Carla’s friend had delivered as a birthday present did not feel any different from the way it had when he left his office, despite having smashed into one car and been run over by another. It took another few moments for his jangled brain to come up with the obvious inference that whatever was inside the wrapping wasn’t in fact a cake. This was confirmed by a jagged tear at one corner of the shiny ivory wrapping paper, printed with the name of a nearby cafe and pastry shop, through which a section of orange paper could be seen.

  Covering the torn corner with one hand, Zen continued along the street to the building where he lived, ran up the shallow stone steps three at a time and let himself into his apartment, where he threw the package down on a chair. Then he went through to the kitchen and mechanically made himself a cup of coffee while he tried to work out what he knew and what else might be inferred from that knowledge.

  A woman wearing a dowdy coat and old-fashioned headscarf had left a package for him with the guard outside the Questura. According to the guard, she had claimed that it was a present for Carla Arduini, daughter of Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen. He was to pick it up and deliver it to the intended recipient on her birthday, the coming Saturday. The notional present was clad in the wrapping paper of a pasticceria in Via Etnea, but proved to contain what looked like another package, as though in some game of pass-the-parcel. The contents were bulky, consistent, quite heavy, slightly flexible, and had resisted various forms of extreme impact with no apparent effect.

  It had crossed his mind, of course, that it might be a bomb. The same thought had crossed the mind of the officer on guard at the Questura, so he had taken it inside and run it through the X-ray machine used to monitor all incoming bags and packages. Nothing had shown up on the screen — no wiring, no batteries — but you could never tell these days. He’d read somewhere that they’d invented some sort of chemical trigger which didn’t show up on the machines.

  If it was a bomb, though, the intended target would almost certainly be the person who opened the package, in this case Carla. Which raised another question. Whoever the mystery donor might be, she had known two things which, as far as Zen knew, no one in Catania was aware of. The first was that, despite her surname, Carla Arduini was supposedly Zen’s daughter. The second was that her birthday fell on Saturday.

  He tossed back his coffee, lit a cigarette and wandered back into the living room. Rather to his surprise, the package was still where he had thrown it. He looked at it for some time, then grabbed it suddenly and ripped off the wrapping paper. Inside was a large manilla envelope, plain except for a message written in flowing script with a medium blue felt-tip pen.

  This is the item I told you about, Carla, DO NOT OPEN IT. Wrap it up in some dirty underclothes or something and hide it away. I’ll pick it up in a few days, once things settle down. I apologize for dragging you into this, but there is no one else I can turn to. P.S. Your real birthday present will be a lot more interesting!

  Zen read this through several times, then put it down on the table and walked about the room, picked it up and read it again. Carla had been specifically instructed not to open the package. Therefore it was something which, if opened, might either threaten her in some way, or compromise the
writer of the note, whoever that might be.

  After the bomb idea, Zen’s next quick-fix solution was drugs. According to Baccio Sinico, Catania was now what Marseilles had once been, the major entry point into Europe for hard drugs coming from the eastern Mediterranean or North Africa. The package was about the right size, weight and feel to be a vacuum-packed slab of refined cocaine or heroin.

  But such speculations were pointless. What was certain was that possession of the envelope, whatever its contents, constituted a potential hazard for the person concerned. Whoever had left it to be delivered to Carla obviously felt that in her case this risk was so small as to be negligible, but Zen could not feel so sanguine. Nor could he open the packet and determine for himself what it contained. In that event, the interested parties would naturally assume that it was Carla who had deliberately flouted the DO NOT OPEN warning, and would take the appropriate measures.

  So in a sense the thing was a bomb, albeit one with a delayed-action fuse of indeterminate length. And the only way that Zen could protect Carla against possible danger was to prevent her ever taking delivery of the package, while ensuring that she would be able to produce it again, untouched and unharmed, at a future date. Which meant that he was going to have to hide it himself. Which meant, he decided after another cigarette and several minutes’ reflection, that he needed to visit the fish market.

  He had been there before, often stopping by on his way to meet Carla, spellbound by the everyday miracle which had taken place on this spot for almost three thousand years: the decapitated swordfish and tuna being hacked into slabs with curved blades like machetes, the tubs full of squirming squid and octopus, the wooden trays of anchovies and sardines, their silvery skin glistening with unexpected glints of evanescent colours which had no name. And everywhere the stench of flesh and death, the clamour of voices in a timbre at once raucous and shrill, and the blood, above all; spattered on the stall-keepers’ aprons, streaked across their arms and knives, trickling away in the gutter.

  It was now almost three o’clock, and the pulsing drama in the streets around the market had disappeared like the sea at low tide, leaving a wrack of stalls in the process of demolition, various unidentifiable scraps being raided by feral cats and the more daring seagulls, and remnants of unsold fish turning dull and matt in their communal coffins with the pathetic air of those who have died in vain. Zen approached one of the traders, a bulky, morose man surveying his remaining stock of sardines.