Blood Rain - 7

by Michael Dibdin

  It wasn’t a question of courage, the teacher explained. The Arabs had never seen such creatures before. To them, they must have seemed like extraterrestrial aliens gifted with incomprehensible, superhuman powers. To try to fight against them would be mere folly. So they ran back to their boats, those who survived, and the local townspeople asked the Normans how much they would charge to stay around and provide this sort of service on future occasions. Not very much, was the answer. ‘But then,’ the teacher ended with a sly smile, ‘wine in Sicily is cheap.’

  And now the Normans had returned, Zen reflected as the waiting passengers started to make their way up the gangplank, whose sullen Cerberus had finally consented, after a lengthy discussion on a two-way radio, to open to public access. The sleeping girl had been shaken into semi-consciousness and was helped along by a couple of the red-shirted men. Arsenal, thought Zen. He knew what the word meant, of course: the naval yard in his native city where the fleets of galleys which had built and maintained the Venetian empire had been constructed. But why were these drunken barbarians advertising it on their beefy chests? It was all a mystery. All he knew was that the Normans had returned, and that he was going to have to spend the next seven hours with them in the spartan public lounge of the ferry, since the cabins were apparently fully booked.

  Apart from the latter-day Normans, the passengers consisted of a few dauntless young back-packers, and a selection of elderly Sicilian, Maltese and Tunisian persons, none of whom aroused any suspicion in Zen’s mind. Once on the ferry, he took up a position near the head of the gangplank, lest anyone else should board before they left. No one did. Ten minutes later, the mooring lines were cast off and they were steaming quietly off into the Ionian Sea, past the glowing lights of the refineries at Augusta and the twin headlands encircling the harbour of Syracuse, rumbling quietly south. Zen left his post and went down to the saloon. He was safe. He’d made it. They would never be able to find him here.

  Down in the saloon, a major crisis had erupted, sparked by the Tirrenia line employee in charge, who was attempting to close the bar. This decision was being vigorously contested by the neo-Normans, one of whom, it turned out, spoke some Italian. But the barman was paying no attention to his protests and pleas. Closing time was closing time and that was that. The metal grille covering the bar came rattling down with the finality of a guillotine.

  It was at this point that Zen intervened. He couldn’t care less about the foreigners, but he wanted a drink himself — thought he deserved one, in fact — and also wanted to throw his bureaucratic weight about a little in return for all the aggravation which he and everyone else had been treated to by the ferry company’s staff so far. Flashing his police identification card at the barman, he told him to reopen the bar immediately, lest his actions provoke a breach of the peace given the presence of a large number of evidently unhappy barbarians from the north, which might easily lead to actions of assault and affray likely to endanger the safety of the ferry, her crew and passengers.

  The barman made the mistake of sneering at him.

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in international waters now. Back in Italy, you’re the law. Out here, what I say goes. And I say the bar closes.’

  ‘Where is this vessel registered?’ asked Zen.

  The barman didn’t know. Zen took him by the arm and led him over to a framed certificate on the bulkhead, which showed that the motor-vessel Omero, built in 1956, was registered at Naples, Italy, with a stamp from the relevant authorities to prove it.

  ‘So?’ the barman responded.

  ‘So wherever we may be geographically, from a legal point of view we’re on Italian soil, and Italian laws therefore apply.’

  Zen gave him an avuncular smile and an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

  ‘Think of this ship as a little island,’ he said in accents borrowed wholesale from the history teacher who had retailed the story about the Norman occupation of Sicily all those years ago. ‘An island temporarily mobile and detached from its home, but still subject to all the rules and regulations which apply in that state, of which I am an official representative. I therefore order you to reopen the bar sine die, on the aforementioned grounds of provoking a possibly injurious if not fatal breach of the peace.’

  The barman gave a defeated snarl.

  ‘You sons of bitches really enjoy this, don’t you?’ he said, sliding the grille back up with a loud racket.

  ‘Damn right we do,’ Zen replied.

  The Italian-speaking Norman materialized at Zen’s side.

  ‘Is it open again?’ he asked.

  Zen nodded.

  ‘It’s open. And it’ll stay open until I give permission to close it.’

  The foreigner yelled something to his companions, who immediately surged forward to the bar.

  ‘How did you do it?’ the Italo-Norman asked Zen.

  ‘How do you do this?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Speak Italian.’

  ‘My grandmother was one of yous. I’m from Glasgow myself. In Scotland,’ he added, noting Zen’s troubled frown. ‘Came over in the twenties, never went back. But she brought me mam up to speak the lingo a bit, and she passed it on to me.’

  ‘And why do all your shirts have that word on them?’ asked Zen.

  ‘Arsenal? It’s a football club. We won a competition at this place where we all work, in Croydon, just outside London. Know where London is? Best sales team in the company. Free week’s holiday in Malta. Came over to Italy on a day trip, had one too many, missed the hydrofoil back. One of the lads is an Arsenal supporter. I’m a Celtic man myself, but he bought the shirts for all of us, so we sort of have to wear them. Would look a bit thankless else. Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you. A grappa, please.’

  Zen stood there amid the swirling alien mass while the other man fought his way to the bar. He already felt very foreign, and very reassured. They — whoever they might be — certainly couldn’t get him here. In the centre of the saloon, the girl who had earlier been asleep on the quay was now dancing alone to some inaudible music. Her breasts, Zen noted with some interest, were even better than her legs.

  The Glaswegian returned with Zen’s grappa and one for himself.

  ‘Never tried this stuff before,’ he said. ‘Not bad, and cheap too.’

  ‘Are you Norman?’ asked Zen.

  ‘No, Norman’s the one sitting on the beer supply. I’m Andy.’

  ‘Why is that girl dancing all alone?’

  ‘Stephanie? Well, you know how it is on trips like this. Couples form and couples fall apart. Hers fell apart.’

  He looked sharply at Zen.

  ‘Do you want to meet her?’

  Zen shrugged.

  ‘Why not?’

  After that, one thing led to another with astonishing rapidity. Eventually they all ended up on the afterdeck of the ferry, under a clear sky and an almost full moon, surrounded by the benign vastness of the sea. Zen was getting on very nicely with Stephanie, who seemed both easy to please and also quite intrigued by this distinguished-looking foreign gent who kept trying out his incomprehensible English on her while peeking down her cleavage in a sexy but respectful way. Wit flowed like wine, and the wine — well, grappa, beer and whisky, actually — flowed like the softly enveloping air of the Mediterranean night.

  The other noise, when it first became apparent, seemed at first just a slight annoyance, a minor case of interference which might disturb but could not obliterate the experience they were all sharing. But it persisted, and at last someone went to the stern rail to see what was going on.

  ‘It’s a boat,’ he reported. ‘Got writing on the side. C, A, R, A, B, I, N …’

  Zen dragged himself away from Stephanie’s side and went to look. It was true. A dark-blue Carabinieri launch was closing rapidly with the ferry, its searchlight scorching th
e gentle wavelets between them. A few moments later, it was alongside. A rope ladder was thrown down, and a man swarmed up it from the launch.

  Zen felt himself sobering up rapidly. He knew who had come aboard, and why he was there. Reluctantly he got Baccio Sinico’s revolver out of his pocket and hurled it into the sea. Then he returned to Stephanie. She said something which, like all the things she had said, he did not understand. He shook his head and clutched her hand tightly. She looked alarmed. He forced a smile.

  Then he remembered the other piece of incriminating evidence. He searched in his pockets until he found the object he had stolen from the museum. It was a silver cross, with forked ends and intricate engraving on the surface. Zen pressed it into the palm of the hand he had been holding.

  ‘For you,’ he said.

  Stephanie looked down at the cross, turning it this way and that so that it gleamed gently in the moonlight. Then her face suddenly crumpled, she turned away and burst into tears. Panicked, Zen looked around for the Italian-speaking man.

  ‘What did I do wrong?’ he demanded. ‘I didn’t mean to insult her! Christ, can’t I get anything right?’

  The Glaswegian came over and spoke rapidly to Stephanie, then turned her back to face Zen. The girl was still weeping and making little sniffing noises as she spoke.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ Andy told Zen.

  The girl started to talk, seemingly not to the two men but to the silver cross cradled in the palm of her hand.

  ‘She says it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen,’ Andy translated. ‘She says she didn’t know that such beauty existed in the world. She says she feels ashamed because she doesn’t deserve to have it.’

  At the end of the deck, adjoining the superstructure, a man appeared.

  ‘Tell her that no one deserves such beauty,’ Zen said quickly. ‘Tell her that it is indeed very precious, but no more than she is. Tell her to care for it, and for herself.’

  He stood up as the ROS agent appeared in front of him.

  ‘Aurelio Zen,’ he said. ‘You evaded our plan of preventative detention and are therefore officially considered to be at risk. I am are here to accompany you back to Catania.’

  Zen gestured defeatedly.

  ‘And if I say no?’

  Roberto Lessi tossed his head contemptuously.

  ‘Let’s go. The boat’s waiting.’

  And there indeed was the Carabinieri launch, lying about ten metres off to port, wallowing slightly in the softly bloated seas.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Andy, in Italian. ‘He’s a friend of ours.’

  Lessi gave him a hard glance.

  ‘So?’ he replied.

  The Glaswegian smiled.

  ‘So, if you want to take him, you’re going to have to take all of us. And I’m not sure that we’d fit on that wee boat of yours. That’s always supposing that you were able to get us on board in the first place, which personally speaking I wouldn’t be inclined to place a bet on.’

  The ROS agent turned furiously to Zen.

  ‘Tell this little prick to fuck off before I break his balls!’ he spat out.

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Andy ‘I can’t understand when they speak so quick.’

  Zen racked his brains. What was the name of that other English team? Leaver, Leever … And what was the phrase that taxi driver in Rome, the vociferous Lazio supporter, had used?

  ‘He said that Arsenal are a clan of degenerate wankers and marginal know-nothings,’ Zen confided to Andy. ‘According to him, the only half-decent English team is Liverpool, and compared to Lazio they suck too.’

  The Glaswegian spoke loudly and rapidly to his red-shirted companions, who dropped whatever they were doing and clustered tightly around the ROS man. The latter pulled out and displayed a police identity card embedded in his wallet.

  ‘I am a police!’ he declared in cracked English.

  ‘Is that right?’ Andy replied, plucking the wallet from the Carabiniere’s hand and tossing it overboard. ‘Awful hard job, they say’

  The Carabiniere looked around at the towering Arsenal supporters with a furious but cornered expression.

  ‘You are all under arrest!’ he screamed. ‘Outrage to a public official! Surrender your papers immediately! You are all…’

  At which point a whisky bottle slammed into his skull.

  ‘Liverpool, my arse,’ said Norman.

  Stephanie giggled.

  When thieves fall out read a sub-headline in the copy of the newspaper La Sicilia which Zen bought the next morning in Valletta. ‘A brutal strangulation concludes a successful break-in to the Civic Museum of Catania. The presumed killer makes a daring escape by leaping from a window and remains at large. A twelfth-century Norman crucifix “of inestimable value” is missing.’

  Zen smiled sourly. So that’s how they had decided to pitch the story. But why was there no mention of Alfredo Ferraro, the ROS agent whom he had shot? And why hadn’t he been named as the ‘presumed killer’? He was sure that Roberto Lessi, the other ROS man, had identified him in that final moment before he leapt from the window, but there was no mention of this in the article. This was both good news and bad. Good, because it meant that they were not going to be coming after him openly, with arrest warrants and extradition orders. Bad, because it meant that he didn’t have the slightest idea what they were going to do.

  The ferry had docked in Valletta at just after six o’clock that morning, following a night which from Zen’s point of view had been extremely eventful. Following the intervention of the English football supporters, the ROS agent had been placed in one of the lifeboats hanging from cradles along both sides of the main deck. At Zen’s suggestion, Norman had moved his beer supply to a nearby bench, and when the supposed Liverpool supporter finally regained consciousness, it had been made clear to him that the alternative to lying low and keeping quiet was another dose of whisky

  ‘And, frankly, I’m not at all sure that whisky should really be your drink of choice, Roberto,’ Norman had added, brandishing the bottle as if unaware that it was in his hand at the time. ‘To be perfectly honest, I don’t think you can handle it. I’m not sure you’ve got the bottle to deal with the hard stuff. Seems to go straight to your head. Personally speaking — and this is just my opinion, with which you may well disagree, as is your right — but personally, for what it’s worth, I think you should stick to beer.’ With which he split open another can of Nastro Azzurro and handed it to the still only partially conscious ROS agent with a significant grin.

  Meanwhile the Carabinieri launch had come alongside, and two of its crew, armed with machine-guns, were searching the ferry for their missing colleague. Aurelio Zen was in a feigned clinch with Stephanie at the time, having explained the realities of the situation through the Italian-speaking Glaswegian. Stephanie clearly didn’t believe a single word of this rigmarole, assuming that this Italian was just trying to get into her pants. But she was prepared to play along, up to a point, and so when the Carabinieri officers passed through on their sweep of the boat, all they saw was a horde of drunken English football hooligans, two of whom were necking.

  Had they persisted, the truth would no doubt have emerged in time, but by then dawn was breaking and Malta was in sight. A coastguard cutter closed in on the ferry and its escort, and over a very powerful loudspeaker demanded to know just what the Italian police thought they were doing, trespassing in Maltese waters. At this point the Carabinieri acknowledged defeat, withdrew to their launch and sped off northwards. Unfortunately Norman had also passed out, exhausted by the stresses and strains of the night’s adventures, and when Zen reluctantly disentangled himself from Stephanie’s embraces and went to inspect the lifeboat where the ROS agent had been stowed away, he found it empty.

  Nor did Lessi put in an appearance when the passengers disembarked in the imposing harbour at Valletta, but this was hardly surprising.
He could not arrest Zen on foreign soil, and since his identification papers were now at the bottom of the Mediterranean, he was not in a position to enlist the help of the Maltese authorities either, even if they had been disposed to be helpful.

  On the quayside, Zen said goodbye to his seriously hung-over British friends and kissed Stephanie, who surprised him by putting her tongue in his mouth and then starting to weep again. He then changed some money and, after a discussion in very fractured Italian with a taxi driver, had himself driven to a small hotel at the top of the old town.

  For a moment he thought he had hired a suicidal maniac, since the driver proceeded to turn out of the port area and start driving on the left-hand side of the road. But if he was mad, everyone else seemed to share his madness, and the short journey passed uneventfully. At the hotel, Zen took the one remaining room, a small single at the rear of the premises, overlooking what had once been a small internal courtyard and was now a deep, dank shaft filled with air-conditioning ducts, rubbish and cooking smells.

  There had been no obvious sign that his taxi had been followed, but he knew that it wouldn’t take them long to find him. His Italian identity card had been enough to get him through passport control, but he had to fill out an entry card which would now be on file. He was officially registered as having entered the country, and it was far too small a country to hide in, particularly for someone with no friends and who didn’t speak the language.

  His best hope, he reckoned, lay in that entry card. Persons leaving Malta legally would have to complete a similar exit card, which would also be filed. If a search for ‘Zen, Aurelio’ turned up no such card, it would naturally be assumed that he was still in the country. The resulting confusion might just be enough to buy him the time he needed. But first he had to find a way to leave the country illegally. With a heavy heart, he lifted the phone and dialled a number in Rome.

  There was no answer, so he left a message.

  ‘Gilberto, it’s Aurelio. I’m in it up to here, and I don’t even know who with, but they don’t mess about. I can’t say any more on the phone, and I can’t give you my number, but I need help desperately, and after what happened in Naples you owe me, you son of a bitch. I’ll call again every thirty minutes until I get you. Don’t let me down, Gilberto, and none of your stupid jokes. This is deadly serious. And I mean that literally’