Ratking az-1

by Michael Dibdin

  Zen noted these details in the margin of his earlier doodles.

  ‘ Shall I send a written copy up to your office, dottore? ’

  ‘No! Definitely not. I’ve got what I wanted. Much obliged.’

  He hung up, studying the information. Ruggiero’s Luger would be war loot, belatedly registered once the menace of an armed Communist insurrection had faded. That might possibly have done the damage to Valesio’s head, at close range. So might Gianluigi’s hunting rifle, for that matter. But he didn’t really believe any of it, not for a moment.

  He got an outside line, dialled the law courts and asked to speak to Luciano Bartocci. While he waited he looked round his office with a deepening frown, trying to track down the detail which had been altered. What was it? The filing cabinet, the coat-stand, the rubbish bin, that big ugly crucifix, the photograph of Pertini, the calendar. Of course, the calendar! Someone had thoughtfully turned the page to March and now the glossy colour photograph showed the Riot Squad drawn up in full battle gear in front of their armoured personnel carriers.

  ‘ Yes? ’

  ‘Dottor Bartocci? It’s Zen, at the Questura.’

  ‘ Finally! I’ve been trying to get hold of you since yesterday afternoon! Where have you been? ’

  ‘Well, I was…’

  ‘ Listen, there’ve been developments. Come and see me at once.’

  ‘Patrizia Valesio has been here. She claims that…’

  ‘ I’ve already seen her. This is something else. Be here in twenty minutes.’

  Outside the weather was hazy and dull. In the car park between the Questura and the prison Palottino had taken a break from polishing the Alfetta to chat to a pair of patrolmen. He looked hopefully at Zen, who waggled his finger and walked off up the street.

  It was market day, and the wide curving flight of steps leading up to the centre was lined with flimsy tables covered in kitchenware and watches and clothing and tools and toys. Music blared out from a stall selling bootleg cassette tapes. The traders called like barnyard cocks to the women moving from one pitch to the next, uncertain which to mate with.

  ‘… at prices you simply won’t believe…’

  ‘… never before in Perugia…’

  ‘… thanks to the miracle of American technology…’

  ‘… ever wears out I will pay you twice the…’

  ‘SOCKS!!! SOCKS!!! SOCKS!!!’

  ‘… one for thirty thousand, two for fifty…’

  A man sitting on a three-legged stool emptied a dustpan full of rubbish over his suit and then removed it with a battery-powered mini-vacuum cleaner. On the wall behind him the name UBALDO VALESIO appeared over and over again in large black capitals. It was a notice-board devoted exclusively to funeral announcements, and the lawyer’s death was well represented. There were posters signed by his partners, by the local lawyers’ association, the Miletti family, various relatives, and of course his wife and children. The wording changed slightly, depending on the degree of intimacy involved, but certain formulas recurred like the tolling of a bell.

  ‘… an innocent victim of barbarous cruelty…’

  ‘… tragically plucked from the bosom of his loved ones by a callous hand…’

  ‘… a virtuous and well-respected life extinguished by the criminal violence of evil men…’

  The morning session at the law courts was in full swing, and the halls and corridors were crowded. Luciano Bartocci’s office was tall and narrow, with shelves of books that seemed to lean inwards like the sides of a chimney as they rose towards the distant ceiling. Two lawyers were facing the magistrate across a desk that occupied most of the floor space. One was clearly asking some favour on behalf of a client: bail or a visitor’s pass or access to official files. Meanwhile the other lawyer was growing impatient with Bartocci for allowing himself to be imposed upon in this way by his pushy and unscrupulous colleague instead of attending to his utterly reasonable request for bail or a visitor’s pass or access to official files. In the end Bartocci solved the problem by shooing both of them out of the office and leading Zen downstairs.

  ‘There’s something I want you to hear.’

  He took him to a long narrow room in the cellars of the law courts, where phone-taps were carried out. A bank of reel-to-reel tape recorders lined the wall. A man was monitoring one of them over a pair of headphones. He jumped slightly as Bartocci touched his shoulder.

  ‘Morning, Aldo. Can you play us that recording I was listening to earlier?’

  ‘Right away.’

  He selected a tape from the rack and threaded it on to a spare machine.

  ‘This was intercepted late yesterday afternoon on the Milettis’ home phone,’ the magistrate explained to Zen. ‘That’s why I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’

  The technician handed Zen a pair of headphones and started the tape. There was a fragment of ringing tone and then a voice.

  ‘ Yes? ’

  ‘ Signor Miletti? ’

  ‘ Who is this? ’

  ‘ Go to the rubbish skip at the bottom of the hill, on the corner of the main road. Taped to the inside there is a letter for you. Get down there quickly, before the cops beat you to it.’

  The caller had a thick, raw Calabrian accent.

  ‘ The time for games is over. You have three days to do what we say, otherwise we’ll do to your father what we did to Valesio. Only more slowly.’

  Zen removed the headphones, looking for clues to Bartocci’s reaction. The message had sounded genuine enough to him.

  ‘What was in the letter?’

  ‘That’s what we’re about to find out. Thank you, Aldo!’

  As they walked back upstairs Bartocci went on, ‘Pietro Miletti has agreed to see me. I’m expecting him shortly and I’d like you to be present. We’ve just time for a coffee.’

  They went to a tiny bar in Piazza Matteotti. The only other person there was a woman eating a large cream-filled pastry as though her life depended on it.

  ‘I had a phone call from Antonio Crepi,’ Zen remarked casually.

  ‘Really?’

  Bartocci’s voice, too, was carefully expressionless.

  ‘He knows we had lunch.’

  ‘I’m sure he does. In fifteen minutes he’ll know we’ve had coffee, too.’

  ‘What did you make of Patrizia Valesio’s story?’ Zen asked.

  The magistrate shrugged.

  ‘It doesn’t get us anywhere. A hostile Public Prosecutor would make mincemeat of her. The distraught widow trying to assuage her grief for her husband’s death by carrying out a vendetta against the Miletti family, that kind of thing. But this letter is another matter.’

  It took Zen a moment to see what Bartocci was getting at.

  ‘If they try and fake a letter from the kidnappers, you mean?’

  Bartocci nodded between sips of coffee.

  ‘They can’t fake it well enough to fool a forensic laboratory. I’m surprised they haven’t realized that. So this meeting with Pietro Miletti may well prove to be decisive. That’s why I want you to be there.’

  The eldest of the Miletti children seemed about as unlike the others as was possible. Short and plump, with receding hair and a peeved expression, Pietro looked at first sight like an English tourist who had come to complain about his belongings being stolen from his hotel room, full of righteous indignation about Italy being a den of thieves and demanding to know when the authorities proposed to do something about it. From his tweed jacket to his patterned brogues he looked the part perfectly: not the usual designer mix from expensive shops in Milan or Rome, but the real thing, as plain and heavy as Zen imagined the English climate, character and cuisine to be.

  Bartocci introduced Zen as ‘one of the country’s top experts on kidnapping, sent here specially by the Ministry to oversee the case’.

  Pietro Miletti was politely dismayed.

  ‘I understood this was to be a private meeting.’

  ‘Nothing which is said in this r
oom will go any further,’ Bartocci assured him. ‘We are simply here to discuss what measures to take in the light of recent developments. Please be seated.’

  After a moment’s hesitation Pietro leaned his rolled umbrella and leather briefcase against the desk and sat down. Bartocci took his place on the other side of the desk. There was no other chair, so Zen remained standing.

  ‘Now then,’ the magistrate continued smoothly, ‘I understand that in the course of a telephone call yesterday afternoon the kidnappers informed you of the whereabouts of a letter from them, and that this letter was subsequently recovered. You’ve brought it with you, I take it.’

  ‘Not the original, no.’

  Pietro Miletti spoke as though the matter was of no consequence, but Bartocci glanced at Zen before replying.

  ‘A copy of the letter is of very little use to our scientific experts.’

  ‘I haven’t brought a copy.’

  Bartocci gestured impatiently.

  ‘Excuse me, dottore. You haven’t brought the original letter, you haven’t brought a copy. Would you mind very much telling me what you have brought?’

  Pietro Miletti opened his briefcase and took out a sheet of paper which he offered to the magistrate.

  ‘I’ve brought a memorandum prepared from the original letter, itemizing every relevant piece of information it contained.’

  Bartocci made no attempt to take the paper.

  ‘Dottore, I strongly resent the assumption that anybody is in a position to dictate to me what is or is not relevant to a case I am investigating. If you are not prepared to let me see the original letter then this pretence of cooperation becomes a farce and I see no point in continuing it.’

  Pietro Miletti gave a short laugh that sounded unpleasantly arrogant and mocking, although it might equally well have been nervous in origin.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible.’

  ‘Impossible? Allow me to remind you that you are head of the family in your father’s absence. Nothing is impossible if you want it.’

  ‘No, no, I mean it’s literally impossible. The letter no longer exists.’

  Bartocci shot Zen a triumphant glance. So the Milettis had realized the threat to their schemes which the fake letter would pose and had no intention of letting them see it!

  Pietro balanced the sheet of paper on his knees.

  ‘I should explain that although part of the letter was dictated by the kidnappers, most of it was written by my father. It was a personal letter addressed to his family, and like any personal letter it was not intended to be read by outsiders. It was, besides, a very long, rambling and really rather distressing document. Distressing, I mean, for the evidence it provided of my father’s state of mind. The strain and anguish of his long ordeal has clearly had a terrible effect on him. Naturally no reasonable person would wish to hold him accountable for what he wrote, but certain passages nevertheless made very disturbing reading.’

  Zen gazed up at the shelves loaded with rows of books as uniform as bricks.

  ‘He accused you of having abandoned him,’ he said.

  ‘He recalled the innumerable sacrifices he has made on your behalf and reproached you for not being prepared to help him in his hour of need. He even compared your behaviour unfavourably with that of his kidnappers.’

  Pietro Miletti looked round in amazement.

  ‘How do you know that? It isn’t possible! Unless…’

  An idea flared up in his eyes for a moment and then went out.

  ‘Such letters resemble one another,’ Zen explained. ‘Like love letters.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  Pietro had lost interest again.

  Bartocci was staring angrily at Zen, who realized that he had made the mistake of speaking as though the letter really existed, as if the kidnapping was genuine. The magistrate rapped on his desk.

  ‘What became of the letter?’ he demanded.

  ‘We burned it.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘My father specifically forbade us to communicate any of the information it contained to the authorities, or to cooperate with them in any way whatsoever. That position received the strongest support from various members of the family, and it was only by strenuous and prolonged efforts that I have been able to persuade them to let me bring you this memorandum, which contains, as I’ve said, all the relevant items in the letter.’

  Zen suddenly understood that Bartocci had some move in mind, something which he was keeping up his sleeve for the moment.

  ‘And what are these “relevant items” you mention?’ the magistrate asked, deliberately postponing this initiative.

  Pietro Miletti picked up the paper again and began to read in a calm, confident voice, a voice that was accustomed to being obeyed, that never needed to make a fuss. The full ten thousand million lire, in well-worn notes, not consecutively numbered, was to be made ready for delivery immediately. An untapped telephone number was to be communicated to the gang, who would use it to pass on further details, identifying themselves by the same method they had used with Valesio. The police were not to be informed of any of these arrangements or to be involved in the payoff in any way. Failure to comply with these instructions would result in the immediate death of the victim.

  ‘And what do you intend to do?’ Bartocci asked when Pietro had finished.

  ‘We shall obey, of course. What else can we do?’

  ‘What you’ve been doing for the past four months! Stalling for time, crying poor, haggling over every lira.’

  Pietro Miletti replaced the sheet of paper carefully in his briefcase.

  ‘That’ll do, Bartocci. We already know what our enemies say about us.’

  An effortless hardening had taken place in his tone. He got to his feet and looked at both of them in turn.

  ‘Do you know why kidnapping flourishes here in Italy? Perhaps you think it’s because we’re saddled with a corrupt and inefficient police force directed by politically biased career judges lacking any practical training whatsoever. That is certainly a contributing factor, but similar conditions obtain in other countries where kidnapping is almost unknown. No, the real reason is that in our hearts we admire kidnappers. We don’t like successful people. We like to see them brought low, made to suffer, made to pay. They used to call Russia an autocracy moderated by assassination. Well, Italy is a plutocracy moderated by kidnapping.’

  ‘How do you propose to raise the money when for the past months you’ve been claiming that it just wasn’t possible?’

  But Pietro Miletti had no further interest in the exchange.

  ‘That’s our affair.’

  ‘There’s always SIMP, of course,’ Bartocci insinuated.

  ‘Yes, there’s still SIMP left to bankrupt. No doubt some people would be very glad to see that happen. But if our company ever does go under, those are the very people who are going to moan loudest.’

  ‘What about this untapped telephone number the gang have asked for? How are you going to communicate it to them?’

  ‘If I told you that, I doubt whether the number would remain untapped for very long. We’re paying an extremely high price to get my father back. We have no intention of putting the success of that operation at risk because of the usual bungling by the authorities.’

  ‘I take it you’ve asked for guarantees,’ Zen put in quietly.

  Pietro Miletti turned at the door.

  ‘What guarantees?’

  ‘How do you know your father is still alive?’

  ‘We just got a letter from him!’

  ‘How do you know when he wrote it? You should make it a condition of payment that the gang supplies a Polaroid photograph of your father holding the morning’s paper on the day the drop is made. That will incidentally also establish that the people you’re dealing with have still got possession.’

  ‘Possession of what?’

  His tone was reasonable and polite, a senior manager seeking specialized information from a consultant
.

  ‘The negotiations for your father’s release have been very long drawn out,’ Zen explained. ‘It may well be that the original kidnappers couldn’t afford to wait so long. It would depend on their financial situation, how the other jobs they’re involved in are going. If they need some quick cash they may have sold your father to another group as a long-term investment.’

  Pietro Miletti repeated his short laugh.

  ‘My God, are we talking about a business in secondhand victims?’

  Luciano Bartocci had been shuffling papers about noisily on his desk in an attempt to disrupt this exchange from which he was excluded.

  ‘There is just one other thing…’ he began.

  Pietro Miletti cut him off.

  ‘But what does it matter, after all? We don’t mind who we pay as long as we get my father back.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t want to pay one gang and then find that they’d sold your father to another, would you?’

  ‘There is just one other thing.’ the magistrate repeated. ‘When the pay-off is made, one of the people present will be Commissioner Zen.’

  Bartocci might previously have had some difficulty in making himself heard, but now he instantly had the total attention of both men. It was so still in the room that it seemed the three had suspended their dealings by mutual consent in order to catch the barely audible undulations of a distant ambulance siren.

  ‘You must be crazy,’ Pietro Miletti said at last.

  The young magistrate did actually look slightly mad. His eyes were bright with determination, his face flushed with a sense of the risks he was taking, and the stillborn smile twitched away at the corner of his mouth as though he was trying to eat his beard.

  ‘Should you refuse to cooperate,’ he went on, ‘I must warn you that as from this evening each member of your family and household staff will be under surveillance twenty-four hours a day by a team of Commissioner Zen’s men from Rome.’

  He gave Zen a long, level look, daring him to deny it.

  ‘Naturally this flurry of police activity will get into the newspapers. The kidnappers will quite possibly call off the whole operation.’