Ratking az-1

by Michael Dibdin

  Zen hesitated for a moment.

  ‘May I use your phone?’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  There was an internal directory pinned to the wall by the phone. He dialled Luciano Bartocci’s number.

  ‘ Yes? ’

  ‘Well, it did come to the same thing in the end.’

  ‘ Who is this? ’

  ‘I’m going back to Rome tomorrow. But first I’d like to have a word with you. About ratkings.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘ I’m very busy.’

  ‘It’ll only take a few moments.’

  The technician was busy fitting a new leader to a reel of tape. His work probably left him little interest in listening to other people’s conversations, but Zen kept his voice low.

  ‘It’s vitally important.’

  Zen spoke slowly, stressing each word, giving Bartocci time to think.

  ‘ In about half an hour. On the roof of the market building.’

  Zen pushed past the women selling doughnuts and flowers and through a group of African students giggling at the photos they had just had taken in the machine. The terrace on the roof of the market was deserted except for a flock of pigeons and the two Nordic girls, one of whom was sketching the view while the other basked in the sun, her head on her friend’s lap. The puddle under a leaky tap near by had frozen overnight and not yet had time to thaw, so that the pigeons slipped and skidded as they came to drink.

  When Luciano Bartocci appeared, tense and wary, Zen wasted no time.

  ‘I need to consult a document.’

  ‘Ask Foria.’

  ‘She’s not here. It’s urgent.’

  Bartocci shook his head.

  ‘Out of the question.’

  ‘I just need a copy of the transcript of the call the gang made to tell the Milettis that they had released Ruggiero.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The Carabinieri in Florence have arrested the kidnappers. I’ve been to see them. They didn’t kill Ruggiero.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you? Or with me, for that matter? Rosella Foria is investigating the Miletti murder. Let her investigate. That’s her job. Or do you think you’re cleverer than she is?’

  ‘I think I understand the situation better, thanks to you.’

  Bartocci smiled at this clumsy attempt at flattery.

  ‘Remember what you told me about ratkings?’ Zen reminded him. ‘How each rat defends the interests of the others and so the strength of one is the strength of all? Well, I think there’s one case where that doesn’t apply, where the system goes into reverse and the rats all turn on each other.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘When they sense that one of their number is damaged.’

  The magistrate shook his head.

  ‘They would simply destroy the damaged rat.’

  ‘But suppose they don’t know which one it is?’

  Bartocci considered this for a moment.

  ‘It all sounds a bit theoretical.’

  ‘I agree. What I want to do is to test the theory. And that’s why I need to see that transcript.’

  One or two pigeons were already scrabbling about at their feet, their beady eyes skinned for a hand-out. Bartocci would clearly have liked to tell Zen to go to hell, but he was trapped by the relationship which he himself had been at such pains to create, and which he wasn’t quite cynical enough to disavow now that it served not him but the other person. It was less trouble in the end just to give in.

  ‘You remember the bar we went to in Piazza Matteotti?’ he asked. ‘Be there later on this morning, about midday. If there’s anything for you read it there and then, seal it up and hand it back. If there isn’t then go away. And stay away.’

  On the Corso the hammering had stopped and the platform was being decorated with flags and bunting and posters proclaiming a political address the following day. By then, Zen thought, I’ll be back in Rome, whatever happens. He found this oddly comforting.

  The civic library was staffed by the usual sullen crew, as though it were a branch of the prison service. Since Zen was not a registered member it took his police identity card even to get him past the door. He climbed up to the periodicals room on the second floor and announced to the female attendant that he wished to consult back numbers of the local newspaper.

  ‘Fill in a request form,’ she replied, without looking up from her knitting.

  There were no forms to be seen, but one of the other inmates explained that they were kept in the corridor on the next floor up.

  ‘And the accession number?’ the woman demanded when Zen brought his form back. The tip of her steel knitting needle hovered over a space as blank as Zen’s face.

  ‘I don’t know what the accession number is.’

  ‘Look it up!’

  ‘Can’t you do it?’

  It’s not my job to fill in the forms. You have to look in the card catalogue.’

  The card catalogue was in the basement. It took Zen twenty minutes to locate the section dealing with the newspaper he wanted. Since each month’s copies had a separate accession number he then had to make out six different forms, which meant going back to the third floor and copying out his name, address, profession, and reason for request twelve times.

  By half past ten he was back. The woman’s knitting was making good progress. She pushed his forms away.

  ‘No more than three requests may be submitted at one time.’

  He handed back the forms corresponding to the last three months. The woman scrutinized them in vain for further errors or omissions, laid down her knitting with a reluctant sigh and trotted off. As soon as she was out of sight Zen took out his pocket-knife and cut through a stitch in the middle of the work she had completed.

  He needn’t have hurried. A further ten minutes elapsed bef ore she returned, pushing a trolley bearing three large folders fastened with black tape.

  ‘Keep pages in order edges straight corners aligned do not crease crinkle or tear leave at your position after use,’ she told him.

  As he began his search through the classified advertisements columns, Zen realized why the kidnappers had chosen boats as their cover. Perugia is about as far from the sea as any Italian city can be, and particularly during the winter interest in buying and selling boats is low. As a result there was little chance of the gang overlooking one of the messages intended for them. The discovery of the advertisements which confirmed Geraci’s story was gratifying, but what really excited Zen was an announcement which had appeared the previous Friday, the day after the Milettis received Ruggiero’s letter giving the instructions for the final ransom payment. ‘Two-way radio for sale,’ it read. ‘Phone 8818 after 7.’

  It looked innocuous enough, and yet Zen felt like an astronomer sighting a planet whose existence he had predicted from his calculations. This was the clincher, the thing that made everything else make sense. It was like in a dream where, tired of beating your fists against a locked and bolted door, you step back and notice for the first time that there is no wall on either side. Of course! It was so simple, so obvious.

  In the bar opposite the post office a street-sweeper was explaining how he would sort out the national football team.

  ‘Too many solo artists, that’s the problem. One of them gets the ball and sees a bit of open space, all he thinks about is going forward, the rest of the team might as well not exist. When it comes off it’s magnificent, I grant you, but how often does that happen, eh? No, it’s percentages that add up in the end, this is what they don’t realize. What we need is more discipline, more organization, more teamwork.’

  ‘Well, this is it,’ the barman said, turning to the new customer with an interrogatory lift of the chin.

  Zen identified himself and was handed a white envelope which was tucked between two bottles of fruit syrup. He opened it and took out a photocopy of a typed page: INTERCEPT: Yes? CALLER: Verona. INTERCEPT: What? You’ve got the wrong number. CALLER: OK, listen. We
have released Dottor Miletti. Understand? But someone’ll have to go and pick him up. It’s his leg, he can’t walk. Here’s haw to find him. INTERCEPT: Wait a moment! Turn down that music, Daniele! CALLER:… the road to Foligno. Just beyond Santa Maria degli Angeli turn right, the Cannara road. Go to the telegraph pole with the mark and turn left. Take the second right and go about a kilometre until you see a building site beside the road on the left. The Milettis’ father is there. INTERCEPT: Wait a minute! The second on the right or the left? Hello? Hello?

  Zen looked up, his breath coming short and fast. He sealed up the photocopy in the envelope enclosed and handed it back to the barman. Then he got a telephone token and dialled the police laboratory. Hair is either fair or yellow, Lucaroni had told him. But all that’s yellow isn’t hair, the laboratory confirmed. The yellow threads found in the Fiat they had examined were strands from a cheap synthetic wig.

  He emerged into the bright sunlight, blinking like a mole. The last piece of the puzzle was in place. He knew who had done it and how it had been done, and with the exception of the murderer he was the only person who did know. For a few more hours the whole situation would remain fluid and he held the key cards in his hands. If he played them right then perhaps just this once the bastards wouldn’t get away with it after all. He tried not to think about what might happen if he played them wrong.

  TEN

  Gianluigi Santucci sat at the head of the dining table watching his family feed. Although he had hardly noticed his wife take a mouthful, her plate was already empty. He wondered how she managed to do it, given that she had been talking almost uninterruptedly since the meal began. His daughter Loredana had originally taken only four pieces of ravioli, subsequently increased to five under sustained pressure from her mother. But since she had eaten only half of them this apparent victory revealed itself, like so many in the family circle, as illusory. Gianluigi didn’t need to read Cinzia’s trashy psychology magazines to know that Loredana worshipped the ground he trod on. One of the ways in which this manifested itself was by her mimicking of the meagre diet to which her father was reduced by his digestive problems. For though Gianluigi was proud of the good fare he provided for his family, that was about the only pleasure he could take in it since this vicious intruder had taken up residence in his gut.

  How his mother would have triumphed! As a child Gianluigi had resembled not fastidious Loredana but little Sergio there, his face cheerily smeared with tomato sauce, putting away the sticky pouches with a single-mindedness he would soon devote to masturbation. Gianluigi too had been a stuffer, eating as though he had a secret mission to devour the world. His mother had never left him in peace on the subject. ‘Don’t eat so fast, it’s bad for you. Don’t eat bread before your pasta, it’s bad for you. Don’t put oil on your meat, it’s bad for you.’ But she had never understood the secret source of her son’s appetite: a gnawing envy of an elder brother who seemed so much bigger and more successful. Pasquale could dominate a room just by walking into it, and even his absence usually appeared to be of more interest than Gianluigi’s presence. ‘If you don’t eat you won’t grow,’ his mother told him. Gianluigi turned this logic on its head and determined to eat his way into a future where he would be bigger and better than anyone around. But the only result had been a stomach condition which left him unable to do more than nibble a few scraps while this pain roamed his innards like a rat.

  His hunger hadn’t disappeared, however. It had just taken a different form. His physical size he could do nothing about, but on every other score he had beaten his brother hollow! Pasquale was now a dentist responsible for curing half the tooth problems in Siena and causing the other half, as he himself liked to joke. But his three children were all girls, his wife was a whore – Gianluigi himself had had her three times last summer – and although his earnings were respectable enough, his rival could already match him lira for lira twice over. And that was only the beginning. The events of the past week had opened up perspectives which even Gianluigi found slightly dizzying.

  Not that he was by any means unprepared for the pickings that Ruggiero’s death promised to bring with it. On the contrary, he had been working towards that very goal from the moment he met Cinzia Miletti. For in the end Pasquale had proved to be a disappointment. Like many young achievers he had gone into an early decline, growing fat and complacent, no challenge for the pool of unused ambition that ached and burned like the excess gastric acids in Gianluigi’s stomach. He needed roughage, and his solution had been to marry into a family full of brothers and take them all on. He had been counting on this using up his energies for many years to come, so his pleasure at the way things had worked out was mixed with a certain amount of regret that it was all over so quickly. The Japanese deal on which he had expended so much energy and cunning was irrelevant now. Ruggiero’s will would hold no surprises. Each of the Miletti children would receive a twenty-five per cent holding in SIMP. Cinzia’s share was already in his hands, of course, and he could count on Daniele’s too. It was not just a question of the money he had been advancing the boy ever since he got himself into trouble over drugs, although by now that amounted to almost a hundred million lire. Daniele was hooked on something quite as addictive as hard drugs and almost as expensive: a fashion market whose sole function was to flaunt the spending power of its wearers, or rather their fathers. To admit that he could no longer compete because his father had turned his back on him would have been the ultimate humiliation for the boy, so he had been glad to accept his brother-in-law’s help. But what made Gianluigi quite certain of Daniele’s support was the fact that the boy admired him. Pietro had never understood that, never been prepared to admit that his younger brother’s hero was the outsider in the family, the pushy, self-seeking Tuscan. He would have to pay for that. One of Gianluigi’s axioms was that one always paid for any lack of clarity and realism. Meanwhile he accepted Daniele’s homage as he did his daughter’s, and with as little thought of consummating the relationship. The fact of the matter was that the boy hadn’t a hope in hell of ever amounting to anything, being spoiled, weak, vain and without that bitter inner pain that drives a man on.

  So there he was in effective control of fifty per cent of SIMP. But even if Pietro knew that, he would still be counting on Silvio to balance things out. Which was a mistake, because when the chips were down Silvio would support Gianluigi too. This was something that Pietro could have no inkling of, for the simple reason that Silvio didn’t know himself and would have denied it strenuously if he’d been asked. Nevertheless when the time came he would vote with Gianluigi, because of the photographs. Gianluigi had paid a detective agency in Milan five million lire for them, but like Daniele’s allowance it was money well spent. Those photographs would make him undisputed master of the Miletti empire. It had been a nerve-racking business, particularly the last few weeks. He wondered what his family would think if they knew the risks he had been running. But now it was all over and he had come out on top. The Milettis had made it clear from the beginning that they played winner-take-all. And he would, he would!

  The doorbell sounded and Margherita set down the dish of fried fish she was serving to go and answer it.

  ‘Who on earth can that be?’ Cinzia wondered aloud. ‘What an idea, not even lunchtime is sacred any more, no wonder there’s so much tension and unhappiness in the world, finish your pasta, Loredana.’

  The housekeeper reappeared in the doorway.

  ‘It’s the police, dottore.’

  Gianluigi was accustomed to living with pains, but the one that shot across his chest now was a stranger.

  ‘Tell them to come back later,’ his wife told the housekeeper, as though it was as easy as that, as though there was nothing to worry about. ‘It’s really too bad, a total chaos and intrusion.’

  ‘No, I’ll sort them out.’

  He got to his feet, gathering his strength, his courage, his wits.

  Margherita’s words had conjured up visions of armed
men surrounding the house, and when Gianluigi reached the door he was relieved to find no one there but Aurelio Zen. But relief merely made him angry for having been given an unnecessary fright.

  ‘What the hell do you want now, Zen? Don’t you know it’s lunchtime?’

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, dottore, but it’s a matter of the highest urgency.’

  ‘It had better be.’

  He was sure of himself again, in control of the situation. This sort of confrontation was the stuff of his life, for which he trained like an athlete. Once he had mastered that initial moment of panic it was a pleasure to exercise those considerable skills.

  ‘According to our records,’ Zen went on, ‘your wife is the registered owner of a Beretta pistol. I would like to examine it with a view to eliminating it from our inquiries.’

  ‘Let me see your search warrant.’

  ‘I’m not conducting a search.’

  Gianluigi allowed his eyebrows to rise.

  ‘Oh? Then what the fuck are you doing, may I ask, disturbing me without the slightest warning in the middle of lunch?’

  ‘I’m conducting a preliminary inquiry in the sense of article 225 of the Penal Code, the results of which will be communicated to the Public Prosecutor’s office and a search warrant issued in due course, your refusal to cooperate having been noted. But what’s the problem? You have got the gun, haven’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  This automatic reply was his first error, conceding the man’s right to question him. But the sudden change of tone had caught him by surprise.

  ‘Then why not just show it to me?’ Zen suggested. ‘It’ll save both of us a lot of unnecessary bother.’

  There was a shuffle of bare feet as Cinzia appeared.

  ‘What’s going on, Lulu? Oh, Commissioner, I thought you were back in Rome. Surely you must be.’

  She and Zen exchanged a lingering glance.

  ‘Get on with your lunch,’ Gianluigi told his wife. ‘I’ll handle this.’

  Realizing that after this interruption his earlier position of rigid intransigence would seem stilted, Gianluigi told his visitor to wait, went through to the living room and opened the top drawer of the old desk where the pistol was always kept.