Then she heard a sound behind her. Someone had spoken her name. On the other side of the great naked space a figure stood gazing at her with imploring eyes. Silvio, it’s Silvio, she thought.
‘I’ll give you as long as I can, dottore,’ Geraci murmured.
Silvio nodded impatiently.
‘Yes, yes. Thank you.’
The man bowed slightly as he backed towards the door.
‘Thank you, dottore. Thank you.’
Despite his impatience, once they were alone Silvio seemed unable to speak.
‘What are you doing here?’ Ivy demanded coldly.
‘That man telephoned me and told me what had happened. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all afternoon! I had no idea they would move so quickly!’
At his words something Ivy thought had died for ever flickered into life again.
‘But how did he get you in?’ she asked guardedly. ‘They said I was to see no one.’
‘He’s one of them. Apparently he’s in some trouble, wants me to put in a word for him. But let me explain what happened, you have no idea…’
‘Excuse me, I know exactly what happened! I’ve seen the whole thing, read every one of the lies you put your name to.’
Silvio rubbed his hands together in anguish.
‘You don’t think I signed that thing willingly, do you? Ivy, you must understand!’
‘I don’t care how you signed it! It’s quite sufficient that you did. Do you know how I’ve spent the last few hours? Sitting all alone in a stinking cell, totally humiliated and despairing! And you have the gall to try and interest me in your state of mind when you signed the libellous rubbish that made that possible? You expect me to under stand? No, no, those days are over, Silvio. I don’t feel very understanding any more. I don’t have time to worry about your problems. I’ve got problems of my own.’
‘But you haven’t! It’s all meaningless!’
He blundered blindly towards her.
‘Ivy, you must understand! It’s all just a trivial vendetta by Cinzia. It doesn’t amount to anything. You’ll be out of here by this evening, I promise. I’ll retract the whole statement, deny everything. They’ll have to let you go.’
She turned towards him, a new light in her eyes.
‘Cinzia?’
‘That’s right. She got hold of some photographs taken in Berlin and gave them to that bastard Zen. They threatened to make them public unless I signed. What could I do? I was taken completely by surprise. I thought I’d have time to warn you, at least. But it doesn’t amount to anything, that’s the important thing. She just wanted to stir up a bit of scandal, to give you a bad time for a day or two. But we’ll soon sort her out, won’t we? We’ll make her sorry!’
Ivy was silent. The nightmare was beginning to fade, but something still remained, some real cry of distress which the dream had taken up and used for its own purposes. What had it been?
Meanwhile Silvio told her the whole story, starting with the call from the banker which had set him up to be waylaid by Zen. It was all Cinzia’s fault, he repeated. But Ivy knew better. She had long recognized Gianluigi Santucci as her most formidable opponent. Like her, he was an outsider; like her, he had a personal hold over one member of the family; like her, he was ambitious and unscrupulous. In different circumstances they might have been natural allies. As it was they were rivals. Ivy had always known that sooner or later she would have to deal with Gianluigi. Evidently he’d had the same idea, and had struck first. It should have occurred to her that he would have had Silvio followed to that club and his indiscretions photographed. After all, she would have done exactly the same thing in his position.
But there was still that other fact nagging at the back of her mind, that real nightmare. It was something Zen had told her almost casually and which she had immediately forgotten, not because it didn’t matter but because it mattered far too much, because coming on top of Silvio’s apparent stab in the back it was just too hideous to contemplate. But now that she wanted and needed to deal with it Ivy found that repression had done its job too efficiently. Try as she would, she simply couldn’t recall what it had been.
‘By the way, do you know that they’ve arrested the kidnappers?’ Silvio asked her eagerly.
They had often remarked on the fact that one of them would mention something that had been on the tip of the other’s tongue, as though they were able to read each other’s minds. Now it had happened again. And now Ivy understood why she had deliberately forgotten. This was the worst news in the world.
There was only one way. She dreaded it as one might dread a painful and risky operation, even knowing that there was no alternative. It would have to be very quick, before she could change her mind.
‘Silvio, the kidnappers didn’t kill Ruggiero.’
He tossed his head impatiently.
‘But they’ve confessed!’
‘They didn’t do it.’
‘How do you know?’
It was his scornful, cocksure tone of voice that tipped the balance in the end, that made it possible for her to tell him.
‘Because I did.’
It took him a moment to react.
‘That’s silly.’
He frowned.
‘Don’t say things like that. It’s horrible. It frightens me.’
‘It frightens me too. But if we face it together it won’t be so frightening. You know that nothing can frighten us as long as we’re together.’
She moved towards him.
‘And now we’ll never have to be apart again.’
His mouth opened a crack.
‘But… you…’
‘When they phoned to say he’d been released I suddenly realized what that would mean. We’ve been happy these past months, haven’t we? Happy as never before. And that happiness is precious, because people like us know so little of it. The others are rich in happiness, yet they want to take away what little we’ve got. You remember the letter he sent. You remember what he said about us. Why should people be allowed to say things like that? You know it’s unfair, you know it’s wrong. And it was all about to start again. We would have been separated again, kept apart from one another. You would have been trapped at home, having to listen to his cruel, obscene gibes. You couldn’t stand that. Why should you be expected to stand it?’
Although she was very close to him now, she still did not touch him. He turned away, and for a moment she thought that she’d lost him, that he was about to rush to the door, scream for the guards, denounce her.
‘Perhaps I’ve done the wrong thing,’ she went on, almost whispering. ‘Perhaps I’ve made a terrible mistake. Even mummies aren’t perfect, they make mistakes sometimes. But babies have to forgive them, don’t they?’
After an interminable moment he looked back at her, and she knew she was safe. That dash to the door would never happen, for it would be like running off a cliff.
‘What are we going to do?’ he moaned.
‘We must plan and act, Silvio. That statement will be used against me.’
‘But since it’s all lies…’
‘It’s all lies, yes. But it’s not all untrue.’
Just as she had once paid tribute to her employer’s cleverness, she now gave Gianluigi Santucci his due. It was very cunning, the way he had woven details like the wig and the pistol and the fake appointment with Cinzia into a tissue of lies. Yes, there was enough truth there to give the investigators plenty of material to get their teeth into.
‘Besides, if they’ve arrested the kidnappers then sooner or later they’ll find out that it was my number they called on Monday morning to announce Ruggiero’s release.’
‘But that’s not true! They called us at the house on Tuesday! I remember that perfectly well. Pietro took the call.’
Ivy shook her head wearily.
‘No, that was a recording I made when they phoned me the day before. The gang was given my number before the ransom drop, because it wasn’t being tap
ped by the police. Don’t you remember?’
Silvio gestured impatiently.
‘Who cares what they say? It’s just their word against yours. I’ll get you the finest lawyers in the country…’
‘That’s not enough. The judicial investigation is secret, don’t forget. However good a lawyer you get, there’s nothing he can do initially. Besides, the Santuccis will be working against us, and there’s no telling what line Daniele and Pietro will take. No, it’s going to be a struggle, I’m afraid. We must prepare to fight on a much wider front, and that means we’re going to need friends, all the friends we can get. Russo, for example, and Fratini. Possibly Carletti. I’ll send you a list later. We must think flexibly. We might make it seem all a grotesque plot which Gianluigi is orchestrating in order to compromise the Miletti family. The new investigating magistrate will remember what happened to Bartocci. Hopefully she’ll think twice about venturing too far on flimsy evidence in the teeth of sustained opposition. And if she does, we’ll put it about that her zeal is not wholly inspired by a fervour for the truth, tie her in to Gianluigi’s interests in some way.’
She had been thinking aloud, her eyes gleaming with enthusiasm as she began to see her way clear. But Silvio just moved his big head from side to side as though trying to dodge a blow.
‘I can’t do all that!’ he wailed.
This brought her down to earth with a bump. She gripped his arms tightly, pouring her strength and determination into him.
‘Nonsense! Remember what happened with Gerhard, after they arrested Daniele. You managed then.’
‘But you were there too!’
‘And I’ll be here this time, to help you and tell you what to do. But you must do it, because I can’t. Don’t you see that? You must! No one but you can.’
But his look remained vague and distracted. She took his head in both her hands, forcing him to look her in the eyes.
‘You know what happened to your real mummy, don’t you?’
He bridled like a horse, but her grip was firm, holding him steady.
‘She died, Silvio. She died because you didn’t love her enough. Because you were too tiny, too weak. Do you want that to happen to me, too?’
He twisted away, a look of unspeakable horror on his face. After a moment he sighed massively and turned back towards her.
‘I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever has to be done.’
Satisfied, Ivy drew him down, tucking his nose into the hollow in her shoulder-blade where it loved to nestle.
As they embraced she gazed up at the crucifix on the wall. The figure on the cross was oddly distorted, suggesting not the consolations of the Christian faith but the realities of an atrocious torture. It looked as though the crucifix had been broken and then crudely glued together again, she thought idly.
‘There, there,’ she murmured. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
‘ By the way, do you know that they’ve arrested the kid nappers? ’
‘ Silvio, the kidnappers didn’t kill Ruggiero.’
‘ But they’ve confessed! ’
‘ They didn’t do it.’
‘ How do you know? ’
‘ Because I did.’
‘ That’s silly. Don’t say things like that. It’s horrible. It frightens me.’
‘ It frightens me too. But if we face it together it won’t be so frightening. You know that nothing can frighten us as long as we’re together.’
‘Right, that’ll do.’
Geraci pressed a button on the tape recorder and Chiodini clapped his enormous hands together.
‘We got the bastards, didn’t we? We really got them!’
Zen looked at them both.
‘You can never be sure, can you? But on balance, yes, I would say that this time we’ve got them.’
TWELVE
It was raining in Rome. People said Venice was wet, but it seemed to Zen that it rained even more in the city of his exile. It had something to do with the way the two places coped with this basic fact of life. Venice welcomed water in any form, perfectly at home with drizzle or downpour. The city was rich in cosy bars where the inhabitants could go to shelter and dry out over a glass or two, secretly glad of this assurance that their great ark would never run aground. But Rome was a fair-weather city, a playground for the young and the beautiful and the rich, and it dealt with bad weather as it dealt with ageing, ugliness and poverty, by turning its back. The inhabitants huddled miserably in their draughty cafes, gazing out at this dapper passer-by with his large green umbrella and his bouquet of flowers, taking the rain in his stride.
Two weeks had passed since Zen’s return from Perugia. His working days had been dominated by the readjustment to the humdrum world of Housekeeping and his personal life by the apparent impossibility of getting together with Ellen. Whenever he tried to arrange to see her it seemed to be the wrong day or the wrong time. In the end he’d begun to suspect that she was putting him off deliberately, but then this morning she had phoned out of the blue and invited him round to her flat for dinner.
‘ I’ll get us something to eat. It won’t be much, but…’
He knew what she meant by throwaway phrases like that! She had probably been planning the meal for days.
Ellen’s attitude to food had initially been one of the sharpest indicators of her very different background. Brought up to assume that women cooked the regional dishes they had learned from their mothers, Zen had at first been both amazed and appalled by Ellen’s eclecticism. He would no more have expected Maria Grazia to make a Venetian dish, let alone a French or Austrian one, than she would have expected to be asked. But at Ellen’s you had to expect anything and everything. A typical meal might begin with a starter from the Middle East followed by a main course from Mexico and a German pudding. Presumably this was an example of the famous American melting-pot, only far from melting, the contents seemed to have retained all their rugged individuality and to jostle each other in a way Zen had found as disquieting as the discovery that the source of these riches was not family or cultural tradition but a shelf of cookery books which Ellen read like novels. Nevertheless, with time he had come to appreciate the experience. If the menu was bizarre, the food itself was very good, and it all made him feel pleasantly sophisticated and cosmopolitan. What new discoveries would he make tonight?
Ellen was given to dressing casually, but the outfit in which she came to the door seemed fairly extreme even by her standards: a sloppy, shapeless sweater and a pair of jeans with paint stains whose colour dated them back more than two years, when she’d redecorated the bathroom. The flowers he presented her with seemed to make her slightly ill at ease.
‘Oh, how lovely. I’ll put them in water.’
‘There’s no hurry, I expect they’re wet enough.’
She led him into the kitchen.
‘I really meant it about the food being simple, you know.’
She held up a colourful shiny packet. Findus 100% Beef American-style Hamburgers, he read incredulously. Was this one of her strange foreign jokes, the kind you had to be a child or an idiot to find funny?
‘I imagine you ate well in Perugia, didn’t you?’ she continued with restless energy. ‘Tell me all about it. What I don’t understand is how the Cook woman ever thought she could get away with it. Surely it was an insane risk to take.’
He sat down at the kitchen table.
‘It only seems like that because the kidnappers were arrested. Of course once I knew what had happened then I started to notice other things. For example, in the phone call to the Milettis which we recorded on the Tuesday, the gang’s spokesman gave the name of a football team, Verona, as a codeword. Pietro should have responded with the name of the team Verona were playing the following Sunday, but he didn’t understand and simply assumed it was a wrong number. Yet the kidnapper, instead of insisting or hanging up, says that’s fine and goes ahead as if the correct response had been given. Which it had, of course, in the original conve
rsation with Ivy. Also the spokesman refers to “the Milettis’ father”, because he knows that the person he’s speaking to is not a member of the family. If he’d been phoning the Milettis direct he’d have said “your father”.’
Ellen ignited the gas under the grill.
‘Go on!’ she told him as she peeled away the rectangles of plastic which kept the hamburgers separate. She seemed more concerned that he might fall silent than interested in what he had to say.
‘Well, you know most of the rest. The kidnapper I spoke to in Florence told me that they’d phoned the same number as was used to arrange details of the kidnapping. The family had never revealed what this was, and I obviously couldn’t approach them directly. But I knew that the gang had used advertisements in a local newspaper as a way for people to get in touch with them. I went to the library and looked through the paper until I found an advertisement that was supposedly for a two-way radio. Phone 8818 after 7, it said. There are no four-digit telephone numbers in a big city like Perugia. But if you read the instructions literally you get a five-digit one, 78818. That was Ivy Cook’s number.’
There was a crinkling sound as Ellen tore off a sheet of aluminium foil to line the grill-pan.
‘What confused the issue slightly was that the kidnapper told me that the person who answered was a man with an accent like mine. For a moment I thought it might have been Daniele. But Ivy’s voice is deep enough to be mistaken for a man’s, and to a shepherd from Calabria her foreign accent sounded like someone from the North. She recorded the kidnappers’ call on the answering machine attached to her phone, edited the tape to cut out her own voice, then telephoned the Milettis the next morning and played it back to Pietro.’
Ellen laid the patties on the foil and slid the pan under the grill.
‘I’m surprised she and Silvio weren’t more cautious,’ she remarked. ‘Talking freely like that in a police station.’
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