End Games - 11

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked, half to himself.

  ‘Coat of arms of the Calopezzati family,’ the forensic officer replied after a glance.

  There was a silence.

  ‘Local landowners, back in the day,’ he added helpfully.

  Zen nodded.

  ‘Let me have your preliminary report at the very earliest opportunity, however basic it may be.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘It must be damned hot in that biohazard gear.’

  ‘It is.’

  Aurelio Zen returned to the Questura in an unusually grim and resolute mood. What had gone before had been mere skirmishes. This was war, and as in any war the first priority was to secure one’s base. He therefore headed first not to his own office but to that of the deputy questore. Giovanni Sforza had heard about the discovery of the body and Zen’s trip to the scene, but his only allusion to this consisted of a slightly raised eyebrow.

  ‘A bad one,’ Zen told him. ‘They blew his head off with something, a shotgun at very close range or maybe explosives. The killing occurred in situ, an abandoned village in the middle of nowhere.’

  Giovanni nodded morosely, as though this merely confirmed his long-standing views about the awfulness of life in Calabria.

  ‘Is it the American?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet. It looks as though the victim was stripped and then dressed in a cheap suit like a corpse laid out for a traditional funeral. No form of identification. But the height and weight correspond with the data for Peter Newman.’

  He paused, as though he had been about to add something and then changed his mind.

  ‘I should have a definitive answer by this evening.’

  Sforza gave him a heavily ironic smile.

  ‘Just as well you’re here, Aurelio. Otherwise the Ministry would have sent down some hotshot from Rome to boss us all around.’

  By now, Zen was immune to the charms of irony. He swung round on the deputy questore.

  ‘Well, since I am here, I plan to nail the bastards who did this! I’m sick to death of this romantic mystique of the south and the people’s self-proclaimed status as eternal victims ground beneath the tyrant’s boot throughout the ages. I’m particularly fed up with hearing how crime down here is ineradicable because it feeds off an unfathomable collective tradition of blood, honour and tragedy which we northerners can never presume to understand. To hell with that! It’s time they all woke up and started taking responsibility for their actions, and I plan to be their alarm clock.’

  Sforza nodded.

  ‘A noble speech. Many of us have made it before, at least in our own minds.’

  Zen waved his hands in a gesture of apology and lowered his voice.

  ‘I’m sorry, Giovanni, but it was really horrific. It looked very much like a ritual killing, almost a pagan sacrifice, and it’s somehow got under my skin. I have no idea how the investigation will play out, but I do know that it will be a constantly evolving situation and that timing will be of the essence. I may need to take extraordinary measures and make extraordinary demands on our available resources. So I’m asking you, in the name of the questore, to give me permission to do so in advance, sight unseen, using your name and rank as authorisation.’

  Giovanni Sforza regarded him in silence.

  ‘It is of course an insane request,’ Zen added.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with a little insanity,’ said Sforza, ‘as long as it’s employed in the service of reason. Do what you like. But I warn you –’

  He broke off.

  ‘What?’ asked Zen.

  Sforza shook his head.

  ‘Never mind. Those were brave words about the public perception of the south and the need for Enlightenment values, but dare I say that they sounded ever so slightly callow? After all, just what are we doing with those values? Take the internet. Here’s the most powerful intellectual tool in the history of the human race and we use it to write narcissistic online journals and to “have our say” like a swarm of squabbling starlings. Enlightenment values? We’re playing hide-and-seek in the library of Alexandria.’

  Zen’s dismay must have shown in his expression. Sforza laughed.

  ‘Oh, take it as a compliment, Aurelio! This case seems to have rejuvenated you. It’s just that I have a different paradigm for the problems of policing the south. It’s like arguing with a woman. You may win small victories, at a high cost, but afterwards everything goes on very much as it did before.’

  He gestured self-deprecatingly.

  ‘Take no notice of me. I’m just an old cynic.’

  ‘You’re a year younger than me, Giovanni,’ Zen said acidly.

  ‘Time in the south cannot be measured by the clock,’ was the mock sententious reply.

  Back in his office, Zen summoned Natale Arnone and briefed him on the situation.

  ‘Right, here’s my shopping list. The cadaver is on its way to the hospital for autopsy and further forensic tests. I want an immediate comparison of the dead man’s fingerprints with those of the American sent to us by the consulate, and after that a DNA profile. I’ll get on the phone and give the relevant orders, your job is to ensure that the people who promised me the earth don’t try and fob me off with a handful of dirt. Got that?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  Arnone got up.

  ‘I’m not finished yet,’ Zen told him. ‘I also want you to track down Thomas Newman, the American’s son. He’s staying at the Hotel Centrale. If he’s not there now, leave a man in the lobby until he returns. Finally, I need to trace any surviving relatives of Ottavia Calopezzati as well as the man cited on that birth certificate as Pietro’s father, Azzo whatever it was.’

  Arnone looked mystified by this last request, but held his tongue.

  ‘Is that all?’ he asked.

  ‘By no means all, but it should be enough to keep you busy until eight this evening. That’s your deadline for delivery of all the foregoing items. Buon coraggio.’

  When Arnone had gone, Zen lit a cigarette, then picked up the phone and dialled the extension of the officer in charge of operations.

  ‘I am ordering a house-to-house search of the new town of Altomonte, beneath the hilltop where that corpse was discovered today. All road access and egress is to be sealed by personnel carriers with officers in battledress and armed with machine guns. Helicopters hovering low overhead to spot anyone who tries to escape on foot. Inside the net, every individual is to be questioned separately by plain-clothed officers concerning the arrival and killing of the victim, his identity and that of those responsible. The level of duress is to exploit the legal limits to the maximum and slightly exceed them should the situation appear to warrant it. As with the discovery of the body, the whole operation is to be subject to a total media blackout until further notice. Authorisation for these orders has been given by the questore’s office.’

  The official coughed lightly.

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  He sounded doubtful.

  ‘Is there a manning problem?’ Zen demanded. ‘Pull everyone off other jobs, cancel all –’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘Then what the hell is it?’

  ‘Well, sir, I don’t want to be critical or anything, only I know you’re new to the area and I have to say that operations like this haven’t proven very productive in the past. In fact, you might almost say that they’ve been counter-productive. People around here, the more you squeeze them, the harder they get.’

  ‘Admirable attempt to save your colleagues from hours of irksome overtime,’ Zen commented. ‘Admirable, but doomed. I don’t remotely expect any of the inhabitants of the place to talk. That isn’t the object of the exercise. Execute the orders you have been given.’

  Martin Nguyen held that one of the ways you distinguished winners from losers was by how many times they had to change planes to get to their destination. He had therefore been appalled to discover that to reach the godforsaken hole
in the ground down which Rapture Works was pouring its millions, he needed to transfer not just in Los Angeles but also in Rome. On the up side, the transatlantic flight lasted almost ten hours and the time difference was in Martin’s favour. He worked the twenty-dollar-a-minute credit-card phone in the armrest of his first-class seat to good effect, arranging to hire a European mobile – when was the rest of the world going to get over its hissy fit and switch to the US standard? – as well as a limo and driver, all to be delivered to him on arrival at Fiumicino airport.

  The driver spoke extremely limited English, but he was there on time and proved to possess the skills, nerve and coolness of a Formula One professional. A little jaded after the long flight, Martin sat back in the rear of the Mercedes S-Class saloon and admired the Italian’s amazing ability to overtake and undertake, using the hard shoulder or a notional third lane which he conjured into being for precisely the duration of opportunity required, as well as the shamelessly thuggish tactics he employed on slower vehicles, which in effect meant everything else on the road, accelerating towards them at well over a hundred m.p. h., braking at the very last moment to fetch up less than a metre from the victim’s rear bumper and then repeatedly flashing his halogen high beams and sounding a series of aggressive and discordant horn blasts. The long section of single-lane working resulting from the reconstruction of the Salerno– Reggio autostrada proved almost excessively interesting, with plastic cones flying in all directions and at least one moment when Martin knew without a shadow of doubt that he was going to die.

  In the end, they covered the five hundred kilometres from Rome to Cosenza in just under three hours, including a pit stop south of Naples. With the layover for the connection, flying would have taken four. Once the initial thrills of this crash course in extreme driving had worn off, Martin got busy with his rental phone. Okay, so this place was abroad. He knew what you did with broads. Someone fucks and someone gets fucked was the rule everywhere. Martin was sporting his Bluetooth, he was eager and armed. First up was the US consulate. They were as helpful as they had been during his earlier contacts with them, but apparently had nothing new to report on the Newman case.

  ‘The officer in charge is called Aurelio Zen,’ the consular official informed Martin. ‘Let me spell that. Well, yeah, “aw-reelly-oh” is how it might look to you, but “ow-raily-oh” is how they pronounce it here. Anyway, I suggest that you get in contact with him tomorrow, if only for form’s sake. It would just make everything go more smoothly. Do you have an interpreter? I can fix one up for you if you want.’

  ‘An American?’

  The official hesitated.

  ‘I do know someone, but she’s vacationing right now. But I have a whole list of Italians who speak English better than most Americans. Hey, only kidding! They’re students, so they’d be glad to make some money.’

  I’ll bet, thought Martin. Students could be bought cheap, but there was no knowing who else might offer them a cut above the agreed rate to pass on details of the conversations they had been party to. You could trust Italians to drive cars, but much of what Martin would need to discuss came under the heading of highly sensitive and strictly confidential information. If any word of what Rapture Works was really up to in Calabria leaked out, the whole project would be blown sky high in no time, and Martin’s job with it.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll think it over.’

  ‘The other thing is Newman’s son, Thomas. You’ll probably want to meet with him too. He’s at a hotel in the centre. Let me give you the number.’

  Martin dialled it next. The desk clerk put him through to the room, where the phone rang and rang. Martin was about to hang up when a bleary voice answered.

  ‘Pronto.’

  Martin wondered what the hell the Lone Ranger had to do with it.

  ‘Give me Tom Newman,’ he stated crisply.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Oh, hi, Tom. My name is Martin. I’m a business associate of your father. All of us at the company are just shocked at what’s happened, so I’ve been sent out from the States to see if we might be able to provide any help on the ground. I’ll be arriving in Cosenza momentarily. I don’t know how you’re fixed for this evening, but I’d sure appreciate it if we could touch base at some point.’

  Martin manufactured an embarrassed chuckle.

  ‘I’m kind of like the new kid on the block here, so it would be real helpful to have someone who can bring me up to speed on the background and the current state of play. If you’re free, that is.’

  ‘Free as the wind,’ the voice replied tonelessly.

  ‘Well, how about dinner? I’m staying at a different hotel, but what say I swing by your place about six? Do you know somewhere that does good food?’

  ‘Sure, but they don’t really get going till eight.’

  ‘They don’t?’

  ‘Nowhere does.’

  ‘That late? Wow, this is seriously foreign. Still, when in Rome, I guess! Okay, how does a quarter of eight sound? Good speaking with you, Tom.’

  Martin’s next call, to Phil Larson, was pitched in a rather different register.

  ‘Nguyen. I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Anything new?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Any fresh ideas about narrowing the search area?’

  ‘Not till someone firms up the variables in the equation for me, Mr Nguyen.’

  ‘I’ve got a team doing that right now. They’ll email me their conclusions by midnight tonight local time. When do you start work?’

  ‘We get to the site at five-thirty and airborne around six.’

  ‘Be there no later than five tomorrow. I need to brief you.’

  The next call was the one that Martin had been dreading, but it had to be made. After ploughing through a security cordon of call-catchers, he finally got Luciano Aldobrandini on the line. At least the great director spoke excellent English.

  ‘Good of you to take my call, maestro,’ Martin gushed.

  ‘I’d told Pippo that I was at home to nobody, but money doesn’t speak, it shouts, as your famous cantautore put it. What can I do for you, Signor Nguyen?’

  Martin gave out the warm guffaw of a door-to-door salesman working up to his pitch.

  ‘Well, maestro, I just flew into Rome so I thought I’d give you a call.’

  ‘You are in Rome now?’

  Aldobrandini’s tone was not welcoming.

  ‘No, no, I’m on my way to Cosenza. As you know, our representative there has gone missing and I’ve been sent over to sort out the loose ends and get everything back on track. So I was kind of wondering if we might get together at some stage and hash out any outstanding issues.’

  The film director’s voice changed, perhaps consciously, to one of unctuous menace.

  ‘No problem at all. A berth is in preparation.’

  ‘A birth?’

  ‘At Marina di Fuscaldo, for my yacht. It’s the only place down that way to put up in season but parking’s always a problem. I had to bounce out a couple of boaters who’d had the nerve to reserve months ago. One doesn’t like to pull rank – a trifle vulgar, I always think – but sometimes it’s the only way to get what one wants. The port is in a very nice position, with a splendid view of the precipitous coastline, and only twenty minutes or so from Cosenza. Why don’t you drop by for cocktails one day, if you’re not too busy? Among his many and varied talents, my assistant Pippo mixes the best martini this side of the Pillars of Hercules.’

  The director’s love of his own voice was his downfall. A moment before, Martin had been bemused, but by the time silence finally fell he was back on task.

  ‘So when do you plan to start shooting, maestro?’

  ‘We dock tomorrow afternoon and I propose to get down to work as soon as possible after that. I’ve spent months planning this project and have achieved as much as I can at the theoretical level. My creative juices don’t really get flowing until the cameras start to turn, so I naturally want to move on to that stage a
s soon as possible.’

  ‘I see,’ replied Martin.

  ‘I doubt it, but that’s irrelevant. What I need from you is the money which you are contracted to pay to my agent on the first day of principal photography. I assume there will be no problem with that.’

  ‘No, no. No, of course not.’

  ‘Then I think we have nothing further to discuss at present. My cell phone has noted your number and I shall be in touch as soon as my ship comes in, so to speak.’

  Martin Nguyen hung up and stared forwards through the windscreen. They had been sweeping up a long curve along the flank of a mountain range, but the magisterial progress of the Mercedes was now impeded by two articulated lorries engaged in a truckers’ duel on the steep gradient. Clearly frustrated and humiliated at being able to go no faster than seventy, Martin’s driver sent his vehicle darting to this side and that like a hummingbird, probing for an opening, then rammed his foot down and surged forward through a momentary gap between the two giant vehicles.

  ‘Yeah, go for it!’ Martin yelled. ‘Stick it to him! Ram it up his ass till he bleeds! Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him!’

  Natale Arnone reappeared in Zen’s office two minutes before his deadline expired. He had phoned in earlier to report that the fingerprints of the corpse found at Altomonte matched those of Peter Newman and that the American’s son had left his hotel at about two o’clock that afternoon but had not yet returned. The rest of Arnone’s afternoon and early evening had been spent tracking down any surviving members of the Calopezzati family, as well as the individual named on Pietro Ottavio’s birth certificate as the father. The latter had turned out to be a dead end.

  ‘I checked with our central database in Rome as well as those for the civil authorities of every region in the country. The name Azzo Plecita does not appear in any of them. Only a fraction of the earlier paper archives have been digitalised, of course, but it did occur to me that la baronessa might just have made it all up.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  Arnone looked pleased by Zen’s interest in his theory.