Back to Bologna

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘That’s him! That’s him!’

  The patient had raised himself up and was gesticulating wildly. Everyone turned to look, but by this time Zen and his wardress were out of sight behind the curtained side-screens, and a moment later the patient had slipped into unconsciousness.

  25

  …original contract specifically stipulated that payment would be made on receipt and acceptance–I emphasise the latter term–of a written report detailing your means, methods and findings in full.’

  ‘I’ve told you what you wanted to know.’

  ‘The presumption that you know what I “want to know” is impertinent.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘These photographs, for example,’ Avvocato Amadori continued. ‘I need to know where and when they were taken, with affidavits from credible witnesses in support of the foregoing facts.’

  ‘Well, it was in this bar…’

  ‘Has the proprietor of the establishment assented in writing to the photographic recording and subsequent reproduction and distribution of images of clients taken on his premises?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I take it that means no.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘So the said images are legally worthless.’

  At the beginning of his solo career, Tony had considered making his slogan ‘The hope of knowing everything, always’, playing catchily on his surname. Plus he could have offered two plans at different rates, the Hope scheme and the Assurance scheme. ‘Let me put it like this, Signora Tizia. “Assurance” is going to cost you a little more up-front, but think of it as an investment. It’ll be well worth the extra in the long run, particularly if you ever decide to take the cheating son of a bitch to court.’ In the end, though, he had rejected the Hope option as too tentative. Now it seemed a massive presumption.

  ‘You told me you wanted pictures of your son’s low-life pals, avvocato. I’ve provided them, together with details of his address and movements over the last few days.’

  ‘All you have provided me with is an assortment of photographs of various unappealing young men apparently in a state of advanced inebriation. Without objective evidence of their alleged connection with Vincenzo, over and above your verbal say-so, they are of merely anecdotal interest.’

  With a father like this, no wonder the kid left home, thought Tony.

  ‘And then there’s the matter of your alleged expenses. You not only claim to have spent over three hundred euros on “refreshments and incidentals”, but have the cheek to add a further five hundred and eighty to cover “depreciation of professional inventory”!’

  ‘In the course of my investigations, I was mugged and robbed of a very valuable digital camera, which I had to replace in order to take those photographs, and of an equally expensive pistol.’

  ‘I decline to be held responsible for losses due to your incompetence.’

  ‘If you think I’m incompetent, avvocato, then why did you hire me?’

  ‘To keep my wife quiet. The whole thing was her idea. Personally I’d be more than happy to let our ungrateful son discover the error of his ways in the fullness of time and at his own expense, but to maintain a semblance of peace in the household I judged it best to make a token gesture of concern. Not to the tune of almost fifteen hundred euros, however. On receipt and my acceptance of the full written report to which I have already alluded, I shall send you a cheque for the amount we originally agreed, together with a nominal five per cent per diem to cover your incidental outgoings.’

  The line went dead. So, for a moment, did Tony. Then he reached for the bottle of Jack Daniels on his desk.

  The offices of Speranza Investigazioni SpA occupied a small room at the back of a building whose legal status was currently indeterminate pending the outcome of a divorce case based largely on evidence gathered by Tony himself, who had foregone a percentage of his fee in return for the temporary use of this facility to house the ‘janitorial security service’ that he was supposedly providing, all on the strict understanding that when instructed to vacate the premises he would already have left, and indeed never have been there in the first place. Meanwhile Tony figured it was worth every cent, as he had been delighted to discover that the new European small change was called. It gave him a public face, a city centre letterhead, a window on the world and the opportunity to do all the things he would be doing at home in his suburban apartment anyway, only downtown.

  It also gave him a base for his online operations, thanks to a tap into the DSL circuit installed in an apartment on the second floor. ‘If I ain’t heard of it, it never happened’, Tony liked to say. Taken literally, this maxim would have erased almost all human knowledge from the record, but in practice it meant little more than a free subscription to a ‘Headline HeadsUp’ service that bombarded its clientele with news snippets in return for selling their email addresses to spammers offering cut-price, over-the-virtual-counter Viagra.

  Feeling utterly defeated by his client’s surly arrogance, Tony fired up the computer, logged on to his surveillance website and quickly tracked Vincenzo Amadori’s movements that day, just in case the matter came up in future negotiations. They were fairly predictable: at home until eleven, half an hour in a café, and then the walk to the university that Tony had witnessed in person. An hour there, then back by a different route through the narrow streets of the former ghetto to the apartment he shared with Rodolfo Mattioli, the boyfriend of that cute illegal redhead.

  ‘BREAKING NEWS’ flashed the screen below a picture of a man graced with the aura of the modern celebrity: making you feel vaguely uneasy for not immediately recognising who he was. ‘World-famed academic and author Edgardo Ugo shot in Bologna. The attack occurred outside the professor’s house on Via dell’Inferno, in the heart of the city, shortly after one o’clock this afternoon. The victim was rushed to hospital but no details of his condition have yet been released. Earlier today, Professor Ugo was involved in a cookery contest against Romano Rinaldi, the star of the show Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta, in an attempt to settle the issue of possible defamation resulting from Ugo’s comments in his column for the weekly magazine Il Prospetto. The Carabinieri have stated that they are anxious to trace Signor Rinaldi’s present whereabouts with a view to eliminating him from their ongoing enquiries.’

  Tony felt a thought stir sluggishly in its comatose stupor. He couldn’t care less if some professor had got shot by that celebrity chef, of course. No money in it for him. Nevertheless, something in that news bulletin had caught his attention. Via dell’Inferno–the Street of Hell, in the mediaeval ghetto–shortly after one o’clock that afternoon…He shot back to the online surveillance site, and carefully checked times and locations once again. Well now, he thought. Well, well. Well, well, well!

  Ten minutes later he was in Amadori’s law office. The receptionist put on a brave show of pretending that she hadn’t been daydreaming about Tony ever since his previous visit, and then announced in a transparently insincere voice that l’avvocato was ‘away from his desk’.

  ‘I don’t care if he’s under it, honey,’ Tony replied. ‘Get him. But soon.’

  By now visibly weak at the knees with barely repressed desire, the receptionist managed to blurt out that her employer could not be disturbed and suggested that Tony might care to make an appointment for the following month.

  Tony Speranza eyed her appreciatively. The right age, he thought. Not that gleamy, raw look of uncooked sausages the flesh of the young ones had. This babe had been hanging just long enough. The meat was nicely cured without the casing getting too wrinkly.

  ‘How much they paying you?’ he said.

  ‘Mi scusi?’

  ‘Never mind. But if you want to make some extra, breathe the name Edgardo Ugo into your boss’s shell-like ear.’

  ‘Edgardo Ugo?’

  Tony nodded.

  ‘The great, and for all we know late, Professor Ugo.’

  ‘What might this be regarding?’

>   ‘You going to go conditional on me, the possibilities are endless. Let’s just say that Vincenzo Amadori, a young hooligan not entirely unrelated to your employer, was present in Via dell’Inferno at the time when Professor Ugo was shot, and that I can prove it with documented evidence that will stand up in any court of law. You got that, Wanda?’

  The receptionist, damn her, blushed.

  ‘How did you know my name?’

  Mindful of the desirability of preserving his professional mystique, Tony forebore to point out the framed photograph that stood on the filing cabinet, with ‘To Wanda, with all my love, Nando’ scrawled across it. Some muscle-bound meatball with a chicken perched on his shoulder.

  ‘Hey, once in a while you get lucky! And we just did, Wanda. Because what I just told you is true, but so far you and I are the only people who know. I imagine that l’avvocato will want to keep matters that way, which gives us a certain leverage. Are you following me? So you go and drag him back to that old desk, by main force if necessary, and impress on him that if either of us were to make the Carabinieri a party to our exclusive knowledge, then those gentlemen would no doubt issue a pressing invitation for Vincenzino to assist them with their enquiries.’

  He smiled and walked to the door.

  ‘You make your deal, I’ll make mine.’

  ‘My husband’s a policeman,’ Wanda replied provocatively.

  Tony just laughed.

  ‘Great! Let me know next time he’s working nights, and we’ll have dinner and compare notes.’

  He was back in the bar he had patronised that morning, lingering over a quadruple Maker’s Mark, when Amadori phoned. The conversation did not go entirely as Tony had foreseen. Not only did l’avvocato flatly refuse to offer any money in return for Tony’s silence, still less to negotiate an appropriate sum, but proceeded to dismiss his hireling on the spot and with immediate effect, and threatened to have Speranza’s private investigator’s licence revoked for attempted extortion.

  Tony switched to Jack Daniels for his second shot, feeling a need for its asperity to help him work out how to respond. This took less than five minutes. He then tossed back the bourbon and marched down the street to the junction with Via Rizzoli, where one of those museum pieces from an unimaginably primitive past, a public telephone box, had been retained as a heritage item. Tony stepped in and dialled Carabinieri headquarters. The response was a recorded woman’s voice.

  ‘Welcome to the Carabinieri helpline for the province of Bologna. If you know the extension number of the person you are calling, you may dial it at any time. To report a crime, please press 1. Alternatively, hang up now and dial 112 to reach our pronto intervento section. For information on our products and services, please press 2. To learn about career opportunities with the force, please press 3. To speak to a representative, please press 4 or hold the line.’

  Tony Speranza did so, and was rewarded with an endless silence punctated at intervals by a different voice telling him that his call was important to them but that all operators were currently busy and the approximate wait time would be nine minutes. He slammed the phone down and called the Polizia di Stato. A surly male voice answered almost immediately. Tony wrapped the lapel of his greatcoat over his mouth and spoke rapidly in a generalised approximation of the local dialect.

  ‘Listen, I know who shot that professor this afternoon. Name’s Vincenzo Amadori, the lawyer’s son. Can’t give mine, but he’s your man all right. I’ve got proof of that.’

  He left the booth and walked quickly away. The police might trace the call eventually, but thanks to his gloves there would be no prints. Once the judicial machinery ground into motion then il grande avvocato Amadori might well decide that it had been rash of him to dismiss Tony’s original offer. In fact, when the time came he might well raise the starting price, just to teach the smug bastard that you didn’t fuck with Tony Speranza.

  26

  The original thirty minutes within which Zen had been told that he could expect to hear word of Gemma’s condition stretched to an hour and more, divided between a series of coffees in a bar opposite the hospital complex and smoke breaks outside one or another of the doors, where a louring dusk was already well advanced. And when he finally lost patience on his fifth return to the desk, where a different orderly had now come on duty, and demanded to see Gemma at once, he was informed that she was no longer there.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She discharged herself.’

  ‘Where did she go?’

  The orderly shrugged.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Then let me speak to someone who does.’

  ‘And who are you, signore?’

  Zen decided that this was not the moment for worrying about the niceties of his civil status.

  ‘Her husband.’

  ‘Un momento.’

  It was actually about twenty minutes before Zen was directed to an office on the second floor of the building where he was greeted by a tired-looking young man in a white coat.

  ‘Signor Santini?’ he said.

  Zen nodded.

  ‘Your wife left the hospital twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘And you permitted this?’

  The doctor shrugged.

  ‘We have no power to detain patients. There were certain additional tests I would have preferred to perform, but she refused them.’

  ‘Where was she going?’

  ‘I have no idea. Home, presumably.’

  ‘Home?’

  The doctor looked at him curiously.

  ‘Back to Lucca, signore. Where she lives.’

  ‘Was she in a fit state to drive?’

  ‘I couldn’t offer a qualified opinion on that question.’

  Zen jerked his head angrily.

  ‘If it had been your wife, would you have let her take the wheel?’

  ‘No.’

  Zen turned away feeling utterly cut adrift. He called Gemma’s mobile. No reply. He was walking down the stairs to the foyer when, with a lift of his heart, he heard the muffled chirps of his own phone. But it turned out to be Bruno Nanni.

  ‘Buona sera, capo. I’m so sorry to hear about your wife’s accident. Those damn bikes can be as dangerous as a car. I had a near miss myself just the other day. I hope she’s all right.’

  ‘Oh yes, just minor scrapes and bruises. In fact she’s already gone home.’

  ‘Ah, right. So are you free this evening, by any chance?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Some interesting information has just come in. I don’t want to discuss it on the phone, but it might potentially be an important lead and I think you should know about it as soon as possible. Is there any chance we might meet a bit later on?’

  ‘Why not? God knows I’ve got nothing better to do.’

  ‘There’s a place in the university district called La Carozza. Five minutes walk from your hotel. Nothing fancy, just good pizzas and simple dishes, but we can talk freely there.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘Around nine?’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  But it soon began to look as though he wouldn’t. As he crossed the hospital foyer, heading for the taxi rank, he was approached by a young man wearing the plainest of plain clothes who identified himself as an officer of the Carabinieri.

  ‘You are Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen.’

  It was not a question, so Zen did not reply.

  ‘I have been ordered to place you under provisional arrest and take you to regional headquarters for questioning.’

  Zen was so astonished that he could only murmur, ‘On what charge?’

  ‘Suspicion of attempted murder.’

  27

  Arancid darkness had fallen by the time Romano Rinaldi set out in search of sustenance for his soul. The cold that had gripped the city all week seemed if anything to have intensified, so it was perfectly natural that he should be wearing a scarf drawn up over his nose to ward off dangerous germs and potential
lung infections, and coincidentally concealing his famous face. He had been worried about slipping out of the hotel unobserved, but ironically enough all attention in the lobby had been focused on two reporters pretending to be police detectives who were trying to browbeat the assistant manager into giving them a pass key to Signor Rinaldi’s suite, and he felt reasonably confident that none of the other pedestrians trudging about the streets with an air of aimless intent would recognise him. As for the locales he planned to cruise, they would be dimly lit and packed with students, addicts, artists, anarchists and suchlike demographic flotsam and jetsam that definitely didn’t form part of the core viewership of Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta. Then, once he had restored his spirits, he would be off to that villa in Umbria, never to return to this accursed town.

  He made his way slowly through the narrow streets of the university district, inspecting various locations with care. He was tempted for a moment by a pizzeria-cum-snack bar called La Carrozza, which had a handwritten sign in the window reading ‘Temporary Kitchen Help Urgently Wanted’, and appeared to be patronised by exactly the sort of people he was in search of. But service was at tables only, and once seated it would be difficult to make the kind of approach he had in mind. Besides, he would have to remove his scarf to eat or drink anything. Too risky, he decided.

  One or two bars also looked likely propositions, particularly one darkened and smoke-filled dive where youths of various sexes wearing ethnic-looking knitted hats with earflaps perched on bar stools listening to American popular music beneath posters acclaiming Il popolo di Seattle and denouncing the World Trade Organization. But the place had almost the atmosphere of a private members’ club, and Rinaldi would be the oldest person in the room and far too conspicuous.