Cabal - 3
Page 9
‘I’ve given up buying them. Don’t laugh. My doctor says it’s a first step.’
He lit up and exhaled mightily, then shook his head.
‘It wouldn’t work,’ he said. ‘They’d need to get out the element, for a start. That’s a major job even with a new heater. If this one’s as old as you say, the nuts will have rusted up. Anyway, the thing’s bound to be checked, and it’ll be clear that it’s been tampered with. There’s no chance of it being mistaken for an accident.’
‘So it can’t be done?’
‘Of course it can be done, but not like that. What you want to do is by-pass the heater altogether. Where exactly is this run-down tenement?’
‘Right across the road.’
Gilberto glanced at his watch.
‘Let’s have a quick look. Then I really must go, or Rosella will think I’m having an affair.’
The hallway was dark and dank, the only sound the brushing of Zen’s sleeve on the plaster as he groped for the switch.
‘No!’ whispered Nieddu.
He opened the metal case and removed a small torch. A beam of light split the darkness, precise as a pointing finger, indicating walls and ceiling, doorways, steps, painting brief slashes and squiggles in the stairwell as they walked upstairs. On each floor they could hear the murmur of radios and televisions, but they saw no one. When they reached the top, Zen led the way along the corridor. Light showed under the door of Marco Duranti’s room, but there was no sound inside. Zen tried the door to Giovanni Grimaldi’s room, but it was now locked. The shower sported a brand-new hasp and a large padlock, as well as a sign reading ‘OUT OF ORDER’.
Zen opened his burglary kit and got to work on the padlock. Despite its impressive appearance, it was a cheapie. He had barely started work before it snapped open. Nieddu gave a low whistle.
‘When you finally get the boot, Aurelio, you give me a call. We can always use people with skills like yours.’
He pushed the door open. The broken hinges protested loudly and the base scraped across the tiles like fingernails down a blackboard. Zen shoved him inside quickly and pushed the door closed as someone came out of a room further along the corridor. Nieddu doused the torch and he and Zen stood side by side in the darkness. Footsteps approached, then retreated again. A door closed and feet receded down the stairs.
Nieddu switched on the torch. The beam bounced and skittered around the glazed white tiles, picking out the water heater resting on its wooden trestle near an oblong window high up in the whitewashed wall.
‘Give me a leg up.’
Zen locked his hands together to make a step. With the adroitness of an acrobat, the Sardinian hoisted himself up, gripping the trestle with one hand and resting his foot on the wall screening off the shower cubicle.
‘Just as I thought,’ he said, his voice reverberating off the bare walls. ‘The threads are all corroded to hell. No one’s touched this for years.’
He dropped back to the floor and padded around the bathroom, shining the torch over the glossy tiles and matt-white plaster. When he reached the partition wall beside the door, he grunted significantly.
‘Ah.’
‘Found something?’ queried Zen.
Nieddu eased the door open and stepped outside. He shone the torch into the angle of the wall. Inside, a thin pencil of light appeared in the darkness. Zen bent down and inspected the wall. A small hole had been drilled right through it. He went out to join Nieddu in the corridor. The torch beam was now pointing along the wall at an electric junction box a few yards away.
Outside in the street, a police car approached at high speed, siren howling. The walls and ceiling of the corridor pulsed with a revolving blue light. Down below, in the entrance hall of the building, an excitable voice which Zen recognized as that of Marco Duranti yelled ‘This way!’ The stairwell resounded to the sound of voices and clattering boots.
‘Time to go?’ asked Nieddu calmly.
Zen nodded. The Sardinian opened the metal case and removed something which looked like a large firework. He ran along the corridor to the head of the stairs, tossed it down and came running back.
‘Smoke bomb,’ he explained. ‘Should hold them for a while.’
There was an acrid smell in the air, and the sounds below turned to coughing and spluttering. They ran back to the bathroom, where Nieddu held his hands cupped while Zen hoisted himself clumsily up to the wooden trestle. Nieddu then passed up his dispatch case. Going into the shower, he gripped the metal piping and pulled himself up on the wall around the cubicle. From there he leapt across to join Zen on the trestle, which creaked ominously under their combined weight. Nieddu clambered on top of the water heater.
‘Fuck!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’ve snagged my jacket on a nail.’
‘Christ, is that all?’
‘All? It’s brand-new, from Ferre.’
He leant across to the window and pulled it open. Taking the metal case from Zen, he pushed it through the opening, then sprang after it and held his hands out to Zen, who had clambered up on top of the tank. He tried not to look down. The trestle was still groaning and the window looked a long way away.
‘It’s no good,’ he said suddenly. ‘I can’t do it.’
The Sardinian sat down facing the window, his feet braced on either side.
‘Give me your hands.’
Zen leaned forward across the gap and Nieddu gripped his wrists. In the corridor outside he could hear a stampede of approaching boots. He kicked off from the heater, scraping his shoes desperately on the wall, and somehow Nieddu dragged him through the opening and out on to the sloping tiled roof.
‘Come on!’ the Sardinian said urgently. ‘I’ve got some stun grenades, but you wouldn’t want me to have to use those. They cost a fortune, and you already owe me for the suit.’
They ran off together across the roofs towards the lights of the next street.
3
If Zen had spent the night at home instead of at Tania’s, he could have walked to his first appointment next morning. As it was he ended up on foot anyway, the taxi he summoned having ground to a halt outside the Liceo Terenzio Mamiani, just round the corner from Zen’s apartment. Wednesday mornings were always bad, as the usual rush-hour jam was supplemented by the influx of pilgrims heading for the weekly papal audience. Zen paid the driver and strode off past lines of honking, bleating vehicles, including coaches whose utilitarian styling and robust construction exuded a graceless charm which awakened nostalgic memories of the far-off, innocent 1950s. From portholes wiped in their misted-up windows, the Polish pope’s compatriots peered out at the Eternal City, perhaps wondering if the last kilometre of their pilgrimage was going to take as long as the previous two thousand.
Zen crossed Piazza del Risorgimento and followed the towering ramparts of the Vatican City State up the hill, passing women carrying wicker baskets and plastic bags of fruit and vegetables home from the Trionfale market. The bells of the local churches were in some disagreement about the exact moment when nine o’clock arrived, but the Vatican itself opened its doors dead on time, as though to emphasize that although in Rome, it was by no means of Rome. The handful of tourists waiting for the museums to open began to file inside. Zen followed them up the curving ramp to the cash desk, where he plonked down his ten-thousand-lire note with the rest. Then, like someone doing Rome in two days, he hurried through the collections of classical antiquities, following the arrows marked ‘Raphael Stanze and Sistine Chapel Only’.
A marble staircase brought him to a gallery receding as far as the eye could see. The walls were hung with tapestries and painted maps alternating with windows overlooking a large courtyard. Dust swarmed like a school of fish in the sunlight streaming in through the windows. Zen had already left the other early visitors far behind, and this part of the museums was deserted. At the end of the gallery, he turned left into a chamber hung with enormous battle scenes, then down a staircase to a
suite of rooms on the lower floor overlooking a courtyard patrolled by a Swiss Guard. Zen smiled wryly, thinking of the night before. Following their hasty exit from the house where Giovanni Grimaldi had been murdered, he and Gilberto Nieddu had climbed down a fire escape into the internal courtyard of a building in the next street and then sneaked past the lodge where the portiere was watching television.
‘Never again, Aurelio!’ Gilberto told him as they parted in the street. ‘Don’t even bother phoning.’
Back at Tania’s, Zen had called his mother to tell her that his duties in Florence unfortunately required him to stay another night but he would be back for sure the following day.
‘That’s all right,’ his mother replied. ‘At least you ring up and let me know what’s happening, not like some.’
‘What do you mean, mamma?’
‘Oh, that Gilberto! It makes me furious, it really does! Rosella phoned here only half an hour ago, to ask if I knew where you were. Apparently Gilberto called her this afternoon and said he might be a bit late home this evening because he was meeting you, if you please! Can you believe the cheek of it? Poor Rosella! Come nine o’clock there’s no sign of him and the dinner’s ruined, so she phones me to try and find out what’s going on. Of course I didn’t know any of this at first, so I just told her the truth, that you were in Florence. It’s the old story. I told her. Just look the other way. There’s no point in making a fuss. You’re not the first and you won’t be the …’
‘Listen, mamma, I’m running out of tokens. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Wait, Aurelio! There’s a message for you. This gentleman called, he wouldn’t leave his name, but he said it was about a Signor Giallo. He asked you to phone him immediately.’
Zen dialled the number he had been given by Lamboglia. It was answered by a different voice, this time with a foreign intonation. But why not? The Vatican was the headquarters of an international organization.
‘Your presence is required tomorrow morning,’ the man told him. ‘Come to the main entrance to the Vatican Museums, pay in the normal way, then follow these directions.’
Zen noted them down.
‘Now there’s something I want you to do,’ he told the anonymous voice. ‘Contact whoever is responsible for the maintenance of the building where Signor Giallo lived and find out whether a workman was sent there yesterday to investigate the sewers.’
He had hung up just as Tania walked in naked from the shower, looking rather like the gracefully etiolated females in the frescos which covered the chamber where he now found himself. The subjects were nominally biblical, but the action had been transferred from the harsh realities of historical Palestine to a lush Italian landscape peopled by figures of an ideal renaissance beauty. On one wall, ships navigated under full sail and armies manoeuvred for battle. Another showed a large chamber where men were disputing and orators pronouncing. The painted room was about the same size and shape as the one on whose wall it was depicted, and the artist had cleverly included a painted door at floor level, creating the illusion that one could simply turn the handle and step into that alternative reality. Zen was just admiring this amusing detail when the handle in fact turned and the door opened to reveal the stooping figure of Monsignor Lamboglia.
‘Come!’ he said, beckoning.
Inside, a spiral stone staircase burrowed upwards through the masonry of the ancient palace. They climbed in silence. After some time, Lamboglia opened another door which led into a magnificent enclosed loggia. The lofty ceiling was sumptuously carved and gilded, the rear wall adorned with antique painted maps representing a world in which North America figured only as a blank space marked Terra Incognita. The large windows opposite offered an extensive view over St Peter’s Square, now reduced to serving as a parking lot for those pilgrim coaches which had managed to fight their way through the traffic.
Zen followed his guide through a door at the end of the loggia, beneath a stained-glass light marked ‘Secretariat of State’ and into a vaulted antechamber. The walls and ceiling were covered in fantastic tracery, fake marble reliefs and painted niches containing trompe l’oeil classical statues. Lamboglia pointed to one of the armless chairs upholstered in grey velvet which stood against the painted dado, alternating with carved wooden chests and semi-circular tables supporting bronze angels.
‘Wait here.’
He disappeared through a door at the end of the corridor. Zen sat down in the designated chair, which proved to be as uncomfortable as it was no doubt intended to make the occupant feel. The windows on the opposite wall were covered in lace curtaining which strained the sunlight like honey through muslin. Zen closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on what he was going to say. Try as he would, though, his thoughts kept drifting away to the night before. Tania had lied to him, there was no doubt about that. Not just filtered the truth, as he would shortly do for the benefit of the Vatican authorities. No, Tania had lied.
‘Were you out this afternoon?’ he had asked casually as they lay in bed together.
‘Out?’
He ran his fingertips lightly over her ribs and belly.
‘Mmm. About six o’clock.’
She pretended to think.
‘Oh yes, that’s right. I stepped out for a moment to do some shopping. Why?’
‘I tried to phone. To tell you I’d be late.’
He rolled up on his side, gazing down at her.
‘A man answered.’
A distant look entered her eyes, and he knew she was going to lie. The rest was routine, a matter of how hard he wanted to press, how much he could bully her into revealing.
‘You must have got a wrong number,’ she said.
He looked away, embarrassed for her, regretting that he’d brought it up. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help adding. ‘It happened twice. I dialled again.’
She laughed lightly.
‘Probably a crossed wire at the exchange. It’s a pity the Vatican doesn’t run a phone system as well as a postal service. They fly their mail out to Switzerland to be sorted, you know, yet it still arrives in half the time it takes the post office.’
He accepted the diversion gratefully.
‘That’s because the post office sends it to Palermo for sorting. By boat.’
She laughed again, with amusement and relief. Thinks she’s got away with it, Zen thought to himself. Already he was getting used to the idea of her treachery. To be honest, once he’d recovered from the initial shock it was almost a relief to find that she was indeed deceiving him. The immense and unconditional gift which Tania had made of her love still amazed him. Being worthy of it had been a bit of a responsibility. This discovery evened things up considerably. All in all, he told himself, it was probably the best thing that could have happened.
The door at the end of the corridor opened and Lamboglia reappeared. He extended his right hand, palm down, and waggled the fingers beckoningly. Zen rose and followed him into the office where he had been received by the Cardinal Secretary of State’s deputy the previous Friday. On this occasion, Juan Ramón Sánchez-Valdés was in his full episcopal regalia, an ankle-length soutane with a magenta sash, piping and buttons. The crown of his head was covered by a skullcap of the same colour. The rim of an ecclesiastical collar was just visible beneath the soutane, while a plain silver cross hung from its chain at the base of the archbishop’s chest.
As before, Zen was placed on the long red sofa while the archbishop sat in the high-backed armchair by the table. At his elbow, beside the white telephone, lay a single sheet of paper with some lines of typing. Lamboglia took up his earlier position, just behind the archbishop’s shoulder, but Sánchez-Valdés waved him away.
‘Sit down, Enrico! You make me nervous, hovering there like a waiter.’
Flinching as though he’d been struck, poor Lamboglia trotted off across the elaborately patterned rug with the quick fluttering gait of a woman, all stiff knees and loose ankles, and subsided into a chair on the end wall.
Although he was aware of being manipulated by a skilled operator, Zen could not help smiling.
‘I gather it was you who found poor Grimaldi’s body,’ the archbishop went on without a pause.
Zen’s smile faded.
‘What a terrible tragedy!’ sighed Sánchez-Valdés. ‘Those poor children! First they lose their mother to illness, and now …’
He broke off, seemingly overcome by emotion. Lamboglia was rubbing his hands together furiously, as though to warm or wash them.
‘I believe Enrico informed you that we had strong reason to suppose that Grimaldi was the author of that anonymous letter to the press,’ Sánchez-Valdés continued. ‘Needless to say that fact has now become one more of the many embarrassments which this case threatens to cause us. If it became known, one can easily imagine the sort of vicious insinuations and calumnies which would inevitably follow. No sooner is the identity of the “Vatican mole” discovered than he is found dead in the shower. How very convenient for those who wish to conceal the truth about the Ruspanti affair, etcetera, etcetera.
‘That’s why we’ve summoned you here this morning, dottore. Enrico has explained to me your unfortunate misunderstanding of our intentions with regard to the death of Ludovico Ruspanti. On this occasion I want to leave you in no doubt as to our position. Fortunately it is very simple. With Grimaldi’s death, this tragic sequence of events has reached its conclusion. Any mistakes or miscalculations which may have occurred are now a matter for future historians of Vatican affairs. As far as the present is concerned, we shall instruct the Apostolic Nuncio to convey our thanks to the Italian government for your, quote, discreet and invaluable intervention, unquote.’