Cabal - 3

by Michael Dibdin

  6

  The piazza in front of Rome’s Stazione Termini, normally thronged with buses, cars, traders’ vans and lorries, with crowds of commuters, tourists, beggars, transients and the forlorn Senegalese and Filipino immigrants who used the place as an informal clubhouse, information centre and canteen, was now a bleak, empty, rainswept wasteland. As Zen stared out of the window of the taxi at the porticoed arcade to one side and the blank wall closing off the vista, he slipped back into the dream from which the alarm clock had saved him less than half an hour earlier.

  He’d been walking across just such a piazza, but in broad daylight, beneath a brutal summer sun. The light flattened the ground at his feet, reducing it to a featureless expanse bordered by a row of broken columns, the last of which cast a perfect shadow of itself on the hot paving, like the hands of a clock showing one minute to twelve. That was indeed the time, and he would never manage to catch the train, which left on the hour from the station whose enormous façade sealed off the perspective. Already he could see the plume of smoke as the locomotive pulled away from the invisible platform, inaccessible behind a high wall …

  The taxi hit one of the kerbs delineating the bus lanes, jolting him awake again. The dream was still horribly vivid, though: the stillness, the stifling heat, the paralysis of his limbs, the sickening perspectives of the piazza, at once vertiginous and claustrophobic. He sat up straight, willing himself back to the here and now. It was only a dream, after all.

  Having paid off the taxi, he carried his bag through the booking hall into the main concourse of the station. It was twenty past six. He’d spent a quarter of an hour blundering around the apartment, worrying that he’d remembered to pack everything except the one essential item, whatever it was, without which his journey would be in vain, and was just wondering whether to take the replica revolver when the taxi arrived, ten minutes early. In the end he’d thrown the thing into his suitcase along with a couple of spare shirts, grabbed his briefcase with the precious transcript, and rushed downstairs. As a result of that unnecessary haste, he now had forty minutes to hang around the draughty public spaces of the station.

  The cafeteria was still closed, but a small kiosk was dispensing coffee to a huddle of early arrivals. Zen joined the queue, eventually obtaining a double espresso which he knocked back like a shot of spirits. The warming glow of caffeine hit his bloodstream, adding the depth of memory to his two-dimensional consciousness. He winced, recalling his parting from Tania the night before, the unforgivable things said on either side, the way he had walked out without any attempt at reconciliation. Well, what was the point? It was over, that was clear enough. Tania might be ludicrously mistaken about his supposed amours, but he certainly wasn’t about hers. There was too much evidence, both material and circumstantial, and he was too experienced an investigator to be led astray. Besides, Tania had made it plain that after the years of confinement in a joyless marriage to Mauro Bevilacqua she wasn’t prepared to submit to the strait-jacket of another exclusive relationship. Why insist on freedom and then leave it untasted?

  Zen tossed the disposable plastic cup into the rubbish bag provided and turned to survey his fellow passengers. They looked bizarrely out of place, an elegant, wealthy throng clustered around the mini-bar like factory workers on the early shift. Power dressing was the order of the day, both men and the few women present discreetly flaunting an understated sartorial muscle based on cut, finish and quality fabrics. The only exception was a tense-looking man wearing the undress uniform of the Church the world over, a plain clerical suit and white collar clutching a locked attaché case under his arm. Zen instinctively glanced at his own battered leather briefcase, leaning against the overnight bag at his feet.

  After storming out of Tania’s apartment the night before, he had gone to the bar round the corner and shared some of his problems, suitably depersonalized, with the Neapolitans over a hot chocolate. Since he couldn’t very well ask Tania for her brother-in-law’s address, Zen looked it up in the phone book and then took a cab round there to pick up the transcript. Unfortunately, Tullio Bevilacqua was so proud of the part he had played in the relentless struggle against organized crime that he had invited his brother to witness this historic event.

  The last time Zen had seen Tania’s husband, Mauro Bevilacqua was waving a gun in his face and threatening to exact revenge for the insult done to his family honour, so his unexpected appearance at this juncture seemed likely to result in all manner of problems, both professional and personal. In the event, the encounter was less fraught than it might have been. After a brief but violent internal tussle, Mauro opted for a pose of contemptuous indifference, as though to emphasize that the doings of his estranged wife were of no concern to him. Only at the end, when Zen was about to leave, did his mask slip for a moment.

  ‘We mustn’t detain our guest any longer, brother. He has important work to do keeping prostitution off the streets.’

  Tullio frowned.

  ‘Dottor Borsellino isn’t in the Vice Squad.’

  Mauro gave a smile of exquisite irony.

  ‘Borsellino?’ he enquired archly. ‘Ah, excuse me! I was confusing him with an official who used to work with all the sluts of the city. A slimy, venal little faccia di culo by the name of Aurelio Zen.’

  He turned to face Zen.

  ‘Do you know him by any chance, dottore?’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘I’ll tell him what you said.’

  ‘Yes, do that. Not that I’ve got anything personal against him, you understand. In fact he did me a favour once. Took this whore off my hands.’

  Mauro Bevilacqua smiled reminiscently.

  ‘I wonder who’s she with now!’

  Since Zen was wondering almost exactly the same thing, he was unable to come up with a suitably crushing reply. Back home, his mother had kept him up late with a long and involved story about some childhood friend of hers who had moved to Milan with her husband and been killed during the war when an Allied bomb struck the laundry where she worked. By the time he extricated himself, Zen had felt too tired to do more than go straight to bed and hope that he would feel better in the morning.

  He walked over to the news-stall, which had just opened, and looked through the serried ranks of magazines. The cover of the new issue of Moda showed an extraordinary peacock of a man, a shimmering apparition in heavy grey and gold silks, his guileless blue eyes turned levelly towards the camera. The caption read ‘Falco: A Philosopher in the Wardrobe’. Just then a subliminal frisson spread through the group of men standing at the news-stall, leaping from one to another like an electric charge. Zen turned his head along with all the others, but it was too late. The woman who had generated all this excitement had already passed by, and all he could see of her was her shoulder-length blonde hair and the back of her darkcream trenchcoat, the hem oscillating back and forth above her suede bootees. With a sigh he picked up his luggage and followed her and the other passengers towards the platform where il pendolino, as the pride of the Ferrovie dello Stato was popularly known, was now boarding.

  The eight carriages which made up the ETR 450 high-speed unit, with a bullet-shaped cab at each end, were mounted high above the bogies on which they tilted to maintain stability at speeds of up to 150 mph – hence its nickname, ‘the pendulum’. All seats were reserved and first class only. Zen’s carriage was towards the middle of the train. In the vestibule, a uniformed attendant checked his ticket and directed him to his place. Two rows of reclining seats ran the length of the coach, just as in an airplane. Indeed, the pendolino was the next best thing to a plane, covering the four hundred miles between Rome and Milan in under four hours.

  Having stowed the suitcase in the luggage rack, Zen lowered the table attached to the back of the chair in front, opened his briefcase and extracted the sheaf of papers which it contained. Apart from the initial reference list of phone numbers, the transcript consisted of twenty-two pages headed UFFICIO CENTRALE DI VIGILANZA and covered
in single-spaced typing, divided into blocks headed with a date, time and telephone number. Each represented one phone call which Ruspanti had made. Incoming calls did not figure. Ruspanti presumably hadn’t given his phone number to anyone, either because the 698 prefix would have revealed his presence in the Vatican City State, or because he knew or suspected that the line was being tapped.

  There was a whistle blast from the platform outside, a whine as the automatic doors closed, then a slight jolt of movement. Zen glanced at his watch. Seven o’clock on the dot. A moment later the window was covered in a speckle of rain as the train emerged into the grey dawn. Inside, the broad strip of fluorescent panelling on the ceiling of the coach bathed everything in a coolly efficient radiance. Zen lowered his head over the papers again and started to read.

  Some time later he sensed someone standing behind him, craning over him. He hastily covered the type-written page, but it was only one of the stewards, offering him an airplane-style breakfast tray, an assortment of sad pastries and unloved rolls in plastic shrouds. Zen waved it away, then reclaimed the cup and asked for coffee. Beyond the window, the flat expanses of the Tiber flood-plain slipped past like a video being fast-forwarded. They were on the new direttissima line by now, the train humming purposefully along at its top speed on the custom-built high-speed track.

  Zen read quickly through the rest of the transcript, then laid it on the table, face down, and sighed. Giovanni Grimaldi had been felled in his shower like a beast at the abattoir because he had threatened to reveal the contents of this document, yet Zen had just read it from cover to cover and it meant almost nothing to him.

  He turned back to the beginning and read it through once more. Whether Ruspanti had been aware of the tap on his own line, or was concerned about possible eavesdroppers the other end, he had gone to great pains to say nothing of any consequence. About half the calls amounted to little more than requests to be contacted ‘at the usual number’ or ‘in the normal way’. In others, Ruspanti referred to ‘the sum agreed’ or ‘under discussion’, or urged that ‘the measures previously outlined be put into immediate effect’. Only twice did he mention anything more specific. The first instance occurred in the course of the call to the pay-phone in the lobby of the Hotel Torlonia Palace the previous Thursday. His patience had finally run out, Ruspanti said. If ‘Zeppegno’ couldn’t be persuaded to ‘do the decent thing’ by the weekend at the latest, then he would ‘have no alternative but to make public the matter which you know about’.

  This might well have some bearing on the circumstances of Ruspanti’s death, given the timing. But as the nature of the secret he threatened to make public was not even hinted at, and the name mentioned was presumably false, it did not amount to very significant evidence. The other call was to the last of the Milan numbers which Zen had tried the night before, but although it sounded an intimate note perceptible even in the unrelievedly literal transcription, its significance remained equally cryptic.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Ludo! Where are you? Are you coming here?’

  ‘I’m not in Milan, my love.’

  ‘Where, then?’

  ‘I’m … moving around a bit. Here today, gone tomorrow.’

  ‘Sounds like fun.’

  ‘In fact I was talking to someone about you just the other day, Ariana. Someone who works for a magazine.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘That’s right. I told him all about your dolls. He sounded very interested. In fact he wants to write an article about them.’

  ‘Don’t make fun of me, Ludo. It isn’t fair.’

  ‘I’m not! This is quite serious.’

  ‘But why would anyone be interested in my dolls?’

  ‘You’d be amazed, Ariana. So would your brother!’

  ‘You haven’t told him, have you?’

  ‘No, I can’t seem to get hold of him. Why don’t you tell him? Tell him to get in touch and let me know what he thinks about the idea. He knows how to contact me, if he wants to.’

  ‘But when will I see you?’

  ‘As soon as all this is over.’

  ‘All what? There’s some problem, isn’t there? I can feel it. What is it, Ludo? Tell me!’

  ‘Oh nothing. Just the silly games we boys play. Girls are more sensible, aren’t they?’

  Zen looked at the window, but the train was running through a tunnel, and all he could see was the reflection of his own features, baffled and haggard. Perhaps a reader more familiar with the details of the case against Ruspanti might glean something more substantial from the transcript. Since someone had been prepared to kill Grimaldi and bribe Zen to obtain the damn thing, there must be some clue hidden there. The reference to ‘dolls’ might be a code of some kind. What would Ruspanti’s mistress be doing playing with dolls? Perhaps Antonio Simonelli would know what it meant.

  The roar of the tunnel faded as the train emerged into bright sunshine. A moment later they had crossed the Arno and rejoined the old line running through the outskirts of Florence. Zen replaced the transcript in his briefcase, which he locked and placed on his knee as the train drew into the suburban station of Rinfredi, which it used to avoid the timewasting turn-round at the Florentine terminus of Santa Maria Novella. The stop was a brief one, and by the time he had had a chance to skim La Stampa they were once again under way, along the fast straight stretch to Prato.

  ‘Good morning, dottore.’

  Zen looked up from his newspaper. The voice was both distinctive and familiar, but it still took him a moment to recognize the man standing beside his seat, an umbrella in one hand and a briefcase in the other, gazing down at Zen with a smile of complicity. It was the man who had been in his thoughts just a few minutes earlier, the man he was going to Milan to see, Antonio Simonelli.

  ‘Have you brought the transcript?’

  They had barely settled down in the seats to which Simonelli had led the way. When the magistrate suggested that Zen join him in the next carriage, he had at once agreed. Policemen are accustomed to obeying the instructions of the judiciary, and besides, seeing Simonelli was the reason for Zen’s trip to Milan. This chance meeting – the magistrate had apparently just joined the train at Florence, where he had been attending a meeting – was simply a happy coincidence. Or so it had seemed, until Simonelli mentioned the transcript.

  Zen instinctively tightened his grip on the briefcase, which was lying on his knees. The train rounded a curve, and sunlight suddenly streamed in through the window. In the lapel of Simonelli’s jacket, something glimmered. Zen looked more closely. It was a small silver eight-pointed cross.

  ‘You’re a member?’

  The magistrate glanced down as though noticing the insignia for the first time.

  ‘I am, actually.’

  ‘Like Ruspanti.’

  Simonelli’s laugh had an edge to it.

  ‘Hardly! Ruspanti was a Knight of Honour and Devotion. You need at least three hundred years of nobility behind you to achieve that. I’m just a simple Donat, the lowest of the low.’

  It was only when Zen felt the magistrate’s restraining hand on his wrist that he realized that he had reached for his cigarettes. Simonelli indicated the sign on the window with a nicotine-stained finger.

  ‘No smoking.’

  Zen let the muscles of his eyes unclasp, projecting his point of focus out of the train, beyond the dirt-flecked window with its prohibitory sign and into the landscape beyond. The slanting winter light streaked the narrow gorge of the Bisenzio where road and railway run side by side until the river peters out in the southern flanks of the Apennines. Then the road, largely disused since the motorway was opened, begins the long climb to the pass thousands of feet above, while the railway plunges into the eleven-mile tunnel under the mountains.

  Why had Simonelli reserved a seat in a non-smoking section when he was himself a smoker? There were plenty of single seats available in the smoking coach where Zen was sitting, but not two together. If Simonelli had alrea
dy known that the seat beside his was unoccupied, this could only be because he had booked them both in advance. The implications of this were so dizzying that he hardly heard Simonelli’s next words.

  ‘After all, it wouldn’t do for a judge and a policeman to break the law, would it?’

  Zen glanced round at him witlessly.

  ‘Or at least,’ corrected Simonelli, ‘to be seen to do so.’

  ‘Seen to … How?’

  ‘By smoking in a non-smoking carriage.’

  Zen nodded. Antonio Simonelli joined in until both their heads were wagging in the same tempo. They understood each other perfectly.

  ‘It is the original, I trust.’

  Once again the magistrate’s nicotine-stained finger was extended, this time towards the briefcase Zen was hugging defensively to his body.

  ‘As my colleague explained to you on the phone, we’re not interested in purchasing a copy.’

  Zen’s mouth opened. He laughed awkwardly.

  ‘No, no. Of course not.’

  Simonelli glanced out of the window at the landscape, which was growing ever more rugged as they approached the mountain chain which divides Italy in two. With its many curves and steep gradients, this difficult section of line was the slowest, and even the pendolino was reduced to the speed of a normal train. Simonelli consulted his watch.

  ‘Do you think we’re going to be late?’ Zen asked.

  ‘Late for what?’

  The Maltese cross in the magistrate’s lapel, its bifurcated points representing the eight beatitudes, glinted fascinatingly as the contours of the valley brought the line into the sunlight.