Cabal az-3

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘Don’t worry, dottore, you’re in good company,’ said Zen, tossing the latex mask aside. ‘The best minds in the Vatican fell for it when Ruspanti spun them the tale. The press and the public fell for it when Grimaldi wrote his anonymous letter. I fell for it myself when the Vatican seemed to be covering the matter up, and the top man at the Ministry did when I passed the story on.’

  Falcone studied him watchfully from the floor.

  ‘The shock’s wearing off now, isn’t it?’ Zen continued. ‘You’re starting to ask yourself why I bothered going to all this trouble. After all, everyone else has had a reason. Ruspanti used the Cabal to get into the Vatican. Grimaldi used it to stir up speculation about Ruspanti’s death, so that he could put the squeeze on you and Zeppegno. You two used it to try and lead me up a blind alley. But what’s in it for me? That’s what you’re asking yourself, isn’t it dottore?’

  He took out his packet of Nazionali and lit up.

  ‘Of course, I could say that I’m just getting even for that session in the confessional. My knees just about seized up solid! Where were you, anyway?’

  Falcone gave a pallid grin. He didn’t know what this man wanted, but he sensed that his life was no longer in danger.

  ‘In a car on the Gianicolo hill. It was Marco’s idea. He provided the gadgetry and set it all up. Mind you, we had a few tricky moments, like when that police car passed by with its siren going.’

  ‘What you told me about the Vatican — the schisms and feuds, all the various groups jockeying for position — sounded very authentic.’

  ‘I got all that from Ludovico. He knew all the right-wing weirdos and religious eccentrics in Rome, of course. These people are actually quite harmless, like the ones who want to restore the monarchy. All I did was make them sound a significant threat.’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘It sounds like you were on quite good terms with your cousin. And Ariana is still in love with him, isn’t she?’

  A chill ripple passed over Falcone’s skin.

  ‘What?’ he croaked.

  Zen waved a pistol casually.

  ‘Look, let’s get one thing clear. I’m not here in my professional capacity.’

  Falcone stared at him.

  ‘You mean…’

  ‘I mean I’m on the make,’ Zen replied. ‘I’m a corrupt cop. You’ve read about them in the papers, you’ve seen them on television. Now, for a limited period only, you can have one in your own home or office.’

  Raimondo Falcone stood up, facing Zen.

  ‘How much?’

  Zen let his cigarette fall to the floor and stubbed it out with the toe of his right shoe. Falcone watched anxiously to make sure it was properly extinguished. Fire in the atelier was the great terror of every designer.

  ‘How much do you think it’s worth?’

  Falcone’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘How much what ’s worth?’

  Zen looked past him at the window of the inner office, where the lighted dome of the Galleria rose into the gathering fog.

  ‘You killed your cousin to keep it secret,’ he said as though to himself. ‘That would seem to make it quite valuable.’

  Again the chill spread over Falcone, eating into his complacency like acid. With an effort, he pulled himself together. There was no need to panic. He was in no danger. All this crooked, taunting bastard wanted was money. Give it to him, promise him whatever he wanted, and get him the hell out of here.

  ‘We agreed fifty million for the transcript,’ he said decisively, the businessman in him taking charge.

  ‘I no longer have the transcript.’

  Falcone couldn’t help smiling. He knew that, having wrested most of it from Zeppegno before pushing him out of the train. Instead of hanging on to the door, poor obtuse Zeppegno had clutched the transcript, still believing that it was the real object of the exercise. The idea had been that Zeppegno would join the pendolino at Florence, engage Zen in conversation and get hold of the document. Falcone, in drag again, would go to the vestibule as they approached the Apennine tunnel and turn off the lights. While Zeppegno walked through to the next carriage, Falcone was to go back to the seat where Zen was sitting and shoot him dead.

  At least, that’s what Zeppegno thought was going to happen. Falcone had quite different ideas, and in the event they prevailed. Once he’d opened the door and pushed his startled accomplice out, he’d taken the part of the transcript he’d managed to seize back to the lavatory. Luckily it included the page where Ruspanti phoned Ariana. He’d burnt that and flushed the ashes down the toilet. This was no doubt an unnecessary precaution, but he preferred to err on the safe side. Then he’d pushed the other pages out of the window, checked his appearance in the mirror and gone out to face Zen and the train crew. As he’d expected, all they’d looked at was his bum.

  ‘I’m not interested in the transcript,’ he said.

  ‘There’s no reason why you should be,’ agreed Zen. ‘You weren’t even mentioned.’

  ‘I was simply using that figure as a benchmark.’

  ‘Your sister was, though.’

  For a moment Falcone hoped he’d misheard, even though he knew perfectly well he hadn’t.

  ‘And her dolls,’ added Zen. ‘And the journalist who supposedly wanted to write about them. That’s who she thought I was when I went there yesterday. What really shook me was that she seems to think that Ruspanti is still alive.’

  Falcone stood perfectly still, his hands clasped and his eyes raised to the ceiling, like a plaster statue of one of the lesser saints.

  ‘Of course, given the isolation in which she lives, there’s no reason why she should ever find out. Unless someone told her.’

  There was no reaction apart from a fractional heightening of Falcone’s expression of transcendental sublimity.

  ‘I’m no psychologist,’ Zen admitted, ‘but I’d be prepared to bet that if Ariana was told that her beloved cousin Ludo was dead, and exactly how he died, then the consequences would be extremely grave.’

  He waved casually around the workshop.

  ‘At the very least, the supply of new Falco designs would be likely to dry up for some considerable…’

  Then the other man was on him, grabbing the pistol in his right hand. Zen tried to shake him off, but Falcone hung on like a terrier. In the end he had to crack him across the head with the other pistol before he would let go.

  ‘There’s no need for this,’ Zen told him. ‘All I want is a reasonable settlement. We can come to terms. I’m not greedy.’

  But Falcone was beyond reach. Shaking his woozy head like a boxer, he came forward again. Zen cocked the replica revolver and pointed it at him.

  ‘Keep your distance!’

  There was a deafening bang. This time both men looked stunned, but Zen recovered first. He wasn’t still groggy from the first time, for one thing. But the main point was that he had felt the revolver rear up in his hand, and realized what had happened. Falcone didn’t seem to have been hit, thank God, but his face was that of a man in hell.

  ‘It was a mistake!’ Zen assured him. ‘I got the pistols mixed up. I fired yours by mistake. Mine’s just a replica.’

  But Falcone was gone, turning on his heel and sprinting through to the next room.

  ‘Come back!’ yelled Zen, chasing him. ‘You’re in no danger! All I want is money!’

  When he reached the door of the office, it was empty. He searched the gymnasium and bathroom beyond, but there was no sign of Falcone. Only then did he notice the open window. The offices formed part of the south end of the Galleria’s main aisle, the lower floors having windows which opened directly on to it, beneath the glazed-barrel vault roof. This floor was at roof level, and it was only a short drop from the window to one of the iron girders which supported the large panes of glass. Catwalks ran the length of the main supporting struts, giving access to the roof for cleaning and maintenance. Along one of these, Raimondo Falcone was now running for his life.

&n
bsp; ‘ Merda!’ shouted Zen.

  He was disgusted with his clumsiness, his unbelievable gaucheness, his limitless ineptitude. Couldn’t he do any thing right? What would Tania think of him, after all his proud boasts about things changing? Nothing had changed. Nothing would ever change. In sheer frustration he fired the pistol again and again, blasting away as though to punch new stars in the night sky.

  The renewed firing made Falcone run even faster. He had reached the cupola now, and started to climb the metal ladder which led from the catwalk up the curving glass slope of the dome to the ventilation lantern at the top. Through the shifting panels of fog, Zen could just see Falcone moving rapidly across the panes of lighted glass like a nimble skater on a luminous mountain of ice. It thus seemed no great surprise when, in total silence and with no fuss whatsoever, he abruptly disappeared from view.

  Down in the Galleria itself, Christmas was in the air. The shops, cafes and travel agencies were all doing a thriving business. Giving and receiving, eating and drinking, skiing and sunning and all the other rituals and observances of the festive season ensured that money was changing hands in a manner calculated to gladden the hearts of the traders. Any modern Christ who had attempted to intervene would himself have been expelled in short order by the security guards employed to keep this temple of commerce free of beggars, junkies, buskers, religious fanatics and other riff-raff.

  Nevertheless, it was some such gesture of protest that sprang to most people’s minds when they heard the sound of breaking glass. The shop windows were a powerful symbol of the socio-economic barriers against which the poor were constantly being brought up short. They could gawk at the goodies as much as they liked, but they couldn’t get at them. Sometimes, especially around Christmas, the disparity between the way of life on display and the one they actually lived became too much to bear, and some crazed soul would pick up a hammer and have a go.

  Even the screaming seemed at first to fit this scenario, until some people, more acute of hearing, realized that it was not coming from on-lookers in the immediate vicinity of the presumed outrage, but from somewhere else altogether — in fact from above. When they raised their eyes to the roof to see what it could be, the expression of amazement on their faces made their neighbours do the same, until in no time at all everyone in the Galleria was gazing upwards. It must have looked extraordinary, seen from above, this crowd of faces all tilted up like a crop of sunflowers.

  Until then, the distribution of people in the aisles of the Galleria had been fairly even, but they now began to scatter and press back, forming clusters near the walls and rapidly evacuating the space at the centre of the building, where the arms of the House of Savoy were displayed in inlaid marble. The clearing thus formed might have been destined for an impromptu performance of some kind, a display of acrobatics or some similar feat of skill or daring. But the crowd’s attention was high above, where the vast, dark opacity of the cupola weighed down on the lighted space below. Now the shock was over, they were reassured to realize that the body plummeting to earth amid a debris of broken glass must be a spectacle of some kind got up to divert the shoppers, an optical illusion, a fake. Clearly no one could have fallen through the enclosure overhead, as solid and heavy as vaulted masonry. It was all a trick. A moment before impact the plunging body would pull up short, restrained by hidden wires, while the accompanying shoal of jagged icicles tinkled prettily to pieces on the marble floor before melting harmlessly away.

  In the event, though, it turned out to be real.

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