White Death (2011)

by Jones, Tobias

  ‘I heard,’ he said.

  ‘You knew about it?’

  ‘Of course I did. The Carabinieri were round here within days. They were investigating his finances and that led them here. Sure, I knew about it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘You thought Moroni was responsible?’

  He stared at me. ‘Tosti was stupid.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘He was supposed to sit on that land for six months. Nothing else. He was given the money to buy it and was then supposed to sell it on. But once he realised what was up, that the land was reclassified as residential, he saw his chance. He didn’t sell it on. Started demanding this and that, offering it round to other constructors.’

  ‘And Moroni wasn’t happy?’

  ‘That’s an understatement. He said people like Tosti were only good for foundations.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘He meant it.’ He looked at me to check I understood how serious he was.

  ‘You think Moroni was involved in his death?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ he said sharply.

  ‘Did the Carabinieri question him?’

  ‘I don’t think so. They didn’t even know who he was. Even if they had come across him, they would have thought he was just some foreman.’

  I heard the front door click open and the man’s daughter came in. Her father asked where she had been as if she were a teenager and she smiled and kissed him on the cheek. As she walked past me we shook hands briefly and she surreptitiously gave me my car keys.

  ‘Where does he live?’ I asked Masi.

  ‘Who? Moroni?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Just round the corner. That’s the rub. I even see him when I go out for a walk.’

  ‘Which street?’

  ‘Duca Alessandro. It’s number 57. One of those beautiful old villas.’ He looked at me with a weary expression. ‘Mind if I go back to bed now?’

  ‘Prego.’

  He let me out and I walked round to Via Duca Alessandro. I found the villa at 57 and saw a light on on the ground floor. When I buzzed, a voice came on the line almost immediately like he was used to having visits at this time of night.

  Moroni stood by the door as I came in. He was fully dressed still and had his glasses on. His face looked saggy like some kind of dangerous dog whose viciousness was disguised behind wrinkles. At his back I could see a desk with a long, horizontal green light on it.

  ‘You again?’ He looked over his half-moon glasses at me. ‘Did you buy a flat?’

  I passed him a card between my fingers. He took it, looking at me before he read it. When he looked back up at me his face was changed. It looked cold and dead somehow. He didn’t say anything.

  ‘Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?’

  He walked to his desk without replying. I watched him stand behind it like it was some kind of shield.

  ‘What exactly do you want to know?’ The words were spoken so slowly that he sounded both bored and threatening.

  ‘I hear you always buy in cash.’

  He looked up briefly at the ceiling. ‘I work in construction. Cash is king. There’s no other currency in this business.’

  ‘And where does your cash come from?’

  ‘A cashpoint.’ He was looking at me with a ‘screw you’ face. ‘If you’re interested in my career, I can send you a curriculum vitae.’

  ‘I’m not interested in the official version.’

  ‘That’s the only version there is.’ He put out a hand towards a chair and nodded. He sat down himself and his tone seemed to become more warm. ‘Listen, in this line of work it’s hard to get the right labourers. You pay people in cash they come back for more. It makes them punctual, polite. Not virtues to be taken for granted. Everybody is happy.’

  ‘Except the taxman.’

  He rolled his head. ‘Whether they pay taxes or not isn’t my concern. Every construction company does it.’

  ‘Doesn’t make it right,’ I said.

  ‘What’s right?’ he asked, smiling at me with a sneer.

  ‘Try lawful.’

  ‘Ah, the law,’ he said, throwing his hands in the air as if we were talking about something ethereal, a fantasy of men’s imaginations.

  He was one of those men who thought that the law was the enemy and that infringement of it was a form of self-defence. He didn’t care what the law was, as long as it didn’t come after him. He was like a lot of people: those who thought that the further you could get from the law the better. It meant you were more independent and brave, somehow more manly.

  ‘What about Luciano Tosti?’

  ‘Who?’ he barked back quickly.

  ‘He bought the prosciuttificio in Via Pordenone where you’re now building your beautiful flats. Then he sold it on to Masi Costruzioni. He was put up to it by someone who had inside information about future building permits.’

  He was staring at the desk like he was wondering what to do with me.

  ‘Luciano Tosti was murdered,’ I said, watching him closely.

  He nodded slowly and then fixed me with his lazy eyes again. ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘I heard that Masi was talking to the Carabinieri and I found out why.’

  ‘You don’t like Masi talking to the Carabinieri?’

  He shot me a stare. ‘What exactly is it you want?’

  ‘I want to find out who’s been lighting fires around town. And now I’m on it, I’m kind of getting interested in what happened to Tosti.’

  ‘Talk to Masi,’ he said.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘And he told you to come to me?’

  I didn’t know what to say. I tried to think of some way of defending Masi from the notion that he had led me to Moroni, but nothing came to me. Moroni smiled and nodded his head.

  ‘He thinks I’m involved does he?’ He said it like he would settle the score in his own time.

  ‘He didn’t even mention you,’ I said quickly.

  ‘So what brings you here?’ He narrowed his eyes. I shrugged weakly and he started to laugh. ‘You think you’re smart, eh?’

  ‘I think you are.’

  He picked up my card and looked at it again. He held it with his thumb and forefinger as if he were holding unpleasant rubbish and opened a drawer. He dropped the card inside the drawer and shut it again.

  ‘Why would you want to do your work? Sneaking around at night, prying into people’s lives?’

  ‘I like to see safe streets. Like to see criminals inside.’ I stared at him.

  He smiled without showing his teeth. ‘I’m a businessman,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a big word. You run a launderette. You use Masi’s company to clean your cash.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me exactly what you’re accusing me of and I’ll tell you how I plead?’ The man was almost more unsettling when he adopted such a hospitable tone.

  I stared at him, disconcerted by his lazy stare. ‘You’ve been getting tip-offs about what land is about to be flipped from agricultural to residential and have been commissioning thugs to force people off their land.’

  He laughed openly, like he was genuinely amused. ‘Innocent.’

  ‘You put Tosti up to buying Lombardi’s prosciuttificio and when he didn’t sell on to you at the agreed price, you put a price on his head.’

  He laughed again, before leaning forward and suddenly dropping the smile. ‘Innocent. I’m a businessman. I buy and sell. I hire and fire. That’s it.’

  ‘Hire and fire? You fired Tosti all right.’

  He was shaking his head.

  ‘I met Tosti’s widow. She’s got a lot of money in the bank and wants to buy a slice of justice for her dead husband. I thought you might want to sell some information.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said sarcastically. ‘I don’t know anything about his murder. Wish I did, because I would punish the idiot who whacked him.
’

  It was the first time he had said something unexpected. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Tosti went to his grave owing me money. And he’s not going to give it back now, is he?’

  ‘Tosti’s gone, but his money isn’t. I told you. His widow’s sitting on it, and she’s more concerned about justice than her bank balance.’

  ‘Yeah, well, like I told you, I don’t know anything about it.’ He stared at me over the top of his glasses. It felt as if he was being sincere for the first time, trying to underline the fact that he was telling the truth.

  ‘Why do you say he owed you money?’

  ‘Because he did.’

  ‘Why?’

  He didn’t say it, but I knew. And he knew I knew. He had arranged for Tosti to take possession of the prosciuttificio and had expected it to be sold on for a certain price. Tosti had bounced the price and Moroni felt he was still owed.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, trying to contort his weary face into a friendly pose, ‘why don’t you come and work for me? I could pay you double what you’re on now. Give you top-end work. Surveillance stuff in Rome. Go after the real criminals. I can line up for you the kind of investigations that could make your name on a national level.’

  I smiled in derision. ‘I thought you were just a foreman.’

  His face found its cold sneer again. ‘Think about it.’

  ‘I already have. And I’ve already got a client.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Pino Bragantini. His car was burnt a couple of nights ago.’

  He laughed like he was genuinely amused about something. ‘You better get to work then.’ He stood up and went over to the door, holding it open for me. ‘Buonanotte,’ he said with sarcastic courtesy.

  It was the middle of the night when the phone went. I knew it was trouble as soon as the desperate, digital ringing woke me up.

  ‘Sì,’ I said.

  ‘The factory’s on fire.’ It was Bragantini. His voice sounded frantic. ‘The whole thing’s up in flames. The whole lot.’ I could hear a roar in the background, like he was in a forest of falling trees.

  ‘Have you called the fire brigade?’

  ‘Yes, yes. But I can’t see him. I can’t see him anywhere.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tommy. I can’t see him.’

  ‘Who’s Tommy?’

  ‘He’s the security boy you told me to get in. He’s sleeping in there tonight. Like you said he should.’

  In his desperation he was putting it all on me. Like it was my idea and so now it was my fault. I told him I would be round there immediately.

  I got dressed in a hurry and ran downstairs. Long before I got there I saw the orange tongues in the distance lighting up the night sky. As I got closer I could see the revolving lights of the emergency services and the silver arcs of water aimed at the angry fire. It looked hopeless. Men in hi-viz tops were running around the building, shouting to each other. Eventually I worked out what they were shouting: ‘Tommy Mbora. Tommy Mbora’. The flames were completely out of control, leering at us from every window, dancing in parallel lines to taunt our impotence. The noise was deafening.

  Bragantini ran up to me. His eyes were so wide he looked like someone from a cartoon whose neck had been squeezed. ‘They can’t find him,’ he screamed, leaning closer to me so that I could hear. ‘No one’s seen him.’

  ‘He’s definitely in there?’

  ‘I assume so. You saw where he slept.’

  ‘In that corridor?’

  ‘Right. One of those rooms.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  He threw his palm in the air in the direction of the fire. It was a furious gesture, as if to say it made no difference.

  We could do nothing other than watch. The flames eventually died for lack of fuel, but it took a few hours during which they came and went, disappearing from one window to reappear at another. Officials kept coming up to Bragantini to talk to him, taking notes. He called a lawyer, who arrived as it was getting light. By then the flames had been replaced by a smouldering, spitting blackness. The birds were singing as if nothing had happened, chirping away like it was another normal day.

  It was a cold spring morning, blissfully still now. The grass had a sheen of dew and webs. Tall trees looked majestically static. The mist was lifting and the sky was going from white to blue. I walked around the site, staring at the ground. There were clumps of white foam everywhere like patches of melting snow. A lot of litter: cigarette butts, an old shoe, a chocolate bar wrapper, the rectangular plastic packaging for tissues. I walked around for half an hour. Head down, trying to find anything useful.

  Looking for evidence is like looking for a queen on the frames of the bee hive. Every time you look at bees you keep an eye out for the queen, hidden amongst the tens of thousands of other black-brown dots, amongst the workers and drones. You see the colony crawling all over the brood, all over each other, and almost hypnotise yourself to find that one elusive queen. Sometimes people put a dot on her back, but even then she’s hard to find. You have to lift frame after frame, turn them over, watch the edges and corners. You concentrate but sort of switch off at the same time. I was doing the same now. Looking for something different. Something that was hidden, camouflaged amidst everything that was similar, but out there somewhere.

  I put everything I found in a plastic bag. If none of it was important, at least I had tidied up the countryside. I went over to the river and watched the water. The sound of it was soothing after the aggressive heat of the night. I stood there staring at the cool water, amazed that nature could be so beautifully oblivious to human stupidity.

  Walking back towards the shell of the factory, I saw two people carrying a stretcher. They were wearing the orange uniforms of the assistenza pubblica. It looked like they were carrying a burnt log or beam. They placed the stretcher on the ground and I approached, seeing the long black form from between their legs: you could barely tell it was once human. It stank of scorched meat. I could hear a voice talking about dental records.

  ‘That Tommy?’ I said like I knew him.

  They turned round to look at me, making space. I took a closer look and almost gagged on the putrid stench of damp, burnt flesh. There was nothing left of him. No hair, no skin, just a lipless grimace and flesh clinging to bone like a bin-liner to a lamp-post.

  I turned away and saw the jawline from the fire station. He was even taller, more chiselled, in his helmet and uniform. He nodded when he saw me walking towards him.

  ‘Deliberate?’ I asked straight up.

  He nodded his head to one side, a non-committal ‘probably’. ‘There’s shattered glass from the windows on the inside of the building.’

  ‘Smashed from the outside?’

  ‘Looks that way. And no smoke on the underside of the glass which means the glass was shattered prior to the fire.’

  ‘Deliberate,’ I said conclusively.

  He rocked his helmet from side to side, still not prepared to commit.

  ‘Was there an accelerant?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’ He closed his eyes at the same time as if it were the only way to keep his anger from spilling over.

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘The usual.’ His eyes opened and stared down at me.

  ‘Petrol?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Arson then?’

  He opened his hands like he still wasn’t prepared to be conclusive. We stared at each other for a second, like we were sealing a pact. Then I thanked him and moved away.

  I spent the morning going round all the petrol stations in the city. The Agip ones were easily recognisable, all the same: each forecourt had the same square red columns supporting a yellow and white roof. At each one the same symbol of a six-legged animal breathing red fire on its tail. Every word written was in lower-case letters with double red lines: aperto, cassa, centro gomme.

  Most people were more interested in my card than my questions. Many just shrugged, said they had n
o recollection of anyone filling up a petrol can in the last week or two. Most of them only worked shifts anyway, so told me to come back at other times when someone else might be able to help.

  It must have been about the eighth or ninth filling station that something came up. As usual I had had to wait until the customers were done. This time I enjoyed the wait. The girl behind the counter had short blond hair and bee-stung lips. She looked tough and beautiful at the same time, even with her red, silver and yellow Agip outfit on.

  I watched the forecourt whilst she served customers. There was an old beaten-up van there with nothing written on it except, by hand, ‘no logo vintage’. Old men walking home with their shopping took shortcuts across the forecourt. On the far side was a yellow caritas bin for used clothes and shoes and beyond that the car-wash with its furry, coloured columns spiralling upwards like a Twister lollipop.

  ‘Can I help?’ she said when there was no one left in her little booth.

  I put my card on the counter. She picked it up and read it.

  ‘What kind of investigator?’

  ‘Anything. Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?’

  She looked at me like she was preparing her defence. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m looking into an arson attack, trying to trace someone who might have bought a can or two of petrol recently from a station somewhere in the city …’

  She nodded, staring at me with green eyes. She was even more beautiful close up. She looked young but had the kind of face that said she had suffered and survived. ‘People usually don’t buy cans of petrol at this time of year,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They usually buy them in the late spring, summer. You know, when they need petrol for their mowers, or when they want a spare can in the back of the car for going on holiday.’

  ‘So you haven’t seen anyone?’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. I noticed it because it’s unusual at this time of year. A guy came round last night. Came in twice. Once to buy the cans, then to pay for the juice.’

  ‘Remember the car?’

  She looked at the ceiling and shook her head.

  ‘Remember him?’