White Death (2011)

by Jones, Tobias

  ‘You know why eight millimetres is important in my world?’ I asked him.

  He looked at me and frowned. ‘Something to do with firearms?’

  ‘No. It’s the measurement of the beespace. It’s the distance bees always, in the wild, leave between one comb and the next.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Who do you think discovered that?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘There are two kinds of people’, I said, ‘who have traditionally been pioneering beekeepers. Monks and Italians. The guy who discovered the beespace was both. Almost. He was a churchman called Lorenzo.’

  He looked vaguely interested now.

  ‘The guy revolutionised beekeeping. It meant we no longer had those conical wicker hives where we had to evict or kill the bees to get at their honey. We could now lift out the combs …’

  ‘And steal their honey?’ Mauro laughed. ‘Sounds just like a priest.’

  ‘He was American really,’ I said. ‘Called Langstroth. But his first name was Lorenzo, so you can bet that his mother or grandmother was Italian. That’s where the genius came from. He wrote a manual which is still used today.’

  Mauro rolled his head like he was almost impressed.

  ‘And you know who wrote the first, and still the best, poem about bees, having studied them using a concave mirror in the sixteenth century?’ I waited for him to answer, and raised my eyebrows in sarcastic surprise at his ignorance. ‘Giovanni Rucellai.

  ‘And who first made detailed drawings of the anatomy of a bee and actually, along with a few others, coined the word “telescope”?’

  He shrugged again.

  ‘A guy called Cesi, Prince Federico Cesi. Know where he was from?’

  He threw me a palm to say it was obvious.

  ‘I-ta-lia,’ I said, imitating the football chant by emphasising each syllable. ‘And which are the most popular bees in the world? Which bees produce most new bees and honey? Which was the kind of bee that Lorenzo Langstroth bred, because it was so beautiful, almost blond, and docile? Apis mellifera ligustica, better known as the Italian bee.’

  Mauro grunted.

  ‘See, I’m proud that my little hobby has been improved and perfected by Italians. It makes me think we’ve got good eyes and brains, that we can improve the world for the better, and that makes me patriotic. You see, in my line …’

  ‘Your line is crime,’ he interrupted.

  I shut my eyes. ‘I wish it wasn’t. If I’m jaundiced, that’s the reason. All I ever see is the worst of this place.’

  He nodded, like he knew what I was talking about. And, knowing what he had seen, he probably did. Mauro could be provocative but he could listen when he needed to.

  ‘All these deaths just stay with you. I met a boy yesterday who was in the bloom of life and today all that was left of him were teeth and bones. You can’t wash that thought away, you can’t drown it with drink or sleep it off. It’s there in your mind like an open wound, a memory that says life can be ended as simply as switching off a light. All you need to do is press a button, pull a trigger, and life is gone. One minute it’s here, the next it’s not. And that thought starts to paralyse you. Starts to make you think it’s not worth doing anything. It’s like trying to persuade yourself to start a game of chess even though the board will be overturned long before the end. If that’s the case, it’s hardly worth starting. You might as well not bother. You become paralysed by inertia and indolence. There doesn’t seem to be any point getting out of the chair, let alone the house. I spend half my life sunk in that chair in the middle of the night, freezing cold but too tired to go and get a pair of socks. Those deaths live with me, haunt me. They seem so pointless.’

  I looked up at Mauro. I hadn’t expected to say so much, but it was just coming out.

  ‘And the only thing’, I went on, ‘that gets me out of that chair at night is the thought that I might be the only person who can make those deaths less pointless. That the only way that any of those deaths has meaning is if I find out who’s responsible, if I make it less of a random act and find out why it happened. If I can place it in the chain of cause and effect. It doesn’t help those grieving for the stiff, but it helps me. It makes me hope that there’s a reason, however wrong, for what happened.’

  He closed his eyes and looked pained. ‘I’m not sure that looking for a reason really helps.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I spent ages looking for the reason my marriage fell apart. And when I found it, it was hard to take.’ He looked at me with sadness. ‘My marriage fell apart because I was always drunk.’

  ‘I thought it was because you were always away.’

  ‘That too. But I was sober when I was away, so I was drunk when I was home. You can’t really blame Marta for finding someone else.’

  ‘You can.’

  He shrugged. ‘I never thought it would happen again, that I would ever get together with another woman. But now I’m with Giovanna and I don’t want to lose her just because I suck bottles like a new-born baby.’

  ‘She’s told you to cut it out?’

  ‘Not at all. She wouldn’t do that. She’s not like that. If she were, I probably wouldn’t listen, if you see what I mean. That was the problem with Marta. The more she nagged, the more I drank.’

  ‘And boy could she nag.’

  He looked and me and smiled at the solidarity. ‘And I could drink. I’m not saying it was her fault, but you know.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  We went outside and started feeding the syrup to the bees. Mauro lifted off the roofs, the zinc sheeting catching the moonlight as he did so. The feeder was a shallow, square bucket inside the hive with slots cut into one side so that the syrup could seep into a trough for the bees. I slopped a load into the feeder and then we put the hive back together. We worked along the line like that, taking off the roof, pouring in syrup, putting it back together. It always amazed me the quantities they could consume. Within a couple of days it would all be gone.

  The local news was on the TV when I got back home. The fire at Bragantini’s factory was the lead item.

  ‘Yet another terrible white death has blighted our city,’ the newscaster intoned. Politicians from all parties vied with each other to express their outrage. It was another case of a tragic death in the workplace. Bragantini, as employer, was directly responsible for a young man’s death. The words ‘manslaughter’ and ‘prosecution’ were mentioned. There was footage from the evening’s protest vigil in the piazza. The general public were interviewed and they, too, expressed disgust. The whole report managed to make it look black and white: Bragantini was a pantomime villain, the person the popolo should boo and hiss. He was the reason poor Tommy had died. No mention of arson, of construction contracts and corrupt politicians. The whole charade infuriated me. People’s sincere indignation was being manipulated. They were being told that Bragantini was responsible for a young immigrant’s death and being encouraged to give it to him with both barrels.

  There was a brief report about Tommy Mbora. It said he was a recent immigrant from Cameroon. There was a photograph of him smiling in his Inter top. They were playing music over the report just in case the heartstrings weren’t being tugged sufficiently hard. Poor Tommy, who had been anonymous in life, was becoming an icon in death. Another one of those names that stood for the injustice of the system, that would be repeated whenever someone wanted to make a political point about the padroni and the little people.

  I switched it off and just sat in the chair. I don’t know what time I got up and crawled into bed, but it was black, quiet and cold by then.

  The first thing I did in the morning was to walk round to the offices of the city council and demand a meeting with the assessore all’urbanistica. The cool receptionist, a young man whose tie was knotted wider than his chin, said that the assessore was in meetings all day. He suggested I write a letter.

  I drew my lips over my teeth to offer him a fake smile. ‘
Give him this,’ I passed my usual business card, ‘and tell him that I want to see him to talk about Giulio Moroni. Giulio Moroni,’ I repeated.

  The receptionist looked at the card and then back at me. He stood up and went through a glass door. He came back a few minutes later to say that someone would be with me shortly. I sat on one of the chairs and read a promotional publication about the province. There were the same people pictured in every photograph. The same local politicians in hard-hats and sashes, shaking hands with businessmen in suits. I put the magazine down and watched the councillors coming and going. It was strange seeing people who were at each other’s throats in elections walking through the foyer patting each other on the back.

  Anyone who has lived here for long enough has seen it all before: opposing sides of the political spectrum ferociously criticising each other, getting hot under the collar about this and that, bringing up all sorts of allegations and innuendos. Then just as it looks as if the argument is about to get physical, harmony breaks out. A dialogue is opened, an accord or a compromise is found. And suddenly, just as quickly as it came, all that fiery rhetoric subsides and everyone realises it was all synthetic, put on for show when all along some deal was imminent anyway. It’s as if every politician is merely an actor in a little theatre, and as soon as the curtain falls and the public can’t see them any more they all slap each other on the back, tot up the takings and go out for an expensive meal.

  After about half an hour a woman came into the reception. ‘Castagnetti?’

  I stood up.

  ‘You’re waiting to see Mr D’Antoni? Come this way please.’

  She led me up some stone stairs to another waiting room. I sat there for another hour.

  Eventually the wooden double doors swung open and a mini entourage emerged. The two security men were wearing black suits whose sleeves looked too thin for their thick arms. They were glancing left and right as if looking for trouble. They had transparent plastic tubes running from their ears into their collars as if they were in radio contact. The assessore had thin glasses on the end of his narrow nose. His white hair looked like it had been painted on. He had a narrow, formal face but his eyelids covered up half his pupils as if he were bored by life or had something to hide. It was easy to recognise him from the huge posters that were slapped up all over the place at every election. Like everything in this country, even an election was a beauty contest.

  ‘You’re this Castagnetti?’ he said, like it was an accusation.

  I nodded.

  ‘Let’s talk outside. I’ve been in meetings all morning. I need some fresh air.’

  We walked out of the waiting room and onto the corridor outside. It was a stone balcony which ran around the interior of the palazzo. I watched his heavies fan out to a discreet distance. They put their knuckles on the stone balcony to lean over the edge. They were scanning the whole area like someone might take a pot-shot at this local cowboy any minute. They looked ridiculous, but they made the assessore look important and that, more than protection, was their purpose.

  ‘So you’re a private investigator?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did the opposition hire you?’ he said drily, a hint of a smile on his lips. It was a smile that reminded me of a knife in moonlight.

  ‘No. Bragantini did.’

  He frowned. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Owns a factory on the outskirts of town. Burnt down the other night. A young boy was killed.’

  His mouth lost its hint of humour. He shook his head slowly, staring at me through his lazy eyelids.

  ‘You didn’t hear about the fire that killed a young man, a boy called Tommy Mbora? There’s been little else on the news for the last twenty-four hours.’

  His face was a picture of controlled contempt. He didn’t say anything.

  ‘He was a young immigrant. Brought in to protect Bragantini’s property from a series of arson attacks.’ I said it slowly so he understood. ‘He was twenty-two years old.’

  He moved his face closer, so that I could smell the coffee on his breath. ‘Your tone seems to be implying’, he said icily, ‘that I’m responsible for his death.’

  ‘In this country no one’s ever responsible are they? It’s always someone else’s fault.’

  ‘It’s not on my conscience.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like you have a conscience to put it on.’

  He stared at me from underneath those heavy eyelids. ‘What is it you’re after?’ He said it like his job was to grant favours, which in a way it was.

  ‘Someone’s been lighting fires to intimidate Bragantini. They’re trying to buy his land and using the usual thuggery: burning property, threatening the owner’s family.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the land is about to be redesignated as residential. The arsonist knows as much because someone’, I looked at the assessore, ‘tipped him off. That’s why the place was set alight, to try to get my client off his own land, to persuade him to part with something he has built up over his entire lifetime.’

  His derisive smile froze on his face. He stared at me over the top of his glasses. He had hard, grey eyes. ‘So who’s guilty of this arson?’

  ‘I don’t know who is lighting the fires, but I know who has been buying the land.’

  ‘Who?’ He was staring at me intently now.

  ‘Amedeo Masi. Or rather, Giulio Moroni. I hear he’s a friend of yours.’

  He took off his glasses and held them at arm’s length, looking at the sky through the lenses. He pulled a blue handkerchief from his pocket and polished the glass. ‘Most of us’, he gestured down at the courtyard below, ‘spend most of our lives trying to earn enough money. Giusto?’ I didn’t say anything, so he repeated the word louder, like he insisted on my assent before going on. ‘Giusto?’

  I shrugged a non-committal assent.

  ‘We spend our lives tearing around just trying to make ends meet. That’s what life is like, right?’ He put his glasses back on. ‘When you become a politician you have the opposite problem. People are constantly trying to offer you things: donations, meals, watches, holidays, cars. You name it, it’s thrown at us.’

  ‘Tough life.’

  He turned his grey eyes on me. ‘If I so much as have my photograph taken with the wrong person it can ruin my career. If I’m next to someone in a restaurant who wants to shake my hand it would be discourteous not to. But say someone snaps a photograph and ten years later that person is arrested for something, you can be sure that photograph will come out. In this country there’s so much smoke people wouldn’t be able to see the fire, even if there was one. It’s all innuendo and suspicion and paranoia.’

  ‘What’s any of that got to do with Giulio Moroni?’

  ‘You said the man was a friend of mine. I’m trying to explain to you that I don’t have friends.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘Not in the sense you were implying.’ It felt as if he were building a wall around himself, trying to keep me at a distance. He was throwing words over the top like you throw steak to a guard dog you want to keep quiet. It was a tactical distraction, not conversation.

  ‘How about your wife?’

  He looked at me with a face that was suddenly menacing. ‘What about my wife?’ he whispered.

  ‘I hear she’s got quite a friendship going with Moroni.’

  He stared at me. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I heard he’s putting a lot of work her way. She’s got a contract worth a few hundred thousand to sell his flats. A few hundred thousand just to walk clients around the place. He also sold her the cherry on the cake, the penthouse. Now I don’t know what sort of discount he gave her, but it’s not hard to find out. See, it sounds to me like Moroni is being really generous to your wife, and that’s not something I associate with a hard-headed businessman. It kind of makes me think you might have some close friends after all.’

  ‘My wife is good at her job.’ He was smiling, faking p
ride for his spouse.

  ‘She’s good at her job …’ I repeated with sarcasm.

  ‘There’s nothing illegal whatsoever in what you’ve described. My wife is an estate agent. She sells flats. Someone puts a contract her way and you barge in here and accuse me of corruption.’

  ‘I’m accusing you of a lot more than that.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he whispered.

  ‘The last person to have bought land on behalf of the Moroni operation was murdered last year outside his home in Milan. Is that legal as well?’

  He looked at me as if he were aiming a gun. ‘You’re making some very explosive allegations.’

  ‘They’re explosive facts.’

  ‘You want to be careful where they explode.’ We were staring at each other now like boxers at a weigh-in.

  ‘That sounds like a threat.’

  He smiled insincerely. ‘No threat. Just friendly advice.’

  He caught the eye of one of his heavies and nodded his thin head towards me. The man immediately strode towards me.

  ‘I’m not interested in how your family makes its money,’ I said hastily. I put out a palm to stop the heavy who was reaching for my shoulder.

  The man was about to take a swing but the assessore stopped him with an authoritative click of his tongue. ‘Give us one minute.’

  I stepped closer and stared at him over the top of his glasses. ‘I’m not interested in corruption. Not today. All I want to know is who’s lighting these fires. I know why. I just need a name.’

  He laughed freely, as if he were genuinely amused. He looked up at me and shook his head. ‘I didn’t even know there had been any fires until three minutes ago, and now you expect me to tell you who’s responsible.’ He chuckled again.