White Death (2011)

by Jones, Tobias

  ‘Salute,’ Gaia said, holding up her glass.

  ‘Salute.’ We clinked glasses and took a swig.

  ‘You’re a good liar,’ she said, looking at me seriously. ‘I thought your name was Castagnetti.’

  ‘White lies,’ I said to myself. ‘White lies. White death.’ I stared at the candle on the bar, remembering the flames the other night at Bragantini’s place. It was strange how the same thing could be so soothing or so destructive.

  ‘Do me a favour.’ I leant closer to her and whispered quickly. ‘Go and stand by that archway and cough loudly if he comes back.’

  She frowned slightly again but wandered off holding her glass.

  I looked around quickly and went over to a sort of lectern by the end of the bar. I looked at the page where it was open and saw the name Rinaldi and the number. I flicked back to the beginning of the year. Every page had a dozen names and phone numbers. Next to each name was a circled number, presumably the number of diners. I looked up at Gaia who was watching me. She looked the other way and shook her head.

  I kept flicking through the bookings looking for Bragantini. He said he had eaten here a couple of weeks ago, so I flicked back to the beginning of the month and went forwards. There, on a Wednesday evening, was his name and his number.

  Gaia coughed. I put the book back to the right day and moved sideways back towards the bar. I heard Gaia waylaying the man in the apron as he approached. I picked up my glass and walked over.

  ‘Let me show you your table,’ the man said, walking towards the corner of an adjoining room. There were a few other people eating and talking and the room had that relaxing sound of soft voices and active cutlery. As we sat down, he pulled a lighter out of the pouch of his apron and lit a candle.

  ‘I told you it would be romantic,’ I said as he moved away.

  She looked at me askew, to say she wasn’t fooled. ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘I wanted to take you out to dinner.’

  ‘What’s the real reason? Something to do with your case, isn’t it?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And you can’t tell me about it?’

  I shook my head. ‘You already know more than most people.’

  We picked up the menus. They had thick leather covers, but inside was just one handwritten sheet of paper. The handwriting was flamboyant and illegible.

  ‘I can’t read this,’ she said.

  ‘You can probably guess.’ The food round here was wonderful but, because of that, very predictable. No one ever seemed to get bored of the usual classics and each restaurant had identical menus, if not identical results. I tried to interpret the handwriting: ‘Tortelli, cappelletti, stinco, punta di vitello, bolliti vari …’

  We ordered and ate and chatted. She didn’t drink much, but she became more open, telling me about how her father had remarried a few years ago and how she got on with the new woman and their new child.

  ‘She’s only four. I read her all these fairy tales and you realise after a while how many of them are similar. There’s always something forbidden – a door you shouldn’t open, a box you shouldn’t unlock.’

  ‘A fruit you shouldn’t eat?’

  ‘Exactly. Only they always do, and that sets off the story and its morality: the separation from innocence, the dangerous consequences of disobedience, the quest to return home. Either that, or there’s something that is allowed from the outset but only with the promise of repossession, or payment, in the future. There are all these stories of kings being granted their wish, but only if something is given in return a year to the day in the future: their daughter, or wife, or kingdom, or whatever. So they enjoy their wish for a year, and forget about the promise that was extracted, and live blithely and happily. Only the reader knows what’s coming: the troll, or fairy, or mysterious stranger will return and expect the promise to be honoured.’

  She was smiling at me with bright, wide eyes, as if I were a child she was reading to. Then she became more serious. ‘In a way, both types of story are fairly similar. They’re about the price of our curiosity or our desires. They’re about honesty and contracts and conditions.’

  She shrugged like she had said enough and didn’t want to bore me. I was watching her closely: the enthusiasm of her hands, the intensity of her eyes. There was something exhilarating about her. She had a combination of childlike simplicity and adult intelligence.

  ‘You know my ambition?’ she said.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I want to be a children’s writer.’ She was looking down at her hands like she had said something that might be embarrassing.

  ‘Seriously?’

  She looked up at me and smiled bashfully.

  ‘You should do it then,’ I said. ‘Write a few stories.’

  She shrugged, like she wasn’t sure she would ever get round to it. I leant closer so no one else could hear. ‘This case I’m working on is a bit similar to one of those stories. It’s about someone who was given something if he promised to return it a few months later, only he got used to his new possession and didn’t want to give it back.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘Not a happy ending, I’m afraid. I met his widow a day or two ago and promised I would find out who was responsible.’

  She looked at me with what I vainly hoped was admiration.

  ‘Why does everyone call you Casta?’ she asked.

  ‘Because it’s shorter than Castagnetti.’

  ‘And what’s your Christian name?’

  I laughed. It wasn’t that uncommon round these parts but it still amused people. ‘Yuri,’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘Your parents were Communists?’

  I nodded wearily.

  ‘We had two Yuris in our class at school,’ she said.

  ‘We had a few in school too. It’s like being branded for life: you’re the son of lefties. That’s why I just introduce myself as Casta. It’s less of a logo.’

  ‘Digestif?’ The owner looked more relaxed now that the restaurant was almost empty.

  Gaia asked for a coffee. I didn’t want another drink, but I wanted to get the man sitting down with us, preferably with a bottle in between.

  ‘Have you got mirto?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  He came back with a purple bottle and poured a generous shot. He left the bottle on the table like it was ours for the evening.

  ‘Will you join us?’ I asked him.

  He smiled graciously like he couldn’t refuse a client’s invitation. He pulled up a chair and twisted it as he picked it up, so that he sat with its back between his thighs.

  ‘How was your dinner?’ he asked.

  ‘Buonissima, grazie.’

  ‘What did you have?’

  We spoke idly about food and recipes and about which was the authentic shape of cappelletti: serrated or smooth. I’m fond of food but I get bored talking about it. I poured the man a glass of his own mirto, topped myself up and interrupted.

  ‘You’re the proprietor, right?’

  ‘Sure. Have been for thirty-two years.’

  I nodded with a slow blink to show respect. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Giulio Morandi.’

  I nodded again and pushed him my card.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said, picking it up. I watched his face drop. He looked from me to Gaia and back at me again. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘A client of mine is being threatened. He’s been the victim of arson attacks, threats, that sort of thing.’

  He brought his eyebrows down in disapproving sympathy. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

  I took out my snap of Davide Pace. ‘You ever seen this lad?’

  He looked at it for a second and then passed it back to me. He was shaking his head.

  I found the photo of Santagata. I zoomed in on his face and passed him the snap. ‘And this one? Seen him?’

  ‘Sure.’ He looked up at me and then back at the camera. He tapped the small screen lightly with hi
s finger. ‘He was in here a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘For a meal?’

  ‘No. He came in saying friends of his had booked a table. I did the usual thing and let him wander around to find them. But they weren’t here. We looked in the book and couldn’t find them and that was that. He went out again.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘A couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘Did he look through your bookings too?’

  ‘Sure. He didn’t know which of his friends had booked, so I showed him. He looked down the list, didn’t see them, and that was that. Never saw him again. Never thought any more about it until now.’

  ‘Could you remember what day it was?’

  He jutted his chin out and looked up at the ceiling. ‘No, not really. I suppose I might recognise the names from the book.’ He looked at the table as if trying to work out whether he really would. ‘Hang on.’ He got up and went through to the bar and picked up the book. He laid it on the table and flicked back through the days, shaking his head at each one. ‘Ecco,’ he said eventually. ‘This was the day, I remember these names.’ He chuckled, shaking his head. ‘It’s not every day you have diners next to each other called “Lunghi” and “Corti”.’

  He passed the book over to me. It was the same page with Bragantini’s name and home phone number. I must have smiled slightly because he asked me if any of it made sense.

  ‘Plenty,’ I said.

  It made a whole lot of sense. Santagata must have been stalking Bragantini, watching him at home and at work. He must have followed him to this restaurant a week or two ago and realised it was the perfect opportunity to get his number. He came in, made up some story in order to have a look at the book, got the number and wandered off. Until now I only had some loose connections, but now it was beginning to stack up.

  ‘You’re absolutely sure?’ I asked.

  He nodded quickly. I thanked him and told him he might have to testify. He kept nodding like it was no big deal. I thanked him and passed him a couple of notes for the meal.

  We wandered out into the cold evening air. I was feeling elated. Gaia put her hand in my arm and we wandered around the city. There were groups of people still window-shopping late at night, discussing the cut and colour of the clothing on display. It felt like I was on the verge of wrapping up the case: I had the connections, even though they were threadbare: a restaurateur had seen Santagata scamming Bragantini’s number. He didn’t know that’s what was going on, but he had described the scene. Santagata had called Pace and asked for petrol. All I needed was the link between Santagata and Moroni and the whole thing would fall into place. The entire chain of events would become clear.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Gaia asked.

  ‘Nowhere in particular. Just wandering.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  I stopped to look at her. It was one of those innocent questions that had an array of implications. She was staring up at me like she expected me to pick her up and carry her there.

  ‘I live in the smallest monolocale in the city.’

  ‘There space for two of us?’

  ‘We’ll have to squeeze.’

  We walked towards my apartment. It felt like there was a bond between us now. All I could think about was what we would do when we got there. It felt as if our leisurely stroll had turned into a sprint.

  I opened the door to the apartment block and, out of habit, looked at the thin vertical strip of glass that was my personal postbox. There was something in there so I opened up, pulling out a small envelope. Nothing was written on the outside. The envelope wasn’t flat but slightly bulging like those envelopes that contain a birthday card with a badge on them. I shook it from one corner and the small bulge moved easily inside the envelope like it wasn’t attached to anything.

  I ripped it open, knowing instinctively what I would find. The slug of metal looked innocent enough on its own. It was still and harmless. But the message was clear. The next bullet wouldn’t come in an envelope. I could feel my heart beating, I could hear the pulse in my ears. I knew it was the kind of warning they only give once. There wouldn’t be any more communication. I either dropped the case or they dropped me.

  ‘What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ I heard her cheerful voice from what seemed like a hundred metres away.

  I put the envelope back in my slot and turned around. I took her roughly by the arm and led her back out.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

  I didn’t even want to explain. I wanted her as far away from me as possible. I wanted her in another city, another country. I didn’t want her soiled by the sleazy world I was mixed up in. I looked left and right as we walked back onto the road, checking to see if there were any parked cars with snooping drivers inside. Couldn’t see anything unusual. I still had my hand on her upper arm as I marched her towards a taxi stand.

  ‘Stay away from me,’ I said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘They’re coming after me and I don’t want you caught in the crossfire.’

  ‘What was in that envelope?’

  I turned away and hailed a taxi.

  ‘But I want to stay with you,’ she said, turning round to see the white cab pulling up beside her. I pulled her closer to kiss her and she brought a hand up to my face so fast I wasn’t sure if it was a caress or a slap. She got into the cab without saying anything. I saw her staring ahead as it drove off.

  Seeing her like that made me more livid than the stupid slug in the envelope. I strode back home in a hurry, took the envelope upstairs and paced around my tiny flat. Before, I had been excited to be within touching distance of them, but now it just seemed that they were within firing range of me. I went over to the window and looked through the gaps between the tapparelle. I couldn’t sense anything out of the ordinary.

  I had so far avoided involving the authorities because the case was political and that meant that it wouldn’t be played straight. There would be pressures from all sorts of unexpected quarters and honest officers would find themselves making compromises. Handing over my case to them would be like launching a paper aeroplane in a gale: it would certainly go somewhere, but there was no telling how or why. I wanted to hold on to it myself. At least until I had the kind of case that could only go in one direction.

  But that bullet in the envelope had changed my mind. I decided to call Dall’Aglio, an old-style, abrasive Carabiniere. It was gone midnight but I called him anyway.

  ‘Dall’Aglio? Castagnetti.’

  He grunted. We were never sure if we were allies or rivals in the fight against crime. Sometimes I didn’t know if he was even fighting the fight or just watching it and taking notes. And he had a grudge against me because I fought as much against the authorities as I did against the criminals. But we went way back and held the animosity in check for the sake of civility.

  ‘I’ve got a very sensitive case,’ I said slowly.

  ‘And you’re a sensitive guy.’

  ‘Right.’ I paused. ‘This one’s political.’

  I heard him sucking air through his teeth. ‘We don’t do politics here.’

  ‘What’s that mean? You let them do whatever they want?’ Before I could stop myself our old arguments were boiling to the surface.

  ‘It means’, he said wearily, ‘that almost anything political gets referred to the Guardia di Finanza. Ninety-nine per cent of political crime is financial. I assume this one is too?’

  ‘Started out financial. Finished with murder.’

  The line went quiet. I could hear his slow breathing, nothing else. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know Pino Bragantini?’

  ‘I know he’s about the most unpopular person in the city right now.’

  ‘Well, he shouldn’t be. That fire wasn’t his fault.’

  I had known Dall’Aglio long enough to trust him with every little detail. As I went through it, I heard him sucking his teeth. H
e swore eloquently when I told him about the evening’s little delivery. He seemed more angry that I had held out on him than about what had been going on.

  ‘It sounds like you should lie low for a while, let me take this up,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not my style.’

  ‘No.’ He said it regretfully. ‘That’s not your style.’

  ‘I’m going to write a memorandum and leave it with a friend. If anything happens to me, he’ll have all the details and the evidence.’

  ‘The evidence should be here.’

  ‘It will be. This time tomorrow you’ll have everything. All neatly bagged up and labelled.’

  ‘I just hope you’re not that way yourself.’

  It was as close as he would ever get to human warmth and I thanked him. He told me he was on night duty and to come and see him if anything came up.

  I shuffled over to my desk to write a formal document about the case. I went over it in my head. Bragantini had hired me because his car had been torched. It had started out as a no-hope investigation into mindless vandalism. Cars get burnt all the time. It’s the way city folk enjoy a camp fire. But then it had become obvious that the vandalism wasn’t mindless at all but a well-orchestrated plan. Elements within Masi’s construction company had been burning the property of people who owned land that was about to be requalified as residential. They literally turned up the heat. It had happened last year to Lombardi and this year it was Bragantini’s turn. It seemed likely that they were getting their information from the assessore himself, because his unimpressive wife was receiving large contracts. Everyone seemed to be doing nicely but it was a costly game. Last year the go-between, Luciano Tosti, had been killed. This year a young boy hired as an extra pair of eyes had been killed.

  It seemed very likely that Santagata had started the fire that killed Tommy Mbora. Gaia had seen Davide Pace buying petrol, and he had told me in person that he had given it to Santagata. And the restaurateur gave me a positive ID on him, saying he had visited his place the day Bragantini was dining there. It wasn’t watertight, but it was looking like it might not have too many leaks. All I needed was a connection between Santagata and Moroni.

  I started writing it up formally. I listed the evidence and the various eyewitnesses: Gaia, the restaurateur, Davide Pace. I signed the report and put it in an envelope along with the other envelope I had opened an hour ago.