The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Two minutes later he was in a corrugated shack at the end of the camp, seated at a low plastic table with an elderly bent man who smelled of cheap dark tobacco and wood smoke.

  “What do you want?” Ion Dinicu’s father asked.

  “To find out who killed your son.”

  “Why?”

  Peroni shrugged and said, “It’s what I do. Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want some kind of …” He hesitated. The word sounded odd, wrong, in these circumstances. “… justice?”

  Dinicu’s father had the same kind of eyes as the man on the gate. Dark and intense. Blazing now.

  “Find me the man who killed my Ion and I’ll show you justice,” he said. “He was a good boy.”

  Peroni sighed.

  “He was a pickpocket. A petty thief. Petty. But a thief all the same.”

  “That was then!” the old man cried. “Not now.”

  “Now he’s dead. I want to know why.”

  The Romanian was silent for a while then he murmured, “Everyone hates us here.”

  “Why did Ion come back then? After we deported him?”

  “Everyone hates us there too. At least here there’s money. Work.”

  “Tourists on the bus. Women with purses in the park.”

  “No!”

  “Then what?” Peroni wanted to know.

  “When he came back he was a chauffeur. People wanted to go somewhere, they called. He was good. Cheaper than those taxi guys. Reliable. He had his own car.”

  This was interesting.

  “Where’s the car?”

  “Gone. He went out on a job yesterday. Next thing you send round some kid in a uniform to tell me he’s dead. What am I supposed to say?”

  Peroni folded his arms, stared out of the opening of the shack, watched the kids playing with their grubby toys, the women sitting round, darning clothes, hanging up washing.

  He couldn’t shake from his head what he’d seen in the morgue that morning. How many possible explanations were there?

  “This is going to seem an odd question,” Peroni said. “What kind of socks did your son wear?”

  The man blinked and looked at him sideways.

  “Is this a joke?”

  “Not at all. What kind? Short? Long? Medium?”

  Ion Dinicu’s father rolled up the legs of his cheap black trousers. His socks ran all the way to the knee.

  “These socks,” he said.

  The cop nodded.

  “I mean,” the man went on, “these socks. We shared. Socks. Shirts. Was cheaper. Easier that way.”

  “Right,” Peroni murmured and found his mind wandering back to the city.

  “What happens to my son? You won’t let the Catholics have him? Don’t do that to him. He don’t deserve it.”

  Peroni said, “Give me some way I can get in touch with you. When his body’s released I’ll make sure they know he needs an Orthodox service. If you want to come in to the Questura …”

  The father was shaking his head briskly.

  “Then give me some way …”

  The man reached into his pocket and handed him a card. It read, “Deluxe Ciampino Limousine Service” and had two mobile phone numbers printed beneath a colour photo of the front of an elderly but very shiny Mercedes, a young man standing beside it, smiling.

  “The second phone number’s mine. First was Ion’s,” he said.

  Peroni said thanks then walked back to the car.

  6

  By the time he was back in the city, looking for somewhere to park near the Campo dei Fiori, most of the smell of tobacco and wood smoke had left him. Peroni squeezed the battered unmarked police Fiat into a diagonal space that left the front wheels up on the pavement of the Via dei Pellegrino and would, to his regret, force pedestrians into the cobbled street. He hated doing this, but there was work to be done.

  He got out and called the Questura. Prinzivalli was the duty sovrintendente running the uniform officers out on patrol. This was good news. He was an old-time cop, a colleague going back three decades.

  Peroni said, “If I asked for five strong men outside an address near the Campo dei Fiori in twenty minutes would you want to know why? Time’s a little short, see.”

  There was a pause on the line. Trust was an odd thing. Delicate, easily broken.

  “I’ve got officers round there all the time,” Prinzivalli said. “I’d still need to give them some idea what exactly they’re looking for.”

  Peroni told him, then passed on Eva Spallone’s mobile number and some more instructions.

  “You know the new guy from Milan? The inspector? Vieri?” he said when he was finished.

  “Mr Cheery we call him,” Prinzivalli replied.

  “He’s the one. Well, Mr Cheery’s busy right now. It’s best he doesn’t know. Not straightaway.”

  There was that pause again, then Prinzivalli said, “Vieri hates being interrupted when he’s busy. I’ve learned that already.”

  “Me too,” Peroni said, then finished with a few more details and cut the call.

  He read the notes he’d made on the computer that morning.

  Detailed notes. There was a stationery shop on the way to the gym. He went in there, bought the things he needed, then walked down the narrow street to the Palestra Cassius.

  7

  It was now close to four o’clock. Peroni smiled for the girl on reception and said, “It’s me again, Letizia.”

  She was chewing a nougat from the bowl on the counter, looking bored in the way only teenagers knew.

  Eva Spallone wasn’t there. Must have been a long lunch. Prinzivalli could deal with her then.

  There seemed to be one customer in the place, a fat guy sweating and grunting on an exercise bike. The hulks were still crowded round the boxing ring. Peroni walked over. Two of the biggest blondes were in boxing shorts, bare-chested, tanned pecs and biceps gleaming with oil, sparring lazily off and on the ropes. They looked bored too.

  Peroni clapped his hands and brought the fun to a close. Ten sets of eyes turned on him. He waved his ID card high, chose his most authoritative of voices and ordered them all into Eva Spallone’s office. That instant.

  They obeyed straightaway, shambling over to the far side of the gym in a long line. Peroni watched them. Bodybuilding did something bad to the way people walked, he decided. It was like health stores. They always seemed to be full of sick, sniffy people.

  The ten hulks filled the small office. The smell of sweat and oils and liniment was a little overpowering. None of them spoke, which he found interesting.

  “This is a simple, routine check,” Peroni announced, forcing his way to the desk. “I want …”

  He began coughing. Kept on coughing. The hulks stared at him. They looked worried they might catch something.

  “Sorry … sorry,” Peroni said, gasping. “Got a really bad throat today. Hurts like hell. Tell you what …”

  He pulled out the dark grey paper he’d bought in the stationery shop and the blue pen then scrawled a single word in large capital letters.

  “Any of you guys ever been …” He coughed and roughed up his voice even more. “Here?”

  Then he walked down the line showing them the paper. Eight of them shook their heads. A thuggish-looking guy with the name Vladimir embroidered on his T-shirt glared back at Peroni and said, “Was years ago. In Russia.”

  “Must have been fun,” Peroni replied.

  Only one, halfway down the line, didn’t answer at all. He was the biggest of them all, one of the boxers, a good deal taller than Peroni, muscle-bound with a flattened nose, dim close-set eyes and a stripe of Mohican-cut blonde hair. His chest gleamed with sweat and oil, his muscles looked as if they’d been sculpted somehow.

  There was a name embroidered on his bright red satin shorts. Eva Spallone did take great care to tag her possessions.

  Peroni looked down at it and said, “Sven?”

  “What was the question again?” the man asked.

>   Peroni held up the paper. The close-set eyes glanced at it nervously then darted round the room.

  “The rest of you leave,” Peroni ordered and he didn’t take his attention off the man in front of him for a moment as they filed out of the office.

  “Swedish?” Peroni asked when they were gone.

  “Finnish.”

  “Like Eva Spallone. Isn’t that nice?”

  The hulk just stood there. Big, stupid Sven, with his beady blue eyes and blonde cockatoo stripe.

  Peroni looked at him and said, “You know when my daughter was four years old the doctors thought there was something wrong.” He indicated his eyes. “Here. With her sight. We went through all these tests. Pretty nurse in the clinic.” He grinned. “I never said no when it came to running her there.”

  “What?” Sven asked.

  “Bear with me,” Peroni went on. “One of the things they thought was maybe to do with the way she saw colours. That perhaps she was colourblind.” He sighed. “Scary when you think there’s something wrong with your kid. There wasn’t. She just needed better glasses. But that nurse was so pretty, so careful, I kept going back and talking to her. I thought I knew everything then, of course. Colourblindness. Red and green. People couldn’t see traffic lights and things. I was a smartass. She put me straight. Sure they can’t see red or green. But they can see something, which light is on for one thing. So they can drive if they want. No problem usually. And also …”

  He reached into his pocket and found his own notepad where it sat, next to the one he’d stolen from Vieri’s guy that morning.

  “It’s not just red and green. That may be the most common kind there is but you find lots of others. Like one called …” He glanced at the note. “Tritanopia. You heard of that, Sven?”

  The Finn stood there stiff as a gleaming rock, saying nothing.

  “I looked it up. They call it blue-yellow colourblindness but it’s not that simple. Specially with the blues. Anyone who’s got this thing really struggles with those. Can’t see the difference between blue and black easily for one thing.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Sven asked.

  Peroni’s eyes narrowed, “I’m talking about you. How did it go? Let me guess. Eva’s been monkeying around with you for a little while. She says, ‘Oh Sven, oh darling Sven. If only it was the two of us. You and me running the gym. Then we’d be together and make lots of money too. But Giorgio won’t ever divorce me … ’”

  Beads of sweat were beginning to build on the Finn’s broad, tanned forehead.

  “So all you’ve got to do is wait one night until he’s in the sauna on his own. Walk in there, boxing gloves on, beat him about the head until he’s out stone cold. You got those gloves on, remember. No serious marks. No cuts. Dump him in the river. Eva says how sad, how depressed he was. Suicide. Stupid cops nod and then you’re done.”

  Sven cleared his throat and stared down at his own broad chest.

  “I guess Eva thinks a sauna’s a clever place,” Peroni went on. “All that evidence – sweat and blood and everything – gets washed away down the drain. Not sure about that frankly but it doesn’t matter. You see Giorgio Spallone’s a nice guy. Really. His maid in Parioli calls him cars from some poor Roma kid called Ion. He likes Ion. Feels sorry for him. Sneaks him into the gym for a sauna last night as a favour. And there’s the Roma kid, hidden in all that steam, when you go wading in with the boxing gloves, punching Giorgio in the head.”

  Peroni reached down and lifted Sven’s vast fists. He undid the lace ties of the boxing gloves at the wrist and gently tugged them off his enormous hands. There were cut marks on the knuckles. He touched them. Sven flinched. Then he looked more closely at the hulk’s face. There was a graze near the right cheekbone.

  “Middle-aged psychiatrist’s a piece of cake for a thug like you. A Roma kid like Ion doesn’t go down so easily. I guess the gloves came off there. But he was a little guy. You punched him out in the end.”

  “This is stupid …” Sven murmured.

  “It was,” Peroni agreed. “See, when it’s done you now have two bodies in all that steam. Both naked. One, Ion, dead, I guess. Giorgio out for the count. You got to dress them – Eva won’t do that for you. You got to get them out of there.”

  He cocked his head and looked up at the Finn.

  “Ion’s car, I guess. You got his keys, beat where it was out of him. Put the two of them in there. Giorgio goes in the river somewhere near the Ponte Sublicio in Trastevere. Then you drive over and dump Ion with the trash near the nightclubs in Testaccio, the sort of place a Roma kid might find himself in trouble.”

  “Stupid,” Sven said again.

  “Here,” Peroni told him, “is the problem. Tritanopia. You got to put their clothes on and it’s hot, you’re scared, you’re all alone. And you don’t see what everyone else can. Those two guys are wearing different coloured socks. They’d know it. I’d know it. But not you.”

  He pulled out his phone and showed the hulk the photo from that morning: four dead legs, two sets of odd, long socks.

  Peroni put the phone away and picked up the paper sheet he’d written on.

  “See this? The paper’s just about the same colour as Giorgio’s socks. The pen the colour of Ion’s. You can’t read what I wrote there, Sven. Because it all looks the same to you. Here. Let me help.”

  He took out a red pen and scribbled over the letters he’d written earlier in blue.

  “How’s that?”

  Sven could see the word now. He stared at it with his tiny, frightened eyes.

  “P. R. I. G. I. O. N. E.” Peroni spelled it out.

  “Prison. Jail. Incarceration. That’s the place you’re headed. One murder’s bad enough. But two.”

  He sighed, put away the paper, reached up and lifted the Finn’s chin so he could look into his face.

  “Two is so much worse. My advice is this. Tell the truth. Think about cooperation. Tell everyone how Eva put you up to it and led you by your beat-up nose. We’ll find out anyway. You don’t think you were the first one she made goo-goo eyes at, do you? We’ll talk to all the other guys. But if you help us now you’re talking years off the sentence. Otherwise …”

  He stood back and looked up and down at the shining, sweating man in front of him, quaking in his tight red satin shorts.

  “Otherwise it’s just more fisting time in jail, and really I do not recommend …”

  The Finn pushed him out of the way and raced across the gym towards the stairs.

  They run oddly too, Peroni thought. Arms pumping, legs going up and down like mechanical dolls.

  He walked over to the receptionist, watched by the line of wide-eyed, open-mouthed hulks who’d stayed behind and the fat customer now stationary on his exercise bike. There he picked up a couple of fistfuls of nougats from the bowl and stuffed them into his pockets before calling Vieri.

  “There’s good news and there’s bad,” he said when he got through to the inspector still in his office in the Questura. “The Spallone case and the Roma kid are done. Bad is …” – he popped a nougat in his mouth – “… you’re going to have to unplug yourself from your Blackberry and take a walk outside.”

  8

  When he got down the stairs he found Sven cuffed, hands behind his back, face pressed against a blue police wagon blocking the narrow street. Prinzivalli was there, seven men with him. Peroni handed out nougats from his jacket pockets.

  “I only asked for five,” he said. “You didn’t need to come.”

  Prinzivalli watched the hulk make one last effort to struggle then give up. The Finn looked shocked and a little teary-eyed.

  “It’s on my way home. End of shift.” He popped Peroni’s nougat into his mouth. “I thought perhaps this was something I didn’t want to miss.”

  “It’s just an arrest,” Peroni answered.

  Eva Spallone was being marched down the street in the custody of two women officers leading her firmly but politely by the arm.r />
  “Wife?” Prinzivalli guessed.

  “The ice queen of the north,” Peroni murmured.

  Moments later a Lancia saloon drew up behind the van. Vieri got out, face like thunder, with three of his minions from Milan.

  Peroni looked at the men holding Sven, nodded for them to let go a little. The hulk looked up, saw the Spallone woman and started to squawk in broken Italian, “Was her idea! Her idea! I tell you …”

  “Tell him,” Peroni cut in, indicating the approaching Vieri.

  “Her idea!” he yelled again, at Vieri this time. “Not mine!”

  By now the Spallone woman was close enough to hear.

  “Shut up, you moron!” she screamed at him. “Shut the …”

  She glanced at Peroni, looked as if she felt stupid for a moment. Then the abuse started again, this time in an incomprehensible stream of gibberish, a language so strange Peroni couldn’t begin to guess a single word.

  He took out his phone and hit the record button. When she was done he stopped the phone, walked out in front of the van and said to the officers there, local and Vieri’s crew from Milan, “Listen to me. I want these two taken into separate custody. No chance they get to talk to one another. No shared lawyers.” He held up the phone. “I want a Finnish translator. Call Di Capua and …”

  Vieri broke stride and leapt in front of him, then roared, “I am the inspector here!”

  Peroni put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Of course.” Then he turned to the men again and said, “The inspector wants these two in custody. No contact. Finnish translator. Forensic are going to seal off the sauna in this place. The Roma kid was killed there, Spallone got beat up. Whatever this woman thinks there’s got to be some trace left. Check bank records and the financials for this gym of hers. This place was bleeding old man Spallone dry. Talk to the maid. She’s got the Roma kid’s number and called him when Giorgio needed a ride. There’s your link. And the car.” He pulled out the business card Ion Dinicu’s father had given him. “This is an old Mercedes. Dinicu used it as an illegal cab. Spallone was his customer. My guess is Sven here ferried them away in it after he hit them, then dumped the thing. Find this …” – he squinted at the picture and read out the licence plate – “… and we’re in court come Friday. My guess is start looking around Testaccio.” He glanced at the Finn. “Sven here’s not the brightest button in the box.”