by Aidan Conway
“There’s nothing I can do about it, and there’s nothing I can do here either. The doctors even suggested I have a break. It can help in these situations. Besides, it’s not exactly a holiday. More like a funeral.”
“Ah,” said Maroni, “I didn’t realize, Rossi. Er, my sympathies.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Rossi’s superior had a distinctly harried air and was staring at a point on the far edge of his desk, as if willing something to appear. Rossi shifted in his chair. He had initially declined Maroni’s offer to be seated as time was against him and he knew he still had numerous things to see to before taking the 14.45 flight to Santiago de Compostela.
Maroni lifted his gaze for a moment. “It’s getting depressingly predictable, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, sir. I’m afraid it is.”
“Anyway,” said Maroni, “we’re dealing with it, like with the other three, and Yana, of course. We soldier on. We have to, don’t we? I’ve got some good lads on it, you’ll be glad to know.”
Rossi raised a questioning eyebrow that didn’t go unmissed as Maroni’s chubby fingers fiddled with a chain of paper clips.
“Beautiful city, I hear, San Compostela,” he declared.
“Yes, I should like to make the full pilgrimage one day.”
“Yes, I believe it’s very ‘in’, the pilgrimage thing.”
“Oh, is it?” replied Rossi, sensing an opening now in Maroni’s more chatty approach. He seemed to have lowered his guard, as if he might want to connect with him.
“Can’t say I’ve ever really been into what’s in, sir. I just do what I’m into.”
Maroni furrowed his brow further, disgruntled at having been even partially exposed as a mere follower of trends. Roman trends. The most predictable.
“Well, good luck, Rossi and look, if you do think of anything while your thoughts are elsewhere, you will let me know?”
“You mean you’re not so sure now, about Spinelli?”
Maroni clasped his hands in front of his face, prayer-like.
“Maybe we should talk. When you get back. When there’s more time. Nothing official, you know.”
Rossi held him in his gaze as if awaiting further confirmation. Maroni was looking anywhere but at him, as if tracking the vague peregrinations around the office of an entrapped fly.
“And now with this shooting at the Colosseum the pressure is getting to be, well, I won’t say unbearable, but it’s coming from every sainted direction.”
Maroni gave a furtive glance towards Rossi, whose expression had softened enough for Maroni to feel he could continue.
“There’s a lot of pressure on me, Rossi, I don’t need to tell you, and that comes all the way from the top. And as much as they might say they want results, they also demand scapegoats when it suits and you fit the bill for some. It’s politics, Rossi. It’s not about long-term results, it’s about quick fixes, and short memories, placating the media and suchlike. But give me a few days and I can get things back the way they were. I know these cases are hellish, and there’s no guarantee of success but I personally think you are among the best we’ve got. Let me see if I can make some other concessions and then we can find a way round any formalities if needs be. After all, it’s compassionate leave, isn’t it? It can’t last forever.”
Get back on the case? So he needs me now, thought Rossi. He must be in trouble.
Rossi waited a moment longer. Maroni was waiting too. Their eyes locked.
“Go to Spain, Rossi. Do what you have to do. I’ll see what I can do this end and then when you’re back we can talk again.”
“Very well, sir,” replied Rossi. “Very well.”
Rossi skipped down the stairs to his office on the second floor. Urgency had given him energy, even with the new burdens he now knew he would have to carry with him, perhaps always. He had to print his boarding pass and add a suitcase to the booking. He was forgoing travelling light so as to be able to stock up on wines and delicacies should the opportunity present itself. He was at least entitled to that. Having fumbled through his bag and diary for the necessary codes of access, but without success, he logged on to his personal e-mail to look up the missing booking code. Among the several reasons why Rossi disliked electronic mail was that he always felt some important or tedious communication was waiting there, slyly lurking to catch him out. It was a feeling that could sometimes leave him in a constant state of mild but oppressive anxiety.
Among the spam near the top of his inbox there was, however, something sufficiently out of the ordinary to engage his interest. “For Rossi,” it read “I know who it is.” Phone calls from crazies, legion during a murder enquiry, rarely got through to him but e-mails from freaks were even less common. Of course, nowadays, your address could fall into anyone’s hands; nevertheless, despite his considerable scepticism, and knowing time was against him, he clicked. Anonymous. Might have known. From a Xerox machine. Traceable, yes, but they’d have taken all the necessary precautions. He’d get Carrara onto that anyway. His field. The message itself was short and to the point.
I know who it is. Meet in Basilica San Giovanni, Saturday. 10.00. Alone. Bring phone.
A mobile number followed. Get Carrara onto that, too, though it would only be some SIM card of convenience registered to a hill farmer in deepest Peru. “Well, something to look forward to when I get back,” said Rossi to no one in particular but without holding out much in the way of real hope. “Haven’t been inside San Giovanni for ages,” he mused as he grabbed the phone.
“Gigi, got something for you to check out. Should be in your inbox,” said Rossi pressing send and feeling very hi-tech and with it, “now. And I’ll be in Rome a day earlier than expected. Yes,” Rossi continued, “it’s very interesting. Maroni wants us back. Kind of.” He permitted himself a little satisfied smile as his colleague celebrated by sending a string of Maroni-directed expletives down the line. “Oh and Gigi, can I ask you to take a look in on Yana, while I’m not here. I’m going to pop over again if I can today before I leave. I’d appreciate it.”
With some considerable irritation, he concluded his flight preparations, double-checked he hadn’t fouled it all up and then stuffed the pass into his jacket pocket where the two photos from the judge still were. He’d forgotten all about that. Might have to give that back, he thought. Or maybe not. He checked his watch. A detour to Via Tiburtina? Was it doable? He could always board with his warrant card if it went down to the wire. He left the office and the building and got into a waiting cab.
“Tiburtina then San Giovanni. Quick as you can.”
Rossi jumped out of the taxi and jogged over to the newsagent’s stand. It was the one nearest to the judge’s apartment. A snazzily dressed middle-aged man was hunched over the papers and magazines. Out of the corner of his eye, Rossi saw beyond the news stand that a silver Audi had stopped suddenly in the traffic. The glass was tinted, and he watched as the driver’s window lowered a couple of inches. A lens maybe? The car sped away into the traffic.
“Excuse me, sir. Police,” said Rossi, holding up his badge. “Routine enquiries. Have you ever seen this person?” At which he produced one of the two photos on loan from the judge. He studied the picture for a moment and then made a theatrical gesture as if to say was the pope Catholic?
“Il Professore!”
“A judge, actually, I believe,” said Rossi. “Did he by any chance buy a book from you recently? I was hoping to get him a present for his birthday. We’re old friends and I didn’t want to get him something he’s already read. That one there by chance?” said Rossi, indicating the Buzzati volume on the shelf behind him.
The man turned, scratched his head for a second, and raised his finger.
“The very one,” he said.
“And do you remember when?”
“Oh, yes. A couple of days ago, if I remember rightly. Yes. The day before yesterday it was.”
“Thank you,” said Rossi.
Thirty<
br />
As the cardinal’s black Lancia swung him through the gates of the Vatican City, the Swiss Guards’ salutes were tri-colourful blurs that didn’t even register for him. He had his head buried deep in his papers. A busy afternoon of appointments lay ahead after lunch. Meetings, visits from foreign counterparts, discussions on key policy documents: immigration, poverty, the family, sexual abuse, the Vatican “bank” (his quotation marks), for it wasn’t a bank but an “institute for sacred works” – the ISW. He was, however, regardless of his intrinsic pedantry, in an excellent mood. If he had been walking, he would have had a definite spring in his purple-stockinged step, even with his seventy and more years. And not just because of the sunshine taking the edge off the unseasonably cold weather they’d been enduring. No. He could already imagine the end of this long working day before it had really begun and the joy that was in store for him. His favourite ‘boy’ was back in town and was, he had been told, bringing a companion.
Boy. The correct term would perhaps have been a compound noun: rent-boy. It was a term he had heard but not a term he, His Excellency, would ever have seen fit to employ, not least because there was and never had been any pecuniary or peccable exchange involved. For him they simply afforded company; intimate, compliant company, yes, although he was aware that other of his “colleagues” made more questionable demands. The boys came and went by arrangement. An exchange born of mutual necessity. They were, he was assured, by his trusted and grateful intermediaries (business men of substance and standing much needed and much appreciated by the Church) not boys in the strict sense but young men. Yet, for a man – and man he was, in spite of his princely status and calling – at his stage of life, that distinction was neither particularly apparent nor in any sense an impediment to his gratification.
The cardinal’s distracted thoughts returned again to the crisp lines of text in the speech he was to deliver, his pen poised and ready to refine it. The Church played its part, was playing its part, in alleviating the crisis, the drama of migration. The boys and men and women and children who saw in Europe their only chance of a better life were at the mercy of the worst exploitative elements within society. The Mafia. (Would he use the “m” word?) Criminal elements. (Safer.) The boys in his care, however, were fortunate and were thriving. They were not at the mercy of the gangmasters, harvesting tomatoes under a merciless sun for 14 hours a day and living, if living it could be called, in tin shacks and lacking the most basic of necessities. The Church had plucked these souls from the jaws of the leviathan and would guide them into education and towards betterment and opportunity and prosperity. Or words to that effect. One had to be so careful. Don’t want to come across as some unreconstructed communist or self-righteous aid agency, or, God forbid, like the UN! When were their scandals going to come out?
Then there were the works to be assigned. His trusted intermediaries, gentlemen of the Church, could be relied upon to provide the means by which important building works could be carried out. There was an abundance of talk about liquidity and availability. In fact, availability was liquidity and vice versa. Willingness. Duty. Their liquidity guaranteed the health and vigour of the Church in these tempestuous times. Without this helping hand, who could be counted on to erect the structures and to guide the organizations which allowed the gospel to be lived out in full? This was the reality. The “poor” Church they harped on about in some of the more radical (communist) sectors was a negation of earthly reality. Making the Church poor would serve only to open the floodgates and who would step in when Saint Peter’s barque had been dashed to mere matchwood on the rocks? The communists, the liberals, the relativists; in a word, the barbarians! This destiny could not be allowed to pass. And it would be his legacy to see that it did not.
The importance of his legacy was not lost on him, for he was the last of his line, so he would leave this to his beloved Church. Too many priests in that family, they’d said, and now no immediate kin to speak of. His thoughts turned to the frail older cousins who had stayed in the village withering into senility like so many olive trees. He would have a papal-embossed ‘card’ posted to them every Christmas and Easter but his life was conducted entro le mura, within the secure walls of the Vatican, the all-embracing, solid, impenetrable fortress of God’s Church.
He had been the youngest and despite his parents’ injunctions had insisted on taking this path. He had always been drawn to the liturgy, the ritual, the majesty of the Church and, as he had quickly learned, to its power. Now, as always on his few forays extra muralis, he yearned to return to his creature comforts. To the silence and the solemnity. To the invulnerability. Not so very long ago the Holy Father had ruled this city as its monarch, the bishop of Rome. Faced with annihilation, they had compromised and the Church’s earthly kingdom now was reduced to these few square kilometres and the treaties underwriting its existence. But the kingdom of the mind and of the spirit was far-reaching. There the great game could still be played, power exerted, majesty displayed.
But he knew also that fissures were appearing in that fortress, hairline cracks, at first, but which would require speedy action if they were not to widen. God’s house, like any house, required timely maintenance and skilled hands if it were to stand. The enemy was at the gates and could, given the chance, bring everything crashing to the ground. But act the Church would, as it always had, down the centuries, down the millennia. Always. Semper et in aeternum. And if the methods had to be questionable it was because the enemy was yet more perfidious. And in this case, as a Prince of the Church, he felt he had to concur with the words of his fellow Sicilian, man of letters, and secular Prince, Tomasi di Lampedusa: “Meglio un male sperimentato che un bene ignoto”. Better a known evil than an unknown good.
Thirty-One
As Rossi hurried along the now-familiar twisting route towards Yana’s ward he stopped. Someone had called his name.
“Michael!”
“Yes?”
He turned to see the familiar face of Marta, Yana’s colleague from the Wellness centre.
“How are you?” he said, kissing her then on both cheeks.
“Fine thanks, just been looking in on Yana. No change, I’m afraid, but there’s still time isn’t there?”
Her huge, dark eyes were glassy with undisguised emotion.
“There is time,” said Rossi, “there’s always time.”
“Well I hope you catch that son of a bitch soon!” she said. “You are going to get him, aren’t you? Sooner or later.”
“Yes,” replied Rossi, “sooner would be better.”
He looked at his watch.
“Look, Marta, I’m catching a plane in about an hour.”
“No problem, beautiful. Off you go. You’ll get him you see. Was it you who was going to come and take a statement?”
“Statement?” said Rossi, hesitating. “What statement?”
“The statement the policeman that came to the gym said I had to make. He wanted to know if Yana had any problems, with money, affairs, that kind of thing. I told him it wasn’t part of her character. Very proper girl and all that. Sensible. Sensitive. You know she was already shook up by that client we had the day it happened. Told her to go home early, I did. I think now if she’d stayed maybe she’d have been all right, but—”
“Excuse me, Marta,” said Rossi cutting her short, “but what client?”
“The one who came to the gym that afternoon.”
“And nobody came to get the facts from you?”
“Well, I was wondering whether I should go down the Questura myself, but I thought they mustn’t have needed it in the end.”
“Go on,” said Rossi. “The client.”
“Oh, well, charming he was, at first, but creepy with it, now I think of it. He tried it on with her. Yana was on massage with Giulia being off. Only said he wanted an ’appy ending when he knew bloody well it’s therapeutic massage only. Go somewhere else if you want that kinda thing, I said.”
“And you cou
ld give a description?”
“Oh yeah. They’ll have his photo, too, on the CCTV. Get down there smartish though before security go over them tapes.”
Rossi whipped out his phone.
“Gigi, me again,” said Rossi, “get yourself or one of the boys down to the Wellness Fitness and Beauty and get the CCTV tapes. We might have a lead. And see what Maroni’s crowd have managed to put together while we were away. I think it’s time for some old-fashioned police work. Yes,” he added, “like starting with the last person to see the victim, maybe, and taking their statements. Oh, and keep your eyes peeled. I think we might have some ‘friends’ interested in us. Audi. Silver.”
He snapped his phone shut.
“Everything all right?” said a now worried-looking Marta. “You’re not in any trouble, are you?”
Thirty-Two
Rossi put down his Italian paper feeling less informed than he had felt before he started reading it. Yes, it told him what people, mainly in politics, were supposedly doing and saying, but it didn’t tell him why and what the consequences might be. As for the outside world, it got pretty short shrift. It was the old story: a merry-go-round of spin, non-news and sensationalist skewing of reality and it left him feeling perplexed and unsatisfied. Beneath him, the sea was giving way to the coast of Spain. Soon they would be crossing the arid, central wastes with their high sierras topped with blobs of virgin snow. Remote, very remote, almost desert areas as good as cut off from the big urban centres and their sophistication. It could, he thought, be a good place to spend some time.
He turned away from the window and picked up again where he had left off, replaying in his mind his own story and that of Rosa Martinez Garcia from when he had been a young man in search both of adventure and of himself all those years ago. How blithely he had redirected the path of his life back then. Yet, he remembered how, when he had arrived there that first day, he had almost wanted to abandon the whole idea. He knew no one; the city was an electrifying turmoil into which he couldn’t imagine anyone willingly throwing themselves. The language, too, was a mystifying babble, despite his best efforts to study it before going. But then he had made friends with other students in the same situation in the temporary hostel accommodation and they’d hunted down somewhere better to live. Then Rosa had arrived on the scene and, soon after, Giuseppe.
