by Aidan Conway
“Bloody wire’s gone,” he hissed to Carrara. “We’ll have to wing it.”
Their suspect then moved around the car as planned, and Marini’s vague form on the driver’s side became visible again.
“Open your door, quietly,” whispered Rossi, disabling the inside light, as he squeezed the handle on his side. “Let me get close before you switch on the headlights. Then follow but come round wide from the other side.”
There was a loud cry from Maria.
“Police! Hands on the car!”
Rossi took it as his cue to leap out onto the now inches-thick carpet of snow. Keeping low and heading straight for Marini, he slipped his weapon from the holster and barked his orders as the headlights then illuminated the whole scene.
“Don’t move! Police!” he barked.
Carrara was now moving, describing a wide arc to Rossi’s right as he too, keeping low to the ground, homed-in on the vehicle. As Rossi approached, he could see a dark-coated figure splayed across the opposite side of the bonnet of Marini’s SUV. She was standing just a couple of feet behind him now in a firm, authoritative stance and was angling her weapon with both hands at the nape of his neck.
“Everything under control?” Rossi enquired.
“All according to plan,” came the response.
“Positive ID?”
“Take a look for yourself.”
The car’s inside light shed enough light across the bonnet for Rossi to give confirmation. Older, some hints of grey at the temples, slightly heavier, but him all right.
“Well, let’s get the cuffs on him, shall we?” said Rossi, tucking his Beretta back into its holster and giving Carrara the signal to approach. “We can talk in the car. Good work.”
“Just a minute,” said Marini taking a step back then to raise her weapon in Rossi’s direction. “How about you just throw that on the ground.”
“Do what?” said Rossi.
“Throw the gun on the ground, there,” she said indicating the shadows out of the headlights’ reach. “And slowly.”
Rossi glanced across at Carrara, who had snapped into a kneeling firing stance, but did as asked.
“Don’t move, Gigi,” said Marini tracking him from the corner of her eye. “I don’t know about you but I was top of the class at marksman’s school. I might not get you both, but one of you’s going down. So keep it very, very calm.”
“Just leave it, Gigi,” said Rossi. “Drop the gun.”
“I’ve got her if you want,” said Carrara. He was cast-iron steady, the laser an unwavering dot on Marini’s temple. Marini’s aim, meanwhile, was boring a red hole between Rossi’s eyes.
“Put it down,” Rossi said again. “No one is getting hurt.”
Carrara remained firm, then lowering his aim, he flicked on the safety and tossed the weapon away. The flakes had thickened and were rushing across the headlights’ beams now.
Marini, her weapon still trained on Rossi, also released herself from the firing stance.
“Well,” she said. “So, here we all are.”
She walked forward and jammed the muzzle of the gun hard into the back of Bonaventura’s skull, her finger tightening on the trigger as she revelled in her own performance.
“Maria,” said Rossi, “it’s not for you to take the law into your own hands.”
She looked up.
“Revenge, you mean? It’s not my job to mete out revenge? For what he did to Kristina? You’re smart, I’ll give you that, Rossi but I think you’ve gone and got the wrong end of the stick on this one. None of this is about revenge. Well, at least not for me it isn’t.”
She cleared away some of the snow from the bonnet with a swipe of her hand then laid her gun next to Giuseppe Bonaventura’s still immobile hand.
“You’ll be needing this, I suppose,” she said stepping back. “It will really confuse the ballistics when they find this is the murder weapon. Non-police issue and against all the regulations. But I’m getting ahead of myself. You two must have so much to say to each other.”
Carrara seemed to be gathering himself to make a lunge for his weapon.
“No!” cried Rossi halting his colleague with a firm hand gesture.
From his prostrate position, Bonaventura took hold of the gun and raised himself up off the bonnet. It was him all right. No mistake. He weighed the weapon with apparent satisfaction.
“Michael,” he said, “it’s been so long.”
Rossi gave no answer.
“And what a night for a reunion,” he said gesturing to the sky and the candid tableau in which they now found themselves. Rossi gave a grim laugh.
“I thought you might have preferred to smash my skull in with a hammer. Or is that method reserved for defenceless women? How many is it?”
It was now his adversary’s turn to acknowledge the dark irony with a dry attempt at laughter.
“Michael, Michael, I was following orders. Nothing more and nothing less. In our line of work, someone has to do the dirty deeds. Killing has become my second nature. It’s how I pay my way in this vale of tears. And if a few innocents have to fall by the wayside so that the status quo can be maintained, so be it. It’s the grand design, Michael. The powerful must rule and with an iron fist. It’s bigger than me, than you, than all of us. But we all play our part. But this, now. This here is personal. And you know why.”
“Do I?”
Memories seemed to have visited Giuseppe’s face as before Rossi’s eyes it began to transform itself into a mask of evil intent.
“You mean you don’t remember what you did to me?”
“You deserved everything you got,” Rossi replied, without hesitation.
“You stole my woman. You set me up. I did time because of you, Michael. And then I had to drag myself back to where I am now. I had to take the hard way. I’m not bitter but I do believe in vengeance, and what goes around comes around. You of all people should know that.”
“It was nothing less than you had coming but I’m surprised it’s taken you so long to crawl out from beneath that stone you’ve been hiding under.”
“I bided my time, Michael. A dish best served cold and all that. Oh,” he said, changing the subject with theatrical over emphasis, “and by the way, how is Yana? That is what she calls herself now, isn’t it?”
“What the hell do you know or care about her?”
“Oh, just wondering if she might have had some nostalgia. You know, for the old days. The good old days. Back then I was doing the rounds in the underworld. Let’s say my efficiency did not go unnoticed or unrewarded. There was a lot of merchandise to shift in and out of those places, a lot to dispose of too. You know the kind of things – overdoses, clients getting carried away with the rough stuff, the snuff trade. Who knows, our paths may even have crossed. She might have been one of the madams there holding a clipboard and ticking it all off.”
Rossi felt his muscles stiffen at the provocation. His fingers first reached for the weapon that was not within his reach and then began to shape themselves into a futile fist.
“Do you honestly think I would believe a single word you’re saying?”
“Oh, but you should,” he said, nodding and pointing his gun at Rossi as if it were an admonishing finger. “Because I’m in control now, not you. You will let me know when she’s back on her feet, won’t you?”
“You won’t get anywhere near her,” Rossi growled, knowing that the provocation was meant to destabilize him, as well as hurt him where it could hurt most. He had tried to kill Yana, but had failed and she would outlive him whatever he had to do to guarantee it.
“Well, I guess you won’t be around to know that. Maybe I’ll look her up myself,” he said and raised the weapon, aiming it at his old adversary. “Perhaps you’d like to run, Michael, it could make it more fun, for me, of course. I’ve been taking out too many soft targets recently. It gets a little boring, you know.”
“So you’re not going to use your hammer on me?” said Rossi.
“I thought you liked to get close to your victims.”
“Oh, I do, Michael, when they smell nice. All that perfume and sexuality. But I’m afraid my hammer’s in the Tiber now along with my other tools. Never to be found. So, this will just have to do.”
It was then, with the sound of something approaching a frenzied battle-cry, that Carrara dived to make a desperate lunge for his stranded weapon. In an instant, Giuseppe had swung round and, taking swift aim, squeezed the trigger. But as Carrara went tumbling across the snow the gun gave only a dull click.
“Don’t shoot, Gigi!” Rossi shouted. “It’s a trap.”
As Giuseppe cursed, re-racked the slide on the Beretta and positioned himself to take aim again, Maria, from inside her coat, had already drawn a snub-nose revolver to deliver the one and only decisive shot – into the back of Giuseppe Bonaventura’s skull.
She stood there, the diminutive weapon at ease in her hand. Carrara had grasped his gun and, rolling away, had swivelled to lock on to his target. A thick black slick was spreading from where Giuseppe lay on the virgin snow. Keeping Maria in his sights, Carrara got to his knees. He’d managed to gash his head and lip in the attempt and looked dazed but still he held his ground.
“Don’t move, Michael,” she said. “Just stay where you are. I think we have a few things to straighten out.”
“Really?” said Rossi. “I think it’s you who’ve got the serious explaining to do.”
She walked around from behind the car pointing the snub-nose at Rossi with rock steady assurance even as she reached down to pick up the inspector’s weapon.
“Here,” she said, checking it had been de-cocked before tossing it onto the snow at his feet. “No bad feelings, I hope.”
“I should be dead,” said Carrara still holding her in his sights.
“Me too,” said Rossi.
“Giving me a gun with no firing pin was very clever, Inspector,” said Marini. “You were really trying to look after us.”
“You seem to have been looking after yourself with that,” he countered, indicating the revolver aimed at him now from her hip. “So, that’s what you wanted so much, is it?” he said, indicating the cooling pool of blood issuing from the dead man’s skull. “Well, you got it. And just how far were you intending him to go with that little mise en scène you decided to cook up? Are you telling me you would have let it go down to the wire? He could have killed me without so much as a by your leave.”
“I’d taken the pin out, Inspector. It didn’t jam. Give me that much credit, at least. I just wanted to see what you were capable of, under pressure. And you were good. Very good. And I could hardly take him out in cold blood, could I? It would have been something of an anti-climax.”
“Well,” said Rossi, “at least I knew you were up to something when you swapped your gun for mine back at the flat. I guessed you’d want to have it your way. You like things your way. That’s why you went to the bathroom, isn’t it? You couldn’t believe I’d actually give you a weapon, so you checked it out.”
“Very smart,” she replied. “Cleverer than I would have thought.”
“So,” said Rossi, with a pragmatic air, “you got your revenge, against our wishes, and got some kick out of putting our lives on the line too. Giuseppe’s dead. What do you want now? Or do I have the feeling there is yet more to this than meets the eye?”
“Now, I just disappear. It’s all that simple. I wanted to make it more interesting, shall we say. Giving him that final illusion of power was cruel but wonderful, erotic almost. Then bam! But you’ll never see me again. Job done. You’ve got your corpse. He admitted everything. You can sleep tonight with a clear conscience that justice has been served.”
Behind them the car radio had crackled into life.
“They’re looking for me,” said Rossi putting on hold the marginal gloss he would have made on Marini’s disturbing psychological admission. “Perhaps I should let them know we are, shall we say, ‘busy’?”
“Well let’s go and see,” said Marini with near jocular levity and giving Carrara clearance. He lowered his aim with visible reluctance, strode back to the car and reached in to take it, but it had gone dead again.
“I will admit,” said Maria, as the three of them stood there in the snow, “it did get a bit too complicated, but I suppose that’s just the way I am. And at least that’s one chapter closed. So, I can go back to rebuilding a life; you’ve got your killer.”
“Who’s been very conveniently denied the right to a fair trial,” said Carrara.
“He was guilty as hell – he admitted as much,” replied Marini.
“And we’ll never know who sent him,” Rossi added, “or why he did it. They’ll slip back into the shadows as always, right? But doesn’t it just seem like he’d done his job? Wasn’t it all as if his time had come? Like he’d become expendable? Or am I reading a little too much into our clever or fortuitous stumbling upon him like we did?”
“I think you should take from this what you can, Inspector. Count your blessings. You’ll need them.”
The radio sputtered into life again with a squawk. Marini gave Carrara a sign of assent with her gun.
“Put the pistol on the bonnet then answer it but no clever shit, OK?”
She was calling the shots now and she looked like she’d slipped into the role like a natural. Carrara did as ordered and reached in again for the radio.
“Yes,” said Carrara into the handset and straining then to hear through clouds of static. He turned back to Rossi. “It’s Bianco. The channel’s bad but I think he’s at the hospital. Says they want to talk to you.”
Ignoring Marini, Rossi bound towards Carrara and tore the handset away from him.
“Yes!” said Rossi.
“Inspector?”
“Yes!” said Rossi again.
“They tried calling you but most of the mobile networks are down, with the snow and all, but there’s something important.”
“What?” said Rossi with growing impatience.
“It’s Yana.”
“What?” demanded Rossi. “What about her?”
“She’s spoken.”
“She’s done what?” he shouted. “You’ll have to speak up!”
“I said she’s spoken. Yana. Today. We’ve been trying to reach you. We think it might be important, for the case.”
The signal was crackling and wavering again, but Rossi could still just make it out.
“What did she say? What?”
There was a pause. A few perfect flakes settled on the shiny black handset while he waited for the response.
“She said this,” he said, “only this,” and then enunciating with great care, “she said ‘it was a woman’.”
But Marini, arms outstretched, was already behind them and pointing her weapon.
“Out of the fucking way!” she ordered before exploding a round through the open car window and tearing the radio apparatus apart.
“I’ve got four left, so don’t even think of being heroes,” she warned as Carrara, unsteady now as more blood trickled down his face, made a reflex lurch for his own weapon.
“You did it! You tried to kill Yana!” he shouted, abandoning his effort.
“And I’ll kill you at the drop of a hat, bello,” she replied.
“And you murdered Kristina,” said Rossi. “Had she rumbled you, or what? Was it blackmail? Or just another easy target?”
Marini was holding Rossi in her sights now.
“Let’s say I was planning on being out of here before it came to this but if you really want to know, I don’t see why I shouldn’t let you in on the secret. It wasn’t in the script but it’ll be like pillow talk, won’t it? After all the fun we’ve had.”
She reached under her sweater, yanked off the wire and, dropping it onto the ground, crushed it under her heel for good measure.
“Giuseppe was working for us. For the services. For our branch of the services. So, what he said to you before he departed this
mortal coil was true. But I’m afraid he’d gone way beyond his brief. He was getting out of control. That cop getting shot in Tor Sapienza – that was all his work. So, we had to rein him in. And that’s how I got him here, under the pretence that he was going to have you, Michael, at long last. That was what he had so wanted and for which he’d been playing ball, up to a point. That was why he was working for the … well let’s just say ‘for us’.”
“So he was surplus to requirements.”
“He was a dangerous killer, Michael.”
“Don’t give me that shit. He was your killer and you knew all along.”
Marini gave a sigh which, while theatrically affected and self-consciously condescending, in pathological terms appeared all too real.
“It’s a war, Michael. A long, dirty war. Unpleasant things have to happen so as to maintain the status quo. We have never gone away and the strong must rule.”
“And women must die for that? You make me sick.”
“It’s what we believe in. And it is, I admit, a heavy responsibility.”
“So you’re a fascist then,” said Carrara with disgust and spitting more blood onto the snow.
“Yes,” she said nodding, “if that’s what you want to call me. A fascist, yes. Undiluted. Black-hearted, through and through. A guardian of the patria, the real state. Not this illegitimate farce they call a democracy. Government by the people! Government by those strong enough to seize it! We govern the real state of affairs from within, unseen. Custodians of the flame, sentinels at the gates, holding back the hordes, the infidels. I would prefer that but yes, fascist will suffice.”
“You’re insane!” said Carrara leaning against the car clutching his head and steadying himself.
“Well it all just fitted together so well,” she said. “It was quite beautiful. We had Spinelli inside and his party of populist fools in fibrillation, we had the city running scared, the crime squad’s best men in the palm of our hand. You did well though, Rossi, I’ll give you that. You picked up on everything, all the clues. So, when Kristina’s moment came, I had that little note worked out and I thought I’d just muddy things up by leaving it where you’d find it further down the line. And sooner or later you might have got him, with the risks he was taking.
