by Tim Parks
Morris stared at her. ‘That they have a lousy selection procedure.’
The lawyer laughed heartily. ‘We also know that he spent his last holiday with Zolla, sharing the same suite in a hotel in Benghazi.’
‘Benghazi!’
‘Yes.’
‘But why would anyone go on holiday in Benghazi?’
‘Morris, that’s hardly a question we need to answer. The point is that we can now prove beyond reasonable doubt that there was an intimate relationship which had clearly soured, if Zolla was sitting on the floor in Volpi’s office crying. The younger man felt humiliated. He had a motive to kill.’
Morris shook his head. ‘Carla, I’m in your hands,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you all I know. For the rest I give up.’
The lawyer gathered her papers, got to her feet. ‘We will get your name cleared, Signor Duckworth,’ she assured him. ‘Believe me, you will walk free.’
Towards seven that evening, as he was eating a risotto with radicchio rosso, listening to the evening news on the radio and glancing through photos of VIPs in their swimwear on Corriere della Sera’s home page, a slip of paper was pushed under the door.
‘Please come after midnight to the sixth floor, where your presence is required.’
Chapter Twenty
MORRIS WAITED FOR SAMIRA to knock and told her she would have to spend some time alone. He had been called upstairs. He was late. The girl became thoughtful.
‘Remember, Morris. If it’s really what you want, I’m with you,’ she said. ‘I’ll give any help you need.’
Morris felt moved. Climbing the stairs, he remembered his recurrent Holofernes dream. Would Samira betray him as Antonella had? His wife had cut the jugular, now he was putting his mistress in a position to sever his head. Not a picture he ever wanted to see.
Mariella opened the door in baby-blue pyjamas, braless, her hair loose.
‘You’re late, Dottor Duckworth.’
‘The invitation said after midnight.’ It was quarter past one. Morris pretended the embarrassment of the man growing older. ‘I fell asleep for a while.’
In a cloud of smoke in the sitting room, two men were playing cards. ‘Buona sera,’ said the mayor.
Morris did not show so much as a flicker of surprise. Recent events had taught him that much. The room was as he remembered it, the low lighting, the lines of well-dusted photos, and the gloomily polished furniture. You always felt Mass was about to be intoned in these well-to-do Veronese homes.
‘Do fix Dottor Duckworth a drink,’ said a gravelly, ecclesiastical voice. In his red dressing gown, Cardinal Rusconi was studying the cards in his hand. ‘Forgive us, will you, if we finish our little game,’ he said without looking up.
‘Forgiven,’ Morris conceded, pulling up a chair. The mayor grinned at the new arrival more frankly. In jeans and v-neck tee shirt, his square jaw unshaven, he might have been a worker on one of Morris’s building sites. The man’s shoes, in particular, were the slip-on moccasin kind that Morris felt sent all the wrong signals. When he tasted Jack Daniels, he said at once to Mariella, ‘Chiedo scusa, but I really would prefer a Scotch.’
‘Of course,’ she said.
Morris had no idea what game the two men were playing; they were bent over a low glass table, slapping down cards and picking up from a stack, occasionally muttering the name of the card as they revealed its face. It was childish. Settling in a deep armchair, he asked coolly, ‘One thing I’d very much like to know, Your Eminence, is how Don Lorenzo ended up with such a bad leg. I’d always meant to ask him and I always forgot.’
The mayor threw Morris a quizzical look from eyes closer set than eyes should ever be. But the cardinal had begun to chuckle.
‘How funny you should ask, Dottor Duckworth. It was so many years ago. But hard to forget. We were at the funeral of a famous local personage—my bishop days, this was. Don Lorenzo was one of the coffin bearers. Holding the back right corner. I remember because I was walking directly behind him. Anyway, he tripped, or rather, as he privately complained to me later, was tripped, and the coffin crashed down on his leg. We were at the top of the steps coming out of San Zeno and I remember feeling we were rather lucky the thing didn’t split open and send the body tumbling down into the piazza. It was only sometime later that we realised how badly poor Lorenzo had been hurt. He was in plaster for months.’
The cardinal continued to play as he spoke, chuckling all the time, his cigar, as ever, smouldering at the corner of his mouth. Having reflected for a moment on the discrepancies with the version he had heard some months earlier, Morris asked: ‘And who was the rather famous personage, pray?’
The cardinal hesitated. ‘A very wonderful man.’
Morris waited.
‘A mayor.’
‘Of Verona?’ the present mayor enquired.
‘Of Bussolengo,’ the cardinal replied, laying down his penultimate card. ‘A rather flamboyant fellow. Not without his faults, alas, but nothing the Almighty hasn’t forgiven, I’m sure.’
‘You haven’t told us his name.’
‘D’Alessio, a most charismatic character if ever there was one. Gigi D’Alessio.’
‘The judge’s father, then?’ Morris quickly enquired.
‘His uncle.’
‘The D’Alessio family owns half the property between Bussolengo and Lake Garda,’ the mayor said respectfully. ‘But I’m sure Morris knows this. You don’t mind my calling you Morris, do you? Please do call me Roberto.’
‘To tell the truth the cardinal was calling me Morris last time I was here.’
‘So I was,’ Rusconi remembered.
‘As I recall,’ Morris observed, ‘the main property owner in that area is Malesani.’
‘That’s the grandfather’s wife, I believe. There was some convenience in keeping the property in her name. But the actual owners are the D’Alessios.’
‘And why would anyone want to trip a poor priest and mourner, at such a moment?’
The cardinal laid down his last card, raising a silent smile of triumph to the mayor who shook his head ruefully. The churchman then sat up and turned to Morris, a more businesslike tone creeping into his voice: ‘It was a long and complicated affair, Morris. I was never sure I understood it, and I certainly don’t think we have time to go into it now. We mustn’t rob our mayor of too much of his beauty sleep.’
‘D’Alessio was Signora Trevisan’s, my defunct mother-in-law’s, lover,’ Morris guessed confidently. ‘I presume that Signor Trevisan’s friend Don Lorenzo had tried to intervene. What I don’t understand is who at the funeral would have wanted to trip Don Lorenzo for this act of mediation.’
‘Santo cielo,’ the cardinal sighed deeply. ‘I’m very much afraid that you are, how do you English say, barking about the wrong bush, Morris. The fact is that the good Don, perhaps not so absolutely good as some in the town believed, for we all have our small faults and foibles’—he winked here and half frowned too at Morris, as if to intimate that the mayor was not to be brought in on any other sensitive information regarding the dead priest—‘the good Don had become rather, er, intimate with D’Alessio’s wife; it was even rumoured that it was this, yes, intimacy, that had driven the mayor, this flamboyant mayor, very much in love with his own charisma, a very vain man, to his early grave. It would have been the nephew, that is our present judge D’Alessio, bearing the back left corner of the coffin, as I recall, who would have been in a position to trip Don Lorenzo, if that is indeed what happened, feeling as he no doubt did that the priest had no business to be at the funeral of a man he had cuckolded, never mind carrying his coffin. Dear D’Alessio was very attached to his uncle for reasons that escape me. Perhaps you could ask him. In any event, my own opinion on these matters is that a man’s dealings with a woman need never come between the fraternal instincts of true male friendship. Isn’t that true, cara?’ He turned again to Mariella and smiled unctuously. She was sitting apart, on a straight-backed chair at the dinner table, kn
itting what looked like a very small sweater, and received his occasional attentions with quick pursings of puckered lips.
‘So there you are.’
Morris found himself staring at the cardinal’s soft, beringed fingers holding the turd-like cigar whose smoke wrapped up every conversation in a stench of stale sophistication. Once again, he thought, Italy was making an utter fool of him.
‘I wonder, though,’ the cardinal went on, ‘why you are so fascinated by the events of thirty and more years ago.’
‘I believe,’ Morris said matter-of-factly, brushing imagined crumbs from his knees, ‘that my son owes his red hair to the D’Alessio family.’
‘Davvero!’ The cardinal twisted his mouth in theatrical reflection. ‘How interesting. And you set about establishing this by asking me about Don Lorenzo’s ankle?’
‘The two facts are connected, I believe.’
‘You know a great deal, Morris.’
‘Never enough, it would seem.’
‘But again, I’m not quite clear in my mind why you would raise this issue at this moment.’
Morris hesitated: ‘Because I fear, Your Eminence, that I may not have many further occasions for tapping your considerable knowledge.’
‘Per favore! Quite the contrary,’ the cardinal assured him. ‘When we have overcome this little legal hiccup of yours, I’m sure we will have plenty of time for discussing all sorts of things. And if I am to call you Morris, you really must call me Paolo.’
‘Let’s come closer to home, then, Paolo,’ Morris said abruptly. ‘Why was Professor Zolla weeping in Volpi’s office that morning?’
‘Ah, there’s a question!’ The churchman stood up and went to the sideboard to refresh his glass. ‘It was a most distasteful incident.’
But the mayor was looking at his watch.
‘Paolo, perhaps we’d better . . .’
‘Of course,’ the cardinal conceded. ‘We can discuss this later, Morris. However, the reason we are met here this evening is because the good mayor has a proposal to put to you.’
The Northern League man turned to Morris, rubbed his square hands and set his jaw.
‘Morris, we would like you and Fratelli Trevisan Enterprises to be responsible for guiding the project to build a road tunnel under the Torricelli. No doubt you are familiar with the plan: the tunnel will link the east and west of the city passing under the hills to the north of the river, thus removing at a single stroke all the traffic congestion that has been holding back our urban development for so long. One of the reasons for making you an honorary citizen, in fact, was to prepare your public profile for this offer. I’ll be frank: we feel that your company, owning as it does considerable chunks of the property above the route of the tunnel, will be well placed to head off some of the middle-class opposition to the project. The excavations, for example, will pass under the old Trevisan estates in Quinzano, and the fact that you are not concerned about this and actually involved in the tunnel’s construction will reassure the other landowners.’
The mayor paused.
‘We expect to be opening the project to official tender in the next few weeks and assigning the contract early autumn. Needless to say, this will be the largest public works in Verona since Mussolini had the river embankments built in the twenties. It is a huge opportunity, hence not a decision we have taken lightly. Having watched the way you have worked, Morris, over the last thirty years, we believe that more than any local entrepreneur, you have the expertise and psychological stamina to see it through. We have been deeply impressed by your combination of efficiency, long-term strategy and absolute discretion, not to mention your immense charitable involvement in everything Veronese.’
Morris could not believe it. If only this offer had come three months ago! It was an extraordinary gesture of faith in his regard. He sighed heavily, turning to look in frank amazement from one man to the other.
‘Caro, carissimo Roberto,’ he eventually said. ‘I am honoured, deeply honoured. But I must remind you, gentlemen, that I am presently under arrest for murder. Am I not? My trial starts on 10 July. How can I tender for a major public project in these circumstances? I would have to start talks at once to put together a consortium of companies with the appropriate experience. I should also say that since my wife has asked for the annulment of our marriage I am not even sure what my legal position in Fratelli Trevisan really is any more.’
When the mayor’s face broke into a grin Morris was struck by the thought that the corners of his huge mouth were indeed further apart than the outer corners of his eyes.
‘What did I tell you?’ he said to the cardinal.
‘And I said you were right.’
The mayor smiled at Morris. ‘Paolo and I had a little bet together on your reaction to the offer, knowing what a correct kind of man you are. We were not wrong.’
‘That may be so,’ Morris began, ‘but—’
The mayor had held up his hand. ‘Morris, my friend, as for your legal troubles, the cardinal has assured me that you two have an agreement that will lead to their rapid resolution. So let’s hear nothing more of the matter. Concerning the consortium, we are already putting that together. Don’t worry. We have excellent engineers in mind. Your job will be to head the team. If we give that privilege to a Veronese, there will be endless infighting and envy.’
Morris stared. ‘If it’s merely a question of using Fratelli Trevisan,’ he said, ‘my son Mauro is presently at the helm and—’
‘Ha!’ The mayor laughed heartily. ‘You son is an excellent Hellas fan, Morris; but I’m afraid he does not have the maturity for a project of this magnitude.’
The cardinal coughed. ‘If I may, Morris: regarding your position in the company and so on, I think you will soon be hearing some good news from your dear Antonella. I have personally spent many hours in prayer and Bible-reading with her, pointing out that you two have been living together happily for more than twenty years, which would hardly be the case if you were some sort of monster. In any event, she is now persuaded that the, er, wild charges against you, past and present, are mere nonsense.’
‘I’m very grateful,’ Morris said humbly, appreciating that the cardinal was warning him that the other man knew nothing of this aspect of the situation.
Looking at his watch again, the mayor jumped to his feet. ‘Talking about wives, mine will be getting suspicious!’ He smiled at Mariella. ‘Thank you so much for your hospitality, Mari. Our cardinal is such a lucky man!’ A moment later the city’s first citizen was gone, leaving Cardinal Rusconi, who hadn’t risen from his seat, smiling complacently at Morris from over his drink.
‘Are you pleased?’ the churchman asked.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Morris said.
‘My purpose in bringing the mayor here this evening,’ the cardinal went on, ‘was to reassure you that we are keeping our side of the bargain. You can trust us. We are willing to put you right at the heart of Veronese society, back in your palazzo in Via Oberdan, where you belong, back beside your wonderful wife who has been so sadly and needlessly upset. All you have to do in return, Morris’—at this point the cardinal reached deep into his dressing gown—‘is use this.’
He pulled a small handgun from a pocket and laid it down on the glass coffee table beside the drinks and packs of cards. From his other pocket he removed a thick cylinder about six inches long. He placed this on the table beside the weapon.
‘I believe the combination amounts to the most silent handgun on the market.’
Morris waited a few moments before asking: ‘And who am I to point it at?’
The cardinal squeezed the very tip of his nose. ‘Morris, the last time we met you said you were very eager to see the art show that you had been involved in promoting, Painting Death.’
Morris waited.
‘The opening is on 9 July, am I right?’
Morris did not comment.
‘At the show, and I must say this is a rather genial idea of Profe
ssor Zolla’s, there will be a dark room where visitors can simulate involvement in murders. They can touch period weapons, they can interact with holograms. They can watch video reconstructions of famous assassinations, pretending to be the participants.’
Morris did not waste time informing the cardinal that this had actually been his idea.
‘On the opening day, you will be in that dark room with this, er, instrument.’ He waved a hand over the gun. ‘We will get you into the building unseen the morning of the opening. You will have plenty of time to visit and enjoy the show. Immediately before the ceremony begins, and only then, we will indicate to you who will be the, er, object of your attention. After Zolla’s opening speech, there will be a guided visit to the show. You will wait till your target enters the dark room, you then do your duty, which will only take a moment, and walk quickly out of the show. The confusion in that room will be such that you will not be apprehended. We will return you unseen to your home in Via Oberdan where your wife will welcome you back and all will be as it was before this nightmare began. At the opening of the trial on the following day, evidence will emerge suggesting that the man you killed in the museum was Volpi’s murderer. There will be excellent reasons for believing this and the charges against you will be dropped. Is all that clear?’
As mud ever can be, Morris thought. He sighed deeply. ‘Now please tell me,’ he said, ‘why Zolla was sitting on the floor in Volpi’s office that morning.’
Chapter Twenty-one
STANDING BEFORE CAIN AND ABEL, Morris wept. How well Titian understood killing: on one side innocence and unpreparedness, on the other sudden, ruthless, crushing violence. Morris saw now, examining the master’s brushwork in the hazy light of a summer’s dawn, how the painting’s odd perspective beautifully reinforced this ugly truth: the low angle, almost from under the tumbling Abel, foreshortened the towering Cain into a whirlwind of clubbing fury, fusing killer with stormy sky and victim with stony ground. Murder crashed down on the dark earth from the darker heavens, irresistible and inexplicable as a thunderbolt.
