Blood rain az-7

by Michael Dibdin

  I’m fine, Baccio. I have an appointment. I’ll call you later.’

  Zen checked his watch. It was ten to four. He paid his bill and walked down towards the sea.

  During his years of official disgrace following the Aldo Moro affair, Aurelio Zen had been posted to a city in Umbria to investigate another kidnapping case involving a local industrial tycoon. While he was there, one of his colleagues at the Questura had recounted a stock story which the Perugians told about their neighbours and traditional rivals from the town of Foligno, about thirty kilometres away in the valley below their mountain stronghold. The people of Foligno, it was alleged, thought like this: Europe was the centre of the world, the Mediterranean was the centre of Europe, Italy was the centre of the Mediterranean, and Foligno was the geographical centre of Italy. In the centre of Foligno was the Piazza del Duomo, and on this piazza there was a bar, in the centre of which there was a snooker table. The hole in the centre of this table, at the centre of all the other centres, was therefore the original omphalos, navel and origin of the universe.

  Catania was exactly the opposite, Zen reflected as he picked his way across the main road bordering the port area. A landfall on the eastward brink of an island which had always been marginal to the interests of whichever foreigners currently controlled it, Catania had never been the centre of anything. On the contrary, it was the edge. And at the very edge of Catania stood the port, impressively walled, as though to contain the foreign contagions to which it was by its nature exposed. At one end stood the breakwater, flexed like an arm thrust out against the waves.

  And today they were huge, mythical monsters breaking surface as if for the first time, visible evidence of powers and depths beyond human comprehension. A storm had passed over in the night, and although the south-easterly wind had now moderated, the seas it had raised came striding confidently ashore, only to have their determination and vigour smash into the random mass of stone blocks piled to seaward of the breakwater. Visibly perplexed and weakened, the waves shattered into futile spumes of spray and then re-formed as a contradictory scurry of surges and backwashes, their initial impetus dispersed or turned back against itself.

  On one of the outlying rocks, a lone fisherman was trying his luck in the swirls of water below, protecting himself from the sun by means of a large yellow umbrella marked ‘You have a friend at the Cassio di Risparmio di Catania — the friendly bank!’ Zen clambered over the low wall of the breakwater and made his way gingerly from one boulder to another until he reached the one adjacent to the fisherman’s perch.

  ‘Catching anything?’ asked Zen.

  The man turned around and inspected Zen briefly.

  ‘A few minnows. I threw them back in.’

  ‘What did you expect, a swordfish?’

  The man smiled and gestured in a peculiarly feminine way which Zen had by now come to recognize as characteristically Sicilian. It was almost as if, since women had traditionally not been allowed out in public, the men had learned to fill the social space which they would have occupied.

  ‘Dottor Zen. What a pleasure.’

  Zen held his eyes.

  ‘Are you surprised to see me?’

  ‘No, why? We had an arrangement.’

  ‘Death cancels all arrangements.’

  ‘Death?’ murmured Spada. ‘You mean your daughter? Forgive me for not mentioning this terrible tragedy. I thought, perhaps wrongly, that it might be painful…’

  ‘Not half as painful as a bomb in the face. My face.’

  The man looked more and more bewildered.

  ‘A bomb?’

  ‘In the form of a laptop computer belonging to my daughter, gutted of its works, stuffed with plastic explosive and left in my apartment.’

  Spada put down his fishing rod and stared at Zen. Judging by his expression, the bomb might have been meant for him.

  ‘I know nothing of this/ he said.

  Zen raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I thought that the whole point of dealing with people like you was that you did know about these things.’

  ‘I repeat, I know nothing about this. But I will make enquiries.’

  ‘A lot of good your enquiries would have done me if I’d opened the lid of that computer.’

  The man slashed his hand through the air.

  ‘What are you talking about? My friends have no interest in harming you, dottore. You’re no use to us dead.’

  Zen lowered his head ironically.

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it. And in just what way can I be of use to you?’

  Spada gestured in an awkward way.

  ‘It’s a question of a mutual interest, dottore. I’ve been given to understand that you want to find out who killed your daughter. Very naturally.’

  ‘And your interest?’

  To facilitate your investigation.’

  Zen smiled with an irony that was now undisguised.

  ‘But everyone knows that my daughter was killed by your “friends”. Why would you want to help me prove it?’

  Spada picked up his rod, reeled in and then cast his line again.

  ‘Ah, but suppose we didn’t do it?’ he said, looking down at the water.

  ‘Then who did?’ demanded Zen.

  ‘Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?’

  Zen waved his hand dramatically.

  ‘And you don’t know the answer to that either? I’m beginning to wonder whether I should bother taking you or your friends very seriously, Signor Spada.’

  The fisherman slackened his grip on the rod in order to read the vibrations which it was transmitting.

  ‘If you want to find out the truth,’ he said, ‘then you’re going to need help. And for different reasons, which do not concern you, we need help from you. Perhaps we can make a deal.’

  Zen gazed out across the sea with an air of complete boredom.

  ‘My friends didn’t kill Tonino Limina, either,’ said Spada.

  The waves shattered and re-formed on the rocks beneath.

  ‘The Limina family have denied that their son is dead.’

  ‘He’s dead, all right.’

  ‘Then why did they deny it?’

  ‘Because Don Gaspare is a control freak, even though he doesn’t control anything worth a piss these days. But he doesn’t want to look bad. Plus he didn’t want the authorities taking an interest. He would have his revenge when the time came. Which it just has. Five of the Corleone clan frozen to death in a meat truck.’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing about this.’

  ‘It hasn’t been made public. The Corleonesi don’t want to look bad either. I’m just presenting my credentials. Go back to your friends at the DIA and check it out. It’s true.’

  Zen looked up to the north where Etna was spewing out fat white clouds into a heartbreakingly pale blue sky.

  ‘What’s all this got to do with me?’ he demanded. ‘I’m a policeman. I should arrest you right now. Take you down to the basement and have the hard boys go to work on you!’

  He turned away, shielding his face from the wind in an attempt to light a cigarette. On the breakwater, perhaps ten metres away, a young man wearing dark glasses was staring at him. Zen stared back. The man turned away, took out a cellphone and walked off down the mole.

  ‘We didn’t kill Limina,’ Spada repeated, playing his line.

  Zen turned to him with an expression of bored cynicism.

  ‘All right, let’s pretend that you’re telling the truth. Your friends didn’t do it. So who did?’

  Spada raised his rod and plied the reel furiously. About five metres from the edge of the breakwater, a fish broke surface. He hauled it in, twitching and struggling in vain, a small red mullet. Spada inspected it briefly, unhooked the line, and threw the fish back.

  ‘Maybe yours,’ he said.

  Zen tossed the butt of his cigarette after the fish.

  ‘I don’t have any friends.’

  ‘Then you’re dead, dottore. Professionally speaking, o
f course. But here in Sicily, without friends…’

  There was a silence.

  ‘And just who would these friends of mine be, supposing they existed?’ asked Zen.

  A large shrug.

  ‘Who knows? What I’m hearing is that the operation was planned and carried out by people from the continent.’

  ‘From Rome?’

  Spada did not answer for so long that his silence became an answer in itself. He leaned back and looked at Zen as though seeing him for the first time. Then Zen realized that the other man was looking not at him but past him.

  ‘I think we’ve been here long enough, dottore,’ Spada remarked.

  He scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Zen.

  ‘Come to this address after eight this evening. A relative of mine is the caretaker. We’ll be able to talk without any risk of disturbance.’

  He quickly dismantled his rod and line, packing everything away into the wicker hamper he had brought with him. Zen turned away and clambered from rock to rock until he regained the concrete breakwater. Gulls swooped overhead, but there was no one in sight.

  He was still three streets from his apartment block when they grabbed him. It only occurred to him later that this meant that he must have been followed all the way.

  Along with five or six other passers-by, he had stopped to watch a peculiar courtship spectacle involving two dogs: a young dalmatian and a rather more mature spaniel. Their respective owners were a portly woman in a long coat and another, young enough to be her daughter, wearing a black pantsuit. Both dogs were leashed, and the spaniel was evidently in heat. The dalmatian was making frantic attempts to mount her, and the owners were making equally frantic attempts to drag the two lovers apart. Meanwhile a small crowd had gathered to offer advice and make the predictable jokes.

  Zen sensed their presence a moment before one of them caught him by the arm.

  ‘Dottor Zen? I’m Roberto Lessi of the Raggruppamento Operazioni Speciali, currently seconded to the DIA. You’re to come with us, please.’

  There were two of them, in their thirties, both wearing jeans and sports jackets. Zen found himself hyperventilating.

  ‘Come with you where?’ he asked.

  A blue saloon pulled in alongside the rank of parked vehicles by the kerb. The two men took Zen by the elbows, one on each side, and steered him towards it.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

  ‘It’s for your own protection,’ the other man said flatly.

  The back door of the car opened and Baccio Sinico stepped out.

  ‘Baccio!’ Zen called to him. ‘What the hell’s happening?’

  Sinico made a gesture like swatting a fly. The two Carabinieri agents released Zen.

  ‘You can’t go back to your apartment, dottore, not after we discovered that bomb there. These people, if at first they don’t succeed, they try and try again until they do. And they own the building, so access won’t be very difficult.’

  ‘But what’s the alternative?’

  Sinico beamed a smile.

  ‘You’ve been put on the high-security risk roster, dottore! They’ve allocated you quarters in the Carabinieri barracks. You’ll be perfectly safe there, under armed guard night and day. And if for any reason you need to leave the barracks, you’ll have a full escort of armed officers with you at all times.’

  ‘I noticed what a good job they did with that judge,’ Zen retorted sourly.

  Sinico looked indignant.

  ‘That wasn’t our fault! She deliberately broke security rules and took off on her own. There was nothing we could do. But don’t complain, dottore! This is an honour that many of your colleagues would die for.’

  He gave a loose shrug.

  ‘So to speak.’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

  ‘All right, let’s go.’

  ‘What about my personal effects?’

  ‘Everything will be packed up and transferred to your allotted quarters at the barracks.’

  Zen looked down at the pavement and shook his head slowly.

  ‘What a narrow escape!’ he exclaimed in a tone of voice which might have raised the eyebrows of someone who knew him better than Baccio Sinico. ‘I can’t thank you enough for taking all this trouble. Thank heavens I’ll be properly protected from now on! But listen, there’s just one thing I need to collect from my apartment.’

  ‘As I said, all your belongings will be…’

  ‘This is not one of my belongings, strictly speaking. It’s something which…’

  He broke off, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

  ‘Something which belonged to my mother, Giuseppina.’

  Baccio Sinico nodded respectfully.

  ‘It makes no difference. Everything that’s there except the furniture will be delivered to you at…’

  ‘That’s the problem. You see, this is a piece of furniture. Well, actually it’s a picture which I brought from our house in Rome after she…’

  ‘Just tell us where it is, and we’ll bring it.’

  Zen sighed heavily.

  ‘That’s what’s embarrassing, you see. I don’t remember. I just grabbed it at random, as something to remember her by, but I can’t recall where I put it or even what the subject of the picture is. All I know is that I’ll recognize it the moment I see it.’

  He gripped Sinico’s arm.

  ‘Look, even the Mafia are not going to try again so soon after the failure of this attempt. Let’s go to my place right now, just the two of us. I’ll pick up the picture and then we’ll drive straight to the barracks.’

  Baccio Sinico shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry, dottore, I don’t have the authorization to…’

  ‘And then there are the papers,’ said Zen.

  Sinico looked at him sharply.

  ‘Papers?’

  ‘Legal documents.’

  Sinico was now staring at him with a mute intensity.

  ‘Relating to my mother’s will,’ Zen added. ‘I hid them away for safety. It would be impossible for anyone else to find them. You can imagine how important they are.’

  ‘The papers,’ Sinico repeated.

  ‘Yes. Those legal documents. If they fell into the wrong hands…’

  Baccio Sinico nodded almost maniacally.

  ‘Of course, of course. The wrong hands.’

  ‘We wouldn’t want that.’

  ‘No, no! Certainly not.’

  He sighed.

  ‘Very well. It’s highly irregular, but…’

  They took off at high speed for the short drive to Zen’s home, emergency lights flashing and sirens wailing. If they had wanted to draw the Mafia’s attention to the fact that their target was returning home, thought Zen, they could hardly have done a better job. The car drew up in front of the building, providing a further visual clue by parking the way the police always park: so as to create the maximum inconvenience for everyone else. While one of the two ROS agents secured the front door, Zen and Sinico walked upstairs with the second, who then stood guard at the door to Zen’s apartment while the two men went inside.

  Zen looked around quickly. The Toshiba laptop had of course gone. Maybe it really had been a bomb, as they claimed. He would never know. More to the point, the papers which Corinna Nunziatella had ‘posted’ to herself, using Carla as a cut-out, and which Zen had left on the sofa, had also disappeared.

  ‘Through here,’ he told Sinico, leading the way towards the bedroom. As Sinico crossed the threshold, Zen smashed the door into his face. The younger officer reeled back, clutching his forehead and staring wildly at Zen, who grabbed him by the arm and hair and hurled him forward into the bedroom, tripping him up as he passed so that he fell sprawling on the gleaming aggregate floor.

  After a moment, Sinico got to his knees and then his feet, pulling a revolver from a holster at the back of trousers, but he was too shocked and too slow. Zen yanked him forwards by t
he arm holding the gun, chopped the weapon free with a blow to the wrist, then kneed Sinico in the chest as he went down for the second time. He picked up the revolver and checked it quickly, keeping an eye all the while on the figure splayed out on the floor, panting hard as though he were about to burst into tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, Baccio,’ Zen said quietly ‘I had no choice.’

  Sinico looked up at him.

  ‘You’re mad!’ he croaked.

  ‘That’s conceivable, but I can’t afford to take the risk of finding out that I’m not. Don’t worry, I won’t bother you again, as long as you don’t bother me. Remember that “compassionate leave” you told me about? I’ve decided to take your advice.’

  Sinico crawled up into a sitting position.

  ‘They’ll kill you, dottore! They’ve tried once already, and they won’t give up. You need us! You need our help, our protection!’

  Zen put the revolver in his coat pocket and stared bleakly down at the younger man.

  ‘Who are they, Baccio? Whose friends are they?’

  Sinico shook his head despairingly.

  ‘This is all madness!’ he said. ‘Paranoia run wild!’

  Zen inclined his head.

  ‘As I said, that’s conceivable. It’s also conceivable that you’re just trying to keep me talking until one of those ROS thugs comes to see why we’re taking so long.’

  He walked over to the doorway.

  I’m leaving now,’ he told Sinico. ‘If you try to stop me, I’ll shoot you.’

  Once in the living room, he crossed rapidly to the front door and opened it. The ROS agent named Lessi looked at him in surprise.

  ‘We’ve found something!’ Zen said in an urgent undertone. ‘Baccio thinks it might be another bomb. He wants you to take a look.’

  Lessi nodded and ran inside. Zen closed the door and locked it with the complicated double-sided key, formed like a gondola’s prow, turning it four times to insert the metal security bolts into the retaining block. Without a key, it could not be opened from the inside.

  He ran quickly downstairs and slunk into the shadows at the rear of the entrance hall. About twenty seconds later, the front door flew open and the other ROS man ran in, a pistol in his hand, talking urgently on his cellphone.