The Few

by Nadia Dalbuono

  ‘You didn’t know he’d been having sex with men.’

  She flashed him a look of anger. ‘That’s very different.’

  Scamarcio decided to change tack. ‘Do you think he’d be capable of hiring someone to commit murder on his behalf?’

  She didn’t hesitate this time. ‘Certainly not. In his mind, it would amount to the same thing, whether he did it himself or not. He has a logical mind — he’s always been a highly rational thinker.’

  To Scarmacio, there was nothing very rational about setting up a rentboy and his friend in two apartments in Trastevere; nothing very rational about attending the kind of parties that Ganza did. Maybe that’s what happened to exceptionally rational people, Scamarcio reflected — they were inevitably prone to moments of breathtaking irrationality. Base nature would always triumph over intellect.

  ‘Do you think your husband has any idea who might have done it?’

  She sighed, exasperated again. ‘You would need to ask him yourself. He’s never said anything to me. But I guess Arthur, as you call him, inhabited a dirty little world where dirty little people do dirty little things.’ It was clear that this was a world that, for Mrs Ganza, was as distant as Venus.

  ‘I’d very much like to talk to your husband, but it seems quite difficult to reach him right now.’

  She smiled bitterly again, fixing him with a hard stare. ‘I’m sure that when he leaves the retreat, you’ll be the first person he calls, Detective.’

  51

  HE FILLED IN GARRAMONE about the fruitless meeting with Mrs Ganza. Reflecting on it, as he headed down to Naples the next morning, he wondered about the deadness in the eyes, considered anew if, like Mrs Baker, she was also on some kind of medication to ease her pain. Now he thought back, when she turned her head a certain way, the light revealed a plasticity to the skin. But that could be the botox, rather than any anti-depressant drug. He thought about the Moltisanti, wondering about their connection to Ganza and his world.

  Although it took just an hour and a half by car to get from Rome to Naples, the heat in the city was far more cloying than in the capital. There was a rank intensity to it that made Scamarcio desperate to leave the place almost as soon as he had arrived. The foetid miasma of two weeks’ worth of garbage hung over Rossi’s street, and as he entered the building he saw the ribbed red tail of something feral disappear between some broken bin bags. A resident held the front door open for him, and he took the lift to the fifth floor, figuring that the family had to be home, that they couldn’t hide out forever. He left the elevator and stepped out into the corridor. This time there were no neighbours around. He found the door, pushing the square buzzer on the wall to the right. He waited, but once again there was no sound of footsteps from inside, no TV murmur, no chatter. He tried the buzzer once more, but he was greeted by the same silence. He was about to turn away when, from nowhere, a tattooed arm reached over his left shoulder and placed a large, hairy hand on the door in front of him.

  ‘Who wants them?’

  Scamarcio turned to see a tall, muscle-bound man with close-cropped hair, over-tanned skin, bulldog features, and a gold stud in each ear standing directly in front of him, barring his way to the elevator.

  ‘And you are?’

  The man pushed him in his chest, throwing him against the door. It caught the back of his head.

  ‘I ask the questions, arsehole.’

  Scamarcio rubbed at his skull and tried to straighten up. The meathead barred his huge arms across his chest, setting his feet apart. The message was clear: Scamarcio wasn’t going anywhere for the time being.

  ‘I’m looking for Officer Rossi. I’m a colleague of his from Rome.’

  The man shook his head. ‘As far as he tells it, his colleagues sold him down the Swanee.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘What do you want with him?’

  ‘Just to talk.’

  ‘Well, he’s not here.’

  ‘When is he coming back?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘Now listen, Mr …?’

  ‘Again, none of your business.’

  Scamarcio decided he’d had enough. He looked to his right a moment, as if he’d seen something alarming approaching down the corridor, and when the idiot turned to follow his gaze, he rushed forward and kneed him in the groin, spinning him around to the left so that, from behind, he could push his arm across his neck and Adam’s apple, holding it hard under his chin. He tightened the vice and pulled the man down towards the floor while, with the other hand, he twisted his balls.

  ‘It’s time to be polite.’

  The man began whimpering like a baby.

  ‘It’s actually very simple. I want you to tell me where Rossi is, and I want the truth, otherwise you’ll be looking at losing a testicle — maybe two.’ He twisted harder, and the man screamed.

  ‘Could you manage without them, do you think?’

  The man screamed again.

  ‘Spit it out.’

  Scamarcio’s heart was pounding, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could resist the push of the man’s huge thigh muscles against his arm.

  ‘He’s in their summer house … in Scala.’ The meathead gasped, and Scamarcio pulled harder. ‘The hills above Amalfi,’ he spluttered. In one movement, Scamarcio prised his arm free from between the man’s legs, and swung it around to his left-hand jeans pocket, where he grabbed his cuffs from their usual place. He then opened them with his teeth, and attached one to his left wrist and the other to the man’s right, where he was trying to prise Scamarcio’s arm from his neck. Scamarcio then quickly swung the right half of his body free. The lout was too slow to follow what he was doing and react.

  ‘You’re going to take me there,’ said Scamarcio.

  As he was bundling him into the elevator, the numbskull spat in his face.

  ‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ asked Scamarcio. ‘I have a new set of knives that I’m dying to try out.’

  The colour seemed to drain from the man’s face, and they rode down to the lobby in silence.

  Once outside, he pushed the man into the passenger seat of his car, detaching the cuff from his right wrist and transferring it to the door handle on the passenger side. He swung the door shut on the blockhead and walked around to the driver’s side. He got in and pushed the car into gear, scrabbling for his fags in the tray under the radio. He found his lighter in his shirt pocket, and lit up.

  ‘Sorry, I should have asked you if you wanted one.’

  The man just looked away in contempt.

  They left the garbage-strewn suburbs, and headed off in silence along the A3 towards Salerno. Scamarcio only asked the man for directions as they neared the city. He grunted a few rights and lefts until they were ascending a steep hill with the Amalfi coast spread out beneath them. Scamarcio thought he could spot the spires of Positano cathedral glinting in the sun, silver fishing boats dancing in the harbour below. Eventually, the road became dust and, above it, low stone walls appeared, studded with cacti and bougainvillea. Small farms branched off to either side, their red shutters baking in the sun.

  ‘Next left,’ spat the man.

  Scamarcio turned onto a long track. Fields ran alongside it, and at the end of the drive stood a large white villa; terracotta pots lining the paved entranceway to the porch, and pink bougainvillea framing the front door. A couple of black Labradors yapped as they ran up and down the gravel.

  There was only one car parked in front of the garage — a black Suzuki jeep. Scamarcio took that as a good sign. It might mean that there weren’t too many of them home.

  ‘Give me your mobile,’ he said to the man.

  ‘It’s in my right-hand pocket.’ He rattled his wrist in the cuff to show he couldn’t get to it.


  Scamarcio reached over. ‘Sit up a second.’

  The man did so, and Scamarcio managed to pull it from his pocket and place it in his own. He opened the car windows slightly and killed the engine before stepping out into the afternoon heat. He clicked the central locking: Meathead could stay where he was for now.

  Scamarcio patted the Beretta in its holster inside his jacket and walked up to the house. The Labradors ran up to him, barking, but he ignored them and made straight for the door, pressing the buzzer.

  Almost immediately, he heard footsteps inside and several latches being pulled. The door opened slowly, and he saw a young man standing there, probably no more than 23 years old.

  ‘Gianfilippo Rossi?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  Scamarcio flashed him his badge. ‘I’m a colleague of yours from Rome. Your pal Limoni may have told you about me.’

  Rossi’s reaction was reflex: he swung around and started running through what appeared to be a huge, tiled lobby. Scamarcio ran after him, slamming the front door behind him to stop the dogs from following. The boy was heading for some patio doors that opened onto a back garden with fields beyond. Before he could reach the sliding doors, Scamarcio leapt onto his back, bringing him crashing to the floor. He rolled him over and sat on his chest, pinning his arms behind him against the tiles, palms up. There was no sound of footsteps running to find them, and no shouts, so he presumed the boy was alone in the house.

  ‘Not so fast, Rossi,’ he gasped.

  The boy was only about 5ft 8 and thin, so he was no match for Scamarcio’s 6 ft 3 bulk. He gave Rossi a hard slap across the side of his face, and then pulled his gun from its holster.

  ‘How would you feel about having that pretty face of yours cut up a bit?’

  There were tears in the boy’s brown eyes, and he saw one of them break and roll slowly down his right cheek.

  Scamarcio sighed, suddenly tired from the day, tired of the whole thing. ‘Now listen, Rossi, let’s just keep this simple. I’m a busy man — places to go, people to mutilate.’

  The boy wouldn’t meet his eye, and was blinking away the tears.

  ‘That guy who handed you and Limoni the photos of Foreign Secretary Ganza — did you know him?’

  The boy shook his head, so Scamarcio smashed the gun into the side of his face. The boy was shaking now, and blood was mixing with the tears.

  Scamarcio kept his tone even. ‘I will ask you again: did you know him?’

  The boy nodded feebly, turning his head to the wall so he wouldn’t have to look at Scamarcio.

  ‘How did you know him?’

  When it came, Rossi’s voice was high and shaky. ‘He knew an uncle of mine, my dad’s brother.’

  ‘How did he know him?’

  ‘Just a business associate, I think.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘My uncle?’

  ‘No, the man.’

  ‘Zaccardo — Paolo Zaccardo.’

  ‘How did he get the photos?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Scamarcio smashed the left side of his face with the gun, as he had often seen his father do. The boy howled. He was panting now. ‘I promise that’s the truth. I don’t know how he got them. I was just told that I had to take them from him, that I could make some money from them if I wanted, and that I’d have to share the money with him.’

  Scamarcio looked towards the patio doors and then behind him, checking for unannounced visitors. He returned his attention to the boy.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  The boy said nothing, so Scamarcio raised the gun. The boy started shaking again. ‘I’m not sure. But there’s a place he might be — Pogerola. It’s not far from here — fifteen minutes or so. I can show you how to get there.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  Scamarcio dragged the boy to his feet and then stabbed the gun into his back, pushing him to lead the way. When they reached the car, the boy was wide-eyed at the sight of Meathead, handcuffed to the passenger door. They exchanged furious glances, but neither of them said a word.

  Scamarcio pushed the boy into the back of the car behind the driver’s seat, and pulled out a spare set of cuffs from the glove pocket. He attached the boy to the door handle and then slammed the door shut, locking him inside.

  He hopped in front and started the engine, slamming the car into gear and taking the drive as fast as possible. He didn’t want to encounter any relatives back from the shops or a Camorra killing spree.

  ‘Quite the family outing,’ he said as they approached the main road.

  Neither of the men responded.

  ‘Right or left here?’

  ‘Right,’ muttered the boy behind him.

  It was past midday, and the air conditioning in his Toyota was not up to the job. He could smell the sweat of the two strangers, and opened his window wide. As the sea came into view, the tourist villages of the Amalfi coast blinked back at them, the small sailboats still bobbing in their harbours, the surf rolling gently towards the hills. The boy was murmuring oaths to himself, entreating all the saints, calling God a pig. Eventually, the meathead shouted at him not to take the Lord’s name in vain, and he finally fell silent.

  Pogerola was more a hamlet than anything else, a scattering of ten-or-so houses with a tiny chapel at the end of the road. The boy grunted at him to make a right-hand turn, and he pulled up outside a stone cottage set slightly back from the drive, its wooden fence circling a sloping patch of lawn that ran downhill with the gravel lane. The windows were in the old style with yellow wooden shutters, and painted on the stone slabs of the ground floor was a kind of nautical design. There was a large tiled area before the front door, where two black-and-white cats were sunning themselves lazily. The place was well kept: the grass was freshly mown, and two blue pots full of primroses marked the entrance to the house. Scamarcio wondered at the English lawn — getting that to work this far south was quite an achievement.

  He turned in his seat to face the boy. ‘Give me your mobile.’

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  Scamarcio got out from the driver’s seat and unlocked the boy’s door. He patted him down, but could find no sign of a phone. ‘Right, stay here while I have a chat with your friend Zaccardo.’

  Once again, he felt for his Beretta in its holster and took the path to the house. He was tired, but somehow he liked days like this — it felt like he was cleaning up, tidying away, so they could all move forward. He knocked on the wooden front door, noticing the antique knocker and sliding bolt. A horseshoe hung over the porch above him. Maybe it would turn out to be his lucky day.

  He heard footsteps, and the old door creaked open. If this was Zaccardo, he was not what Scamarcio was expecting. He had anticipated Meathead Mark II, not the small wiry man standing before him now. His hair was curly, his face tanned and taut, his narrow eyes a gimlet blue.

  ‘Yes?’ The accent was undiluted Neapolitan.

  ‘Paolo Zaccardo?’

  The man surveyed him for a few moments, as if weighing up their relative physiques and his chances of winning in a fight. Although the man was small, he was well muscled; nevertheless, Scamarcio reckoned he could take him without too much fuss.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  Scamarcio showed him his badge. ‘Detective Leone Scamarcio, Rome Flying Squad.’

  Scamarcio saw the cogs whir, and figured the man was assessing anew whether it was worth the effort. In the end, he surprised him completely by opening the door wider and saying: ‘You’d better come in.’

  The ceilings in the house were low. Downstairs seemed to be all open plan, exposed stone walls, and terracotta floors, creating a French farmhouse effect. Zaccardo gestured to a leather armchair by the fireplace. ‘Take a seat, Detective. Can I offer you something?’
/>   Scamarcio wondered if he was playing for time, giving whoever was upstairs the chance to arm up and come down. But he couldn’t hear anyone else in the house.

  ‘No, thank you. I’m fine.’

  Zaccardo took a seat on the sofa opposite. ‘I think I can guess why you’re here.’

  ‘You can?’

  Several seconds of silence followed, in which all Scamarcio could hear was the lazy hum of the cicadas outside.

  Eventually, Zaccardo said: ‘Arthur dies, and now, from what I hear, Simon up in Florence. Another acquaintance of mine, Geppo, has also been killed.’ He sighed. ‘The fact is, they’re all linked to the same thing.’

  ‘Geppo the bookie, you mean?’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘I knew of him. But not when he was alive. He was connected to Arthur and the other guy?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  Scamarcio stopped a moment, deciding it was best to take things one step at a time.

  ‘I’ve been told you were the one who handed the photos of Ganza to my two colleagues in Rome?’

  Zaccardo sank back into the sofa, crossed his legs, and sighed again. ‘I was just trying to make a bit of extra money.’

  ‘What was the deal between you and officer Rossi?’

  ‘He’d share any proceeds with me.’

  ‘Proceeds from blackmail?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Why are you being so open with me?’

  Zaccardo got up from the sofa and went to a low shelf cut into the stone to his right. On it stood various bottles of whisky. He selected a Jamesons, and poured himself a generous measure. ‘You sure I can’t offer you anything, Detective?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  Zaccardo sat back down, said nothing, and just sipped tentatively at the whisky. Scamarcio didn’t take him for an afternoon drinker. ‘Blackmail comes with a hefty sentence, so I’m wondering why you’re willing to own up so readily. I’d expected much more of a fight, to be honest. It’s not usually this easy.’