Blood Rain - 7

by Michael Dibdin

  He had been there before, often stopping by on his way to meet Carla, spellbound by the everyday miracle which had taken place on this spot for almost three thousand years: the decapitated swordfish and tuna being hacked into slabs with curved blades like machetes, the tubs full of squirming squid and octopus, the wooden trays of anchovies and sardines, their silvery skin glistening with unexpected glints of evanescent colours which had no name. And everywhere the stench of flesh and death, the clamour of voices in a timbre at once raucous and shrill, and the blood, above all; spattered on the stall-keepers’ aprons, streaked across their arms and knives, trickling away in the gutter.

  It was now almost three o’clock, and the pulsing drama in the streets around the market had disappeared like the sea at low tide, leaving a wrack of stalls in the process of demolition, various unidentifiable scraps being raided by feral cats and the more daring seagulls, and remnants of unsold fish turning dull and matt in their communal coffins with the pathetic air of those who have died in vain. Zen approached one of the traders, a bulky, morose man surveying his remaining stock of sardines.

  ‘How much for those?’

  The man glanced at him in astonishment, as though suspecting a practical joke, then brightened up considerably. A price was named, halved, halved again, and finally concluded. Money changed hands and Zen strode away with the best part of a kilo of extremely smelly fish.

  Back at his apartment, he put his purchase in the sink, then wrapped the manilla envelope in several layers of plastic film, securing each with adhesive tape. When he was satisfied with this sheath, he opened the plastic bag provided by the fishmonger and slipped the package inside. The last stage was the most tricky, working the slithery mass of sardines around inside the bag until they concealed the inserted envelope. Once he had achieved this, Zen taped the bag tightly shut and wedged it into the freezing compartment of his refrigerator.

  He completed his task, and sat down on the sofa with a sense of regret. What now? It was the unanswered and perhaps unanswerable question which had haunted his days and nights for some time. The ‘now’ was both specific and general; at once the next hour which had somehow to be filled, and the rest of a life which seemed increasingly predictable and pointless, in a vaguely cosy way. His career had evidently hit a plateau where he would be stuck until he retired. The promotion to Questore which he had been promised on being told of this Sicily assignment had failed to materialize, and now Zen was pretty sure that it never would. He had made too many enemies for that.

  To be honest, he couldn’t really complain. The fact was that he just didn’t care any more. Career, love, family, friendships — he’d tried his best in each field, but the results had not been encouraging. Once he’d been callow and enthusiastic, now he was tired and cynical. Once he’d been ignorant, now he was knowing. Whatever the middle term of these bleak declensions might be, it appeared to have passed him by.

  So, what now? The answer was clear enough: another five or ten years plugging away at a job he no longer believed in and messing about with tentative relationships which were doomed from the start, while the world around him gradually changed into an unrecognizable although all too familiar place. Age makes us all exiles in our own country, he thought.

  He looked up, startled, as an electronic beeping filled the room. It was his mobile phone, which he never took with him. He located it, on a cupboard in the kitchen, and pressed the green button.

  ‘Aurelio?’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘It’s Gilberto.’

  Silence.

  ‘Gilberto Nieddu. Listen, the thing is …’

  Zen clicked the phone shut. He had had no contact with his former Sardinian friend since the latter had betrayed him — unforgivably, in Zen’s view — by first stealing and then selling, at a vast profit, a video tape which was evidence in a case Zen had been investigating. One man had died as a result and another could have joined him, in which case Zen’s career prospects might easily have turned out to be even less inspiring than they were at present.

  The phone rang again.

  ‘Don’t hang up on me, Aurelio!’ Gilberto’s voice said. ‘This is important, really important. It’s about…’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck what it’s about, Gilberto. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a treacherous scumbag and I never want to speak to you again, still less see you.’

  He snapped the phone shut again, like a clam closing its shell, then stalked down the room and opened the doors on to the balcony overhanging the courtyard. At once he was subject to both an overwhelming tide of hot air, and a deafening outburst of hilarity which was the trademark of Signora Giordano, his herb-growing neighbour. She was a retired lady of some consequence and independent means, but socially nervous. Normally there was never a sound from her apartment, but on the few occasions when she entertained a harsh, convulsive laugh would burst forth at regular intervals, on average once every ten seconds. No sounds of conversation or of others’ merriment were audible, just this dreadful, forced cackle like a hack actor trying to signal a punchline to an unresponsive audience.

  Behind him, the telefonino had started to beep again, a distant exclamation point amid the ambient noises of the neighbourhood and Signora Giordano’s outbursts. Zen lit a cigarette and waited for it to stop. But it didn’t stop. Why didn’t Gilberto get the message? What did he have to do, install one of those devices to block nuisance calls? He smoked quietly for a minute by the clock on the wall. The phone continued to ring. ‘It’s no use hiding,’ it seemed to say. ‘We know you’re there, and we’ve got plenty of time.’

  After the second hand on the clock had described another complete circle, Zen threw his cigarette into the courtyard below, stalked over to the sofa and picked up the phone.

  ‘Well?’ he bellowed.

  ‘Excuse me …’

  It was a frail, elderly woman’s voice, vaguely familiar to him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is Maria Grazia,’ the voice said after a pause.

  Zen’s expression relaxed from aggression to a bored tolerance lightly mixed with perplexity. The housekeeper at his apartment in Rome had never phoned him before about anything.

  ‘Signor Nieddu asked me to call.’

  ‘Well, you can tell Signor Nieddu to …’

  ‘It’s about your mother, you see.’

  Zen broke off, frowning.

  ‘My mother?’

  ‘Yes. You see …’

  ‘Hello? Maria Grazia?’

  ‘Yes. You see, the thing is …’

  ‘What’s going on? What’s all this about?’

  A silence.

  ‘It’s about your mother.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Maria Grazia,’ Zen replied sarcastically, ‘I think I’ve just about grasped that. So let’s move on to the next point. What about my mother?’

  Another silence, longer this time.

  ‘How soon can you get here?’

  ‘Get where?’

  ‘To Rome, of course!’

  Zen stiffened. He was not used to being interrogated like this by the donna di servizio.

  ‘Look, Maria Grazia, please stop this nonsense and just tell me why you’re calling.’

  Another silence, ending in a sniff and what sounded like weeping.

  ‘Excuse me. I would never have done it, only … Only it’s your mother, you see.’

  ‘What about my mother? Put her on the line if she wants to talk to me!’

  This time the silence went on so long that they might almost have been cut off. When the answer to his question finally came, it was in a neutered tone of voice such as might issue from a public address system playing some pre-recorded emergency message.

  ‘She’s dying, Aurelio.’

  Nineteen minutes past seven, Corinna Nunziatella had said. ‘Be in the entrance hall of your building by seven fifteen, but don’t
open the door.’ Carla smiled to herself as she completed her preparations for the evening, checking her hair in the mirror and removing a stray strand from her blouse. How ridiculous all this secret-service stuff seemed! But also romantic, in a way, like being in a movie.

  The entrance hall to the apartment building where she lived was a dreary space, replicated ad infinitum by the mirrored walls and dimly lit by five circular lamps of pebbled glass dangling on their cords from the meaninglessly high ceiling. Mafia chic, circa 1965, in short. Carla waited just inside the front door, eyeing the bank of mailboxes, in each of which the same round of junk advertising pamphlets lingered like a bad smell. When the door opened, she started forward, only to encounter the stout, overdressed form of Angelo La Rocca, a retired and chronically deaf lawyer who lived in solitary splendour in his illegal apartment on the roof, up a flight of stairs from the end of the elevator on the sixth floor, and exercised his rights over any unfortunate he happened to meet in the public areas in his unchallenged capacity as the building’s Official Bore.

  ‘Ah, Signorina Arduini!’ he cried, spying his prey. ‘How lovely you look this evening! A veritable symphony of shapes and shades, as fashionable as it is delectable. You are going out I perceive. And who’s the lucky young man? Forgive my impertinence, my dear. An old man’s privilege, just as you young women now enjoy the privilege of going out unescorted whenever you please, wherever you please, with whoever you please. I can still remember the time when a woman had to stay at home …’

  ‘Listening to old farts like you,’ muttered Carla.

  The avvocato leaned forward, pleased to have provoked a response.

  ‘What, my dear?’

  A horn sounded outside.

  ‘My taxi’s here,’ said Carla loudly, opening the door.

  In fact, it wasn’t a taxi but a blue Fiat saloon. None the less, Carla had three reasons for thinking that this was the car which Corinna Nunziatella had sent for her. The first was that it was now exactly seven nineteen, and the second that the driver had parked right outside the building, blocking the traffic, and didn’t seem at all bothered by this. The third and decisive factor was that the tough-looking young man who had been sitting in the front passenger seat was already walking towards her, scanning the street to both sides, his right hand grasping something bulky concealed inside his jacket.

  ‘Signorina Arduini?’ he barked.

  Carla nodded.

  ‘Get in,’ the man replied, jerking his head at the car.

  Once she was inside, everything happened very quickly. The driver shot forward, accelerating furiously, then braked and skidded over a low yellow ledge in the middle of the road. The Fiat swung round, screeching on the lava slabs, until it was facing in the opposite direction, then took off at high speed down the single lane supposedly reserved for buses. The man who had spoken to her now sat rigidly in the front seat, scanning the windows and mirrors as though monitoring a bank of radar screens.

  It was almost as if she had been kidnapped, Carla reflected as they negotiated the stalled traffic in a large circular piazzale by dint of going the wrong way round the roundabout and appropriating part of the pavement. Neither man spoke, although the driver occasionally emitted low grunts. After about ten minutes, the man on the passenger side pulled a portable radio from his jacket and started a long sequence of brief exchanges. Places, times and distances were ticked off as though on a list. At length he switched off the radio and muttered something to the driver, who took the next exit and stopped under the bridge carrying the highway they had been on over a country road fringed with villas and two-storey apartment buildings. The columns supporting the bridge were covered in election posters displaying the local candidate of the right-wing National Alliance party, the recycled third-generation successor to Mussolini’s Fascists. The radio crackled again, and instructions were exchanged. Then another car materialized on the road ahead, drew level with theirs and then swung around to park behind them.

  The man in the passenger seat was already outside, opening the back door of the Fiat and motioning Carla out. The back door of the other car was open and another man, this one in uniform and carrying a machine-gun, waved impatiently at her. ‘In here!’ he snapped. She was barely inside when he slammed the door, jumped into the front seat and yelled, ‘Go!’ The car screeched around the parked Fiat and roared away.

  It was only then that Carla noticed the other woman, curled up in the other corner of the back seat in a loosely woven cotton gauze outfit with narrow trousers, daringly unbuttoned at the throat, the sleeves rolled up to reveal her tanned arms, and a wide gold cuff bracelet on her right wrist. Her eyes were invisible behind a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. To Carla, who had only ever seen Corinna Nunziatella in high-heeled pumps and tailored suits, this was a revelation.

  ‘So did you enjoy the ride?’ the judge asked ironically.

  ‘Well, it beats taking the bus. But I can’t quite see why they went to all that trouble to protect me. I mean, my life’s not in danger.’

  Corinna Nunziatella pushed the sunglasses up on to her brow and glanced at Carla sharply.

  ‘Of course not. They were protecting me, not you. The assumption is that all my friends, acquaintances and surviving relatives are under surveillance. Your phone may well be tapped, and your mail intercepted. They may even have bugged the office where we made the arrangement to meet tonight. What they wouldn’t know is where and when, but all they’d need to do is follow you and you’d lead them right to me.’

  She smiled and shook her head impatiently.

  ‘Anyway, that’s all over. Now we can just enjoy ourselves for the rest of the evening.’

  It soon became clear that this was not entirely true. The drive, up into the foothills of Etna to the north of the city, was a highly choreographed affair, involving constant radio contact between the two vehicles already engaged, as well as a third which was apparently located somewhere up ahead. Sometimes they slowed almost to a crawl, at others raced forward at speeds which pinned Carla back into the seat. Turns were taken seemingly at random, always at the last moment and without signalling, to the accompaniment of much squealing of tyres, ripping of gears and wrenching of the steering wheel.

  ‘Well, at least they’re enjoying themselves!’ Carla confided to Corinna with a fugitive smile, nodding her head at the two men in the front.

  To her surprise, there was no answering smile.

  ‘Eighteen judges from the DIA or its predecessors have been killed in the last decade,’ Corinna Nunziatella replied. ‘In almost every case, their escorts have died with them. When they killed Falcone and his wife, the six men in the lead car were blown to pieces as well. In Borsellino’s case, it was eight. No, all appearances to the contrary, I don’t think they’re enjoying it all that much. If I hadn’t wanted to take you out to dinner tonight, they could have been safe at home with their wives and children watching TV. As it is, if they make a single mistake, they could be on TV.’

  Carla nodded soberly.

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  Observing her guest’s chastened expression, Corinna smiled and clasped her arm.

  ‘As a matter of fact, this is the first time I’ve been out in the evening since I took up this position with the DIA,’ she said. ‘Which is quite a compliment to you, my dear.’

  A few minutes later they reached the brow of the hill they had been circuitously climbing all this time, between fields surrounded by stone walls and the occasional outcrop of modern housing, and passed a white sign marked TRECASTAGNI. Almost at once they turned right into a secluded driveway between high brick walls and came to a standstill. Carla opened the door and started to get out.

  ‘Not yet!’ one of the uniformed officers barked at her.

  ‘They need to make sure it’s clean,’ Corinna explained.

  The blue Fiat had pulled up behind them. The two plain-clothed men got out and walked up a flight
of steps into the complex of buildings to their left.

  ‘The lead car will be parked in the street outside,’ Corinna said. ‘In case we have to make a quick get-away and need a block thrown. The two men in the back-up will take a table inside and check out the other clients. This is a very well-known restaurant, and of course “they” like the better things in life.’

  ‘You mean the Mafia?’ demanded Carla. Not noticing Corinna Nunziatella’s slight wince, she went on, ‘I always thought that they were a bunch of peasants. Mamma’s homemade pasta or nothing.’

  Corinna smiled wearily.

  ‘It’s a little more complex than that,’ she replied in a slightly patronizing tone. ‘Some of them are like that, but even they like to try to impress each other, and especially guests from out of town, precisely because they too know the stereotype and know that it’s true. But there is also quite a different class of person involved these days, men who spend their time moving around between here and Bangkok, Bogotá, Miami, you name it. For them it’s even more important to show off their sophistication and wealth. It’s like wearing the right kind of clothes and accessories. No international drug baron is going to take you seriously as a major player if you invite him home for a plate of pasta, no matter how germina it is.’

  Corinna was talking rapidly and a little distractedly, all the while scanning the steps leading up to the main building where the two plain-clothed escorts had disappeared.

  ‘What’s taking them all this time?’ she demanded.

  As if in response, the radio crackled into life and one of the two ‘minders’ reappeared on the steps and walked towards the car, beckoning urgently.

  ‘It’s clean?’ asked Carla.

  ‘Apparently.’

  The two women got out of the car and were led up a series of steps and exterior galleries into the building, then down again into the layered spaces of the restaurant, each at a different height and angle: bare stone walls, a large open fireplace, antique wooden cabinets supporting bottles of wine and oil. From exposed wooden beams hung folkloristic agricultural implements and stiff-limbed marionettes representing the Christian knights Rinaldo and Orlando.