Ratking az-1

by Michael Dibdin

  Zen walked over to the window and looked out. Down below was a small car park for police vehicles. Facing him was a windowless stone wall with a heavy gate guarded by two men, one in grey uniform with a cap, the other in battledress and a flak jacket. Both carried submachine guns, as did another guard patrolling the roof of the building. So that was it: they had given him an office with no view but the prison. He smiled sourly, acknowledging the hit. Sicilians were notoriously good at this kind of thing.

  And the phone? He would never forget those first months at the Ministry, sitting in a windowless office in the basement, his only link to the outside world a telephone which was not connected. The repair men were always just about to come, but somehow they never did, and for over three months that telephone had squatted on his desk like a toad, symbol of a curse that would never be lifted. And when it finally was repaired Zen knew that this was not a token of victory but of total defeat. They could let him have a phone now. It didn’t matter, because it never rang. Everyone knew about his ‘reputation’. He had broken the rules of the tribe and been tabooed.

  Here in Perugia his phone worked all right, but the same logic applied. Who was he going to call? What was he going to do? Should he fight back? Call Iovino’s bluff and start throwing his weight around? The Ministry had sent him and they were bound to back him up, if only as a matter of form. With a bit of effort and energy he could soon bring the Questore and his men to heel. The problem was that he lacked the energy and was not going to make the effort. At heart he just didn’t care enough about these provincial officials and their petty pride. He didn’t even care about the case itself. Nine kidnappings out of ten were never solved anyway, and there was no reason to think that this one would be any different. In the end the family would pay up or the gang would back down. As a spectacle it was as uninspiring as an arm-wrestling contest between two strangers.

  Outside the Questura he found the driver who had brought him there from Rome, a young Neapolitan named Luigi Palottino, still standing attentively beside the dark blue Alfetta. The sight of him just increased Zen’s humiliation by reminding him of the scene at his apartment that morning when he’d returned, having spent the night with Ellen, to find Maria Grazia and his mother trying to organize his packing while the driver stood looking on with a bemused expression and everyone had to shout to be heard above the cheery chatter of the television, which had apparently turned itself on so as not to be left out of things.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Zen snapped at him.

  ‘Waiting for you, sir.’

  ‘For me? I’m not in the mood for company, frankly.’

  ‘I mean waiting for your orders, sir.’

  ‘My orders? All right, you might as well take me to my hotel. Then you can go.’

  The Neapolitan frowned.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You can go back to Rome.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Zen looked at him with menacing attention.

  ‘What do you mean, “no”?’

  ‘My orders are to remain here in Perugia with you, sir. They’ve allocated me a bed in the barracks.’

  They want to keep tabs on me, thought Zen. They don’t trust me, of course. Of course! And who could say what other orders Luigi Palottino might have been given?

  Half an hour later Zen was sitting in a cafe enjoying a late lunch, when he heard his name spoken by a complete stranger. The cafe was an old-world establishment quite unlike the usual chrome-and-glass filling stations for caffeine junkies, a long, narrow burrow of a place with a bar on one side and a few seats and small tables on the other. The walls were lined with tall wooden cabinets filled with German chocolates and English jam and shelves bending dangerously under the weight of undrinkably ancient bottles of wine. There were newspapers dangling from canes and waiters in scarlet jackets who seemed to have all the time in the world, and faded pastoral frescos presided amiably from the vaulted ceiling. Zen took the only free table, which was between the coat-stand and the telephone, so that he was continually being disturbed by people wanting to get at one or the other. But he paid no particular attention to the other clients until he heard his own name being laboriously spelt out.

  ‘?,?,?. Yes, that’s right.’

  The man was in his early sixties, short but powerfully built with an almost aggressively vigorous appearance that suggested a peasant background not many generations earlier. But this was no peasant. His clothes and grooming suggested wealth, and his manner was that of a man used to getting his own way.

  ‘So I’ve been told. Perhaps he hasn’t arrived yet? Ah, I see. Listen, Gianni, do me a favour, will you? When he comes back, tell him

  … No, nothing. Forget it. On second thoughts I’ll call him myself later. Thanks.’

  The receiver was replaced, and the man glanced down.

  ‘Sorry for disturbing you, eh?’

  He walked slowly away, greeting various acquaintances as he went.

  The elderly cashier seemed to have no idea how much anything cost, and by the time the waiter who had served Zen had told her and she had manipulated the Chinese box of little drawers to extract the right change, the man had disappeared. But as soon as Zen got outside he almost bumped into him, standing just to the left of the doorway chatting to a younger bearded man. Zen walked past them and stopped some distance away in front of a glass case displaying the front page of the local edition of the Nazione newspaper with the headlines circled in red ink.

  ‘TRAGEDY ON THE PERUGIA-TERNI: ATROCIOUS DEATH OF YOUNG COUPLE UNDER A TRUCK.’ He could see the two men quite clearly, reflected on the glass surface in front of him, the younger protesting in a querulous whine, ‘I still don’t see why I should be expected to deal with it.’ ‘BUSES IN PERUGIA: EVERYTHING TO CHANGE – NEW ROUTES, NEW TIMETABLES.’ ‘It’s agreed, then?’ exclaimed the older man. ‘But not Daniele, eh? God knows what he’s capable of!’ ‘FOOTBALL: PERUGIA TO BUY ANOTHER FOREIGNER?’ Zen scanned the newspaper for some reference to his arrival. Rivalries within the Questura usually ensured that an event which was bound to be damaging to someone’s reputation would be reported in the local press. But of course there had been no time for that as yet.

  When he next looked up he found that the two men had now separated and the older one was walking towards him.

  ‘Excuse me!’

  The man turned, suspicious and impatient.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I couldn’t help overhearing your telephone call just now. I believe you wish to speak to me. I am Aurelio Zen.’

  The man’s impatience turned first to perplexity and then embarrassment.

  ‘Ah, dottore, it was you, sitting there at the table? And there I was, talking about you like that! Whatever must you have thought?’

  His voice drifted away. He seemed to be rapidly searching his memory, trying to recall what exactly he had said. Then with an apologetic gesture he went on, ‘I am getting old, dottore! Old and indiscreet. Well, what’s done is done. Forgive me, I haven’t even introduced myself. Antonio Crepi. How do you do. Welcome to Perugia! Will you allow me to offer you a coffee?’

  They returned to the cafe, where Crepi hailed the barman familiarly.

  ‘Marco, this is Commissioner Zen, a friend of mine. Any time he comes in I want you to give him good service, you understand? No, nothing for me. You know, dottore, they say we must be careful not to drink too much coffee. I’m down to six cups a day, which is my limit. It’s like a bridge, you know. You can reduce the number of supports up to a certain point, depending on the type of construction, nature of the soil and so on. After that the bridge collapses. For me the lower limit is six coffees. Fewer than that and I can’t function. Anyway, how do you like Perugia? Beautiful, eh?’

  ‘Well, I’ve only just…’

  ‘It’s a city on a human scale, not too big, not too small. Whenever I go to Rome, which nowadays is almost never, I feel like I am choking. It’s like putting on a collar that’s too tight, you know what I mean
? Here one can breathe, at least. A friend of mine once told me, “Frankly, Antonio, the moment I set foot outside the city walls I just don’t feel right.” That’s the way we are! Provincial and proud of it. But listen, dottore, I want to be able to talk to you properly, not standing in some bar. Can you come to dinner this evening?’

  Zen avoided a reply by taking a sip of coffee. He still hadn’t the faintest idea who he was talking to!

  ‘I’m sure this is very different from the way you do things in Rome,’ Antonio Crepi went on. ‘Maybe you even think it’s a bit strange, but I don’t care! The only thing that interests me is getting Ruggiero released. The only thing! Do you understand? It is wonderful that you’re here, your arrival gives us all new heart. Come to dinner! Valesio will be there too, the lawyer who’s been handling the negotiations. Talk informally, off the record. Say what you like, ask any question you like. Be as indiscreet as I am, if you can! No one will mind, and when you start work tomorrow morning you’ll know as much about the case as anyone in Perugia. What do you say?’

  This time there was no way out.

  ‘I’ll be delighted.’

  Crepi looked pleased.

  ‘Thank you, dottore. Thank you. I’m glad you understand. We Umbrians are just simple, forthright country folk. Rome is another world. If at first you find us a bit rough, a bit blunt, that’s just our way. After a while you’ll get used to it. We lack polish, it’s true, but the wood beneath is sound and solid. But you’re not from Rome, surely? Excuse me asking.’

  ‘I’m from the North.’

  ‘I thought so. Milan?’

  ‘Venice.’

  ‘Ah. A beautiful city. But Perugia is beautiful too! I’ll send someone to collect you at about eight. No, I insist. It’s easier than trying to give directions. You need to have been born here! Until this evening, then.’

  As Zen walked back to his hotel he noticed several people staring at him curiously, but it was not until he caught sight of his reflection in a shop window that he realized that he was wearing one of those annoying little Mona Lisa smiles which makes everyone wonder why you’re so pleased with yourself. It was just as well that no one knew him well enough to ask, for he had no idea what he would have replied.

  Whatever the reason might have been, by eight o’clock the smile had definitely faded.

  Zen had spent the afternoon and early evening reading the background material he had been given on the Miletti case. Like most police drivers, Luigi Palottino clearly considered himself a Formula One contender manque, and the relentless high speeds and a succession of near misses had brought on a mild attack of the car sickness from which Zen often suffered, so that he just hadn’t been able to face the pile of documents Enrico Mancini had sent round with the Alfetta. Not that he needed them, of course, to know who Ruggiero Miletti was. To any Italian of his generation the name was practically synonymous with the word gramophone. Ruggiero’s father, Franco, had started the business, first repairing and later constructing the new-fangled machines in a spare room at the back of the family’s furniture shop on Corso Vanucci, the main street of Perugia. That was in 1910. Ruggiero had been born the previous year. By the time he left school Miletti Phonographs had become a flourishing concern which had outgrown the original premises and moved to a site convenient to the railway line down in the valley.

  Although by no means cheap, the Miletti instruments had enjoyed from the first the reputation of being well made, durable, and technically advanced, ‘combining the ancient traditions of Umbrian craftsmanship with an irresistible surge towards the Future’, as the advertisements put it. Franco had a flair for publicity, and before long such notables as D’Annunzio, Bartali the cycle ace and the composer Respighi had consented to be photographed with a Miletti machine. Franco’s greatest coup came when he persuaded the Duce himself to issue a typically bombastic endorsement: ‘I declare and pronounce that your phonographs are truly superior instruments and represent a triumph of Fascist civilization.’ Meanwhile the radio age had arrived, and the Miletti company were soon producing the massive sets which formed the centrepiece of every wealthy family’s sitting-room, around which friends and hangers-on would congregate on Sunday afternoons to listen to the programme called ‘The Four Musketeers’, which eventually became so popular that the football authorities had to delay matches until it was over.

  The family’s good fortune continued. Although Ruggiero’s elder brother Marco was killed in Greece, the Milettis had a relatively easy war. Having sacrificed one son, it was easy for Franco to persuade influential friends that Ruggiero’s brains were too valuable a commodity to be put at risk, and hostilities ended with them and the Miletti workshops intact. Both were quickly put to work. The post-war economic boom, artificially fuelled by the Americans to prevent Italy falling to the Communists, provided ideal conditions for rapid growth, while Ruggiero soon proved that he combined his father’s technical genius with even greater ambition and vision. In the next decade the company steadily expanded and diversified, though often in the teeth of considerable opposition from Franco Miletti. When his father died in 1959, Ruggiero found himself at the head of one of the most successful business concerns in the country, producing hi-fi equipment, radios, televisions and tape recorders, exporting to every other country in Europe as well as to many in South America, and often cited as a glowing example of the nation’s economic resurgence. In 1967 the firm became the Societa Industriale Miletti di Perugia, or SIMP for short, but this fashionably ugly acronym changed nothing. The Miletti family, which in practice meant Ruggiero himself, remained in absolute and sole control.

  The kidnap itself was described in a few pages of material copied over the teleprinter from Perugia. The contents proved to be highly predictable, but at least Zen discovered who Antonio Crepi was: the retired director of a construction company with whom Ruggiero Miletti was in the habit of spending Sunday evening playing cards. One week Crepi would motor over to the Miletti villa, the next Ruggiero would drive down to his friend’s place, overlooking the Tiber valley. On the last Sunday in October, four and a half months earlier, it had been Ruggiero’s turn to visit Crepi. He had left home as usual at eight o’clock and arrived at Crepi’s twenty minutes later. The two had played cards and chatted until about a quarter past eleven, when Ruggiero left to drive home. He had never arrived.

  The alarm had been given by Silvio, one of Ruggiero’s three sons. It was rare for Ruggiero not to be back by midnight, and since there was a hard frost Silvio began to worry that his father might have had an accident. He therefore phoned Crepi, who had already gone to bed, and learned that Ruggiero had set out on his return journey an hour earlier. But, as so often, no one thought of a kidnapping. Daniele, the youngest son, arrived home while his brother was speaking to Crepi, and instead of alerting the police the two decided to search the road themselves. When they arrived at Crepi’s villa without having found any trace of Ruggiero the police were finally informed. It was twelve thirty-seven.

  Perugia is blessed with a crime rate among the lowest in Italy, and at that hour only a skeleton staff was on duty at the Questura. It took another quarter of an hour to call out the men on standby, and it was twenty past one before a complete set of roadblocks had been set up. Meanwhile the route Miletti had taken was thoroughly examined, revealing evidence of a struggle. Ruggiero’s hat, tie and shoe were found lying on the verge, and not far away lay a muslin wad soaked in ether. But it wasn’t until daybreak that the burnt-out shell of the car Ruggiero had been driving, one of a fleet of leased Fiat Argenta saloons used by both the family and the senior management of SIMP, was finally spotted by a helicopter in an abandoned quarry some eleven miles north of the city. The front bumper was dented and one of the headlamps cracked, indicating that the gang had front-tailed Ruggiero from the villa, then deliberately braked hard on a bend to cause a minor collision, immobilizing his car. They would have got out to examine the damage, all smiles and apologies. At the last moment their victim must ha
ve realized what was happening, for he had fought and kicked and struggled. But by then it was much too late. You could only defend yourself against kidnappers before they struck, by persuading them to strike somewhere else.

  The remainder of the report on the Miletti kidnapping set out the investigators’ provisional conclusions. The gang had had about two hours altogether in which to seize Miletti, dispose of his car, and make good their escape. Assuming the first two stages took about thirty minutes, that left an hour and a half before the roadblocks went up. It was more than enough. If they had continued north they could have been on any one of a dozen remote roads high up in the Apennines within an hour. It was quite possible that they had gone to ground there, in some isolated farm or mountain hut. On the other hand they might well have left the area altogether, taking the link road west to the motorway and spending the rest of the night driving south. By dawn they could have reached the Aspromonte mountains behind Reggio di Calabria, a territory fifty times the size of San Marino and considerably more independent of the Italian State.

  In short, it had been a typical professional kidnapping, well planned and well executed. The victim had been carefully chosen to combine the maximum potential return with the minimum possible risk. Like many others, Ruggiero Miletti had regarded kidnapping as something that happened to other people in less fortunate areas of the country, and had scorned to take any precautions. Like many others, he had been wrong. For months, his movements had been logged and analysed, until the kidnappers knew more about his way of life than he did. They had taken him at the weekend. By Monday morning the snatch squad would be back at the garages or factories where they worked. Their companions would laugh as they yawned their way through the day and make crude jokes about their wives being too much for them. They wouldn’t mind. They would be getting paid soon, their job over.

  Meanwhile the central cell of the gang would be in touch with the family to get the negotiations moving. They wouldn’t be too impatient at first, although they would sound it, phoning up with bloodcurdling threats about what would happen to their victim if they weren’t paid by the day after tomorrow. But they had timed the operation for the autumn precisely to allow themselves the long winter months in which to break any resistance to their demands. By now though, in late March, they would be starting to grow restless, wanting to see some return on their considerable investment. Summer was just around the corner, and they wouldn’t want to risk missing their month at the seaside. Criminals have the same aspirations as everyone else. That’s why they become criminals.