by Tobias Jones
She blinked and tears fell onto her cheeks. She ignored them and kept talking, the pitch of her voice a little higher now. ‘Anna was always being invited to parties. Every weekend there would be a different one.’
‘Organised by who?’
‘Usually the studio.’
‘Di Angelo?’
‘Right. We were even paid to go.’
‘Paid?’
‘We got an attendance fee from Vespa.’
‘Why?’
‘It was like an audition for being a showgirl, you had to dance for them, that sort of thing. We were like the chorus girls for the parties.’ She shook her head, smiling bitterly at the memory. ‘Anna was so desperate to make it on television she would have done anything.’
‘And did she?’
Chiara looked at me sharply, as if determined to defend the memory of her missing friend. ‘She had ambition, and she knew that the only way to get ahead was to play their game.’
‘And what game was that?’
She rolled her eyes, impatient with my questions. ‘Most of the people at these parties were advertisers. The kind of businessmen who bankrolled the studios by buying up airtime for their products. And they expected more than just an improvement in sales.’
‘Meaning?’
‘What do you think?’ There was a bitter exasperation in her voice. ‘We were there to service these cranky old men . . .’ Her voice trailed off again.
It sounded like Tony Vespa really was some kind of pimp, supplying girls to dance and flirt and sleep with advertisers who were paying huge sums into the studio’s coffers. The girls were so desperate to be on screen that they didn’t seem to mind crawling under the covers to get there.
‘Anna was so . . .’ she paused, looking absently at the floor, ‘so lost that she seemed ready to embrace anyone who could be a father to her. She didn’t just go upstairs at those parties because she was ambitious. I think she really needed to be embraced by an older man. It was the classic case of a young girl who looked for her father in other men. But they only wanted her body briefly and each time she was abandoned again she looked more desperately for someone who would really love her.’ She sighed heavily. ‘The tragedy is that she did meet someone who loved her and, just as she seemed about to find happiness, she disappeared.’
‘Who was that?’
‘Oh, some guy who had a yogurt empire,’ she laughed at how ridiculous it sounded. ‘He was one of the regular advertisers on the prime-time slots. They got really close for a while. She became his mistress, you know a fixed item, and he lobbied hard for her to get a run-out on screen. For a while, it looked like it was all going to work out for her, but then it just . . .’ she shrugged, ‘it just went wrong.’
‘You mean she went missing?’
Chiara nodded. ‘She was so close to everything she longed for. She had an older man who loved her. She was about to become a chorus girl on TV. And then . . .’ She raised her hands, throwing them in the air like a slow-motion explosion. ‘That was it. She was gone.’
I looked at her briefly. Her chest was shaking as her breathing became staccato.
‘You said,’ I spoke quietly, ‘that you lost yourself as well that year.’
She growled softly and reached for a packet of tissues on the desk behind her. ‘I was introduced to someone by Vespa. I had no idea who he was, but you could tell by the way Vespa was behaving that he was some big cheese.’
‘You remember his name?’
‘Hard to forget. Giorgio Gregori. Vespa told me it would be a big step in my career if I was good to him. That was always the phrase he used. “Be good to him”.’
‘Were you?’
She shut her eyes and her head rocked back as she exhaled in derision. ‘Good’s not the word. All I could think about was getting ahead. There were all these girls at these parties, all wanting the same thing: to make it on TV. This Gregori told me he could have a word with Di Angelo, said it would be real easy to get me on screen. We had a meal and lots to drink and then went back to his place. I knew what was coming but I was still shocked by it.’ She was whispering now. ‘He sat in an armchair and just gave me orders. Started insulting me, telling me I was a whore, that I was a dirty slut who needed to be straightened out. And I was,’ she looked at me now with an apologetic smile. ‘I knew I was being paid for this, that Vespa would be giving me a big envelope of cash when I got back to the studios. So I let him do what he wanted to me. He would pull my hair to get me where he wanted. He would slap me for being dirty, for doing what he wanted. He liked me to protest, so that he could hit me harder.’
‘Sounds like a nice guy.’
‘He was a piece of shit. A true piece of shit. Each time there were little variations, but it was usually the same stuff. He would start by telling me how he only needed to make one call and Di Angelo would put me up there on the stage with the other stars. He would be almost romantic, like he cared about my future. Then we would get to some hotel or flat and he would flip. It was like he was possessed, like he had to blame me for something. He was wild, nasty. And afterwards he wouldn’t even want to talk. He would just tell me to get out, like that was it. Like he was ashamed about what had happened. And I would get paid by Vespa and try to forget about it until the next time. You do something once,’ she said in a dreamy voice, ‘and get paid for it and you think you’ll never do it again. But then you do, because you need the money or the advancement. And then it becomes a habit and you lie to yourself about what you do or what you’ve become.’ She looked at me with tired eyes and nodded. ‘You must think I’m terrible.’
I shook my head. I had seen much worse than an ambitious girl using her charms to get ahead. I looked at her and she was shaking her head now, like she either didn’t believe me or couldn’t believe what her former self had done.
‘That’s why I say I lost myself.’
‘And you lost Simona too?’
She looked at me sharply. ‘What do you mean?’
I didn’t say anything else, but watched her face. I had a hunch about something now and probably only Chiara could tell me if I was right or not. I guessed that she had dropped out of the game because she had fallen pregnant. And that the child she was carrying was Giorgio Gregori’s. Her parents had adopted the child, pretending to everyone that the two girls in their household were sisters. It meant that Chiara’s reputation stayed undamaged. And if Simona was the result of the tawdry liaison between Chiara and Gregori, she would be living proof that Di Angelo used to serve up young girls to oil the wheels of his business empire.
Chiara was breathing heavily now, moving as if pained by something physically coming to the surface. She almost looked like she was going to be sick. She made a couple of false starts, clamping her mouth shut just as something was about to come out. Then she shut her eyes and took some deep breaths.
‘My parents found out I was pregnant. There’s only so long you can hide something like that. They decided everything before I even knew what was going on. They were going to bring up Simona as their own daughter. I didn’t want her anyway. I thought she would be a constant reminder of that man. Of what I had done. I was fine with it. She was supposed to be my little sister and that was OK. But then, when she was born,’ her voice suddenly went up an octave, ‘she was this helpless, tiny baby. My baby.
‘People always used to say how close we were, despite the age difference, and I used to think that they knew, that they must have known. But no one ever did. They just thought we were sisters. We’ve always been so close. I’ve tried to be like a mother to her, even though I’ve done everything to disguise it.’ She had given up keeping the tears back now. ‘Sometimes I’ve just wanted to hug her, you know, to hold her and tell her the truth, but I couldn’t. Not once I’d lied about it all those years, it was impossible. And by now she’s been my sister so long that it seems almost true.’
‘And not even Simona knows the truth?’
She shook her head.
‘And your husband?’
She was still shaking her head, moving her chin from side to side as though it were a slow, heavy pendulum.
I leant forward and touched her shoulder as it bounced with her sobs. I watched her lap being darkened with her tears.
There was an abrupt knock at the door and her husband came in. He looked at us for a second. ‘Everything OK?’
She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand and nodded. ‘Fine.’ She looked at him and smiled apologetically. ‘It’s fine.’
I took my hand off her shoulder, not wanting to appear intimate in front of her husband.
‘OK,’ he said, unconvinced, and shut the door again.
We heard his footsteps retreating down the corridor. ‘I don’t know how I’ll ever tell him all this,’ she whispered. ‘Or what I’ll tell the boys.’
‘The most important thing right now is to find Simona.’
She looked at me with longing. There was something attractive about her damp lips as she smiled wistfully. ‘I should have told you all this at the beginning.’
I shrugged as if it didn’t matter. ‘Tell me about Giorgio Gregori.’
She sighed, throwing her head back to look at the ceiling. ‘I only found out afterwards who he was.’
‘Go on.’
‘The head of Teleshare Italia.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s the organisation that measures viewing figures.’ She rested her head on her shoulder as she moved her eyes from the ceiling to me. ‘Get it?’
‘Di Angelo’s studio was providing . . .’ I tried to be tactful, ‘entertainment for the head of Teleshare?’
‘Right.’ Her faraway stare had returned. Her gaze was fixed on the wall behind my shoulders. ‘And Simona,’ she said quietly, almost to herself, ‘is the living evidence of that, of that entertainment.’
I felt like I finally understood Mori’s interest in the young girl. She was the proof that Di Angelo’s TV station was crooked, that it had been employing high-class call girls to service the men who controlled the revenue streams. Not just the important advertisers, but the quango that measured viewing figures. Increases of even fractions of a per cent in audience share could mean millions more in advertising revenue for a studio. With tens or hundreds of thousands of extra viewers, a station could increase its charges to advertisers. Giorgio Gregori, the head of Teleshare, was like the fairy godfather, the man who – with a wave of his wand – could give a media magnate pots of gold. So the media magnate had sent round young girls to please the fairy godfather to persuade him to nudge up the viewing figures. Mori, I guessed, knew what had gone on and was using Simona to squeeze some money out of Gregori or, more probably, Di Angelo.
‘How did Mori know about it?’ I asked her.
She shrugged.
‘You never told him?’
‘I hardly knew him. I only met him once or twice.’
‘With Anna?’
‘Right. They were friends, sort of. I knew he had hung out with Anna in the past. They were from the same tiny village somewhere in Le Marche.’
‘Where was that?’
She shrugged again. ‘I can’t remember, but they were from the same village, or certainly the same area.’
‘What was he like?’
‘A charlatan. I don’t know what she saw in him. He had nothing going for him except her.’
‘And now Simona.’
‘Yeah, that’s what he was like. He used people, nothing more. Are you sure it’s him?’
‘Seems that way.’ I pulled out the old photograph of Mori that his brother had given me. ‘This is him, right?’ I passed it over and she looked at it, shaking her head in disbelief that he was back in her life.
‘Yeah, that’s him.’ She turned the photograph over to look at the back, and then looked at the shot again. ‘Anna must have told him about me before she went missing. I told her I was pregnant. She was more or less the only one I told.’
‘And she knew who the father was?’
‘Sure. She knew.’
Chiara and I looked at each other, thinking the same thing. That Mori must have known about Simona’s existence for years. But it was only when her photograph appeared in a magazine recently that he knew where to look for her, where to find her outside her family home. And it was only now, now that Di Angelo was a senator in parliament pontificating about the state of the nation, that he might be prepared to pay big money to keep his skeletons in the cupboard.
‘Where does this Gregori live?’ I asked.
‘Gregori?’
‘Sure.’
She shut her eyes. ‘He used to be in Via Napoli. One of the apartments on the right of that courtyard opposite the fountain.’
I stood up to go. I looked at her, unsure of what to say. She just sat there, staring ahead. I put a hand on her shoulder briefly and walked out.
Her husband was watching television with his sons. I nodded in his direction and he came over to let me out.
‘She’s been really shaken by this whole Simona thing,’ he said, as if explaining his wife’s tears.
‘I think everyone’s been shaken by it.’
‘Any news?’
I shook my head. ‘Old news. There’s stuff that happened a long time ago. I think it’s bringing back bad memories.’
‘What do you mean?’ He had an uneven smile, and I wondered how much, deep down, he actually knew or suspected.
‘Secrets are like fireworks,’ I said. ‘You don’t see them until they explode.’
He looked at me quizzically as we shook hands. I got in the lift and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I hadn’t shaved for five days and there was a purple patch above my eye where Vespa had hit me in Mori’s caravan. I looked like a boozer after a bar brawl.
I went and sat in the car and watched the world. Pedestrians kept walking past with rectangular shopping bags with string handles. The shops’ logos were printed on the outside. I was tired and bemused. Bemused that the world kept on shopping whatever the warnings, as if it were vital to be well dressed for the economic apocalypse. Bemused that people could keep going despite the grief and terror and tragedy all around them. And bemused that parents who were desperate to find their only daughter seemed to be holding out on me. It didn’t make sense.
I found Via Napoli and Gregori’s place easily enough. It was one of those old palazzi that made Rome seem timeless. I walked in through the main archway and found an old staircase to the right. The centres of the stone steps were worn with time and the stone bannisters had been polished by centuries of palms.
At the top of the staircase there was an internal balcony. I walked along it, looking at the dark wooden doors with their oval brass nameplates. The whole place felt old and august.
At the end of the line I saw the name Gregori on a plaque. I stared at it for a second, not sure what to expect. I realised I didn’t know if he was married, if he had family, if he had other children.
I rang the bell. Almost a minute later the door opened and an elderly woman stood in the doorway. She was wearing an apron and wiping her hands on a blue towel.
‘Hello.’
‘I’m looking for Giorgio Gregori.’
‘And you are?’
‘Castagnetti. I’m a private detective.’
‘My brother’s very frail. He’s not really up to seeing visitors.’
‘A young girl’s life is in danger.’
She frowned, looking at me as if she suspected it was some kind of wind-up. ‘What girl?’
‘Can I come in?’
She held the door open, looking at me as I moved past her and into the hallway. It was the kind of place that was furnished entirely with antiques. There were large oil paintings with curling gold-leaf frames‚ scratched mirrors above marble mantlepieces‚ an oak table with a row of reclining, embossed invitations.
‘This was my parents’ house,’ the woman said. ‘Giorgio has lived here ever since they passed aw
ay in the 1970s. I’ve been looking after him since he fell ill.’
‘And you’re his sister?’
‘Mariangela Gregori,’ she held out a hand. ‘Who is this girl who is missing? I’m sure Giorgio can’t help you. He’s barely left his bedroom for the last year.’
I stared at her kind face, wondering how much she knew about her brother.
‘Coffee?’
We went into the kitchen and she went through the habitual motions: water, granules, heat. She asked me a couple of courteous questions as we waited for it to bubble up to the top chamber. When it hissed its arrival, she poured it out and led me through to a dining room. We sat on the corner of a huge, rectangular table surrounded by cabinets of silver bowls and decorated dishes.
‘My brother hasn’t got long,’ she said.
‘I won’t need long,’ I said.
‘I mean, he won’t be with us much longer. He was diagnosed with emphysema years ago and is slowly going downhill.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He’s always been so active, so strong. It’s strange to see him lying there all day, barely able to feed himself.’
‘He had a very successful career,’ I said vaguely.
She nodded. ‘He did. He was always being asked to chair this or that. People knew he was reliable.’
I smiled at the irony. Reliability was what got you work in this country. You had to do what you were told, making little compromises all the way to the top until, if you got there yourself, you had made so many compromises that you had to start forcing other people to make them to cover up your tracks.
‘Didn’t he work for Teleshare a long time ago?’ I asked innocently.
‘He set it up,’ she said. ‘Before then, there was no trustworthy measure of public taste. He was the first to devise a system to measure audience figures scientifically.’
She was clearly the sort of sister who idolised her older brother. I didn’t want to burst her bubble, but I was facing a race against time to find Simona.
