Vendetta az-2

by Michael Dibdin

  Once it became clear that a national uprising of the Italian working class was not going to happen, Spadola and his comrades put their weapons and training to use in a sporadic campaign of bank raids and hold-ups which they tried to justify as 'acts of class warfare'.

  The success of these ventures soon caused considerable strains and stresses within the group. On one side were those led by Ugo and Carlo Trocchio, who still adhered to a doctrinaire political line, and on the other Spadola's followers, who were beginning to appreciate the possibilities of this kind of private enterprise. These problems were eventually resolved when the Trocchio brothers were shot dead in a cafe in the Milan suburb of Rho.

  With their departure, the gang abandoned all pretence of waging a political struggle and concentrated instead on consolidating its grip on every aspect of the city's criminal life. High-risk bank raids were replaced by unspectacular percentage operations such as gambling, prostitution, drugs and extortion. Spadola's involvement in these areas was well known to the police, but one aspect of his partisan training which he had not forgotten was how to structure an organization in such a way that it could survive the penetration or capture of individual units. No matter how many of his operations were foiled or his associates arrested, Spadola himself was never implicated until the Tondelli affair.

  Bruno Tondelli himself was not one of Milan's most savoury characters, but when he was done to death with a butcher's knife it was still murder. The Tondellis had been engaged in a long-running territorial dispute with Spadola's men, which no doubt explained why Spadola , found it expedient to disappear from sight immediately after the murder. Nevertheless, no one in the police would have wagered a piece of used chewing-gum on their chances of pinning it on him.

  Then one day Zen, who had been given the thankless task of investigating Tondelli's stabbing, received a message from an informer asking for a meeting. In order to protect them, informers' real names and addresses were kept in a locked file to which only a very few high-ranking officials had access; everyone else referred to them by their code name. The man who telephoned Zen, known as 'the nightingale', was one of the police's most trusted and reliable sources of information.

  The meeting duly took place in a second-class compartment of one of the Ferrovia Nord trains trundling up the line to Seveso. It was a foggy night in February. At one of the intermediate stations a man joined Zen in the prearranged compartment. Pale, balding, slight and diffident, he might have been a filing clerk or a university professor.

  Vasco Spadola, he said, was hiding out in a farmhouse to the east of the city.

  'I was there the night Tondelli got killed,' the informer went on. 'Spadola stabbed him with his own hand.

  "This'll teach the whole litter of them a lesson," he said.'

  'A lot of use that is to us if you won't testify,' Zen retorted irritably.

  The man gave him an arch look.

  'Who said I wouldn't testify?'

  And testify he duly did. Not only that, but when the police raided the farm house near the village of Melzo, they t'ound not only Vasco Spadola but also a knife which proved to have traces of blood of the same group that had once flowed in Bruno Tondelli's veins.

  Spadola was sentenced to life imprisonment and Aurelio Zen spent three days basking in glory. Then he learned from an envious colleague that the knife had been smeared with a sample of Tondelli's blood and planted at the scene by the police themselves, and that the reason why 'the nightingale' had been prepared to come into court and testify that he had seen Spadola commit murder was that the Tondellis had paid him handsomely to do so.

  Zen closed the file and handed it back to the clerk with the blank video cassette.

  'Oh by the way, if it isn't too much trouble, do you think you could manage to get my name right next time?' he asked sarcastically, flourishing the memorandum.

  'What's wrong with it?' the clerk demanded, taking the substitute video without a second glance.

  'My name happens to be Zen, not Zeno.'

  'Zen's not Italian.'

  'Quite right, it's Venetian. But since it's only three letters long, I'd have thought that even you lot would be capable of spelling it correctly. And while we're at it, what the hell does this say?'

  He indicated the phrase scribbled in the blank space.

  '"… since it is needed by another official",' the clerk read aloud. 'Maybe you need glasses.'

  Zen frowned, ignoring the comment.

  'Who asked for it?'

  The clerk sighed mightily, pulled open a filing cabinet and flicked through the cards.

  'Fabri, Vincenzo.'

  Even now, sitting in the taxi, looking out at the deserted streets of the dormitory suburb, Zen could feel the sense of panic these words had induced. Why should Vincenzo Fabri, of all people, have put in a request for the Burolc video? He had nothing to do with the case, no legitimate reason for wishing to view the tape. If nothing more, it was monstrously unfortunate. Not only would Zen's substitution of the blank tape come to light, but it would do so through the offices of his sworn enemy. Nervously Zen lit a cigarette, ignoring the sign on the taxi's dashboard thanking him for not doing so, and reflected uneasily that Vincenzo Fabri couldn't have contrived a better opportunity to disgrace his rival if he'd planned it himself.

  The earlier part of Zen's evening had not improved his mood. Dinner was always the most difficult part of his day. In the morning he could escape to work, and when he got home in the afternoon Maria Grazia, the housekeeper, was there to dilute the situation with her bustling, loquacious presence. Later in the evening things got easier once again, as his mother switched the lights off and settled down in front of the television, flipping from channel to channel as the whim took her, dipping into the various serials like someone dropping in on the neighbours for a few minutes' inconsequential chat. But first there was dinner to be got through.

  Today, to make matters worse, his mother was having one of her 'deaf' phases, when she was – or pretended to be – unable to hear anything that was said to her until it had been repeated three or four times at an ever higher volume. Since their conversation had long been reduced to the lowest of common denominators, Zev found himself having to shout at the top of his voice remarks that were so meaningless it would have been an effort even to mumble them.

  To Zen's intense relief, the television news made no reference to the discovery of exclusive video footage showing every gory detail of the Burolo murders. Indeed, for once the case was not even mentioned. The news was dominated by the shooting of Judge Giulio Bertolini and featured an emotional interview with the victim's widow, in the course of which she denounced the lack of protection given to her husband.

  Even when Giulio received threats, nothing whatever was done! We begged, we pleaded, we…' "'Your husband was warned that he would be killed?' the reporter interrupted eagerly.

  Signora Bertolini made a gesture of qualification.

  'Not in so many words, no. But there were tokens, signs, strange disturbing things. For example an envelop pushed through our letter-box with nothing inside but a lot of tiny little metal balls, like caviare, only hard. And the:!

  Giulio's wallet was stolen, and later we found it in the living room, the papers and money all scattered about the floor.

  But when we informed the public prosecutor he said ther – were no grounds for giving my husband an armed guard.

  And just a few days later he was gunned down, a helpless victim, betrayed by the very people who should…'

  Zen glanced at his mother. So far neither of them had referred to the mysterious metallic scraping which had disturbed her the previous night, and which he had explained away as a rat in the skirting. He hoped Signora Bertolini's words did not make her think of another possible explanation which had occurred to him: that someone had been trying to break into the flat.

  'Don't you like your soup?' he remarked to his mother, who was moodily pushing the vegetables and pasta aroun.3 in her plate.r />
  'What?'

  'YOUR SOUP! AREN'T YOU GOING TO EAT IT?'

  'It's got turnip in.'

  'What's wrong with that?'

  'Turnips are for cattle, not people,' his mother declare~'. her deafness miraculously improved.

  'You ate them last time.'

  'What?'

  Zen took a deep breath.

  'PUT THEM TO ONE SIDE AND EAT THE REST!' he yelled, repeating word for word the formula she had on;e used with him.

  'I'm not hungry,' his mother retorted sulkily.

  'That won't stop you eating half a box of chocolates whilc you watch TV.'

  'What?'

  'NOTHING.'

  Zen pushed his plate away and lit a cigarette. From the television set, Signora Bertolini continued her confused and vapid accusations. Although he naturally sympathized with her, Zen also felt a sense of revulsion. It was hecoming too convenient to blame the authorities for everything that happened. Soon the relatives of motorists killed on the motorway would appear on television claiming that their deaths were due not to the fact that they had been doing zoo kilometres an hour on the hard shoulder in the middle of a contraflow system, but to the criminal negligence of the authorities in not providing for the needs of people who were exercising their constitutional right to drive like maniacs.

  At one minute to seven exactly Zen walked through to the inner hallway where the phone was and dialled the number Tania had given him. A woman answered.

  'Yes?'

  'Good evening. I have a message for Signora Biacis.'

  'Who's this?'

  The woman's voice was frugal and clipped, as though she had to pay for each word and resented the expense.

  'The Ministry of the Interior.'

  Muffied squawks penetrated to the mouthpiece which the woman had covered with her hand while she talked to someone else.

  'Who's this?' a man abruptly demanded.

  'I'm calling from the Ministry,' Zen recited. 'I have a me ssage for Signora Biacis.'

  'I'm her husband. What have you got to say?'

  'You've no doubt heard about the recent terrorist outrage, Signor Biacis…'

  'Bevilacqua, Mauro Bevilacqua,' the man cut in.

  Zen noted the name on the scratch pad by the phone.

  Evidently Tania Biacis, like many Italian married women, had retained her maiden name.

  'As a result, ministerial staff have been placed on an emer cncy alert. Your wife is liable for a half-shift this evening,'

  The man snorted angrily.

  'This has never happened before!'

  'On the contrary, it has happened all too often.'

  'I mean she's never been called in at this time before!'

  'Then she's been very lucky,' Zen declared with finality, and hung up.

  That was all he'd needed to do, Zen thought as he sat in the taxi, waiting for the driver to return. It was all he'd been asked to do, it was all he had any right to do. But instead of returning to the living room and his mother's company, he'd lifted the phone again and called a taxi.

  The address listed in the telephone directory after 'Bevilacqua Mauro' did not exist on Zen's map of Rome.

  The taxi driver hadn't known where it was either, but after consultations with the dispatcher it had finally been located in one of the new suburbs on the eastern fringes of the city, beyond the Grande Raccordo Anulare.

  Whether it was that the dispatcher's instructions had been unclear or that the driver had forgotten them, they had only found the street after a lengthy excursion through unsurfaced streets that briefiy became country roads pocked with potholes and ridged into steps, where concrete-covered drainage pipes ran across the eroded surface. Until recently this had all been unfenced grazing land, open campagna where sheep roamed amid the striding aqueducts and squat round towers that now gave their names to the new suburbs which had sprung up as the capital began its pathological post-war growth. Laid out piecemeal as the area grew, the streets rambled aimlessly about, often ending abruptly in cul-de-sacs that forced the driver to make long and disorientating detours. Here was a zone of abusive development from the early sixties, a shanty town of troglodytic hutches run up by immigrants from the south, each surrounded by a patch of enclosed ground where chickens and donkeys roamed amid old lavatories and piles of abandoned pallets. Next came an older section of villas for the well-to-do, thick with pines and guard dogs, giving way abruptly to a huge cleared expanse of asphalt illuminated by gigantic searchlights trained down from steel masts, where a band of gypsies had set up home in caravans linked by canopies of plastic sheeting. After that there was a field with sheep grazing, and then the tower blocks began, fourteen storeys high, spaced evenly across the landscape like the pieces in a board-game for giants, on tracts of land that had been brutally assaulted and left to die. Finally, they had found the development of walk-up apartments where Mauro Bevilacqua and Tania Biacis had made their home.

  Zen sank back in the seat, wondering why on earth he had come. As soon as the driver returned from his snack he would go home. Tania must have left long ago, while the taxi was lost in this bewildering urban hinterland. Not that he had really intended to follow her, anyway. Putting together her comment about her husband that morning and then her request that Zen phone up with a fictitious reason for her to leave the house, it seemed pretty clear what she was up to. The last thing he wanted was proof of that. He had accepted the fact that Tania was happily and irrevocably married. He didn't now want to have to accept that, on the contrary, she was having an illicit affair, but not with him.

  A silhouetted figure appeared at one of the windows of the nearby block. Zen imagined the scene viewed from that window: the deserted street, the parked car. It made him think of the night before, and suddenly he understood what he had found disturbing about the red car.

  Like the taxi, it had been about fifty metres from his house and on the opposite side of the street, the classic surveillance position. But he had no time to follow up the implications of this thought, because at that moment a woman emerged from one of the staircases of the apartment block.

  She started to walk towards the taxi, then suddenly stopped, turned, and hurried back the way she had come.

  At the same moment, as if on cue, the taxi driver reappeared from the bar and a swarthy man in shirtsleeves ran out into the car park underneath the apartment block, looking round wildly. The woman veered sharply to her left, making for the bar, but the man easily cut her off.

  They started to struggle, the man gripping her by the arms and trying to pull her back towards the door of the block.

  Zen got out of the taxi and walked over to them, unfolding his identity card.

  'Police! '

  Locked in their clumsy tussle, the couple took no notice. Zen shook the man roughly by the shoulder.

  'Let her go!'

  The man swung round and aimed a wild punch at Zen, who dodged the blow with ease, seized the man by the collar and pulled him off balance, then shoved him backwards, sending him reeling headlong to the ground.

  'Right, what would you like to be arrested for?' he asked. 'Assaulting a police officer…'

  'You assaulted me!' the man interrupted indignantly as he got to his feet.

  '… or interfering with this lady,' Zen concluded.

  The man laughed coarsely. He was short and slightlybuilt, with a compensatory air of bluster and braggadocio which seemed to emanate from his neatly clipped moustache.

  'Lady? What do you mean, lady? She's my wife!

  Understand? This is a family affair!'

  Zen turned to Tania Biacis, who was looking at him in utter amazement.

  'What happened, signora?'

  'She was running away from her home and her duties!' her husband exclaimed.' His arms were outstretched to an invisible audience.

  'I… that taxi… I thought it was free,' Tania said. She was evidently completely thrown by Zen's presence. 'I was going to take it. Then I saw there was someone in it,
so I was going to the bar to phone for one.'

  Mauro Bevilacqua glared at Zen.

  'What the hell are you doing lurking about here, anyway? It's as bad as Russia, policemen on every street corner!'

  'There happens to be a terrorist alert on,' Zen told him coldly.

  Tania turned triumphantly on her husband.

  'You see! I told you!'

  Having recovered her presence of mind, she appealed to Zen.

  'I work at the Ministry of the Interior. I was called in for emergency duties this evening, but my husband wouldn't believe me. He wouldn't let me use the car. He said it was all a lie, a plot to get out of the house!'

  Zen shook his head in disgust.

  'So it's come to this! Here's your wife, signore, a key member of a dedicated team who are giving their all, night and day, to defend this country of ours from a gang of ruthless anarchists, and all you can do is to hurl puerile and scandalous accusations at her! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'

  'It's none of your business!' Bevilacqua snapped.

  'On the contrary,' Zen warned him. 'If I choose to make it my business, you could be facing a prison sentence for assault.'

  He paused to let that sink in.

  'Luckily for you, however, I have more important things to do. Just as your wife does. But to set your fears at rest, I'll accompany her personally to the Ministry. Will that satisfy you? Or perhaps you'd like me to summon an armed escort to make sure that she reaches her place of work safely?'

  Mauro Bevilacqua flapped his arms up and down like a flightless bird trying vainly to take off.

  'What I'd like! What I'd like! What I'd like is for her to start behaving like a wife should instead of gadding about on her own at this time of night!'

  He swung round to face her.

  'You should never have gone to work in the first place! I never wanted you to go.'

  'If you brought home a decent income from that stinking bank I wouldn't have to!'