Vendetta az-2

by Michael Dibdin

  'Just take my advice, my friend,' he said. 'Have nothing to do with that place. Terrible things have happened there, things you can't wash away with water, even if there was any. There are plenty of nice villas up north, on the coast, houses for rich foreigners. Down here is not the place for them. There are too many naughty boys. Like that one over there, for instance.'

  He nodded towards Furio Padedda, who was just finishing his beer.

  'Is he a friend of yours?' asked Zen.

  Turiddu slapped the table so hard that the bottle nearly fell over.

  'Him? He's no one's friend, not round here! He's a foreigner. He's got friends all right, up in the mountains.'

  He lowered his voice to a sly whisper.

  'They don't grow crops up there, you know. They don't grow anything, the lazy bastards. They just take whatever they want. Sheep, cattle. Sometimes people too. Then they get very rich very quick!'

  One of his companions said something brief and forceful in Sardinian. Turiddu frowned but was silent.

  A shadow fell across the table. Zen looked up to find Furio Padedda standing over him.

  'Good evening, Herr Gurtner,' he said, stressing the foreign title.

  'What the fuck do you want, Padedda?' growled Turiddu.

  'I just wanted to greet our friend frcm Switzerland here.

  Been having a drink, have you? Several drinks, in fact.'

  'None of your fucking business,' Turiddu told him.

  'I was thinking of Herr Gurtner,' Padedda continued in an even tone. 'He should be careful. Our Sardinian grappa might be a little strong for him.'

  He called his companion over.

  'Let me introduce my friend Patrizio. Patrizio, Herr Reto Gurtner of Zurich.'

  Patrizio held out his hand and said something incomprehensible. Zen smiled politely.

  'I'm sorry, I don't understand dialect.'

  Padedda's eyes narrowed.

  'Not even your own?'

  A silence like thick fog fell over the pizzeria. You could feel it, taste it, smell it, see it.

  'Patrizio spent eight years in Switzerland working on the Saint Bernard tunnel,' Padedda explained. 'He speaks Swiss German fluently. Oddly enough, it seems that Herr Reto Gurtner does not.'

  I knew him at once. They think they're so clever, the others, but their cleverness is lost on me. It's a poison that doesn't take, a disease I'm immune to. Their conjuring tricks are meant for them, the children of the light to whom everything is what it seems, the way it looks. The policeman just provided himself with false papers and a big car and – presto! – he was magically transformed in his own eyes and theirs into a foreign businessman come to buy property. They believe in property, they believe in documents and papers, namcs and dates. How could they not believe in him? Living out a lie themselves, hou~ could they recognize his lies?

  But I knew who he was the moment I set eyes on him. I kneu› wh!i he Jmd come and why he wanted to see the house. I knew what lay behind his sly questions and insinuating remarks, his prying and peeping.

  I was very bold, I confronted him openly. He shied away, seeming not to know me. The darkness showed its hand for an instant, like a brief eclipse of the sun, and I read death in his eyes. I'd seen it before with the animals Father killed. I knew what it meant.

  Perhaps he too sensed that something was going on. Perhaps he even suspected that his life was in danger. But how could he have had the slightest idea who it was that represented that danger?

  Sunday, 07.00 – 11.20

  Perhaps if the kidnap attempt had not occurred when he had been driving back from it, Oscar Burolo might have shown his appreciation to the local church by donating a set of real bells. It was the kind of showy gesture he was fond of, stage-managed to look like an impulsive act ~›t generosity, although in fact he would have costed the whole thing down to the last lira and got a massive discount from the foundry in return for some building work using materials recycled from another contract. Nevertheless, the village church would have got its bells. As it was, it had to make do with a gramophone record of a carillon played through loudspeakers, and it was this that woke Aurelio Zen shortly before dawn the following morning.

  The gramophone record was very old, with a loud scratch which Zen's befuddled brain translated as high-velociti shots being fired at him by a marksman perched in thv bell-tower. Luckily, by the time they reached his room the bullets had slowed down considerably, and in the ena they just hovered in the air about his face, darting this waxand that like dragonflies, a harmless nuisance.

  As the recorded bells finally fell silent, Zen opened his eyes on a jumble of colours and blurred shapes, impossible to sort by size or distance. He waited patiently for things to start making sense, but when minutes went by and hi~ surroundings still refused to snap into focus, he began tc worry that he had done some permanent injury to his brain. pe hauled himself upright in bed, slumping back against the wooden headboard.

  Things improved Somewhat True, he Still had a Sp]itting headache and felt like he might throw up at any moment, hut to his relief the objects in the room began -a little reluctantly, it seemed – to assume the shapes and relationships he vaguely remembered from the previous cfay. There was the large plywood wardrobe with the cfoor that wouldn't close properly and the wire coatpangers hanging like bats from a branch. There was the small table with its cumbersome ceramic lamp, and the three cheap ugly wooden chairs squatting like refugees awaiting bad news. From a ceiling the colour of spoiled milk a long rusty chain supported a dim light, whose irregular thick glass bowl must have looked very futuristic in about 1963.

  There was the washbasin, the rack for glasses below the mirror and the dud bulb above, the metal rubbish bin with its plastic liner, the barred window lying open into the room. He must have forgotten to close it when he went to bed. That was why the air seemed stiff with cold, and why the sound of the bells had wakened him. He didn't feel cold in bed, though, probably because he was still fully dressed apart from his shoes and jacket. He laboriously transferred his gaze to the floor, a chilly expanse of speckled black and white aggregate polished to a hard shine. There they were, the two shoes on their sides and the discarded jacket on its back above them, like the outline drawing of a murder victim.

  He lay back, exhausted by this effort, trying to piece together the events of the previous evening. Quite apart from resulting in the worst hangover he had ever experienced, he knew that what had happened hadn't been good news. But what had happened?

  He remembered arriving back at the hotel. The bar was empty except for the old man called Tommaso and a younger man playing the pinball machine in the corner.

  The proprietor called Zen over and handed him his identity card and a bill.

  'The hotel's closing for repairs.'

  'You didn't tell me when I checked in.'

  'I'm telling you now.'

  The pinball player had turned to watch them, and Zen recognized him. He even knew his name – Patrizio -although he had no recollection of how or where they had met. What had he been doing all evening?

  Abandoning this intractable problem, Zen swung his feet down on to the icy fioor and stood up. This was a mistake. Previously he had had to deal with the electrical storm in his head, a stomach badly corroded by the toxic waste swilling around inside it, limbs that twitched, joints that ached and a mouth that seemed to have been replaced by a plaster replica. The only good news, in fact, had been that the room wasn't spinning round and round like a fairground ride. That was why it had been a mistake standing up.

  Washing, shaving, dressing and packing were so man ~. stations of the cross for Aurelio Zen that morning. But it wasn't until he lit a cigarette in the mistaken belief that it might make him feel better, and found tucked inside thc packet of Marlboros a book of matches whose cover reaa 'Pizzeria II Nuraghe', that the merciful fog obscuring the events of the previous evening suddenly lifted.

  He collapsed on one of the rickety wooden chairs, its feet scraping at
rociously on the polished floor slabs. Ze n didn't notice. He wasn't in his hotel room any longer. He was sitting at the table in the pizzeria, drunker than he had ever been in his life; horribly, monstrously, terminally drunk. Five men, three seated and two standing, were staring at him with expressions of pure, malignant hostility. The situation was totally out of control. Nothing he could say or do would have any effect whatsoever.

  For a moment he thought that they might be going to assault him, but in the end Furio Padedda and his friend Patrizio had just turned away and walked out. Then the man called Turiddu threw some banknotes on the table and he and his companions left too, without a word. putside, the air was thick with scents brought out by the rain: creosote, wild thyme, wood smoke, urine, motor oil. yo judge by the stillness of the street, it might have been tpe small hours. Then a motorcycle engine opened up the night like a crude tin-opener, all jagged, torn edges, The pike emerged from the shadows of an alley and moved slowly and menacingly towards Zen. By the volatile ~oonlight, he recognized the rider as Furio Padedda. The Sardinian bestrode the machine like a horse, urging it on with tightenings of his knees. From a strap around his shoulders hung a double-barrelled shotgun.

  Then a figure appeared in the street some distance ahead cf Zen. One ahead and one behind, the classic ambush. The correct procedure was to go on the offensive, take out one oi the other before they could complete the squeeze. But if Zen had been following correct procedures he would never have been there in the first place without any back-up. Even in his prime, twenty years ago, he couldn't have handled either man, never mind both of them. As Zen approached the blocker, he saw that it was Turiddu. With drunken fatalism, he kept walking. Ten metres. Five. Two. One. He braced himself for the arm across the throat, the foot to the groin.

  Then he was past and nothing had happened. He sensed rather than saw Turiddu fall in behind him, his footsteps blending with the raucous murmur of Padedda's motorcycle. Zen forced himself not to hurry or look round.

  He walked on past rows of darkened windows, closed shutters and locked doors, followed by the two men, until at last he reached the piazza and the hotel.

  Now, mulling it over in his room, his thoughts crawling through the wreckage of his brain like the stunned survivors of an earthquake, Zen realized that he owed his escape to the enmity between the two Sardinians. Each had no doubt intended to punish the impostor, but neithe was prepared to allow the other that honour, and cooperation was out of the question. Back at the hotel, the proprietor, alerted by Padedda's associate Patrizio, had delivered his ultimatum. There was no other accommodation in the village, and in any case there was no point in Zen remaining, now that Reto Gurtner had been exposed as a fraud. Whatever he said or did, everyone would assume that he was a policeman, a government spy. The farce was over. He would drive to Cagliari that morning and book a ticket on the night ferry to the mainland. When he returned to the village, it would be in his official capacity. At least that way he could compel respect.

  His inability to do so at present was amply demonstrated by the length of time it took him to get breakfast in the bar downstairs. At least half-a-dozen of the locals had drifted in and out again, replete with cappuccinos and pastries, before Zen was finally served a lukewarm cup of coffee that tasted as though it had been made from second hand grounds and watered milk.

  'Goodbye for now,' he told the proprietor as he stalked out.

  The remark elicited a sharp glance that expressed anxious defiance as well as hostility. It gladdened Zen for a moment, until he reflected that his implied threat was the first step on the path which had led to the Gestapo tactics of the past.

  The weather had changed. The sky was overcast, grey and featureless, the air still and humid. Zen's hangover felt like an octopus clinging to every cell of his being.

  Although weakening, the monster had plenty of life in it yet. Every movement involved an exhausting struggl against its tenacious resistance. He found himself looking, forward to sinking luxuriously into the Mercedes' leather upholstery and driving away from this damned village, listening to the radio broadcasts from Rome, that lovely, civilized city where Tania was even now rising from her bed, sipping her morning coffee, even thinking of him perpaps. He could allow himself to dream. Given all he'd been through, he'd surely earned the right to a little harmless self-indulgence.

  Half-way across the piazza, beside the village war memorial, Zen had to stop, put his suitcase down and catch his breath. The dead of the 1915 -1918 war covered two sides of the rectangular slab, the same surname often repeated six or eight times, like a litany. The Sardinians pad formed the core of the Italian army's mountain divisions and half the young men of the village must have died at Isonzo and on the Piave. The later conflicts had taken a lesser toll. Thirty had died in 1940 -1945, four in Spain and five in Abyssinia.

  As Zen picked up the leaden suitcase again, he noticed a tall thin man in a beige overcoat staring at him curiously.

  His deception would be common knowledge by now, he realized, and his every action a cause for suspicion. He dumped the suitcase in the boot of the Mercedes, got inside and turned the ignition on. Nothing happened. It was a measure of his befuddlement that it took him several minutes to realize that nothing was going to happen, no matter how many times he twisted the key. At first he thought he might have drained the battery by leaving the lights on, but when he tried the windscreen wipers they worked normally. He had invented problems with the Mercedes as a way of breaking the ice with Turiddu and his friends the night before, and the wretched car was apparently now taking its revenge by playing up just when he needed it most. Then he noticed the envelope tucked under one of the wiper blades, like a parking ticket.

  Zen got out of the car and plucked it free. The envelope was blank. Inside was a single sheet of paper. FURIO PADKDDA IS A LIAR,' he read. HE WAS NOT IN THE BAR THE NIGHT THE FOREIGNERS WERE KILLED BUT THE MELEGA CLAN OF ORGOSOLO KNOW WHERE HE WAS.

  The message had been printed by a hand seemingly used to wielding larger and heavier implements than a pen. The letters were uneven and dissimilar, laboriously crafted, starting big and bold but crowded together at the right-hand margin as though panicked by the prospect of falling off the edge of the page.

  Despite his predicament, Zen couldn't help smiling. So the humiliating disaster of the previous night had worked to his advantage, after all. Turiddu had seen an opportunity to even the score with his rival, no doubt easing his conscience with the reflection that Zen had not yet been officially identified as a policeman. If the information was true, it might be just what Zen needed to fabricate a case against Padedda and so keep Palazzo Sisti off his back.

  Unfortunately Turiddu's hatred for the 'foreigner' from the mountains, whatever its cause, did not make him a very reliable informant. Nevertheless, there was something about the note which made Zen feel that it wasn't pure fiction, although in his present condition he couldn't work out what it was.

  He stuffed the letter into his pocket, wondering what to do next. For no reason at all, he decided to ring Tania.

  The phone was of the new variety that accepted coins as well as tokens. Zen fed in his entire supply of change and dialled the distant number. Never had modern technology seemed more miraculous to him than it did then, stranded in a hostile, poverty-stricken Sardinian village listening to a telephone ringing in Tania's flat, a universe away in Rome.

  'Yes?'

  It was a man's voice, abrupt and bad-tempered.

  'Signora Biacis, please.'

  'Who's speaking?'

  'I'm calling from the Ministry of the Interior.'

  'For Christ's sake! Don't you know this is Sunday?'

  'Certainly I know!' he replied impatiently. The coins were dropping through the machine with alarming frequency. 'Do you think I like having to work today either?'

  What do you want with my wife?'

  'I am afraid that's confidential. Just let me speak to her, please.'

  'Oh no, certainly not!
And don't bother ringing any more, signore, because she isn't in! She won't be in! Nog ever, not for you! Understand? Don't think I don't know wpat's going on behind my back! You think I'm a fool, gon't you? A simpleton! Well, you're wrong about that! I'll peach you to play games with a Bevilacqua! Understand? I know what you've been doing, and I'll make you pay for it! Adulterer! Fornicator!'

  At this point Zen's money ran out, sparing him the rest of Mauro Bevilacqua's tirade. He walked despondently pack to the Mercedes. By now the octopus had slackened its grip somewhat, but it still took Zen five minutes tp work out how to open the bonnet. Once he had done so, however, he realized at once why the car would not start.

  This was no credit to his mechanical knowledge, which was non-existent. But even he could see that the spray of wires sticking out of the centre of the motor, each cut cleanly through, meant that some essential component had been deliberately removed.

  He closed the bonnet and looked around the piazza. The phone box was now occupied by the man in the beige overcoat. With a deep sigh, Zen reluctantly returned to the hotel. Why on earth should anyone want to prevent him from leaving? Did Padedda need time to cover his tracks?

  Or was this sabotage Turiddu's way of reconciling his anonymous letter with the burdensome demands of omerta?

  The proprietor greeted Zen's reappearance with a perfectly blank face, as though he had never seen him before.

  'My car's broken down,' Zen told him. 'Is there a taxi service, a car hire, anything like that?'

  'There's a bus.'

  'What time does it leave?'

  'Six o'clock.'

  'In the evening?'

  'In the morning.'

  Zen gritted his teeth. Then he remembered the railway down in the valley. It was a long walk, but by now he was prepared to consider anything to get out of this cursed place.

  'And the train doesn't run on Sunday,' the proprietor added, as though reading his thoughts.