‘Oh, yes, I think I caught some of that,’ Scamarcio lied. ‘Do you get on well with him?’
Bini was starting to look concerned. Scamarcio could see him trying to work out how Giacometti might fit into all this.
‘Yes, I mean Paolo’s a bit mad, but his heart is in the right place, and he definitely knows the business; his scripts are always rock-solid. I’ve never had any issues with him.’
‘And him and Micky? Do they get on, do you think?’
Bini exhaled. ‘Well, you know, Detective — the way our business works — if Paolo had an issue with Micky, he’d never talk to us actors about it. It would be the height of unprofessionalism. He’d keep that kind of thing for off the shoot.’
‘OK,’ said Scamarcio. ‘That makes sense.’ He made a pointless note on his pad while he allowed a thought to take shape. ‘Given you’ve worked with Paolo a bit before, can I ask you if you’ve noticed any change in him recently, anything different?’
Bini frowned and shook his head: ‘No, not that I can think of.’ Then, after a few moments’ silence, he laughed and said: ‘Well, apart from the newfound football obsession, of course.’
‘What?’
‘It’s like he suddenly can’t get enough of it. When I was up in Trieste, he kept watching matches on his iPad or checking the results on his phone. I mean, he seemed more interested in that than the shoot, half the time! It’s hilarious, because he’s never been into sport, Paolo. He couldn’t have cared less. We’ve all been making jokes about the transformation; ribbing him that he’s having a mid-life crisis!’
Scamarcio’s heart was doing double time. This was it — he was starting to see it properly now. ‘Has Mr Giacometti declared himself for any one team in particular?’
Bini nodded keenly, still amused by it all. ‘Roma, of course! And Aconi is the star striker. He carries the show, according to Paolo. I think he’s half in love with him.’
Scamarcio took a long drink of his water. It might as well have been champagne.
He’d nailed it — the missing element.
31
ACONI WAS LYING DOWN, his huge back to the ground, taking it in turns to hug each mammoth knee to his chest. All around him, his teammates were repeating the same exercise. It was a surprisingly cold morning, and Scamarcio could see eleven little clouds of breath suspended in the frosty air.
He approached one of the trainers who appeared to be in deep discussion with a man who looked alarmingly like Franco Zandelli, the Roma manager. Zandelli was renowned for having a terrible temper, and Scamarcio didn’t relish the prospect of going head to head with him. He steeled himself and pulled out his badge.
‘Excuse me, gentlemen. May I have a minute of your time?’
They turned, and looked first at him and then the badge.
‘Detective.’ Zandelli seemed to be having trouble making out the rest of the writing on the ID. He patted his pocket for a pair of glasses, but then quickly gave up. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m investigating a kidnapping. I need a moment with Aconi.’
‘A kidnapping?’
‘There’s a boy’s life at stake. I need to speak to him urgently.’
Zandelli and his trainer just looked at him, shocked.
‘Please — just five minutes. It could be crucial.’
Zandelli nodded, confused. ‘OK. But take him somewhere else — I don’t want the lads distracted. Then, when you’ve spoken to him, come back and report to me. I need to know if there’s a problem in my team.’
Scamarcio felt like one of his stressed-out players, but nodded anyway. He just wanted to get this over with.
Aconi didn’t seem that surprised to see him again. ‘I thought you’d be back,’ he said, glancing up quickly before continuing with his leg presses.
‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’
The footballer took a long, controlled breath and said: ‘Just let me do ten more.’
Scamarcio waited patiently for him to finish, the eyes of Zandelli boring into him all the while.
After a minute or so, Aconi splayed his huge hands by his sides, then sprang up from the ground with the grace of someone half his weight. ‘Let’s go to the canteen. I’m hungry,’ he said, waving quickly at Zandelli, who was still staring.
When they were seated at a far table in the empty cafeteria, Aconi said: ‘So what is it this time?’
‘You said you weren’t surprised I was back. Why’s that?’
‘Because Pollett’s wife was killed. The whole thing seems to be unravelling, running away from you. You’ve got to try everything now.’
Scamarcio averted his eyes and took a sip of the espresso in front of him. It was good. Aconi, he noticed, had opted for a fruit tea. Maybe footballers weren’t allowed caffeine. Perhaps it did something to the muscles.
Scamarcio took one more sip and then looked hard at the man before him. ‘So, Aconi, I’ve heard you’re bisexual, and that, as well as Fiammetta di Bondi, you’ve also been seeing a TV producer called Paolo Giacometti.’
Aconi just stared back at him, his expression blank.
Scamarcio pulled out his notebook and opened it to a clean page. He smoothed down the page and pushed down the button on his biro. ‘Needless to say, nothing you tell me today will make its way to the press. You have my word on that. I hate those bastards as much as you do, perhaps more. I know what it’s like to be at the wrong end of their lenses — I know the fear, the panic, the shame. All I want is to solve this inquiry as quickly as possible. That is my only agenda; the sole reason I’m here.’
Scamarcio looked up at him once more and scratched at the corner of his nose, expectant.
Aconi just kept staring at him, his face a blank.
‘Come on, man. They’ve got Proietti’s boy and, as you so observantly noted, we’re desperate. I need to hone down this angle and move on. And I need to do it in the next ten minutes.’
Aconi took a quick sip of his tea, but when the waitress brought over a plate of scrambled eggs on toast, he immediately pushed it away. He sat back in his chair and barred his arms across his vast chest. To Scamarcio, the gesture seemed born more from self-protection than defiance.
‘How can I trust you? I start talking to you, and my career could be over by tonight,’ said the nation’s top striker. Then, as an afterthought: ‘I need to call my agent.’
Scamarcio sighed. ‘I don’t have time for that. You can trust me, because not too long ago I found my face splashed all over the papers when they decided to write about what it must be like to be a top policeman and the son of a leading Mafioso. I’m still reaping the consequences, and I’m still trying to shake the shame. So you have my word when I say I’ll make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to you.’
Aconi nodded slowly, his expression solemn. ‘Yes, I thought you seemed familiar.’
Scamarcio exhaled and tapped the biro against the blank page of his notepad. ‘OK, so now we’ve got all that over with, can you tell me about Paolo Giacometti?’
‘Paolo,’ said Aconi hesitantly, as if he was trying to match a name to a face. ‘Paolo and I had a thing for about two months, but I called it off when I met Fiammetta.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Like I told you, I fell for Fiammetta. By that point, I was beginning to find Paolo rather stifling. He’d become quite intense about the relationship, and I realised he wanted more out of it than I did.’
‘Did Micky Proietti know you were seeing Paolo Giacometti?’
‘I kept that side of my life very quiet, and I’d never told Micky. But Paolo said once that he suspected Micky knew.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Micky had made some comment that had got Paolo worried. Paolo believed that Micky could be malicious when he wanted to be — often quite arbitrarily. He was worried that Micky was planning
something that would hurt me.’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘Paolo wasn’t sure — he just said he had a bad feeling.’
‘And this comment that Micky made?’
‘I can’t remember the nature of it now.’
‘But why would Micky want to get at you? Or Paolo, for that matter? Paolo was one of Micky’s top suppliers.’
‘Paolo believed that Micky was jealous of him, of his success.’
‘Micky’s successful.’
‘But he’s not in the same league financially as Paolo. He hasn’t made the millions Paolo has. Paolo has launched a few reality shows that have made him mega bucks. He thinks Micky resented that.’
‘It seems so petty.’
‘Shit, Detective, then you don’t understand these people at all. It’s a petty world they inhabit.’
A thought occurred to Scamarcio, stopping him in his tracks for a moment. When he’d brought it into focus, sharpened it, he asked: ‘How soon after Paolo Giacometti mentioned his suspicions about Micky did Micky introduce you to Fiammetta?’
Aconi scratched at his neck and frowned. ‘Well, now you ask, I’d say pretty soon. It was the same week, I think. We’d been at my house on the Sunday having breakfast when Paolo brought up his worries about Micky knowing something. Then I think it was the Wednesday or Thursday night that I was at the Fendi party with Micky, and he introduced me to her. So, yeah, we’re talking three or four days. I’d need to check my diary to be sure, though.’
Aconi inclined his head to the side, and Scamarcio saw the realisation slowly dawn. Aconi may have had a Laurea of 108, but he wasn’t being particularly quick on this one.
He turned to Scamarcio, his eyes alive. ‘Jesus, do you think Micky introduced me to Fiammetta to make sure I broke up with Paolo?’
‘Could be …’
‘But that’s mad …’
‘I wonder if Proietti may in fact be slightly mad.’ Scamarcio took a breath. ‘Did Paolo Giacometti know that Micky introduced you to Fiammetta? Did Paolo Giacometti know that you’d left him for her?’
Aconi began to understand where Scamarcio was heading. ‘Christ, do you think Paolo has something to do with the kidnap?’ He wiped his hand across his forehead. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘You haven’t answered my question, Mr Aconi.’
‘Oh, right. Yes, did he know, did he know? Let me think …’
He was getting flustered, losing it. The realisation that his connection to the kidnapping might be far tighter than he had imagined seemed to be proving too much to process. Scamarcio waited patiently for him to answer. A fly was attempting to land on the rim of his espresso cup, and he flicked it away with his biro. But it wasn’t deterred and kept coming back, its disgusting little legs criss-crossing over where Scamarcio had just placed his mouth. He wanted to swat it dead, but didn’t want to distract the footballer.
‘Oh shit,’ said Aconi, bringing both hands to his lips as if in prayer. ‘Yes, of course he knew. He was there, Paolo, at the Fendi party. I remember him watching us when Micky introduced me to Fiammetta. He was watching us from a corner. I remember now that I was thinking I must go and talk to him, get him to stop staring, stop looking so angry. Oh shit …’
Oh shit indeed, thought Scamarcio, swatting the fly away once more. How the hell were they going to track down Giacometti before he let this madness escalate any further? Who the hell knew what else the man was capable of?
32
THE POLICE IN TRIESTE had visited the location for the Autumn of our Lives shoot, but there’d been no sign of Paolo Giacometti. He hadn’t shown up at his offices either, and his ex, Sebastiano, hadn’t seen him. They’d put surveillance on both GD Films and the flat in Trastevere, but so far had nothing. Scamarcio insisted they also maintain their search for Chiara Bellagamba, but when he’d suggested keeping an undercover unit outside her parents’ place, Garramone had said, ‘That would be one cost too many.’
‘What does Mancino want us to do? Just keep wasting money repeating pointless tasks, or actually spend it on something useful?’
‘That horse has already bolted.’
‘In a case like his, there can be no such thing as too much surveillance. It prevents there being too many murders.’
‘You’re preaching to the choir, Scamarcio.’
But it seemed that Garramone had quickly changed his mind and had put it to the chief, because just an hour later they had two plainclothes officers posted outside Bellagamba’s parents’ flat in Testaccio. Davide Stasio hadn’t been seen in days, so Garramone had decide to lift his men off that, convinced that they’d been rumbled and that Stasio had gone to ground.
Scamarcio was now sitting with Micky Proietti in his living room, where everything, including Proietti himself, was starting to take on a grimy, faded hue. The cleaner hadn’t been in, so the floors were dusty, and smeared with dried-out footprints from countless police boots traipsing in and out. The sofa cushions looked far less pristine than on Scamarcio’s first visit, and were now slack and wine-stained in several places. As for Proietti, his hair was hanging in limp, greasy strands, his eyes were bloodshot, and his chin bore the dirty, grey stubble of several days’ growth. Yet again, Scamarcio prayed silently to a God he didn’t believe in that the investigation would conclude before Proietti had grown a beard.
‘Every day I feel like I’m about to wake up, that the nightmare is almost over. But I never do, I never wake up,’ said Proietti, taking a sip from a glass that looked like water, but which Scamarcio knew was neat vodka.
‘We’re close to finding him, we’re making progress now.’ Scamarcio wasn’t lying — he believed it. He always had the same feeling on every case when it turned a corner, when the switch was finally flicked. It was an expectancy, an electric anticipation that the goal was in reach, that they just needed to make the final push.
‘I can’t believe Paolo would do this. It’s just so fucking warped,’ said Proietti, cradling the glass.
‘Love can make people do all sorts of irrational things — things they’d never normally be capable of,’ said Scamarcio.
‘But a kidnapping? For fuck’s sake!’
‘From what I’ve heard, you baited him a bit …’
Scamarcio thought he might lash out, tell him to go fuck himself, but the result was quite the opposite. Proietti stewed in silence for a few moments, then said: ‘I’m a fucker. I’ve behaved like a shit — for years. This is my comeuppance, my divine retribution.’ He paused and looked down into his lap. ‘It’s been a long time coming.’
He glanced up and shook his head at Scamarcio, still bewildered by it all. ‘Funny thing is that it came from where I least expected.’
‘Life’s always playing tricks like that,’ said Scamarcio.
Fiammetta di Bondi was getting ready to head out when Scamarcio dropped by her place.
‘Oh, Scamarcio,’ she said, shaking on a brown-leather jacket. ‘I’ve got a photoshoot in Piazza di Spagna. Can it wait?’
He was disappointed that she seemed quite unruffled by his visit. It was as if their last encounter had never happened. He wondered for a moment if she were mentally ill. Perhaps she said things like that to strangers all the time then forgot about it.
‘I just wanted to know what the situation is with you and Aconi, the footballer. I’m trying to tie up that line of inquiry.’
He knew deep down that the question was not of central relevance to the investigation, but while they were waiting for Giacometti or his researcher to surface, he deemed it worth a try.
‘Walk with me,’ she said quickly.
She swung shut her front door behind her, and he was almost relieved that he didn’t have to see the inside of her flat. What would it be this time? A rotting chicken carcass on the coffee table? An overturned dustbin in the bath?
‘Me a
nd Aconi,’ she said, taking the steps two at a time, ‘we’re having a break. All this business with Manfredi and Micky, it’s got to us. They were people we hung around with, came to know. Aconi tells me he wants to take some time out to reassess his life, and I’m taking the opportunity to do the same.’ She turned to look at him for a moment, and he felt a small spark of something that might have been hope. Then he wondered if she was telling him that she wanted time out from everything; that she was retreating for a period of reflection.
‘Right,’ he said lamely.
She pulled open the heavy wooden door to the street and stepped out into the mild warmth of the afternoon. She turned to face him. ‘Is that the answer you were looking for, Detective?’
He frowned, confused. ‘Perhaps.’
She smiled, then hurried off in the opposite direction, not looking back once.
He wondered at the neatness of it all. Just a few days before, Aconi had claimed he was in love with di Bondi. Then, less than 24 hours ago, di Bondi made a move on Scamarcio. Now she was telling him she was single. It was all too convenient. If he could have stepped outside his body and kicked himself, he would have. He needed to wake up and stay sharp. His emotions had to be left right out of this.
33
PAOLO GIACOMETTI HAD BEEN spotted on CCTV at Trieste station that morning, boarding a train to Rome. Why such a public re-entry? Scamarcio wondered. Could he be coming home to talk, to finally face up to his breathtaking stupidity?
From what little he knew of him so far, Scamarcio decided that Giacometti was someone prone to spectacular madness, but whose rational side would always pull him back down to terra firma eventually. Had he been mulling it over up north — had he decided that he wanted it over with? The police had now talked to too many of his friends and associates. It must have been clear to him that the net was fast closing in.
Scamarcio waited with the team on platform 9 at Termini. They had come prepared for a fight, as they always did, but Scamarcio sensed there wouldn’t be one. Giacometti was tired, and would come willingly.
The Hit Page 24
