Europa Blues

28

HE HAD TO admit it. He loved this case already. A couple of days had passed, information was flooding in from both Milan and Stockholm, and he was starting to realise that this was no ordinary case.

It certainly wasn’t ordinary. And nor was Commissioner Italo Marconi. There was something about him.

‘A very good friend?’ he asked, fixing his gaze on the man on the other side of the table.

The man on the other side of the table said: ‘That was how he put it. He was very careful to emphasise it.’

Marconi shook his head. His moustache bristled like reeds in a sea breeze.

‘Signor Sadestatt,’ he said eventually, ‘you think I am Marco di Spinelli’s very good friend?’

‘Not at all,’ said Söderstedt. ‘But he wanted me to think you were. Why?’

‘Because he once managed to get me to gang up on another policeman,’ Marconi said with sorrow in his voice. ‘I reported him for being corrupt. I was wrong, but I only found evidence of that once he’d committed suicide.’

‘He likes playing with the police,’ Söderstedt nodded, trying to imagine himself in a similar situation. Arto Söderstedt accusing Paul Hjelm of being corrupt. Paul Hjelm committing suicide. Arto Söderstedt finding out that Paul Hjelm was innocent.

It was impossible.

The situation was so terribly different.

He hoped that would be the case.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, thinking that it sounded pitiful.

‘Me too,’ said Marconi, pulling himself together.

‘So he doesn’t want to play with me any more?’ Söderstedt asked.

‘Doesn’t seem to. He’s refusing to meet you. What is it you think you’ll achieve with a new meeting?’

‘I want to press him a bit more.’

‘You don’t press Marco di Spinelli.’

‘No, you can,’ said Söderstedt, ‘you just can’t let him realise you’re doing it.’

‘I’m not even sure I’ve understood what you think you found out last time? He knew your old Jewish man, Leonard Sheinkman?’

‘I’m fairly sure he came across him sometime during the war. Do we have no idea at all what he was up to back then?’

‘You’ve read his file. His life is well documented – aside from during the war. He was never a member of the Fascist Party, oddly enough. He’s a self-made man from Milan’s poor quarter. He stood out in the convent school he went to and was taken under the wing of a priest who helped him continue his studies. He became a banker early on, and just after the war he took over one of the leading banks in the city. Exactly how and when that previously respectable bank started to be used for criminal activities is still unclear. We’re always looking for evidence, but we never find any. We’re annoyed we can’t find any evidence.’

Arto Söderstedt nodded slowly. Then he said: ‘Was he going to New York?’

‘No,’ said Marconi. ‘He never leaves his palace these days. It’s over a year since he last left.’

‘I thought so,’ said Söderstedt.

He paused for a moment before continuing.

‘I’d like a sketch of Palazzo Riguardo.’

Italo Marconi glanced suspiciously at him.

‘You want a sketch of Palazzo Riguardo?’

‘Yes. Please.’

‘Maybe you can press di Spinelli without him noticing,’ said Marconi, ‘but you can’t deceive me. Are you planning some mischief that might jeopardise my entire investigation?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Söderstedt replied, feeling like a suspect. It was something he was quite used to.

‘So what on earth do you need a drawing of Marco di Spinelli’s palace for?’ the normally so controlled commissioner blurted out. His moustache started to spin like a helicopter’s rotor blade. He got up from his desk and went over to the window. He seemed to calm down. With his back to his Europol colleague, he continued sullenly: ‘I don’t know what you’re up to, Sadestatt, and that annoys me. I’m extremely worried about seeing years of work being ruined as a result of one stupid mistake from you. What were you thinking, going in and revealing confidential information to di Spinelli?’

‘I’ve already tried to explain that,’ Söderstedt said patiently. ‘He already knows it all. What I told him wasn’t news. We know that he knows and we’re telling him that we know that he knows. That unknown killers threw the wolverines’ henchman to the wolverines. That his man was about to set up an organised prostitution ring on behalf of the Ghiottone in Stockholm. That those prostitutes then went missing. He knows all that perfectly well. And he’s already hunting for them. It’s better if he knows that we know that too.’

‘And you don’t think he’ll see straight through all this?’ Marconi asked, turning round, immediately more interested.

‘Of course,’ said Söderstedt. ‘And that means he’ll feel pleased. I think he’ll just have realised that he felt pleased during our conversation. That’s why he doesn’t want to talk to me any more. I made him feel pleased and now he’s mortified about it. He’ll be wandering around wondering what he revealed while he felt pleased. That uncertainty is good.’

‘Seems like you’re playing his game,’ said Marconi, sitting down with a thud.

‘It’s good if it seems that way,’ Söderstedt replied with a crazy look in his eye. Marconi looked at his facial expression, finding it fundamentally flawed. He nodded and smiled.

‘And that’s why you need a sketch of his palace? Utterly logical.’

Arto Söderstedt smiled too.

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Logical is an understatement.’

Marconi was still nodding.

‘So you think…?’

‘Yes. That he’s in danger.’

‘Marco di Spinelli is in danger? Do you know what kind of fantastical security systems that palace has? How many guards he has? Breaking in there would be like breaking into Fort Knox.’

‘You know you agree, Commissioner,’ said Arto Söderstedt. ‘They’re coming for him.’

‘Who are?’ Italo Marconi asked, without really asking.

Arto Söderstedt’s answer wasn’t quite an answer.

‘The Erinyes.’