Back to Bologna

14

Aurelio Zen’s mind was wandering, and he was happy to let it do so. The air was acrid and savagely cold, the night starkly bright. On a frozen, floodlit field far below, men in suits and dark overcoats stood in line, heads bowed respectfully, awaiting their turn to step up to the podium and deliver a speech concerning the various virtues of Lorenzo Curti, their personal sense of loss and their perspectives on the unspeakable tragedy that his untimely death represented to everyone foregathered there, to the wider footballing community united at this moment in grief and remembrance, to the city of Bologna and indeed the nation and the world in general.

The surrounding environment consisted of concrete, steel and rows of blue plastic bucket seats which the spectators had lined with newspapers to protect their clothing from the residue of filth deposited there by the polluted void above. Apart from the amplified eulogies, the only sound was from the crowd of hardcore ultra fans at the far end of the stadium, who kept up a continuous low ululation, presumably a spontaneous expression of respect.

‘I’ll see you in the bar,’ Zen told Bruno Nanni, getting up and starting along the narrow row between the seats towards the nearest aisle.

Atotal stranger whose foot Zen inadvertently stepped on looked up at him truculently.

‘Leaving already? You might show a little respect.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Zen replied, shaking his head. ‘I just can’t take any more. It’s like a death in the family. Do you understand?’

The man’s expression changed to one of sympathy and he nodded.

Zen made his way through the cavernous vaults and vomitories of the stadium until he finally emerged in the bleak piazzetta outside, its scruffy grass borders and failed shrubs and trees exposed beneath the powerful and pitiless lighting ranged high overhead on steel poles.

On their arrival, Bruno had pointed out a bar in a neighbouring street as the unofficial clubhouse of the diehard Bologna supporters. At present the latter were still all inside the stadium, and the bar was almost empty. The most conspicuous figure was a bulky man wearing a double-breasted overcoat, a grey trilby and dark glasses. He was leaning casually against the rear wall, sipping a tumbler of whiskey and smoking an unfiltered American cigarette, and was fairly obviously a private detective. Apart from him, there were just three elderly men playing cards at the rear of the premises, and a woman of about their age who was sipping a glass of Fernet Branca and murmuring in a sustained monologue to a Pekinese dog that was a triumph of the taxidermist’s art.

‘…personally I want to be burnt when the time comes, even though it turns out you pay the same either way, well of course you don’t pay but…’

The ceiling was festooned with banners and flags in the team’s red and blue colours, and the walls were covered in photographs of cup and league-winning squads dating back to well before World War Two. Zen ordered a coffee with a shot of grappa and took it over to a table.

Almost half an hour passed before the crowd started drifting out of the stadium. The bar soon filled up with young males wearing baseball caps, floppy jackets, even floppier pants, and synthetic sports shoes constructed along the lines of a club sandwich. They adopted a wide-legged stance, taking up as much room as possible, and loitered there with indefinite but vaguely menacing intent, talking and staring and drinking and twitching.

Feeling slightly overwhelmed, Zen stood up and found an elbow-level ledge against the mirror-clad pillar in the centre of the bar. The man dressed up as a private eye had now removed his shades and was gazing with intense concentration at a knot of particularly obnoxious newcomers who had taken up position to Zen’s right. He kept bringing his right hand up to his face to inspect something in the palm, a mobile phone perhaps. The thought spurred Zen to check his own, which he had switched off in the stadium out of respect for the occasion. A text message appeared: coming bo tomorrow lunch? He hit the speed-dial buttons for the Lucca number, but there was no reply.

One of the fans came lurching back from the bar, a tall glass of some yellow liqueur in his hand. He was wearing a woolly hat, a black leather jacket with the club crest on the back, torn jeans and sports shoes, and walked straight into the mirrored pillar, spilling most of his drink over Zen’s coat.

‘ Cazzo! ’ he spat out. ‘Fuck you doing here, vecchione? Buy me another drink, you…’

But Zen had apparently been seized by a violent coughing attack, which caused him to lose his balance and lurch towards the younger man. A moment later the latter screamed and then collapsed on the tiled floor, just as Bruno appeared.

‘He hit me!’ the man on the floor yelled, thrashing wildly about. ‘He kneed me in the fucking balls! Christ it hurts!’

All conversation in the bar ceased, but no one intervened. The complainant struggled painfully to his feet and turned on Bruno.

‘You with him, Nanni?’ he demanded aggressively.

Bruno nodded.

‘So who is the old bastard?’

‘A friend.’

There was a moment then when various things might have happened, then three of the man’s companions came over and led him away.

‘Sorry about that, dottore,’ the patrolman remarked.

‘He knows you, Bruno?’

Nanni shrugged.

‘I’m not part of his tight set, but we all more or less know each other. The ones who go to away matches, I mean.’

‘Does he know you’re a policeman?’

‘You think I’m crazy?’

He leant forward.

‘Actually, he’s the one I wanted you to meet.’

‘The one who’s bragging that he killed Curti?’

Bruno nodded.

‘So who is he?’

‘Name of Vincenzo Amadori. His father’s a lawyer and his mother works for the regional government. One of the better families in town, as they say here. But the kid likes to act the desperate emarginato with nothing to lose. Comes on like he’s one of the hardest cases at the stadium.’

‘And the others accept him?’

Bruno shrugged.

‘They tolerate him. Of course, it helps that he’s got money. All the drinks tonight for that clique over there are on him, for example. He just hands the barman his credit card.’

‘But he’s not really liked?’

‘I didn’t notice anyone rushing to his aid just now.’

He looked wonderingly at Zen.

‘Did you really knacker him?’

But Zen chose not to hear.

‘Why is there nothing about any of this in the interim report on the Curti case?’ he demanded.

Bruno dismissed the question with a wave.

‘No one knows except me. In any case, it’s just stadium gossip.’

‘Or malicious misinformation put about by some rival gang of supporters who resent this Vincenzo Amadori’s attitude and influence, and are trying to make trouble for him.’

‘That’s possible,’ Bruno conceded. ‘But there is one potentially substantive detail. That pack always hires a coach to take them to the away fixtures, so that they can travel together and stoke up on booze and God knows what before being shaken down by the cops at the entrance to the ground. I was rostered for duty the night Curti was shot, so I couldn’t go to the game myself, but I’ve heard that Vincenzo travelled down to Ancona with the rest of them as usual, only when the coach left for the return trip he wasn’t on it.’

Zen noticed the man in the trench coat and trilby heading for the door. He handed Bruno some money.

‘Get us both a drink. A hot toddy for me. And a damp cloth to clean this muck off my coat.’