Ratking

TEN

Gianluigi Santucci sat at the head of the dining table watching his family feed. Although he had hardly noticed his wife take a mouthful, her plate was already empty. He wondered how she managed to do it, given that she had been talking almost uninterruptedly since the meal began. His daughter Loredana had originally taken only four pieces of ravioli, subsequently increased to five under sustained pressure from her mother. But since she had eaten only half of them this apparent victory revealed itself, like so many in the family circle, as illusory. Gianluigi didn’t need to read Cinzia’s trashy psychology magazines to know that Loredana worshipped the ground he trod on. One of the ways in which this manifested itself was by her mimicking of the meagre diet to which her father was reduced by his digestive problems. For though Gianluigi was proud of the good fare he provided for his family, that was about the only pleasure he could take in it since this vicious intruder had taken up residence in his gut.

How his mother would have triumphed! As a child Gianluigi had resembled not fastidious Loredana but little Sergio there, his face cheerily smeared with tomato sauce, putting away the sticky pouches with a single-mindedness he would soon devote to masturbation. Gianluigi too had been a stuffer, eating as though he had a secret mission to devour the world. His mother had never left him in peace on the subject. ‘Don’t eat so fast, it’s bad for you. Don’t eat bread before your pasta, it’s bad for you. Don’t put oil on your meat, it’s bad for you.’ But she had never understood the secret source of her son’s appetite: a gnawing envy of an elder brother who seemed so much bigger and more successful. Pasquale could dominate a room just by walking into it, and even his absence usually appeared to be of more interest than Gianluigi’s presence. ‘If you don’t eat you won’t grow,’ his mother told him. Gianluigi turned this logic on its head and determined to eat his way into a future where he would be bigger and better than anyone around. But the only result had been a stomach condition which left him unable to do more than nibble a few scraps while this pain roamed his innards like a rat.

His hunger hadn’t disappeared, however. It had just taken a different form. His physical size he could do nothing about, but on every other score he had beaten his brother hollow! Pasquale was now a dentist responsible for curing half the tooth problems in Siena and causing the other half, as he himself liked to joke. But his three children were all girls, his wife was a whore – Gianluigi himself had had her three times last summer – and although his earnings were respectable enough, his rival could already match him lira for lira twice over. And that was only the beginning. The events of the past week had opened up perspectives which even Gianluigi found slightly dizzying.

Not that he was by any means unprepared for the pickings that Ruggiero’s death promised to bring with it. On the contrary, he had been working towards that very goal from the moment he met Cinzia Miletti. For in the end Pasquale had proved to be a disappointment. Like many young achievers he had gone into an early decline, growing fat and complacent, no challenge for the pool of unused ambition that ached and burned like the excess gastric acids in Gianluigi’s stomach. He needed roughage, and his solution had been to marry into a family full of brothers and take them all on. He had been counting on this using up his energies for many years to come, so his pleasure at the way things had worked out was mixed with a certain amount of regret that it was all over so quickly. The Japanese deal on which he had expended so much energy and cunning was irrelevant now. Ruggiero’s will would hold no surprises. Each of the Miletti children would receive a twenty-five per cent holding in SIMP. Cinzia’s share was already in his hands, of course, and he could count on Daniele’s too. It was not just a question of the money he had been advancing the boy ever since he got himself into trouble over drugs, although by now that amounted to almost a hundred million lire. Daniele was hooked on something quite as addictive as hard drugs and almost as expensive: a fashion market whose sole function was to flaunt the spending power of its wearers, or rather their fathers. To admit that he could no longer compete because his father had turned his back on him would have been the ultimate humiliation for the boy, so he had been glad to accept his brother-in-law’s help. But what made Gianluigi quite certain of Daniele’s support was the fact that the boy admired him. Pietro had never understood that, never been prepared to admit that his younger brother’s hero was the outsider in the family, the pushy, self-seeking Tuscan. He would have to pay for that. One of Gianluigi’s axioms was that one always paid for any lack of clarity and realism. Meanwhile he accepted Daniele’s homage as he did his daughter’s, and with as little thought of consummating the relationship. The fact of the matter was that the boy hadn’t a hope in hell of ever amounting to anything, being spoiled, weak, vain and without that bitter inner pain that drives a man on.

So there he was in effective control of fifty per cent of SIMP. But even if Pietro knew that, he would still be counting on Silvio to balance things out. Which was a mistake, because when the chips were down Silvio would support Gianluigi too. This was something that Pietro could have no inkling of, for the simple reason that Silvio didn’t know himself and would have denied it strenuously if he’d been asked. Nevertheless when the time came he would vote with Gianluigi, because of the photographs. Gianluigi had paid a detective agency in Milan five million lire for them, but like Daniele’s allowance it was money well spent. Those photographs would make him undisputed master of the Miletti empire. It had been a nerve-racking business, particularly the last few weeks. He wondered what his family would think if they knew the risks he had been running. But now it was all over and he had come out on top. The Milettis had made it clear from the beginning that they played winner-take-all. And he would, he would!

The doorbell sounded and Margherita set down the dish of fried fish she was serving to go and answer it.

‘Who on earth can that be?’ Cinzia wondered aloud. ‘What an idea, not even lunchtime is sacred any more, no wonder there’s so much tension and unhappiness in the world, finish your pasta, Loredana.’

The housekeeper reappeared in the doorway.

‘It’s the police, dottore.’

Gianluigi was accustomed to living with pains, but the one that shot across his chest now was a stranger.

‘Tell them to come back later,’ his wife told the housekeeper, as though it was as easy as that, as though there was nothing to worry about. ‘It’s really too bad, a total chaos and intrusion.’

‘No, I’ll sort them out.’

He got to his feet, gathering his strength, his courage, his wits.

Margherita’s words had conjured up visions of armed men surrounding the house, and when Gianluigi reached the door he was relieved to find no one there but Aurelio Zen. But relief merely made him angry for having been given an unnecessary fright.

‘What the hell do you want now, Zen? Don’t you know it’s lunchtime?’

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, dottore, but it’s a matter of the highest urgency.’

‘It had better be.’

He was sure of himself again, in control of the situation. This sort of confrontation was the stuff of his life, for which he trained like an athlete. Once he had mastered that initial moment of panic it was a pleasure to exercise those considerable skills.

‘According to our records,’ Zen went on, ‘your wife is the registered owner of a Beretta pistol. I would like to examine it with a view to eliminating it from our inquiries.’

‘Let me see your search warrant.’

‘I’m not conducting a search.’

Gianluigi allowed his eyebrows to rise.

‘Oh? Then what the fuck are you doing, may I ask, disturbing me without the slightest warning in the middle of lunch?’

‘I’m conducting a preliminary inquiry in the sense of article 225 of the Penal Code, the results of which will be communicated to the Public Prosecutor’s office and a search warrant issued in due course, your refusal to cooperate having been noted. But what’s the problem? You have got the gun, haven’t you?’

‘Of course.’

This automatic reply was his first error, conceding the man’s right to question him. But the sudden change of tone had caught him by surprise.

‘Then why not just show it to me?’ Zen suggested. ‘It’ll save both of us a lot of unnecessary bother.’

There was a shuffle of bare feet as Cinzia appeared.

‘What’s going on, Lulu? Oh, Commissioner, I thought you were back in Rome. Surely you must be.’

She and Zen exchanged a lingering glance.

‘Get on with your lunch,’ Gianluigi told his wife. ‘I’ll handle this.’

Realizing that after this interruption his earlier position of rigid intransigence would seem stilted, Gianluigi told his visitor to wait, went through to the living room and opened the top drawer of the old desk where the pistol was always kept.

It was not there.

For thirty seconds he stood quite still, thinking. But though the disappearance of the pistol was both mysterious and annoying, there was nothing whatever to be worried about. He returned to the front door.

‘Look, the thing appears to have been mislaid,’ he told Zen, who was now leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette. ‘Probably the cleaning lady has put it somewhere. We’ll have a proper look this afternoon or tomorrow if you care to contact me later.’

He was starting to close the door as Zen replied.

‘That’s fine. I didn’t really come about the gun at all.’

The door opened again.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘There’s been an unfortunate development, dottore. As the result of a tip-off the Carabinieri have arrested most of the gang that kidnapped your father-in-law. Among other things, they’ve been talking about their contact in the Miletti family, the one who left messages tucked in a magazine at that service area on the motorway. The last magazine in the top right-hand row, I think it was.’

The exotic pain returned to Gianluigi’s chest.

‘And what has this got to do with me?’

Articulating these words was one of the hardest tasks he could ever remember performing.

‘Well, it depends how you look at it. On the face of it, all this amounts to is an unsupported allegation by a gang of known criminals. On the other hand, it’s hard to see what they have to gain by lying. We’ve suspected for a long time that there was an informer passing on the strengths and weaknesses of the family’s negotiating position to the gang, but we didn’t know who it was. Pietro was in London for much of the time. If the pick-up point was on the motorway, that excludes Silvio, who can’t drive. As for Daniele, the gang say that the person who left the messages was short and slightly built, so he won’t do. In one sense it’s just a question of who’s left, really.’

He tossed the butt of his cigarette out on to the gravel of the drive, where it continued to smoulder.

‘But there’s more to it than that. Above all, the investigating magistrate is going to be looking for a motive. Now if he had just wanted to beggar the Milettis the informant could have revealed the true extent of the family’s finances straight off, but instead he chose to pass on scraps of information so that the negotiations were drawn out as long as possible. The magistrate will therefore be looking for someone who stood to gain from a delay in Ruggiero’s return coupled with the need for a massive injection of cash to prop up SIMP. Cash from a Japanese company, for instance.’

The silence that followed was as long and significant as the words that had preceded it. Whatever was said now would have extraordinary resonances, and that knowledge was as inhibiting as the acoustics of a great church.

‘I think that you are full of shit,’ Gianluigi finally murmured, slowly and distinctly. ‘I’m going to find out. And if you are, I’ll make sure you drown in it.’

He walked through to his study, his heart a madhouse filled with the shrieks of despairing wretches, his head a cool and airy library where shrewd men debated tactics. Norberto was the best route to take. As a member of the regional council he knew almost everything that was going on and could find out the rest quickly and discreetly.

‘Norberto? Gianluigi Santucci. Yes, me too. I’m sorry, but it can’t wait. Someone’s just told me that there’s been a break in the Miletti case, that arrests have been made. Have you heard anything?’

Sensing a movement, he looked round to find that Zen had followed him and was now standing in the doorway. For a moment Gianluigi was tempted to get rid of him, but he restrained himself. The news was good. Much better to show himself unconcerned, a man with nothing to hide.

‘Nothing at all?’ he confirmed. ‘I thought as much!’

‘Get him to check,’ Zen warned. ‘This happened in Florence and the military are keeping it quiet until the magistrate gets there.’

Gianluigi bit his lip.

‘Would you mind just checking that?’ he said into the phone. ‘You’ll call back? Very well.’

As he replaced the receiver Loredana’s voice rang out from the dining room.

‘Christ, not chocolate pudding again! What are you trying to do, poison me? You know I hate chocolate! It brings me out in spots.’

While he waited for Norberto to get through to his contact, Gianluigi thought back to that other phone call, in the days shortly after Ruggiero was kidnapped. The gang had been given the Santuccis’ number as a ‘clean’ telephone line on which to communicate. At first Gianluigi had played it absolutely straight, but when the gang’s modest demands were swiftly met and it began to look as if Ruggiero would be released within days, it occurred to him how convenient it would be if the old man’s return could be delayed. The whole question of the deal with the Japanese was hanging in the balance, and with it Gianluigi’s future, for if it went through he was a made man. So when the gang next phoned he’d expressed slight surprise that they’d asked for so little, given the family’s ability to pay. If they needed more information on this subject, he implied, this could be arranged. It had been a risk, of course, but very carefully calculated, like all the risks he took. The kidnappers could pose no threat unless they were caught, a possibility so remote that Gianluigi had discounted it.

The phone rang.

‘ Well, you seem to be better informed than I am, Santucci! The gang have indeed been arrested. A magistrate went to Florence this morning to question them. Hello? Hello, are you there? ’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m here. Thanks. I’ll be in touch.’

I’ll never see Loredana’s children grow, he thought, never take Sergio hunting. But this uncharacteristic weakness lasted no more than a moment. Then he strode to the end of the room and opened the sliding door to the terrace, beckoning to Zen to follow him.

The terrace was covered by a pergola whose vines were just beginning to put out shoots. It was sunny, still and surprisingly hot.

‘So you’re accusing me of collaborating with my father-in-law’s killers, is that it?’ Gianluigi demanded point-blank.

Zen looked taken aback.

‘Not at all, dottore! I just wanted to warn you of certain developments which could potentially cause problems unless steps are taken now. That’s all.’

‘What kind of steps did you have in mind?’

Zen held up his hand, shaking his head.

‘That’s your affair, dottore. I don’t need to know anything about it. But whatever you decide, it’ll take time, and time is precisely what we don’t have at present. Rosella Foria is questioning the gang in Florence at this very moment. We must act right away.’

So that was the way of it, eh? Thank God for human nature, thought Gianluigi, rotten to the core!

‘Excuse me, but what’s in this for you?’ he queried pointedly.

Zen made a small gesture of embarrassment.

‘About four years ago I had a misunderstanding with my superiors in Rome. They transferred me from active service and stuck me away in the Ministry doing bureaucratic work. At this stage of my career I haven’t got much to look forward to except retirement anyway, but my pension will be pegged to my rank. Before this thing happened I was in line for promotion to Vice-Questore, but now…’

Gianluigi nodded and smiled.

‘And you’d still like that promotion.’

Zen shrugged, his eyes discreetly lowered.

‘You spoke of taking action,’ Gianluigi went on. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Well, there’s another factor involved. The kidnappers admit shooting Valesio, but they deny the Miletti murder. Moreover, one of the SIMP Fiats was observed near the scene of the murder, driven by a woman with blonde hair. I identified the car that day you found me at the garage, and later I had it stolen and subjected to a forensic examination.’

Gianluigi was silent. A display of outrage seemed a bit beside the point under the circumstances, and anyway, he needed to save his energy.

‘Several long threads were found,’ Zen went on. ‘Threads from a blonde wig. It almost looks as though someone was trying to frame your wife, particularly since Ruggiero was shot with a pistol similar to hers which you now tell me is missing. But the point is that all this presents us with both a risk and an opportunity.’

Gianluigi almost missed this last remark. A blonde wig, he was thinking. A blonde wig,

Feeling that the silence had gone on long enough, he murmured, ‘A risk for my wife, you mean?’

To his surprise Zen laughed rather nastily.

‘No, dottore! Look, Ruggiero was killed on Monday, twenty-four hours before the phone call saying he had been released. Only the kidnappers knew where he was then, so if they didn’t kill him they must have told the person who did. And only one person was in touch with the gang.’

‘I didn’t kill him!’

Gianluigi’s voice swooped from a scream to a whisper as he realized that he might be overheard.

Zen nodded earnestly.

‘I know, dottore. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. I’m just pointing out that the investigating magistrate is bound to assume that the gang’s informant and Ruggiero Miletti’s murderer are one and the same person. That’s a risk we shouldn’t underestimate. But it also provides a way out of the original problem. Because if the informant and the murderer are assumed to be one and the same person, then providing we can persuade Rosella Foria that one of the others committed the murder, she’ll naturally assume that person was also the informant.’

After a moment’s silence Gianluigi burst out laughing, as if he had just been told a story about the bizarre customs of a foreign country.

‘You know, Zen, I think I’ve been underestimating you,’ he said.

‘We have an unfair advantage in the police. Everyone assumes we’re stupid.’

Gianluigi’s smile abruptly disappeared.

‘But it won’t work! Do you think these magistrates are children? How can you hope to implicate one of the family in Ruggiero’s murder? It’s preposterous!’

‘That doesn’t matter. The point is just to create as much fuss and confusion as possible, to send the shit flying in every direction. And then while Rosella Foria is busy trying to clear it all up there’ll be plenty of time to take whatever steps you feel are appropriate to bring about a satisfactory and lasting solution of the problem. But I don’t need to know anything about that. What I do need are those photographs of Silvio.’

Once again Gianluigi lost his head.

‘Who put you up to this, Zen? You’re not big enough to be operating on your own. Who’s behind you, eh? What’s the game?’

A dark suspicion suddenly took form in his mind as he remembered the look Zen and his wife had exchanged. Yes, it had to be her. No one else knew about the photographs.

He stepped forward furiously.

‘Look here, you fuck off! Just fuck off out of here right now!’

But Zen stood his ground, gazing at him with the stolid confidence of a dog or horse that knows its owner will see reason sooner or later. And Gianluigi immediately realized that he was right. He would deal with Cinzia later, in private. He mustn’t make it a public shame, still less allow it to compromise the successful resolution of the appallingly dangerous situation he found himself in. To do that would be the folly of an impetuous amateur, not the astute and hardened professional that he was.

‘What are you going to do with the photographs?’

His voice was as calm as marble, and as hard.

‘Don’t you think it might be better if I didn’t tell you?’ Zen replied. ‘They’re going to question you, you know. I think it would be best for you to know as little as possible. It’s amazing what people give away without even realizing it. When I mentioned the blonde wig, for example, you reacted. A magistrate would notice that. As you said, they’re not children. What was it about the wig, by the way?’

Gianluigi eyed him for a final long moment before deciding.

‘I’ll show you.’

He went back into his office, opened the wall-safe and took out a yellow envelope. There were nine prints in all. He selected two, snipped the corresponding negatives from the strip of film and attached them to the prints with a paperclip. The other prints and negatives, the pick of the set, he put back in the safe. They would still do their job when the time came. Indeed, this could be a useful try-out, to see how Silvio reacted to being blackmailed.

When he re-emerged Zen had his back to the house, gazing at the view Gianluigi greeted exultantly each morning on rising with the thought, ‘I bought you!’ He handed over the envelope and watched with undisguised amusement as Zen studied the first photograph. It showed Silvio, naked to the waist, dancing in a crowded discotheque. His hairy chest and smooth shiny belly were bare and a leather dog-lead dangled from each of his pierced nipples. His head was covered in a startling profusion of long blonde locks.

‘The wig,’ murmured Zen.

Gianluigi nodded.

‘Where was this taken?’ Zen asked him.

‘In Berlin.’

‘Ah yes, of course. Home of Gerhard Mayer.’

Gianluigi decided that it was time to remind his new employee of the realities of their relationship.

‘So you know about that too, do you? Very clever. But don’t get so clever that you forget what’s what, will you? Because if you do I promise that you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. And I don’t make empty threats, Zen.’

Zen looked at him with an expression brimming with earnest sincerity.

‘Dottore, please! I’m one hundred per cent on your side!’

Gianluigi nodded.

‘Then we’ll say no more about it. Now let’s see just how clever you are. What do you make of this, eh?’

The second picture apparently showed Silvio leaning back against a tiled wall. But what was that gleaming white mass of vaguely rump-like curves looming above his chest? And why did he have that expression of ecstatic martyrdom?

Gianluigi turned the print on its side, observing Zen’s puzzlement with a knowing smirk. It really was very difficult if you hadn’t seen some of the later and more explicit shots.

‘Does that help?’ he prompted.

Now Silvio was seen to be lying supine on a white tiled floor beneath the white structure. It might almost have been an altar of some sort. Certainly the scene had a ritual air about it, as though it formed part of a ceremony whose exact significance was revealed only to initiates.

‘What’s this?’ Gianluigi asked teasingly, pointing out the white object.

Zen shook his head.

‘Well, what does it look like?’

He was having his fun all right, getting his money’s worth!

‘To be perfectly honest, it looks like a toilet.’

Gianluigi applauded ironically.

‘Bravo, my friend. It is a toilet. But a rather special toilet. It’s not connected to a sewer, it’s connected to Silvio. He’s waiting for someone to come along and use it. One of the places our Silvio goes when he visits his boyfriend in Berlin is a club for people who like to be crapped on, and vice versa of course. Don’t you wish you’d thought of it, eh? What a goldmine! They both pay for their fun, and you’ve got a flourishing little business in top-quality garden manure on the side.’

Zen laughed and replaced the photographs in the envelope. Gianluigi clapped him familiarly on the back, pushing him into the house. Now he must get rid of him quickly. He needed peace and quiet in which to think. It was no use alerting his usual contacts. For them to be effective they would have to know the truth, and if they knew the truth they would abandon him. There were limits to what you could get away with, and he was well aware that he’d overstepped them. It was a pity the judiciary were already involved. Magistrates were so bloody-minded that they would often pursue their investigations even when it had been made perfectly clear to them that it was against their own best interests. That sort of stubbornness was something that Gianluigi absolutely despised. As far as he was concerned it was an aberration like religious or political fanaticism, something quite out of place in a modern democratic society.

‘I need to talk to Silvio as soon as possible,’ Zen remarked as they reached the front door. ‘Could you get someone to persuade him to go to Antonio Crepi’s house this afternoon? Crepi himself needn’t know anything about it.’

Gianluigi stared at him, his eyes narrowing.

‘You’re asking an awful lot and giving very little in return,’ he observed sourly.

‘I’m doing it all for you, dottore!’ Zen exclaimed with a hurt expression.

After a moment Gianluigi broke into loud laughter.

‘All for me, my arse! You’re doing it for your pension, my friend, and don’t think I don’t know it.’

Zen shrugged awkwardly.

‘Oh well, that too, of course.’

‘What now?’

Silvio silently echoed his driver’s exasperated murmur as he caught sight of the patrolman waving them down. What now, indeed? Another annoyance, another setback, another delay.

As the taxi slowed to a halt beside the unmarked police car parked at a bend in the road a massive sigh began its slow progress up from the bottom of Silvio’s chest. For this was not the first vexation which the day had dropped on him, not by a long chalk! In fact it had been nothing but trials and tribulations from the moment his clock-radio had turned itself on at five o’clock that morning, shocking him into consciousness. It had been supposed to wake him from a nap the previous afternoon in time for an appointment with a young friend, but he must have set it wrong, for having messed up his evening by failing to go off, it had then ruined his sleep into the bargain. So there he was, wide awake at the crack of dawn, with no more chance of going back to sleep than of getting a turd back where it came from, as dear Gerhard used to say.

He really must get in touch with Gerhard soon. One of the most unpleasant features of the last few months had been having to suspend his trips to Berlin, but now everything was satisfactorily resolved he would be able to slip away again sometime soon. As Ivy pointed out, Ruggiero’s death was not without its consolations.

‘Rubbish!’ she’d retorted when he claimed to be grief-stricken.

‘But my father’s dead!’ he’d cried with a dramatic gesture. ‘I’ve got a right to be upset. It’s only natural!’

‘But you’re not upset. On the contrary, you’re quite relieved.’

‘Don’t say that!’

But he had known that she was right. That was what was so amazing about Ivy, her ability to reach into his mind and show him things he had never dared admit to himself were there. It was terrible, sometimes, how right she could be.

The policeman, a rather attractive young fellow with an enormous moustache, was checking the driver’s documents. Silvio thought he’d seen him somewhere before. And wasn’t there something familiar about the spot where they had been stopped too? The sun was high and it was unpleasantly hot in the taxi. He felt grotesquely overdressed in his heavy underwear, thick suit and overcoat, perspiring all over. But the moisture remained trapped between flesh and fabric, unable to do its business properly. Silvio consulted his watch. The patrolman was now walking in a maddeningly leisurely fashion around the taxi, inspecting it closely, taking his time. If this went on much longer he was going to be really late.

After that rude awakening he’d tried in vain to get back to sleep, but in the end he’d given up all hope and gone downstairs, only to find that Daniele had scoffed all his special organic goat’s yoghurt rich in the live bacilli which Silvio’s homoeopathist was adamant he needed to maintain the precarious equilibrium of his health. The goaty taste was what attracted Silvio, though. Everything to do with goats came into that special category where pleasure and disgust struggled for supremacy like two naked wrestlers. Sweat was another, and farts and bad breath. Gianluigi’s breath was quite overpowering sometimes, because of his indigestion problems no doubt, or those teeth of his which never saw a brush, packed with rich, undisturbed deposits of plaque, so that he wondered sometimes how Cinzia could stand it. But perhaps she too loved to loathe, longed to stretch herself languorously out and yield to the very thing that made her shudder with disgust.

After that his day had gone from bad to worse, the last straw being this lunchtime call from that creep Spinelli at the bank, insisting on meeting a representative of the family at Antonio Crepi’s villa that very afternoon to discuss some urgent problem that was too sensitive to discuss on the phone. Silvio had been hoping to treat himself to an afternoon listening to Billie Holliday records and leafing through that auction catalogue of rare Haitian issues which Pietro had sent him from London, hoping to keep him sweet for the future now he represented twenty-five per cent of the company! Yes, there were certainly consolations to Ruggiero’s death, just as Ivy had insisted. She should have been here to drive him, but by the time the call came she’d already left to keep an appointment. So he’d had to take a taxi, which of course had been late arriving and then got stuck in the traffic. And now this! It really was too bad.

An official in plain clothes had got out of the police car.

‘How’s it going?’ Silvio heard him ask the young patrolman.

‘Not too good. Fucking thing’s in excellent shape.’

Suddenly Silvio realized why this spot had seemed familiar. It was at this very bend that his father’s car had been forced off the road by the kidnappers.

‘You planning to be much longer?’ the taxi driver demanded.

‘We’re just noting the defects we’ve found on your vehicle,’ the official told him.

‘Defects? What defects?’

The patrolman consulted his notebook.

‘Insufficient tread depth on nearside front tyre. Rear window partially obscured by sticker. Number-plate light defective.’

The driver laughed sarcastically.

‘The cigarette lighter doesn’t work, either.’

‘Really?’ queried the official. ‘ Two faults in the electrical system, then. May I see your snow chains?’

‘Snow chains?’ the driver replied incredulously. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘All vehicles using this road between the beginning of October and the end of April are required to carry snow chains on board. Didn’t you see the sign back there on the hill?’

‘Can’t you feel that sun? It’s over twenty degrees!’

‘That’s the law.’

‘Then the law’s crazy!’

‘I wouldn’t say that if I were you. You could end up facing a charge for contempt.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ the driver murmured.

Silvio wound down his window.

‘Excuse me!’ he called testily. ‘I’m already late for an appointment and…’

The official looked round.

‘Why, Signor Miletti! Please forgive me, I had no idea it was you.’

Silvio squinted up into the sunlight.

‘Oh, it’s you, Zen. I thought you were back in Rome.’

‘Not yet, dottore. Not yet.’

‘They’ve put you on traffic duty, have they?’

As someone often accused of lacking a sense of humour, Silvio liked to draw attention to his jokes by laughing at them himself. Zen duly smiled, although this might have been at the sound of Silvio’s squeaky laughter rather than the joke itself.

‘Anyway, will you please fine the driver or whatever you intend doing, and let us proceed. As I say, I’m already late for an appointment.’

‘Out of the question, I’m afraid. On a cursory examination alone this vehicle has been found to have five defects. As such it is clearly unfit to ply for hire as a public conveyance. However, I’d be delighted to offer you a lift.’

‘I have no wish to travel with you, Zen.’

‘Suit yourself. But it’s a long walk.’

‘Snow chains!’ murmured the taxi driver disgustedly.

Silvio sat there stewing in the stuffy heat in the back of the car, thinking over what had just been said. A thrilling sense of peril had taken hold of him, and it was this that finally moved him to open the door and give himself up to whatever was about to happen.

‘A long walk to where?’ he murmured dreamily as the taxi screeched round in a tight turn and headed back to the city.

Zen opened the rear door of the Alfetta.

‘To where you’re going.’

‘But you don’t know where I’m going.’

‘Oh, but I do, dottore, I do.’

‘Where, then?’

It had been intended as a challenge, but Zen treated it as a real question.

‘You’ll see,’ he replied complacently as they drove off down the hill.

Crepi’s villa was visible in the distance, perched up on its ridge, but the countryside flashed by at such an insane rate that in no time at all they had passed the driveway.

‘You’ve missed the turning!’ Silvio told the driver. ‘I’m going to Antonio Crepi’s! He’s expecting me.’

‘Wrong on both counts,’ Zen replied without turning round.

‘You’ll lose your jobs for this,’ Silvio stammered, almost incoherent with excitement. ‘This is kidnapping! You’ll get twenty years, both of you!’

They had reached the flatlands near the Tiber, whose course was visible to the right, marked by a line of trees whose lower branches were festooned with scraps of plastic bags and other durable refuse.

‘This one,’ Zen told the driver, pointing to an abandoned track burrowing into a mass of wild brambles and scrub. The entrance was marked by a pair of imposing brick gateposts in a bad state of disrepair. A cloud of red dust rose up all around the car, almost blotting out the view.

They drew up and Zen got out. He removed his overcoat and threw it on the front seat. From the dashboard he removed a clipboard and a large yellow envelope. Then he opened the rear door of the car.

‘Get out, dottore.’

Silvio got out.

As the dust settled he could see the massive piles of bricks all around the clearing where they were parked. They still preserved the vague outlines of the barracks, ovens and chimneys they had once been, but fallen out of rank and order like an army of deserters. It reminded him of the old factory below the house which had been his private playground for many years, despite his mother’s dire warnings about venturing into it. He had been a solitary child, and those deserted alleys, yards and warehouses provided the perfect environment for his fantasies to flourish. They were fantasies of war, for the most part, or rather of suffering. His victims were Swedish wooden matchsticks, which he arranged behind bits of wall or in trenches scooped from the dirt and then bombarded mercilessly with bricks, from a distance at first but gradually closing in until you could see the sharp edges of the missile gouging into the ground. But the best bit was afterwards, picking through the bent and broken splinters, picturing the appalling injuries, the grotesque mutilations, the agony, the screams, the pathetic pleas to be finished off. He played all the parts himself, his voice mimicking shells and explosions, sirens and screams. In that secret playworld he was blissfully transparent, secure in the knowledge that the gates of the abandoned factory were locked and guarded, the walls too high to climb and topped with shards of broken glass.

Then one day he looked up and found a pair of eyes on him.

The man was lean and hard and dirty, his clothes greasy and torn. Silvio had never seen a Communist before, but he knew instinctively that this was one. His father had told him how the Communists were going to take over the factories and kill the owners and their families. Silvio fled, and for weeks he stayed away. Then, gradually at first, he found that the danger was no longer a reason for avoiding the factory but rather an irresistible temptation to return. He had no further interest in his innocent games. They were lost to him for ever, he knew, part of something he now thought of for the first time as his childhood. If he was to go back it would be in exploration of a new dimension he felt opening up within himself. It was not a comfortable sensation. He felt wrenched apart internally, split and fractured like one of his matchstick heroes. But there was no denying that urge. He already knew he would be its willing slave for the rest of his life.

The second time he saw the man it was Silvio who had the advantage of surprise. He had rounded a length of wall, moving stealthily, and there in a corner he saw the figure, turned away, head bent, intent on some furtive task. He knew he should run for his life, but instead he found himself moving towards the man, who remained quite still, apparently unaware of his presence. Then, when Silvio was almost close enough to touch him, he suddenly whirled around and sent a high spray of urine flying through the air, splashing Silvio’s clothes and face, his lips, his mouth.

Afterwards he drenched himself with the garden hose and told his parents that the rough boys near the station had thrown him in the fountain. His clothes came back unspotted from the laundry, but the obscene warmth and acrid taste of the bright yellow liquid had marked his flesh as indelibly as a tattoo. He never returned to the factory, which shortly afterwards was spruced up into offices and parking space for the management of what would soon become SIMP. But those barren desolate landscapes were now a part of him, like that stain which no water could wash off. Whenever he touched himself in bed at night he was there again, at risk from merciless mocking strangers, drenched in their stink and slime, both cringing and exultant.

‘You see, dottore?’ Zen remarked ironically. ‘I told you I knew where you were going.’

It was suffocatingly hot. The great mounds of bricks were high enough to prevent the slightest breeze from entering but not to give any shade from the sun. Silvio could feel little rivulets of sweat running down the creases and furrows in his body, trickling through the hairy parts and soaking into his underclothes.

‘Naturally I didn’t just happen to be waiting at that bend in the road by pure coincidence,’ Zen went on.

‘It’s a plot!’ Silvio muttered.

‘Yes, it’s a plot. But you’re only the means, not the end. All I need from you is your signature on these papers.’

Zen handed him the clipboard. The sun made a dazzling blank of the page, and Silvio had to turn so that the clipboard was in his shadow before he was able to make out anything except the crest printed at the top. Even then it took him a long time to see what it was about, because of the florid formulas and the stilted tone of the text. When understanding suddenly came he almost cried out with a pain as different from the gaudy agonies of his fantasies as a gallon of make-up blood is from a drop of the real thing.

He had never forgotten his mother’s strict orders not to venture into the site where he had first experienced those horrid thrills, and when she was taken from him a few years later he knew that he was being punished for his disobedience. Not that this stopped him indulging; on the contrary, guilt made his forbidden pleasures taste still sourer and stronger. But the gentle hurt of her absence was something else. Nothing could assuage that, until Ivy came. And now…

‘You must be out of your mind!’

Unfortunately, as so often happened when he got angry, his voice let him down, and the words emerged as an imperious squeak.

‘It’s nothing to do with me, dottore,’ Zen assured him. ‘I’m only following orders.’

‘Whose orders?’

‘Can’t you work it out for yourself?’

Silvio struggled to summon up the small residue of cunning which he had inherited from his father. This man had known that he would be passing that spot on the road. Therefore he must have known that he was going to Crepi’s, although he claimed that Crepi himself hadn’t known. In other words, the summons from Spinelli had been nothing but a ruse designed to draw him into an ambush. So the banker must be part of the plot. But he was only a minor figure, like this man Zen. Who controlled them both? The obvious answer was Gianluigi Santucci, the banker’s patron. But Gianluigi wouldn’t waste his energy on petty vendettas of this type. No, it could only be…

‘Cinzia,’ he murmured.

Silvio threw the clipboard to the ground at Zen’s feet.

‘You can go fuck yourself.’

‘We don’t expect you to do it for nothing, of course,’ Zen said mildly, dusting down the papers.

‘You’re trying to bribe me?’

Although eminently unworldly in his way, Silvio was enough of a Miletti to resent the idea that anyone would presume to patronize him financially.

‘No, it’s a question of a few souvenirs, that’s all. Souvenirs of Berlin.’

Zen took two photographs from the large yellow envelope and held them up.

Instantly Silvio’s real pain and righteous anger were overwhelmed by stronger sensations. To think that all the time this beast had known, had seen!

‘No, I won’t do it!’

He knew very well that this petulant refusal wasn’t worth the paper it was wiped with, as dear Gerhard would put it. But Zen seemed to have been taken in.

‘In that case I’m afraid that prints of these photographs will begin to circulate among friends and enemies of the Miletti family in Perugia and elsewhere. Just imagine the scene, dottore! There they are, early in the morning, still dewy-eyed over that first cup of coffee, when bang! Hello! What’s this? Good God! It looks like Silvio Miletti waiting for someone to come and take a dump on him! What do you think their reaction is going to be, dottore? Oh, well, it takes all sorts, different strokes for different folks, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it?’

Silvio was literally speechless. The idea of those images being seen by people who inhabited a quite separate zone of his life, whom he met at receptions and conferences, at dinners and concerts, who greeted him on the Corso every day! Yes, he would have to sign, no question about that. The revelation of his secret pleasures to the whole of Perugia would be a humiliation so monumental, so absolute, so perfect, that he knew he would never survive the excitement it would generate.

But at the thought of what he was about to do, these thrills faded and the real pain returned.

‘But it’s all lies! Filthy obscene lies and nothing else!’

To his amazement, Zen winked conspiratorially.

‘Of course it is! That’s why it doesn’t matter. In fact the kidnappers are already under arrest in Florence. They’ve confessed to the whole thing. Believe me, dottore, if I thought for a single moment that these allegations would be taken seriously, I’d never have agreed to be a party to this! But it’s just a question of stirring up a bit of scandal, a bit of dirt. Quite harmless really.’

The man’s whinging hypocrisy made Silvio feel sick, but what he said made sense. If the gang had confessed then the papers he was being asked to sign were totally worthless except precisely to someone like Cinzia, someone who would stoop to any trick to sully the honour of the woman he loved and whose love sustained him. But they would deal with Cinzia later. Meanwhile he must get this over with and warn Ivy immediately. It was awful to think how she might suffer if she was suddenly confronted with his apparent treachery.

‘Just put your name on the dotted line at the bottom, dottore,’ Zen prompted. ‘Where it says that you made the statement freely and voluntarily.’

Silvio took out his pen and signed. When the yellow envelope was safe in his hands he turned to Zen.

‘I may be dirty in super?cial ways,’ he remarked, ‘but you’re dirty through and through! You’re a filthy putrid rancid cesspit, a walking shit-heap.’

The final proof of the official’s total degeneracy was that he didn’t even try to defend himself, merely getting into the waiting car, his despicable job done. Silvio followed, but more slowly. Despite the varied splendours and miseries of his existence, the pleasure of moral superiority was one that very rarely came his way. As a connoisseur of exotic sensations he was determined to savour it to the utmost.