Back to Bologna (3 page)

4

Gemma Santini stood in her nightdress, dispassionately surveying the ravages of time in the mirror above the dressing table. Not too bad, all things considered, was her conclusion. Some decorative details might have succumbed to wear and tear, and the odd patch of pediment gone missing, but the Goths and Vandals had yet to lay waste to everything in sight. In short, she still felt reasonably confident that she could get a date, if it should come to that.

Which it very well might, she reflected. This was an uncomfortable thought, but Gemma had never felt at ease with anything but the truth, however inconvenient it might be. Facts had to be faced, whether they were the facts about her own face, as reflected in the bedroom mirror, or about the man in her life, as reflected in the kaleidoscopic sequence of grotesque and disturbing patterns into which their life together had recently disintegrated. Gemma took a modest pride in being a truth-teller who did not spare herself or others; a realist who, whatever mistakes she might make, could recognise them as such and learn to stop making them. And she was beginning to consider her relationship with Aurelio Zen as just such a mistake.

Another characteristic of hers was that having come to this decision–or at least contemplated the possibility of doing so–she had not the slightest interest, unlike her partner, in endlessly analysing the hows, whats, whens and whys of the situation. At the same time she took a certain satisfaction from knowing that if she had chosen to play this game, she could have beaten Zen hollow. There were, for instance, two crucial factors involved of which he remained totally unaware. One he might be forgiven for, since it was a family matter which Gemma had kept from him. He had only himself to blame for his ignorance, however. If you make it abundantly clear that certain concerns of other people are of not the slightest interest to you, it is only to be expected that they will spare you any details of subsequent developments.

The other factor was Zen’s hypochondria, in the broadest sense of the term, encompassing not only a morbid anxiety about his health but also chronic depression. Of this, Gemma had originally been as unaware as Zen still was that she herself might be going to become a grandmother. Looking back, she had perhaps been a little slow on the uptake, but then she’d had plenty of reasons for wishing it not to be true. But by now the evidence appeared incontrovertible. First there had been Zen’s endless complaints about abdominal pains and a vague sense of lassitude. Then, once it became clear that he had no intention of seeing a doctor of his own free will, Gemma had had to browbeat and virtually strong-arm him into doing so. Diagnosis had proved to be another series of hurdles, involving trips first to the local hospital and then to a private clinic in Rome, where the consultant that Zen was revisiting that day had prescribed a surgical intervention which was reported to have been ‘routine and without complications’. The patient, on the other hand, seemed to regard this everyday procedure as a nightmarish and potentially lethal ordeal comparable with being the first-ever recipient of a brain transplant.

And so it had gone on ever since. Like any pharmacist in a culture where, even by strictly legal criteria, the profession is granted considerable discretionary powers, Gemma had her share of regulars who frequently dropped in to discuss their latest ailments and general state of health before asking her to supply ‘a little something’ to alleviate their symptoms which, however, were ‘not worth bothering the doctor with’. Nevertheless, she had never before encountered a full-blown case of paranoid hypochondria until Zen returned home to recuperate after his discharge from the clinic.

She had initially been indulgent, reasoning that he would soon pull himself together and return to normal. Not only was there still no sign of this, but he seemed to come up with a fresh complaint every day. If it wasn’t backache, it was toothache. When those afflictions lost their novelty, he claimed to have terrible migraines that made sleep impossible, so that he felt–there was a lot about his feelings–utterly exhausted, confused and depressed. He couldn’t think straight, he couldn’t remember anything, and he certainly couldn’t go back to his job. He’d finally realised how important his work was to him, and now he would never be able to work again. In short, he no longer recognised himself. ‘I just don’t feel like me any longer,’ he’d moaned. ‘It’s as if a thread has broken somewhere and the whole fabric is unravelling before my eyes.’ These melodramatic displays had finally pushed Gemma’s patience to its limits, and the result had been some quite lively rows, followed by long periods of sullen silence. Zen had apparently adopted the tactic of pointedly ‘not speaking’ to her, which she was only too happy to reciprocate. But things plainly couldn’t go on like this much longer.

When the phone rang, she nearly didn’t answer it, suspecting that it would be her former lover, as she now thought of him, soliciting a lift from the station, or even from Florence. But the caller turned out to be her son. This was as welcome as it was unusual. It had almost always been Gemma who initiated contact with Stefano, particularly after she had made the mistake of touching ever so lightly on various aspects of his new situation which she privately found worrisome in the extreme. Neither mother nor son had much small talk, but both made a show of chatting briefly about neutral topics such as the weather and Zen’s health before Stefano got to the point.

‘Actually, Lidia and I were wondering if you could come up here some time.’

‘To Bologna?’

‘Well, yes. This weekend, if you’re free.’

‘Has something happened?’

She tried to keep an edge of urgency out of her tone, without complete success. Stefano had obviously been expecting this question.

‘We’ve got lots to tell you, but let’s wait till you come. If you’re able, that is. But it’s hard for us to get away, and…’

‘Don’t be silly! Of course I’ll come.’

She replaced the phone with mixed emotions. On the one hand she was looking forward to getting away from her own domestic problems, on the other she was already concerned about those that might await her at the other end. She could think of at least three main possibilities, none of them good. But they would have to be faced anyway, and a change of scenery was a definite bonus.

The echo of a door shutting in the stairwell, followed by a series of trudging, faltering footsteps, warned her that her significant other had returned. She quickly turned off the light, dived into bed, pulled the covers over her face, and was to all appearances deeply asleep by the time that Aurelio Zen hesitantly pushed open the door.

5

Flanked by two beaming bimbettes wearing smiles as big as their boobs and very little else, Romano Rinaldi grasped the wooden handle of the Parmesan dagger and held it dramatically above his head.

‘And now, like an Aztec priest performing the ultimate sacrifice, I open the heart of this cheese, the very heart of Italy!’ he cried, plunging the cutter home and simultaneously bursting into a rendering of Verdi’s ‘
Celeste Aida
’ that went on, and on, and on.

In the soundproofed control booth, Delia’s glance met that of the director.

‘Coked again,’ she muttered.

‘You amaze me,’ the director replied drily.

He touched a button on the console before him.

‘Technical edit,’ he said. ‘Romano, the teleprompt script to camera three, please.’

He switched off the microphone link to the studio beyond the triple-glazed window.

‘I’ll cut in some of that promotional footage the producers’ association sent us,’ he said with a brief, harsh laugh. ‘Maybe one of those scenes with lots of cows. Then lay Lo Chef’s big aria under, fade it out and meld to the teleprompt VO with cutaways to him gabbing to camera.’

‘You’re a star, Luciano.’

‘Thank God for digital is all. The trailer segment has to be ready to air tomorrow. In the old days, that would have taken Christ knows how many man-hours. Even with the money the
parmigiani
are slipping us under the table, we’d still have had a hard time costing out.’

Delia nodded vaguely. She looked, and was, preoccupied.

‘How much longer till wrap-up?’ she asked.

‘Where our Romano’s involved, who knows? The studio’s booked till noon, just to be on the safe side. As long as he doesn’t manage to eviscerate himself with that Parmesan cleaver, we should be finished by then.’

Lo Chef’s voice boomed out over the speakers set against the padded wall.

‘…sixteen litres of the finest, richest, freshest milk to make a single kilo of this, the Jupiter of cheeses lording it over the rabble of minor gods. And then as much as two years of completely natural ageing, according to traditions handed down over seven centuries of continuous production, with no artificial manipulation to influence the process…’

Delia walked over and kissed the director lightly on the forehead.

‘Do me a favour, Luciano. Keep him at it for at least another fifteen minutes. I’ll have to hose him down and mother him when it’s over, but I need a coffee first.’

‘No problem. If he goes all speedy and rushes through the rest of the script, I’ll just tell him he was a bit flat on a couple of bars of that Verdi aria and get him to repeat the whole thing.’

Delia smiled her thanks.

‘Hey, did you see that thing that Edgardo Ugo wrote about him in
Il Prospetto
?’ Luciano added. ‘Got him bang to rights, no? I laughed myself sick!’

Without answering, Delia went out to the corridor. Almost immediately her mobile started to chirp. She checked the screen and said ‘Damn!’ before answering.

‘Have you told him?’ the caller asked.

‘Not yet,’ she replied, ignoring the stairs down to the street. ‘He’s in one of those moods this morning. You know what he’s like when he’s taping.’

‘Delia, he’s going to find out sooner or later, probably within a few hours. The damn magazine is on the streets now. It’s essential that he hears the bad news from us. How are you going to spin it?’

Delia pushed open the door to the fire escape, blocking its automatic closing mechanism with her briefcase, and stepped out on to the metal platform.

‘More or less as we discussed. The big question is how he’ll react. You know how he feels about having his competence called into question.’

‘Naturally, since he hasn’t got any. But the show is making a fortune for us here at the station, another fortune for Lo Chef and a very nice career for you, my dear. Don’t let’s screw any of that up just because Romano Rinaldi can’t take a joke. And that’s all it was meant to be.’

Aplane flying low overhead on the final approach into Ciampino put the conversation on hold for some time.

‘You’re sure about that?’ Delia yelled over the final resonant rumbles.

‘One hundred per cent. My people checked with Ugo’s people today. In any case, none of our audience is going to care less what some professor of semiotics in Bologna thinks. All Romano needs to do is ignore the whole incident and it’ll be forgotten in a couple of days.’

Delia checked her watch.

‘I’ve got to go. He’ll be off-stage at any moment.’

Actually there were at least five minutes to go, but Delia had never mastered the art of taking a mobile phone call and lighting a cigarette at the same time, and it was the latter rather than a coffee that she desperately needed before bearding her highly-strung client. Unmarried, very ambitious, with a baker’s dozen years of ova already addled and a
molto simpatico
but totally ineffective significant other, Delia knew that she couldn’t afford to lose this job.

After graduating with a modest degree, she had worked her way up through several jobs in corporate communications and public relations before landing her present position as personal assistant to the celebrity chef whose television show,
Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta
, regularly pulled in millions of faithful viewers every week. Moreover, the figures were always rising, and there had even been approaches from other European broadcasters interested in acquiring the rights for their own territories. And then this left-wing academic and obscure novelist pops up and lets the cat out of the bag, jokingly or otherwise, thereby threatening to ruin the whole sweet deal.

She tossed her cigarette down into the car park below and went back inside. To her horror, the light mounted above the door to the studio was glowing green. She was late, and Romano Rinaldi didn’t like to be kept waiting. She shoved the door open and ran up to the stage where he stood, sweating and hyperventilating, in the toque and white uniform which had had to be changed four times that morning after being spattered with assorted ingredients.

‘I’m so sorry, Romano!’ Delia said breathlessly. ‘I had to pop out for a moment to take a very sensitive business call. I didn’t want Leonardo listening in. Actually, it was about something we need to…’

‘It’s nothing,’ the star interrupted, jerking both hands outwards as though to symbolise the jettisoning of redundant cargo. ‘I don’t need any praise or applause. The great artist is always a great critic as well. Today I was magnificent. I know that instinctively, in my belly, in my heart!’

He grasped her arm and broke into the gaping, toothy, beard-framed smile that was one of his professional hallmarks, an image of which featured on the labels for the evergrowing list of sauces, oils, cookware and other products branded under the Lo Chef trademark.

‘I’m getting better and better, Delia,’ he confided. ‘This is only the beginning of the rich, prolific middle period for which I shall always be remembered. The years to come…’

Lost for words to describe adequately the splendours of the future that awaited him, he relapsed into a long heartfelt sigh. Delia patted his shoulder.

‘I understand, Romano, and I completely agree. Now you go and get changed, and then we must have a brief discussion. I realise that this is a difficult moment for you, after putting on such a superb performance, but there are some very important and urgent issues that we need to address.’

6

‘Yes, yes! Give it to me! Give it to me hot and hard!’

King Antonio perched naked on his throne, sweating, groaning, imploring. Then his expression changed to one of alarm, almost of fear.

‘Oh my God, it’s coming! Ah! Oh! No, I can’t! It’s too big! It’ll tear me apart! Please God, I can’t take it!’

At the last moment, just when he knew from the pangs below that he was about to do himself a serious injury, his sphincter relaxed that crucial millimetre or so. After that there were only the gasps, tears and moans, followed by a triumphal flush and the glowing sense of absolute fulfilment.

Next came an invigorating shower, but Tony emerged totally uninvigorated. After a moment’s reflection, he swallowed six paracetamol tablets washed down with water gulped from the hand-basin tap. They wouldn’t do his liver any good, particularly given his rigid regime of a bottle of bourbon a day, but at least they would ease the vicious headache that had been with him since he awoke.

Straightening up, he caught sight of himself in the mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet. The reflected image was a shock. His forehead was swollen to twice its normal size and, when he touched it, proved very sensitive. Tony immediately thought about malignant cysts, but the thing definitely hadn’t been there the day before, so a bruise seemed the more likely solution. The skin was a rainbow in shades of pink, red, purple, blue and black, but didn’t seem to be broken.

He walked through to the bedroom, trying to calm down and get the situation into perspective. It was all part of the job, after all. Being the top
investigatore privato
in Bologna was tough work, but somebody had to do it. Still, he wished he could recall a little more clearly what had happened the previous night. He knew that he had fired his current girlfriend, but only because he did that to whoever happened to occupy that position on the last day of each month. Private eyes couldn’t have stable, long-term affairs. They were complex, alienated loners who had to walk the mean streets of the big city, men who might be flawed but were neither tarnished nor afraid. Above all, they had to suffer.

Tony Speranza was certainly suffering as he laboriously put on his clothes and went through to the kitchen to make coffee. The resulting brew produced still more suffering, to alleviate which Tony lit an unfiltered Camel, cracked open the Jack Daniels and knocked back a stiff shot. What the hell had happened last night, apart from the screaming match with Ingrid or whatever her name was?

Screaming match. Football match. Of course, he’d been to the stadium to check up on the target’s pals. Photograph them at the bar afterwards with that ultra-cool digital camera he’d just bought, barely bigger than a matchbox. It had taken all the experience of the total pro he was to do so without being spotted, but he’d accomplished his mission. Now it was just a matter of downloading the picture files to his desktop and emailing them to
l’avvocato
. Only where was the camera? He checked his overcoat pockets, then patted his suit. His wallet and keys, notebook and pen, were all present and correct. But not the camera. And not…

Oh shit, he thought. Oh fuck. Oh my God.

To be honest, Tony didn’t really need a gun. Ninety-nine per cent of his work came from divorce cases, jealous husbands, and keeping tabs on the children of local families worried that their costly offspring were getting into bad company and worse habits.
La sicurezza di sapere tutto, sempre!!!
was the slogan he used for his ad in the Yellow Pages and on the fliers stuck under the windscreen wipers of parked cars. The work itself was mostly a question of being equipped with the latest surveillance technology, and occasionally putting in a sleepless night staked out in front of the property where an adulterous liaison or drug party was going on. There was almost never any violence, certainly none involving firearms.

But Tony Speranza knew and respected the rules of the genre. Private eyes have to have a gun, so he had acquired one from a Serbian former special policeman who had done some freelance work for him at one time. It was an M-57 semi-automatic, manufactured to the highest specifications in strictly limited quantities by the Zastava State Arsenal. The pistol fitted unobtrusively into the capacious pockets of the double-breasted trench coat and had a gorgeous walnut grip and silky blued finish into which Tony had had his name engraved in fancy cursive script. A little beauty, in short. The only problem was that he didn’t seem to have it any more. ‘The assurance of knowing everything, always’. Ha! Right now, Tony would have settled for feeling reasonably sure about anything, once in a while.

This train of thought was derailed by the phone.

‘Tony Speranza,
investigatore privato
,’ he said automatically.

‘This is the office of Avvocato Giulio Amadori,’ a female voice stated.

Tony laughed and took a hit of bourbon.

‘Hey, I never talked to an office before!’

‘Avvocato Amadori wishes to be informed of the current status of the unresolved issues in the matter in which he has employed you.’

‘Put him on, darling, put him on.’

‘Avvocato Amadori is presently away from his desk.’

‘Then let me speak with the desk.’

‘It concerns the photographic evidence which you and he have discussed.’

Tony laughed again and lit another Camel.

‘You know what? I bet you’re not an office at all. You were just kidding around. I see you as a ravishing blonde with a come-hither look that can melt platinum at twenty metres, who knows where all the bodies are buried, and has the murder weapon tucked into her garter belt.’

‘To ensure quality service and for your protection, this conversation is being recorded. If Avvocato Amadori considers your attitude inappropriate, he reserves the right to take the necessary steps.’

‘Oh yeah? What does he do when he gets mad, run up the bell tower of San Petronio and make like Quasimodo?’

‘Thank you. Avvocato Amadori will be informed of your response in due course.’

‘Listen, I’m on the job, okay? But discretion is of the essence and so far a suitable opportunity has not presented itself.’

But he was talking to a dead line.

He put the phone down and poured himself another bourbon. I knew the Amadori case would be trouble from the beginning, he fantasised. Of all the PI offices in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. In point of hard fact, it was a routine surveillance operation for a fortyish yuppy whose kid had left home and was refusing to communicate with him. Giulio Amadori’s main worry seemed to be that Vincenzo would end up in trouble with the cops and that this would reflect badly on his own law practice, although he had made a cursory gesture towards fashionable sentimentality by foregrounding the family reputation and his wife’s feelings. He was prepared to pay five hundred up front for details of his son’s whereabouts, habits and associates, with the possibility of more to come for follow-up investigations or interventions based on the primary information.

Tony Speranza would much rather have been hired to look into a seemingly casual disappearance that led him to a sexy but dangerous babe with plenty to hide both physically and criminally, but in his experience that sort of thing rarely happened in Bologna. All he had to go on was a snapshot of the young man and the information that he affected to be a diehard supporter of the Bologna football club. Such fans invariably had season tickets at the Curva San Luca end of the ground, and sure enough when Tony headed out to the stadium on Via Costa the evening of the next home fixture he soon identified Vincenzo emerging in a group of his fellow
ultras
from one of the stepped concrete culverts leading down from the stands. He had then followed them through prolonged post-game festivities in various bars and clubs before tailing the target home to an apartment right in the centre of the city.

Thanks to his superb professional skills, Tony had remained unobserved by Vincenzo and his associates on this occasion, but he knew that it would be too risky to repeat the operation regularly enough to provide the total surveillance which his client expected. A remote device was therefore called for, and the question became where to install it. The most convenient location was the target’s car, but Tony had already established that Vincenzo didn’t own one. The normal alternative was some personal possession or item of clothing in frequent use, and here Tony had better luck.

The Amadori kid spent a lot of time asleep or hanging around the apartment he shared with one Rodolfo Mattioli, a harmless, ineffectual graduate student who didn’t appear to socialise with the target. There was also a girl involved, a red-headed stunner that Tony had tracked to her nest and planned to visit in the very near future, but the activities that
l’avvocato
was concerned with invariably involved some or all of the crew of football fans, and when he went out with them Vincenzo equally invariably donned a rough-looking black leather jacket, the back of which was decorated with an oval of shiny metal studs surrounding a painted image of the official club logo and the heading BFC 1909.

The next problem was access. Tony considered various possibilities, but in the end fate handed the solution to him on a plate. The occasion was a home game against the mighty Juventus, for which the Renato Dall’Ara stadium was packed to capacity. In the end Bologna lost to a disputed penalty, so the mood of the emerging fans was far from serene. The police were present in force and made an attempt to direct the
tifosi
of either team away from the stadium separately, but the hardcore elements on either side had had long experience of much more ruthless crowd control than the local authorities, accustomed to keeping a low profile in left-wing Bologna, could bring themselves to impose. Pretty soon those who had come not just to watch the match but to get into a fight managed to drift away down side streets and alleys, reassembling in the car park of a nearby Coop supermarket as soon as the police dispersed. Tony Speranza followed the group that included Vincenzo, keeping a discreet distance and trying to look like an ordinary citizen on his way home.

When they reached the deserted, dimly lit car park, it became apparent that the Juve supporters outnumbered their opponents by about two to one. This advantage increased as some of the
rossoblù
yobs disappeared into the bushes screening off the street, on the pretext of needing to pee, and did not return. It soon became clear that they had made a wise decision. The brawl lasted no more than two minutes, at the end of which the Bologna contingent slunk away to the jeers and laughter of the Torinese. All except Vincenzo Amadori. He stood his ground, hurling obscenities and abuse at his enemies and taunting them to come and get him. This they duly did. Amadori ended up in a foetal crouch on the bare asphalt, where he received a few more vicious kicks before the aggressors tired of the sport and trooped off up the street.

Tony Speranza had been concealed behind a delivery van parked in the far corner of the lot. He now emerged and ran quickly over to Vincenzo Amadori, who was groaning feebly. None of his companions seemed to be coming to his assistance, so Tony unzipped and folded back one side of the leather jacket. The satin lining was quilted in a diamond pattern. Tony took out an Xacto knife and made a small incision in the stitching of one of the diamonds, then inserted the handle of the knife and tore the opening a little more. Into it he slipped an object about the size of a cigarette packet, but as smoothly rounded as a pebble on the seashore and weighing no more. This he positioned in the centre of the padded sac, then pressed both sides hard so that the Velcro wrap would adhere to the fabric. Thirty seconds later he was in a phone box further up Via Costa, summoning an ambulance anonymously to the Coop parking lot. Now the bug was successfully planted, it was in his interests to get Amadori back on his feet and active again as soon as possible.

The device in question was essentially the innards of a mobile phone, stripped of its cumbersome microphone, speaker and other frills, but containing microchips responsive to a number of different networks. Once an hour the unit turned itself on and made contact with the nearest receiver-transmitter mast for each company and then phoned the data in to the computer in Tony’s office, where a nifty bit of software translated the resulting triangulation into a time-dated map with a star indicating the position of the target at that moment. Tony was therefore covered if any questions arose about Vincenzo’s whereabouts at any particular moment, and without the tedious and potentially tricky chore of actually following the little bastard and his mates around.

So two elements of the assignment had been completed. The third was the set of photographs that he had taken the previous evening, but which had gone missing when he had been mugged and his miniaturised camera and gun stolen. How the hell had that happened? Vincenzo Amadori and his pals certainly hadn’t spotted him, Tony reflected as he slipped on the double-breasted trench coat, trilby and aviator shades he had bought online from an American retailer specialising in 1930s retro gear. He would have known instantly if they had. A trained investigator could always tell when he’d been ‘made’, to use the technical term.

He let himself out of the apartment and walked downstairs to the street. The windscreen of his battered Fiat was dusted with a coating of grey, granular snow from which a parking ticket protruded, one end trapped under the wiper blade.
Comune di Ancona
, it was headed. Below that, in handwriting, appeared the amount of the fine payable within thirty days under penalty of…He groaned as the details of the previous evening finally came back to him. Of course! He had indeed been to a football match, only not at the stadium here in Bologna. The fixture, played midweek for some reason, had been an away game with local rivals Ancona, and Tony had duly driven down to that city with a view to completing the photographic record of Vincenzo’s cronies.

He started up the car, blotting out the view in a dense pall of exhaust fumes. He had it now, he thought. He’d located the clique he sought, despite the fact that for some reason the target wasn’t wearing his leather jacket. After the game he had followed them to a bar and very cautiously taken good-quality shots of the whole group. Mission accomplished, he had then gone to the lavatory at the rear of the bar for a quick pee before heading home.