Back to Bologna (16 page)

31

‘But this is crazy!’ the barber protested. ‘You have a magnificent head of hair, a superb beard! All that’s required is a delicate and discreet trim, a snip here, a hint more shape there…’

‘Do what I say!’ snapped Romano Rinaldi.

For a moment the barber, reflected in the mirror facing the swivel chair in which Rinaldi was seated, looked as though he might be about to refuse. The man must have been in his sixties, with a moonlike face and the expression of a priest struggling to bring an unrepentant sinner to the foot of the cross, while his shop looked as though it had been furnished about the time of national unification and left untouched ever since. The proprietor clearly regarded himself as one of the city’s top professionals, and was more accustomed to advising his clients on which interventions needed to be undertaken than merely carrying out their orders, particularly when these were eccentric and wilful in the extreme. Nevertheless, he picked up his scissors with a heavy sigh of disapproval and set to work.

His eyes fixed on the antique sink in front of him, Rinaldi sat there impassively as his shorn locks fell on to the wrap that covered his upper torso. The police would be watching the hotel, the railway and bus stations, and the airport, as well as monitoring both his and Delia’s mobile phones. He had instructed the barber to shave his scalp bald, remove his eyebrows and trim his beard down to a very thin moustache. That should prevent any casual recognition on the street. His plan was to find a small, seedy hotel of the kind used by young backpackers on a tight budget, pass himself off as a foreigner and tell the proprietor that his passport had been stolen but he had informed the consulate and a replacement would arrive within the week. That and a hefty deposit should do the trick in the short term. After that it would be a matter of keeping an eye on the news and seeing how the affair played out.

The barber finished his job, scowling his disapproval, and whisked away the hair-covered wrap.

‘Fifty euros.’

Getting to his feet, Rinaldi stared speechlessly at his reflection in the mirror while the barber brushed him down like a horse. Even Delia wouldn’t recognise him like this, he thought. He reached for his wallet, but encountered only an alien object, smooth, cool and heavy. Pulling it out impatiently, he found to his amazement that he was holding what looked like an automatic pistol.

It took him only a moment to work out that the little rat at the Irish bar had ripped him off after all. He’d faked that collapse to give him the chance to grab hold of Rinaldi, then lifted his wallet and substituted this cheap replica gun to simulate its bulk and weight. A wave of sheer panic swept over him as the implications sunk in. All his cash and credit cards were gone, and since he was wanted by the police he could not report the incident and get replacements in the usual way.

He turned to the barber, flashing his radiant Lo Chef smile.

‘Look, I seem to have left my wallet at home.’

The man did not reply. He stood very still, gazing down at the pistol in his client’s hand. Rinaldi hastily replaced it.

‘I’ll leave my watch as surety while I go and fetch my wallet,’ he went on. ‘It’s a vintage Rolex, platinum band, worth at least a thousand. I’ll be back in about half an hour.’

‘I close in ten minutes,’ the barber stated in a voice like an automated recording.

‘Then tomorrow.’

He thrust the watch at him and walked out. As soon as he reached the corner, he turned left and ran until he was out of breath. The night air felt cruelly cold in his newly shorn state, but at least there was no one about. A few metres further on, lost in the overarching shadows cast by the
portici
, stood a municipal rubbish bin. Rinaldi rooted about in it until he found an empty plastic bag, and then stuffed his pigskin gloves, cashmere scarf and camelhair overcoat into it. Then he roughed up his blazer, pullover and trousers against the rough plaster on one of the pillars of the arcade, scuffed his immaculately polished brogues repeatedly against a neighbouring doorstep, and set off again looking rather more like a common vagrant, battered bag of belongings in hand.

But where to? The loss of his wallet changed everything. He was not only homeless and wanted by the police, but down to four euros and sixty-three
centesimi
in small change, most of which he promptly spent in the first bar he came to, just to warm up. He was staring at the drying stain in his coffee cup, as though hoping to read his fortune in the grounds, when a memory of something he had seen earlier that evening came back to him. He cringed with humiliation at the very idea. What a comedown! Talk about riches to rags. But there was no obvious alternative, and it might just prove to be what he needed to see him through the next few days, until things sorted themselves out. It was certainly worth a try.

32

Flavia looked up from her battered paperback at the clock above the alcove where the proprietor was busily crafting raw pizzas beside the maw of the oven. One of the two waiters reappeared, the skinny Stan Laurel lookalike. He regarded her quizzically.

‘Ready to order?’ he asked, when Flavia did not react.

‘I’m waiting for someone.’

And he was more than twenty minutes late, she thought, as the waiter sidled off. It had been absurdly naïve to imagine that he would come at all. Her relationship with Rodolfo had been intense, diverting and instructive, but she had never allowed herself any illusions about the ultimate outcome, even before he started acting in this strange, angry, icily controlled way. But with his university career in ruins, there was no longer any reason for him to remain in Bologna, or with her. That was what he had been hinting at last night, taunting her with lying about her origins and then refusing to sleep with her. As for this evening, he simply wouldn’t show up, leaving her to get the message. But she already had.

She glanced up hopefully as the door opened, but it was a stranger, as tall and austere in appearance as her own dead father. Flavia finished the chapter she had been reading and then consulted the clock again. The thirty minutes grace she had allowed Rodolfo had passed. She put on her coat and headed for the door.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the fat waiter, who was serving two pasta dishes to a nearby table. ‘My boyfriend just phoned to say he can’t make it.’

Ollie inclined his head sideways in a way that could have meant anything or nothing.

In the street just outside, she literally ran into Rodolfo. He dropped the duffle bag he was carrying and kissed her on the mouth.

‘Everything’s all right!’

They returned together to the table that Flavia had vacated, the only one free now that half of the rest had been pushed together to form a large rectangular area seating about a dozen, presumably for a group that would arrive later. Rodolfo stowed the nylon bag in the corner and then, in a breathless rush, told Flavia that he had been to see Professor Ugo in hospital, had been readmitted to the course, and could finish his thesis and graduate.

‘That’s wonderful,’ said Flavia coolly. ‘Then what?’

Rodolfo shrugged.

‘Come the summer, I’ll want to go back to Puglia, at least for a while. My father says he needs me, although who knows how long that will last. Anyway, I’m sick of this damned place. Afterwards we’ll see.’

Flavia nodded vaguely.

‘What’s the weather like in Puglia?’

‘Ah, much warmer than here! The people too.’

She pointedly did not respond.

‘And in Ruritania?’ he asked with a self-deprecating smile.

‘The weather in Ruritania? It doesn’t exist.’

Rodolfo took her hand.

‘I’m sorry, Flavia. I was so angry about what had happened, almost insane, and I took it out on you. I apologise.’

There was a silence.

‘What’s in the bag?’ Flavia asked at length.

‘Oh, just some clothes Vincenzo asked me to bring him. Apparently he’s going to be away for a while and couldn’t get back to the apartment. The reason that I was so late getting here is I had to go back and pick that up after visiting Ugo.’

He smiled at her.

‘Anyway, enough about all that. Let’s talk about us.’

‘Us?’

‘Will you come with me to Puglia?’

She gazed at him for at least a minute, levelly and without the slightest expression.

‘As what?’

Rodolfo mimed exaggerated shock and horror, silent film style.

‘As my
fidanzata
, of course! They’d stone us both to death otherwise.’

Stanlio manifested himself at the table.

‘Two margheritas with buffalo mozzarella,’ Rodolfo told him, not breaking eye contact with Flavia. ‘And a bottle of champagne.’

‘…a bottle of
spumante
,’ the waiter repeated, writing on his pad.

‘No, not
spumante
. French champagne.’

The waiter looked doubtful.

‘I could get some from the bar down the street. But the price…’

Rodolfo produced a well-stuffed designer wallet, an evidently expensive item that Flavia didn’t recall having seen before.

‘Is irrelevant,’ he said.

33

As a newcomer to La Carrozza, Aurelio Zen had been allocated a small table set apart between the end of the bar and the front door. This afforded a close-up view of interactions between the overworked waiters and the foulmouthed owner, with much interesting commentary on both sides, and a blast of freezing air whenever the door opened to offset the searing heat of the wood-burning pizza oven at Zen’s back. He ordered a glass of beer but no food, on the grounds that he was waiting for someone.

‘Eh, like everyone!’ the thinner of the two waiters had replied cryptically.

Zen looked around the premises, but the only person who seemed to fit the waiter’s comment was a young woman sitting at a table near by, who kept glancing up from her book at the front door. She had surveyed Zen for a moment when he entered, with a look of hopeful eagerness that immediately faded as recognition failed. She had blue eyes of the most astonishing clarity, as bright and guileless as ice, but much warmer. She was very attractive in other ways too, and Zen found his own gaze returning to her both for this reason and because the title of the book that she was reading seemed to be
The Prisoner of Zen
, although her plumply elegant forefinger partially covered it.

In the end she gathered up her things and left, rather to his disappointment, only to collide in the street outside with a young man who kissed her spectacularly and then led her back to her table, where the couple were now canoodling and chatting enthusiastically over a bottle of bubbly wine. ‘Ah, youth!’ thought Zen, glad to have someone to feel happy for. Now that his brief interlude of high spirits–probably a delayed reaction to the shock of his arrest–had passed, his own prospects for the evening seemed considerably less promising. The news that Stefano’s girlfriend had miscarried promised to add a vast new uncharted minefield to the blighted warzone that his relationship with Gemma had become. He had apparently acquired an almost infinite capacity for saying or doing the wrong thing, and this new development, which could hardly fail to be the main topic of conversation between them in the immediate future, offered plenty of scope for his talents in this respect.

It was then that a thought occurred to him. As matters stood, he had no real standing in the Santini family, but as Stefano’s stepfather he would have to be accorded at least a grudging toleration. So if the situation started to get out of hand back at the hotel later that evening, he would simply make a proposal of marriage to Gemma. That would at least clarify the situation, whatever the result. If she turned him down, they would have to part. If she accepted, they would have to put up with each other. It might not be the most romantic solution, but it was eminently practical.

Another ten minutes passed before Bruno Nanni finally turned up.

‘So what’s this “important lead” you mentioned?’ Zen demanded once they had ordered their pizzas. ‘You were very mysterious about it on the phone.’

Bruno leant forward.

‘Well, apparently some anonymous informant called the Questura this afternoon…’

‘Claiming he knows who shot Edgardo Ugo,’ Zen interrupted. ‘Stale news, Bruno. The Carabinieri told me hours ago.’

‘You’ve been in touch with the Carabinieri?’

‘They got in touch with me. The officer in charge of the Ugo shooting is an old friend of mine and a fellow Venetian. He naturally wanted to compare notes.’

‘Did they tell you the name that the caller mentioned?’

Zen thought back.

‘No, actually they didn’t mention a name.’

Bruno smiled smugly.

‘They couldn’t, because we haven’t told them.’

‘How come you know all this, Bruno?’

‘Got it out of the duty sarge who took the call.’

Their pizzas arrived, and for some time both men were absorbed in eating.

‘Do you also know the name involved?’ asked Zen when his first wave of hunger had passed.

Bruno was in the middle of chewing a gargantuan bite and couldn’t reply immediately.

‘Vincenzo Amadori,’ he finally replied in a choked whisper.

‘Probably just a nuisance call.’

Bruno shook his head.

‘There’s been no public reference to the ballistics tie-in between the two cases,’ he pointed out. ‘The buzz around the Questura is that the same gun was definitely involved, but they’re not going to release that news to the media for fear of setting off an Uno Bianca feeding frenzy. It looks like they’re going to keep it under wraps for a while, with the excuse that further tests are needed, and hope to get a quick break in the case before they have to come clean.’

He finished his beer and signalled the waiter to bring a refill.

‘And without the knowledge that the same gun was used, there would be no point in anyone trying to smear Vincenzo with the Ugo affair. I doubt he even knew who Ugo was, never mind had a motive to shoot him.’

Zen felt a sudden sense of lassitude and indifference, a brief backwash from the storm that had so recently threatened to overwhelm him.

‘Well, that’s the basic problem with the whole investigation,’ he heard himself say, as though at a great distance. ‘On the face of it, the two victims had nothing whatever in common beyond the fact that they were well-known public figures in Bologna. There are plenty of killers who attack only certain demographic groups, usually prostitutes, but celebrity stalkers are invariably obsessed with one particular person. No others need apply.’

‘Perhaps there were two men involved,’ Bruno suggested, waving a forkload of pizza in the air. ‘One shot Curti for reasons of his own, the other Ugo ditto, but with the same pistol.’

‘You should retire and write thrillers,’ said Zen sarcastically. ‘Anyway, it no longer has anything to do with us. On the basis of the possible analogy you mentioned, the judicial authorities have handed over the Ugo case to our colleagues in the Carabinieri. Assuming that the ballistics tests verify the identity of the weapon concerned, they will get de facto control of the Curti murder as well, leaving us free to deal with such really important issues as policing football games.’

He broke off as a party of about a dozen entered the establishment, laughing and chatting loudly, filed past Bruno and Zen and took their places at the large table that had been assembled at the back of the room. One of the waiters appeared and collected the empty pizza plates.

‘Tutto bene, signori?’

Zen nodded, but Bruno scratched the back of his neck.

‘You go if you want,
capo
, but I’m still hungry.’

Aman in a filthy apron had just emerged from the rear of the premises to lay two plates of pasta on the counter next to the pizza oven. He was pudgy, with a bald head, a vestigial moustache, no eyebrows and an air of immense resentment.

‘Who’s that?’ Bruno asked the waiter.

‘The new help. Normo’s mother’s been taken poorly, so we had to get someone at short notice to do the made dishes.’

‘Is he any good?’

‘He’s only just started. A foreigner. I haven’t had any complaints.
La nonna
is keeping a close eye on him.’

‘God help him. Well, let’s see how good a team they make. Bring me a bowl of
penne all’arrabbiata
and half a litre of red.’

‘In that case, I’ll have a dessert,’ said Zen. ‘That chocolatey thing on the bottom shelf of the cooler.’

Behind them, the whoops, giggles and guffaws from the large table soon rose to such a level that there was no need for Bruno and Zen to try and find something to talk about.