Cabal - 3 (10 page)

There was no sound inside, but as a precaution Zen knocked gently before getting out the wooden box he had removed from the suitcase in his bedroom at home. The door was fitted with a Yale-type lock above the handle and a deadlock with a keyhole below. Zen bent down and squinted into the opening of the lower lock but the key was in position. He frowned briefly, then shrugged. Presumably Grimaldi only used the Yale lock when he went out.

He opened the tool kit and selected a device like a pair of callipers, which he inserted into the upper lock. Zen had acquired the tools during the years he had spent in Naples. He had been directing a plan to bug the beachside villa of a prominent
camorra
boss when a burglar had broken into the property. He couldn’t arrest the intruder without compromising the original operation, but the burglar didn’t know that, and was delighted when Zen offered to drop all charges in return for the tool kit and a series of masterclasses in its use. It was some time since he had needed to put these skills to the test, but he was nevertheless surprised to find that the lock totally resisted all his efforts.

The lack of play in the lock was so marked that if the lower lock hadn’t had the key in it, he might have thought that the catch was snibbed back. But it had, and an unoccupied room couldn’t very well be locked from the inside. He stood listening to the hushing of the rain and staring at the stubborn door. Wrapping a handkerchief around the door handle, he shoved his shoulder hard against the edge, to see which lock gave. The next thing he knew, the door had swung effortlessly open, depositing him on his knees in the middle of the floor.

A dull prickle of apprehension ran over his scalp as he got up again. Surely Giovanni Grimaldi’s work could not have left him with such a rosy view of human nature that he went off to work leaving his belongings in an unlocked room in an unguarded building? The only possible answer seemed to be that he didn’t
have
any belongings, or at least none worth stealing. Apart from a few magazines, a small radio, a cheap alarm clock, some empty soft-drink bottles and the clothes hanging in the closet and laid out on the bed, the place looked as impersonal as a hotel room. The furniture must have been an eyesore even when new, which it hadn’t been for a very long time.

Zen looked around for somewhere to hide the plastic twine. The obvious candidate was the chest of drawers, a hideous monstrosity with bandy metal legs and a synthetic woodgrain top. The drawers were slightly open and the contents in disarray. Of course, men who live alone tend to be either obsessionally tidy or total slobs, and it might simply be that Grimaldi was one of the latter. Nevertheless, Zen once again felt the warning prickle.

On top of the chest of drawers lay a leather wallet, a bunch of keys, a red plastic diary, some loose change, an open letter and a framed photograph of a young woman holding two small children by the hand. A faded chrysanthemum lay on its side in front of the picture. Zen picked up the letter, from some relative in Bari, and skimmed through it. It was mostly about Grimaldi’s children, who were apparently well and ‘as happy as can be expected’, although they sometimes confused their mother’s absence with their father’s, thinking that he was in heaven and she in Rome. Zen put the letter down beside the flower of death. He stepped over to the window and looked down at the street below, sighing deeply as though gasping for breath. By the entrance to the pizzeria opposite a group of men were standing in the mild sunshine, arguing good-naturedly.

Zen whirled round as though someone had touched him. There was no one there.
There was no one there
. The unlocked door, the clothes laid out on the bed, the wallet and money and keys all ready, the drawers in disorder, the sound of rain while the sun shone … As if sleep-walking, Zen crossed the room and opened the door. Along the floor of the corridor, a long mobile tongue of dark liquid was making its slow way, curling this way and that across the red tiles. Zen set off towards the direction from which it was coming. At the end of the corridor was a door painted glossy white, with no number and no lock, just a semi-circular metal handle. The sound of falling water grew louder as Zen splashed his way towards it. Light streamed out of the cracks around the door on three sides, water on the fourth.

He rapped loudly on the white panelling. When there was no reply, he pulled and then pushed the door handle. The door rattled, but it was bolted on the inside. Zen stepped back, measuring his distance carefully. He bent his right leg and raised his foot to about the level of the internal bolt, then kicked out hard. The door burst inwards, but held.

‘Hey!’

A man had poked his head out of a doorway further along the corridor. Zen ignored him. He brought his leg up again and smashed his foot viciously at the door. This time the bolt gave way and the door sagged in. A wave of water poured down the steps into the corridor, creating a series of miniature waterfalls.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ the man demanded.

Zen didn’t even look round. He was staring at the water running down the white porcelain tiles of the floor, at the drenched dressing-gown which had for some time stemmed the flood under the door, at the eight-pointed cross roughly chalked on the wall, at the naked body slumped in the shower, blocking the drain, and at the face of Giovanni Grimaldi staring back at him, seemingly with an astonishment to match his own.

If the man had done as Zen had told him – phoned the police, and then waited outside for them to arrive – there would have been no problem. There was no phone in the building, so he had to go across the road to the pizzeria. That should have left plenty of time for Zen to subject Grimaldi’s room to a thorough search. As it was, he had barely started when he heard voices on the stairs. He hastily stuffed the red plastic diary into his pocket and regained the corridor just before the neighbour returned with a Carabinieri patrolman whose 850cc Moto-Guzzi had been parked outside the pizzeria while its driver demolished a piece of ham-and-mushroom within.

Apart from forcing him to curtail his search, this coincidence meant that Zen was cast in the role of Material Witness in the ensuing investigation, which went on for the rest of the afternoon. Faced with a couple of subordinates from his own force, he could have made a brief statement and then buggered off, but the paramilitary Carabinieri saw no reason to stretch the rules to accommodate some big shot from their despised civilian rivals. On the contrary! The inquiry into Giovanni Grimaldi’s death was handled strictly according to the letter of the law, with every t crossed, every i dotted, and every statement, submission and report written up in triplicate and then signed by the witnesses and counter-signed by the officials.

Not that there was the slightest doubt as to the cause of the tragedy. ‘I always said it was just a matter of time before something like this happened,’ the dead man’s neighbour told the patrolman as they gazed in through the open doorway of the shower. Marco Duranti was one of those florid, irascible men who have the answer to all the world’s problems. It’s all so very simple! The solution is right here, at their fingertips! Only – and this is what drives them
mad
– no one thinks to ask them. Not only that, but when they offer the information, as a disinterested gesture of goodwill, people take no notice! They even turn away, muttering ‘Give it a rest, Marco, for Christ’s sake!’ That’s what Grimaldi had done, the last time he’d warned him – purely out of the kindness of his own heart – about that damned shower. It was thus understandable that Duranti’s grief was tempered by a certain satisfaction that his oft-repeated warnings of disaster had been proved right.

He drew the attention of the Carabinieri patrolman to the electric water heater supplying the shower. Sellotaped to the wall near by was a piece of paper in a plastic cover punched for use in a folder. A faded message in red felt-pen indicated that the heater should always be turned off before using the shower. Now, however, the switch was clearly set to ON.

‘It should have been replaced years ago,’ Duranti went on indignantly, ‘but you can imagine the chances of that happening. The Church has always got enough money to keep Wojtyla jetting about the world, but when it comes to looking after its own properties and the poor devils who live in them – eh, eh, that’s another matter! This whole place is falling to pieces. Why there was someone in only yesterday morning poking about in the drains. The next thing we know the floor will be running with shit, never mind water!’

By this time a small group of residents, neighbours and hangers-on had gathered in the corridor. No one wanted to go into the bathroom while the water was still potentially lethal, so Duranti fetched a hook with a long handle which was used for opening the skylight windows, and after several abortive attempts the patrolman managed to flip the heater switch to the OFF position. Protected by the solid leather soles of his magnificent boots, he then ventured into the flooded cubicle and turned off the water just as the
maresciallo
arrived with three more patrolmen and a doctor. No one paid any attention to the design chalked on the wall, and by the time they all adjourned to the local Carabinieri station it had been rubbed by so many sleeves and shoulders that it was no longer recognizable.

For the next few hours, Zen, Duranti and a selection of the other residents were questioned severally and together. Zen told them that he had gone to the house while following up a lead in a drugs case he was engaged on, details of which he could not disclose without authorization from his superiors. The lead had in fact been false – an address on the fifth floor of a building which only had four – but when he reached the top of the stairs he had noticed the water seeping along the corridor. Having traced the source to the shower, he attempted to communicate with the occupant, and when that failed he had kicked the door down.

It was this homely gesture which had finally won the Carabinieri over. They glanced at each other, nodding sympathetically. Confronted by an obstinately locked door and a stubborn silence on the other side of it, that was what you did, wasn’t it? You kicked the fucking thing down. It might not do the door any good, but it would sure as hell make the next one think twice about messing you around. The
maresciallo
thanked Zen for his cooperation and told him he could go. Marco Duranti on the other hand, was detained for a further forty minutes. Zen spent the time in a café across the road making a number of phone calls. The first was to the contact number he had been given in the Vatican. This was engaged, so he phoned Tania.

‘Hello?’

It was a man’s voice, with a reedy timbre and clipped intonation.

‘Sorry, I must have a wrong number.’

He dialled again, but now this number was engaged as well, so he fed the two-hundred lire piece back into the slot and called Paragon Security Consultants. A secretary made him hold the line for some time before putting him through to the managing director.

‘Gilberto Nieddu.’

‘This is the Ministry of Finance, dottore. Following a raid by our officers on a leading firm of accountants, we have uncovered evidence which suggests that for the last five years your company has consistently failed to declare twenty-five per cent of its profits.’

There was silence at the other end.

‘However, we have no time to concern ourselves with such small-time offenders,’ Zen continued, ‘so we’d be prepared to overlook the matter in return for the services of a discreet, qualified electrician.’

This was greeted by a sharp intake of breath.

‘Is that you, Aurelio?’

Zen chuckled.

‘You sounded worried, Gilberto.’

‘You bastard! You really had me going there!’

‘Oh come on, Gilberto! You don’t expect me to believe that you’re fiddling a quarter of your taxes, do you?

‘Of course not, but …’

‘It must be a hell of a lot more than that.’

Nieddu made a spluttering sound.

‘Now about this electrician,’ Zen went on.

‘Look, Aurelio, it may have escaped your attention, but I’m not running a community information service. You need an electrician, look in the
pagine gialle.
’

‘I’m not talking about changing a plug, Gilberto.’

‘So what
are
you talking about?’

Zen told him. Nieddu gave a long sigh.

‘Why do I let you drag me into these things, Aurelio? What’s it got to do with me? What’s it got to do with
you
, for that matter?’

He sighed again.

‘Give me the address.’

When they’d agreed a rendezvous, Zen called Tania again. The same male voice answered.

‘Who’s that?’ demanded Zen.

There was a brief interval of silence, then the receiver was replaced. Zen immediately redialled, but the phone rang and rang without any answer. He hung up, went to the bar and ordered a double espresso which he gulped down, searing his throat. He got out the red plastic-bound diary which he had removed from Giovanni Grimaldi’s room. It turned out to be dated the following year, a freebie given away with a recent issue of
L’Espresso
. He riffled through it, but the pages were blank except for a few numbers and letters scribbled in the Personal Data section. Replacing the diary in his pocket, Zen touched his packet of Nazionali cigarettes. He took one out and lit it, then returned to the phone. There was still no reply from Tania’s number, so he tried the Vatican again. This time the number answered almost immediately.

‘Yes?’

‘This is Signor Bianchi.’

‘Yes?’

It was a voice Zen didn’t recognize.

‘I’ve just seen Signor Giallo.’

He felt ridiculous, but Lamboglia’s instructions had been quite clear: even on this supposedly secure line, Zen was to refer to Grimaldi only by this code name.

‘He’s dead.’

There was a brief silence.

‘Is there anything else?’ asked the voice.

‘You mean any other deaths?’ Zen shouted. ‘Why, how many are you expecting?’