Back to Bologna (7 page)

‘Just another routine job. A temporary secondment to review and assess an ongoing case.’

‘Have you any plans for this evening?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘Then you might care to go to the stadium.’

‘The football stadium?’

Nanni nodded.

‘The club’s holding a memorial service for Lorenzo Curti. Funnily enough, I was the one who discovered the body. Anyway, all the players will be there, the rest of the staff, and of course the supporters. They’ll all pay tribute, in their different ways, to the late president of Bologna FC.’

‘Doesn’t really sound like my sort of thing, Bruno.’

‘It might be interesting from a professional point of view,’ Nanni remarked, rather too casually.

‘In what way?’

‘This case that you’ve come to look into. It has to be the Curti murder, right? The Ministry isn’t going to send a senior man like yourself up here for anything else that’s happened lately. Well, the event itself may be pretty dreary, but the stadium will be packed with every diehard fan in the city.’

‘So?’

Bruno Nanni smiled mysteriously.

‘What I’ve heard from friends is that a certain individual, one of the craziest and most violent of the
ultra
mob, has been putting the word about that he killed Curti. He’ll certainly be there tonight, and I know the bar where that gang goes to booze it up afterwards. It might just be worth your while taking a look at him.’

Zen weighed up the options. After all, what did he have to lose? The only alternative was to eat a solitary dinner and then spend a lonely evening in his hotel room watching television. He might even get desperate enough to read the copy of the file that Brunetti had given him.

‘Very well. I’m staying at the Hotel Roma, just round the corner.’

‘I’ll pick you up just before six,
dottore
.’

12

A blinding flash.

‘Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!’

Vincenzo straddled the doorway in an extravagantly debonair pose, one leg cocked up behind him and a tiny metallic object held to his eye. Another flash of halogen brilliance. Vincenzo laughed and tossed the object across the room to Rodolfo, who put down his book and just managed to make the catch.

‘Wicked, huh?’

Rodolfo turned the thing over. It seemed to be some sort of camera, but smaller than any he had seen, or indeed imagined possible. But Vincenzo was clearly high, so he decided to appear underwhelmed.

‘Very clever,’ he remarked coolly. ‘How much did it cost?’

Vincenzo laughed uproariously for some time.

‘Oh, I picked it up last night after the game. Along with another little toy that’s not bad either. What can I tell you? I got lucky. I finally got lucky.’

He started pacing restlessly about the room, occasionally kicking the furniture.

‘Have you been snorting Ritalin again?’ asked Rodolfo.

‘None of your fucking business. You’re not my mother.’

Rodolfo closed the book he had been leafing through and gently palpated the sturdy, plain, well-worn leather binding. He must return it today, he thought. Volumes as rare and precious as this were not supposed to be removed from the university library, but graduate students of Professor Edgardo Ugo enjoyed certain privileges.

‘I’m trying to study, Vincenzo,’ he lied.

His flatmate grinned aggressively.

‘So are you planning to just sit here all evening reading a musty old book and then scribble some shit for that cocksucking prof to sneer at? Jesus, what a pathetic life!’

‘At least I’m getting laid.’

‘Yeah, by some illegal immigrant from Christ knows where with a temporary job as a cleaner. Congratulations,
terrone
! You’ll make a great couple.’

Rodolfo was on his feet in a second. He grabbed Vincenzo by the shoulder and slammed him against the wall.

‘Take that back!’

Vincenzo looked stunned.

‘Fuck! Can’t you take a joke?’

Rodolfo held him pinned against the wall, staring the other intensely in the eyes until he looked away.

‘Fucking southerners,’ complained Vincenzo. ‘Bunch of freaking crazies.’

‘Quite right, my friend. And if you ever allow yourself one more insulting remark about my girlfriend, or for that matter my people, you’ll find out exactly how crazy we can be.’

Vincenzo shook his head weakly.

‘
Va bene, va bene. Basta, oh!
’

Rodolfo nodded sharply and with significance, then released the other man. Vincenzo shook himself with a certain hauteur.

‘Anyway, you’re not the only ones who can be a little crazy. It’s just that up here in the north we don’t make empty threats.’

Rodolfo went back to the sofa and opened Andrea de Jorio’s
La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano
at the illustration he had been examining earlier, marvelling at the quality and detail of the engraving.

‘Meaning what?’ he muttered through a long yawn.

‘Meaning this evening’s service of tribute down at the stadium.’

‘You speak in riddles.’

Vincenzo laughed scornfully.

‘If you ever got your head out of the library and into the real world, you’d know the answer.’

‘Unfortunately I’m not a spoilt brat like you, Vincenzo. I can’t afford to play at being the eternal student. My father has spent a lot of money sending me up here to get a degree. He naturally expects to see some return on that investment.’

And is going to be shattered and furious when he finds out that I have pissed it away, he thought.

‘All that interpretation shit you study with Ugo?’ Vincenzo retorted. ‘Well, interpret this! Someone killed Lorenzo Curti because he bought our team, with all its glorious history, for a song, then let all the best players go and was too cheap to get replacements. He’s been screwing us over for years, and last night he paid the price.’

‘They said on TV it was probably to do with his business dealings.’

Vincenzo shrugged impatiently.

‘What do those jerks know? Anyway, the important thing is the bastard’s dead, and there isn’t a true-hearted Bologna fan who isn’t totally over the moon. So of course we’re all going along to this memorial thing they’re putting on, only–get this!–we’re going to laugh all the way through it. Sure, I’m a little stoned. The others will be too. We won’t do anything outrageous, but up there in the stands we’ll be holding our own private commemorative service. And I promise you, the tone will be rather different from the official one down on the pitch. So give me that jacket of mine you stole.’

Rodolfo retrieved the battered, black leather garment and handed it to Vincenzo, who stomped out of the apartment without another word, slamming the front door behind him.

Blissfully solitary once more, Rodolfo took one last lingering look at the
Disprezzo
engraving that he had scanned and downloaded–using the university’s state-of-the-art technical facilities–and then forwarded to Professor Ugo. Knowledge of his email address and mobile phone number was another of the privileges that Ugo made available to graduate students.

Not that Rodolfo was one any more. His tutor had made it very clear that he had been barred from attending the seminar course and stood no chance of receiving his final degree, although like any other member of the public he was at perfect liberty to attend the professor’s celebrated weekly lectures, the next of which was tomorrow. Rodolfo smiled reflectively. Maybe he would go along and hold his own ‘private commemorative service’, just like Vincenzo and the rest of the yobs at the stadium tonight. Nothing outrageous, as Vincenzo had put it, but he might put in an appearance. He’d have to go back to the uni soon anyway, if only to return the Andrea de Jorio book and all the others that he had borrowed over the past months, most of which were long overdue.

He walked through to his bedroom and was scanning the shelves for the necessary titles when the phone rang.

‘It’s your old dad, Rodolfo. Just my usual weekly call. Like to keep in touch, you know.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘So how are things?’

‘Fine, dad. Fine.’

‘Wish I could say the same.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Oh, nothing really.’

The voice paused.

‘At least, nothing I want to talk about over the phone. You understand?’

‘What’s happened?’

The resulting silence was finally broken by a bitter guffaw.

‘What do they teach you up there at the university?’ his father mused quietly, as though to himself. ‘You know nothing. Less than you did when you were ten. Five, even. Nothing, nothing…’

The voice died away.

‘I know a few things,’ Rodolfo replied truculently, hoping that he wouldn’t be asked to provide an example.

But now his father sounded contrite.

‘Of course you do, of course. You’re very learned, I’m sure. You must forgive me, it’s just…’

‘What, dad?’

‘Nothing. Just keep talking, that calms me. It’s probably just that I’ve been overworking.’

‘On what?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’

‘Tell me!’

‘Well, we’ve been rebuilding a retaining wall on a bend in the road up past Monte Iacovizzo, up there in the Gargano. It’s in the national park, so we have to use the original granite blocks. An absolute bitch. We’ve been there all month, and we’re not done yet. It’s going to be way over budget, but it’s for the government so of course there’s no problem about cost overruns.’

Silence fell.

‘What’s a retaining wall?’ asked Rodolfo artlessly.

His father laughed harshly.

‘Don’t pretend you give a damn!’

‘I do.’

Another long silence.

‘Well,’ his father began hesitantly, as though still suspicious of a trap, ‘basically they support unstable ground. And they’re always problematic, especially old ones like the one we’re mending.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they defy the laws of gravity and of soil mechanics. There are so many ways they can fail.’

‘Such as what?’

‘Sliding, foundation failure, you name it. Overturning is the most common. What most people don’t realise is that mortar isn’t a glue, it’s just to level out the irregularities in the stone blocks and keep the pressure diagram constant. That sort of wall is a simple gravity structure, so you need to calculate the overturning moment.’

‘You can predict when it will fall down?’

His father laughed again, with indulgent contempt this time.

‘Not that kind of moment, idiot! The outward push at a given distance from the base. The weight of the blocks times the horizontal distance from the front of the wall gives the restoring moment. That obviously has to be greater than the overturning moment if the thing’s going to stand up.’

‘I never knew anything about this,’ Rodolfo remarked.

His father laughed cannily.

‘You’re taking the piss, aren’t you? Patronising your dumb old dad banging on about stuff the Romans knew as if it was breaking news!’

‘It’s news to me.’

‘I’m sure it is, but why should you care?’

‘What about failure?’ his son replied.

‘It can happen for lots of reasons. Rising water levels during the rainy season, seasonal shrinkage and swelling.’

Rodolfo murmured his comprehension.

‘So failure is the key to everything,’ he said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, the possibility of failure. That’s the truth maker, as philosophers say. The only authentic tasks are those at which you can fail.’

A silence fell. No, there was a sound of the sea, or maybe the soughing of a breeze in the oak grove around the house. Then he thought that his father was laughing quietly. But as the sound went on, Rodolfo realised that he was weeping.

‘What’s the matter, dad?’ he cried with genuine alarm.

‘I’m just lonely. Since your mother died, I’ve been all alone, and with so many problems, professional and personal. I want you here, but all I get is a disembodied voice down the phone line. I hate telephones, I hate computers, I hate this technology that is stealing our souls! Laugh at me all you like, the fact remains that I want you to be here. Here in Puglia, here at home. You, my only son.’

Yet another silence.

‘Now do you understand?’ his father asked.

‘Well, I’m not sure. I mean, what exactly do you have in mind?’

‘No, you don’t,’ his father retorted, plainly ashamed of having let his feelings show for the first time. ‘Your problem, Rodolfo, is that you’ve been educated beyond your intelligence. What the hell is this
semiotica
all about, anyway? Can you explain it to me the way I just explained retaining walls to you? If you have to waste more of your time and my money at university, why not go the whole hog and study
ottica
? That way you could at least make some money as an eye doctor when you finally graduate, if ever. People always need help with their sight. I can’t tell a tension crack from a spider’s thread without my glasses any more.’

Absurdly, Rodolfo found himself defending the very position he had repeatedly attacked in Ugo’s seminars.

‘You’re confusing the etymology, Dad. The Latin prefix “semi” is derived from the Sanskrit
sami
, meaning a half or part, whereas semiotics is from the Greek
semeion
, a sign. It means the study of signs.’

‘Like road signs?’

‘Well, it’s a bit more complex than that. Rightly considered, everything’s a sign.’

There was a resonant thud.

‘This isn’t a sign. It’s a damned table, for the love of God!’

Rodolfo instantly saw the massive scored and scorched surface, as though it were standing before him. But he had been trained by masters.

‘In itself, it’s nothing. Now that you’ve so designated it, then its signifier is indeed “a table” for the purposes of this text.’

‘What do you mean, it’s nothing?’

His father’s voice had now taken on an edge of rage which Rodolfo found only too familiar.

‘I built this bugger with my own hands from timbers I pulled out of the house where I was born! Hard, seasoned holm oak, at least four hundred years old. Christ, I could hardly cut or plane it even with the most powerful equipment. And you’re telling me that it’s nothing?’

‘No word or other sign has any meaning except within the context of a specified discourse. That table is evidently laden with significance for you, given its physical sourcing in the construction material of your natal home, the notion of “the family board”, and by extension the altar in church where communion is taken. But none of these intrinsically or necessarily adhere to the physical object you just struck. Surely that’s obvious.’

His father sighed.

‘All I know is that I built this table, and that my construction company now builds walls, bridges, roads, office blocks, apartment buildings, you name it. They either stay up or they fall down.’

‘That’s not the point. If someone says “This book’s really good”, they’re not referring to an object that weighs so much and is such and such a size. They’re talking about the text, the discourse, and the infinite variety of possible interpretations that it offers.’

‘You and your damn books!’

There was a dry click as the receiver went down.

You and your damn books. Rodolfo surveyed the crowded shelves on his bedroom wall. Yeah well, they were going to have to go. Flavia too, for that matter. Might as well make a clean break. Apart from anything else, his father would go berserk if he learned that his only son had not only been expelled from university but was virtually living with an illegal immigrant from an eastern European country that no one had ever heard of, and whose real name almost certainly wasn’t Flavia.

Which just left Ugo. Ideally he would have liked to draw a line there too, but couldn’t imagine how it could be done. He began lifting the heavy volumes down and stacking them on the bedside table. As he pulled out Umberto Eco’s
La struttura assente
, he noticed a dull metallic gleam peeking out from behind the next book on the shelf. He gazed at it for a moment, then reached in and removed a semi-automatic pistol. The wooden grip sported an elaborate metallic crest surmounted by a large red star, and the words ‘Tony Speranza’ were engraved on the barrel.