Cabal - 3 (25 page)

‘No, I can’t seem to get hold of him. Why don’t
you
tell him? Tell him to get in touch and let me know what he thinks about the idea. He knows how to contact me, if he wants to.’

‘But when will I see you?’

‘As soon as all this is over.’

‘All what? There’s some problem, isn’t there? I can feel it. What is it, Ludo? Tell me!’

‘Oh nothing. Just the silly games we boys play. Girls are more sensible, aren’t they?’

Zen looked at the window, but the train was running through a tunnel, and all he could see was the reflection of his own features, baffled and haggard. Perhaps a reader more familiar with the details of the case against Ruspanti might glean something more substantial from the transcript. Since someone had been prepared to kill Grimaldi and bribe Zen to obtain the damn thing, there must be some clue hidden there. The reference to ‘dolls’ might be a code of some kind. What would Ruspanti’s mistress be doing playing with dolls? Perhaps Antonio Simonelli would know what it meant.

The roar of the tunnel faded as the train emerged into bright sunshine. A moment later they had crossed the Arno and rejoined the old line running through the outskirts of Florence. Zen replaced the transcript in his briefcase, which he locked and placed on his knee as the train drew into the suburban station of Rinfredi, which it used to avoid the timewasting turn-round at the Florentine terminus of Santa Maria Novella. The stop was a brief one, and by the time he had had a chance to skim
La Stampa
they were once again under way, along the fast straight stretch to Prato.

‘Good morning, dottore.’

Zen looked up from his newspaper. The voice was both distinctive and familiar, but it still took him a moment to recognize the man standing beside his seat, an umbrella in one hand and a briefcase in the other, gazing down at Zen with a smile of complicity. It was the man who had been in his thoughts just a few minutes earlier, the man he was going to Milan to see, Antonio Simonelli.

‘Have you brought the transcript?’

They had barely settled down in the seats to which Simonelli had led the way. When the magistrate suggested that Zen join him in the next carriage, he had at once agreed. Policemen are accustomed to obeying the instructions of the judiciary, and besides, seeing Simonelli was the reason for Zen’s trip to Milan. This chance meeting – the magistrate had apparently just joined the train at Florence, where he had been attending a meeting – was simply a happy coincidence. Or so it had seemed, until Simonelli mentioned the transcript.

Zen instinctively tightened his grip on the briefcase, which was lying on his knees. The train rounded a curve, and sunlight suddenly streamed in through the window. In the lapel of Simonelli’s jacket, something glimmered. Zen looked more closely. It was a small silver eight-pointed cross.

‘You’re a member?’

The magistrate glanced down as though noticing the insignia for the first time.

‘I am, actually.’

‘Like Ruspanti.’

Simonelli’s laugh had an edge to it.

‘Hardly! Ruspanti was a Knight of Honour and Devotion. You need at least three hundred years of nobility behind you to achieve that. I’m just a simple Donat, the lowest of the low.’

It was only when Zen felt the magistrate’s restraining hand on his wrist that he realized that he had reached for his cigarettes. Simonelli indicated the sign on the window with a nicotine-stained finger.

‘No smoking.’

Zen let the muscles of his eyes unclasp, projecting his point of focus out of the train, beyond the dirt-flecked window with its prohibitory sign and into the landscape beyond. The slanting winter light streaked the narrow gorge of the Bisenzio where road and railway run side by side until the river peters out in the southern flanks of the Apennines. Then the road, largely disused since the motorway was opened, begins the long climb to the pass thousands of feet above, while the railway plunges into the eleven-mile tunnel under the mountains.

Why had Simonelli reserved a seat in a non-smoking section when he was himself a smoker? There were plenty of single seats available in the smoking coach where Zen was sitting, but not two together. If Simonelli had already known that the seat beside his was unoccupied, this could only be because he had booked them both in advance. The implications of this were so dizzying that he hardly heard Simonelli’s next words.

‘After all, it wouldn’t do for a judge and a policeman to break the law, would it?’

Zen glanced round at him witlessly.

‘Or at least,’ corrected Simonelli, ‘to be
seen
to do so.’

‘Seen to … How?’

‘By smoking in a non-smoking carriage.’

Zen nodded. Antonio Simonelli joined in until both their heads were wagging in the same tempo. They understood each other perfectly.

‘It
is
the original, I trust.’

Once again the magistrate’s nicotine-stained finger was extended, this time towards the briefcase Zen was hugging defensively to his body.

‘As my colleague explained to you on the phone, we’re not interested in purchasing a copy.’

Zen’s mouth opened. He laughed awkwardly.

‘No, no. Of course not.’

Simonelli glanced out of the window at the landscape, which was growing ever more rugged as they approached the mountain chain which divides Italy in two. With its many curves and steep gradients, this difficult section of line was the slowest, and even the
pendolino
was reduced to the speed of a normal train. Simonelli consulted his watch.

‘Do you think we’re going to be late?’ Zen asked.

‘Late for what?’

The Maltese cross in the magistrate’s lapel, its bifurcated points representing the eight beatitudes, glinted fascinatingly as the contours of the valley brought the line into the sunlight.

‘For whatever’s going to happen.’

Simonelli eyed him steadily.

‘All that’s going to happen is that you give me the transcript, and I take it to an associate who is seated in the next carriage. Once he has confirmed that it is the original, I return with the money.’

Zen stared back at the magistrate. Marco Duranti had described the supposed maintenance man who hot-wired the shower to kill Giovanni Grimaldi as stocky, muscular, of average height, with a big round face and a pronounced nasal accent, ‘a real northerner’. The description fitted Simonelli perfectly. And would not such a humble task befit ‘a simple Donat, the lowest of the low’? Despite the almost oppressive warmth of the air-conditioned carriage, Zen found himself shivering uncontrollably.

Simonelli tugged at the briefcase again, more insistently this time. Zen held on tight.

‘How do I know I’ll get paid?’

‘Of course you’ll get paid! No one can get off the train until we reach Bologna anyway.’

As the train glided through the station of Vernio and entered the southern end of the long tunnel under the Apennines, Zen’s attention was momentarily distracted by the woman who had caused such a stir at the terminus in Rome. She was making her way to the front of the carriage, and once again he only saw her clothes, a cowlneck ribbed sweater and tightly cut skirt. She left a subtle trail of perfume behind her, as though shaken from shoulder-length blonde hair like incense from a censer.

‘If the transcript is safe with you, the money is safe with me,’ Zen found himself saying above the roaring of the tunnel. ‘So give it to me now, before you take the transcript.’

He had hoped to disconcert Simonelli with this demand, to force him to consult his associate and thus give Zen more time to consider his next move. But as usual, he was a step behind. With a brief sigh of deprecation at this regrettable lack of trust on Zen’s part, Simonelli opened his briefcase. It was full of serried bundles of ten-thousand-lire notes.

‘Fifty million,’ the magistrate said. ‘As we agreed.’

He closed the lid and snapped the catches, locking the case, then stood up and laid it on his seat.

‘Now give me the transcript, please.’

Zen stared up at him. Why struggle? What difference did it make? He had been going to hand the transcript over to Simonelli anyway, in Milan. This way the result was the same, except that he came out of it fifty million lire better off. Even if he wanted to resist, there was nothing he could do, no effective action he could take. The only weapon he had was the fake revolver buried inside his suitcase in the luggage rack at the end of the next carriage. But even if he had been armed to the teeth, it wouldn’t have made any difference in the long run. The Cabal would get their way in the end. They always did.

He lifted his arm off his briefcase. Simonelli reached across, opened the briefcase and removed the transcript.

‘I shall be no more than five minutes,’ he said. ‘We have several men on the train. If you attempt to move from this seat during that time, I cannot be responsible for your safety.’

He strode off along the carriage towards the vestibule where the blonde woman was now smoking a cigarette. The train seemed to be full of masochistic smokers, Zen reflected with a forlorn attempt at humour. He stared out of the window, trying to think of something other than the humiliation he had just suffered. Although he had been travelling this line for years, the ten-and-a-half-minute transit of the Apennines was still something which awed him. His father had impressed the young Aurelio with the history of the epic project which had gripped the imagination of the nation throughout the twenties. Although marginally shorter than the Simplon, the Apennine tunnel had been infinitely more difficult and costly to construct, running as it did a nightmarish schist riddled with pockets of explosive gas and unmapped underground lakes which burst forth without warning, flooding the workings for months on end. Zen was lost in these memories and speculations when, just like the previous Friday, all the lights went out.

A moment later the secure warmth of the carriage was gutted by a roaring torrent of ice-cold air. The train shuddered violently as the brakes locked on. Cries of alarm and dismay filled the carriage, turning to screams of pain as the train jerked to a complete stop, throwing the passengers against each other and the seats in front.

Once Zen’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he discovered that it was not quite total after all. Although the lights in this carriage had failed, those in the adjoining coaches reflected off the walls of the tunnel, creating a faint glimmer by which he could just make out the aisle, the seats and the vague blurs of the other passengers moving about. Then two figures wielding torches like swords appeared at the end of the carriage. A moment later, the fluorescent strip on the ceiling of the carriage came on again.

It was a perfect moment for a murder, Zen reflected afterwards. The killers would be wearing sunglasses, and while everyone else was blinded by the sudden excess of light, they could carry out their assignment as though in total darkness. Fortunately, though, the men who had entered the carriage were not assassins but members of the train crew. Zen followed them to the vestibule at the front of the carriage, where he made himself known to the guard, a grey-haired man with the grooming and gravity of a senior executive.

The gale-force wind which had stripped all the warmth out of the carriage had diminished now the train had come to a halt, but there was still a vicious draught streaming in through the opened door. Zen asked what had happened. The
capotreno
indicated a red lever set in a recess in the wall near by. Shouting to make himself heard over the banshee whining in the tunnel outside, he explained that the external doors on the train were opened and closed by the driver, but that this mechanism could be overridden manually to prevent people being trapped inside in the event of an emergency. The lever was normally secured in the up position with a loop of string sealed like a mediaeval parchment with a circle of lead embossed with the emblem of the State Railways. This now dangled, broken, from its support.

‘As soon as this lever is thrown, a warning light comes on in the driver’s cab, and he stops the train. Unfortunately some people like to kill themselves this way. I don’t know why, but we get quite a few.’

Just like St Peter’s, thought Zen.

‘But why did the lights go off?’ he asked.

The guard indicated a double row of fuses and switches on the wall opposite, protected by a plastic cover which now swung loose on its hinges.

‘The fuse for the main lighting circuit was missing. We’ve swapped over the one for the air-conditioning thermostat, just to get the lights back on before the passengers started to panic. He must have done it himself, so he couldn’t see what was going to happen to him.’

The toilet door opened with a click and the blonde woman stepped out. She looked slightly flustered by so much male attention.

‘Has something happened?’ she asked.

Close to, her skin showed a slight roughness that made her seem older. Her pale blue eyes looked at Zen, who sniffed. Apart from her perfume, there seemed to be another new odour present – the smell of burning.

‘Did you hear anything?’ he said.

The flaxen hair trembled as she shook her head.

‘Just the roaring noise when the lights went out. Has someone …?’

The
capotreno
dismissed the woman with a wave and told two of his assistants to keep the passengers off the vestibule.

‘We’d better have a look on the track,’ he said.

The
pendolino
had never seemed more like an airplane to Aurelio Zen than when he stepped out of its lighted sanctuary into the howling storm outside. The Apennines form a continuous barrier running almost the entire length of the Italian peninsula, and the prevailing climatic conditions are often very different on either side. This man-made vent piercing the range thus forms a conduit for violent air currents flowing in one direction or the other as the contrasting weather systems try to find their level.

The high pressure was in Tuscany that day, so the wind was flowing north, battering the faces of the men as they walked back along the track. While they were still alongside the train, the lights streaming from the windows high overhead, Zen found the experience just about tolerable. But when they passed the final coach and struck out into the midst of that turbulent darkness which corroded the fragile beams of their torches, wearing them away, using them up, until they could hardly see the track in front of them, he was gripped by a terror so real it made anything else appear a flimsy dream of security, a collective delusion provoked by a reality too awful to be contemplated.