Cabal - 3 (26 page)

The noise was already deafening, but as they moved forward, breasting that black tide that threatened at every moment to sweep them away with it, it became clear that its source lay somewhere in front of them. The five men trudged slowly on, leaning forward as though pushing a laden sledge, their feeble torch beams scanning the ballast, sleepers and rails. The occasional patch of toilet paper, a soft-drink can or two, an ancient packet of cigarettes and a newspaper was all they found at first. Then something brighter, a fresher patch of white, showed up. One of the train crew picked it up and passed it to the
capotreno
, who held up his torch, scanning the line of heavy type at the top: UFFICIO CENTRALE DI VIGILANZA.

As the clamour up ahead grew ever more distinct and concentrated, the movement of the air became stronger and more devious, no longer a single blast but a maelstrom of whirling currents and eddies fighting for supremacy. Without the slightest warning a giant beacon appeared in the darkness behind them and swept past, forging south into the gale. As the locomotive passed, the darkness was briefly swept aside like a curtain, revealing the vast extent of the cavity where they cowered, deafened by the howl of its siren. Then the darkness fell back, and all other sounds were ground out by the wheels of a seemingly endless succession of unlighted freight wagons.

At length two red lights appeared, marking the last wagon. As it receded into the distance, the men started to move forward again and the original, primitive uproar reasserted itself, an infinitely powerful presence that was seemingly located somewhere in the heart of the solid rock above their heads. The train crew shone their torches upwards, revealing a huge circular opening in the roof of the tunnel. It was almost impossible to stand here, in the vortex of the vicious currents spiralling straight up the mountaintop thousands of feet above.

The
capotreno
beckoned to Zen, who lowered his ear to the man’s mouth.

‘Ventilation shaft!’

They found the body a little further on, lying beside the track like another bit of rubbish dropped from a passing train in defiance of the prohibition in several languages. One leg had been amputated at the thigh and most of the left arm and shoulder was mangled beyond recognition, but by some freak the face had survived without so much as a scratch. The Maltese cross glinted proudly in the lapel of the plain blue suit, and the fingers of the right hand were still clutching several pages of the transcript which now appeared to have claimed its second victim.

The power and influence of Milan – Italy’s rightful capital, as it liked to call itself – had never appeared more impressive to Aurelio Zen than they did as he strode along the corridors of the Palazzo di Giustizia late that afternoon. The office to which he had been directed was in an annexe built on at the rear of the main building, and its clean lines and uncluttered spaces, and still more the purposeful air of bustle and business, was as different as possible from other sites sacred to the judiciary. If Milan was capable of influencing, even superficially, an organization in which the bacillus of the ‘Bourbonic plague’ was preserved in its purest and most virulent form, then what couldn’t it do?

He rounded a corner to find a woman looking towards him from an open doorway. A helmet of lustreless black hair cropped at the nape framed her flat, open face, the bold cheeks and strong features blurred by menopausal turmoil like a damp-damaged fresco. She wore a slate-grey wool jacket with a matching skirt cut tight just below the knee.

‘Antonia Simonelli,’ she said. ‘Come in.’

He followed her into an office containing two teak desks. One, pushed into a corner, was almost invisible beneath a solid wall of stacked folders reaching up to within a metre of the ceiling. The other was completely bare except for a laptop computer. At the other side of the room, a large window afforded an excellent view of the gothic fantastications of the cathedral and the glazed roofs and dome of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.

The woman sat at the bare desk and crossed her long legs. Zen took the only other seat, a hard wooden stool.

‘I must apologize for the spartan furnishings,’ the woman said. ‘My office is in the part of the main building which is being renovated, and meanwhile I’m sharing with a colleague whose tastes and habits are very different from mine. Gianfranco likes the blinds drawn and the lights on, even in high summer. That’s his desk. I sometimes feel I’m going to go crazy just looking at it.’

Zen looked at the rounded peak of her knee and the tip of her grey suede court shoe, which rose above the sheeny expanse of the desktop like a tropical island in a calm sea.

‘He didn’t have any ID,’ he murmured.

The woman bent forward, frowning slightly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Zen looked up at her.

‘The man on the train. He didn’t have any identification. But I suppose
you
do.’

He produced his own pass certifying him as a functionary of the Ministry of the Interior and laid it on the desk.

‘Anyone could walk in here,’ he remarked earnestly. ‘We’ve never met before. How would you know it wasn’t me?’

The woman regarded him fixedly.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ she asked guardedly.

Zen tapped the desk where his identification lay. The woman opened her black grained-leather bucket bag and passed over a laminated card with her photograph and an inscription to the effect that the holder was Simonelli, Antonia Natalia, investigating magistrate at the Procura of Milan. Zen nodded and handed it back.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I suppose I must have sounded a bit crazy.’

The woman said nothing, but her expression did not contradict the idea.

‘I’ve had a slight shock,’ Zen explained. ‘On the way here a man fell from the train. I had to help retrieve the body from the tunnel.’

‘That can’t have been very pleasant,’ the magistrate murmured sympathetically.

‘I had been talking to him just a few moments earlier.’

‘It was someone you know, then?’

He looked at her.

‘I thought it was you.’

The woman’s guarded manner intensified sharply.

‘If that was intended as a joke …’ she began.

‘I don’t think the people involved intended it as a joke.’

She eyed him impatiently.

‘You’re speaking in riddles.’

Zen nodded.

‘Let me try and explain. On Wednesday I received a message at the Ministry asking me to call a certain Antonio Simonelli at a hotel in Rome. When I did so, he identified himself as an investigating magistrate from Milan working on a case of fraud involving Ludovico Ruspanti, and asked me to meet him to discuss the circumstances of the latter’s death.’

The woman seemed about to say something, but after a moment she just waved her hand.

‘Go on.’

Zen sat silent a moment, considering how best to do so.

‘At the time I thought he was trying to obtain information off the record which might help him prosecute the case against Ruspanti’s associates. That risked placing me in a rather awkward position. When the Vatican called me in, I was asked to sign an undertaking not to disclose any information which I came by as a result of my investigations. I therefore answered his questions as briefly as possible.’

The woman opened a drawer of her desk and removed a slim file which she opened.

‘Go on,’ she repeated without looking up.

Zen pretended to look at the view for a moment. He decided to make no mention of the transcript of Ruspanti’s phone calls. That was lost for ever, scattered beyond any hope of retrieval by the gale which had sucked it away and strewn it the length of the eleven-mile tunnel. The only thing to do now was to pretend that it had never existed.

‘On the train up here this morning,’ he continued, ‘I was approached by the same man. He asked why I was travelling to Milan. I said I had an appointment with one of his colleagues at the Procura. He must have realized then that the game was up, I suppose. He went off towards the toilets, fused the lights and threw himself out.’

The woman looked steadily at Zen.

‘Describe him.’

‘Burly, muscular. Big moon face, slightly dished. Strong nasal accent, from the Bergamo area, I should say. Smoked panatellas.’

Antonia Simonelli selected a photograph from the file lying open on the desk and passed it to Zen. A paper sticker at the bottom read ZEPPEGNO, MARCO. Zen suppressed a gasp of surprise. There had been so many fakes and hoaxes in the case so far – including the fifty million lire, which had turned out to consist of a thin layer of real notes covering bundles of blank paper – that he had assumed that the names which appeared in the transcript were also pseudonyms. But perhaps Ruspanti had deliberately raised the stakes by mentioning the real name of one of the men he was threatening on a phone he knew to be tapped, making it clear that he was ready to start playing dirty. That would certainly explain why the individual concerned had been desperate to suppress the transcript by any means, including the murder of Giovanni Grimaldi.

Zen handed the photograph back.

‘You know about him, then?’

Antonia Simonelli nodded.

‘I know
all
about him!’

‘Including whether he is – was – a member of the Order of Malta?’

She looked at him with surprise.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

Zen said nothing. After a moment, the magistrate tapped the keyboard of the laptop computer.

‘Since 1975,’ she said.

‘It wasn’t an aspect of his activities that concerned you?’

She gave a frown of what looked like genuine puzzlement.

‘Only in that it was perfectly typical of him. Joining the Order is something that businessmen like Zeppegno like to do at a certain point. It provides social cachet and range of useful contacts, and demonstrates that your heart is in the right place and your bank account healthy. But I repeat, why do you ask?’

Zen shrugged.

‘He was wearing the badge, on the train. I asked him if he was a member, and he said he was. I just wondered if that was a lie too, like everything else he had told me.’

Antonia Simonelli wagged her finger at him.

‘On the contrary, dottore! Apart from the little matter of his identity, everything he told you was true.’

A smile unexpectedly appeared on the woman’s face, softening her features and providing a brief glimpse of the private person.

‘Antonio Simonelli, indeed!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have to hand it to the old bastard. What a nerve! Supposing we had been in touch before, and you were aware of my gender?’

‘He checked that by suggesting that we had. It was only when I said I didn’t know him – you – that he asked to meet me.’

She sighed.

‘So he’s dead?’

‘Well, the identification still has to be confirmed, of course, but …’

‘Who’s handling the case?’

‘Bologna. That took another half hour to work out. He jumped out right on the border between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. In the end we had to get a length of rope and measure the distance from the body to the nearest kilometre marker.’

‘And there’s no doubt that it was suicide?’

Zen looked away. This was the question he had been asking himself ever since the torch beams picked out the corpse sprawled by the trackside. The circumstances had conspired to prevent anything but the most cursory investigation at the scene. Short of closing the Apennine tunnel, and thus paralysing rail travel throughout Italy, the corpse could not be left
in situ
while the Carabinieri in Bologna dispatched their scene-of-crime experts. Fortunately there happened to be a doctor travelling on the train who was able to pronounce the victim dead. Zen then carried out a nominal inspection before authorizing the removal of the body. By the time the train reached Bologna, no one had the slightest interest in questioning that they were dealing with a case of suicide. The only remaining mystery was the victim’s identity, since there were no papers or documents on the body.

Zen shook his head.

‘The only person who was anywhere near him when he fell from the train was a woman who had gone to the toilet, and she wouldn’t have had the strength. Anyway, she was a German tourist with no connection with the dead man. No, he must have done it himself. There’s simply no other possibility.’

Antonia Simonelli got up from her desk.

‘I’m sure you’re right, dottore,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I’d come to know Zeppegno quite well, and if you’d asked me, I’d have said that he just wasn’t someone who would ever commit suicide. He thought too highly of himself for that.’

She waved at the file, the photographs, the computer.

‘For the past five years I have been painstakingly assembling a case against a cartel of Milanese businessmen. Zeppegno was typical. His family were provincial bourgeois with aspirations. His father ran an electrical business in a town near Bergamo. By a combination of graft and hard work, Marco gradually built up a chain of household appliance suppliers in small towns across Lombardy. As an individual unit, each of his outlets was modest enough, but taken together they represented a profitable slice of the market.

‘Like other entrepreneurs, Zeppegno hated paying taxes and wanted to be able to invest his money freely. The answer was to cream off a percentage of his pre-tax profits and invest them abroad. The problem was how to do it. Big businesses have their own ways around the currency control laws, of course. You order a consignment of raw material from a foreign supplier who is prepared to play along. This is duly invoiced and paid for, but the goods in question are never shipped, and the money ends up in the off-shore bank account of your choice. There’s an element of risk involved, but in a big outfit with a complex structure and a high volume of foreign trade the danger is minimal. The bogus orders can be hidden amongst a mass of legitimate transactions, and if all else fails
i finanzieri
have on occasion been known to look the other way.’