Death of a Showgirl (5 page)

Mori closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Presumably you didn’t think he would steal or extort either?’

He stared at me. ‘You’re wrong. I’m afraid I wasn’t even surprised when he was arrested for this or that. Not surprised. But he wouldn’t, wouldn’t ever . . .’ He trailed off again, staring at the wall behind me as he shook his head.

‘Does the name Simona Biondi mean anything to you?’

He shook his head again. ‘Who’s that?’

‘The girl. Fabrizio’s never been connected with anyone called Biondi?’

‘Not that I know.’

‘Have you got a photograph of him?’

‘Of Fabrizio?’

I nodded and he stood up, groaning slightly with the effort as he pushed himself up by leaning on the arm of his chair. He came back a minute later, holding a framed photograph. He passed it over and I looked at the two brothers, arms around each other’s shoulders. Fabrizio’s face looked longer than his older brother’s. He was staring at the camera as if it had insulted him and he looked surly, his eyelids low over his dark, shrewd eyes.

‘Nothing more recent?’ I asked. The photo I was looking at must have been from twenty years ago.

He shook his head. ‘We haven’t exactly met up much recently. And even when we do, we don’t take snaps for the family album.’

‘Mind if I take this?’ I asked.

He shrugged as if it were all the same to him. I opened up the back of the frame and slipped out the photo. I tried to imagine him with grey hair in a ponytail.

I gave the man a card and told him to call me if he heard from his brother. He looked at it wearily, like he had been told something similar many times before. He walked me to the door and shook my hand. He looked sheepish, as if he were to blame for his brother’s conduct.

‘When you find him, tell him to give me my passport back.’

I nodded, thanked him for the coffee, and headed down the nine flights of stairs.

By now the sun was high and hot. The car felt like a sauna as I got in, a gust of dense air hitting me as I bent into the scalding seat. I wound down the windows and drove as fast as I could to get some cool air coming in.

The road to Rome was snarled up as usual. One lane was closed, so cars were aggressively cutting into the remaining one at the last minute to get ahead. I flicked on the radio and heard the same discussion about football that I had heard earlier. I searched for another station and found some Roman reggae. It suited the sunshine and I put my elbow out of the window.

The countryside south of the city was beautiful. I drove past vineyards, large lakes and distant hill towns. And, in between, the scars of industrialisation: old quarries and oil depots and forgotten railways. Rubbish had been dumped randomly and plastic bags hung in the trees, shredding in the wind and turning grey. Eventually the road ran alongside a dense dark pine grove and I saw a sign to the campsite.

It was more like a poor man’s suburb than a campsite. Caravans had been parked there for so long that most of the wheels had been replaced by bricks, and permanent patios and hedges had grown up around them. Awnings and tarpaulins were pulled tight over scaffolding poles with elastic bungees. There were neat sets of plastic chairs under each awning and football flags flying from spare poles. As I walked along the gravel path between the caravans I could see that some people had put plastic roses in their hedges. There were people walking around in towelling dressing gowns, ambling back from the communal showers. There were pollarded poplars shading the various lots and, as I looked for Lot 37 South, I could see a concrete ping-pong table, its bumpy surface painted green and white, with Sellotape pulled between two pencils for a net. It was all a strange combination of permanence and improvisation.

I found Fabrizio Mori’s place easily enough. It seemed the same as all the others: a shaded shack that looked like it had been parked there twenty years ago and hadn’t moved since. There was a padlocked wooden building in the corner of the tiny plot. I peered in through a window and saw a few old tools – some shears and secateurs – and a dozen brown-glass bottles. I turned back towards the caravan and knocked hard on the door. The whole vehicle seemed to wobble as I knocked again. Nothing.

To the side there was only half a metre between the end of the caravan and a green lattice fence. I turned sideways, shuffled down the narrow space and immediately saw a broken window. There were shards of glass on the pillow of the bed inside.

‘Mori,’ I called. ‘Simona.’ No reply. I called again to make sure. Still no reply.

There was an old newspaper caught against the deflated tyre of a bicycle. I used it to knock over the vertical triangles of broken glass still in the window frame and then placed it over the shattered stumps and pulled myself inside.

As soon as I landed the other side I saw something rushing towards me from the left. A heavy object slammed into the back of my head and knocked me to the side of the bed. The same object hit me again and I fell off the mattress. As I lay on all fours I got kicked in my midriff and collapsed on my side. The kicks kept coming hard. I put my arms over my stomach to protect myself, and I watched the black boots pounding into my forearms.

Eventually the panting animal stepped back. The back of my head was throbbing badly from where I had taken the blow, but I tried to lift it up to see the assailant.

‘Who are you?’ he grunted. There was a lean authority in his voice.

I pushed myself backwards so I was leaning against the wall. I could feel a patch of warm sticky blood behind my ear. ‘Father Christmas,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t find the chimney.’

We stared at each other as he lit a cigarette. He was short and fat. He had a puffy face, like he had eaten too many pastries washed down with sweet wine. His head was bald but for over-length, slightly curly hanks of grey at the sides and there were beads of sweat across his scalp. His shirt, with its improbable floral pattern, was unbuttoned to half-way down his protruding stomach. In his left hand he was holding a long wooden club. His trousers were cream linen, making him look as though he had just stepped off a yacht in the harbour. He smelt of sweat and perfume, like a zoo animal that had just been shampooed. Only his footwear, leather boots with toecaps so circular they must have been steel, gave the impression that he really meant business.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked after a couple of deep drags.

‘Dropping off presents.’

‘Don’t play the wise guy,’ he whispered. He took a step towards me and put his shoe on the knuckles of my right hand. He bent down and held the orange tip of the cigarette an inch from my eye. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m trying to find a girl.’

‘Who?’ He straightened up, still staring at me with his mouth twisted in disdain.

‘Simona Biondi.’ I tried to push myself up. ‘That name mean anything to you?’

‘Why come here?’

‘She’s been abducted by Fabrizio Mori.’

‘That so?’ he asked disinterestedly. ‘And who are you?’

I pushed myself to my feet. My head was still throbbing and I rolled it round my shoulders, keeping my eyes on the thug. ‘Castagnetti. I’m a private detective.’

‘Who hired you?’

‘The parents of the missing girl.’

He looked at me through narrowed eyes. He took one last drag on his cigarette and then flicked it out of the broken window. ‘You won’t find anything here.’

‘I found you.’

He snorted in derision as if he were small fry. It looked like a sign of weakness and I tried to exploit it.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘Same as you. Been hired by someone to find Mori.’

‘Why?’

He shook his head. ‘Just got to find him. That’s all I know.’

‘Who hired you?’

He clicked his tongue, tutting away the question. The moment of weakness was gone.

‘Mind if I look around?’

‘There’s nothing here.’

He was blocking my way, standing between the end of the bed and the wall. I shook some glass off the pillow and sat down on it. I put my head between my knees and looked underneath the bed. There were a lot of boxes down there, a grey T-shirt, a cobwebbed sock. I pulled one of the boxes out and rifled through it briefly: it was mostly copies of old gossip magazines. I lifted them above the bed and dropped them onto the thin mattress. Dust billowed in all directions. Magazines fanned out across the faded floral sheets. I pushed them apart and looked at one or two covers: the smiles of the eager girls on the covers looked strange behind the dust, like they were dated and their moment had passed. Their glamour looked long gone.

On the white plastic bedside table I saw the issue of
Moda
in which Simona’s photograph had appeared. I flicked through until I found her and passed it over to the man.

‘There,’ I said to the thug, ‘that’s the girl I’m looking for.’

He took the magazine and leered at her. ‘Nice piece.’

The other boxes were the same: more gossip magazines, older this time. The stars were different but the poses and the pouts were the same. I leafed through them quickly, trying to find anything or anyone that might help.

Next to me the man picked up a copy at random and leafed through it. ‘That man was a cretin,’ he said, looking at a snap of a man in a black shirt and black suit. He threw the magazine down and picked up another. ‘Sweet little piece she was. She was always going to rise to the top.’

‘You know these people?’

‘Sure. Most of them.’

I looked at him again. His bare chest was smooth and suntanned. He looked like a bull who hung out with the peacocks.

‘How come?’

‘I work in the industry.’

‘Which industry?’

He threw his chin at the pile of magazines fanned across the mattress. ‘That one,’ he said disparagingly. ‘The gossip industry. Showbiz.’ He grinned for the first time and I saw that one of his front teeth was gold-plated. ‘I work for one of the big TV stations.’

‘Which one?’

He looked at me with his head on one side, weighing up whether to spill or not. Pride got the better of him. ‘TV Sogni.’

‘Quite a comedown to breaking into caravans and beating up members of the public.’

He looked at me and bounced his head to one side. ‘All part of my job.’

‘And what’s that exactly?’

He just tutted again, refusing to answer. I looked at him again and smiled derisively. In the world of showbiz he might have passed for a hard man, but I had seen much harder. His only advantages were surprise and a wooden club, and the first was gone.

I barged past him and went to the other end of the caravan. It wasn’t far. There was a tiny kitchen with two hot-rings and a rickety oven. I opened the cupboards and saw only a few sticky plates and plastic cups. Behind me was a narrow bathroom. I went through it but found nothing. Beyond that was a sitting area. Rigid rectangular cushions were placed at right angles to make an uncomfortable sofa. I lifted them and looked through the chests underneath. In one there were old clothes and photographic magazines and the usual debris of life: a snorkel, a few paperbacks, old cassettes, a biscuit tin containing spare washers and nuts.

I dropped the lid and went over to the other chest, taking off the cushion and looking underneath. There was more of the same: a rucksack, old bills from Telecom Italia, a rusty pair of scissors. But at the bottom was a metal box. It was dented and dark brown. A padlock knocked against the metal as I lifted it out.

The thug was standing behind me now, watching. I told him to find the key.

He grunted and started going through drawers again. I heard cutlery and coat hangers rattling. He came back a minute later, shrugging and shaking his head.

We both stared at the box feeling impotent. The thug took the padlock in his hands as if weighing it.

I watched him climb back out of the broken bedroom window. He came back two minutes later with some heavy-duty bolt cutters. The handles were almost a metre long. He placed the teeth over the thin metal of the padlock and it gave a dull snap as it broke. He threw the lock on the floor and pulled out thick piles of photographs in each hand. He passed me a handful as the snaps slipped apart. Even from the corners I could see naked limbs.

‘Shit,’ he said under his breath. ‘This guy has the dirt on everybody.’

I went through my pile and each one was a variation on a theme: couples embracing, kissing, dancing, snorting, screwing. Some of the snaps were out of focus or blurred, others were clearly taken from a long distance away and were at odd angles.

The man next to me was muttering appreciation for the passion on display. ‘Little whore,’ he said. ‘I always knew she was filthy.’

‘Who are these people?’ I asked.

‘Same people you saw in those magazines in there,’ he thumbed over his shoulder at the pile of magazines on the bed. ‘Same people, different poses.’

These were the compromising photos that Mori had used to blackmail various celebrities, just as his brother had said. This sort of archive must have been worth a few million lire back in the day.

‘Was he blackmailing all of these people?’ I asked.

The man was still looking at the photographs. He didn’t reply.

‘How did he get caught? I hear he did time for extortion.’

He looked at me now, throwing the snaps down onto the narrow table between the two sofas. These sordid photos seemed to have made us into allies somehow, like we were both voyeurs who were unexpectedly on the same side. We were both looking at the same thing in the same way.

‘You remember Filippo Marinelli, the footballer?’

I shook my head.

‘He used to play for Perugia and then Roma. The poor guy was married, but Mori had photographs of him with another woman. There were apparently drugs involved too, so Mori thought he was onto a nice little earner. He thought he would fleece the rich footballer, who otherwise risked losing his career as well as his wife. But Marinelli had given up on his marriage and was at the end of his career. So he denounced the extortion.’

‘And?’

‘You know, the usual bull. Mori was arrested, released, rearrested, tried, imprisoned, acquitted on appeal, released again. The story rumbled on for years. Mori was a piece of shit, but he was smart. He said he was simply selling photographs to the highest bidder, which he was in a way.’

‘How do you mean?’

The man looked at me like he was angry at being pumped for information. But he shrugged and looked away, as if everyone knew the story anyway. ‘Mori was working with a magazine sub editor. The sub used to call up the victim and say, all cosy and friendly, “Look, I don’t want you to get into trouble, so I thought you should know we’ve got hold of this picture and we’re going to run it . . .” And the sub would let slip how much his magazine was going to pay for the snapshot and who was selling. So the victim, of course, got hold of Mori and offered more. And Mori would then split the sum with the sub. It was a decent scam. And even when he got rumbled he had enough dirt on enough people to persuade everyone to go easy on him. Look.’ He picked up a few photos at random. ‘He had the dirt on politicians, businessmen, magistrates, everyone. He was attracted to the dirt like a fly to the shit. It’s hardly surprising they all went easy on him when it came to court.’

‘When did all this happen?’

‘Huh,’ he threw his head back. ‘Long, long time ago.’

‘And then?’

‘I never heard of him again until this morning. All I know is I was told to come here and bring him in.’

‘By who?’

He stared at me. ‘You ask too many questions.’

I had a lot more I hadn’t asked him. Like whether there was a connection between him looking for Mori and me looking for Simona Biondi. It was the sort of coincidence that set me thinking. And if there was a connection, I needed to know what it was. My guess was that this thug was working for someone who was being blackmailed by Mori, and the Biondi girl was somehow involved. Maybe she had the dirt on someone too. Maybe she was the dirt.