Ratking (29 page)

By half past ten he was back. The woman’s knitting was making good progress. She pushed his forms away.

‘No more than three requests may be submitted at one time.’

He handed back the forms corresponding to the last three months. The woman scrutinized them in vain for further errors or omissions, laid down her knitting with a reluctant sigh and trotted off. As soon as she was out of sight Zen took out his pocket-knife and cut through a stitch in the middle of the work she had completed.

He needn’t have hurried. A further ten minutes elapsed bef ore she returned, pushing a trolley bearing three large folders fastened with black tape.

‘Keep pages in order edges straight corners aligned do not crease crinkle or tear leave at your position after use,’ she told him.

As he began his search through the classified advertisements columns, Zen realized why the kidnappers had chosen boats as their cover. Perugia is about as far from the sea as any Italian city can be, and particularly during the winter interest in buying and selling boats is low. As a result there was little chance of the gang overlooking one of the messages intended for them. The discovery of the advertisements which confirmed Geraci’s story was gratifying, but what really excited Zen was an announcement which had appeared the previous Friday, the day after the Milettis received Ruggiero’s letter giving the instructions for the final ransom payment. ‘Two-way radio for sale,’ it read. ‘Phone 8818 after 7.’

It looked innocuous enough, and yet Zen felt like an astronomer sighting a planet whose existence he had predicted from his calculations. This was the clincher, the thing that made everything else make sense. It was like in a dream where, tired of beating your fists against a locked and bolted door, you step back and notice for the first time that there is no wall on either side. Of course! It was so simple, so obvious.

In the bar opposite the post office a street-sweeper was explaining how he would sort out the national football team.

‘Too many solo artists, that’s the problem. One of them gets the ball and sees a bit of open space, all he thinks about is going forward, the rest of the team might as well not exist. When it comes off it’s magnificent, I grant you, but how often does that happen, eh? No, it’s percentages that add up in the end, this is what they don’t realize. What we need is more discipline, more organization, more teamwork.’

‘Well, this is it,’ the barman said, turning to the new customer with an interrogatory lift of the chin.

Zen identified himself and was handed a white envelope which was tucked between two bottles of fruit syrup. He opened it and took out a photocopy of a typed page:

Zen looked up, his breath coming short and fast. He sealed up the photocopy in the envelope enclosed and handed it back to the barman. Then he got a telephone token and dialled the police laboratory. Hair is either fair or yellow, Lucaroni had told him. But all that’s yellow isn’t hair, the laboratory confirmed. The yellow threads found in the Fiat they had examined were strands from a cheap synthetic wig.

He emerged into the bright sunlight, blinking like a mole. The last piece of the puzzle was in place. He knew who had done it and how it had been done, and with the exception of the murderer he was the only person who did know. For a few more hours the whole situation would remain fluid and he held the key cards in his hands. If he played them right then perhaps just this once the bastards wouldn’t get away with it after all. He tried not to think about what might happen if he played them wrong.

Gianluigi Santucci sat at the head of the dining table watching his family feed. Although he had hardly noticed his wife take a mouthful, her plate was already empty. He wondered how she managed to do it, given that she had been talking almost uninterruptedly since the meal began. His daughter Loredana had originally taken only four pieces of ravioli, subsequently increased to five under sustained pressure from her mother. But since she had eaten only half of them this apparent victory revealed itself, like so many in the family circle, as illusory. Gianluigi didn’t need to read Cinzia’s trashy psychology magazines to know that Loredana worshipped the ground he trod on. One of the ways in which this manifested itself was by her mimicking of the meagre diet to which her father was reduced by his digestive problems. For though Gianluigi was proud of the good fare he provided for his family, that was about the only pleasure he could take in it since this vicious intruder had taken up residence in his gut.

How his mother would have triumphed! As a child Gianluigi had resembled not fastidious Loredana but little Sergio there, his face cheerily smeared with tomato sauce, putting away the sticky pouches with a single-mindedness he would soon devote to masturbation. Gianluigi too had been a stuffer, eating as though he had a secret mission to devour the world. His mother had never left him in peace on the subject. ‘Don’t eat so fast, it’s bad for you. Don’t eat bread before your pasta, it’s bad for you. Don’t put oil on your meat, it’s bad for you.’ But she had never understood the secret source of her son’s appetite: a gnawing envy of an elder brother who seemed so much bigger and more successful. Pasquale could dominate a room just by walking into it, and even his absence usually appeared to be of more interest than Gianluigi’s presence. ‘If you don’t eat you won’t grow,’ his mother told him. Gianluigi turned this logic on its head and determined to eat his way into a future where he would be bigger and better than anyone around. But the only result had been a stomach condition which left him unable to do more than nibble a few scraps while this pain roamed his innards like a rat.

His hunger hadn’t disappeared, however. It had just taken a different form. His physical size he could do nothing about, but on every other score he had beaten his brother hollow! Pasquale was now a dentist responsible for curing half the tooth problems in Siena and causing the other half, as he himself liked to joke. But his three children were all girls, his wife was a whore – Gianluigi himself had had her three times last summer – and although his earnings were respectable enough, his rival could already match him lira for lira twice over. And that was only the beginning. The events of the past week had opened up perspectives which even Gianluigi found slightly dizzying.

Not that he was by any means unprepared for the pickings that Ruggiero’s death promised to bring with it. On the contrary, he had been working towards that very goal from the moment he met Cinzia Miletti. For in the end Pasquale had proved to be a disappointment. Like many young achievers he had gone into an early decline, growing fat and complacent, no challenge for the pool of unused ambition that ached and burned like the excess gastric acids in Gianluigi’s stomach. He needed roughage, and his solution had been to marry into a family full of brothers and take them all on. He had been counting on this using up his energies for many years to come, so his pleasure at the way things had worked out was mixed with a certain amount of regret that it was all over so quickly. The Japanese deal on which he had expended so much energy and cunning was irrelevant now. Ruggiero’s will would hold no surprises. Each of the Miletti children would receive a twenty-five per cent holding in SIMP. Cinzia’s share was already in his hands, of course, and he could count on Daniele’s too. It was not just a question of the money he had been advancing the boy ever since he got himself into trouble over drugs, although by now that amounted to almost a hundred million lire. Daniele was hooked on something quite as addictive as hard drugs and almost as expensive: a fashion market whose sole function was to flaunt the spending power of its wearers, or rather their fathers. To admit that he could no longer compete because his father had turned his back on him would have been the ultimate humiliation for the boy, so he had been glad to accept his brother-in-law’s help. But what made Gianluigi quite certain of Daniele’s support was the fact that the boy admired him. Pietro had never understood that, never been prepared to admit that his younger brother’s hero was the outsider in the family, the pushy, self-seeking Tuscan. He would have to pay for that. One of Gianluigi’s axioms was that one always paid for any lack of clarity and realism. Meanwhile he accepted Daniele’s homage as he did his daughter’s, and with as little thought of consummating the relationship. The fact of the matter was that the boy hadn’t a hope in hell of ever amounting to anything, being spoiled, weak, vain and without that bitter inner pain that drives a man on.

So there he was in effective control of fifty per cent of SIMP. But even if Pietro knew that, he would still be counting on Silvio to balance things out. Which was a mistake, because when the chips were down Silvio would support Gianluigi too. This was something that Pietro could have no inkling of, for the simple reason that Silvio didn’t know himself and would have denied it strenuously if he’d been asked. Nevertheless when the time came he would vote with Gianluigi, because of the photographs. Gianluigi had paid a detective agency in Milan five million lire for them, but like Daniele’s allowance it was money well spent. Those photographs would make him undisputed master of the Miletti empire. It had been a nerve-racking business, particularly the last few weeks. He wondered what his family would think if they knew the risks he had been running. But now it was all over and he had come out on top. The Milettis had made it clear from the beginning that they played winner-take-all. And he would, he would!

The doorbell sounded and Margherita set down the dish of fried fish she was serving to go and answer it.

‘Who on earth can that be?’ Cinzia wondered aloud. ‘What an idea, not even lunchtime is sacred any more, no wonder there’s so much tension and unhappiness in the world, finish your pasta, Loredana.’

The housekeeper reappeared in the doorway.

‘It’s the police, dottore.’

Gianluigi was accustomed to living with pains, but the one that shot across his chest now was a stranger.

‘Tell them to come back later,’ his wife told the housekeeper, as though it was as easy as that, as though there was nothing to worry about. ‘It’s really too bad, a total chaos and intrusion.’

‘No, I’ll sort them out.’

He got to his feet, gathering his strength, his courage, his wits.

Margherita’s words had conjured up visions of armed men surrounding the house, and when Gianluigi reached the door he was relieved to find no one there but Aurelio Zen. But relief merely made him angry for having been given an unnecessary fright.

‘What the hell do you want now, Zen? Don’t you know it’s lunchtime?’

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, dottore, but it’s a matter of the highest urgency.’

‘It had better be.’

He was sure of himself again, in control of the situation. This sort of confrontation was the stuff of his life, for which he trained like an athlete. Once he had mastered that initial moment of panic it was a pleasure to exercise those considerable skills.

‘According to our records,’ Zen went on, ‘your wife is the registered owner of a Beretta pistol. I would like to examine it with a view to eliminating it from our inquiries.’

‘Let me see your search warrant.’

‘I’m not conducting a search.’

Gianluigi allowed his eyebrows to rise.

‘Oh? Then what the fuck are you doing, may I ask, disturbing me without the slightest warning in the middle of lunch?’

‘I’m conducting a preliminary inquiry in the sense of article 225 of the Penal Code, the results of which will be communicated to the Public Prosecutor’s office and a search warrant issued in due course, your refusal to cooperate having been noted. But what’s the problem? You have got the gun, haven’t you?’

‘Of course.’

This automatic reply was his first error, conceding the man’s right to question him. But the sudden change of tone had caught him by surprise.

‘Then why not just show it to me?’ Zen suggested. ‘It’ll save both of us a lot of unnecessary bother.’

There was a shuffle of bare feet as Cinzia appeared.

‘What’s going on, Lulu? Oh, Commissioner, I thought you were back in Rome. Surely you must be.’

She and Zen exchanged a lingering glance.

‘Get on with your lunch,’ Gianluigi told his wife. ‘I’ll handle this.’

Realizing that after this interruption his earlier position of rigid intransigence would seem stilted, Gianluigi told his visitor to wait, went through to the living room and opened the top drawer of the old desk where the pistol was always kept.

It was not there.

For thirty seconds he stood quite still, thinking. But though the disappearance of the pistol was both mysterious and annoying, there was nothing whatever to be worried about. He returned to the front door.

‘Look, the thing appears to have been mislaid,’ he told Zen, who was now leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette. ‘Probably the cleaning lady has put it somewhere. We’ll have a proper look this afternoon or tomorrow if you care to contact me later.’

He was starting to close the door as Zen replied.

‘That’s fine. I didn’t really come about the gun at all.’

The door opened again.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘There’s been an unfortunate development, dottore. As the result of a tip-off the Carabinieri have arrested most of the gang that kidnapped your father-in-law. Among other things, they’ve been talking about their contact in the Miletti family, the one who left messages tucked in a magazine at that service area on the motorway. The last magazine in the top right-hand row, I think it was.’

The exotic pain returned to Gianluigi’s chest.

‘And what has this got to do with me?’

Articulating these words was one of the hardest tasks he could ever remember performing.

‘Well, it depends how you look at it. On the face of it, all this amounts to is an unsupported allegation by a gang of known criminals. On the other hand, it’s hard to see what they have to gain by lying. We’ve suspected for a long time that there was an informer passing on the strengths and weaknesses of the family’s negotiating position to the gang, but we didn’t know who it was. Pietro was in London for much of the time. If the pick-up point was on the motorway, that excludes Silvio, who can’t drive. As for Daniele, the gang say that the person who left the messages was short and slightly built, so he won’t do. In one sense it’s just a question of who’s left, really.’

He tossed the butt of his cigarette out on to the gravel of the drive, where it continued to smoulder.

‘But there’s more to it than that. Above all, the investigating magistrate is going to be looking for a motive. Now if he had just wanted to beggar the Milettis the informant could have revealed the true extent of the family’s finances straight off, but instead he chose to pass on scraps of information so that the negotiations were drawn out as long as possible. The magistrate will therefore be looking for someone who stood to gain from a delay in Ruggiero’s return coupled with the need for a massive injection of cash to prop up SIMP. Cash from a Japanese company, for instance.’

The silence that followed was as long and significant as the words that had preceded it. Whatever was said now would have extraordinary resonances, and that knowledge was as inhibiting as the acoustics of a great church.

‘I think that you are full of shit,’ Gianluigi finally murmured, slowly and distinctly. ‘I’m going to find out. And if you are, I’ll make sure you drown in it.’

He walked through to his study, his heart a madhouse filled with the shrieks of despairing wretches, his head a cool and airy library where shrewd men debated tactics. Norberto was the best route to take. As a member of the regional council he knew almost everything that was going on and could find out the rest quickly and discreetly.

‘Norberto? Gianluigi Santucci. Yes, me too. I’m sorry, but it can’t wait. Someone’s just told me that there’s been a break in the Miletti case, that arrests have been made. Have you heard anything?’

Sensing a movement, he looked round to find that Zen had followed him and was now standing in the doorway. For a moment Gianluigi was tempted to get rid of him, but he restrained himself. The news was good. Much better to show himself unconcerned, a man with nothing to hide.

‘Nothing at all?’ he confirmed. ‘I thought as much!’

‘Get him to check,’ Zen warned. ‘This happened in Florence and the military are keeping it quiet until the magistrate gets there.’

Gianluigi bit his lip.

‘Would you mind just checking that?’ he said into the phone. ‘You’ll call back? Very well.’

As he replaced the receiver Loredana’s voice rang out from the dining room.

‘Christ, not chocolate pudding again! What are you trying to do, poison me? You know I hate chocolate! It brings me out in spots.’

While he waited for Norberto to get through to his contact, Gianluigi thought back to that other phone call, in the days shortly after Ruggiero was kidnapped. The gang had been given the Santuccis’ number as a ‘clean’ telephone line on which to communicate. At first Gianluigi had played it absolutely straight, but when the gang’s modest demands were swiftly met and it began to look as if Ruggiero would be released within days, it occurred to him how convenient it would be if the old man’s return could be delayed. The whole question of the deal with the Japanese was hanging in the balance, and with it Gianluigi’s future, for if it went through he was a made man. So when the gang next phoned he’d expressed slight surprise that they’d asked for so little, given the family’s ability to pay. If they needed more information on this subject, he implied, this could be arranged. It had been a risk, of course, but very carefully calculated, like all the risks he took. The kidnappers could pose no threat unless they were caught, a possibility so remote that Gianluigi had discounted it.