Ratking (34 page)

A month later her post was made permanent.

She’d done it once, and if she could do it once then couldn’t she do it again? But it wasn’t as simple as that. The situation was quite different this time. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she remembered Zen’s panicky orders about keeping her ‘in quarantine’. As though anyone was going to lift a finger to save her! Didn’t he understand that she had no support whatever apart from Silvio? Her relationship had always been exclusively with him. That was the way he had wanted it. Evidently there was something about her that attracted homosexuals, perhaps the same thing that repelled the young men she would have preferred to attract. But you had to make the best of things, and Silvio Miletti was a pretty good catch, all things considered.

Ironically enough, it had been Ivy’s boss at the hospital who had introduced her to Silvio. That was before the two men fell out over their mutual infatuation with a young German called Gerhard Mayer. Never one to do things by halves, Silvio had deprived his rival not only of Mayer’s services but of Ivy’s as well. For three years now they had been a couple in all respects but one. Ivy’s only stipulation had been to insist on keeping her job at the hospital, although the work was actually done by a succession of temporary secretaries paid through a Miletti subsidiary. It was partly a form of insurance to hold on to the salaried position and the promise of a pension that went with it, but it was mostly spite. The director had not been very happy about the arrangement, to say the least, but what with the Miletti’s leaning on him from one side and the fear that the missing documents might one day surface gnawing at him from the other, he had ended by agreeing.

Silvio and Ivy had proved to be a very effective couple, complementing each other perfectly. She had the vision, the will, the patience; he had the power, the contacts, and the influence. So far their exploits had been relatively modest. The anonymous letter she’d sent to the investigating magistrate Bartocci, alleging that the kidnapping was a put-up job, was a typical example. Ivy’s method was to seize the opportunity when it arose, and meanwhile to stir things up so that opportunities were more likely to arise. The letter to Bartocci had in fact succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, for it had indirectly created the circumstances leading to Ruggiero Miletti’s death, which had in turn removed the one remaining impediment to the brilliant future which beckoned to her and Silvio.

Or rather had seemed to beckon, until just a few hours ago. For now the unthinkable had occurred, the one eventuality which Ivy had left out of her calculations. Cautiously at first, but with increasing confidence as she recognized Silvio’s dependence on her, she had sacrificed all her minor allegiances to this one relationship, which offered far more than all the others put together. It was often a considerable effort to remember that despite his fecklessness and petulance, his timidity and sloth, Silvio was a man of considerable power. And that power was now at her disposal, to use as though it were her own. It was a dizzying sensation, like finding yourself at the controls of a jet after a lifetime of flying gliders. Only now did she appreciate the more sinister implications of this image. Gliders rode the buoyant winds, versatile and questing, finding alternative currents if one failed, but when jets went wrong disaster was swift and inevitable. But it had never seemed possible that anything
could
go wrong. Silvio needed her as he needed food and drink, not to mention more esoteric satisfactions. He could no more deny her than he could deny himself.

At least, so she’d always supposed. But apparently she’d been mistaken, and with catastrophic results. The police could relax. No one would be pulling strings on her behalf, for she had deliberately cut them all except for those which bound her to Silvio. And he – even now she could hardly bring herself to believe it! – had not merely abandoned her but turned viciously against her, perjuring himself in the vilest way so that she could be thrown into a common lock-up like some gypsy beggar. No, Zen had nothing to worry about on that score!

Then an even more terrifying thought occurred to her. The discrepancy in the time of the statement proved that Zen and Silvio were hand in glove. He must
know
that the Milettis were not going to intervene to save her. Was he perhaps worried that their intervention might take a quite different form? A cup of coffee, for example, laced with something that would have her flopping about the cell like a landed fish, gasping out the classic words, ‘They’ve poisoned me!’

That deposit box at the bank now contained much more than her employer’s precious documents, as Silvio well knew. There were photocopies of letters, account books and papers of all kinds, and above all the tapes, boxes of them. The answering machine had been a stroke of genius. For some reason they were always regarded as slightly comical annoyances. No one liked having to deal with them, so callers were always relieved when you answered in person, too relieved to remember that the machine was still there, still connected and possibly recording every word they said. For some reason that never seemed to occur to anyone. But it was a meagre consolation just the same, not nearly enough to keep the rising tide of panic away. She might take a couple of the bastards with her, or at least scratch up their pretty rich faces a bit, but that would not save her. Nothing could save her now.

When the door of the cell opened she hoped it might be a familiar face, even a visitor to see her, but it was only the hard man who had brought her down there.

‘Come on!’ he said, beckoning impatiently.

Ivy felt as reluctant to leave her cell as a condemned prisoner being led away to execution.

‘Where are we going?’

The man just stared at her in his insolent way, like those bastards at the hospital when they thought they had her where they wanted her.

‘So you’re called Chiodini, are you?’ Ivy asked him.

‘What about it?’ the man demanded, suddenly on his guard.

‘Nothing.’

But if I ever get out of here, she thought, I’m going to call a certain number I know and pay whatever it takes to have one of those arrogant eyes of yours sliced in two like a bull’s testicle, my friend.

Chiodini led her away along a narrow passage constantly switching direction, like a sewer following the turnings of the street above. The walls here were a world away from the shiny, polished façades of the Questura – rough, grainy slabs of stone beaded with moisture like a sweaty brow, infilled with chunks of saturated brick and rubble. Here and there diminishing islands of plasterwork still clung on, but most of it had gone to make a gritty porridge that scratched and slithered underfoot. It felt like part of the complex system of tunnels and passages underlying the ancient city, into which it was said that children occasionally strayed and were never seen again.

At length they turned a corner to find a man who seemed to have been waiting for them. He was short and fleshy, with a melancholy face and heavy eyebrows, dressed in a heavy-duty suit of the kind farmers wear on Sundays. To Ivy, he was the image of an executioner.

‘What are you doing here, Geraci?’ Ivy’s escort demanded. ‘They said you were off ill.’

‘I’m all right. I’ll take over now, you run along.’

‘But the chief said …’

‘Never you mind about that! I’ll look after her.’

Chiodini looked at Ivy, then at the other man.

‘Go on, beat it!’ Geraci insisted.

When Chiodini had gone, he led Ivy along the passage to a metal door. So lost was she in evil dreams that she expected to see a whitewashed stall inside, with a dangling noose, the wooden shutters of the trap and the lever that springs them back to reveal the pit beneath. But in fact the room was large and high-ceilinged, bare of any features whatever except for a crucifix on one wall and a small barred window high up on the other. Through the window Ivy could just make out a section of exterior wall, bright with sunlight. The fact of their being outside, in the real world where life was going on in its reassuring humdrum way, imbued those stones with infinite fascination for Ivy. She wished she could see them more clearly, admire the tiny plants sprouting in the crevices, watch the insects coming and going, study the shifting subtleties of colour and shade. She longed to lavish a passionate attention on that poor patch of wall, to astonish it with her unwearying love.

Then she heard a sound behind her. Someone had spoken her name. On the other side of the great naked space a figure stood gazing at her with imploring eyes. Silvio, it’s Silvio, she thought.

‘I’ll give you as long as I can, dottore,’ Geraci murmured.

Silvio nodded impatiently.

‘Yes, yes. Thank you.’

The man bowed slightly as he backed towards the door.

‘Thank
you
, dottore. Thank
you
.’

Despite his impatience, once they were alone Silvio seemed unable to speak.

‘What are you doing here?’ Ivy demanded coldly.

‘That man telephoned me and told me what had happened. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all afternoon! I had no idea they would move so quickly!’

At his words something Ivy thought had died for ever flickered into life again.

‘But how did he get you in?’ she asked guardedly. ‘They said I was to see no one.’

‘He’s one of them. Apparently he’s in some trouble, wants me to put in a word for him. But let me explain what happened, you have no idea …’

‘Excuse me, I know exactly what happened! I’ve seen the whole thing, read every one of the lies you put your name to.’

Silvio rubbed his hands together in anguish.

‘You don’t think I signed that thing willingly, do you? Ivy, you must understand!’

‘I don’t care how you signed it! It’s quite sufficient that you did. Do you know how I’ve spent the last few hours? Sitting all alone in a stinking cell, totally humiliated and despairing! And you have the gall to try and interest me in your state of mind when you signed the libellous rubbish that made that possible? You expect me to
under
stand
? No, no, those days are over, Silvio. I don’t feel very understanding any more. I don’t have time to worry about your problems. I’ve got problems of my own.’

‘But you haven’t! It’s all meaningless!’

He blundered blindly towards her.

‘Ivy, you must understand! It’s all just a trivial vendetta by Cinzia. It doesn’t amount to anything. You’ll be out of here by this evening, I promise. I’ll retract the whole statement, deny everything. They’ll have to let you go.’

She turned towards him, a new light in her eyes.

‘Cinzia?’

‘That’s right. She got hold of some photographs taken in Berlin and gave them to that bastard Zen. They threatened to make them public unless I signed. What could I do? I was taken completely by surprise. I thought I’d have time to warn you, at least. But it doesn’t amount to anything, that’s the important thing. She just wanted to stir up a bit of scandal, to give you a bad time for a day or two. But we’ll soon sort her out, won’t we? We’ll make her sorry!’

Ivy was silent. The nightmare was beginning to fade, but something still remained, some real cry of distress which the dream had taken up and used for its own purposes. What had it been?

Meanwhile Silvio told her the whole story, starting with the call from the banker which had set him up to be waylaid by Zen. It was all Cinzia’s fault, he repeated. But Ivy knew better. She had long recognized Gianluigi Santucci as her most formidable opponent. Like her, he was an outsider; like her, he had a personal hold over one member of the family; like her, he was ambitious and unscrupulous. In different circumstances they might have been natural allies. As it was they were rivals. Ivy had always known that sooner or later she would have to deal with Gianluigi. Evidently he’d had the same idea, and had struck first. It should have occurred to her that he would have had Silvio followed to that club and his indiscretions photographed. After all, she would have done exactly the same thing in his position.

But there was still that other fact nagging at the back of her mind, that real nightmare. It was something Zen had told her almost casually and which she had immediately forgotten, not because it didn’t matter but because it mattered far too much, because coming on top of Silvio’s apparent stab in the back it was just too hideous to contemplate. But now that she wanted and needed to deal with it Ivy found that repression had done its job too efficiently. Try as she would, she simply couldn’t recall what it had been.

‘By the way, do you know that they’ve arrested the kidnappers?’ Silvio asked her eagerly.

They had often remarked on the fact that one of them would mention something that had been on the tip of the other’s tongue, as though they were able to read each other’s minds. Now it had happened again. And now Ivy understood why she had deliberately forgotten. This was the worst news in the world.

There was only one way. She dreaded it as one might dread a painful and risky operation, even knowing that there was no alternative. It would have to be very quick, before she could change her mind.

‘Silvio, the kidnappers didn’t kill Ruggiero.’

He tossed his head impatiently.

‘But they’ve confessed!’

‘They didn’t do it.’

‘How do
you
know?’

It was his scornful, cocksure tone of voice that tipped the balance in the end, that made it possible for her to tell him.

‘Because I did.’

It took him a moment to react.

‘That’s silly.’

He frowned.

‘Don’t say things like that. It’s horrible. It frightens me.’

‘It frightens me too. But if we face it together it won’t be so frightening. You know that nothing can frighten us as long as we’re together.’

She moved towards him.

‘And now we’ll never have to be apart again.’

His mouth opened a crack.

‘But … you …’

‘When they phoned to say he’d been released I suddenly realized what that would mean. We’ve been happy these past months, haven’t we? Happy as never before. And that happiness is precious, because people like us know so little of it. The others are rich in happiness, yet they want to take away what little we’ve got. You remember the letter he sent. You remember what he said about us. Why should people be allowed to say things like that? You know it’s unfair, you know it’s wrong. And it was all about to start again. We would have been separated again, kept apart from one another. You would have been trapped at home, having to listen to his cruel, obscene gibes. You couldn’t stand that. Why should you be expected to stand it?’