Vendetta: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (14 page)

But on the rare occasions when Zen spent this kind of money on a meal, he went to places where the food rather than the ambience was the attraction, so Gilberto Nieddu’s remark had been accurate enough. But that didn’t make Zen feel any happier about the slightly patronising tone in which it had been made. Matters were not improved when Gilberto patted his arm familiarly and whispered, “Don’t worry! This one’s on me.”

Zen made one final attempt to get his friend to appreciate the gravity of the situation.

“Look, I’ll spell it out for you. They’re asking me to frame someone. Do you understand? I’m to go to Sardinia and fake some bit of evidence, come up with a surprise witness, anything. They don’t care what I do or how I do it as long as it gets the charges against Favelloni withdrawn or at least puts the trial date back several months.”

Gilberto nodded vaguely. He was still glancing compulsively around the restaurant.

“This could be your big chance, Aurelio,” he murmured, checking his watch yet again.

“Gilberto, we are talking here about sending an innocent person to prison for twenty years, to say nothing of allowing a man who has gunned down four people in cold blood to walk free. Quite apart from the moral aspect, that is seriously
illegal.”

The Sardinian shrugged. “So don’t do it. Phone in sick or something.”

“For fuck’s sake, this is not just another job! I’ve been
recommended
to these people! They’ve been told that I’m an unscrupulous self-seeker, that I cooked the books in the Miletti case and wouldn’t think twice about doing so again. They’ve briefed me, they’ve cut me in. I know what they’re planning to do and how they’re planning to do it. If I try and get out of it now, they’re not just going to say, ‘Fine, suit yourself, we’ll find someone else.’ They already hinted that if I didn’t play along I could expect to become another statistic in somewhere like Palermo. Down there you can get a contract hit done for a few million lire. There are even people who’ll do it for free, just to make a name for themselves! And no one’s going to notice if another cop goes missing. Are you listening to any of this?”

“Ah, finally!” Gilberto cried aloud. “A big client, Aurelio, very big,” he hissed in an undertone to Zen. “If we swing this one, I can take a year off to listen to your problems. Just play along, follow my lead.”

He sprang to his feet to greet a stocky, balding man with an air of immense self-satisfaction who was being guided to their table by the unctuous Licio.

“Commendatore! Good morning, welcome, how are you? Permit me to present Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen. Aurelio, Dottor Dario Ochetto of SIFAS Enterprises.” Lowering his voice suggestively, Gilberto added, “Dottor Zen works directly for the Ministry of the Interior.”

Zen felt like walking out, but he knew he couldn’t do it. His friendship with Gilberto was too important for him to risk losing it by a show of pique. The fact that Gilberto had probably counted on just this reaction didn’t make Zen feel any happier about listening to the totally fictitious account of Paragon Security’s dealings with the Ministry of the Interior which Gilberto used as a warm-up before presenting his sales pitch. Meanwhile Zen ate his way through the food that was placed before them and drank rather more wine than he would normally have done. Occasionally Gilberto turned in his direction and said, “Right, Aurelio?” Fortunately, neither he nor Ochetto seemed to expect a reply.

Zen found it impossible to tell whether Ochetto was impressed, favourably or otherwise, by this farce, but as soon as he had departed, amid scenes of enthusiastic hand-shaking, Gilberto exploded in jubilation and summoned the waiter to bring over a bottle of their best malt whisky.

“It’s in the bag, Aurelio!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “An exclusive contract to install and maintain antibugging equipment at all their offices throughout the country, and at five times the going rate because what isn’t in the contract is the work they want done on the competition.”

Zen sipped the whisky, which reminded him of a tar-based patent medicine with which his mother had used to dose him liberally on the slightest pretext.

“What kind of work?”

Nieddu gave him a sly look. “Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t think anything,” Zen retorted aggressively. “Why don’t you answer the question?”

Nieddu threw up his hands in mock surrender. “Oh! What is this, an interrogation?”

“You’ve gone into the bugging business?” Zen demanded.

“Have you got any objection?”

“I certainly have! I object to be tricked into appearing to sanction illegal activities when I haven’t even been told what they are, much less asked whether I mind being dragged in! Jesus Christ almighty, Gilberto, I don’t fucking well
need
this! Not any time, and especially not now.”

Gilberto Nieddu gestured for calm, moving his hands smoothly through the air as though stroking silk.

“This lunch has been arranged for weeks, Aurelio. I didn’t ask you to come along. On the contrary,
you
phoned
me
at the last moment. I would normally have said I was busy, but because you sounded so desperate I went out of my way to see you. But I had to explain your presence to Ochetto, otherwise he’d have been suspicious. This way, he’ll just think I was trying to impress him with my contacts at the Ministry. It worked beautifully. You were very convincing. And don’t worry about repercussions. He’s already forgotten you exist.”

Zen smiled wanly as he dug a Nazionale out of his rapidly collapsing pack.
You were very convincing.
Tania had said the same thing the night before, and it had apparently been Zen’s convincing performance in the Miletti case which had recommended him to Palazzo Sisti. Everyone who used him for their own purposes seemed very satisfied with the results.

“So you’re in the shit again, eh?” continued Nieddu, lighting a cigar and settling back in his chair. “What’s it all about this time?”

Zen pushed his glass about on the tablecloth stained with traces of the various courses they had consumed. He no longer had any desire to share his troubles with the Sardinian.

“Oh, nothing. I’m probably just imagining it.”

Nieddu eyed his friend through a screen of richly fragrant smoke.

“It’s time you got out of the police, Aurelio. What’s the point of slogging away like this at your age, putting your life on the line? Leave that to the young ambitious pricks who still think they’re immortal. Let’s face it, it’s a mug’s game. There’s nothing in it unless you’re crooked, and even then it’s just small change really.”

He clicked his fingers to summon the bill.

“You know, I never had any idea what was going on in the world until I went into business. I simply never realised what life was about. I mean, they don’t teach you this stuff at school. What you have to grasp is,
it’s all there for the taking!
Somebody’s going to get it. If it isn’t you, it’ll be someone else.”

He sipped his whisky and drew at his cigar.

“All these cases you get so excited about, the Burolos and all the rest of it, do you know what that amounts to? Traffic accidents, that’s all. If you have roads and cars, a certain number of people are going to get killed and injured. Those people attract a lot of attention, but they’re really just a tiny percentage of the number who arrive safely without any fuss or bother. It’s the same in business, Aurelio. The system’s there, people are going to use it. The only question is whether you want to spend your time cleaning up after other people’s pile-ups or driving off where you want to go. Fancy a cognac or something?”

It was after three o’clock when the two men emerged, blinking, into the afternoon sunlight. They shook hands and parted amicably enough, but as Zen walked away, he felt as though a door had slammed shut behind him.

People changed, that was the inconvenient thing one always forgot. It was years now since Gilberto had left the police department in disgust at the way Zen had been treated over the Moro affair, but Zen still saw him as a loyal colleague, formed in the same professional mould, sharing the same perceptions and prejudices. But Gilberto Nieddu was no longer an expoliceman, but a prosperous and successful businessman, and his views and attitudes had changed accordingly.

On a day-to-day level this had been no more apparent than the movement of a clock’s hands. It had taken this crisis to reveal the distance that now separated the two men. The Sardinian still wished Zen well, of course, and would help him if he could. But he found it increasingly difficult to take Aurelio’s problems very seriously. To him they seemed trivial, irrelevant, and self-inflicted. What was the point of getting into trouble and taking risks with no prospect of profit at the end of it all?

Gilberto’s attitude made it impossible for Zen to ask him for help, yet help was what he desperately needed for the project that was beginning to form in his mind. If he couldn’t get it through official channels or friendly contacts, then there was only one other possibility.

The first sighting was just north of Piazza Venezia. After the calm of the narrow streets from which most traffic was banned, the renewed contact with the brutal realities of Rome life was even more traumatic than usual. I’m getting too old, Zen thought as he hovered indecisively at the kerb. My reactions are slowing, I’m losing my nerve, my confidence. So he was reassured to see that a tough-looking young man in a leather jacket and jeans was apparently just as reluctant to take the plunge. In the end, indeed, it was Zen who was the first to step out boldly into the traffic, trusting that the drivers would choose not to exercise their power to kill or maim him.

It was marginally less reassuring to catch sight of the same young man just a few minutes later in Piazza di Campidoglio. Zen had taken this route because it avoided the maelstrom of Piazza Venezia, although it meant climbing the long steep flights of steps up the Capitoline hill. Nevertheless, when he paused for breath by the plinth where a statue of his namesake had stood until recently succumbing to air pollution, there was the young man in the leather jacket, about twenty metres behind, bending down to adjust his shoelaces.

Zen swung left and walked down past the Mamertine prison to Via dei Fori Imperiali. He paused to light a cigarette. Twenty metres back, Leather Jacket was lounging against a railing, admiring the view. As Zen replaced his cigarettes, a piece of paper fluttered from his pocket to the ground. He continued on his way, counting his strides. When he reached twenty, he looked round again. The young man in the leather jacket was bending to pick up the paper Zen had dropped.

The only thing he would learn from it was that Zen had spent twelve hundred lire in a wine shop in Piazza Campo dei Fiori that morning. Zen, on the other hand, had learnt two things: the man was following him, and he wasn’t very good at it. Without breaking his pace, he continued along the broad boulevard toward the Colisseum. This, or rather the underground station of the same name, had been his destination from the start, but he would have to lose the tail first. The men he was planning to visit had a code of etiquette as complex and inflexible as any member of Rome’s vestigial aristocracy and would take a particularly poor view of anyone arriving with an unidentified guest in tow.

Without knowing who Leather Jacket was working for, it was difficult to choose the best way of disposing of him. If he was a solo operator, the easiest thing would be to have him arrested on some pretext. This would also be quick—a phone call would bring a patrol car in minutes—and Zen was already concerned about getting back to the house before six o’clock when Maria Grazia went home. But if Leather Jacket was part of an organisation, then this solution would sacrifice Zen’s long-term advantage by showing the tail that he had been burned. He would simply be replaced by someone unknown to Zen and quite possibly someone more experienced and harder to spot. Zen therefore reluctantly decided to go for the most difficult option, that of losing the young man without him realising what had happened. It was not until the last moment, as he was actually passing the entrance, that he realised that the perfect territory for this purpose was conveniently at hand.

In the ticket office, three men in shirtsleeves were engaged in a heated argument about Craxi’s line on combatting inflation. Zen flashed his police identity card at them and then at the woman perched on a stool at the entrance, a two-way radio in one hand and a paperback novel in the other. Without looking around to see if Leather Jacket was following, he walked through the gateway and into the Forum.

To his untutored eye, the scene before him resembled nothing so much as a building site. All that was missing were the tall green cranes clustered together in groups like extraterrestrial invaders. But this project had evidently only just passed the foundation level, and only then in a fragmentary and irregular way. Some areas were still pitted and troughed, awaiting the installation of drainage and wiring, while in others a few pillars and columns provided a tantalising hint of the building to come. Elsewhere whole sections of the massive brick structures—factories? warehouses?—which had formerly occupied the area had still not been completely demolished.

For the moment, work seemed to have ground to a halt. No dump trucks or concrete pourers moved along the rough track running the length of the site. Perhaps some snag had arisen over the financing, Zen thought whimsically. Perhaps the government had been reshuffled yet again, and the new minister was reluctant to authorise further expenditure on a project which had already overrun its estimated cost by several hundred percent—or was at least holding out for some financial inducement on a scale similar to that which had induced his predecessor to sign the contract in the first place.

A Carabinieri helicopter was thrashing about overhead like a shark circling for the kill. Zen tossed away his cigarette and strolled along a path in the patchy grass between the ruins. A fine dust covered everything, beaten into the air by passing feet from the bone-dry soil. The sun crouched low in a cloudless sky, its weak rays absorbed and reflected by the marble and brick on every side. Overhead the helicopter swept past periodically, watchful, alien, remote. Halfway up the path, which veered to the right and started to climb the Palatine hill, Zen paused to survey the scene. At this time of year there were only a few tourists about. Among them was a young man in a leather jacket and jeans. Oddly enough, he was once again having problems with his laces.