When the Dead Awaken (17 page)

Everything was too big. Too complicated and utterly impossible. Unmanageable, enormous. The satellites …
the fashion king who was waiting for her, encoded lamps and billions of euros, a building full of dead scientists, cars full of smashed-up geniuses, dead young mothers and dead boys, and dead baby boys ready to be born, thrown into black bin liners like rubbish.

Sabrina pummelled her face, gave herself a couple of echoing slaps to come to. She felt dispersed. Like a random, loosely connected cloud – of nanoparticles, for example – that were about to flee their fixed positions in her body, dissolve and mix with the molecules of the toilet bowl, the door, the toilet-roll holder, the bolt … ‘
Stop!
' she shouted – probably out loud. Agitated muttering ricocheted off the tiled walls and hard floors. Sabrina heard how the other women, in this most defenceless of situations, panicked to finish their business, how they struggled with toilet paper, clothing, zips and obstinate doors to get out and away.

She understood them. A sudden outburst of madness in a lavatory would have made her react in exactly the same way.

‘I'm sorry,' she cried out in a half-strangled voice, which only led to further, suppressed upheaval. Milan was a European metropolis, the restaurant was a place of pilgrimage and there were expressions of outrage in several languages. A child started to cry. Without looking to either side, Sabrina left the cubicle, washed her hands and face at the sink and rinsed out her mouth.

She retrieved her best imitation of a natural smile and returned to her world-famous host.

Massimiliano Di Luca smiled politely. She knew she was as white as a sheet. Sabrina sat down, hid a last hiccup behind her napkin and looked desperately at the next dish that had been served in her absence.

Trancio di rombo ai funghi porcini con puré di patate
. Wither Hills Marlborough Pinot Noir gleamed in the glasses. 2003. Miserably, she swallowed a mouthful of mushrooms.

Di Luca found the mashed potatoes too hot and the mushrooms stale. He attributed this to perversity on behalf of the chef since this, too, was something to which he had previously drawn her attention.

‘I'm actually not very hungry,' he admitted when the waiters had left the room. ‘Strange, really. I belong to a generation that elevated gluttony to an art form. Later, we called it self-expression and handed the bill to our children.'

‘Who was going to operate the system?'

‘The Swiss, of course,' Di Luca said. ‘If you were to place the strip under a microscope right now, you would be able to see a line of small numbers and letters and a twelve-digit code under the crystals.
Swiss Electrotechnical Committee ISO 9001:2 000
.'

‘Why the Swiss?' she asked.

‘There's no avoiding them. Their forte is to place their broad backsides – in the form of their venerable
institutions – on every serious international certification. That committee was set up in 1889 when the rest of Europe barely knew what electricity was. Today it employs 210 people in Fehraltorf and Lausanne. It describes itself as a non-profit organization, which must be a unique example of Swiss humour. You know the story about the hair and a silver thread, don't you?'

‘No.'

‘No? Right, in order to demonstrate their microtechnology superiority back in the sixties, General Electric sent a human hair lined with a silver thread to Switzerland. A few weeks later the hair came back from Bern. The Swiss had hollowed out the silver thread and fed through it an even thinner copper thread. When scientists in California pulled it out under an electron microscope, the copper thread formed itself into the word “Swissmade”.' The fashion designer smiled indulgently. ‘It was one of Giulio's favourite stories. I imagine you have to be a nerd to appreciate it fully.'

‘I can see that, signore,' Sabrina said.

Massimiliano Di Luca smoothed the napkin on the table.

‘The date in the crystals changes. As regular as clockwork. As far as I understood Giulio – and he always found me unbelievably dense – the physical properties of the crystals are transformed to the rhythm of the heartbeat of the earth's magnetism. The rest was, according to Giulio and Batista, a relatively simple question of chopping the
transformation into twenty-four-hour segments so the strips would show the exact date throughout the next millennium. The Camorra would never be able to copy it. The technology is too advanced and once in place any attempt at selling fake products would reduce their profit margins to zero.'

‘Some people might regard the timing as suspicious,' Sabrina interjected casually.

‘I beg your pardon?'

She smiled.

‘They point out that the attack on Nanometric was carried out a few days before the patent applications were about to be submitted.'

Massimiliano Di Luca dabbed his lips.

‘And who might they be, signorina?'

‘The public prosecutor in Naples.'

‘What's the real reason for your visit? I thought you had come to tell me that Lucia and Salvatore had been found.'

‘It's my understanding that you had a personal connection to the Forlani family. That your relationship wasn't purely professional?'

He smiled.

‘Of course. I was very fond of the family.'

She leaned back and played with her wine glass.

‘I thought it only proper to tell you in person,' she said.

‘And I'm grateful. Are you making progress? Do you think someone betrayed Nanometric?'

‘My superiors are convinced that the case is closed and should remain so,' she said lightly. ‘It was thoroughly investigated here in Milan, but finally shelved as unsolved.'

She opened her mouth to utter more non-committal words and again she felt the blood drain from her face to her chest or wherever it is blood flows to. She could have sworn she had seen the top of a mobile phone in his shirt pocket when she went to the lavatory. It was in a different pocket now.

She despaired at herself.

Massimiliano Di Luca was undoubtedly one of the world's most celebrated men. His mobile must be close to meltdown most hours of the day. However, it had been completely silent all the time she had been with him.

‘Dottoressa?'

‘I'm sorry?'

Di Luca smiled.

‘I asked if you would agree with your superiors' assessment of the case. Dead or alive?'

‘Dead or alive?'

‘A figure of speech. The case, I mean.'

‘Yes. Of course. After all, everyone is dead, aren't they?'

‘So what are you doing now?'

‘Heading home. Incidentally, did anyone carry on the work of Nanometric?'

Before Massimiliano Di Luca had time to reply, the waiters returned, this time supervised by Signora Santini
in person. Rumours and complaints from the ladies' lavatory had undoubtedly reached her ears.

Torta di pesche all'Amaretto
. Château d'Yquem in new glasses. 1990.

They ate their pudding in silence. This time – and not without a certain amount of irritation – Di Luca found the dish to be perfection.

‘I never harboured any hope that others would carry on,' he said at last. ‘It would surely mean a one-way ticket to the hereafter. I can't risk exposing any more innocent people to what happened to Nanometric and Giulio's family.'

‘What about the Americans? Professor Luán, for example.'

‘They're welcome to it. The Camorra can easily buy plane tickets to the US.'

The cuckoo jumped out of its Swiss chalet and called three times, even though the time was 1.30 p.m.

Sabrina took a deep breath and looked at the Venetian with all the concentration she could muster. She was about to make a big leap.

‘You knew my father, Signor Di Luca,' she declared.

‘Did I? I know many remarkable people, signorina.'

‘General Agostino D'Avalos. He certainly knew you. He called you on the fifth of September 2007 at 12.15. Around the time Lucia and Salvatore Forlani disappeared from Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. He was Nanometric's other investor. I assume that the two of you joined forces?'

Di Luca was impossible to rattle.

‘Absolutely. A wonderful man. Your father, did you say? My condolences.'

‘Thank you. So you knew him?'

‘Of course. Very well, or as well as anyone ever did. He was by virtue of necessity a private man, dottoressa. He rang me on the fifth to brief me on Giulio's accident and the attack on Nanometric, but he said nothing about Lucia and Salva. Three days later I was told that he had been found dead in a motel near Switzerland.'

‘Did you work closely together?'

‘Totally. It was a partnership.'

From the backseat of an Audi parked two hundred metres from the restaurant, Urs Savelli told the driver to start the engine, let it idle and turn up the car's air conditioning. He took the white earphones out of his ears, wrapped the cord around his fingers and put them in his pocket.

The bug he had hidden long ago in the Swiss cuckoo clock had transmitted Di Luca and Sabrina D'Avalos's predictable exchange to Savelli's earphones. Over the years the microphone had picked up every conversation between Di Luca and his prominent guests in the private dining room. Including his weekly meetings with Giulio Forlani. People were very much creatures of habit, he thought. He himself slept in a different place every night.

The designer's bottle-green Bentley pulled up in front
of the restaurant. The designer and the straight-backed assistant public prosecutor were waved off by Signora Santini herself.

‘Massimiliano …' Savelli mumbled, and shook his head.

He leaned back in the leather seat and loosened his tie.

‘
Andiamo
,' he said to the driver.

None of the confessionals was vacant, so Sabrina was reduced to sitting on one of the rear pews in the cathedral. She tried to let herself dissolve in its grey, vaulted light.

Her nausea came and went.

The Bentley had dropped her off near La Scala opera house and people on the pavement had looked at the emo with undisguised bemusement when the elegant car eased away from the kerb. Mortified, she had pulled the hood over her head and hurried on.

She left the cathedral with a group of Russian tourists.

The sky was clouded and a drop of rain hit her hood. She crossed the cathedral square and took shelter in an archway. The rain started washing the tourists off the square. She had bought a new mobile phone and a pay-as-you-go SIM card in a supermarket and memorized the phone numbers should would need. She called the orphanage. It was answered by one of the supervisors she knew well.

‘How is he?' she asked.

‘Quiet. Except at night. The usual nightmares. They've put him back on medication.'

She knew that Ismael didn't care. He swallowed every pill they put in front of him.

‘Can I speak to him?'

‘Hold on.'

She heard a clattering sound as the handset was placed on the metal shelf next to the payphone on the wall of the boys' wing.

The handset was picked up and Sabrina told herself she could hear breathing. She started to cry – but silently. An audible sob would make Ismael drop the phone instantly. She knew that from previous episodes where she had allowed her feelings to get the better of her.

‘Ismael? It's Sabrina. Are you all right?'

There was no sound down the other end.

Something welled up inside her chest and she pressed the handset against her sleeve.

Then she heard the slow, measured grinding of Ismael's teeth.

The boy waited.

‘I'm in Milan,' she said. ‘I'm looking at the cathedral, Ismael. I've sent you a postcard. With dragons and monks and gargoyles and more monks and griffins. Griffins are half lion and half eagle. You wouldn't believe how many saints there are here.'

She knew that her postcard would be stuck to the wall above Ismael's bed with all the others she had sent.

‘I'll be home soon,' she said with tears streaming down her face.

His breathing changed pace.

‘I'm fine,' she said with all the conviction and composure she could muster.

The air moved more slowly across the sensitive microphone in the orphanage.

‘We'll go to the zoo as soon as I get back,' she promised, as if they had already pencilled it in, and the rest was just a question of fitting the trip into their busy schedules.

‘Ismael?'

She was aware that a stray sob was on its way and she banged her head against the wall.
Porca puttana!

Ismael quietly cleared his throat and Sabrina smiled. A warm feeling began to spread through her body.

‘Thank you, Ismael,' she said. ‘Thank you.'

Another irritated grunt before the handset bounced off the wall on the third floor of the orphanage in Naples. The boy was gone.

She took refuge under the awning of the nearest pavement café and ordered a Vecchia Romagna brandy and an espresso. Then she smiled brightly to a man braving the rain with hunched shoulders and an open umbrella. The man stopped in the middle of a puddle and returned her smile.

Sabrina acknowledged him and thought about Nestore Raspallo. She had started to regard him as the genie of the lamp. All she had to do was rub a mobile phone and he appeared ready to fulfil her every wish.

‘Raspallo.'

‘Sabrina.'

‘How are you?'

‘Have our “handymen” started talking?' she asked.

‘It's a little too soon. Perhaps they will once we've gathered more evidence, linked them to some unsolved crimes, lowered their expectations a little. If they still won't talk, then we'll waterboard them. They're with the ROS now, not the Boy Scouts. Where are you?'

‘Nowhere,' she said.

‘What's it like there?'

She looked around. The square was deserted.