White Death (15 page)

The next morning, the sun was shining and the place was full of people wearing sunglasses. For the first time in months people were sitting at the tables outside, shouting greetings to friends who walked by. I could see two women chatting outside the bakery eating rectangles of focaccia. It was as if the city had come back to life after its winter hibernation.

The shop door of one bar was wedged open, and the barman was standing there in his apron, talking so much into his phone that he barely had time to drag on his cigarette. There were cyclists zig-zagging between the ground-level cardboard counters of the immigrant retailers. An elegant woman carrying a dog in a check body-warmer was admiring her hair in the reflection of the Mandarina Duck shop, pushing her palm into the back of her bouffant.

I hadn’t been to the market for months but it was just the same. The usual stalls selling the usual bargains. Triangular knickers were stretched on plastic rings. Hangers rattled under blue tarpaulin. There were carpets and bathmats wrapped in cellophane. A buck-toothed Chinese woman was selling faded duvet covers decorated with cartoon characters. There were buckets of shoes and dusty, plastic flowers with fake dew drops on the fraying petals. The whole area was filled with the amplified patter of a man selling magical cloths and mops. Black men were selling sunglasses from
groundsheets. There was a wall of mannequin legs showing off tights and stockings. The prices were written on laminated sheets held onto plywood boards by crocodile clips. It was the kind of market where even the plastic bags looked cheap.

The customers were mostly the same types of people you saw on the buses: immigrants, pensioners, young parents, students. Those with no disposable income. Sleeping children were left in their pushchairs between the stalls as mothers raced through bins of loose clothes and fingered through CDs in thin, plastic slips.

I found Pace’s stall selling stationery and picked up the nearest packet of pens. I held it up for him to see, he said ‘three’ and I passed him some coins held in the original receipts. He didn’t say anything else, just nodded at me.

Next to him was a stall selling bins and buckets. The
stall-holder
was bear-like: a well-built man in his mid-forties with a beard. The skin on his face was loose, like it had given up the fight against gravity. He had none of the joviality of the other stall-holders. He looked like he was bored, about to fall asleep. But the eyes themselves were alive and alert, like coiled snakes waiting for the right moment. Before he had noticed me, I held up my phone as if searching for reception and took a couple of snaps of him. I turned round and took a couple of Davide Pace for good measure.

I walked up to Santagata’s stall. ‘Could I have a look at that one?’ I pointed at a blue plastic bucket hanging from a hook.

He pointed at it to make sure he had understood right. I nodded.

He took it down. I watched his hairy fingers extend
themselves to lift it up off the hook. He changed his grip as he passed it to me and I guessed I had enough prints.

‘How much?’

‘Five,’ he said whilst looking over his stall to check everything was in order.

I passed him a note and he nodded a goodbye.

‘That your van?’ I said, pointing at the white van behind him.

Another nod.

‘I was thinking of getting one like that. Fiat, isn’t it?’

As he nodded again, his eyelids falling even lower as if in contempt for a stupid question, I walked between the stalls to get a better look. When another customer took his attention, I pretended to be reading a message and took a snap of the number plate. I wandered off with the bucket, holding it by the semicircular handle.

I was feeling good. The sun was out and I thought I was close to breaking the case. Everything seemed to be making sense.

Sitting in the bar opposite the marketplace I watched Santagata closely. There was a regular stream of customers coming to buy buckets and bin-liners and the like. He never smiled. I watched him passing over goods and taking money without even seeming to speak to his customers.

An hour later I was uncomfortable and bored. The stool was too high, or too narrow, and I felt like an elephant perched on a pin. I had drunk three spremute and hoofed two brioches so I had icing sugar all down my front.

The bar was full of talk about some important game from last night. I listened to people’s awe for the goals and derision
for the linesmen. The brilliant spontaneity of the pitch had been replaced by the predictable paranoia and pomposity of the bar-fly commentators. Football’s a way to reinforce that deep-rooted feeling that the world is against you. It’s yet another reason to be indignant and that, here, is our favourite pastime. There’s certainly enough to be indignant about. It’s just that there are more serious things than a phantom offside or a disallowed goal that should arouse our powerless
self-righteousness
.

Then I saw Santagata walking towards the bar where I was sitting. He came in and shouted his order when he was barely through the door. He greeted a couple of people and took the tiny tazzina in his hand. I noticed how fat his fingers were as they held the petite handle of his cup. Close up, his face looked mean. Either his nose was too wide or his mouth was too narrow. He shouted for a glass of acqua which was immediately poured out for him and put on the counter. He slapped a couple of coins on the counter, the metal making a loud crack as he did so, and walked out without saying another word. I watched him walk back to his stall, nodding at Davide Pace to say he had returned.

I took a piece of paper out of my pocket and looked at the number. I dialled it and listened to it ring, watching Santagata reaching for his pocket. I placed my dictaphone next to my ear. It rang for five rings before a gruff voice came on the line. ‘Pronto.’

‘Salve,’ I said, ‘you left your number with my secretary. I’m just returning your call.’

‘Who is this?’

I made up a name and a company.

‘You must have the wrong number.’ The voice was harsh and impatient.

‘So who am I speaking to?’

There was a pause before he said goodbye and hung up. I stopped the dictaphone and listened again. The conversation was so short it was over in less than two seconds. I listened once more and then put the dictaphone in my pocket and called Bragantini.

I arranged to see him at his house. He let me in and I told him I had something I wanted him to listen to.

‘What’s that?’ He sounded distracted, almost uninterested.

‘I’ve got a recording of a voice you might recognise. It’s just an idea.’

‘I told you, it’s over.’

‘Just listen,’ I said, putting the dictaphone on the table.

Our short conversation was played back. The man the other end only said a few words.

‘Allora?’ I asked. ‘Could that be the man that called you, who threatened you after the first fire?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said impatiently. ‘It could be. I don’t know. When they phoned me it lasted a few seconds, just like that.’ He seemed defeated, like he had given up.

‘Does it sound like him?’ I asked again.

‘I don’t know.’ He told me again to drop round my expenses. It was a way of reminding me that my commission was over, that the case, for him, was closed.

I showed him the photograph I had of Santagata. He shook his head curtly like he was warding off some street vendor.

I drove round to Lombardi’s place. He was the only other person I knew who had received a threatening phone call. I hoped he would be more helpful than Bragantini.

As I walked in I saw him slicing some coppa for a customer, his left hand moving backwards and forwards like he was
rowing. Slender slices fell away, and he caught the upper edge with a small clip and laid them out flat. It looked like something he had done all his life, something he could do without even watching his hands.

‘Some culatello as well?’ he asked as he folded up the edges of the aluminium foil over the coppa.

The customer agreed and Lombardi reached for the culatello under the transparent plastic bar. ‘This is really optimum quality,’ he said proudly as he placed it on the squat needles of the slicer. The machine began whirring and he started rowing again.

As he was slicing he looked up and saw me. ‘Buongiorno,’ he said.

I raised a hand and smiled at him.

Once the customer had left, he came round to the side of the bar. He made a gesture to say he would have shaken hands but that they weren’t clean. I told him I had a recording of a voice he might be interested in. I put the dictaphone on the transparent counter and pressed play. I watched his face as he listened: he was grimacing in concentration.

‘Is that the man that threatened you?’

He raised his eyebrows and his shoulders. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t tell. It was a year ago and that’, he pointed at the dictaphone, ‘was so short.’

The photograph wasn’t familiar to him either. I nodded, knowing I would have to go down a different route.

‘Some prosciutto?’ he asked jovially.

‘Thank you.’

‘Coppa, culatello, gambetto?’

I threw my fingers in the air and he took one at random.
He went through the usual routine, placing it on the slicer and starting his one-handed rowing.

‘That’s more than enough,’ I said after a few seconds.

He kept going, ignoring me. ‘Ecco,’ he said eventually, passing me a thick A4-size folder of aluminium.

I passed him a twenty but he tutted. ‘It’s a present for your family.’

‘That’s very kind,’ I said, not telling him that I didn’t have any.

He shrugged like it was no big deal. ‘I’m fortunate. Business is good. You know, everyone’s talking incessantly about the economic crisis, but people round here will never give up eating prosciutto. They would rather go without shoes than without ham. I’ve got roughly the same job security as an undertaker.’ He laughed gently at his own grim joke. ‘Death and ham, they’re the only certainties around here.’

‘Who’s your supplier?’ I asked. I had always been amazed that for an area that eats so much ham, you never see any pigs in the fields.

‘I am. That’s the only way to make real money in this line. If I didn’t raise my own pigs, I would be nothing more than a shopkeeper. I would just be selling someone else’s product. This way, I’m responsible for it. I know it’s the best quality because I’ve raised it with my own hands.’ He held out his palms to me and shook them to underline the point.

That’s what I like about this part of the world. It’s so sophisticated but earthy at the same time. Even the fine flavours of a delicatessen are just an extension of a farm.

‘Buon appetito,’ he said, raising his right palm to his shoulder as I turned to walk out.

I sat in the car and called an old friend who was still with the force. He had a family to support, which meant that he would sometimes look things up for me in return for some financial gratitude.

‘Marco?’

‘Sì.’

‘It’s Casta.’

‘Salve. How you doing?’

‘Not bad. I’ve got a scent and I’m looking for the prey.’

‘What’s the scent exactly?’

‘A number plate.’

‘That it?’

I gave him the numbers from Santagata’s Fiat and heard him repeating them under his breath. ‘I’ll call you back,’ he said. ‘It normally takes a while.’

I parked and wandered around the city aimlessly. Eventually I felt my phone vibrating and pulled it out. It was Marco.

‘Got a pen?’

‘Got a memory. Go on.’

‘It’s registered to a guy called Antonio Santagata.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘So what do you need?’

‘The address.’

‘Via Volturno is what it says here.’

‘Number?’

‘53.’

The road to the Agip station where I had met Gaia was full of afternoon traffic. I sat in the car inching forwards and feeling frustrated at not having a positive ID on Santagata’s voice and face. So far all I really had was someone buying petrol and passing it on to a friend. The friend didn’t appear particularly friendly, but that was no crime.

I parked at the far end of the forecourt and walked towards the booth where she was serving customers. Most of them seemed to know her; they stood there talking and laughing with her as they paid for their petrol. I was surprised to find myself feeling excluded somehow as she offered each of them her happy, honest smile. I stood at the back of the queue and she didn’t notice me until I was right in front of her.

‘Salve,’ she said, her smile more contained than it had been for other customers.

I had the photo of Pace ready and passed her the phone across the counter. She looked at it briefly then nodded.

‘You found him then?’ she said in a low voice.

‘He came forward.’

‘I guess that’s that then.’ She said it like she wanted to be contradicted.

‘There is something else.’ I looked over my shoulder and saw one other customer in the booth choosing some chocolate. He didn’t seem to be listening. I leant closer
towards her. ‘I need to check something out and I kind of need company.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve got to go and scout out a restaurant. If I go on my own, I stand out. People are suspicious. If I go with a woman, well, it looks normal. They don’t notice me.’

‘You need me for cover?’ She sounded almost offended.

‘Il Cucchiaio tonight at eight?’

‘OK,’ she said. We stared at each other for a second longer than necessary and I walked out feeling mildly euphoric.

I drove home and called Il Cucchiaio. I wanted to check that it did what every other restaurant did: take a number with the booking. I walked over to my desk and looked in the phone book. It rang for a long time before a sleepy voice came on the line.

‘Il Cucchiaio.’

‘I was hoping to book a table for later tonight.’

‘How many?’

‘Two.’

‘What time?’

‘Eight.’

‘Two for eight o’clock. Can I take a name and a number?’

‘Renzo Rinaldi.’ The name rolled off my tongue so easily it sounded real. ‘Zero five two one. Fifty-eight, seventy-four, sixty-two. Is that right? Hang on, sorry, I’ve just moved house and don’t always get it right. Could you just read that back to me?’

‘Zero five two one. Fifty-eight, seventy-four, sixty-two.’

‘That sounds right, thank you. See you later.’ I hung up and stared at the phone. It was a long shot, but if Bragantini’s
housekeeper had been booking tables there, they must have had his number. And if they had his number, the chances were someone else had got hold of it.