The receptionist, damn her, blushed.
‘How did you know my name?’
Mindful of the desirability of preserving his professional mystique, Tony forebore to point out the framed photograph that stood on the filing cabinet, with ‘To Wanda, with all my love, Nando’ scrawled across it. Some muscle-bound meatball with a chicken perched on his shoulder.
‘Hey, once in a while you get lucky! And we just did, Wanda. Because what I just told you is true, but so far you and I are the only people who know. I imagine that l’avvocato will want to keep matters that way, which gives us a certain leverage. Are you following me? So you go and drag him back to that old desk, by main force if necessary, and impress on him that if either of us were to make the Carabinieri a party to our exclusive knowledge, then those gentlemen would no doubt issue a pressing invitation for Vincenzino to assist them with their enquiries.’
He smiled and walked to the door.
‘You make your deal, I’ll make mine.’
‘My husband’s a policeman,’ Wanda replied provocatively.
Tony just laughed.
‘Great! Let me know next time he’s working nights, and we’ll have dinner and compare notes.’
He was back in the bar he had patronised that morning, lingering over a quadruple Maker’s Mark, when Amadori phoned. The conversation did not go entirely as Tony had foreseen. Not only did l’avvocato flatly refuse to offer any money in return for Tony’s silence, still less to negotiate an appropriate sum, but proceeded to dismiss his hireling on the spot and with immediate effect, and threatened to have Speranza’s private investigator’s licence revoked for attempted extortion.
Tony switched to Jack Daniels for his second shot, feeling a need for its asperity to help him work out how to respond. This took less than five minutes. He then tossed back the bourbon and marched down the street to the junction with Via Rizzoli, where one of those museum pieces from an unimaginably primitive past, a public telephone box, had been retained as a heritage item. Tony stepped in and dialled Carabinieri headquarters. The response was a recorded woman’s voice.
‘Welcome to the Carabinieri helpline for the province of Bologna. If you know the extension number of the person you are calling, you may dial it at any time. To report a crime, please press 1. Alternatively, hang up now and dial 112 to reach our pronto intervento section. For information on our products and services, please press 2. To learn about career opportunities with the force, please press 3. To speak to a representative, please press 4 or hold the line.’
Tony Speranza did so, and was rewarded with an endless silence punctated at intervals by a different voice telling him that his call was important to them but that all operators were currently busy and the approximate wait time would be nine minutes. He slammed the phone down and called the Polizia di Stato. A surly male voice answered almost immediately. Tony wrapped the lapel of his greatcoat over his mouth and spoke rapidly in a generalised approximation of the local dialect.
‘Listen, I know who shot that professor this afternoon. Name’s Vincenzo Amadori, the lawyer’s son. Can’t give mine, but he’s your man all right. I’ve got proof of that.’
He left the booth and walked quickly away. The police might trace the call eventually, but thanks to his gloves there would be no prints. Once the judicial machinery ground into motion then il grande avvocato Amadori might well decide that it had been rash of him to dismiss Tony’s original offer. In fact, when the time came he might well raise the starting price, just to teach the smug bastard that you didn’t fuck with Tony Speranza.
26
The original thirty minutes within which Zen had been told that he could expect to hear word of Gemma’s condition stretched to an hour and more, divided between a series of coffees in a bar opposite the hospital complex and smoke breaks outside one or another of the doors, where a louring dusk was already well advanced. And when he finally lost patience on his fifth return to the desk, where a different orderly had now come on duty, and demanded to see Gemma at once, he was informed that she was no longer there.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She discharged herself.’
‘Where did she go?’
The orderly shrugged.
‘I have no idea.’
‘Then let me speak to someone who does.’
‘And who are you, signore?’
Zen decided that this was not the moment for worrying about the niceties of his civil status.
‘Her husband.’
‘Un momento.’
It was actually about twenty minutes before Zen was directed to an office on the second floor of the building where he was greeted by a tired-looking young man in a white coat.
‘Signor Santini?’ he said.
Zen nodded.
‘Your wife left the hospital twenty minutes ago.’
‘And you permitted this?’
The doctor shrugged.
‘We have no power to detain patients. There were certain additional tests I would have preferred to perform, but she refused them.’
‘Where was she going?’
‘I have no idea. Home, presumably.’
‘Home?’
The doctor looked at him curiously.
‘Back to Lucca, signore. Where she lives.’
‘Was she in a fit state to drive?’
‘I couldn’t offer a qualified opinion on that question.’
Zen jerked his head angrily.
‘If it had been your wife, would you have let her take the wheel?’
‘No.’
Zen turned away feeling utterly cut adrift. He called Gemma’s mobile. No reply. He was walking down the stairs to the foyer when, with a lift of his heart, he heard the muffled chirps of his own phone. But it turned out to be Bruno Nanni.
‘ Buona sera, capo. I’m so sorry to hear about your wife’s accident. Those damn bikes can be as dangerous as a car. I had a near miss myself just the other day. I hope she’s all right.’
‘Oh yes, just minor scrapes and bruises. In fact she’s already gone home.’
‘Ah, right. So are you free this evening, by any chance?’
‘Why?’
‘Some interesting information has just come in. I don’t want to discuss it on the phone, but it might potentially be an important lead and I think you should know about it as soon as possible. Is there any chance we might meet a bit later on?’
‘Why not? God knows I’ve got nothing better to do.’
‘There’s a place in the university district called La Carozza. Five minutes walk from your hotel. Nothing fancy, just good pizzas and simple dishes, but we can talk freely there.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Around nine?’
‘I’ll be there.’
But it soon began to look as though he wouldn’t. As he crossed the hospital foyer, heading for the taxi rank, he was approached by a young man wearing the plainest of plain clothes who identified himself as an officer of the Carabinieri.
‘You are Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen.’
It was not a question, so Zen did not reply.
‘I have been ordered to place you under provisional arrest and take you to regional headquarters for questioning.’
Zen was so astonished that he could only murmur, ‘On what charge?’
‘Suspicion of attempted murder.’
27
Arancid darkness had fallen by the time Romano Rinaldi set out in search of sustenance for his soul. The cold that had gripped the city all week seemed if anything to have intensified, so it was perfectly natural that he should be wearing a scarf drawn up over his nose to ward off dangerous germs and potential lung infections, and coincidentally concealing his famous face. He had been worried about slipping out of the hotel unobserved, but ironically enough all attention in the lobby had been focused on two reporters pretending to be police detectives who were trying to browbeat the assistant manager into giving them a pass key to Signor Rinaldi’s suite, and he felt reasonably confident that none of the other pedestrians trudging about the streets with an air of aimless intent would recognise him. As for the locales he planned to cruise, they would be dimly lit and packed with students, addicts, artists, anarchists and suchlike demographic flotsam and jetsam that definitely didn’t form part of the core viewership of Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta. Then, once he had restored his spirits, he would be off to that villa in Umbria, never to return to this accursed town.