The waiter snatched the dish of pasta from the counter and handed Rinaldi a piece of paper.
‘Nine orders for the large party. All to be ready together, so move it!’
35
It was a tribute to the vigorous if crude skills of Vincenzo Amadori’s hair stylist that when he entered La Carrozza, neither Bruno nor Rodolfo recognised him at first. Vincenzo had spent much of the afternoon at a hair salon in an unfashionable suburb having his rug cut, dyed pink and spiked in retro-punk mode. Spotting Rodolfo and his Ruritanian tart at their usual table, Vincenzo slouched over and plonked himself down.
‘Got the bag?’
Rodolfo jerked a thumb at the corner behind his chair.
‘Right then, I’ll be off,’ said Vincenzo, getting to his feet again.
‘Oh, calm down!’ Rodolfo replied. ‘And sit down. No one’s going to pick you up here looking like that. In either sense of the phrase. So stay and have a drink with us, at least. Flavia and I have something to celebrate.’
He signalled to the waiter to bring another glass. Vincenzo leered at the bottle.
‘Veuve Clicquot? Sort of pricey shit my parents and their set drink to impress each other. What the fuck’s this all about? You win the lottery or something?’
‘In a way,’ Rodolfo replied with a long look at Flavia. ‘We just got engaged.’
Vincenzo slewed his head like a startled horse. The extra glass arrived, and Rodolfo did the honours.
‘Here’s to all of us!’ he proposed gaily.
He and Flavia clinked glasses. Vincenzo downed his dose in one, scowled and lit a cigarette.
‘You don’t seem very happy for us,’ Flavia remarked.
Vincenzo shrugged.
‘For you, maybe. Not for me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Other people’s happiness brings me bad luck.’
A soggy silence followed.
‘So what exactly is all this about?’ asked Rodolfo, jerking a finger at Vincenzo’s hairdo and a thumb at the bag of clothing he had brought.
Vincenzo drew a small bottle of some clear spirit from his pocket and had a long slug.
‘I told you, fuckwit!’
‘You said that the private detective your parents hired to check up on you claims to have evidence that you committed a crime. What crime?’
Vincenzo squirmed uneasily in his chair.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Meaning you don’t trust us.’
‘It doesn’t matter, that’s all. Okay, it was the thing that happened today. That prof at the uni got plugged.’
‘You didn’t do that!’ Rodolfo exclaimed.
‘Of course I didn’t! Even if the cops find me, they’ll never be able to prove a thing. I just don’t need the hassle, that’s all. That’s why I’m going to lie low for a while.’’
‘Can’t you prove that you were somewhere else at the time?’
‘I was asleep.’
‘Alone?’
‘Listen, I didn’t fucking do it, okay? This time I’m completely and utterly innocent.’
Rodolfo nodded seriously.
‘I know you are,’ he said. ‘You see…’
‘This time?’ Flavia put in.
Vincenzo gave her a hard look, as though recognising her as an equal. He’s never looked at me like that, Rodolfo thought.
‘Well, I did Curti! I’ve been telling everyone that until I’m blue in the face, but of course the bastards don’t believe me when it’s the truth. Instead they try and nail me over this lie.’
‘So you killed Lorenzo Curti,’ Rodolfo remarked, just to remind them both that he was still there.
‘Sure. I’d been carrying that Parmesan cutter around for weeks. My first idea was to carve up the paintwork on his car when he was at one of the games down here and leave the knife at the scene to make a statement.’
He laughed raucously.
‘Get under his skin a bit, know what I mean? But I never had a chance. He always had one of his minders with him, or some business buddy.’
He jerked back another drink.
‘But that night in Ancona everything came together. After the game I hung around the VIP entrance to the stadium, and for once Curti came out alone. He knew my father and he’d seen me around the house back when I used to live there. So when I told him that I’d missed the fan bus and asked for a lift back to Bologna he waved me into his Audi. He came off the autostrada at San Lazzaro to let me out, and when he pulled over I let him have it. Then I stuck the cheese cutter in his chest and walked home. Nice touch, don’t you think? The Parmesan knife, I mean.’
‘What did you talk about on the drive back?’ Flavia enquired.
Vincenzo stared at her in utter bewilderment.
‘What the fuck’s that got to do with it?’
‘Where did you get the gun?’ Rodolfo demanded, in an intentionally ironic parody of the typical commissario di polizia, given to fixed ideas and the third degree. Vincenzo laughed uneasily and flashed one of his rare radiant smiles, switching effortlessly into his alternative persona as someone gifted with beauty to burn, who could not only get away with anything but make you long for him to try.
‘I came by it,’ he said, waving his hand as though to suggest that firearms regularly fell into it by some process that he did not understand but was powerless to prevent.
‘Oh come on!’
‘No, really. There was this old guy in the bar, right?’
‘Where?’
‘At Ancona, after the game. He was taking photographs of me and the boys with that camera I showed you and I sussed that he must be the snooper my parents had hired. They hadn’t told me, natch, but the housemaid gave me a heads-up. So when the guy goes to pee I go in after him and smash his head against the wall, then go through his pockets. And I find the camera, very nice job too, full of digital shots of us, and also a pistol.’
Vincenzo frowned.
‘And then someone took it! From our apartment. I’d hidden it behind the books in your bedroom.’
He shot Rodolfo a glance.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Then who?’
‘The private detective, of course,’ said Flavia. ‘He must have been keeping a watch on the house, because he followed me back to mine and then came round later and tried to pump me for information.’
‘You never told me that!’ Rodolfo protested.
‘I thought it might disturb you after your bad news at the university. Anyway, Dragos must have recognised your friend here when he attacked him, then raided the apartment when you were both out and taken his gun back.’
‘Who’s Dragos?’ both men asked in unison.
‘Oh, that’s just my name for him. I thought he was a secret policeman.’
Vincenzo drained the last drops from his bottle.
‘Anyway, the only thing for sure is that this Ugo business had nothing to do with me. I didn’t even know the old fart. Was he really famous?’
‘In some circles,’ Rodolfo replied airily.
He was tempted to end Vincenzo’s anxieties by confessing the truth, but that would start a crack in his relationship with Flavia that could never be made good. He decided to let Vincenzo sweat it out overnight and contact him in the morning. Besides, there was just the remotest possibility that he was telling the truth about the Curti killing. The pistol definitely existed, after all, and he had presumably concealed it in Rodolfo’s room to throw suspicion on him if it were discovered in the course of a police search. No, he didn’t owe Vincenzo any favours.
A gale of laughter swept over from the large table in the centre of the room.
‘Who are these wankers?’ yelled Vincenzo, whirling around. ‘More happy fucks! Jesus, my luck’s certainly run out tonight.’
‘It’s that young girl’s birthday,’ said Flavia. ‘They’re just having fun.’
‘Fun? Fun? You think that’s what life’s about, having fun?’
‘Then what?’
Vincenzo’s lips crinkled in a contemptuous sneer.
‘Stopping other people having fun,’ he said. ‘That’s what it’s all about, sweetheart.’