‘Er, non parlo italiano.’
There is a pause.
‘English?’
‘Yes. English. I speak English. I’m Irish. Sono irlandese.’
‘Oh.’ Another pause. ‘Irlandese.’
Jimmy isn’t sure but even after these few brief seconds… does he detect a change of tone?
‘Yes, er… si.’ What does he think he’s doing? He got one of the students across the hall to come over and write a few phrases down in this notebook. But the hope was that Signora Bonacci might have a bit of English herself and that they could muddle through.
‘What I can… what… what is it you want?’
The voice is young, female. Signorina Bonacci?
‘My name is Jimmy Gilroy,’ he says, swivelling in his chair. ‘I am a journalist.’ The next bit he already feels guilty about, because – he doesn’t know – is it even true? ‘I am investigating the air crash three years ago in which Gianni Bonacci was killed.’
‘O dio mio.’
Jimmy winces. ‘I’m sorry.’
There is a long silence, and then, ‘I am Francesca Bonacci. Gianni’s daughter.’
‘Hello.’ Jimmy winces again. How young is she? A teenager? A kid? It’s hard to tell. Bonacci was forty-five when he died. ‘May I ask how old you are, Francesca?’
‘Seventeen.’
He needs to be careful here.
‘Look, I’m sorry to disturb you in this way, but… I would like to speak with your mother sometime, if that is possible. Does she speak English?’
‘No. She does not speak any English.’
This sounds slightly defensive, even a bit confrontational. Has he offended her? ‘Could I ask you some questions?’ he then says, with nowhere else to go. ‘Or ask her some questions through you?’
‘What kind of questions? What is it you are investigating, mister, er…?’
‘Gilroy. But please, call me Jimmy.’ He pauses. ‘I’m not sure what I’m investigating, Francesca, and that’s the truth. I realise this must be very painful for you, and I apologise for the intrusion, but I just need to gather some information first before I can -’
‘Gather?’
‘What? Er… collect. Get.’ He looks around. Where was he? ‘Before I can…’ He trails off, unsure how to proceed.
‘Accuse.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Accuse. Before you can accuse somebody. Is that what you mean?’
Jimmy looks again at the notebook in his hand, stares at the spidery scrawl, as though it were some type of code, something he could use to turn this situation around. But the fact is, there’s nothing left here to decipher – these are just simple phrases and he has already used them up.
He tosses the notebook onto the desk.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, almost to himself, ‘maybe. But accuse who, and of what?’
Francesca Bonacci scoffs at this. ‘Now you are looking for answers? Now? What about three years ago, eh?’
That’s exactly what Maria Monaghan said to him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘When we wanted answers to those questions, my mother, my uncles, the lawyers, no one would talk to us, in Ireland, no one would give us any information. We found what was the phrase, someone told me, a brick wall.’
She’s angry. It also strikes Jimmy how remarkably self-possessed she seems to be for seventeen. But at the same time, what is she saying?
‘I don’t understand, Francesca. Questions? Answers? If what happened was an accident -’
‘Oh, per piacere,’ – from the tone he takes this to mean oh, please – ‘you really believe that?’
‘Well, it’s what I’m trying to find out.’
There is silence for a moment. Then she says, ‘What is your e-mail address?’
His impulse is to ask why, but he just gives it to her. This could well be a step in the right direction.
‘You will need a translator,’ she says.
He’s not sure what this means. Something she is going to send him?
‘OK. No problem.’
‘I must go now,’ she says.
He doesn’t argue. ‘Thank you, Francesca.’
The line goes dead.
Jimmy closes the phone and puts it down. He sits back and stares at the computer screen.
He’s exhausted.
It took him over an hour and several phone calls to locate that number. This was followed by an awkward twenty minutes with the student from across the hall, who was clearly hungover and kept insisting it’d be easier if he made the call himself. But Jimmy couldn’t take the chance.
Then… questions, answers, a brick wall… you really believe that? Bonacci’s widow and daughter making the same claim that Larry Bolger made?
A few minutes later things get even knottier when he hears the ping of an incoming e-mail. It’s from Francesca. There is no message, just a single hyperlink. He clicks on it and his browser opens up onto the homepage of what looks like an Italian news website.
At first it makes no sense to him. It’s in Italian. He doesn’t understand any of it. He considers bothering the student across the hall again when suddenly something comes into focus for him. He recognises a few names clustered together – Enrico Mattei, Giuseppe Pinelli, Aldo Moro, Marco Biagi, Carlo Giuliani. As far as he remembers, from things he’s read and seen over the years, these men were all high-profile victims of political assassination.
In some form or other. At least in theory.
At which point he realises this must be a website devoted to, or specialising in, Italian conspiracy theories. Aldo Moro, for example, was the ex-prime minister who was kidnapped and killed in 1978, allegedly by the Red Brigades. Enrico Mattei was a politician who challenged the oligopoly of the international oil markets and died in a mysterious plane crash in the early 1960s.
Jimmy flicks around the site for a while, scans various chunks of text at random. Eventually, in a sidebar, he comes across Gianni Bonacci’s name. He is unable to decipher the text that surrounds it, but the very presence of Bonacci’s name here, on a website of this nature, surely indicates that -
What?
When Jimmy Googled Bonacci’s name before, he filtered out any stuff that wasn’t in English. The stuff he did look at was UN-related and fairly uninteresting. He Googles the name again now and sees that there are references to him on dozens of Italian sites, many of which – at a glance – also contain references to Mattei, Moro and others. In addition to this, he repeatedly comes across words such as omicidio, assassinio, vittima, cospirazione.
From what Jimmy can make out, Bonacci would be fairly low down on any league table of political assassinations, but the mere fact that his death is perceived by some people in this way at all comes as quite a shock.
And there must be a reason for it.
He swivels his chair around, looks across the room at his bookshelves.
Mustn’t there?
Or is even posing this question a first and dangerous step into the delusional, self-perpetuating fog that is the mindset of the conspiracy theorist?
He swivels back around.
It doesn’t matter, though. It’s fine. Someone else’s perception of the truth – however outlandish or irrational – is a valid starting point for any investigation.
He sets up a reply to Francesca’s e-mail. He thinks about what to say. He starts typing. But when he is half a sentence in, his buzzer sounds.
Damn.
He gets up and goes over to the intercom, presses the button. ‘Yeah. Who is it?’
‘Hi, Jimmy. It’s Phil Sweeney.’
Jimmy closes his eyes for a second. He turns away from the intercom. He groans.