He held up his hand.
‘Now, you may think that the whole community will form a circle and protect you faithfully whatever the cost. That would be a mistake. People round here have a healthy respect for power and patronage, but they don’t have any more time for sadistic crackheads than I do. You’ll be on your own and on the run, Giorgio. Even your friends may eventually start wondering how much your friendship is worth. Sooner or later there’ll be a fire-fight at some ruined farmhouse where you’ve been holed up in misery for months like a kidnap hostage yourself, and you will come out of it either dead or facing a life sentence without parole in that high-security hostel in Terni.’
Giorgio gestured his boredom.
‘This is just talk, Nicola. The plain fact is I don’t need you any more.’
He approached, knife held out. It was then that Mantega had his supreme inspiration.
‘Maybe not, but you do need money. And I’m talking about serious money, the kind that will buy friends and influence people or spirit you away abroad if things get too hot here. That’s what you need, Giorgio, and I know where you can get it. Therefore you need me.’
Even Mantega didn’t really believe that this last-minute appeal was going to work, but he felt he owed it to his reputation as a notaio di fiducia to give it a whirl. In the event, it stopped Giorgio in his tracks. He must be even more cash-strapped than I thought, Mantega reflected. This didn’t entirely surprise him. Giorgio’s eagerness when Mantega had suggested Peter Newman as a kidnapping prospect indicated that his finances had been at a low point. Since he had chosen to kill his hostage rather than ransom him, with the additional costs of the operation he might well be close to broke by now. Despite their operational efficiency and ruthless enforcement methods, Giorgio and his associates hadn’t progressed much beyond the ‘feast or famine’ approach of the historical brigands. Whatever money they had, they spent, then looked around for more.
Mantega stood up and smiled widely.
‘Put away that knife, Giorgio, and I’ll tell you how you can make yourself a sackful of cash in a week or two, and at no risk whatsoever. Because the beauty of this scheme is that it isn’t even illegal, strictly speaking.’
Giorgio attempted a contemptuous laugh.
‘What kind of bullshit is this?’
‘A very easy and lucrative kind,’ Mantega returned with just the right professional polished ease. ‘Draw up a chair, Giorgio. Let’s get rich!’
Aurelio Zen stayed at his desk until ten o’clock that night, feeling more and more like the captain of a doomed vessel who is reluctantly observing the tradition of going down with his ship. Should he contact the investigating magistrate and advise the arrest of Nicola Mantega and Dionisio Carduzzi, both of them prima facie material witnesses and probable accessories to murder, the former before the fact and the latter after, as the call-catcher and go-between for the man known as Giorgio? Or should he hold off and wait for the even more opportune moment which all his instincts told him was not far off?
In the end he decided that he was too tired to make an effective decision. He walked back through the brooding darkness to his apartment, packed an overnight bag, then phoned the Questura’s car pool and arranged for a vehicle to drive him first to the Cosenza Nord service station on the autostrada, where he bought a panino and a litre of mineral water, and then up the spectacular highway that snaked up out of the Crati flood plain before piercing the range of mountains in a series of tunnels and viaducts and twisting steeply down to the coast and the main north-south railway line.
It was a mild night, and Zen spent the hour or so he had to wait sitting outside on a station bench eating his ham and cheese roll, smelling the heady perfume of the sea breezes and listening to the distant hushing of waves on the beach. Leaving Cosenza felt like escaping from a locked room. By the time the Conca d’Oro night sleeper from Palermo pulled in at twenty to one in the morning, he was quite content to stretch out on his bed in a spacious Excelsior compartment and fall asleep for five and a half dreamless hours.
It was only when he was ejected from this sanctuary into the commuter rush hour at Rome that he realised to what extent he had become a provincial after just a few months in Calabria. He found it both physically difficult and emotionally repugnant to battle his way through the riptide of people coming at him from every direction, empty eyes trained like a gun on the personal zone immediately in front of them, attention absorbed by the loud songs or little voices in their heads, fingers fiddling with iPods and mobile phones, all oblivious of each other and their surroundings, marching relentlessly onwards like the ranks of the damned.
In the middle of the vast concourse of Termini station Zen gave up and came to a dazed halt. One of the zombies immediately approached. He automatically placed a cluster of small coins in its outstretched hand.
‘This way, Dottor Zen,’ it said.
‘How did you recognise me?’
‘We obtained a photograph.’
A Fiat saloon was illegally parked at the kerb. The man opened the rear door for Zen, then got into its equivalent on the far side.
‘Your document, please,’ he said as they drove away.
Zen handed over his police identification card.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To a house where you will meet the person you came to see. Our journey time will be approximately forty minutes, depending on the traffic. There will then be a short delay before the subject arrives.’
‘For security reasons?’
‘No, he wouldn’t agree to an earlier meeting. He’s an elderly man and doesn’t like making an early start.’
They drove south-east out of the city along Via Tuscolana, across the ring road and up into the foothills of the Colli Albani. When they reached Frascati, Zen’s escort announced that they were ahead of time and suggested stopping for a coffee. There were no parking spaces available on the edge of the main square, so the driver left their vehicle in the traffic lane of the main street outside the busiest and glossiest bar. One of the traffic wardens blew his whistle shrilly and came striding over, but the driver said a few words to him and the official slunk off. Frascati had been a playground for the rich and powerful since Etruscan times and the locals had learned a thing or two about dealing with such people.
Inside the bar, Zen was left to fend for himself. He ordered a cappuccino and an attractive-looking pastry and, having consumed both, eyed his minders with cold disdain. They stood at a distance, their mobile phones laid on the counter like pistols, apparently ignoring him although acutely aware of his presence. The driver, the younger and taller of the pair, was lean and hard, all prick and muscle. His superior was almost bald, with a superficially benign face, strongly featured and slightly inflated in appearance, like a wiser and sadder Mussolini.
Zen paid and walked outside to light his first cigarette of the day. As he smoked, he took in the scene all around with sharpened pleasure, eyeballing a sensational woman cradling a bottle of mineral water to her bosom like a baby. She gave him a lingering glance before moving on, the cheeks of her buttocks colluding furtively as she strolled away. Then he heard a familiar squillo and immediately reverted to his official self, striding up and down the pavement clutching his mobile phone like a life-support system.
‘Arnone, sir. You ordered me to report any developments.’