Michael Dibdin - Blood rain

Zen walked over and inspected the thing. The cover was stamped with black letters on a silver ground reading ‘Toshiba Satellite’. A paper label stuck alongside, at a slight angle, said, ‘Property of Uptime Systems Inc.’. Someone had added, in a rounded hand, ‘Carla Arduini’.

He stretched out one hand towards the computer, then drew it sharply back. An ambulance siren, identical to the one he had heard at Carla’s apartment earlier, was just audible in the distance. Zen located his mobile phone, dialled the DIA headquarters and asked to be put through to Baccio Sinico. The younger officer sounded suitably concerned, agreed that Zen was doing the right thing by taking no chances, and promised rapid response.

Twenty minutes later, in the bar across the street, Zen watched the convoy of police vehicles gathering in front of his apartment building. Figures in full-body suits, with huge helmets and metal pincers, descended and disappeared inside. Others carried a large trunk-like container supported on two metal poles. Sirens wailed and blue lights flashed. Another ten minutes went by before Zen’s cellphone beeped.

‘Where are you, dottore?’ asked Baccio Sinico.

‘Out and about,’ Zen replied.

‘You were right about the computer. An initial scan suggests that the works have been removed and replaced with half a kilo of explosive, detonated by opening the lid.’

‘Well, I’m glad that you lads didn’t go to all that trouble for nothing.’

‘But where are you? You need protection! We need to get you into a secure…’

I’m fine, Baccio. I have an appointment. I’ll call you later.’

Zen checked his watch. It was ten to four. He paid his bill and walked down towards the sea.

During his years of official disgrace following the Aldo Moro affair, Aurelio Zen had been posted to a city in Umbria to investigate another kidnapping case involving a local industrial tycoon. While he was there, one of his colleagues at the Questura had recounted a stock story which the Perugians told about their neighbours and traditional rivals from the town of Foligno, about thirty kilometres away in the valley below their mountain stronghold. The people of Foligno, it was alleged, thought like this: Europe was the centre of the world, the Mediterranean was the centre of Europe, Italy was the centre of the Mediterranean, and Foligno was the geographical centre of Italy. In the centre of Foligno was the Piazza del Duomo, and on this piazza there was a bar, in the centre of which there was a snooker table. The hole in the centre of this table, at the centre of all the other centres, was therefore the original omphalos, navel and origin of the universe.

Catania was exactly the opposite, Zen reflected as he picked his way across the main road bordering the port area. A landfall on the eastward brink of an island which had always been marginal to the interests of whichever foreigners currently controlled it, Catania had never been the centre of anything. On the contrary, it was the edge. And at the very edge of Catania stood the port, impressively walled, as though to contain the foreign contagions to which it was by its nature exposed. At one end stood the breakwater, flexed like an arm thrust out against the waves.

And today they were huge, mythical monsters breaking surface as if for the first time, visible evidence of powers and depths beyond human comprehension. A storm had passed over in the night, and although the south-easterly wind had now moderated, the seas it had raised came striding confidently ashore, only to have their determination and vigour smash into the random mass of stone blocks piled to seaward of the breakwater. Visibly perplexed and weakened, the waves shattered into futile spumes of spray and then re-formed as a contradictory scurry of surges and backwashes, their initial impetus dispersed or turned back against itself.

On one of the outlying rocks, a lone fisherman was trying his luck in the swirls of water below, protecting himself from the sun by means of a large yellow umbrella marked ‘You have a friend at the Cassio di Risparmio di Catania — the friendly bank!’ Zen clambered over the low wall of the breakwater and made his way gingerly from one boulder to another until he reached the one adjacent to the fisherman’s perch.

‘Catching anything?’ asked Zen.

The man turned around and inspected Zen briefly.

‘A few minnows. I threw them back in.’

‘What did you expect, a swordfish?’

The man smiled and gestured in a peculiarly feminine way which Zen had by now come to recognize as characteristically Sicilian. It was almost as if, since women had traditionally not been allowed out in public, the men had learned to fill the social space which they would have occupied.

‘Dottor Zen. What a pleasure.’

Zen held his eyes.

‘Are you surprised to see me?’

‘No, why? We had an arrangement.’

‘Death cancels all arrangements.’

‘Death?’ murmured Spada. ‘You mean your daughter? Forgive me for not mentioning this terrible tragedy. I thought, perhaps wrongly, that it might be painful…’

‘Not half as painful as a bomb in the face. My face.’

The man looked more and more bewildered.

‘A bomb?’

‘In the form of a laptop computer belonging to my daughter, gutted of its works, stuffed with plastic explosive and left in my apartment.’

Spada put down his fishing rod and stared at Zen. Judging by his expression, the bomb might have been meant for him.

‘I know nothing of this/ he said.

Zen raised his eyebrows.

‘I thought that the whole point of dealing with people like you was that you did know about these things.’

‘I repeat, I know nothing about this. But I will make enquiries.’

‘A lot of good your enquiries would have done me if I’d opened the lid of that computer.’

The man slashed his hand through the air.

‘What are you talking about? My friends have no interest in harming you, dottore. You’re no use to us dead.’

Zen lowered his head ironically.

‘I’m pleased to hear it. And in just what way can I be of use to you?’

Spada gestured in an awkward way.

‘It’s a question of a mutual interest, dottore. I’ve been given to understand that you want to find out who killed your daughter. Very naturally.’

‘And your interest?’

To facilitate your investigation.’

Zen smiled with an irony that was now undisguised.

‘But everyone knows that my daughter was killed by your “friends”. Why would you want to help me prove it?’

Spada picked up his rod, reeled in and then cast his line again.

‘Ah, but suppose we didn’t do it?’ he said, looking down at the water.

‘Then who did?’ demanded Zen.

‘Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?’

Zen waved his hand dramatically.

‘And you don’t know the answer to that either? I’m beginning to wonder whether I should bother taking you or your friends very seriously, Signor Spada.’

The fisherman slackened his grip on the rod in order to read the vibrations which it was transmitting.

‘If you want to find out the truth,’ he said, ‘then you’re going to need help. And for different reasons, which do not concern you, we need help from you. Perhaps we can make a deal.’

Zen gazed out across the sea with an air of complete boredom.

‘My friends didn’t kill Tonino Limina, either,’ said Spada.

The waves shattered and re-formed on the rocks beneath.

‘The Limina family have denied that their son is dead.’

‘He’s dead, all right.’

‘Then why did they deny it?’

‘Because Don Gaspare is a control freak, even though he doesn’t control anything worth a piss these days. But he doesn’t want to look bad. Plus he didn’t want the authorities taking an interest. He would have his revenge when the time came. Which it just has. Five of the Corleone clan frozen to death in a meat truck.’