Michael Dibdin - Blood rain

The voice was deep, the accent strong, the man perhaps about fifty.

‘Is that all that Spada’s brother discovered?’ demanded Zen.

‘Isn’t it enough?’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘There was some damage to some of the exhibits, and the opened window.’

Zen deliberately paused before replying.

‘You asked what conclusion I would draw from what you’ve just told me, Don Gaspare. The answer is that I would have come to the same conclusion as you, if I hadn’t been assured by an eye-witness that another man had also been killed in the museum that evening.’

Several men laughed this time, even more sardonically.

‘I’m afraid we’re not in a position to call this eye-witness of yours, Signor Zen, even supposing that he existed.’

‘You don’t need to call him. And he does exist. He’s sitting in front of you.’

‘So you admit you were there.’

‘Certainly I was there. But so were two other men. One of them was strangling Spada when I surprised them. He drew a gun and I shot him dead. His partner escaped through the window. Evidently he returned later, turned off the burglar alarm which I had tripped, and removed his accomplice’s body’

Another laugh, slightly less assured this time.

‘Why should we believe this?’

‘Don Gaspare, Spada was strangled by a professional. Not the clumsy two-handed grip you see at the movies, but with one hand gripping the windpipe and the other pressed into the back of the neck. It’s hard work. Look at my hands. I’m a bureaucrat, I work at a desk. Spada was strong, vigorous and at least ten years younger than me. There’s no way I could have strangled him like that, still less tied him up before.’

A dense silence formed.

‘So you’re saying that another clan killed Spada? Who, the Corleonesi?’

‘They didn’t kill Spada. And I don’t think they killed Tonino either.’

The blow came first as an outrageous surprise. It was only when he hit the floor that Zen began to feel pain, and to taste the dense salty blood in his mouth. Hands picked him up with the chair he was bound to and set him upright again.

‘Don’t you dare mention my son’s name again!’ the voice said, very close to Zen’s face now.

Zen spat some bloody saliva on the floor and took a few deep breaths.

‘As you mentioned, Don Gaspare, I’m a policeman. I know how interrogations are conducted. I know all the moves and all the methods, hard and soft. If you want to go hard, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. But if you want the truth, we’re going to have to cooperate. You know things that I don’t know, and I know things that you don’t know. If you beat me up every time I mention one of them, we’re not going to get very far.’

A sound of shuffling feet.

‘All right, then! Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘Spada was killed by an agent of the Carabinieri’s Special Operations Group, the one I shot. His name was Alfredo Ferraro. His partner, who got away, is called Roberto Lessi. They wanted to dispose of Spada before he could talk to me, but they wanted to do so in a way which would make it look like a classic Mafia execution.’

He paused.

‘That’s how you do it, isn’t it? If you’re going to kill me, later tonight, you’ll strangle me.’

‘We might,’ the voice conceded lightly. ‘You seem very calm about the prospect.’

‘Don Gaspare, in the past week my daughter has been murdered and my mother has died. My own life no longer seems as important as it once did.’

There was a brief whisper of indrawn breath.

‘I had heard about your daughter’s death, of course, but not about your mother’s. I offer my sincere condolences.’

‘I appreciate it, Don Gaspare. Now let’s get back to the death of your son. You won’t hit me if I call him that?’

‘Goon.’

‘Before she died, Judge Corinna Nunziatella made a photocopy of her file on the so-called Limina affair. She evidently feared that the papers would be officially “disappeared”, as indeed happened. A handwritten note at the end of the copy mentions the names of the two ROS agents who murdered Spada. Apparently they took possession of the original file. The copy, however, was left in my safe-keeping, and after Nunziatella’s death I opened it. The evidence it contains is indirect, and at first sight not very striking, but taken in conjunction with the other recent events, I think it indicates quite clearly who killed Ton… who killed your son.’

A raucous guffaw.

‘We already know that! It was those bastards in Corleone, and we’ve already returned the compliment. We sent them a gift of some nice fresh meat from Catania! Right, lads?’

The other men all laughed loudly.

‘The Corleonesi didn’t kill your son,’ said Zen stolidly.

‘That’s ridiculous!’ snapped the other man. ‘We all know that they control Palermo — or like to think they do, at least. Tonino was found in a wagon of a train which had come from Palermo, with our family name written on the waybill. The message is clear.’

‘That train never existed.’

‘This is totally absurd! You of all people should know that! Your colleagues had it under investigation at the marshalling yard in Catania for weeks. For all I know it’s still there.’

‘A train existed,’ Zen replied, ‘and it certainly originated in Palermo. But the wagon in which your son was found was never part of it. All the indications are that it had been sitting on the siding where it was found for at least a month and possibly much longer. Your son was kidnapped in Milan on his way to Costa Rica. He was then brought back to Sicily and locked in that wagon, to which a fake waybill was attached. Once he was dead, a goods train from Palermo was stopped and backed briefly into the siding where the wagon was parked, precisely to make you and everyone else believe that this was indeed a message from Palermo.’

‘But if it wasn’t the Corleonesi, then who? And why?’

The voice was almost imploring now. Zen had gained the upper hand.

‘We’ll come to that in a minute,’ he said in a slightly condescending tone. ‘First, I’d like to discuss something else. We’ve talked about your son, Don Gaspare. What about my daughter?’

‘I already told you that that had nothing to do with us. We had no interest in killing that judge. I was informed that the DIA had closed the case, having accepted our declaration that the body on the train was not Tonino. It was, of course, but we prefer to settle our accounts in our way and in our own good time, without interference from the authorities. Anyway, they believed us. Why should we bother killing a judge who had been taken off a case which was no longer active?’

‘Nunziatella must have had other active cases, perhaps involving other clans. Maybe one of them killed her.’

‘No!’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘You don’t understand!’

The words were like another fist in the face.

‘Nothing happens on my territory unless I have either ordered or connived at it, understand? I run Catania. The port, construction projects, kickbacks, protection rackets, hiring and firing, everything! And most certainly any killings that occur. I wouldn’t be who I am if I didn’t. And I’m telling you that neither I nor any of my friends had anything whatsoever to do with the murder of that judge.’

‘You used to run Catania,’ Zen said quietly.

An enormous silence.

‘Maybe I’ll have Rosario cut your throat,’ hissed the other man. ‘If only to show that I still have some fucking say about what goes on around here!’

‘Of course you do, Don Gaspare,’ Zen replied soothingly. ‘But killing me wouldn’t prove that. Just the opposite, in fact. I’m just a common policeman, not even a DIA operative. You would actually lose respect by killing someone like me. It would be like mugging an old lady.’