Michael Dibdin - Blood rain

There was a low laugh.

‘You’ve got balls, Zen, I’ll give you that.’

I’m not a fool either. I think I know who killed Corinna Nunziatella, but I don’t have conclusive proof and so I had to make absolutely sure that you and your friends were not involved. But there was no need to get so angry. You could simply have given me your word as a uomo d’onore. I would have accepted that without question.’

‘So who did kill that judge?’ the voice asked in a mollified tone.

‘The same people who killed Spada. The same people who killed your Tonino.’

He braced himself for the blow, but it did not come.

‘The ROS agents?’

‘Either them, or someone very much like them.’

‘But why would they kill one of their own?’

‘Well, they might have done so because Nunziatella had stumbled on evidence undermining the official line on your son’s death. If one of the clans had wanted to kidnap Tonino, they wouldn’t have waited until he was in transit at the international airport in Milan to do it. And diverting a train is much easier if you’ve got the power of a state organization behind you. But as a matter of fact I don’t think that killing the judge was their primary intention. She was just an extra, a little ham on the bread, as they say. But it was very helpful to them, because it enabled them to make the operation look like a typical Mafia hit, and so disguise the identity of the real target.’

‘And who was that?’

‘My daughter.’

This time, the ensuing silence felt thin, diffuse and frail.

‘You’re making me feel old and out of touch,’ the voice said.

Zen smiled for the first time.

‘Welcome to the club. I’ve only worked it out myself in the last day or two. There’s nothing like being on the run to concentrate the mind. My daughter was installing the new computer network for the DIA offices in Catania, designed to link them to each other and their colleagues in Palermo and elsewhere. She told me that she had discovered an anomaly in the system, someone coming in from outside and spying on the status of the work in progress. She had also identified the “fingerprint” of the computer being used to access the system. That meant that it could be traced.’

He broke off.

‘Could someone give me a smoke?’

After a brief pause, a lighted cigarette was pushed between his lips. He inhaled urgently. It was a bionda, by the taste of it, probably American. That made sense. The Mafia would smoke the cigarettes they smuggled, and these wouldn’t be the low-cost, low-profit Nazionali. He took two or three puffs, then spat the cigarette out to one side.

‘Carla naturally assumed that the intruder was someone working for Cosa Nostra, so she informed the director of the DIA in Catania about her discoveries. Unfortunately, her assumption was almost certainly mistaken. For one thing, you and your friends don’t strike me as being any more computer-literate than I am. No doubt you could hire someone to try to hack into the DIA server, but I doubt that such an idea would even occur to you. More to the point, according to Carla, the DIA network hadn’t been forcibly entered. The access which the intruder was using had been planted in the system from the start. Well, we know who specified the system to be used by an elite judicial and law-enforcement department, and it wasn’t you or your friends.’

Zen tried to loosen slightly the bonds on his wrists and ankles, which were beginning to ache intolerably. To his surprise, the voice barked an order in dialect, and the cords were untied.

‘Thank you, Don Gaspare,’ he said.

‘So they kill your daughter because she knows that they exist. But who are they, and what are their aims?’

Zen rubbed his wrists, trying to get the circulation going again.

‘The short answer, of course, is that we’ll never know. But on the basis of the events we do know about, I think we can make a pretty accurate guess. Are you familiar with that famous trick picture, Don Gaspare? You can see it either as a vase or as the profile of two faces in silhouette. I think that this affair has been a similar trick. Everybody assumes that the Corleonesi killed your son, that you or some other clan killed Judge Nunziatella, and that some equally shadowy party di stampo mafioso strangled Spada.’

‘Well, it certainly looks like that’s what happened, doesn’t it?’

Zen smiled again.

‘But what would it look like, if it looked like my version of events? What would it look like if someone had an interest in promoting violence between the clans here in Sicily, and in showing that they are still capable of killing heavily protected DIA judges? What would it look like if that someone had ordered your son to be kidnapped and then left to die in that wagon, in such a way as to make the killing appear to be a message from Palermo? What would it look like if they had discovered that my daughter had unearthed evidence which would identify this someone, and that Spada was about to give me further details when we met that evening? What would it look like if all this were the case, Don Gaspare?’

There was a pause, then a low cough.

‘It would look the same as it does in fact look,’ the voice replied.

‘My point precisely.’

‘But who is this “someone”?’

‘Who knows? There must be plenty of people in Rome who regret the good old days of the Red Brigades and the Mafia wars. Too much stability is the last thing a politician wants. Who needs a strong government when everything is going well? Politicians have a vested interest in problems, crises and general unease. And if those things don’t happen to exist at a given moment, then they have to invent them. And that’s what this whole bloody business has been from start to finish — an invention.’

‘You don’t need to lecture me about the terzo livello,’ the other man replied drily. ‘But believe me, it’s dead. All our contacts are either in prison, in exile, or politically disgraced and powerless.’

‘The old Third Level, perhaps,’ Zen replied. ‘But there may be levels that you don’t even know about. The fact is, Don Gaspare, and I say this with all due respect, I get the impression that neither you nor the Corleonesi are quite at the cutting edge of organized crime here in Sicily these days.’

Footsteps sounded out loudly, stomping towards him. The voice said loudly, ‘No!’ The steps ceased in a sigh of mute frustration.

‘Forgive me, Don Gaspare,’ Zen went on. ‘I’m simply repeating what I’ve heard. And I’m all the more inclined to believe it, because it would explain why these people in Rome chose your two clans as subjects for their destabilization project. You both still have a high profile, which will guarantee lots of publicity in the event of another Mafia war breaking out, but the truth of the matter is that you’re both finished as major players. The real action now is in smaller places like Caccamo and Belmonte Mezzagno, and above all in Ragusa, where I was “met at the airport” tonight. Those are the people that the politicians will be courting. You and your friends are yesterday’s men, just like me. We’re all expendable, counters in whatever game they’re playing.’

He paused significantly.

‘And if you kill me, you’ll be playing their game.’

There was a mutter of voices, a subdued argument, a sense of suppressed dissension. Then the voice returned, quite close to Zen, and slightly to his right.

‘We’re not going to kill you, Dottor Zen. You have treated me with respect, and I shall accord you the same treatment. You have never set eyes on me, and the place where we are is nowhere near my home. You therefore pose no threat to us, although those pushy little squirts in Ragusa could be in trouble if you reveal the location of the landing strip they use for their drug runs. But fuck them!’