Michael Dibdin - Blood rain

A wave of laughter enveloped the room.

‘It has been a privilege meeting you,’ the voice went on, ‘but for both our sakes I hope that our paths do not cross again. You cannot be my friend, and I would hate to have you as my enemy. We shall be leaving now. Your wrists and ankles have been freed. In your own interests, I ask you not to remove your blindfold for at least five minutes after we leave. If you do, and any of us are still here, we shall have no compunction about killing you. Once we are clear of this area, one of my men will place a call to the authorities in Catania and report your whereabouts. Goodbye, Dottor Zen.’

‘Goodbye, Don Gaspare.’

The herd of footsteps trooped out, and then Zen heard the roar of car engines. Soon they faded, and a perfect silence formed.

It was not broken for another three hours, much longer than Zen had reckoned on. He spent the time sitting on the steps of the abandoned farmhouse in which he had been questioned. The moon was up, but the only other light to be seen was a curved stripe of glowing red in the night sky, as vivid and troubling as an open wound. He finally realized that it must be the molten lava flowing down one of the many flanks of Etna after the eruption which had been signalled by the earlier tremors.

Then, at long last, other lights appeared: mere points at first, two fixed, the other mobile, weaving from side to side and up and down and sometimes disappearing for minutes at a time. Eventually sound was added to the spectacle, a low thrumming and a slightly higher and more abrasive grating. All these phenomena increased in intensity, until a car and an accompanying motorcycle swept into the farmyard and came to a stop at the foot of the steps. The man seated astride the bright red motorbike started talking into a two-way radio, and Baccio Sinico leapt out of the car.

‘Thank God you’re safe!’ he exclaimed as Zen stood up. I’m sorry it took us so long to get here, but our colleagues in the Carabinieri were worried that it might be a trap and wanted to make certain preparations, all of which took some time. Then, to cap it all, their car got separated from us somehow on the drive up. They must have taken a wrong turning, I suppose. But, oh, dottore! Why did you run off like that? Look how it turned out! All we were trying to do was protect you. As it is, you’re lucky to be alive.’

‘We’re all lucky to be alive, Baccio,’ Zen remarked sententiously ‘The problem is that we often forget it.’

They walked down the steps and over to the waiting car. As they passed the man on the motorcycle, he removed his helmet and put away his radio.

‘We’re cleared to go,’ he told Baccio Sinico. ‘We’ll be taking a slightly different route, via Belpasso. I’ll stay about fifty metres ahead. Keep my tail-light in view at all times.’

Sinico turned to Zen.

‘This is our colleague from the Carabinieri, Roberto Lessi. I think you’ve met before.’

The ROS agent stared silently at Zen, who nodded slowly.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ve met before.’

Lessi replaced his helmet and revved up his engine. Sinico was holding the back door of the car open, but Zen got into the one in front.

‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ he asked. ‘They tied me up for a long time and I’d like to be able to stretch my legs.’

‘Of course, dottore,’ said Sinico. Then, to the driver, ‘Let’s go, Renato! Follow the bike.’

Zen lit a cigarette with trembling fingers.

‘But how on earth did you manage to talk the Limina clan into letting you go?’ Sinico demanded, leaning forward from the back seat. ‘They have a reputation for cruelty second to none. Their speciality is slow drowning in a bath of water followed by disposal of the corpse in one of the side vents of Etna.’

Zen opened the window to clear the smoke from his cigarette.

‘Oh, I told them a pack of lies,’ he said dully.

‘What sort of lies?’

‘I turned the facts of the affair inside out and suggested that some secret government agency in Rome was behind the whole thing. A campaign of destabilization and so on.’

Sinico gave an incredulous laugh.

‘And they believed you?’

‘I don’t know if they believed me, but they let me go.’

Sinico leaned forward between the two front seats and spoke quietly into Zen’s ear.

‘But you don’t believe this conspiracy theory, do you?’

‘Of course not.’

They hurtled along the twisting road, following the tail-light of the Moto Guzzi.

‘By the way, do you have my revolver?’ asked Sinico.

‘I’m afraid I lost it. I’ll take full responsibility. Fill out a docket for a replacement and I’ll sign it.’

‘Only there’s a problem, you see. One of Roberto’s colleagues has been killed. I think you met him too. Alfredo Ferraro.’

‘I seem to remember the name.’

‘Well, he was shot. Late last night, in that rough area just north of Piazza San Placido, where the whores and the extra-communitari hang out.’

Zen took another drag at his cigarette and tossed it out of the window.

‘That’s where they found the body?’

‘Yes, at about midnight. And the problem is that it seems that he was almost certainly shot with my revolver. As you know, we have to perform test firings whose ballistic characteristics are kept on file. They found one of the bullets fired at the scene, and forensic tests show that the characteristics of my revolver are identical to those of the murder weapon.’

Zen nodded.

‘Unfortunately I can’t help you, because the gun was taken from me much earlier that evening, just an hour or so after I left you.’

‘Taken? How?’

‘A pickpocket. You know that Catania is notorious for petty crime. I was walking down a street near San Nicolo when a woman stopped me and asked me for a light. While I was holding it out to her, a man pushed into me from behind. The next thing I knew, they had both disappeared down an alley. Your gun and my wallet had disappeared with them.’

‘Yes, I see,’ said Sinico doubtfully.

‘This Alfredo Ferraro probably saw the couple trying something similar in the Via San Orsola area. He challenged them, and the man pulled out your gun and shot him.’

‘I suppose so. All the same, it’s awkward.’

‘Don’t worry, Baccio, I’ll sort it all out. We’re alive, that’s the main thing. The rest is just details.’

Ahead of them, the red light had turned brilliant white, shining straight back at them from the other side of a small valley where the road curved down across a seasonal torrente, now a bone-dry mass of lava boulders.

‘Get a move on, Renato!’ Sinico told the driver. ‘We’re getting left behind.’

‘This is a dangerous road,’ the man grumbled.

Nevertheless, he jammed his foot to the floor and the car shot forward on to the low concrete bridge across the riverbed. At the top of the hillside opposite, the man on the motorcycle flashed his headlight on and off. An answering flash of light appeared in the darkness above. A moment later, the bridge exploded.

The motorcycle rider replaced his helmet and turned his machine around. It had been an impressive blast, even though they’d had very little time. The quantity of explosives used was only a fraction of the amount which the Mafia had used to kill the judges Paolo Falcone and Giovanni Borsellino. But this too would be perceived as a message. After all, Zen was just a policeman.