Michael Dibdin: A long finish

‘I used to have a collection of railway tickets,’ Zen remarked.

Giulio flashed a smile.

‘I knew it!’

A dry rustling amongst the bottles to his left made Zen start.

‘Rats,’ said the famous director. ‘You were saying?’

‘My father…’

Zen hesitated, as though at a loss, then started again.

‘He worked for the railways, and he used to bring them back for me, little cardboard tickets with the name of the destination printed on them, the class and the fare paid. By the end I had one to all the stations as far as Verona, Rovigo, Udine and Trieste…’

He paused again, then clicked his fingers.

‘All except Bassano del Grappa! I remember someone making a joke about having to wait until I was older before trying grappa. I didn’t understand at the time. I was just annoyed at having that gap in my collection. It ached like a pulled tooth.’

‘Excellent! Perfect! Then no doubt you will understand how I felt when I heard about this dreadful business involving Aldo Vincenzo.’

Zen frowned, returning reluctantly to the present.

‘Vincenzo?’ he echoed.

The famous director shone his torch around the neighbouring bins, lifted a bottle and held it out to Zen. The faded label read:

BARBARESCO 1964. VINIFICATO ED IMBOTTIGLIATO DAL PRODUTTORE A. VINCENZO.

‘Aldo Vincenzo was one of the producers I selected more than thirty years ago as worthy of a place in the cellar I then decided to create,’ he declared solemnly, replacing the bottle on the stack with as much care as a baby in its cot. ‘And now he’s dead and his son is in prison, all on the eve of what promises to be one of the great vintages of the century! That’s the reason why you have been “summoned here”, as you put it.’

‘You want to complete your collection.’

‘Exactly!’

‘To continue your horizontal tastings.’

His host regarded Zen sharply, as if suspecting some irony.

‘They might be that,’ he remarked, ‘if one actually swallowed all the wines on offer. Such, of course, is not the way in which a vertical tasting is conducted. But in any case, if you imagine that I have any chance of personally enjoying this year’s vintage at its best, you credit me with the longevity of a Methuselah. The patriarch, not the bottle.’

Zen struggled mutely with some internal paroxysm, then sneezed loudly, spraying gobs of sputum over the adjacent wine bins. The famous director grasped him once again by the arm and led him back the way they had come.

‘Enough! We’ll continue this talk upstairs.’

‘I’m all right,’ Zen protested. ‘It’s just this cold I’ve felt coming on for…’

‘I’m not worried about you! But sneezing in a cellar risks half the bottles turning out corked. So they say, at any rate. As for the presence of a menstruating woman, forget it! The whole business of wine is full of that sort of lore. I both believe and disbelieve, but with an investment like this I can’t afford to take chances.’

Giulio closed and locked the massive door giving into the vaults and led the way up a long, winding staircase and through an archway leading to the ground floor of the palazzo. They passed through several suites of rooms to the book-lined study where he had received Zen on the latter’s arrival, and gestured him into the armchair which he had occupied earlier.

‘As I was saying, the idea that I’m collecting the Vincenzo wine of this year — assuming there is any — for my own benefit is, of course, absurd. If the vintage is even half as good as has been predicted, it will not be remotely approachable for ten years, and won’t reach its peak for another ten. By which time I will be, if not defunct, at least “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”, as Shakespeare says.’

‘Then why should you care?’ demanded Zen, lighting a cigarette, which induced another massive fit of coughing. The other man eyed him keenly.

‘Do you have children, dottore?’

‘No. That’s to say… Yes. One.’

‘Boy or girl?’

‘A boy. Carlo.’

‘How old?’

There was a long pause.

‘He’s just a baby,’ Zen replied at length.

‘Congratulations! But they grow up rapidly. Hence my interest in this year’s Vincenzo wines. I have two sons, both in the most repulsive period of their teens. At present they regard my interest in wine as just another example of their father’s dotage. If they drink at all, it’s some obscure brand of imported beer, although Luca at least shows promising signs of becoming a collezionista about that, too, hunting down limited-release Trappist brews and the like.’

He set about the meticulous business of cutting and lighting a massive cigar.

‘I believe — I have to believe — that in time they will come to appreciate what I have bequeathed them, and perhaps even set about extending the cellar far into the next millennium as a heritage for their own children.’

A triumphant puff of blue smoke.

‘But that is to look too far into the future. For the moment, all that concerns me is this harvest! Unless we act now, the grapes will either be sold off to some competitor or crudely vinified into a parody of what a Vincenzo wine could and should be.’

Aurelio Zen tried hard to look suitably concerned at this dire prospect.

‘But what can I do about it?’ he asked. ‘If the son is already under arrest…’

‘I don’t believe for a moment that he did it,’ the famous director exclaimed impatiently.

Zen produced a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.

‘Nevertheless, I’ve been given to understand that the Carabinieri have concluded their investigation. They have pressed charges against Manlio Vincenzo and the case is now in the hands of the judiciary. I don’t see where I come in.’

His host exhaled a dense barrage of smoke.

‘Perhaps you should be more concerned about where you go out,’ he said.

Zen frowned.

‘Go out? You mean, from this house?’

For the first time, Giulio smiled with what appeared genuine amusement.

‘No, no! All appearances to the contrary, I am not planning to immure you in some lost recess of my cellars. Nevertheless, a not dissimilar fate might well await you.’

He eyed Zen keenly.

‘I refer to your next professional posting.’

‘That is a matter of departmental policy,’ Zen replied, drawing on his cigarette.

Another smile, a shade more meaningful.

‘Exactly. And in that regard I wish to draw your attention to various facts of which you are aware, and to another which is as yet privileged information. I shall be brief. Firstly, the current Minister is a man of the Left. Many of his friends and associates in the former Communist Party dedicated their lives to the struggle against organized crime. Some of them were killed as a result.’

His eyes met Zen’s, and slid away.

‘In addition, you have recently been reassigned to work for Criminalpol after your brilliant exploits in Naples where, as the whole country knows, you were instrumental in smashing the terrorist organization known as Strade Pulite.’

‘But that was…’

‘A major coup! Indeed. All this you know, dottore. What you do not know — what no one outside the Minister’s immediate circle knows — is that he is in the process of forming an elite pool of senior officers who are to be drafted to Sicily to spearhead the coming campaign against the organization which took the lives of his comrades.’

Giulio waved his hand negligently.

‘We’ve all heard this before, of course, every time some judge or police officer was gunned down or blown up. But that was in the days when the Mafia had its men here in Rome, in the highest circles of power. Everyone understood how the game worked. Any over-zealous official who looked like doing some worthwhile work was transferred or killed, the government put up a token show of force, the Mafia made a token show of backing off, and in a few months it was back to business as usual.’