Michael Dibdin: Cabal

This put Tania in an awkward position. Eight years of marriage to Mauro Bevilacqua had left her with no illusions about the fragility of the male ego, or the destructive passions that can be unleashed without the slightest warning when it feels slighted. She knew that Zen had already been hurt by her refusal to move in with him, and she guessed that his belief that he was supporting her financially might well be the necessary salve for this wound. He could accept Tania’s independence as long as he was secretly subsidizing it, as long as he believed that she was only playing at being free. But how would he react if he learned that his mistress was in fact the senior partner in a business with a turnover which already exceeded his salary by a considerable amount? She had no wish to lose him, this strange, moody individual who could be so passionately there one moment, so transparently distant the next, who seemed to float through life as though he had nothing to hope or fear from it. She wanted to know him, if anyone could, and to be known in return. But not possessed. No one would ever own her again, on that she was quite adamant.

She pulled the phone over, got an outside line and then dialled a restaurant in Stockholm’s business district where a brambly refosco made by a relative of Aldo’s sister had become a cult wine. The distributor who had been importing Agrofrul’s produce had recently gone bankrupt and the restaurant now wanted to know if they could obtain supplies direct. Using her limited but serviceable English, Tania ascertained that the proprietor had not yet arrived but would call back. She lit a cigarette and turned her attention to the newspaper open on the desk in front of her, which was making great play with allegations of a cover-up in the death of a Roman nobleman in the Vatican.

Tania turned the page impatiently. She had no appetite for such things any more, the grand scandals which ran and ran for years, as though manipulated by a master storyteller who was always ready with some fresh ‘revelation’ whenever the public interest started to wane. The one thing you could be sure of, the only absolute certainty on offer, was that you would never, ever, know the truth. Whatever you did know was therefore by definition not the truth. Like children playing ‘pass the parcel’, the commentators and analysts tried to guess the nature of the mystery by examining the size, shape and weight of the package in which it had been concealed. But the adult game was even more futile, for once the wrappings had all been removed the parcel always proved to be empty.

The shrilling of the phone interrupted her thoughts. Pulling over the rough jotting of proposals she had prepared for the Swedish restaurateur, Tania lifted the receiver.

‘Good morning,’ she said in English.

‘Who the hell is this?’

The speaker was male, Italian, and very angry. Tania immediately depressed the rest with her finger, breaking the connection. A moment later the phone rang again. She let it go on for some time before lifting her finger and snarling ‘Yes?’ in her best bureaucratic manner, bored and truculent.

‘Is that Biacis?’ demanded the same male voice.

‘Who do you think, the Virgin Mary?’

There was a furious spluttering.

‘Don’t you dare talk like that to me!’

‘And how am I supposed to know how I should talk when you haven’t told me who you are?’ Tania snapped back.

In fact she knew perfectly well who it was, even before the caller angrily identified himself as Lorenzo Moscati, head of the Criminalpol division. Within the caste system of the Ministry, Moscati was a person of considerable stature, whose relation to a mere Grade II administrative assistant such as Tania was roughly that of one of the figures in the higher reaches of a baroque ceiling-piece, almost invisible in the refulgence of his glory, to one of the extras supporting clouds or propping up sunbeams in the bottom left-hand corner. But Tania didn’t give a damn. As a successful independent businesswoman, she had no reason to be impressed by some shit-for-brains with the right party card and an influential clique behind him. Even the Russians were finally having second thoughts about the virtues of such a system. Only the Italian state apparatus remained utterly immune to the effects of glasnost.

‘Zen, Aurelio!’ Moscati shouted.

‘What about him?’

‘Where is he?’

‘How should I know? This isn’t Personnel.’

Moscati’s voice modulated to a tone of unctuous viciousness.

‘I am aware of that, my dear, but all Ciliani can tell me is that he’s off sick. So I called his home number and asked if I could speak to the invalid, only to find that his mother hasn’t seen him since yesterday and seems to think he’s gone to Florence for work.’

‘So? What have I to do with it?’

Moscati gave a nasty chuckle.

‘To be perfectly honest, I thought he might be holed up at your little love-nest.’

Tania gasped involuntarily. Moscati chuckled again, more confidently now.

‘No wonder he needs a day off to recover, poor fellow,’ he continued in the tone of silken brutality he used with female underlings. ‘All that night service, and at his age, too. Anyway, that’s another matter. The fact is that our Aurelio is deep in the shit, wherever he may be. Have you seen the papers? These allegations are extremely serious, even alarming, but as his colleague I naturally feel a certain solidarity. That’s why I’m giving him one last chance to put things right. Have him call me, now.’

He hung up. Tania stubbed out her cigarette, which had burned down to the filter, and dialled a Rome number. It rang for some time before a sleepy voice answered.

‘Yes?’

‘Did I wake you, sweetheart?’ she asked gently.

A pleased grunt.

‘Not exactly. I’ve been lying here beside you. The pillow is still shaped by your head, and the sheets smell of you. There’s really quite a lot of you still here.’

‘More than there is here, believe me. Look, I’m sorry to have to be the one to break this to you, but Moscati has been on to me. He’s after your blood for some reason.’

There was a brief silence.

‘Why did he call you?’ Zen asked.

He sounded wide awake now.

‘He knows, Aurelio.’

‘He can’t!’

The exclamation was as involuntary as a cry of pain.

‘I’m afraid he does,’ said Tania. ‘And about the flat, too.’

A silence. Zen sighed.

‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered almost inaudibly.

‘It doesn’t make any difference. Not to me, at any rate.

You’d better phone him, Aurelio. It sounded urgent.’

Another sigh.

‘Any other messages?’

Tania leafed through the mail for the Criminalpol department, which she planned to deliver when the pressures of business permitted.

‘Just a telegram.’

‘Let’s have it.’

Tania tore open the envelope and read the brief typed message.

‘It sounds like some loony,’ she told him.

‘What does it say?’

‘“If you wish to get these deaths in the proper perspective, apply at the green gates in the piazza at the end of Via Santa Sabina.”’

He grunted.

‘No name?’

‘Nothing. Don’t go, Aurelio. It could be a nutter.’

She sounded nervous, memories of Vasco Spadola’s deadly vendetta still fresh in her mind.

‘When was it sent?’

‘Just after five yesterday afternoon, from Piazza San Silvestro.’

He yawned.

‘All right. I’d better ring Moscati now.’

‘What’s it all about, Aurelio? He said it was in the papers.’

‘Well, well. Fame at last.’

Tania said nothing.

‘I’ll ring you later about tonight,’ he told her. ‘And don’t worry. It’s just work, not life and death.’