Michael Dibdin - End games

‘It’s for rich people. They pay a lot of money to wager a lot more on a certain number or the cards they hold. Then they wait and see what happens.’

‘And what does happen?’ Aurelio had asked, clutching his father’s hand as they walked along the redolent alley leading to the station.

‘The right number or card either comes up or it doesn’t. If it does, those rich bastards get even richer.’

‘And if it doesn’t?’

‘Then they lose everything.’

At the time, Zen hadn’t understood why anyone would want to take risks like that, entirely dependent on forces beyond one’s control, an opinion that was confirmed when his father disappeared shortly afterwards. He’d lost everything without even being conscious of placing the bet, and had never thought to do so again. But life has a way of mocking such resolutions, and he now decided — instantly and without reflection — to stake everything on one spin of the wheel. He therefore summoned Natale Arnone and instructed him to fetch Rocco Battista up from his holding cell in the basement.

The prisoner was an unprepossessing specimen, vaguely resembling a genetic cross between a wild boar and a stockfish. It is no doubt true that the triumphs of art cannot redeem the defects of nature, but the various forms of mutilation that Rocco had inflicted on his features provided conclusive evidence that there is always room for disimprovement. He shuffled into the room and was about to sit down on the chair facing Zen’s desk, when Natale Arnone adroitly removed it.

‘Stand up straight before the chief of police, you scum!’

Battista stumbled back to his feet and stood looking around dully, but probably no more dully than usual. Zen had already been told that since his initial defiant statement of intent, the prisoner had not once responded by word or gesture to any of the questions and comments of the interrogating officers. He was also acutely aware that the success of the plan he had in mind depended on his eliciting not just a response but the one he needed, so he left Battista standing there, hanging his head and staring down at the floor in a manner which suggested, in a pathetically inadequate way, that while the cops could break his bones they would never break his will.

Zen lounged back in his chair and stared unblinkingly at the individual with whom he had to deal, taking him in, sizing him up, getting his measure. After an intolerable and seemingly interminable silence had fully matured, he leant forward like a doctor who has concluded his diagnosis, and spoke.

‘In my opinion, Rocco, the root of the problem is that you are stupid. That’s not your fault. Men can no more control the degree of intelligence they were born with than they can the size of their membro virile.’

A satisfied smirk appeared on Rocco Battista’s lips.

‘They can however control what they do with the equipment that nature has provided,’ Zen went on. ‘You were observed speaking to Nicola Mantega yesterday. When I broke him early this morning, I told him that he’d been silly. In your case, the appropriate word is stupid. I therefore suggest that we take stock of the situation in which you find yourself. The only witnesses to the attack were you, the victim and his lady friend. One, two, three. When this case comes to trial, any testimony you may give in your own defence will of course be discounted as worthless. As for the victim, he appears to have gone into shock immediately after you knifed him and has only the vaguest and most confused ideas about what happened. In other words, the only credible witness — the person who will in effect decide your fate — is the woman who was accompanying him.

‘As you learned to your cost last night, she is also a police officer. Unless she wishes to relinquish that career, she will tell the magistrates simply and solely what I order her to tell them. If she testifies that your intentions were clearly homicidal, and thwarted only by the victim’s agility and alertness, you will be convicted of attempted murder. If on the other hand she deposes that, far from being flustered and off balance, you knew exactly what you were doing — inflicting a painful but non-life-threatening injury, a little lesson for Signor Newman with the implied threat that he might not get off so lightly next time — then you will go down for assault occasioning minor bodily harm.

‘Now there’s a big difference between an assault and a botched homicide, Rocco. At least ten years and possibly a lot more, depending on whether the judge’s piles are playing up. But at the bare minimum, a whole decade when instead of eating, drinking, fighting, fucking and indulging in whatever other pastimes console you for your destined role in life as a dickhead, you’ll be locked up for twenty-two hours a day with five other dickheads in a cell designed to accommodate two, under the beady eyes of the uniformed dickheads who run the house of punishment according to their own tried and trusted methods, and take particular pleasure in denying their charges the tempting option of suicide by slow strangulation from a knotted bedsheet tied to the window bars.

‘That’s the choice facing you now, Rocco. Do you want to spend your next ten to fifteen years eating shitty pizza, stomping whichever of your cretinous crew is marginally more fucked up than you that night and contributing to the alarming incidence of sexually transmitted disease, or would you prefer to escape from these horrors and settle down to a quiet life at the taxpayers’ expense? I appreciate that this is a difficult decision, particularly for someone whose head starts throbbing intolerably when the waiter says “ Acqua gassata o naturale? ” But I’m afraid that you do have to make it. Now. Specifically, in the next five minutes. If you do what I want, your prison spell will be so brief that you may barely have time to find out the hard way who gets to bugger whom in the particular wing of the facility to which you have been committed, since I doubt very much that you would be anyone’s first choice. If not, you’ll be offered virtually unlimited opportunities to suck your wife’s cock.’

Another minute passed in silence. Then Rocco Battista spoke for the first time.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘To phone Giorgio Fardella using the number registered to his sister Silvia in San Giovanni in Fiore and listed in the directory of your mobile phone under the name Lui. Your mobile carrier has informed us that you called this number three times in the last two years, which suggests that you are known to Giorgio but not one of his close associates. I’m guessing here, but it seems probable that he employed you from time to time, no doubt on minor jobs requiring neither intelligence nor skill but involving a risk to which he was unwilling to expose the more valuable members of his organisation. Three minutes.’

Once again, Rocco achieved speech.

‘What do I say?’

‘Giorgio almost certainly will not be at his sister’s apartment in Via del Serpente, but someone will. You are to say that you have an urgent message which must be passed on without delay. The message is that Nicola Mantega is cheating Giorgio over their plan to sell fake antiquities to an American buyer. You have discovered that Mantega has made arrangements with a third party to supply the desired merchandise, thereby cutting Giorgio out of the picture and out of the profits. You will add that the deal will be concluded very shortly and that Giorgio, or someone speaking for him, should therefore summon Nicola Mantega to a personal meeting at the very earliest opportunity, preferably no later than tonight. Ninety seconds.’

In the event, it was almost half an hour before Rocco speed-dialled the number on the mobile that Zen had restored to him. It went completely against his nature to do the sensible thing, but the police chief had somehow talked him into it. What tipped the balance was that line about the bitch who had so royally kicked his arse the night before testifying that he, Rocco Battista, far from being flustered and off balance, had known exactly what he was doing. No one had ever suggested that Rocco had even the vaguest idea what he was doing. The prospect of being denounced as competent in open court, before all the judges and avvocati in their finery, quite turned his head. It might even get reported on television! ‘According to the prosecution’s leading witness, an experienced policewoman of impeccable character, Rocco Battista knew exactly what he was doing.’ Making a hoax phone call to Giorgio, who had always treated him like shit anyway, was a small price to pay for a glowing public testimonial which would change his status on the street for ever.