Michael Dibdin: Ratking

In short, it had been a typical professional kidnapping, well planned and well executed. The victim had been carefully chosen to combine the maximum potential return with the minimum possible risk. Like many others, Ruggiero Miletti had regarded kidnapping as something that happened to other people in less fortunate areas of the country, and had scorned to take any precautions. Like many others, he had been wrong. For months, his movements had been logged and analysed, until the kidnappers knew more about his way of life than he did. They had taken him at the weekend. By Monday morning the snatch squad would be back at the garages or factories where they worked. Their companions would laugh as they yawned their way through the day and make crude jokes about their wives being too much for them. They wouldn’t mind. They would be getting paid soon, their job over.

Meanwhile the central cell of the gang would be in touch with the family to get the negotiations moving. They wouldn’t be too impatient at first, although they would sound it, phoning up with bloodcurdling threats about what would happen to their victim if they weren’t paid by the day after tomorrow. But they had timed the operation for the autumn precisely to allow themselves the long winter months in which to break any resistance to their demands. By now though, in late March, they would be starting to grow restless, wanting to see some return on their considerable investment. Summer was just around the corner, and they wouldn’t want to risk missing their month at the seaside. Criminals have the same aspirations as everyone else. That’s why they become criminals.

More recent details were skimpy in the extreme. The gang had apparently contacted the family soon after the kidnapping and it was understood that a ransom had been agreed. The sum remained unknown but was thought likely to have been in the region of ten thousand million lire. Payment was assumed to have taken place towards the end of November, but the hostage had not been released, and a local lawyer named Ubaldo Valesio was now believed to be negotiating on behalf of the family. This last snippet was dated mid-December, and unless someone had filleted the file before it was put on the teleprinter it was the most recent piece of information the police in Perugia had. The message was clear: ‘… was understood that a ransom had been paid… remained unknown but was thought to have been in the region of… was assumed to have taken place towards the end… believed to be negotiating…’ Whoever had drafted the report wanted no one to be in the slightest doubt that the Miletti family had not been cooperating with the authorities.

There was nothing unusual in this, of course. The trouble with the authorities’ line on kidnapping was that it sounded just too good to be true. Free the victim, punish the criminals and get your money back! Besides, most people were happier doing business with the kidnappers, whose motives they understood and who like them had a lot to lose, than with the impersonal and perfidious agencies of the State. If Zen was unpleasantly surprised to discover how little the Milettis had been cooperating, it was because it put paid to the theory he’d evolved to explain his sudden recall to active duty.

The explanation Enrico Mancini had given him was obviously false. In the first place, provincial detachments never requested intervention of this kind. A local Questura might ask for an expert from Criminalpol to advise them on some technical problem, but that was a very different thing to handing over control to someone from Rome. Such a procedure was always imposed by the Ministry, and was regarded as a humiliating reprimand for inefficiency or incompetence. But an even more serious objection to Mancini’s story was simply that Mancini was telling it. Enrico Mancini was a very big fish indeed, whose natural habitat was the wider ocean of political life. At the moment he chose to swim in the local waters of the Interior Ministry, where indeed he had survived an abrupt change in the political temperature which had proved fatal to several of his species. But tomorrow he might well be sighted in one of the other branches of government, between which he moved as effortlessly as a porpoise moves from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic and back again. According to some observers, indeed, this rather too evident ease, together with Mancini’s brashly confident manner, might prove to be his downfall in the long run.

At all events, the likes of Mancini did not concern themselves with such normal everyday matters as staff movements. The implication was clear. Despite appearances, this particular staff movement was neither normal nor everyday. When you got a personal phone call from an assistant under-secretary to the Minister and were told you were leaving the next morning, someone had been pulling strings. The obvious candidates had been the Miletti family, but if the Milettis were not cooperating with the authorities they would hardly run to the Ministry complaining that those authorities weren’t doing enough. So what was going on?

Zen read and re-read the material, scribbling a few notes and a lot of convoluted designs in the margins. But it was no good. There were too many faceless names, or what was worse, names which had somehow acquired a totally misleading set of features and characteristics. Thus Pietro, Silvio, Cinzia and Daniele appeared as ‘The Miletti Children’, a quartet of child entertainers in matching outfits, and this despite Zen’s knowledge that the youngest, Daniele, was twenty-six years old, while Pietro was already in his late thirties, married and living somewhere abroad. As for Cinzia, she could hardly be a winsome little pre-pubescent charmer since she already had two children of her own, the eldest twelve years old.

Meanwhile it was getting late, and the full implications of accepting Crepi’s invitation were becoming clear to Zen. He’d acted without thinking, purely on reflex, paralysed by his ignorance of who Crepi was. But after what had happened at the Questura he could be in no doubt as to the weakness of his position in Perugia. To survive he must armour himself in authority, surround himself with as many of the signs and symbols of office as he could muster. Instead of which he had agreed to venture out on to dangerously ambiguous ground, half-social and half-official; a treacherous no man’s land where all manner of elaborate games might be played at his expense, where any points he scored would count for nothing but the slightest slip might compromise his position for ever. Well, at least he would go in style. He had phoned the Questura and arranged for Palottino to meet him outside the hotel. They could follow Crepi’s chauffeur back to the villa.

The call came at ten past eight.

‘ There’s someone here to collect you. He says he’s expected.’

‘I’ll be down at once.’

The lobby was empty except for a bearded man reading a newspaper and a French couple who were disputing some item on their bill with the receptionist. Zen had almost reached the revolving door when he was called.

‘Excuse me!’

Suddenly Zen had an unpleasant sense that events were getting out of hand. It was the bearded man Crepi had been talking to outside the cafe earlier that afternoon.

‘You are Commissioner Zen?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m Silvio Miletti. How do you do?’

‘I had no idea that you would be coming in person to fetch me,’ Zen murmured in some confusion. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered.’

‘It was no bother.’

The way this was said made it quite clear that exactly the opposite was the case. For a moment Zen was tempted to turn on his heel, refuse to go, invent some last-minute engagement. But they were outside now, and Silvio Miletti was pointing across the street.