Michael Dibdin: Ratking

‘My car’s over there.’

Palottino saved him. The Neapolitan had parked the Alfetta right in front of the hotel, practically blocking the entrance, and was now leaning in a nonchalantly heroic posture on the driving door, receiving the homage of the passers-by. As he caught sight of the superior from whom flowed his power to flaunt, dazzle and ignore the parking regulations, he snapped smartly to attention.

‘And mine’s right here,’ Zen replied.

‘No, no, dottore,’ Silvio Miletti insisted fussily. ‘You’re travelling with me. That’s why I’ve come, after all.’

‘Signor Miletti, my driver gets so little work he’s almost going crazy as it is. But if you would permit me to offer you…’

‘No, no, I insist!’

‘So do I.’

Zen softened the words with a pale smile, but there was nothing soft about his tone.

Silvio Miletti sighed massively.

‘As you wish, dottore, as you wish. Perhaps you would have the goodness to wait just one moment, however, if it’s not too much to ask.’

He walked across the street to a large blue Fiat saloon and spoke to someone inside. Zen stood watching, his brief triumph draining away. He had not only been rude, he had been uselessly rude. His petty insistence had demonstrated his weakness, not his strength. I’ve lost my touch, he thought bleakly. Then the blue saloon drove off and Zen saw that the driver was a woman. That made it perfect. He had succeeded in insulting not only Silvio Miletti but also his fiancee.

‘I didn’t realize you were with someone,’ he remarked as the two men took their places in the back of the Alfetta.

Silvio Miletti shrugged.

‘It’s only my secretary. I don’t drive.’

They followed the blue Fiat through a wedge-shaped piazza and down a steeply curving street. At the bottom it turned sharp right and disappeared through a narrow archway. Numerous scratches on the brickwork showed where drivers had misjudged the clearance, but Palottino revved up and took it like a lion going through a blazing hoop, almost crushing two pedestrians in the process.

Out of the corner of his eye Zen studied Silvio Miletti. Close to, Ruggiero’s second son looked like an overweight ghost, at once insubstantial and corpulent. His features, which might have been strong and full of character, had sagged like paint applied too thickly. He was sturdily built, yet gave an impression not of vitality but of enormous lethargy, of a weary disgust with everything and everyone, like a man who has never reconciled himself to what he sees in the mirror every morning. His gestures were oddly prim and fussy for such a lumbering frame, and his voice was high and slightly querulous, with an underlying whine of self-pity.

As suddenly as in a medieval fresco, the city ended and the countryside began. One moment they were driving down a densely inhabited street, the next they were on a country road that dropped so steeply Zen felt his ears aching. A yellow sign flashed by: ‘All vehicles using this road from 1 November to 31 March must carry snow-chains on board’. Palottino kept the Alfetta tucked tightly in behind the slowly moving Fiat, like a dog worrying a sheep.

‘Tell me, when did the kidnappers last make contact?’

Zen dropped the question idly, just to test the water.

‘The negotiations are being handled by Avvocato Valesio.’

Silvio Miletti’s tone was so uncompromising that Zen asked himself why he had agreed to be present in the first place.

‘Presumably he keeps you informed.’

‘No doubt he tells us everything he feels we should know,’ Miletti replied with a fastidious quiver, rearranging the folds of his coat. ‘On the other hand he fully understands how difficult this experience is for us, and I’m sure that he would avoid distressing us unnecessarily.’

He made it quite clear that the negotiator’s tact and consideration could well serve as a model to other less thoughtful people.

As the road bottomed out in the valley Palottino swung out and booted the accelerator, leaving the Fiat for dead.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ Zen exploded. ‘We’re supposed to be following that car!’

‘Oh, fuck. Sorry, sir, I forgot.’

‘I’ll tell you when to turn,’ Silvio Miletti told him with another sigh. These sighs were immensely expressive. The world, they seemed to suggest, had once again demonstrated its limitless capacity for stupidity, vulgarity and total insensitivity to his needs and desires. Not that this surprised him; on the contrary, he had long resigned himself to the unremitting awfulness of life. Nevertheless, each reminder was another pebble thoughtlessly tossed on to the already intolerable burden which he was expected to bear without complaint. It really was too bad!

‘So when did the gang last make contact, to the best of your knowledge?’ Zen continued remorselessly.

There was a rustle of clothing as Miletti changed position with a wriggle of his hips.

‘I’m afraid I really can’t discuss this. I’m sure you understand why.’

‘No, as a matter of fact I don’t understand at all. I’m aware that the Miletti family has not been cooperating with the police up to now, but since you have agreed to meet me tonight I assumed that you must have decided to change that attitude. I certainly can’t imagine what we’re going to talk about otherwise.’

The sigh emerged again in all its glory.

‘As far as cooperation goes, I think the fact that I was prepared to come and pick you up from your hotel is sufficient proof of my personal goodwill. In my father’s absence, however, decisions are being made jointly by the whole family, and the decision which had been made is that all dealings with the authorities are to be handled by our legal representative, Ubaldo Valesio. He will be present this evening and you will have ample opportunity to put your questions to him.’

The road ran along between two ridges, beside a small stream. The moon was almost full, and by its light the scenery looked flat and unconvincing, depthless shapes blocked out of black cardboard. Even the few clouds in the sky were as neat and motionless as a backdrop. To one side, up on the crest of the ridge, a row of cypresses and cedars led up to a ruin with a tall tower.

‘In other words, Valesio will be acting as intermediary not just between you and the gang but also between you and me?’

Zen made no attempt to conceal his irony, and Silvio’s reaction was to flare up.

‘Yes, dottore, that’s exactly what I mean! Despite what some people seem to think, I’m made of flesh and blood like everyone else and there’s only so much I can stand. I just can’t cope with anything more! I can’t be expected to!’

He broke off abruptly to tell Palottino to turn left up a narrow dirt track.

‘For over a month we have heard nothing,’ he continued in the same self-pitying tone. ‘Nothing!’

The headlights swept over rows of neatly pruned vines as the twists and turns of the steeply climbing track succeeded one another.

‘Before, they used to make threats, to rant and rave and say God knows what. That seemed bad enough at the time, but now I almost miss their threats. They seem almost reassuring, compared with this terrible silence.’

The track became a driveway lined with cedars and cypresses and suddenly the house was there before them, a fantastic affair of mock-medieval turrets and towers with fishtail embattlements and coats of arms embedded in the walls which Zen realized with a slight shock was the ruin he had caught sight of from the road below. With a satisfying spray of gravel, Palottino brought the car to a halt beside a white Volvo parked in the forecourt.

Antonio Crepi must have been on the lookout, for when Zen got out he found his host at the door to welcome him.