Michael Dibdin: Ratking

The Veronese was beside himself with rage.

‘So you refuse to reply, do you? But that won’t do! I demand an answer! You can’t get out of it that easily, you know! God in heaven, do you feel no shame, Commissioner? You calmly allow innocent citizens to be robbed under your very nose while you hide behind the power of office and do precisely damn all about it! Mother of God! I mean, everybody knows that the police these days are a bad joke that makes us the laughing stock of every other country in Europe. That’s taken for granted. But dear Christ, I never in my worst moments expected to witness such a blatant example of craven dereliction of duty as I have seen today! Eh? Very well. Excellent. We’ll see about this. I’m not just some nobody you can push around, you know. Kindly give me your name and rank.’

The train was rounding the curve by the Porta Maggiore and the terminus was now visible up ahead.

‘So, your name?’ the silver-haired man insisted.

‘Zen.’

‘Zen? You’re Venetian?’

‘What of it?’

‘But I am from Verona! And to think you disgrace us like this in front of these Southerners!’

‘Who are you calling a Southerner?’

The young Roman was on his feet.

‘Ah, ashamed of the name now, are you? A few minutes ago it was your proudest boast!’

‘I’m ashamed of nothing, signore! But when a term is used as a deliberate insult by someone whose arrogance is matched only by his stupendous ignorance of the real meaning of Italian culture…’

‘Culture! What do you know about culture? Don’t make me laugh by using big words you don’t understand.’

As the carriage jarred over several sets of points and began to run in alongside the platform Zen left the compartment and squeezed through the line of people waiting in the corridor.

‘In a big hurry, eh?’ remarked a sour-looking woman.

‘Some people always have to be first, and just too bad for everyone else.’

The platform was packed with passengers who had been waiting for hours. As the train slowed to a halt they stormed it like assault troopers, intent on winning a seat for the long haul down to Naples and beyond. Zen struggled through them and out to the station concourse. The phones were all in use. At the nearest a tired-looking, poorly dressed woman was repeating ‘I know… I know… I know ’ over and over again in a strident, unmodulated country voice. Zen waved his identity card at her.

‘Police. This is an emergency. I need to use this phone.’

He took the receiver from the woman’s unresisting hand and dialled 113.

‘This is Commissioner Aurelio Zen. No, Zen.?,?,?. No O. That’s right. Attached to the Ministry of the Interior. I’m calling from the Stazione Termini. There’s been a train job. They ran off towards Via Prenestina. Get a car off now and then I’ll give you the descriptions. Ready? The first was about twenty. Height, one sixtyish. Short dark hair, military cut so possibly doing his service, dark-green leather jacket with twin zippered flaps, faded jeans, dark brown boots. The other slightly taller, longer lighter hair, moustache, big nose, brown leather jacket, new jeans, red, white and blue running shoes, carrying a green plastic sports bag with white lettering “Banca Popolare di Frosinone”. He’s got a small automatic, so be careful. Got that? Right, I’ll leave a full report with the railway police.’

He hung up. The woman was gazing at him with an air of cautious fascination.

‘Was it a local call?’ he asked.

Fascination was replaced by fear.

‘What?’

‘Were you speaking to someone in Rome?’

‘No, no! Salerno! I’m from Salerno.’

And she started rooting in her bag for the identity card which was her only poor talisman against the dark powers of the state.

Zen looked through his change until he found another telephone token, which he handed to her.

‘Here. Now you can dial again.’

The woman stared at him suspiciously. He put the token down beside the phone and turned away.

‘It’s my sister,’ she said suddenly, gripping his arm. ‘She works for the Pope. At the Vatican! She’s a cleaner. The pay’s rotten, but it’s still something to work for the Pope, isn’t it? But her husband won’t let me in the house because of what my brother found out about him, the dirty bastard. So I phone her whenever I come up to see my grandson. She hasn’t got a phone, you see, so I phone from the station. They’re stingy bastards, those priests. Still, it’s better than packing anchovies, at least your fingers don’t stink. But listen, can that criminal do that? Forbid me to see my own sister? Isn’t there a law against that?’

Mumbling something about emergencies, Zen pulled away from the woman’s grasp and crossed the concourse towards the distant neon sign reading POLIZIA FERROVIARIA.

‘Welcome home,’ he muttered under his breath. His earlier mood already seemed as remote and irrelevant as a childhood memory.

The heavy front door closed behind him with a definitive bang, shutting him in, shutting out the world. As he moved the switch the single bulb which lit the entrance hall ended its long, wan existence in an extravagant flash, leaving him in the dark, just back from school. Once he had kissed his mother he would run out to play football in the square outside. Astonishingly, he even seemed to hear the distant sound of lapping water. Then it faded and a didactic voice began pontificating about the ecology of the Po Delta. Those liquid ripples overlaying the constant rumble of traffic came not, of course, from the backwater canals of his childhood, but from the television.

He moved blindly along the passage, past pictures and furniture which had been part of his life for so long that he was no longer aware of their existence. As he approached the glass-panelled door the noise of the television grew louder. Once inside the living room it was deafening. In the dim mix of video glare and twilight seeping through the shutters he made out the frail figure of his mother staring with childlike intensity at the flickering screen.

‘Aurelio! You’re back!’

‘Yes, mamma.’

He bent over her and they kissed.

‘How was Fiume? Did you enjoy yourself?’

‘Yes, mamma.’

He no longer bothered to correct her, even when her mistakes sent him astray not just in space but in time, to a city that had ceased to exist a third of a century earlier.

‘And what about you, mamma? How have you been?’

‘Fine, fine. You needn’t worry, Maria Grazia is a treasure. All I’ve missed is seeing you. But I told you when you joined! You don’t know what it’s like in the services, I said. They send you here and then they send you there, and just when you’re getting used to that they send you somewhere else, until you don’t know which end to sit down on any more. And to think you could have had a nice job on the railways like your father, a nice supervising job, just as secure as the police and none of this roaming around. And we would never have had to move down here to the South!’

She broke off as Maria Grazia bustled in from the kitchen. But they had been speaking dialect, and the housekeeper had not understood.

‘Welcome home, dottore!’ she cried. ‘They’ve been trying to get hold of you all day. I told them you hadn’t got back yet, but…’

At that moment the phone started to ring in the inner hallway. It’ll be that old fascist on the train, Zen thought. That type always has friends. But ‘all day’? Maria Grazia must have exaggerated.

‘ Zen? ’

‘Speaking.’

‘ This is Enrico Mancini.’

Christ almighty! The Veronese had gone straight to the top. Zen gripped the receiver angrily.

‘Listen, the little bastard had a gun and he was standing too far away for me to jump him. So what was I supposed to do, I’d like to know? Get myself shot so that the Commendatore could keep his lousy watch?’