Michael Dibdin - Ratking

An official in plain clothes had got out of the police car.

‘How’s it going?’ Silvio heard him ask the young patrolman.

‘Not too good. Fucking thing’s in excellent shape.’

Suddenly Silvio realized why this spot had seemed familiar. It was at this very bend that his father’s car had been forced off the road by the kidnappers.

‘You planning to be much longer?’ the taxi driver demanded.

‘We’re just noting the defects we’ve found on your vehicle,’ the official told him.

‘Defects? What defects?’

The patrolman consulted his notebook.

‘Insufficient tread depth on nearside front tyre. Rear window partially obscured by sticker. Number-plate light defective.’

The driver laughed sarcastically.

‘The cigarette lighter doesn’t work, either.’

‘Really?’ queried the official. ‘ Two faults in the electrical system, then. May I see your snow chains?’

‘Snow chains?’ the driver replied incredulously. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘All vehicles using this road between the beginning of October and the end of April are required to carry snow chains on board. Didn’t you see the sign back there on the hill?’

‘Can’t you feel that sun? It’s over twenty degrees!’

‘That’s the law.’

‘Then the law’s crazy!’

‘I wouldn’t say that if I were you. You could end up facing a charge for contempt.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ the driver murmured.

Silvio wound down his window.

‘Excuse me!’ he called testily. ‘I’m already late for an appointment and…’

The official looked round.

‘Why, Signor Miletti! Please forgive me, I had no idea it was you.’

Silvio squinted up into the sunlight.

‘Oh, it’s you, Zen. I thought you were back in Rome.’

‘Not yet, dottore. Not yet.’

‘They’ve put you on traffic duty, have they?’

As someone often accused of lacking a sense of humour, Silvio liked to draw attention to his jokes by laughing at them himself. Zen duly smiled, although this might have been at the sound of Silvio’s squeaky laughter rather than the joke itself.

‘Anyway, will you please fine the driver or whatever you intend doing, and let us proceed. As I say, I’m already late for an appointment.’

‘Out of the question, I’m afraid. On a cursory examination alone this vehicle has been found to have five defects. As such it is clearly unfit to ply for hire as a public conveyance. However, I’d be delighted to offer you a lift.’

‘I have no wish to travel with you, Zen.’

‘Suit yourself. But it’s a long walk.’

‘Snow chains!’ murmured the taxi driver disgustedly.

Silvio sat there stewing in the stuffy heat in the back of the car, thinking over what had just been said. A thrilling sense of peril had taken hold of him, and it was this that finally moved him to open the door and give himself up to whatever was about to happen.

‘A long walk to where?’ he murmured dreamily as the taxi screeched round in a tight turn and headed back to the city.

Zen opened the rear door of the Alfetta.

‘To where you’re going.’

‘But you don’t know where I’m going.’

‘Oh, but I do, dottore, I do.’

‘Where, then?’

It had been intended as a challenge, but Zen treated it as a real question.

‘You’ll see,’ he replied complacently as they drove off down the hill.

Crepi’s villa was visible in the distance, perched up on its ridge, but the countryside flashed by at such an insane rate that in no time at all they had passed the driveway.

‘You’ve missed the turning!’ Silvio told the driver. ‘I’m going to Antonio Crepi’s! He’s expecting me.’

‘Wrong on both counts,’ Zen replied without turning round.

‘You’ll lose your jobs for this,’ Silvio stammered, almost incoherent with excitement. ‘This is kidnapping! You’ll get twenty years, both of you!’

They had reached the flatlands near the Tiber, whose course was visible to the right, marked by a line of trees whose lower branches were festooned with scraps of plastic bags and other durable refuse.

‘This one,’ Zen told the driver, pointing to an abandoned track burrowing into a mass of wild brambles and scrub. The entrance was marked by a pair of imposing brick gateposts in a bad state of disrepair. A cloud of red dust rose up all around the car, almost blotting out the view.

They drew up and Zen got out. He removed his overcoat and threw it on the front seat. From the dashboard he removed a clipboard and a large yellow envelope. Then he opened the rear door of the car.

‘Get out, dottore.’

Silvio got out.

As the dust settled he could see the massive piles of bricks all around the clearing where they were parked. They still preserved the vague outlines of the barracks, ovens and chimneys they had once been, but fallen out of rank and order like an army of deserters. It reminded him of the old factory below the house which had been his private playground for many years, despite his mother’s dire warnings about venturing into it. He had been a solitary child, and those deserted alleys, yards and warehouses provided the perfect environment for his fantasies to flourish. They were fantasies of war, for the most part, or rather of suffering. His victims were Swedish wooden matchsticks, which he arranged behind bits of wall or in trenches scooped from the dirt and then bombarded mercilessly with bricks, from a distance at first but gradually closing in until you could see the sharp edges of the missile gouging into the ground. But the best bit was afterwards, picking through the bent and broken splinters, picturing the appalling injuries, the grotesque mutilations, the agony, the screams, the pathetic pleas to be finished off. He played all the parts himself, his voice mimicking shells and explosions, sirens and screams. In that secret playworld he was blissfully transparent, secure in the knowledge that the gates of the abandoned factory were locked and guarded, the walls too high to climb and topped with shards of broken glass.

Then one day he looked up and found a pair of eyes on him.

The man was lean and hard and dirty, his clothes greasy and torn. Silvio had never seen a Communist before, but he knew instinctively that this was one. His father had told him how the Communists were going to take over the factories and kill the owners and their families. Silvio fled, and for weeks he stayed away. Then, gradually at first, he found that the danger was no longer a reason for avoiding the factory but rather an irresistible temptation to return. He had no further interest in his innocent games. They were lost to him for ever, he knew, part of something he now thought of for the first time as his childhood. If he was to go back it would be in exploration of a new dimension he felt opening up within himself. It was not a comfortable sensation. He felt wrenched apart internally, split and fractured like one of his matchstick heroes. But there was no denying that urge. He already knew he would be its willing slave for the rest of his life.

The second time he saw the man it was Silvio who had the advantage of surprise. He had rounded a length of wall, moving stealthily, and there in a corner he saw the figure, turned away, head bent, intent on some furtive task. He knew he should run for his life, but instead he found himself moving towards the man, who remained quite still, apparently unaware of his presence. Then, when Silvio was almost close enough to touch him, he suddenly whirled around and sent a high spray of urine flying through the air, splashing Silvio’s clothes and face, his lips, his mouth.

Afterwards he drenched himself with the garden hose and told his parents that the rough boys near the station had thrown him in the fountain. His clothes came back unspotted from the laundry, but the obscene warmth and acrid taste of the bright yellow liquid had marked his flesh as indelibly as a tattoo. He never returned to the factory, which shortly afterwards was spruced up into offices and parking space for the management of what would soon become SIMP. But those barren desolate landscapes were now a part of him, like that stain which no water could wash off. Whenever he touched himself in bed at night he was there again, at risk from merciless mocking strangers, drenched in their stink and slime, both cringing and exultant.