Michael Dibdin - Ratking

She looked up at Zen, conscious that nothing of all this showed in her face.

‘I don’t know what to say. I feel like asking if this is some kind of joke. But it quite obviously isn’t.’

The grey eyes regarded her cryptically.

‘So what is it?’ she demanded with a nervous laugh.

‘It’s a statement made to me by Silvio Miletti.’

‘It’s a pack of lies!’ she cried. ‘It’s rubbish, sheer invention, as you must know very well! And not even very clever invention! Do you really think that if I’d committed a murder I would bring the gun back to the house in a plastic bag and leave it lying in my room in full view while I went to have a shower?’

‘The witness describes you as hysterical. Hysterical people do irrational things.’

‘I was not hysterical!’ She sounded it now, though. ‘I wasn’t even there! After I got back from Cinzia’s I went home to my flat, for heaven’s sake.’

‘What time was that?’

‘I don’t know, late morning. I remember I had to do some shopping, to get something for lunch. Yes, that’s right, and then I ran into a friend on the Corso. We had an aperitif together. There, that proves it. He’ll verify my story!’

‘What about earlier, before the appointment with Cinzia? Where were you then?’

She was about to reply, but checked herself.

‘If you’re going to question me then I’m entitled to the presence of a lawyer.’

Zen acknowledged the point with a fractional inflexion of his lips, not so much a smile as the memory of a smile.

‘But this isn’t an interrogation,’ he said.

His words were such an unexpected relief that Ivy felt quite faint. The riot in her body had been put down, but at too great a cost.

‘I really must go,’ she murmured.

Zen stared at her in silence. His expression was even more alarming than Chiodini’s, although quite different. He was looking at her as though she was dead.

‘I’m afraid that’s not possible.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Signora, an eminent citizen has come forward and made a statement implicating you in the murder of his father. Now I don’t know exactly what conception you have of the duties of the police, but I can assure you that I wouldn’t be performing mine if I simply ignored this allegation on the grounds that the person accused claims that it’s all a pack of lies.’

‘Are you saying I’m under arrest?’

‘Not exactly. You’re being held on suspicion of having committed a crime punishable by life imprisonment. This will be communicated to the Public Prosecutor’s office, who will in turn inform the investigating magistrate. She will want to question you, I imagine. But that won’t be for a day or two. She’s in Florence at the moment. The kidnappers are under arrest there.’

So far Ivy had been proud of her control, but now a little manic giggle escaped her. Dear Christ, how much more could she take?

‘Obviously she’s got her hands full with that at the moment,’ Zen continued. ‘The Public Prosecutor is supposed to be informed within forty-eight hours, and the magistrate is bound to interrogate you within a further forty-eight. In practice that tends to get run together to suit everyone’s convenience, but at the worst it shouldn’t be later than Tuesday.’

‘Tuesday.’

The word seemed meaningless.

‘And until then?’ she asked.

‘Until then you’ll be held here. Chiodini!’

The bruiser came back in.

‘Take Signora Cook down to the cells.’

The word was like an electric shock, and Ivy sprang to her feet.

‘Just a moment! I’m entitled to make a phone call first. It’s my legal right!’

Zen ignored her.

‘Now listen to me, Chiodini,’ he said. ‘I won’t be here to supervise this, so I’m depending on you. Until Rosella Foria gets back from Florence Signora Cook is out of bounds, in quarantine. Understand? She speaks to no one and no one speaks to her. And I mean no one!’

‘Right, chief. Come on, you!’

Chiodini made a grab at Ivy’s arm, but she evaded him and stalked out, deliberately repressing all thought. There’ll be time for that when I’m alone, she told herself.

As it was, she had to fight even for the small privilege of solitude. The cells were in the basement of the Questura, which clearly predated the rest of the building by several centuries. The doors had an air of total impenetrability which Ivy found oddly reassuring. Her privacy was very important to her, and she saw the doors not as shutting her in but as keeping others out. What had always terrified her most about prisons was the overcrowding, four or five people shut up together in a cell intended to be barely tolerable for two. Italians seemed to be able to stand such enforced intimacy, but Ivy knew that it would drive her mad. She simply couldn’t function adequately without a space she could call her own, and she was acutely aware that in the hours ahead she was going to need to function not just adequately but quite extraordinarily well.

So it was a nasty shock when the cell door swung open to reveal a strange-looking woman with a smell on her and a wild look in her black eyes.

‘I’m not going in there,’ Ivy said firmly.

‘Oh, you’re not, eh?’ Chiodini replied.

He stared at her in some confusion, unsure how to proceed. If it had been a man he would have hit him. But with women things were different; you could only hit them if they were married to you.

‘There are lots of other cells,’ she pointed out.

‘They’re being painted.’

‘For God’s sake, man, she’s a gypsy! How would you like it?’

Chiodini could see her point. His mother had told him about gypsies. With a bad grace he locked the cell up again and installed Ivy in the one next door.

She slumped down on the bed. To think that on her way to the Questura, just an hour ago, she’d been worrying about whether or not to splash out on that slinky but hideously expensive Lurex trouser-suit she’d had her eye on for some time. The contrast between that reality and this cell, this mean pallet bed, that door as massive as the slab over a tomb, was so disturbing that she felt black waves of panic lapping up at her. But she refused to give in. To do so would be sheer self-indulgence. She had managed before, after all. When she discovered the reason why she had been invited for that weekend in Bologna she had calmly set about reviewing the options open to her. They fell into two categories, revenge and reward. There was no question that revenge was a very attractive option, but in the end Ivy had rejected it in favour of reward. Damaging your enemies is satisfying, but doing yourself a favour is more important in the long run. Only in exceptional circumstances is it possible to combine the two.

Like everyone else, Ivy had envied those who had a secure job, guaranteed by the State, which could not be taken away no matter how lazy or incompetent you were and whose admittedly meagre salary could be supplemented by tax-free moonlighting in the afternoon. Her position at the hospital was, as they said, ‘precarious’. To keep it she had to please, which meant everything from picking up one man’s suit from the cleaners and buying fresh pasta for another to queuing for over an hour in the pouring rain to get theatre tickets for one of the patients, quite apart from being expected to do the work of an entire typing pool single-handed. But she didn’t dare complain. ‘Don’t give yourself airs!’ the old fascist who served as porter remarked when she’d made the mistake of letting herself be provoked by his rudeness. ‘The day the director decides he doesn’t like the colour of your knickers you’ll be out on the street.’ He had no need to add, ‘On the other hand I’m here for ever, whether he likes it or not.’ That was implicit in everything he did, or more usually failed to do.