Michael Dibdin - Back to Bologna

‘Bring me two bottles of vodka and a bucket of ice,’ he said, cutting off the speech into which she immediately launched. ‘Personally. Now.’

Five minutes later there was a timid tap at the door. Rinaldi peeked through the spy-hole and verified that it was indeed Delia, and that she was alone, before dismantling his barricade and letting her in.

‘Put it down there,’ he said, pointing to the floor of the entrance hall.

But Delia kept going straight into the lounge, where she deposited the two bottles and the silver bucket on a glass-topped table.

‘Get out of here!’ Rinaldi shouted, coming after her. ‘I need to be alone.’

‘We have to talk, Romano.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

Delia sank into a sofa the size of an average family car.

‘ Carissimo, I’ve been trying to call you for hours!’

Rinaldi dropped four large ice cubes into a tall tumbler, filled it to the brink with vodka, and drank deeply.

‘Why didn’t you answer my messages?’ Delia went on in an irritating, deep-down-inside-I’m-just-a little-girl whine. ‘How can I help you if you won’t even speak to me?’

‘Nobody can help me. And I can’t help your career along any more, so don’t pretend to be personally interested. It’s over. Me, you, the series, the company, everything.’

‘That’s absurd, Romano! You can’t just chuck the whole thing away because of a silly accident.’

He gulped some more vodka and almost choked as he burst into incredulous laughter.

‘Silly accident! I almost burnt down the Bologna exhibition centre! For all I know the police are after me.’

‘It wasn’t your fault! How were you to know that the dial controlling the burners on the stove hadn’t been calibrated properly? All the kitchen equipment was rounded up at the last moment from the manufacturers exhibiting at Enogastexpo. They have a few functional demonstration models, but most of the hardware is on static display. It was one of those units that was placed in your kitchen area. The fitters connected it to the gas supply, but they didn’t have time to fine-tune all the various functions. So you put that pan of oil on over what you thought was low heat, then turned away to do other things and entertain your fans. In fact, the flame under the pan was hotter than the safety regulations allow for that kind of stove even at the very highest setting! The outcome was inevitable.’

Rinaldi finished his drink and immediately poured another.

‘No one will believe that.’

Delia got to her feet and eyed him levelly.

‘They will when the managing director of the company that manufactured the stove confirms it tomorrow morning, having conducted a personal examination of the unit in question.’

Acontemptuous shrug.

‘Why should he want to help?’

‘Well now, I wonder. Maybe the hundred thousand from the broadcasters had something to do with it.’

Rinaldi stared at her in wonderment.

‘They’ve bribed him?’

‘Of course they have. You’re one of their premium products for the foreseeable future, Romano. They aren’t going to give you up without a fight.’

She came over and stood very close to him, looking him unblinkingly in the eyes.

‘All you have to do is keep your head down for the next few days. No interviews, no comments, no phone calls except to and from me. In fact it would be best if you didn’t even appear in public. Why don’t you just stay here?’

Rinaldi shook his head violently.

‘Out of the question!’

Apart from anything else, he couldn’t possibly show his face in any restaurant in town, where most of the clients would be attending the Enogastexpo. Even room service would be risky. ‘Sorry, sir, Bologna fire regulations prohibit the preparation of flambeed dishes in the rooms, heh heh heh.’

Delia nodded.

‘In that case, we go to Plan B. One of the directors of our TV channel owns a villa in Umbria. It’s luxurious and very remote. At seven this evening I’ll have a car waiting for you at the back door of the hotel to whisk you off. There’ll be a wellstocked larder and cocktail cabinet, not to mention a selection of your favourite recreational drugs. When everything’s prepared, we’ll bring you down to Rome for a well-rehearsed press conference. You’ll have been coached with an answer to every conceivable question. Then, at the end, you publicly challenge Edgardo Ugo to a replay.’

Rinaldi jolted so violently he spilled most of his drink.

‘Go through that again? Are you crazy?’

Delia laid her hand on his arm.

‘You won’t have to, Romano. Ugo’s lawyer is already in possession of a document guaranteeing that we will not pursue any claims against his client regardless of the result of today’s contest. Ugo has nothing left to gain, so he will decline our offer. But you will have made it, which makes you look good. After that it’s back to business as usual, planning the summer series of the show. Va bene? ’

Rinaldi thought this over for some time. Actually it didn’t sound too bad. Maybe there was hope after all.

‘Va bene.’

He saw Delia to the door, and bolted and chained it after her. Back in the lounge, he replenished his glass and started to wander about again, but at a more relaxed pace than before. Vodka was good stuff, taken in sufficient quantities, but after the day he’d had Rinaldi reckoned that he deserved some of the very best. He wouldn’t be able to get that here, of course, but even a relatively modest product would be better than nothing. Once it got dark and the press corps gave up, he would slip out and try asking in a few bars around the university area. It never hurt to ask.

The moment the automatic doors of the Policlinico Sant’Orsola swished to behind him, Zen felt at home. It was good to be back in that calm, purposeful, well-ordered world, where an atmosphere of assured competence prevailed and questions of life and death were discussed in cool, measured undertones. Of course, it wasn’t like that in Palermo or Naples-or even Rome, which is why Zen had gone to a private clinic-but the high civic values of the Bolognese ensured that their public hospital was a model of its kind.

Nevertheless, the lowly and marginal status of non-patient, lacking the talismanic plastic wrist-strap, meant that passing through the various internal frontiers took a lot longer. Zen’s police identity card helped to an extent, but when he finally reached the waiting room outside the surgery where Gemma was being treated, admission was categorically refused. To make matters worse, the orderly in charge made it clear that this was at the patient’s request.

‘Nonsense,’ Zen retorted. ‘She doesn’t even know I’m here.’

‘The patient stated upon admission that if someone named Aurelio Zen asked to see her, permission should be refused.’

‘But that’s absurd! We live together!’

‘The policy of the hospital is to respect the patient’s wishes in such matters.’

The orderly turned away and began looking through a pile of files.

‘How long will it be before the preliminary diagnosis is complete?’ Zen demanded.

‘That depends on the physician.’

‘I’m asking for an estimate.’

‘At least half an hour.’

Zen sighed loudly and wandered to the doorway shaking his head, nearly colliding with a tiny, wizened woman whose worn-out coat was at least five sizes too large for a physique heavily discounted by age.

‘Bastards, they think they own you,’ Zen muttered.

The woman tittered, an unexpectedly liquid ripple of sound. Zen suddenly recognised her as the person who had been talking to an apparently stuffed Pekinese in the bar near the football stadium the night before.