Michael Dibdin - Back to Bologna

Feeling utterly defeated by his client’s surly arrogance, Tony fired up the computer, logged on to his surveillance website and quickly tracked Vincenzo Amadori’s movements that day, just in case the matter came up in future negotiations. They were fairly predictable: at home until eleven, half an hour in a cafe, and then the walk to the university that Tony had witnessed in person. An hour there, then back by a different route through the narrow streets of the former ghetto to the apartment he shared with Rodolfo Mattioli, the boyfriend of that cute illegal redhead.

‘BREAKING NEWS’ flashed the screen below a picture of a man graced with the aura of the modern celebrity: making you feel vaguely uneasy for not immediately recognising who he was. ‘World-famed academic and author Edgardo Ugo shot in Bologna. The attack occurred outside the professor’s house on Via dell’Inferno, in the heart of the city, shortly after one o’clock this afternoon. The victim was rushed to hospital but no details of his condition have yet been released. Earlier today, Professor Ugo was involved in a cookery contest against Romano Rinaldi, the star of the show Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta, in an attempt to settle the issue of possible defamation resulting from Ugo’s comments in his column for the weekly magazine Il Prospetto. The Carabinieri have stated that they are anxious to trace Signor Rinaldi’s present whereabouts with a view to eliminating him from their ongoing enquiries.’

Tony felt a thought stir sluggishly in its comatose stupor. He couldn’t care less if some professor had got shot by that celebrity chef, of course. No money in it for him. Nevertheless, something in that news bulletin had caught his attention. Via dell’Inferno-the Street of Hell, in the mediaeval ghetto-shortly after one o’clock that afternoon…He shot back to the online surveillance site, and carefully checked times and locations once again. Well now, he thought. Well, well. Well, well, well!

Ten minutes later he was in Amadori’s law office. The receptionist put on a brave show of pretending that she hadn’t been daydreaming about Tony ever since his previous visit, and then announced in a transparently insincere voice that l’avvocato was ‘away from his desk’.

‘I don’t care if he’s under it, honey,’ Tony replied. ‘Get him. But soon.’

By now visibly weak at the knees with barely repressed desire, the receptionist managed to blurt out that her employer could not be disturbed and suggested that Tony might care to make an appointment for the following month.

Tony Speranza eyed her appreciatively. The right age, he thought. Not that gleamy, raw look of uncooked sausages the flesh of the young ones had. This babe had been hanging just long enough. The meat was nicely cured without the casing getting too wrinkly.

‘How much they paying you?’ he said.

‘Mi scusi?’

‘Never mind. But if you want to make some extra, breathe the name Edgardo Ugo into your boss’s shell-like ear.’

‘Edgardo Ugo?’

Tony nodded.

‘The great, and for all we know late, Professor Ugo.’

‘What might this be regarding?’

‘You going to go conditional on me, the possibilities are endless. Let’s just say that Vincenzo Amadori, a young hooligan not entirely unrelated to your employer, was present in Via dell’Inferno at the time when Professor Ugo was shot, and that I can prove it with documented evidence that will stand up in any court of law. You got that, Wanda?’

The receptionist, damn her, blushed.

‘How did you know my name?’

Mindful of the desirability of preserving his professional mystique, Tony forebore to point out the framed photograph that stood on the filing cabinet, with ‘To Wanda, with all my love, Nando’ scrawled across it. Some muscle-bound meatball with a chicken perched on his shoulder.

‘Hey, once in a while you get lucky! And we just did, Wanda. Because what I just told you is true, but so far you and I are the only people who know. I imagine that l’avvocato will want to keep matters that way, which gives us a certain leverage. Are you following me? So you go and drag him back to that old desk, by main force if necessary, and impress on him that if either of us were to make the Carabinieri a party to our exclusive knowledge, then those gentlemen would no doubt issue a pressing invitation for Vincenzino to assist them with their enquiries.’

He smiled and walked to the door.

‘You make your deal, I’ll make mine.’

‘My husband’s a policeman,’ Wanda replied provocatively.

Tony just laughed.

‘Great! Let me know next time he’s working nights, and we’ll have dinner and compare notes.’

He was back in the bar he had patronised that morning, lingering over a quadruple Maker’s Mark, when Amadori phoned. The conversation did not go entirely as Tony had foreseen. Not only did l’avvocato flatly refuse to offer any money in return for Tony’s silence, still less to negotiate an appropriate sum, but proceeded to dismiss his hireling on the spot and with immediate effect, and threatened to have Speranza’s private investigator’s licence revoked for attempted extortion.

Tony switched to Jack Daniels for his second shot, feeling a need for its asperity to help him work out how to respond. This took less than five minutes. He then tossed back the bourbon and marched down the street to the junction with Via Rizzoli, where one of those museum pieces from an unimaginably primitive past, a public telephone box, had been retained as a heritage item. Tony stepped in and dialled Carabinieri headquarters. The response was a recorded woman’s voice.

‘Welcome to the Carabinieri helpline for the province of Bologna. If you know the extension number of the person you are calling, you may dial it at any time. To report a crime, please press 1. Alternatively, hang up now and dial 112 to reach our pronto intervento section. For information on our products and services, please press 2. To learn about career opportunities with the force, please press 3. To speak to a representative, please press 4 or hold the line.’

Tony Speranza did so, and was rewarded with an endless silence punctated at intervals by a different voice telling him that his call was important to them but that all operators were currently busy and the approximate wait time would be nine minutes. He slammed the phone down and called the Polizia di Stato. A surly male voice answered almost immediately. Tony wrapped the lapel of his greatcoat over his mouth and spoke rapidly in a generalised approximation of the local dialect.

‘Listen, I know who shot that professor this afternoon. Name’s Vincenzo Amadori, the lawyer’s son. Can’t give mine, but he’s your man all right. I’ve got proof of that.’

He left the booth and walked quickly away. The police might trace the call eventually, but thanks to his gloves there would be no prints. Once the judicial machinery ground into motion then il grande avvocato Amadori might well decide that it had been rash of him to dismiss Tony’s original offer. In fact, when the time came he might well raise the starting price, just to teach the smug bastard that you didn’t fuck with Tony Speranza.

The original thirty minutes within which Zen had been told that he could expect to hear word of Gemma’s condition stretched to an hour and more, divided between a series of coffees in a bar opposite the hospital complex and smoke breaks outside one or another of the doors, where a louring dusk was already well advanced. And when he finally lost patience on his fifth return to the desk, where a different orderly had now come on duty, and demanded to see Gemma at once, he was informed that she was no longer there.

‘What do you mean?’