Michael Dibdin - Back to Bologna

Most people are familiar with the temporary euphoria produced by a few glasses of wine, but few would claim that the experience had saved their marriage. For Zen, however, this may just have been the case, because when his phone rang he was in a particularly mellow and affable mood, amenable to anything and treating it all lightly.

‘It’s me,’ Gemma’s voice said.

‘At last! How are you? Where are you?’

‘In a bar.’

‘Me too.’

He laughed.

‘We really must stop meeting like this.’

There was no reply, but instead of regretting his flippancy and moodily clamming up in turn, he signed the bartender to refill his glass and carried on as though there had just been a brief lapse in transmission, of no personal intent or significance.

‘Which bar? I’ll come immediately.’

‘No, no, don’t. Stefano’s here.’

‘Stefano?’

‘My son.’

‘Oh, Stefano! Yes. Yes, of course. I thought you said…er, “sto telefono”.’

‘You’re the most awful liar, Aurelio.’

‘That’s because I never get any practice.’

‘Anyway, the reason I’m calling is…I’m having dinner with them, as I told you. Then I was planning to drive home, but after what’s happened I’m not so sure that would be a good idea.’

‘Don’t dream of it, particularly in the dark. The truckers on the autostrada are vicious. The doctor I spoke to at the hospital was horrified that you’d even discharged yourself. He said you needed more tests and…’

‘It’s not just that. But I really need a bed for the night, only because of this trade fair there don’t seem to be any hotel rooms to be had.’

‘Do you want to sleep with me?’ Zen replied in a lighthearted tone that he had thought he would never be able to manage again.

‘If that’s what it takes.’

‘It’s a sort of bed and a half rather than a full double.’

‘I’ll take it.’

He laughed again, quite naturally.

‘It’s yours, signora. We’ll just need a credit card number to secure the deposit. I had an appointment this evening, but I’ll cancel it.’

‘Don’t do that. I won’t be free till later anyway. Probably much later. They’ve had some bad news, you see. That’s why Stefano arranged to meet me here before dinner, so that he could break it to me alone. Anyway, it looks like being a long evening in every sense.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘I’ll tell you later. But the upshot is that I’m not going to be a grandmother after all.’

This was a much stiffer check, but once again Zen carried blithely on.

‘That’s a shame. Still, they’re young. There’s plenty of time.’

‘Not necessarily. It sounds as though this has put the relationship at risk. I get the feeling that Stefano’s relieved, quite frankly. Lidia, on the other hand, is naturally shattered. So a long evening, and I may be a bit weepy when we meet. It’s been a difficult day, one way and another.’

Zen took another hearty gulp of the effervescent wine and started toying with one of the pork ciccioli.

‘Yes, shame about lunch. You misunderstood me. I was talking to my stomach.’

‘I’d rather been looking forward to knitting little bootees and jackets.’

‘Well, I could use a new pullover.’

‘It wouldn’t be the same.’

He laughed again, by now quite impervious to anything she might throw at him.

‘I should hope not! It would never fit otherwise. I’ll tell the hotel to expect you. Just ask at the desk and they’ll give you a key if I’m not back.’

‘Thank you.’

‘All part of the service, signora. We know you have a choice. We work hard to be both your first choice and your last.’

He hung up, grinning widely, and grabbed a lump of Parmesan the size of an inoperable tumour.

‘But this is crazy!’ the barber protested. ‘You have a magnificent head of hair, a superb beard! All that’s required is a delicate and discreet trim, a snip here, a hint more shape there…’

‘Do what I say!’ snapped Romano Rinaldi.

For a moment the barber, reflected in the mirror facing the swivel chair in which Rinaldi was seated, looked as though he might be about to refuse. The man must have been in his sixties, with a moonlike face and the expression of a priest struggling to bring an unrepentant sinner to the foot of the cross, while his shop looked as though it had been furnished about the time of national unification and left untouched ever since. The proprietor clearly regarded himself as one of the city’s top professionals, and was more accustomed to advising his clients on which interventions needed to be undertaken than merely carrying out their orders, particularly when these were eccentric and wilful in the extreme. Nevertheless, he picked up his scissors with a heavy sigh of disapproval and set to work.

His eyes fixed on the antique sink in front of him, Rinaldi sat there impassively as his shorn locks fell on to the wrap that covered his upper torso. The police would be watching the hotel, the railway and bus stations, and the airport, as well as monitoring both his and Delia’s mobile phones. He had instructed the barber to shave his scalp bald, remove his eyebrows and trim his beard down to a very thin moustache. That should prevent any casual recognition on the street. His plan was to find a small, seedy hotel of the kind used by young backpackers on a tight budget, pass himself off as a foreigner and tell the proprietor that his passport had been stolen but he had informed the consulate and a replacement would arrive within the week. That and a hefty deposit should do the trick in the short term. After that it would be a matter of keeping an eye on the news and seeing how the affair played out.

The barber finished his job, scowling his disapproval, and whisked away the hair-covered wrap.

‘Fifty euros.’

Getting to his feet, Rinaldi stared speechlessly at his reflection in the mirror while the barber brushed him down like a horse. Even Delia wouldn’t recognise him like this, he thought. He reached for his wallet, but encountered only an alien object, smooth, cool and heavy. Pulling it out impatiently, he found to his amazement that he was holding what looked like an automatic pistol.

It took him only a moment to work out that the little rat at the Irish bar had ripped him off after all. He’d faked that collapse to give him the chance to grab hold of Rinaldi, then lifted his wallet and substituted this cheap replica gun to simulate its bulk and weight. A wave of sheer panic swept over him as the implications sunk in. All his cash and credit cards were gone, and since he was wanted by the police he could not report the incident and get replacements in the usual way.

He turned to the barber, flashing his radiant Lo Chef smile.

‘Look, I seem to have left my wallet at home.’

The man did not reply. He stood very still, gazing down at the pistol in his client’s hand. Rinaldi hastily replaced it.

‘I’ll leave my watch as surety while I go and fetch my wallet,’ he went on. ‘It’s a vintage Rolex, platinum band, worth at least a thousand. I’ll be back in about half an hour.’

‘I close in ten minutes,’ the barber stated in a voice like an automated recording.

‘Then tomorrow.’

He thrust the watch at him and walked out. As soon as he reached the corner, he turned left and ran until he was out of breath. The night air felt cruelly cold in his newly shorn state, but at least there was no one about. A few metres further on, lost in the overarching shadows cast by the portici, stood a municipal rubbish bin. Rinaldi rooted about in it until he found an empty plastic bag, and then stuffed his pigskin gloves, cashmere scarf and camelhair overcoat into it. Then he roughed up his blazer, pullover and trousers against the rough plaster on one of the pillars of the arcade, scuffed his immaculately polished brogues repeatedly against a neighbouring doorstep, and set off again looking rather more like a common vagrant, battered bag of belongings in hand.