Michael Dibdin - Back to Bologna

Something hot, wet and sticky exploded on the wall beside him. The street kid he’d accidentally knocked over grabbed another of the plates of pizza that Normo had set out on the counter and hurled it at Rinaldi.

‘Stronzo di merda, vaffanculo!’

‘You’re barred, you bastard!’ screamed Normo ritualistically, but he couldn’t take any action, shut away as he was behind the counter. As for the two waiters, they seemed disinclined to enter the fray. The aggressor reached for another pizza. Rinaldi stepped smartly into the kitchen and dug the replica pistol out of the pocket of his jacket. Waiting until the third pizza and its plate exploded against the door to the lavatory, he stepped back into the corridor.

‘Out,’ he said decisively, waving the barrel of the pistol at the intruder.

The youth stared at the weapon with fascination rather than fear.

‘Hey, that’s my gun!’

‘Out!’ Rinaldi repeated, whirling the troublemaker around by his left arm and marching him towards the door.

‘Remember what I said about us being left free to concentrate on public order issues?’ Zen murmured to Bruno sarcastically.

He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder.

‘Here’s your chance to make the big arrest that brings promotion.’

The patrolman rolled his eyes.

‘It’s just one of those little punkabestia creeps who hang out under the portico of the Teatro Communale and in Piazza Verdi. We don’t bother much with them. The drug dealers take care of the really violent ones. They don’t want any trouble on their turf.’

‘Neither, apparently, does lo chef,’ Zen remarked as the troublemaker passed their table on his way to the front door, escorted by the foreign cook who was screaming ‘Out! Out!’ and prodding the younger man in the back with what was presumably some kitchen implement.

‘Holy Christ!’ said Bruno. ‘That’s Vincenzo Amadori.’

‘What a charmer.’

‘What do we do?’

Zen shrugged.

‘No longer our case, is it?’

‘Don’t forget your stuff, Vincenzo!’

The cry came from the boyfriend of the young woman whom Zen had noticed earlier. He had grabbed the blue nylon duffle bag he had brought and was now squeezing through the tables towards the door.

‘There could be evidence in that bag,’ said Bruno urgently. ‘We should take him!’

Zen lit a cigarette. Time to buy a new pack, he thought. The tobacconists would be closed by now, which just left the machines.

‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘There’ll be a lot of paperwork, you can say goodbye to the rest of your evening, and in the end the Carabinieri will get all the…’

But Bruno was already on his feet and gone. Ah, youth!

Out in the street, the situation had already changed. The shortorder cook stumbled on the edge of the doorstep and the yob he was ejecting took advantage of this momentary loss of balance to turn on him. He emerged from the ensuing scuffle holding an automatic pistol. Aurelio Zen stubbed out his cigarette and called in on his work mobile to explain the situation and order the immediate dispatch of a squad car. Rising from the table, he collided with the young woman he had been eyeing earlier, who was now rushing towards the door with the skinnier of the two waiters in hot pursuit.

‘And the bill?’ he called plaintively. ‘Over a hundred with the champagne!’

Zen followed the woman out to the street, where her companion had been grabbed and hoisted under the armpits by the punkabestia person, who was holding the pistol to the side of his head.

‘Back off or the puppy gets it!’ he yelled.

‘Police!’ Bruno retorted, keeping his distance and evidently uncertain what to do next. ‘Lay down the gun! You’re under arrest!’

The gunman didn’t even glance at him, his attention entirely absorbed by the imposing spectacle of the young woman closing in on him.

‘Put my boyfriend down this instant or you’ll have me to deal with!’ she shouted.

Apatrol car swept around the corner, light bar pulsing but siren stilled, and screeched to a halt a few metres away. Vincenzo Amadori surveyed the situation, then lowered his weapon, released Rodolfo and burst into laughter.

‘Ah, fuck!’ he said.

Flavia took the pistol from his fingers and handed it to Bruno. Nobody else approached Vincenzo, who stood swaying about, alternately screwing up and widening his eyes like someone learning a potentially enthralling new skill.

‘Are you a friend of his?’ Zen asked Rodolfo.

‘Who are you?’

‘A police officer.’

‘We share an apartment.’

‘What’s in the bag?’

‘Just some clothes he asked me to bring him.’

While Bruno, aided by his fellow patrolmen, handcuffed Amadori, Zen started looking through the contents of the duffle bag. He lifted out a striped cream silk shirt bearing the Versace label and held it up to the light of the restaurant’s neon sign. Several brown stains were visible on the right-hand chest panel.

Zen called Bruno over.

‘It looks like you may have been right about there being evidence in the bag.’

Bruno peered at the shirt, unimpressed.

‘A couple of wine stains?’

‘Let’s see what the DNA tests say. But if it’s blood rather than wine, as I have reason to suppose, then we’ll have stolen both the Curti and Ugo cases back from the Carabinieri, and you’ll be a sergeant next month.’

Tony Speranza woke up feeling like hell. Actually, he woke up feeling like hell every morning, but as he could never remember much about the day before, still less the days before that, this always came as a surprise.

He shuddered out of bed and padded through to the kitchen, where he cracked a bottle of Budweiser before proceeding to the living room and unmuting the TV, which had been on all night. A post-breakfast talk show for bored housewives was in progress, some hermetically groomed babe in a power suit. When Tony’s eyes finally focused, he saw that a title in the corner of the screen identified her as Delia Anselmi, personal assistant to the famous star branded as Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta.

‘Romano’s new concept is just awesome,’ she was gushing. ‘To think that he’s actually been working in disguise at an ordinary neighbourhood trattoria, doing research for this fabulous new series. Returning to his roots, as he put it to me last night, Stella. And I want you to know that he was weeping!’

The buxom, genetically modified presenter beamed.

‘That’s just great, Delia! I want you both to know that we’re all weeping too, but we’re weeping tears of joy.’

‘Thanks for sharing, Stella! I’m really moved, and I just know that Romano will be too. I can’t of course disclose the location of the restaurant where Romano decided to go “back to the rock face”, as he put it to me. That would compromise the integrity and authenticity of the whole experience, but it’s also for legal reasons following Romano’s heroic and decisive intervention in the dramatic arrest of Lorenzo Curti’s assassin last night. But we will shortly be filming him there, fly-on-the-wall style, and the resulting series, Real Work , will be shown…’

‘…exclusively on this channel,’ the presenter put in.

‘…early in the autumn. I just know that this is a break-through concept that is going to entirely change the whole way we look at…’

Tony Speranza hit the mute button and shambled over to his phone. No messages from the Amadori family, despite the turn of the screw he had administered the day before by calling the Questura and shopping Vincenzo as Edgardo Ugo’s attacker. Of course, they might not have been told yet. The police were so inefficient. He returned to the kitchen, swapped the Bud for a Jack Daniels and then shambled back to collapse in front of the TV, surfing to a twenty-four-hour news channel which was showing footage of some botoxed presenter heavy-lipping a huge microphone as if it were a phallus. ‘Supercop from Rome Cracks Curti Case’ read the title. Tony’s hand darted for the remote control.