Michael Dibdin: Back to Bologna

Thanks to his superb professional skills, Tony had remained unobserved by Vincenzo and his associates on this occasion, but he knew that it would be too risky to repeat the operation regularly enough to provide the total surveillance which his client expected. A remote device was therefore called for, and the question became where to install it. The most convenient location was the target’s car, but Tony had already established that Vincenzo didn’t own one. The normal alternative was some personal possession or item of clothing in frequent use, and here Tony had better luck.

The Amadori kid spent a lot of time asleep or hanging around the apartment he shared with one Rodolfo Mattioli, a harmless, ineffectual graduate student who didn’t appear to socialise with the target. There was also a girl involved, a red-headed stunner that Tony had tracked to her nest and planned to visit in the very near future, but the activities that l’avvocato was concerned with invariably involved some or all of the crew of football fans, and when he went out with them Vincenzo equally invariably donned a rough-looking black leather jacket, the back of which was decorated with an oval of shiny metal studs surrounding a painted image of the official club logo and the heading BFC 1909.

The next problem was access. Tony considered various possibilities, but in the end fate handed the solution to him on a plate. The occasion was a home game against the mighty Juventus, for which the Renato Dall’Ara stadium was packed to capacity. In the end Bologna lost to a disputed penalty, so the mood of the emerging fans was far from serene. The police were present in force and made an attempt to direct the tifosi of either team away from the stadium separately, but the hardcore elements on either side had had long experience of much more ruthless crowd control than the local authorities, accustomed to keeping a low profile in left-wing Bologna, could bring themselves to impose. Pretty soon those who had come not just to watch the match but to get into a fight managed to drift away down side streets and alleys, reassembling in the car park of a nearby Coop supermarket as soon as the police dispersed. Tony Speranza followed the group that included Vincenzo, keeping a discreet distance and trying to look like an ordinary citizen on his way home.

When they reached the deserted, dimly lit car park, it became apparent that the Juve supporters outnumbered their opponents by about two to one. This advantage increased as some of the rossoblu yobs disappeared into the bushes screening off the street, on the pretext of needing to pee, and did not return. It soon became clear that they had made a wise decision. The brawl lasted no more than two minutes, at the end of which the Bologna contingent slunk away to the jeers and laughter of the Torinese. All except Vincenzo Amadori. He stood his ground, hurling obscenities and abuse at his enemies and taunting them to come and get him. This they duly did. Amadori ended up in a foetal crouch on the bare asphalt, where he received a few more vicious kicks before the aggressors tired of the sport and trooped off up the street.

Tony Speranza had been concealed behind a delivery van parked in the far corner of the lot. He now emerged and ran quickly over to Vincenzo Amadori, who was groaning feebly. None of his companions seemed to be coming to his assistance, so Tony unzipped and folded back one side of the leather jacket. The satin lining was quilted in a diamond pattern. Tony took out an Xacto knife and made a small incision in the stitching of one of the diamonds, then inserted the handle of the knife and tore the opening a little more. Into it he slipped an object about the size of a cigarette packet, but as smoothly rounded as a pebble on the seashore and weighing no more. This he positioned in the centre of the padded sac, then pressed both sides hard so that the Velcro wrap would adhere to the fabric. Thirty seconds later he was in a phone box further up Via Costa, summoning an ambulance anonymously to the Coop parking lot. Now the bug was successfully planted, it was in his interests to get Amadori back on his feet and active again as soon as possible.

The device in question was essentially the innards of a mobile phone, stripped of its cumbersome microphone, speaker and other frills, but containing microchips responsive to a number of different networks. Once an hour the unit turned itself on and made contact with the nearest receiver-transmitter mast for each company and then phoned the data in to the computer in Tony’s office, where a nifty bit of software translated the resulting triangulation into a time-dated map with a star indicating the position of the target at that moment. Tony was therefore covered if any questions arose about Vincenzo’s whereabouts at any particular moment, and without the tedious and potentially tricky chore of actually following the little bastard and his mates around.

So two elements of the assignment had been completed. The third was the set of photographs that he had taken the previous evening, but which had gone missing when he had been mugged and his miniaturised camera and gun stolen. How the hell had that happened? Vincenzo Amadori and his pals certainly hadn’t spotted him, Tony reflected as he slipped on the double-breasted trench coat, trilby and aviator shades he had bought online from an American retailer specialising in 1930s retro gear. He would have known instantly if they had. A trained investigator could always tell when he’d been ‘made’, to use the technical term.

He let himself out of the apartment and walked downstairs to the street. The windscreen of his battered Fiat was dusted with a coating of grey, granular snow from which a parking ticket protruded, one end trapped under the wiper blade. Comune di Ancona, it was headed. Below that, in handwriting, appeared the amount of the fine payable within thirty days under penalty of…He groaned as the details of the previous evening finally came back to him. Of course! He had indeed been to a football match, only not at the stadium here in Bologna. The fixture, played midweek for some reason, had been an away game with local rivals Ancona, and Tony had duly driven down to that city with a view to completing the photographic record of Vincenzo’s cronies.

He started up the car, blotting out the view in a dense pall of exhaust fumes. He had it now, he thought. He’d located the clique he sought, despite the fact that for some reason the target wasn’t wearing his leather jacket. After the game he had followed them to a bar and very cautiously taken good-quality shots of the whole group. Mission accomplished, he had then gone to the lavatory at the rear of the bar for a quick pee before heading home.

After that, he had only a confused memory of the door bursting open and someone slamming his head forward against the tiled wall. When he recovered his senses, it had been to find himself on his hands and knees with his face in the trough of the urinal. By the time he had cleaned himself up and returned to the bar, Vincenzo Amadori and his friends were no longer there. Tony had ordered a couple of large whiskies to fortify himself, and must somehow have driven home and got into his apartment before passing out fully clothed on the bed.

In short, he had made one mistake, he thought with some satisfaction as he put the car in gear and backed out of the parking slot. So intent had he been on snapping the circle standing around Vincenzo Amadori without being observed by them that he had overlooked the fact that there were other people in the bar. This wouldn’t have mattered in law-abiding Bologna, but Ancona was a port city, crawling with down-and-outs, illegal migrants and criminal elements of every description. One of them must have noted the chic little Nikon nestling in Tony’s fingers and determined to make it his own.