End Games - 11 (21 page)

While all this was going on, another phase of the job was taking place on the lower slopes of Monte Serratore to the south, where the stonemasons were dismantling a long-abandoned and roofless house of the type that abounded in the area and transferring the blocks of weathered basalt to the bed of a truck. These materials arrived at the construction site shortly after the team’s lunch break, following which the masons started to install them in the excavated pit in the form of a circular wall five courses deep and nine hundred and forty-three centimetres in diameter. The masons protested that this was an irrational number, but Giorgio refused to be swayed. He had no idea what kind of linear measurement would have been used by the people who had supposedly built this structure, but it certainly wouldn’t have been the standardised French import which even today wasn’t in general use in certain parts of the region. Likewise, he had chosen the circular pattern on the basis of some very old earthwork mounds up in the mountains, which the schoolteacher had told the class were the graves of the Bruttii, the original inhabitants of Calabria. This information had caused general hilarity, since the deletion of the final letter gave a word meaning ‘the uglies’. From that moment on, Giorgio’s personal motto became ‘
Sugno brutto e mi ’nde vantu
’: ugly and proud of it.

The resulting structure, however, wasn’t ugly at all. Indeed, as it gradually took shape, the stone blocks trimmed, laid and locked together with no visible mortar, Giorgio began to think for the first time that this scheme of Mantega’s might actually work. Not that it would be any great loss to him if it didn’t. His contact in Vibo Valentia owed him a couple of favours and had offered a very reasonable price for the equipment and wages. And if it did by any chance succeed, then there was no telling what kind of profits might be made on the operation. It was simply a question of what the purchaser wanted, how badly he wanted it and how much he could afford to pay. If Mantega was to be believed – and in cases offering the possibility of personal enrichment, he was – the answer to the last question was ‘almost anything’.

Dusk had gathered by the time the walling was completed and the mechanical digger started to dump the rock and gravel excavated earlier into the resulting enclosure. Its claw would inevitably scar some of the stones in a potentially suspicious way, but the constraints of time and security had forced Giorgio to make various assumptions. One of these was that once it became apparent that the supposed tomb had already been opened, the treasure seekers would not bother to dig it out to a depth greater than the five courses of blocks that had been laid, and that they would use mechanical means to do so. Any marks on the rocks removed would therefore be attributed to their own equipment. And if by any chance they took a more painstaking approach, Giorgio had already worked out various ways to hurry them up. The work they imagined they were doing would of course be illegal, so it shouldn’t take much to scare them off.

The final phases of the operation were undertaken after dark, lit by the headlights of the various trucks. The remaining stones from the demolished barn were tossed on top of the piled infill, suggesting elements of the vaulted roof which had been removed, then the surface rocks and vegetation were carefully replaced and the entire site cleared and swept by hand. Last of all, the dam of sandbags was removed, allowing the accumulated water to flow over the workings, obliterating the traces of human intervention. The construction convoy then snaked its way around the narrow country roads to the
autostrada
and headed south to their depot. As for Giorgio, he drove the black Jeep back up into the Sila mountains, heading home to his sister’s apartment. At the former station of San Nicola, on a windswept plateau fifteen hundred metres above sea level, he pulled off the main road. Cowbells clanked intermittently in the far distance, but there was no other sound. This part of the railway had been abandoned, but the public payphone attached to the station building still worked and there was never anyone there.

Giorgio fed in some money and had started to dial when he heard a noise close behind him. He let the receiver drop and whirled around, his pistol in one hand and his torch in the other. A pair of hallucinogenic eyes stared back at him, a feral black cat out hunting for prey amidst the long grass that had grown up between the rusted rails. After a moment it disregarded him and moved away across the row of sleepers, balks of sun-spliced timber cut from the forests that had once clad this entire region, now aged and weathered like beams of the True Cross.

‘
Pronto
,’ Mantega’s voice squeaked somewhere in the distance. ‘
Pronto, pronto
?’

Giorgio picked up the receiver.

‘Signor Rossi?’

‘He’s gone out.’

Giorgio hung up and climbed back into the Jeep, well pleased with the way the day had gone. The coded message was to inform Nicola Mantega that the trap was ready. Once it was found and opened – self-evidently for the second time, the contents already looted – then the notary would initiate dealings with the disappointed tomb robbers. They would almost certainly demand to inspect a sample of the supposed treasure before proceeding any further. To guarantee the authenticity of the fakes that would subsequently be offered for purchase, some genuine sample of antique Roman gold work would have to be produced for verification. That was Giorgio’s next task, and he had already decided on a way to accomplish it. This involved a kidnapping prospect he had had his eye on for some time, and would be put into effect the very next day.

Having been detained in Rome by work until early evening, Aurelio Zen decided to return to Calabria in the same way that he had arrived, rather than trekking all the way out to Fiumicino to catch a plane and then have to arrange for transport from the airport at the other end. He slept badly this time – possibly as the result of over-indulging at a restaurant near the Viminale, where he had eaten the first decent meal he had had for weeks and the only one in which tomatoes did not feature in any shape or form – and was then deposited at the junction for Cosenza shortly after four in the morning, almost an hour before the first connecting train.

By the time he got back to the city it was too late to go to bed and too early to go to work, so he killed time in the first bar he found open, drinking double espressos laced with a streak of milk, pondering his next move and generally feeling like hell. But the temperature was pleasantly mild and the air clean, with not a trace of the toxic pall that smothered the capital, dense enough to see as well as smell and taste. By the time he arrived at the Questura, he had formulated a suitable response to the demands of his superiors at the Ministry concerning his handling of the murder case which had gripped Italy and also, as they did not fail to remind him, had international implications.

Once in his office, he phoned the magistrate who had been appointed to oversee the investigation of the original presumed kidnapping and who was now so beside himself with delight at finding himself in charge of a gruesome, high-profile homicide that he had given Zen his mobile phone number. After the usual courtesies, Zen explained that he wished to file a request for an arrest warrant on one of the suspects, if the
signor giudice
could find a moment to receive him. The judge judiciously observed that there was no time like the present – or at least in an hour, when he would be at the Palace of Justice. Zen summoned Arnone.

‘We’re going to take Mantega,’ he told his subordinate. ‘It’s a little sooner than I would ideally have liked, but I was put under a lot of pressure at headquarters yesterday. They badly want something they can feed to the media to show that we’re on the job. It will also free up all the people who have been shadowing him. Given the way the situation appears to be evolving, I may well need them for other duties.’

‘Very good.’

‘Now listen, this is important. I want the arrest to be made as publicly as possible, for instance on the street or while he’s at lunch, and I want you to handle it. If you can arrange for reporters and photographers from the local television and press to arrive fortuitously at about the same time, so much the better.’

‘
Benissimo, capo
.’

‘Oh, by the way, did anything come of that business about Giorgio ordering in a construction team from Vibo Valentia?’

‘Following your instructions, an officer was dispatched to the assembly point on the
autostrada
to observe events and take photos, but I haven’t debriefed her yet. I’ll make enquiries and get back to you.’

‘Let’s take care of Mantega first. I’m off to get the warrant. After that it’s up to you, but bear in mind what I said about it being a high-profile arrest. I want word of this to get around like a forest fire with a gale behind it. Understand?’

On his way out of the building, Zen caught sight of an old woman seated on the long, shiny and very hard bench placed in the entrance hall of the Questura for the use of supplicants seeking an official document or permit for one of the numerous activities for which such papers are mandatory. Zen was about to pass by, but then, recalling what Arnone had told him on the phone the day before, he stopped and went over to her.

‘Are you being looked after,
signora
?’

The woman eyed him with an air of determination amounting to defiance. She looked as shrivelled as a raisin and as hard as a nut, and clearly wasn’t going to be placated or put off her stride by anyone.

‘I want to speak to the chief of police,’ she said.

‘I am he.’

The woman looked at him again, as if for the first time.

‘Yes, I suppose you are,’ she conceded grudgingly.

‘And who are you,
signora
?’

‘
Sono una creatura
. A person. My name is Maria Stefania Arrighi.’

‘Ah, yes. You came here yesterday, didn’t you?’

She nodded.

‘They told me you were away.’

‘I was. But why do you want to speak to me? I’m extremely busy this morning. If it’s not an urgent matter …’

The woman shrugged.

‘It may be urgent. It’s certainly important. To me, at least.’

Zen weighed this up.

‘I won’t be free until after lunch,
signora
, but I promise to see you some time today.’

‘Then I shall wait.’

‘That bench looks very uncomfortable. Let’s make an appointment for three o’clock. I’ll leave instructions for you to be shown straight up to my office. In the meantime you can do a bit of shopping, have a bite to eat …’

His voice tailed away.

‘I shall wait here,’ the woman said.

It took Zen less than an hour to obtain the arrest warrant, which was well below par for that procedure. As he walked back to the Questura, his mobile rang. It was Lucio, the technician at the police laboratory in Rome whom he had selected to analyse Roberto Calopezzati’s DNA sample, and then compare the results with those from the corpse of Pietro Ottavio Calopezzati, a.k.a. Peter Newman.

‘I’m glad to see that you still have a lot of clout at the Ministry,’ Lucio said, ‘but next time around would you mind not using it to rough us up? Three of our best people got dragged in to work with me all night on these tests.’

‘That’s your answer. It wasn’t my clout but panic on the top floor. This gaudy little murder, which would normally get buried away on the
Cronaca
pages, is suddenly front-page news. And it’s not being handled as one of those condescending “Made in Calabria” stories but as a “What have we come to?” guilt piece. Anyway, do you have a positive result?’

‘I wouldn’t have phoned otherwise.’

‘So there’s a definite relationship?’

There was a pause at the other end.

‘Between what?’

‘For God’s sake, Lucio! You may have been up all night, but I haven’t had that much sleep either. Between the individual whose DNA sample I gave you yesterday and the other whose DNA profile you also have in your hands.’

‘Oh. In that sense, no.’

‘What do you mean, no?’

‘I mean there is no correspondence at all.’

‘But you said the results were positive!’

‘Technically, they were. Sometimes matters are not so definitive, depending on the age of the sample, possible contamination and so on. But here there is no doubt whatsoever. The two subjects possess utterly different genetic profiles.’

‘There is no possibility that one of them could be the son of the other’s sister?’

‘Absolutely not. They are quite definitely unrelated by blood in any way.’

There was a long silence.

‘That was the result you were expecting, wasn’t it?’ Lucio put in at last.

It was a stiff test, but Zen rose to the occasion.

‘Of course, Lucio! You’ve confirmed my hypothesis. Many thanks.’

He put the phone down and continued on his way, his eyes blank.

Enough was enough, thought Emanuele Pancrazi, gazing at the rapturous light streaming in through the bedroom window. Emanuele had just turned seventeen, his soul was gaping open like a mussel to filter every last drop of life on offer and only a few days remained before he would have to return home to school and everyday reality. It was time to assert himself.

Thus far, Emanuele had indulged the agenda lovingly crafted and managed by his father. This governed every aspect of their month together, mostly in the form of day trips to churches and castles, long treks in the mountains and painstaking guided tours of the supposed sites of ancient Greek cities which in practice had vanished almost entirely. The day before had been devoted to the dull and seemingly endless badlands of the Marchesato di Crotone, unenlivened as usual by his father’s commentary on the historic system of sharecropping on the vast estates which had once covered the entire region, generating equally vast unearned profits for heartless absentee landlords such as the Calopezzati family.

In some dim way, prefiguring a wisdom that he didn’t really want just yet, Emanuele realised that his visits to Cosenza were as difficult for his father as they were for him, if not more so. His parents had been separated for ten years, and he had long ago stopped wetting the bed and weeping in corners. He was young and tough and sanely egoistic, but he knew that his mother still suffered from the break-up, not because she missed his dad, as he once had, so badly, but because she felt guilty for the pain that they had both caused him. He had to assume that his father felt the same sense of culpability, and that his gruelling programme of educational experiences was not in fact a deliberate bid to wreck his son’s visit but an attempt to provide a regime of constant activity, excluding any possibility of embarrassing hiatuses when the big dark questions that lurked in the background might assert themselves and demand to be addressed.