White Death (18 page)

‘Can you search by name?’

‘Certainly.’

I told her to look under Antonio Santagata. She started typing without saying anything. She was quite an iceberg. I heard the sound of her fingertips on the keyboard, like the sound of a train rattling over the tracks. She took the mouse and started clicking again. I shut my eyes and it sounded like the noise of an indicator from the inside of a car. But the result was the same. Nothing came up under that name. No smoking gun. There never is in this country; only the smoke. The smoke and fog and sand. Anything that obscures and confuses and silts up. Nothing’s ever conclusive, nothing’s ever black and white. Except Tommy and the way he died.

I drove towards the underwear shop where Tosti’s widow worked. I heard a child’s crying as I walked in and saw Rosaria
behind the glass counter. She was bending down to try to reason with what looked liked a furious two-year-old. His nose and eyes were running and his skin was blotchy. I couldn’t understand what he was shouting, and neither could his mother, which only made him shout louder.

She straightened up when she saw me. The child saw me too and immediately stopped his screaming.

‘What was all that noise for?’ I asked him. He slid behind his mother’s thigh, his staggered breathing muffled by her trousers.

Rosaria looked at me and rolled her eyes. She smiled and shook her head to show me her exasperation. It felt like a friendly gesture, a hint that she and I were somehow on the same level.

‘Any news?’ she asked.

I took out my phone, found the snap of Santagata and put it on the glass counter. She picked it up and stared at it. She frowned and shook her head.

‘You’ve never seen him?’

She shook her head again.

‘You’re sure?’

She was. ‘The man who was hassling Luciano was older than that. Thinner.’

It sounded like D’Antoni, the thin, wily local politician. But I doubted that he ever got his hands dirty. I found the recording of Santagata’s voice and played that to her. She shook her head again.

I was surprised. I had thought I was on the home straight, but her reaction threw me. It wasn’t even a ‘maybe.’ The boy was pulling at her sleeve now and she turned round to see
what he wanted. He whispered something to her whilst staring at me.

Her reaction to the picture of Davide Pace was the same. Nothing. She shrugged and apologised as if it were her fault. She bent down and picked up the boy, groaning slightly as she took his weight. He straddled her hip, resting his head on her shoulder as he looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

As always, I woke up early the next morning. It was just gone four. The flat was freezing. I pulled on socks and a jumper and went to make coffee. I flicked on the light of the extractor fan above the hob because it was more gentle on the eyes and pulled up the tapparelle slowly, hoping not to wake the neighbours. Outside, the street was deserted. I opened the window briefly to enjoy the air: it was fresh and expectant.

I shut the window and heard the coffee hiss its arrival. I poured a slug into a tazzina and stirred in some sugar. I felt impatient, wishing it was already morning so I could get on and crack the case. But there wasn’t much to do yet. I sat at the kitchen table and drew circles with my left foot. It cracked as I rotated it, sounding like a car driving slowly over gravel. I rotated it the other way. More cracks, but gentler this time.

There wasn’t much to do at this time of day, so I started knocking some frames together: sandwiching the wax foundation between thin, square sticks that I gently nailed in place. I would need a few hundred of these over the spring and summer, as the weather got warmer and the bees needed more storage space.

Whilst I was at it, my mind wandered over the case. I needed to get Davide Pace to sign an affidavit. When it was a decent hour I phoned him and his sad voice came on the line.
I told him what we needed to do, but he began stammering, saying there was no point. I told him I would be round at his house in a quarter of an hour.

I walked through the centre, past the usual adolescents in clothes they had seen on MTV: oversize, bright-coloured baseball tops whose shoulders were at their elbows. They bounced around the steps of the Duomo, trying to disguise their self-consciousness with apeish loudness. A woman with bowed legs was begging outside the Battistero. She had a sign saying ‘ho fame’.

The concrete piazza looked even more ugly in daylight. It was grey and the finish was rough. I rang the bell to the Pace apartment and was buzzed in.

He was standing at the door to his flat like he wanted to block me from entering. He looked embarrassed and defiant at the same time.

‘I made a mistake,’ he whispered as soon as I was level with him.

‘It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know what Santagata was planning to do. No one will blame you.’

‘You don’t understand.’ He was looking at the floor. ‘I got it wrong.’

‘Got what wrong?’

He raised his round face to look me in the eyes. He looked strained, like he was lifting weights as well as his eyes. He was breathing heavily. ‘I made a mistake. I didn’t ever give any petrol to anyone.’

It sounded like he was repeating someone else’s words and I told him so. He just looked at me as if pleading for me to understand.

‘Those petrol cans that you bought have been found in a skip outside Santagata’s apartment. You bought them, he disposed of them. If you start obstructing justice, you’re an accessory and the Carabinieri will be here instead of me. An accessory to manslaughter.’

He repeated his line. ‘I didn’t ever give any petrol to anyone.’

‘A boy died,’ I said. ‘Lost his life. Do you understand that? You effectively bought the murder weapon.’

He was staring at the floor showing me only his thinning hair.

‘I think’, I whispered, ‘that you were a good Samaritan. You did him the kind of favour any friend would do.’

His head sprang up like I had removed the weights.

‘But if you start telling lies and siding with him, you’re in trouble. Real trouble. There are records of what went on. Phone records, receipts, fingerprints. And you start to look like an accessory.’

He just repeated his favourite sentence again. I interrupted him and told him what sort of man I thought he was. I walked back down the corridor swearing to myself about cowardice and coglioni. I was about to limp down the steps when a thought occurred to me. I turned round and walked back along the corridor. By now his door was shut and I rang the bell.

‘Cosa?’ he said with fatigue as he opened the door a crack.

‘Where’s he from?’

‘Who?’

‘Santagata. Where’s he from originally?’

He looked down the corridor before answering, to make
sure no one was there. The boy was more paranoid than I thought. ‘Monteleccio,’ he said quickly, shutting the door again as if it could keep away his worries.

The town of Monteleccio was an hour and a half south of the city at the far end of the province. The road there was straight at first, going through various towns and villages whose names I remembered from summer fairs long ago. But for the last half-hour the road zig-zagged up into the mountains and clouds. Everywhere suddenly looked different: bleaker, braver, more solid. The people by the roadside looked sterner and stronger, dressed for survival rather than for fashion.

The town had only one central square, though it wasn’t particularly square. It was built on a slope and had a small monument in the middle. A church stood on the higher side of the square whilst a bar, with an old-fashioned lantern on the outside, was at the lower end. I let gravity pull me towards the bar.

It was warm and noisy inside. I could hear guttural shouts and laughter. Men who hadn’t shaved for days sat around tables playing cards. The chairs were three deep around one game and most of the men had small glasses of grappa in their fists. The only woman in there was behind the bar.

‘Salve.’ She smiled at me.

‘Coffee please.’

‘Subito.’

She set about the usual ritual and I looked around the bar. None of the men had even noticed I had come in. She put the coffee in front of me and moved away to serve someone else.
I looked to the end of the bar and saw a man who was a good twenty years younger than the others. He said something to me that I didn’t understand. I shuffled towards him and asked him to repeat it. It was something about the weather, but his accent was still incomprehensible.

We both stared ahead, sinking our coffees. I caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror behind the bar and his eyes looked bloodshot, as if he had had too much drink or cold air or both. He had thick black curly hair and the kind of pinched face that suggested he would be loyal to whoever treated him worst.

‘I’m from Milan,’ I said. ‘I’ve come back to try and find old relatives who might still be living here.’

He looked me up and down like he had never seen someone from the city. ‘Ah sì?’

‘My grandfather left this town after the war. He always told me about his brothers here.’

‘Which family?’ He asked the question like he might have something to gain from the encounter, like I might have untold riches to hand out to the hardened montanari.

‘D’Antoni.’

‘D’Antoni?’ he repeated. He shook his head. ‘I’ve been here forty years and never heard of a D’Antoni.’

I frowned as if I were surprised. In truth I wasn’t. It had been a long shot, but one worth trying. I knew Luciano Tosti had come from here. This was where he had met his wife. And if he and D’Antoni had been from the same place I would have a connection.

‘You could talk to one of the older men.’

He shouted to one of the men on the fringes of the card game. A man in a red and grey jumper came towards us
slightly unsteadily. It looked like he had been here drinking since breakfast. His wiry, unbrushed hair and blackened teeth suggested it might have been longer.

My friend introduced us and explained that I was trying to trace my ancestors. The man shook his head silently whilst staring at me. The gesture made me think that the wily man knew I was lying.

‘Never heard of a D’Antoni round these parts,’ he said.

‘Sure you’ve got the right town?’ the younger man asked.

‘Monteleccio? Absolutely. My grandfather spoke about it often enough. Told us all about his friends. There was a family called Tosti I remember.’

‘Was,’ said the older man. ‘They left a while back.’

We had common ground at least and I decided to try out a few more names just for luck. ‘He told me about the Santagatas,’ I nodded, underlining my reliability.

‘I’m a Santagata,’ the old man said, smiling broadly. ‘What did he tell you about us, eh?’

‘You are?’ I said, letting it sink in. He held out his hand and I shook it.

‘What did he say about us?’

I made up some story about how a Santagata had stolen my grandfather’s sweetheart. The man drank it up like it was grappa. He grinned and said that success with women was in the genes. He asked the barmaid for confirmation and she looked at him with affection and nodded. The man ordered a grappa for me and started telling anyone who would listen about how rumours of his family’s powers of seduction had reached Milan. A few people laughed and turned round to look at us. I raised my glass and threw it back.

‘And wasn’t there a family called Moroni?’

‘Sure. Still is.’ The man pointed at one of the card players sitting at the table. ‘There are more Moronis in this village than we know what to do with.’

The rush of scorching alcohol fuelled my euphoria. I had known Tosti and Santagata were from up here, but Moroni had come as a surprise. They were all from this same small town. Moroni must have gone back to his roots when looking for people to do his dirty work. It made sense in a strange, subtle way. People always go close to home when looking for prestanomi, the frontmen who pretend to be the owners of a flat or a bank account. When Moroni wanted muscle or a frontman, he went back to Monteleccio.

I slapped some coins on the counter and walked out. The hairpins seemed tighter on the drive back to the city, perhaps because both car and blood were moving faster. I was in the city in little over an hour. Near the pavement where I parked I saw one of those walls where political campaigners had pasted up election posters. Every poster had the face of the aspiring politician. There was no originality, no humour, nothing other than a huge close-up of their mug with, underneath, their vacuous promises: ‘working for you’ or ‘solidarity and good sense’. I walked further along the wall and saw the Italia Fiera poster: ‘proud to be proud’ it said. I looked at D’Antoni’s face. The poster was peeling away at the edges but it was clearly him. He looked like a benign, fit grandfather in the photograph. I took hold of one brittle corner of the poster and ripped a strip off. ‘Proud eh?’ I asked the mute photograph as I screwed up the strip.

I decided to go and see Bragantini one last time. I drove round to the factory but it was deserted. The only thing still in the car park was the burnt-out shell of his old Audi, the thing that had lit the fuse of this case in the first place. I looked at it there, inert and innocent.

There was nobody around. I phoned Bragantini and he told me he was at home. I walked round and he came to the door in casual clothes. He looked incongruous in jumper and jeans, as if he had lost his old identity and was trying out a new one. He welcomed me inside like he didn’t have a care in the world.

He led me into his study, talking over his shoulder as he went. ‘You’re here to give me an invoice, I take it?’

‘Not really.’

He stopped and turned round. His face looked more severe. ‘What are you doing here then?’

‘Just a couple of final questions.’

He made a disgruntled growl.

‘Your insurance company has employed me to look into the circumstances surrounding the fire.’

He looked at me quizzically. ‘That’s ridiculous.’ His good humour evaporated.

‘They’ve asked me to treat you as a suspect, just like everyone else.’

He told me where to go and what to do once I got there.

I smiled and batted away the insult with the back of my hand. ‘I know you’re not a suspect. You’re the victim in this. I know that.’

He looked up at me, surprised, I assumed, by my support. I repeated what I had said, to make sure he knew I was on his side.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, sitting down and holding his forehead in his hands. He sat there like that for a while, rubbing the balls of his thumbs into his temples. ‘I just want my life back.’ He took his hands away and looked at me over his shoulder. ‘I was a successful businessman. Never knowingly wronged anyone. Worst I ever did was drive a hard bargain. And now I find my factory burnt to the ground and I’m despised across the city. Treated like a criminal.’

I nodded. We sat like that for a few minutes. A woman in an old-fashioned domestic’s apron came in, saw us sitting there like pensive mourners, and walked out again.

‘Was that Valentina?’

He nodded. ‘How did you know?’

‘I spoke to her about something. In her own way, she broke the case open for me.’

‘Valentina?’ He sounded incredulous.

I told him briefly about the restaurants, about how Valentina always left his home number when she reserved a table. I told him that someone had been watching him and had followed him into Il Cucchiaio a couple of weeks ago to get his number from the bookings.

‘Bastardi,’ he said to himself.

‘Spying on you for weeks probably.’

He shook his head aggressively. I was glad to see some of his old anger coming back. I wanted to needle one last piece of information from him.

‘Who are you selling to?’

‘There’s some cordata.’ He waved his fingers in the air like he didn’t care about anything any more.

It was a word I disliked. There’s always some cordata. It meant originally a bunch of climbers all roped – corded – together. But now it means a consortium, a bunch of people who have grouped together to climb to the top of the capitalist peak.

‘What are they called?’

He looked at me and hesitated. He must have known if he gave me a name I might manage to sabotage his sale. ‘It’s an Ati,’ he said quietly and with contempt.

‘What’s that?’

‘Associazione temporanea d’imprese.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning you have absolutely no idea who’s involved. It’s an association that guarantees complete privacy to the participants.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘There’s no register of who’s involved, no record of the percentages of participation. All I know is the price they’re prepared to pay.’

‘And you’re happy with it?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m not happy at all, but I’ve got no choice. You know that the insurance company’s hardly likely to pay out if it’s proved to be arson anyway. I’ve got to take what I can get.’

‘From whoever you can get it?’

He stared at the ceiling as if imploring it for patience.

‘Ci vediamo,’ I said, bouncing my fist gently on his shoulder as I went out.