White Death (4 page)

When he had finished I asked him what any of it had to do with his car.

‘Someone was trying to persuade me to sell,’ he said. ‘Someone wanted me out.’

‘Did they say so explicitly?’

‘Very.’

‘Like?’

‘What you said just now. Late-night calls, saying the area was dangerous, that now would be a good time to sell and so on.’

‘Male?’

He nodded.

‘Remember much about the voice?’

‘Nothing. Just menace.’ He stared at me. He took out another cigarette but simply held it between his fingers with the lighter in his other hand. He pointed the unlit cigarette at me. ‘You know what a “piano regolatore” is?’

I shook my head, but it sounded familiar, like one of those many plans politicians come up with. Piano urbanistico, piano turismo, piano regolatore.

‘It’s the development document for the city,’ he said. ‘It tells you where the city is going to sprawl next. Tells you what area of agricultural land is going to be buried in cement, which greenfield sites are going to be gone for ever.’

‘Doesn’t sound like you approve.’

He shook his head fast. ‘Someone knew my place was going to come inside the boundaries of the new development belt. That’s why they were desperate to get hold of it. It was suddenly, as they say, appetibile. It was going to be more lucrative than an oil well. If you’re inside the belt you can apply for a cambio di destinazione d’uso, which means you can convert anything to residential use. If I had known that, I would have held on to it. The value of the place would have tripled or more. Instead I sold out for next to nothing.’

‘To Masi Costruzione?’

He shook his head and looked at me as if I had offended him. ‘I’m not that stupid.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘If a constructor comes to you wanting to buy land you know something’s up. You know he thinks he’ll be able to build and you know you can ask for a fortune. I’ve never met
Masi. I just had a guy approach me who said he wanted to take over the business.’

‘When was this?’

‘A few weeks after the car went. This guy wanted to run a prosciuttificio. I didn’t connect the car and the calls with him. He just seemed to come at the right time and he was offering good money for a quick sale. I only realised later why he was in such a rush.’

‘Because the new piano regolatore was about to be made public?’

‘Exactly. Like I said, if I had known my place was inside the development belt I would have held out for double or treble what he was offering.’

‘What was he called?’

‘Luciano something.’ He was shaking his head again. ‘The minute I sold it to him, the whole thing was passed on to Masi, the planning permits went through, and almost before I had moved my stuff out, the cranes were there, ready to rumble.’

‘This Luciano,’ I said, ‘you remember his surname?’

He shook his head. ‘It’ll be in the Ufficio del Catasto.’

I nodded. ‘One other thing. What was the insurance company?’

‘For the car?’

I nodded.

‘Gruppo Sicurezza.’

‘And they provided a replacement?’

He threw his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Eventually.’

We disentangled our knees and he led me back out to the shop. He told his wife to slice me a few etti of culatello. She
started up the machine and moved the circular blade backwards and forwards, catching the thin wafers in something that looked like a crocodile clip. She wrapped it up in aluminium foil and gave it to me with a warm smile. I asked them what I owed, but they both tutted to say it was on the house.

Lombardi walked me to the door. ‘If you find the people who did this,’ he looked at me anxiously, ‘what happens to my car?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘If the insurance company find out there’s someone else who should have footed the bill, you can be sure they’ll ask for their money back.’

I reassured him that I would make sure his car didn’t get taken away. He started telling me why he needed it, how his grandchildren lived forty kilometres away and the only way to get there was in a car. His wife didn’t have one, and if the insurance company was intending to stop him seeing his grandchildren, he would hold me responsible. I held up a hand and told him to trust me.

Amedeo Masi’s office wasn’t far away. It was the next exit on the ring road. Outside it there was a sign with the Masi logo, big white letters on an oval, blue background. The office was on the ground floor of a block of flats. I assumed he had built the whole block and kept the ground floor for himself.

I got buzzed in and saw that there was nothing more than a couple of rooms with a couple of desks. It all looked fairly drab for the control centre of a construction empire. I guessed Masi was the kind of man who liked to keep costs down.

The young girl on the front desk was sturdy with short black hair and a chunky kind of face. She frowned at me when I said I didn’t have an appointment. I gave her my card and she disappeared into another office. As she opened the door I could hear the booming tones of a man who was losing his temper. She came out again, shutting the door. ‘You’ll have to wait a while, I’m afraid.’

‘Was that Masi I heard shouting?’

‘That was him.’ She nodded.

‘Does he often raise his voice?’

‘Never lowers it,’ she said, smiling naturally, like she almost admired him for it.

‘Must be hard to work with.’

‘And live with.’

I looked at her sideways.

‘I’m his daughter,’ she explained. ‘I don’t even notice it any more.’

I nodded at her and went to sit down. I listened to the phones. They were ringing constantly. No sooner had someone hung up than one rang again. It was so frenetic it was almost tiring to listen to. The receptionist and another girl were ordering materials, phoning banks, talking to contractors and employees.

Eventually, a short man came out of the closed office. He was stocky with a flat nose and a round stomach. As he got closer I could see his face looked like a crushed beer can: a strange combination of the sharp and the smooth. His hair was slightly ginger and the freckles on his face had joined forces a decade ago, leaving him with an orangey-brown complexion.

‘Masi,’ he said gruffly, holding out his hand as I stood up. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Can we talk in private?’

‘Like that, is it?’ he said, snarling at me as he turned to walk back towards his office. He held the door open for me as I went in, then shut it and stood there with his hands on his hips.

‘Allora?’ His body language suggested that he was impatient to get on with his day.

‘I’m investigating a fire in a car park a few nights ago.’

He nodded, the sides of his mouth pulled down in disapproval. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

I explained the connection: the fact that another car had been torched some time ago. That Lombardi had sold up after a bad fire and a good offer. How he had started to receive unpleasant phone calls. Masi frowned when he heard about Lombardi, pushing his head back like he was trying to place the name. ‘Doesn’t mean anything to me,’ he said quickly, like he had really tried his best.

‘Lombardi used to own a prosciuttificio on Via Pordenone. He sold the land to someone called Luciano, who sold the land to you. Now you’re building a block of flats there.’

‘Via Pordenone?’

‘That’s right.’

We stared at each other.

‘So you’ve come in here to ask if I’m in the habit of setting fire to the property of people from whom I intend to buy land?’

I shrugged as if to ask him to answer his own question.

‘Sit down,’ he said, motioning to a chair with a headbutt to the air. He sat down behind his desk and studied me. ‘You’ve come in here with some pretty serious accusations.’

‘I’m not making any accusations. Just asking you to tell me what you know.’

‘It wouldn’t take long to tell you everything I know. I’m a simple man.’

‘Tell me everything then.’

He stared at me some more. ‘You know much about building?’

I shook my head.

‘It’s a very simple process. You buy land, you build houses or offices or airports or whatever, and you sell them.
Straightforward. All you need is land, labour, materials. A bit of expertise and experience, and up it goes.’

‘And capital,’ I said.

‘Yes. And capital. Lots of it. Are you going to accuse me of being a capitalist as well?’

‘No accusation,’ I said, throwing my left palm in the air, fingers up. ‘I just know that you need a lot of capital to put up a block of flats.’

‘Sure you do,’ he said, ‘but I started with nothing. The only money I’ve ever had behind me is what I put in my back pocket myself, you with me? I started out as an apprentice when I was fifteen. I’ve worked every day since then. Every day. For years, if a worker didn’t show, I used to do their shift. I would still do it today if I had time. Look at me.’ He showed me his calloused hands. ‘Do I look like a lazy capitalist?’

‘No, no you don’t,’ I said slowly.

He stared at me and nodded. ‘I’ve been lucky, I’ve made a lot of money.’ He moved his hands so that his palms faced the ceiling, a gesture to suggest there was nothing dishonest in his wealth. ‘But I’ve given work to hundreds of people, given flats to—’

‘Sold, I assume.’

He shot me a glance as a reproach for the interruption. ‘I’ve sold flats to thousands of people. Flats that are safe, comfortable, good value for money. Look at the resale value of a Masi flat. It’s a great investment because everything works, everything has been thought through and done properly. My name is an assurance of quality. I’ve never left an invoice unpaid. I’ve never failed to pay a worker. I’ve never
salted away millions and feigned bankruptcy. You ask any supplier if they’ve ever had difficulty with me. You won’t hear a bad word.’

He was talking faster, still trying to defend himself from my sideways accusation.

‘I’ve worked hard,’ he went on. ‘And I’ve helped other people work hard. People seem to think that working in construction is a licence to print money. You know what? It’s hard, hard work. It’s expensive, gruelling work.’ He showed me his rough hands again, then ran them over his desk, his palms brushing the papers that were strewn everywhere. ‘I’m not much different to any other labourer. I make more money, sure, but I work as hard as any of them. Harder.’

I nodded. I wanted to give him his head, let him vent a bit of pride.

‘The problem with this country’, he went on, ‘is that everyone resents success. If you sweat to build and nurture a company, if it grows and becomes successful, people point at you and start insinuating you’re bent, like you must have made compromises on the way. That’s the malice of envy. It allows people to think that the only reason they’re shabby is because they’re honest. Listen, I don’t deny I’m financially comfortable. I’m well off.’ He waved an arm around the room. On the walls there were photographs of himself in a hard hat shaking hands with dignitaries wearing tricolour sashes hanging obliquely across their chests. ‘Where’s the harm in being well off? I’m proud I’ve been successful, and even more proud to have helped hundreds of other people enjoy success.’

He was looking at me now, trying to work out if his words
had sunk in. ‘So what’s this all about? You said there’s been some fire.’

‘Right. No accident either. It was arson.’

He was nodding slowly. ‘And you say the same thing happened over in Via Pordenone?’

‘The pattern was the same. Car set alight. Late-night intimidation.’

He looked at the ceiling the way some people ask for heavenly intervention. It looked false somehow, like the outrage or piety was manufactured. He snapped back to his usual self, fixing me with a stare and leaning forward on his desk. ‘Via Pordenone was a bad bit of business for us. I don’t often make mistakes, but that was a big one. I overpaid for it. Bought it at the top of the market a year ago and even if we manage to sell all the flats tomorrow we’ll be lucky to cover our costs on it.’

‘Who did you buy it from?’

He looked at his desk and shook his head. ‘I really can’t remember.’

‘I’m sure a successful businessman like you finds it hard to forget the bad deals. I heard you bought from a Luciano somebody. Ring any bells?’

‘I do a dozen deals a month, hundreds in a year. I don’t remember every person I shake hands with.’

Most businessmen I’ve met remember every detail of every deal: the figures, the people, the circumstances, the coincidences. Each deal has an anecdote or two. I didn’t buy his memory lapse.

‘And did you know this Luciano character? Had you ever met him before?’

‘I don’t even know who you’re talking about.’ He said it like his confusion, or my insistence, made him angry.

‘Luciano, the person you bought Via Pordenone from. Did you know him?’

‘I told you …’ he started.

‘And when you bought the land, did it already have planning permission?’

He looked at me with contempt. ‘I don’t buy land without it. What do you think I am, some kind of farmer?’

‘Would you have any objection to me asking your office’, I thumbed over my shoulder, ‘to look out the paperwork, find me a name?’

‘They’re busy,’ he whispered, staring at me in defiance. ‘So am I.’ Any friendliness he had was gone and his whisper seemed more intimidating than his shouts.

‘You don’t understand why this is important?’

He had stood up and his hands were by his sides as if he were about to shoo me out of his office. ‘I don’t like mudslingers,’ he said, headbutting the air with the side of his head again to show me which direction to walk.

‘I’m not slinging mud,’ I said, staring back at him. ‘Just trying to understand who is burning cars.’

‘I can’t help you there. I build flats. That’s all I do. I’m just a simple builder.’ He moved to the door.

As I walked past him I could feel his animal energy, like he was ready to attack. I stood in front of him for a split second, to let him know that I had that sort of energy myself. I headed out and heard the door slam behind me.