Back to Bologna (13 page)

24

The moment the automatic doors of the Policlinico Sant’Orsola swished to behind him, Zen felt at home. It was good to be back in that calm, purposeful, well-ordered world, where an atmosphere of assured competence prevailed and questions of life and death were discussed in cool, measured undertones. Of course, it wasn’t like that in Palermo or Naples–or even Rome, which is why Zen had gone to a private clinic–but the high civic values of the Bolognese ensured that their public hospital was a model of its kind.

Nevertheless, the lowly and marginal status of non-patient, lacking the talismanic plastic wrist-strap, meant that passing through the various internal frontiers took a lot longer. Zen’s police identity card helped to an extent, but when he finally reached the waiting room outside the surgery where Gemma was being treated, admission was categorically refused. To make matters worse, the orderly in charge made it clear that this was at the patient’s request.

‘Nonsense,’ Zen retorted. ‘She doesn’t even know I’m here.’

‘The patient stated upon admission that if someone named Aurelio Zen asked to see her, permission should be refused.’

‘But that’s absurd! We live together!’

‘The policy of the hospital is to respect the patient’s wishes in such matters.’

The orderly turned away and began looking through a pile of files.

‘How long will it be before the preliminary diagnosis is complete?’ Zen demanded.

‘That depends on the physician.’

‘I’m asking for an estimate.’

‘At least half an hour.’

Zen sighed loudly and wandered to the doorway shaking his head, nearly colliding with a tiny, wizened woman whose worn-out coat was at least five sizes too large for a physique heavily discounted by age.

‘Bastards, they think they own you,’ Zen muttered.

The woman tittered, an unexpectedly liquid ripple of sound. Zen suddenly recognised her as the person who had been talking to an apparently stuffed Pekinese in the bar near the football stadium the night before.

‘Eh, no, it’s the undertaker who owns you!’ she replied.

Zen noted the time and went outside to have a cigarette, the ban on smoking inside the hospital apparently being observed in Bologna even by the doctors.

An ambulance had drawn up to the ramp outside the
Pronto Soccorso
department, and staff and paramedics were unloading a stretcher case under the supervision of two officers of the Carabinieri. In the tradition of policemen the world over, they had parked their car where it was most convenient for them and least so for everyone else, in this case blocking the wheeled route into the hospital. One of the officers went to move it, and on his way back Zen waylaid him and, having displayed his warrant card, enquired with mild professional curiosity what was going on.

‘Gunshot wound,’ the Carabiniere replied as the victim was conveyed inside.

Zen eyed the familiar bulging plastic bag that one of the paramedics held high, filled with colourless fluid feeding the intravenous drip, formerly his sole sustenance for days on end.

‘Self-inflicted?’

‘We don’t know yet. He was in no condition to answer questions.’

‘All part of the job,’ Zen commented in a tone of trade solidarity.

‘It’s going to be news, though,’ the other officer went on, seemingly piqued by the implication that this was just another routine chore.

‘How so?’

‘We checked his documents in the ambulance. Professor Edgardo Ugo. A big noise at the university, apparently.’

Zen frowned. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it there and then. So much had happened in the past few hours.

‘Well, I’d better go and see about taking a statement,’ the patrolman remarked, straightening his cap.

‘I’ll tag along,’ said Zen. ‘I’ve got someone in there too.’

He was hopeful that Gemma might be undergoing treatment in one of the curtained-off areas of the emergency ward, and that by circumventing the orderly at the desk he might be able to talk to her. There must have been some mistake or confusion when she was checked in. She had very likely been mildly concussed. In any case, she would never refuse him in person.

Unfortunately the efficiency of the Bologna hospital and its deplorably adequate manning levels brought this scheme to nothing. Zen was intercepted and asked his business by a nurse, and once his identity and intent had been established he was referred to the ward sister, who ordered him to leave in no uncertain terms. As she escorted him to the door, they passed the cubicle where the Carabinieri patrolman stood watching the most recent admission being given an injection prior to the doctors cutting his clothing away. Zen smiled nostalgically. He had come to love those gleaming pricks of pain, as bright and shiny as the freshly unwrapped hypodermic itself, particularly when morphine was involved.

‘That’s him! That’s him!’

The patient had raised himself up and was gesticulating wildly. Everyone turned to look, but by this time Zen and his wardress were out of sight behind the curtained side-screens, and a moment later the patient had slipped into unconsciousness.

25

…original contract specifically stipulated that payment would be made on receipt and acceptance–I emphasise the latter term–of a written report detailing your means, methods and findings in full.’

‘I’ve told you what you wanted to know.’

‘The presumption that you know what I “want to know” is impertinent.’

‘But…’

‘These photographs, for example,’ Avvocato Amadori continued. ‘I need to know where and when they were taken, with affidavits from credible witnesses in support of the foregoing facts.’

‘Well, it was in this bar…’

‘Has the proprietor of the establishment assented in writing to the photographic recording and subsequent reproduction and distribution of images of clients taken on his premises?’

‘What?’

‘I take it that means no.’

‘Well…’

‘So the said images are legally worthless.’

At the beginning of his solo career, Tony had considered making his slogan ‘The hope of knowing everything, always’, playing catchily on his surname. Plus he could have offered two plans at different rates, the Hope scheme and the Assurance scheme. ‘Let me put it like this, Signora Tizia. “Assurance” is going to cost you a little more up-front, but think of it as an investment. It’ll be well worth the extra in the long run, particularly if you ever decide to take the cheating son of a bitch to court.’ In the end, though, he had rejected the Hope option as too tentative. Now it seemed a massive presumption.

‘You told me you wanted pictures of your son’s low-life pals,
avvocato
. I’ve provided them, together with details of his address and movements over the last few days.’

‘All you have provided me with is an assortment of photographs of various unappealing young men apparently in a state of advanced inebriation. Without objective evidence of their alleged connection with Vincenzo, over and above your verbal say-so, they are of merely anecdotal interest.’

With a father like this, no wonder the kid left home, thought Tony.

‘And then there’s the matter of your alleged expenses. You not only claim to have spent over three hundred euros on “refreshments and incidentals”, but have the cheek to add a further five hundred and eighty to cover “depreciation of professional inventory”!’

‘In the course of my investigations, I was mugged and robbed of a very valuable digital camera, which I had to replace in order to take those photographs, and of an equally expensive pistol.’

‘I decline to be held responsible for losses due to your incompetence.’

‘If you think I’m incompetent,
avvocato
, then why did you hire me?’

‘To keep my wife quiet. The whole thing was her idea. Personally I’d be more than happy to let our ungrateful son discover the error of his ways in the fullness of time and at his own expense, but to maintain a semblance of peace in the household I judged it best to make a token gesture of concern. Not to the tune of almost fifteen hundred euros, however. On receipt and my acceptance of the full written report to which I have already alluded, I shall send you a cheque for the amount we originally agreed, together with a nominal five per cent per diem to cover your incidental outgoings.’

The line went dead. So, for a moment, did Tony. Then he reached for the bottle of Jack Daniels on his desk.

The offices of
Speranza Investigazioni SpA
occupied a small room at the back of a building whose legal status was currently indeterminate pending the outcome of a divorce case based largely on evidence gathered by Tony himself, who had foregone a percentage of his fee in return for the temporary use of this facility to house the ‘janitorial security service’ that he was supposedly providing, all on the strict understanding that when instructed to vacate the premises he would already have left, and indeed never have been there in the first place. Meanwhile Tony figured it was worth every cent, as he had been delighted to discover that the new European small change was called. It gave him a public face, a city centre letterhead, a window on the world and the opportunity to do all the things he would be doing at home in his suburban apartment anyway, only downtown.

It also gave him a base for his online operations, thanks to a tap into the DSL circuit installed in an apartment on the second floor. ‘If I ain’t heard of it, it never happened’, Tony liked to say. Taken literally, this maxim would have erased almost all human knowledge from the record, but in practice it meant little more than a free subscription to a ‘Headline HeadsUp’ service that bombarded its clientele with news snippets in return for selling their email addresses to spammers offering cut-price, over-the-virtual-counter Viagra.

Feeling utterly defeated by his client’s surly arrogance, Tony fired up the computer, logged on to his surveillance website and quickly tracked Vincenzo Amadori’s movements that day, just in case the matter came up in future negotiations. They were fairly predictable: at home until eleven, half an hour in a café, and then the walk to the university that Tony had witnessed in person. An hour there, then back by a different route through the narrow streets of the former ghetto to the apartment he shared with Rodolfo Mattioli, the boyfriend of that cute illegal redhead.

‘BREAKING NEWS’ flashed the screen below a picture of a man graced with the aura of the modern celebrity: making you feel vaguely uneasy for not immediately recognising who he was. ‘World-famed academic and author Edgardo Ugo shot in Bologna. The attack occurred outside the professor’s house on Via dell’Inferno, in the heart of the city, shortly after one o’clock this afternoon. The victim was rushed to hospital but no details of his condition have yet been released. Earlier today, Professor Ugo was involved in a cookery contest against Romano Rinaldi, the star of the show
Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta
, in an attempt to settle the issue of possible defamation resulting from Ugo’s comments in his column for the weekly magazine
Il Prospetto
. The Carabinieri have stated that they are anxious to trace Signor Rinaldi’s present whereabouts with a view to eliminating him from their ongoing enquiries.’

Tony felt a thought stir sluggishly in its comatose stupor. He couldn’t care less if some professor had got shot by that celebrity chef, of course. No money in it for him. Nevertheless, something in that news bulletin had caught his attention. Via dell’Inferno–the Street of Hell, in the mediaeval ghetto–shortly after one o’clock that afternoon…He shot back to the online surveillance site, and carefully checked times and locations once again. Well now, he thought. Well, well. Well, well, well!

Ten minutes later he was in Amadori’s law office. The receptionist put on a brave show of pretending that she hadn’t been daydreaming about Tony ever since his previous visit, and then announced in a transparently insincere voice that
l’avvocato
was ‘away from his desk’.

‘I don’t care if he’s under it, honey,’ Tony replied. ‘Get him. But soon.’

By now visibly weak at the knees with barely repressed desire, the receptionist managed to blurt out that her employer could not be disturbed and suggested that Tony might care to make an appointment for the following month.

Tony Speranza eyed her appreciatively. The right age, he thought. Not that gleamy, raw look of uncooked sausages the flesh of the young ones had. This babe had been hanging just long enough. The meat was nicely cured without the casing getting too wrinkly.

‘How much they paying you?’ he said.

‘Mi scusi?’

‘Never mind. But if you want to make some extra, breathe the name Edgardo Ugo into your boss’s shell-like ear.’

‘Edgardo Ugo?’

Tony nodded.

‘The great, and for all we know late, Professor Ugo.’

‘What might this be regarding?’

‘You going to go conditional on me, the possibilities are endless. Let’s just say that Vincenzo Amadori, a young hooligan not entirely unrelated to your employer, was present in Via dell’Inferno at the time when Professor Ugo was shot, and that I can prove it with documented evidence that will stand up in any court of law. You got that, Wanda?’

The receptionist, damn her, blushed.

‘How did you know my name?’

Mindful of the desirability of preserving his professional mystique, Tony forebore to point out the framed photograph that stood on the filing cabinet, with ‘To Wanda, with all my love, Nando’ scrawled across it. Some muscle-bound meatball with a chicken perched on his shoulder.

‘Hey, once in a while you get lucky! And we just did, Wanda. Because what I just told you is true, but so far you and I are the only people who know. I imagine that
l’avvocato
will want to keep matters that way, which gives us a certain leverage. Are you following me? So you go and drag him back to that old desk, by main force if necessary, and impress on him that if either of us were to make the Carabinieri a party to our exclusive knowledge, then those gentlemen would no doubt issue a pressing invitation for Vincenzino to assist them with their enquiries.’

He smiled and walked to the door.

‘You make your deal, I’ll make mine.’

‘My husband’s a policeman,’ Wanda replied provocatively.

Tony just laughed.

‘Great! Let me know next time he’s working nights, and we’ll have dinner and compare notes.’

He was back in the bar he had patronised that morning, lingering over a quadruple Maker’s Mark, when Amadori phoned. The conversation did not go entirely as Tony had foreseen. Not only did
l’avvocato
flatly refuse to offer any money in return for Tony’s silence, still less to negotiate an appropriate sum, but proceeded to dismiss his hireling on the spot and with immediate effect, and threatened to have Speranza’s private investigator’s licence revoked for attempted extortion.

Tony switched to Jack Daniels for his second shot, feeling a need for its asperity to help him work out how to respond. This took less than five minutes. He then tossed back the bourbon and marched down the street to the junction with Via Rizzoli, where one of those museum pieces from an unimaginably primitive past, a public telephone box, had been retained as a heritage item. Tony stepped in and dialled Carabinieri headquarters. The response was a recorded woman’s voice.

‘Welcome to the Carabinieri helpline for the province of Bologna. If you know the extension number of the person you are calling, you may dial it at any time. To report a crime, please press 1. Alternatively, hang up now and dial 112 to reach our
pronto intervento
section. For information on our products and services, please press 2. To learn about career opportunities with the force, please press 3. To speak to a representative, please press 4 or hold the line.’

Tony Speranza did so, and was rewarded with an endless silence punctated at intervals by a different voice telling him that his call was important to them but that all operators were currently busy and the approximate wait time would be nine minutes. He slammed the phone down and called the Polizia di Stato. A surly male voice answered almost immediately. Tony wrapped the lapel of his greatcoat over his mouth and spoke rapidly in a generalised approximation of the local dialect.

‘Listen, I know who shot that professor this afternoon. Name’s Vincenzo Amadori, the lawyer’s son. Can’t give mine, but he’s your man all right. I’ve got proof of that.’

He left the booth and walked quickly away. The police might trace the call eventually, but thanks to his gloves there would be no prints. Once the judicial machinery ground into motion then
il grande avvocato Amadori
might well decide that it had been rash of him to dismiss Tony’s original offer. In fact, when the time came he might well raise the starting price, just to teach the smug bastard that you didn’t fuck with Tony Speranza.