Back to Bologna (8 page)

13

The door banged open and her supervisor walked in.

‘So this is where you’ve been hiding!’

‘I’m not hiding,’ Flavia replied calmly. ‘I’m putting away the equipment. My work is over.’

The balding gnome stared at her maliciously. He was sweating, and the array of pores on his nose resembled the backside of a bad cep. Conscious of the unearned superiority afforded by her looks and stature, Flavia felt a certain disinterested pity for him, although she would have killed him without a thought if the need had arisen.

‘No it’s not! The construction crew just finished putting up the set in B1, but everything’s filthy, the event’s at ten tomorrow morning and all the other girls have gone home.’

He put his head in his hands and sighed deeply.

‘God, the day I’ve had! At the very last minute they decide to hold this stupid event, and guess who has to organise everything on less than twenty-four hours’ notice? I managed to beg, borrow or steal the stoves, pans and all the rest of it from the exhibitors here, but then the stoves had to be hooked up and the whole fucking set constructed from scratch in less than eight hours. I’ve been going mad! Anyway, it’s all done now, but the place is a total mess and we’ll have the TV crew in here at crack of dawn tomorrow to set up. So get your illegal arse out there right now,’ he snapped, stomping out, ‘or I’ll have it shipped back to wherever the hell it came from.’

Ruritania, she thought. I am the Princess Flavia, and mine is a Ruritanian arse.

She stacked her mop, pail, rags, bottles of cleanser and other equipment on to the trolley, and pushed it and the vacuum cleaner out into the vast arena, its ceiling festooned with an intricate mass of yellow piping like a giant molecular model. Another half-kilometre past stands displaying every kind of food, wine and kitchen equipment brought her to the double doors of hall B1. She shoved the door open with her Ruritanian arse, moved the gear inside and then turned to survey the extent of the task before her.

Any lingering feelings of self-pity and indignation instantly left her. The vast space was in darkness except for the brilliantly lit stage area, where two kitchens had been constructed, one on each side, with a fake dining room walled off between them. Flavia was instantly enchanted. It looked like a full-sized version of the doll’s house she had played with as a child, before that and all the other family possessions, and indeed the family itself, had been dispersed. She had named it the House of Joy, and then transferred that epithet to the state orphanage to which she had later been sent, as if the concrete walls of that formidable institution could also be folded back and its roof lifted off to reveal a multitude of nooks and crannies where all manner of secrets could be kept accessible but safely out of sight. The memory of the books she had read so many times that she had them by heart, for example. As soon as she discovered the Italian text of one of them at a market stall in Trieste, she realised that it was a key that would unlock this odd dialect of her own sweet tongue. In the event, it had also served as the go-between in her introduction to Rodolfo.

It was, he had told her later, the first time he had ever set foot in La Carrozza, and he had only done so that evening because it had started pouring down with rain, and he was recovering from a bad cold. The arcades had protected him so far, but the next stage of his journey home was in the open and he would have got drenched to the skin if he had continued. Since there was nowhere else free, he had asked the young woman seated alone, who had finished her meal and was reading a book, if she would mind his joining her. The pizzeria was a no-nonsense establishment where questions like this were a mere polite formality, and Flavia had murmured agreement and waved to the empty chair without even looking up. Rodolfo had ordered some
olive ascolane
and a beer. Flavia was sitting over a cup of mediocre coffee, laboriously picking her way through the battered paperback garishly emblazoned with the title
Il Prigioniero di Zenda
.

‘Excuse my asking,’ the young man had said at length, ‘but what are you reading?’

‘I am learning Italian,’ she’d replied. ‘This is my textbook.’

He could easily have left it at that, or made some stupid remark which would have put an end to everything there and then. Instead, he nodded sagely, as though she had said something profound.

‘Books are good, but to learn a language properly you really need a teacher.’

This had confused her, with its offered plethora of responses, but only for a moment.

‘I can’t afford such luxuries. Besides, I prefer to find things out by making mistakes.’

He had laughed, seemingly spontaneously, so that she forgave the impertinence of his next remark.

‘God almighty, a woman who can make me laugh! Where have you been all my life?’

His name was of course already as familiar to her as her own, which perhaps helped to explain the ease with which things took their course, quite as though it had already been written in a book she knew by heart. But all books come to an end. Now, two months later, she sensed that the pack of unread pages was running low.

Never mind, there was work to be done. She walked out on to the stage and set to work with a will, thinking about what she had overheard from another of the cleaning staff about what was to happen the next day. Some sort of duel, it seemed to be, like the one between Black Michael and King Rudolph’s double, only with pots and pans instead of swords and pistols.

About ten minutes later a man and a woman came out on to the set from the wings, treading straight through the area that Flavia had just washed and waxed. She glared at them but said nothing.

‘So, this is it,’ the woman said to the man. She was about thirty, with fashionably distressed hair, was clad in a beige business suit and carried an imposing briefcase. ‘This one will be your kitchen. Ugo’s is on the other side. Both are visible to the audience, but not to each other or to the judges, who will be seated at the table in…’

‘Delia!’

The man jogged her arm and pointed at Flavia. He was large and bearded, with the air of someone who would have liked to have a good time but didn’t know how. That pushy crow he was with certainly wouldn’t be able to help, thought Flavia, instinctively moved to take Lo Chef under her battered wings. Such scavengers had descended on her own country too, she had heard. Maybe Viorica had even become one. You needed serious wealth and clout to ship food parcels such as the one she had just received intact across so many frontiers.

The woman strode over to where Flavia was leaning on her mop.

‘I’m sorry, but I must ask you to leave. I’m having a very important meeting with Signor Romano Rinaldi about his event tomorrow and we cannot be interrupted.’

Flavia shrugged.

‘No capire. Di Ruritania.’

She waved her hand vaguely, as though indicating some large but undefined shape at the rear of the set. Delia gave an irritable shake of the head and walked back to her companion.

‘It’s all right, she’s just some asylum seeker. Doesn’t understand Italian. Now, as I was saying, the jury will be in the central dining area through there, again visible to the audience but not to either of the competitors.’

The man took about half a dozen very short, very loud breaths. He grabbed a bottle of pills from his pocket and twisted the knob of a gleaming tap in the kitchen area. Nothing emerged.

‘The water’s not hooked up!’ he squealed.

‘It will be by tomorrow. Here, I’ve got some Ferrarelle.’

She passed him a plastic bottle and he downed the pills with a grimace.

‘So, how many are ours?’ he croaked.

‘Paleotti, Aldrovandi, Sigonio, Colonna and Gentileschi,’ Delia replied. ‘Zappi and Giovio are leaning towards us, but could go either way, while Orsini will certainly vote for Ugo. They have the same publisher, apart from anything else. But that will just make it look better. The main thing is that whatever happens you’re bound to win. So relax, okay? There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘That’s easy for you to say! You’re not the one who’s going to have to stand up in front of Christ knows how many million viewers and actually do it.’

Flavia made a show of passing her mop over the false-tile vinyl floor, but in reality she was listening carefully. Her spoken Italian was not perfect as yet, although by no means as primitive as her reply to the crow had suggested, but she understood the language very well indeed. When you are a young woman, poor, powerless and alone in a strange land, you learn fast.

The woman called Delia gave a snort of what sounded like exasperation.

‘Listen, Romano, everything’s going to be all right. Trust me. You’ll do fine, you’ll look fabulous, and above all you’ll clear your name of this ridiculous slur once and for all. If you’re nervous, just double your normal dose of beta blockers.’

She paused and looked at him significantly.

‘But nothing else, all right? No coke, no speed, and none of whatever those pills are that you’ve been popping. Not until the event’s over. Understand? After that you can do what you like.’

The man nodded grudgingly. Delia indicated a large video screen hanging at an angle above the set.

‘The list of ingredients will be displayed there. Glance at it briefly but with apparent interest. Remember, it’s supposed to be the first time you’ve ever seen it. Scrutinise it with a nonchalant, relaxed expression, as if your mind is running through all the possibilities offered before making a spontaneous decision. Then turn decisively away, go to the stove and get the pasta water going before starting in on the sauce. Do everything with panache and
naturalezza
. Maybe sing a bit. But not too much, okay?’

She pointed to the kitchen counter.

‘The ingredients will be laid out here. Just pick out the ones we’ve been through with Righi and leave the rest alone. No last-minute improvisation, please. I’ll arrange for a litre bottle of
Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta
oil to be placed here. Naturally a celebrity such as you wouldn’t dream of using an inferior product, plus it’ll give our label some nice exposure.’

She looked around.

‘What else? Knives here, next to the cutting board. Pans over here. When the dish is ready, press this buzzer. Someone will come and take the pasta bowl from you and carry it out behind the set and in through the back of the dining area, so that in theory the jurors don’t know which kitchen it came from. In fact your bowl has a distinctive orange patterning at the rim, subtly different from Ugo’s. Our people will be in no doubt about which one is which.’

She looked at him.

‘Any questions?’

‘Something’s going to go wrong,’ the man replied in a dull voice. ‘I just know it.’

‘For God’s sake, Romano! Nothing will go wrong. Nothing can. I’ve covered all the angles. All you have to do is be here on time, with a clear head, and put together a simple bowl of pasta that even I could make blindfold. Besides, it doesn’t matter if it’s any good or not. Haven’t you understood yet? You’re bound to win! It’s all been arranged.’

She glanced at her watch.

‘Right, let’s go back to the hotel. The press conference starts in half an hour.’

When they had left, Flavia finished up her cleaning, then returned all the equipment to the storage room before leaving the concrete wasteland of the
fiera
complex and heading for the bus stop. The video display indicated that a smog alert was in effect, all vehicles with uneven numbered plates being banned from the streets, and that her bus would arrive in six minutes. She took out her phone and dialled.

‘It’s me. I had to work overtime because of this chef’s duel they’re having tomorrow. Where are you? Oh. Well, I’m starving. La Carrozza in half an hour? Yes, I know you’re going through a bad patch, Rodolfo, but it will do you good to get out. Ah, here’s my bus.
A presto, caro
.’

Flavia climbed aboard the bus with a smile on her lips that had nothing whatever to do with the silly intrigues on which she had been eavesdropping. I’m going to meet my prince, she thought.

14

Aurelio Zen’s mind was wandering, and he was happy to let it do so. The air was acrid and savagely cold, the night starkly bright. On a frozen, floodlit field far below, men in suits and dark overcoats stood in line, heads bowed respectfully, awaiting their turn to step up to the podium and deliver a speech concerning the various virtues of Lorenzo Curti, their personal sense of loss and their perspectives on the unspeakable tragedy that his untimely death represented to everyone foregathered there, to the wider footballing community united at this moment in grief and remembrance, to the city of Bologna and indeed the nation and the world in general.

The surrounding environment consisted of concrete, steel and rows of blue plastic bucket seats which the spectators had lined with newspapers to protect their clothing from the residue of filth deposited there by the polluted void above. Apart from the amplified eulogies, the only sound was from the crowd of hardcore
ultra
fans at the far end of the stadium, who kept up a continuous low ululation, presumably a spontaneous expression of respect.

‘I’ll see you in the bar,’ Zen told Bruno Nanni, getting up and starting along the narrow row between the seats towards the nearest aisle.

Atotal stranger whose foot Zen inadvertently stepped on looked up at him truculently.

‘Leaving already? You might show a little respect.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Zen replied, shaking his head. ‘I just can’t take any more. It’s like a death in the family. Do you understand?’

The man’s expression changed to one of sympathy and he nodded.

Zen made his way through the cavernous vaults and vomitories of the stadium until he finally emerged in the bleak piazzetta outside, its scruffy grass borders and failed shrubs and trees exposed beneath the powerful and pitiless lighting ranged high overhead on steel poles.

On their arrival, Bruno had pointed out a bar in a neighbouring street as the unofficial clubhouse of the diehard Bologna supporters. At present the latter were still all inside the stadium, and the bar was almost empty. The most conspicuous figure was a bulky man wearing a double-breasted overcoat, a grey trilby and dark glasses. He was leaning casually against the rear wall, sipping a tumbler of whiskey and smoking an unfiltered American cigarette, and was fairly obviously a private detective. Apart from him, there were just three elderly men playing cards at the rear of the premises, and a woman of about their age who was sipping a glass of Fernet Branca and murmuring in a sustained monologue to a Pekinese dog that was a triumph of the taxidermist’s art.

‘…personally I want to be burnt when the time comes, even though it turns out you pay the same either way, well of course you don’t pay but…’

The ceiling was festooned with banners and flags in the team’s red and blue colours, and the walls were covered in photographs of cup and league-winning squads dating back to well before World War Two. Zen ordered a coffee with a shot of grappa and took it over to a table.

Almost half an hour passed before the crowd started drifting out of the stadium. The bar soon filled up with young males wearing baseball caps, floppy jackets, even floppier pants, and synthetic sports shoes constructed along the lines of a club sandwich. They adopted a wide-legged stance, taking up as much room as possible, and loitered there with indefinite but vaguely menacing intent, talking and staring and drinking and twitching.

Feeling slightly overwhelmed, Zen stood up and found an elbow-level ledge against the mirror-clad pillar in the centre of the bar. The man dressed up as a private eye had now removed his shades and was gazing with intense concentration at a knot of particularly obnoxious newcomers who had taken up position to Zen’s right. He kept bringing his right hand up to his face to inspect something in the palm, a mobile phone perhaps. The thought spurred Zen to check his own, which he had switched off in the stadium out of respect for the occasion. A text message appeared:
coming bo tomorrow lunch?
He hit the speed-dial buttons for the Lucca number, but there was no reply.

One of the fans came lurching back from the bar, a tall glass of some yellow liqueur in his hand. He was wearing a woolly hat, a black leather jacket with the club crest on the back, torn jeans and sports shoes, and walked straight into the mirrored pillar, spilling most of his drink over Zen’s coat.

‘
Cazzo!
’ he spat out. ‘Fuck you doing here,
vecchione
? Buy me another drink, you…’

But Zen had apparently been seized by a violent coughing attack, which caused him to lose his balance and lurch towards the younger man. A moment later the latter screamed and then collapsed on the tiled floor, just as Bruno appeared.

‘He hit me!’ the man on the floor yelled, thrashing wildly about. ‘He kneed me in the fucking balls! Christ it hurts!’

All conversation in the bar ceased, but no one intervened. The complainant struggled painfully to his feet and turned on Bruno.

‘You with him, Nanni?’ he demanded aggressively.

Bruno nodded.

‘So who is the old bastard?’

‘A friend.’

There was a moment then when various things might have happened, then three of the man’s companions came over and led him away.

‘Sorry about that,
dottore
,’ the patrolman remarked.

‘He knows you, Bruno?’

Nanni shrugged.

‘I’m not part of his tight set, but we all more or less know each other. The ones who go to away matches, I mean.’

‘Does he know you’re a policeman?’

‘You think I’m crazy?’

He leant forward.

‘Actually, he’s the one I wanted you to meet.’

‘The one who’s bragging that he killed Curti?’

Bruno nodded.

‘So who is he?’

‘Name of Vincenzo Amadori. His father’s a lawyer and his mother works for the regional government. One of the better families in town, as they say here. But the kid likes to act the desperate
emarginato
with nothing to lose. Comes on like he’s one of the hardest cases at the stadium.’

‘And the others accept him?’

Bruno shrugged.

‘They tolerate him. Of course, it helps that he’s got money. All the drinks tonight for that clique over there are on him, for example. He just hands the barman his credit card.’

‘But he’s not really liked?’

‘I didn’t notice anyone rushing to his aid just now.’

He looked wonderingly at Zen.

‘Did you really knacker him?’

But Zen chose not to hear.

‘Why is there nothing about any of this in the interim report on the Curti case?’ he demanded.

Bruno dismissed the question with a wave.

‘No one knows except me. In any case, it’s just stadium gossip.’

‘Or malicious misinformation put about by some rival gang of supporters who resent this Vincenzo Amadori’s attitude and influence, and are trying to make trouble for him.’

‘That’s possible,’ Bruno conceded. ‘But there is one potentially substantive detail. That pack always hires a coach to take them to the away fixtures, so that they can travel together and stoke up on booze and God knows what before being shaken down by the cops at the entrance to the ground. I was rostered for duty the night Curti was shot, so I couldn’t go to the game myself, but I’ve heard that Vincenzo travelled down to Ancona with the rest of them as usual, only when the coach left for the return trip he wasn’t on it.’

Zen noticed the man in the trench coat and trilby heading for the door. He handed Bruno some money.

‘Get us both a drink. A hot toddy for me. And a damp cloth to clean this muck off my coat.’