Ratking (13 page)

Bartocci introduced Zen as ‘one of the country’s top experts on kidnapping, sent here specially by the Ministry to oversee the case’.

Pietro Miletti was politely dismayed.

‘I understood this was to be a private meeting.’

‘Nothing which is said in this room will go any further,’ Bartocci assured him. ‘We are simply here to discuss what measures to take in the light of recent developments. Please be seated.’

After a moment’s hesitation Pietro leaned his rolled umbrella and leather briefcase against the desk and sat down. Bartocci took his place on the other side of the desk. There was no other chair, so Zen remained standing.

‘Now then,’ the magistrate continued smoothly, ‘I understand that in the course of a telephone call yesterday afternoon the kidnappers informed you of the whereabouts of a letter from them, and that this letter was subsequently recovered. You’ve brought it with you, I take it.’

‘Not the original, no.’

Pietro Miletti spoke as though the matter was of no consequence, but Bartocci glanced at Zen before replying.

‘A copy of the letter is of very little use to our scientific experts.’

‘I haven’t brought a copy.’

Bartocci gestured impatiently.

‘Excuse me, dottore. You haven’t brought the original letter, you haven’t brought a copy. Would you mind very much telling me what you
have
brought?’

Pietro Miletti opened his briefcase and took out a sheet of paper which he offered to the magistrate.

‘I’ve brought a memorandum prepared from the original letter, itemizing every relevant piece of information it contained.’

Bartocci made no attempt to take the paper.

‘Dottore, I strongly resent the assumption that anybody is in a position to dictate to me what is or is not relevant to a case I am investigating. If you are not prepared to let me see the original letter then this pretence of cooperation becomes a farce and I see no point in continuing it.’

Pietro Miletti gave a short laugh that sounded unpleasantly arrogant and mocking, although it might equally well have been nervous in origin.

‘I’m afraid that’s impossible.’

‘Impossible? Allow me to remind you that you are head of the family in your father’s absence. Nothing is impossible if you want it.’

‘No, no, I mean it’s literally impossible. The letter no longer exists.’

Bartocci shot Zen a triumphant glance. So the Milettis
had
realized the threat to their schemes which the fake letter would pose and had no intention of letting them see it!

Pietro balanced the sheet of paper on his knees.

‘I should explain that although part of the letter was dictated by the kidnappers, most of it was written by my father. It was a personal letter addressed to his family, and like any personal letter it was not intended to be read by outsiders. It was, besides, a very long, rambling and really rather distressing document. Distressing, I mean, for the evidence it provided of my father’s state of mind. The strain and anguish of his long ordeal has clearly had a terrible effect on him. Naturally no reasonable person would wish to hold him accountable for what he wrote, but certain passages nevertheless made very disturbing reading.’

Zen gazed up at the shelves loaded with rows of books as uniform as bricks.

‘He accused you of having abandoned him,’ he said.

‘He recalled the innumerable sacrifices he has made on your behalf and reproached you for not being prepared to help him in his hour of need. He even compared your behaviour unfavourably with that of his kidnappers.’

Pietro Miletti looked round in amazement.

‘How do you know that? It isn’t possible! Unless …’

An idea flared up in his eyes for a moment and then went out.

‘Such letters resemble one another,’ Zen explained. ‘Like love letters.’

‘Ah, I see.’

Pietro had lost interest again.

Bartocci was staring angrily at Zen, who realized that he had made the mistake of speaking as though the letter really existed, as if the kidnapping was genuine. The magistrate rapped on his desk.

‘What became of the letter?’ he demanded.

‘We burned it.’

‘You did
what
?’

‘My father specifically forbade us to communicate any of the information it contained to the authorities, or to cooperate with them in any way whatsoever. That position received the strongest support from various members of the family, and it was only by strenuous and prolonged efforts that I have been able to persuade them to let me bring you this memorandum, which contains, as I’ve said, all the relevant items in the letter.’

Zen suddenly understood that Bartocci had some move in mind, something which he was keeping up his sleeve for the moment.

‘And what are these “relevant items” you mention?’ the magistrate asked, deliberately postponing this initiative.

Pietro Miletti picked up the paper again and began to read in a calm, confident voice, a voice that was accustomed to being obeyed, that never needed to make a fuss. The full ten thousand million lire, in well-worn notes, not consecutively numbered, was to be made ready for delivery immediately. An untapped telephone number was to be communicated to the gang, who would use it to pass on further details, identifying themselves by the same method they had used with Valesio. The police were not to be informed of any of these arrangements or to be involved in the payoff in any way. Failure to comply with these instructions would result in the immediate death of the victim.

‘And what do you intend to do?’ Bartocci asked when Pietro had finished.

‘We shall obey, of course. What else can we do?’

‘What you’ve been doing for the past four months! Stalling for time, crying poor, haggling over every lira.’

Pietro Miletti replaced the sheet of paper carefully in his briefcase.

‘That’ll do, Bartocci. We already know what our enemies say about us.’

An effortless hardening had taken place in his tone. He got to his feet and looked at both of them in turn.

‘Do you know why kidnapping flourishes here in Italy? Perhaps you think it’s because we’re saddled with a corrupt and inefficient police force directed by politically biased career judges lacking any practical training whatsoever. That is certainly a contributing factor, but similar conditions obtain in other countries where kidnapping is almost unknown. No, the real reason is that in our hearts we admire kidnappers. We don’t like successful people. We like to see them brought low, made to suffer, made to pay. They used to call Russia an autocracy moderated by assassination. Well, Italy is a plutocracy moderated by kidnapping.’

‘How do you propose to raise the money when for the past months you’ve been claiming that it just wasn’t possible?’

But Pietro Miletti had no further interest in the exchange.

‘That’s our affair.’

‘There’s always SIMP, of course,’ Bartocci insinuated.

‘Yes, there’s still SIMP left to bankrupt. No doubt some people would be very glad to see that happen. But if our company ever does go under, those are the very people who are going to moan loudest.’

‘What about this untapped telephone number the gang have asked for? How are you going to communicate it to them?’

‘If I told you that, I doubt whether the number would remain untapped for very long. We’re paying an extremely high price to get my father back. We have no intention of putting the success of that operation at risk because of the usual bungling by the authorities.’

‘I take it you’ve asked for guarantees,’ Zen put in quietly.

Pietro Miletti turned at the door.

‘What guarantees?’

‘How do you know your father is still alive?’

‘We just got a letter from him!’

‘How do you know when he wrote it? You should make it a condition of payment that the gang supplies a Polaroid photograph of your father holding the morning’s paper on the day the drop is made. That will incidentally also establish that the people you’re dealing with have still got possession.’

‘Possession of what?’

His tone was reasonable and polite, a senior manager seeking specialized information from a consultant.

‘The negotiations for your father’s release have been very long drawn out,’ Zen explained. ‘It may well be that the original kidnappers couldn’t afford to wait so long. It would depend on their financial situation, how the other jobs they’re involved in are going. If they need some quick cash they may have sold your father to another group as a long-term investment.’

Pietro Miletti repeated his short laugh.

‘My God, are we talking about a business in secondhand victims?’

Luciano Bartocci had been shuffling papers about noisily on his desk in an attempt to disrupt this exchange from which he was excluded.

‘There is just one other thing …’ he began.

Pietro Miletti cut him off.

‘But what does it matter, after all? We don’t mind who we pay as long as we get my father back.’

‘But you wouldn’t want to pay one gang and then find that they’d sold your father to another, would you?’

‘There is just one other thing.’ the magistrate repeated. ‘When the pay-off is made, one of the people present will be Commissioner Zen.’

Bartocci might previously have had some difficulty in making himself heard, but now he instantly had the total attention of both men. It was so still in the room that it seemed the three had suspended their dealings by mutual consent in order to catch the barely audible undulations of a distant ambulance siren.

‘You must be crazy,’ Pietro Miletti said at last.

The young magistrate did actually look slightly mad. His eyes were bright with determination, his face flushed with a sense of the risks he was taking, and the stillborn smile twitched away at the corner of his mouth as though he was trying to eat his beard.

‘Should you refuse to cooperate,’ he went on, ‘I must warn you that as from this evening each member of your family and household staff will be under surveillance twenty-four hours a day by a team of Commissioner Zen’s men from Rome.’

He gave Zen a long, level look, daring him to deny it.

‘Naturally this flurry of police activity will get into the newspapers. The kidnappers will quite possibly call off the whole operation.’

‘How dare you, Bartocci?’

Pietro Miletti’s voice was quiet and curious. Despite its rhetorical form, the question seemed to have real meaning.

‘How dare you make my father a pawn in your games?’

The investigating magistrate steepled his fingertips judiciously.

‘Dottore, we are all here in our official capacities. You represent your family. Commissioner Zen and I represent the State. As such our duties are clearly laid down in the Criminal Code. They are to investigate crimes, prevent them from being carried out, discover the guilty parties and take any further steps necessary to uphold the law. In our official capacities that is
all
that we need do. But we are not simply judges or police officials, we are also human beings, and as human beings we sympathize deeply and sincerely with the terrible situation in which the Miletti family find themselves, and wish to do everything possible to bring it to a swift and satisfactory conclusion. At the same time, we cannot ignore our duty. And so, after long and careful deliberation, we have arrived at a compromise between our official responsibilities and our natural wish to avoid hindering your father’s release in any way. It is this compromise which I have just outlined to you. I believe that you would be well advised to accept it.’

Pietro Miletti shook his head slowly.

‘How can you even consider putting my father’s safety at risk?’

‘There is no risk,’ Bartocci assured him. ‘No risk whatsoever. Isn’t that so, Commissioner?’

Zen’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. You bastard, he was thinking. You shifty little bastard.

But Pietro Miletti was not interested in Zen’s opinion.

‘The kidnappers have just given us quite explicit instructions not to involve the police in any way, yet you claim that we can send a senior officer along on the pay-off itself without there being any risk!’

Bartocci waved the objection aside.

‘They won’t know that he’s a police official.’

Pietro Miletti stood staring intently at the magistrate.

‘Why, Bartocci? You’re going to alienate half the city, put my father’s life at risk, all for what? What’s in it for you? Why are you prepared to play such a desperate game, to put your whole future in jeopardy like this?’

‘How dare you threaten me?’ Bartocci shot back.

After a moment Pietro shrugged and turned away.

‘I shall have to discuss the whole matter with the rest of the family.’

‘Since when has the Miletti family been run as a cooperative?’ Bartocci jeered.

‘I shall contact you tomorrow morning.’

‘You’ll contact me by three o’clock this afternoon,’ the magistrate insisted. ‘Otherwise I shall have no alternative but to allow Commissioner Zen to put his men in position.’

Bartocci made Zen sound like a mad dog he was managing to restrain only with the greatest difficulty.

Pietro Miletti turned in the doorway.

‘Needless to say, if we do agree, the responsibility for the consequences of that decision will be on your heads. You might like to think about that before committing yourselves to this course of action.’

‘I tell you there isn’t the slightest risk!’

‘That’s what they told Valesio.’

As the door closed, Zen let out a breath he realized he had been holding for a long time. And to think he’d been agonizing about what line to take on Bartocci’s conspiracy theory! No need for that now. Henceforth, as far as the Milettis were concerned, Zen was Bartocci’s accomplice, the henchman whose men were to be used to enforce their enemy’s will.

‘You’re prepared to go, I suppose?’ the magistrate asked him with a studied casualness Zen found rather insulting.

‘It’s my job. But I would have preferred to know you were going to do it.’

Bartocci laughed boyishly.

‘I didn’t know I was going to do it myself until it happened!’