I scrambled forwards, smacking my head against a cupboard door before swivelling around, to look up.

  A startled, middle-aged man, a man older than me – in his fifties, maybe, but fit with it. Neat grey beard with a matching quiff. Functionally dressed – jeans, bomber jacket and dark T-shirt, sculpting a muscular build.

  The carving knife dug half way into his side, blood blossoming black against the green of his jacket.

  He closed a hand around the blade, visible through his thick fingers, more in an effort to stem the bleeding, I think, than to remove it.

  Our eyes locked. He looked at me as if to say – now why did you do that?

  A squeak – talk. He was wearing an earpiece. He looked back at the knife, then at me.

  ‘Cazzo.’

  He swung himself towards the door and marched stiffly back along the corridor, the knife sticking out of his side like the key to a clockwork toy.

  Chapter 10

  I was still sitting nursing my bruised throat when the Carabinieri rocked up. My assailant had not bothered to close the door, so I watched them come along the corridor, the first with his baton at the ready, his partner at his shoulder with a yellow taser.

  ‘Here!’ I tried to shout, but nothing came out. I tried again, this time more softly. Something managed to escape, but my throat felt like needles. Instead, I banged on the kitchen floor, waved.

  As they approached, I began to pull myself up. I fell back down again.

  ‘Raise your hands!’ said the one with the taser. I did as I was told, gesturing at my throat as I did so.

  ‘Can’t speak,’ I whispered.

  ‘Get to your feet!’

  I tried again, this time with more success.

  ‘Hands!’

  The one with the baton swept my hands behind my back and cuffed me. ‘What the fuck happened here?’

  ‘I was attacked,’ I whispered.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Something about being attacked.’ He switched on his torch and aimed it down the corridor. ‘Have you seen that?’

  I saw it now – a drizzle of blood. The Carabinieri turned me around to face them. ‘Where’s that from?’

  ‘I was attacked. Strangled me.’

  ‘And the blood?’ I shrugged. I wasn’t about to confess to a stabbing, even if it had been in self-defence.

  ‘Nice suit. He doesn’t look like a burglar.’

  ‘Private investigator,’ I whispered.

  ‘You’re a snoop?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I’m not liking this, Dario,’ said the first. ‘Snoops, break-ins, blood. Let’s close it off and get him back to the caserma.’

  ‘I concur.’

  ‘Are you all right…’ He reached into my pocket and pulled out my ID. ‘Daniel Lie-chester?’

  ‘It’s him, the bloody English detective. Comandante’s son-in-law.’

  ‘You need a doctor?’ I swallowed, shook my head. ‘Be that as it may, this is still what it is.’

  ‘It is what it is.’

  ‘We’ll take him in, let the higher-ups decide.’

  ‘Affirmative,’ said ‘Dario’. ‘Leave it to the higher-ups.’

  My phone rang as I was sitting in the back of the gazzella. The cop reached around and plucked it out, showed it to his colleague at the wheel.

  ‘Have you seen this?’

  ‘Higher-ups.’

  ‘They must have some sixth sense or something.’ He showed it to me. It said ISPETTORE ALESSANDRO CALLING. ‘Want me to get this?’ I nodded. He put it on speakerphone.

  ‘Pronto, Ispettore.’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Carabiniere Geldi. Comando stazione, Galliera.’

  ‘What are you doing with Daniel Leicester’s phone?’

  ‘We’ve arrested him, sir, on suspicion of breaking and entering.’

  A long sigh, followed by silence.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘And this address, it wouldn’t happen to be the dwelling of a young man by the name of Gianni Colline, by any chance?’

  The Carabinieri looked at each other – I realised they had no idea. They looked at me. I nodded.

  ‘It appears so, Ispettore.’

  ‘All right, then. Where are you?’

  ‘In the car, sir, almost at the station.’

  ‘No, bring him here.’

  ‘And where’s “here”, sir?’

  The River Reno had once loomed as large in the character of Bologna as its towers, positioning the city at the crossroads of Italian trade and feeding a network of canals that criss-crossed the city. But like those canals now buried beneath the city streets, today it was largely out of sight, out of mind, winding through the flat Emilian countryside on the outskirts, its banks punctuated by clumps of trees amid an otherwise unremarkable landscape of reddy-brown fields.

  Our destination was clear even through the dust thrown up around us as we headed along the dirt track – the caravan of dark-blue Carabinieri vehicles gathered around one such copse. ‘Gazzelle’ – Alfa Romeo 159s – Jeep Cherokees, and a forensics van.

  We got out.

  An airliner screamed in low, landing flaps up and wheels down. The airport was little more than a kilometre away.

  The Ispettore was standing by one of the Cherokees dressed as immaculately as before, only wearing Wellington boots. He looked down at my shoes sunk in the ploughed earth.

  ‘You would be surprised how often it ends in a muddy field,’ he said. ‘Go on, then.’ He nodded to the uniforms either side of me. They turned me around and uncuffed me, then turned back to face him. ‘Are you all right? You’re looking rather … peaky.’

  I pointed at my throat. ‘I was attacked,’ I whispered, although it was beginning to sound a little stronger. ‘Someone tried to choke me from behind.’

  ‘In Gianni Colline’s apartment, you mean?’ I nodded. ‘And what were you doing there?’ I was about to answer when he shook his head. ‘Perhaps better to save your voice. Was it something to do with this business about the rubbish you mentioned to Massima?’ I nodded. ‘And thanks to that, you ended up at this fellow’s apartment.’ I nodded. ‘On the hunt for those negatives?’ I nodded. ‘Did you find them?’ I shook my head. ‘Well, I may be able to help you with that.’

  I followed him down a path leading into the copse. A short way in – just enough to be shielded from the road – a Fiat 500 had been parked and set on fire. It seemed that traces of smoke were still swirling around it, until coming closer I realised they were clouds of mosquitoes.

  But the car was not quite inert – it was creaking as it cooled, and giving off a pungent, pork-sweet, yet rubbery, odour.

  The heat had seared the paint off the car to leave only its grey shell. A fire-blackened interior was visible through glassless windows, but as we moved around the vehicle, I realised it wasn’t just combusted upholstery – melted into the mass was a person, slumped forward so their head rested upon the wheel, although they might just as easily have been transported there from Pompeii, such was their charcoaled anonymity: no hair, nose, lips, eyes, but recognisably human – side on, the entire jaw was burnt back, exposing its teeth in a skeletal grimace.

  ‘You see, there, on the seat beside him,’ the Ispettore observed dispassionately. ‘The petrol can.’

  ‘And here.’ He moved to the backseats and indicated a large melted blob. ‘I suspect we have what remains of that film of yours.’

  The contents were utterly ruined, but it was true – you could tell by the curves and spindles, the sharp, chemical tang that cut through the sickly rubbery smell even in this state and recalled the CineBo archive; the shrivelled scraps and loops of celluloid that had fallen out or floated upwards, the black and brown lump the size and density of what might once have been a large CONAD shopping bag containing the negatives of Amore su una lama di rasoio.

  ‘Case closed?’ enquired the Ispettore dryly.

  I took a step back. Tried not to dwell on the grinning corpse.

  ‘And how,’ my voice was coming back, ‘do we know this is Gianni Colline?’

  He gestured me to accompany him deeper into the copse.

  We arrived at the river bank. The Reno rushed below in a torrent of silty grey. Resting on the bank above, a log. In front of it, an empty bottle of rum, a framed photo of Valeria Vignetti, and an ID – Gianni Colline.

  ‘Convenient.’ I coughed. It still hurt.

  ‘Which lends it credence,’ said the Ispettore. ‘Suicides can be very obliging – after all, the act itself is unequivocal. People who take their life don’t tend to be keen on ambiguity.’

  ‘No note, though, I’m guessing.’

  ‘Is one really necessary? The act – or should that be acts – says it all. He killed the woman and then himself. This is her car. Given your presence here, I presume you will be able to enlighten us further.’

  ‘He was her boyfriend,’ I said. ‘They were running a kind of cinema club together with two others – a woman at the university and a student. They appeared to be borrowing films from CineBo to show there.’ I watched the river water rumble by. ‘All right, let’s say he killed the woman. It was a personal thing. Why would he incinerate the film?’

  The Ispettore shook his head. ‘I’ll say this for you, Daniel – you are single-minded. Who knows? Maybe it was the source of the friction, maybe they argued about it and it triggered all of this. Or maybe it was just sitting in the back of the car and its presence is coincidental.’

  ‘And the attack on me in the apartment? That seems less than coincidental.’

  ‘Although it could be – it is Petroni, after all.’

  ‘This guy, he didn’t strike me as your typical opportunist druggie. Too old, fit. Expert – he might have killed me.’

  ‘Not expert enough, apparently.’

  ‘I got lucky.’

  ‘How?’

  I hesitated – but this was the Ispettore, not a pair of uniforms. We had history. ‘Stabbed him.’

  That provoked the Ispettore’s interest. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Not fatally, I think. In the side. He made off before your guys arrived. And – he was wearing an ear piece.’

  ‘That’s … curious.’

  ‘Professional.’

  ‘All right,’ said the Ispettore. ‘You have my attention. But I’m still treating this as murder-suicide.’ He looked back down at the framed photo – a selfie, Valeria Vignetti standing on the edge of a volcano smiling, especially bronzed, in a pale-blue T-shirt and shorts, her long curly hair hanging loose around her shoulders.

  ‘Poor girl,’ he said.

  Chapter 11

  La Residenza Faidate, or Faidate Residence, was aptly named. Although the size of a modest palazzo, it was definitely not one of Bologna’s palaces, trumpeting its status, complete with state and ball rooms (although almost all of the city’s palazzi had now converted these into impractical residential or office spaces). Neither was it exactly a casa, or house, at least as commonly understood. You might pass La Residenza without the foggiest idea what lay behind the four-metre-tall ochre wall that ran along a section of narrow, otherwise porticoed Via Mirasole, although its bricked-together battlements might suggest there was something inside worth protecting, as indeed there once had been: La Famiglia Faidate had historically been merchants specialising in luxury items for Bologna’s aristocratic families, from books and scientific instruments to spices, ointments and, mostly, medicinal herbs.

  Entering through the now automated, iron-strapped oak gates, you would step onto a gravel path that crossed a grassed area complete with an ancient silver elm beyond which, where there had once stood a well, were spaces for a couple of cars. Overlooking you on three sides were frescoed ‘Romeo and Juliet’ balconies rising three storeys, albeit that over time – and there had been as many bad as good times for the Faidate across the preceding five centuries – those Biblical scenes had been touched up by cruder hands, if not lost altogether: upon our landing we had armless saints and bugle-less cherubs exhorting across concrete-patched clouds, while just to the right of our door, a little flock of sheep floated upon a pale-green pasture riven permanently asunder from their half-faced shepherd.

  The ground floor of the Residence had traditionally been used for stores and workshops, although I was waging a campaign to persuade Jacopo, who had most recently been hiring them out as studio space to his pals, to let me convert one into a garage so we could have more room for the garden.

  Nearest the gate was, actually, a small ‘house’ – in fact another former workshop, where Alba lived with Claudio – and along the stretch of path running outside it, the dinner table had been set.

  ‘All in all,’ I said, coiling the tagliatelle al ragù around the side of my plate, ‘terrible. A terrible, terrible day.’ I shuddered to think of Valeria lying there like a broken doll, Gianni’s charcoaled corpse.

  ‘How’s the throat?’ asked Alba. ‘You seem to be eating okay.’

  ‘Your cooking is evidently medicinal.’ She nodded as if it evidently was. ‘But seriously,’ I said, ‘it seems better, just a bit bruised.’

  ‘Well, eat up.’

  We liked to dine outside this time of year, before the summer heat forced us inside. In fact, in the years before the family had invested in air-conditioning, we had soldiered on through July until we escaped to the seaside, but now, once the evenings passed thirty degrees we scuttled inside and luxuriated in the cool – less romantic, perhaps, but also a sight less sticky.

  ‘The pair of you, however,’ said the Comandante, a fork of ‘Roast Beef’ topped by rucola and Parmesan paused halfway to his mouth. ‘Yourself and Dolores, you did good work tracking down the lead to the film.’

  ‘And a lot of good it did us.’ Rufus, our Lagotto Romagnolo – a springy-haired truffle-hunting dog – appeared in the space between my daughter and me, looking mournfully up at us. Rose scooped up a forkful of ragù and lowered it to muzzle level. He polished it off in an instant. She responded to my scowl by reaching for the fork in the bowl of tagliatelle.

  ‘I’ll use this,’ she mouthed.

  ‘So it seems,’ the Comandante admitted. ‘However, this incident at the apartment, well, that is … intriguing.’

  ‘I’m glad you see it like that,’ I said. ‘Your successor didn’t seem to be unduly concerned.’

  ‘The Ispettore was right to react the way he did,’ said the Comandante. ‘His reasoning appears sound. The deaths of two young people clearly take precedence over some missing film, and as someone with more experience of these kinds of tragic incidents than yourself, he is right to prioritise the more banal explanation – certainly I found that in the course of everyday life passion tends to trump plot.

  ‘On the other hand, we do have the luxury to ruminate on your encounter. The most likely explanation is of course that it was an opportunistic burglary. It is just around the corner from Piazza Verdi … In his fever, the boy might even have left the door open, and from what you are saying, there was plenty of valuable material – this computer, for example. Isn’t that precisely the kind of thing drug addicts favour?’

  ‘Except, this guy didn’t seem like a typical druggie. He was neat, strong, seemed like a pro. And he had an earpiece.’

  ‘Most curious. Although – are you sure it was an earpiece for communicating, and not simply the kind that people use to listen to music?’

  ‘It was one of those squiggly ones behind the ear bouncers use. It was definitely for communicating. I’m presuming someone outside tipped him off about the cops, which is why he got out.’

  ‘Still,’ said the Commandante. ‘Although we can’t discount that this was somehow connected to the film, the fact is there was so much other material there. He could have been interested in any of these other items.’ He caught my sceptical look. ‘I am simply playing devil’s advocate, Daniel.’

  ‘But the film’s gone now,’ said Rose, who rarely took any interest in ‘work talk’ as she put it. ‘So, “case closed”, no?’

  ‘Have you been speaking to the Ispettore?’ I said. ‘But I suppose you’ve got a point. Although there may be some wrapping up to do – to work out the extent this “secret cinema club” has been pilfering the films, and if there are any further ones outstanding.’

  ‘I expect CineBo will want to keep it under wraps, though, no?’ replied Rose. ‘Can you imagine the publicity if it got out?’

  The adults around the table – at least, the Comandante, Alba, Jacopo and I, Claudio was too busy with his meal – surveyed my daughter with surprise.

  ‘A most astute comment,’ said the Comandante. ‘And what has prompted this sudden interest?’

  She shrugged. ‘I just like CineBo, they put on some good films.’ Indeed they do, I thought. I had a sudden vision of her among the student bustle in the Department of Communications a couple of years hence, although I realised her preference would almost certainly be art school.

  ‘Dan.’ Alba was looking meaningfully at me across the table. ‘You were going to mention.’

  What? Then I remembered. ‘Yes, well, actually, it was the Comandante’s idea.’ I nodded at Giovanni. For once, let him carry the can.

  The Comandante cleared his throat. ‘Very well. We thought,’ he glanced at Alba, sitting back, idly rubbing her belly, ‘when your cousin takes her leave, it could be a good time for you, perhaps, to take the reins at the firm …’

  ‘Me?’ Rose straightened as if accused of a heinous crime.

  Alba chuckled.

  ‘Don’t worry, amore, he’s not actually asking you to run the company,’ which was, in fact, her role behind the reception desk. ‘Just answer the phone and, you know, do what you do best – look pretty.’

  ‘But …’ Rose began.

  ‘It would only be for a few weeks,’ I interjected – it seemed unfair to have her think she was about to be pressed into child labour. ‘Before we close for summer. And, let’s face it,’ I added mischievously, ‘you could do with the money.’

  ‘But …’ She looked between us, furiously calculating. ‘Let me think about it.’

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25