Italian rules daniel lei.., p.7
Italian Rules (Daniel Leicester), page 7
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘but don’t take too long. When are you due off, Alba?’
‘Ten days,’ she said. ‘She’ll have to come in for a few days beforehand, learn the ropes.’
‘So let us know soon,’ I said. ‘Otherwise we’ll have to think of an alternative, and your Uncle Jac here is not too keen to be staffing reception.’ Jacopo spluttered on his wine.
My phone buzzed. A WhatsApp. ‘It’s from Director Domori,’ I said. ‘Wants an update. He’s also asking for a meeting tomorrow.’
‘Why the frown, Daniel?’
‘The venue,’ I said. ‘It’s not CineBo, it’s at the headquarters of Fausto SpA.’
Chapter 12
It was one of those spring mornings when the crystalline bright dazzled as if the sun was reflecting off a rippling sea, even though Bologna was an hour’s fast drive from the Adriatic.
So it seemed natural for all three of us to be in sunglasses as I drove the Alfa along Via Stalingrado – me in my Aviator-style Polaroids, the Comandante in the passenger seat sporting a pair of surprisingly trendy blue-lensed tortoise-shell Wayfarers I suspected Rose had picked out for him, and Dolores stretched out in the back with ‘vintage’ eighties glasses that, along with the padded shoulders of her red jacket and that henna bob, could have won her a walk-on part in an old MTV video.
‘This is the one,’ said the Comandante.
There was a certain predictable irony that the radical-left filmmaker’s family fortune would be embodied by such a blatant Fascist-era monument. Mid-way along one of the main roads out of the city, the building housing Fausto SpA would have seemed even more at home when Via Stalingrado had had its more innocuous, although still somehow implicitly Fascist, moniker, Via Nuova.
Set back from the road proper, the four-storey white stone edifice with its ranks of geometrically aligned square windows either side of four columns, stood alone among a wilderness of abandoned industrial land stretching all the way up to the autostrada, more like a war memorial than a company HQ.
‘They might have moved outside the city, with all the others,’ said the Comandante, ‘but they couldn’t vacate the premises unless they could get someone else to move in, and it would have been too expensive …’
‘Couldn’t they just have pulled it down?’
‘Oh no,’ said the Comandante. ‘By that time, it was listed.’
In any case, the impression of decline was misleading. It was true Famiglia Fausto hadn’t been able to abandon their old building, but they had a series of state-of-the-art packaging plants along the autostrada towards Imola and even the wasteland they currently occupied was in the process of redevelopment – their HQ would soon be surrounded by custom-built, futuristic plants hosting the mega computers of Data Valley. In fact, at first I had presumed the trucks and trailers in the car park, along with the cranes rising around an abandoned factory to the side of the building, were connected with this, until I saw the RAI livery and realised that it was associated with the remake of Amore su una lama di rasoio. I had read somewhere that the film was a co-production with the Italian broadcaster, and it would make perfect sense to utilise the facilities available at the family firm – of course, Indigo Adler was family too – precisely as Toni Fausto had: scenes from the original would have been shot at the very same factory before it had fallen to ruin.
We walked up the steps between the columns and pushed through revolving doors into a huge reception illuminated by the largest Murano chandelier I had ever seen. But at least its frondescence took the edge off what would have otherwise been an oppressively stark granite and black marble interior dominated by a long reception desk flanked by a pair of slate-grey staircases. They may have been building a film set outside, but I felt as if we had just stepped into one – probably a noir from the 1940s, and certainly in black and white.
The receptionist directed us to a lift and we ascended to the fourth floor where we were met by a young woman in a dark suit and heels who led us along a panelled corridor lined by photographs celebrating company milestones: foundation layings, factory openings; mechanisation, computerisation.
We were shown into the company boardroom.
They were already in some kind of discussion but stood as we entered: Alberto and Elettra Fausto, Rocco Domori, and, coming towards me, hand held out ready to pump my own, Indigo Adler.
‘You’re the English detective, right? Daniel Leicester?’
‘That’s right. And you’re Mr Adler.’
‘Indigo,’ he said solemnly. ‘It’s been intense, Rocco tells me.’
‘It has,’ I said.
‘And they found the guys who did it.’
‘Allegedly.’
He nodded to himself. ‘You know, it’s only now I truly think I’m beginning to get it – that Toni Fausto menace. Of course, he had the backdrop of the Years of Lead to help rack up the tension along the blood red porticoes – a Kodak 25 filter I’d say, but I’d need to check the shooting notes. Anyhow, what I’m saying is – for all their prettiness, the devil’s walking these porticoes, too, right?’ He gave me an intense look.
‘I don’t know about the devil,’ I said, ‘but it’s true, I sometimes have the sense the city’s alive, and has claws.’
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘“Claws”,’ he repeated as if making a mental note. ‘Then how to convey it? Toni could use the politics because that was the context for the audience, too, see? But it’s a subtext that no longer exists, so it becomes literally meaningless to the modern audience. I need to capture that same sense of life-on-the-edge – of a razorblade, right? – that around every corner …’
‘Roeg managed it,’ I said. ‘With Don’t Look Now.’
Indigo nodded appreciatively. ‘You’ve got it.’ He turned to Elettra. ‘Wasn’t I saying that?’ She smiled affectionately.
‘You were saying a lot, Indi, as usual.’
‘She thinks I talk too much. She’s right. I think that’s why she’s making me learn Italian – she’s hoping it will slow me down, but they speak so quickly, mamma mia … Anyway – anything new?’
‘Well …’ I looked at the others who had presumably viewed our exchange with varying degrees of comprehension – only Rocco and Elettra could speak really good English, with Dolores bringing up the rear. ‘Shall we sit down? Maybe your wife could translate?’
‘Oh, yeah, sure, sure.’ We took our places at the end of a glass-topped conference table so long that each place included a microphone and speaker set.
I quickly summarised what they apparently already knew about Valeria and Gianni, hoping to skip over prurient speculation.
‘But they were screwing, right?’ said Indigo.
‘Well, they were apparently going out,’ I said. ‘Gianni Colline was on the same course as Valeria when they were at university, which was presumably where the connection came from.’
‘Valeria was appointed by my predecessor,’ interjected the director. ‘I barely knew the woman.’
‘There was a mini theatre at Gianni’s home,’ I continued. ‘We have spoken again to the other woman involved in their so-called “secret cinema” – another doctoral student, Patrizia Bussoni – who claims Valeria and Gianni were the driving force behind the project.’
‘As well she might,’ said Alberto.
‘She said Valeria got the idea after she began working at CineBo and described how she and Gianni got the films out in the early hours of the morning, which is consistent with what we had already discovered. She also provided us with a full list of the movies they had borrowed.’ I pushed it over to the director. ‘Which she said, as far as she was aware, had been replaced.’
‘She was very cooperative, this woman,’ observed Elettra.
‘I gave her the impression that she could either talk to us, or the police.’
Director Domori looked alarmed. ‘But we’re not going to go to the police? About the negatives, I mean.’
‘We don’t have to, if you don’t want us to.’
‘We don’t want them to, do we?’ Alberto and Elettra shook their heads.
‘Although I can’t guarantee the police won’t come to you,’ I said.
‘But that would be about the bodies,’ said Domori. ‘Not the negatives.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think they will be more interested in the deaths.’ He nodded, apparently oblivious to my irony.
‘I should add,’ he said, ‘the Ispettore in charge of the crime scene passed on a sample of the small amount of material that had not been entirely consumed by the blaze, and from the stills in question, we can confirm they were the negatives from Amore su una lama di rasoio.’
Silence around the table.
‘Then all in all,’ said the Comandante, ‘I believe we can bring this matter to a close. I am very sorry we were not able to achieve a more satisfying outcome.’
‘But that’s what I don’t get,’ said Indigo.
Elettra sighed. ‘This again, amore?’
Her husband ignored her. ‘You say “film”, Signor Faidate, but they were negatives. Go on, sweetie-pie, please.’ With a roll of her eyes, Elettra translated.
‘I’m sorry, Signor Adler,’ said the Comandante, glancing at me. ‘I’m not sure I understand your point.’
‘These kids were screening prints of the films, right? On a projector?’ I nodded. ‘Well, you couldn’t screen these because they were negatives, right? You use them to make the prints, but you can’t actually project them.’
‘I think I get your point,’ I said. ‘I actually saw a Moviola machine in the room, too. My guess is they were using that to view them.’
‘But why?’
‘I suspect, like you, Indigo, Gianni was a Toni Fausto fan – he had his movie posters on the walls – and, having access to a Moviola, the temptation …’
Indigo slapped the table. ‘Now I get it. Yup, I can see that. Hell, if I’d been one of those kids, I’d have probably done the same. But then, that’s the real tragedy.’ He corrected himself. ‘For art, I mean, obviously – those negs going up in smoke.’
‘You mean because of the out-takes?’ I said. ‘Bloopers? Otherwise, as I understand it, the rest of the negatives are, ultimately, replaceable, no?’
‘Oh no, man,’ said Indigo. ‘That’s not it at all. It’s the ending.’
‘What do you mean, “the ending”?’
Indigo looked at Alberto and Elettra. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you? I came across it in his papers before I left the States – the version of Amore su una lama di rasoio deposited in the CineBo archives had a whole different ending.’
I looked between father and daughter. ‘But I thought …’
‘You’re right, Giovanni.’ Alberto Fausto rose, followed by Elettra. ‘Our business here is concluded.’
Alberto Fausto had begun to lead the Comandante, arm-inarm, along the corridor towards the lift when Elettra took me aside. ‘Sensitive subject. Nonno didn’t like my uncle’s ending so he changed it. Nobody complained at the time and he was quite happy to let his brother take all the credit. He had no idea the footage “on the cutting room floor” had even survived. He didn’t really understand much about how films are made, despite having to complete one himself. As you can imagine, it’s brought up a lot of unhappy memories.’
‘I never would have noticed,’ said Indigo Adler. ‘The papers were at the bottom of a box file. I was actually looking for his photography notes for the Bologna shoot, when I came across the receipts and out of curiosity checked what had gone into the store and then to the CineBo archive.
‘It was then I realised the editors must have kept Toni’s cut for posterity and given Alberto new masters to work from, only the poor sap never realised.’ He shook his head in wonderment.
‘Look,’ he continued. ‘I was wondering if you’d be free to meet up outside office hours? I promised Anna lunch tomorrow but Elettra’s out of town, so we’re sort of missing our local Bologna expert-stroke-translator.
‘It’d be cool to hear what it’s like to be an English detective in Italy and,’ he winked, ‘maybe I’ll even be permitted to tell you about Toni Fausto’s original ending.’
Elettra rolled her eyes. ‘I’m sure he’s got better things to do than play the tour guide, Indi.’
But I was intrigued, and not only by Toni Fausto’s finale.
‘That’s Anna … Bloom?’ I asked.
‘Anna, yup.’
‘Sure,’ I said as casually as I dared, adding – even as I was saying it, wondering if I was entirely sane – ‘would you mind if my daughter joined us?’
Chapter 13
Rose, however, had not given me quite the reaction I had expected.
‘Not Elettra Fausto?’ she said in the English we habitually spoke to each other. I looked into her disappointed brown eyes – her mother’s eyes – and understood that while to an oldie like me, Elettra Fausto was a nobody compared to, well, Aphrodite, in the universe of a sixteen-year-old Bewitching fan, Cassandra Sinistra, a supporting witch on a Netflix series, was by far the larger planet in the solar system.
‘Well, you don’t have to come,’ I said. ‘If you’ve got something better to do.’
‘Oh no,’ said Rose, looking down at her phone. ‘I’ll come. You’re right – I’ve got nothing better to do.’
‘Fine.’ I silently posed the question universally asked by all parents of teenagers – why do I bother?
Happily, Rose’s disinterest was short-lived – perhaps she had simply needed to consult her fifth metal and glass limb before being able to properly commit herself – because as I returned from walking Rufus the following morning, she was full of fun facts about Anna Bloom.
‘Did you know she was first choice for Lady Luck?’
‘I didn’t, but I don’t know who Lady Luck is.’
Rose rolled her eyes. ‘It’s from the Stargaze franchise.’ CUE: amazement at my unbelievable ignorance. ‘Scarlett Johansson is Lady Luck.’
‘Okay.’
‘She dated Jamie Taverner.’
‘Oh, yeah, I knew that.’
‘Do you even know who Jamie Taverner is?’
‘An actor?’
‘Dad. Jamie Taverner is from Young Blood. You know – the group.’
‘You mean that dreadful boyband of dancing vampires?’
‘She was the older woman.’
‘I suppose she must have been,’ I said, feeling vaguely disappointed. ‘But wasn’t she married to Clive Cornwall – you know, the Shakespearean actor and Oscar winner?’
‘It was after they divorced. Apparently, she’s now going out with her personal trainer.’
‘I suppose there comes a time in every celebrity’s life when they date their personal trainer,’ I said. Rose looked at me with great seriousness.
‘I should find something to wear,’ she said.
‘Yes, you’d better get a move on, we’ve only got … five hours.’
As this was a Saturday, I indulged in my weekend habit of listening to BBC Radio 4 which, considering how immersed I otherwise was in Italian culture, could sometimes feel like the World Service, so detached from my reality were the concerns and passions of that Island People. Although I suppose Italy is also, effectively, an island – her knee-length boot stretches into the Mediterranean and is topped by a formidable mountain range. Certainly, she has that inward-looking island mentality, and is parochial to a granular detail that can make the British – be they English or any of the Celtic nations – seem like a homogenous blob. The difference is, of course, the ‘island’ of Italy has not gone unmolested for a thousand years, so instead of investing in a shared national identity, solidarity finds expression through: family, locality, profession. Italian society is essentially one great ‘closed shop’. Over the generations, these identities evolved their own peculiarities, and while there are of course a range of personalities in every profession, characteristics tend to be shared between members as they might within a family, something as true for camerieri and criminali as for professori and avvocati.
And that was what had been troubling me: despite what I had said to the Ispettore, there had been something a little ‘off’ about the supposed ‘professional’ criminal who attacked me. I had come across a few in my time – from London gangsters to Bologna’s local hoods, the Nonnies. But when they weren’t keeping it in the family, the Nonnies tended to contract out to guys up from the south – probably lying low after some especially heinous mob business – spindly, skinny types with sharp haircuts in their teens and twenties.
But this one had been local, well built, older, with a definite Emilian accent. I simply hadn’t come across any local mobsters of that generation who would still be willing to get their hands dirty. That was a young man’s game.
‘Don’t struggle.’ I could still smell his coffee breath. He had got me well and good – until I got lucky.
He was a professional, then, but what profession?
‘No!’
It had come from Rose’s room. I went to knock at her closed door.
‘Is everything all right?’
‘You can come in,’ she replied miserably. She was standing in front of the mirror in her best dress – the white, jewel-necked Gucci the Comandante had bought for her mother Lucia for our wedding reception. Rose had last worn it a little over a year before for a friend’s birthday party, and even then I’d thought, although it fit her slender teenage frame well having been adjusted a few months previously, it ended a good inch above where it was supposed to. One year and a late growth spurt on, it was verging on a mini.
Despite trumpeting her Englishness at every opportunity, and that auburn hair licking her long pale neck, Rose presented me with an ineffably Italian expression of horror – hands on hips, jaw jutted out, the unmistakable pose of outraged Latin womanhood. Actually, to my eyes the dress didn’t look so bad – she had plenty of contemporary ones the same length she ventured out in during the evening – but I appreciated what might be appropriate for teenage boys, my daughter did not consider right for meeting a movie star and famous director. Perhaps that was also the Italian in her – these young girls had the heads of old women.
