Read Blood Rain - 7 Online

Authors: Michael Dibdin

Tags: #Police Procedural, #Murder, #Mystery & Detective, #Zen; Aurelio (Fictitious Character), #Fiction, #General, #Sicily (Italy)

Blood Rain - 7 (5 page)

BOOK: Blood Rain - 7
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Walking over to the window at the rear of the apartment, overlooking the courtyard, Aurelio Zen unlatched the twin panes. It was like opening the door of an oven which is no longer turned on, but still stocked with heat from the long hours when it was blazing away. A spent wave of exhausted air invested the room, scented lightly with the basil and rosemary, thyme and oregano which a neighbour grew in pots on her balcony.

The doorbell sounded. It was Carla, looking relaxed in loose, wheat-coloured linen trousers and a peach ribbed cotton-knit top, her radiance and energy instantly enlivening the room. All Zen’s previous apprehensions about the success of the evening were swept away. Together they rummaged through the kitchen cupboards for cooking utensils, then poured the soup from its jar into a saucepan that proved to be too small, getting a stain on Carla’s trousers in the process. It didn’t matter. They laughed and sorted it out and put the soup on to warm, opened a bottle of wine and gossiped about the latest political and social scandals, and discussed what to do about Carla’s birthday, which fell on the following Saturday.

The conversational tempo slowed a bit once they had eaten, and at length Zen found himself resorting to a rather tired old standby.

‘So how’s work?’

‘The usual,’ said Carla. ‘I can never understand why so many people seem to find computers interesting. To me, they’re about as fascinating as a light switch — which is really all they are, when you get down to it. That’s why I like working with them. They’re soothing company.’

She paused, pushing the salt cellar to and fro across the table.

‘I found something interesting today, though.’

‘Yes?’

Another pause, followed by an embarrassed shrug.

‘I probably shouldn’t tell you. All this stuff is supposed to be highly confidential. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork they made me sign.’

‘Oh, come on, Carla! We both work for the same side, after all. And anyway, I’m family’

Carla conceded the point with a smile.

‘Well, someone’s been pinging the DIA system. I discovered a sequence of packet hits, all in the middle of the night, when none of the registered users was logged on.’

Zen smiled weakly.

‘Well, that
does
sound interesting.’

Carla laughed.

‘Actually, it is, sort of. In plain language, it means that someone outside the DIA has been looking at their work, checking their files and opening their mail. And what’s really interesting is that this doesn’t look like your average hacker. These people seem to be coming in with virtual sysadmin status, which means they can open, alter or even delete any file — even so-called “closed” files, inaccessible to other co-users. And they can do that not just here in Catania, but over the entire DIA network.’

‘So who are they?’

Carla shrugged.

‘That I can’t say, yet. But I’ve identified the string code of the machine they’re using, code name “nero”. That’s like a fingerprint. It doesn’t tell you who or where the user is, but there are ways of tracking it back. Which is what I plan to do next.’

She fumbled around in her bag and produced a folded piece of paper.

‘Look at this. This is just one of the entries I found on the DIA server’s var-log-messages file.’

Zen took the sheet of printout and read:
Aug 12 23:19:06/falcone PAM_pwdb[8489]: (su) session opened for user root by nero (uid=o)

Carla pointed a finger at the page.

This means that at nineteen minutes and six seconds past eleven at night on Tuesday last, someone identified as “nero” accessed the DIA system and used the “su” command to switch to user root status. Don’t look at me like that, Dad! This is important, because the root user has permission to do anything he likes on or to the system. Anything at all.’

Zen nodded gravely.

‘And what action did you take?’

‘Well, of course I wrote a report and sent it to the DIA director. He’ll have to decide what to do next.’

While Carla unwrapped the dessert she had bought, Zen got to his feet and set about making coffee. He had accepted the fact that he would never understand the new technology that was sweeping the world, where everything was intangible and instantaneous, and occurred at once everywhere and nowhere. A street vendor in the fish market had told him with great bitterness that most of the local tuna were now snapped up by the Japanese, taken to that country to be processed, and then sold back to Italians in those cheap cans of fishy slurry that came in packs of six. This story might be true, or it might be one of those urban myths with a built-in ethnic slur such as the Sicilians themselves had endured for many centuries. The only certain thing was that it was now possible. The technology was there, and a primitive, hard-wired circuit in Zen’s brain told him that if something could be done, then somebody was going to do it.

‘And apart from your work?’ he asked over his shoulder as he assembled the coffee pot. ‘What do you get up to in the evening?’

‘Not much, to be honest,’ Carla replied from much nearer than he expected.

She lifted two plates down from a shelf and set about opening drawers in search of forks.

‘That one,’ Zen told her.

‘But I’ve been asked out to dinner tomorrow,’ she said, returning to the table.

‘Anyone interesting?’

‘One of the judges at the DIA. We’ll probably have soldiers lurking under the table and tasting the food to make sure it’s not poisoned.’

The coffee burbled up.

‘Good for you! Is he good-looking? Or married?’

There was a brief silence during which Zen poured out the coffee.

‘Actually, it’s a woman,’ Carla replied. ‘The one I told you about this morning, Corinna Nunziatella. She’s really been very nice to me. I think she’s lonely. She needs a girlfriend to talk things over with, but in her position …’

Zen nodded slowly, not looking at her.

‘Perhaps,’ he said, almost inaudibly, then went on in a tone of forced
bonhomie
, ‘Well, congratulations! It looks as though you’ve inherited the family skill for making friends in high places.’

‘You’ve always done that, then?’ asked Carla.

‘Sometimes. But it didn’t do me any good.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I made an even greater number of highly placed enemies.’

He gave her an odd smile, like a crumpled photocopy of the original.

‘Anyway, it sounds as if you might be in for an interesting evening,’ he said, swigging the pungent black coffee down in one go. ‘Let me know how it turns out.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

They came for Corinna Nunziatella just after she arrived for work the next day. There were two of them, in their twenties, both dressed in the all-purpose leisure uniforms of the trendy young: leather baseball caps, synthetic jackets, jeans and gigantic boot-style shoes. One was thin and ingratiating, the other squat and silent. Corinna instantly dubbed them Laurel and Hardy. She had never seen either of them before.

‘Sorry to disturb you,
dottoressa,’
said Laurel with a charming smile. ‘We’ve been told to come and pick up the file on the Limina case.’

Corinna got up from her desk and turned to face them.

‘And who are you?’

Laurel removed his small oval-lensed sunglasses and produced a plastic card identifying him as Roberto Lessi, a corporal of the Carabinieri. The card was overstamped ROS in large red letters.

Corinna indicated Hardy, who was chewing gum and staring overtly at her in a way that she found extremely disturbing, all the more so in that there was nothing remotely sexual about his attentions.

‘My partner, Alfredo Ferraro,’ said Laurel, with an even more winning grin. ‘We work together.’

‘On what?’ Corinna demanded pointedly

‘Security.’

‘What kind of security?’

Laurel paused, as though unsure how to answer.

‘Internal,’ he said at length.

‘And you are responsible to whom?’ demanded Corinna.

‘To the director, Dottor Tondo,’ was the reply, delivered with a definite taunting edge, as though to say, ‘Trump
that!’

Corinna picked up the phone and dialled.

‘Nunziatella,’ she replied when Sergio Tondo’s secretary answered. ‘I need to speak urgently to the director.’

After a silence broken only by the distant sound of a siren, Tondo came on the line.

‘I have two men in my office,’ Corinna told him. ‘They have identified themselves as Lessi, Roberto, and Ferraro, Alfredo. They claim to be working under your supervision on, quote, internal security, unquote, and want me to hand over the Limina papers to them. Can you verify that you are aware of this?’

‘My dear Corinna,’ the director replied in his most smarmy voice, ‘a woman as beautiful as you should never allow herself to lose her poise because the company is disagreeable. I apologize if these two young men have failed to make a favourable impression. But what they lack in charm, they make up for in efficiency.’

‘They
are
working for you, then.’

‘They’re working for all of us, my dear, as part of my constant attempts to make the lives of you and your colleagues safer and more productive. Speaking of which, I mustn’t detain you any longer. Just give your visitors the file relating to the matter which we discussed yesterday, and then you can get back to work.’

Sergio Tondo hung up. After a moment, so did Corinna. The gum-chewing man was still staring at her, his eyes moving at intervals to another part of her body as if taking exposures for a composite photograph. Corinna stepped over to the tower of box files in the corner. She grasped one with her right hand, steadied the pile above with her left, and in one decisive movement yanked the file free. The tower teetered for a moment, then settled back into place. Corinna returned to the two men, holding the file against her bosom.

‘I’ll need a receipt,’ she said.

Laurel frowned, as though Corinna had committed a minor lapse of good manners.

‘I’m afraid we don’t have anything like that,’ he said.

‘Then write one. “We, the undersigned, acknowledge receipt of file number such-and-such from Judge Corinna Nunziatella”, with the date and time. Spell out your names in block letters and then sign beneath.’

Laurel sighed.

‘I’ll need to consult the director.’

‘He’s just gone into a very important meeting,’ lied Corinna. ‘He won’t be very happy if this file isn’t on his desk when he comes out, and I’m not handing it over without a receipt. Here’s some paper and a pen.’

In the end the two men complied. Corinna took the receipt, read it through carefully, and only then handed over the file. Laurel and Hardy then left without a word, the latter breaking his sullen, intense scrutiny with apparent reluctance. Corinna Nunziatella listened to their footsteps receding on the marble floor outside. When they were no longer audible, she unlocked a drawer in her desk and removed another box file, identical to the one she had handed over except for the number marked on the spine.

She stood there for a moment, breathing rapidly and shallowly, her eyes unfocused. Then she opened the door, gave a quick glance in each direction, and strode off down the corridor to the main staircase. She went down two floors, then turned sharp left down to an unmarked door beneath the staircase. Inside, a stuffy, narrow passage led to another door, at which Corinna knocked. A moment later, the door was opened by a florid, elderly woman.

‘Well?’ she snapped.

A moment later, her face abruptly changed into a smile of welcome.

‘Oh, it’s you, my dear!’ she went on in Sicilian dialect. ‘Come in, come in. How nice to see you! I was just getting ready to give that empty room on the fourth floor a good going-over for these new people who’ve just got here. Lucia’s taking a few days’ sick leave to visit her son in Trapani, so I’ve got to do the whole thing myself. Not that they bothered to give us any notice, needless to say, just a phone call from His Royal Highness this morning telling me to …’

‘New people?’ asked Corinna, sitting down carefully on the cracked swivel chair which Agatella had scavenged from somewhere. It was perfectly comfortable and stable as long as you didn’t lean back too hard, in which case the whole thing tipped over while simultaneously spinning you around to land on your nose.

‘Arrived yesterday,’ the cleaning lady confided in hushed tones. ‘I was told in no uncertain terms to clean everything up by noon today, then clear out and never set foot in there again “under any circumstances whatsoever”.’

She rolled her eyes.

‘From Rome,’ she whispered.
‘I servizi.’

‘I servizi?’
repeated Corinna, repeating the common shorthand term for the alleged network of clandestine military agencies based in Rome, many of them tainted by scandals alleging their involvement in extreme right-wing terrorism. It may not have been coincidental that the word also meant ‘toilets’.

Agatella shrugged expressively.

‘Who knows? But that’s what Salvo thought.’

Salvo was Agatella’s son, employed at the Palace of Justice as a chauffeur.

‘He’s met them?’ asked Corinna.

‘He was sent to pick them up from the airport. Only not to the usual passenger terminal, but round the other side. You know that Fontanarossa used to be a military airfield? Well, it still is, and that’s where their plane came in, at the military buildings on the far side. Small jet, Salvo said, the sort millionaires have.’

Corinna gripped the file in her hands more tightly. She seemed about to say something, then aborted the remark in a lengthy exhalation, and started again.

‘Anyway, Agatella, the reason why I’m bothering you …’

‘It’s no bother, my dear! I’m always delighted to see
you.’

‘The thing is, I was wondering if I could borrow your coat and scarf for about an hour.’

Agatella looked at her in astonishment.

‘My coat and scarf? Of course, but why, in heaven’s name?’

Corinna smiled sheepishly.

‘I’m meeting someone. A personal thing. But because of all this security nonsense, they won’t let me leave the building without an armed escort. And if I go with them, it won’t exactly be a relaxed encounter, to say the least, and of course word of the whole thing will be all over the department in five minutes. But if I could just put on your coat and scarf and slip out the side entrance, no one will be any the wiser.’

Agatella smiled radiantly.

‘Of course, my dear, of course! No one ever takes any notice of comings and goings at that door. Let me just fetch my things. Some nice young man, is it? It’s about time you settled down and started a family, my dear. None of us is getting any younger.’

Ten minutes later, a woman of uncertain age with a satin scarf on her head, carrying a bulging plastic bag with the logo of the Standa department chain, entered a newsagent’s shop on Via Etnea which advertised in the window that photocopies might be made there. Twenty or so minutes after that she reappeared, the plastic bag even more gravid than before, and started back the way she had come. But after going a short distance she stopped, then started to cross the street, as though at a loss. Traffic swirled and shrieked around her, while the other pedestrians went steadfastly about their business, ignoring this hapless female who had obviously lost her grip on the realities of life.

The woman walked down the street to a
pasticceria
, where she ordered a coffee. No one paid any attention there either. Even the barman who served her and took her money managed to convey the impression that the transaction hadn’t really taken place. The woman removed a large, thick manilla envelope from her plastic bag, sealed the flap and wrote something on the front.

‘How much to wrap this?’ she snapped.

The barman looked at her with a frown.

‘Like you do the cakes,’ the woman explained.

The barman cast a defeated glance at the other two male patrons in the bar, shook his head and started washing coffee cups.

‘Would two thousand do it?’ the woman demanded.

‘It might, if you had it,’ the barman replied in dialect.

A banknote appeared in the woman’s fingers as the envelope slid along the chrome counter to stop in front of the barman.

‘What is this?’ he asked irritatedly.

‘A practical joke I’m playing on a friend,’ the woman said. ‘I want it wrapped just like a cake, with a ribbon and all, and a little card. In return …’

She pushed the two-thousand-lire note into an empty glass on the other side of the bar. Seemingly embarrassed, the barman glanced again at the two men, then shrugged and did as the woman asked.

Five minutes later, she presented herself at the guard post at the main door of the police headquarters of Catania.

‘This is to be delivered to Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen,’ she told the officer on duty through the grille in the bullet-proof screen, placing an elegantly wrapped parcel on the shelf outside the access hatch, presently closed.

‘You know him?’ demanded the guard with a mocking air.

‘I’m a friend of his daughter, Carla Arduini. This is for her. A birthday present. All he has to do is give it to her on Saturday, understand?’

The officer shook his head, picked up the phone and dialled.

‘Excuse the disturbance,
dottore,’
he said into the mouthpiece. ‘There’s someone here with what she says is a birthday present for your daughter. To be delivered on Saturday. Does this make any sense to you? Oh, it does? All right, sir. I understand. Very good.’

He hung up, and nodded vaguely at the woman.

‘Dottor Zen will pick it up on his way home.’

‘Mind he does, now!’ she replied. ‘And take good care of it meanwhile. It’s very precious, and you will be responsible if anything happens to it.’

The officer nodded repeatedly in a way that said, ‘Let’s humour the bitch and get her out of here.’ After a further sharp exhortation, the woman shuffled off across the little square in front of the police station. A lifetime of humiliation and submission seemed to have made it impossible for her to look up, so she did not notice the tall, gaunt figure gazing down at her from a balcony on the second floor of the Questura.

In all, almost an hour had elapsed before Corinna Nunziatella pushed open the obscure side entrance to the Palace of Justice, whose self-locking door she had propped open with one of Agatella’s wash rags. A few minutes after that, minus coat, scarf and plastic bag, she walked blithely through the checkpoint into the DIA section and along the corridor to her office. Opening the door, she found Laurel and Hardy in possession of her office, one lounging in her chair, the other inspecting the map of the province of Catania hanging on the wall.

‘Ah, there you are!’ cried Corinna with a touch of irritation. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. You know what? I gave you the wrong file! I’m
so
sorry. This is the one you want. No, no receipt necessary, thank you.’

 

BOOK: Blood Rain - 7
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