Blood Rain - 7 (19 page)

The deal had been struck after an inspection of the merchandise in Mazara del Vallo, a fishing port on the south-west corner of the island. This was deep in the territory of the Marsala clans, and strictly off-limits to entrepreneurs from anywhere else, especially Corleone, so Ignazio had arranged the appointment — at a disused fish-packing plant just south of the town — for the early hours of the morning, arriving under cover of darkness and leaving as soon as the duffle-bag of cash had changed hands.

Travel on a north-south axis in this part of Sicily was relatively easy, but going from west to east you might as well be on a mule as in a car. There were various possible routes, none of them good. Ignazio wanted to get out of enemy territory as quickly as possible, so he opted to take the
autostrada
to the Gallitello turn-off, then cut across country on back roads. It was almost six o’clock before he sighted his destination, distinct in the pre-dawn glimmer on its hilltop. A few minutes later he saw the truck.

Ignazio was by nature an opportunist, and although he had already done very nicely on the night’s work — even after the cut he’d have to give the importer and the handling people — he was not about to turn down an opportunity such as this. A meat truck from Catania abandoned at the roadside! He was back on his home turf now, and no one here had any exaggerated respect for the Limina family. Any windfalls from their territory were fair game. The driver would have known that, of course, which was no doubt why he’d vanished after his rig broke down on that excruciatingly steep ascent into Corleone. Odd route to choose, but he’d probably got lost.

Ignazio braked hard and turned off into an abandoned mule track leading down to the left. He bounced around a curve, parked out of sight of the road and then ran back to the truck. All he needed to do was break into the cab, then fix whatever had gone wrong. If he couldn’t, he’d use his cellphone to page his brother. Worst came to worst, they could cut Concetto in on the deal in return for the use of his tow truck.

None of these refinements proved necessary. The cab door was unlocked, the keys were in the ignition, the engine started first time. In retrospect, this should perhaps have given Ignazio pause, but he was an opportunist, and opportunity was clearly knocking.

The road was too narrow to turn the truck around, so Ignazio was forced to blast through the centre of town before heading up into the mountains to the east, looking for somewhere to stash the thing for a few hours, long enough for him to get back to his car, contact his brother and work out what to do next. And he quickly found it, in the form of a dried-up river-bed alongside the old road just north of Monte Cardella, the direct route to Prizzi since by-passed by the longer but less arduous
strada statale
. From there it was about six kilometres back to the spot where he’d left the car, but all downhill. Ignazio locked the truck, pocketed the keys and set off.

It took him about forty minutes to reach the place where he’d left his car, by-passing the town on another of the old mule tracks which criss-crossed the area. Five minutes after that he was back in Corleone, but by then the drama had moved on to a third act, and his role had been revealed to be merely supernumerary. By the time he and his brother returned to the parked truck, others were there to meet them.

The ensuing explanations took over three hours. Long before that, Ignazio started screaming, ‘Kill me! I’ve told you all I know, so just kill me!’ Which of course they did, but later. The refrigerated lorry had proved to contain the bodies of five ‘made men’ of the town, including the grandson of Bernardo Provenzano, the
capo
of the family, now in hiding in Palermo. The Corleonesi had accepted an invitation from a clan in Messina to attend a lunch to celebrate and inspire future contacts between the two clans involved. At some point, the five had been placed, alive, into the back of the truck, which was then driven off with the freezing unit turned on. Thanks to the sub-zero temperatures, none of the corpses showed any sign of post-mortem deliquescence, but they were almost unrecognizable just the same. Ironically enough, the only undamaged one was that of Binù’s grandson, the reason being that his left leg had been removed before he had entered the ‘death chamber’, and so he had been in no condition to try to escape. It was the thigh portion of this leg, suitably wrapped, which had been flung on to
their
doorstep. Examination of the severed stump suggested that the amputation had been performed with a chainsaw.

The bar in Piazza Carlo Alberto was as packed as ever, but the crowd was more evenly distributed now that the exclusion zone created by Carla Arduini’s presence was no longer in effect. There was perhaps a momentary flicker of the former tension when Aurelio Zen made his appearance, but it was instantly dissipated in a renewed rumble of discussion and comment.

Zen made his way to the counter and ordered a coffee. The barman appeared oddly frenetic and distracted. He said not a word, going about his business in a jerky, mute, compulsive frenzy, like an actor in a silent film.

‘Where’s the young lady who used to meet me here?’ Zen enquired as the coffee touched down on his saucer.

The barman ran through a range of facial expressions as if trying on a selection of hats, none of which really suited.

‘How should I know?’ he said at length, furiously wiping the gleaming counter with a rag. ‘She didn’t come today. I don’t know why. She just didn’t come. Maybe tomorrow …’

Zen knocked his coffee back.

‘No,’ he said. ‘She won’t be coming tomorrow, either. She won’t be coming ever again.’

He smiled mirthlessly.

‘Neither will I, for that matter.’

His eyes never leaving those of the barman, he produced his wallet and extracted a two-thousand-lire note which he tossed on the counter. With it came a spray of what looked like dust. Noticing it, Zen turned his wallet upside down. A stream of reddish grains poured out, forming an uneven pile on the stainless-steel counter.

‘What’s that?’ the barman demanded.

‘It’s called “blood rain”,’ Zen told him. ‘Think of it as a message.’

‘A message?’

Zen nodded.

‘A message from Rome.’

His arrival at the Questura appeared to be ill-timed. The guard in his armour-plated sentry box looked taken aback, as though he had seen a ghost. So did two fellow officers whom Zen met on the stairs inside. But the biggest surprise was his office, which was draped in lengths of cloth sheeting speckled and blotched in various hues and stank of paint thinner. At the top of a high and rickety-looking step-ladder, a short dark man in overalls and a paper hat was coating the ceiling with a large brush.

‘Attenzione!’
he called loudly. ‘Don’t step on the drop-sheets, there are wet splashes. And mind that paint!’

Zen abruptly jerked his arm away from what had once been his filing cabinet, and in so doing knocked over a can containing about five litres of off-white paint.

‘Capo!’

It was Baccio Sinico, standing in the doorway with an expression which seemed to Zen to be identical to that of everyone he had met so far:
And we thought we’d seen the last of him
.

‘They’re repainting,’ Sinico added redundantly, while the painter scuttled down from his roost, declaiming loudly in dialect. Fortunately for Zen, the can had landed with its mouth pointing away from him, so the main damage was to the floor and furniture. Meanwhile a crowd of his colleagues, subordinates and superiors, had formed in a semicircle discreetly situated just inside the door, away from the spreading puddle of paint. A chorus of voices rose up on all sides, lilting conventional laments and litanies of commiseration. To have a daughter killed! And coming so soon after the death of a mother! Such a cruel destiny would turn the strongest head. No one could be expected to resist this lethal hammer blow of fate.

Zen turned to Baccio Sinico.

‘I need to talk to you.’

The junior officer looked around the assembled crowd with the embarrassed expression of someone being importuned by a harmless madman.

‘I’m sorry,
dottore
, but I can’t. No time, what with my official responsibilities and so on.’

Sinico extracted a wallet and inspected its contents. With what seemed like exaggerated care, he folded up a fifty-thousand-lire note and handed it to Zen.

‘Here’s half of what I owe you,’ he said with false
bonhomie
. ‘You’ll get the rest just as soon as I can afford it. Meanwhile, since you’ve been given a month’s compassionate leave because of this awful tragedy, I think you should take full advantage. Eh, boys?’

He eyed the chorus, which nodded as choruses do.

‘So why not go and have a nice cup of coffee on me,
dottore?’
Sinico concluded, patting Zen’s arm in an overtly patronizing way.

He turned away to the assembled crowd with the air of someone bestowing a knowing wink on the insiders who knew the truth of the matter. Zen headed for the stairs, clutching the crushed banknote. Half-way down, he unfolded it. Inside was a small slip of white paper printed with writing and figures. It proved to be a printed
ricevuta fiscale
, the legally required receipt from the cash register proving for tax purposes that a commercial transaction had taken place. The heading named a bar in Via Gisira, a few hundred metres from the Questura.

He had been there less than ten minutes when Baccio Sinico appeared. Zen handed him the fifty-thousand-lire note.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ he demanded.

Sinico ordered a coffee, then turned to Zen.

‘First of all, let’s get one thing clear. You never came here, we never met, and I never said this.’

‘Is it that bad?’

Sinico shrugged.

‘Possibly. Probably. At any rate, let’s assume so. That way, we might be pleasantly surprised later.’

Zen lit a cigarette and peered at Sinico.

‘But why? All I’m doing is meeting a fellow officer for a coffee and a chat. We’ve done that often enough before. Why is it any different now?’

Sinico looked carefully around the bar.

‘Because of
la Nunziatella
, of course.’

‘But what’s that got to do with me?’

Sinico sighed lengthily, as though dealing with some foreigner whose grasp of the language was not quite up to par.

‘Listen,
dottore
, your daughter died with her, right?’

‘So?’

‘So the view has been taken that your inevitable emotional involvement as the father of the secondary victim disqualifies you from active duty at this time.’

Zen laughed.

‘I didn’t realize that the Ministry had become so warm and caring about its staff. Anyway, there’s no problem. I had a bad patch for a few days, after I heard the news. But I’m fine now. I’ve got a plan, you see. A goal.’

‘Which is?’

‘I’m going to find out who killed Carla.’

‘No one meant to kill your daughter! She was just caught in the crossfire.’

‘That doesn’t make her any less dead. And I’m going to find out who did it.’

Sinico shook his head.

‘The whole
Direzione Investigativa AntiMafia
is working on that,
dottore!
When one of our judges gets killed, we drop everything else. If we can’t solve the case and identify the murderers with all the resources at our command, how can you possibly hope to do so?’

‘Baccio, my daughter has been murdered! What am I supposed to do, sit around my apartment watching television?’

The junior officer stared at Zen, seemingly more shocked by the casual use of his first name than by anything else he had heard.

‘That apartment of yours,’ he said at length. ‘How much is it costing you?’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘How much?’

Zen told him. Sinico nodded.

‘And how long did it take you to find it?’

‘Three days? Four? Less than a week. Someone phoned me at the Questura. He said that he worked in a different department and had heard that I was looking for a place to live. It just so happened that some friends of his owned an apartment which might be suitable.’

‘Did he give a name?’

‘Yes, but I can’t remember what it was. Some sort of fish.’

‘A swordfish?
Spada?’

‘That’s it.’

Sinico nodded in the same lugubriously significant manner.

‘So you arrive here, fresh off the train, and in under a week you’ve found a gracious and spacious apartment right in the city centre, a few minutes’ walk from your work, at a price which normally wouldn’t get you a two-bedroom hutch in a crumbling tower block out in some suburban slum like Cíbali or Nésima. How do you think you managed that?’

Zen shook his head in a perturbed way.

‘I didn’t think about it. I don’t know the price of property down here. I just assumed …’

‘You assumed that the locals were being warm and caring, just like the Ministry,’ Sinico replied sarcastically. ‘Well, I hate to break it to you,
dottore
, but neither assumption is true. Your employers are only interested in your state of mind insofar as it might lead to actions which jeopardize the DIA operations currently under way They want you out of harm’s way, but it isn’t your harm that they’re worried about.’

‘They’re putting me in quarantine?’ asked Zen.

‘Think of it as compulsory compassionate leave.’

Zen dropped his cigarette on the marble floor and stepped on it.

‘Which is why you had to sneak away to talk to me.’

Sinico nodded.

‘As for the man who calls himself Spada, he is well known to us. He functions as a cut-out and message drop between various clans, and also between them and the authorities.’

‘Why don’t they just pick up the phone and dial?’

‘For all sorts of reasons. The most important, perhaps, is deniability.’

‘As in “you never came here, we never met, and I never said this”?’

A nod.

‘Fine, so this Spada, whose name isn’t Spada, makes a living by passing on messages in a way that is also a message in itself. Am I right?’