White Death (3 page)

‘Anyone around?’ I shouted again as I walked upstairs. There had to be someone because they always kept a couple of people at the station on stand-by. I walked down the corridor, knocking on doors, not waiting for a reply but knocking hard and moving on to the next one.

‘What’s going on?’ a voice said behind me.

I turned round and saw a man in a tracksuit. He was taller than me and had a jawline as wide as my shoulders.

I held out a card for him. He took it and looked down at me.

‘You’re an investigator?’

‘You can read then?’

‘Very funny. What are you doing sneaking around here at night?’

‘I’m not sneaking. The door was open.’

‘What do you want?’ he said, losing patience.

I told him about the burnt-out car. He said he had heard about it. Said it happened every now and again. Said that conviction rates were in single figures, if not fractions.

‘Why do they do it?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘I could tell you if we ever caught them. My guess is a combination of the usual. Insurance job. Jealous spouse. Working-class hero with a chip on their shoulder. The anarchist who doesn’t believe in the system. The
eco-warrior
who doesn’t believe in the internal combustion engine. Or, most likely, some loser who likes to watch flames, to see the chaos they can create just by striking a match. It
gives them a sense of power, of manipulating events, of being a creator of sorts.’

‘You got records of all car fires?’

He laughed. ‘We got records for everything. You can’t flush a toilet here without filling in the right piece of paperwork. We got records, all right.’

‘Open to the public?’

He shook his head. ‘The office is locked until tomorrow.’

People are always saying to me that they can’t give out information. Which normally means they’ll happily sell it. I’ve never met anyone who believes more in privacy than in money. Open your wallet and they normally open their mouth. I held out a fifty.

He looked at me with disgust. ‘Put it away,’ he said with authority.

I put the note away and looked at the jawline. ‘I’m just trying to save lives, the same as you,’ I said.

‘That so?’ he said with sarcasm.

‘I’ll make an official request in the morning.’

‘You do that.’

He stood at the door to his room, watching me slink down the stairs like a naughty child. I didn’t like the humiliation, but I was pleased that my jaundiced world view wasn’t entirely correct. There were people who didn’t take cash in the middle of the night. There were people who wouldn’t do anything for a bit of easy money. It didn’t help me, but it cheered me up a little.

I woke up early the next morning and went straight back to the fire station. It took a fair amount of bluster to get what I wanted. The woman on the front desk made a point of being unhelpful and the man with the jawline wasn’t around. Eventually I got to speak to some public liaison person who gave me a list of car fires in the last two years. There were sixteen in total. I couldn’t take all the documentation with me, so I made a generous donation to the retired firemen’s fund and got the charmer on the front desk to make photocopies.

I went from one address to the next. Most of them were out, or had moved away, so I wasted the morning limping from one place to the next just to ring a doorbell a couple of times. It was raining heavily and within an hour my clothes were stuck to my back and I was bored.

To those who were in, I told the truth: that I was looking into all car fires in the last two years to try and establish some sort of pattern. They came out with their own theories, used my appearance as an excuse to get an old grudge off their chest. Out of politeness I wrote down names they mentioned – former boyfriends, or business partners, or local eccentrics – and promised to follow up the leads. They seemed surprised that anyone would still be interested in their case because no one had seemed particularly interested when it had happened.
They told me what new car they had bought as a replacement, told me in detail about how it was better, or worse, than the one they had had before. I took down the names of their insurance companies, just in case.

I had been to about a dozen addresses when something interesting came up. I had been looking for a man called Carlo Lombardi, a prosciutto merchant whose Volvo had been charcoaled a year ago. The address I had for him was a prosciuttificio half a mile to the north. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant area: hemmed in by the railway, the ring road and the motorway. I decided to drive there since it was so out of the way and it was still raining heavily. I went up and down the road twice without seeing the place. Normally a prosciuttificio has its prices on display outside, large numbers describing weights and the length of stagionatura. They normally have a forecourt where customers can park to pick up their ham wholesale, get a whole leg instead of a few wafers of the stuff.

It was supposed to be number 17, but in the
hundred-metre
stretch between 15 and 19, all I could see was chaos. Steel straws stuck out of square concrete pillars. The building was a shell of thick grey lines. It was entirely hollow but for a concrete staircase which ran from one non-floor to the next. Red and blue flexi tubes protruded from windows. Above, two cranes moved slowly like the arms of a clock which had lost their centre. There was the constant noise of banging, only offset by the booming voices of the workers: parolacce and laughter, random shouts and snatches of famous songs. The place smelt of wet sand.

I got out of the car and walked up to the site. Facing the
road was a large white sign detailing the construction firm, the engineer, the architect and the timescale for the building. The official rubbish. I took the phone out of my pocket and snapped a shot. I looked at the result and checked I could read the names. The main one was easy. It was written in large letters at the top: Masi Costruzioni.

I walked towards a portakabin a few metres from the pavement. It had Masi flags flying from each corner. I knocked on the door.

‘Avanti,’ someone shouted from inside.

I opened the door and saw a man at a desk. ‘You’re the first person who has ever knocked on that door.’ He laughed, his earlobes wobbling as he bounced. ‘Who are you?’

‘I was just passing,’ I said, faking timidity, ‘and wondered … are there still flats for sale?’

‘I’ve no idea. Not my role.’

‘Isn’t this the ufficio vendite?’

‘No, I’m just the foreman. Trying to make sure work gets done on time.’

‘Does it?’

‘What?’

‘Get done on time?’

‘Depends how often I’m distracted.’ He looked at me over his half-moon glasses. His face was all ears and nose. It was a sad face, the face of someone who was downtrodden but loyal and strangely shrewd. The face of someone who had been bullied, but who had cut a deal with the bullies.

‘It says on the board the flats will be ready for consegna at the end of the summer.’

‘It will have to be a very long summer,’ he laughed.

‘How long you been on it?’

‘Since last autumn.’

‘Wasn’t this where the old prosciuttificio used to be? What was it called? Lombardozzi or something?’

He shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t know.’

‘So where’s the ufficio vendite?’

‘In the centro. Sales are being handled by some agency.’

‘Any idea who?’

He grunted, growing bored of the disturbance. He stood up and went over to a board and tilted his head backwards so he was looking through his glasses. ‘Casa dei Sogni it’s called.’

The phone started ringing. ‘Scusi,’ he said and picked it up.

I held up a palm by way of goodbye and walked out. I drove a few blocks and parked outside a bar. Bar staff are the next best thing to parish priests when it comes to street-level intelligence. No one knows the territory like them. They hear all the gossip and complaints and grievances.

There was a petite woman serving. ‘What can I get you?’ she asked.

‘Malvasia.’

She poured it like she was watering a plant, sloshing it out so fast that the glass moved towards me as it filled up. Fizzing drops fell onto the counter.

I raised the glass to no one in particular and took a deep gulp. She pushed a bowl of crisps towards me. I took one, but crisp it wasn’t. It tasted like salted paper.

She was staring out of the window as she wiped a cloth across the bar where she had spilt the drink. ‘If it rains much
more today we’ll need a boat to get home.’ She spoke Italian with a southern accent. It sounded Neapolitan to me, with the usual sawn-off consonants. No point finishing a word if you knew what was coming.

I looked over my shoulder at the damp street. You could only see umbrellas walking past. I nodded and took another gulp. ‘I prefer my liquids on the inside.’

‘Want another?’ She was pouring it before I had even replied.

‘Thanks.’

I sat there for a few minutes, watching the rain. I didn’t want to rush it. Go in too quick and people know you’re pumping them for information rather than making idle conversation.

‘What happened to that prosciuttificio?’ I asked eventually.

‘Lombardi?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘He sold up about a year ago.’

‘I was looking for it just now, couldn’t see it anywhere. Thought I had lost my head.’

‘The only thing they’re selling there now are flats.’

‘I saw all that building work and thought I must have been on the wrong road.’

‘Right place,’ she said, ‘just a year or so too late.’

I took another gulp of the malvasia. ‘He still in business?’

‘Who? Lombardi?’

‘Yeah.’

She put her chin in the air. ‘Boh. I wouldn’t know.’

‘You got a phone book?’

She turned around and reached under the table where the
till was. ‘Ecco.’ She put it in front of me, turning it round so it was the right way up. ‘Another?’

I heard her pouring the wine as I leafed through the phone book. There were two or three pages of Lombardis. More than half a column of Carlo Lombardis. I turned to the front of the book where the commercial section was and looked for prosciuttifici. Quite a few of those too, but there he was: Carlo Lombardi. He had moved out of town, towards Colorno. I wrote down the address and passed the phone book back to her. I left a note on the bar and walked back to the car, my legs feeling a little frizzanti.

I drove to the address of the new prosciuttificio. It was easy enough to see: this time there were all the usual yellow posters with prices and weights. I went in and smelt the musty, peppery smell of seasoned meat. There were hundreds of
tear-shaped
legs hanging from the ceiling. Eventually a man in a white overcoat came towards me. He had thinning white hair swept back and glasses hanging around his neck. I noticed his chin was slightly skew, so that when he smiled a greeting his lips made a thin figure of eight. It had the effect of making him look cheerful or boyish.

‘You Lombardi?’ I asked.

‘Certainly am,’ he said.

‘Didn’t you use to have the place over on Via Pordenone?’

‘Used to. Not any more.’ He put his glasses on and looked at me as if he were trying to recognise an old customer. ‘We’ve been here almost nine months now.’

I nodded, looking around quickly to check we were still on our own.

‘What can I get you?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘I’m not here to buy. I wanted to ask you a few questions.’

He looked confused. ‘Go on.’

‘Your car got torched a while back.’

‘That was a long time ago,’ he said slowly. ‘How do you know about that?’

I passed him my card. I watched him read it and then look up at me with a frown.

‘A client of mine had his car torched the night before last. I was wondering if there’s a connection.’

‘A client?’

‘Yeah, a client. Someone who doesn’t take kindly to intimidation.’

We looked at each other with suspicion.

‘Dozens of people get their cars burnt each year,’ he said. ‘Why come to me?’

‘Because you sold up soon after. Made me wonder what went on. Made me wonder whether anyone suggested you move on. Whether you got any threatening phone calls, saying it was a good time to sell, that your family would be safer someplace else.’

His eyes narrowed and he was nodding slightly. ‘Wait here,’ he said. He walked through a side door behind the counter and a little while later came back with a woman. ‘My wife will watch the shop,’ he said. He had taken off his white coat. He beckoned me round the side of the counter and led me through the side door into a little office, crowded with files and papers.

We both sat down. The place was so small that we had to dovetail our knees.

‘What’s this about?’ he said, staring at me.

‘I told you. My client’s car was torched a couple of days ago. I came across your name in the records …’

‘Which records?’

‘Fire department.’

We stared at each other some more. He took out a cigarette and started turning it from a solid into a gas.

‘I’m trying to work out a pattern.’

‘And who are you?’

The guy was clearly nervous. He had something he wanted to share, but wasn’t sure he should be sharing it with me. I told him who I was, gave him the names of a couple of reputable Carabinieri who could vouch for me. He nodded, nothing more.

‘I saw the building site where you used to be. Looks like they’re going to make a killing.’ I watched him drag on his cigarette. ‘How many flats are they building there?
Twenty-five
, thirty probably. Six floors, one on each corner. A couple up top. Something like that. Each one eighty metres square. Say six or seven thousand euros a metre.’ I whistled. My maths wasn’t good enough to work it out, but it was millions. ‘How much did you sell out for? Two, three hundred thousand?’

He blew smoke towards the ceiling, shaking his head. He stared at me as if trying to decide whether to talk or not. ‘You know,’ he started quietly, ‘sometimes I hate this country. We were blessed with the most beautiful landscape in Europe. Mountains, sea, rivers. Everywhere you look it’s stunning. But we’re slowly ruining it.’ He crushed his cigarette into a green glass ashtray. ‘There’s barely a beach left that’s public,
hardly anywhere you can sit down on a bit of sand without someone hassling you for five or ten euros. They’re building huge marinas in every tiny fishing village. The mountainsides are dotted with illegal villas. The traffic jams just to get there make you want to turn round.’

‘It’s the same everywhere,’ I said.

‘No. No, it’s not. There’s something different in this country. Rules here are like breadsticks. As soon as you get them out of the packaging, you realise someone else has already broken them. You see that they’re in pieces and if they’re going to serve their purpose, they’ve got to be broken some more.’

‘It’s the same everywhere,’ I said again.

‘Bullshit. Here the rules don’t mean anything. Everything in this country is a façade, a mask, a pretence. If you ever get behind the façade, if you ever get through all the flowery phrases about “re-evaluation of the territory”, you’ll see the usual thieves and gangsters after a quick buck.’

I gave a tired nod of my head, not wanting to contradict a man in pain. I let him keep talking for a while and listened to his bitterness.

‘This city’, he lowered his voice slightly, ‘is like my wife’s waistline. It spreads out every year. Every year it grows. It’s relentless, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Just a year ago that spot out there’, he thumbed over his shoulder through a tiny window, ‘was agricultural land. Now look.’

I leant left and right and could see the familiar triangular arm of a gyrating crane. It looked like a transparent Toblerone.

‘More flats and cars and kitchens and consumption and pollution and …’

‘People have got to have somewhere to live,’ I said.

‘Ha!’ He looked at the ceiling again. ‘That old defence. The oldest in the book. “People have got to have somewhere to live.” Of course they do. You would have thought I was denying them bread. Of course they’ve got to have somewhere to live. But they don’t need two places to live. Or three or four. We’ve got a declining population but we’re still building at breakneck speeds. Almost everyone in this country has two homes, some have three or four. It’s not about having homes, it’s about greed.’

I nodded as he drew breath.

‘The politicians have all sorts of euphemisms. They call it recupero. Valorizzazione del territorio. Ripristino.
Riqualificazione
. They make it sound like they’re transforming ugly wastelands into green parks where children will play happily on swings and slides until sunset. But it’s just old-fashioned sviluppo, frenetic development. It’s all about building, pouring cement onto greenfield sites, spreading the city outwards until there’s no countryside left.’