Steal You Away (11 page)

Pierini had moved closer and searched for something in its eyes. But he had found nothing. Nothing. Neither pain, nor astonishment, nor hatred.

Nothing whatsoever.

Two stupid little black balls.

He had struck it again and again until his arm was too sore to continue. The tortoise lay with its carapace turned into a jigsaw puzzle of bones dripping blood, but its eyes were the same. Staring. Stupid. With no secrets. He had removed it from the vice and put it on the ground, in the garage, and it had started walking off, leaving a trail of blood behind it, and he had started screaming.

Yes, that was it, Dickhead was just like that tortoise.

Graziano Biglia woke up at about seven o’clock in the evening, still feeling bloated after the enormous lunch. He took a couple of Alka-Seltzers and decided to spend the rest of the evening at home. Just lazing around.

His mother brought him tea and pastries in the sitting room.

Graziano picked up the remote control, but then told himself he could do something better, something he was going to have to start doing regularly, since country life had a lot of long pauses that had to be filled and he didn’t want to become a couch potato. He could read a book.

The library of the Biglia household did not offer a wide choice.

The
Animal Encyclopaedia
. A biography of Mussolini by Mack Smith. A collection of essays by Enzo Biagi. Three cookery books. And Luciano De Crescenzo’s
History of Greek Philosophy
.

He opted for De Crescenzo.

He sat down on the sofa and read a couple of pages, then it occurred to him that Erica hadn’t called yet.

He consulted his watch.

Strange
.

When he’d left Rome that morning, Erica, still half asleep, had said she would call him as soon as the audition was over.

And the audition had been at ten o’clock in the morning.

It should have finished a long time ago
.

He tried her mobile.

The number was not available at present.

How come? She always keeps it on
.

He tried ringing her at home, but there was no reply there either.

Where can she have got to?

He tried to concentrate on Greek philosophy.

They were fifty metres from the school.

Their bikes dumped in a ditch, the four of them were crouching behind a laurel hedge.

It was cold. The wind had got up and was shaking the black trees. Pietro huddled into his denim jacket and blew on his hands to warm them.

‘Well, how shall we do it? Who’s going to put the chain on?’ asked Ronca in a low voice.

‘We could draw lots,’ suggested Bacci.

‘No lots.’ Pierini lit a cigarette and turned to Pietro. ‘What did we bring Dickhead for?’

Dickhead
…

‘Right. It’s Dickhead who’s got to put the chain on. A shitty, puky little Dickhead who’s got no guts and has to go home to his darling mama,’ commented Ronca contentedly.

There it is
.

There’s the truth
.

The reason they’d made him come.

All that song and dance because they were too scared to chain up the gate themselves.

In films the villains are usually exceptional people. They fight the hero, challenge him to duels and do incredible things like blowing up bridges, kidnapping the families of decent folk, robbing banks. Sylvester Stallone had never come up against villains who pussyfooted around like these three cowards.

This made Pietro feel better.

He’d show them. ‘Give me the chain.’

‘Watch out for Italo. He’s crazy. He’ll shoot you. He’ll fill your bum so full of holes you’ll have six arseholes all spurting out squit,’ Ronca guffawed.

Pietro took no notice. He pushed his way through the hedge and made for the school.

They’re scared of Italo. Always acting so tough and they don’t
even dare put a padlock on a gate. Well, I’m not scared
.

He concentrated on what he had to do.

The sombre black silhouette of the school seemed to be floating in the mist. Via Righi was deserted at night, because there were no houses there. Only a neglected public garden, with some rusty swings and a fountain full of mud and reeds, the Segafredo Bar with graffiti on its shutters and a streetlamp that crackled, making an irritating buzz. No cars passed.

The only danger was that lunatic Italo. The cottage he lived in was right next to the gate.

Pietro stopped, with his back against the wall. He opened the padlock. Now he only had to crawl as far as the gate, shut it and go back again. It was easy, he knew, but his heart didn’t agree, he felt as if he had a steam engine inside his chest.

A noise behind him.

He turned. The three bastards had moved closer and were watching from behind the hedge. Ronca was waving his arms, urging him to get on with it.

He dropped flat and crawled along on his hands and knees. He held the key between his teeth and the chain in his hand. The ground was covered with mud, rotting leaves and soggy paper. He was getting his jacket and trousers filthy.

From that position it wasn’t easy to tell whether Italo was at the window. But he noticed that no light was visible through the cracks in the blinds, not even the bluish glare of the television. He held his breath.

There was total silence.

He steeled himself, stood up and with an agile leap caught hold of the gate and scaled it to the top. He looked past the house, to where Italo kept his car, the 131 Mirafiori, and …

It’s not there. The 131’s not there
.

Italo’s not there! He’s not there!

He must be in Orbano, or more likely he’d gone to the farm, which was not far from Pietro’s house.

He jumped down from the gate, coolly wound the chain round the lock and closed the padlock.

Done it!

He sauntered back more casually and coolly than Fonzie and feeling an almost irresistible desire to whistle. But instead he pushed his way through the branches and entered the garden to look for the chickenshits.

The panda has a fairly simple diet: bamboo leaves for breakfast, bamboo leaves for lunch, bamboo leaves for dinner. But if it doesn’t get those leaves it’s in the shit, in a month it’ll die of hunger. Since bamboo is hard to come by, only the richest zoos can afford to keep the great black-and-white bear among their prison populations.

It’s a classic example of a specialist species, a kind of animal that has been driven by evolution into a tiny ecological niche where its existence is precariously poised on a delicate relationship with the environment. You only have to remove one element (bamboo leaves for the panda, eucalyptus leaves for the koala, algae for the Galapagos marine iguana, and so on) and for these creatures extinction is certain.

The panda doesn’t adapt, it dies.

Italo Miele, the father of Bruno Miele, Graziano’s policeman friend, was, in a sense, a specialist species. The caretaker of the Michelangelo Buonarroti school was the classic kind of guy who, if you didn’t give him a dish of bucatini with plenty of sauce and didn’t let him go with prostitutes, would gutter out like a candle.

That evening, too, he was endeavouring to satisfy his vital needs.

He was sitting, napkin tucked into his collar, at a table in the Old Wagon and guzzling down the speciality of the house, sea-and-mountain pappardelle. A concoction of boar-gravy, peas, cream and mussels.

As happy as a pearl in its oyster. Or rather, as a meatball in its tomato sauce.

Miele, Italo. Weight: one hundred and twenty kilos.

Height: one metre sixty centimetres.

It must be said, however, in the interests of accuracy, that his fat was not flabby, it was as firm as a hard-boiled egg. He had chubby hands with short fingers. And that bald head, as large and round as a watermelon, drooped between his rounded shoulders and made him look like a monstrous Russian doll.

He was a diabetic, but refused to accept the fact. The doctor had told him he must follow a balanced diet, but he took no notice. He was also lame. His right calf was as round and hard as a bread roll and under the skin his veins twisted, swollen, one over the other, forming a tangle of blue worms.

There were days, and this was one of them, when the pain was so acute that his foot lost all feeling, a numbness rose up to his groin and Italo’s only wish was to have that damned leg amputated.

But the Old Wagon’s pappardelle put him at peace with the world again.

The Old Wagon was an enormous place, built in rustic Mexican style, fenced round with prickly pear and cattle-bones and situated on the Aurelia, a few kilometres beyond Antiano. It was also a motel, a disco, pub and sandwich bar, a billiard room, a service station, an electrical repair workshop and a supermarket. Whatever you were looking for, you would find it there, or something very like it.

Its main clientele was truck drivers and passing travellers. That was one of the reasons why it was Italo’s favourite restaurant.

No one to bother you, no one you have to say hallo to. The
food’s good and the prices are reasonable
.

Another reason was that it was a stone’s throw from the Meat Market.

The Meat Market, as the locals called it, was a stretch of asphalted road about five hundred metres long which branched off the Aurelia and petered out in the middle of the fields. In the intentions of some megalomaniac engineer it was going to be the new sliproad for Orvieto. But for the moment it was just the Meat Market.

Open twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days
a year, no holidays, no rest days. The prices were moderate and fixed. Credit cards and cheques not accepted.

The hookers, all Nigerian, waited at the roadside sitting on stools, and when it rained or the sun was too hot, they would get out their umbrellas.

A hundred metres away, on the main road, there was also a van that made the famous Bomber sandwich, filled with char-grilled chicken, cheese, pickled aubergines and peppers.

But Italo wasn’t satisfied with the Bomber, and once a week he gave himself a treat, his evening de luxe.

First the Meat Market, then the Old Wagon. An unbeatable combination. Once he had tried inverting the order. First the Old Wagon and then the Meat Market.

A disaster. He had felt sick. While he was humping away the sea-and-mountain pappardelle had come up again and he had vomited all over the dashboard of his car.

About a year ago Italo had stopped switching prostitutes and become a regular client of Alima. He would arrive at seven on the dot and she would be waiting in her usual place. He’d let her into the 131 and they would park behind a billboard nearby. The whole thing lasted about ten minutes, so by eight o’clock they were already at their table.

Alima, it must be admitted, was no Miss Africa.

Rather plump, she had a bum the size of a mooring buoy, cellulite and two flat empty boobs. On her head she wore a stringy blond doll’s wig. Italo had seen more attractive whores, but Alima was, to use his own words,
a human suction-pump
. When she gave head, she really applied herself. He couldn’t swear to it, but he was pretty sure she enjoyed it.

Sometimes he had screwed her, but both of them being on the large side (and there was the problem of his lame leg too), they were a tight fit inside the 131 and it became more of an ordeal than a pleasure. Besides, she charged fifty thousand for that.

This way it was perfect.

Thirty thousand for the blow job and thirty thousand for dinner.
Two hundred and forty thousand lire a month well spent.

You’ve got to taste the high life once a week, otherwise what’s
the point of living?

Italo had also made a discovery. Alima was quite a gourmet. She loved Italian cooking. And she was really good company. He found her easier to talk to than his wife, whom he’d had nothing to say to for twenty years or more. So he took her to the Old Wagon, and to hell with the local gossip.

That evening, strangely, they were sitting at a different table than usual, by the window that overlooked the Aurelia. The headlights of the cars would flash for a moment in the restaurant and disappear, swallowed up by the darkness.

Italo had in front of him a dish piled high with pappardelle, Alima one of orecchiette with ragù.

‘What I’d like to know is why your Allah won’t let you eat pork and drink wine, but allows you to be a whore,’ said Italo, continuing to chew. ‘I think it’s stupid, myself. I don’t say you ought to stop being a whore but, since you don’t exactly live a saintly life, at least you could treat yourself to a nice pork chop and a couple of sausages. Eh?’

Alima no longer even bothered to answer.

He had asked her that question a million times. At first she had tried to explain to him that Allah understood everything and that she didn’t mind doing without wine and pork, but that she couldn’t not be a prostitute, because she sent the money to her children, in Africa. But Italo would just nod and the next time ask her exactly the same question again. Alima had realised that he didn’t really expect a reply and that the question had a purely ritual function, like saying enjoy your meal.

But that evening she was in for a shock.

‘How’s the ragù? Is it good?’ asked Italo contentedly. He had already practically finished a bottle of Morellino di Scansano.

‘Good, good!’ said Alima. She had a nice broad smile, which opened over regular white teeth.

‘Good, is it? You know that’s not beef ragù but sausage meat?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘There’s … po … pork in that.’ Italo talked with his mouth full, pointing to Alima’s plate with his fork.

‘Pork?’ Alima didn’t understand.

‘Pork. Pig.’ Italo grunted to make his meaning clearer.

The penny dropped. ‘You’ve made me eat pork?’

‘That’s right.’

Alima stood up. Her eyes were suddenly blazing. She started shouting. ‘You shit. All shit. I never want to see you again. You’re disgusting.’

The diners around them stopped eating and directed fish-like gazes at them.