A Long Finish - 6 (16 page)

‘Where?’

‘Down by the stream, the morning Beppe was killed.’

Minot said nothing.

‘Only they might ask again, you see, under oath this time. It would help if I knew the truth.’

Minot looked down at the dirty concrete platform for some time.

‘If that’s what you want, Bruno.’

He removed one of the new green bottles from the stack, examining it as though he had never seen such a thing before.

‘The truth,’ he said, ‘is that I killed him.’

Bruno’s face ran through a pantomime of expressions. Then he gave a forced laugh.

‘Don’t make jokes about something like this!’

Minot looked him in the eyes.

‘I’m not joking.’

Neither man said anything for a long time.

‘But why?’ murmured Scorrone.

Minot stared down at the bottle in his hand and smiled faintly.

‘He was on my turf. I discovered that patch of truffles years ago, long before anyone else. But Beppe did an underhand thing. I used to borrow his dog once in a while, when he didn’t need her. He took to dipping her paws in aniseed before I took her out, and then tracing my route the next day. I soon found that all my best patches had been cleaned out before I got there. That’s why he lent me Anna in the first place, so that she would lead him to all my secret discoveries. So I decided to get even.’

Bruno Scorrone clutched at one of the concrete pillars supporting the roof.

‘But that’s absurd!’ he exclaimed in a wavering voice. ‘You don’t kill someone over truffles.’

In a single swoop, Minot smashed the bottle he had been holding against the pillar and jabbed the broken end into Scorrone’s throat, twisting the jagged glass into the exposed flesh. A whistling spray of blood emerged, accompanied by a gargling shriek which quickly drowned on the pulsing flood. Bruno Scorrone slid down the pillar, emitting vaguely anal sounds and thrashing around feebly on the concrete.

It all went quicker than Minot had imagined. The twin advantages of surprise and sobriety aside, it was a question of will in the end. He wanted Bruno dead more than Bruno wanted to live. There was a lot of mess to clean up, but this was a site designed for spillage, with drains everywhere and a high-pressure hose on the wall. No one had seen or heard what had happened, and the only people who knew that he’d been there in the first place were Gianni and Maurizio Faigano. And he could deal with them. 

It was dark when Aurelio Zen arrived back in Alba in a bus packed with football supporters who spent the journey loudly celebrating their victory over a town in the next valley. By the time he disembarked in the inevitable Piazza Garibaldi, Zen had learned several colourful terms of abuse in the local dialect, and even found himself singing along to a rousing chorus which alleged that the players of the Coazzolo team were unable to score in more ways than one.

He started back to his hotel, paying no particular attention to his surroundings until the celebratory yells of the soccer fans brought a uniformed policeman out of a neighbouring building to suggest forcefully that they show a bit of respect, in view of the fact that Juventus had just lost to Inter by a disputed last-minute penalty. This was news to the local
tifosi
, due to poor radio reception on the road and the aforementioned festivities. The upshot was a lively discussion regarding the merits of the latest foreign acquisition by the Turin club, and estimations of how much the Milanese had paid the Roman referee to award the penalty after the Inter centre-forward took a blatant dive inside the area.

While all this was going on, Zen sidled around the group and entered the police station unobserved. He had expected the place to be deserted, it being Sunday, but to his surprise there was a group of five men in the squad room, a plain-clothes officer in the middle of a telephone conversation, and various uniformed patrolmen looking on.

‘Sì, sì, sì
,’ the man on the phone declared in a tone of utter boredom. ‘
Va benissimo. D’accordo. Senz’altro. Non si preoccupi, dottore. Certo, certo. Non c’è problema, ci penso io. D’accordo. Sì, sì. Ci sentiamo fra poco. Arriverderla, dottore. Buona sera, buona sera.
’

He replaced the phone and glanced sourly at Zen, who was hovering in the doorway.

‘Well?’

‘Excuse me,’ Zen began hesitantly. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you, but the thing is …’

‘Yes?’

Zen hesitated.

‘Well …’

‘Get on with it! We’re busy here.’

‘Well, the fact is, I need a phone tapped.’

There was a long silence. The plain-clothes officer got to his feet. He smiled, not pleasantly.

‘Are you sure that’s all? You don’t want anyone arrested, by any chance?’

‘Not at the moment.’

The officer’s smile became still more menacing.

‘Just the phone tap, eh? And which phone did you have in mind?’

‘The one at the hotel where I’m staying,’ Zen replied. ‘It’s called the Alba Palace.’

‘The whole hotel? All the calls, eh?’

‘Just the incoming ones.’

At this point, the officer evidently decided that he had milked the joke for all it was worth.

‘What the hell’s Dario doing down there at the door?’ he asked, turning to his colleagues. ‘Letting some madman push his way in here like this! It’s a disgrace.’

‘I apologize,’ Zen replied. ‘I should have …’

The officer whirled around.

‘As for you, bursting in here and demanding a telephone tap on the leading hotel in town! Are you out of …’

He grabbed the identity card which Zen was holding out.

‘… your mind? Are you out …? Are you …? Aaaaaaaagh! Ha! Yes. Yes, yes, of course. Dottor Zen! We meet at last.’

He held out his hand with a fixed smile.

‘Nanni Morino. Forgive me for not recognizing you,
dottore
.’

‘On the contrary, forgive me for interrupting. Nothing important, I hope.’

‘No, no, just an accident at a local winery. But the victim was quite a big name round here, so we’ve had to cancel our plans for Sunday evening and show willing. Still, it’s double time, eh, lads?’

With an insincere laugh, he motioned his subordinates to make themselves scarce, which they duly did.

‘Now then, this phone tap,’ Morino said, once he and Zen were alone. ‘No problem, of course, but it may take a while to set up.’

He stared intently at Zen.

‘That’s a nasty-looking cut you’ve got there,
dottore
.’

‘Yes, and quite fresh, too, by the look of it. Can we get back to the point, please? I’ve been getting some anonymous calls recently. The first was at the hotel, the second at the Vincenzo house.’

Nanni Morino raised an eyebrow.

‘I went out to Palazzuole today, to take a look at the scene of the crime,’ Zen explained. ‘The son, Manlio, was there, and he invited me back to the house for lunch. While we were eating, the phone rang and it was for me. My anonymous caller.’

Morino brightened up.

‘In that case, I should be able to give you a lead right away.’

‘How do you mean?’

He lifted the receiver of his own phone and dialled.

‘The Vincenzo line has been tapped ever since the crime. Any calls received there today should have been logged. This was at lunchtime, you said?’

Nanni Morino spent over five minutes talking to various police personnel in Asti, running through a repertoire of stock phrases such as those he had used in his previous phone conversation. Then he hung up and turned to Zen.

‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘There was only one call recorded to the Vincenzo house at that time today. It was made at twelve fifty-two.’

‘That sounds right. Where was it from?’

‘That’s what’s odd. It was made from the hotel you mentioned, the one where you’re staying. The Alba Palace.’

There was a long pause. Then Zen slapped his forehead.

‘I’m an idiot. My apologies again for the interruption.’

‘Don’t mention it,
dottore
.’

At the door, Zen turned, suddenly recalling Tullio Legna’s warning about the consequences of Manlio Vincenzo’s release.

‘That accident you mentioned …’

‘Yes?’

‘Who was involved?’

‘A man called Scorrone. He ran a big commercial operation out near Palazzuole and was found dead there earlier this evening.’

‘You’re sure it was an accident?’

‘No question about it! It’s something we’re all too familiar with around here. He was found floating in a vat of fermenting grapes. Apparently he’d been to a local restaurant and had a long and well-lubricated lunch, then drove straight to his winery to check on some wine he’d started up the day before. He must have leaned over too far and fallen in. The atmosphere above those vats is heavy with carbon dioxide and alcohol fumes. One slip and you drown or suffocate, or both.’

Zen nodded absently.

‘Scorrone, you said?’

‘Bruno Scorrone. Do you know him?’

‘I’ve heard the name.’

He turned towards the door.

‘About that phone tap …’ Morino said.

‘That won’t be necessary, thank you. Good night.’

At the main entrance downstairs, Dario was explaining in an authoritative tone to the assembled fans that if only Del Piero had taken down that long ball from Conte late in the second period with the
inside
of his foot and then got in the cross to Inzaghi, who was wide open … Zen slipped unnoticed through the opinionated throng and made his way back to the hotel.

The night clerk on duty was the same one who had been there when Zen arrived on the train from Rome, a short balding man with an expression which mingled anxiety, humiliation and aggression, as if he were perpetually haunted by the suspicion that everyone secretly despised him for his frailty and incompetence and was defying them to come right out and admit it.

Zen flashed his identification card.

‘Show me a list of everyone staying here,’ he said.

‘
Staying
here?’ asked the clerk, wide-eyed, as though the idea of anyone staying at a hotel was a bizarre and slightly disturbing notion which had never occurred to him before.

‘Everyone currently registered at the hotel,’ Zen explained.

‘Staying here
now
?’

‘What do you think I mean, April the first next year? Just show me the book.’

The clerk shook his head violently.

‘There isn’t one! No one has a book any more! Books are finished.’

He turned away, pressing a series of buttons on a computer keyboard. Paper unrolled to a staccato rhythm from a printer on the shelf beside him. The clerk tore it off and handed it to Zen.

‘There! Everyone who’s here now! All of them, every one!’

He stared at Zen with a manic intensity which suggested that there were in fact a number of guests not named on the list whose bodies were concealed in the cellar. Zen walked through an archway into the bar and sat down at a corner table, scanning the list. It was more or less what he had expected. Apart from the ten foreigners – three Swiss, four Germans, two Americans and a Frenchman – there was a woman, three couples and four single men, excluding himself. None of the names meant anything to him, but tomorrow he would return to the
Commissariato di Polizia
and ask them to run a search of the records.

‘Have you got a light?’

He looked up, his right hand already reaching automatically for his lighter. The speaker was a young woman in black leggings and a leather blouson. Zen vaguely remembered having seen her leaving the room next to his when he got back the previous evening. She lit her cigarette, then slumped down in the armchair opposite him.

‘Do you mind if I sit here?’

Zen glanced at her curiously. The bar was empty, and there was no shortage of available seats.

‘Suit yourself.’

The woman took a few puffs at her cigarette, then ground it out in the ashtray. Her hair was cropped short in layers, she wore no make-up and the expression of her green eyes was uncompromisingly direct.

‘I don’t usually do things like this,’ she said.

Zen smiled politely.

‘No.’

‘The truth is, I’m going out of my mind with boredom.’

‘I see.’

‘Alba is
fantastically
boring, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so.’

It couldn’t be a pick-up, he decided. She was too straightforward to be anything other than a professional, in which case she would have got to the point by now. Besides, it was hard to imagine that sort of action in the bar of the Alba Palace.

The young woman’s eyes met his.

‘You’re here on business?’

Zen nodded.

‘And you?’

‘The worst kind. Family business.’

Silence fell. Zen had decided to make no attempt to keep the conversation going. The woman was quite pretty, he supposed, in a rangy, sharp-featured way, but he wasn’t attracted to her. For him, the voice was always the key to such things, and hers lacked that special resonance.

‘You’re a policeman,’ she said.

He hesitated just a second.

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘I heard you talking to the desk clerk. Something about wanting a list of guests at the hotel. He seemed quite amazed, but then he always does.’

She pointed to the scroll of paper on the table.

‘Is that it?’

Zen regarded her in pointed silence.

‘I suppose I’m being indiscreet,’ she said. ‘It’s just that the idea that anyone in this dump might be of interest to the police seemed irresistibly … well, interesting.’

Zen thought briefly of telling her to mind her own business. Then it occurred to him that she might be of use.

‘It’s not an official matter. At least, not yet. Someone’s been making anonymous phone calls. I have reason to believe that it’s one of the people staying here.’

He handed over the list.

‘Have you met any of the men whose names I’ve marked?’

‘This one tried to chat me up in the restaurant last night and then gave me his card. He’s a commercial traveller in wines and seems to sample a lot of the product. And one of the others patted my bottom in the lift yesterday. I don’t know his name.’