The Death of an Irish Consul (20 page)

“To Signor Battagliatti’s house. Can you point me the way?”

“Better—I can take you.”

McGarr consented readily. With Alfori present, he wouldn’t have to explain his own identity as a police official of a foreign country.

From the top of the hill above Francesco Battagliatti’s small white house, McGarr could see Enrico Rattei’s villa in the distance.

It was late afternoon and the Battagliatti house sat in the deep shadows of the former zinc excavation. The entire area surrounding the house had been sodded and Battagliatti’s sister was working in a vegetable garden.

She was a frail woman in her sixties with a remarkably thin face and a long, pointed nose. She wore a bright red babushka and rubber boots that reached her knees. Her dress was plain gray, obviously a utility item. Her hands were black with dirt and seemed too large and coarse for her stature.

She sat on a tomato crate and offered others to McGarr, O’Shaughnessy, and Alfori.

“I’ve come about this gun.” McGarr handed her the automatic.

“It’s Francesco’s!” She was alarmed. “What’s happened to him? He’s been carrying this with him since the Palio. I found it in his coat pocket several times. I knew no good would come of it.” She searched McGarr’s and O’Shaughnessy’s faces, which were impassive, and then she looked to Alfori. “How did they get this? Where’s Francesco?” She started to rise.

McGarr put his hand on her thin arm and eased her back onto the tomato crate.

Behind her McGarr could see a large hare loping slowly toward the fringe of the garden. Strange, he thought to himself, how funereal were the purple shadows the cliff cast over the house while the western slopes of the hills beyond were brilliant with the same startling ocher light of the dwindling sun that he had noticed some days before.

Alfori was saying, “To tell you the truth, Maria, I don’t know how these gentlemen obtained the gun. Can you enlighten us, sirs?”

“What can you remember about the theft of the gun, ma’am?” O’Shaughnessy asked. “Thinking back on it now, is there something you can remember that you forgot to tell Signor Alfori at the time? It’s important.”

But she just kept staring at the two Irishmen, trying to read their faces. “I don’t know. I don’t like this. Who are these two men?” she asked Alfori.

“As I told you before, Maria, they’re policemen from Ireland.”

“Why Ireland? I’ve never been to Ireland. Where’s Francesco? I want to talk to him first.”

McGarr said, “This gun has been to Ireland. It killed two people there.”

Her hand jumped to her mouth. “I don’t believe it.” She looked at Alfori.

He said, “It’s true. These men don’t lie.”

“But Francesco’s never been to Ireland. If he had
visited that country he would have brought me something from there. That’s his way whenever he goes someplace new.”

“The gun killed those people while it was stolen, before it was found in the automobile again.”

Her neck jerked and she glanced down into the valley and at the bright hills.

Alfori said, “We’re too well acquainted, Maria, for me not to know that you’ve got something to tell us.”

“I can’t,” she said. “It’s not right. I’m not really sure. That’s why I never said anything before, not even to Francesco. And he’s a poor man anyhow, a mere servant.”

“Who?” asked Alfori.

“I must talk to Francesco first.”

McGarr picked up a stone and tossed it at the hare so it scampered out of the garden. “You can’t talk to Francesco anymore.”

She lowered her head. “I thought that’s what you’d say.”

“It’s why we’ve come,” McGarr explained. “We need to know about that gun. If we act fast——”

“His name is Cervi.” She looked up at McGarr. She was not crying. Her voice was clear and strong. “He has a three-wheel van, a Lambretta, I think it is. The day we were robbed I saw him going down the hill,” she pointed over her shoulder. “I was in the bus. It’s high. When he passed, I looked back and I thought I saw the hilt of the sword Francesco brought back from
Russia. It was one of the things stolen from the house. I couldn’t be sure because of all the dirt on the windows of the wagon and the dust from the road. And then we were going fast. I only got a glimpse of it. Anyhow, it wasn’t ’til much later that I remembered it, and I thought all of the things taken we could easily do without. We don’t——” She paused. “——we never needed much.”

“
Paolo
Cervi?” Alfori asked.

She nodded.

McGarr and O’Shaughnessy stood.

Alfori said, “Are you going to be all right, Maria?”

“Of course,” she said. She was looking toward the garden.

The hare had reappeared.

McGarr could see at least two others.

“Perhaps Signor McGarr can tell you——”

“I don’t want to know. They’ll tell me soon enough, I’m sure.”

But as McGarr turned to go, she asked, “Was there pain?”

“No,” he lied.

“Do you mind if I use your phone, Maria?” Alfori asked.

She flicked her wrist toward the house.

While Alfori called his office for somebody to come out to the house and keep her company, McGarr and O’Shaughnessy watched her watch the
lepri
nibbling on the plants in the garden.

“You don’t think she’ll do something wild?”
O’Shaughnessy asked McGarr. “She gives me that feeling.”

But she was on her feet now, shooing the hares out of the garden. She then began to replace the tall chicken-wire fence that kept them out during the night.

McGarr had not correlated the name Paolo with the man’s occupation, servant, and the butler from Rattei’s villa until the door of the hillside
casòtto
, more a shelter than a house, opened, and he saw him standing there, for the briefest moment that it took Cervi to react.

He slammed the door in McGarr’s face and threw the bolt. The chief inspector could then hear him rushing through the house.

One thing about McGarr, he could always run with the best of them. As a lad on Moore Street, he had not once been caught by the Garda after nicking fruit from vendors’ wagons, and as a wing on any football team he couldn’t be stopped once he broke clear.

McGarr shoved by O’Shaughnessy and Alfori and sprinted around the house, out of which Cervi had long since debouched. McGarr could see him up on the hillside, running through a herd of goats which were scattering, their bells clanking and ringing. A caged guard dog lunged at McGarr and then coursed from side to side barking savagely.

The air was cool in the shadows on the hillside, yet McGarr’s lungs burned. He smoked too much. He promised himself he’d quit as soon as he got back to
Ireland, and he knew he was lying to himself. Anyhow, he wished he could quit.

The diminutive butler kept looking back, as McGarr gained on him. His eyes were wide with fright. McGarr could see he wasn’t carrying a weapon, since he wore only a light cotton shirt, which flapped as he ran, and tight black pants, no doubt his work garb, that would have shown the bulge of a gun had he been carrying one.

Just at the line where the setting sun peeked over the neighboring hill and struck Cervi, McGarr clapped his hand on the man’s neck and forced his face into the hillside. He pulled handcuffs from the small holster on his belt and jerked Cervi’s wrists into them. Then he pulled out Battagliatti’s Baretta Special. He held it so the sunlight glinted off the gold plating, so Cervi would see. McGarr figured that as long as Alfori and other witnesses were beyond earshot he’d try to frighten the little man. McGarr was sure Rattei would supply Paolo Cervi with his best lawyers the moment he was booked.

“See this, you little bastard?” he whispered in the man’s ear while leaning all his weight into the handcuffed arms. “You know what it is, don’t you? Twice you pulled this trigger and dispatched the old men. Did you know who they were? Did Rattei tell you? Or did you read about it later in the papers? They were big men, important men, and you’re in trouble now.

“Rattei told you they’d never extradite you, right?” McGarr jerked up on the handcuffs.

The man winced with the pain.

McGarr glanced behind him and could see O’Shaughnessy and Alfori weaving through the bushes and goat droppings as they started to climb the hill toward him.

“Well, he was right, like always. Your boss is always the man with the proper information. But this time he didn’t tell you one thing—the British don’t do things regular when it’s a case like this. No. The British are ruthless themselves, you know that. When I went to London they offered me a lot of money, whole piles of it, not—mind you—
not
to bring anybody back for a court trial—that’s too long, too messy—but to ‘solve’ the problem, get me? And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to ‘solve’ you. Down there in that chicken shack. It’s not a standard Irish chicken shack, but we’ll see how much you can course around after I put a bullet in your brain.”

McGarr flashed the gun in Cervi’s face, then, stepping off him and using the handcuffs, pulled the small man to his feet. McGarr started down the hill with him, rushing him toward O’Shaughnessy and Alfori so that Cervi stumbled and tripped and fell. McGarr just kept on tugging at the handcuffs, so that the little man seemed more to sledge down the hill on his chest than to use his feet. The front of his shirt and pants was smeared with animal slurry.

“He resisted arrest,” said Alfori, when McGarr passed the two policemen. He began tsk-ing. “More people seem to make that tragic mistake daily. Ah, well—it’ll save the Italian people the expense of a trial.”

McGarr twisted the wooden latch of the shed and tossed Cervi into the shadows without caring that the hutch was filled with chickens which burst out of the confinement with a flurry of wings and feathers and dust and squawking. It all added to the show, McGarr believed.

He shouted, “Son of a bitch—stand away from the building, Liam. I don’t want to hurt any witnesses to his resisting arrest. He’s got a gun, you know. The very same one he used to kill Hitchcock and Browne.” McGarr dropped the gun so that it lay close to Cervi’s nose. He then pulled out his own Walther, slowly checking the clip to make sure it was fully loaded. He pushed forward the safety, cocking it. Compared to the little gun in the dust of the chicken coop, the 9-mm automatic looked like a weapon of terror.

McGarr spoke all the while. “You’ve got the advantage over them though, my friend. I was remiss. I failed to remember to bring along any twenty-two-caliber ammunition. This gun”—he waved the Walther—“will blow the front of your head right off. Sorry about that. Nobody’s perfect. You’ll just have to be satisfied with a closed casket.
Buona notte!
” McGarr had only to place the metal barrel of his fountain
pen on the back of the man’s neck and Cervi began to speak in a rush.

“He made me do it, signor. I had no option. I’m just a poor man. We don’t have complete control over our destinies. Sometimes we have to do what other men—bigger, richer men—desire. That’s the only way we can survive.”

“Why tell me?” asked McGarr. “After I kill you I’ll be a bigger, richer man.”

“Don’t!” he howled pitiably.

McGarr slipped the Walther into its holster and kicked open the chicken coop door. He waved O’Shaughnessy in.

The tall Garda superintendent already had his notebook out. Alfori had one too.

“Rattei’s responsible for the murders, then?”

“Yes. He hired the Negro, he asked me to accompany him.”

“And you did.”

“I had no choice. I know Rattei. It was not really a request. If I had said no, he wouldn’t have trusted me any longer. Then, because of other things I know, it would have been only a matter of time before—” his voice trailed off.

“How did you get to Ireland?”

“ENI company jet to London. I took the train from there. I stayed in a bed-sitter in Limerick for a week and a half. I met the helicopter outside the city in a field near the river.”

“Why you and not some bigger man?”

“I didn’t know at the time, but later I put it together. It was because Francesco Battagliatti and I were the same size.” Cervi broke down and sobbed. “And the Battagliattis have been so good to me. His sister used to send his old clothes and shoes—and not even when they were old or used either—over here to me.”

“And still you burglarized their home?” McGarr asked. He had lit up a Woodbine now, which burned his throat. He tossed it into the dust.

“I had to, I had no choice.”

“Did you pull the trigger of this gun twice in Ireland?”

“I had to. Yes.”

“Did you murder Hitchcock and Browne, then?” O’Shaughnessy asked to get Cervi on record twice admitting to the crimes.

“I had no choice. I didn’t know who they were. They were just two old Englishmen. It was them or me, really, signor. The way Rattei asked me, I saw how it was.”

“What did Rattei give you to kill Hitchcock and Browne?”

“Some of his private shares in ENI. Believe it or not, he has little else. He’s gambled everything on the new drilling.”

“And you were willing to go along with him?”

“Don’t you see I had to? And in a few years the shares would be worth millions. Signor Rattei is never wrong.”

O’Shaughnessy said, “He certainly was when he asked you to kill two men.”

“I mean, in business.”

“Who was the man who ‘played’ Rattei in Ireland?”

“I don’t know. I never saw him before, I never saw him again. He let it slip that he worked for ENI in Spain, though.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to find,” O’Shaughnessy said to McGarr.

“Where was he when you pulled the trigger?” McGarr asked.

“Right outside the building.”

“And Foster?”

“Standing alongside me.”

Alfori, who had gathered enough information to conclude that this was no ordinary burglary arrest, asked, “Where did Rattei make this request, here in Chiusdino?”

“Yes. Can I sit up now?” Cervi’s face was still in the dust of the chicken shack.

McGarr undid the handcuffs and pulled him to his feet.

McGarr had often noted in the past that people who didn’t really like the taste of whiskey could in no way appreciate the flavor of Irish whiskey. He was sitting in the breeze of Falchi’s air conditioner. On the window ledge were also a telephone, a bucket of cracked ice, some tumblers, and a bottle of fourteen-year-old Jameson whiskey that McGarr guessed was at least twice
that age. The café owner across the street had found it down in the farthest recess of his wine cellar, or so he told McGarr’s runner when mentioning the premium price; and now McGarr and O’Shaughnessy sipped tall cool glasses of the peat-smokey liquor. Even over ice, the crisp whiskey flavor and musky aroma were unmistakable. Alfori, who entered the room now, had had to cut his whiskey with water. But McGarr figured the Chiusdino barracks commandant would have drunk the mixture if it had been laced with hemlock, for the glass itself gave him high status here in Siena headquarters. Only Falchi, who was standing on the other side of the door, had been offered a drink and had refused.