Lone Wolf Page 6

  ‘There must be hundreds of them,’ Cangio protested.

  ‘In that case,’ Grossi said with a tight smile, ‘you’d better get started.’

  EIGHT

  Padova, Veneto

  Professor Bianchi was always wary when the telephone rang.

  He checked the digital display, didn’t recognise the number.

  The area code was 0961, which was somewhere down south, he thought, though he couldn’t say exactly where.

  That was one of the problems with being the president of a national association: calls could come from anywhere, though they rarely came directly to him. One of his secretaries handled the preliminary contacts, as a rule.

  He ignored the phone call, let it ring itself out.

  Of course, it might be an invitation of some sort …

  The bigger companies were never short of cash for junkets and conferences, sometimes quite sensational ones. On the last occasion, he had cruised the Norwegian fjords for five days in exchange for three one-hour illustrated talks about the latest developments in TUR, TURP, and more traditional BPH procedures.

  He unbuttoned his trousers, pushed his undershorts to his ankles, and sat down.

  The phone rang again.

  He smiled and thought, If they could see me now!

  Indeed, it was the fun aspect of it that broke his resolve not to answer.

  He reached for the phone, pressed the button, and said: ‘Bianchi here. May I help you?’

  ‘It’s about your daughter, Professor,’ a deep voice said. ‘Your only daughter.’

  Bianchi felt his bowels cramp. ‘What about my daughter?’

  ‘Marisa’s doing well, I hear.’

  ‘She’s … she’s …’

  ‘She’s doing well. Like I just said. She could do even better, that’s the thing. And only you can help her.’

  The accent was definitely from the south, a low nasal growl, staccato sentences, the vowels drawn out.

  ‘Do I know you?’ Umberto Bianchi asked.

  There was a rumble of a laugh at the other end of the line.

  ‘Not yet, you don’t,’ the voice said. ‘But we know you. Your reputation, anyway, Professor. Now, about this daughter of yours. She’s been making regular progress at the university. And now there’s a chair coming up. Somebody died, we hear. They’ll need to fill his shoes, no kidding. And you can help her, like I told you before. Just you, and no one else. Now, that really is a big responsibility for a father.’

  He wasn’t used to being spoken to like this. Talked down to. The opposite was true. He had his band of acolytes and hangers-on, assistants and protégés, people who looked up to him for patronage and favours. That was the way of things, of course. You didn’t get anything for nothing. Not in this world. Not in the circles in which he moved.

  The circles in which Marisa moved …

  ‘What … exactly are we talking about?’

  ‘This weekend, or next. You decide. A car will pick you up on Friday night. A three-hour drive. Sleep all the way, if you feel like. The job will only take you a couple of hours. We’ve got everything you need. We’ll put you up in a five-star hotel if you want to rest when you finish, or we’ll drive you straight back home. It’s up to you. There and back in ten hours. Ten thousand euros, cash in hand. Per hour, of course, including the travelling. That’s one hundred thousand euro for a bit of uncharted overtime. Think about it. I’ll call you back this time tomorrow.’

  ‘And Marisa?’

  ‘She’ll get what she wants, I guarantee. There’s only one condition …’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Mum’s the word.’

  The phone went dead.

  Professor Bianchi’s bowels opened with a rush.

  Valnerina, Umbria

  They’d been driving for ten minutes, and Desmond Harris still hadn’t said a word.

  They might have been two strangers sitting side by side like deaf, blind mutes on the Underground, which was one of the many reasons Sebastiano Cangio had been glad to leave London behind him.

  The first thing the Englishman had done was to reach for the seat belt. Then he had spent a couple of minutes adjusting the strap, making sure that he was safely harnessed. As Cangio pulled away, the cop had set his briefcase carefully on his knees like a kid being driven to school, then he turned his head away and looked out of the window.

  No questions, curiosity apparently zero, no spark of a conversation.

  Cangio had tried, of course.

  Did Inspector Harris live in London? Was he married? Did he have children?

  The answers came back pat: yes, yes, and no. He lived in London, but he didn’t say where. He was married, but his wife was either nameless or unnameable. And as for having kids, the answer was just a flat no.

  Cangio wondered whether Harris and his wife might have separated.

  Having fired off his bullets, he fell silent, concentrating on his driving as they headed for the ring road. Harris murmured a hushed sorry as Cangio brushed his arm, turning left onto the approach road, then he smiled ironically as Cangio swung hard left again to avoid a Fiat 500 that shot in front of them without signalling, the driver too busy shouting into the mobile phone he was holding in one hand while gesticulating wildly out of the window with the other hand. As if that smile confirmed everything the English copper knew, or thought he needed to know, about Italy and Italian drivers.

  Cangio felt his irritation mounting.

  The driver of the Fiat had pissed him off, but you learnt to live with Italian drivers. Lucia Grossi had dragged him into something that had nothing to do with him, and there’d been no way of avoiding it. And now that smile from the mummy embalmed in the seat beside him confirmed every prejudice he had ever held against the British.

  I’m doing you a favour, he felt like telling the guy. This was Scotland Yard’s affair, not his. Why had Lucia Grossi let herself get caught up in it? Hadn’t the British voted to leave the European Union? What the hell did Italy owe them?

  Lucia Grossi’s ambition had a lot to do with it, no doubt. The fact that she had saved his life meant that he couldn’t simply refuse to help her. Desmond Harris was lucky not to be driving around Valnerina in a rented car with a tourist map and whatever scraps of Italian gibberish he might happen to know, looking for a restaurant he would probably never find.

  But as they were passing the exit signs for Assisi, the atmosphere changed.

  ‘Is that the Assisi?’ Harris asked him.

  ‘It’s the only one that I know of,’ Cangio said.

  ‘It looks so beautiful up there on the hill. Stretched out like a sleeping leopard.’

  Had Harris got used to the cars and the traffic? Or maybe it had finally clicked that they were going to have to work together?

  ‘Sebastiano,’ he said suddenly, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, as if he savoured the sound of the foreign name.

  His awkward pronunciation made Cangio smile. He could have used Seb, after all, and saved himself the embarrassment. Cangio waved his hand in the air, as if to say, I’m here. I’m listening.

  ‘We’ll need to visit quite a few restaurants before we find the right one, I suppose?’

  ‘There aren’t so many, but it may take time.’

  ‘What I wanted to say,’ Harris glanced at his wristwatch, ‘I usually eat far earlier than this. If you take into account the two-hour flight, the one-hour difference, and the hours that I’ve spent messing about in Perugia this morning. As a rule, I would have eaten a couple of hours ago.’

  Cangio was silent, unsure what he was supposed to say.

  ‘I suffer from chronic gastritis,’ Harris went on. ‘I try to keep it under control by sticking to a regular diet, and regular meal times, but … well, if I miss a meal, I start to feel bloated. It’s something to do with pepsins in the stomach, apparently. It begins as a slow burn that just gets worse and worse. If I start belching, you’ll have to forgive me. Once or twice the attacks have been so
bad, I ended up in hospital.’

  Cangio had a vision of himself in hospital forced to sit by Harris’s bed and deal with the doctors as another great belch ripped through the night.

  ‘The fact is, Sebastiano, I need to eat … What I mean is … If you have in mind a restaurant that might have issued that bill, could we start there, please? We could sit down like two normal customers, order some truffles, and ask some questions while we’re eating. It might seem odd after those photos that we were looking at,’ he chuckled aloud, ‘but I can’t help wondering what the attraction is. You know, truffles? They look so … well, so awful, so unappetising, but what do they actually taste like? That’s what I was thinking. I ran a check on the Internet …’

  ‘You’ve never eaten truffles?’

  Harris settled his briefcase more comfortably between his feet. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘And Scotland Yard will be picking up the bill, of course. We’d be killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. I’d like to offer you lunch, if you have no objection?’

  Would he ever understand the way the English mind worked?

  Desmond Harris was in Italy with a difficult investigation on his hands, but he was thinking about his stomach. Why not make a holiday of it with a decent meal or two thrown in at the expense of the British public?

  ‘No objection,’ Cangio said. ‘I haven’t eaten a thing since six o’clock this morning.’

  Let him put his gastritis to rest with something he’d seen in the stomach of a dead man in some pathologist’s laboratory in London.

  For a moment, he tried to imagine Harris standing over a gutted corpse, asking a man in green scrubs and blue rubber gloves, ‘What’s that revolting black stuff? It looks like fresh mud.’

  ‘It’s anything but mud, Inspector. His last meal must have cost a fortune. Black truffles, I’d say, by the gritty look of them.’

  ‘Not English, then?’

  ‘The tuber grows in the hilly parts of France and Italy. It’s a subspecies of the potato family, but hellishly expensive, highly thought of in foreign culinary circles. Can’t you smell it, sir? That delicate perfume beneath the stench …’

  Then the inspector would have run a check through the computer and put two and two together. A couple of words of Italian on the remnants of a restaurant bill, direct flights to Perugia from Stansted Airport, a dead body stuffed with truffles. Bingo, the dead man had come from Umbria! Then, having been ordered to fly to Italy and check out the story, he had made up his mind to taste some truffles while he was going about the business.

  Inspector Harris stretched out his legs, and seemed to relax.

  ‘We’ll have something to eat, then see if anyone remembers our man being there. How does that sound?’ He said it as if they had suddenly become friends, and might enjoy a couple of hours having lunch in each other’s company.

  ‘It sounds like a holiday,’ Cangio said, trying not to sound too harsh.

  ‘We’ll be working while we’re eating,’ Harris countered. ‘It isn’t often you get the chance to do that, is it?’

  He tapped his knuckles against the window, indicating the vegetation streaming past the car like a solid green wall beyond the glass.

  ‘What do the people actually do in Umbria? How do they live, I mean? What happens here … well, when anything happens?’

  ‘There’s not a great deal in the way of work in Valnerina itself,’ Cangio told him. ‘A lot of people commute to the larger towns, like Perugia in the north, and Terni in the south. They work in shops, banks, hotels, and restaurants in Spoleto and Norcia. You’d be surprised how many people work in local government administration. The rest are farmers, though they don’t all work the land. Many people make a decent living looking for mushrooms, truffles and nuts, while others run trout farms, or grow olives. Umbria is all about food. Truffles, trout, pigs, and olive oil.’

  ‘So what would a foreigner be doing here?’

  ‘He might have come on holiday. Or on business. Then there’s Francis of Assisi, art and religion. And there are lots of pretty towns to visit. We get a million tourists every year. Many of them visit the national park where I usually work.’

  ‘And what do you do in the park exactly, Seb?’

  Cangio told him about the wolves, the wildlife, the day-to-day assistance to farmers and tourists, working with schools and so on. He didn’t mention the alarming things that had happened since he’d been in Umbria. He said nothing about getting shot and nearly killed by the ’Ndrangheta, nor the rapid infiltration of the Calabrian mafia in the region, bringing drugs and guns and danger.

  And then it started raining.

  Harris warmed up and told him about the weather in England.

  Bari, southern Italy

  Marisa Bianchi was about to leave for the university when the phone rang.

  ‘Marisa?’

  ‘Papà?’

  Her father called her every Friday. Today was Tuesday.

  ‘Is something wrong, Papà?’

  ‘No, no, my dear. Everything’s as right as rain. It’s just that … well, I’ve been thinking … you know, about the appointments commission. When are the members due to meet?’

  ‘Within the next few weeks. They want to fill the post by the end of the month.’

  He hesitated for a moment. ‘Your name is on the list, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it is, Papà.’ His daughter sounded amused at his concern. ‘Now listen here, please don’t start worrying about me. You’ve got quite enough on your plate, and you’ll only make me jumpier than I already am.’

  ‘A bit of moral support never hurt anyone, my sweet.’

  ‘Of course not, Papà. I am grateful, I really am. It’s just that … well, you know, I … I’m going to have to stand on my own two feet on this occasion. I will accept the decision of the commission, whatever it may turn out to be.’

  He was quiet for a moment, seeking the right words.

  ‘You’ll be the top runner, I imagine.’

  Marisa made a noise, and he tried to visualise the expression on her face.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if I have to be really honest … There are seven names on the list, and they’re all highly qualified … well, recommended might be a better word. We’ve all got decent research papers to our names. It’s the … well, it’s that extra bit of push that makes all the difference in these matters.’

  There was silence, an unspoken conversation between them. – Please, help me, Papà. – I wish I could, my dear.

  ‘Just keep your chin up high,’ he said, ‘and see what happens. I’m sure you’ll make it.’

  He put a lot of force into the word sure, trying to tell her that it was a cert.

  ‘I do hope you’re right,’ she said, though she didn’t sound very convinced.

  She didn’t know that he was holding a trump card, and that he was ready to play it, but there was no way that he could tell her about it.

  Not now. Not ever.

  ‘Oh, by the way, my dear, the other reason I rang … I won’t be phoning you this Friday. I have a speaking appointment, and a dinner afterwards. I shall probably leave my phone at home that night. I don’t want it ringing at the wrong time.’

  His daughter laughed and said, ‘Is there ever a right time?’

  In other circumstances, they would have told each other stories about phones going off at inappropriate moments, but he was in no mood for joking. ‘Just wait until they call to tell you that you’ve got the chair,’ he said.

  He ended the call, then sat for some moments staring at nothing.

  Then he rang a different number.

  The phone rang and rang, and he was about to give up, take it as a sign of destiny.

  It might be better to let things run their natural course. After all, Marisa might just get the chair at the university without any help from him. And if she didn’t, well, perhaps that was how things were meant to be …

  ‘Yes?’

  The deep, southern voice at the oth
er end of the line took him by surprise.

  ‘It’s … it’s me,’ he said.

  This announcement was greeted by silence.

  ‘I’m ready to do what you asked me to do,’ he said into the phone.

  ‘I’m sure you won’t regret it,’ the voice came back at him. Then there was a pause, a long one. ‘Still, there is one thing you’d better do some thinking about.’

  He hardly dared to ask what the something was. ‘Wha … what’s that?’

  ‘A celebration present. Have you decided what to give her when this is over?’ He heard a sharp intake of breath, then the sound of a throaty chuckling. ‘No sacrifice is too great for the sake of a child. Isn’t that right?’

  The conversation ended with a click.

  He was right, of course.

  Was there anything he wouldn’t have done to help Marisa?

  Valnerina

  When they drove out of the Sant’Anatolia tunnel, rain was tipping down.

  ‘Not long now,’ Cangio said, turning north on the SS 209.

  The road followed the winding course of the River Nera, which had cut a wide gorge through mountains that rose fairly sharply on either bank. Dark clumps of trees and bushes covered the lower slopes, while swirling clouds obliterated everything above.

  ‘It looks just like a painting,’ Harris said as they rounded a bend and the picturesque walled fortress town of Vallo di Nera came into view.

  Cangio slowed down, indicating to go left, pulling off the road before they reached the town at a sign which said ‘Il Tartufo Nero’.

  ‘The Black Truffle?’ Harris said. ‘That sounds right, doesn’t it?’

  ‘The food’s pretty good here,’ Cangio said. ‘In the summer it’s one of the most popular restaurants in the valley.’

  ‘What makes you think that this is the place?’ Harris asked.

  Cangio killed the engine. ‘That piece of paper you showed me. The one that they found near the corpse.’

  ‘Did you recognise the name or something?’

  ‘Not the name, but something that was written there.’

  ‘A smart-looking place,’ Harris said, as they walked towards an ancient mill which had been beautifully restored and done up as a restaurant.