8

10 November 1999
Beldoro
North Italy

 

 

Michael drove down through northern and eastern France and onwards into the more enticing mountainous region that abutted onto Italy. He had been a traveller on this road many times and in many different guises – as a hitch-hiker when he was a teenager, heading south to meet up with whatever fate he could find, selling leather bracelets in sunsoaked markets the length of the Riviera or picking grapes near Béziers; with Rosa, a few years later, in an open-topped car, heading for the silver beaches of the south, wiping with the back of their hands the peach juice running down their chins, lust colouring their every move; later still with Rosa, cooler, better off, much older, it seemed, and more assured, taking several days to get there, good hotels booked en route, silk handkerchiefs with which to soak up the peach juice still glistening on their chins.

This time he approached the journey in a business-like fashion. He noted only perfunctorily the mountains beginning to rise on the horizon as he headed towards the French Alps. He listened to Puccini and Bruce Springsteen on the car stereo and stared straight ahead at the road that glistened in an endless, shiny black strip into the distance.

By seven in the evening he had crossed the French-Italian frontier – cold-looking soldiers waving a long, slow-moving snake of cars through with hardly a glance at passports and faces within – and his eyes had begun to ache with the strain of the drive. He stopped at a town about thirty kilometres into Italy, a town that existed solely for that purpose. Consequently, he had a choice of any number of inexpensive hotels, picking one that seemed very modest from the outside and did not betray that particular notion inside. Still, it was clean and a place to lay his head. He ate pasta and drank a small carafe of red wine at a restaurant in the middle of the town’s one street before calling it a day around ten.

Next morning dawned crisp and sunny and he was speeding along the motorway to Turin long before the other travellers had even breakfasted. He breezed past Turin but got hopelessly lost a few hours later on the motorway that skirted the northern edges of Milan, finding himself in a spaghettilike tangle of roadworks and missed signs. Eventually, he extricated himself from it and had soon joined the motorway to Lecco and Como, a road with which he was very familiar from his visits with Rosa to this part of the world. It led, if you stuck to the direction of Chiavenna and Sondrio, around the eastern side of Lake Como. Michael took the wrong junction, however, and found himself on the road along the western side of the lake. Never mind, he could take the ferry to his destination, Beldoro, from the small lake-side town of Menaggio.

A few wispy clouds punctuated the blue sky, but, in the distance, over the mountains which enclosed the lake, the clouds were gathering and starting to look angry. The petrol gauge on the BMW was registering about a third of a tank as he pulled into a tiny one pump petrol station to fill up and check the map. Beldoro would be a good base for his investigations. It was there that the kidnapping had taken place in the bar next to the shop belonging to that character, Bonfadini, who had become a hero. Luigi Ronconi, father of the kidnapped girl also lived close by, in what could only be described as a palace overlooking the lake and the small town.

He arrived at the ferry at 3.20 p.m. to discover there was not another crossing until 3.55. The afternoon was getting chilly as the wintry sun began to slip down towards the mountains, whose jagged peaks were topped with snow, and he decided to give himself some energy for the last part of his long journey by drinking an espresso at the large hotel that overlooked the ferry. He left his car second in the ferry queue and walked the short distance to the hotel. Its frontage was grand, but the bar was surprisingly small. A television set was switched on with the volume turned up very loudly. A large, masculine-looking woman stood behind the bar and at a table in the corner sat another woman and a baby. She was talking to a man he took to be the hotel chef, judging from his white top and checked trousers, and both were making cooing noises at the baby in between remarks. He sat down at the only other table, which was right in front of the television and was soon taking his first grateful sip of the bitter black coffee and reading the headlines of the Gazzeta dello Sport, which lay on the table in front of him. But the loud voices booming out of the television almost immediately wrestled his attention away from the latest problems facing the overpaid stars of Inter Milan.

The programme on the TV was coming to an end, the credits rushing underneath the main action as the host brought it all to a close, giving way to adverts, loud and brash, selling pasta, washing powder and cars. These were followed by an insistent theme introducing a local news bulletin: a dapper middle-aged man with unnatural, bronze-coloured hair staring at the camera and announcing the main story of the day – the exposure of Alfio Bonfadini, the hero of Beldoro, as a liar.

A man, by the name of Ignazio Mazzini, had confessed to assaulting Bonfadini because Bonfadini had been having an affair with his wife, who worked in Bonfadini’s shop. Film of a strangely smiling Ignazio being led in handcuffs into the main police station by police officers over whom he towered was followed by a picture of Alfio’s shop. Police were considering, said the announcer, whether to bring charges against Bonfadini.

‘That’s a turn-up for the books,’ said the large woman who was polishing glasses behind the bar.

‘Oh, Bonfadini was never any kind of a hero. I could have told the police that. He’s a weakling, an idiot. He spends his life selling wool and knickers, remember.’

‘Judging by some of those rich bitches in Beldoro, probably woolen knickers sometimes, too!’ The woman behind the bar laughed as she said this and the others, Michael included, joined in. Moments such as this reminded him how good it was that he had learned Italian a number of years back.

His coffee finished, he wandered back out and leaned on the railing that ran along the side of the lake. The ferry, a small craft capable of carrying about ten cars, was approaching, cutting a line through the faultless surface of the water.

A turn-up for the books, indeed, and one about which the police will not be at all happy, he thought. He had planned on talking to this Alfio Bonfadini, had thought it might make an interesting sidebar to the kidnapping story, the elevation of this shopkeeper into a national hero. This new twist on the story, however, was even better and he would try to talk to this new man on the scene, Ignazio Mazzini. The first piece he wrote would be about this particular blind alley in which the police now found themselves.

The ferry arrived, unloaded a couple of cars and with an efficiency rare in any activity carried out in Italy, filled up again with the four who now waited alongside Michael’s car. Within a few minutes he was staring back at the hill that rose above the multi-coloured buildings of Menaggio as the ferry engines throbbed beneath his feet on the way to the next stop before it zigzagged back across the lake to Beldoro.

Once again, he recalled making exactly this journey a few years ago with Rosa. They had eaten sandwiches at the rails of the ferry with the wind pulling at their hair, but had stayed on and returned to Menaggio where they had left their car. He felt a stab of pain as he remembered that crossing and reminded himself that he would have to get to Milan. He had called into a post office before leaving London and had sent an express letter to the box number that he had discovered at Rogerson & Gilchrist. In the letter, he had enigmatically told the recipient that he had something of great interest to him and suggested that if he wished to find out what it was he should meet him at the bar in Milan’s Stazione Centrale at noon on the 12th of November.

How beautiful Beldoro had looked when he had last seen it with Rosa – as the ferry approached, he saw that it still was. The hotels that clustered around the lake-front were painted in a variety of shades of ochre, topped by red slate roofs. The tower of the church climbed up above the red roofs in the centre and pine trees clothed the hill that rose behind the town, sheltering it from the worst of the winter weather. Large buildings hid amongst the trees there, but standing proudly out on its own and hiding from nothing and no one was a large orange building, which he recognised from photographs as Palazzo Ronconi.

He carefully drove his car off the ferry and turned into the road that ran along the lake. Hotels lined the streets, looking closed for the winter as indeed the majority of them were. He had consulted a Michelin guide on the road through France and had selected the appropriately named Hotel del Lago, phoning ahead to ensure that it remained open during the off season. It was across from this establishment that he parked his car, staring up at the hotel’s weather-beaten, orange-coloured frontage.

He waited an age at the front desk – this was, indeed, the close season for visitors. Eventually, a man appeared, clad in paint-spattered overalls. He apologised for the fact that the hotel was undergoing some refurbishment, which meant that Michael’s room was located at its furthest extremity. It was no more than a cupboard and to get to it he had to clamber over rolled-up carpets and furniture that belonged elsewhere.

‘Mi dispiace, signore,’ the paint-spattered man apologised all the way through the seemingly endless corridors. In all honesty, Michael did not care and when he threw open the shutters, none of it mattered anyway. His small room looked out on the lake, the magnificent view taking in Menaggio and the mountains on the far shore, the peaks of which were beginning to dissolve into mist in the early evening light.

Naturally, in this state of disrepair, the hotel had closed its restaurant for the winter – it was only open for breakfast – which meant that, after showering in a bathroom so small that he could hardly turn round in it, Michael walked the streets to find somewhere to eat, settling finally on a busy, steamy-windowed bar full of noisy card-playing workmen that was able to cook him a steak that he could wash down with his customary half carafe of red wine. Such was his relief at having stopped travelling and at being anonymous amongst all these people living out their existences in this town on the banks of Lake Como that he ordered a second small carafe, knowing he would regret it in the morning. He drank it, watching them talk, argue and laugh at each other, an outsider looking in on the life of a town and happy to be so.

At eleven o’clock he got up and staggered through the deserted narrow streets of Beldoro, his footsteps echoing in the darkness. As he entered the hotel, he looked back across the lake, which stretched like a black sheet towards the lights of Menaggio. A light flashed in the distance, probably on the ferry landing stage. Above it, lives were being played out, lives from which he felt for the moment divorced. Somehow, he had to get back into that world, he thought, stopping for a moment in the doorway.

 

When he went down to breakfast at around eight-thirty next morning, he discovered he was not alone in the hotel, after all. There were four others – three elderly Germans, a man and two women, obviously on holiday and dressed for walking in stout boots and thick clothes. There was also another man, an Italian, it seemed to Michael, probably here on business. A travelling salesman of some kind, he thought, from the practised manner in which he dealt with the complexities of the self-service breakfast bar.

He rapidly lost interest, however, as he drank his coffee and planned his day. He never slept well when he drank a lot, and having wakened early this morning, around six-thirty, he had watched the television news and was surprised to learn that Ignazio Mazzini had been released from custody late the previous night. Alfio Bonfadini, it seemed, was unable to stand the embarrassment of going to court with this case and had decided not to press charges. The police, therefore, had had no choice but to let Mazzini go free. The newsreader noted, however, that the police had not yet decided whether to charge Bonfadini in relation to the lies he had told about the kidnapping.

Perhaps, thought Michael, it was time to talk to these two men, Alfio Bonfadini and Ignazio Mazzini.

 

The Bonfadini shop was just off a medium-sized square with a church dominating one side of it and shops occupying the other three, which served as the centre of town. Michael made his way there around eleven, as the streets began to fill with the increased bustle of late morning.

The shop itself was dowdy, its one window filled with lacklustre displays of wool and faded knitting patterns on one side and industrial sized women’s under-garments on the other. Bonfadini’s customers were evidently of the matronly sort.

The lights of the shop, however, were off and the sign on the door had been turned around to the side that announced that it was closed.

Next door, as Michael already knew from press reports about the kidnapping, was the bar in which it had actually taken place. It was long and small, with a chrome-surfaced bar running down one side. Michael entered and ordered a caffè macchiato from the barman, who was absently cleaning glasses and staring out through the doorway as if expecting someone extraordinary to walk in at any moment.

‘So, he’s closed, next door?’ asked Michael, lifting the small cup to his lips.

‘Cosa?’ The barman had been far away.

‘The wool and knickers shop. Is it closed?

A smile played across the dark features of the barman.

‘Si, signore, chiuso. He is closed, but the widow that works for him is most definitely open for business.’ He laughed, creases appearing around his eyes.

‘You mean …?’ Michael also smiled.

The barman leaned forward, his elbows resting on the bar, as if he were sharing a great secret.

‘It’s well-known, signore. Every day, when the widow is in, from eleven until twelve, Alfio Bonfadini likes to enjoy a little, how shall we say, siesta. He is very good to his employees because he allows them to share his hour off.’ He leaned forward even further and began to speak very quietly, even though there was only one other customer – an elderly man, reading a newspaper at the other end of the bar. ‘The Mazzini woman wasn’t the first, you know, although she was certainly the youngest.’ He then stood up straight again, picked up his tea towel and began to dry another glass.

‘So what kind of women does he usually go for?’ Michael smiled conspiratorially, humouring him.

‘Usually they are older, widows or spinsters who are just glad to have some tender loving care.’

‘What is it now then, Widow or spinster?’

‘Oh, it’s the widow Briganza. She’s fifty, lost her husband fifteen years ago. As I say, hungry for a little TLC.’

‘And how long before he opens for business again?’

The barman looked at his watch. ‘He will be in for a coffee and a brandy on the stroke of twelve, signore. But, hey, who wants to know all this. You a journalist?’

‘Yes, I am. From London.’

‘Once, you know, that would have been some kind of big deal round here, but we’ve had them in here from all over the world – the States, Australia, Scandinavia, you name it. I’ve been on TV all over the world. My cousin in Sydney saw me being interviewed.’

‘So, you were on duty then, when the kidnapping …?’

‘Actually, no, signore, but most of you reporters really didn’t care. It was my brother Claudio who was on duty that day, but he is a little camera-shy, so I have been standing in for him.’

The man at the end of the bar signalled for a refill and the barman went over to serve him. Michael picked up a copy of La Stampa from a nearby table and lost himself temporarily in the affairs of the world.

It was fifteen minutes later, at exactly twelve, as the barman had predicted, that Alfio Bonfadini came in. It was not too difficult to work out that it was him because of the scaffolding of plasters and bandages that covered his nose.

He was a plump, balding man whom Michael estimated to be in his early fifties. He had something almost feminine about him; his walk or his posture, Michael was unsure. Bonfadini ordered a coffee and a brandy and stood at the bar, lifting the tiny coffee cup to his mouth, a cigarette between the fingers of the same hand and his little finger crooked delicately like an English aristocrat.

‘Signor Bonfadini?’ Michael had gone to the bar and ordered a beer. He couldn’t drink another macchiato, as it generally played havoc with his digestion if he drank more than one cup of Italian coffee.

‘Maybe. Who wants to know?’ He changed the position of his foot on the chrome foot-bar that ran along the base of the bar, turning towards Michael.

‘Michael Keats of the London Evening Post.’ Michael extended his hand.

‘Un altro giornalista meschino!’ he said, ignoring Michael’s outstretched hand. ‘Look, I have nothing to say to the press. Nothing that has not already been said.’

‘But we would all like to know what you really saw of the incident, signor Bonfadini. You must have seen or heard something.’

‘Look, signor …’

‘Keats.’

‘Signor Keats. Most of the time during which this incident took place I was flat on my back with my nose spread across my face. I’ve already told the police a hundred times what I saw and heard. I heard the scream, then saw the van pull up, watched three guys get out …’

‘Hang on a second, Signor Bonfadini. You just said you heard the scream and then saw the van arrive on the scene. Is that right? That’s not exactly what you’ve been saying up till now, is it?’

Bonfadini suddenly looked worried. He began to stammer. ‘Erm … I … I’m not sure … perhaps … perhaps not.’ And then angrily, collecting himself again. ‘I can’t remember. I was knocked senseless. My nose was smashed by that thug, Mazzini.’

The barman returned to the bar from wiping some tables outside and Michael took Bonfadini by the arm, guiding him to a table in the corner where they could not be overheard.

‘Un altro cognac per signor Bonfadini, per favore,’ he called over his shoulder to the barman, pushing the other man into his seat and taking a seat opposite, both elbows on the table, looking hard into Bonfadini’s face.

‘Look, signor Bonfadini … Alfio … I am not concerned about whether your nose was broken by Ignazzio Mazzini or by a kidnapper. What is important is what happened just before that. So, concentrate. What came first – the scream or the van?’

Bonfadini was visibly shaken, reaching nervously with a shaking hand to the bandages across his face as if their very presence provided him with confirmation that all was well with the world.

‘I … I am not sure. I was walking past the window,’ he was looking at the table, his eyes screwed up, going through his actions carefully in his mind. ‘I had to pee; you know how it is when you have been making love?’ Something approaching a leer crossed his face.

‘Yes, and …?’

‘Ah, signore, I remember now. Silvia – that’s the wife of that ignorant farmer, Mazzini …’ A faraway look came into his eyes. ‘Oh, Madonna, what a body, signore. The body of a …’

‘Okay, Alfio, I get the message.’

‘Sorry, signore. I heard the scream, as I say, as I was making my way across the room and I remember I pulled the curtain back to see what was going on. It was then that I saw the van come down the street and stop out there in front of the bar.’

‘So, you did hear the scream before you saw the van.’

‘I suppose I must have. I heard the scream and then looked out of the window to see what was going on.’

Michael sat back to consider this. If the scream happened before the van arrived then surely it was obvious that one of the kidnappers was already in the bar. Why had the police not worked that out?

Bonfadini threw back the cognac that Michael had bought for him and made as if to go.

‘Now I must get back to work, signore.’

‘Just one more question, Alfio, if you don’t mind.’ Michael grabbed his arm as he stood up.

‘Okay, but please make it quick.’ He looked at his watch.

‘How many men got out of the van when it arrived?’

‘Three. Definitely three. Two from the back and the driver.’

‘And how many dragged Teresa Ronconi out of the bar?’

‘Again three. But, look, signore, I have to go. My shop …’ He stood up, shrugging his shoulders at Michael and bustling off in that slightly effeminate way of his towards the door of the bar.

So, the action had actually begun in the bar before the van arrived, Michael thought. However, according to what he remembered of the press reports he had studied, there had been no other witnesses apart from Alfio and the barman.

‘Your brother, is he around, signore?’ he asked the barman.

‘Claudio? Oh, no. All of this … he has taken it very badly. As soon as the media started to arrive in town he took off. He’s the delicate sort, you see.’ He smiled contemptuously at the thought of his brother’s delicacy. It was obvious to Michael that it was a source of some tension for the two men.

‘Oh, and where did he take off to then? Milano? Roma?’

‘Oh no, signore, he couldn’t go that far. I don’t think Claudio has been to Milano more than twice in his entire life– he certainly only went further than that when he did his military service in Firenze.’

‘So where …?’

‘He’s gone up the mountain.’

‘Up the mountain?’

‘Sì. Like a lot of people round here, our family has a little chalet up in the mountains. In the old days they took the cattle up there in the summer. These days we rarely go up there. I want to sell the damn place, but Claudio won’t agree. Anyway, at the first sign of a TV camera, he was off.’

‘So where exactly is this chalet of yours? How can I find it?’

The other man smiled. ‘No, signore. You don’t quite understand. My brother doesn’t wish to speak to you or any other journalist. That’s why he’s gone up there, to get away from all of you.’

His eyes fell to Michael’s hand, in which was clasped a wad of notes. Michael began to slide them across the bar.

‘There’s two hundred and fifty thousand lire for you if you’ll give me directions to the chalet. And the same for Claudio for a half hour conversation. Come on, how many macchiati do you have to pour to make that much profit?’

‘Look, signore, my brother and I may disagree about a lot of things, but I still would not betray him. You won’t find out from me where he is.’ He turned away from Michael and walked to the other end of the bar.

Michael shrugged his shoulders, picked up the fistful of notes and walked out into the street. He was walking slowly in the direction of his hotel, wondering what to do next when he heard a voice behind him.

‘Hey, inglese, wait.’

An elderly man whom he at first failed to recognise, was limping breathlessly behind him.

‘Ah, signore …’ He stopped in front of Michael, breathing heavily from his exertions and removing his cap to wipe his sleeve across his sweat-covered brow.

‘Signore, I was in the bar …’ Michael recognised him now. He was the man who had been standing at the other end of the bar. ‘… and I overheard your conversation with Franco, the barman. I wondered, is your offer open to anyone?’

‘Offer?’

‘I mean the two hundred and fifty thousand for directions to Claudio’s chalet in the mountains?’

‘It might be. Do you know …?’

‘Indeed, I do, signore. I am a friend of the family. I used to go up there hunting with the boys’ father.’

 

The road was hardly a road at all. It switched back and forth up the side of the mountain. For a half mile or so the precipitous drop fell away on his right and then for the next half mile it fell to his left. The valley down below became increasingly distant and then disappeared from view entirely as he drove over a ridge, deeper into the mountains.

Every now and then he would pass a track leading off the road with a small, usually hand-made sign announcing the ownership of whatever property lay through the trees at the end of the track.

The air was very pure and he opened the car windows to let it circulate.

The man with the limp had given him precise instructions as to which road of the several that led up into the mountains he should take. He had told him that the place he was looking for was at the very end of the road he was now on and that it was signposted ‘Casa Scatti’, Scatti being the surname of Claudio and Franco.

‘It is a long way up, signore, about three hundred metres beyond the end of the road. It’s the highest chalet. You have to leave your car and walk the last part. It’s a steep climb.’

 

He had, indeed, been climbing for about thirty minutes on a track that became ever more precipitous and ever less smooth. The track began to narrow and branches began to brush against the sides of the car. Then up ahead he saw a scruffy, old, red Cinquecento parked against a wall of trees that signalled the end of the road. To the right, a footpath led off upwards through the trees and a wooden board nailed to a tree with a painted arrow underneath it told him that Casa Scatti lay at the end of the path.

Michael took his shoulder bag, containing his tape machine and spare tapes and batteries, locked his car and set out on the footpath. It was clearly cut through the trees and bushes, but the grass and ferns growing across it showed how little used it was. Above him, the trees closed in and he was able to see only patches of sky between the overhanging branches. There was complete silence apart from the dull sound of his footsteps and his increasingly heavy breathing.

At last, he broke out of the trees into a grassy clearing and there in front of him stood the Casa Scatti: a small, stone building with a wooden roof and a raised porch at the front, accessed by a wooden staircase of four steps. There was a deathly hush in the clearing; not even the movement or call of a bird shattered the silence. Above the house, the jagged peak of the mountain rose into the clear, blue sky, the first snow of winter clinging to its steep, rocky slopes.

‘Buongiorno!’ Michael paused at the foot of the steps up to the porch. No sound or movement came from within. ‘Claudio!’ He shouted now to the forest around him, thinking that perhaps Claudio was walking or climbing nearby. Still nothing.

He waited a moment and then climbed the steps. Arriving at the door, he raised a hand to knock upon it, only to find that it was actually slightly ajar.

‘Hello!’ he called, more nervously this time, gingerly pushing the door open and peering into the darkness within. The curtains were closed. He stepped cautiously inside, his eyes becoming used to the dark. It was furnished very simply: just a table, some chairs, and a sofa, but the chairs had been upended and as he took a step forward, Michael felt and heard the crunch of broken glass beneath his feet.

There was an odd smell. Like food gone rotten and left for a week. There was also a sound, a deep humming, seeming to come from behind the door to his right.

His hand grasped the door handle and began to slowly turn it. At the same time, he said once more, but more quietly this time, ‘Buongiorno? Claudio?’

The door opened and he was hit by a sickening stench that invaded his nostrils, seeped down his air passages and ended in the pit of his stomach, pushing up the coffee and beer that he had drunk earlier in the day.

There before him, slumped in a bath, was the body of a man he presumed to be Claudio Scatti, bathing in his own slowly congealing blood. Around his head he wore a hood made up of hundreds of buzzing flies, frenziedly investigating a gaping wound in his neck, which he wore like a second smile. Claudio’s eyes stared sightlessly straight at Michael in the doorway and his mouth was frozen for all eternity in the midst of a silent scream.

Michael’s legs momentarily began to fold under him, as the horror of the sight invaded his mind and the smell his senses. Then he turned and ran, gasping for air and gagging. He banged painfully into the doorjamb and then stumbled and fell down the four steps that led down to the lush grass of the clearing, landing on all fours at the foot. He retched dryly and painfully, inhaling great lungfuls of clean mountain air between each crisis of his body.

‘God!’ Tears ran down his cheeks, partly from the exertions of retching, but equally from the shock of the hellish sight that he had just witnessed.

Clambering unsteadily to his feet, he staggered back into the shady comfort of the trees, plummeting through the branches and bushes that threatened to eventually swallow the path entirely. He reached the car, got in, locking the doors immediately and sat back, his head burrowing deep into the headrest, his eyes screwed tight shut.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he squeezed the words like toothpaste between gritted teeth. ‘Jesus Christ!’

*

It had been a difficult few hours. He had driven back down the mountain recklessly, almost losing control several times on the steep, switch-back road. On returning to his hotel room he had locked the door and had drawn the curtains, peering out between them, as if expecting to see someone staring back up at him from the street outside.

It seemed pretty obvious to him now that Claudio Scatti had been involved in some way in the kidnapping. If Alfio Bonfadini’s memory was right, and there was a scream from the bar before the arrival of the van, it could only be that Claudio, alone in the bar with Teresa Ronconi, had been involved, had begun the action.

And now, he was dead.

Michael realised it was foolish, but he had decided not to go to the police. He gambled that Scatti’s body would remain undiscovered for some time and that, in turn, would give him some time to investigate further and put together a more comprehensive story. And, anyway, there was not very much Michael could do for him now.

It had not been difficult to find the Mazzini farm; the television news had given the name of the village near which it was situated. About five miles from Beldoro, having climbed even more switchback roads with precipitous edges, he came upon a group of houses – it could hardly be called a village – and had been directed along a dirt track road by an old woman who stood in the road watching him drive off, shaking her head at what he presumed she thought was the foolishness of Ignazio Mazzini getting his shame paraded on television and brought these foreigners to visit him.

Not far along, this track had widened into a small plateau and there in its midst stood the stone farmhouse to which an unwilling Ignazio had brought his equally unwilling bride, Silvia, five years ago. The house gave the impression of having grown out of the earth. Either that or it was tumbling back into it. It was difficult to make out if its walls were actually walls or just piles of large stones onto which a roof had been thrown. Old, rusting farm machinery added to the overall impression of disintegration and neglect.

As he pulled up on the uneven ground, however, a snarling dog came running towards him, teeth bared and eyes red with fury. Foamy saliva now ran down the car window where the dog’s sharp-toothed mouth had jumped up. Michael instinctively pushed down the locks and leant inwards away from the muffled growling. The dog now stood about three feet away from the car, snarling and barking at him. Its fury showed little sign of abating until the door on the farmhouse slowly opened and a huge figure stepped out, a figure Michael recognised from the television as Ignazio Mazzini.

‘Hoh! Via!’ he growled at the dog which immediately started whimpering and backing away from the car, its tail between its legs.

Ignazio stood at the door staring in Michael’s direction. He wore what appeared to be the same scruffy dark suit that he had been wearing as he walked into the police station on television and on his head was a small, trilby-style hat of the kind the men wore in these mountains. His dark face was etched with deep lines and his eyes sank deep into their sockets.

Michael gingerly opened the car door and stepped out, but the dog was sufficiently cowed by Ignazio’s voice to do nothing but yelp in a shame-faced way, wagging its tail and looking at him with large eyes.

‘Buongiorno,’ he walked towards the house, more confident now that the dog had been ordered to leave him alone.

‘Signor Mazzini?’

‘Sì. I am Ignazio Mazzini. And you are …?’

‘Signor Mazzini. I’m Michael Keats and I’m a reporter. I work for the English newspaper, the London Evening Post. I’m very pleased to meet you,’ he stretched out his hand, which was received somewhat unwillingly in the massive, calloused hand of the farmer. ‘I wondered if I could talk to you about Alfio Bonfadini and the events of the last few weeks?’ He had decided that there was little point in beating about the bush with Ignazio and he also counted on the early mention of Bonfadini raising the hackles of the big man.

‘Ach!’ Ignazio leaned forward, hawked and spat out a ball of green phlegm, which hit the wall beside the door and began to slowly run down it. ‘Don’t talk to me about this man. He is as good as dead if I ever see him again. He would be dead if only I had had the courage to hit him just once more …’ His eyes were blazing with anger. He seemed so angry he could not talk.

‘Perhaps we could go inside and you could tell me about you and Bonfadini? I expect you’ll be happy to see the truth being told about this business, rather than let anyone go on believing Bonfadini’s lies?’

‘Sì!’ There clearly was no doubt in his mind. He certainly wanted that. ‘Please, come in.’ He pushed the door open and stepped to one side, ushering Michael into the house with his hands. ‘Please … excuse the …’ He failed to finish the sentence, casting his eyes around the kitchen as he walked in and shaking his head. ‘My wife … you know, she has … gone.’ This last word, ‘fuggita’, was difficult for the big man to say and he said it with such tenderness, such sadness, Michael thought.

The kitchen, however, was in a terrible state. Food lay all over the place and greasy plates were piled up in the sink. Coffee that had been spilled – goodness knows when – on the work surface had congealed into a shiny stickiness. A faintly rotting smell pervaded the atmosphere and Michael felt as if he did not want to touch anything. Especially the table at which Ignazio beckoned him to sit.

‘She left immediately Bonfadini was taken to hospital. She knew it was me who had hit him, knew what a liar and a coward he is, that he didn’t do what he claimed to have done.’ He pushed some plates around the table to clear a space for Michael’s tape recorder.

‘You have no objection?’ Michael asked, moving a heavy green ashtray piled high with ash and cigarette ends to one side and gingerly placing the machine on the table’s sticky surface.

‘No, none whatsoever. After all, I spent most of yesterday talking into one at the police station. What do you need to know?’

Michael spent the next forty-five minutes teasing Ignazio’s life story out of him – the poor childhood spent on this farm; the loneliness of his adolescence followed by the humiliation of the times when he was treated like a circus freak and a target for bullies and drunks from both sides of the lake. Then he spoke of the anger he had felt on realising that once again he was being humiliated, how he had been told by a Beldoro man about his wife’s dalliance with Alfio Bonfadini.

His story told, he slumped back in his chair, his eyes cast downwards, his mind struggling with the idea of living on with so much pain inside.

Michael took his leave of him, looking back in his rear-view mirror as he pulled away and seeing Ignazio standing staring after him, unmoving, sadness oozing from every pore.

 

The next day, Michael would be making the two-hour train journey to Milan and would be calling in at the Post’s Italian sister paper to send the first part of his story through to London. He also wanted to send the photograph that Ignazio had given him, showing him and Silvia on their wedding day, standing awkwardly side by side, he in a dark suit that might even be the one he now wore every day; she, clutching a posy of flowers, wearing a white wedding dress that spilled out from her waist in copious folds; on both their faces an expression of complete incomprehension. And behind them the ever-present mountains rising accusingly towards the blue sky, the last remnants of winter dusting their peaks.

He was in two minds, however, about Claudio Scatti. It would make a fantastic scoop. But something made him hesitate. He should tell the police, of course. There was a man dead up there in the mountains. But, he knew that as soon as he told them, his story would become public property. The job, therefore, was to write the story, send it to London and then inform the police. There might be a spot of bother about holding the information back for a little while, even a charge of some kind. But it would be worth it. This story would blow the whole kidnapping wide open.

He finished writing the first part of his piece at around nine-thirty. He had sent out for a pizza from the local pizzeria about an hour-and-a-half before and he was now very thirsty and in need of a change of scenery. The paint-splattered receptionist had told him that, even though the rest of the hotel was closed, the bar remained open and so he thought he might as well go downstairs and have a couple of beers. With the intention of taking his mind off the task in hand, he picked up the book he had started reading weeks ago, left his room and negotiated the debris that littered the corridors of the hotel.

The bar was small but untouched by the refurbishment. The faded grandeur of the hotel was present in all its glory. At one end of the room stood an ornately carved mahogany bar, bottles and glasses glinting in the mirror that lined the wall behind it. Large paintings that were in need of cleaning hung on the cream walls and the ceiling above it all was like the icing on a wedding cake. In the centre hung a large chandelier, which threw light across the room in the same casual way as it had probably done for the last century.

There was no one behind the bar, but at one end of it, sat on a stool, with a glass and a bottle of whisky in front of him, sat the man who, at breakfast, Michael had thought to be a travelling salesman of some kind, although there was now something about him which suggested otherwise. His suit looked too good for that.

‘Buonasera.’ he said, looking up from the newspaper that rested on the bar in front of him. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to help yourself. Paolo, the barman, is trying out his skills as a painter and decorator on the fourth floor this evening. He says we can drink what we want as long as we settle up with him in the morning. So …’ he said, standing up. ‘What will it be? Let me get it for you.’

‘That’s very kind of you. I’ll just have a beer, please.’ said Michael slipping onto a bar stool.

The other man walked around to the other side of the bar, bending to pick a bottle of beer out of the cold shelves at the bottom.

‘Now, where is … ah, yes, here it is.’ He reached down below the counter and brought out a bottle opener.

‘Not often you get the run of a hotel bar, eh? Like letting a junkie loose in a pharmacy!’ He opened the bottle and handed it to Michael along with a glass. ‘I’m Vito Pedrini, by the way,’ he went on, holding out a hand to Michael.

‘Michael Keats,’ said Michael, shaking Pedrini’s hand.

‘Ah, you’re English?’ he asked, not quite sure.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘I wasn’t certain for a moment, there. I thought you might be American. Or Canadian, even. That’s a very different accent, you know, the Canadian accent. I lived there for a couple of years, I should know. But, hey, you speak good Italian.’

‘Thanks. I learned it at university and I am … I was married to an Italian.’ Michael took a long drink of the glass of beer in front of him. The pizza he had eaten had given him a thirst.

‘So, you are here on business … Michael. I hope you don’t mind if I call you …?’

‘No, of course not. Please do. Yes, I am here on business of a kind. I’m a reporter.’ He sat on a stool a few feet from the man.

‘Ah,’ Pedrini said, as if understanding a great deal. ‘The Ronconi kidnapping. But, you’re a little late, are you not? The journalistic community was out in force a few weeks ago when the kidnapping took place. I was passing through then as well. If I hadn’t known Paolo here, I wouldn’t have been able to find a room in all Beldoro!’

‘I’ve come to follow up on the case. You know this story about the shop-keeper lying? I’m, as it were, applying some local colour to it.’

‘I see. And have you found out anything of interest since you’ve been here?’

‘No, not really. I’ve spoken to the farmer who beat up the shop-keeper, though. That was very interesting.’

‘Really?’ The other man leaned forward on his stool, his steely blue eyes full of interest. ‘Did he tell you anything new?’ Michael was for some reason suddenly suspicious of this man and immediately reined himself in from saying too much – although why would it be too much? The story was in the public domain, to the extent that it would probably be read by three quarters of a million Londoners tomorrow, or the day after, if the paper was already full.

‘Oh, nothing you don’t already know.’

He managed to pass the remainder of the half hour or so that he spent in Pedrini’s company in inconsequential talk about Italy and England, and at ten-thirty, after two beers, he made his excuses and left in the direction of his room, where the work of the day engendered a good night’s sleep, preparing him for an early rise in order to catch the train to Milan.

 

Mattresses hung drunkenly over the balconies of brightly coloured modern tower blocks as the train slowed on its way into the city.

Michael shifted uncomfortably on the leather seat and recalled making this journey with Rosa many years ago. They had gone to see Leonardo’s Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie and he remembered how they had been amazed at the simplicity of it. It had seemed to them not at all like one of the greatest pieces of art in the world, but just as it had actually been intended – wallpaper in a refectory, a piece of decorative adoration. They had both been deeply moved by just that simplicity and had left the building, walking in silence for a while before returning to their senses or, rather, having their senses returned to them by the bustle and the oppressive heat of Milan.

The train took an eternity to arrive at the station. It crawled over points at an achingly slow pace, accompanied by a metallic chorus of shrieks and screams, passing huts in which Michael could see blue-jacketed workmen enjoying their coffee and probably the finer points of the weekend’s football. At last, it pulled into the station and squealed to a grudging halt.

The station bar was quiet. The waiters lounged at the till, talking to each other, glad of the rest. The gap between breakfast and lunch seemed, to some of the old-timers, at least, to get shorter every year and soon they would again be gliding across the stone floor, trays carrying impossible quantities of drinks, hands dealing out change like lightning and placing receipts on tables, or pulling the tops off bottles, always with their eyes looking in another direction, searching out the next order or the nearest short skirt.

Michael sat at a table close to the wall with a good view of the entrance to the bar and ordered his usual macchiato. ‘Dirty coffee,’ Rosa used to call it. To make identification possible, he had asked, in his letter to the man who had been with Rosa, that he carry a copy of each of two newspapers – La Gazzetta dello Sport and the London Times. This was a mixture he felt was unlikely to be found very often. The place was so quiet, however, that this fussiness seemed slightly redundant.

There was a huge clock on the wall behind the bar. The hands moved laboriously, with a loud clunking noise. It was, indeed, as if time had become audible, as if it could be heard passing.

Ten to twelve … clunk, clunk …

Seven minutes to twelve … clunk, clunk … The hands moved as if passing through something viscous and heavy. Michael began to sweat, in spite of the fact that it was chilly in the vastness of this huge edifice.

With four minutes remaining before the appointed time for the meeting, he regretted having sent the letter. He regretted having gone to Rogerson & Gilchrist, he regretted his trip to the Lighthouse Hotel. He began to feel very warm. What was he going to say to this man, anyway? ‘So, you’re the chap who was screwing my wife? Pleased to meet you.’ It was not going to be the easiest conversation. He fought for the right words, but his mind was confused and nothing of any sense was rising to the surface. Most likely, he was going to walk away without saying a word, but, somehow, for some unknown reason, he felt he had at least to see him.

Three minutes to twelve … he lifted his coffee cup to his lips only to find his mouth filling with the bitter dregs from the bottom of the cup.

Two minutes to twelve … A man came in carrying La Gazzetta and Michael sat up, but there was no English paper and he turned round and walked out again just as soon as he came in.

Three minutes past twelve … He checked his watch, but the bar clock was indeed correct.

Ten minutes past twelve … His eyes darted to his watch again and his heart sank and rose at the same time. He need not find out the truth, need not confront Rosa’s secret life.

Twenty-three minutes past twelve … Positive joy at the thought of not having to deal with this, of being able to luxuriate in the idea that it might not be true; he may, in fact be wrong about what had been happening in the most important part of his life.

At half past twelve he stood up and negotiated a path between the tables to the door and out through the main section of the station towards the massive exit.

He failed to notice the figure leaning on the wall just outside the bar who pulled the collar of his heavy jacket tight around his neck, threw a darting glance to his right and his left and then fell into step about twenty yards behind him.

 

There was a constant hum in the room. The murmuring and sometimes shouting voices were accompanied by the sounds of fingers hitting computer keys. Men and women with phones pinned between their ears and their shoulders, talked and typed, occasionally taking their hands off the keys and gesturing with them.

Increasingly, newsrooms were beginning to look the same all over the world. This one was no different. True, the language was not the same, but close your ears and it could have been the Post’s main news office in London, with black cabs and the ladies of Kensington crawling past outside instead of the luxurious cars and fur-coated women of the capital of northern Italy. Michael felt a stabbing pain of envy for all these journalists in their ranks of desks and cubicles, so comfortable in this, their scheme of things. They fitted where he no longer did. They had a purpose that he no longer did. He felt as if he was here in this country on false pretences, outwardly to write a story, but inwardly he knew very well that he was here to expunge a part of his life that he once held as dear as anything in the world. What kind of purpose could that truly be? It was as if he were about to destroy his own past and, in so doing, perhaps also destroy himself.

‘Michael!’

His train of thought was interrupted by a plump figure making his way between the rows of desks. Bruno Barni and Michael had spent time in each other’s company on several occasions. Most memorably, they had travelled together across America with Bill Clinton’s cavalcade of journalists and hangers-on for the last month of the 1992 American election campaign. They had spent many nights carousing and bemoaning their journalistic fates in small town America and, as is always the case in such circumstances, had, on their last night in each other’s company, sworn eternal friendship. Since then they had exchanged the occasional postcard, but had always failed to meet up whenever Michael had visited Italy or when Bruno had come to London.

‘Michael, how are you?’

‘All the better for seeing you, my old friend.’ They clasped each other in a bear hug and then Bruno stepped back, holding Michael by the shoulders.

‘I was so sorry to hear about your wife, Michael. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t.’

‘Me neither, Bruno. As you can imagine, it’s not been easy.’

Bruno put an arm around Michael’s shoulder, walking him back the way he had come.

‘Come on, let’s get out of this dump and grab some lunch. I’ll just get my jacket.’

They had almost finished their first bottle of red wine before the food arrived at the table. Michael had explained everything to Bruno and Bruno now sat shaking his head and running his hand through his thinning black hair.

‘You mean you had no idea?’

‘None whatsoever, Bruno.’ He smiled at the apparent absurdity of it. Surely you can tell when someone has fallen out of love with you? Surely you know when that someone is dreaming of a life with someone else? ‘Hey, I know what you’re thinking. How come I didn’t realise? Well, Bruno, it seems you just don’t.’ He smiled at Bruno and reached for the bottle, sharing the remnants between both glasses, at the same time indicating to a passing waiter that they were in need of another.

‘Ah, Michael.’ Bruno shook his head and stared into Michael’s eyes. ‘But, hey, you remember what we used to say whenever we hit one of those small towns in the States in ninety-two?’

They said it together, smiling at the memory: ‘It don’t get much worse than this!’

‘But look, you say you don’t know who this guy is …?’ Bruno said this between hungry mouthfuls of cotoletta alla Milanese and Michael recalled just how much Bruno had loved his food in America. He would start the morning with a huge pile of pancakes and maple syrup and work his way through whatever food he could get his hands on as the day wore on. Michael, a sparing eater at the best of times and especially when on the road, would look on in wonder and sometimes even disgust, as steaks, ice cream, waffles, and hamburgers would disappear in ever larger quantities into that grinning mouth. ‘You have no idea …?’

‘Well, I know he’s Italian. I know he wears a size forty-four jacket. I know he has expensive taste. Oh, and I think I have a name that has some kind of connection to him.’ He put down his knife and fork and searched in his inside pocket for his wallet. From it he fished out the card that he had discovered in the jacket pocket that drunken night at the Lighthouse Inn and handed it to Bruno. ‘Or it could even be him, for all I know. I found that card in the pocket of the jacket I was sent.’

Bruno, in turn placed his knife and fork on the table and took the card from Michael.

‘Massimo Di Livio, Via Broletto No. 110, Milano.’ He read from the card and then turned it over in his fingers like a playing card with which he was performing a conjuring trick. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know the name, but I know the street. To live in Via Broletto it helps if you have a lot of money in the bank. This guy is pretty well off.’ He sat up, as if a thought had just occurred to him. ‘But, hey, here’s an idea. Why don’t I run his name through our computers back at the office and have a word with a few people? Even if this isn’t your man, he may at least be able to point you in the right direction.’

Michael concurred. ‘Well, if it’s not too much trouble …’

‘It’s no trouble at all, Michael. To tell you the truth, I’d like to help you get to the bottom of this. You seem a little, how do you say … dislocated from things, my friend. Understandably so, I might add.’

‘Yes, you’re right, Bruno,’ Michael replied, nodding and smiling slightly. ‘I think I need what our American friends would call closure.’

They finished the meal talking about the old days and took leave of each other, agreeing to speak by telephone later in the day once Bruno had made his enquiries.

Michael walked unsteadily back to the Stazione Centrale and, even after drinking a bitter espresso at the bar in which he had waited in vain earlier in the day, he dozed all the way back to Beldoro, waking with a start as the train pulled into the station. He had intended to finish his piece at the office, but he had drunk way too much and would need to sleep it off before he could concentrate sufficiently to put together something cogent.

His shadow in the heavy jacket who had followed him to the newspaper office and sat at a corner table of the restaurant, slowly eating a dish of pasta, watched him climb onto the train before walking purposefully in the direction of a phone box at the exit to the station.

 

‘Michael! I so enjoyed our lunch. I am just sorry it couldn’t have taken place in happier circumstances.’

Michael’s head felt fuzzy. He had lain down and almost immediately fallen asleep on the bed when he had returned to his room. Just before the telephone’s shrill ring had jarred his senses around seven, he had once again found himself in the blue room with Rosa’s flailing body speeding towards him, but never quite reaching him, on the bonnet of the blue car.

‘But let me tell you, I’ve found something on your Massimo Di Livio. Something very interesting.’

‘Yes, go on, Bruno. What have you got?’ He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, making himself comfortable against the headboard of the bed.

‘Now look, Michael, you said that this man was a big man?’

‘Yes … the jacket was a size forty-four. I don’t know what that is in European sizes …’

‘Oh, don’t worry, Michael, I’ve bought clothes in England. Forty-four is a substantial man. Not as substantial as me, of course, but that only comes with a lot of practice.’

Michael smiled.

‘No.’ His voice turned serious now. ‘This Di Livio character, he is known to us. In fact, he is known also to the police; perhaps a little more intimately than we know him.’

‘What do you mean, Bruno?’

‘Well, I asked around – as you know I have some friends in the police – and I also had a look in our archives and came up with some interesting stuff about signor Di Livio.’ There was a moment’s silence and Michael guessed that Bruno was probably taking a sip from a glass of the bourbon he had grown to like so much in the States and which had been the cause of so many hangovers during those few weeks. ‘For example, in 1968, he was suspected of being one of the henchmen of a guy running a protection racket in Turin. Three of his colleagues went to prison. He walked.’ Another pause, another sip. ‘In 1973, he was charged with rearranging the face of another character in the same line of business. Again, he walked – this guy has good lawyers, believe me. He stayed clean for ten years and then in 1979 he did time for some very tricksy financial dealings. His crime had gone legit,’ – Bruno enjoyed using the argot of the American crime novels he loved so dearly – ‘but signore Di Livio hadn’t. He did three years and since he came out he seems to have kept his nose clean. He is very careful.’

‘Good God, Bruno. That’s unbelievable! How could Rosa get mixed up with such a man?’ Michael was by now sitting bolt upright on his bed.

‘That’s just it, Michael. I’ve asked around and I also found some pictures. This is a seventy-year-old man who is as thin as a string of spit and is no more than five feet five inches tall. And if that wasn’t enough to convince you, well, let me just say that from the conversations I have had, Di Livio’s proclivities lie on the more, erm, muscular side, if you get my drift. No, believe me, Michael, this is definitely not your man.’