It was borne in upon him that he bloody well was involved. No chance of dodging this one.

  He made a determined effort at self-command. He’d heard the rifle shot. A ballistics man would only make a rough shot, sorry, effort, at angle of fire, because a big high-velocity cartridge spins you round and sends you flying.

  Pretty good shooting. Range of five hundred metres? More, maybe.

  He was not an expert but even if you aim chest high—no, head high for a chest shot. The bullet, even if copper-jacketed would make a smallish entry but an exit as big as a Metro tunnel. It had thrown maybe a tiny bit low and right. From the front it took the liver straight out of the body.

  You would die instantly. You wouldn’t feel a thing. Your entire blood supply, all the little network for veins and arteries, even totally disregarding the major internal organs, simply explodes.

  The face is more or less recognisable. The corduroy breeches, rather more so.

  Castang, make tracks out of here. The whoever could pick you off right here as easy as a chicken.

  Castang retired again, feeling subdued, but the word does not adequately convey the action.

  Big pool of blood. He had forgotten how many litres of blood, precisely, the human body contains. Don’t want to know either. All there. But once it begins to coagulate in the sunshine, it can nearly all be picked up in a spoon and put, if desired, in an evidence bag.

  Don’t want evidence bag. Thought self-emptied, still a bit of sick to throw up. Guts hurt.

  Finished now?

  Castang toiled—very wearily—back to the car. One kilometre had become ten. Fellow won’t shoot me. Long gone. Rifle buried or otherwise disposed of.

  Go to Policía—what the hell do they call it, Questura, in Bormio; must be some sort of police post there; hell, big winter sports resort, month of March, plenty-plenty tourists. I’m one. Went for nice walk, found highly unpleasant surprise.

  Damn it, drive on the right-hand side of the road. Why does this pissy Alfa keep wandering over to the left: if there’s anybody round the bend coming up there’ll be a nasty accident.

  Policía plenty fed up. Quite enough to do with these bad-mannered skiers who bash into one another. Insurance companies, whose view of the world is cynically chill, cut it all in half anyhow.

  The Policía accepted the news with fatalism. A dead woman makes a change in the routine of tourists who have lost their passports, their jewellery (that rather valuable brooch with the slightly shaky clasp they have unaccountably chosen to wear while out skiing) or complain of sexual molestation in the lift. They spoke Austrian German. They wrote it all down at great length. It was exactly as it would have been at home, very dull and very slow. A Carabinieri lieutenant had to come all the way from Sondrio, which is the administrative centre. Remember, if you are thinking of finding any dead bodies, don’t, because your civic spirit will come under heavy strain after about six hours of hanging about. Luckily for Castang, he knew all this. He had to drive all the way down the valley in the dark, with nothing to eat but some Alpine fried chicken courtesy of Colonel Sandosi, and didn’t get in much before midnight, with a severe instruction to come to Sondrio in the morning for a lot more bureaucracy; the threat of having to say it all once more in Como, and quite possibly again in Milano the day following.

  The very first thing the next morning was the damned hotel manager.

  “Ah, Signor Castang, the lady who was with you—”

  “Lady, what lady?”

  “The lady hasn’t come back, her room seems to be empty—”

  “Her business, I should think.”

  “But I understood you were together?”

  “I’m right here, I’m afraid. About to pay my bill—”

  “Perhaps if I could just have a word in private?”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’m sorry if I caused you embarrassment.”

  “None whatever, let me reassure you.”

  “I must apologise for the misunderstanding. You see, she made the booking, and as I understand, her credit card—”

  “Yo, one of those things. I made the lady’s acquaintance and mentioned that I’d been stupid enough to leave my own card back in another suite in Milano. I’m settling your account with a personal cheque, if that’s all right.”

  “To be sure, to be sure. You do see how my mistake arose.”

  “These things happen. The lady and I found we’d mutual friends back at home. A chance companionship, you follow me?”

  “Of course, of course. Simply that if the lady doesn’t turn up—”

  “Then I imagine you’d do whatever you usually do in such circumstances.”

  “The Tourist Board can be very fussy. I might have to mention the matter to the police.”

  “Let your conscience be clear, Herr Direktor, whatever you think is appropriate.”

  “I’m so sorry to have bothered you.”

  There would have to be a rather lengthy telephone call too. Best made from Como.

  “Morning, Suarez, Castang here. Bad morning, I’m afraid,” and related the news of Rawlings’ demise.

  “Oh God.”

  “I’d say, let the Brits know, smartish, cover up your end, I may not be fatally compromised here, but I’ll have to get hold of some senior officer and explain matters—and ask for discretion.”

  “I must rely upon you, Castang.”

  “Just so’s you know what to say, if the Carabinieri come checking on me in Bruce.”

  “Quite, quite. How very unfortunate.”

  COMO, MORNING

  The lieutenant of Carabinieri was a pale, twitchy young man. He had the sort of beard that shows in black dots beneath the skin however closely one shaves. His uniform cap was on the desk; it is a becoming uniform and he had some claim to be called handsome in it. He had white, oddly feminine hands, but looked male enough for the girls to want to eat. He also looked tired and cross, but an unexpectedly sweet smile would sometimes break through across a long, lippy jaw and uneven teeth, belying the mask of bristly officialdom.

  He showed some bad temper. Castang, when behind the desk, had often done the same.

  “Yesterday you told a lot of nonsense. Today you’ve a chance to set that right. We’ll start again, with the truth this time, and no evasions or concealments.

  “Name? Permanent address? Occupation?”

  “Civil servant. Generally known as Eurocrat. I think it was Churchill who said they would no longer be civil, and no longer be servants. Some truth in that, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re a cop,” wearily. “It’s the only reason we put up with you at all. Otherwise I’d have your arse in jail.”

  “I used to be.”

  “You’re a PJ man. You hold the rank of Divisional Commissaire. But here on my piece of paper you’re another clown trying to throw mud in my eye. There’s no way you can get any leverage out of Paris or Brussels or anywhere. You’re a pro. Behave like one.”

  “Well, since technically I’m your superior officer—no, wrong, since humanly we’re two pros together, let’s be polite for a start.”

  “I’ve been up all night.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “You’re very lucky. General Bonacorsi says I should listen to you.”

  “Bobby a General now?” Castang had met Colonel Roberto Bonacorsi nine years ago, at a police conference in Munich. A good drinking companion; he could hardly claim a friendship.

  “Commands the Bologna district. Technically your superior officer,” with the first of those Italianate smiles.

  “Shall I talk to him on the telephone?”

  The lieutenant thought about this. There was a green one as well as a grey one. The narrow clean fingers punched buttons. Three figures for the district, two for headquarters, two more for the boss and one for a personal line.

  “Ex-Commissaire Castang of the PJ prays for a word with the General,” all of it sarcastically underlined.

  A remembered voice said, “Castang old friend, how are you? Nice cup of coffee? Little intrigue with Nato? Little pankiwank with Brits? I’ll tell you how you are—in the shit. Not just raining on your head, chum.” It was the old-fashioned English of the educated foreigner, with the phrases of forty years ago.

  “I hope you appreciate the depth and specific-gravity of this shit. Quicksand, my boy, you’re sinking at the rate of a centimetre a minute. So tell my lad there all; I calculate you’ve ten minutes. Sorry to be a bit abrupt but I’m rather busy. We’ll jack you out, you have a shower, we’ll manage a drink eventually. If it isn’t going gloo-gloo over your head by then. Give me back my Lieutenant, would you?” Who listened for thirty-seven seconds and said, “Yes sir.”

  “Hear that great long rawhide whip go crack,” said Castang.

  “Stop fucking about,” the Lieutenant blinked his eyes against the sand of fatigue. “I’m prepared to let you go. Quoting the General, better to have you inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in. So I’m giving you a choice. Either you get straight on the next plane across the frontier, or you surrender your passport and any official document identifying you as a PJ officer. When you want them back you come to me here. You then give me an exact account of your sayings and doings. If you do something illegal on your own you can expect no protection or indulgence. Which is it to be?”

  “What about wearing a yellow star?” said Castang agreeably.

  “What’s funny?”

  “You don’t expect me to be impressed? The pieces of paper are meaningless. I’ll do as I please, and tell Bobby Bonacorsi I said so.” The young man flushed angrily, and then broke into his smile.

  “He did say you were an undisciplined bugger.”

  “If I do find anything I’ll let you know it. You can persecute me or even arrest me, but you’ll do yourself more good by leaving me alone.”

  “So tell me something,” drawlingly, “were you following her or was she following you?”

  “Yes, that puzzled me. I thought she was in Milano.”

  “Perhaps she didn’t altogether trust you.”

  “Possibly, but I’d have expected her to have more sense. My present trouble is that she knew a good deal more than she told me and now I’ve no access to her. I’m very much in the dark.”

  “Suppose you tell me what you do know.”

  “No more than a working hypothesis,” all too aware that this would be one-way traffic.

  Unfortunate, said Mr Suarez. No Error!

  Castang, driving along this awful road out of Como. In all the world women are the most exasperating, incomprehensible, awkward and utterly marvellous of inventions.

  Two recent Vera-examples:-

  “I’ve got to go to the dentist so I’m just having a quick cup of Nes. I’m making you some proper coffee.” And, “I’ve got to go to the airport, so I’ll also have a quick Nes.”

  “But you hate Nes. I’m making you a real—”

  “I don’t need it. I don’t want it.”

  “You have to have a proper start to the day.”

  “Why can’t I have a cup of Nes and not all this fucking argument?”

  Vera much vexed.

  Only the week before … he’d been moved to complain.

  “Those are awful flowers.”

  “Yes.”

  “Banal, vulgar, and quite hideous.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Perhaps we could throw them out.”

  “No.”

  “Or put them where they’d be less offensive.”

  “No.”

  “They’re in the worst of taste.”

  “Yes, and no.”

  “That silver paper left inside the vase. That shiny plastic string curling about. Why?”

  “Because …” Why do my wife and I quarrel all the time? And why is that such a silly question?

  Our ancestors, to be sure, found Electra, Antigone or Cassandra alarming girls. Phallocentrics of the world, go cower in the corner. An unfailingly comic spectacle.

  It is peculiar to start with some minute variation in chromosomes and to end with this magical female being, the basis of all art. Unbearable it may be in character and behaviour, it is full of glories and grandeurs. The sexual pleasures are transient if (thank heaven) renewable. Art however is long, unaffected by a grumbling prostate.

  What am I doing in this goddam car? What’s this I’m whistling? Why?

  Rawlings’ hired Alfa, and he was stuck with it. The Gendarmerie needed no hotel manager to make the connection; had only to ask in Milan’s car-hire firms. Whose signature is on the paper?

  Mozart again; catchy number, top of the pops this last two hundred years. You who know, what a thing is love.

  Yes, indeed: he’d have to think about that. Unless of course he got shot. A detail to be borne in mind. For the chap with the rifle could have potted him there, sleepy on his hillside. Didn’t. Hadn’t perhaps worked out what he was doing there. Had perhaps lost no time in hurrying away. Wanted to see what he would do next? Chap thinking “one thing at a time”.

  But by today, perhaps, chap might have added more ideas. Or had them added up for him. Could be, a decision was arrived at that Castang was an inconvenience. There had been talk of Mafia. Well, when mafiosi want to make a public statement, hold a press conference you might call it, they bomb people. When it’s run of the mill, mostly they just shoot you.

  So that this is no time to be thinking about art. One has never the leisure to enjoy it because before you’ve turned around a calamity has you by the tail. Another crime. Another death. Hurry, hurry, and it might be for the appointment with his own death. He had done over twenty years of police work. Homicides are fairly rare, although in France gunshot homicides are not infrequent. But add accidents and suicides, and violent death is never far away. Castang has learned a thing from this; to treat his own death as a familiar spirit, lurking just out of sight but close by at his left hand.

  Likewise lurking, and making him no less vulnerable, would be the Carabinieri. He was at best a stalking-horse, the sort of “loose cannon” a police force hopes to turn to its advantage. At worst they’d be following him; a faded green Opel had been sitting just-far-enough back this last twenty kilometres. It didn’t have to mean anything because this was no road even to pass trucks. Well; here was Tirano. He’d get out and walk. One might see things coming, then. Equally, one might not. One would try and use the terrain.

  The Valtellina is never better than narrow, and frequently steep-sided. A smallish climb took him beyond urban and even suburban building projects. His path was suddenly bare hillside and he didn’t know whether there could be somebody sitting there with binoculars, chuckling. Above him was a stony terrace, and a stony cottage, and a “peasant” pruning his row or two of vines. Both of them raised their head to look at one another, to take the other in, and both smiled and said “Good day”, and “Sorry,” said Castang in Spanish (idiot), “don’t speak any Italian!”

  The peasant (after all, the word means countryman) straightened, smiled again, stretched from the hips to ease his stooping back, and said “Bisserl Deutsch?”, “Less bad,” said Castang, because this was an oldish man with a fine face. Not the crooked dwarf that has made paysan de montagne one of the worst of French insults. He was handsome, and had princely manners. Castang would learn that in northern Italy this is normal.

  “D’you mind my asking what sort of grape you’re growing there? A white, d’you make, or a red?” The old man thought about this, while choosing words in his rusty German.

  “You know, that’s a complicated question,” laughing. “But it’s warm. You’ve climbed. You’re hot; perhaps tired. Come into my house and then you can taste it, and that will be better than my talking about it.”

  This too, Castang was about to learn, is the simple hospitality of the Valtellina. He demurred, but only for a second. “Come, come,” said the old man smiling at urban awkwardness, clownish stiffness at being asked into a home. In the house, a brown, beautiful old woman made a sketch at a curtsey, the arm movements that say “my house is yours”. Castang felt shame at his own barbarism and sat at a linoleum-covered table.

  “She speaks no German. But it doesn’t matter,” producing a bottle of country wine and two glasses. “The vines can wait. They take patience.” The woman vanished into the kitchen from which the smell of coffee came within a minute. “No, take it. Please her. You have time.”

  Yes! He had time! All the time one could wish for. For art, for love, for living. “Your prosperity, happiness, and a good season for the vines.”

  “Prosit,” clinking their glasses together.

  “I’m a lucky man to find you speak German,” said Castang. Police officers, in order to be good, have also to be lucky. Napoleon, it is said, before promoting a general, would ask whether he were lucky. Those must have been his younger days and before he began to rely upon toadies, because it is a sensible remark. Castang had not always been lucky but when he had been so, generally he had been successful too.

  The old man smiled. One can still meet these old men who have lived lives of hardship and love for something worth the having.

  “My parents spoke German a little. Austrians, you know, were our overlords. Myself no, but in this last war we were again occupied. There was some hardship; there was no barbarity. Those troops were quiet, oldish men. They wished only to arrange matters. No persecutions and no assassinations. They looked for a few comforts. So that like ourselves, in the question of a few small illegalities across the border, they looked the other way. We used to stop and talk to each other. There was, even, a certain respect.”

  Castang was answered, but he also had a cue. “And I suppose these arrangements over the mountain still continue?”

  “Times have changed. Those soldiers wished us no harm. They were not happy with the zeal of their Führer: we felt embarrassment at the bad manners, the noisy mouth of our Duce. They were lonely men. One made them a little present; they were content. The officials now are hard and greedy men, who care only for money.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24