swing deals.
‘Try some of this!’ he told Minot, pouring a grappa illegally made by a neighbour in a disused pig barn.
‘So you’ve been talking to Pascal, eh?’ Minot remarked, setting his glass down after an appreciative sip. ‘So have I.’
Still savouring the grappa he’d knocked back in one, Bruno Scorrone didn’t seem to hear.
‘He told me you’d claimed to have seen my truck down by the stream where Beppe was killed.’
Bruno stared at him, all attention now.
‘What? I did nothing of the sort. Like I said, I called him to say that I’d found Anna running loose and had taken her home and all the rest of it. I didn’t even know Beppe was dead then! Pascal asked where I’d been that morning, and I told him that I’d driven into Alba. I saw people there who could corroborate that — apart from my Munich buyer, I mean — so it seemed the safest thing to do.’
He poured himself another glass of the oily spirit.
‘But why bring me into it?’ asked Minot, lifting his grappa but not drinking.
‘I didn’t! He asked if I’d seen anything unusual down where the road crosses the river. I said I thought I might have seen a truck parked in the bushes, but I wasn’t sure. He said, “What kind of truck?”, and I said I didn’t know but it looked a bit like yours. I didn’t say it was yours.’
Minot looked at him silently.
‘So you didn’t make a statement under oath or sign any papers?’
‘Of course not! It was just a casual chat over the phone.’
Bruno slurped out a third glass of grappa for himself.
‘What about you?’ he asked Minot. ‘You’re not drinking.’
‘I’ve got to keep a clear head.’
Scorrone puffed contentedly on his cigar.
‘Anyway, I’m glad you told me,’ he said. ‘That’s the sort of thing which can lead to all sorts of misunderstandings if it’s not cleared up. No hard feelings, eh?’
Minot shook his head.
‘No feelings at all.’
They walked out of the office and along the concrete loading bay to the truck. As they passed a stack of new bottles, Bruno suddenly laid his hand on Minot’s arm.
‘You weren’t really there, were you?’ he asked.
Minot looked at him in surprise.
‘Where?’
‘Down by the stream, the morning Beppe was killed.’
Minot said nothing.
‘Only they might ask again, you see, under oath this time. It would help if I knew the truth.’
Minot looked down at the dirty concrete platform for some time.
‘If that’s what you want, Bruno.’
He removed one of the new green bottles from the stack, examining it as though he had never seen such a thing before.
‘The truth,’ he said, ‘is that I killed him.’
Bruno’s face ran through a pantomime of expressions. Then he gave a forced laugh.
‘Don’t make jokes about something like this!’
Minot looked him in the eyes.
‘I’m not joking.’
Neither man said anything for a long time.
‘But why?’ murmured Scorrone.
Minot stared down at the bottle in his hand and smiled faintly.
‘He was on my turf. I discovered that patch of truffles years ago, long before anyone else. But Beppe did an underhand thing. I used to borrow his dog once in a while, when he didn’t need her. He took to dipping her paws in aniseed before I took her out, and then tracing my route the next day. I soon found that all my best patches had been cleaned out before I got there. That’s why he lent me Anna in the first place, so that she would lead him to all my secret discoveries. So I decided to get even.’
Bruno Scorrone clutched at one of the concrete pillars supporting the roof.
‘But that’s absurd!’ he exclaimed in a wavering voice. ‘You don’t kill someone over truffles.’
In a single swoop, Minot smashed the bottle he had been holding against the pillar and jabbed the broken end into Scorrone’s throat, twisting the jagged glass into the exposed flesh. A whistling spray of blood emerged, accompanied by a gargling shriek which quickly drowned on the pulsing flood. Bruno Scorrone slid down the pillar, emitting vaguely anal sounds and thrashing around feebly on the concrete.
It all went quicker than Minot had imagined. The twin advantages of surprise and sobriety aside, it was a question of will in the end. He wanted Bruno dead more than Bruno wanted to live. There was a lot of mess to clean up, but this was a site designed for spillage, with drains everywhere and a high-pressure hose on the wall. No one had seen or heard what had happened, and the only people who knew that he’d been there in the first place were Gianni and Maurizio Faigano. And he could deal with them.
It was dark when Aurelio Zen arrived back in Alba in a bus packed with football supporters who spent the journey loudly celebrating their victory over a town in the next valley. By the time he disembarked in the inevitable Piazza Garibaldi, Zen had learned several colourful terms of abuse in the local dialect, and even found himself singing along to a rousing chorus which alleged that the players of the Coazzolo team were unable to score in more ways than one.
He started back to his hotel, paying no particular attention to his surroundings until the celebratory yells of the soccer fans brought a uniformed policeman out of a neighbouring building to suggest forcefully that they show a bit of respect, in view of the fact that Juventus had just lost to Inter by a disputed last-minute penalty. This was news to the local tifosi, due to poor radio reception on the road and the aforementioned festivities. The upshot was a lively discussion regarding the merits of the latest foreign acquisition by the Turin club, and estimations of how much the Milanese had paid the Roman referee to award the penalty after the Inter centre-forward took a blatant dive inside the area.
While all this was going on, Zen sidled around the group and entered the police station unobserved. He had expected the place to be deserted, it being Sunday, but to his surprise there was a group of five men in the squad room, a plain-clothes officer in the middle of a telephone conversation, and various uniformed patrolmen looking on.
‘Si, si, si,’ the man on the phone declared in a tone of utter boredom. ‘ Va benissimo. D’accordo. Senz’altro. Non si preoccupi, dottore. Certo, certo. Non c’e problema, ci penso io. D’accordo. Si, si. Ci sentiamo fra poco. Arriverderla, dottore. Buona sera, buona sera. ’
He replaced the phone and glanced sourly at Zen, who was hovering in the doorway.
‘Well?’
‘Excuse me,’ Zen began hesitantly. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you, but the thing is…’
‘Yes?’
Zen hesitated.
‘Well…’
‘Get on with it! We’re busy here.’
‘Well, the fact is, I need a phone tapped.’
There was a long silence. The plain-clothes officer got to his feet. He smiled, not pleasantly.
‘Are you sure that’s all? You don’t want anyone arrested, by any chance?’
‘Not at the moment.’
The officer’s smile became still more menacing.
‘Just the phone tap, eh? And which phone did you have in mind?’
‘The one at the hotel where I’m staying,’ Zen replied. ‘It’s called the Alba Palace.’
‘The whole hotel? All the calls, eh?’
‘Just the incoming ones.’
At this point, the officer evidently decided that he had milked the joke for all it was worth.
