examined, revealing evidence of a struggle. Ruggiero’s hat, tie and shoe were found lying on the verge, and not far away lay a muslin wad soaked in ether. But it wasn’t until daybreak that the burnt-out shell of the car Ruggiero had been driving, one of a fleet of leased Fiat Argenta saloons used by both the family and the senior management of SIMP, was finally spotted by a helicopter in an abandoned quarry some eleven miles north of the city. The front bumper was dented and one of the headlamps cracked, indicating that the gang had front-tailed Ruggiero from the villa, then deliberately braked hard on a bend to cause a minor collision, immobilizing his car. They would have got out to examine the damage, all smiles and apologies. At the last moment their victim must have realized what was happening, for he had fought and kicked and struggled. But by then it was much too late. You could only defend yourself against kidnappers before they struck, by persuading them to strike somewhere else.
The remainder of the report on the Miletti kidnapping set out the investigators’ provisional conclusions. The gang had had about two hours altogether in which to seize Miletti, dispose of his car, and make good their escape. Assuming the first two stages took about thirty minutes, that left an hour and a half before the roadblocks went up. It was more than enough. If they had continued north they could have been on any one of a dozen remote roads high up in the Apennines within an hour. It was quite possible that they had gone to ground there, in some isolated farm or mountain hut. On the other hand they might well have left the area altogether, taking the link road west to the motorway and spending the rest of the night driving south. By dawn they could have reached the Aspromonte mountains behind Reggio di Calabria, a territory fifty times the size of San Marino and considerably more independent of the Italian State.
In short, it had been a typical professional kidnapping, well planned and well executed. The victim had been carefully chosen to combine the maximum potential return with the minimum possible risk. Like many others, Ruggiero Miletti had regarded kidnapping as something that happened to other people in less fortunate areas of the country, and had scorned to take any precautions. Like many others, he had been wrong. For months, his movements had been logged and analysed, until the kidnappers knew more about his way of life than he did. They had taken him at the weekend. By Monday morning the snatch squad would be back at the garages or factories where they worked. Their companions would laugh as they yawned their way through the day and make crude jokes about their wives being too much for them. They wouldn’t mind. They would be getting paid soon, their job over.
Meanwhile the central cell of the gang would be in touch with the family to get the negotiations moving. They wouldn’t be too impatient at first, although they would sound it, phoning up with bloodcurdling threats about what would happen to their victim if they weren’t paid by the day after tomorrow. But they had timed the operation for the autumn precisely to allow themselves the long winter months in which to break any resistance to their demands. By now though, in late March, they would be starting to grow restless, wanting to see some return on their considerable investment. Summer was just around the corner, and they wouldn’t want to risk missing their month at the seaside. Criminals have the same aspirations as everyone else. That’s why they become criminals.
More recent details were skimpy in the extreme. The gang had apparently contacted the family soon after the kidnapping and it was understood that a ransom had been agreed. The sum remained unknown but was thought likely to have been in the region of ten thousand million lire. Payment was assumed to have taken place towards the end of November, but the hostage had not been released, and a local lawyer named Ubaldo Valesio was now believed to be negotiating on behalf of the family. This last snippet was dated mid-December, and unless someone had filleted the file before it was put on the teleprinter it was the most recent piece of information the police in Perugia had. The message was clear: ‘… was understood that a ransom had been paid… remained unknown but was thought to have been in the region of… was assumed to have taken place towards the end… believed to be negotiating…’ Whoever had drafted the report wanted no one to be in the slightest doubt that the Miletti family had not been cooperating with the authorities.
There was nothing unusual in this, of course. The trouble with the authorities’ line on kidnapping was that it sounded just too good to be true. Free the victim, punish the criminals and get your money back! Besides, most people were happier doing business with the kidnappers, whose motives they understood and who like them had a lot to lose, than with the impersonal and perfidious agencies of the State. If Zen was unpleasantly surprised to discover how little the Milettis had been cooperating, it was because it put paid to the theory he’d evolved to explain his sudden recall to active duty.
The explanation Enrico Mancini had given him was obviously false. In the first place, provincial detachments never requested intervention of this kind. A local Questura might ask for an expert from Criminalpol to advise them on some technical problem, but that was a very different thing to handing over control to someone from Rome. Such a procedure was always imposed by the Ministry, and was regarded as a humiliating reprimand for inefficiency or incompetence. But an even more serious objection to Mancini’s story was simply that Mancini was telling it. Enrico Mancini was a very big fish indeed, whose natural habitat was the wider ocean of political life. At the moment he chose to swim in the local waters of the Interior Ministry, where indeed he had survived an abrupt change in the political temperature which had proved fatal to several of his species. But tomorrow he might well be sighted in one of the other branches of government, between which he moved as effortlessly as a porpoise moves from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic and back again. According to some observers, indeed, this rather too evident ease, together with Mancini’s brashly confident manner, might prove to be his downfall in the long run.
At all events, the likes of Mancini did not concern themselves with such normal everyday matters as staff movements. The implication was clear. Despite appearances, this particular staff movement was neither normal nor everyday. When you got a personal phone call from an assistant under-secretary to the Minister and were told you were leaving the next morning, someone had been pulling strings. The obvious candidates had been the Miletti family, but if the Milettis were not cooperating with the authorities they would hardly run to the Ministry complaining that those authorities weren’t doing enough. So what was going on?
Zen read and re-read the material, scribbling a few notes and a lot of convoluted designs in the margins. But it was no good. There were too many faceless names, or what was worse, names which had somehow acquired a totally misleading set of features and characteristics. Thus Pietro, Silvio, Cinzia and Daniele appeared as ‘The Miletti Children’, a quartet of child entertainers in matching outfits, and this despite Zen’s knowledge that the youngest, Daniele, was twenty-six years old, while Pietro was already in his late thirties, married and living somewhere abroad. As for Cinzia, she could hardly be a winsome little pre-pubescent charmer since she already had two children of her own, the eldest twelve years old.
Meanwhile it was getting late, and the full implications of accepting Crepi’s invitation were becoming clear to Zen. He’d acted without thinking, purely on reflex, paralysed by his ignorance of who Crepi was. But after what had happened at the Questura he could be in no doubt as to the weakness of his position in Perugia. To survive he must armour himself in authority, surround himself with as many of the signs and symbols of office as he could muster. Instead of which he had agreed to venture out on to dangerously ambiguous ground, half-social and half-official; a treacherous no man’s land where all manner of elaborate games might be played at his expense, where any points he scored would count for nothing but the slightest slip might compromise his position for ever. Well, at least he would go in style. He had phoned the Questura and arranged for Palottino to meet him outside the hotel. They could follow Crepi’s chauffeur back to the villa.
The call came at ten past eight.
‘ There’s someone here to collect you. He says he’s expected.’
‘I’ll be down at once.’
The lobby was empty except for a bearded man reading a newspaper and a French couple who were disputing some item on their bill with the receptionist. Zen had almost reached the revolving door when he was called.
‘Excuse me!’
Suddenly Zen had an unpleasant sense that events were getting out of hand. It was the bearded man Crepi had been talking to outside the cafe earlier that afternoon.
‘You are Commissioner Zen?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Silvio Miletti. How do you do?’
‘I had no idea that you would be coming in person to fetch me,’ Zen murmured in some confusion. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered.’
‘It was no bother.’
