‘And what do you intend to do?’ Bartocci asked when Pietro had finished.
‘We shall obey, of course. What else can we do?’
‘What you’ve been doing for the past four months! Stalling for time, crying poor, haggling over every lira.’
Pietro Miletti replaced the sheet of paper carefully in his briefcase.
‘That’ll do, Bartocci. We already know what our enemies say about us.’
An effortless hardening had taken place in his tone. He got to his feet and looked at both of them in turn.
‘Do you know why kidnapping flourishes here in Italy? Perhaps you think it’s because we’re saddled with a corrupt and inefficient police force directed by politically biased career judges lacking any practical training whatsoever. That is certainly a contributing factor, but similar conditions obtain in other countries where kidnapping is almost unknown. No, the real reason is that in our hearts we admire kidnappers. We don’t like successful people. We like to see them brought low, made to suffer, made to pay. They used to call Russia an autocracy moderated by assassination. Well, Italy is a plutocracy moderated by kidnapping.’
‘How do you propose to raise the money when for the past months you’ve been claiming that it just wasn’t possible?’
But Pietro Miletti had no further interest in the exchange.
‘That’s our affair.’
‘There’s always SIMP, of course,’ Bartocci insinuated.
‘Yes, there’s still SIMP left to bankrupt. No doubt some people would be very glad to see that happen. But if our company ever does go under, those are the very people who are going to moan loudest.’
‘What about this untapped telephone number the gang have asked for? How are you going to communicate it to them?’
‘If I told you that, I doubt whether the number would remain untapped for very long. We’re paying an extremely high price to get my father back. We have no intention of putting the success of that operation at risk because of the usual bungling by the authorities.’
‘I take it you’ve asked for guarantees,’ Zen put in quietly.
Pietro Miletti turned at the door.
‘What guarantees?’
‘How do you know your father is still alive?’
‘We just got a letter from him!’
‘How do you know when he wrote it? You should make it a condition of payment that the gang supplies a Polaroid photograph of your father holding the morning’s paper on the day the drop is made. That will incidentally also establish that the people you’re dealing with have still got possession.’
‘Possession of what?’
His tone was reasonable and polite, a senior manager seeking specialized information from a consultant.
‘The negotiations for your father’s release have been very long drawn out,’ Zen explained. ‘It may well be that the original kidnappers couldn’t afford to wait so long. It would depend on their financial situation, how the other jobs they’re involved in are going. If they need some quick cash they may have sold your father to another group as a long-term investment.’
Pietro Miletti repeated his short laugh.
‘My God, are we talking about a business in secondhand victims?’
Luciano Bartocci had been shuffling papers about noisily on his desk in an attempt to disrupt this exchange from which he was excluded.
‘There is just one other thing…’ he began.
Pietro Miletti cut him off.
‘But what does it matter, after all? We don’t mind who we pay as long as we get my father back.’
‘But you wouldn’t want to pay one gang and then find that they’d sold your father to another, would you?’
‘There is just one other thing.’ the magistrate repeated. ‘When the pay-off is made, one of the people present will be Commissioner Zen.’
Bartocci might previously have had some difficulty in making himself heard, but now he instantly had the total attention of both men. It was so still in the room that it seemed the three had suspended their dealings by mutual consent in order to catch the barely audible undulations of a distant ambulance siren.
‘You must be crazy,’ Pietro Miletti said at last.
The young magistrate did actually look slightly mad. His eyes were bright with determination, his face flushed with a sense of the risks he was taking, and the stillborn smile twitched away at the corner of his mouth as though he was trying to eat his beard.
‘Should you refuse to cooperate,’ he went on, ‘I must warn you that as from this evening each member of your family and household staff will be under surveillance twenty-four hours a day by a team of Commissioner Zen’s men from Rome.’
He gave Zen a long, level look, daring him to deny it.
‘Naturally this flurry of police activity will get into the newspapers. The kidnappers will quite possibly call off the whole operation.’
‘How dare you, Bartocci?’
Pietro Miletti’s voice was quiet and curious. Despite its rhetorical form, the question seemed to have real meaning.
‘How dare you make my father a pawn in your games?’
The investigating magistrate steepled his fingertips judiciously.
‘Dottore, we are all here in our official capacities. You represent your family. Commissioner Zen and I represent the State. As such our duties are clearly laid down in the Criminal Code. They are to investigate crimes, prevent them from being carried out, discover the guilty parties and take any further steps necessary to uphold the law. In our official capacities that is all that we need do. But we are not simply judges or police officials, we are also human beings, and as human beings we sympathize deeply and sincerely with the terrible situation in which the Miletti family find themselves, and wish to do everything possible to bring it to a swift and satisfactory conclusion. At the same time, we cannot ignore our duty. And so, after long and careful deliberation, we have arrived at a compromise between our official responsibilities and our natural wish to avoid hindering your father’s release in any way. It is this compromise which I have just outlined to you. I believe that you would be well advised to accept it.’
Pietro Miletti shook his head slowly.
‘How can you even consider putting my father’s safety at risk?’
‘There is no risk,’ Bartocci assured him. ‘No risk whatsoever. Isn’t that so, Commissioner?’
Zen’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. You bastard, he was thinking. You shifty little bastard.
But Pietro Miletti was not interested in Zen’s opinion.
‘The kidnappers have just given us quite explicit instructions not to involve the police in any way, yet you claim that we can send a senior officer along on the pay-off itself without there being any risk!’
Bartocci waved the objection aside.
‘They won’t know that he’s a police official.’
Pietro Miletti stood staring intently at the magistrate.
‘Why, Bartocci? You’re going to alienate half the city, put my father’s life at risk, all for what? What’s in it for you? Why are you prepared to play such a desperate game, to put your whole future in jeopardy like this?’
‘How dare you threaten me?’ Bartocci shot back.
After a moment Pietro shrugged and turned away.
‘I shall have to discuss the whole matter with the rest of the family.’
‘Since when has the Miletti family been run as a cooperative?’ Bartocci jeered.
‘I shall contact you tomorrow morning.’
‘You’ll contact me by three o’clock this afternoon,’ the magistrate insisted. ‘Otherwise I shall have no alternative but to allow Commissioner Zen to put his men in position.’
