and take them all on. He had been counting on this using up his energies for many years to come, so his pleasure at the way things had worked out was mixed with a certain amount of regret that it was all over so quickly. The Japanese deal on which he had expended so much energy and cunning was irrelevant now. Ruggiero’s will would hold no surprises. Each of the Miletti children would receive a twenty-five per cent holding in SIMP. Cinzia’s share was already in his hands, of course, and he could count on Daniele’s too. It was not just a question of the money he had been advancing the boy ever since he got himself into trouble over drugs, although by now that amounted to almost a hundred million lire. Daniele was hooked on something quite as addictive as hard drugs and almost as expensive: a fashion market whose sole function was to flaunt the spending power of its wearers, or rather their fathers. To admit that he could no longer compete because his father had turned his back on him would have been the ultimate humiliation for the boy, so he had been glad to accept his brother-in-law’s help. But what made Gianluigi quite certain of Daniele’s support was the fact that the boy admired him. Pietro had never understood that, never been prepared to admit that his younger brother’s hero was the outsider in the family, the pushy, self-seeking Tuscan. He would have to pay for that. One of Gianluigi’s axioms was that one always paid for any lack of clarity and realism. Meanwhile he accepted Daniele’s homage as he did his daughter’s, and with as little thought of consummating the relationship. The fact of the matter was that the boy hadn’t a hope in hell of ever amounting to anything, being spoiled, weak, vain and without that bitter inner pain that drives a man on.
So there he was in effective control of fifty per cent of SIMP. But even if Pietro knew that, he would still be counting on Silvio to balance things out. Which was a mistake, because when the chips were down Silvio would support Gianluigi too. This was something that Pietro could have no inkling of, for the simple reason that Silvio didn’t know himself and would have denied it strenuously if he’d been asked. Nevertheless when the time came he would vote with Gianluigi, because of the photographs. Gianluigi had paid a detective agency in Milan five million lire for them, but like Daniele’s allowance it was money well spent. Those photographs would make him undisputed master of the Miletti empire. It had been a nerve-racking business, particularly the last few weeks. He wondered what his family would think if they knew the risks he had been running. But now it was all over and he had come out on top. The Milettis had made it clear from the beginning that they played winner-take-all. And he would, he would!
The doorbell sounded and Margherita set down the dish of fried fish she was serving to go and answer it.
‘Who on earth can that be?’ Cinzia wondered aloud. ‘What an idea, not even lunchtime is sacred any more, no wonder there’s so much tension and unhappiness in the world, finish your pasta, Loredana.’
The housekeeper reappeared in the doorway.
‘It’s the police, dottore.’
Gianluigi was accustomed to living with pains, but the one that shot across his chest now was a stranger.
‘Tell them to come back later,’ his wife told the housekeeper, as though it was as easy as that, as though there was nothing to worry about. ‘It’s really too bad, a total chaos and intrusion.’
‘No, I’ll sort them out.’
He got to his feet, gathering his strength, his courage, his wits.
Margherita’s words had conjured up visions of armed men surrounding the house, and when Gianluigi reached the door he was relieved to find no one there but Aurelio Zen. But relief merely made him angry for having been given an unnecessary fright.
‘What the hell do you want now, Zen? Don’t you know it’s lunchtime?’
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, dottore, but it’s a matter of the highest urgency.’
‘It had better be.’
He was sure of himself again, in control of the situation. This sort of confrontation was the stuff of his life, for which he trained like an athlete. Once he had mastered that initial moment of panic it was a pleasure to exercise those considerable skills.
‘According to our records,’ Zen went on, ‘your wife is the registered owner of a Beretta pistol. I would like to examine it with a view to eliminating it from our inquiries.’
‘Let me see your search warrant.’
‘I’m not conducting a search.’
Gianluigi allowed his eyebrows to rise.
‘Oh? Then what the fuck are you doing, may I ask, disturbing me without the slightest warning in the middle of lunch?’
‘I’m conducting a preliminary inquiry in the sense of article 225 of the Penal Code, the results of which will be communicated to the Public Prosecutor’s office and a search warrant issued in due course, your refusal to cooperate having been noted. But what’s the problem? You have got the gun, haven’t you?’
‘Of course.’
This automatic reply was his first error, conceding the man’s right to question him. But the sudden change of tone had caught him by surprise.
‘Then why not just show it to me?’ Zen suggested. ‘It’ll save both of us a lot of unnecessary bother.’
There was a shuffle of bare feet as Cinzia appeared.
‘What’s going on, Lulu? Oh, Commissioner, I thought you were back in Rome. Surely you must be.’
She and Zen exchanged a lingering glance.
‘Get on with your lunch,’ Gianluigi told his wife. ‘I’ll handle this.’
Realizing that after this interruption his earlier position of rigid intransigence would seem stilted, Gianluigi told his visitor to wait, went through to the living room and opened the top drawer of the old desk where the pistol was always kept.
It was not there.
For thirty seconds he stood quite still, thinking. But though the disappearance of the pistol was both mysterious and annoying, there was nothing whatever to be worried about. He returned to the front door.
‘Look, the thing appears to have been mislaid,’ he told Zen, who was now leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette. ‘Probably the cleaning lady has put it somewhere. We’ll have a proper look this afternoon or tomorrow if you care to contact me later.’
He was starting to close the door as Zen replied.
‘That’s fine. I didn’t really come about the gun at all.’
The door opened again.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘There’s been an unfortunate development, dottore. As the result of a tip-off the Carabinieri have arrested most of the gang that kidnapped your father-in-law. Among other things, they’ve been talking about their contact in the Miletti family, the one who left messages tucked in a magazine at that service area on the motorway. The last magazine in the top right-hand row, I think it was.’
The exotic pain returned to Gianluigi’s chest.
‘And what has this got to do with me?’
Articulating these words was one of the hardest tasks he could ever remember performing.
‘Well, it depends how you look at it. On the face of it, all this amounts to is an unsupported allegation by a gang of known criminals. On the other hand, it’s hard to see what they have to gain by lying. We’ve suspected for a long time that there was an informer passing on the strengths and weaknesses of the family’s negotiating position to the gang, but we didn’t know who it was. Pietro was in London for much of the time. If the pick-up point was on the motorway, that excludes Silvio, who can’t drive. As for Daniele, the gang say that the person who left the messages was short and slightly built, so he won’t do. In one sense it’s just a question of who’s left, really.’
He tossed the butt of his cigarette out on to the gravel of the drive, where it continued to smoulder.
‘But there’s more to it than that. Above all, the investigating magistrate is going to be looking for a motive. Now if he had just wanted to beggar the Milettis the informant could have revealed the true extent of the family’s finances straight off, but instead he chose to pass on scraps of information so that the negotiations were drawn out as long as possible. The magistrate will therefore be looking for someone who stood to gain from a delay in Ruggiero’s return coupled with the need for a massive injection of cash to prop up SIMP. Cash from a Japanese company, for instance.’
The silence that followed was as long and significant as the words that had preceded it. Whatever was said
