she could be.
The policeman, a rather attractive young fellow with an enormous moustache, was checking the driver’s documents. Silvio thought he’d seen him somewhere before. And wasn’t there something familiar about the spot where they had been stopped too? The sun was high and it was unpleasantly hot in the taxi. He felt grotesquely overdressed in his heavy underwear, thick suit and overcoat, perspiring all over. But the moisture remained trapped between flesh and fabric, unable to do its business properly. Silvio consulted his watch. The patrolman was now walking in a maddeningly leisurely fashion around the taxi, inspecting it closely, taking his time. If this went on much longer he was going to be really late.
After that rude awakening he’d tried in vain to get back to sleep, but in the end he’d given up all hope and gone downstairs, only to find that Daniele had scoffed all his special organic goat’s yoghurt rich in the live bacilli which Silvio’s homoeopathist was adamant he needed to maintain the precarious equilibrium of his health. The goaty taste was what attracted Silvio, though. Everything to do with goats came into that special category where pleasure and disgust struggled for supremacy like two naked wrestlers. Sweat was another, and farts and bad breath. Gianluigi’s breath was quite overpowering sometimes, because of his indigestion problems no doubt, or those teeth of his which never saw a brush, packed with rich, undisturbed deposits of plaque, so that he wondered sometimes how Cinzia could stand it. But perhaps she too loved to loathe, longed to stretch herself languorously out and yield to the very thing that made her shudder with disgust.
After that his day had gone from bad to worse, the last straw being this lunchtime call from that creep Spinelli at the bank, insisting on meeting a representative of the family at Antonio Crepi’s villa that very afternoon to discuss some urgent problem that was too sensitive to discuss on the phone. Silvio had been hoping to treat himself to an afternoon listening to Billie Holliday records and leafing through that auction catalogue of rare Haitian issues which Pietro had sent him from London, hoping to keep him sweet for the future now he represented twenty-five per cent of the company! Yes, there were certainly consolations to Ruggiero’s death, just as Ivy had insisted. She should have been here to drive him, but by the time the call came she’d already left to keep an appointment. So he’d had to take a taxi, which of course had been late arriving and then got stuck in the traffic. And now this! It really was too bad.
An official in plain clothes had got out of the police car.
‘How’s it going?’ Silvio heard him ask the young patrolman.
‘Not too good. Fucking thing’s in excellent shape.’
Suddenly Silvio realized why this spot had seemed familiar. It was at this very bend that his father’s car had been forced off the road by the kidnappers.
‘You planning to be much longer?’ the taxi driver demanded.
‘We’re just noting the defects we’ve found on your vehicle,’ the official told him.
‘Defects? What defects?’
The patrolman consulted his notebook.
‘Insufficient tread depth on nearside front tyre. Rear window partially obscured by sticker. Number-plate light defective.’
The driver laughed sarcastically.
‘The cigarette lighter doesn’t work, either.’
‘Really?’ queried the official. ‘ Two faults in the electrical system, then. May I see your snow chains?’
‘Snow chains?’ the driver replied incredulously. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘All vehicles using this road between the beginning of October and the end of April are required to carry snow chains on board. Didn’t you see the sign back there on the hill?’
‘Can’t you feel that sun? It’s over twenty degrees!’
‘That’s the law.’
‘Then the law’s crazy!’
‘I wouldn’t say that if I were you. You could end up facing a charge for contempt.’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ the driver murmured.
Silvio wound down his window.
‘Excuse me!’ he called testily. ‘I’m already late for an appointment and…’
The official looked round.
‘Why, Signor Miletti! Please forgive me, I had no idea it was you.’
Silvio squinted up into the sunlight.
‘Oh, it’s you, Zen. I thought you were back in Rome.’
‘Not yet, dottore. Not yet.’
‘They’ve put you on traffic duty, have they?’
As someone often accused of lacking a sense of humour, Silvio liked to draw attention to his jokes by laughing at them himself. Zen duly smiled, although this might have been at the sound of Silvio’s squeaky laughter rather than the joke itself.
‘Anyway, will you please fine the driver or whatever you intend doing, and let us proceed. As I say, I’m already late for an appointment.’
‘Out of the question, I’m afraid. On a cursory examination alone this vehicle has been found to have five defects. As such it is clearly unfit to ply for hire as a public conveyance. However, I’d be delighted to offer you a lift.’
‘I have no wish to travel with you, Zen.’
‘Suit yourself. But it’s a long walk.’
‘Snow chains!’ murmured the taxi driver disgustedly.
Silvio sat there stewing in the stuffy heat in the back of the car, thinking over what had just been said. A thrilling sense of peril had taken hold of him, and it was this that finally moved him to open the door and give himself up to whatever was about to happen.
‘A long walk to where?’ he murmured dreamily as the taxi screeched round in a tight turn and headed back to the city.
Zen opened the rear door of the Alfetta.
‘To where you’re going.’
‘But you don’t know where I’m going.’
‘Oh, but I do, dottore, I do.’
‘Where, then?’
It had been intended as a challenge, but Zen treated it as a real question.
‘You’ll see,’ he replied complacently as they drove off down the hill.
Crepi’s villa was visible in the distance, perched up on its ridge, but the countryside flashed by at such an insane rate that in no time at all they had passed the driveway.
‘You’ve missed the turning!’ Silvio told the driver. ‘I’m going to Antonio Crepi’s! He’s expecting me.’
‘Wrong on both counts,’ Zen replied without turning round.
‘You’ll lose your jobs for this,’ Silvio stammered, almost incoherent with excitement. ‘This is kidnapping! You’ll get twenty years, both of you!’
They had reached the flatlands near the Tiber, whose course was visible to the right, marked by a line of trees whose lower branches were festooned with scraps of plastic bags and other durable refuse.
‘This one,’ Zen told the driver, pointing to an abandoned track burrowing into a mass of wild brambles and scrub. The entrance was marked by a pair of imposing brick gateposts in a bad state of disrepair. A cloud of red dust rose up all around the car, almost blotting out the view.
They drew up and Zen got out. He removed his overcoat and threw it on the front seat. From the dashboard he removed a clipboard and a large yellow envelope. Then he opened the rear door of the car.
‘Get out, dottore.’
Silvio got out.
As the dust settled he could see the massive piles of bricks all around the clearing where they were parked. They still preserved the vague outlines of the barracks, ovens and chimneys they had once been, but fallen out of rank and order like an army of deserters. It reminded him of the old factory below the house which had been his private playground for many years, despite his mother’s dire warnings about venturing into it. He had been a solitary child, and those deserted alleys, yards and warehouses provided the perfect environment for his fantasies to
