‘But you said that he’s insisting on going to court. What can I do about it?’
‘Show up at the Bologna exhibition centre two days from now.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘This is still at the negotiation stage, but I’ve already roughed it out with his personal assistant, a very intelligent woman called Delia Anselmi. She’s totally in agreement and seems to have a lot of influence over Rinaldi. Between the two of us I think we can swing it. But first I need your agreement.’
‘To what?’
‘Taking part in a cookery contest with Rinaldi during the Enogastexpo food fair that’s on there now.’
Edgardo Ugo laughed.
‘You must be mad. Or think I am.’
‘On the contrary, it’s a perfect arrangement for all concerned.’
‘But he’s bound to win!’
‘Of course he is. So you’re going to lose a cook-off with the leading celebrity chef in Italy. If you challenged Roger Federer to a game of tennis you’d lose too. How humiliating is that? There are plenty of other aspects of life where you’re an acknowledged world champion. All you need to do is show up, shake hands with Lo Chef on stage, maybe join him in a duet-can you sing?-and generally make it clear that the whole affair was just a ridiculous mistake that the media have blown up out of all proportion. In return, he will sign a document that I will prepare, renouncing any legal action whatsoever against you now or in the future. End of story.’
Ugo was silent.
‘Plus,’ Scheda added, ‘and this is the beauty part, the whole show will be broadcast live and as part of the deal I’ll arrange for you to have a few minutes solo to camera. There will be multiple repeats later in the day and throughout the weekend. Overall projected viewer numbers are around twenty million.’
‘I’ll do it.’
Ugo put down the phone. All this talk of food made him realise that he’d forgotten to have lunch. He walked downstairs to the gigantic kitchen and peered despondently into the fridge. There were the remains of the dinner to which he’d invited a group of friends and colleagues the previous weekend, all the dishes being prepared communally from Marinetti’s tract on Futurist cooking. As the generous quantity of leftovers indicated, the preparation had been more satisfying than the actual food, but it had all looked very striking and had been beautifully photographed for an article about the event in La Cucina Italiana -good publicity for everyone concerned.
He selected a few of the chunks of mortadella and cheese sculpted into letters that had formed part of the dish ‘Edible Words’, from which all the guests were supposed to eat their own names, then walked through to the former housekeeper’s office. This is where he paid his bills, kept his domestic files, and checked his emails. There were very few of the latter today, only twenty-eight new messages. He skimmed through the titles, opening some and deleting others unread. An offer for Lithuanian rights to two of his books, a request from the BBC for him to contribute to a documentary on the cultural significance of professional sport, an invitation to give a series of vapid but very highly-paid lectures in Japan, plus a selection of the usual academic tittle-tattle sent or forwarded by his friends and admirers all over the world.
He clicked open the last unopened email message. The subject header was blank and the ‘From’ box contained only a Hotmail address consisting of a string of apparently random numbers. As for the message itself, there was no text, just a line drawing-an engraving, rather-of a male hand, the thumb and index finger almost joined to form a circle.
Ugo gazed at it for some time, then walked through to his library, located in the former living and reception rooms of the villa, now knocked through to form one vast and tranquil space. Here he opened a drawer in a handsome rosewood cabinet and consulted the well-thumbed handwritten index cards inside. A minute or so later he had located the position of the volume and, having hauled over the wheeled ladder used for accessing the higher of the eight rows of shelves, was leafing through Andrea de Jorio’s classic 1832 text about southern Italian gestures and their origins in classical antiquity.
Yes, there it was: ‘ Disprezzo ’, contempt. Although the tactful Neapolitan cleric had no more than hinted at this, the root significance of the sign was of course blatantly sexual. It was the most powerful non-verbal insult that existed, what de Jorio had termed ‘the superlative form’ of other offensive gestures.
Basically, someone was telling him to fuck off.
9
Barefoot and wearing her raincoat as a dressing gown, Flavia was savouring a cigarette and stirring a pan of sauce when there came a pattern of heavy raps at the door. She went to squint at the caller through the fish-eye lens, getting only a general impression of a hat, dark glasses and a heavy overcoat.
‘Who is it?’
‘Police.’
She took another peek, then unbolted and opened the door. The man flashed a plastic card from his wallet. Flavia made out the word ‘Speranza’ but nothing more.
‘May I come in?’ he asked.
He looked more like a secret policeman than the regular sort, thought Flavia, although such men did not present identification or ask permission to come in. But there was only one reason why the police should be interested in her and the other girls living in those rooms, and that was to effect their immediate deportation under the new immigration laws that had been rushed through to satisfy the xenophobic electorate of various politicians whose support was essential to the survival of the governing coalition.
The intruder stood at the centre of the room, looking about him at the mattresses on the floor, the fruit crates used as cupboards, the pot of pasta sauce simmering on the hotplate, the length of blue nylon cord suspended between two bent nails and serving as a communal wardrobe. In an inversion of its normal function, Flavia wrapped the raincoat tightly about her body, still wet and cold from the primitive shower in the opposite corner.
‘Nice place,’ the man remarked.
This was too obvious a provocation to merit a reply.
‘You sharing?’
Flavia shook her head. There was just a chance of saving the other girls, if she could somehow get word to them before they came home. Didn’t they have to allow you a phone call here in Europe? The man was staring at their meagre possessions, in full view all around. There was still a chance, though, since these added up to less than a quarter of what the average Italian woman would have regarded as the basic minimum.
The policeman took a studio photograph from the inside pocket of his double-breasted coat and showed it to Flavia.
‘You know this person,’ he said.
She recognised Rodolfo’s flatmate immediately, although she had never seen him wearing a jacket and tie, but shook her head again. The intruder replaced the photograph and produced a shiny metal hip flask from which he took a long gurgling drink.
‘Sure you do,’ he said, wiping his lips. ‘Name’s Vincenzo. Vincenzo Amadori.’
He swapped the flask for a packet of cigarettes from yet another pocket of his capacious coat.
‘Mind if I smoke?’
She shook her head again.
‘Want one?’
Her instinct was to refuse-tell nothing, take nothing-but a much older superstition reminded her that three denials brought bad luck. The packet was labelled Camels and the cigarette the man lit for her had a pleasant toasty flavour. American imports, she thought inconsequentially. Definitely the secret police. She decided to call him Dragos.
‘Sure you know him,’ the intruder insisted. ‘Number seventy-four Via Marsala, second floor at the back.’
Flavia realised that further evasion was in vain. Clearly she had been followed.
