us, but could go either way, while Orsini will certainly vote for Ugo. They have the same publisher, apart from anything else. But that will just make it look better. The main thing is that whatever happens you’re bound to win. So relax, okay? There’s nothing to worry about.’
‘That’s easy for you to say! You’re not the one who’s going to have to stand up in front of Christ knows how many million viewers and actually do it.’
Flavia made a show of passing her mop over the false-tile vinyl floor, but in reality she was listening carefully. Her spoken Italian was not perfect as yet, although by no means as primitive as her reply to the crow had suggested, but she understood the language very well indeed. When you are a young woman, poor, powerless and alone in a strange land, you learn fast.
The woman called Delia gave a snort of what sounded like exasperation.
‘Listen, Romano, everything’s going to be all right. Trust me. You’ll do fine, you’ll look fabulous, and above all you’ll clear your name of this ridiculous slur once and for all. If you’re nervous, just double your normal dose of beta blockers.’
She paused and looked at him significantly.
‘But nothing else, all right? No coke, no speed, and none of whatever those pills are that you’ve been popping. Not until the event’s over. Understand? After that you can do what you like.’
The man nodded grudgingly. Delia indicated a large video screen hanging at an angle above the set.
‘The list of ingredients will be displayed there. Glance at it briefly but with apparent interest. Remember, it’s supposed to be the first time you’ve ever seen it. Scrutinise it with a nonchalant, relaxed expression, as if your mind is running through all the possibilities offered before making a spontaneous decision. Then turn decisively away, go to the stove and get the pasta water going before starting in on the sauce. Do everything with panache and naturalezza. Maybe sing a bit. But not too much, okay?’
She pointed to the kitchen counter.
‘The ingredients will be laid out here. Just pick out the ones we’ve been through with Righi and leave the rest alone. No last-minute improvisation, please. I’ll arrange for a litre bottle of Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta oil to be placed here. Naturally a celebrity such as you wouldn’t dream of using an inferior product, plus it’ll give our label some nice exposure.’
She looked around.
‘What else? Knives here, next to the cutting board. Pans over here. When the dish is ready, press this buzzer. Someone will come and take the pasta bowl from you and carry it out behind the set and in through the back of the dining area, so that in theory the jurors don’t know which kitchen it came from. In fact your bowl has a distinctive orange patterning at the rim, subtly different from Ugo’s. Our people will be in no doubt about which one is which.’
She looked at him.
‘Any questions?’
‘Something’s going to go wrong,’ the man replied in a dull voice. ‘I just know it.’
‘For God’s sake, Romano! Nothing will go wrong. Nothing can. I’ve covered all the angles. All you have to do is be here on time, with a clear head, and put together a simple bowl of pasta that even I could make blindfold. Besides, it doesn’t matter if it’s any good or not. Haven’t you understood yet? You’re bound to win! It’s all been arranged.’
She glanced at her watch.
‘Right, let’s go back to the hotel. The press conference starts in half an hour.’
When they had left, Flavia finished up her cleaning, then returned all the equipment to the storage room before leaving the concrete wasteland of the fiera complex and heading for the bus stop. The video display indicated that a smog alert was in effect, all vehicles with uneven numbered plates being banned from the streets, and that her bus would arrive in six minutes. She took out her phone and dialled.
‘It’s me. I had to work overtime because of this chef’s duel they’re having tomorrow. Where are you? Oh. Well, I’m starving. La Carrozza in half an hour? Yes, I know you’re going through a bad patch, Rodolfo, but it will do you good to get out. Ah, here’s my bus. A presto, caro.’
Flavia climbed aboard the bus with a smile on her lips that had nothing whatever to do with the silly intrigues on which she had been eavesdropping. I’m going to meet my prince, she thought.
14
Aurelio Zen’s mind was wandering, and he was happy to let it do so. The air was acrid and savagely cold, the night starkly bright. On a frozen, floodlit field far below, men in suits and dark overcoats stood in line, heads bowed respectfully, awaiting their turn to step up to the podium and deliver a speech concerning the various virtues of Lorenzo Curti, their personal sense of loss and their perspectives on the unspeakable tragedy that his untimely death represented to everyone foregathered there, to the wider footballing community united at this moment in grief and remembrance, to the city of Bologna and indeed the nation and the world in general.
The surrounding environment consisted of concrete, steel and rows of blue plastic bucket seats which the spectators had lined with newspapers to protect their clothing from the residue of filth deposited there by the polluted void above. Apart from the amplified eulogies, the only sound was from the crowd of hardcore ultra fans at the far end of the stadium, who kept up a continuous low ululation, presumably a spontaneous expression of respect.
‘I’ll see you in the bar,’ Zen told Bruno Nanni, getting up and starting along the narrow row between the seats towards the nearest aisle.
Atotal stranger whose foot Zen inadvertently stepped on looked up at him truculently.
‘Leaving already? You might show a little respect.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Zen replied, shaking his head. ‘I just can’t take any more. It’s like a death in the family. Do you understand?’
The man’s expression changed to one of sympathy and he nodded.
Zen made his way through the cavernous vaults and vomitories of the stadium until he finally emerged in the bleak piazzetta outside, its scruffy grass borders and failed shrubs and trees exposed beneath the powerful and pitiless lighting ranged high overhead on steel poles.
On their arrival, Bruno had pointed out a bar in a neighbouring street as the unofficial clubhouse of the diehard Bologna supporters. At present the latter were still all inside the stadium, and the bar was almost empty. The most conspicuous figure was a bulky man wearing a double-breasted overcoat, a grey trilby and dark glasses. He was leaning casually against the rear wall, sipping a tumbler of whiskey and smoking an unfiltered American cigarette, and was fairly obviously a private detective. Apart from him, there were just three elderly men playing cards at the rear of the premises, and a woman of about their age who was sipping a glass of Fernet Branca and murmuring in a sustained monologue to a Pekinese dog that was a triumph of the taxidermist’s art.
‘…personally I want to be burnt when the time comes, even though it turns out you pay the same either way, well of course you don’t pay but…’
The ceiling was festooned with banners and flags in the team’s red and blue colours, and the walls were covered in photographs of cup and league-winning squads dating back to well before World War Two. Zen ordered a coffee with a shot of grappa and took it over to a table.
Almost half an hour passed before the crowd started drifting out of the stadium. The bar soon filled up with young males wearing baseball caps, floppy jackets, even floppier pants, and synthetic sports shoes constructed along the lines of a club sandwich. They adopted a wide-legged stance, taking up as much room as possible, and loitered there with indefinite but vaguely menacing intent, talking and staring and drinking and twitching.
Feeling slightly overwhelmed, Zen stood up and found an elbow-level ledge against the mirror-clad pillar in the centre of the bar. The man dressed up as a private eye had now removed his shades and was gazing with intense concentration at a knot of particularly obnoxious newcomers who had taken up position to Zen’s right. He kept bringing his right hand up to his face to inspect something in the palm, a mobile phone perhaps. The thought spurred Zen to check his own, which he had switched off in the stadium out of respect for the occasion. A text message appeared: coming bo tomorrow lunch? He hit the speed-dial buttons for the Lucca number, but there was
