‘Your fee.’
‘My agreed fee was ten per cent of the ransom, Giorgio. We haven’t even started negotiating yet. How can you possibly know how much the family will end up paying?’
‘There won’t be any negotiations. You get a kill fee of a thousand. Take it.’
‘What do you mean, no negotiations? What’s happened? What’s going on?’
‘At the back of the barn you’ll find an old Vespa. Full tank, key in the ignition. Turn right when you reach the road, then left at the next junction. After that follow the signs for Cosenza. Dump the scooter in the outskirts and take a bus into town.’
There was a long silence.
‘And Newman?’ asked Mantega.
‘He died.’
The two men stared at each other.
‘What?’ Mantega shouted. ‘You let your hostage die and now you expect to buy me off with a lousy thousand euros? You must be crazy!’
Giorgio unhooked the torch from its support.
‘Let me show you how crazy I am.’
He shone the stark beam up and to one side, coming to rest on one of the transverse timbers supporting the roof. Attached to the side of the joist was a silver box terminating in a glittering glass eye.
‘Digital camcorder,’ said Giorgio. ‘I switched it on by remote control when I fetched the grappa and off again when I went back for the bottle. One of my cumpagni fixed it up for me, as well as the wire to hang up the torch that would draw you into its field of view.’
He shone the light straight into Mantega’s face, blinding him.
‘You have not only admitted your part in the kidnapping but claimed that the whole thing was your idea. Without you it wouldn’t have been possible, you said. I kept my back to the camera all along, but I made sure that you were facing it. If I get arrested because you’ve blabbed, under duress or not, that video will end up in the hands of this new chief of police you’re so scared of.’
He turned off the torch, leaving them both in the dark.
‘Drive carefully, Nicoletta.’
‘ I calabresi non sanno fare squadra. Tutto li! They can’t play as a team and so they’re condemned to remain ineffective whingers, always complaining that the state handouts they live on aren’t generous enough.’
As if to illustrate his thesis, Giovanni Sforza attracted the waiter’s attention with a loud ‘ Eh! ’ and then stabbed his finger at the bread basket and the wine carafe. Moments later, both had been replenished.
‘You see?’ demanded Sforza. ‘Bullying and beating is the only language they understand.’
‘You sound like one of those racists who want to declare an independent Padania,’ said Zen.
‘I’m not a racist, I’m a realist,’ Sforza returned mildly. ‘A racist believes that a designated ethnic group can never function and compete effectively because of its innate deficiencies. I don’t believe that. All I’m saying is that the Calabrians do not in fact function or compete effectively, despite having been given every opportunity to do so. Look at the Irish, by way of comparison. Their historical and economic circumstances were very similar for centuries, yet now their country is per capita one of the richest and most successful in Europe.’
Zen didn’t want to talk about Ireland. In fact he didn’t really want to talk at all, but Giovanni had invited him to lunch and it would have been churlish to refuse. Sforza was an overweight, melancholic individual from Bergamo who freely admitted that the only reason he had accepted his present posting as deputy questore in Cosenza was because it meant promotion. He and Zen saw eye to eye on almost everything that mattered, and tactfully agreed to differ on all the things that didn’t.
‘Anyway, I’ve ranted enough,’ said Sforza, reminding Zen of why he liked him. ‘How’s the Newman case going?’
‘No word yet from the kidnappers, but I’ve discovered one possibly significant fact. The victim’s original name was not in fact Newman.’
Sforza made a visible effort to appear interested.
‘Really? So what was it? Mickey Mouse? Arnold Schwarzenegger?’
‘Pietro Ottavio Calopezzati. He was born here in the province of Cosenza.’
Sforza shrugged.
‘In the two decades before the Great War, the south lost more men to emigration than the entire country lost fighting in that war.’
‘The significance is threefold,’ Zen replied. ‘First of all, he lied about his identity, even to his son. Lying is always significant, since by nature we’re truth tellers. Secondly, the documents relating to his American citizenship are held in a classified file marked “For Official Use Only”. And finally, the Calopezzati family used to be the greatest landowners in these parts. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.’
Sforza shook his head.
‘So what? The latifondo system is as obsolete as Russian serfdom. Far enough removed from us now, in fact, that we can even afford to indulge in a little nostalgia. If you ever drive over to the east coast, take a look around the Marchesato. You realise instantly that the only viable way to make any economic sense of that lunar landscape is intensive, centralised wheat farming on a massive scale with low labour costs.’
Zen laughed.
‘You’re sounding a little sentimental, Giovanni. Are you sure you’re not secretly voting for the Lega Nord?’
Sforza erased that suggestion with a decisive swipe of his hand, but his eyes smiled.
‘You know the old saying — once a Communist, always a Communist.’
‘So you still believe in that line in the Marxist creed: “to each according to his needs”?’
‘Devoutly.’
‘Well, my needs presently include tracking down any surviving members of the Calopezzati clan and getting as much information as possible about their whereabouts and activities during the war years. Can you help?’
‘Yes, but I need to smoke. Let’s pay these swine and adjourn to a cafe.’
They found a suitable place a few doors away, with tables on the street where they could smoke. The coffee was tolerable, but Giovanni Sforza was incredible. He swung into action as one to the manner born, calling a dozen of his contacts and gouging the information he needed out of each until a complete network had come into being and formulated a result, which he then communicated to Zen.
‘The man you need is Cataldo Antonacci. He curates the archives and local history section of the provincial museum. What he doesn’t know about events around here for the last thousand years is not worth knowing. He’s expecting you within the hour.’
‘Did you explain the nature of my interest?’
‘Naturally not. I merely said that the chief of police wished to consult him about a matter that he had not disclosed to me but which might quite possibly be legally privileged. He sounded very impressed.’
Twenty minutes later, Zen was in an elegant building on a quiet piazza high above the sterile grid of the modern city below, discussing the origins of the latifondo system in general and of the Calopezzati family in particular with Cataldo Antonacci. The historian’s expression of benign bemusement suggested that Zen’s visit possibly constituted a slight indelicacy, but one which he was too well bred to bring to his guest’s attention. Nor, needless to say, did he enquire why such an eminent official as the capo della polizia for the province of Cosenza was so interested in a dry subject that most people had learned about at school and promptly forgotten.
With exquisite tact and a welcome gift for concise synthesis, he related the origins of the huge southern estates in land grants made by the Spanish viceroys of Naples during the eighteenth century, and in their subsequent enlargement by shrewd purchases from adjoining landowners, often ancient noble families who had got into debt and needed cash fast. The key to success, the archivist explained, was to get possession of a property large enough to be virtually self-sufficient, to allow diversity of production involving economies of scale thus insulated from the vagaries of the market. The continuing integrity of the operation was then guaranteed by strict adherence to the primogeniture system, under which the eldest son inherited everything, the other males being maintained on an allowance but forbidden to marry.
‘To do that successfully over many generations requires good luck or good genes. The Calopezzati were gifted with both. They were of humble origins, small landowners from Cosenza, but they proved exceptionally astute and energetic in developing and managing their property, which eventually extended from the wheat plains around Crotone to the alpine forests and summer pastures of the Sila massif above us to the east. There was constant tension and occasional strife with the local peasantry, most usually over the encroachment and expropriation of smallholdings and common land bordering the Calopezzati domains, but in general the system worked fairly smoothly. By the mid-nineteenth century the family had been raised to baronial rank, was immensely wealthy and kept a splendid palace in Naples.’