‘I’m kind of like the new kid on the block here, so it would be real helpful to have someone who can bring me up to speed on the background and the current state of play. If you’re free, that is.’
‘Free as the wind,’ the voice replied tonelessly.
‘Well, how about dinner? I’m staying at a different hotel, but what say I swing by your place about six? Do you know somewhere that does good food?’
‘Sure, but they don’t really get going till eight.’
‘They don’t?’
‘Nowhere does.’
‘That late? Wow, this is seriously foreign. Still, when in Rome, I guess! Okay, how does a quarter of eight sound? Good speaking with you, Tom.’
Martin’s next call, to Phil Larson, was pitched in a rather different register.
‘Nguyen. I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Anything new?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Any fresh ideas about narrowing the search area?’
‘Not till someone firms up the variables in the equation for me, Mr Nguyen.’
‘I’ve got a team doing that right now. They’ll email me their conclusions by midnight tonight local time. When do you start work?’
‘We get to the site at five-thirty and airborne around six.’
‘Be there no later than five tomorrow. I need to brief you.’
The next call was the one that Martin had been dreading, but it had to be made. After ploughing through a security cordon of call-catchers, he finally got Luciano Aldobrandini on the line. At least the great director spoke excellent English.
‘Good of you to take my call, maestro,’ Martin gushed.
‘I’d told Pippo that I was at home to nobody, but money doesn’t speak, it shouts, as your famous cantautore put it. What can I do for you, Signor Nguyen?’
Martin gave out the warm guffaw of a door-to-door salesman working up to his pitch.
‘Well, maestro, I just flew into Rome so I thought I’d give you a call.’
‘You are in Rome now?’
Aldobrandini’s tone was not welcoming.
‘No, no, I’m on my way to Cosenza. As you know, our representative there has gone missing and I’ve been sent over to sort out the loose ends and get everything back on track. So I was kind of wondering if we might get together at some stage and hash out any outstanding issues.’
The film director’s voice changed, perhaps consciously, to one of unctuous menace.
‘No problem at all. A berth is in preparation.’
‘A birth?’
‘At Marina di Fuscaldo, for my yacht. It’s the only place down that way to put up in season but parking’s always a problem. I had to bounce out a couple of boaters who’d had the nerve to reserve months ago. One doesn’t like to pull rank — a trifle vulgar, I always think — but sometimes it’s the only way to get what one wants. The port is in a very nice position, with a splendid view of the precipitous coastline, and only twenty minutes or so from Cosenza. Why don’t you drop by for cocktails one day, if you’re not too busy? Among his many and varied talents, my assistant Pippo mixes the best martini this side of the Pillars of Hercules.’
The director’s love of his own voice was his downfall. A moment before, Martin had been bemused, but by the time silence finally fell he was back on task.
‘So when do you plan to start shooting, maestro?’
‘We dock tomorrow afternoon and I propose to get down to work as soon as possible after that. I’ve spent months planning this project and have achieved as much as I can at the theoretical level. My creative juices don’t really get flowing until the cameras start to turn, so I naturally want to move on to that stage as soon as possible.’
‘I see,’ replied Martin.
‘I doubt it, but that’s irrelevant. What I need from you is the money which you are contracted to pay to my agent on the first day of principal photography. I assume there will be no problem with that.’
‘No, no. No, of course not.’
‘Then I think we have nothing further to discuss at present. My cell phone has noted your number and I shall be in touch as soon as my ship comes in, so to speak.’
Martin Nguyen hung up and stared forwards through the windscreen. They had been sweeping up a long curve along the flank of a mountain range, but the magisterial progress of the Mercedes was now impeded by two articulated lorries engaged in a truckers’ duel on the steep gradient. Clearly frustrated and humiliated at being able to go no faster than seventy, Martin’s driver sent his vehicle darting to this side and that like a hummingbird, probing for an opening, then rammed his foot down and surged forward through a momentary gap between the two giant vehicles.
‘Yeah, go for it!’ Martin yelled. ‘Stick it to him! Ram it up his ass till he bleeds! Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him!’
Natale Arnone reappeared in Zen’s office two minutes before his deadline expired. He had phoned in earlier to report that the fingerprints of the corpse found at Altomonte matched those of Peter Newman and that the American’s son had left his hotel at about two o’clock that afternoon but had not yet returned. The rest of Arnone’s afternoon and early evening had been spent tracking down any surviving members of the Calopezzati family, as well as the individual named on Pietro Ottavio’s birth certificate as the father. The latter had turned out to be a dead end.
‘I checked with our central database in Rome as well as those for the civil authorities of every region in the country. The name Azzo Plecita does not appear in any of them. Only a fraction of the earlier paper archives have been digitalised, of course, but it did occur to me that la baronessa might just have made it all up.’
‘Why would she do that?’
Arnone looked pleased by Zen’s interest in his theory.
‘Well, we know that she never married, so the child was evidently illegitimate. Ottavia’s lawyer could easily have forged a document purporting to be a sworn declaration from the imaginary father to the effect that he wished his son to be named Calopezzati. That and a few bribes or threats to the clerk in Spezzano would have done it.’
A vague, dreamy look came over Zen’s face. He was silent for a full thirty seconds, then slapped his palm on the desk so hard it made Arnone start.
‘Azzo Plecita!’ he cried. ‘Calopezzati! It’s an anagram of her own name. She wanted to produce a surrogate heir while keeping the whole thing in the family and excluding outsiders.’
‘We can be a bit like that down here,’ Arnone admitted.
‘So what did you find out about the baronial bastard farmers?’
‘That took longer, because I had to search the local paper trail as well. The net result is that the only surviving members with any relation to the Calopezzati are a stepdaughter last heard of thirty years ago and a half-cousin who may or may not have emigrated to Australia.’
‘What about the brother, Roberto?’
‘It appears that he had strong connections with the Fascist movement back in the 1930s and later went on to fight in the colonial wars, Greece, Albania and back here after the Allied invasion. After that his name disappears from the records. It may well be that he was killed but never identified.’
Zen dismissed his subordinate and then sat quite silent and still, staring at the wall, until Giovanni Sforza walked in and suggested that they repair to a bar.