Authors: Michael Dibdin
He glanced at Zen.
‘Tell your Roman friend to invest with confidence. This is going to be a quite exceptional wine. At a quite exceptional price, naturally.’
‘I don’t think the price is a problem.’
‘Unless you set it too low! The market’s so hot these days that you can sell practically anything as long as it’s expensive enough. But if you don’t charge stellar prices, the serious collectors will sneer at you. “Why, anyone could afford that,” they think.’
He gestured towards a door in the wall.
‘Let’s go and find Andrea.’
Manlio Vincenzo led the way into the next part of the connected sheds, closing the door carefully behind him. In the sorting room which Zen and Carla had first entered, there was little evidence apart from the bunches of grapes themselves that wine was being produced there, rather than knitwear or ceramics. In the room in which they now found themselves, this fact was primary and dominant, confirmed by a pervasive stench at once as heady as petroleum and as dank and dark as hanging meat or rotten leaves.
The space was almost entirely occupied by a number of huge fermentation vats made of deeply stained oak banded with metal. The pipe which had disappeared into the wall next door emerged here at the same inclined angle, running up to a level above the vats, into one of which it discharged a gush of rich red juice. Manlio waved to a woman standing on a ladder attached to the side of the vat being filled. He climbed up to join her and peer down into the internal cavity. They had a brief discussion, then came down to join their impromptu guests.
Once Carla and Andrea had been introduced, Manlio led them outside into the blissfully fresh air.
‘You’ll have to forgive Rosa,’ he warned Zen. ‘She’s a little eccentric at times, but a wonderful housekeeper. I shall miss her.’
‘Is she leaving?’ asked Carla.
‘No, we are,’ Andrea replied.
‘I hope we’re not inconveniencing you,’ said Zen.
Manlio laughed.
‘At vintage time Rosa cooks for everyone, including all the student pickers and the sorting ladies. It’s a sort of informal festa, and there’s always too much food. Rosa grew up on a big farm, but now she lives alone in an apartment in the village with no one to care for except herself, and she doesn’t care about herself. So at this time of year, it’s as if the world has suddenly started to make sense again. Lots of people around, masses of food being served, a scene of chaos and purpose. I’ll swear she looks about ten years younger!’
As promised, the meal was copious, simple and good: homemade pasta ribbons with a wild mushroom sauce, followed by roast chicken and a selection of fruit. Several of Manlio’s neighbours who were helping him out with the vintage joined them at table, so the subject which had brought Zen there was not raised until the meal was over and the neighbours had returned to work, along with Andrea, who quickly sized up the situation and suggested that Carla join her.
When Zen and Manlio Vincenzo were alone, the younger man poured them both another glass of the wine they had been drinking, regarding Zen in the manner which he recognized by now as an invitation to make a fool of himself by commenting on the beverage in question.
‘Interesting,’ he remarked urbanely, choosing an adjective which seemed promisingly vague.
The look which Manlio Vincenzo gave him suggested that this was not quite enough.
‘A very long finish,’ Zen added. ‘Which brings me to my reason for troubling you today, Signor Vincenzo. As I mentioned earlier, I have some good news. We have made an arrest in the matter of your father’s murder. It is supported by a full and voluntary confession, not to mention various pieces of material evidence. There is thus no doubt that the judges responsible will confirm your unconditional discharge within a few days. In short, your legal worries are over.’
Manlio Vincenzo nodded coolly.
‘So who did it?’
Zen lit a Nazionale with the air of someone who didn’t care if the bouquet of the wine was adversely affected.
‘My report to the judiciary will conclude that the crime was a conspiracy between Gianni and Maurizio Faigano, although the former has tried to take all the blame on himself.’
Manlio started forward so suddenly that he upset his water glass.
‘The Faigano brothers? But that’s absurd!’
He picked up his toppled glass mechanically, frowning.
‘There was that stupid business of my father trying to talk me into marrying the daughter, but I explained the whole thing to her privately, and of course it came to nothing. Why on earth should the Faiganos have wanted to kill my father?’
Zen slurped some more wine into his glass, blinking from the cigarette smoke which had got in his eyes.
‘According to the confession deposed by Gianni Faigano before me and a court-appointed lawyer in my office yesterday, the motive for the crime dates back more than four decades. Signor Faigano claims that he and your late mother, Chiara Cravioli as she then was, were sweethearts at that time. They planned to marry, but since Gianni was unemployed, Chiara’s father would not approve the marriage. It was at this point that your father entered the picture.
‘What happened next is based on Faigano’s account of what your mother told him when she explained why she was breaking off their unofficial engagement. There is no proof that it is true, and at this late stage there probably never will be, but your father allegedly went to Signor Cravioli and asked permission to court his daughter. This was readily given, since Aldo Vincenzo was a man of property and an excellent match.
‘As for Chiara, she agreed to the engagement, partly out of fear of her father and partly to provide her with a screen behind which she and Gianni could continue, however infrequently, to see each other. Whenever Aldo tried to fix the date of the marriage, she pleaded for more time, hoping that he would eventually lose interest. But he didn’t, because his interest wasn’t in her but in the Cravioli property, which would come to Chiara when her parents died.
‘And then one day – this is all according to Gianni Faigano, I repeat – Aldo took her out for a drive in the country, and in a wood down by a river he raped her. Repeatedly. And then he looked at her and said, “From now on, I won’t bother you any more. Let nature take its course. If you’re with child, I’ll marry you and legitimize my heir. If you’re not, I’ll put it about that I’ve had you, and you’ll be ruined unless you accept me. The choice is all yours,
signorina
.”’
Manlio Vincenzo was staring down at the spreading stain of damp on the tablecloth with the silent intensity of a gambler watching a spinning roulette wheel. The door opened and Rosa appeared, a creature from another world, blithe and unconcerned.
‘
Vattene!
’ barked Manlio rudely.
The old woman looked at him as though he had struck her, then shuffled out again, slamming the door behind her. Manlio glanced up at Zen.
‘Go on.’
Zen crushed out his cigarette.
‘Well, it turned out that Chiara
was
pregnant. She went to Gianni, explained what had happened and what she had to do as a result, which was to marry Aldo. Her child was more important than her feelings, and her duty was to ensure its future by marrying the father. Gianni broke down and wept at this point of his confession. He said that that day was the blackest in his entire life, for he couldn’t fault her logic, despite the fact that it put an end to any chance of happiness for either of them.
‘Chiara duly married your father, only to suffer a miscarriage in her eighth month. Gianni claimed that your father struck her while they were having an argument, but that may be malicious gossip. At all events, almost ten years passed before you were born. And all that time, and ever since, Gianni Faigano carried this terrible secret about with him. At their last meeting before the marriage, Chiara had explicitly forbidden him to denounce or harm the man who had raped her and whom she was now forced to marry. That was why he could do nothing until she died.’
There was a long silence. Then Manlio looked up at Zen.
‘But is it true?’
Zen stared at him coldly.
‘I don’t criticize your wine, Signor Vincenzo. Please accord me the same professional courtesy. The truth of the matter is, of course, for the courts to decide, but let me tell you that if you’d been present in the room when Gianni Faigano made his statement, sobbing and distraught, you wouldn’t doubt its truth.’
He lit another cigarette.
‘Besides, who’s going to confess without the slightest pressure to a murder he didn’t commit?’
‘I suppose you’re right. It’s just that I’ve never thought of Gianni as a killer. He might
want
to be – who hasn’t? – but he never struck me as someone who could actually bring it off.’
‘When you’ve had as much experience as I have, Signor Vincenzo, you realize that murderers don’t have forked tails and horns on their heads.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,
dottore
. In any case, this is certainly good news as far as I’m concerned. Not only that, but you’ve helped me make a decision that I’ve been dithering over for days. Or rather, you’ve helped me realize that I’d actually already made it.’
‘What decision?’
Manlio smiled.
‘Andrea and I have been toying with the idea of selling up here and moving to Chile. It’s an exciting place for wine these days, and she knows a lot of people there. We have an option on some land in the Maipo Valley, which is their equivalent of Napa. My idea is to retain a few non-DOC fields here in Piedmont and replant them with Cabernet, Merlot and Syrah, from which I would make an unofficial “signature” wine I could sell for a fortune to collectors less single-minded than your Roman
intenditore
.’
He raised his right forefinger.
‘And because Chile’s in the other hemisphere, their vintage is in January and February. Andrea and I could make our wine down there, then fly back here to look after this end of things. Two harvests a year, and perpetual summer! What more could anyone want?’
‘It sounds delightful.’
‘Yes, but at some level I was still undecided. After what you’ve just told me, I have no further doubts. The land my father acquired in the way you’ve just described will be tainted for as long as it remains in the Vincenzo family. I knew nothing about this terrible story, but my intuition was correct. I’ll make this one last vintage of Vincenzo Barbaresco, and then put the property on the market. Thanks to you,
dottore
, my mind’s made up!’
He looked at Zen and gestured to the door.
‘Shall we go and see how the women are doing?’
Minot was the way he liked it: alone. His recent forays into the world had been entirely successful. That was why he was able to be alone. That was success, to so arrange things that they left you alone.
It was almost dawn by the time he got home. A bitter, recalcitrant glimmer had begun to infect the darkness, revealing the extent of the devastation caused by the gales which had swept the region for the past week. Bare tree limbs poked the sky like reinforcing wire bereft of its concrete cladding. Stripped of their fruit, the vines looked like a beaten army, their serried rank and order a hollow mockery.
Still worse were those fields whose owners had gambled on the good weather holding out another precious few days, and whose harvest now languished in a heavy, sodden, putrescent mess beyond retrieval. Like the invaders they were, the wind and rain had come from the north, sweeping down without warning and laying waste to whatever remained of the summer; an impersonal obliteration, impartial and absolute.
But what was bad for wine was good for truffles, as traditional wisdom had it, and this local saying was borne out by Minot’s bag that night. He had spent over eight hours skulking through groves of oak and linden with Anna, encouraging the hound with the constant muffled chant,
‘Péila cà jé! Péila cà jé!’
He then excavated the heavy clay the dog pointed out with his mattock, revealing the nest of tubers, and finally teased out the buff-coloured nuggets and stashed them safely away in his pocket. Anna had meanwhile been bought off with a dog biscuit, a token of her master’s appreciation.
He must have gathered over a dozen truffles, several the size of new potatoes, and more than half of the superior female variety. Depending on where he placed them, he could be looking at almost a million lire for his night’s work. For Anna’s work, rather, but she was no more demanding than the rats. The biscuits, at a few hundred lire a box, were enough to keep her sweet. What she craved was to feel appreciated. It was not the gift but the thought behind it which counted. She and Minot understood each other perfectly.
Their relationship went back a long way, well before her legal owner’s death. It had started when Minot discovered some hand-written receipts one day at Beppe’s house while the latter was absent, proving that Gallizio had earned substantial sums of money from the sale of truffles supposedly from the prized Alba region, but in fact imported from such far-off and unfashionable localities as Lombardy, the Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and even Umbria.
It amazed Minot that Beppe was capable of such entrepreneurial initiative, and still more that he would be fool enough to keep the evidence stashed away in an unlocked drawer, like a bunch of love letters! There it was, nevertheless, and once he had outlined to Beppe the likely consequences of such documents falling into the hands of the
fisc
– tax evasion plus commercial fraud was a lethal combination – it had proved relatively easy to negotiate a compromise permitting Minot to borrow Anna for his nocturnal expeditions on those occasions when Beppe was otherwise employed.
Unfortunately, and through no fault of his own, this arrangement was to lead to Beppe’s untimely demise. It had all started when one of the Faigano brothers had mentioned hearing Anna barking from the neighbouring Vincenzo land on the morning of Aldo’s death. That chance remark had tied them all together like one of those cords they used to have on the railway, running back from the locomotive to the guard’s van, for use in case of emergency. Once it was pulled, the whole train ground to a halt, while the tell-tale sag in one compartment pointed to the guilty party.