Just then, a man bumps into her as he rushes out of the porch of an apartment building. She is knocked off balance, protests aloud. The man does not turn round but runs faster. He is wearing a white T-shirt and jeans and a stylish panama hat pulled down over his eyes. Lisa doesn’t get a look at his face. Then one thing follows another, as with a well-oiled machine. The man in the panama is closing in on the couple. A motorbike rides slowly up the street, and passes Lisa. The
man in the panama catches up with the couple. Lisa hears a gunshot. No mistaking it, she’s heard enough in her life to know. A single shot. She freezes, and at the same time sees Filippo collapse, the bike pass the couple in slow motion, the man in the panama jump on to the pillion, the bike roar off, and Cristina spin round and crumple on to the pavement. Lisa springs into action, races towards the two bodies on the ground, screaming, ‘Help … Help!’
When she reaches them, she glances at Filippo’s body lying face down, a black hole in the centre of his back, his lovely beige jacket scorched. A pool of blood is spreading over the pavement close to his left shoulder. Dead. Too late to do anything. She quickly turns to Cristina, lying on her back, her entire body rigid, her face ashen, the whites of her eyes showing, her jaw locked. Lisa tries to raise Cristina’s head, but is unable to. Suddenly her body goes into spasm, shudders, her teeth chattering. Lisa, desperate, doesn’t know what to do. She looks up. A few people appear at their windows, alerted by the gunshot and her screams. A stranger is standing next to her.
‘I’m a doctor. My surgery is in the apartment building over the road. I heard the shot, and then your screams. This woman is having an epileptic fit. Do you know if it’s happened before?’
‘No, not that I’m aware of.’
‘I’ve already called an ambulance and the police. You don’t look too good either. I’m going to get a chair so you can sit down until the police get here. Don’t take it as an excuse to faint, please.’
The ambulance arrives very quickly and Cristina, still unconscious, is driven off to the nearest hospital. Shortly afterwards, three police cars pull up, sirens wailing. The police block off the street and cordon off the crime scene. A plain-clothes police officer takes Lisa to one side and starts questioning her, while others try and gather statements from the neighbours.
For the time being, Lisa is the only witness. ID? Italian refugee. Aha … Did she know the victim? Yes, Filippo Zuliani, also an Italian. The police officer looks up from his notebook.
‘The guy who wrote a book about how he assassinated a
carabiniere
, and boasts about it?’
Lisa shrugs helplessly.
‘If you like…’
The police officer barely lowers his voice.
‘Good riddance.’
Then she has to say, and repeat over again, the same words, explain what the three of them had been doing at the Café Pouchkine, the couple leaving together first, Lisa staying behind to pay. No, they hadn’t had a quarrel.
‘That’s not what the barman says.’
It was a discussion, they had disagreed, but it wasn’t a quarrel. She had not fallen out with the dead man. Well … not like that. When she came out, the man in the panama, no, she hadn’t seen his face. Height, build, age … in his thirties or forties, not all that young, quite well-built, that was all she could say. The motorbike, no, she hadn’t seen the licence plate, not even certain whether it had one … the police officer presses her … or not.
When he repeats his questions for the fourth time, night has fallen and Lisa, exhausted, asks him what he’s driving at, exactly.
‘All three of you are Italian, two of you are refugees with a dodgy background, possible disagreements between you back in Italy, where there are lots of shootings. You met at the café, there was a heated discussion, you didn’t leave with him. You saw the killers, but you haven’t given me any useful information. So I’m asking myself, and I’m asking you: did you lure this Filippo into a trap and give the signal to the killers?’
Probably due to the shock of the murder or the exhaustion of being interrogated, Lisa bursts out laughing.
‘I think you’re as paranoid as I am. But you’ve got a point. I’m not able to prove that I didn’t kill Filippo Zuliani.’
Now she understands what the officer wants to get out of her, she is able to breathe more easily. She is no longer in the surreal realm of the nightmare. She gets her breath back, finds her nerve, and casts her eye over the crime scene. The body has been removed, the job of the police seems to be done. A small group of onlookers is still hanging around, Roberto is in the front row. How did he hear? Always there when she needs him. The sight of him comforts her, she waves to him, smiles at him.
Shortly afterwards the police pack up their equipment. Lisa, whose home and workplace addresses have been checked out, is allowed to go home – she’ll be summoned to the police station later. She falls into Roberto’s arms. The worst of the shock has been cushioned. Too late to cry. A pity.
Her staunch friend has thought of everything. Nothing like a good meal to help face up to death. In their infinite wisdom, both French and Italian traditions prescribe a feast after a funeral. Even more reason for one after an assassination. So he takes her for dinner to the best local eatery, the only one that stays open so late. Sébillon, famed for its leg of lamb.
Lisa has great difficulty regaining her composure. She is caught up in the brutality of the absurd, torn between hysteria and despair. As they sit down at their table, Roberto first of all asks after Cristina.
‘You told me she was coming to the Café Pouchkine with you. I looked everywhere for her, but I couldn’t find her.’
‘After our meeting, she left with Filippo, to take him home to bed.’
‘So he came off best in your duel?’
‘I think that now I can admit it, yes, definitely. I didn’t even get off the ground and he was flying in the stratosphere. So, Cristina was on Filippo’s arm when he was shot.’
‘Shit!’
‘She had an epileptic fit and was taken to hospital, I don’t know which one. And right now, I don’t care. I’ll think about it tomorrow.’
She sips a pleasant Loire wine, breathes deeply then takes the plunge.
‘Roberto, I’d never have thought our secret service would assassinate Filippo. I’m thinking it’s more likely to be Bonamico.’
‘Stop fantasising, please. Not now. It’s creepy. And eat.’
‘Why did they kill him? Because they knew we were on Bonamico’s trail, and that we have proof? I don’t see the connection.’
‘That’s absurd. They didn’t know. Who could have told them? Neither you nor I, and no one else knows about your investigation. Satisfied?’
Lisa attacks her food. Delicious lamb, cooked to perfection, the meat melts in her mouth. It’s tricky, cooking leg of lamb. Someone knew. She thought of her telephone conversations with Stefania, the
Corriere di Brescia
journalist.
‘My boss asked me if I was in contact with you.’
The information had surfaced and quickly. Am I the one who sparked the whole thing off? No way I can tell Roberto. Stefania’s voice continues to ring in her ears.
Suddenly she freezes, fork halfway to her mouth. What had Stefania said? Bonamico, the lover of the Tomasino girl, the Brescia banking family, a photo from 1974, a terrifying face, the eyebrows joined, the scar … Just like Marco in
Escape
: eyebrows, scar, vicious, brutal … Filippo saw Bonamico with Carlo, he says so in his book. And the moment Prosecutor Sebastiani tried to bring him back to Italy to stand trial – and was likely to succeed – was the moment Filippo was sentenced to death. Lisa closes her eyes. A hollow ache in her chest. Hard to accept. Even the story he told me about his and Carlo’s escape, more than a year ago, was no more reliable than the rest. At the end of the day, maybe he did take part in the hold-up after all. I’ll never know. No choice, I’ll have to live with it. She slowly readjusts to the reality of the restaurant, Roberto, their conversation. It’s no longer a time for passion, but for appraisal.
In a neutral voice, she says, ‘The French police will conduct
a lengthy investigation into Filippo’s assassination, but they won’t find the killers. They’ll only be sure of one thing. The
modus operandi
: a professional hit man, a single bullet shot at point-blank range, an accomplice on a motorbike, speedy getaway, no clues, no witnesses, it’s a professional hit. Then a police officer will recall having read Filippo’s book: Carlo’s double was shot after the Rome gang informed on him. To avenge him, Filippo’s double shoots Marco, the leader of the Rome gang, who take their revenge by having Filippo killed. It all makes sense.’
‘You’re talking nonsense.’
‘You’ll see. I’m willing to bet on it.’
Roberto desperately casts about for a topic of conversation to distract her.
‘It would be better to talk about our own affairs. There’s no reason not to continue with Bonamico. Who shall we contact to publish your report?’
Lisa stops eating, she looks straight through Roberto, and stares into the far distance.
‘I don’t think you realise what’s just happened. We’re not going to publish anything at all. There’s no point. There’s nothing more to be done. Nobody can fight against a death as romantic as Filippo’s. He’s become a sort of legend, that of the hoodlum at a turning point in his life – he steals, he kills, he writes and he dies at the age of twenty-three, shot on the streets of Paris by strangers, with a bullet straight through his heart. Twenty-three years old, just think. The age I was when I met Carlo. Filippo is a comet, and his book will now be sacrosanct. He has taken Carlo off into a world of his own. Nothing more to be done. Adieu, Carlo,
bon voyage
.’
‘Are you giving up?’
Still gazing into the distance, she says nothing for a while.
‘Yes, I’m giving up. That particular battle’s lost. If I want to try and salvage our past, there’s only one thing left for me to do. Write novels.’
Dominique Manotti uses two historical references that may be unfamiliar to readers, the more so since the second is fictitious. Years of Lead and Years of Fire frame the events of
Escape
. Its author is a former trade unionist and political militant, for many years a professor of nineteenth-century history at the University of Vincennes during its most actively radical period. Manotti’s ten novels all explore unholy alliances forged between crime and politics.
Escape
is no different but changes context – from Poland to Korea to Turkey in previous works – and looks south to Italy during the years of Red Brigades activism in the 1970s and ’80s.
Escape
’s origins are steeped in the ‘Republic of Salò’, named after the town near Brescia where Mussolini sought to establish his Republican Fascist Party as his army was forced northwards from Rome. It became known as the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, lasting from 1943 to 1945, as a client state of German Nazism, doomed to destruction by the Allies and partisans. Echoes of its politics reverberated down the generations: through the fascist Ordine Nuovo waging a clandestine terror campaign to Alessandra Mussolini’s recent People of Freedom, a revival of her grandfather’s questionable legacy. As Manotti has written elsewhere: ‘To understand Italy, one has to remember the immense and profound support for Mussolini and the proximity of the War to the events in this book. Fascism had only been defeated for twenty-five years in 1968, leaving numerous live fascist cells behind.’
Years of Lead describes a period of political turmoil and
flying bullets in Italy, sparked by the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan that killed seventeen and wounded ninety people. It was followed by probably dozens of undisclosed acts of terrorism, including the 1970 bomb that killed six in the southern Gioia Tauro train station; the 1972 car bombing that killed three police officers in Pateano, northern Italy; the 1974
Italicus
train bombing that killed twelve in the Apennines between Florence and Bologna; the 1974 massacre in Brescia’s Piazza della Loggia that killed eight anti-fascist protesters and wounded 100; the 1980 plane crash near the Sicilian island of Ustica, the 1980 Bologna train station bombing that killed eighty-five and wounded over 200; and the 1984 Rapido 904 massacre in which sixteen died when a bomb exploded on the Florence-Bologna train line. It was only in April 2014 that Prime Minister Matteo Renzi declassified secret files on a minority of the most notorious cases, confirming the involvement of the neo-fascist Ordine Nuovo and, latterly, of its offshoot the Armed Revolutionary Nucleo (ARN). Terrorism, involving the indiscriminate murder of civilians, was routinely used by the Right in order to blame and discredit the Left, and to foment mass insecurity and unrest. Is
Escape
, written two years before the disclosures, a case of fiction anticipating political disclosure of historical fact?
The Years of Fire is a term invented by the book’s first protagonist Carlo, a Red Brigades leader. His strategy is to counter the deadening nature of the Years of Lead via propaganda through targeted assassinations and popular insurrection, destined to catch fire and burn brightly. Revealed are the lengths to which the state will go to create a ‘strategy of tension’ to sow disorder, resulting in popular demand for imposed order. In 1969, political parties across the spectrum from neo-fascist to centre-left were panicked at the imminent prospect of the majority Italian Communist Party winning elections with 36 per cent of the votes. No left-wing party was ever allowed to come that close to power again.
At a recent conference (at City University, London, in May 2014), Manotti was asked why she had turned from political activism to writing crime novels. She replied, ‘
par désespoir
.’ She could as well have quoted herself, speaking as Carlo’s comrade, Lisa, at the close of this stranger-than-fiction history: ‘That particular battle’s lost. If I want to try and salvage our past, there’s only one thing left for me to do. Write novels.’
Amanda Hopkinson
May 2014