White Death

Title Page
Dedication
It was just after eight o’clock 
I woke up early the next morning
Amedeo Masi’s office wasn’t far
The Ufficio del Catasto
The shop was a few blocks away
The Carabinieri caserma
I found Via Dei Mille
I phoned a friend who worked in construction
I stopped in a bar on Via Sauro
It was early evening
It was dark and cold
He let me out
It was the middle of the night
I spent the morning going round all the petrol stations
I headed towards the city
I walked home along the river
The first thing I did in the morning
Gaia, the girl from the petrol station
I pulled out my phone and called Bragantini
I looked at the piece of paper
I was woken up by my phone
The next morning
I arranged to see him at his house
I sat in the car and called an old friend
The road to the Agip station
It was a short walk to the offices
Gaia was standing under the arches
I found Santagata’s address easily enough
It was still dark and the roads were almost empty
As always, I woke up early the next morning
The town of Monteleccio
I decided to go and see Bragantini
I was walking home
An hour later, I got a phone call
I went round to see Dall’Aglio
I twisted the key in the ignition
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright

It was just after eight o’clock when the phone started trilling impatiently. I had been awake for hours, leaving the lights off so I could watch the dawn turn the cupolas orange and pink. I enjoyed the silence of the sleeping city, the absence of all the usual noise of shouting and cars. In the last two hours my peace had slowly ebbed away: the stars had sunk back into the sky and the traffic had started to build up outside my window. Then the phone started its ugly electronic prod and I knew the day had begun.

‘Pronto,’ I said.

‘Castagnetti?’ asked an impatient voice.

‘That’s me.’

‘You’re the private detective, right?’

‘Sort of.’ I try to avoid the term because it makes people think in stereotypes. ‘I offer clarity in criminal cases,’ I said slowly.

‘I’ve a job for you.’

‘And you are?’

He said his name was Pino Bragantini, said it slowly like it was the kind of name that people normally recognised. I had never heard of him.

‘What’s the job?’

‘I’ll tell you in person if you don’t mind. Face to face.’

‘Fair enough. Where are you?’

He gave me his address. He said it was some factory to the south of the city. Said he wanted to see me there immediately if that were possible. I told him it was.

I hung up and looked out of the window. It was the beginning of one of those blissful spring days without a cloud. The sky was infinite blue and the sun winked off windscreens and sunglasses. There was a gentle wind combing the city, hurrying scontrini across the cobbles and ruffling the
rabbit-skin
cuffs of people’s coats.

I twisted apart the macchinetta and filled it with water, scooped in some coffee and twisted it back together. I put it on the gas and went to have my weekly shave. I looked at myself in the mirror: my short hair was going grey at the temples and as I scraped the blade across my face I noticed how the stubble in the sink looked like salt and pepper. More salt than pepper. I would be forty in a couple of years’ time and here I was, still living in a provincial city not even knowing what to call my job.

By the time I got back to the kitchen, the coffee was spluttering across the hob, the top of the macchinetta bouncing up and down as the brown liquid spat in all directions. I drank it quickly and got dressed.

Outside the traffic was static. It was the normal rush-hour standstill. I decided to walk to the factory since it was only just the other side of the city. It wouldn’t take long, even allowing for my gammy ankle. Someone had taken objection to me getting my foot in the door a few years back and it has never been right since. Doctors keep saying I need to exercise it but every time my left heel leaves the ground I feel the area around my tendon twinge. It’s not an acute pain, but I’m
always aware of it. When it’s quiet I can even hear it crackling like a peal of distant fireworks. And when it’s cold or damp, or I’ve been driving for too long, the whole thing seizes up completely and the only way I can walk is to drag it along behind me. And that brings two things I never want: attention and sympathy. People stare or smile like they’re sorry for me.

So I limped up towards the factory, amazed at how bedraggled our beautiful city appeared. It had begun to contract. Shops were closing down, windows were being covered with large red letters at oblique angles: ‘vendita totale’. Exotic clothes and mighty mannequins had been replaced by whitewashed glass and hopeless, handwritten notes: ‘to let’. It was like the city had a puncture and was losing air all the time. No amount of pumping or repair seemed to make any difference.

The crisis had been going on for a few years now and it had hit this city hard. I looked at people’s faces and they seemed desperate. Short of money and patience. They seemed more pallid, as if they couldn’t afford the skiing or even the tanning clinics any more. The place felt less glamorous, less flashy all of a sudden. Before, people had spent thousands just to keep up, to look right, to fit in and feel good. Now there was nothing to keep up with, nothing to fit into. All the masks and costumes of the carnival had been put away, sold off, and we were left with the dull reality of our dull selves. No feathers, no fancy dress, only the struggle for survival.

I got to the factory an hour later. It was a beautiful spot. Cypresses and poplars creating elegant avenues, the gurgle of the nearby river. It felt like an oasis in the urban jungle. The
factory itself looked unusually august, as if it had been there for at least the last hundred years.

I walked in the front door and saw a receptionist. She was young and dark-skinned, with spray-on clothes over nice curves. As I got closer I realised she was wearing too much perfume. She smelt like the inside of a taxi with too many magic trees.

‘I’m here to see Bragantini,’ I said.

‘And you are?’

‘Castagnetti.’

She picked up the phone and told him I was here. He came out a few minutes later: a shortish man, mid-fifties, bald head with a grey halo of hair and a bushy grey moustache that covered his mouth. He dressed like someone used to hiding behind elegance: smart suit, serious tie, sober shoes. I noticed a chunky watch as we shook hands. He took me into his office and showed me to a chair.

‘Thank you for coming,’ he said.

‘Thank you for calling. How can I help?’

‘I’ve got a problem.’

I nodded.

‘I’ve been the victim of an arson attack.’

I looked at him. No burns. ‘Where?’

‘My car. Last night. Windows smashed, petrol poured in. By the time I got here this morning my Audi was a wreck.’

‘What kind of Audi?’

‘An A4 Saloon.’

‘Nice sled.’

‘It was,’ he said regretfully. He stared into space in memory of his car.

‘What time did you get here this morning?’ I asked.

‘Seven. I always start early. Have to be here that early just to tackle the paperwork. I never have time during the day.’

‘And what is this place?’

‘The factory?’ He looked up, surprised that I didn’t know. ‘We produce bottles. And bottle tops.’

‘Bottles?’

‘And bottling machinery.’

‘Many rivals?’

‘Most of the city. Every other businessman around these parts is into something similar. That’s our distretto. Some cities specialise in sofas or tiles or automobiles. Our speciality is food engineering.’

I nodded as if impressed. ‘And the car? You got insurance?’

‘Sure, but that’s not the point.’

‘What is the point?’

‘Someone’s targeting me, deliberately setting fire to my property.’

‘How do you know it wasn’t just some hooligan trying to keep himself warm at night?’

He shook his head impatiently. ‘Look where we are. No one comes up this way, day or night. This isn’t the kind of place you just chance upon. Someone’s trying to intimidate me and I want to know who and why.’

He didn’t seem like the sort of man to suffer intimidation. His stare was intense and it pinned me to the chair.

‘Let’s start with who,’ I said. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Mah!’ he said impatiently. ‘I’ve had to lay off a few workers recently. What with the crisis. They weren’t happy, I suppose, but I can’t see them ever pulling a stunt like this.’

‘I’ll need their names and addresses.’

He nodded curtly.

‘Have you,’ I paused, not sure how to say it, ‘have you made anyone jealous recently?’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means’, I gave up on delicacy, ‘have you been screwing another man’s wife?’

He ran his thumb and forefinger down each side of his moustache like he was thinking about it.

‘I’ll need that name and address too.’

‘I didn’t hire you to delve into my private life.’

‘You haven’t hired me yet. And if you do, I’ll delve wherever I want.’

‘There’s only one,’ he looked up at me, talking quietly, ‘and her husband doesn’t know.’

‘Who knows who knows?’ I said. ‘People have a sixth sense when they start sprouting horns.’

He stared at me. ‘I need discretion.’

‘And I’ll need those names.’

He nodded, looking at me with a tilted head like he disliked me already. He leant forward and pressed a button on his desk.

‘Nunzia, bring in the addresses of all the employees we let go in the autumn.’

He hung up and stared at me again. ‘How much?’

I told him, and he wrote it down, whistling like he thought I was a rip-off.

‘Expenses on top,’ I said.

He looked at me and forced a laugh.

The receptionist came in with a few sheets of paper.

‘Could you write your address on here too?’ he asked her.

She nodded. ‘Sì dottore.’ She went round beside him and scribbled on the paper.

‘Thank you.’

She turned round to go and Bragantini caught my eye.

‘She your squeeze?’ I said as the door closed behind her.

‘Her name’s Nunzia Di Michele. Her address is here.’ He took out a pen and I saw his hand circling something on the pages. He passed the paper across to me. There were a few addresses across the city and the receptionist’s handwritten one.

‘Discretion,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘Any rival particularly competitive, got a grudge, anything like that?’

‘All of them.’

‘And are they likely to pull a stunt like this?’

He stared at his desk, narrowing his eyes. ‘I doubt it. What would they gain from burning my car?’

‘Give me the names anyway.’

I passed him back the paper and he picked up a pen and started writing on the back of the list of addresses.

‘You got security?’

He shrugged like he didn’t know what that meant. ‘I lock up. I set the alarm.’

‘No CCTV?’

He shook his head.

‘Dogs?’

Same again.

‘You might want to think about stepping things up, maybe get a night porter, someone to keep an eye out.’

‘I thought that’s what I was employing you for.’

‘I’ll come by when I can,’ I said. ‘But I’m not a security guard. Get someone on it. Someone who can watch out for you when you’re not around.’

He twisted his head like he didn’t like the mounting costs.

‘You want to show me the car?’ I said, trying to take his mind off it.

He nodded in silence and stood up. He passed me the list of addresses as he led the way out of the room. ‘Back in five minutes,’ he said to the receptionist. I looked at her and peered over her desk. There was a photograph of a young man next to her computer screen who I assumed was her husband.

Bragantini led me across to the car park. I could smell the car even before I could see it. It was little more than a
burnt-out
box. Much of the metal was black and flaky. It looked like an automobile skeleton, with the gear stick and steering wheel stripped of all flesh. Bragantini stared at it and shook his head.

‘This happened last night?’

He nodded.

‘You always leave your car at work overnight?’

‘Not always, but I only live over there.’ He bounced his chin in the direction of a block of flats through the trees. ‘I spend so much time in the car during the day that come the evening I’m happy to have a short walk home.’

‘And why not call the police?’

He rocked his head backwards and rolled his eyes. ‘You know the answer to that. They haven’t got the time or resources to dedicate to this kind of case. They give a very good impression of not even caring.’

‘But you’ve reported it?’

‘I will,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘But the only reason I would even do that is for insurance purposes. I don’t expect them to dedicate any more time to this than it takes to fill in a form.’

‘Which insurance company are you with?’

‘Gruppo Sicurezza.’

I looked at him again and wondered why he was even wasting money on me. He would get reimbursed for the cost of the car, so it wasn’t as if he had had anything stolen as such. He must have known that I would get no further than the usual authorities, and would just cost him a few thousand on top.

‘Why did you call me in?’ I asked. ‘If it was a hooligan having his fun, it’s hardly worth hiring a private.’

‘You don’t want the job?’

I threw my palms in the air. ‘I’m happy for any work I can get, but I like to know why I’m getting it. It doesn’t seem to make much sense.’

He grunted, and looked behind me, right and left. ‘This car park is half full most nights.’ He took a step towards me to underline what he was saying. ‘There are probably about a dozen company cars here every night. Now if one of those had been torched I might be able to ignore it. But of those dozen cars they deliberately went for my personal one.’ He suddenly looked at me and nodded. ‘That makes me think whoever did this wasn’t some idiot arsonist, but someone who was trying to send a direct message to me. I want to know what that message is, and who sent it.’

It made more sense like that. I nodded and shook his hand.
I promised to do what I could. He walked back inside and I turned to examine the burnt-out car. I knelt down and looked underneath. I peered inside. There was nothing to go on. I wandered over towards the river and watched it for a minute or two: there was a rusty can of Coke, the red and white only just visible below the blanket of algae. There was a bike lock down there, a few shredded plastic bags hanging onto bushes, the wide, transparent triangle of a sandwich wrapper bouncing on the plaited waters towards the open seas.

I walked off, reading the list of addresses as I went. I still thought it likely that some random hooligan had found a smart car and burnt it for fun. It was probably just chance they had burnt Bragantini’s. Or maybe they had gone for it because it was clearly the smartest.

Either way I wasn’t exactly excited about it. Getting an arson case is like being asked to work out who’s sprayed a slogan on your wall in the middle of the night. The chances of catching the culprit are very small. And even if you do, it’s hardly high-end work. Most of the arson cases I had worked on were insurance jobs. People bored of their unprofitable businesses and cumbersome assets that no one wanted to buy, so they torched the lot. Except this time that didn’t look likely. Bragantini wouldn’t have hired me if it had been him who poured petrol all over his wheels.