2 Thirty kilometres away, Inspettore Luca Carducci sat in his office in Macerata, the provincial capital. His dark ringed eyes were straining. His feet were comfortably on his desk and in one hand he held a Poirot whilst in the other absentmindedly directed a digestive biscuit towards a steaming cup of tea. Beneath the desk his chocolate labrador, Deefor, snored gently and occasionally broke noxious wind. As he flicked over a page he turned his gaze from the book to the biscuit which he proceeded to dunk, remove and savour. Rome, he mused, may be a hotbed of criminal politicians but it did have some rather splendid delicatessens which stocked such favorites as shortbread, PG Tips and porridge oats. Though he loved his hometown fiercely, it was the poorer for not having access to these treats that he had craved since his first trip to Britain as a student. As he nibbled the sodden segment, he nodded to the Anigonni portrait of Elizabeth II in her Garter robes which hung on the wall opposite. His mind often mischievously speculated if she was wearing anything beneath the velvet cloak; as if any Englishman would look upon the picture as erotic rather than patriotic. He turned to his paperback and dipped the biscuit into the tea again and as he did so his telephone chirped to life. Out of sheer surprise, Luca dropped the Poirot and snatched the phone in order to stop the racket more than in a devotion to duty. Unbeknown to him, the dunked end of the digestive slipped beneath the surface of the tea with the majestic tragedy of the Titanic without the band. Mistakenly priding himself as something of a multi-tasker, Luca brought the biscuit to his open mouth as he listened to the voice on the phone. He frowned when he saw he had been robbed of his penultimate digestive and this trauma took precedence over the phone-call. He picked up a teaspoon and tried to salvage the sacred soggy remains from the murky depths but was too late. The tipping point of disintegration had been passed. It was lost and now his tea would be spoiled with biscuit slurry. The voice on the phone squawked, 'Are you still there, Carducci?' Luca held the his ear back to the handset. 'Si, si, certo. I'll come up straight away, sir.' Luca replaced the phone and tried a second attempt to raise the sacred wreck of his biscuit. With partial sloppy success, he spooned the remains into his mouth. All was not lost after all. He returned to his dropped novel only to be interrupted again. This time it was Maria, his secretary, who knocked and entered the office almost skipping with excitement. 'Inspettore, was that the phone I heard ring?' She asked expectantly. 'Er, yes. As a matter of fact it was. There has been a murder out towards the mountains. Some foreigner apparently.' Replied Luca while he sought out his place in the book. 'That's fantastic isn't it? A case. A murder at last. Maybe you will be able to practice your English, too?' ' Yes, well maybe, whatever. That's all very well but I was rather hoping to finish this particular mystery before lunch and now my second to last digestive sleeps with the fishes. Everything is ruined.' He sighed and returned the book to its drawer. Maria left in with a concentrated look on her face; an increase in work, however slight, might bite into her lucrative on-line shoe business that she ran from her desk next door. Luca had a stretch, taking in the objects on his desk and the office beyond. The room was noticeably devoid of the expected trappings of a police inspector's place of work. The desk was not strewn with piles of files, the computer page saver did not display the seal of his Department but rather a view of the craggy Cornish coastline of Penwith. The walls were not covered with pictures of most-wanted criminals, memoranda or Health & Safety instructions in the event of Emergencies. There was a map of Italy next to which was one of the region of Le Marche of greater size and beside this were blown up photographs of the family holidays taken in Britain. Pictures of the three Pascuccis standing beneath Eros pointing in opposite directions; of them huddled next to sign indicating Loch Ness, invisible behind them in a swath of fog; Luca rather dubiously holding up a whole pint of bitter in a brasses-and-beams pub and pride of place was one of Luca cuddling a bearskinned Scots Guardsman outside St James's Palace: Luca had been surprised to learn that this soldier was Russian; when asked his name he replied 'Buggeroff'. Luca smiled helplessly at the framed photo of his wife, Sofia, cuddling their six year old daughter Agatha. He had known Sofia nearly all her life as she was the best friend of his younger sister, Theresa, and they were still thick as thieves. After his training and secondment in Rome, Luca had realised that he had not only felt the ache of exile from his hometown but something even deeper in his heart. When, at his welcome home party, he caught sight of Sofia's suede-soft eyes again after the years away his heart leapt in recognition at what was missing. They were engaged for two years and finally married and began living together seven years ago. Agatha had arrived about a year later and due to the unremarkable police pay(though excellent pension scheme), she was likely to be an only child. Sofia had seemed a little distant these last two weeks and was acting rather furtively in Luca's view. They lived in an ancient, though thoroughly refurbished, apartment in the centro storico of Macerata. It was handy for Sofia's work which was only a five minute walk along the cobbled lanes to her office. This meant that mealtime arrangements could be dealt with the minimum of fuss. Sofia worked for the Sferisterio- the neo-classical open air arena by the town walls where the famous Macerata Opera Season (second only to Verona- the critics said) took place each summer. She was the Events Coordinating Officer which covered most of the diverse organization, a role that was heaped onto her by her lovely but disorganised colleagues but was not rewarded with a corresponding renumeration. Although in theory a committee of the great and the good ran the Opera Season, including her mother in law, in reality Sofia did; and she was happy to - music was her vocation. A skilled pianist and organist, she could have been a professional but preferred music to be a consolation from Life rather than be her Life . From time to time, Sofia gave recitals for charity and her great joy was that Agatha had inherited some of her skills at the keyboard. Next to this photo was a silver-framed group shot of 'Team Carducci' taken at his grandmother's 90th or maybe hundredth birthday party. She was so old he had lost track and if and when she died she would have to be carbon- dated. The star of the photo was not the skipper but the manager of the team: Margherita, his mother, looking impossibly glamorous with a smile magnified by the photographer's flash. It reminded Luca of an artist's impression he had seen in a magazine of the birth of a supernova in the deep dark cosmos. At the sight of his beaming mother, Luca patted his close cropped greying hair, checked his suede brogues were unscuffed but then reminded himself that he was nearing forty and should not be enthrall of his mother even if she had been the wife of a former President of the Region. In an act of defiance he loosened his tie a little further and paced out of the office in an air of world-weariness which always seems to follow him around these days. Mother. Madonna! was it Thursday- almost the weekend, already? Every other week, Luca, Sofia and Agatha were summoned to Sunday lunch at the apartment in the palazzo where Luca had spent the first twenty for years of his life. Margherita had been delighted when she had heard that the newlyweds were going to buy a flat in the centro storico too but was horrified that it was all of half a kilometre's distance. 'That's only 500 metres, mother.' Luca had explained. The analogy of the half full/half empty glass had stirred in Luca's mind at this point. Still, Luca and family would religiously make their way to lunch after Mass; Margherita was not such a tyrant as not to offer dispensations every month or so. Luca's sister, Theresa, was not subjected to this ordeal (as Luca saw it) for two reasons. Firstly, she and her husband, Ugo, lived beyond the pale of Macerata near Morrovalle some 25kilometres towards the coast. Secondly, Ugo was the heir to a handbag fortune and had a company car ready at his mother-in-law's beck and call; in addition she could eat out anywhere in the region and charge it to Ugo's business; also Margherita had a room permanently made up for her at Ugo's house in Portofino where his family had holidayed for decades. Luca did not resent his sister's material comfort or success at having bought off the maternal clutches. It was not Theresa's fault that Luca was the only son and consequently heir to Margherita's ambitions and machinations. For Luca's father had been President of the Region. Early on, Margherita had ambitions for Luca to follow his father. Manfredo had no such ambitions when, in early middle age, a successful and respected architect, he had been wooed by the much younger Margherita. It was she who had poured the honeyed words into his ears and had shown him what he could achieve in the political arena. It was she who had lead him into success, glory and power; a handsome percentage of which she claimed as commission. He had reigned for twelve glorious years with Margherita as First Lady and emminence gris until his sudden death in a Sirolo hotel in the company of two Eritrean prostitutes. The scandal was hushed up from the public who had unwittingly financed these shenanigans but were saved the anguish of the exact cause of their leader's fatal heart attack. Le Marche had mourned. The authorities turned a blind eye to exposure when the widow hinted at files that contained facts that would incriminate everyone . Literally everyone in the system from the road sweepers up. A lid was firmly placed on any investigation of misconduct full stop. The government had sighed. Manfredo was given an official funeral at the romanesque cathedral of San Siro in Ancona. It was presided over by several cardinals and attended by all the regional top-brass and even representatives of central government in Rome. Heavily sweetened by a pension of presidential proportions, Margherita was ousted and returned to Macerata from where she held a court in exile. Her political skills were still highly valued by the new powers in the region but they were wary only to seek her advice at arm's length lest she insinuate herself into the bosom of power once more. A young political cartoonist had unwisely alluded to Margherita as Hannibal Lector. Such was her influence that a week later the same wag could be found scratching a living dashing off caricatures of hassled tourists on the dockside in Bari. In truth, Margherita was not so much disappointed in Luca as in herself; she saw her inability to lure him into politics as her failing not his. She had seen so many less promising candidates catapulted into the highest echelons of power. They sat in various powerful posts with the bewildered look of boxing monkey puppets whilst unseen in the background their masters operated the levers of power. Luca could play that role she had often mused with un- ironic pride. He was good looking, more importantly, normal looking, likeable like a real person. That is to say that he lacked the maniacal, almost alien stain that so many politicians spent fortunes having airbrushed out by spin doctors and sliced out by surgeons. And so it was that he was viewed in some quarters (but behind closed doors) as a possible representative of the new politics. He was quite tall thanks to a healthy dollop of northern genes and generations of prosperity and the good diet that accompanied it. He had a honest face given to a roundness that suggested conviviality . He had his father's soft brown dark-rimmed eyes which leant him an air of devotion to duty though when he was younger and his hair longer and more unruly, he could sometimes give the misleading appearance of being hungover which was disconcerting in the afternoon. However, since he had begun to lose his hair he had decided to keep it short so that the five o'clock shadow- night on the tiles look was now definitely a thing of the past. She loved his adoption of il stilo inglese in dress. His Italian cut tweed jackets and cords gave him the air of a cultivated Bologna intellectual of aristocratic pedigree. The Carduccis were certainly not paisanne and even had the odd drop of blue blood in their veins; however, they were not intellectual giants by any stretch of the imagination. Luca had sauntered through his studies at Macerata University and it was widely believed that his high attendance record alone had secured him his degree. His father's string-pulling had resulted in Luca gaining a place at police college. After some time in Rome, Luca was wrangled a vacant post in the Homicide Department back home where he was rarely troubled by a murder and more importantly, as his mother saw it, he had kept well clear of the temptations of Vice and Drugs and had hence kept his copybook clean. He was a perfect candidate for the new breed of politics which had filled the void after the political meltdown in the 1990s. He looked the part; he had a clean record; a loving family and the most sharp-minded political puppeteer ready and waiting in the wings. All he had to do was appear to be remotely bothered about or interested in the political destiny which his mother had prefabricated in readiness for him. She had vowed to continue her work behind the scenes on his behalf. This would be her bequest to Luca. After patting Deefor on the head, Luca left his office and locked the door behind him. This really was a terrible inconvenience. He was reaching a critical point in the novel and there had already been the single mandatory murder for the year - a drug related gang killing on the coast in May. Once a year that was the usual quota anything more was usually a husband killing his wife and lover then adding a suicide to the statistics. However, the season for this was during the Dog Days of August when the heat in the towns became too much for some. A separate murder was a different matter altogether, though; it would appear as a blip, a surge even, a doubling of the annual homicide rate in the region. He frantically thought back. Yes, there had been two separate murders in the same year a while back but there had been none the following years so the numbers evened out in the end. Please God that would be the case again or else the statisticians would be onto him wanting an explanation for the 100% increase in murder. Luca shuddered at the thought of the paperwork. As if he did not have enough to deal with. He paced distractedly down the brightly lit corridor to the office of the Boss. A charming 'Si, accommodi.' answered his business-like knock and he went into the anteroom where his superior's secretary tapped away at her computer. With eyebrows that suddenly arched over her spectacles, Claudia said 'He's expecting you, Luca. Go on in.' Luca drew a deep breath and went ahead. 'Porca Madonna!' The Boss slammed the phone down and glanced up at Luca. He looked like a badly shorn baboon and had the temperament to match. With a hairy, gnarled paw, he pointed at the chair on the opposite side of his file strewn desk, drew a huge breath and barked sarcastically,’ Now, Carducci, I know your mother somehow very kindly arranges that there aren't any murders in the region so you can have an easy life and we're grateful, really we are; don't get me wrong. I'm happy, you're happy, everyone's happy.' His voice had a certain southern twang together with it's tone and volume that caused Luca's eye to squint in discomfort. 'No, Carducci, I could not be happier than you when you've got your nose in a paperback and it seems to keep the region's murderers off their game, too. But every so often, I'm afraid, a greater force than your mother comes into the arena and our easy lives are thrown into the wind like dust.' Luca looked at him blankly,’ There’s been a murder apparently..?' 'Yes, apparently, yes. A murder out at Monte San Nicola, some rusky with a British passport. London's full of them now apparently; dodgy ruskies and polak plumbers. This one's juicy. Been taken out.' 'Taken out? Executed?' 'Hoofed.' 'Hoofed?' 'Hoofed.' He paused as if nothing need be expanded upon; Luca's expression showed expansion was needed.' Hoofing is an old cossack form of execution only nowadays these 21st century ruskies trample their victims with their 4x4s rather than using horses. Progress, I suppose you could call it. There was a Harvey Keitel movie that came out on DVD recently, the mob took out some informer like that. Have you seen it? No, didn't think so. Not exactly Sherlock Holmes, I'm sure.' He paused and scratched his ribs. He shot up from his chair and bounded over to the coffee machine in the corner and with the clumsy flick of a lever followed by a gush of pressurised steam he was afforded his treat: a hard boiled espresso shot. Luca looked from the wild-eyed primate and the wastepaper basket in the corner and counted six crushed plastic beakers.Figlio di putana! he must be absolutely wired! The Boss prowled his way back behind his desk and continued: 'Well, ruskies mean trouble; trouble like drugs, guns, Albanians, illegals and all sorts. Juicy, like I said. So, we need a guy with nous, a razor mind, an eye on the bigger picture, subtly, and above all balls.' He paused to take a slurp of scalding black liquid and winced like it was bad medicine. 'However, we have you.' He paused to allow his gullet to cool down.’ You speak English and, well, your mother plays cards with the Chief. As God is my witness, if there was anyone else, I would have used them. So there you have it. This is potentially a big deal and could have international repercussions. I want this sorted out quickly and cleanly or you're on a transfer to Lampadusa processing African illegals. And from what I remember that the tiny little island that doesn't even have a bookshop let alone a library and that would be especially crap for you wouldn't it. Oh, and the school's only fit for morons. So go back to your office, put a bookmark in your paperback and get out there and solve this one. There are lots of eyes on you on this one, do it right. Oh and by the way. My favorite nephew, Andrea Rispoli, has just graduated from Police College, top of the class, don't you know. He just happens to be fluent in English, too. As a graduation present, I've wrangled him a temporary secondment here. He'll arrive next Wednesday and if the case ain't sorted by then, it's his. Capisce?' He flung a report over to Luca who caught it clumsily. At least Deefor might get a walk out of it, he mused as he plodded back to his office whilst skimming through the thin interim report. |
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Chapter Three |
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| Dead Man in Marche Chapter Two |