Globusz^® Publishing 

It was five o’clock in the morning but in Campo de’ Fiori, the big foodstuff open-air market in the centre of Rome, the grocers, the butchers, and the fishmongers were already unloading their lorries. He walked through the stalls, then took Via dei Baullari. He turned right after a few yards, and strode to Piazza Pollarola. The hacker was at the window of his flat, waiting for him.

“Here you are!” he said, dropping down a bunch of keys.

Paul picked them up, chose the one that looked truly pre-capitalistic, opened the front door, and rushed up the badly-chipped steps to the first floor. The hacker let him in.

“I hope it’s urgent.”

“I need an ex-directory telephone number with its street address. It belongs to a lady doctor. And I would also like you to check if this guy has a criminal record,” said Paul, handing him two hundred euro and a piece of paper where he’d written down the names of Fausto Turini and the San Bernardo psychiatrist, Claudia Fossati.

The hacker took it, and placed it next to the keyboard on his computer station. “Sit down. It won’t be long,” he said, and started keyboarding frenetically.

Paul slumped into an armchair, and began to fill his Peterson. The thought that Debby didn’t love him had kept him awake all night, and in an almost futile attempt at driving it away, he’d often ended up going over the deputy state attorney’s theory on what the press had dubbed the Landi case.

He knew her, Anna Rienzi, the deputy attorney. She was a good sort. She was also naïve. That was why, he felt sure, Ernesto Lodiacono had found it easy to mislead her into assuming it was Marcello Caramia, the driver of the Savanna, who had murdered Nino Landi. According to the latest reports, Anna Rienzi was convinced he’d used Nino Landi as a pusher inside San Bernardo, since there were rumours that some of the inmates received money from their families and spent it on coke or cannabis. So, her argument ran, when Landi failed to pay for the drug, Caramia lured him outside San Bernardo and beat him to death. Then, after keeping the body hidden for three days, which was why it stank, he put it into the boot of the Savanna and set off to dispose of it.

Paul also had no doubt at all that Lodiacono had involved Dr Fossati in the cover-up. As the consultant in charge of Landi’s treatment, she’d made a statement to the deputy attorney, and all the leading TV stations’ reports held that she’d confined herself to saying Nino Landi was on the road to recovery when he disappeared from San Bernardo.

A load of rubbish…none of it tallied with Lelia’s account, still less with his conclusions. Paul could read her mind. She was frightened. Why? Because she hadn’t heard about the beating. She had seen it.

She’d said they gave Landi a beating because he was lazy and didn’t do any work. OK! However, a beating was usually used as a last resort—which meant they must have given him a warning before. They must have first threatened him. They must have bullied him. And it was unlikely he hadn’t talked about that to his psychiatrist. So, Claudia Fossati knew, and most certainly she knew that Lelia knew.

They had a couple of psychologists over there, but only one consultant psychiatrist. It was unthinkable that Dr Fossati hadn’t treated Lelia, too, and if she had, Lelia let on what she’d seen. It was also unthinkable that Lodiacono wasn’t told that she knew. Lelia had been topless when she opened the door to Paul—she should still be in rehab. But Lodiacono must have become restless. He couldn’t have her in the home, and thus he had her discharged, perhaps getting Dr Fossati to do the dirty work.

A loud bleep told Paul that the printer had been turned off. “Did you get it?”

The hacker turned to him and handed him two printouts. The first one contained Claudia Fossati’s address and telephone number. She lived in Via Francesco dall’Ongaro. Paul could tell where it was—up the hill overlooking Viale Trastevere. It was a residential, middle-class street with comfortable blocks of flats. They were the jewels of the palazzinari, the rough building speculators of the fifties and sixties, who hadn’t thought that decent houses should be built on streets with pavements on both sides.

The second printout contained Fausto Turini’s record. He’d been sentenced to prison three times. The first, he got five years for robbery while in possession of a firearm; the second, three years for causing grievous bodily harm, and the third, two years for attempted male rape while a prisoner in custody. He was a certified drug addict.

“Is it what you expected?” asked the hacker.

“Yes. By the way, I may need you again pretty soon.”

The hacker nodded.

* * *

Paul squeezed past the bumper of a Maserati parked no more than ten inches away from the entrance to the building, and looked for Dr Claudia Fossati’s entryphone. It was next to that of the leading Italian eye surgeon. Debby was right, he said to himself. They called the blind non vedenti, unable to see, but if a blind man lived here, he could neither enter nor leave his place.

“Pronto,” answered a female voice after a couple of minutes.

He spoke his name, Paul Calvert, and added, “I’m sorry to disturb you so early in the morning. I wonder if I could have a quick word with Dr Fossati.”

“Do I know you?”

Thank God he’d got her. “Dr Fossati, we were both on the scene of the accident—”

“Afraid I cannot help,” she broke in. “Didn’t even see how it happened. I only tried to see if I could do anything for that badly injured lady.”

“I am not seeking any evidence for myself. I wasn’t involved in the accident, but—”

“What d’you want then?”

“I’ve got a few details about the Landi case. If you’re good enough to let me in, I’ll tell you what I want. It’s a delicate matter. We can’t discuss it over the entryphone.”

“I’m sorry, but I have nothing to discuss with you. I’ve already spoken to the deputy state attorney.”

“Dr Fossati, I’m a journalist. I’d like to check if some facts are true. If you don’t allow me to go over them with you, I’ll have no other choice than to make them public without your amendments to the version I have.”

“OK,” she said after a pause. “Come up. It’s the top floor.”

A good-looking man of middle height, aged about thirty-five, was waiting at the door to her flat.

“Have you got any ID?”

Paul showed him his press card.

“Your name doesn’t sound Italian,” remarked the man.

“I’m British. My mother was Italian.”

The man led the way through a short corridor to a study, and waved him to an armchair beside an open window.

It was half past seven, summer time—half past six, solar time. Paul pointed at the window. “Can I first look at Rome in the early morning?”

“Help yourself.” The man forced a smile.

The window peered down over Trastevere and beyond. On his left, Paul could see the Tiber and St Peter’s Dome; on his right, the Tiber again and the old working-class quarter of Testaccio.

He heard the man’s voice. “Lovely view, isn’t it?”

Paul turned about. “Unique!”

“Dr Fossati won’t be long,” said the man, and left.

She came almost immediately, smiling faintly—Paul felt sure she’d recognized him. In a short dressing gown and mules, she looked younger than she did last Sunday. She should be just below forty, like Debby, but not that pretty. Too skinny, with a horsy face and small, rounded eyes.

Suddenly, her expression changed to one of anger. “So you’ve come to blackmail me.”

“I’ve never blackmailed anybody in my life and am not starting now. I write for the Meridiano...” He let it sink in.

She kept silent for a few seconds. “Why are you threatening me?”

“I’ll uncover something Ernesto Lodiacono keeps hidden. I’m not threatening you. Don’t answer my questions if you don’t want to. I’ve only made it clear that if you don’t, I shall reveal the facts as I know them. So, why not play it straight with me?”

Again, she kept silent for a while. “I doubt I can tell you much more than what’s been on the news.”

“Well, let me put my questions then.”

“OK, shoot.”

“Nino Landi was under your care—”

“That’s on the news,” she laughed.

“Hang on, please. Have you told the deputy attorney that Landi confided to you that he’d long been bullied by Fausto Turini and feared for his own life?”

“What he confided to me is confidential. I am a doctor. Have you forgotten?”

“D’you know a San Bernardo inmate called Lelia Parsi?”

She opened her eyes wide. “I do,” she admitted after a second of hesitation.

“It was you, wasn’t it, who discharged her from San Bernardo last week?”

She raised her eyebrows, bringing them closer to each other. “San Bernardo is not a mental hospital. Inmates are not discharged by a psychiatrist. They either discharge themselves or are advised to leave when they are rehabbed.”

“What did you tell the deputy attorney about Lelia Parsi?”

“The deputy attorney never mentioned her name to me.”

“Didn’t Lelia Parsi tell you she saw Turini and other thugs beating up Nino Landi?”

“What are you talking about?” she said, touching her cheek.

“How come this time you didn’t say it’s confidential?”

“You should already know by now that what my patients tell is confidential, shouldn’t you?”

“Look, one of your patients has been murdered. That man told you Fausto Turini and his thugs were bullying him. Now try and concentrate...Haven’t you told this to the deputy attorney?”

She snapped, narrowing her lips, “How can you say Landi told me he was bullied by Turini or anybody else?”

“Has your mind gone blank? It was you who confirmed my suspicions, Claudia...I hope you won’t mind if I call you Claudia...”

“Don’t you get cute with me!”

“Claudia, you gave yourself away. Look, I asked did Landi tell you about the bullying and you hid behind the doctor’s confidentiality duty although a negative answer wouldn’t have breached it.”

She shook her head. “You’re wrong, you are wrong.”

“You’re not a criminal, Claudia–”

“Thank you. Nice to discover I am an honest person,” she put in, smiling uneasily.

“Lelia Parsi...let me first tell you something and then I’ll come to her. The situation is dangerous. If you warn Ernesto Lodiacono, you put your fingers in an uncontrollable machinery. There may be other deaths, but I trust you.”

“Good to know.”

“I’m proposing you a deal. I’m doing some more inquiries. In the meantime, you keep your mouth shut. If you see me at San Bernardo, pretend we only met on the scene of the accident. When I am ready—maybe this week, maybe the next one—I’ll share what I’ve found out with you. I’ll file my piece and you’ll go to Attorney Rienzi to change your version. D’you follow?”

“Carry on.”

“I’m telling you two things I am certain I’ll prove. First, Lelia Parsi told you and Lodiacono that she saw the beating of Landi. Second, Lodiacono had her quit San Bernardo in a matter of hours, and I have the strange feeling that he made you do the job.”

“I’ll talk to my lawyer.”

“May I ask why?”

“No, you may not.”

“I’ll come back to you. As I said, I trust you. Mind you, however, should anything happen to Lelia Parsi, I’d hold you responsible. She’s my sister.”

* * *

Paul had had a salad of pasta and a dish of charentais and Parma ham, together with a flask of dry white, at his cousin Rupert Ardwick’s flat off Piazza Navona, and now he was slumped in the sofa, puffing on his pipe.

Rupert handed him a glass of Bell’s, straddled a chair in front of him, and lit a cigar. Paul wrinkled his nose at the stench. He could tell it was a toscano. Its offensive smell overwhelmed the fresh one of his pipe blend.

He looked at a photograph of his own father and Rupert’s mother on the bureau opposite him. He always did when he came here. They were twins. There was nearly a generation between Paul’s parents, and that photograph went back to the thirties, when Rupert had just been born. Unlike Paul’s father, Rupert’s mother married young. That was why he was twenty years older than Paul.

Poor Rupert! He’d been a promising psychiatrist in Harley Street until he was caught selling movie stars hard drug prescriptions. The Medical Council struck his name off. He was prosecuted and served time. After his release, twenty-five years ago, he settled in Rome. For a while, he worked as a representative of a pharmaceutical company. Then a lady doctor fell in love with him and kept him. In the nineties, she got tired to death of him and ditched him. Nobody could tell how he’d made a living ever since.

He was still an excellent doctor. The best Paul had ever met. No other doctor was able to advise him as well as Rupert did when he needed medical help. Of course, he couldn’t give him a prescription, but would tell Paul what he should take, so that he might have it prescribed by his Italian GP.

Sipping at his whisky, Paul wondered if he hadn’t made too much of it. What was the point of pouring out his soul to Rupert? Had he given him a distorted picture? Debby didn’t mean to ditch him; she only wanted to move to England. Right, her answer amounted to saying she didn’t love him any more, but wasn’t he taking it too dramatically? She’d always been so irritable and temperamental…

No, he wasn’t making too much of it. It was exactly as he’d just told Rupert. The Italian chaotic life and her intellectual frustrations had plunged her into depression, and in such a state, she didn’t feel in love with him. Otherwise, she’d have answered of course I love you, Paul. They’d been so united, they’d been so much in love.

Sensing Rupert’s stare, he eyed him. He’d hidden nothing from Rupert, even that he couldn’t keep a hard-on. Rupert had let him carry on, and when he’d finished talking, he’d kept silent. What did he think? Why was he still silent? Did he look down on him, did he view him as a twit? Or was he critical of Debby? Paul didn’t like the idea that he might misjudge her. She was good. She had filled him with joy.

“Say something, Rupert.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“I look forward to your opinion...Debby hasn’t had enough of me, has she?”

“To give you an answer I should talk to her.”

“Just give me your impression.”

Rupert seemed lost in thought. “There’re two aspects to it,” he said after a long pause. “The sexual aspect, and the general feeling she has towards you. They are intertwined.”

“Yeah.” Of course, they were intertwined. No relationship rested on sex after thirteen years, but all the same, the sexual aspect was important.

Rupert went on, “We need sex, and so we have it with our long-standing partners even if our mutual attraction has long been fading out.”

“I still feel a strong sexual attraction for Debby.”

Rupert drew on his cigar. He looked pensive. “I can’t tell for sure, but that feeling might be partially self-induced. It is as though, subconsciously, you said to yourself, Oh yes, I like Debby the way I used to, I remember when and why I was so attracted to her, and what attracted me in the past still attracts me now. In other words, you make the memory of each happy moment you’ve been together prevail over everything else.”

Paul shook his head. “Maybe it’s like that for Debby, but it isn’t for me. My attraction for her is genuine.”

“You are right. You’re also wrong.”

Paul made no comment. What if it happened again, he asked himself, thinking about his erection problem. He enjoyed making love with her. He enjoyed seeing her reach a climax. He put it before his own pleasure. But he was afraid of not satisfying her fully as he used to, for he’d recently grown apprehensive. He feared he’d left her unsatisfied each time they’d had sex in the last months. He’d told Rupert about his fear. Why wasn’t he offering any suggestion?

“Look,” Paul queried, eventually, “couldn’t I use Viagra or anything like that?”

Rupert smiled, “I wouldn’t take Viagra after a few misses.”

“I’d like to try.”

“I believe you misfire because somehow Debby’s mood has put you off...”

“Bullshit!”

“Well, as you see, I can’t help you.”

Paul hesitated. “Tell me what you make of Debby’s mood.”

Rupert looked him in the eyes. “Are you sure she hasn’t got a lover?”

“An intellectual like you should know better. Her problem is not she’s cheating on me.”

“Then I can try to guess. You see, Paul, she’s not the type of English bird who could feel at home in Rome.”

Paul recalled that she’d been enthusiastic when they settled here.

“The place has now eroded her enthusiasm. It happens,” remarked Rupert, as though he’d read Paul’s thought.

“There are plenty of happy English women here in Rome. Why d’you reckon she’s so different from the others?”

“Maybe because she isn’t after the same things.”

It was unspoken, but Paul understood. The English girls who liked living here fell into a few categories. The little snobs found it easy to cling to the upper classes’ shirt tails because it never entered their “perceptive” minds that in England they were second-raters. The silly and beautiful liked it here because rich vulgarians took them to fashionable places. Starlets, models and TV girls, for the same reason as the silly and beautiful and as well as that, they did better here than in England. Debby was a linguist—a phonologist. She had nothing to do here. Nor was he a celebrity, and even if he was, she wouldn’t bask in his reflected light.

Was Rupert as unhappy here as Debby? Paul wondered. Piazza Navona was one of the most prestigious addresses in Rome. His flat consisted of two rooms, but this was a very big one. The décor was good. It was all junk but very nice junk. Rupert had made the softwood desk and bookcase himself, and had stained them green. The sofa and armchairs had lovely cretonne covers. The curtains were made of brown denim. There was a cosy oak tallboy and a walnut square table. The house was old—more than old, ancient—but it had been reconverted.

Rupert did look cheerful, with his tousled white hair and trimmed grey beard. He was sixty-eight, but still walked erect like a grenadier. He’d paid a great price for an offence that in Italy would have at most carried a suspended sentence. He would have been safer had he been in Rome at the time, rather than in Harley Street. Even now, to make a living without a job or a pension, not to be rejected as an outcast, not to be gaoled if he earned a few euros and didn’t pay the income tax, he needed the Italian unique brand of elastic morality. But would he like to go back to England? Paul was about to ask him. Then he had a vision of Debby, and changed his mind.

“D’you think Debby associates me with Italy and the Italians and so bears resentment against me?”

“Yes, I think she does. I also think that if she doesn’t have a lover, she will soon find one. I’m sorry to be so crude, but listen to me, Paul...Take her back to England as soon as you can.”

* * *

Paul had just jotted down a few lines about his conversation with Claudia Fossati and decided to make a list of the things he had to do. Ernesto Lodiacono—he should interview him, then he should approach Fausto Turini and his mates at the San Bernardo butchery. He shouldn’t file the story on Thursday, so he had more time. Before everything else, however, he had to talk to Lelia again, also because he’d been unprofessional not to get her full confession before challenging Claudia’s story. She wasn’t on the telephone, and hadn’t rung him up as he asked her to yesterday; so, to avoid another trip to Calcata he’d couriered her a message asking her for lunch tomorrow. Also, he also wanted to have a word with Dr Manni; he’d been the first to see the two dead bodies, and he was in the directory—he was the senior registrar at the Intensive Care Cardiology Ward of the San Camillo Hospital.

The door opened and Debby came into the study. “Paul, what about your lamp? D’you want me to change the bulb?”

“I certainly do,” he replied, without raising his eyes from the computer monitor.

It had slipped his mind—he now remembered that his table lamp’s bulb died down twice last night and then, unexpectedly, started working again. Quite possibly he’d spend tonight wide awake, too. Better to see to it that the light shouldn’t go off.

Debby came back with a new bulb. It had been good of her to find it. Only one shop in Rome stocked bayonet bulbs. They’d bought the table lamp with the bloody bayonet fitting in London, and he’d never tried to push the bulb into the socket since when, while twisting it into place, he broke it, badly cutting his hand.

“Is it all right?” he asked, as soon as she was through.

“It is, sir. Do you have other orders, sir?”

“Orders?”

“I certainly do,” she said, irritably repeating the words he’d used before, imitating what, presumably, was his face staring at the monitor.

“Are you mad?”

“Don’t call me mad!” she shouted. “You treat me like a maid. You’re like any presumptuous Italian macho. You don’t need a wife. You need a fucking maid. You behave as if everything was due to you, as if you had an inalienable right to a valet. But I am not your fucking valet, I am not your fucking slave!”

She turned and stormed off.

He wondered what he had done to her. It wasn’t the moment for him to lose his self-control. No, her outburst didn’t stem from a moment of anger. She could not accept the way he was, the way he behaved, the way he spoke. He relived her face imitating his own. It was marred by an expression of hate.

Her resentment towards him, her acrimony, her unhappiness could have deeper causes than he’d imagined, deeper that Rupert himself had thought. One might be that he was born in Italy, and that his mother was both Italian and upper class. And yes, she might even be ready for an affair, if she didn’t already have one.

And if it was instead only a moment of anger? She’d had outbursts such as this before. They weren’t so irrational, but they were just as violent as this one. If she was going through a crisis, should he show no disappointment? If she was depressed, shouldn’t he prove himself an understanding, loving husband? Shouldn’t he talk to her in a kind, gentle way, shouldn’t he always say please?

The best thing to do now was to write to the Guardian and the BBC World Service. That might make her happier, or less unhappy. Of course, the chances they’d hire him were slim, but it was worth trying. Especially with the World Service—his record with them was good.

It was half past seven when he’d finished. He heard the sound of Vivaldi’s music coming from the living room and went there. It was The Four Seasons on DVD. She lounged across a large easy chair, with her back on one armrest and her legs dangling down from the other. Standing out in silhouette against a ray of sun coming from the window, she resembled a drawing by a master of chiaroscuro who had put blonder highlights into her hair. She wore a tunic made of light, almost transparent violet cotton, and he could make out her breasts.

She looked away from the video and turned to face him. He had the impression that she hadn’t been watching, that she had merely been listening, dreaming about the day they would leave Rome.

“Amore, I’ve written to the Guardian and the World Service,” he said, grinning.

“Good.”

“You’ll see. We’re going to leave Rome.”

“I know you’re doing what you can. Thank you, darling.”

He moved closer to her. “You’re beautiful. I love you.”

“Kiss me, if you love me.”

He bent and kissed her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth.

She hugged him. “Stupido!” she said as she came up for air.

He felt ecstatic even more because calling him stupid in Italian was her way to say, I’m sorry, forgive me. “There is nothing to forgive, amore.”

“Make love to me.”

“Here?” he whispered.

“On the floor,” she whispered back.

He quickly undressed himself. She slipped off her tunic and briefs, and lay down on the carpet. Slowly, he knelt and bent over her. They exchanged French kisses for a while. Then he kissed her nipples.

“I love you, Debby.

She touched him.

“D’you love me?”

“Push it into me,” she said.

He penetrated her and her breathing became deeper. He raised his head, to look into her eyes. They were closed. He could see it. Yet, to him, they were open, and to him, her face was not the face of a woman moaning with pleasure, but the disfigured face he’d seen earlier—and he felt it wouldn’t work.

“I can’t...I can’t...” he cried, as Herbert von Karajan’s interpretation of the summer depicted by Vivaldi was ending.