A Long Finish - 6 Read online

  ‘I see,’ said Aurelio Zen, who didn’t see anything except the bins of bottles stretching away into the gloomy reaches of the vast, cold, damp cellar, its vaulted roof encrusted with a white mesh of saltpetre.

  ‘Barolo is the Bach of wine,’ his host continued. ‘Strong, supremely structured, a little forbidding, but absolutely fundamental. Barbaresco is the Beethoven, taking those qualities and lifting them to heights of subjective passion and pain that have never been surpassed. And Brunello is its Brahms, the softer, fuller, romantic afterglow of so much strenuous excess.’

  Aurelio Zen was spared the necessity of answering by an attack of coughing which rendered him speechless for almost a minute.

  ‘How long have you had that cough?’ the other man asked with a solicitude which was all too evidently feigned. ‘Come, let us go back upstairs.’

  ‘No, no. It’s only a touch of chestiness. A cough won’t kill me.’

  Zen’s host looked at him sharply. To someone who did not instantly recognize him – no such person was known to exist – he might have appeared an unremarkable figure: trim and fit for his sixty-odd years, but distinguished mostly by the layers of expensive tailoring which clad him like a second skin, and by a face whose wrinkles and folds seemed an expression not of calendar age but of inheritance, as though it had been worn by countless other eminent and powerful members of the family before being bequeathed to the present owner.

  ‘Kill you?’ he exclaimed. ‘Of course not!’

  With an abrupt laugh, he led the way further into the labyrinth of subterranean caverns. The only light was provided by the small torch he carried, which swung from right to left, picking out stacks of dark brown bottles covered in mildew and dust.

  ‘I am also a purist in my selection,’ he announced in the same didactic tone. ‘Conterno and Giacosa for Barolo, Gaja and Vincenzo for Barbaresco. And, until the recent unfortunate events, Biondi Santi for Brunello. Poco ma buono has always been my motto. I possess an excellent stock of every vintage worth having since 1961, probably the best collection in the country of the legendary ’58 and ’71, to say nothing of a few flights of fancy such as a Brunello from the year of my birth. Under these exceptional circumstances, vertical tastings acquire a classical rigour and significance.’

  He turned and shone his torch into Zen’s face.

  ‘You are Venetian. You drink fruity, fresh vino sfuso from the Friuli intended to be consumed within the year. You think I am crazy.’

  Another prolonged outburst of coughing was the only reply, ending in a loud sneeze. The other man took Zen by the arm.

  ‘Come, you’re unwell! We’ll go back.’

  ‘No, no, it’s nothing.’

  Aurelio Zen made a visible effort to get a grip on himself.

  ‘You were saying that I don’t understand wine. That’s true, of course. But what I really don’t understand is the reason why I have been summoned here in the first place.’

  His host smiled and raised one eyebrow.

  ‘But the two are the same!’

  He turned and strode off down the paved alley between the bins. The darkness closing in about him, Zen had no choice but to follow.

  The instruction to attend this meeting at the Rome residence of the world-famous film and opera director, whose artistic eminence was equalled only by the notoriety of the rumours surrounding his private life, had come in the form of an internal memorandum which appeared on his desk at the Ministry of the Interior a few days earlier. ‘With respect to a potential parallel enquiry which the Minister is considering regarding the Vincenzo case (see attached file), you are requested to present yourself at 10.30 hrs on Friday next at Palazzo Torrozzo, Via del Corso, for an informal background briefing by …’

  The name which followed was of such resonance that Giorgio De Angelis, the one friend Zen still had in the Criminalpol department, whistled loudly, having read it over Zen’s shoulder.

  ‘Mamma mia! Can I come too? Do we get autographs? I could dine out on this for a year!’

  ‘Yes, but who’ll pay the bill?’ Zen had murmured, as though to himself.

  And that was the question which posed itself now, but with renewed force. The celebrity in question clearly hadn’t invited Zen to his palazzo, scene of so many widely reported parties ‘demonstrating that the ancient tradition of the orgy is still not dead’, merely to show off his wine collection. There was a bottom line, and the chances were that behind it there would be a threat.

  ‘I can appreciate your point of view,’ his host’s voice boomed from the darkness ahead. ‘I myself grew up in the estuary of the Po, and we drank the local rotgut – heavily watered to make it palatable – as a sort of medicine to aid digestion and kill off undesirable germs. But perhaps there is some other way I can make you understand. Surely you must at some time have collected something. Postage stamps, butterflies, first editions, firearms, badges, matchboxes …’

  ‘What’s that got to do with wine?’

  The famous director, known to his equally famous friends as Giulio, stopped and turned, admitting Zen back into the feeble nimbus of light.

  ‘The object of the collection is as unimportant as the quantities inserted in an algebraic formula. To the collector, all that matters is selection and completeness. It is an almost exclusively male obsession, an expression of our need to control the world. Women rarely collect anything except shoes and jewellery. And lovers, of course.’

  Zen did not reply. His host pointed the torch up at the curved ceiling of stone slabs.

  ‘The nitre! It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are now below Via del Corso. Young men, my sons perhaps included, are racing up and down in their cars as they once did on their horses, yet not a murmur of that senseless frenzy reaches us here. The wine sleeps like the dead.’

  ‘I used to have a collection of railway tickets,’ Zen remarked.

  Giulio flashed a smile.

  ‘I knew it!’

  A dry rustling amongst the bottles to his left made Zen start.

  ‘Rats,’ said the famous director. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘My father …’

  Zen hesitated, as though at a loss, then started again.

  ‘He worked for the railways, and he used to bring them back for me, little cardboard tickets with the name of the destination printed on them, the class and the fare paid. By the end I had one to all the stations as far as Verona, Rovigo, Udine and Trieste …’

  He paused again, then clicked his fingers.

  ‘All except Bassano del Grappa! I remember someone making a joke about having to wait until I was older before trying grappa. I didn’t understand at the time. I was just annoyed at having that gap in my collection. It ached like a pulled tooth.’

  ‘Excellent! Perfect! Then no doubt you will understand how I felt when I heard about this dreadful business involving Aldo Vincenzo.’

  Zen frowned, returning reluctantly to the present.

  ‘Vincenzo?’ he echoed.

  The famous director shone his torch around the neighbouring bins, lifted a bottle and held it out to Zen. The faded label read: BARBARESCO 1964. VINIFICATO ED IMBOTTIGLIATO DAL PRODUTTORE A. VINCENZO.

  ‘Aldo Vincenzo was one of the producers I selected more than thirty years ago as worthy of a place in the cellar I then decided to create,’ he declared solemnly, replacing the bottle on the stack with as much care as a baby in its cot. ‘And now he’s dead and his son is in prison, all on the eve of what promises to be one of the great vintages of the century! That’s the reason why you have been “summoned here”, as you put it.’

  ‘You want to complete your collection.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘To continue your horizontal tastings.’

  His host regarded Zen sharply, as if suspecting some irony.

  ‘They might be that,’ he remarked, ‘if one actually swallowed all the wines on offer. Such, of course, is not the way in which a vertical tasting is conducted. But in any case, if you imagin
e that I have any chance of personally enjoying this year’s vintage at its best, you credit me with the longevity of a Methuselah. The patriarch, not the bottle.’

  Zen struggled mutely with some internal paroxysm, then sneezed loudly, spraying gobs of sputum over the adjacent wine bins. The famous director grasped him once again by the arm and led him back the way they had come.

  ‘Enough! We’ll continue this talk upstairs.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Zen protested. ‘It’s just this cold I’ve felt coming on for …’

  ‘I’m not worried about you! But sneezing in a cellar risks half the bottles turning out corked. So they say, at any rate. As for the presence of a menstruating woman, forget it! The whole business of wine is full of that sort of lore. I both believe and disbelieve, but with an investment like this I can’t afford to take chances.’

  Giulio closed and locked the massive door giving into the vaults and led the way up a long, winding staircase and through an archway leading to the ground floor of the palazzo. They passed through several suites of rooms to the book-lined study where he had received Zen on the latter’s arrival, and gestured him into the armchair which he had occupied earlier.

  ‘As I was saying, the idea that I’m collecting the Vincenzo wine of this year – assuming there is any – for my own benefit is, of course, absurd. If the vintage is even half as good as has been predicted, it will not be remotely approachable for ten years, and won’t reach its peak for another ten. By which time I will be, if not defunct, at least “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”, as Shakespeare says.’

  ‘Then why should you care?’ demanded Zen, lighting a cigarette, which induced another massive fit of coughing. The other man eyed him keenly.

  ‘Do you have children, dottore?’

  ‘No. That’s to say … Yes. One.’

  ‘Boy or girl?’

  ‘A boy. Carlo.’

  ‘How old?’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘He’s just a baby,’ Zen replied at length.

  ‘Congratulations! But they grow up rapidly. Hence my interest in this year’s Vincenzo wines. I have two sons, both in the most repulsive period of their teens. At present they regard my interest in wine as just another example of their father’s dotage. If they drink at all, it’s some obscure brand of imported beer, although Luca at least shows promising signs of becoming a collezionista about that, too, hunting down limited-release Trappist brews and the like.’

  He set about the meticulous business of cutting and lighting a massive cigar.

  ‘I believe – I have to believe – that in time they will come to appreciate what I have bequeathed them, and perhaps even set about extending the cellar far into the next millennium as a heritage for their own children.’

  A triumphant puff of blue smoke.

  ‘But that is to look too far into the future. For the moment, all that concerns me is this harvest! Unless we act now, the grapes will either be sold off to some competitor or crudely vinified into a parody of what a Vincenzo wine could and should be.’

  Aurelio Zen tried hard to look suitably concerned at this dire prospect.

  ‘But what can I do about it?’ he asked. ‘If the son is already under arrest …’

  ‘I don’t believe for a moment that he did it,’ the famous director exclaimed impatiently.

  Zen produced a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.

  ‘Nevertheless, I’ve been given to understand that the Carabinieri have concluded their investigation. They have pressed charges against Manlio Vincenzo and the case is now in the hands of the judiciary. I don’t see where I come in.’

  His host exhaled a dense barrage of smoke.

  ‘Perhaps you should be more concerned about where you go out,’ he said.

  Zen frowned.

  ‘Go out? You mean, from this house?’

  For the first time, Giulio smiled with what appeared genuine amusement.

  ‘No, no! All appearances to the contrary, I am not planning to immure you in some lost recess of my cellars. Nevertheless, a not dissimilar fate might well await you.’

  He eyed Zen keenly.

  ‘I refer to your next professional posting.’

  ‘That is a matter of departmental policy,’ Zen replied, drawing on his cigarette.

  Another smile, a shade more meaningful.

  ‘Exactly. And in that regard I wish to draw your attention to various facts of which you are aware, and to another which is as yet privileged information. I shall be brief. Firstly, the current Minister is a man of the Left. Many of his friends and associates in the former Communist Party dedicated their lives to the struggle against organized crime. Some of them were killed as a result.’

  His eyes met Zen’s, and slid away.

  ‘In addition, you have recently been reassigned to work for Criminalpol after your brilliant exploits in Naples where, as the whole country knows, you were instrumental in smashing the terrorist organization known as Strade Pulite.’

  ‘But that was …’

  ‘A major coup! Indeed. All this you know, dottore. What you do not know – what no one outside the Minister’s immediate circle knows – is that he is in the process of forming an élite pool of senior officers who are to be drafted to Sicily to spearhead the coming campaign against the organization which took the lives of his comrades.’

  Giulio waved his hand negligently.

  ‘We’ve all heard this before, of course, every time some judge or police officer was gunned down or blown up. But that was in the days when the Mafia had its men here in Rome, in the highest circles of power. Everyone understood how the game worked. Any over-zealous official who looked like doing some worthwhile work was transferred or killed, the government put up a token show of force, the Mafia made a token show of backing off, and in a few months it was back to business as usual.’

  He glanced at Zen, who stifled a cough.

  ‘But this time, so I am assured, it will be different. A fight to the finish, with no quarter offered. The Mafia’s links to Rome have all been cut, and the new government is eager to show that it can deliver on what its predecessors endlessly promised. As a result, a process of internal head-hunting has been going on for officers of proven experience, ability and – shall we say? – independence.’

  He broke off to relight his cigar, holding the tip at a respectful distance from the flame.

  ‘Your dossier, Dottor Zen, revealed you to have been severely compromised in the eyes of the former regime. This fact, needless to say, put you at the top of the list under the new management. Add to this your evident astuteness and ability to get things done, and you became a natural candidate for the new squad.’

  ‘They’re sending me to Sicily?’ gasped Zen.

  His host nodded.

  ‘Oh, yes. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about that. There’s promotion in it, of course, and a substantial pay rise, but you’re definitely going to have to go south. The only question is when and where.’

  For a moment Zen looked as though he was about to burst into tears, but all that emerged was another massive sneeze.

  ‘Salute!’ said his host. ‘Speaking of which, Sicily is notoriously insalubrious, particularly for newly arrived policemen who might well be drafted straight to the capital. If one were to arrive a little later, on the other hand, once the central command structure had been set up and all posts in Palermo filled, it might prove possible to secure an assignment in some relatively pleasant spot. Do you know Syracuse? An ancient Greek settlement in the least troubled portion of the island, possessing all the charm and beauty of Sicily without being tiresomely … well, Sicilian.’

  Zen raised his eyes to meet those of his interlocutor.

  ‘What guarantees do I have?’

  A look of pain, almost of shock, appeared on the famous director’s face.

  ‘You have the guarantee of my word, dottore.’

  ‘And your interest is?’
/>
  ‘I thought I’d made that clear. I want Manlio Vincenzo released from prison in time to make the wine this year.’

  ‘Even if he murdered his father?’

  A shrug.

  ‘If he turns out to be innocent, so much the better. But let’s assume that he did kill Aldo. It’s absurd to believe that Manlio Vincenzo poses a threat to any other member of the community. And in the meantime there’s a potentially great wine – maybe the great wine of the century – which demands the skill and attention only he can provide.’

  He shrugged again, more expansively.

  ‘After that, I don’t really care what happens to him. In a year the estate will have had time to reorganize, to get another wine-maker or sell out to Gaja or Cerretto, either of whom would be only too glad to get their hands on the Vincenzo vineyards. But for now, Manlio’s my only resource. Just as I’m yours.’

  Zen sat trying to catch his breath through the layers of phlegm which had percolated down into his lungs.

  ‘Why me?’ he demanded point-blank.

  The famous director waved the hand holding his cigar, which left a convoluted wake of smoke hanging in the still air.

  ‘I made various enquiries, as a result of which someone mentioned your name and sketched in the details of your record. Most promising, I thought. You appear to be intelligent, devious and effective, compromised only by a regrettable tendency to insist on a conventional conception of morality at certain crucial moments – a weakness which, I regret to say, has hampered your career. In short, dottore, you need someone to save you from yourself.’

  Zen said nothing.

  ‘In return for the services which I have outlined,’ his host continued seamlessly, ‘I offer myself in that capacity. I understand that at one time you enjoyed the favour of a certain notable associated with the political party based at Palazzo Sisti. His name, alas, no longer commands the respect it once did. Such are the perils of placing oneself under the protection of politicians, particularly in the present climate. They come and go, but business remains business. If you do the business for me, Dottor Zen, I’ll do the same for you. For your son, too, for that matter. What was his name again?’