Free Back to Bologna by Michael Dibdin Page B

cigarettes from yet another pocket of his capacious coat.
    ‘Mind if I smoke?’
    She shook her head again.
    ‘Want one?’
    Her instinct was to refuse–tell nothing, take nothing–but a much older superstition reminded her that three denials brought bad luck. The packet was labelled Camels and the cigarette the man lit for her had a pleasant toasty flavour. American imports, she thought inconsequentially. Definitely the secret police. She decided to call him Dragos.
    ‘Sure you know him,’ the intruder insisted. ‘Number seventy-four Via Marsala, second floor at the back.’
    Flavia realised that further evasion was in vain. Clearly she had been followed.
    ‘I am see him there I think,’ she declared in a laborious chant.
    ‘Hey, it talks as well!’ Dragos remarked with a jocular leer. ‘Tell me you mix a mean martini, darling, and you’ve got yourself a date. Actually, all you need to do is sit down and cross your legs.’
    He looked around hopefully, but chairs were among the many items of furniture the room lacked.
    ‘You go there to see him?’ Dragos continued. ‘Or is it the other kid?’
    ‘The other.’
    Asharp nod.
    ‘Smart girl. Strictly between you, me and anyone who may be listening in behind these cardboard walls, our little Prince Vince is bad news.’
    ‘I already know these. But he is not a prince I think.’
    The secret policeman’s attention had seemingly wandered again, this time to the electric hotplate that was the household’s only cooking facility. He walked over and sniffed the simmering sauce appreciatively.
    ‘Have you ever met any of his friends?’ he remarked in a tone of studied indifference.
    ‘Of this Vincenzo?’
    ‘The very same.’
    Drago sucked at his cigarette.
    ‘He’s fallen into bad company, you see. His parents are very worried.’
    ‘My friend he is not bad company.’
    ‘Mattioli? No, he’s okay, for a student. But there’s this crew that Amadori hangs out with at football matches. They’re a different story.’
    ‘These I never see.’
    ‘Never, eh?’
    Dragos picked up a spoon, dipped it into the pasta sauce and slurped down the contents, turning to Flavia with a patronising smirk that was abruptly wiped from his face. He dropped the spoon and clutched his throat, then doubled over and began bawling incoherently.
    Flavia ran to the washbasin and filled the toothglass with water, but the sufferer had already grabbed a beaker of colourless fluid from a nearby shelf and downed it in one. The result was a series of piercing shrieks which blasted openings into that wing of the palace which the Princess had ordered to be abandoned and sealed up years before.
    ‘Merda di merda di merda di merda di merda di merda di…’
    It was only after administering a lengthy course of plain yoghurt diluted with lemon juice that Flavia was able to get her visitor into a fit state to leave, which by then was all he showed any desire to do. Unfortunately the interruption left her no time to complete and then eat the late lunch she had been eagerly anticipating before going to work. She was particularly resentful about this since the sauce–despite the unprintable things the secret policeman had said about it–was a personal favourite which she could only prepare on very rare occasions when the necessary ingredient was to hand.
    There were few enough things that Flavia missed about her native country, but the relish which formed the basis of this sauce was one. It consisted of sliced red and yellow goatshorn peppers, robustly hot and subtly sweet, steeped in oil with garlic and lemon zest and mysterious spices. The wonderfully intense flavour suffused your entire system for hours afterwards, warming and reinvigorating both flesh and spirit. It was a perfect pick-me-up for this vicious cold spell that had lasted for weeks, and Flavia had been overjoyed when six large and priceless jars emerged from the parcel she had received the day before from the woman who had been