The Hit Read online

  Proietti nodded absently.

  ‘How old is your boy?’

  ‘Nine.’ Something dark crossed Proietti’s features, and he slumped down onto the sofa. ‘He’s only nine.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘Thirty-nine.’

  ‘Is this a picture we could use for the press? Is it recent?’

  Proietti got up tiredly from the sofa and picked up a larger photo in a sterling-silver frame. ‘Use this. It was taken a month ago.’

  Scamarcio studied it. If anything, the woman looked even more beautiful. Her face was all smooth planes and angles, and she reminded him of the actress Charlize Theron. ‘Is your wife Italian?’ he asked.

  ‘Italian father, Ukrainian mother.’

  ‘And things were good between you?’

  Proietti glanced up quickly. ‘Why is that relevant?’

  ‘At this stage, everything’s relevant.’

  He sighed and took the photo from Scamarcio, studying it. ‘Yes, things were good, are good. Why are we talking about her in the past tense already?’

  ‘How long have you been married?’

  Proietti kept looking at the photo. He seemed to be studying it closely, looking for a clue as to why she’d disappeared. ‘Ten years now. But we’ve known each other since our early twenties.’

  ‘University sweethearts?’

  ‘No, we were in the same circle of friends. I always liked her, but she wasn’t interested at first.’

  Scamarcio was surprised by this. With his perfect square jaw, large, dark eyes, and athletic frame, Proietti was handsome by any standards. What had put her off?

  ‘Did she have a boyfriend back then?’ he asked.

  Proietti seemed surprised by the question. ‘No. She just wasn’t interested.’

  ‘Did it take you long to win her round?’

  ‘A couple of years. We were dating for five years before we married.’

  Scamarcio nodded. ‘A couple of officers will need to confirm some basic details with you — your wife’s height, hair colour, etc, and the same for your son and driver. We’ll need it for the media release.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’

  Proietti gestured him to a white armchair opposite the sofa. Even the scatter cushions were white. It seemed too much.

  ‘Maybe you should sit as well, Mr Proietti. This might take a while.’

  Proietti nodded mutely and did as instructed. Scamarcio sensed that the man was shutting down — that the effects of the coke or whatever it was were finally wearing off.

  ‘Mr Proietti, do you have any enemies?’

  Proietti looked at him as if he’d just asked him to count the blades of grass on the manicured lawn outside.

  ‘I’m head of drama on the nation’s most popular channel. I’ve made my name by cutting costs and pushing the talent to the limit. I’m sure I’ve put quite a few noses out of joint, but if you’re asking me if they’d go so far as to kidnap my family — well, frankly, the idea is ridiculous.’

  ‘What about outside your work?’

  ‘There is no outside my work. My life is my work and my family. That’s it — there’s no room for anything else.’

  ‘Can you think of anyone who might be jealous of you, of your success?’

  Proietti was shaking his head again. ‘I’m sure there are quite a few who are envious. I’ve climbed the ladder fast; I’m paid well for a job I love. But again, would they kidnap my family out of jealousy? Forgive me, Detective, but it feels like you’re clutching at straws.’

  Scamarcio ignored him and pushed on. ‘What about your chauffeur? Do you trust him?’

  Proietti blinked. ‘I don’t know him. I couldn’t even tell you his name. The channel uses an agency, and the drivers change daily.’

  Scamarcio made a note. ‘Do you know the name of this agency?’

  ‘No. but my secretary would have it.’

  Scamarcio fell silent for a few moments and then asked: ‘What about you? Your background? Are your parents involved in anything that might invite recrimination? Your wife, for that matter?’

  Proietti narrowed his eyes. ‘Neither my wife nor my mother work, and my father’s not a Mafioso, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  The thought hadn’t crossed Scamarcio’s mind. He wondered why Proietti had jumped on this. Then he wondered if he’d already read up on Scamarcio’s past, and that’s why he’d made the reference. He pushed the question to the back of his mind, trying to focus.

  ‘What does your father do for a living?’

  ‘He was CFO of Enel for the last twenty years before he retired. My mother fills her time with charity lunches, that kind of thing. She’s your typical Parioli housewife.’

  ‘They live near here?’

  ‘One floor down. You can pay them a visit on your way out.’

  ‘Do they know what’s happened?’

  ‘No. My father and I aren’t on speaking terms at the moment.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Proietti raised his eyes to the heavens and exhaled. ‘Again, how is this relevant?’

  ‘Mr Proietti, if you want me to find your wife and son, I need to be the judge of what is relevant.’

  Proietti sighed and cast his gaze to the swaying palm fronds outside. Scamarcio looked up and saw dark clouds beyond the rooftops. A cooler, charged breeze was sweeping into the room.

  ‘We argued about some stocks he’s holding in my name. I want to sell; he doesn’t.’

  ‘Why do you need the money?’

  ‘I don’t. I just think that the company is heading for trouble, and it’s time to bail.’ Scamarcio watched his eyes as he spoke. They way they evaded him, shifting once more to the darkening skies beyond the window, told him that Proietti was lying.

  5

  PROIETTI HAD SAID THAT his secretary would provide Scamarcio with a list of the people he did business with, although Proietti seriously doubted they’d be able to help with the whereabouts of his family. Garramone had dispatched a team to keep watch on Proietti and his home, and had organised a second unit back at base to deal with any potential sightings that came in. Scamarcio had passed by Proietti’s parents’ place on his way out the previous evening, but they hadn’t been in. He decided to head back later, once he’d visited Proietti’s office.

  The secretary was pretty close to what Scamarcio had expected: bottle blonde, fake tanned, legs to her armpits, collagen lips. This might be Proietti’s bit of rough, quite different from the natural beauty of the wife.

  Scamarcio guessed that this woman didn’t expect to remain a secretary for long. And, as she held out a hand to greet him, something in her eyes told him that she was screwing the boss. Had this helpful little message been intentional? Scamarcio wondered. If so, he needed to understand why.

  ‘Micky said you needed a list of his contacts — the production houses he does business with.’

  She motioned him to a chair opposite her desk. The office was impressive — sparkling white walls, modernist white furniture. What was it with Proietti’s obsession with white? Was it even a colour? Wasn’t it just a nothingness, an absence? Scamarcio seemed to remember reading that there was in fact no colour in the universe. The world was black and white, but the human brain had created colour in order to make better sense of the objects around us.

  ‘The people Micky does business with change according to the projects we have on the slate,’ she continued. ‘There are, however, a few teams we use frequently. I can give you their details.’

  ‘Good,’ said Scamarcio. ‘If there are any new people he’s worked with recently, throw those in as well.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘That will be a lot of names to get through.’

  ‘It’s OK; we have a lot of manpower.’

&n
bsp; She didn’t seem particularly reassured by this, but began delicately tapping at her keyboard, her eyes scrolling down the computer screen. After a few moments, the printer whirred to life.

  ‘And I’ll need the details of the chauffeur agency you use.’

  She nodded, opened a drawer, and handed him a business card. He saw the name ‘Executive Cars’ embossed in gold letters. Two Rome telephone numbers were listed, along with an address out near Fiumincino.

  ‘Do you like working for Micky?’ he asked, pocketing the card.

  Her cheeks flushed, and she looked down at her desk for a moment. ‘Very much, yes.’

  ‘How long have you been sleeping with him?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ She was trying to do outrage, but it wasn’t quite working. If she wanted to be an actress, she wasn’t going to make it, thought Scamarcio tiredly.

  ‘I asked you how long you’ve been sleeping with him.’

  She said nothing. She just stared at him and then quickly glanced away. After a few seconds, she looked back, defiant. ‘There’s nothing going on between us — you’ve got it wrong.’

  ‘If you want me to arrest you for obstructing a major police inquiry, then let’s go. Otherwise we can stay put, and you can tell me the truth. A coffee wouldn’t go amiss either.’

  She threw him a look of undiluted hatred, then got up and headed for the espresso machine. ‘Sugar?’ she hissed with all the charm of a master poisoner.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  She quickly handed over the espresso, her eyes refusing to meet his. He smiled, and knocked it back in one sip. It was much better than the coffee they had in his office. Something about this infuriated him.

  ‘So, you were saying …’

  She sighed and ran a hand through the fake blonde mane. ‘I only arrived here a couple of months ago.’

  ‘When did you start sleeping with him?’

  She chewed on her bottom lip and said nothing, then: ‘A couple of months ago.’

  ‘Did he promise you anything in return?’

  She inclined her head. ‘I want to make it onto The Inheritance.’

  ‘Fun show — I catch it from time to time.’

  She exhaled sharply and slouched back against her chair. Scamarcio sensed that she couldn’t be bothered to put on the glamorous-secretary act anymore. Her features seemed to slacken, and her face became even less remarkable.

  ‘Listen, Detective. I won’t waste your time and, in return, I’d be grateful if you didn’t waste mine.’

  Even her voice had changed. It was lower and stronger now, and her eyes conveyed a deeper intelligence. ‘I’m sorry to hear that Micky’s wife and son have gone missing, really I am. But I had nothing to do with it. You need to understand that I’ve worked my way up through the school of hard knocks, and I’m a realist. I wasn’t harbouring any illusions that Micky was going to leave his family for me.’ She stopped for a moment and looked into her lap. ‘Micky is just a means to an end. I’m not in love with him and, if you asked him, I’m sure he’d say the same.’

  Scamarcio was impressed by the cynicism, by the cold-hearted rationality of it all.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In the school of hard knocks?’

  She began toying with the papers on her desk. ‘Children’s home followed by foster home, and all that that entails …’

  She threw him a guarded look, and he felt something dark pass between them, something better left unsaid.

  ‘I gave up waiting for my knight in shining armour a long time ago.’

  He nodded and smiled, trying to convey a little warmth this time. This woman was being straight with him; he wasn’t going to push her. ‘OK,’ he said eventually. ‘I won’t take up any more of your time. Good luck, Lola.’

  Micky had told him her name. Somehow, Scamarcio felt sure it was an invention, just like the rest of her work persona. He rose, and tossed the tiny plastic cup into the trash before picking up the small stack of A4 with the names she’d printed off for him.

  As he was heading for the door, she said: ‘Start with Giacometti.’

  ‘Giacometti?’

  He turned, and she gestured to the paper in his hand.

  ‘He runs the biggest film and TV production house in Rome — a heavy hitter.’ She had seemed about to say more, but fell silent.

  He decided to let it go. ‘Thanks. He’ll be my next stop.’

  As he was heading for Paolo Giacometti’s office, Scamarcio dialled the number for Executive Cars. A harassed-sounding woman answered.

  ‘Sorry, who did you say you were?’

  Scamarcio repeated his introduction, trying not to sound irritated.

  ‘Are you calling about Piero?’

  ‘Piero?’

  ‘Piero Cogo, our driver who was assaulted.’

  ‘You’ve had an assault there?’

  ‘Piero was on his way to a client when some bastard coshed him over the head. They nicked his wallet, phone, and car keys.’ She paused. ‘That’s not what you were calling about then?’

  Scamarcio stopped walking and took a seat on a broken wall. He rubbed a hand across his eyes. ‘Out of interest, who was Mr Cogo scheduled to drive?’

  ‘One second.’ He heard papers being shuffled, and a pen falling to the floor. ‘I know it was somewhere around Parioli. Hang on … Oh yes, here we are: it was an executive at Channel One, a Mr Proietti.’

  Scamarcio didn’t like it. As kidnappers went, they were starting to seem pretty organised. ‘Where exactly did this happen?’

  ‘A few streets away from the client’s house, I believe.’

  ‘Where was the car?’

  ‘At the client’s. We provide the drivers, but our customers often prefer to use their own cars.’

  Scamarcio made a mental note to send a colleague to look for street cameras near Proietti’s place and to talk to the driver, but he wasn’t hopeful.

  Paolo Giacometti, the producer, had his legs up on his desk and seemed to be watching something intently on his laptop when Scamarcio arrived. Every so often, Giacometti would lean forward and scrawl a quick note on a pad of paper, his eyes locked on the screen as he did so.

  ‘Why don’t you just press pause?’ asked Scamarcio from the doorway.

  Giacometti didn’t look up. ‘You don’t get the same effect. You need to watch the whole show uninterrupted to get a true sense of it.’

  Scamarcio found it odd that Giacometti hadn’t asked who he was and what he wanted. Instead his attention remained focused on the screen, his pen still moving. From the laptop, Scamarcio heard shouting then a flourish of piano music.

  ‘Come and take a seat, Detective. You can watch it with me. It’s always good to get a second opinion.’

  Giacometti swung the computer around so they could both see the screen from either side of his desk. Scamarcio noted that he was well built, but perhaps not tall. He had wavy, unruly salt-and-pepper hair, and was wearing heavy glasses with fashionable black frames. He’d put him at around fifty.

  ‘You watch much TV, Detective?’

  ‘Not really.’ Scamarcio wanted to ask how Giacometti knew who he was, then figured that Proietti’s secretary might have called ahead. Why would she do that? Good relations perhaps, her eye on the bigger picture, the long-term game?

  On the screen a woman was crying. A man was seated next to her, his hand on her shoulder. After several moments of what, Scamarcio guessed, was intended as dramatic silence, the piano resumed, and the screen turned black.

  ‘You see, Detective,’ said Giacometti, finally laying down his pen. ‘What some people in this business still fail to comprehend is that we are not in America. We are in Italia.’ He tapped out the syllables with his index finger. ‘These channel executives go to the trade fairs, the swanky conventions, ru
b shoulders with the big guys from LA, then come back thinking they have to do everything like them. But as Herman Melville once said: ‘It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.’ In my business, imitation is the road to ruin; it’s idiocy, it’s craziness, and, more importantly, it’s a huge waste of money.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Scamarcio, wondering if Giacometti was just a little bit crazy himself.

  ‘Because things are different here; our demographic is different for a start. This is a country of old men. And, more importantly, old women: old women who pray to Padre Pio, who worship the pope, who are superstitious, romantic, narrow-minded, hopeful, vengeful, jealous, traditional, prudish.’ He swept an arm across the room. ‘And what do these old women want?’ He didn’t allow Scamarcio time to respond. ‘They want old-fashioned love stories. And what do they want in those love stories?’

  Again, he didn’t stop to let Scamarcio speak. ‘They want hope, then the crushing of all hope; they want betrayal, followed by devastation, followed by rebirth, renewal, and reconciliation.’ He punched his hand on the table with each ‘re’. ‘And what do they want accompanying all this?’

  Scamarcio shook his head again.

  ‘Piano music! That’s what they want.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘Micky is a cretin. He doesn’t get it. He’s trying to make shows for people like him. But most Italians aren’t like him — they’re not metropolitan metrosexuals. They live in crumbling old villages, they live with their 90-year-old mothers — they live cut off from the 21st century, they’ve never been abroad. They want what they know, what’s familiar. My director understood this perfectly.’ He shook his head. ‘And now Micky wants him fired. Proietti doesn’t get the business; he doesn’t understand his audience.’

  ‘I heard he was doing pretty well.’

  ‘Ah, don’t believe the hype.’ He pointed a finger. ‘You start asking around, and you’ll get a very different picture.’

  ‘You heard about his wife and son?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Giacometti, as if he was surprised Scamarcio had changed the subject. ‘Yeah,’ he repeated, staring him straight in the eye now. ‘It’s weird.’ He almost whispered the word.