Sure enough, on the door, in minimalist letters, a plaque read: ‘I. Marconi’. Short and sweet.
He knocked, receiving a muttering in reply.
He opened the door.
It had been hot and humid out in the big fifties office, but it felt much cooler and more comfortable inside Marconi’s room. There was an ultra-modern computer on the enormous antique oak desk. Söderstedt understood. He had passed through the twilight zone and found his way back to the present.
The man behind the desk was in his early fifties, roughly the same age as Arto Söderstedt, and had a mighty moustache. His slender body made it seem even bigger, like a great big propeller in the middle of his face. Söderstedt was worried he might lift off at any moment and chug off through the window. The man stared at him, like Söderstedt was some kind of albino assassin from a terrible gangster film. Then his face lit up like the sun.
‘I see,’ he said in English, walking the considerable distance around his desk and holding out his hand. ‘Mister Sadestatt from Sweden.’
‘That’s right,’ said Mister Sadestatt from Sweden. ‘And you must be Italo Marconi.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Marconi replied. ‘I hear your country has animals responsible for killing one of my nastiest pimps. Could I import them?’
Arto Söderstedt laughed politely and was immediately confronted by a tricky-to-translate word. He couldn’t for the life of him remember the English word for wolverine. Was it wasp? No, that wasn’t it. Or…?
To hell with it.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was you, wasn’t it, who was in charge of the investigation into the Greek, Nikos Voultsos?’
Italo Marconi’s smile faltered; all his preconceived notions about socially inept northern Europeans had been confirmed. He made a gesture towards a chair opposite the desk and Söderstedt sat down on it. Or rather in it. It was quite soft.
‘That is correct,’ said Marconi. ‘Nikos Voultsos was a particularly unpleasant criminal. Completely lacking a conscience. We were happy when he disappeared and we’re even happier now that he’s dead.’
Plain talking, Söderstedt thought, before asking: ‘Was it you, Commissioner, who was responsible for the case summary which was given to Interpol and sent on to Stockholm?’
‘It was,’ Marconi nodded. ‘Would you like some coffee, Signor Sadestatt?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Söderstedt.
‘I’ll go and ask for some,’ said the commissioner, disappearing out of the room. He came back after a few minutes. It looked as though he had been laughing.
‘The coffee will be here soon,’ he said, repeating the walk around the desk, sitting down, leaning forward and continuing: ‘I know my report might have seemed sparse, but there just isn’t room for all the information in such a report. But I’m completely at your disposal – I just checked with my superiors. What is it you would like to know?’
‘Was Voultsos a mafioso?’
Marconi spluttered. How to explain the national state of affairs to the village idiot?
‘There is no Mafia here,’ he said. ‘It sticks to Sicily. We do, however, have local criminal gangs. Our assessment is that Nikos Voultsos was tied to one of these gangs.’
‘How was he able to commit a whole string of serious crimes without you even arresting him?’
‘You really are getting stuck straight in,’ Marconi replied, observing his chalk-white counterpart. ‘It’s important you understand a few fundamental things about the Italian justice system. We have to move slowly and pay close attention to where we step. There are always plenty of things to be taken into consideration in a whole host of different directions. I can’t go into any more detail than that. The important thing is that we had Nikos Voultsos under surveillance.’
‘Were you watching his brothel?’
Marconi snorted with laughter.
‘There are brothels and then there are brothels,’ he said, fixing his gaze on Söderstedt. ‘I can see that you are impatient, Signor Sadestatt. You’ve been without anything to do for too long, poking your toe in the dry Tuscan earth in search of pastures new. And now you’ve been given an opportunity. You’re charging ahead like an addict on the hunt for his first hit of the week.’
Arto Söderstedt wasn’t keen on Marconi’s turn of phrase. Not keen at all. But he knew what he meant.
Without raising his voice, but with his moustache about to start spinning, Marconi continued: ‘Your boss described you as one of Sweden’s most intelligent policemen. I have no reason to doubt Signor Oltin – he sounded like a level-headed man. But he also pointed out that you would probably act as you have until now: hot-headedly. In a minute or two, my secretary will bring the coffee and a tiny little grappa, to toast your presence in Tuscany – a place which, for us up here in the north, also seems like paradise, if a bit boring. So let’s partake of these drinks and see if we can’t find some other tone for the conversation.’
Söderstedt, normally so good at taking the bearing of a situation and breathing in the atmosphere, immediately realised that Marconi was right.
He nodded weakly and said: ‘You’re absolutely right. I apologise.’
That wasn’t something which happened so often.
As their conversation turned to familial structure and living conditions, Arto Söderstedt began to understand what the Italian way of working was like. He was recovering from an accident.
A culture clash.
The coffee arrived. The tiny little grappa turned out to be a glass filled to the brim. Marconi raised his glass slightly and Söderstedt mirrored the gesture. He sipped the grappa – a good one, it tasted of grapes rather than industrial waste. Grappa, the Italian schnapps, was, after all, a by-product of the wine industry.
‘Very nice,’ said Söderstedt.
‘It makes me happy to see you enjoy it,’ said Marconi. ‘It’s from your area, the Castello di Verrazzano vineyards up among the rugged hills to the north of Greve. Aside from this superb grappa they make, in my opinion, one of Chianti’s best white wines, which are hardly a Tuscan speciality otherwise.’
Then they sipped the magnificent espresso, the firm foam on which suggested that the police station had its own espresso machine tucked away somewhere in its jungle of desks.
‘So,’ said Marconi, putting the little cup to one side, ‘now I want to say a few words about Nikos Voultsos. The events in Stockholm are more or less clear, and plenty of it fits with what we know about Voultsos and his employers. What doesn’t fit in the picture is, of course, your Nobel Prize winner.’
Nominee, Söderstedt thought, though he didn’t say it aloud. He liked to think he had learned to sit. Even though he was an old dog.
‘Well, from our side, you can’t count on any link between Nikos Voultsos and’ – Marconi read from a piece of paper – ‘Leonard Sheinkman. I’d also struggle to give you anything about the murderer’s identity. That said, I can give you suggestions as to a motive.
‘There’s a kind of war going on in Europe, Signor Sadestatt. East, west, north and south are meeting, and that means several different types of criminality coming together – it means an endless war for control over the main spheres. Drugs have long been the most important, and weapons are big, of course – alcohol and cigarettes too; but data smuggling and the smuggling of stolen goods to the East – above all cars and boats stolen from the West – are relatively new. But the really big new market is women, and to a large extent Eastern European women.
‘The big crime syndicates have only just started to realise that, and so they’ve started making serious moves into the prostitution branch. Talking about brothels is not exactly right – they do have them, of course, but they’re secondary – it’s more about controlling prostitution as a whole, from the most elegant of escort services to the weariest of whores on street corners.