White Death by Tobias Jones Page B

now?’
    ‘Prego.’

He let me out
    He let me out and I walked round to Via Duca Alessandro. I found the villa at 57 and saw a light on on the ground floor. When I buzzed, a voice came on the line almost immediately like he was used to having visits at this time of night.
    Moroni stood by the door as I came in. He was fully dressed still and had his glasses on. His face looked saggy like some kind of dangerous dog whose viciousness was disguised behind wrinkles. At his back I could see a desk with a long, horizontal green light on it.
    ‘You again?’ He looked over his half-moon glasses at me. ‘Did you buy a flat?’
    I passed him a card between my fingers. He took it, looking at me before he read it. When he looked back up at me his face was changed. It looked cold and dead somehow. He didn’t say anything.
    ‘Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?’
    He walked to his desk without replying. I watched him stand behind it like it was some kind of shield.
    ‘What exactly do you want to know?’ The words were spoken so slowly that he sounded both bored and threatening.
    ‘I hear you always buy in cash.’
    He looked up briefly at the ceiling. ‘I work in construction. Cash is king. There’s no other currency in this business.’
    ‘And where does your cash come from?’
    ‘A cashpoint.’ He was looking at me with a ‘screw you’ face. ‘If you’re interested in my career, I can send you a curriculum vitae.’
    ‘I’m not interested in the official version.’
    ‘That’s the only version there is.’ He put out a hand towards a chair and nodded. He sat down himself and his tone seemed to become more warm. ‘Listen, in this line of work it’s hard to get the right labourers. You pay people in cash they come back for more. It makes them punctual, polite. Not virtues to be taken for granted. Everybody is happy.’
    ‘Except the taxman.’
    He rolled his head. ‘Whether they pay taxes or not isn’t my concern. Every construction company does it.’
    ‘Doesn’t make it right,’ I said.
    ‘What’s right?’ he asked, smiling at me with a sneer.
    ‘Try lawful.’
    ‘Ah, the law,’ he said, throwing his hands in the air as if we were talking about something ethereal, a fantasy of men’s imaginations.
    He was one of those men who thought that the law was the enemy and that infringement of it was a form of self-defence . He didn’t care what the law was, as long as it didn’t come after him. He was like a lot of people: those who thought that the further you could get from the law the better. It meant you were more independent and brave, somehow more manly.
    ‘What about Luciano Tosti?’
    ‘Who?’ he barked back quickly.
    ‘He bought the prosciuttificio in Via Pordenone where you’re now building your beautiful flats. Then he sold it on toMasi Costruzioni. He was put up to it by someone who had inside information about future building permits.’
    He was staring at the desk like he was wondering what to do with me.
    ‘Luciano Tosti was murdered,’ I said, watching him closely.
    He nodded slowly and then fixed me with his lazy eyes again. ‘I know,’ he said.
    ‘How did you find out?’
    ‘I heard that Masi was talking to the Carabinieri and I found out why.’
    ‘You don’t like Masi talking to the Carabinieri?’
    He shot me a stare. ‘What exactly is it you want?’
    ‘I want to find out who’s been lighting fires around town. And now I’m on it, I’m kind of getting interested in what happened to Tosti.’
    ‘Talk to Masi,’ he said.
    ‘I have.’
    ‘And he told you to come to me?’
    I didn’t know what to say. I tried to think of some way of defending Masi from the notion that he had led me to Moroni, but nothing came to me. Moroni smiled and nodded his head.
    ‘He thinks I’m involved does he?’ He said it like he would settle the score in his own time.
    ‘He didn’t even mention you,’ I said quickly.
    ‘So what brings you here?’ He narrowed his eyes. I