The Bologna Vendetta

Book 6: Daniel Leicester

by Tom Benjamin

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Political Thrillers

Synopsis

'Instead of escaping reality to this fantastic city, this city of phantoms, I was rushing towards it - hard fate awaited me in the soupy shade of this place...'

Amid the oppressive heat of a Bologna summer, English detective Daniel Leicester relives his beloved wife's final days. Vivid memories are awakened by the sight of her bicycle - missing since the accident that killed her - being ridden by a stranger through the city's tight medieval streets.

As unfinished business bleeds - quite literally - into the present, the sickening realisation Lucia's death wasn't an accident begins to dawn on Daniel. As he embarks on a quest for the truth, this most personal of crusades leads him to two very different worlds: the secretive, ancient realm of freemasonry he encountered during his first Bologna winter, and the 'Reclaim Bologna' activists he stumbles across this blistering summer.

What links these contrasting factions? Is there a chance Lucia wasn't the woman Daniel believed her to be? And will the truth be too painful, or too perilous, to bear?

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Praise for Tom Benjamin:

'Bologna is perfectly captured, the crime plot is fresh and intriguing, and the characterisation remains spot on. I found myself totally immersed and swept through this stunner of a story in 24 hours. Highly, highly recommend' - PHILIPPA EAST

'An atmospheric, intelligent crime novel that is an intricate portrait of the heart of Bologna. Beautiful, gripping, and very clever' - VICTORIA DOWD

'The locale is brought to life . . . the plot keeps you guessing' - THE TIMES

'Slow-burning, tense and brooding' - THE HERALD SCOTLAND

Release date: November 14, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 80000

Sample

It was the evening before the end, and our usual Sunday night at the Circolo San Mamolo, a social centre just outside the walls.

During the day, you would find the old people of the quarter playing Scopa or Briscola or sharing newspapers and complaining about the ruling Partito Democratico, which everyone agreed was a pale reflection of the communists who used to run Bologna. There was a bar, and a kitchen that served the local staples like tagliatelle al ragù and tortelloni, plus, on nights like this in the depths of winter, tortellini in brodo.

Many evenings the dance floor would fill to liscio Romagnolo, a local mash-up of polka and the waltz, which certainly kept the old folk in shape, along with line dancing. Reflected in the snow-darkened windows, the pensioners turned with the precision of starlings at the appropriate beat, performing impressive hand and footwork to contemporary Italian pop, although anyone familiar with the San Remo-infused genre would appreciate there was very little contemporaneous about the music to trouble them.

And at weekends, the families of members were welcome to join their nonni and take advantage of the cheap food and excellent Sangiovese or Pignoletto served in litre jugs.

‘What’s up?’ my wife asked in English.

‘I’m just distracted.’ We watched our daughter on the dance floor with her grandfather, the old boy nimbly walking our ten-year-old through the dance steps.

Lucia gave me a sympathetic look. ‘Our eccentric Signor Lambertini?’

‘It’s got its hooks in me,’ I admitted.

‘It was certainly an adventure.’ Her dark eyebrows arched. ‘But, hell, that’s Italy. What’s that expression of yours? Out of the saucepan . . . ?’

‘The frying pan.’

‘Into the fire.’

‘What have you gotten me into?’ I asked.

She prodded me teasingly: ‘As usual, amore, you got yourself into it. Even in Italy, you can’t seem to keep out of trouble.’

The song had finished and they were returning to the table, Rose brimming with excitement, while Giovanni Faidate, or ‘the Comandante’ as everyone, including his family, called him, chuckled along. I bet the old boy couldn’t believe his luck – he had been facing a widower’s life banging about the Residence, as his old palazzo-cum-stronghold down the road was called. Now here was his daughter, his granddaughter, oh, and that awkward English husband in tow.

‘Come on.’ Lucia grabbed my hand.

‘I’ve told you . . .’

‘You have to learn!’

She dragged me to the dance floor where we joined the back row. In front of us were multiple generations who knew all the moves. Lucia imitated them with aplomb, me, more like a plum. Let’s just say I was glad when it was over.

My wife assessed me, hands on hips: ‘Hopeless!’

‘I tried to tell you.’

She pulled me close, gave me an interrogatory look. ‘You know, we always can go back.’

I appreciated the sentiment, but neither of us could have thought it would be that simple.

‘Actually,’ I said. ‘I’m beginning to think it was what I needed all along.’

‘You’re saying you’re really okay in this damn country?’

I nodded. She glanced over my shoulder at Giovanni and Rose, then kissed me fiercely. ‘I’m so happy,’ she whispered.

I hope you were, Lucia. I truly hope you were.



The heat-scoured expanse of Piazza Verdi. It is mid-morning and the air has already swollen to stifle sound itself. Only the cicadas performing their castanet symphony from nearby Giardino del Guasto cut through, and soon even they will be silenced. It beats down from above, it radiates from the old stone palazzi, exuding the rusty whiff of the medieval kiln. The florid perfumes of June and July have burnt off. It is August in Bologna and we remaining locals usually emerge only at dusk, like vampires.

Hence, I keep to the shade. I had actually been surprised to discover Freud’s bar open, but I suppose like everywhere else it is seeking to exploit the burgeoning tourist trade, although the only other people sat outside – a German couple, blinking nervously – have plainly understood that this time of year Bologna is more like a trap and are consulting their guidebook as if discussing routes of escape.

I know how they feel – with the exception of my partner, Dolores, the rest of Faidate Investigations has already fled: the Comandante and his niece Alba and her daughter to the beach house in Cesenatico. His son Jacopo and fiancée Celeste south to her home in Naples, and thence, apparently, Capri. Eighteen-year-old Rose, who is not strictly-speaking an employee but certainly a beneficiary of the company’s largesse, to her boyfriend’s family’s place in the Dolomites. So it is just me and Dolores holding the fort, and she’s due off soon – to London, of all places. ‘Home of Punk!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ I replied.

But misery doesn’t go on vacation, and that is our business.

The opera house is closed for the season, yet a woman emerges from the side biglietteria door. Even from across the square, it is plain she is a lady of quality. While I am in my regulation polo shirt and chinos, which are already beginning to cling, and the Germans in short shorts and baggy T-shirts, the stout, late-middle-aged woman is wearing a colourful Dolce & Gabbana dress and smart white shoes. An expensively curated silver-blonde bob floats above her pale, not unattractive oval face, while a cream handbag hangs from a gold chain over her shoulder. I’m surprised she’s on foot – she’s not the sort of person one ordinarily sees anywhere outside frescoed receptions and gallery openings. There should have been a black limo sat outside, a suited driver ready to jump out and open the door. Instead, she puts on a pair of Jackie-O sunglasses, and heads directly towards me.

I am not overly concerned. Signora Bonelli can’t have any idea I’m on her case, although I do wonder as she approaches whether she is about to ask me directions – the only other half-respectable-looking person in the piazza. Instead, she passes by and, to the evident surprise of a pair of drug dealers stationed on the corner, heads purposefully up Via Petroni.

The pushers brazenly size me up as I go after her, clearly presuming I am some kind of bodyguard instructed to keep a distance. They give me a wary nod as if to indicate that they’re in on it, which I guess in a way they now are. I wonder – is this signora Nancy Bonelli’s dirty secret? She’s a drug fiend?

I had been given the assignment the previous week by a similarly-outfitted lady at one of our regular lunches, although this time the Contessa di Castiglione had suggested we meet at Lemongrass, an upmarket Thai restaurant which was currently all the rage, but certainly not one of our usuals – Ginevra habitually loathed anything rage-worthy and, despite being rake thin, always ordered the local, a meat-heavy pasta primo, a secondo, and more often than not, a dolce. ‘My secret,’ she liked to say, ‘is only eating out.’ Our relationship, although officially professional, was mostly social. She had had our company on a retainer more or less since its foundation, and we had looked into a thing or two for her – the background of her daughters’ fiancés (now spouses), sniffing out a couple of paintings that had ‘wandered out’ of her Venice residence (without involving the police), and setting up a state-of-the-art security system at her country villa – but, as she liked to point out, the relationship between the Castiglione and Faidate went back centuries, and she had taken a particular interest in my well-being when I had lost my wife, as she had lost her husband, young (he had a weak heart) and only the widowed truly understood the burden of dolore d’amore or ‘love-grief’ (which may or may not have been true).

‘Chopsticks,’ she said sourly.

‘What did you expect?’

‘I know how to use them, of course.’ She expertly raised them between her long, manicured fingers. ‘But it’s the rice that’s so . . . inelegant.’ She set them down and looked around. ‘Well, this is different.’

‘It is. I didn’t realise you liked Thai.’ She laughed with straight, capped white teeth. She was in her mid-sixties but, like the lady I would later be following, had avoided over-exposure to the sun and obvious plastic surgery to age as gracefully as top-class beauty treatment and solid genes would permit.

‘Didn’t someone say that one should try everything once? How silly. There are plenty of things I wouldn’t ever want to try. Honestly, I think curiosity is over-rated.’

‘You’re not alone – many Italians feel the same.’

‘But I was curious about this place. Virginia kept going on about it.’

‘Your daughter has no end of enthusiasms.’

‘Is she still banging her yoga teacher?’

‘I couldn’t say she’s not. You only asked us to confirm that she was.’

‘As long as she doesn’t give too much money away. Do you know how much setting him up in that studio cost?’

‘Several hundred thousand, I would imagine. But I believe she hung on to the lease?’

‘I should certainly hope so – my daughter may like her exercise, but I wouldn’t want to think I had raised a fool.’

The waiter came to take our orders. I had a chicken curry and salad. The Contessa, who hadn’t examined her menu, had ‘what he’s having’.

‘Were you genuinely interested in this restaurant, Ginevra, or did you choose it because you wanted to meet somewhere out of the way?’

‘What do you think?’

‘That you don’t like spilling rice.’

‘You mean, I prefer to “speel the bins”?’ She said the last part in English.

‘Very good. Is there an equivalent in Italian?’

‘Many. So,’ she lowered her voice, ‘there’s a certain signora in whom I have taken an interest.’ She picked up her phone, pursing her lips as she scrolled. She apparently found what she was looking for and mine buzzed. She had sent me a WhatsApp containing a photograph.

‘Problem?’

‘I’m having trouble opening the photo.’

‘Probably my fault, my phone’s, I mean. My daughter was telling me my settings were too high or something, too many pixies, apparently.’

I laughed. ‘Pixels. Damn pixies, they get into everything. Oh, here we go.’ A photo appeared of Nancy Bonelli stood in a group in a frescoed ballroom.

‘From an IWF trip,’ said the Contessa. ‘That’s the International Women’s Forum. I took a photo of the photo, if you know what I mean.’

‘And what do you want to know?’

She frowned. ‘It’s sensitive.’

‘Naturally.’

‘Well, it’s actually on behalf of a friend. I mean, she doesn’t know we’re meeting, but, in short, she believes this woman is having an affair with her husband, and I would like you to monitor her.’

‘And who’s the husband?’

‘You know I trust you, Daniel,’ she rested a hand on mine, ‘but I would prefer not to say.’

‘I only ask,’ I said, ‘because in these situations, it is usually the man that takes the initiative, books the hotel and so on.’

‘Be that as it may,’ she smiled sadly, ‘I would prefer we did it this way.’

‘Very well.’ Had the Contessa not been widowed, I would have presumed the gentleman in question was her spouse. Instead, I wondered if he was her lover.

She arranged her chopsticks in a pyramid to face me. ‘I would like a report on her activities.’

‘You will have one.’

The waiter reappeared with some pickles. The Contessa scooped up her sticks. ‘I’m not really sure what I’m still doing here, I’m usually in the mountains.’ She plucked up a pickle and popped it in her mouth. ‘They’re hot!’ The Contessa clacked her sticks at me. ‘Try one.’

Signora Nancy Bonelli continued along the low-beamed portico of Via Petroni past its kebab stores and grocers, the only establishments not shuttered.

Bologna becomes a city of dark-skinned migrants and pale-skinned tourists this time of year and we weave between them, both exceptions in our own ways. But signora Bonelli doesn’t enter through one of those graffiti-riddled, syrup-brown doors, or dip down a dingy corridor. She continues on to the corner of Via San Vitale, where the height of the portico rises along with the calibre of establishment.

She lingers beneath a green pharmacy sign, the thermometer reading 39ºC, waiting for the lights to change. Across the road, Piazza Aldrovandi opens like a lung among the ribs of porticoes. Through the polarised lenses of my sunglasses the sky broods opal.

I hang back, pretending to examine the pages of the communist-supporting Il Manifesto on a noticeboard while, despite the absence of traffic, the signora continues to wait. Bourgeois Bolognese are as punctilious as Germans, even in this heat.

She finally crosses San Vitale, passing the crowded tables outside a bar before ducking back beneath the portico running south up to Strada Maggiore. The eateries are setting up for lunch, while almost everything else – from the Italian-run grocers and bakers to the posh furniture stores and interior decorators – is closed.

The signora arrives at Maggiore, or ‘main street’, turning the corner where a pair of massive, weary-looking mountain nymphs support the entrance of Palazzo Bargellini. Opposite, ancient porticoes wrap around the Basilica di Santa Maria dei Servi. Within five minutes, we have gone from the rookeries of Petroni to the palazzi of Maggiore. Bologna remains a medieval city to her core.

I follow the signora past the palazzo and along the portico running parallel to dei Servi, mostly antiquarian stores and palazzi parcelled into offices and apartments. She presses a buzzer and waits for a huge set of oak doors to open. Once she has gone inside, I hurry up to slip through before they close. There is another pair of spiked iron gates beyond, but these are even slower to shut behind the signora, who is already halfway along the road that runs beside a garden square.

She steps into a side entrance and I follow closely behind.

I am at the base of an elegant, curved stairwell in time to hear the signora being greeted by another woman on the floor above. By the time the door closes, I’ve climbed high enough to see which one.

I step softly on to a landing.

Fresh pink carnations are set in a blue-and-white-painted porcelain vase in the centre of an alcove seat beneath the open window – a decoration, and a disincentive to loiter. On one side, the smart oak door of a lawyer’s office. Opposite, outside the apartment signora Bonelli entered, the discreet bronze plaque:

Associazione Studi Culturali Mazzini

Association for Cultural Studies Mazzini. I take a photograph and make my way back down the stairs.

On the surface, a wealthy lady’s trip from the opera house to a cultural club would hardly set alarm bells ringing, but Nancy Bonelli’s seemingly innocuous destination has given me pause for thought. I will need to talk with the Comandante over the phone this evening.

I walk back up the road, keeping to the shade of the building, and press the brass button marked Tiro set in the wall. While the gates and doors open, I put my sunglasses back on.

I leave the palazzo and turn down Maggiore, heading for home.

I stop dead.

I remove my sunglasses. Despite the heat, a chill runs through me. Sweat drips down my flanks. I feel my shirt flat against my back and chest.

My heart is beating fast.

I turn, and walk slowly back to the palazzo.

Beneath the arch of the portico, opposite the door and chained to a pole beside the road, is a bicycle. It is bottle green with racing handlebars, old-fashioned, as well it should be – it was second-hand when we bought it in London, its distinctive gold Raleigh heron quite a novelty in Bologna.

It is definitely hers – Lucia’s. The bike she was riding on the day she died. The bike that only days or weeks – or was it months? – later I, we, one of the family, realised we had never seen again. She had been sent flying as she jumped some lights, according to the reports, and we had presumed it had been taken in evidence, but when we had contacted the police, they had no record of it. It had just disappeared.

Yet here it is, chained to this pole.

I try the chain. It is firmly locked. I look around. The portico is deserted.

I run my fingertips over the saddle, the handlebars. Clasp them as Lucia must have done, as if to absorb some kinetic memory. I let out a noise, which may be a whimper, and squat by the machine. An onlooker might presume there is a problem with the chain or wheel, but I am simply clinging to this relic of her.

Perspiration splashes off me, darkens the pavement like rain, or blood. But I cannot leave it. I cannot leave her. I will buy the bike – or take it – from whomever has left it here, whatever the price.

It must be over forty degrees by now, but the shade isn’t making it easier – the heat collects beneath the portico like poison gas. I can feel it in my pores, the back of my throat. I need to do something.

I can start by sitting down.

I cross the road and lower myself upon the wall that separates the portico of the basilica from the street. The age-pitted marble slab, smoothed by centuries of wear, is comfortable enough.

I still can’t quite believe the bike is Lucia’s, but there’s no doubt about it. It had been mine before we moved to Bologna and hers was stolen soon after. I’d said we should get another, but, as I was walking to work, she said she would use the Raleigh, despite the crossbar. She lowered the seat and her toes just about managed to touch the floor. Now, I note, the seat has been raised. A bloke, then, most likely. That makes it easier – a woman might not want to part with it, whatever I offered, and then what could I do? A guy, if he turned down the money, I’d just grab it from him and to hell with the consequences.

I lean back against the Romanesque column and, after it becomes clear no one is coming straight away, lift my feet up and stretch my legs along the slab.

There was a time when it would have been completely deserted in this part of the city, but these days there’s enough money flushing about to maintain a low buzz of traffic, both on foot and behind the wheel. Along the portico, pedestrians plod past, while on the other side, cars and trolley-buses rumble by.

Was the bike already there when I followed the signora in? I was focusing on Nancy, the opening and closing doors. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it, although my inner inquisitor is already demanding how that could be possible, to miss something so iconic?

Look – I saw it in the end, didn’t I? My unconscious registered the thing even while my conscious was looking forward to getting back to some air-conditioning. And there it now stands, as if it was waiting for me all along, as if it had been waiting for me ever since the accident; roaming these streets in search of its owner like a dog separated from its master.

Speaking of which – there is a cold nose against the back of my hand. I look down, into the all-too-human eyes of my Lagotto Romagnolo, Rufus, his woolly chocolate-brown fur freshly shorn for summer.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask him. ‘Shouldn’t you be at the beach with the Comandante?’ He gazes back up at me, panting. I reach out to tickle beneath his muzzle but, curiously, feel nothing. He has disappeared.

A bus trundles past.

I rouse, blinking.

Sit up, refocus on the doorway. But there’s something missing.

The bike is missing.

I jump to my feet. Look wildly up and down the road. Nothing. I begin to walk towards the doorway. The blare of a horn. I stumble back and let the SUV pass.

Then I notice movement beneath the portico.

I make it across. A guy is wrapping the chain around the seat post. He looks at me, and I at him. He is, to my eyes, a strange confection – moustachioed with a curly mullet dyed lime green and wearing a tight pink woman’s T-shirt, artistically slashed, and short shorts that show off a pert bottom and smooth legs.

‘Hey,’ I say, coming toward him. ‘Excuse me, but—’ He jumps on the bike. ‘Look, I only want—’ He begins to move off along the portico, raised above the saddle to achieve maximum propulsion. ‘Hey!’ I call. He glances over his shoulder. ‘Stop!’ He puts more into it.

He’s speeding up, he’s getting away.

I begin to run.



Despite being an immigrant, I initially treated Italy like a tourist, as a sort of theme park of the senses. The food, architecture, countryside, weather. I had certainly never let my lack of Italian bother me before, be it accompanying Lucia on visits from London or ping-ponging between work in the UK and nappies in Italy after she had given birth to Rose at Bologna’s Ospedale Maggiore. If I had considered the language at all, I may have presumed I would somehow acquire it by osmosis.

Even when Lucia’s supposedly temporary stay to help care for her ailing mother dragged on, the Italian primer remained a permanent fixture at the bottom of my travel bag. It was only when she was offered the job at the housing charity in Bologna and that temporary move became permanent that I began seriously thinking about it, but armed with a modest advance to pen a paperback on London’s criminal underworld, I was not overly concerned about my subsequent failure to acquire more than a handful of phrases. After publishing my bestseller, I told myself, I would surely be contracted to write another ‘true crime’, so I would only need enough Italian to get by, especially as I would have Lucia or Rose by my side.

Not precisely a tourist, then, but arguably more ‘expat’ than immigrant.

However, as the advance dwindled and I discovered that writing a hundred-thousand-word book was nowhere near as easy as knocking out a thousand-word article, I began to notice the concessions the English-speaking side of my family had made for me had begun to melt away, and I was passing my days in a linguistic bubble, or babble.

I dug out my old travel bag and there it still was – the depressingly pristine-looking language course.

I managed to master enough basic vocabulary and grammar to navigate most simple tasks, from buying a bus ticket to ordering at a restaurant, but soon came to appreciate that this was far removed from being able to understand, let alone participate in, the ebb and flow of conversation. Li. . .