Back to Bologna

'Someone should kill him.' Bruno didn't reply. 'Well, I don't actually mean that, of course,' Nando went on. 'Not literally.' 'No.' 'As in a knife through the heart.' 'For example.' 'You were speaking allegorically.' 'Er . . . yes.' 'My client's intention in allegedly uttering the phrase "Someone should kill him" was entirely euphemistic, not to say parabolic.' 'Right. It's just that if the smarmy bastard should happen to drop dead . . .' 'Which God forbid.' '. . . then that would solve all our problems.' 'Says who? The next one could be even worse.' 'Worse than Curti? You must be joking.' 'Plus you're assuming that anyone in his right mind would be prepared to buy a club where half the players are on a loan or time-share deal with other teams, and the rest will be sold off at the end of the season to meet the budgetary shortfall. It would take years, not to mention very deep pockets, to turn i rossoblu around.' 'All right, so hold the heart attack, cancel the stroke. Now what? One more season like this and I'll . . .' Nando broke off as the car's headlights picked out an amazing pair of black legs displayed up to the white silk triangle of the crotch. 'Keep your eyes on the road,' Bruno grunted sourly. 'Get stuffed.' 'By her? Any time.' 'Or him.' 'With legs like that, who cares? God, I'm bored.' Nando turned the radio back up. '. . . created several good chances, particularly in the second half, but this merely served to underline the thing that Bologna fans have been talking about all season, and in all honesty for many seasons past, namely the lack of a worldclass striker who could capitalise on the many opportunities going to waste out there and put the ball in the net. The service from the wings and the midfield is always reliable and occasionally inspired, but when it comes to finishing it's the same sad story week after week . . .' Bruno yawned massively. 'So how are the kids?' he asked, cutting the volume of the radio to a plaintive whine. 'All doing well except Carmelo. He's got some sort of canker on his ribs just below the wing. It must be bothering him because he keeps gnawing at it.' 'Can't you put some sort of bandage on it? Or just tie him up till it heals?' They drove past a rare prominence in this two-dimensional landscape, one of the vast tumuli where the city's garbage was interred, its burning vapours a perpetual flame of remembrance. 'They go crazy if you try and restrain them. I'm taking him to the doctor tomorrow. He needs to get on a course of antibiotics.' 'They say now you shouldn't overdo that stuff. Lowers your immunity to flu or something.' 'Birds don't get flu.' 'Sure they do. Remember that Chinese chicken scare?' 'Carmelo isn't a chicken.' Nando was a handsome hunk from some village down in the Abruzzi that Bruno had never heard of, whose latest doomed dream was to get his hands on the ten-cylinder, 500 bhp, 300 km/h Gallardo coupe which the Lamborghini company had recently donated to the Polizia di Stato for mutual public relations purposes. Built like a wrestler, with a neat black beard and an amiable but unfocused smile, he had for some reason married himself off to a skinny, neurotic harridan from Ferrara. Presumably to compensate for the fact that their marriage was and would remain childless, the couple kept a total of eleven parrots and cockatoos in their two-bedroom apartment. The birds perched on your shoulder, nibbled your ear and shat on your jacket, and the whole place stank. Bruno had been there for dinner. Once. He and Nando were on their way back to headquarters after having been called to the scene of an alleged burglary out in Villanova. The complainant was a slyly pugnacious electrical contractor whose wDibdin, Michael is the author of 'Back to Bologna ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780307275882 and ISBN 0307275884.