Delilah by Rhodri Wyn Owen

Author:Rhodri Wyn Owen [Rhodri Wyn Owen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 45

It took me around an hour on the Internet Terminal at the Gazette the next morning to find what I was looking for. I began by searching the name of one of the Italians in the photo caption but ‘Andrea Bianchi’ seemed just too common a name around the world among both men and women. With the possibilities seemingly endless, I turned my attention to ‘Giancarlo Azzotti’ instead. After a couple of dead ends the search engine highlighted the name halfway down a web page in Italian. I scrolled down to the bottom but saw no images of the man standing alongside Harris and my father.

Scanning the page more closely I found several references to ‘Acciaio S.p.A’. So I opened up another tab and entered ‘S.p.A Italian’. Two consecutive pages of entries for spa holidays from Milan to Bari left me none the wiser, so I added the word ‘businessman’. This did the trick, turning up an entry on the term ‘Società per Azioni’ which confirmed my guess: ‘This translates as Public Company in Italian’. I cleared the search box and typed in ‘Acciaio’: it was Italian for steel.

I clicked back on the original tab, found the name Giancarlo Azzotti once again and then copied and pasted the two Italian words which followed it – ‘amministratore delegato’ – into the search box. Mr Azzotti, it transpired, was the chief executive officer of a steel manufacturing firm, Acciaio S.p.A, based just outside the city of Verona in northern Italy.

I looked down at my notes and sensed I was missing something obvious. What was it? Of course. I picked up the Sporting Life again. The syndicate’s horse was called Forza Aspa. Aspa was an acronym for Acciaio Società per Azioni. I typed in ‘forza’. I already knew it was a term commonly chanted in sports stadiums, as in ‘Forza Azzurri!’ or ‘Come on the Blues!’ It translated literally as ‘force or strength’.

Finally I cleared the search box once more and typed in both names at the same time: ‘Andrea Bianchi, Giancarlo Azzotti’. This brought up the picture of the syndicate, though this version was attributed to an Italian publication, business-related by the looks of it. I searched some more but got no further clarity on the identity of Andrea Bianchi before I was distracted by one of the Germolene Twins waiting to use the Internet Terminal.

‘Can it wait, Nigel?’

‘I’m Aled. And no, it can’t. Coma wants me to print off the agenda for tonight’s full meeting of the town council.’

‘You can do that?’ I had meant to cast doubt on the digital readiness of Porthcoed Council, but from the look Aled shot me, it was clear that he had taken my comment personally. The truth was that he and Nigel were by far the most computer literate of the paper’s staff. ‘Okay. Look, it’s all yours.’

I grabbed my jacket and headed out of the newsroom, down the stairs and past Teg, who was offering the facts of life to yet another punter expecting to be able to place a small ad for free.

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