Wednesday, 07.20-12.30


As Zen closed the front door behind him its hinges emitted
their characteristic squeal, which was promptly echoed
from the fioor above. One of the tenants there kept a caged
bird which was apparently under the illusion that Zen's
front door was a fellow inmate and responded to its
mournful cry with encouraging chirps.
Zen clattered down the stairs two at a time, ignoring the
ancient lift in its wrought-iron cage. Thank God for work,
he thought, which gave him an unquestionable excuse to
escape from his dark, cluttered apartment and the elderly
woman who had taken it over to such an extent that he felt
like a child again, with no rights or independent existence.
What would happen when he no longer had this ready-
made way of filling his days? The government had
recently been making noises about the need to reduce the
size of the bloated public sector. Early retirement for senior
staff was one obvious option. Fortunately it was unlikely
that anything more than talk would come of it. A govern-
ment consisting of a coalition of five parties, each with an
axe to grind and clients to keep happy, found it almost
impossible to pass legislation that was likely to prove
mildly unpopular with anyone, never mind tackle the
bureaucratic hydra which kept almost a third of the work-
ing population in guaranteed employment. Nevertheless,
he would have to retire one day. The thought of it con-
tinued to haunt him like the prospect of some chronic
illness. How would he get through the day? What would
he do? His life had turned into a dead end.
Giuseppe, the janitor, was keeping a watchful eye on
the comings and goings from the window of his mez-
zanine flat. Zen didn't stop to mention the scraping noises
he had seemed to hear the night before. In broad daylight
the whole thing seemed as unreal as a dream.
The streets were steeped in mild November sunlight
and ringing with sounds. Gangs of noisy schoolchildren
passed by, flaunting the personalities that would be buried
alive for the next five hours. The metallic roars of shutters
announced that the shops in the area were opening for
business. A staccato hammering and the swishing of a
paint sprayer issued from the open windows of the
basement workshops where craftsmen performed mys-
terious operations on lengths of moulded wood. But the
traffic dominated: the uniform hum of new cars, the
idiosyncratic racket of the old, the throaty gurgle of
diesels, the angry buzzing of scooters and three-wheeled
vans, the buses' hollow roar, the chainsaw of an un-
silenced trail bike, the squeal of brakes, the strident
discord of horns in conflict.
At the corner of the block the newsagent was adding the
final touches to the display of newspapers and magazines
which were draped around his stall in a complex over-
lapping pattern. As usual, Zen stopped to buy a paper, but
he did not even glance at the headlines. He felt good,
serene and carefree, released from whatever black magic
had gripped his soul the night before. There would be time
enough later to read about disasters and scandals which
had nothing whatever to do with him.
Across the street from the newsstand at the corner of the
next block was the cafe which Zen frequented, largely
because it had resisted the spreading blight of skimmed
milk, which reduced the rich foam of a proper cappuccino to
an insipid froth. The barman, who sported a luxuriant
moustache to compensate for his glossily bald skull,
greeted Zen with respectful warmth and turned away
unbidden to prepare his coffee.
'Barbarians!' exclaimed a thickset man in a tweed suit,
looking up from the newspaper spread out before him on
the bar. 'Maniacs! What's the sense of it all? What can they
hope to achieve?'
Zen helped himself to a flaky brioche before broaching
the chocolate-speckled foam on the cappuccino which
Ernesto placed before him. I." was only after they had been
meeting in the bar each morning for several years that Zen
had finally discovered, thanks to an inflamed molar re-
quiring urgent attention, that the indignant newspaper-
reader was the dentist whose name appeared on one of the
two brass plates which Giuseppe burnished religiously
every morning. He congratulated himself on having resis-
ted the temptation to look at the paper. No doubt there
had been some dramatic new revelation about the Burolo
affair. Hardly a day went by without one. But while for the
dentist such things were a form of entertainment, a pretext
for a display of moral temperament, for Zen it was work,
and he didn't start work for another half hour. Idly, he
wondered what the other men in the bar would say if they
knew that he was carrying a video tape showing the
Burolo killings in every last horrific detail.
At the thought, he put down his coffee cup and patted
his coat pocket, reassuring himself that the video cassette
was still there. That was one mistake he certainly couldn't
allow himself. There had already been one leak, when
stills from the tape Burolo had made showing love scenes
between his wife and the young lion-keeper had been
published in a trashy scandal magazine. Such a magazine,
or even one of the less scrupulous private TV stations,
would be willing to pay a small fortune for a video of the
killings themselves. The missing tape would immediately
be traced to Zen, who had signed it out from Archives.
Everyone would assume that Zen himself had sold the
tape, and the denials of the magazine or TV station -- if
they bothered to deny it -- would be discounted as part of
the deal. Vincenzo Fabri had been waiting for months for
just such an opportunity to present itself. He wouldn't let
it go to waste!
Zen now knew that he had badly bungled his
unexpected promotion from his previous menial duties to
the ranks of the Ministry's prestigious Criminalpol divi-
sion. This had been due to a widespread but mistaken idea
of the work which this group did. The press, intoxicated
by the allure of elite units, portrayed it as a team of high-
powered 'supercops' who sped about the peninsula crack-
ing the cases which proved too difficult for the local offi-
cials. Zen, as he had ruefully reflected many times since,
should have known better. He of all people should have
realized that police work never took any account of indivi-
dual abilities. It was a question of carrying out certain
procedures, that was all. Occasionally these procedures
resulted in crimes being solved, but that was incidental to
their real purpose, which was to maintain or adjust the
balance of power within the organization itself. The result
was a continual shuffling and fidgeting, a ceaseless and
frenetic activity which it was easy to mistake for pur-
poseful action.
Nevertheless, it was a mistake which Zen should never
have made, and which had cost him dearly. When dis-
patched to Bari or Bergamo or wherever it might be, he
had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the cases he had
been assigned, asking probing questions, dishing out criti-
cism, reorganizing the investigation and generally stirring
things up as much as possible. This was the quickest way
to get results, he fondly imagined, not having realized that
the results desired by the Ministry flowed automatically
from his having been sent. He didn't have to lift a finger,
in fact it was important that he didn't. Far from being the
'oop from the Ministry' which the press liked to portray,
Criminalpol personnel were comparable to inspectors of
schools or airports. Their visits provided a chance for the
mistry to get a reasonably reliable picture of what was
happening, a reminder to the local authorities that all
power ultimately lay with Rome, and a signal to concerned
pressure groups that something was being done. No one
wanted Zen to solve the case he had been sent to look into.
Not the local police, who would then be asked why they
had failed to achieve similar results unaided, nor the
Ministry, to whom any solution would merely pose a fresh
set of problems. All he needed to do in order to keep
everyone happy was just go through the motions.
Unfortunately, by the time he finally realized this, Zen
had already alienated most of his new colleagues. Admit-
tedly he had started with a serious handicap, owing to the
manner of his appointment, which had been engineered
by one of the suspects in the Miletti kidnapping case he
had investigated in Perugia. Zen's subsequent promotion
had naturally been regarded by many people as a form of
pay-off, which was bound to cause resentment. But this
might eventually have been forgiven, if it hadn't been for
the newcomer's tactless display of energy, together with
the bad luck of his having made an enemy of one of the
most articulate and popular men on the staff. Vincenzo
Fabri had tried unsuccessfully on a number of occasions to
use political influence to have himself promoted, and he
couldn't forgive Zen for succeeding where he had failed.
Fabri provided a focus for the feelings of antipathy which
Zen had aroused, and which he kept alive with a success-
ion of witty, malicious anecdotes that only came to Zen's
ears when the damage had been done. And because
Fabri's grudge was completely irrational, Zen knew that it
was all the more likely to last.
He crumpled his paper napkin into a ball, tossed it into
the rubbish bin and went to pay the cashier sitting at a
desk in the angle between the two doors of the cafe. The
newspaper the dentist had been reading lay open on the
bar, and Zen couldn't ignore the thunderous headline:
THE RED BRIGADES RETURN'. Scanning the article
beneath, he learned that a judge had been gunned down
at his home in Milan the night before.
So that was what the dentist's rhetorical questions had
referred to. What indeed was the sense of it all? There had
been a time when such mindless acts of terrorism, how-
ever shocking, had at least seemed epic gestures of
undeniable significance. But that time had long passed,
and re-runs were not only as morally disgusting as the
originals, but also dated and second-hand.
As he walked to the bus stop, Zen read in his own paper
about the shooting. The murdered judge, one Bertolini,
had been gunned down when returning home from work.
His chauffeur, who had also been killed, had fired at the
attackers and was thought to have wounded one of them.
Bertolini was not a particularly important figure, nor did
he appear to have had any connection with the trials of
Red Brigades' activists. The impression was that he had
been chosen because he represented a soft target, itself a
humiliating comment on the decline in the power of the
terrorists from the days when they had seemed able to
strike at will.
Zen's eyes drifted off to the smaller headlines further
down the page. BURNED ALIVE FOR ADULTERY', read
one. The story described how a husband in Genova had
caught his wife with another man, poured petrol over
them both and set them alight. He abruptly folded the
paper up and tucked it under his arm. Not that he had
anything to worry about on that score, of course. He
should be so lucky!
As a bus approached the stop, the various figures whn
had been loitering in the vicinity marched out into the
street to try their chances at the lottery of guessing where
the rear doors would be when the bus stopped. Zen did
reasonably well this morning, with the result that he was
ruthlessly jostled from every side as the less fortunate trieci
to improve on their luck. Someone at his back used his
elbow so enterprisingly that Zen turned round to protest,
almost losing his place as a result. But in the end justice
prevailed, and Zen managed to squeeze aboard just as the
doors closed.
The events reported in the newspaper had already had
their effect at the Viminale. The approaches leading up to
the Ministry building were guarded by armoured person-
nel carriers with machine-gun turrets on the roof. The
barriers were lowered and all vehicles were being carefully
searched. Pedestrian access, up a flight of steps from the
piazza, was through a screen of heavy metal railings
whose gate was normally left open, but today each person
was stopped in the cage and had to present his or her
identification, watched carefully by two guards wearing
bulletproof vests and carrying submachine-guns.
Having penetrated these security checks, Zen walked
up to the third floor, where Criminalpol occupied a suite of
rooms at the front of the building. The contrast with the
windowless cell to which Zen had previously been con-
fined could hardly have been more striking. Tasteful
renovation, supplemented by a scattering of potted plants
and antique engravings, had created a pleasant working
ambience without the oppressive scale traditionally associ-
ated with government premises.
'Quite like the old days!' was Giorgio De Angelis's com-
ment as Zen passed by. 'The lads upstairs are loving it, of
course. A few more like this and they'll be able to claw
back all the special powers they've been stripped of since
things quietened down.'
De Angelis was a big, burly man with a hairline which
had receded dramatically to reveal a large, shiny forehead
of the type popularly associated with noble and unworldly
intellects. What spoiled this impression was his bulbous
nose, with nostrils of almost negroid proportions from
which hairs sprouted like plants that have found them-
selves a niche in crumbling masonry. He was from the
<own of Crotone, east of the Sila mountains in central
Calabria. One of the odd facts still lodged in Zen's brain
from school was that Crotone had been the home of
Pythagoras. This perhaps explained why De Angelis
reminded him of a cross between a Greek philosopher and
a Barbary pirate, thus neatly summing up Zen's uncer-
tainty about his character and motives.
'Frankly, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if they set up the
whole thing,' the Calabrian went on breezily. 'Apparently
the Red Brigades have denied responsibility. Anyway, this
Bertolini had nothing to do with terrorism. Why pick on
him?'
Zen took off his overcoat and went to hang it up. He
would have liked to be able to like De Angelis, the only
one of his new colleagues who had made any effort to be
friendly. But this very fact, coupled with the politically
provocative comments which De Angelis was given to
making, aroused a suspicion in Zen's mind that the Cala-
brian had been deliberately assigned to sound him out and
try and trap him into damaging confidences. Even given
the mutual hostility between the criminal investigation
personnel and their political colleagues 'upstairs', De
Angelis's last remark had been totally out of line.
'Have you seen the papers?' De Angelis demanded.
'"The terrorists return". "Fear stalks the corridors of
power". Load of crap if you ask me. The fucking Red
Brigades don't go round spraying people with shotgun
pellets. Nothing but the best hardware for our yuppie
terrorists. ~zs, Armalites, Kalashnikovs, state-of-the-art
stuff. Shotguns are either old-style crime or DIY.'
He looked at Zen, who was patting his overcoat with a
frown.
'You lost something?'
Zen looked round distractedly.
'What? Yes, I suppose so. But in that case it can hardly
have been the Politicals either.'
'How do you mean?'
Zen's hands searched each of the pockets of the overcoai
at some length, returning empty.
'Well, they'd have used the right gun, presumably.'
De Angelis looked puzzled. Then he understood, and
whistled meaningfully.
'Oh, you mean... Listen Aurelio, I'd keep my voice
down if you're going to say things like that.'
Too late, Zen realized that he had walked into a trap.
'I didn't mean that they'd killed him,' De Angelis
explained, 'only that they'd orchestrated the media
response to his death. I mean, you surely don't
believe...'
'No, of course not.'
He turned away with a sickly smile. He had just given
himself away in the worst possible fashion, voicing what
everyone no doubt suspected but no Ministry employee
who wanted to succeed could afford to say out loud. But
that didn't matter, not now. All that mattered was that the
video cassette of the Burolo killings was missing from his
pocket.
Zen walked through the gap in the hessian-clad screens
which divided off the space allotted to each official,
slumped down behind his desk and lit a cigarette. He
recalled with horrible clarity what had happened as he
boarded the bus. It was a classic pickpocket's technique,
using heavy blows in a 'safe' area like the back and
shoulders to cover the light disturbance as a wallet or
pocket-book was removed. The thief must have spotted
the bulge in Zen's coat pocket and thought it looked
promising.
Looking on the bright side, there was a good chance --
well, a chance, anyway -- that when the thief saw that he'd
made a mistake he would simply throw the tape away.
Even if he was curious enough to watch it, the first scenes
were not particularly interesting. Unless you happened to
recognize Burolo and the others, it looked much like any
o~her home video, a souvenir of someone's summer holi-
day. Everything depended on whether the thief realized
that his 'mistake' had netted him something worth more
than all the wallets he could steal in a lifetime. He might,
or he might not. The only sure thing was that Zen could do
absolutely nothing to influence the outcome one way or
the other.
He had expected writing the report to be a chore, but
after what had just happened it was a positive relief to pull
the typewriter over, insert a sheet of paper and immerse
himself in work. The first section, summarizing the scene-
of-crime findings, went very fast. Owing to the evidence
of the video recording and the caretaker's prompt arrival,
there was no dispute about the method or timing of the
killings. The murder weapon had not been recovered, but
was assumed to have been the Remington shotgun that
was missing from the collection Oscar kept in a rack next
door to the dining room. The spent cartridges found at the
scene were of the same make, type and batch as those
stored in the drawers beneath this rack. Unidentified
fingerprints had been found on the rack and elsewhere in
the house. The nature of the victims' wounds indicated
that the shots had been angled upwards, suggesting that
the weapon had apparently been fired from the hip. At
that range it was unnecessary to take precise aim, as the
video all too vividly demonstrated.
The two pistol bullets fired by Vianello had been
recovered, and one of them revealed traces of blood of a
group matching stains found at a point consistent with the
assassin's estimated position. A series of stains of the same
blood group -- which was also that of Oscar Burolo, Maria
Pia Vianello and Renato Favelloni -- were found leading to
the vault beneath the house where Oscar's collection of
video tapes and computer discs was housed. When the
villa was searched, this room was found to be in a state of
complete disorder: the new section of shelving Oscar had
recently installed had been thrown over, and video cas-
settes and floppy discs lay scattered everywhere. The
fingerprints found on the gun-rack were also present in
profusion here.
Zen stopped typing to stub out his cigarette. From
behind the hessian screen he could hear male voices raised
in dispute about the merits and demerits of the new Fiat
hatchback. He recognized the voices of Vincenzo Fabri and
another official, Bernardo Travaglini. Then a flicker of
movement nearby caught his eye and he looked round to
find Tania Biacis standing by his desk.
'Sorry?' he muttered.
'I didn't say anything.'
'Oh.'
He gazed at her helplessly, paralysed by his desire to
reach out and touch her. These exchanges, full of non
sequiturs and dead ends, were typical of their conversation.
Presumably Tania just assumed that Zen was a bit scatter-
brained and thought no more about it. He hoped so,
anyway.
'This is for you.'
She handed him an envelope from the batch of internal
mail she was delivering.
'So what was it last night?' Zen asked. 'The opera, the
new Fellini?'
'The Opera's on strike,' she said after a momentary
hesitation. 'As for Federico, we gave up on him after that
last one. Granted the man used to be a genius, but
enough's enough. No, we went out to eat at this little place
out in the country near Tivoli. Have you been there? It's all
the rage at the moment. Enrico Montesano was there, with
the most peculiar woman I've ever seen in my life, if she
was a woman. But you'd better hurry, if you want to go.
The food's going downhill already. In another week it'll be
ruined.'
?en sat looking at her, hardly heeding what she said.
Tall, large-boned and small-breasted, with brows that
arched high above her deep brown eyes, prominent
cheekbones, a strong neck and a light down on her pro-
truding upper lip, which was usually curved as if in sup-
pressed amusement, Tania Biacis resembled a Byzantine
Madonna come down from her mosaic in some chilly apse,
a Madonna not of sorrow but of joy, of secret glee, who
knew that the universe was actually the most tremendous
joke and could hardly believe that everyone else was
taking it seriously. Like himself, Tania was a northerner,
from a village in the Friuli region east of Udine. This had
created an immediate bond between them, and as the days
went by Zen had learned of her interest in films, music,
sailing, ski-ing, cookery, travel and foreign languages. He
also discovered that she was fourteen years younger than
him, and married.
'I don't care what your dealer told you,' Vincenzo Fabri
proclaimed loudly. 'Until a gearbox has done ioo,ooo kilo-
metres -- under on-road conditions, not on some test track
in Turin -- not even Agnelli himself knows how it's going
to hold up.'
'What do I care?' retorted Travaglini. 'With the discount
I'm getting I can drive it until the warranty runs out and
still break even on the trade-in. That's a year's free
motoring.'
'Would you do me a favour?' Tania whispered hur-
riedly.
'Of course.'
'You don't know what it is yet.'
'It doesn't matter.'
Zen saw nothing wild or extravagant in this claim,
which represented the simple truth. But as she turned
away with a disconcerted look he realized that it had
sounded all wrong, either too gushing or too casual.
'Forget it,' she told him, disappearing through a gap in
the screens like an actor leaving the stage.
Zen sat there taking in her absence with a sharp pain he'd
forgotten about, the kind that comes with love you don't
ask for or even necessarily want, but which finds you out. It
was normal to suffer like this in one's youth, of course, but
what had he done to deserve such a fate at his age?
He tore open the memorandum she had brought him.

'From: Dogliotti, Assistant Registrar, Archives.
'To: Zeno, Vice-Questore, Polizia Criminale.
Subject: 46429 BUR 4gg/K/95 (Video cassette, one).
You are requested to return the above item at your
earliest convenience since it is ...................
in the blank space, someone had scrawled an illegible
phrase.
Zen stuffed the memorandum into his pocket with a
weary sigh. He had been so concerned about the large-
scale repercussions if the tape fell into the wrong hands
that he had completely forgotten the immediate problems
involved. The Ministry's copy of the Burolo video was of
course just that, a copy, the original being retained by the
magistrates in Nuoro. Technically speaking its loss was no
more than an inconvenience, but that didn't mean that
Zen could just drop down to Archives and tell them what
had happened. In theory, official files could only be taken
out of the Ministry with a written exeat permit signed by
the relevant departmental head. In practice no one took
the slightest notice of this, but the moment anything went
wrong the letter of the law would be strictly applied.
Once again, Zen turned to the task in hand as an escape
from these problems. The next section of the report was
considerably less straightforward than the one he had just
written. While the facts of the Burolo case were simple
enough, the interpretations which could be placed on
them were political dynamite. Zen's completed report
would be stored in the Ministry's central database,
accessible by anyone with the appropriate terminal and
codeword, his views and conclusions electronically
enshrined for ever. At least he didn't have to deal with the
dreaded glowing screens himself! The use of computers
was spreading inexorably through the various law
enforcement agencies, although the dream of a unified
electronic data pool had faded with the discovery that the
systems chosen by the Carabinieri and the police were
incompatible, both with each other and with the quite
different system used by the judiciary. It was a sign of
their elite status that those Criminalpol officials who
wished to do so had been allowed to retain their battered
manual Olivettis with the curvy fifties' styling that was
now fashionable once more.
Zen lit another of the coarse-flavoured domestic ciga-
rettes, looked up at the rectangular tiles of the suspended
ceiling for inspiration, then began to pound the keys
again.
'Because of the exceptional diffiiwlty of unauthorized
access to the villa, the number of suspects was extremely
limited. Nevertheless, five possibilities have at various
times been considered worthy of investigation. The first,
chronologically, concerns Alfonso and Giuseppina Bini.
Bini acted as caretaker and general handyman at the villa,
while his wife cooked and cleaned. Both had worked for
Burolo for over ten years. At the time of the murders, the
couple claim to have been watching television in their
quarters in the north wing of the property. This is separ-
ated from the dining room by the width of the whole
building, including the massive exterior walls of the
original farm house. As Giuseppina Bini is slightly deaf,
the volume of the television was turned quite high. Sub-
sequent tests confirmed the couple's story that the
gunshots were at first almost inaudible. It was only when
they were repeated that Alfonso went to investigate.
'The evidence against the Binis never amounted to more
than the fact of their presence at the villa at the relevant
time, but since the only other people present were all
dead, and it was apparently impossible for any intruder to
have entered the property, it is understandable that the
couple came under suspicion. However, the case against
them, which already lacked any viable motive, was further
weakened by the discovery of the video tape recording
Alfonso Bini's evidently genuine shock on discovering the
bodies, and by the fact that a meticulous search failed to
uncover any trace of the murder weapon at the villa,
where the couple had remained throughout.'
Zen paused to give his numbed fingers a chance to
xecover. Next on his list was the vendetta theory, which
involved filling in the background about the attempted
kidnapping of Oscar Burolo. This had surprised no one,
except for the fact that the intended victim had got away
with nothing but a scratch on his shoulder. God damn it,
peopie had murmured in tones of exasperated admiration,
how does he do it? Kidnapping was notoriously a way of
life in Sardinia, and what had Burolo done but choose a
property on the very edge of the Barbagia massif itself, the
heartland of the kidnapping gangs and the location of the
underground lairs where they hid their victims? He was
asking for it!
And he duly got it. Fortunately for Oscar, the Lincoln
Continental he had been driving at the time was a rather
special model, built for the African president who figured
in the fictitious 'slave' story. Oscar did a lot of work in
Africa, which he liked to describe as 'a land of oppor-
tunity', rolling his eyes comically to suggest what kind of
opportunities he had in mind. The president in question
was unfortunately toppled from power just after taking
delivery of the vehicle and just before Oscar could collect
on the contract the president had signed for the construc-
tiov, of a new airport in the country's second-largest city, a
job which had promised to be even more lucrative than
most of those which Oscar was involved in.
Where other companies might reckon on a profit margin
of 2o or 3o per cent, regarding anything above that as an
extraordinary windfall, the projects which Burolo Con-
struction undertook seemed able to generate profits that
were often in excess of the total original budget. Oscar had
earned the sobriquet 'King Midas' for his ability to turn the
hardest rock, the most arid soil and the foulest marshland
into pure gold. In the case of the African airport, his bill
had already soared to a sum amounting to almost 4 per-
cent of the country's gross national product, but on this
occasion Oscar was constrained to realism. Even if the new
regime had been disposed to honour the commitments of
the former president, it would have had considerable dif-
ficulty in doing so, since the latter had prudently diverted
another considerable slice of the country's GNP to the
Swiss bank account that was now financing his premature
retirernent. All this was very regrettable, but Oscar was a
realist. He knew that while governments come and go,
business goes on for ever. So rather than stymie his
chances of profitable intervention in the country's future
by pointless litigation, he reluctantly agreed to accept a
settlernent which barely covered his expenses. To sweeten
the pill, he asked for and was given the Lincoln Con-
tinental as well.
At the time Oscar had seen the car as just another of the
fancy gadgets with which he loved to surround himself,
but it undoubtedly saved his life when the kidnappers
tried to take him. He was driving back from the local
village church when it happened. Much to most people's
surprise, Oscar never missed Sunday Mass. Experience
had taught him the importance of keeping on the right
side of those in power, and compared with the kind of
kickbacks, favours and general dancing of attendance
which some of his patrons expected, God seemed posi-
tively modest in His demands. It was true that you could
never be absolutely certain that He was there, and if so
whether He was prepared to come up with the goods, but
much the same could be said about most of the people in
Rome too. As long as all that was needed to stay in with
Him was taking communion every Sunday, Oscar thought
it was well worth the effort. Unfortunately the local village
church lacked a suitable landing place for the Agusta, so
he had to drive.
As he rounded one of the many sharp bends that Sun-
day, Oscar found the road blocked by what appeared to be
a minor accident. A car was lying on its side in the ditch,
while the lorry which had apparently forced it off the road
was slewed around broadside on to the approaching lim-
ousine. Three men were kneeling beside a fourth who was
lying face-down in the road.
As Oscar got out to help, the men turned towards him.
'instantly, I knew!' he told countless listeners later.
'Don't ask me how. I just knew!'
 He leapt back into the car as the 'accident victim' rolled
to one side, revealing the rifles and shotguns on which
he'd  been lying. Several shots were fired, one of which
wounded Oscar slightly in the shoulder. He didn't even
notice. He threw the Lincoln into reverse and accelerated
back up the road.
Tlie kidnappers gave chase on fnot, firing as they ran.
But the African president, even more of a reaiist than
Burolo himself, had specified armour-plating and bullet-
p;roof windows, and the kidnappers' shots rattled harm-
lessly away. When he reached the corner, Oscar reversed
on to the shoulder to turn the car round. As hc did so, the
youngest of the four men sprinted forward, leaped on to
the bonnet, pressed the muzzle of his rifle against the
windscreen and fired. In the event, the shot barely chip-
ped the toughened glass, but for a second Oscar had
stared death in the face. His reaction was to slam on the
brakes, sending the man reeling into the road, and then
accelerate right over him.
By the time the police arrived at the scene there was
nothing to see except a few tyre marks and a little blood
mixed in with the loose gravel in the centre of the road. A
few days later the funeral of a young shepherd named
Antonio Melega took place in a mountain village some
forty kilometres to the north-west. According to his grim-
faced, taciturn relatives, he had been struck by a hit-and-
run driver while walking home from his pastures.
The abortive kidnap made Oscar Burolo an instant hero
among the island's villa-owning fraternity, eminently kid-
nappable every one. One enterprising shopkeeper did a
brisk trade in T-shirts reading 'Italians 1, Sardinians 0'
until the local mayor protested. But although Burolo was
quite happy to be lionized, in private he was a frightened
man, haunted by the memory of that dull bump beneath
the car and the man's muffled cry as the tons of armour-
plating crushed the life out of him. He knew that by
killing one of the kidnappers he had opened an account
that would only be closed with his own death. Burolo
had been born in the north, but his father had been from
a little village in the province of Matera, and he had told
his son about blood feuds and the terrible obligation of
vendetta which could be placed on a man against his will,
destroying him and everyone close to him because of
something he had nothing to do with and of which he
perhaps even disapproved. Young Oscar had been
deeply impressed by these stories. To his childish ear
they had the ring of absolute truth, matching as they did
the violent and arbitrary rituals of the world he shared
with other boys his age. Just as he had known the kid-
nappers the moment their eyes met, so now he knew
they would not rest until they had avenged the death of
their colleague.
Faced with this knowledge, a lesser man might have
called it quits, sold off the villa -- if he could find a pur-
chaser! -- and taken his holidays elsewhere in future. But
Oscar's realism had its limits, and it ended where his
vanity began. Had it been a business deal, with no one but
himself and the other party any the wiser, he might have
cut and run. But he had invested all his self-esteem in the
villa, to say nothing of several billion lira, and it would
take more than some bunch of small-time sheep-shaggers,
as he jeeringly referred to them, to see him off.
Nevertheless, someone had seen him off, and the friends
and relatives of the late Antonio Melega naturally came
under suspicion. Apart from the sheer ferocity of the kill-
ings, some of the physical evidence seemed to support this
hypothesis. Sardinians, particularly those from the
poorer mountain areas, are the shortest of all Mediter-
ranean peoples. The fingerprints found on the ejected
shotgun cartridges were exceptionally small -- 'like a
child's', the Carabinieri's expert had remarked, an unfor-
tunate phrase which had provoked much mirth in the rival
force. But an adult gunman of small statur  was another
matter, and would also explain the low angle of fire which
had previously been attributed to the gun being held at hip
level. Moreover, sheep rustlers would necessarily be
skilled in moving and acting soundlessly, hence the eerie
silence which had so impressed everyone who had seen
the video tape.
'Unfortunately,.' Zen typed, 'there was an insurn;oun-
table problem about this attractive hypothesis, namely the
question of access. The defences of the Villa Burolo had
been specifically designed to prevent an incursion of pre-
cisely this kind. It is true that the control room itself was
not manned at the time of the murders, but the system
was designed to set off alarms all over the villa in the event
of any intrusion. In order to test the effectiveness of these
alarms, a specialist alpine unit of the Carabinieri attempted
to break into the villa by a variety of means, including the
use of parachutes and hang-gliders. In every case, the
alarms were activated. Any direct assault of the premises,
whether by local kidnappers or any other group, thus had
to be ruled out.'
Placing an asterisk after 'group', Zen added at the foot of
the page: 'Subsequent to an assessment of the situation
undertaken by this department in late September, Dottor
Vincenzo Fabri suggested that the intended victim of the
killings might not have been Oscar Burolo, who was
unarmed and whose demeanour throughout the video
recording showed him to be unafraid of the intruder, but
his guest Edoardo Vianello. Fabri pointed out that the fact
that the architect was carrying a pistol showed that he
feared for his safety, and raised the possibility that an
investigation into Vianello's professional affairs might
reveal an involvement with the organized crime for which
his native Sicily is notorious. To overcome the problem of
access, Fabri suggested that Giuseppina Bini was secretly
working for the Mafia, drawing attention to the fact that in
1861 her maternal grandfather had been born in Agri-
gento. For some reason, however, this ingenious theory
failed to attract the serious attention it no doubt merited.'
Zen smiled sourly. It was rare for him to get an opportu-
nity to put one over on Vincenzo Fabri. What the hell had
the man been up to, he wondered, floating this kind of
wild and unsubstantiated rumour?
The next candidate on Zen's list came into the category
of light relief.
'Furio Pizzoni was detained on his return to the villa
about two hours after the killings had taken place. When
questioned as to his earlier whereabouts, he claimed to
have spent the evening in a bar in the local village. This
alibi was subsequently confirmed by the owner of the bar
and several customers. Pizzoni undoubtedly had access to
the remote control device mentioned below (see Favelloni,
Renato), but given his alibi and the absence of any evident
motive, interest in him soon faded, although it was briefly
revived by the discovery of video tapes showing amorous
encounters between him and Rita Burolo.'
Zen drew the last fragrant wisps of smoke from his
cigarette and crushed it out. After a moment's thought, he
decided against going into any more details. Even the
magazine which had paid so dearly for the photographs
made from one of those ~ideo tapes had drawn a discreet
veil of verbiage over the exact nature of this little love
triangle. It was difficult to offer a tasteful account of the
fact that the murdered woman had been in the habit of
meeting Pizzoni by moonlight in the hut which the lions
used during the day and rolling nude on the straw
bedaubed with their sweat and excrement while the young
man pleasured her in a variety of ways undreamt of in the
animal kingdom. For some people it was still more difficul".
to accept that Oscar Burolo had known about these orgies
and had done nothing whatever about them apart from
rigging up a small video camera in the rafters of the hut
to record the scene for his future delectation.
Suddenly Zen caught the sound of Tania's voice behind
the screens.
'You promise?'
She sounded anxious.
'But of course!'
The heavy, monotonous voice was that of an official
called Romizi.
'Otherwise it'll mean a lot of trouble for me,' Tania
stressed.
'Don't worry! I'll take care of it.'
Zen slumped forward until his forehead touched the
cool metal casing of the typewriter. So she had found
someone else to ask her favour of, after he had scared her
away with his tactless impetuosity. He took a deep
breath, expelled it as a long sigh, and began to pound the
Olivetti's stubborn keys again.
'Given the killer's need of specialized knowledge to
overcome the villa's security defences, it was inevitable
that the only surviving member of Oscar Burolo's
imme tiate family, his son Enzo, should come under sus-
picion. Relations between Enzo and his father had repor-
tedly been strained for some time, largely owing to the
young man's refusal to agree to give up his attempt to
become a professional violinist in favour of a career in law
or medicine. That August, Enzo Burolo was attending a
music school in America, and inquiries by the FBI con-
firmed that he had been in the Boston area during the
period immediately preceding and following the mur-
ders. This line of investigation was therefore also
dropped. '
Zen flexed his fingers, making the joints creak like old
wood. He had now disposed of the suspects the judiciary
had
ad rejected. It only remained to discuss their eventual
choice, currently awaiting trial in Nuoro prison. And here
he had to tread very carefully indeed.
'The remaining possibility centred on Renato Favelloni,'
he wrote. 'Favelloni had visited the Burolo property on
many previous occasions, and had been staying there
during the period immediately prior to the murders. Early
that evening he and his wife were flown by Oscar Burolo
to Olbia airport to catch Alisarda flight IGxzg to Rome.
According to Nadia Favelloni, shortly before the flight was
cailed her husband told her that he had forgotten a very
!mportant document at the villa and had to return to g t it.
She was to go on to Rome while he would take a later
tlight. Nadia Favelloni duly left on IGxx3, but an examina-
tion of passenger lists revealed that Favelloni had made no
booking for a later flight. Under questioning, Favelloni
first claimed that he had flown to Milan instead. When it
was pointed out to him that his name did not appear ov.
the passenger list of the Milan fiight either, he stated that
the purpose of his trip had been to visit his mistress. This
was why he had told his wife the false story about leaving
a document at the Villa Burolo, and why he had booked
under a false name. His wife was jealous, and had once
hired a private detective to check on his movements. How-
ever, none of the staff or passengers on the Milan fiight
was able to identify Favelloni, and since his mistress's
testimony is suspect, there is no proof that he ever left
Sardinia on the night of the murders.
'The key to the Burolo case throughout has been the
question of access. Oscar Burolo had paid an enormou.'
sum of money to turn his property into a fortress, yet th.:-
murderer was able to enter and leave the property without
setting off any of the alarms, all within a few minutes.
How was this possible'?
'The most likely explanation requires some consider-
ation of the provision made to enable the inhabitants of the
villa themselves to come and go. Since Burolo refused to
employ security guards to man the gates or the control
room, thii had to be done automatically, by means of a
remote control or 'proximity' device similar to those used
for opening garage doors. But while most commercially
available models are of little value in security terms, since
their codes can easily be duplicated, the system at the
Villa Burolo was virtually unbreakable, because the code
changed every time it was used. Along with the existing
code, causing the gates to open, the remote cuntrol unit
transmitted a new randomly-generated cluster, replacing
the previous code, which would serve to operate the
mechanism at the next occasion. Since each signal was
uni.~ue, it was impossible for a would-be intruder to
duplicate it. But anyone who had been admitted to the
Vilia could easily remove the device and use it to re-enter
the perimeter without triggering the alarms.'
So far, so good, thought Zen. Technical jargon about
remoute control devices was no problem. Where the Favel-
loni angle got sticky was when it came to dealing not with
means and opportunity but with motive. It was widely
assumed that the reason Renato Favelloni had paid so
many visits to the Villa Burolo that summer was that he
was involved in negotiations between Oscar Burolo and
the politician referred to as 1'onorevole, whose influence
had allegedly been instrumental in getting Burolo Con-
struction its lucrative public-sector contracts. According to
the rumours circulating in the press and elsewhere, the
two men had recently fallen out, and Oscar had threat-
ened to make public the records he kept detailing their
mutually rewarding transactions over the years. Before he
could carry out this threat, however, he and his guests had
been gunned down, his documentary collection of video
tapes and fioppy discs ransacked, and I'onorevole spared
any possible future embarrassment.
This was the aspect of the case which was presumably
occupying the attention of the investigating magistrate,
but Aurelio Zen, unprotected by the might and majesty of
the judiciary, wanted to give the subject the widest
possible berth. Fortunately, he had a convenient excuse
for doing so. Although these theories had been widely
touted, because of the secrecy in which the prosecutiori
case was prepared they remained mere theories, lacking
any substantive backing whatsoever. Once Renato Favel-
loni was brought to trial -- in a few weeks, perhaps -- all this
would very rapidly change, but until then no one could
know the extent or gravity of the evidence against him.
Thus all Zen needed to do was to plead ignorance.
'As already stressed, the details for the case remain sub
judice,' Zen concluded, 'but the fact that the charge is one
of conspiracy to murder indicates that another person or
persons are thought to be implicated. This might indeed
have been inferred from the fact that Dottor Vianello's
pistol shot apparently wounded the assassin, probably in
the leg, while a medical examination of the accused
revealed no recent lesions. 1n this hypothesis, Renato
Favelloni would have removed the remote-control devicc
from the villa and passed it on to an accomplice, probabl~-
a professional gunman, who used it to enter Villa Burol~>
and leave again, having carried out the murders. One
would of course expect a professional killer to use his ow;-
weapon, probably with a silencer. It can be argued that
this anomaly merely strengthens the case against Favel-
loni, indicating that an attempt was made to disguise the
fact that the crime was a premeditated conspiracy against
the life of Oscar Burolo.'
Zen knocked the pages into order and read through
what he had written, making a few corrections here and
there. Then he put the report into a cardboard folder and
carried it through the gap in the screens separating his
work area from that of Carlo Romizi.
'How's it going'?' he remarked.
Romizi looked up from the railway timetable he ha
been studying.
'Bid you know that there's a train listed in here tha'
doesn't exist?'
In every organization there is at least one person of
whom all his colleagues think, 'How on earth did he get
the job ?' In Criminalpol, that person was Carlo Romizi, an
Umbrian with a face like the man in the moon. Even after
sume gruelling tour of duty, Romizi always looked as fresh
as a new-laid egg, and his expression of childlike astonish-
ment never varied.
'No, I didn't know that,' Zen replied.
'De Angelis just told me.'
'Which one is it?'
'That's the whole point! They don't say. Every year they
invent a train which just goes from one bit of the timetable
to another. Each individual bit looks all right, but if you put
it all together you discover that the train just goes round
and round in circles, never getting anywhere. Apparently it
started one year when they made a mistake. Now they do it
on purpose, as a sort of joke. I haven't found it yet, but it
must be here. De Angelis told me about it.'
Zen nodded non-committally.
'What did la Biacis want?' he asked casually.
The effort of memory made Romizi frown.
'Oh, she was nagging me about some expense claim I
put in. Apparently Moscati thinks it was excessive. I mean
excessively excessive. I said I'd send in a revised claim,
only I forgot.'
Youth is only a lightness of the heart, Zen thought as he
walked away, as happy as a bird and all because Tania had
not treated Romizi to her confidences after all.
In stark contrast to the Criminalpol suite, the adminis-
trative offices on the ground floor were designed in the old
style, with massive desks drawn up in rows like tanks on
parade. Tania was nowhere to be seen. One of her col-
leagues directed Zen to the accounts department, where
he spent some time trying to attract the attention of a clerk
who sat gazing into the middle distance, a telephone
receiver hunched under each ear, repeating 'But of
course!' and 'But of course not!' Without looking up, he
handed Zen a form marked 'Do not fold, spindle or mutilate',
on which he had scribbled 'Personnel?'
In the personnel department or. the fourth floor, Franco
Ciliani revealed that the Biacis woman had just left after
breaking his balls so comprehensively that he doubted
whether they would ever recover.
'You know what her problem is?' Ciliani demanded
rhetorically. 'She's not getting enough. The thing with
women is, if you don't fuck them silly every few days they
lose all sense of proportion. We should drop her husband
a line, remind him of his duties.'
Apart from these words of wisdom, Ciliani was unable
to help, but as Zen was walking disconsolately downstairs
again, Tania suddenly materialized beside him.
'I've been looking for you everywhere,' he said.
'Except the women's toilet, presumably.'
'Ah.'
He handed her the folder as they continued downstairs
together.
'This is the report Moscati asked for. Can you get a
couple of copies up there before lunch?'
'Of course!' Tania replied rather tartly. 'That's what I'm
here for.'
'What's the matter? Did Ciliani say something to you?'
She shrugged. 'No, he just gets on my nerves, that's all.
It's not his fault. He reminds me of my husband.'
This remark was so bizarre that Zen ignored it. Every-
thing Tania had said so far had suggested that she and her
husband were blissfully happy together, a perfect couple.
As they reached the third-floor landing, Zen reached
over and took her arm.
'What was it you wanted me to do for you?'
She looked at him, then looked away. 'Nothing. It
doesn't matter.'
She didn't move, however, and he didn't let go of her
arm. With his free hand he gestured towards the stairs.
Whoever had designed the Ministry of the Interior had
been a firm believer in the idea that an institution's pres-
tige is directly proportional to the dimensions of its main
staircase, which was built on a scale that seemed to
demand heroic gestures and sumptuous costumes.
'Perhaps it would work better if we sang,' Zen sug-
gested with a slightly hysterical smile.
'Sang?' Tania repeated blankly.
He knew he should never have opened his mouth, but
he was feeling light-headed because of her presence there
beside him.
'This place reminds me of an opera. I mean, talking
doesn't seem quite enough. You know what I mean?'
He released her, stretched out one arm, laid his other
hand on his chest and intoned, 'What was it you wanted
me to do for you?'
Tania's face softened into a smile.
'And what would I say?'
'You'd have an aria where you told me. About twenty
times over.'
They looked at each other for a moment. Then Tania
  ribbfed something on a piece of paper.
'Ring this number at seven o'clock this evening. Say
you're phoning from here and that because of the murder
of that judge there's an emergency on and I'm needed till
midnight.'
Zen took the paper from her.
'That's all?'
'That's all.'
He nodded slowly, as though he understood, and
turned away.






Blood everywhere, my blood. I'm collapsing like a sack of grai>~
the rats have gnawed a hole in. No one will ever pnd me. No on..-
but me knows about this place. I will have disappeared.
I made things disappear. People too, but that came later, an '
caused less stir. People drop dead all the time anyway. Things ar
more durable. A bowl or chair, a spade, a knife, can hang aroun '
a house so long that no one remembers where it came from..'-
seems that it's always been there. When it suddenly disappearec;
everyone tried to hush up the scandal. 'It must be somewhere.'
Don't worry, it'll turn up, just wait and see.' A crack hai!
appeared in their world. And through it, for a moment, they fe."::
the chill and caught a glimpse of the darkness that awaited then-
too.
I've got together quite a collection, one way and another. Wh
will become of it now, I wonder? Cups, pens, string, ribbo> .
playing cards, wallets, nails, clothing, tools, all piled up in tii
darkness like offerings to the god whose absence I sense at night,
in the space between the stars, featureless and vast.
Things don't just disappear for no reason. 'There's a reason fri~
everything,' as old Tommaso likes to say, nodding that misshapen
head of his that looks like a lump of rock left standing in a field for
farmers to curse and plough around, or else blow up. I'd like to
blow it up, his wise old head. 'What's the reason for this, then? '
I'd ask as 1 pulled the trigger. Too late for that now.
Perhaps he would have understood, at the last. Perhaps the othe;s
did, too. Perhaps the look on their faces was not just pain and
terror, but understanding. At all events, the crack was there, the
possibility of grace, thanks to me. Things are not what they seevi.
There's more to this place than meets the eye. 1 was living proof of
that.
And they proved it too, dying.