Friday, 11.20 - 20.45 'He threatened to kill me?' 'Oh, yes! Me too, for that matter. But it's only talk. He has to call his mother if he finds a spider in the bath. Now if she'd said it we might have something to worry about.' The cafe on Via Veneto accurately reflected the faded glories of the street itself. The mellow tones of marble, leather and wood predominated. Dim lighting discreetly revealed the understated splendours of an establishment so prestigious it had no need to put on a show. Its famous name appeared everywhere, on the cups and saucers, the spoons, the sugar-bowl and ashtray, the peach-coloured napkins ar,d tablecloth and the staff' azure jackets. The waiters conducted themselves like family retainers, studiously polite yet avoiding any hint o1 familiarity. A sumptuous calm reigned. The cafe was too far from the Viminale to be one of the regular haunts of Ministry personnel, who in any case would have balked at paying 4'000 lire for a cup of coffee they could get elsewhere for 800, with a hefty dose of Roman pandemonium thrown in for free. This was one reason why Zen had invited Tania there for their first meeting since his return from Sardinia. The other was a desire he still didn't completely understand, to do things differently, to break free of old habits, to change his life, himself. 'How did he find out?' She smiled, anticipating his reaction. 'He hired a private detective.' 'To follow you?' 'To follow you!' So that was who Leather Jacket had been working for, thought Zen, not Spadola or Fabri, but Mauro Bevilacqua! Ironically, he might have considered that possibility earlier if it hadn't seemed wishful thinking to imagine that Tania's husband could have any reason to feel jealous ofhim. 'He didn't want to admit even to the detective that his wife might be unfaithful,' Tania explained. 'He was afraid people would laugh at him and call him a cuckold.' 'Which he wasn't, of course. Isn't, I mean.' 'Well, it depends on how you look at it. According to the strictest criteria, a husband is a cuckold if his wife has even thought of being unfaithful.' They exchanged a glance. 'In that case we're all cuckolds,' Zen replied lightly. 'That's why Mauro would claim that his vigilance was completely justified.' This time they both laughed. Zen lit a Nazionale and studied the young woman sit- ting opposite him, her legs crossed, her right foot rising and falling gently in time to her pulse. Clad in the cur- rently fashionable outfit of black mid-length coat, short black skirt and black patterned tights, with bright scarlet lipstick and short wet-look hair, she looked very different from the last time he had seen her. Not that he minded. The Tania he loved - he felt able to use the word now, at least to himself - was invulnerable to change, and 'as for this new image she had chosen to show the world, he found it exciting, sophisticated and sexy. A week ago he would have hated it, but the life which had almost miraculously been returned to him in Sardinia was no longer quite the same as it had been before he had passed through that ordeal. 'But it must be a nightmare for you,' he said seriously. 'It was bad enough having to live there before, but now that his suspicions have been proven, or apparently proven...' 'I don't live there any more.' For a moment they both remained silent, the news lying on the table between them like an unopened letter. Tania lifted the pack of Nazionali and shook a cigarette loose. 'May I?' 'I didn't know you smoked.' 'I do now.' He held the lighter for her. She lit up and blew nut smoke self-consciously, like a schoolgirl. 'He hit rne,. you see.' Zen signalled his shock with a sharp intake of breath. 'So I hit him back. With the frying pan. It had hot fat in it. Not much, but enough to give him a nasty burn. When his mother found out I thought she'd go for me with the carving knife, but in the end she backed off and started babbling to herself in this creepy way, hysterical but very controlled, saying I was a northern witch who had put her son under a spell but she knew how to destroy my power. It scared me to death. I knew then that I had to leave.' 'Where did you go?' He dropped the question casually, like the experienced interrogator that he was, as though it were a minor detail of no significance. 'To a friend's.' 'A friend's.' She took a notebook and pen from her handbag, wrote an address and handed it to him. He read, 'Tania Biacis, c/o Alessandra Bruni, Via dei Gelsi 47. Tel. 78847.' 'It's in Centocelle. I'm staying there temporarily, until I find somewhere for myself. You know how difficult it is.' He nodded. 'And Mauro?' 'Mauro? Mauro's still living with his mamma.' Everything about her had a new edge to it, and Zen couldn't be sure that this wasn't an ironical reference to his own situation. Ignoring this, he said, 'That restaurant in Piazza Navona, it's open tonight.' She waited for him to spell it out. 'Would you think of... I mean, I don't suppose you're free or anything, but...' 'I'd love to.' 'Really?' She laughed, this time without malice. 'Don't look so surprised!' 'But I am surprised.' Her laughter abruptly subsided. 'So am I, to tell you the truth. I can't quite see how we got here. Still, here we are.' 'Here we are,' he agreed, and signalled to the waiter. On the broad pavement outside, Zen pulled Tania against him and kissed her briefly on both cheeks in a way that might have been purely friendly, if they had been friends. She coloured a little, but said nothing. Then, having agreed to meet at the restaurant that evening, Tania hailed a taxi to take her to Palazzo di Montecitorio, the parliament building, where she had to run an errand for Lorenzo Moscati, while Zen returned to the Ministry on foot. The winter sunlight, hazy with air pollution, created a soothing warmth that eased the lingering aches in Zen's body. A surgeon in Nuoro had spent three hours picking shotgun pellets out of his limbs and lower back, but apart from those minor subcutaneous injuries and a slightly swollen ankle, his ordeal had left no permanent scars. He strolled along without haste, drinking in the sights and sounds. How precious it all seemed, how rich and various, unique and detailed! He spent five minutes watching an old man at work collecting -ardboard boxes from outside a shoe shop, deftly collapsing and fiattening each one. An unmarked grey delivery van with reflecting windows on he rear doors drove past with a roar and pulled in to the side of the street, squashing one of the cardboard boxes. he old man waved his fist impotently, then retrieved the ox, straightened it out and brushed it clean before adding it to the tall pile already tied to the antique pram he used as cart. Zen walked past the open doorway of a butcher's shop, rom which came a series of loud bangs and a smell of lood. The delivery van roared by and double-parked at he corner of the street, engine running. Outside a pet hop, a row of plastic bags filled with water were hanging om a rack. In each bag, a solitary goldfish twitched to and fro, trapped in its fragile bubble-world. A mechanical treet-cleaner rolled past, leaving a swathe of glistening sphalt in its wake, looping out round the obstruction caused by the grey van. No one got in or out of the van. Nothing was loaded or unloaded. A tough-looking young man, clean-shaven, with cropped hair sat behind the wheel, staring straight ahead. He paid no attention to Zen. Up in the Criminalpol suite on the third floor of the Ministry, the other officials were in the midst of a heated discussion with Vincenzo Fabri at its centre. 'The British have got the right idea,' Fabri was pro- laiming loudly. 'Catch them on the job and gun them down. Forget the legal bullshit.' 'But that's different!' Bernardo Travaglini protested. 'The IRA are terrorists.' 'There's no difference! Sicily, Naples, Sardinia, they're our Northern Ireland! Except we're dumb enough to respect everyone's rights and do things by the book.' 'That's not the point, Vincenzo,' De Angelis inter- rupted. 'Thatcher's got an absolute majority, she can do what she wants. But here in Italy we've got a democracy. You've got to take account of people's opinions.' 'Screw people's opinions!' Fabri exploded. 'This is war! The only thing that matters is who is going to win, the state or a bunch of gangsters. And the answer is they are, unless we stop pissing about and match them for ruth- lessness.' He caught sight of Zen sidling past and broke off suddenly. 'Now there's somebody who's got the right idea,' he exclaimed. 'While the rest of us are sweating it out down in Naples, trying to protect a bunch of criminals who would be better off dead, Aurelio here pops over to Sardinia and turns up, quote, new evidence in the Burolo case, unquote, which just happens to put a certain politician's chum in the clear. That's the way to do things! Never mind the rights and wrongs of the situation. Results are all that matters.' Resignedly, Zen turned to face his tormentor. This was a showdown he could not dodge. 'What do you mean by that?' Fabri faked a smile of complicity. 'Oh, come on! No hard feelings! In your shoes I'd have done the same. But it just goes to prove what I've been saying. Do things by the book like us poor suckers and what do you get? A lot of headaches, long hours, and a boot up the bum when things go wrong. Whereas if you look after number one, cultivate the right contacts and forget about procedures, you get covered in glory, name in the paper and friends in high places!' 'To be fair, you should take some of the credit,' Zen replied. 'Me? What are you talking about?' 'Well, you recommended me, didn't you?' Fabri's eyes narrowed dangerously. 'Recommended you to who?' 'To Palazzo Sisti.' A moment's silence was broken by a rather forced laugh from Vincenzo Fabri. 'Do me a favour, will you? I don't go to bed with politicians, and if I did I certainly wouldn't choose that bunch of losers!' 'It's all right, Vincenzo,' Zen reassured him. 'They told me. I asked who had put them on to me and they said it was their contact a: the Ministry.' Fabri laughed dismissively. 'And what's that got to do with me?' 'Well, they said this person, this contact, had already tried to fiddle the Burolo case for them, except he'd made a complete balls-up of it. As far as I know, you're the only person here who's done any work on that case.' 'You're Iying!' It was Zen's turn to switch on a smile of complicity. 'Look, it's all right, Vincenzo! We're among friends here. No hard feelings, as you said yourself. I for one certainly don't hold it against you. But then I'm hardly in a position to, of course.' Fabri stared at him furiously. 'I tell you once and for all that I have nothing whatever to do with Palazzo Sisti! Is that clear?' Zen appeared taken aback by this ringing denial. 'Are you sure?' 'Of course I'm fucking sure!' Zen shook his head slowly. 'Well, that's very odd. Very odd indeed. All 1 can say is that's what I was told. But if you say it's not true...' 'Of course it's not true! How dare you even suggest such a thing?' 'Admittedly I can't prove anything,' Zen muttered. 'Of course you can't!' 'Can you?' The reply was quick and pointed. Fabri recoiled from it as from a drawn knife. 'What? Can I what?' 'Can you prove that the allegations made by I'onorevole's private secretary are untrue?' 'I don't need to prove it!' Fabri shouted. No one had moved, yet Zen sensed that the arrange- ment of the group had changed subtly. Before, he had been confronted by a coherent mass of officials, united in their opposition to the outsider. Now a looser gathering of individuals stood between him and Fabri, shuffling their feet and looking uncertainly from one man to the other. 'Don't you?' Zen replied calmly. 'Oh, well in that case, of course, there's nothing more to be said.' He turned away. 'Exactly!' Fabri called after him. 'There's nothing more to be said!' When Zen reached the line of screens that closed off his desk he glanced back. The group of officials had broken up into smaller clusters, chatting together in low voices. Vin- cenzo Fabri was talking at full speed in an undertone, gesticulating dramatically, demanding the undivided attention he felt was his by right. But some of his listeners were gazing down at the floor in a way which suggested that they were not totally convinced by Fabri's protesta- tions. They accepted that Zen was an unscrupulous grafter on the make. The difference was that they now suspected that Fabri was one too, and that the reason for his bitter- ness was not moral indignation but the fact that his rival was more successful. Giorgio De Angelis, keeping a foot in both camps as usual, patted Fabri on the shoulder in a slightly patronizing way before walking over to join Zen. 'Congratulations. It was about time something like that happened to Vincenzo.' A wan smile brightened Zen's face. 'So tell me all about it!' De Angelis continued. 'How on earth did you manage to do it?' Zen's smile died. Of all his colleagues, De Angelis was the one with whom he had the closest relationship, yet the Calabrian clearly took it for granted that Zen had 'fixed' the Burolo case. Well, if no one was going to believe him anyway, he might as well take the credit for his supposed villainy! He turned his smile on again. 'The funny thing is, I hadn't been going to use the woman at all originally. The person I had in mind was Furio Padedda. He seemed the perfect candidate from everyone's point of view.' 'But Padedda was involved too, wasn't he?' said De Angelis. Zen shook his head. No one seemed to be able to get the story straight, no doubt because the only thing that really concerned them was the headline news which the media, carefully orchestrated by Palazzo Sisti, had been trum- peting all week: that the case against Renato Favelloni had collapsed. 'Padedda and the Melega family were planning to kid- nap Burolo, successfully this time, and extort a huge sum of money from the family. They might well have killed him too, after they got paid, but that was all in the future. On the night of the murders, Padedda was attending a meet- ing of the gang up in the mountains. But I certainly could have used him, if all else had failed. He even had a con- venient wound on his arm. His blood group is different from that of the stains at the villa, but we could have got round that somehow.' One by one, the other officials had approached to hear Zen's story. It was a situation new to him, and one he found rather embarrassing. Unlike Fabri, he had never enjoyed being the centre of attention. But things had changed. If Fabri could no longer count on star billing, neither could Zen avoid the fame - or rather notoriety - which had been thrust upon him. 'But in the event I didn't need Padedda. As soon as I'd visited the scene I knew how I was going to work it. As you probably know, Burolo's villa was originally a farm house. The farms in that area were all built over caves giving access to an underground stream where they got their water. When I inspected the cellar of the Villa Burolo I noticed that the air was very fresh. The caretaker explained that it was naturally ventilated, and pointed out an opening at floor level. Since we were underground, I realized right away that the air could only have come from the cave system.' The assembled officials nodded admiringly. 'No one else had thought of this as a way around the famous problem of access, for the simple reason that the vent was too small to admit a normal adult. But that was precisely what attracted me to the idea. There were already indications suggesting that the killer might have been exceptionally small. The upward angle of fire, for one thing, and the fact that on the video Burolo and even Vianello's wife, who was tiny herself, look down at the person confronting them. Then there was the ghost that child claimed to have seen one night, a woman who looked like a little old witch. As soon as this woman Elia hobbled up to me in the village, asking for money, I put two and two together and made five.' This elicited a ripple of appreciative laughter. 'But mightn't she have done it?' asked Carlo Romizi earnestly. 'I mean I saw this thing on the television which seemed to be suggesting that...' Zen gestured impatiently. 'Of course she might! She wouldn't have been much use to me otherwise, would she?' 'No, I mean really.' Zen frowned. 'Oh, you mean really!' He turned to the others. 'Quick, someone! Get on the phone to Palazzo Sisti. They'll have your mug all over the morning papers, Carlo. "Italian Believes Favelloni Inno- cent. After months of research, Palazzo Sisti announced last night that they had located someone who believes in the innocence of Renato Favelloni. 'It's true that he's an Umbrian,' admitted a spokesman for l'onorevole, 'but we feel this may be the beginning of a significant swing in public opinion'." ' Zen stood back, letting the waves of laughter wash over him. I could grow to like this, he thought, the good-humoured, easy-going chaffing, the mutual admira- tion of male society. Fatherless from early childhood, with no one to teach him the unwritten rules, he had always found it difficult to play the game with the necessary confidence and naturalness. But perhaps it wasn't too late even now. 'What I still don't understand is how you managed to tie it up so neatly at the end,' Travaglini commented. 'There was nothing to it really,' Zen replied modestly. 'There were various ways I could have worked it, but when Spadola showed up in the village it seemed a good idea to kill two jailbirds with one stone, so to speak. I couldn't predict exactly what would happen if I brought him and Elia together, but there seemed a good chance that one or both might not survive. Which suited me down to the ground, of course. The last thing I wanted was the magistrates getting a chance to interrogate her.' 'Have they found her body yet?' someone asked. Zen shook his head. 'The cave system is very extensive and has never been mapped. As you can imagine, the locals don't have much time for speleology. They used the cave mouths for storage and shelter but no one apart from Elia had both- ered to explore any further. The Carabinieri flew in a special team trained in pot-holing...' 'Complete with designer wet-suits by Armani,' De Angelis put in. Everyone laughed. The glamorous image of their para- military rivals was always a sore point with the police. 'By Wednesday, two of the Carabinieri had managed to get lost themselves,' Zen resumed, 'and the others were busy looking for them. All they found of the woman were a few blood stains matching those at the villa, and a collection of odds and ends she'd apparently stolen, things of no value.' Travaglini offered Zen a cigarette which he felt con- strained to accept, even though it wasn't a brand he favoured. Such are the burdens of popularity, he reflected. 'What are you doing about a motive?' 'No problem. One of the villagers, a man called Turiddu, claimed that his family had owned the farm house which Burolo bought. At the time I thought he was bragging, but it turned out to be true. The Carabinieri also confirmed that Elia was Turiddu's sister, and that she'd been found locked in a cellar. The story is that when she was fifteen she fell in love with someone her father disap- proved of. The man suggested that he get her pregnant to force her father to consent to their marriage. Simple- minded Elia agreed. Once he'd had her a few times, the young man changed his mind about marriage, of course. Although she wasn't pregnant, Elia told her father what had happened, hoping he would force the man to keep his word. Unfortunately her lover got wind of this and ran off to a branch of the family in Turin. 'Since he was out of reach, Elia's father took revenge on his daughter instead, locking her up in the cellar and telling everyone that she had gone away to stay with relatives on the mainland. She spent the next thirteen years there, in total darkness and solitude, sleeping on the bare floor in her own filth. Twice a day her mother brought her some food, but she never spoke to her or touched her again. Turiddu told us that he was forbidden to mention her existence, even within the family. This naturally made him even more curious about this strange sister of his, who had committed this terrible nameless sin. He started sneaking down to the cellar when his parents were out, to gawp at her. And then one day, to his astonishment, he found she wasn't there. 'There was nowhere she could be hiding, and it was inconceivable that she had escaped through the bolted door leading up to the house. Eventually he realized that she must have managed to get through the hole leading to the underground stream. He put out his lantern and kept watch, and sure enough, a few hours later he heard her coming back. He struck a match and caught her wriggling in through the hole, which she had gradually worn away by continual rubbing until it was just wide enough for her to get through. His father's ban on acknowledging Elia's existence made it impossible for Turiddu to betray her secret even if he had wanted to. Anyway, it didn't seem important. As far as he was concerned, the caves where the stream flowed were just an extension of the cellar. Elia's prison might be a little larger than her father sup- posed, but it was still a prison. 'All this came out when we interrogated Turiddu on Monday and Tuesday. At first he played the tough guy, but once I made it clear that his sister was dead, that she was going to take the rap for Favelloni, and that unless he co-operated he would get five to ten for aiding and abet- ting, he changed his mind. Underneath the bluster, he was a coward with a guilty conscieiice. There was a run- ning feud between his family and a clan in the mountains. The usual story, rustling and encroachment. Turiddu's father "accidentally" shot one of the mountain men while out hunting, and they got their own back by ambushing his van. Both parents were killed. It was Turiddu's responsibility to carry on the vendetta, but he shirked it. That sense of shame fed his hatred for anyone connected with the mountains, like Padedda. Still, he gave us what we wanted. Once he got started he poured out details so fast that the sergeant taking notes could hardly keep up. "Eh, excuse me, would you mind confessing a little more slowly?" he kept saying.' Once again, laughter spread through the officials grouped around, hangivg on Zen's words. 'So the motive is revenge,' said De Angelis. 'As far as this woman was concerned, whoever lived upstairs in that house was the person responsible for punishing her.' Zen shrugged. 'Something like that. It doesn't matter anyway. She was crazy, capable of anything. And we don't need a confes- sion. The gun she dropped after shooting Spadola was the one used in the Burolo killings, and her fingerprints match the unidentified ones on the gun-rack at the villa.' 'But how do you explain the fact that Burolo's records had been tampered with?' Travaglini objected. 'Easy. They weren't. In our version, the chaos in the cellar was due to the fact that the new shelving Burolo had put up blocked the vent Elia used to get in and out of her old home. On the night of the murders she worked the fittings loose, then pushed the whole unit over, sending the tapes and floppy disks flying, which is what caused the crash audible on the video recording. By the way, lads, how do you think this is going to make our friends of the flickering flame look? The Carabinieri seized all that material right after the killings. If our murderer didn't erase the compromising data on those discs, who did?' De Angelis shook his head in admiration. 'You're a genius, Aurelio! How the hell did you ever manage to balls up so badly in the Moro business?' For a moment Zen thought his fasade of cool cynicism would crack. This was too near the bone, too painful. But in the end he managed to carry it off. in 'We all make mistakes, Giorgio. The best we can hope for is not to go on making the same one over and over again.' in 'I still don't see how you arranged for the shotgun used in the Burolo murders to turn up in the cave where this Elia was,' Romizi insisted. 'Or how you fixed the finger- prints.' Zen smiled condescendingly. 'Now, now. You can't expect me to tell you all my little secrets!' 'So Renato Favelloni walks free,' Travaglini concluded heavily. 'Not to mention l'onorevole,' added Romizi. For a moment it seemed as though the atmosphere might turn sour. Then De Angelis struck a theatrical pose. '"I have examined my conscience,"' he declared, quo- ting a celebrated statement by the politician in question, ' "and I find that it is perfectly clean." ' 'Not surprisingly,' Zen chipped in, 'given that he never uses it.' The discussion broke up amid hoots of cynical laughter. Before meeting Tania Biacis for dinner that evening, Zen had a number of chores to perform. The first of these was to return the white Mercedes. Early on Monday morning a Carabinieri jeep had towed the car back to Lanusei, where it had been repaired. On his return to Rome Zen had left a note for Fausto Arcuti at the Rally Bar, and earlier that morning Arcuti had phoned and told Zen to leave the car opposite the main gates of the former abattoir. 'What about locking the doors?' Zen had asked. 'Lock them, dottore, lock them! The Testaccio is a den of thieves.' 'And the keys?' 'Leave them in the car.' 'But how are you going to open it, then?' 'How do you think we opened it in the first place?' Fausto demanded. Now that the informer was no longer fear of his life, his naturally irreverent manner had reasserted itself. After lunch with De Angelis and Travaglini, Zen set off the Mercedes, reflecting on his conflicting feelings about being readmitted to the male freemasonry which ran not only the Criminalpol department but also the Ministry, the Mafia, the Church and the government. It all seemed very relaxing and attractive at first, the mutual back-scratching and ego-boosting, the shared values and unchallenged assumptions. Yet even before the end of lunch a reaction set in, and Zen found the cosy back-chat and the smug sense of innate superiority beginning to pall. It was all a bit cloying, a bit too reminiscent of the self-congratulatory nationalism of the Fascist epoch. Whatever happened between him and Tania, he knew it would never be easy. But that, perhaps, was what made it worthwhile. As he queued up to enter the maelstrom of traffic around the Colosseum, Zen noticed an unmarked grey delivery van three or four vehicles behind him. He adjus- ted the wing mirror until he could see the driver. It didn't look like the man he had seen that morning, but of course they might be working shifts. He continued south, past the flank of the Palatine, then turned right along the Circus Maximus and crossed the river into Trastevere. The grey van followed faithfully. He was being tailed. This in itself was bad enough. What made it infinitely worse was that Zen felt absolutely sure he knew who was responsible. Despite his bluster, Vasco Spadola must have known that he couldn't be certain of success in his single-handed vendetta. Things can always go wrong; that's why people take out insurance. There seemed very little doubt that the grey van represented Spadola's insurance. The men he had spotted in the van were not slavering psychotics like Spadola himself, getting a hard-on at the idea of killing. Nor were they third-rate cowboys like Leather Jacket. They were professionals, doing what they had been paid to do, carrying out a contract to be put into effect in the event of Spadola's death. The only other explanation was that Mauro Bevilacqua was pursuing revenge at second- hand, but that seemed wildly unlikely. Tania clearly hadn't taken his threats seriously. In any case, profes- sional killers didn't advertise in the Yellow Pages, and a bank clerk wouldn't have known how to contact them. Zen turned off the Lungotevere and steered at random through the back streets around the factory where his favourite Nazionali cigarettes were made. The incident had plunged him into apathetic despair. These men wouldn't give up, whatever happened. They had their reputation to consider. There was no point in having the team in the van arrested. They would simply be replaced by another crew. His only hope, a very slim one, was to find out who Spadola had placed the contract with and try to renegotiate the deal. But that was for the future. His immediate task was to lose the tail. Unfortunately this called for virtuoso driving skills Zen didn't possess. In the end, his very incompetence proved to be his salvation. As he turned out of the back streets by Porta Portese he was so deep in thought about his problems that he failed to notice that the traffic lights had just changed to red. The white Mercedes managed to squeeze between the lines of the traffic closing in from either side, but the grey van remained trapped. Zen crossed the river again, veered round into Via Marmorata and then, once he was out of sight of the van, turned right into the Testaccio. He aban- doned the car with the keys locked inside, as Arcuti had instructed him, then worked his way back to Via Mar- morata on foot, taking refuge in the doorway of the ornate fire station at the corner until he saw a number thirty tram approaching the stop. He got off the tram near Porta Maggiore and walked round to Gilberto Nieddu's flat, where his mother had been staying for the past week. Zen had promised to collect her that afternoon, but now he was going to have to ask for more time. Gilberto had insisted that everything had gone well, but he was bound to say that. Zen knew that looking after his mother must have been a terrible imposition, and one that would now have to be pro- longed. Until he had resolved the problem of the grey van his mother could not return home. He did not look for- ward to breaking this news to the Nieddus. Gilberto was at work, so it was Rosella Nieddu who greeted Zen at the door of their pleasant, modern flat in Via Carlo Emanuele. To Zen's amazement, his mother was playing a board-game with the two youngest Nieddu daughters. It was so long since he had seen her do any- thing except slump in a comatose state in front of the television that this perfectly ordinary scene of domestic life seemed as bizarre and alarming as if the tram he had just been on had suddenly veered off the rails and started careering freely about the streets, menacing the passers- by. 'Hello, Aurelio!' she called gaily, beaming a distracted smile in his direction. 'Everything all right?' Without waiting for his response, she turned back to the children. 'No, not there! Otherwise I'll gobble you up like this, bang bang bang bang bang!' The girls tittered nervously. 'But Auntie, you can't go there, it's the wrong way,' the elder pointed out. 'Oh! So it is! Silly old me. Silly old Auntie.' Zen felt a pang of jealous hurt, all the stronger for being completely absurd. She's not your auntie, he felt like shouting. She's my mamma! Mine! Mine! Taking Rosella Nieddu aside, he hesitantly broached the subject of his mother staying one more night. 'That's wonderful!' she replied, interrupting his deliberately vague explanations. 'Did you hear that, kids? Auntie Zen's not leaving today after all!' A look of sheer delight instantly appeared on the child- ren's faces. They rushed about, doing a sort of war-dance around the old lady, screaming at the top of their voices while she looked on happily, a benign totem-pole. 'What a treasure your mother is!' Rosella Nieddu enthused. 'Why, er, yes. Yes, of course.' 'She's been absolutely tireless with those two. I love them dearly, of course, but sometimes I think they're going to drive me round the bend. But your mother has the patience of a saint. And she knows all these wonderful games and tricks and stories! I haven't had to do a thing. It's been a real holiday for me. I've finally been able to catch up with my own life a bit. Gilberto helps as much as he can, of course, but he's so busy at work these days. Anyway, we've arranged that your mother's going to come round every week, once she goes home, I mean. That's all right, I hope.' Zen stared at her. 'You want her to come?' Rosella Nieddu's serene features contracted in puzzle- ment. 'Of course I do! And just as important, she wants to. She said she was... Well, anyway, she wants to come.' Zen eyed her. 'What did she say?' 'I don't expect she meant it.' 'Meant what?' 'Well...' 'Yes?' 'It was just a manner of speaking, you know, but she said she'd had enough of being locked up at home.' 'Locked up?' Zen shouted angrily. 'What the hell do you mean? She's the one who refuses to set foot outside the flat!' 'Well, she's been out a lot while she's been with us.' 'She never wanted to move here in the first place. She hates Rome!' 'No she doesn't! We all went to the Borghese Gardens on Sunday. She couldn't believe all the joggers and cyclists, and the fathers pushing babies. Afterwards we went to the zoo and then had lunch out. We had a really good time. She said she hadn't enjoyed herself so much for years.' Zen stood open-mouthed. This is not my mother, he wanted to protest, it's an impostor! My mother is a crabby old woman who spends her time shut up at home in front of the television. I don't want this wonderful, patient, inventive old lady with a zest for life! I want my mamma! I want my mamma! 'I'm glad to hear it, I'm sure,' he said drily. 'So it'll be no trouble if she stays another night, then?' 'It'll be a pleasure.' Zen rode the lift downstairs feeling irritated, relieved and obscurely guilty. It wasn't his fault, of course. How could it be? He hadn't locked his mother up in the flat. She'd locked herself up. It was true that he had accepted that, because it was convenient, because it had left him free to do what he wanted, particularly when he'd been seeing Ellen. He'd always avoided confronting his mother with that relationship, preferring to shut her out of that area of his life. That was apparently one of the things that had made Ellen leave him in the end. Perhaps it was partly his fault, in a way. He hadn't created the situation, but he'd connived at it, used it, acquiesced. He hadn't been cruel, but he'd been lazy. He'd been thoughtless and selfish. He stopped in the first cafe he came to and phoned the caretaker at home. Then he walked back to Porta Maggiore and took a number nineteen tram all the way round the city to its terminus a short walk from where he lived. As he had expected, there was no sign of the grey van, but the chances were that the house was under surveillance. Zen walked casually down the street and into the shop next door to his house, an outmoded emporium selling every- thing from corkscrews and hot-water bottles to dried beans and herbal remedies. It had the air of a museum rather than a shop, and the elderly woman who ran it had the haughty, disinterested manner of a curator. 'You're from the Electricity?' she demanded as Zen threaded his way through the shelves and cupboards to the counter. 'That's right.' She jerked her thumb at a door at the rear of the shop. The array of mops and brooms which normally concealed it had been cleared to one side. 'Don't you dare touch anything!' she admonished. 'I know where everything is! If anything's missing, there'll be trouble, I promise you.' Zen opened the door. Inside was a dark passageway almost completely filled with boxes of various sizes. At the end was a second door, opening into the courtyard of his own house. In the hall he found Giuseppe and thanked him for getting the shopkeeper to unlock the doors. 'So what's the problem, dottore?' the caretaker asked anxiously. 'Just a jealous husband.' Giuseppe cackled and waggled a finger on either side of his forehead. 'He has good reason, I'll bet!' Zen shrugged modestly. Giuseppe redoubled his cackles. 'Like we say in Lucania, there may be snow on the roof but there's still fire in the furnace! Eh, dottore!' Once he had showered and shaved, Zen put on a suit of evening dress exhumed from the oak chest in which it had laid entombed since the last time he had had occasion to attend a formal gathering. He wandered dispiritedly through to the living room, struggling with a recalcitrant collar-stud. In the absence of his mother and Maria Grazia, the lares and penates of the place, the flat felt hollow and unreal, like a stage set which despite its scrupulous accuracy does not quite convince. Catching sight of himself in the mirror above the sideboard, Zen was surprised to find that he did not look flustered and absurd, as he felt, but elegant and distin- guished. What a shame that Tania would not see him in his finery! But it was clearly out of the question to keep their appointment as long as hired assassins were pur- suing Spadola's vendetta from beyond the grave. He had already put her life at risk once too often. He picked up the smooth pasteboard card propped against the mirror and scanned the lines of engraved italic copperplate requesting the pleasure of his company at a reception at Palazzo Sisti that evening at seven o'clock. Even 1'onorevole and his cronies didn't have the gall to celebrate openly the collapse of the case against Renato Favelloni, so the reception was nominally in honour of one of the party's rising stars, who had recently been appointed to a crucial portfolio in the government's newly reshuffled cabinet. Zen had been very much in two minds about attending, particularly after Vincenzo Fabri's attack on him that morning, but the appearance of the grey van had removed his lingering doubts. There was no point in him trying to buy off the people Spadola had hired. Even if he'd had the money to do so, the underworld had a strict code of consumer protection in such matters. Spadola would have made a substantial payment up front, with the balance in the hands of a trusted third party. The deposit was unreturnable now that Spadola was dead, so any failure to carry out the hit would amount to breach of contract. These rules of con- duct were extremely rigid. Zen's only recourse was to try and persuade the organization involved that it was in its own interests to make an exception in this case. He himself didn't have the necessary clout to do this, but 1'onorevole should, or would know who did. And l'onorevole owed him. He reached for the phone and dialled the number Tania had given him that morning, to cancel their date, but there was no reply. By now it was ten to seven, and there was no sign of the taxi he had ordered, so he rang to complain. To his dismay, the dispatcher not only disclaimed all knowledge of his previous call but even hinted that Zen had invented it in order to jump the forty-five minute waiting period that now existed. After a br,'ef acrimonious exchange Zen slammed down the receiver and headed for the door. The evening was fine and it was not too far to walk. Even if he didn't manage to pick up a taxi on the way he would arrive no more than fashionably late. He raced down the stairs two at a time and out on to the street, trying to work out how best to phrase his petition without making it look as though he took Palazzo Sisti's underworld connections for granted. So preoccupied was he that he didn't notice the unmarked grey delivery van that was now double-parked further down the street, nor the dark figure that slipped out of a doorway near by and began to follow him. His route was the same as he and Tania had taken a week earlier: past the law courts, across the river and south through Piazza Navona. He strode rapidly along, oblivious to the stares he was attracting from passers-by curious about this image of sartorial rectitude hoofing it through their vulgar streets like Cinderella going home from the ball. When he reached the small piazza facing the grimy baroque church of Sant'Andrea della Valle, he was halted for some time by the traffic on Corso Vittorio Emanuele. A woman getting out of a car parked by the fountain shouted something and pointed. Zen turned to find a slight, swarthy man brandishing a pistol at him. 'You have disgraced my marriage bed and...' He paused, breathless with the effort of running to keep up with Zen. '... and brought dishonour on my house! For this you shall pay, as my name is Mauro Bevilacqua!' So this is the way it's going to end, thought Zen. He almost laughed to think he had survived the worst a Vasco Spadola could do, only to fall victim to the ravings of a jealous bank clerk. 'You thought you had it all worked out, you two, didn't you?' Bevilacqua sneered. 'You thought you could have fun and games at my expense and get away scot-free. Well let me tell you...' Tyres squealed as the grey van slewed to a halt by the neat Fascist office block at the other side of the piazza. Men in grey overalls bearing the word POLIZIA in fluores- cent yellow leapt out, clutching submachine guns. 'Don't move!' boomed a harshly amplified voice. 'Drop your weapon!' Mauro Bevilacqua looked about him in utter bewilder- ment. He turned to face the van, the pistol still in his hand. A volley of shots rang out. There was a sound of breaking glass and a woman's scream. 'For Christ's sake drop the fucking thing before they kill us all!' Zen hissed. The pistol clattered to the cobblestones. 'It's only a replica,' Bevilacqua muttered. The woman who had shouted to Zen stood looking with a shocked expression at her car, whose windscreen was now crazed and punctured by bullet holes. Two of the men in grey overalls threw Bevilacqua against the side of the car, arms on the roof, and searched him roughly. Another walked up to Zen and saluted. 'Ispettore Ligato, NOCS Unit 4z! I trust you're unharm- ed, dottore? Sorry about losing contact this afternoon. You were a bit too quick for us at the lights. Still, no harm done. We were here when it counted.' He walked over to Bevilacqua, who was now lying face down on the cobblestones, his arms tightly handcuffed behind his back. Ligato gave him an exploratory kick in the ribs. 'As for you, you bastard, you can count yourself lucky you're still alive!' Zen laid a restraining hand on the official's shoulder. 'Don't be too hard on him,' he said. 'His wife's just left him.' Palazzo Sisti was lit up and humming like the power- station it was. Zen walked buoyantly across the courtyard, passing a queue of limousines waiting to discharge their illustrious passengers. Things were looking up, he thought. At this rate, he might be able to keep his date with Tania after all. But first there was the reception to be got through. The minuscule porter, beside himself with the import- ance of the occasion, was haranguing a chauffeur who was trying to park in a space reserved for some party dignitary. Zen slipped past him and climbed the stairs. At the top, he encountered a familiar ape-like figure unconvincingly got up in a footman's apparel. 'Good evening, Lino.' The bodyguard scowled at Zen. 'That way,' he said, jerking his tnumb. 'This way?' Zen inquired brightly. Lino's scowl intensified. 'Don't push me too far!' he warned. 'Sorry, too late. Someone has already threatened to kill me this evening. In fact there's a waiting list, I'm afraid. I could pencil you in for some time next month.' 'You're crazy,' muttered Lino. Zen walked past a mutilated classical torso which revived memories of a particularly nasty murder case he had once been involved in. A pair of rosewood doors opened into a series of salons whose modest dimensions and exquisite decoration reflected the tone of the palace as a whole. The rooms were packed with people. Those nearest the door scanned Zen's features briefly, then turned away. But though they did not recognize him, he saw many faces familiar from the television and news- papers. As he hovered on the fringes of the gathering, unable to find an opening, Zen found himself reminded oddly of the village bar in Sardinia. If the contrasts were obvious, so were the similarities. He couldn't get a drink here either, for one thing, the white-jacketed waiters always passing by just out of his reach, ignoring his sig- nals. But more important, here too he was an intruder, a gate-crasher at a private club. These people were constant presences in each other's lives, meeting regularly at func- tions such as this, not to mention other more significant reunions. Nothing any of them did or said could be indif- feren't to the others. They were a family, a tribe to which Zen did not belong. They had felt obliged to invite the man who did their dirty work for them, but in fact his presence was an unwelcome embarrassment, to himself and every- one else. To Zen's dismay, the first familiar face he saw was that of Vincenzo Fabri, resplendent in an aerodynamically styled outfit that made Zen's look as though it had been rented from a fancy-dress agency. Fabri approached with a smile that boded no good. 'I didn't know you'd be here, Zen.' 'Life's full of surprises.' 'Isn't it just?' Fabri beckoned him closer with a crooked finger. 'Guess what?' Zen gazed at him bleakly. 'I've made Questore!' Fabri crowed in a triumphant whisper. He extended the forefinger of his right hand and poked Zen in the chest. 'To be fair, I suppose you should take some of the credit, as you said this morning. But it's results that count in the end, isn't it? Bari or Ferrara seem the most likely prospects at the moment, unless I decide to take a few months' leave and wait for something better to come up. They say Pacini won't last much longer in Venice. Now there's a thought, eh? Well, I must cir- culate. See you at the Ministry. I'll be in to clear my desk.' Zen knew he had to leave quickly, before he said or did something unforgivable. As he pushed through the crowd, he felt a grip on his arm. 'Wherever are you going in such a hurry, dottore? I was just about to, ah ... that's to say, I was on the point of, ah, bringing your presence to the attention of someone who has taken a very close, very personal interest in the events of the past few days.' The young secretary steered Zen towards a distinguished-looking figure in his mid-sixties who was holding court in the centre of the room, where the throng was thickest. Zen recognized him immediately. Unlike the other celebrities, whose fleshly reality often jarred uncomfortably with their etherealized media image, this man's appearance coincided perfectly with the photographs Zen had seen of him. Elderly without frailty, experienced but not resigned, he gave the impres- sion of just having reached the prime of life. 'We were talking about you earlier,' the young man resumed, effortlessly inserting himself and Zen into the inner circle of initiates. 'Indeed, I trust you will not think me indiscreet if I mention that 1'onorevole was pleased to remark how deeply indebted we are to you for your, ah, effective and timely intervention.' The distinguished figure, deep in conversation with two younger men whose enthusiastic servility was embar- rassing to behold, paid not the slightest attention. 'It would be no exaggeration to say that the Party has been spared a most trying experience as the result of your, ah, initiative,' the young man went on. 'It's true that we were at first somewhat surprised by the choice of... that's to say, by the fact that this woman, ah, proved to be the guilty party. However, on mature consideration we unreservedly approve of this solution, more especially since it allows us to retain the Padedda option as a fall- back position should any further problems arise. We are really most grateful, most grateful indeed. Isn't that so, onorevole?' For a second, the elder man's eyes swept over Zen's face like the revolving beam of a lighthouse. 'If there's ever anything you need...' he murmured. Zen made the appropriate noises, then gracefully with- drew. As he headed towards the door, towards his evening with Tania, the words were still ringing in his ears. 'if there's ever anything you need...' Better than money in the bank, he thought. Better than money in the bank!