Dead Lagoon

Only then, having exhausted every pretext for further delay, did he go downstairs and order a launch to take him to the Ospedale Civile and the inevitable confrontation with Ada Zulian.

If Zen had been worried that his presence at the rally of the Venetian separatist movement that evening would be in any way conspicuous, he was reassured immediately on rounding the corner into Campo Santa Margherita. With the coming of night a fidgety, fickle wind had sprung up, thinning out the fog. It was evident at a glance that the huge irregular space was awash with people.

Normally a political gathering on this scale would have attracted a highly visible police presence, squads in riot gear massed in the streets all around, not so much in anticipation of any real trouble as to convey the none-too-subtle message that whatever the featured speakers might propose, neither they nor their supporters should forget that it was the State and its agents alone who disposed.

In this case, however, Zen himself was the only policeman present, as far as he could see. Perhaps after all the revelations of recent months the State was finally losing its nerve, or perhaps it had more dangerous opponents to impress with its shows of force. For the people who had come to hear Ferdinando Dal Maschio were no angry students or striking workers. Their advanced age and undemonstrative demeanour marked them out as ordinary, law-abiding residents of the Dorsoduro quarter, not given to breaches of the peace or violent excesses of any kind.

They were packed most densely at the far end, where a temporary podium had been erected. At the back of the stage, beneath a banner showing a lion rampant and the name of the party, four men sat listening to a fifth who stood haranguing the crowd through the loudspeakers mounted to either side. On the fringes of these core supporters a second crowd had gathered, less committed but hovering there, looking about them or moving aimlessly back and forth, sampling the speeches, not yet convinced but letting themselves be wooed.

It was here that Zen took his place, as of right, amongst the waverers and spectators. He had spent the first part of the afternoon trying to get Ada Zulian to accept the idea of having a police guard in her house during the hours of darkness. Zen had supposed that the old lady would have been comforted by such conspicuous protection, instead of which she had protested vehemently against this ‘gross invasion of privacy’. Zen had not been helped in his efforts to soothe her by the rough-and-ready manners of Bettino Todesco, the policeman who would be on duty that night, or by the fact that he had to take Ada’s fingerprints in order to compare them with those which might be found on the knife.

In the end, Ada had insisted on phoning her nephews. Nanni and Vincenzo Ardit had driven over from their home in Verona as soon as they heard that their aunt was in hospital and were spending the afternoon in the city, where they had the use of one of the family’s properties not far from Palazzo Zulian. It was thus only a matter of moments before one of them turned up to lend his aunt moral support.

Vincenzo Ardit turned out to be a pleasant surprise from Zen’s point of view. He was a fit, strong man in his early twenties, with the cropped hair and wary eyes of one who has recently concluded his military service. Quietly spoken and evidently used to dealing with Ada, he calmly explained to her the benefits of having an official presence in the house for a limited period ‘to prove that you aren’t simply imagining these terrible things’. Ada held up her bandaged wrists and demanded to know if this wasn’t real enough, but this display of pique showed that she knew she had given way on the major issue.

Zen and her nephew spent a further hour soothing Ada’s ruffled feelings before they could leave her alone with the uncouth Todesco, who was confined to a small room leading off the main landing, with strict orders to venture no further unless summoned. When Zen left, Ardit walked with him to the end of the alley, evidently with the purpose of being able to talk freely.

‘My aunt is a very sick woman. What she needs is extended hospitalization and medical attention, but unfortunately her last experience was so horrific… It was back in the dark ages of psychiatric treatment, in the early fifties. They shot her full of drugs and gave her electric shocks. The result is that she’ll do anything to avoid going back.’

He sighed deeply.

‘So far Nanni and I have gone along with her wishes. But if this suicide attempt is repeated, we’ll have no choice but to insist on getting her the treatment she so desperately needs.’

Zen left Ardit to his family duties and made his way home, feeling totally exhausted. Having showered, he made the mistake of lying down on the bed for a moment. When he opened his eyes again the room was in darkness and the bells of San Giobbe were striking eight o’clock. As a result, the NRV rally was more than half over by the time Zen got there. The present speaker was holding forth on the need to encourage a revival of small shops and businesses by curbing ‘bureaucratic busybodies’ and relaxing the ‘intolerable and unjust tax burdens’ under which they presently laboured.

A glance at the faces all around revealed the expediency of adopting this political line. Almost without exception, the people attending the rally were the pic-cola borghesia incarnate. The wilder rhetoric of separatism might appeal to the romantics among them, but in the end it would be the bread-and-butter issues which would sway the majority. None of them liked having some politician in Rome tell them what they could or couldn’t do, particularly now that Judge Antonio Di Pietro and his colleagues had confirmed their long-held suspicions that those very same politicians had themselves been doing exactly as they pleased all along.

The speaker was loudly cheered as he returned to his seat and one of the men seated at the back stood up. Even through the veil of mist, Zen recognized Tommaso Saoner as he stepped forward to introduce the evening’s star speaker. After a lengthy pause, during which the clapping and shouting grew ever more intense and rhythmic, the leader of the Nuova Repubblica Veneta emerged dramatically from the crowd itself and leapt up on the platform.

Ferdinando Dal Maschio was only superficially the man whom Zen had glimpsed in the wine bar the previous day. The physical outline was the same — the wiry build, of medium height, with sharp, angular features and an unruly mop of light brown hair — but the overall effect was completely different. In the osteria, Dal Maschio had appeared an unremarkable individual with a slightly dopey air, someone you might go drinking or hunting with but whom you wouldn’t trust to post an important letter. Now he was transformed. As he strode across the stage and grasped the microphone, he seemed to radiate authority, vitality and utter conviction.

Almost as soon as Dal Maschio started speaking, Zen realized that he was listening to one of life’s natural orators. Part of the fascination was that his voice did not fit his boyish looks. Deep and gravelly, with a rasping edge he must have picked up during his childhood in Lombardy, it was the perfect vehicle for the savagely mocking assault on the ‘elected Mafia’ in Rome with which he started. There were roars of approval from the crowd as Dal Maschio excoriated the vices of the political class which had run the country since the war.

‘We might forgive them their inefficiency if they weren’t arrogant as well. We might be prepared to overlook their arrogance if they weren’t also corrupt. And their corruption wouldn’t stink quite so much if they hadn’t spent the last fifty years preaching about the need for high moral standards and the rule of law. But inefficiency combined with arrogance plus corruption times hypocrisy? Heh! No, my friends, that’s too much for them to try and shove up our arses!’

This sudden lapse into vulgarity brought a storm of cheers. Dal Maschio had won their minds, now he had conquered their hearts, revealing himself to be one of them, a plain man who used plain words. But he was also astute enough to know that attacking the easy targets in Rome, however popular it might be, was not enough. He had warmed up the crowd with his opening tirade. Now it was time to move closer to home, and to prepare his vision of an alternative future.

‘Ecologists speak of a species “at risk”. Much fuss has been made about the fate of whales and elephants, of rhinos, tigers and porpoises.’

He paused abruptly, giving his audience time to wonder what any of this had to do with their concerns.

‘But there is a species far more important than those, and far closer to our hearts, which is equally endangered, and yet no one lifts a finger to save it. That species, my friends, is the Venetians!’

Dal Maschio stood back, allowing the storm of cheers to subside.

‘Already it is late, very late!’ he cried passionately. ‘In the fifty years since the war, we have lost no less than half our entire population, and those that do remain have the highest average age of any European city. And do not let us forget that those official figures in no way reflect the real dimensions of the problem, since they include all the foreigners who have moved here and forced the price of property through the roof, outsiders who share nothing of our common heritage yet make it impossible for many of us to live in our own city!’

This brought more cheers.

‘It’s not just a question of numbers,’ Dal Maschio went on, his face suddenly grave. ‘Repopulating Venice is not the only issue at stake. Even more vital is the preservation of our distinctively Venetian culture, and for that the time is desperately short! We have literally only a few more years to repatriate the thousands of our citizens who have been forced to emigrate and for the older generation to pass on its skills, tradition and language to the young. After that the chain will be broken beyond any possibility of repair, and one and a half thousand years of Venetian history will be over. If the city survives at all, it will be as a theme park for rich tourists, as Veniceland, a wholly-owned Disney subsidiary with actors dressed up as the Doge and the Council of Ten and catering by McDonald’s.’

Dal Maschio paused, giving his audience time to appreciate this dire prospect. When he spoke again, it was in a low, matter-of-fact tone in dramatic contrast to his previous delivery.

‘But that need not happen. It will not happen. We shall not let it happen.’

He broke off, gazing blankly before him as though lost for words. When it finally came, his next phrase had the hushed intensity of a revelation, of a great truth communicated for the first time.

‘We Venetians must take control of our own destiny.’

He nodded, as though working out the logic of this insight he had just been granted.

‘For over a century we have let ourselves be beguiled by the chimera of nationalism. We freed ourselves from the shackles of the Austrian empire only to hand ourselves over to the hegemony of Rome. And now that regime has been exposed for the rotten sham it is, there are those who urge us to deliver ourselves meekly into the power of Milan!’

A surge of murmurs from the crowd greeted this reference to the rival Northern Leagues.

‘That may make sense for others,’ Dal Maschio went on, the aggressive edge returning to his voice, ‘for those regions which have historically acknowledged the supremacy of the Lombards, or those who have insufficient resources to support pretensions to independence.’

A pause, then he switched back into his declamatory mode.

‘But we are different! Venice has always been different! Istria and the Dalmatian coast have always been closer to us than Verona, Corfu and the Aegean more familiar than Milan, Constantinople no more foreign than Rome. Where others look inward, we have always looked outward. That difference is our heritage and our glory. The New Venetian Republic will revive both! We shall make the city a free port, renew our historic relationship with the newly emergent republics along the Dalmatian coast, and offer significant commercial and financial advantages to businesses, all with a view to making Venice once again the leading interface between the Eastern Mediterranean littoral and Northern Europe.’

Dal Maschio took a drink from the glass of water on the stand beside him. He smiled broadly, one of the boys again.

‘But besides all that, we have one great advantage over other folk. It’s also our great scourge. I’m talking about the tourists, of course.’

He nodded approvingly as a chorus of laughter went up from the crowd.

‘As we know all too well, there is no one on this planet who wouldn’t like to visit our city if they could, and no one who has done so who wouldn’t like to return. Over twenty million such “guests” come to call on us every single year, and what do we see for it? Next to nothing! Most of them spend less than a day in the city, and the few who stay longer are serviced by international hotel chains whose profits end up in Paris or London or New York. Such tourism is like the aqua alta, flooding the whole city, making normal life impossible and leaving nothing but shit behind!’

A loud burst of applause greeted this sally. Dal Maschio raised his hand for silence.

‘But if we dam that flood, my friends, it will generate enough hard cash to provide the basis of a vigorous and stable economy! Tourists pay an average of fifty dollars a head to visit the Disney theme park outside Paris. How much would they be willing to pay for the privilege of visiting the most famous and beautiful city in the world? At present they walk in free, as if they owned the place! Anyone intending to visit the New Venetian Republic would require a visa, for which we would charge… What shall we say? A hundred thousand lire? That would ensure the New Republic an immediate, guaranteed annual income of two thousand billion lire!’

There were gasps from the audience. Dal Maschio shrugged coyly.

‘That’s not bad, is it? In fact it’s well in excess of the gross national product of several emergent nations. But for us it’s only the beginning. Far from being an idle dream, independence is the only policy which can realize the unlimited potential of our unique city. But we must not fall into the trap of complacency, my friends. Do not waste your votes just because you believe — absolutely correctly, mind you — that our victory is a foregone conclusion. Let us not merely win these municipal elections, but win them massively, decisively, with an overwhelming landslide which sends a clear signal to the morally and economically bankrupt regime in Rome! Let’s force them to call elections at a national level in the immediate future, so that we can liberate ourselves once and for all from the burdens which have weighed us down for so long, and begin at last to forge our own destiny in this unique and incomparable city state!’

Dal Maschio turned away. It seemed the speech was over, and scattered applause broke out. Then, as though struck by a sudden inspiration, he grasped the microphone again and continued with hoarse vehemence.

‘Fifteen hundred years ago our forefathers gathered here, on the bleak mudbanks of the lagoon, seeking refuge from foreign domination, from oppression and servitude. They turned their back on the mainland and, over the centuries, made of this inhospitable and unpromising site a city which is one of the wonders of the world. They never bowed to emperor or pope but always held their own course, owing allegiance to no one but always seeking to further the interests of the Republic. Maybe they weren’t always too particular about the methods they used or the people they allied themselves with, but for over a thousand years they made the name of Venice respected and feared. If we wish to be great again, if we simply wish to survive, we must follow their example — as Europeans, as Italians, but first and foremost as Venetians!’

The applause which followed was lengthy and enthusiastic. From the fringes of the crowd some wag yelled ‘Self-rule for the Giudecca!’ but this sarcasm was swamped by repeated ovations for Dal Maschio and his associates.

Zen was just wondering how he could attract Tommaso’s attention when a pair of youths wearing NRV armbands appeared at his elbow and urged him to join up. One was short and chubby, his soft baby-face features contradicted by a small slot of a mouth and hard, shifty eyes set rather too close together. His companion was older and slighter, with a small moustache, long oily perfumed curls and wrap-around sunglasses tapering to a point at his ears. Zen declined their exhortations to ‘stand up and be counted’, and when they persisted he told them that he was there to meet Tommaso Saoner.

The elder of the two activists looked at him sharply.

‘Are you called Zen by any chance?’ he demanded.

‘No, it was my father’s name.’

The born-again Venetian did a double take, then shook his head to show that he had no time for jokes.

‘Tommaso told us to look out for you,’ he said curtly. ‘Come this way.’

The pair moved off, shoving their way roughly through the crowd. The podium was now darkened, and volunteers were already beginning to dismantle the structure. Under one of the plane trees whose roots made the paving warp and buckle like choppy seas, Ferdinando Dal Maschio was meeting his public. He greeted them familiarly, as though each were already an old friend, a member of the family. It was an impressive performance, all the more so in that it looked entirely natural.

Stationed around Dal Maschio and unobtrusively controlling access to him stood a ring of his lieutenants, including Tommaso Saoner and a chubby man with watchful eyes whom Zen recognized with a shock as Enzo Gavagnin. The elder of the two youths went up to Saoner and spoke to him briefly. Tommaso looked over to where Zen was standing and waved him to approach.

‘Well, Aurelio, what’s your verdict?’

Saoner’s face was flushed, his pupils enlarged, his movements jerky and his breath rapid. Zen recalled what Cristiana had said about politics being a drug. In different circumstances, he would have assumed that Tommaso was drunk.

‘Good turnout,’ Zen replied shortly.

But Tommaso was not so easily put off.

‘And Dal Maschio?’ he asked eagerly. ‘What did you think of him?’

Zen shrugged.

‘He’s a natural politician.’

That got through.

‘Stop beating about the bush, Aurelio! Are you with us or against us?’

Zen eyed him with mock alarm.

‘Is there no other choice?’

‘Not for someone like you, a Venetian born and bred! You heard what Dal Maschio said. We have only a few years left, a decade or two at most, to save the city and everything that makes us what we are!’

‘I thought the speeches were over, Tommaso.’

Enzo Gavagnin wandered over to join them. He nodded curtly at Zen, then turned to Saoner.

‘Friend of yours?’

Tommaso glanced at Zen.

‘He used to be.’

Gavagnin detonated a bright yellow gob of spit on the pavement.

‘And now?’

Tommaso Saoner shrugged suddenly and forced a smile.

‘Oh, Aurelio’s all right. He’ll come round in the end. The logic of our arguments are inescapable. There is simply no other viable response to the problems we face.’

He took Zen’s arm and steered him away from the menacing attention of Enzo Gavagnin.

‘Come and meet Andrea.’

Tommaso led him out of the dispersing crowd, right across the campo and under a low portico leading under the houses. The caged lamp on the whitewashed ceiling cast the pattern of a gigantic spider-web on the ground. A small courtyard narrowed to a blind alley ending at a small canal. The tide was high again, the water lapping invisibly at the steps. Zen felt a surge of relief that Bettino Todesco was on duty at Palazzo Zulian. All might not yet be well, but at least the worst had been averted.

Eight houses faced each other across the yard, not counting the upper storeys built over the portico. Tommaso stopped at the last on the right-hand side. The plastic nameplate above the bell read DOLFIN.

‘I don’t know if he’s home,’ Tommaso murmured. ‘He doesn’t have a phone, so we’ll have to take our chances.’

‘What makes you think he knows anything about Rosetta Zulian?’ asked Zen.

Tommaso shrugged and rang again.

‘I recall my mother saying that his name had been linked to that affair. I don’t really remember the details, but if anyone knows anything about it this long afterwards it’ll be Andrea.’

A window high above their heads opened with a loud creak.

‘Who’s that?’

The voice was that of an elderly male, the tone peremptory to the point of rudeness.

‘Tommaso Saoner. I’ve someone here who wants to meet you.’

‘But do I want to meet him? Or is it a her? Have you turned pimp in more ways than one, Saoner? I’ve been trying to shut out the sound of your beastly speeches all evening.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with politics, Andrea. This is an old school friend of mine, Aurelio Zen.’

‘Zen? You mean Stefano? No, he died. Guido? Biagio? Alberto?’

‘Aurelio!’ shouted Tommaso.

Zen could just make out the grizzled head leaning out of a window high above amid the swirling mist.

‘There’s no one by that name. I knew an Angelo Zen once, but he’s dead.’

‘I’m his son,’ Zen called out.

‘Angelo Giovanni,’ the voice continued unheedingly. ‘We were Young Fascists together, among the very first to join. But he had no children. I believe there had been a boy who was stillborn. And before he could make any more, Angelo went off to Russia and…’

‘Are you going to keep us standing here all night?’ demanded Tommaso.

‘All right, all right! Don’t be so impatient!’

A moment later there came the buzz of the door-release. Tommaso pushed the door ajar.

‘I’ve got to get back,’ he told Zen. ‘There’s a policy meeting I must attend. Maybe I’ll catch you later, if Andrea hasn’t managed to persuade you that you don’t exist!’

He strode back through the portico and out into the lighted campo, humming with activity. Zen stepped inside and stood uncertainly in the hallway.

‘Come up!’ called a voice somewhere above.

Zen closed the door and started upstairs. When he reached the first-floor landing, he found himself confronted by a gaunt man in his eighties, wearing a voluminous dressing-gown of some thick red material and resting on a rubber-tipped cane. His face was heavy and jowly, as though all its youthful qualities had drained to the bottom.

‘What was that about Tommaso being a pimp?’ Zen asked him, feeling the need to take the initiative.

The old man cackled sourly.

‘He’s been trying to get me to join this political movement he’s involved with, the ones who were shouting in the square just a moment ago.’

He ushered Zen through an open doorway.

‘I’ve told him over and over again that I’m finished with all that. I got taken in once, but I was young and stupid, and at least Mussolini was the real thing! To be fooled again at my age, and with a cheap imitation like this Dal Maschio — no thank you!’

The room they entered was of about the same dimensions as its equivalent in Zen’s house, but so crammed with possessions that it appeared much smaller. Every scrap of available wall space was covered by furniture or shelving, which in turn supported a vast array of objects of all kinds: a ship’s bell, coins and medals, torn fragments of a flag, a fossilized fish, the six-pronged ferro from the prow of a gondola, stray bits of statuary, books in Arabic and Greek, instruments either medical or musical, a coiled whip, a girl’s ivory hairband…

‘Where on earth did all this come from?’ asked Zen, looking round wonderingly.

‘It’s loot.’

‘Beg pardon?’

Andrea Dolfin regarded him with a malicious eye.

‘Don’t you know your Venetian history? You should, with a name like Zen — if that is your name. Ours is a history of plunder and rapine. Next time you’re passing through the Piazza, take a look around. Virtually everything you see was stolen. We extracted more booty from our fellow-Christians in Constantinople than the Turks ever did. And in my own small way I’m carrying on that tradition.’

He waved Zen towards a square leather chair with a high back and short legs.

‘Sit down, please, and tell me what I can do for you.’

Zen lowered himself with difficulty into the chair, which seemed to have been made for a fat dwarf.

‘I am a police official,’ he said. ‘I’m working on a case involving Contessa Zulian. Tommaso thought you might be able to tell me what happened to her daughter Rosetta.’

Andrea Dolfin stood staring down at him in silence for some time.

‘Rosetta Zulian.’

He shuffled slowly, his bare feet encased in battered leather sandals.

‘This is Tommaso’s revenge,’ he murmured in a low voice. ‘I made mock of his zealous rantings, and in reprisal he has sent you here with a cargo of terrible memories.’

He turned, looking back at Zen from a shadowy recess at the rear of the room.

‘Do you drink, at least?’

Zen made a gesture indicating that he had been known to take a drop from time to time. The old man opened a sideboard and produced a dark brown bottle and two none-too-clean glasses.

‘Recioto di Valpolicella,’ he announced as he hobbled back towards Zen. ‘Made by my son, as a hobby. This is the 1983. The ’81 was a dream but it’s all gone. This could use a little more time, but it’s not bad even now.’

He poured them both a glass. Zen sipped the rich ruby dessert wine. The flavour was almost overwhelmingly grapey, full of restrained sweetness, mellow yet intense.

‘So you’re from the police?’ remarked Andrea Dolfin, subsiding in a grubby upholstered armchair and propping his feet up on an ebony putto, half of its head torn away to expose the jagged, splintered grain of the wood. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have made such a point of telling you about my loot.’

Zen gazed at him over the wineglass and said nothing.

‘Not that the people I took it from made any objection,’ Dolfin went on. ‘They were above such things by then, you see, or below them. In a word, they were dead.’

He smiled a small, remote smile.

‘There was nothing I could do for them, but in some cases I felt able to give some of their possessions a good home. Later, when the war was over, I meant to trace some of the relatives and try and give the stuff back, but what with one thing and another I never got around to it.’

He looked at Zen.

‘Shocking, eh? Are you going to take me in?’

Zen was silent a moment, as though considering the idea.

‘Tell me about Rosetta Zulian,’ he said at last.

A spasm contorted Dolfin’s features for an instant. Then it vanished as though it had never been and a dreamy, vacant expression appeared on his face.

‘What can I tell you? It all seems so long ago, so far away… Rosetta was a strange, solitary child. She never played with the other kids in the neighbourhood. She preferred to go her own way, making her friends where and as she found them. Her closest friend was a girl from — would you believe it? — the Ghetto. You can imagine how the contessa, with her ridiculous pretensions, felt about that!’

He leant forward to pour them both more wine.

‘The friend’s name was Rosa, Rosa Coin. I lived in the area myself at the time, in Calle del Forno, just off the Ghetto Vecchio, and I often used to see them coming and going. The similarity of their names was not the only thing they had in common. Both had the same wavy brown hair, the same sallow skin and dark eyes, the same skinny, angular, hard little bodies. In a word, they were doubles. And not just physically. They shared a certain same intensity of manner, swinging from exaltation to despair in a moment. Even their interests were similar. Rosetta played the piano, Rosa the violin. They used to joke about forming a duo, once the war was over…’

The old man’s expression became grim.

‘It seemed so easy to say at the time. The war brought its hardships, of course, but for most of us life carried on much as before until Mussolini was overthrown. Then the Americans and British invaded from the south, and the Germans from the north, and for the next two years the country became a battlefield.’

He snatched a gulp of wine.

‘Even then we got off pretty lightly here in Venice, apart from the Jews. Two hundred of them, including the Coin family, were deported to the death camps.’

‘And Rosetta Zulian?’ Zen put in a trifle pointedly.

Andrea Dolfin smiled and nodded.

‘The old man is losing track of the subject, eh? It’s true. When I start to think about those days, I sometimes get confused, and forget who was who and what really happened. It’s not hard to do in the case of Rosetta Zulian, because what did happen was so incredible.’

He clicked the forefinger and thumb of his right hand.

‘She vanished, just like that! In the spring of 1944, it was. She would have been about fifteen. One afternoon she left home, telling her mother she would be back by six. She was never seen again. No body was ever discovered. No trace of her, alive or dead, was ever found.’

Dolfin shook his head sadly.

‘The contessa never got over it. Her husband had been killed just a couple of years before, and now this. She started making absurd accusations.’

He shot Zen a glance.

‘That’s why I had to move, to tell you the truth. She started putting it about that I’d done away with her daughter.’

Dolfin shrugged.

‘Normally I’d just have laughed it off, but it was a difficult moment for me just after the war. There were people who had it in for me because I’d been in the party. As though I’d been the only Fascist in Venice!’

He laughed bitterly.

‘She even made a formal complaint to the police! Nothing came of it, of course, but there were plenty of folk prepared to believe that there’s no smoke without fire, enough to make life in the old house impossible for me. So I pulled up my roots and moved over here to Dorsoduro. The people round this way are quite different. They don’t care what you may or may not have done fifty years ago, just as long as you leave them in peace now.’

He stood up painfully, wrapping the russet dressing-gown about his spare form.

‘And then that fool Saoner expects me to sign up for his fantasies of an independent Venice! I might, on condition that we bulldoze the Cannaregio and make it into a car park. So many terrible things have happened here, so many crimes, so many horrors. Who wants to remember all that? We’d all end up like Ada

Zulian, talking to people who aren’t there and ignoring those who are.’

Recognizing that the interview was at an end, Zen stood up, buttoning his coat.

‘Thank you for your hospitality,’ he said. ‘The wine was excellent.’

‘It is not so bad,’ Andrea conceded. ‘I’m sorry I’m unable to tell you any more about Rosetta Zulian.’

He looked Zen in the eye.

‘I fear it’s just one of those episodes which will remain a mystery for ever.’

The next day dawned dull and cold. Aurelio Zen was up to watch as the light imperceptibly reclaimed the eastern sky. He had paid for his late afternoon nap with a broken, restless sleep from which even so early an awakening came as a relief. He had no idea how long he had slept. It might have been hours or minutes, but his abiding memory of the experience was of a continual tossing and turning which was the outward expression of his inner turmoil.

His visit to Andrea Dolfin the night before had merely served to confirm his sense that everything was slipping away from him. The old man’s parting words had echoed his own realisation that the fate of Rosetta Zulian, like that of Ivan Durridge, and for that matter his own father, would quite likely never be known. The few facts he had gleaned stood out like objects scattered at random in a dark room, illuminated by a beam of light whose brilliance only serves to emphasize the impenetrable obscurity all around.

Anxious to dispel this paralysing sense of hopelessness, Zen dressed rapidly and set out for the Questura on foot without even pausing to broach the packet of coffee he had bought the day before. The day was established by now, but the light was still mean and grudging. The keen wind which had seen off the last of the fog blew the pigeons down the streets towards him like flying debris from an explosion.

When Zen reached his office, having stopped off in a bar to get his caffeine count up to par, he discovered that the province’s maritime registration office had faxed over the details he had requested. The list was not extensive. Ivan Durridge’s boat had been the broad-beamed topa, once a common sight on the lagoon but now largely superseded by more utilitarian models. Since the 1st of November of the previous year, only three such vessels had been registered. Of these, one was still powered only by the original lugsail and could thus be discounted. The remaining two had both been equipped with diesel engines, one a Volvo, the other a Fiat.

Zen consulted his watch. By now it was after seven, and Marco Paulon would have made an early start to catch the tide. He looked up his number and dialled. The phone was answered by Signora Paulon, who informed Zen curtly that her husband could be reached on his mobile phone. Zen thanked her and dialled the number she supplied. A brief series of electronic beeps were followed by a gruff shout above the noise of a labouring marine engine.

‘Well?’

‘Good morning, Marco.’

‘Aurelio?’

‘Where are you?’

‘On the way to San Lazzaro with a load of paper for the Armenians’ printing press. What can I do for you?’

‘I hear that that fisherman from Burano you were telling me about was found drowned.’

‘Poor bastard. After whatever happened to him on Sant’Ariano, his brain must have snapped. Christ protect us all from such a fate.’

‘A word of advice, Marco. How do I trace the serial number of the engine of a missing boat?’

For a while there was only the gurgling throb of Marco Paulon’s boat bucking out across the lagoon.

‘Probably the easiest way is to trace the boatyard which sold or serviced it,’ Marco replied at length.‘They’ll be bound to have those details on record.’

‘Of course. Thanks, Marco.’

‘Any time. Hey, what about coming to dinner one of these days? Fabia’s telephone manner may stink, but she’s also a lousy cook. On the other hand, how good do you need to be to cook fish?’

‘Good enough to buy it fresh and not mess it about too much.’

‘Give me a call when you’re free. How about Sunday?’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘We’ll be expecting you.’

Zen dug out the office copy of the Venice Yellow Pages and looked up boatyards. Then he started a series of phone calls, identical in form and content.

‘Good morning, this is the Questura of Venice. Can you tell me if you sold or serviced a converted topa belonging to Ivan Durridge, spelt D-U-R-R-I-D-G-E? You’re sure? Thank you. Goodbye.’

There were about thirty-five yards altogether, and Zen had recited his formula over twenty times before he struck lucky. It seemed that Durridge had had his boat overhauled every year by a small family firm on the Giudecca from whom he had bought it in the first place. They evidently remembered him with affection.

‘Of course, the American. So kind! So friendly! He always brought a present for my little boy when he went away. We were shocked by what happened. What an appalling tragedy! Is there any fresh news?’

Zen said enough to impress on the boatyard owner the importance of the information he sought and then popped the question.

‘The serial number? Yes, of course, I’ll have it in the books somewhere. It was a Volvo, I remember that. Hold on just a minute.’

In the event it was more like five minutes. Meanwhile Zen went through the registration list again. The Volvo-engined topa was owned by one Sergio Scusat. Like all those in the city, the postal address supplied consisted of a number followed by the name of the sestiere, in this case San Polo. Zen was searching the desk drawers for a copy of the directory which converted these postal codes into street addresses when the receiver lying on the desk began to squeak. He picked it up and noted down the serial number of the motor fitted to Ivan Durridge’s boat. It was the same.

He was just thanking the boatyard owner when Aldo Valentini walked in, yawning loudly.

‘Are you here already?’ he exclaimed. ‘I thought you Romans lived in lotus land.’

Zen replaced the receiver with a bang.

‘Where the hell do you keep the street directory?’ he demanded.

‘There’s only one copy that I know of,’ Valentini replied through another mighty yawn, ‘and it’s jealously guarded by Bonifacio down in Admin. He might let you consult it if you suck his cock nicely. On the other hand you might prefer to take a walk to the bar where we went the other day. They keep a copy under the counter. Come to think of it, I’ll come with you.’

In front of the Questura a gleaming wooden launch was drawn up, its idling engine puking out water from time to time. A self-consciously good-looking man in a tweed suit and cashmere overcoat was just stepping ashore. He nodded minimally to Aldo Valentini as he walked past.

‘The chief,’ muttered the Ferrarese to Zen. ‘Francesco Bruno, son of a teacher from Calabria. Currently spends most of his time sticking his bum out of the window trying to decide which way the wind is blowing. You and I may have our problems, not least trying to make ends meet on our salaries, but it’s really tough at the top these days. How are you supposed to know whose orders to ignore?’

A black-headed gull swooped down as though to attack its reflection in the water. With a loud splash it seized a chunk of sodden bread and flew off, dropping a line of soggy bomblets along the canal.

The Bar dei Greci was empty apart from a child sitting on a table swinging his legs as he read a comic. The barman had been replaced by a stout woman wearing a flowery pinafore. Zen asked her for the directory and looked up

Sergio Scusat’s address while Valentini skimmed the local paper. The headline read POLICE QUESTION DROWNED MAN’S BROTHER.

‘Enzo’s gone out on a limb on this one,’ Valentini remarked as they sipped their coffee. ‘Under the new Code he’s only got till six o’clock tonight to screw something out of Filippo Sfriso to justify having held him in the first place, and by all accounts he isn’t going to get it.’

Zen inspected the photographs of the Sfriso brothers: blurred images evidently blown up from a family snapshot or identity card mugshot.

‘What’s the story?’ Zen asked politely, not really wanting to know.

‘In my humble opinion, it’s a concatenation of absurdities,’ Valentini pronounced with a theatrical gesture.

He paused, then repeated the phrase with evident pleasure.

‘A concatenation of absurdities! I spent several hours interviewing the family before Gavagnin took over. The mother kept insisting that no son of hers would take his own life, but she couldn’t suggest why anyone else would either. He was only a fisherman. Why would anyone bother killing him?’

‘In that case, why is Gavagnin giving the brother such a hard time?’

Valentini shrugged.

‘Because that’s how he gets his kicks. But I don’t think he’ll get much change out of Filippo Sfriso. As for Enzo’s drug angle, Sfriso told me that his brother had got involved with some girl in Mestre who’s into hallucinogenics. Obviously Giacomo must have taken a trip that went wrong and started seeing corpses. That’s all there is to it. What’s Enzo want to do, bust some no-hope users trying to take a break from the grim realities of life in Mestre? Christ, I’d probably use the stuff myself if I had to live there.’

As they strolled back along the quay, Aldo Valentini repaid Zen’s courtesy by asking how the Zulian case was coming along.

‘Too well!’ Zen returned. ‘The way things are going, I’ll have to come up with an excuse to stay on a few more days.’

‘Aren’t you missing the dolce vita down south?’

A fugitive smile appeared on Zen’s lips.

‘Perhaps I’ll try and muscle in on the Sfriso case,’ he murmured.

Aldo Valentini stared at him blankly a moment before bursting into laughter.

‘You and your Roman humour!’ he cried. ‘You nearly took me in for a moment there!

Back at the Questura, the two men shook hands and went their separate ways, Valentini to open a file on a case involving the hijacking of a barge conveying two removal lorries loaded with the entire possessions of a Dutch millionaire, Zen to engage one of the police launches with a view to calling on Sergio Scusat.

As though to give the lie to the sneering comments he had made earlier to Marco Paulon, the helmsman turned out to be an excellent and experienced seaman. Mino Martufo was from Palermo, and he had spent most of his time in boats from his earliest childhood. He handled the launch with a nonchalant panache which left Zen hovering between exhilaration and apprehensions as they went careening round corners and under bridges, siren blaring and lamp flashing, totally ignoring the posted speed limits and leaving all other traffic wallowing queasily in their wake. But all to no avail: Sergio Scusat was not at home. His sister, who was looking after the children, told Zen that her brother might be found at a construction site on the Sacca San Biagio, one of three small islands at the western tip of the Giudecca.

The launch roared off again through the back canals of Dorsoduro, narrowly avoiding a collision with a taxi full of fat men with video cameras and skinny women in furs, past tiny intricate palaces and vast abandoned churches, under bridges so low they had to duck and through gaps so narrow they touched the fenders of the moored boats. Then at last, with a dramatic suddenness that took Zen’s breath away, they emerged into the Giudecca channel, the deepest and broadest of all the waterways within the city.

The wind seemed much stronger here, chopping up the water into short, hard waves which shattered under the hull of the launch. The car ferry to Alexandria was steaming slowly down the channel, and Martufo sent the launch veering dangerously close under the towering bows of the huge vessel, keeling over with the force of the turn, the gunwales sunk in the surging torrent of white water. Then they were across the channel and into the sheltered canals separating the Giudecca from the sacce.

These small islands were some of the last areas in the city to be built on, remaining undeveloped until the 1960s. Zen could remember rowing across to them when they were still a green oasis of allotments and meadows. Now Sacca Fisola was covered in streets and squares, shops, schools, playgrounds and six-storey apartment blocks. Except for the eerie absence of traffic, it was all exactly identical to suburbs of the same period in any mainland city. But here there were no cars, no lorries, no motorbikes or scooters. The children played in the street, just as children everywhere had done a century earlier, but in a street flanked by the sort of brutalist architecture associated with chaotic parking, constant horns, revving two-strokes and blaring car radios. Here, the only sound was the lapping of the water at the shore. The overall effect was extremely unsettling, as though the whole thing were a hoax of some kind.

The construction site where Sergio Scusat was working was on a small islet to the south of the Sacca Fisola, with a fine view of the garbage incinerator which occupied the eastmost island. Scusat was the foreman of a team of labourers repairing an apartment block. Access was by a concrete jetty jutting out into the water. As the tide was still high, they were able to come alongside. Zen stepped ashore and walked over to the other side of the jetty, where a broad-beamed boat with a curving prow was tied up. He climbed down into the stern and opened the engine housing.

‘Where’s the serial number on these things?’

Mino Martufo joined him and pointed to a series of numbers etched into a small plaque to the left of the block letters reading VOLVO.

‘Hey! What do you think you’re doing?’

The shout came from the scaffolding on the apartment block. Two men were slapping mortar on a section of external walling. A third stood staring down at the jetty.

‘Scusat?’ Zen called back.

‘Well?’

‘Police!’

The man slipped down through the scaffolding as nimbly as a monkey and walked over to where Zen was standing.

‘What’s all this about?’ he demanded.

Sergio Scusat was a short, wiry man, his sallow face covered as though in make-up powder by plaster dust. His paper hat, folded from a newspaper page, had a party air at odds with his morose expression.

‘Is this your boat?’

‘Well?’

‘How did you acquire her?’

Scusat looked at Zen and blinked.

‘I bought her.’

‘When?’

‘Just before Christmas. I answered an advertisement in the Nuova Venezia.’

‘Who was the vendor?’

‘A boatyard. It was all legal and above-board. She’d been out of the water for years, but they’d overhauled her and put in a reconditioned engine. She’s a good boat and the price was right. What’s all this about, anyway?’

Zen regarded him for a moment.

‘Have you got any proof of sale?’

‘It was a cash deal. I handed over the money, they handed over the boat. What’s the problem?’

‘So you have no way of proving that you in fact acquired the vessel in the manner you have just described?’

‘Why should I need to prove it?’

Zen glowered at him.

‘The boat is stolen property.’

‘I paid good money for that boat!’ Sergio Scusat retorted truculently. ‘There were no documents for her because she’d been laid up for so long. That was why they had to sell her cheap.’

Zen eyed the man sceptically.

‘And who are “they”?’

‘The boatyard I bought it from! Down at Chioggia.’

Zen eyed him.

‘Would the owner’s name be Giulio Bon, by any chance?’

‘That’s right! Why?’

‘Ah!’

Zen closed his eyes for a moment, then looked back at Scusat.

‘I must ask you to come with me to the Questura, signore.’

The man shot him a look of sullen fright.

‘I’ve done nothing wrong!’ he cried.

‘No doubt, but I need to take a written statement of everything you have told me before I can proceed further.’

He pointed to the launch, gurgling quietly beside the concrete jetty.

‘This way, please.’

Aurelio Zen strolled slowly through the east end of the city, the maze of former slums crushed in between the Pieta canal and the high fortress walls of the Arsenale. This was a secretive and impenetrable district, of no particular interest in itself and on the way to nowhere else. In Zen’s childhood it had had a tough — even dangerous — reputation, and he had rarely ventured there. The rest of the city was etched into his mind like a map, but this one forgotten corner was a blank where he could still get lost.

And that was the idea: a sense of physical disorientation to match the one he felt inside. His initial spasm of elation at the breakthrough in the Durridge case was now just a fading memory. That had been young love, aware only of its own delight. Now it was time to get serious, to decide whether to make something of it, to settle down and found a family, or to break off the affair, walk away and try and forget the whole thing ever happened.

All this dangerous excitement was the more unwelcome in that Zen had anticipated nothing of the kind. His purpose in searching for Durridge’s boat had been the search itself. He hadn’t remotely expected to find anything of interest, only to be able to lay his labours before the family like a dog panting mightily before its owner in lieu of the stick it has failed to fetch. When he’d phoned Ellen the night before, after returning from the NRV rally, he had got the impression that some such gesture in return for the fee the Durridges were paying him — not that he had seen any of it yet — was desirable if not essential.

On the face of it, the reappearance of the missing topa was just what Zen needed to make the family feel that they were getting value for money, particularly in view of the link to Bon, one of the three men who had trespassed on Durridge’s island home a month before the American disappeared.

But what was good news for the Durridge family was not necessarily good news for Zen himself. The material which had been made available to him through the good offices of Palazzo Sisti seemed to suggest that the Durridge case had been closed down because of its political sensitivity. If that was so, then any policeman or magistrate who sought to reopen it would be putting himself at risk to some extent. The question was how grave this risk was. Did it justify giving up the Durridges’ money? The terms of Zen’s private investigation were not only generous in themselves, but Ellen had passed on the news that the family had offered an additional lump sum of one hundred thousand dollars payable in the event of the discovery of the missing man, dead or alive, and the arrest of those responsible.

That was more than twice Zen’s annual salary, which like that of all police officials had been frozen for the past five years as part of the government’s drive to reduce public spending in a country where each newborn baby came into the world owing over half a million lire. Nevertheless, even a year earlier Zen would have had no real doubt as to which decision to take. Money might be very desirable in all sorts of ways, but it was no substitute for life and health and nights free from gnawing anxiety and bad dreams.

But things were changing fast in Italy. These days, the men who woke from nightmares between sweated sheets were the very ones who had inflicted the experience on Zen at the time of the Aldo Moro affair, and for many years after. Now their names were being spoken of in connection with that event, and with all the other horrors of post-war Italy — spoken not furtively, in corners, but in committees of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. In a world where a judge could go on record as saying that the Italian Mafia and the Italian government were one and the same, nothing and no one was sacred any longer.

In such a world, it was no longer possible to calculate the odds with any certainty. The hand which had closed the Durridge file might even now be in cuffs, unable to influence even its own fate, never mind that of others. Or, on the contrary, it might still be hovering over the buttons of power, all the more dangerous and unpredictable for the knowledge that its days were numbered. There was simply no way of knowing.

Zen stopped on a bridge, leaning over the railing. The walls of the canal, exposed by the tide, presented bands of colour ranging from brick red at the top through green and blue to a brown which turned slime grey underwater. He had no idea where he was. Time seemed to have stopped. The sky was overcast, an even grey. There was no breath of wind in the airless canyons of these back canals. The houses all around were shuttered, silent.

Zen looked down, staring at the pitted black metal of the railing. It was the French who had added these refinements when they put an end to the Republic’s thousand-year independence. Until then the city’s bridges had been mere arcs of stone, to all appearances as weightless and insubstantial as their reflections, across which the inhabitants went nimbly about their business. Not only were guard-rails or balustrades unnecessary for a people who spent half their life in boats, but they were, as Silvio Morosini had once remarked, ‘an insult to the water’.

Zen let go of the railing and straightened up. He crossed the bridge and turned right, then left, then right again, striding along with ever greater determination. He knew where he was now, and where he was going, and what he would do when he got there.

‘Dating from when?’

‘Nineteen forty-five or six.’

‘If it still exists, it’ll be in Central Archives.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘On the Tronchetto. You have to send in a written request. The stuff is supposed to arrive next day, but don’t hold your breath. Some sections are either missing or inaccessible. It’s best to fax your requirements, mark it “extremely urgent”, and then send a follow-up every hour or so until something happens. Number’s in the directory.’

‘Thanks.’

Zen replaced the receiver. Taking a sheet of headed notepaper from the drawer, he wrote Denunzia fornita alla P.G. dalla parte di Zulian, Ada in re Dolfin, Andrea in the wide, curling script he had been taught at the little school just opposite the Ghetto in the years immediately after the war. He remembered thinking of the Ghetto then as something from ancient history, like the doges and the Ten and the galleys, a prison island where the Jews had been shut up in the far-off days when such minorities had been persecuted. The fact that there were almost no Jews living there any longer had merely seemed to confirm its anachronistic nature.

He finished writing out his request for the archive file relating to the complaint which Ada Zulian had made about Andrea Dolfin at that time, now itself part of history, and was just about to take it downstairs to the fax machine when the phone rang.

‘Yes?’

‘Could I speak to Aurelio Zen, please?’

‘Cristiana! What a pleasure to hear you.’

‘How did you know it was me?’

Zen sat back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk.

‘Your voice is very distinctive,’ he said.

‘No one else seems to think so.’

‘Then they must be stupid.’

There was a gurgle of laughter the other end.

‘But then I was already thinking about you,’ Zen added.

There was a pause while they waited to see who was going to make the next move, and what it would be.

‘I went to see your husband speak last night,’ Zen remarked.

‘Did the earth move for you?’

Zen laughed.

‘No, I had to fake it. But he certainly knows how to work a crowd.’

‘You should see his way with women.’

Zen was about to add another line of banter when the roar of a motor outside made the windowpanes rattle.

‘Just a moment,’ he told Cristiana.

He got up and went over to the window. A police launch had just come alongside the quay below. In the cockpit, a muscular man wearing a pair of oil-stained overalls stood beside a uniformed patrolmen. Zen went back to the phone.

‘I have to go, Cristiana. Something’s come up suddenly. I’ll call you back.’

‘Don’t bother with that. I’ll see you later.’ ‘I don’t know exactly when I’m going to be able to get home.’

‘I’ll be there,’ said Cristiana, and hung up.

Zen replaced the phone slowly. The engine noise outside died away and was replaced by a babble of voices. He crossed back to the window. The launch had now moored. The man in overalls was standing on the quay beside his police escort, who was being harangued by another man. The patrolman shrugged largely several times and gestured towards the Questura. The other man turned round, looking straight up at the window where Zen was standing. It was Enzo Gavagnin.

Zen ran quickly to the door, threw it open and sprinted along the corridor and downstairs, two steps at a time. The group of men had reached the vestibule by the time Zen got there. Enzo Gavagnin marched straight up to him.

‘What the hell’s going on?’

Zen was so breathless he could not answer at once.

‘Todesco tells me you authorized him to bring this man in,’ Gavagnin went on aggressively.

‘Have you some objection to that?’ Zen gasped.

‘Giulio is a friend of mine. I’m not letting him be persecuted by some arsehole from Rome who thinks he can come up here and throw his weight about as much as he likes!’

Zen turned to the patrolman, a hulking, popeyed individual with a face like an over-inflated balloon.

‘Anything happen at Palazzo Zulian last night, Todesco?’

‘Nossir.’

‘No incidents of any kind?’

‘Nossir.’

‘Very good. Take Signor Bon up to my office.’

‘Yessir.’

Enzo Gavagnin thrust himself in front of Zen, staring at him with an air of barely-contained fury.

‘Let me see your warrant!’

Zen glanced at him.

‘Signor Bon is not under arrest.’

‘Then what the hell is he doing here?’

‘I need to ask him a few questions.’

‘With regard to what?’ snapped Gavagnin.

‘To a case I’m working on.’

‘Valentini said you were working on the Ada Zulian case. Would you mind telling me what the fuck Giulio has to do with that?’

Zen shrugged.

Everything connects in the end, Enzo,’ he remarked archly. ‘We’re all part of the great web of life.’

Gavagnin scowled.

‘And what were you doing at the rally last night?’ he demanded. ‘Is that connected to the case you’re working on as well?’

‘What were you doing there?’ Zen shot back.

‘I happen to be a founder member of the movement, just like Giulio,’ Gavagnin replied stiffly. ‘Unlike you, we’re true Venetians, and proud of it!’

Zen nodded solemnly.

‘But I hear your granny screws Albanians,’ he murmured in dialect.

‘What?’

Ignoring him, Zen turned away and followed the clattering boots of Bettino Todesco leading his charge upstairs.

Zen sat behind the desk, Bon in front of it. A female uniformed officer stood over a reel-to-reel tape recorder on a metal stand, threading the yellow leader through the slit in the empty reel. Outside, the sky lowered dull and flat over the furrowed red tiles and tall square chimneys of the houses opposite, on the other side of the canal.

The policewoman straightened up. ‘Ready,’ she told Zen, who nodded. The reels of the recorder started to revolve. Zen recited the date, the time, the place.

‘Present are Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen and Sottotenente…’

He glanced inquiringly at the policewoman, a svelte but rather severe brunette who contrived to make her duty-issue uniform look as though it sported a designer label from one of the better houses.

‘Nunziata, Pia,’ she replied, having paused the tape.

‘… and Sottotenente Pia Nunziata,’ Zen continued. ‘Also present is Signor Giulio Bon, resident at forty-three Via della Traversa, Chioggia, in the Province of Venice.’

He cleared his throat and turned to gaze at the subject of the interview.

‘What is your occupation, Signor Bon?’

Giulio Bon had been staring at the floor between his feet. He shuffled uneasily, working the toe of his right shoe about on the fake marble, and mumbled something inaudible.

‘Speak up, please!’ Zen told him.

‘I’m a marine engineer.’

The voice was hoarse and clipped, with the characteristic boneless accent of Chioggia.

‘Meaning what?’ Zen demanded.

Bon shrugged.

‘I’ve got a diploma as a marine engineer.’

‘I don’t care if you’ve got a degree in Greek philosophy,’ snapped Zen. ‘I asked about your occupation, not your qualifications.’

Giulio Bon stared mutely at the floor for some time.

‘I run a boatyard,’ he said at last.

‘You’re the sole owner?’

‘My brother-in-law has a financial interest, but I look after the work.’

‘Alone?’

‘I employ two men full-time, and there are others I can call on when it’s busy.’

‘Their names?’

Bon mumbled a series of names which Zen noted down.

‘What sort of work does the yard handle?’ he asked.

‘Repairs, servicing, laying up.’

‘Do you also sell boats?’

Bon became very still. Only his foot moved jerkily about on the glossy paving.

‘From time to time,’ he said.

‘How many do you sell every year?’

‘It varies.’

‘Roughly?’

Bon shrugged.

‘Perhaps half a dozen.’

Zen nodded. He lifted a paper from the desk.

‘I am passing Signor Bon the extract from the Register of Vessels supplied by the Provincial authorities, reference number nine five nine oblique six oblique double D stroke four.’

Bon scanned the sheet of paper quickly. His expression did not change except for a minute tightening at the corner of the mouth.

‘Do you recognize any of the boats listed?’ Zen inquired.

‘No.’

‘I refer to the vessel identified as VZ 63923.’

‘I can’t be expected to remember the registration number of every boat that passes through the yard.’

‘This was rather a special boat. A topa. Beautiful craft, but they’re getting quite rare these days. Dying out, like so many of our traditions.’

Bon did not respond.

‘And there’s another reason why you might remember this particular boat,’ Zen went on once Bon’s failure to reply had registered. ‘It was one of the very few which you sell each year. And you sold this one less than two months ago. On the fifteenth of December, to be precise.’

Bon sat absolutely still and silent. Zen let the tape run some more.

‘Now do you remember?’ he demanded.

His tone was as sharp as the crack of a whip. Bon flinched as though struck.

‘It’s possible,’ he mumbled.

‘Possible? It’s not possible that you don’t remember. You are on record as saying that selling boats is not your main business, just something you do from time to time, no more than half a dozen a year. How could you possibly forget selling a craft as rare as a topa just before Christmas?’

‘Okay, all right! Maybe we did sell it!’ shouted Bon, his restraint suddenly cracking. ‘So what?’

‘Where did you get it from?’

Bon closed his eyes, breathing deeply.

‘I’d need to consult my records.’

Zen lit a cigarette. He leant back in his chair, staring coldly at Bon across the desk.

‘According to a sworn statement made in this office this morning, you informed the purchaser that the vessel had been laid up for years prior to being overhauled and fitted with a reconditioned engine. The witness, Sergio Scusat, further deposed that the price had been substantially reduced owing to the fact that no documents were available for the boat. He said that you claimed this was because she had been out of the water for so long that no one could trace the previous owner and she would have to be re-registered. Is that true?’

Guilio Bon shifted in his chair but said nothing.

‘Why are you being so evasive?’ murmured Zen silkily.

‘I’m not being evasive! I just can’t remember. Is that against the law?’

Zen allowed the silence to frame this outburst before continuing tonelessly.

‘The Nuova Venezia has confirmed that you placed an advertisement in the paper to run for the second week of December, offering a diesel-engined topa for sale. Sergio Scusat has testified that he bought the boat from you on the fifteenth. All I’m asking you to do is to confirm or deny the truth of the account you then gave him as to the vessel’s provenance.’

Bon looked at his knees, at the wall, at the ceiling.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘It’s all coming back to me.’

Zen puffed a smoke ring which hovered in the air above the desk like a detached halo.

‘Of course!’ Bon continued. ‘It was that old hulk we found round the back of the shed when we resurfaced the yard. God knows how many years it must have been sitting there. The hull was still sound, though. They built them to last in those days. All we needed to do was replace a few timbers here and there.’

‘And install an engine,’ Zen put in, apparently addressing the neon light fitting.

There was no reply. Zen lowered his head until his gaze met Bon’s.

‘Where did you get the engine?’

Bon waved one hand vaguely.

‘There are various suppliers we use from time to time, depending on…’

‘You told Scusat that the engine was reconditioned. There can’t be many suppliers of reconditioned Volvo marine engines in this area.’

‘“Reconditioned” is a relative term. It was probably some engine we had lying around the yard somewhere which we’d stripped down ourselves and reassembled.’

‘But it would still have had a serial number,’ Zen mused quietly. ‘To sell a craft without papers is one thing, but no one’s going to touch a motor whose serial number has been filed off. Besides, as you probably know, these days there are techniques for recovering markings which are no longer visible to the naked eye.’

There was a knock at the door. Zen gestured to the policewoman, who paused the tape. The door opened to admit a burly man with a bushy beard and a mass of fine wavy hair. In his grey tweed suit and black cape, he looked like a bear got up for a circus act.

‘Carlo Berengo Gorin,’ he said, thrusting out an enormous hand. ‘I represent Signor, er…’

He gestured impatiently at Giulio Bon, then swung round on Zen.

‘Are you Valentini or Gatti?’

‘Aurelio Zen.’

The avvocato’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Zen? Weren’t we at school together? Yes, of course! The basketball ace! The height, the grace, the movements which so bewitched the opposition that they stood like statues while you danced your way through them to notch up yet another point!’

Zen stared dumbly at the lawyer. Despite his height, he had never played basketball in his life. Gorin beamed reminiscently.

‘Happy days!’ he sighed. ‘Now then, will you kindly inform me of my client’s precise legal status?’

Zen felt his stomach tense up. The revised Code governing police procedure which had come into effect in 1988 had changed many aspects of its predecessor, especially regarding the rights of witnesses and suspects and the degree of latitude accorded the police. In many ways this had been a positive step, putting an end to practices which had led to so many abuses in the past, when they had been justified by the need to win the battle against political terrorists such as the Red Brigades. Nevertheless, the new approach suited neither Zen’s habits nor his temperament.

This possibly explained why he could never remember the precise norms and procedures which the revised Code prescribed. Like all senior officials, he had had to attend a course on the new system, but his position with the elite Criminalpol squad meant that in practice he had been largely spared any need to change his working practices. Criminalpol officials intervened only in the most important cases, and were usually accorded a fairly free hand by the magistrates involved.

But this was very different. Not only was Zen not acting under the aegis of the Interior Ministry in the present instance, he was not even supposed to be investigating the Durridge case at all. He was on his own, and any initiatives he took would have to respect the letter of the new law if they were to pass the scrutiny of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. He had known this all along, but he had been counting on the fact that a small-time boatyard owner like Giulio Bon probably wouldn’t know his exact rights under the new system either, still less have access to a lawyer who could make them stick.

Zen looked at the intruder, who was waiting expectantly for an answer. It was odd that a man like Bon should be prepared to pay the kind of money Gorin must charge. It was still odder that Gorin apparently did not know his client’s name.

‘I have reason to suppose that this man possesses information relating to a case I am currently investigating,’ he said carefully. ‘I have therefore had him brought here to answer a few questions.’

‘What is the case?’ asked Gorin.

‘It concerns the sale of a boat.’

Gorin frowned.

‘Involving an infraction of which article of the Code?’

‘That remains to be seen,’ Zen replied stolidly.

‘Have you informed the Public Prosecutor’s Office?’

‘Not yet.’

Gorin turned to Bon.

‘Signor, er…’

‘Bon, dotto. Giulio Bon.’

‘Have you answered any of this official’s questions?’

‘Yes.’

‘Since your legal representative was not present, whatever responses you may have given are inadmissible as evidence. Do you wish to answer the questions again in my presence?’

Bon looked up warily.

‘Do I have to?’

Gorin turned to Zen.

‘Do you intend to place Signor Bon in detention or under arrest?’

This was the crux. Zen had enough evidence against Bon to hold him for questioning, but under the new Code he would have to communicate this fact to the judiciary. That would mean officially revealing his involvement with the Durridge case, and his position was still too weak to risk that.

‘Not at present,’ he replied.

Gorin turned back to Bon.

‘There is therefore no necessity for you to answer any questions, or indeed to remain here, unless you wish to do so.’

Bon stood up quickly.

‘I’ve already told him everything I know!’ he blurted out. ‘I’ve got work to do! Why should I waste my time here if I don’t have to?’

‘Why indeed?’ echoed Gorin.

Bon looked from Gorin to Zen and back again. With a snort of defiance he pushed past the policewoman and walked out. Gorin waggled a hairy finger at the tape recorder.

‘Now then, what about that?’ he asked.

‘What about it?’

‘Since the interview it records was conducted irregularly, the existence of the tape constitutes a violation of my client’s civil rights. Under articles 596 and 724 of the Criminal Code, it is an offence to make recordings of speech acts and other discourse without the written consent of the parties involved. Did my client grant such consent?’

Zen shook his head.

‘Then I must ask you to surrender the tape.’

Zen frowned.

‘It is not the existence of the tape which is at issue, but that of the recording.’

Gorin smiled.

‘A fine distinction, dottore. But since the recording subsists through the medium of the tape, for all practical purposes the two are one and the same. I must therefore ask you once again to hand over the offending article.’

Zen wagged his forefinger negatively.

‘It is true that the recording cannot exist without the tape, avvocato, but the reverse is not the case.’

He turned to Sottotenente Pia Nunziata, who had been watching this exchange open-mouthed.

‘Rewind the spool and erase the recording.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Gorin stepped forward, waving his hands impatiently.

‘No, no, I can’t be expected to hang around here for however long it takes to erase this illegal recording.’

The policewoman fended him off with an icy look.

‘Our equipment is fitted with a high-speed dubbing facility which makes it possible to erase a tape like this in a matter of minutes.’

To prove her point, she pressed a button and the tapes began spinning rapidly. Gorin stared at her for a moment, then stepped back and waved graciously, conceding the point.

‘In that case, I need detain you no longer. Good day!’

With a debonair smile and a courteous nod, the lawyer swept out. As soon as his footsteps had receded, Pia Nunziata switched off the tape recorder.

‘Shall I make a transcript, dottore?’ she asked Zen.

Zen frowned at her.

‘But that tape’s blank now.’

The policewoman shook her head.

‘I made that up. There’s no high-speed facility. I just put it on fast forward.’

Zen smiled slowly.

‘ Brava! But now, if you please, erase it properly.’

He watched her rewind the tape once more, disconnect the microphone and press the red button. Then he got his coat and hat and walked out. The existence of any record of his interview with Giulio Bon was now a threat to Zen, since the questions he had asked contained numerous clues to the real reason for his presence in the city. That was why he had been so concerned to stop it falling into the hands of Carlo Berengo Gorin, especially if Zen’s idea about how the lawyer had come to be summoned to the Questura proved to be correct. In that case the fighting was going to get very dirty indeed.

Zen walked quickly downstairs to the first floor, where he stopped to read the montage of typewritten announcements pinned to the staff noticeboard. Most concerned minor changes to rotas and shift schedules, and were of limited interest even to permanent staff, but Zen was apparently so absorbed by them that he did not even glance round when a door opened further along the corridor.

‘… again, Carlo.’

‘No problem.’

‘See you on Saturday, then.’

‘ Ciao, Enzo.’

‘ Ciao.’

Footsteps started along the marble flooring. Zen moved his head towards a notice pinned at the extreme right-hand edge of the board. He glanced briefly along the corridor, then turned his back on the two men, closing his eyes to study the image they retained: Carlo Berengo Gorin striding towards him consulting his watch while Enzo Gavagnin rolled up his shirt sleeves and stepped back into his office.

Once the lawyer had started downstairs, humming quietly to himself, Zen walked along the corridor until he heard the unmistakable tones of Gavagnin’s voice.

‘… one more time, Filippino mio, just to make quite sure we understand each other. I wouldn’t trust you to be able to find your own arsehole without a map, and I don’t want there to be any mistake about this, know what I mean?’

Just then someone came out of an office further along the corridor. Zen turned and walked away, his lips contorted in a bitter smile.

The sickly light outside was quickly giving up the ghost, and it seemed to have got even colder. Zen turned left, past the separate building occupied by the Squadra Mobile. A pigeon came winging towards him as though intending to smash into his face, then banked aside at the last minute and came to rest on a wall tipped with broken fragments of green glass. Zen crossed the canal, passed a line of plane trees, their bark flaking like old paint, and entered the dingy bar on the corner opposite.

He ordered a coffee, fighting the temptation to ask for a shot of grappa, and sat down at a red plastic table with a view of the entrance to the Questura, where he studied his reflection in the darkening glass. There was no trace of the fury seething within. It was bad enough to have a hundred-thousand-lire-per-hour lawyer stick his nose into a case that had just been starting to show promising signs of getting somewhere. It was even worse to discover that the lawyer in question was ignorant of his client’s name, and must therefore have been retained by someone else. But worst of all was the realization that this someone else was himself a policeman.

It was perfectly clear what must have happened. Enzo Gavagnin had witnessed Bon’s arrival at the Questura, either by chance or because he had been tipped off by Bon. He had taken violent exception to his friend’s detention, and when he failed to bully Zen into backtracking he had called in Carlo Berengo Gorin. That Zen was not prepared to swallow. Being obstructed and frustrated at every turn by politicians, judges, journalists and mafiosi was all part of the job, but when your own colleagues started to undermine your efforts that was something which had to be avenged. It remained to be seen just how much damage Zen could do in return, but at least he knew where to start. He glanced at his watch. Just after five. He had about an hour to wait.

By the time the lone figure finally emerged into the harsh brilliance of the security lights mounted above the entrance to the Questura, Zen had consumed three cups of coffee, five cigarettes and read the previous day’s issue of Il Gazzettino from cover to cover. The man was wearing a brown padded jacket, jeans and leather work-boots. Zen recognized him at once from the photograph he had seen in the local newspaper that morning. When he emerged on to the quay, the man was almost out of sight in the darkness, but by running along the canal to the next bridge he was able to catch up before they reached the busy streets around Campo Santa Zaccaria.

After that it was easy. The man walked steadily, without stopping or looking round, until they emerged from the network of alleys on to the broad promenade of the Riva degli Schiavoni. Here he crossed to one of the ACTV kiosks and bought a ferry ticket. Zen followed him down the walkway to the landing stage, where a crowd of passengers stood clutching bulging shopping bags, holding children or reading papers. He took up a position directly opposite the man he was following, making no attempt to conceal his presence. The man was in his early thirties, quite short and slight, with a shock of greying hair, protuberant ears and a perpetually surprised look. He moved with the fluid, restrained, vaguely simian gestures of the sailor, as though the ground might start to pitch and roll beneath his feet at any moment.

A waterbus bound for the railway station lurched alongside, but the man stayed put. He and Zen were one of only five people left after the number 8 set off towards the distant lights of San Giorgio, passing the incoming number 5, which they both boarded. The man took a seat in the bow section. Zen sat on the bench opposite. The man looked him over without interest. The vaporetto continued its circuit of the city, calling at the Arsenale, the gas works at Celestia and the hospital just beyond. The next stop was Fondamente Nove, where the man got off.

The quayside was packed with commuters on their way home. Zen stuck close to his quarry as he shouldered his way through the throng towards the lights of the bar. Here he consumed a ham roll and a glass of beer, while Zen had another coffee and a cigarette. Again their eyes crossed, and this time the man held Zen’s gaze briefly. The television behind the bar showed puffs of smoke rising from a small town set in a wooded, mountainous landscape.

‘… brought to fifty-five the number of deaths in the Muslim enclave during the recent fighting,’ the news-caster announced. ‘A spokesman for the Bosnian Serbs denied allegations that a new campaign of ethnic cleansing was underway…’

Outside, a ship’s hooter sounded a long blast. The man finished his beer and made for the door. He barged through the crowds to the gangway marked 12 and boarded the white steamer moored there. He made his way to the forward saloon and sat staring straight ahead while the vessel shuddered off across the shallow strait towards Murano. As they cast off from the quay by the lighthouse, he got up and went out on deck.

In the far distance, a train moved slowly across the invisible bridge to the mainland like an enormous glowworm. The man took out a packet of cigarettes, extracted one and put it between his lips. He was still fumbling in his pocket for his matches when a flame suddenly appeared in front of his face. He whirled round, his eyes full of terror.

‘Who are you? What do you want?’

Aurelio Zen released the catch of his lighter, restoring the darkness.

‘What did you tell them, Filippino mio?’ he murmured.

‘Nothing! I told them nothing!’

The words were spat out. Zen produced the flame again and scrutinized the man’s face.

‘Yes, but did they believe you?’

Filippo Sfriso laughed bitterly.

‘The cops don’t give a tinker’s fuck what happened to Giacomo!’

Zen applied the flame to the tip of the man’s cigarette.

‘Then why pull you in, Filippo? Why hold you so long?’

Sfriso inhaled deeply.

‘To make sure I got the message.’

‘What message?’

This time Sfriso’s laugh had an even more mordant edge.

‘You should know!’

Zen lit one of his own cigarettes. The two men eyed each other in the brief interval of light.

‘Don’t play games with me, Filippo,’ murmured Zen menacingly.

‘Games? You’re the one who’s playing games! Pretending not to know what’s going on when you’re the ones pulling the strings!’

He broke off, gasping for breath.

‘Enough, all right?’ he went on dully. ‘You’ve made your point. Do you think I wouldn’t hand the stuff over if I knew where it was? What am I supposed to do with something like that? I don’t know how to sell it or what to charge. What do you think I should charge? How much is my brother’s life worth? What’s the going rate?’

His voice rose again, a ragged yelp raw with pain and hatred.

‘You bastards! You never believed him, did you? You thought he was playing games too. Bastards! Giacomo was my brother. I know when he was lying, and this was no lie. What he said was true! He saw a dead man standing up as straight as you or I, with rats gnawing his chest and a mess of maggots in his eyesockets. He lost his nerve, just as you or I would have done if we’d seen something like that, in that place, at that time of night. He dropped the stuff and ran for his life, and neither of us have been able to find it again. That’s the truth!’

He broke off again, near to tears. When at length he resumed, it was in a raucous whisper.

‘But you didn’t believe him. So you tortured him, holding him down in a tub of water for minutes at a time, until you overdid it and he drowned. And then you set your bent policemen on me to make sure I went along with your story that his death was an accident. Just fuck off, will you? Kill me too if you want, but while I’m still alive let me grieve in peace.’

He tossed his cigarette overboard and strode back to the lights and warmth of the saloon, leaving Zen alone in the seething dark studded with faint, misleading beacons.

It was late when Zen got back to the city. He walked home feeling tired, cold and dispirited. Despite his best efforts, everything kept going wrong. His encounter with Filippo Sfriso had merely served to emphasize the degree to which he was out of his depth. The idea had been to shake Sfriso till he rattled and see what tumbled out, in hopes of uncovering something he could use to get even with Enzo Gavagnin. But in the event it had been Zen who had been shaken to the core by what Sfriso had told him, and still more by what he had evidently assumed Zen already knew.

At best Zen had been hoping to come up with some information which, given the right presentation and packaging, would make Gavagnin look foolish or incompetent in the eyes of his superiors at the Questura. Valentini had remarked that Gavagnin had gone out on a limb over the Sfriso case; Zen’s idea was to saw through the branch behind him. Gavagnin was already vulnerable to a charge of procedural irregularity in wresting the case away from a colleague and then detaining the brother of the drowned man for two days without any apparent evidence that foul play was involved. All that had been needed to complete his discomfiture were a few piquant details such as Filippo Sfriso should have been well placed — and amply motivated — to supply.

Instead of which the Buranese, assuming that Zen was one of the people ‘pulling the strings’, had turned the official version of the case inside out. Not only had Giacomo Sfriso been murdered, but Enzo Gavagnin was apparently acting on behalf of his killers. That was not at all what Zen had wanted. His intention had been to leave Gavagnin with egg on his face, not facing disciplinary proceedings which might result in a fifteen-year jail sentence. Besides, nothing could be proved. Even if Filippo Sfriso could be persuaded to make public his allegations, it would still come down to the word of a common fisherman against that of a senior police officer.

Zen entered a small square whose sealed well had been replaced by a standpipe. The tap was dribbling water into a red plastic bucket from which a mangy cat was drinking. The animal fled as Zen approached, cowering in the shadows to watch him pass. Suddenly a church clock started to strike the hour, nine clangorous blows which served to turn Zen’s thoughts to the evening before him.

It offered little consolation. His arrangement with Cristiana had clearly fallen through. He had warned her that he might be late, but at the time he had had no idea just how much he would be delayed. There was nothing to eat or drink in the house, and by now the shops were all closed. Even the restaurants would be starting to shut their doors, except for the youth-oriented pizzerie such as the one he and Cristiana had visited the night before, and the prospect of going there without her seemed too grim to contemplate.

He unconsciously slowed his pace the closer he got to his destination, as though trying to delay the inevitable. But all too soon he found himself standing before his own front door. Having tried and failed to think of any alternative, he dug out his keys and went in. The air inside reeked of the damp seeping up through the stone flooring from the waterlogged soil beneath the houses. Zen checked the metal letterbox, which contained an advertising flyer and a dead leaf, and then stomped wearily upstairs. He had not felt so low since the night he arrived.

He opened the door to the living room and was about to switch on the light when he noticed that the darkness in the room was not quite complete. The woman sitting on the sofa laid down the book she had been reading and rose to her feet with a smile.

‘Cristiana!’ he cried.

He smiled with pleasure and amazement.

‘You are late,’ she said, in a tone devoid of reproach.

‘I had no idea you were here or I’d have phoned,’ he said, taking off his coat. ‘But I thought you’d have gone home ages ago.’

‘I don’t really have a home.’

‘At your mother’s, I mean.’

She shrugged, walking towards him.

‘Mamma is wonderful, but I feel like a child around her.’

‘You’re not a child.’

She nodded, holding his eyes.

‘And while being an adult has its drawbacks, the great advantage is that you can do what you like.’

‘Within reason.’

‘Even without, sometimes.’

He stood staring at her, beaming like an idiot.

‘It’s wonderful to see you, Cristiana!’

Judging by the slightly severe suit and silk blouse she was wearing, she had come straight from work.

‘Have you had dinner?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘You?’

‘No. And there’s nothing in the house.’

‘I brought some stuff. Nothing fancy, but at least we won’t starve.’

Embarrassed by his emotion, Zen walked over to the sofa and picked up the book which Cristiana had been reading, a thick volume entitled The History of the Venetian Republic, 727-1797. The title page was inscribed ‘To my dear wife, this testimony of our glorious heritage, with love, Nando.’

Zen looked up at Cristiana.

‘Gripping stuff?’ he inquired ironically.

‘It’s not bad. Your family’s mentioned quite a lot. One of them was a rabble-rousing reformer and another one a famous admiral.’

‘And if I remember correctly, they both made a habit of winning all the battles and then losing the war. It must be a family trait. Living proof of that “glorious heritage” your husband makes so much of.’

Cristiana raised her eyebrows slightly.

‘You really don’t like Nando, do you?’

Zen shrugged.

‘I don’t like politicians in general.’

‘But there’s more to it than that.’

He nodded.

‘Yes, there’s you.’

She smiled and turned away. There seemed to be something about her which did not quite fit the crisply professional clothes, some hint of intimacy, some chink in her armour.

‘I’m starving,’ she said. ‘I’ll put the pasta water on.’

Zen followed her out to the kitchen. On the table stood a stoppered litre bottle of red wine, a packet of spaghetti, a fat clove of purple-skinned garlic, a small jar of oil which was the opaque green of bottle glass abraded by the sea, and a twist of paper containing three wrinkled chillis the colour of dried blood.

‘Aglio, olio e peperoncino,’ he said.

‘I told you it was nothing fancy.’

As she set the heavy pan on the stove and tossed a hail-flurry of coarse salt into the water, Zen suddenly understood the rogue element in her appearance. Her breasts moved waywardly inside the sheath of silk, belying the brisk message of her formal clothing with their seditious whisper.

‘Presumably all this overtime means that your work is going well,’ she remarked casually. ‘Or are you just trying to beef up your pay cheque?’

‘I thought I was on to something today, but then someone stepped in and spiked it. Local politics.’

‘Politics?’

‘I mean interests, alliances,’ he said, taking a broad-bladed knife out of a drawer. ‘Mutual protection.’

‘Nando says that’s all politics is anyway.’

‘And he ought to know.’

‘I mean that’s all he thinks it should be. He says the rest is just dogma and outdated ideology.’

Zen laid the blade of the knife on the clove of garlic and hit it sharply with the heel of his hand.

‘Where did you learn that trick?’ asked Cristiana in a tone of admiration.

Zen lifted the tissue-thin skin away and set about chopping up the clove.

‘From my mother.’

‘Nando can’t even make coffee. “I fly planes, you look after the house,” he always says. “Any time you want to swop, just let me know.”’

‘He’s a pilot?’

‘He flew ground-attack helicopters for the air force. He often says it was the high point of his life. That’s why he went into politics, I think, in search of new thrills. He tried business, but it didn’t have enough edge.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He’s a partner in a firm called Aeroservizi Veneti. They cater to rich people needing to be taxied to and fro, businessmen wanting to charter a small jet to Budapest, that sort of thing.’

She laughed.

‘I remember the day he proposed, he took me for a tour all over the lagoon in a helicopter, flying low. As we were hovering over the water in the middle of nowhere he suddenly got up from his seat, leant over me, kissed me and asked me to marry him. Later he told me that he’d put the helicopter on automatic, but I didn’t know that at the time. I was terrified. So of course I said yes, just to get him back at the controls!’

Zen poured the olive oil into a small pan, set it on a low flame and added the chopped garlic.

‘Quite the lad, eh?’

‘Oh yes. And with all the girls.’

The lid of the pasta pan started to rattle. Cristiana tore the spaghetti packet open with her sharp white teeth. She emptied half the golden rods into her palm and lowered them into the pan, where they gradually unbent and began to move freely, like underwater weed. She looked up at Zen, who had been watching the swell and sway of her breasts. Their eyes held a moment, then he turned back to the counter and began to shred the chillis.

‘Are these really hot?’ he asked.

‘I’ve no idea. Those small ones are often the worst.’

‘How many shall I put in? Three? Four?’

‘I can take it if you can.’

Dense with gluten, the pasta water gurgled like hot mud. Zen scattered the flakes of chilli over the slices of garlic, which had turned a pale gold in the warm oil. Cristiana laid a large bowl, two plates, glasses, forks and spoons on the kitchen table and unstoppered the wine. She fished a strand of spaghetti out of the water and tested it.

‘What do you think?’

She passed the rest to Zen, who bit into the clammy filament.

‘Still a bit chewy.’

‘It should be. The oil will finish it.’

She drained the spaghetti and dumped the tangled mass into the bowl, where Zen anointed it with the scalding oil.

‘Ready!’

They sat facing each other across the table, the steaming tub of pasta between them. While Cristiana served them each a plateful, Zen poured the wine.

‘So what have local politics to do with Ada Zulian’s ghosts?’ Cristiana asked, winding spaghetti on to her fork.

‘Ada? Nothing!’

He frowned suddenly, realizing his slip.

‘No, that was… I was talking about a different case.’

‘You’re working on something else?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Is that what that fax was about?’

He nodded.

‘It’s all a bit confidential, actually.’

‘I can keep a secret.’

He looked over at her and smiled, holding her eyes for a moment.

‘It concerns that American who disappeared a few months ago from an island in the lagoon.’

Cristiana gasped.

‘Swallowed a bit of chilli,’ she explained.

‘It was all over the papers for a while. Everyone assumed he had been kidnapped, but there was never a ransom demand.’

‘I seem to remember reading something about it. Has something new come up?’

‘Yes and no.’

She shot him a glance.

‘Meaning you don’t trust me.’

‘It’s not that,’ he said quickly — too quickly.

Cristiana gave the facial equivalent of a shrug and went on eating.

‘The American’s boat disappeared at the same time he did,’ Zen told her after a moment’s hesitation. ‘I think I’ve found it.’

She opened her eyes wide.

‘Where?’

‘Here in the city. The man who took it was probably supposed to scuttle it, but he was greedy. He sold it instead.’

He took a gulp of wine to cut the aromatic oil coating each strand of pasta.

‘But where does politics come into all this?’ asked Cristiana.

‘The man in question has friends.’

‘Who are they?’

‘I don’t know, but they had a lawyer there ten minutes after I’d started my questioning. And this was one of those lawyers you normally make appointments with a year ahead. Name of Gorin.’

‘Carlo?’

‘You know him?’

She frowned.

‘We… Nando knows him, I think.’

She hoisted a last forkful of pasta to her mouth. A dribble of oil ran palely green down her chin. Zen reached over and wiped the oil away with his fingers, then licked them clean.

‘Wonderful,’ he said, setting his own plate aside. ‘I haven’t had that for ages. So simple, yet so good.’

Cristiana smiled and poured them both some more wine. Zen held up his packet of cigarettes.

‘Do you mind?’

‘I’ll have one, if I may. I’m an occasional smoker.’

‘I know the feeling. I’m an occasional non-smoker.’

They smoked in silence for some time.

‘You miss your husband,’ said Zen abruptly.

It was not a question.

‘In a way,’ replied Cristiana. ‘It’s not easy being a single woman in this place. It’s like being a child again. Everything you do is subject to scrutiny and comment.’

‘Does your mother know that you’re here?’

Cristiana shrugged.

‘I expect so. There’s always someone watching.’

In the next room, the phone started ringing shrilly.

‘Damn!’ said Zen, getting up. ‘Don’t go away.’

Cristiana smiled ruefully.

‘Where would I go?’

The moment Zen picked up the receiver, he knew it had been a mistake to answer the phone.

‘Aurelio? Where the hell have you been? Why haven’t you been in touch?’

‘Hello, Tania.’

‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day! We both have.’

‘Both?’

‘Your mother and me.’

‘The old firm.’

‘What?’

‘How are things? Rome still there? I suppose it must be. Eternal city and all that.’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘I’m happy.’

‘Happy? Why?’

‘Why am I happy?’

Laughter pealed out from the kitchen.

‘Who’s that?’ demanded Tania. ‘Have you got someone there with you, Aurelio?’

‘Of course not. It was someone in the street outside. The windows are open.’

‘I see. Well, you may be happy, but I’m certainly not, and neither is your mother. Maybe you should think about that.’

‘Maybe I should.’

‘All you seem to care about is yourself. Out of sight is out of mind as far as you’re concerned. I’ve been talking about you to your mother, Aurelio, and I have to say that I find what she’s told me extremely disturbing. It confirms a lot of things I’d already suspected about you.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like the fact that you’re deeply selfish. That you don’t give a damn about other people. They’re just a means to an end, as far as you’re concerned.’

‘That’s what my mother told you?’

‘Not in so many words, but the things she told me made it quite clear that you’d been ruthlessly self-centred and manipulative ever since you were a child.’

‘It didn’t occur to you that she might have an axe to grind herself, Tania?’

He was angry by now, and his tone showed it.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that she’s jealous of this woman who’s threatening to alienate the affections of her darling son and do disgusting things to him in bed, so she’s doing everything she can to frighten you off so that she can have me all to herself again.’

There was a brief silence.

‘That is the most shocking thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about their mother. For God’s sake, Aurelio! What kind of monster are you? Are you seriously suggesting that your mother is sexually jealous of me? That’s just totally sick! It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever …’

Zen quietly replaced the receiver on its rest and walked back to the kitchen. Cristiana raised her eyes to meet his.

‘What was that all about?’

He shook his head wearily.

‘Don’t ask.’

He slumped down in his chair again. He had just lit another cigarette when the phone began to ring again. He sat staring tight-lipped at the table. The phone rang eleven times before stopping.

‘Persistent,’ commented Cristiana when the noise finally stopped.

As though in response, the phone started trilling again. This time it rang fifteen times.

‘Not to say obstinate,’ Cristiana added.

After a brief pause, shrill bursts of ringing jarred the silence once again. Cristiana stood up.

‘May I?’

Zen breathed a long sigh. He waved at the open doorway. Cristiana marched into the living room and lifted the receiver.

‘Yes? Who? No, there’s no one here by that name.’

She slammed the phone down and unplugged the cord from the socket. When she straightened up again, Zen was standing behind her. He caught hold of her shoulders, turned her towards him and kissed her on the mouth. They measured each other with their eyes in a final brief interval of lucidity, then blindly collided again.

It was the strangeness that woke him, the presence of another body in that bed where he had always slept alone, and which was not quite wide enough for two. He closed his eyes and lay back on the pillow, smiling at some memory from the night before. The sheets were still damp with sweat, the whole bed perfumed with evocative scents.

Cristiana shifted slightly in her sleep, as though the memories which were keeping Zen awake had reached into her dreams too. And indeed it might all have been a dream, so unlikely did it seem in the chill darkness of — was it really only ten to six? He put his watch back on the bedside table and rolled over, seeking the precise position which would enable him to complete the jigsaw of sleep.

But whichever way he turned, images of Cristiana darted through his mind like silver fish. All the other women in his life had made him feel that however much they seemed to be enjoying themselves in bed, in the end they were only doing him a favour. With Cristiana, it had been abundantly clear from that very first kiss that everything she did was done for her own pleasure as well as his. She displayed an eager greed for caresses of all kinds, an inclusive sensuality which had brought a succession of climaxes in its wake and raised Zen to a state of exaltation he had never experienced before.

Shying away from the memory of some of the things he had said and done, he sat up in bed. Sleep was clearly out of the question. He had a momentary urge to grasp Cristiana’s plump white shoulder, to turn her over and start feeding on her breasts and belly. Instead, he forced himself to turn back the covers and stand up. What had happened had happened, but to start acting like an adolescent in heat at his age, and at this time in the morning, would be ridiculous.

He walked quickly across the icy tiles to the bathroom. But even beneath the tepid spray of the shower, thoughts of Cristiana’s languorous, compliant body gave him no peace. It occurred to him for the first time that he might be making a complete fool of himself. This prospect finally succeeded in calming the tumult in his loins. He had no precise idea what sort of humiliation might be in store for him, only a lurking sense that he was vulnerable in various ways.

He dressed and went downstairs to make coffee. By the brutal light of the bare bulb in the kitchen, love’s sweet dream faded still further. What had they done? What were they going to do? Above all, what were they going to say to one another? The prospect of greeting Cristiana, of having to sit down and make small talk, filled Zen with limitless dread. The conversation of their bodies the night before had been as effortless and natural as the soft declension of surf on a beach, but to convert that exchange into the hard currency of language and everyday life seemed a daunting prospect.

The coffee gurgled and gushed. He poured himself a cup which fumed in the chill air and scribbled a note to Cristiana, explaining that he had had to go in to work early and would ring her later that morning. Deciding that this looked cold and bureaucratic, he tore it up and wrote another, attempting to explain the riot of emotions in his heart. That ended up in the bin too. The note he eventually left on the table owed more to the first draft than the second, but with several allusions to his feelings about what had happened the previous night.

Outside, the darkness was still untouched by signs of dawn. It was much colder than it had been the day before, a still, rigid cold. There was hardly a breath of wind. The only sounds were the lapping of water and the cries of gulls circling high above. Zen set off walking fast, burning off the energy surging through his body. Thinking about his youth, as he had often done in the past few days, it seemed like a film overlaid with grandiose gushing music which flooded every banal scene with emotion and made it seem transcendent and unique. Being older, he thought, meant living the same film without the music.

Now, though, the soundtrack was back in place. He felt strong and vigorous, invincible and serene. The doubts and difficulties which had beset him earlier now seemed trivial. A woman had offered herself to him and he had satisfied both her and himself. What could touch him? He kept up a cracking pace all the way to Santa Maria Formosa, his breath blossoming thickly in the frigid air. He passed a street-sweeper mending his broom, a convocation of feral cats, a somnambulant barman setting out his tables, a kid of eighteen folding back the tarpaulin over a moored boat. All seemed to eye him with admiration and envy, waving him past, wishing him well.

At that hour, the isolated palazzo on the San Lorenzo canal which housed the Questura di Venezia was to all appearances as deserted as the rest of the city. Zen walked upstairs to the first floor, and then along the passage to the door marked GAVAGNIN — RUZZA — CASTELLARO. Inside, a solitary fly buzzed in feeble bursts against the window whose glass was bleary with the first hints of dawn. Enzo Gavagnin’s territory was immediately discernible by the extent of the damage surrounding it. The wastebin was dented, the ashtray overflowing, the scar and burn marks on the surface of the desk that much more numerous and profound, the litter of memos, notes and files on top of it that much messier and more impenetrable.

Zen turned over the papers one by one. He waded through reports of drug dealers, suppliers, users and informers. He searched through the desk drawers and the filing cabinet in the corner of the room, all without learning anything other than he had already guessed: that Enzo Gavagnin was a professionally respected officer with a heavy workload and a wide range of contacts in both the force and the local underworld. All this was to be expected. After half an hour, Zen had found nothing to justify his suspicions even to himself, let alone a cynical superior.

At any other time this might have discouraged him, but that morning he was invulnerable to setbacks. Lighting his first cigarette of the day, he thought it through again. He was pretty sure that the litter on the desk would yield nothing. It was too ephemeral, too heterogenous and too likely to be dispersed by a careless or over-zealous cleaner. A cleverer man than Gavagnin, calculating on precisely such an assumption, might have decided that this made it the perfect place to hide a sensitive document. But Gavagnin was not clever, at least not in that way. If he had something to hide, he would hide it, and not in plain view.

What would he be hiding? That was the key. If Zen knew what he was looking for, he would know where to look. If Filippo Sfriso’s allegations were true, Gavagnin would need to be able to pass on news, to give and receive instructions. That meant a phone number, perhaps more than one. Where would such a man keep them?

Zen closed his eyes and concentrated, creating a mental hologram of Enzo Gavagnin, an image he could revolve slowly in his consciousness, seeking the answer to his problem. Who was Gavagnin? A swaggering, unscrupulous fixer, energetic and resourceful, but utterly devoid of any moral sense. Someone incapable of imagining that anything he did could be wrong, even though he knew it was illegal. Someone who would not be troubled by this contradiction. Someone above suspicion in his own eyes.

In short, a mamma’s boy. Mothers fell in love with their sons when their husbands proved unfaithful, Zen believed. This explained his own predicament, his need to be confirmed by the women in his life, and his excessive response when — as last night — this occurred. For Signora Zen had never had the chance to grow disillusioned with her husband, who had disappeared in Russia, an immortal hero whom his son could never hope to supplant. Gavagnin, on the other hand, having been bathed in the river of maternal adoration, felt himself immune to the contingencies of everyday life. Like Achilles, however, he might be wrong about that.

Zen had already noticed the phone book on his first search, in the bottom drawer of Gavagnin’s desk. It was two years out of date, lacked a cover and started midway through the names beginning with C. Zen picked it up and fingered the flimsy pages. There were various marginal marks and underscorings, but Zen was looking for something simpler, something gross and blatant, something meant. And towards the middle of the book he found it, in an advertising insert printed in colour on shiny paper, easy to find. Beneath a picture of a leather armchair, three numbers had been noted down in a jerky handwriting which Zen recognized from other documents written by Gavagnin.

The numbers made no sense in themselves, which merely strengthened Zen’s conviction that he had found what he was looking for. They each consisted of nine digits, the first four written separately, as though they were area codes. Zen picked up the phone and dialled the first number, but got only a continuous tone indicating that no such connection existed. He tried the other two numbers with the same result.

Taking a blank sheet of paper from the top drawer, Zen copied out the three numbers and sat staring at them for some time. Then he picked up the phone and tried dialling the digits without the initial zero. That didn’t work either, nor did dialling just the last five digits, ignoring the prefix. He lit another cigarette and pored over the sequence of numbers once more. After some time, he lifted the receiver and dialled once more, adding the final digit of the prefix to the five which followed. This time the number rang.

There was no answer. Zen depressed the receiver and tried the same method with the next series of digits. This time he was connected to an answering machine.

‘Leave your message after the tone,’ recited a recorded male voice with a strong Veneto accent.

Zen hung up and tried the last number. The response was immediate.

‘Well?’ demanded an irascible male voice.

Zen had been planning to say he’d got a wrong number, but he had a sudden, gleeful inspiration.

‘This is Enzo,’ he said in an approximation of Gavagnin’s guttural tones.

‘Why are you calling at this time in the morning, for fuck’s sake?’

On any other day, Zen would have hung up at that point. He already had the confirmation he needed, and to proceed further might ruin everything, if the man the other end realized that he was not in fact Gavagnin. But he was feeling too good to stop. Besides, what could go wrong on such a morning? His luck was in. He was on a roll.

‘Filippo has agreed to co-operate,’ he murmured.

There was a long silence.

‘That’s not what you told us yesterday,’ the man replied with a new edge.

‘This happened last night. After I told him that his mother would be the next to have an accident.’

This time the silence seemed to last for ever.

‘You exceeded your instructions,’ said the voice. ‘You should have consulted us.’

Zen said nothing.

‘Do you have the goods?’ the man asked.

‘I know where they are,’ replied Zen, and replaced the receiver.

He folded up the paper with numbers and put it in his pocket, then replaced the directory in the drawer. That should give Gavagnin something to think about, he thought as he walked upstairs with a mischievous smile.

His own office was as he had left it the day before, except that the wire tray contained a buff memorandum from the Forensic laboratory with the results of the fingerprint tests on the knife used to attack Ada Zulian. As he had expected, the only prints on the knife — apart from a partial of Zen’s thumb on the base of the handle — were identical to those taken from the contessa herself.

Zen dropped the memo into the file he had opened on the case. Although it told him nothing he did not already know, it was a timely reminder that he had better cover his tracks by devoting some time and energy to the investigation which was the notional reason for his presence in the city. He prowled about the office, trying to think of a way to force the issue.

A sudden racket drew him to the window. In a barge moored on the opposite bank of the canal, a man was stripping the bark off a tree trunk with a chain-saw. As Zen watched, he shaped the end to a rough point and then manoeuvred the stake into position with a rope before ramming it down into the mud with a pile-driver mounted in the bow of the barge. Within minutes, the mooring pole was in place. The whole city was constructed on a subterranean forest of such piles, Zen recalled, laid down centuries ago to stabilize the mudbanks of the lagoon and make them habitable.

For some reason the thought triggered a surge of panic, an intolerable sense of constriction, asphyxiation and dread. His earlier elation was abruptly banished as though it had never been. A moment before he had been thinking about walking to the Bar dei Greci for some well-earned breakfast, buoyed by the knowledge of a job well done and a rival elegantly dished. Now all that had been swept away by an overwhelming need to get out, to escape from this wasteland of water and stone, and feel solid ground beneath his feet again. Similar attacks of claustrophobia may well have been one of the factors which had driven earlier generations of Venetians to colonize substantial stretches of the Mediterranean coastline. Aurelio Zen’s solution was less ambitious but just as effective.

In the early sixties, a relative of Silvio Morosini who worked in one of the glassworks on Murano had been sent to New York for two weeks as one of a group of Italian artisans demonstrating their traditional skills at a trade fair. On his return, the instant celebrity was feted at a huge dinner party. Everyone was agog to hear from his lips what the fabled city of skyscrapers and millionaires was really like. After a suitably impressive pause, the latter-day Marco Polo duly pronounced. ‘New York,’ he said with a dismissive shrug, ‘is Mestre.’

Mestre certainly wasn’t New York, but for therapeutic purposes it would do. Zen went downstairs and commandeered a launch to take him ‘as a matter of the greatest urgency’ to the concrete and asphalt expanses of Piazzale Roma, from which a taxi sped him across the aptly named Ponte della Liberta to the mainland. As the diesel-engined Fiat traversed the freeways and flyovers of Marghera, where the pall of pollution was so bad that vehicles could only be driven on alternate days depending on whether their registration number was odd or even, Zen felt his crisis gradually easing. By the time he had paid off the taxi and walked down a street clogged with stalled and honking traffic and across a piazza filled with rows of parked cars wedged so tightly that it would have been easier to climb over them than to find a way through, he could no longer remember why he had come. To leave those quiet streets and that clean air, for this? The idea was palpably crazy.

He made his way on foot to the station buffet, where he breakfasted badly and expensively before catching a train back to the city. As Zen watched the slums and muddle of the mainland recede, he noticed an electronic sign attached to the tower-block offices of a local bank. Unlike similar displays elsewhere, this one showed not only the time and the date but also the state of the tide. A simple calculation yielded the information that high water that evening would be around nine o’clock. Which suited Zen nicely.

Back in the city, he made his way on foot to Palazzo Zulian. The sun was just showing through the thick haze, a white disc which might have been the source of the cold which gripped the air. Just before turning into the narrow passageway leading to the door, Zen inadvertently stepped in a large turd which the dog’s owner had disguised with a sprinkling of sawdust. He cleaned up the mess as best he could, wiping his shoe along the wall and pavement, but he was not in the best possible humour as he approached Palazzo Zulian. Nor was his mood improved by a raucous shout from overhead.

‘Go away! Get out of here!’

He looked up. Ada was not visible, but the voice was hers.

‘Be off, I say!’

‘Not until I’ve spoken to you, contessa,’ Zen replied.

A head emerged from the carved window at first-floor level.

‘Ah, good morning, Aurelio Battista! So you’ve finally decided to show your face around here. About time too!’

Zen gawked up at her.

‘Thanks for the welcome,’ he retorted sarcastically.

‘I wasn’t talking to you! I didn’t even know you were there. I was shouting at that tomcat on the wall. I made the mistake of throwing him some scraps last week, and now he sits there all day staring at me like a beggar. Now stay put and I’ll send your man down to open the door. Let me tell you, I’m going to give you a piece of my mind!’

Ada drew back into the house and closed the window. Zen looked round, and was reassured to see that the cat in question did in fact exist. Noticing his glance, it gave a self-pitying mew.

‘Piss off,’ said Zen.

The cat blinked and looked away disdainfully. Inside the house there was a clatter of boots on the stairs. A key turned in the lock and the door opened to reveal Bettino Todesco clutching a service revolver.

‘Ah, it’s you, chief,’ he said, putting the weapon back in its holster.

‘Who the hell did you think it was?’ Zen snapped, pushing past.

‘Well she said it was, but I don’t take that much notice of what she says any more.’

He leant forward and whispered confidentially to Zen.

‘If I have to spend another night here I’ll go round the bend myself.’

Zen frowned at him.

‘Why, has anything happened?’

Todesco shook his head lugubriously.

‘I wish something would happen. Anything would be better than having to listen to that woman maundering on. If she’s not bitching about this, she’s moaning about that, or talking to people who aren’t there. Gives me the creeps, I can tell you.’

Zen nodded.

‘All right, Todesco, go off home and get some rest. But be at the Questura by six o’clock this evening. I need you for an operation I have in mind.’

‘Very good, chief.’

Zen made his way up the stairs leading through the mezzanine level to the hallway transecting the house from front to back. The diminutive figure of Ada Zulian stood silhouetted against the window at the far end.

‘So you’ve dismissed your spy,’ she remarked sourly, ‘but I suppose he’ll be back. A fat lot of use it was calling the police! I complain of intruders in my house, and all they do is force another one on me.’

She sniffed suspiciously. Zen shifted uneasily in his shoes. There was still a strong stink of dogshit. Some of the stuff must have got trapped in the crack between the sole and the uppers.

‘I should have listened to Daniele Trevisan,’ Ada Zulian went on. ‘He told me to keep the police out of it.’

‘Well then, you’ll be glad to hear that we’re about to get out of it,’ Zen snapped.

Ada put her head on one side and stared up at him. Her face looked inexpressibly ancient, a palimpsest of all the faces it had ever been: baby, child, adolescent and the whole parabola of womanhood. It was all there, superimposed like layers of paint.

‘What do you mean?’ she inquired mildly.

‘I mean you win, contessa! You want the police out of your hair and I want you and your bullyboys out of mine. Is it a deal?’

Ada Zulian peered at him.

‘Are you feeling all right, Aurelio Battista? Come into the salon and I’ll make some camomile tea to calm you down.’

‘What will calm me down is you calling off your friends and relations!’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh come on, contessa! You told people about the police guard on the house…’

‘I mentioned it to my family…’

‘… who mentioned it to their powerful contacts, who mentioned it to my superiors at the Questura, who have been making my life a misery ever since. Fair enough! I was only trying to protect you, because you were a family friend, and this is the thanks I get!’

He walked right up to her, emphasizing his points by stabbing one palm with two fingers of the other hand.

‘That policeman who just left will not be coming back, contessa. Understand? Neither will his colleagues. Neither will I. You won’t be bothered with any of us any more. And all I ask in return is that you get in touch with all the people you complained to about me and tell them to very kindly stop breaking my balls.’

Ada glared at him.

‘There’s no call to use that sort of language.’

‘I don’t care what sort of language you use, contessa, just as long as you get the message across.’

He turned on his heel and walked back to the stairs.

‘And if the intruders return?’ Ada called querulously after him. ‘What will become of me then?’

Zen turned and stared back at her implacably.

‘But they won’t return, will they? They were never here in the first place. They never existed, except in your dreams. And I have enough real work to do without trying to police people’s dreams.’

He nodded curtly.

‘Good day, contessa. And goodbye.’

Zen paid for his broken sleep and early rising with a blurred mental focus which ensured that the rest of the day passed in a dopy haze punctuated by various isolated episodes which forced themselves on his attention, one being the moment when Enzo Gavagnin publicly accused him of being an undercover agent acting for the Ministry in Rome.

The encounter took place in the Bar dei Greci, where Zen had gone to try and blast away his mental fog with stiff draughts of espresso doppio ristretto. When Gavagnin appeared beside him at the bar, Zen was reading a newspaper report of a speech by Umberto Bossi, demanding immediate national elections to ‘restore credibility to the government before the demands of local demagogues for regional autonomy lead to the break-up of Italy’. A leader commented that now Bossi saw a real chance of achieving power at national level, he was distancing himself from those such as Ferdinando Dal Maschio who were still pursuing the separatist goals which Bossi had once espoused.

‘What the hell were you doing in my office this morning?’ demanded Gavagnin aggressively.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Zen replied. Thanks to his dazed condition, this was literally true. He had temporarily forgotten that he had ever visited Gavagnin’s office, let alone why, and thus had no trouble sounding innocently baffled. But Gavagnin’s fury was not assuaged.

‘Don’t try and deny it!’ he snapped. ‘When I got in this morning I couldn’t breathe for the stink of those camelshit Nazionali. You’re the only one in the building who smokes them.’

Zen merely shrugged and went on reading the paper. Gavagnin snatched it from his hands.

‘Admit it, you’re a spy!’ he shouted. ‘A snooper from the Ministry. All that bullshit about being sent up here to look into some madwoman’s stories about things going bump in the night! What a load of crap! It’s us you’re investigating, isn’t it? You’re checking us out on behalf of your masters in Rome. That’s what you were doing in my office. Going through my papers to try and find something to use against me. And why? Because I’m with the Nuova Repubblica Veneta, and we’ve got the old regime shitting in its pants!’

He continued in this vein for some time, but Zen simply stared levelly at him and said nothing. As time went on, Gavagnin’s tone became distracted rather than confrontational, his tone more pleading than threatening. In the end, he turned on his heel and stalked out.

Another of the landmarks punctuating Zen’s prevailing mental fog had been the arrival of the documents relating to the complaint which Ada Zulian had made about her near-neighbour at the time, Andrea Dolfin. They were brought — with a speed and efficiency belying the warnings Zen had received — by a uniformed messenger attached to the Central Archives of the Province of Venice, recently re-sited in a custom-built concrete bunker beneath the car park on the artificial island of the Tronchetto.

The move from the Archives’ former premises in a palazzo facing the Rialto had led to considerable disruption and, it was rumoured, the loss of several thousand documents. This still left a few million to shelve and classify, however, but by good luck the items which Zen had requested the previous day were evidently lodged in one of the sections that was up and running. Zen lit one of his despised domestic cigarettes and settled down to study the sheets of stiff parchment-like paper covered in heavy typewriting. The document, dated May 1946, consisted of the denuncia made to the authorities by Contessa Ada Zulian, resident in the eponymous palace, concerning the alleged activities of Andrea Dolfin, resident in Calle del Forno, followed by a report into the investigation subsequently carried out by a commissario di polizia.

The draft of Ada Zulian’s statement ran to almost fifteen pages. Reading through them, Zen could not help smiling faintly at the increasing frustration of the police officer who had interviewed her, evident even in the bureaucratic language employed. ‘The deponent was asked to address herself to the substance of the complaint…’ ‘A number of allegations concerning other residents of the Cannaregio district, being extraneous to the matter in hand, have been omitted…’ ‘The deponent was yet again urged to express herself with greater brevity and concision…’

There was nothing humorous about what the contessa had to say, however. Stripped of her characteristic longueurs and digressions, the essence of her accusation was that the said Andrea Dolfin had three years earlier kidnapped and murdered Rosa Coin, daughter of Daniele Coin, formerly resident in Campo di Ghetto Nuovo.

Although Ada’s charges were unsubstantiated by any evidence, they were sufficiently grave to force the police to launch an investigation. The conclusions of the resulting report hinged on two key documents. The first was a photocopy of an extract from German records listing those Venetian Jews deported in 1943. The names of all seven members of the Coin family appeared, but the entry for Rosa Coin had been crossed out and the comment ‘Found hanged’ added in the margin.

This initially appeared to support Ada’s allegations. Andrea Dolfin had been for a time a prominent member of the Fascist administration in Venice, and although he had lost his official status when Mussolini was overthrown, he remained a trusted figure enjoying good relations with the occupying German authorities. Given this fact, and the lack of any other evidence as to how Rosa Coin had met her death, Andrea Dolfin was regarded as a suspect by the police and was questioned on a number of occasions, but without result.

The investigation was dramatically terminated by the arrival of a letter from the supposed victim herself. So far from having died in 1943, it appeared that Rosa Coin was living in Palestine, the sole survivor of her family. A former neighbour in the Ghetto had written to her, revealing Ada Zulian’s allegations, which Rosa proceeded to refute point by point. Her letter made it clear that she was not only alive, but that she owed her survival to none other than Andrea Dolfin, who had used his privileged position to shelter her during the final months of the war. Once Rosa’s identity had been confirmed by the British authorities in Palestine, the case was immediately dropped.

Zen was reading the final lines of the report, which noted that Contessa Ada Zulian had been diagnosed as suffering from ‘hysteria and delusional melancholia’ since the disappearance of her daughter in mysterious circumstances, when the phone rang.

‘Yes!’ he barked gruffly.

‘Hello, sweetie.’

A smile spread slowly across Zen’s face.

‘Well, hello there,’ he breathed.

They shared an intimate moment of silence.

‘How are things?’ Cristiana asked at length.

‘Things are fine. Things are great. Never have they been better.’

‘Good.’

‘How about your things?’

‘They’re not complaining either.’

Another long supple silence.

‘When can we…?’ Zen began, but Cristiana had started talking at the same moment.

‘… make it tonight, unfortunately.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t think I wouldn’t love to, but I have to turn up with you-know-who for this press gala at the Danieli.’

The quality of the silence which ensued was rather different.

‘I thought you were separated,’ Zen said at last.

‘Not publicly. Can you can imagine what the media would make of a story like that, especially just before the elections? Nando’s made plenty of enemies who would just love to get their hands on some juicy scandal.’

‘Why should you care?’

‘For one thing, because I don’t care to have my name dragged through the gutter. And for another, because I want to keep on the right side of Nando.’

‘I see,’ said Zen icily.

‘No, you don’t. You don’t need to. But I’ve got to be realistic. Nando’s already a very powerful man, and the way things are looking he stands a good chance of being elected mayor next month. There’s nothing to be gained by making a sworn enemy of someone in that sort of position. They can do too much harm. By going along with public appearances when he asks me, I keep some leverage.’

She laughed deliberately, to lighten the mood.

‘I don’t want to end up like your ancestors, you know.’

‘What?’

‘Renier Zen and… what was the other one? You said last night they had a habit of winning all the battles but losing the war.’

‘Oh. Yes. But listen…’

‘Just a moment!’

There was a noise in the background and Cristiana greeted someone who had come into the agency.

‘The boss,’ she explained in an undertone to Zen.

‘Shall I call you back?’

‘That’s all right. Now you were enquiring about seat availability over the weekend period, I believe?’

Zen grinned broadly, his fit of pique forgotten.

‘It wasn’t so much seats I was thinking of…’

‘That’s simply the formula we use at booking stage,’ Cristiana returned crisply. ‘You would of course be upgraded automatically at check-in.’

‘Sounds good. When are you free?’

‘Let me just check the computer… The earliest slot would appear to be tomorrow afternoon.’

‘What time?’

‘The flight leaves at… Ah, we can drop the charade. La signora has gone to powder her butt. Where were we?’

‘When are you free tomorrow?’

‘I’ve promised to take Mamma shopping in the morning, and we’re having people to lunch. Say between two and three?’

Zen sighed.

‘That seems like a long way off.’

‘It’s the best I can do.’

He pulled himself together.

‘Of course. I just can’t wait to see you again.’

‘Till tomorrow.’

She hung up. Zen relinquished the receiver more gradually, loath to slip back into the mental miasma he could already feel rising to claim him.

The next thing of which he was distinctly aware was the arrival of Aldo Valentini, a cigar between his lips and an air of infinite self-satisfaction on his glowing features.

‘Ah, the pleasures of food!’ the Ferrarese exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘What is sex compared to a great lunch? Am I glad Gavagnin took that Sfriso case away from me! What’s up with our Enzo anyway? I just passed him on the stairs and he looked through me as though I were a ghost.’

‘A well-fed ghost, evidently,’ commented Zen, who had eaten nothing but a mass-produced pastry during his trip to the mainland.

‘You have no idea, Aurelio! Those lads at the Gritti really know their stuff, I can tell you.’

Zen looked suitably envious.

‘The Gritti Palace? Did you win the pools?’

Valentini smiled.

‘In a manner of speaking.’

He flopped down in a chair and put his feet up on Zen’s desk.

‘I have just seen the new, clean, honest, dynamic Italy of the nineties, Aurelio, and it works! In fact it works just like the old one.’

He puffed on his cigar a moment.

‘The only difference is that the payment’s in kind these days. The way things are, no one can afford to leave a paper trail. Even cash is getting too risky now that the banks are starting to co-operate with the judges. You can’t draw a thousand lire from your account without ending up on a database, but in a few hours the meal I just consumed will be just a glorious memory and another gob of sewage in some pozzo nero.’

‘I see. Who was your host?’

‘A local citizen who has an interest in the outcome, or the lack of it, of a case I’m presently working on.’

Zen frowned.

‘You could have been seen together.’

‘So what? In order to express the nature of his interest in greater detail, the citizen in question proposed that we meet for lunch. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Management are always going on about the need to forge closer links with the general public and thus promote a softer, more caring image of the force.’

Zen yawned.

‘I think I’d better go home and get some sleep. I’ve got to work this evening.’

‘How’s the Zulian business coming along?’ demanded Valentini, heading for his cubicle.

‘Well, I haven’t been offered any free lunches so far.’

Valentini laughed.

‘On the other hand,’ Zen continued as he headed for the door, ‘I have a feeling that things might be about to get interesting in other ways.’

*

‘Three tens.’

‘King and queen beats that.’

‘And ace wins.’

‘Shit.’

The four figures sat huddled around a low table. The flame of a wax nightlight flickered in the tangled currents of their breath, thickly visible in the unheated air. The only sounds were the flutter of the cards being shuffled and dealt, and the soft patter of wavelets against the hull. Once more the players bent forward, trying to make out what kind of hands they were holding without tilting their cards too far towards the light and the eyes of the others.

‘Chief?’

‘I’ll take two.’

‘Discard.’

‘Pass.’

‘Oh shit!’

‘There’s a lady present, Martufo.’

‘And the worst of it is she keeps winning.’

For a few minutes there was only the slap of cards on the table.

‘I’m out,’ called a man’s voice.

‘ Dottore?’

‘Me too.’

‘Nunziata?’

‘Three jacks.’

‘Not again!’

‘I always said it was a mistake letting women join the force,’ commented a man with a strong Southern accent.

The speaker yawned loudly.

‘Christ, but it’s cold!’ someone else remarked.

‘Keep your voice down,’ murmured the tallest figure, opening the curtain over the cabin window a crack and looking out.

‘What time is it, anyway?’ demanded the man on his left.

‘Just gone ten,’ said a woman’s voice.

A pulsing orange light suddenly appeared in the corner of the confined space. The tall man reached over and threw a switch.

‘Yes?’

‘Contact,’ said a tinny voice.

‘How many?’

‘Two.’

‘Don’t let them spot you.’

He switched off the radio and blew out the candle.

‘Is it them, chief?’ asked the man to his left.

‘How the fuck do I know?’ the tall man snapped back. ‘Total silence from now on. If anyone screws this up, they’ll be on foot patrol in Palermo next week.’

‘Is that a promise?’ muttered the man with the Southern accent.

‘Shut up!’

The four sat perfectly still in the darkness, listening to the play of the water beneath them. Only after some time, and then very gradually, did another set of sounds become apparent, a different and more purposeful rhythm complicating the gentle ostinato to which they had grown so accustomed that they had almost ceased to be aware of it. The disturbance gradually approached and passed by. A moment later it ceased altogether. There was chink of metal, several thuds, a grunt. Then silence fell.

‘Let’s go!’

There was a flurry of movement in the darkness. Someone slipped outside, making the boat rock. Then they were mobile, gliding silently across the darkened water towards a wall towering over them like the face of a cliff. A distant streetlamp, hidden from where they had been moored, cast its pallid flickers on the scene. By its light they could make out Mino Martufo crouched on the foredeck, hauling in the sodden hempen rope which he had secured to a mooring post on the other bank of the canal on their arrival three hours earlier.

As the unmarked motor launch came alongside, its bow nudging the inflatable rubber dinghy tied up by the crumbling steps greasy with weed and mud, the Sicilian leapt ashore and made fast to a rusty ring-bolt in the wall. He then held the launch alongside the steps while Zen and Pia Nunziata disembarked. Bettino Todesco drew his service revolver and covered Zen as he mounted the steps and pushed open the massive water-door at the top.

‘Wait here,’ he whispered to the others.

Once inside, the darkness was complete. The few feeble glimmers which filtered in through the doorway were at once swallowed up by a resonant, cavernous reservoir of darkness. Zen stepped cautiously forward, following the wall with the tips of his fingers until he reached the stairs. He glanced back at Todesco and Nunziata, framed in the open doorway. Overcoming a strong sense of reluctance, Zen turned away and started up the stone staircase.

There was not a sound to be heard in the house. When Zen reached the hallway running the length of the first floor, he paused uncertainly. The light was better here, a dimness informed by faint reflections of a streetlight somewhere outside. He turned left and began to climb the next flight of stairs. This had been forbidden territory when he had visited the house as a child. An absolute distinction existed between the show spaces of the piano nobile and the private rooms on the floor above. The young Aurelio had had the run of the former, but the latter were taboo, and even now he had to overcome a sense of dread at venturing up the staircase mimicking the public one he had just climbed, but on a smaller, more intimate scale.

He had gone about halfway up when a sound in the yawning darkness above brought him to an abrupt halt. Sounds, rather: shifting, superimposed layers of keening edged at moments with shrill, grating shrieks. Zen felt his skin and scalp bristle all over. A shiver passed down his spine. Then a long, lingering scream split the night like lightning.

The sheer intensity of fear in it acted as a trigger, releasing Zen from his stupor and sending him dashing up the shallow steps, scrabbling for the rail to regain his balance, tumbling clumsily out on to the landing where the stairs ended. The cacophony was louder here, the strands more distinct: a continuous groaning and wailing punctuated by dull blows and panic-stricken howls of terror. Groping his way towards the source of these sounds, Zen blundered into something hard and hollow which resounded loudly from the contact.

The din inside at once faltered, then broke off altogether, dying away in a succession of grunts and heavy breathing. Then a panel opened in the darkness, a rectangle flickering and shimmering with a ghostly luminescence. Zen rushed forward and abruptly collided with a figure which appeared in the doorway. It gave a startled cry and tried to push past. When Zen held on, they both went tumbling to the floor.

A woman started screaming for help. Another figure burst out of the dimly lit room. It rushed at Zen, and a sharp blow struck his head. He twisted away, still grappling with the first assailant, and was gratified to feel the next kick cushioned by that body. He looked up at the figure standing over them, and gasped. Above him stood a skeleton, the skull grinning horribly, the bony structure glowing white in the darkness.

The sight momentarily paralysed him, and by the time he had recovered the figure with whom he had been grappling had wriggled away and sprung to its feet. It towered above him, lanky and loose-limbed in a flowing white Pierrot costume and an expressionless mask whose rounded features were as smooth as alabaster. Zen crawled backwards, trying to get to his feet, as the clown and the skeleton closed in.

A shot rang out somewhere below, incredibly loud, precise and authoritative. There was an answering scream and a series of shouts, then two more shots. Leaping nimbly over Zen, the skeleton disappeared from view. Zen twisted round just in time to see the clown’s foot lash out at him. He took the blow on his chest and hung on, wrenching the foot around, but it came off in his hand. He looked again, and found he was holding a Nike trainer.

The clown staggered away through the doorway. Zen struggled to his feet and followed, ignoring the shouts echoing up the stairwell. The door slammed shut in his face, but he barged it open again with his shoulder and stumbled into the room. He took in at a glance the elderly woman in bed, her face a mask of terror, and the figure running towards the open window on the other side of the room.

‘Police!’ he yelled. ‘Freeze!’

The clown sprang on to a dressing-table and jumped out through the window. A moment later there came a loud splash, a succession of confused voices, then an incredibly brilliant light. Zen ran over to the window and looked out. The searchlight on the forward deck of the motor launch was trained down at the canal, pinpointing the flowing white costume spreading like a stain on the water. The figure had been trying to swim away, but now it turned, blinded by the light, and caught hold of the boathook which Mino Martufo was holding out from the stern of the launch.

Zen closed the window and turned round. Ada Zulian had sat up in bed, the covers clutched around her, staring indignantly at him as though he were the intruder.

‘It’s all right, contessa, ’ Zen told her. ‘You’re safe now. We’ve got the bastards.’

He hurried to the door and downstairs, turning on the lights as he went. When he reached the portego he almost tripped over someone lying sprawled on the marble paving. He stopped, gazing in horror at the blue police uniform, the long hair, the puddle of blood all around. Pia Nunziata opened her eyes and attempted a pallid smile.

‘It isn’t as bad as it looks,’ she muttered.

Zen knelt down beside her.

‘I had no idea they’d be armed,’ he said helplessly.

‘They weren’t.’

‘But…’

‘It was Bettino.’

‘ What? ’

The policewoman’s attempted shrug turned into a wince and a groan.

‘It was an accident. He didn’t know I was following him. We heard the racket upstairs and came running. I happened to bump into him, and he must have thought…’

Zen shook his head wearily.

‘Where are you hit?’

‘My arm. The upper part, where it’s soft. It’s just a flesh wound. I don’t think there’s any danger.’

She glanced down at the fingers of her left hand, clutched tightly around the sleeve of her uniform jacket.

‘It’s starting to hurt, though.’

Zen straightened up.

‘We’ll get you to hospital right away.’

‘The worst of it is, the bastard got away.’

‘Todesco?’

‘The man in the skeleton costume. Bettino was so concerned about me that he didn’t even try and stop him. Martufo was looking after the canal side, but the man got out by the street door and ran off.’

Zen nodded.

‘It’s all right, I’d thought of that. Now then, can you walk or shall I get a stretcher?’

Grimacing with the pain, Pia Nunziata got to her feet. Zen took her elbow to help her up.

‘Not that fucking arm!’ she screamed.

She looked at him.

‘Sir.’

Downstairs, the doors at either end of the andron had both been thrown open and a gentle current of air flowed through the echoey space, emptying out the odours of mould and decay. As Zen and Pia Nunziata made their way slowly down the staircase, two patrolmen in uniform entered through the street door, escorting a lanky figure in handcuffs dressed in a skintight black costume with the outline of a skeleton superimposed in white fluorescent paint.

‘Sons of whores!’ the young man shouted angrily. ‘This is an outrage!’

‘Load him into the boat,’ Zen told the policemen.

‘We’ve committed no crime!’ the skeleton protested. ‘We’re members of the family!’

‘Wait!’ called Zen. ‘On second thoughts, dump him over there in the corner for now. We’ve got to get our colleague to Emergency, and we can’t hang about waiting for an ambulance.’

He pointed to a massive iron hook protruding from the stonework.

‘If he gives you any trouble, suspend him by his cuffs from that for a while.’

‘You’ll regret this, you heap of shit!’ shrieked the skeleton.

Taking no notice of this outburst, Aurelio Zen led the injured policewoman across the worn marble slabs and out of the waterdoor of Palazzo Zulian.

Gobs of slush fell in slanting lines through the air, tautening at moments to rain which drummed on umbrellas and slapped against skin, colder and harder than the sleet. The crowds in the narrow streets manoeuvred like craft in a crowded channel, tilting or raising their umbrellas to avoid fouling or collision. As if all this were not bad enough, hooligan gusts of wind played rough and tumble with anyone they caught, slitting open seams and sneaking in at cuff and collar until your clothes felt wetter in than out.

Despite the weather — to say nothing of a night both shorter and a good deal more stressful than the one he had spent with Cristiana — Aurelio Zen entered the Questura the next morning with the air of a conquering hero. Not only had he demonstrated in the teeth of professional and public scepticism that the case on which he was engaged existed independently of the workings of Ada Zulian’s florid imagination. He had also solved it, and in the most dramatic and absolute fashion, capturing the persons responsible in the act and at the scene of the crime. It was a coup such as every official dreamed of, an unqualified success, secure from any of the stratagems by which judges and juries contrive to frustrate the police and deny them their rightful triumphs.

This euphoria lasted all of two minutes, such being the time it took Zen to climb the stairs to his office, where he was greeted by a familiar figure, beaming jovially and exuding an air of collusive bonhomie.

‘Good morning, dottore. I wasn’t hoping to see you again so soon. God, it’s cold! There’s snow on the way, if you ask me.’

Zen eyed Carlo Berengo Gorin with open hostility.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Same as yesterday! I’d like to be more original, but I’m only a hireling, when all’s said and done.’

Zen stared at the lawyer truculently. Then he turned and slammed the door shut behind him.

‘Another visit? This must be costing Enzo Gavagnin a fortune.’

Gorin frowned.

‘I think you must have…’

‘How much do you charge to take on a case like this, avvocato?’ Zen demanded, hanging his rain-spattered overcoat on the stand. ‘Whatever it is, a type like Giulio Bon doesn’t have that kind of money to throw around. He’d rather sweat it out for the duration and then tell me to fuck off when my time’s up. He knows the rules. He’d no sooner hire a lawyer to spring him from a routine questioning than he’d hire a limousine to take him to the airport. And if by any chance he did, he’d go for the cut-price end of the market.’

He sneered at Gorin as he brushed past and sat down at his desk. Success in the Zulian case had made him confident.

‘I worked out that much at the time,’ he said, lighting his first cigarette of the day. ‘And when I saw you leaving Gavagnin’s office, and remembered how he’d carried on when Bon arrived, I knew that he must have summoned you. Nice gesture for an old friend, I thought. Shitty thing to do to a colleague, but nothing more to it than that.’

‘Excuse me, but…’

‘But then I realized that what’s true for Bon is true for Gavagnin. If he’d called a lawyer, why the most expensive in the city? It’s a routine case, after all.’

Zen gazed intently at Gorin.

‘Or perhaps it isn’t. And perhaps you have special rates for certain… friends.’

The lawyer stroked his beard, in which bright beads of water were nesting.

‘I believe we’re at cross-purposes, dottore, ’ he said with an embarrassed smile. ‘When I said that the purpose of my visit was the same as yesterday, I was speaking generically.’

Zen shook a parcel of ash off his cigarette into the metal wastebin.

‘Then perhaps you’d be good enough to get to the point, avvocato. I have work to do.’

‘Perhaps not as much as you think, dottore.’

‘Meaning what, avvocato?’

Gorin shrugged and heaved a long sigh.

‘You’re going to have to let them go, you know.’

Zen nodded lightly, as if this were something he had foreseen and which made perfect sense.

‘Let them go,’ he repeated.

‘I’m afraid so.’

There was another pause.

‘Who are we talking about?’ Zen inquired urbanely.

Carlo Berengo Gorin looked taken aback for a moment.

‘Why, the clients of mine you arrested last night! The Ardit brothers.’

Zen felt himself starting to hyperventilate. He drew largely on his cigarette.

‘Ridiculous!’ he snapped.

‘What’s ridiculous?’

Feeling the need to assert himself, Zen stood up and walked over to the window. In the canal below, a collapsed red umbrella edged past on the incoming tide. Zen turned to face Gorin.

‘The men in question were arrested last night at Palazzo Zulian, which they had entered illicitly, in the act of carrying out an assault on the owner. The timely intervention of the police, led personally by myself, prevented their criminal designs and the pair were arrested in flagrante delicto. The entire matter has been communicated to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is in the process of opening a dossier on the case. The matter is therefore in the hands of the judiciary, and I fail to see how I can be of any assistance to you.’

‘Who’s handling it?’

Zen consulted his notebook.

‘Dottore Marcello Mamoli.’

Gorin shook his head sadly.

‘In that case, I doubt there’s anything I can do for you. Marcello and I were at law school together. He was always a stickler for procedure.’

Zen scowled at him.

‘I don’t need you to do anything for me! Save that for your clients, avvocato. They’re the ones who need help.’

‘On the contrary, dottore. Why do you think I bothered coming here in the first place? I wanted to give you a chance to avoid getting covered in shit. You’re one of us, after all.’

‘What do you mean, one of us?’ asked Zen.

Gorin looked at him but said nothing.

‘And what do you mean by covered in shit?’ shouted Zen angrily. ‘It’s your clients who’re in it up to their necks!’

‘What’s the charge?’ murmured Gorin.

Zen counted on his fingers.

‘Breaking and entering. Resisting arrest with consequent injury to a police officer. Intimidation. Attempted extortion.’

‘Breaking and entering is out. They had a key.’

‘They stole a key.’

‘They were given one by their aunt, the contessa.’

‘A key to the street door, yes. But not to the waterdoor, which is how they came and went.’ Gorin shrugged.

‘If you give someone a key to your house, you are granting them access to the property. The fact that my clients chose to travel by water rather than on foot is of no legal significance whatsoever.’

He grinned maliciously.

‘As for the injury to your officer, I have to say that I think it unwise of you to bring that up, since I gather that the individual in question was wounded by a gunshot inflicted by one of her colleagues. Certainly neither of my clients could have been responsible, since they were not armed. Why would they be? They were visiting their aunt.’

‘They weren’t visiting her!’ Zen exploded. ‘They were terrorizing her! They were trying to drive her mad, or rather trying to make everyone believe she was mad!’

Carlo Berengo Gorin looked pained.

‘There is no evidence whatsoever to support such wild allegations.’

‘No evidence! This has been going on for weeks, avvocato! What would they have had to do, in your view, for there to be evidence? Kill her?’

Gorin waggled his forefinger in the air.

‘There is absolutely no proof that my clients were responsible for the earlier intrusions — or indeed that they ever took place at all.’

‘But that must be the presumption.’

Gorin oscillated his hand in the air, fingers outstretched, as though turning a large doorknob back and forth.

‘If it weren’t for the testimony of the contessa herself, perhaps,’ he murmured. ‘But that alters the balance of probability quite dramatically.’

‘What testimony?’

Carlo Berengo Gorin looked from side to side, sighing.

‘I really shouldn’t be cutting you in on the defence case, but, well, as one Venetian to another… When she’s summoned to appear before Mamoli, Ada Zulian will tell him that last night’s episode, so far from being one in a long series, was quite different from anything she had experienced before. Her nephews’ performance, it seems, was so crude that she guessed immediately that it was them. It lacked all the fluidity and “other-worldliness”, to use her own term, of the previous manifestations.’

Zen violently hurled the butt of his cigarette, which had burned down to the filter, into the bin.

‘That’s absurd! The carnival costumes the accused were wearing corresponded exactly with the description the contessa gave me of the figures who have been tormenting her. No one’s going to believe that it was sheer coincidence.’

‘Of course not. But you’re not the only person whose ear she bent about these ghostly apparitions of hers. The old girl’s been going on about it to her nephews for weeks, and last night they played a little trick on her by dressing up in carnival gear and acting out her fantasies.’

Gorin shrugged.

‘Many people may consider such a jape was in extremely questionable taste, to put it mildly. There is, however, nothing remotely illegal about it.’

He shook his head mournfully.

‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to let them go, dottore.’

Zen glanced at his watch, then at the slashing rain outside the window.

‘There’s another charge I omitted to mention,’ he told Gorin solemnly. ‘One of the brothers referred to my men as “sons of whores”, while the other called me a “heap of shit”.’

Gorin laughed a little uneasily.

‘Oh come on Zen! You’ll hear that kind of thing down at the bar any day.’

‘That’s different. If someone insults me when I’m off duty, that’s a personal matter. I can choose to ignore him or to retaliate. But last night I was abused whilst carrying out my duties as a state functionary. The offence was thus not only to me personally but to the office I hold. To let such a thing go unpunished would be to undermine the authority of the legal process and inded the very fabric of an ordered, democratic society.’

Gorin gestured with his hands cupped together, appealing to sanity and common sense.

‘Be reasonable, dottore! If you go round bursting into the homes of respectable citizens in the middle of the night, firing off guns in all directions, you can’t expect a very warm welcome!’

‘Your clients are in contravention of article 341 of the Criminal Code, which penalizes insults to the honour or prestige of a public official, made in his presence and during the execution of his duties. There is no question of their being released at the present time.’

Gorin gave him a long, measured look.

‘All right,’ he nodded, ‘if that’s the way you want to play it. But it isn’t going to look good you clutching vindictively at 341 because your main charges have gone up in smoke. This is the second time in twenty-four hours that you’ve screwed up. If you’re going to take such a hard line, I’ll mention your irregular detention of Signor Bon to Mamoli. I don’t think he’s going to be very impressed. Nor do I think that he’ll be taken in by this vindictive and spiteful attempt to harass my clients on a technicality. You may be able to get away with that sort of high-handed behaviour in Rome, but here in Venice we still have standards.’

He turned and strode across the office to the door. Zen stood quite still, staring fixedly at the space which the lawyer had just vacated. He was still in this trance when Aldo Valentini arrived.

‘Our friend Enzo is deep in the shit!’ cackled the Ferrarese gleefully. ‘Having got back from bum-sniffing the politicos, the boss has summoned all the departmental heads to his office to hear the party line. Not only has Gavagnin not shown up, he hasn’t even phoned in to apologize. And Francesco Bruno is a man who doesn’t take kindly to being stood up.’

Zen nodded absent-mindedly. Valentini looked at him more closely.

‘Is something wrong?’

Zen sighed.

‘What’s the biggest mistake you can make in this job?’

Valentini shrugged.

‘There’s so many to choose from. Accepting too small a bribe? Making a pass at Bruno’s wife? Failing to make a pass at Bruno’s wife?’

He slapped his thigh loudly.

‘I’ve got it! It’s taking Bettino Todesco along on an operation without unloading his pistol first.’

Zen shot him a hurt glance.

‘Nice one.’

‘How is she, anyway?’ asked Valentini with a smile to show he’d meant no harm.

‘At home, recovering. A couple of days’ leave and she’ll be fine. But she was lucky. That fool Todesco could have killed her, firing blind like that.’

‘What’s going to happen to him?’

‘An official reprimand, loss of accumulated promotion points and compulsory attendance at a firearms retraining course. But that’s nothing compared to the unofficial hazing he’ll have to put up with around here. It’s tough enough being a policeman without having your own colleagues shooting at you.’

He collected his coat and hat and made for the door.

‘See you later, Aldo.’

‘Wait a minute!’ the Ferrarese called after him. ‘You haven’t told me about the biggest mistake you can make in this job.’

Zen turned in the open doorway. He closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

‘To take it seriously,’ he murmured. ‘To think you have any hope of achieving anything. To imagine that anyone is going to support you.’

The quay outside the Questura glistened greasily under the steady drench. Mino Martufo, draped in a waterproof cape, was securing the mooring lines of one of the police launches.

‘Are you doing anything?’ Zen asked him.

‘Where to, dotto?’

‘Palazzo Zulian.’

He stepped aboard the launch. Freeing the mooring rope, Martufo followed, pushing off with his foot. He revved the motor, bringing the craft around, then engaged the throttle. The bow lifted and they surged off along the canal, riding a thick cushion of wash. Zen stood facing forward, eyes closed, gaunt and unsmiling, the raindrops dripped down his cheeks like tears. Mino Martufo looked at his superior with concern.

‘We really fixed those bastards, sir, eh?’

Zen did not respond. Emerging into the crowded waters of the bacino di San Marco, the Sicilian dragged the launch into a slewing turn, narrowly missing an incoming ferry and a barge piled high with crates of artichokes.

‘Take it easy,’ Zen told him tonelessly. ‘This is the new Italy. We’ve got to foster good relations with the public. We could be privatized at any moment.’

Martufo glanced twice at his superior before judging it safe to laugh heartily.

‘After all the talk about botched jobs and cock-ups, it’s really great to have taken part in an operation that was a total success from beginning to end,’ he enthused. ‘Okay, it was a shame about la Nunziata, but like I said when we were playing cards, they should never have let ladies join.’

‘You think that your virile flesh would have resisted the bullet better?’

There was no further talk until they drew near Palazzo Zulian. Rain pocked the surface of the canal. There was not enough water to get the launch up to the water-steps, so Zen disembarked by the bridge and walked around to the street door.

It was opened by Contessa Ada Zulian in person. She inspected Zen suspiciously.

‘Where are they?’ she demanded.

‘Where are who?’

‘My poor nephews! I was told they would be at liberty again by now, but I’ve rung their house several times without…’

Zen brushed past her into the dank expanse of the lower hallway.

‘ Do by all means come in,’ Ada commented with pointed irony. ‘Make yourself at home. Perhaps you’d like a drink, or even a meal. Can I offer you anything?’

‘You can offer me an explanation, contessa.’

Ada put her head on one side and stared at him with the impersonal acuity of a gull.

‘But there is nothing whatever to explain.’

Zen marched up to her and stared her in the eye.

‘I came all the way up here from Rome to take on your case, a case which no one else believed in, simply and solely out of the goodness of my heart, because you’re an old acquaintance of my mother’s. I have been openly mocked by my colleagues at the Questura for insisting on taking your complaints seriously when everyone else had decided that you were out of your fucking head.’

‘There’s no call…’

‘I’ve bent over backwards to help you in every way possible, even giving you my home telephone number so that you can call me at any hour of the day or night. Perhaps because I’m an outsider here now, to whom everything feels at once familiar and strange, I succeed in deciphering the pattern which no one had spotted — including you, contessa — and set a trap resulting in the arrest of the two people who have been tormenting you for so long. And what thanks do I get? You tell Gorin that you’re prepared to lie in your teeth in order to get them off and make me look like the biggest idiot of all time!’

Ada gave a slight shrug. She turned away and started upstairs.

‘But they’re my nephews.’

‘I don’t care if they’re the Patriarch’s catamites!’ Zen shouted as he started after her. ‘Don’t you understand what they were doing? Don’t you understand what they would have done, sooner or later, if I hadn’t intervened?’

Ada Zulian walked upstairs without replying. When she reached the gleaming gallery on the first floor, she turned to face him.

‘You take everything so literally, Aurelio Battista. But then you always did. I remember once when Giustiniana left you here, you…’

Zen stopped on the last but one step, so that they were on a level.

‘They would have killed you,’ he said quietly.

Ada gave a little burble of laughter.

‘What are you talking about? It was just a silly prank! Nanni’s always had a taste for practical jokes, and Vincenzo will go along with anything his elder brother suggests.’

Taking her arm, Zen led her into the salon and pushed her down on the low sofa. He sat down beside her and leant close, his voice a mere whisper.

‘At first, their plan was to have you declared mentally unfit. And they very nearly succeeded. All the people I spoke to when I arrived here were convinced that your story of ghostly intruders was proof that you had finally taken leave of your senses. With your previous history, your nephews would have had no difficulty in having you committed. They would then have applied to have control of the family affairs transferred to them, on the grounds that you were mentally unfit to manage the estate.’

Ada Zulian smiled vapidly at him. Her bright, shallow eyes twitched to and fro, refusing to engage his.

‘After a suitable interval,’ Zen continued, ‘they would have entered into negotiations with interested parties over the sale of the old mill site on Sant’Alvise. A plot like that must be worth billions, but Nanni and Vincenzo wouldn’t want the money going to their mad old aunt. Nor could they withdraw huge sums from your account without attracting comment, so they would probably have done a deal with the buyer. The sum named in the contract, and paid to you, would be a fraction of the real selling price. The difference would be paid into a numbered bank account which Nanni and Vincenzo could tap any time they needed a little spending money for another Porsche or a new wardrobe.’

Ada’s smile was still there, fixed in place as if by glue.

‘What an idea!’ she murmured.

‘But my arrival forced them to step up the pace. They had been counting on the fact that no one would bother to investigate your complaints very seriously. The police had a quick look around and put a man on the door to see whether anyone came or went. That didn’t bother your nephews, of course, since they were moving around by water. Given the state of the back canal here, they could only operate for an hour or so each side of high tide, but it gave them the run of the house, unobserved by anyone — although I caught a glimpse of them rowing home the night I arrived.

‘But once I took over the case Nanni and Vincenzo realized that they were going to have to change tactics. They attacked you physically for the first time, scratching your wrists with the carving knife. That’s why I put a guard inside the house. If I hadn’t, they would have returned the following night and repeated the attack, except this time the cuts would have been deeper. They might have used the evidence of your slashed wrists to demonstrate that you were once again suicidal, or they might have gone all the way and made sure that your next “suicide attempt” was successful.’

Shaking off Zen’s grip, Ada Zulian got to her feet.

‘This is preposterous and insulting nonsense! If you will not stop defaming my relations in this way, I must ask you to leave my house immediately.’

‘How can you pretend that the earlier episodes had nothing to do with Nanni and Vincenzo? You know it was them. No other explanation makes any sense.’

Ada Zulian gave him a haughty look.

‘My daughter walked out of this house fifty years ago and has never been seen again. Does that make sense?’

Zen slapped his forehead.

‘For the love of God! If you imagined those other intrusions, how do you explain that each of them happened to coincide with the period when the canal giving on to the waterdoor happens to be navigable?’

Ada shrugged impatiently.

‘Perhaps it’s got something to do with the moon. That’s what controls the tides, isn’t it? I always feel a bit odd around full moon.’

‘Why didn’t you suffer from these hallucinations during the period when your nephews knew that there was a police guard in the house?’

Ada made a bored moue.

‘I really neither know nor care, Aurelio Battista. And now — if you’ve quite finished — I have various tasks which require my attention.’

Zen stared at her, breathing hard, trying to control his fury.

‘Don’t patronize me, contessa!’ he hissed. ‘My mother may have scrubbed your floors and dusted your furniture, but that doesn’t make me your drudge and factotum, to be dismissed when my usefulness is at an end.’

He was gratified to see fear in her eyes, but she said nothing more. Making one last effort, he cupped his hands together, imploring her understanding.

‘If you don’t back me in this, I shall have to let your nephews go.’

Ada sniffed.

‘Do you expect me to perjure myself just to further your career?’

‘I’m thinking of you, contessa, not me! Once your nephews are loose, you’ll be in the same danger as before. Is that what you want? To live in terror of what they might decide to do next?’

A smile spread slowly across Ada Zulian’s thin lips.

‘Oh, I don’t think I shall live in terror,’ she replied calmly. ‘You need have no fear about that, Aurelio Battista. On the contrary, I have every reason to suppose that my nephews are going to be very nice to me for the foreseeable future. Very nice indeed!’

He walked back to the Questura. It was colder than ever, and the rain had turned to a soft barrage of sleet which glistened briefly on clothes and hands before vanishing. Zen pulled down the brim of his hat and plodded along, contemplating the ruin of his hopes and plans. He had foreseen various ways in which the Ada Zulian case might collapse or backfire, but he had never expected to be outwitted by an old woman everyone agreed was crazy. I should be so crazy, he thought glumly.

He had been made use of in masterly fashion. Even if the contessa had not guessed earlier that her nephews were involved — which would suppose a superhuman degree of cunning and courage — she was clearly in no doubt about it now. That much was obvious from the complacent way she had dismissed Zen and his fears for her safety.

Of course she was in no danger from Nanni and Vincenzo! They knew only too well that the one thing standing between them and a stiff fine or prison sentence was Ada’s statement that their ‘silly prank’ had been but a crude imitation of the experiences she had complained about earlier. Should she choose to withdraw this assurance at any time in the future, they would face immediate prosecution.

It was a perfect arrangement for everyone concerned. Ada had her nephews exactly where she wanted them, without the family being dragged through a public scandal. As for Nanni and Vincenzo, having to be ‘very nice indeed’ to their aunt was a small price to pay for being spared the consequences of their actions. The contessa was happy, and so were her nephews. The only loser was Zen, who had been totally outsmarted. And there was nothing whatever he could do about it.

This knowledge was hard enough to bear in itself, but the real blow was that with the collapse of the Zulian case he no longer had a valid motive for remaining in Venice. This meant an end to any hopes of solving the Durridge affair, but that was of secondary importance. His only interest in the fate of Ivan Durridge had been as a means of extracting money from the family which he could use to rent a larger house in Rome — large enough to share with his mother and Tania — and the charms of this living arrangement had abruptly faded. No, the real problem with leaving Venice was that it meant kissing goodbye not to the Durridge case but to Cristiana Morosini, with whom he belatedly realized that he was in love.

Emerging into a small campo, Zen paused for a moment to take his bearings. A series of posters on a billboard opposite showed a chic young couple setting out for a night on the town. Providing equal time for a less glamorous view of life, a clothes-line strung between two balconies overhead displayed an assortment of grey, baggy underpants and knickers. Zen continued on his way, carefully avoiding the stick of drips dropping from the washing to the pavement beneath.

The prospect of his appointment with Cristiana that afternoon now induced a kind of panic. And yet just a few days before, everything had seemed so easy. His desire for Cristiana had been pure and simple, uncontaminated by the murky complications of a sustainable relationship and unthreatening to his existing obligations and commitments in that regard. He had been in control then, the consumer selecting his pleasures, the tourist arranging his itinerary.

Now all that had changed. That infant eroticism, biddable and easily satisfied, had grown up into a moody, fractious adolescent, making demands, issuing statements, taking positions, unsure of its own identity and contemptuous of other people’s. Whatever happened between him and Cristiana that afternoon, it would never have the serendipitous quality of that first encounter. From now on, whatever happened would be meant, something to be weighed and measured and taken responsibility for. He heaved a long sigh. The medical authorities were quite right: there was no such thing as safe sex.

It was Sunday tomorrow, so whatever happened he would have a day’s grace in which to try and find out what Cristiana’s feelings were. She had said she would be free between two and three. That gave him time to sign off at the Questura and have lunch somewhere before going home to wait. He strode along more rapidly. The sleet had eased and people were out and about, fitting in a last burst of activity before retiring home for a lunch of coma-inducing proportions.

He passed a carpenter’s workshop stacked with lengths of wood of every size and shape, leaning at all angles in all directions, every piece covered with a layer of fine sawdust as thick as fallen snow. In the barber’s next door, an unhappy boy of about eight was being shorn while his family looked on from a line of chairs arranged along the back wall. Zen was paying so much attention to these little scenes that he almost didn’t see the jointed metal pipe snaking across the pavement until it was too late. In the event he was able to change pace just in time and avoid tripping.

He walked on, taking in the red tanker barge marked POZZI NERI tied up next to the bridge and the flotilla of smaller craft moored alongside, blocking the canal. A comprehensive array of emergency services was represented: the Carabinieri, the city police, the fire and ambulance brigades. Even as Zen watched, a uniformed figure emerged from a boat marked VIGILI URBANI, clambered over the intervening vessels to the quay and ran off along the alley from which the pipes led back to the sewage tanker.

Zen frowned. After a momentary hesitation, he turned into the alley where the vigile had disappeared. The line of tubing was longer than he had imagined, leading through a maze of narrow lanes and low porticos, all deserted. At length it emerged into a spacious courtyard surrounded on all sides by tall tenement houses from whose windows people were staring down at the scene below. About a dozen more, mostly men in uniform, were grouped loosely around a circular opening in the centre of the yard. A motorized winch mounted on a tripod had been erected over the manhole and a taut cable descended into the darkness beneath.

Zen only realized that the cable was moving when a head and shoulders appeared in the opening. Two men in orange waterproof gear stepped forward and helped a third clamber out on to the pavement of bricks laid in a herringbone pattern. He was wearing a black rubber wet suit and a breathing apparatus, and was covered from head to foot in umber slime. He detached the end of a white synthetic rope which had been tied to his belt and passed it to the others, who made it fast to the cable on which he had been standing. Then one of them set the winch in motion once more.

Zen went up to a man in the uniform of a Carabinieri major and asked what was going on.

‘Body in the cesspit,’ he replied shortly, barely glancing at Zen. ‘This is the fourth time they’ve tried to bring it out. Keeps slipping off the rope.’

This explained the strain visible on the faces of the men working the winch. They didn’t want to have to send their colleague back down to the subterranean cistern which received all the sewage of the surrounding tenements, much less replace him themselves in due course. Lovingly they coaxed the cable inch by inch on to the drum, taking up slack with leather-gloved hands to avoid any jerks or shudders which might precipitate its cargo back into those feculent depths.

‘Maintenance people found it when they came to drain the tank this morning,’ the Carabiniere muttered under his breath. ‘Took the cover off and were just getting the tubing set up when one of them caught sight of this face looking up at them from the surface of the shit below. Poor bastard nearly fell in himself. And you are?’

Zen was spared having to reply by a loud gasp and stifled cries from the other spectators. Something had appeared in the hole at the centre of the courtyard, something as smooth, shapeless and sticky as a bar of softened chocolate. With evident reluctance, the three men clustered around the winch, laid hands on it and began to pull. But the object appeared unwilling to be hauled into the light of day. Again and again it jammed in the opening. The men shouted warnings and instructions to each other, desperate lest it escape them yet again.

At last they got its centre of gravity over the rim of the pozzo nero, and the six hands guided it clear of the hole and let it slump down on to the brick paving with a soft squelch. The racket of the winch died away. Under its sheath of slime, the object was only just recognizable as a human body. The men set about freeing the cradle of rope looped about its limbs. The Carabinieri officer pushed through the circle of onlookers.

‘Can you clean it up a bit, lads?’ he asked one of the men.

‘Gino’s just gone to fetch some water, sir.’

The corpse lay face down, the hands clasped behind the back. Close to, the stench of fermenting excrement was almost unbearable. Everyone stood in embarrassed silence. At length a clatter of boots announced the return of Gino, staggering under the weight of two pails of water. Standing as far from the corpse as possible, he poured the contents of one bucket over its back. It at once became clear that the hands were not clasped but tied together, the thumbs tightly bound with copper wire. Equally clearly, the victim had tried hard to break free: one of the thumbs was almost severed.

‘Clumsy job,’ said the Carabinieri major in a tone of professional disapproval. ‘He’d have drowned anyway, and if they’d gone back and uncovered the manhole once he was dead they could have passed the whole thing off as an accident.’

‘Perhaps they didn’t want to pass it off as an accident,’ murmured Zen.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe they wanted to send a message. To keep the others in line.’

‘What others?’

Zen shrugged. One of the men wearing gloves heaved the inert body on to its back. The viscous brown filth clung to it like mud, smoothing out the features and draining into the open mouth. Someone in the background started to retch. With obvious reluctance, Gino picked up the other pail and poured the water unceremoniously over the head and chest of the corpse.

‘Jesus!’ breathed Zen.

The Carabinieri officer glanced sharply at him.

‘Do you know him?’

Zen nodded slowly.

‘Then who is he? And who are you, for that matter? Do you know who killed him?’

Zen raised his head and gazed at the blank wall opposite.

‘I did,’ he said.

He turned and walked quickly away, then broke into a run. Behind him voices were calling to him to stop, but he couldn’t stop. There was too much to do and to undo, too much to remember, too much to forget.

He ran almost all the way to Campo San Bartolomeo, pushing ruthlessly past anyone in his way, and up the steep steps of the Rialto bridge. Pausing briefly for breath at the top, he raced down the other side and out on to the wooden jetty where three watertaxis were moored. In the cabin of the first in line, five men sat chatting familiarly over plastic cups of coffee. Zen appeared in the companion-way and demanded to be taken to the San Toma pier. One of the men looked up at Zen with an expression which mingled contempt and pity.

‘San Toma? That’s just a few hundred metres along the canal. Two stops on the vaporetto.’

‘I’m in a hurry!’

The man shrugged.

‘It’s not worth my while for a fare like that.’

Zen climbed down into the cabin and thrust his identity card into the man’s face.

‘If you don’t get this tub under way in ten seconds, I’ll have your licence revoked and you’ll spend the rest of your life humping frozen fish and tinned tomatoes around town.’

Shocked by the violence in Zen’s voice, and not realizing that it was directed not at them but at himself, the men sprang into action. Within moments the taxi was cutting its way through the turbid waters, its bow aimed at the volta del canal where the city’s central waterway snakes back on itself, heading east towards the open sea.

From the pier at San Toma it was only a short walk to the offices of the Procura. The entrance to this organ of the Italian State was an apt symbol of that institution as a whole: six large doors led into the building, but only one was open. Zen joined the crowd of people shoving their way in and out and made his way upstairs to the Deputy Public Prosecutors’ department.

Marcello Mamoli was ‘in a meeting’, he was informed by a woman with a pinched and put-upon expression hunched over a typewriter in the reception area. For once the euphemism proved correct, as Zen discovered by opening a selection of doors further down the corridor. As though in deliberate contrast to the windowless glory-hole in which their secretary eked out her working life, the space inside was pointlessly vast. Six men were seated around a table which glistened like an ice-rink, and was only slightly smaller. All six looked round as the door opened. One of them got to his feet and stood staring furiously at Zen.

‘What is the meaning of this intrusion?’

Zen strode over to the table.

‘I must speak to Dottore Marcello Mamoli.’

‘Must you, indeed?’ retorted the other sarcastically. ‘And who might you be?’

‘My name is Aurelio Zen. I’m with Criminalpol, on temporary secondment to the Questura here in Venice.’

The magistrate smiled coldly.

‘Extremely temporary, from what I hear.’

He straightened his shoulders and glared at Zen.

‘I am Mamoli. What possible justification do you have to offer for bursting in on an important and confidential meeting in this way?’

Marcello Mamoli was a pale, fastidious-looking man of about forty whose small, sharp features were partially mitigated by a large pair of bifocal glasses.

‘I apologize to you and your colleagues for the interruption,’ Zen declared in grovelling tones, ‘but this is a matter of the greatest possible urgency.’

Mamoli regarded him with disfavour.

‘On the contrary, dottore, it has been a total waste of everyone’s time! I am shocked and surprised that the Ministry thought it worthwhile troubling me with such a farce. My colleagues and I have had dealings with Criminalpol operatives many times before and I’m glad to say that we have generally been impressed by their level of professionalism. That makes it all the more unaccountable that you should have been taken in by something like the Zulian case, a transparent tissue of…’

‘This has nothing to do with Ada Zulian.’

Marcello Mamoli was clearly not pleased to have been wrong-footed.

‘Then what is it about?’ he demanded icily.

Zen took a step forward.

‘A colleague of mine has been killed. I think I know who did it, and why, and who else is in danger. But we must act at once. Every second is precious. That’s why I came directly here instead of going through the usual procedures. Let me speak to you in private — or, if you’re too busy, to one of your colleagues.’

Mamoli paused. Like the taxi drivers, he was impressed above all by the intensity of Zen’s tone. The hint that he might lose an important case was also well timed. With an apologetic smile to the other magistrates, as though to say ‘I’d better humour this maniac before he gets violent’, he walked past Zen to the door.

‘This way!’

Once in the corridor, he turned to stare levelly at Zen.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

Zen nodded confidently.

‘I know exactly what I’m doing.’

Mamoli led the way to an office at the end of the corridor and shut the door. He did not sit down, nor did he invite Zen to do so. Zen walked straight over to the desk, picked up the phone and dialled the Questura.

‘Aurelio Zen speaking. Do we have a commissariato on Burano? No? Then give me the squad room.’

‘Now listen,’ Mamoli exclaimed, ‘I’ve stood just about as much of this as…’

‘Is Todesco there? Put him on.’

He turned to the furious Mamoli.

‘Just one moment, please! This can’t wait.’

He put the receiver to his ear once more.

‘Todesco? Aurelio Zen. Now pay attention. You’re to take a boat and get over to Burano immediately. No, not Murano, Burano — B as in Brescia. Go to the home of Filippo Sfriso. The address will be in Gavagnin’s file on the case. Take two or three men with you. Put Sfriso himself under arrest. Don’t worry about the warrant. I’ll have one by the time you get back. He’s to make no phone calls, speak to no one. Understood? If at all possible, bring his mother along too. If she won’t budge, leave an armed guard on the house.’

There was a pause.

‘Well you’ll just have to find someone to cover for you,’ Zen resumed with silky menace. ‘And please try not to shoot any of your colleagues this time, Todesco. You almost killed someone last night. This is your chance to make amends before I write up my report.’

He hung up and turned to face Mamoli. The magistrate was by now bursting with indignation.

‘What the devil do you think…’

Zen cut him off.

‘I apologize for my apparent rudeness, signor giudice, but time is pressing. Less than an hour ago, the body of Inspector Enzo Gavagnin, head of the Drugs Squad at the Questura of Venice, was recovered from a cesspit in a courtyard by San Canciano. He had been murdered, thrown into the sewage with his hands tied and left to drown.’

Mamoli’s indignation instantly evaporated.

‘Go on.’

Zen paused, trying to marshal his thoughts, to remember what he could admit and what he must conceal, which facts he could present openly to Mamoli and those whose origin or significance he must disguise.

‘Three days ago, a fisherman named Giacomo Sfriso, resident on Burano, was found drowned in the lagoon. There was no evidence of foul play, yet Enzo Gavagnin insisted on opening an investigation and brought the dead man’s brother in for questioning.’

He broke off and gave an embarrassed smile.

‘Enzo told me all this himself, off the record. He and I had struck it off from the moment I arrived here. Our parents used to be neighbours, and…’

Mamoli nodded impatiently.

‘Quite, quite.’

‘I asked him why he was taking such a hard line. He told me a story which frankly I found hard to believe at the time. He claimed to have received death threats from a powerful drug cartel he had been fighting for years. When I asked what this had to do with the Sfriso brothers, he said that he knew that they were involved with this organization, although he lacked sufficient proof to make a formal request to proceed. He claimed that Giacomo Sfriso had been murdered by the gang, and hoped that Filippo, shocked by his brother’s death, would now agree to co-operate.’

‘And did he?’

Zen shook his head.

‘Not fully, although he apparently supplied some telephone numbers which Enzo hoped to exploit. But before he could do so, the threat to his life which he mentioned to me had been brutally substantiated. What I’m asking of you, signor giudice, is authorization to hunt down my friend’s killers!’

Leaving this passionate declaration ringing in the air, Zen quickly reviewed this fiction to ensure that it covered all the essential points. Satisfied, he looked up at Marcello Mamoli, who was gazing at him with renewed interest.

‘I need the following powers,’ Zen went on quickly. ‘First, interception of all telephonic traffic on the numbers Sfriso supplied to Gavagnin. Second, surveillance of the addresses corresponding to those numbers. Third, a warrant for the arrest of Filippo Sfriso on the grounds of reticence concerning the criminal activities already mentioned. Fourth, round-the-clock protection for Sfriso’s mother, who might otherwise be at risk from the gang. And lastly, authorization in principle to follow up any leads which may arise in the course of these and related enquiries.’

Marcello Mamoli raised his eyebrows.

‘In short, a free hand.’

Zen shrugged.

‘In my experience, it’s quite normal for Criminalpol operatives to be granted a relatively wide degree of latitude in their investigations.’

‘And you would naturally check with me before taking any initiatives which might prove, ah, controversial.’

‘Naturally.’

Marcello Mamoli walked over to the window. It had started to rain again, and fat drops slid slowly down the panes, leaving tracks like slugs. The magistrate consulted his watch.

‘It’s now almost four o’clock,’ he said without looking round. ‘You’ve got forty-eight hours to come up with something solid.’

It was only then that Zen remembered his appointment with Cristiana.

Filippo Sfriso’s return to the Questura was in stark contrast to his unceremonious departure two days earlier. The police launch which had been dispatched to fetch him from Burano cut through the Arsenale, avoiding the more direct but constricted backwaters where it would have had to slow down. Although it was still light, the curtains in the cabin were tightly drawn. Next to the helmsman stood a patrolman in grey battledress cradling a machine-gun.