A long finish

This time, Zen held his tongue.

‘No? Via Strozzi, number twenty-four doesn’t ring a bell? Odd, really, given how many times you rang the bell there. I wonder if you’re really giving this matter your full attention. Let’s try clue number two. A name, this time. Amalia. Surely that must mean something? Amalia. Think about it. I’ll be in touch soon, and I hope that next time you’ll have something to say for yourself. Frankly, these one-sided conversations are becoming rather boring.’

The line went dead. Zen returned to the table and started in on his lukewarm slab of frittata.

‘Work?’ asked Manlio Vincenzo.

Zen took another sip of the Vincenzo Barbaresco.

‘This actually isn’t so bad,’ he said, to change the subject. ‘It stays with you, if you know what I mean. Some wines you drink and they’re gone, but this…’

‘It has a long finish, yes.’

Manlio gouged out another slab of Parmesan from the wheel with the special wedge-shaped tool used for this purpose.

‘Try it with this.’

Zen bit into the pungent, siliceous cheese and drank some more wine.

‘Even better,’ he pronounced. ‘“A long finish”, eh?’

He looked at his host and smiled cunningly.

‘Just what we both need in the present case, Signor Vincenzo.’

‘Are you suggesting that our interests are identical?’

‘Assuming you’re not guilty, of course.’

Manlio Vincenzo gave a light, cynical laugh.

‘Well, let’s assume that, shall we? For the sake of argument. How do our interests coincide, and what do you mean by “a long finish”?’

Aurelio Zen leaned back and lit a cigarette.

‘As I understand it, Signor Vincenzo, you’ve been released on a conditional basis because of a presumed link between the killing of this Beppe Gallizio, which you clearly could not have committed, and that of your father.’

Manlio nodded assent.

‘That’s good news, but it provides only a presumption of innocence in your regard,’ Zen went on. ‘Some piece of evidence could come to light at any moment which would tilt the balance the other way, sending you back to prison and me to Sicily.’

‘Sicily?’

Zen gave a brief description of the reason why he had been sent to Piedmont, this time — since the reference was unattributable — mentioning the name of the famous director in question. As he had hoped, Manlio Vincenzo was suitably impressed, albeit in a negative way.

‘So that’s how the system works!’ he exclaimed. ‘No wonder things are in the state they are.’

Zen smiled thinly.

‘“What matter the road, provided it leads to paradise?” I’ll find out who killed your father, Signor Vincenzo. But I need a little more time to do that, and to let the front-line posts in Sicily get filled. And you need to make your wine.’

Manlio Vincenzo picked up a lump of Parmesan and started to nibble.

‘And just how do we achieve that?’

‘I need more information, in particular in an area which may be delicate or painful for you to discuss. You’ve told me that the real reason for the bad feeling between you and your father was about technical matters relating to wine-making.’

‘No, no! You haven’t understood. That was just one of the symptoms. What really infuriated him was that by sending me abroad, outside his sphere of control, he had created — as he saw it — a monster of ingratitude who refused to toe the paternal line any longer.’

Zen nodded.

‘I’ve been told that at the village festa he specifically accused you of homosexual tendencies, and of a liaison with someone called Andrea. Forgive me prying into your personal life, but is that true or not?’

To Zen’s surprise, Manlio Vincenzo laughed.

‘It’s certainly true that I’m involved romantically with someone called Andrea,’ he said in a tone laden with irony. ‘But the real reason my father made such a fuss about my supposed homosexuality was that it jeopardized his long-term plans for acquiring the Faigano estate.’

‘Gianni and Maurizio Faigano?’

Manlio rose, filled the caffettiera with grounds and water, screwed it together and set it on the stove.

‘They’re neighbours of ours. There’s only one daughter — a very late child — and no other heirs, so when the brothers die, she’ll inherit the entire property. It’s quite extensive, with some very good fields bordering ours, which produce excellent wine.’

‘So your father wanted you to marry Lisa Faigano.’

Manlio Vincenzo laughed.

‘The idea’s absurd! I’ve only met the child a few times. She’s seventeen and I’m almost thirty. My own inclinations aside, there’s no possible reason to suppose that she would have any interest in marrying me. In any case, her father would never agree. Maurizio and his brother are no friends of ours. In fact, we’re barely on speaking terms.’

‘Why’s that?’ Zen asked.

Manlio shrugged.

‘It’s just one of those things which are so common around here. You run up against them every so often, and soon learn not to ask questions. No one wants to talk about it, no one will explain. It’s just a given, like the lie of the land.’

‘Did you point this out to your father?’

‘Of course.’

‘What did he say?’

Manlio Vincenzo did not answer right away. He came back to the table and took another careful taste of wine.

‘He said, “Just get her pregnant, I’ll do the rest.”’

There was a silence.

‘I told him that times had changed, that things don’t work like that any more. “Leave that to me,” he said. “Just get her in the family way, that’s all I’m asking.” That was when I made the mistake of mentioning that I was already involved with someone else.’

The coffee came burbling up the spout and spluttered loudly. Manlio removed the pot and poured out two cups.

‘What did your father say to that?’ asked Zen.

‘He said he didn’t give a damn where I chose to stick it for pleasure. This was business, and my duty to the family was to marry Lisa Faigano, by force if necessary.’

He broke off, his head cocked to one side like a dog on the scent. Then Zen, too, heard the sound of a car engine, very faintly at first, but rapidly confirming its nearing presence.

‘Now what?’ demanded Manlio.

The car — a diesel, by the sound of it — pulled up in the courtyard. Manlio had got to his feet and was heading towards the door when it was flung open by a young woman in her mid-twenties wearing a long beige coat over a pullover and jeans. She shrieked something in English, and rushed to embrace Manlio Vincenzo, who reciprocated fervently.

‘Have you got any money?’ the woman asked, switching to Italian. ‘I forgot to change any at the airport and I have to pay the taxi. It’s so wonderful to see you, and you’re looking so well! I think you’ve lost a bit of weight, in fact. It suits you.’

Manlio Vincenzo turned to his guest in some embarrassment.

‘Do forgive us, dottore!’ he said. ‘I phoned last night when my lawyer told me the good news, but I had no idea…’

Zen stood up and bowed politely.

‘ Molto lieto, signorina. ’

The formal phrase recalled Manlio Vincenzo to the proprieties.

‘But of course you don’t know each other! This is Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen, my dear. Dottor Zen, allow me to introduce my fiancee, Andrea Rodriguez.’

‘Oh, not so bad,’ Minot replied to the brothers’ rhetorical enquiry as to how it was going. ‘Only too many cops, to tell you the truth. I gave one a lift this morning. You remember that character who showed up at the bar, pretending to be a reporter from Naples? He’s trying to pass himself off as a wine dealer now. And no sooner had I got home, than Pascal dropped by.’

Gianni Faigano nodded.

‘Thanks for the tip-off. I was able to lead the nosy bastard a merry dance and get a free feed into the bargain.’

‘I just wish they’d get the whole thing cleared up, one way or another,’ Maurizio said dourly. ‘All these cops hanging around makes things like this even more risky.’

He gestured towards the demijohns of wine in the shed beside which Minot had parked his truck. He was to take them to the cantina run by Bruno Scorrone, who would subsequently work a miracle of the loaves-and-fishes variety on the contents and split the profits with the Faigano brothers. Minot got paid a flat-rate transportation fee.

‘Speaking of which,’ Minot remarked lightly, ‘I need to ask you both a favour.’

The brothers exchanged a glance.

‘What sort of favour?’ asked Gianni.

‘Let’s load the wine, then we’ll talk.’

The job took the best part of twenty minutes. Lifting the hundred litre damigiane on to the bed of the truck was hard enough, but the really tricky part was ensuring that they were set down carefully enough to avoid breakage. In the old days, the glass was covered with a layer of wicker or rope, but now there was just a sheath of coloured plastic matting with little or no give.

Once the truck was safely loaded, the three men went inside for a glass of the product and a smoke.

‘So, two policemen in one day, eh?’ Maurizio remarked once they were seated. ‘What are things coming to?’

This was just an opening gambit in the match they were about to play, of no importance in itself. Someone had to move first. It was what happened afterwards that would determine the result.

‘That’s right,’ said Minot. ‘When I was driving home after a night in the woods, I saw someone walking up from the station towards the village. I naturally stopped and offered him a ride, only to find that it was our friend the spy. I don’t think he recognized me, but I knew him all right, with those stitches in his forehead.’

A silence fell.

‘Terrible business about Beppe,’ remarked Gianni Faigano.

‘Terrible,’ echoed Minot.

‘Why should he want to do something like that?’ Maurizio wondered aloud. ‘I spoke to him only a few days ago, and he seemed perfectly normal then.’

‘Maybe he didn’t do it himself,’ suggested Minot quietly.

Gianni looked at him.

‘How do you mean?’

Minot relit his roll-up, which had gone out.

‘Someone told me that you were driving into Alba that morning, and saw a truck parked close to where Beppe was killed.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ snapped Maurizio. ‘We were busy all day filling those demijohns.’

‘Well, someone saw a truck there,’ said Minot. ‘Told the Carabinieri about it, too. That’s how I found out, from Pascal.’

He finished his wine and poured another glass.

‘Take it easy,’ cautioned Maurizio.

Minot laughed harshly.

‘Don’t worry! If I get arrested, it won’t be for drunk driving.’

The silence reformed, a swirling opacity like one of the morning fogs for which the region was notorious.

‘What were you two doing the night Beppe was shot?’ asked Minot, not looking at them.

Gianni gave a humourless laugh.

‘Eh, you’ve been spending too much time with cops all right, Minot. You’re beginning to sound like one yourself!’

Minot smiled.

‘Fair enough. But let’s say a cop asked you the same question, what would you tell him?’

‘The truth, of course,’ Maurizio retorted irritably. ‘We spent the evening watching TV and then went to bed.’

‘Was Lisa here?’

‘What the hell is…’ Gianni began.

‘Was she?’ Minot insisted, speaking to Maurizio.

‘She was at her aunt’s house in Alba.’

‘So you don’t have any witnesses to confirm your story,’ Minot concluded. ‘In theory, you could have gone out that night, followed Beppe down to the woods and shot him.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ yelled Gianni Faigano, pushing back his chair and standing up.

Minot held up his hands in a calming gesture.

‘Take it easy, Gianni. I know you didn’t kill Beppe. I didn’t either, but that didn’t stop Pascal from coming round and questioning me about it. Sooner or later it’ll be your turn. Just think how much easier everything would be if we all had a nice, solid alibi.’

‘Well, that’s too bad,’ snapped Maurizio, ‘because we don’t.’

‘I do,’ replied Minot with his nagging smile.

‘Good for you.’

‘I was out after truffles that night, miles from where Beppe was shot. And I wasn’t alone.’

‘Well, that’s a stroke of luck. Who did you go out with?’

‘With you two.’

The brothers stared at him.

‘We met here at midnight,’ Minot continued calmly, ‘and drove over to a patch I know of near Neviglie. You provided the dogs, I provided the location. We didn’t have much luck, as it turned out, but we stuck at it and didn’t get home until seven o’clock the next morning. An hour after Beppe was shot.’

Gianni Faigano shook his head.

‘Maurizio and I haven’t been out truffling for ages, Minot. We’re getting too lazy to spend all night tramping through the woods.’

Minot regarded him levelly.

‘That’s not quite true, Gianni. You make exceptions once in a while. This was one of them.’

Once again, the brothers consulted each other silently.

‘Why would we do that?’ asked Maurizio at length.

‘Why wouldn’t you? It’s in all our interests to have a solid story to tell the cops, right?’

Gianni shook his head slowly.

‘I don’t want to get involved in this.’

‘Ah, but supposing you’re already involved?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

Minot told them what he meant.

Twenty minutes later, he was back in his truck, the demijohns of wine covered by a tarpaulin. He took a roundabout route to the Scorrone winery, sticking to the back roads. There were risks either way. On the one hand, if any roadblocks had been set up by the police or the Guardia di Finanza, they were almost certain to be on the main highway, down in the valley. On the other, the indirect route would take about twice as long to drive, which meant twice as many chances of having a breakdown or an accident which would inevitably bring to the attention of the authorities the fact that he was transporting two thousand litres of unlabelled red wine, for which he had no sales documents, certificates of provenance, tax forms or shipping manifests.

It was a fine calculation, and in the end he decided to compromise by taking a short stretch of the strada statale which would cut fifteen minutes off the total transit time. The chances of the uniforms being out at that hour were pretty low. They would have written their quota of tickets that afternoon, lurking in lay-bys to pick off drivers weaving their way home after a long lunch followed by several grappas too many. As for the tax police, both they and their trucker prey would almost certainly have taken Sunday off.

His predictions proved correct, and less than half an hour after leaving the Faigano house Minot pulled off the highway and up a short drive leading to the headquarters of the Azienda Agricola Bruno Scorrone. This looked more like a factory than a winery: all concrete loading bays and stacked plastic crates, pumps and pipes and nozzles and stainless steel tanks. In a region celebrated for its scrupulously traditional approach to wine-making, Bruno Scorrone’s main claim to fortune, if not to fame, was a generic Barbera d’Alba, widely available in screw-top, large-format bottles through various national supermarket chains.

Since in most years the Barbera grape is too cheap and plentiful to be worth faking, that particular product was more or less what it claimed to be, although purists might not have approved of the degree of manipulation which the wine had been subjected to, and would certainly have raised an eyebrow at the percentage of even cheaper and more plentiful grape varieties in the final mix. There had even been one occasion when the authorities had taken an interest in Bruno’s operation, following the discovery that one batch of wine bottled there had been beefed up with various ingredients of a non-vinous nature, notably antifreeze.

But Bruno had stoutly maintained that this particular lot had been bought in bulk from a third party, who had already been arrested and charged in connection with a similar offence, and that his facilities had served merely as a bottling plant. It had been a trying few months, but in the end he had been released with his legal record, if not his reputation, unspotted. One of the great strengths of Scorrone’s operation was that it acted as a depot through which many products of many different provenances passed. Bruno grew no grapes himself, but he vinified others’ fruit and blended the results with wine made still elsewhere, until sometimes he himself — or so he claimed — couldn’t be sure exactly what was in a given vat. This was true not only at the bottom end of the market, on which he depended for his bread-and-butter, but also on the occasions when he was tempted by an unrefusable offer into the high-margin sector. Which was where the Faigano brothers came into the picture.

Minot had been waiting for almost half an hour when Bruno Scorrone finally showed up in a four-wheel-drive Toyota. Gianni had been right, noted Minot; the brand-new vehicle was indeed green.

‘Been over to Lamberto’s for lunch,’ said Bruno, belching loudly. ‘I just wanted to make sure there were no hard feelings. God, you eat well there! I’d forgotten.’

And drink well, too, thought Minot, filing the thought away.

‘Why would there be any hard feelings?’ he asked.

Bruno Scorrone peered at him. Like everyone else, he was a little taller than Minot, but slacker and paunchier, with the florid, swollen face of a habitual drinker.

‘Well, you know, I found Beppe’s dog hanging round here after I got back from town. It seemed a bit odd, so I called the maresciallo to tell him about it. It’s always a good idea to keep in well with the authorities, particularly in my line of business.’

He jerked a thumb towards the laden truck. Minot nodded.

‘I understand.’

‘I didn’t say anything about Lamberto, of course,’ Scorrone went on, lighting a small cigar. ‘I didn’t even know what had happened at that point. But he might have heard that I’d talked to Pascal and thought that I’d said something about him. You can’t be too careful in a small community like this.’

Minot looked up at the vacant expanse of sky.

‘You certainly can’t,’ he said.

Bruno Scorrone puffed unsuccessfully at his cigar, then threw it away. He gestured at the truck again.

‘Well, shall we?’

Minot backed the truck up to one of the loading bays, Bruno Scorrone lowered the tail-gate, and together they set about shifting the heavy, fragile damigiane down to the concrete platform.

‘So what’s it to be this time?’ asked Minot as they took a breather.

Bruno huffed and puffed a little.

‘Barbaresco!’ he exclaimed. ‘I just clinched a deal with a buyer from Munich who’s in the market for five hundred cases.’

Minot whistled.

‘But that’s over four thousand litres! There’s only half that here.’

‘I’ll have to cut it, of course. The stuff that Gianni and Maurizio make could be Barbaresco. In fact, it’s a damn sight better than some I’ve had. Too good for foreigners, that’s for sure. And since they’ve never had the real thing, they won’t be any the wiser.’

Bruno was definitely slightly tipsy, thought Minot, or he wouldn’t be prattling away like this.

‘How do you know they’ve never had it?’

Bruno gave him a worldly wise smile.

‘Because in Germany, my friend, the real thing costs a minimum of a hundred thousand lire a bottle on release.’

Minot whistled again. Bruno nodded.

‘People prepared to pay that kind of money aren’t going to buy stuff at half the price with the name of some producer no one’s ever heard of. On the other hand, the people who will buy it wouldn’t dream of paying a day’s wages for a bottle of wine that won’t even be drinkable for ten years. What they want is something tasty to drink now, at the right price, and with a classy name to impress themselves or their friends. In short, there are two quite different markets, and each one gets what they’ve paid for. Meanwhile Gianni and Maurizio get a decent price for their excellent wine, I make an honest profit as blender and distributor, and you get your slice as our go-between and cut-out. It beats me why it’s even illegal!’

Once the last of the twenty damigiane had been heaved into place, Bruno turned to Minot, panting for breath.

‘Fancy a glass of something?’ he said.

‘Looks like you’ve had a few already.’

Bruno smiled.

‘Well, you know how it is. Lamberto prides himself on his collection of grappas, and after I sympathized about Beppe and the whole business about him and Nina Mandola coming out, he brought out a few bottles and then left them on the table.’

He led the way to an office at the end of the loading dock, where he received wine buyers and their agents during working hours. Here he kept a small but select stock of restoratives which he used to tweak moods and swing deals.

‘Try some of this!’ he told Minot, pouring a grappa illegally made by a neighbour in a disused pig barn.

‘So you’ve been talking to Pascal, eh?’ Minot remarked, setting his glass down after an appreciative sip. ‘So have I.’

Still savouring the grappa he’d knocked back in one, Bruno Scorrone didn’t seem to hear.

‘He told me you’d claimed to have seen my truck down by the stream where Beppe was killed.’

Bruno stared at him, all attention now.

‘What? I did nothing of the sort. Like I said, I called him to say that I’d found Anna running loose and had taken her home and all the rest of it. I didn’t even know Beppe was dead then! Pascal asked where I’d been that morning, and I told him that I’d driven into Alba. I saw people there who could corroborate that — apart from my Munich buyer, I mean — so it seemed the safest thing to do.’

He poured himself another glass of the oily spirit.

‘But why bring me into it?’ asked Minot, lifting his grappa but not drinking.

‘I didn’t! He asked if I’d seen anything unusual down where the road crosses the river. I said I thought I might have seen a truck parked in the bushes, but I wasn’t sure. He said, “What kind of truck?”, and I said I didn’t know but it looked a bit like yours. I didn’t say it was yours.’

Minot looked at him silently.

‘So you didn’t make a statement under oath or sign any papers?’

‘Of course not! It was just a casual chat over the phone.’

Bruno slurped out a third glass of grappa for himself.

‘What about you?’ he asked Minot. ‘You’re not drinking.’

‘I’ve got to keep a clear head.’

Scorrone puffed contentedly on his cigar.

‘Anyway, I’m glad you told me,’ he said. ‘That’s the sort of thing which can lead to all sorts of misunderstandings if it’s not cleared up. No hard feelings, eh?’

Minot shook his head.

‘No feelings at all.’

They walked out of the office and along the concrete loading bay to the truck. As they passed a stack of new bottles, Bruno suddenly laid his hand on Minot’s arm.

‘You weren’t really there, were you?’ he asked.

Minot looked at him in surprise.

‘Where?’

‘Down by the stream, the morning Beppe was killed.’

Minot said nothing.

‘Only they might ask again, you see, under oath this time. It would help if I knew the truth.’

Minot looked down at the dirty concrete platform for some time.

‘If that’s what you want, Bruno.’

He removed one of the new green bottles from the stack, examining it as though he had never seen such a thing before.

‘The truth,’ he said, ‘is that I killed him.’

Bruno’s face ran through a pantomime of expressions. Then he gave a forced laugh.

‘Don’t make jokes about something like this!’

Minot looked him in the eyes.

‘I’m not joking.’

Neither man said anything for a long time.

‘But why?’ murmured Scorrone.

Minot stared down at the bottle in his hand and smiled faintly.

‘He was on my turf. I discovered that patch of truffles years ago, long before anyone else. But Beppe did an underhand thing. I used to borrow his dog once in a while, when he didn’t need her. He took to dipping her paws in aniseed before I took her out, and then tracing my route the next day. I soon found that all my best patches had been cleaned out before I got there. That’s why he lent me Anna in the first place, so that she would lead him to all my secret discoveries. So I decided to get even.’

Bruno Scorrone clutched at one of the concrete pillars supporting the roof.

‘But that’s absurd!’ he exclaimed in a wavering voice. ‘You don’t kill someone over truffles.’

In a single swoop, Minot smashed the bottle he had been holding against the pillar and jabbed the broken end into Scorrone’s throat, twisting the jagged glass into the exposed flesh. A whistling spray of blood emerged, accompanied by a gargling shriek which quickly drowned on the pulsing flood. Bruno Scorrone slid down the pillar, emitting vaguely anal sounds and thrashing around feebly on the concrete.

It all went quicker than Minot had imagined. The twin advantages of surprise and sobriety aside, it was a question of will in the end. He wanted Bruno dead more than Bruno wanted to live. There was a lot of mess to clean up, but this was a site designed for spillage, with drains everywhere and a high-pressure hose on the wall. No one had seen or heard what had happened, and the only people who knew that he’d been there in the first place were Gianni and Maurizio Faigano. And he could deal with them.

It was dark when Aurelio Zen arrived back in Alba in a bus packed with football supporters who spent the journey loudly celebrating their victory over a town in the next valley. By the time he disembarked in the inevitable Piazza Garibaldi, Zen had learned several colourful terms of abuse in the local dialect, and even found himself singing along to a rousing chorus which alleged that the players of the Coazzolo team were unable to score in more ways than one.

He started back to his hotel, paying no particular attention to his surroundings until the celebratory yells of the soccer fans brought a uniformed policeman out of a neighbouring building to suggest forcefully that they show a bit of respect, in view of the fact that Juventus had just lost to Inter by a disputed last-minute penalty. This was news to the local tifosi, due to poor radio reception on the road and the aforementioned festivities. The upshot was a lively discussion regarding the merits of the latest foreign acquisition by the Turin club, and estimations of how much the Milanese had paid the Roman referee to award the penalty after the Inter centre-forward took a blatant dive inside the area.

While all this was going on, Zen sidled around the group and entered the police station unobserved. He had expected the place to be deserted, it being Sunday, but to his surprise there was a group of five men in the squad room, a plain-clothes officer in the middle of a telephone conversation, and various uniformed patrolmen looking on.

‘Si, si, si,’ the man on the phone declared in a tone of utter boredom. ‘ Va benissimo. D’accordo. Senz’altro. Non si preoccupi, dottore. Certo, certo. Non c’e problema, ci penso io. D’accordo. Si, si. Ci sentiamo fra poco. Arriverderla, dottore. Buona sera, buona sera. ’

He replaced the phone and glanced sourly at Zen, who was hovering in the doorway.

‘Well?’

‘Excuse me,’ Zen began hesitantly. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you, but the thing is…’

‘Yes?’

Zen hesitated.

‘Well…’

‘Get on with it! We’re busy here.’

‘Well, the fact is, I need a phone tapped.’

There was a long silence. The plain-clothes officer got to his feet. He smiled, not pleasantly.

‘Are you sure that’s all? You don’t want anyone arrested, by any chance?’

‘Not at the moment.’

The officer’s smile became still more menacing.

‘Just the phone tap, eh? And which phone did you have in mind?’

‘The one at the hotel where I’m staying,’ Zen replied. ‘It’s called the Alba Palace.’

‘The whole hotel? All the calls, eh?’

‘Just the incoming ones.’

At this point, the officer evidently decided that he had milked the joke for all it was worth.

‘What the hell’s Dario doing down there at the door?’ he asked, turning to his colleagues. ‘Letting some madman push his way in here like this! It’s a disgrace.’

‘I apologize,’ Zen replied. ‘I should have…’

The officer whirled around.

‘As for you, bursting in here and demanding a telephone tap on the leading hotel in town! Are you out of…’

He grabbed the identity card which Zen was holding out.

‘… your mind? Are you out…? Are you…? Aaaaaaaagh! Ha! Yes. Yes, yes, of course. Dottor Zen! We meet at last.’

He held out his hand with a fixed smile.

‘Nanni Morino. Forgive me for not recognizing you, dottore.’

‘On the contrary, forgive me for interrupting. Nothing important, I hope.’

‘No, no, just an accident at a local winery. But the victim was quite a big name round here, so we’ve had to cancel our plans for Sunday evening and show willing. Still, it’s double time, eh, lads?’

With an insincere laugh, he motioned his subordinates to make themselves scarce, which they duly did.

‘Now then, this phone tap,’ Morino said, once he and Zen were alone. ‘No problem, of course, but it may take a while to set up.’

He stared intently at Zen.

‘That’s a nasty-looking cut you’ve got there, dottore.’

‘Yes, and quite fresh, too, by the look of it. Can we get back to the point, please? I’ve been getting some anonymous calls recently. The first was at the hotel, the second at the Vincenzo house.’

Nanni Morino raised an eyebrow.

‘I went out to Palazzuole today, to take a look at the scene of the crime,’ Zen explained. ‘The son, Manlio, was there, and he invited me back to the house for lunch. While we were eating, the phone rang and it was for me. My anonymous caller.’

Morino brightened up.

‘In that case, I should be able to give you a lead right away.’

‘How do you mean?’

He lifted the receiver of his own phone and dialled.

‘The Vincenzo line has been tapped ever since the crime. Any calls received there today should have been logged. This was at lunchtime, you said?’

Nanni Morino spent over five minutes talking to various police personnel in Asti, running through a repertoire of stock phrases such as those he had used in his previous phone conversation. Then he hung up and turned to Zen.

‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘There was only one call recorded to the Vincenzo house at that time today. It was made at twelve fifty-two.’

‘That sounds right. Where was it from?’

‘That’s what’s odd. It was made from the hotel you mentioned, the one where you’re staying. The Alba Palace.’

There was a long pause. Then Zen slapped his forehead.

‘I’m an idiot. My apologies again for the interruption.’

‘Don’t mention it, dottore.’

At the door, Zen turned, suddenly recalling Tullio Legna’s warning about the consequences of Manlio Vincenzo’s release.

‘That accident you mentioned…’

‘Yes?’

‘Who was involved?’

‘A man called Scorrone. He ran a big commercial operation out near Palazzuole and was found dead there earlier this evening.’

‘You’re sure it was an accident?’

‘No question about it! It’s something we’re all too familiar with around here. He was found floating in a vat of fermenting grapes. Apparently he’d been to a local restaurant and had a long and well-lubricated lunch, then drove straight to his winery to check on some wine he’d started up the day before. He must have leaned over too far and fallen in. The atmosphere above those vats is heavy with carbon dioxide and alcohol fumes. One slip and you drown or suffocate, or both.’

Zen nodded absently.

‘Scorrone, you said?’

‘Bruno Scorrone. Do you know him?’

‘I’ve heard the name.’

He turned towards the door.

‘About that phone tap…’ Morino said.

‘That won’t be necessary, thank you. Good night.’

At the main entrance downstairs, Dario was explaining in an authoritative tone to the assembled fans that if only Del Piero had taken down that long ball from Conte late in the second period with the inside of his foot and then got in the cross to Inzaghi, who was wide open… Zen slipped unnoticed through the opinionated throng and made his way back to the hotel.

The night clerk on duty was the same one who had been there when Zen arrived on the train from Rome, a short balding man with an expression which mingled anxiety, humiliation and aggression, as if he were perpetually haunted by the suspicion that everyone secretly despised him for his frailty and incompetence and was defying them to come right out and admit it.

Zen flashed his identification card.

‘Show me a list of everyone staying here,’ he said.

‘ Staying here?’ asked the clerk, wide-eyed, as though the idea of anyone staying at a hotel was a bizarre and slightly disturbing notion which had never occurred to him before.

‘Everyone currently registered at the hotel,’ Zen explained.

‘Staying here now?’

‘What do you think I mean, April the first next year? Just show me the book.’

The clerk shook his head violently.

‘There isn’t one! No one has a book any more! Books are finished.’

He turned away, pressing a series of buttons on a computer keyboard. Paper unrolled to a staccato rhythm from a printer on the shelf beside him. The clerk tore it off and handed it to Zen.

‘There! Everyone who’s here now! All of them, every one!’

He stared at Zen with a manic intensity which suggested that there were in fact a number of guests not named on the list whose bodies were concealed in the cellar. Zen walked through an archway into the bar and sat down at a corner table, scanning the list. It was more or less what he had expected. Apart from the ten foreigners — three Swiss, four Germans, two Americans and a Frenchman — there was a woman, three couples and four single men, excluding himself. None of the names meant anything to him, but tomorrow he would return to the Commissariato di Polizia and ask them to run a search of the records.

‘Have you got a light?’

He looked up, his right hand already reaching automatically for his lighter. The speaker was a young woman in black leggings and a leather blouson. Zen vaguely remembered having seen her leaving the room next to his when he got back the previous evening. She lit her cigarette, then slumped down in the armchair opposite him.

‘Do you mind if I sit here?’

Zen glanced at her curiously. The bar was empty, and there was no shortage of available seats.

‘Suit yourself.’

The woman took a few puffs at her cigarette, then ground it out in the ashtray. Her hair was cropped short in layers, she wore no make-up and the expression of her green eyes was uncompromisingly direct.

‘I don’t usually do things like this,’ she said.

Zen smiled politely.

‘No.’

‘The truth is, I’m going out of my mind with boredom.’

‘I see.’

‘Alba is fantastically boring, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so.’

It couldn’t be a pick-up, he decided. She was too straightforward to be anything other than a professional, in which case she would have got to the point by now. Besides, it was hard to imagine that sort of action in the bar of the Alba Palace.

The young woman’s eyes met his.

‘You’re here on business?’

Zen nodded.

‘And you?’

‘The worst kind. Family business.’

Silence fell. Zen had decided to make no attempt to keep the conversation going. The woman was quite pretty, he supposed, in a rangy, sharp-featured way, but he wasn’t attracted to her. For him, the voice was always the key to such things, and hers lacked that special resonance.

‘You’re a policeman,’ she said.

He hesitated just a second.

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘I heard you talking to the desk clerk. Something about wanting a list of guests at the hotel. He seemed quite amazed, but then he always does.’

She pointed to the scroll of paper on the table.

‘Is that it?’

Zen regarded her in pointed silence.

‘I suppose I’m being indiscreet,’ she said. ‘It’s just that the idea that anyone in this dump might be of interest to the police seemed irresistibly… well, interesting.’

Zen thought briefly of telling her to mind her own business. Then it occurred to him that she might be of use.

‘It’s not an official matter. At least, not yet. Someone’s been making anonymous phone calls. I have reason to believe that it’s one of the people staying here.’

He handed over the list.

‘Have you met any of the men whose names I’ve marked?’

‘This one tried to chat me up in the restaurant last night and then gave me his card. He’s a commercial traveller in wines and seems to sample a lot of the product. And one of the others patted my bottom in the lift yesterday. I don’t know his name.’

She handed the list back.

‘What does your anonymous caller want, anyway?’

‘I don’t know. But he knows who I am, and…’

‘Speaking of which, we should introduce ourselves.’

She turned the list around and pointed to the name ‘Carla Arduini’.

‘And you must be Aurelio Zen.’

He looked at her, frowning.

‘How did you know that?’

‘It was in all the local papers, along with a photograph,’ she replied airily. ‘“Ministry sends top man from Rome to investigate Vincenzo case,” that sort of thing. Perhaps that’s how your caller found out, too.’

‘Perhaps.’

Zen felt slightly put out that this idea hadn’t occurred to him.

‘But why does he bother phoning you, if he’s staying here? If he’s too timid to go to your room, he could always accost you in the bar. After all, I have!’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea, signorina. That’s what makes it so unsettling. But enough about that. What are you doing here? Or is it too private to discuss?’

Carla Arduini appeared to consider this question for a moment.

‘I’m trying to trace a relative.’

Zen looked away.

‘A few years ago, a relative traced me. And without even trying,’ he said.

‘What sort of relative?’

‘My father.’

He corrected himself with a gesture of the hand.

‘My mother’s husband.’

‘Is there a distinction?’

Zen did not reply. Carla Arduini got to her feet.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m being tactless and tiresome. I think it’s this place. It seems to be driving me mad.’

Zen stood up, smiling.

‘I know what you mean. Look, perhaps we could have dinner together some time. When are you leaving?’

Carla Arduini looked at him intently, as though considering this proposition.

‘Don’t worry,’ Zen went on. ‘I’m not going to pat your bottom. That’s not my style, and, besides, you’re young enough to be my daughter.’

The woman unexpectedly burst into laughter.

‘Yes, I am!’

‘I’ll give you a call. Which room are you in?’

He glanced at the list.

‘312? Right next to mine. And how long are you staying?’

She looked at him with her disconcertingly candid green eyes.

‘As long as it takes.’

When he emerged from his hotel the next morning, the sky had settled back into a grey, overcast mode which brought it down to a point where it seemed to graze the rooftops. Having stopped in a bar for an eye-opening shot of caffeine, Zen made his way along Via Maestra to the house to which Tullio Legna had led him earlier, ascended to the first floor and rang the bell.

There was no answer. He rang twice more before the door was opened by a young woman in the silk dressing-gown which the doctor had been wearing on Zen’s previous visit. He introduced himself and asked apologetically if it were possible to see Lucchese.

‘Is it about moths, medicine or music?’ the woman demanded.

‘Medicine. Your father treated me for…’

‘My father is dead and has nothing to do with it.’

She pulled back the door with a yawn which was echoed by the silk gown, the two sides gaping open to reveal the upper slope of her breasts.

‘Wait in there,’ she said, pointing to a doorway on the other side of the hall. ‘I’ll tell the prince that you’re here.’

She strode off down the corridor, her bare feet as soundless as an angel’s on the terracotta tiles.

The room in which Zen had been directed to wait appeared to be a library. Taking the only seat visible, a wooden stool positioned in front of a writing desk, he waited.

And waited. And waited. Outside, the sun broke through for a brief and jagged moment, darting in and out of the room like a fugitive memory. Not daring to smoke, Zen got up and started to look over the volumes on the shelves. Old and heavily worn by use, they all seemed to be about musical instruments. There were pictures of pianos and organs, weirdly contorted wind instruments, and stringed ones the shape of a pregnant woman.

‘My apologies for keeping you waiting, dottore.’

He turned to find Lucchese in the doorway, immaculate in a black suit and tie.

‘I have to attend a funeral this morning. One of my relatives has apparently managed to kill himself by falling into a vat of wine. Quite exceptionally inept, even by the standards of the family, but there it is. Hence the delay.’

Zen stood up.

‘Please excuse me for disturbing you so early in the morning, principe.’

Lucchese sighed loudly.

‘Oh dear, has Irena been trying to impress you? That’s one of the problems of fucking down, I’m afraid. There are, of course, compensations. Anyway, what can I do for you? Is it about your head, or is it about your head? I mean, sutures or psychoanalysis? Am I babbling? Irena, who studies music at the Academy in Turin, by the way, brought some exceptionally fine hashish with her and I’m afraid that we rather over-indulged last night — in more ways than one, in fact. Sorry, wrong thing to say to a policeman. Look, why don’t I just shut up and let you talk instead?’

Zen smiled nervously.

‘Actually, I just wondered if there was any chance of getting these stitches out. They make me look like Frankenstein’s monster, besides attracting some attention I could do without. But if you’re incapacitated, principe…’

‘Incapacitated? I fancy that Irena could vouch for me in that respect.’

He went over to the window, grasping the frame at either side with his pale, articulate hands. As if in response, the sunlight returned in full strength, revealing shoals of dust like minnows in the air.

‘It was harpsichords that brought us together,’ the prince continued. ‘I happen to own two particularly fine models, both seventeenth century. We have since moved on from one form of plucked instrument to… No, I don’t think I’ll finish that thought. As for your stitches, there’s no question of removing them yet. The wound would merely reopen and look even worse than it does now.’

Zen nodded meekly.

‘Well, thank you for receiving me, and, once again, please excuse the disturbance.’

‘Not at all.’

Zen started to leave, then turned back.

‘Would the name of the relative whose funeral you’re attending be Bruno Scorrone, by any chance?’ he enquired.

‘That’s him. My cousin twice removed, da parte di madre. I never liked the man in the first place and haven’t seen him for over a decade, but one’s expected to turn out for these things.’

‘I’d like you to see him now.’

Lucchese peered at him.

‘He’s dead, dottore. Or so I’ve been reliably informed.’

‘That’s precisely why I’d like you to see him. What time is the funeral?’

‘Eleven.’

‘Here in town?’

‘In Palazzuole, the village where he lived. But why should you be interested? God knows I’m not, and I’m family.’

Zen lowered his voice.

‘I was sent here to investigate the death of Aldo Vincenzo. Since my arrival, two other men have died violently. In a quiet, rural community like this, it is statistically improbable that three such incidents should occur without there being a connection between them. There is therefore a possibility, to put it no higher, that your cousin’s death may not have been an accident. My only chance of proving this is to examine the cadaver before it is buried or cremated. To do so officially, I would need the family’s permission, which almost certainly would not be granted. A judicial order would take too long, so I have to improvise. Do you have any insuperable objection to performing a post-mortem examination on a relative?’

Lucchese’s lips spread in a wicked smile.

‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure! In fact, I can think of three or four kinsmen whom I would be glad to eviscerate without the formalities of a death certificate.’

He frowned.

‘But in this case it’s impossible. The corpse is laid out at Scorrone’s house, closely watched over by the allegedly grieving widow and an indeterminate number of offspring summoned from their niches in Molino.’

‘Where?’

‘I beg your pardon. My term for the megalopolis which bestraddles us to the north. Torino plus Milano equals Molino.’

Zen nodded sadly.

‘I understand. Oh, well, it was worth a try.’

‘However, thanks to an ancient family tradition which I have just remembered, there should be no problem.’

Lucchese moved a tall ladder attached to a rail along the shelving, climbed up and produced a large spike made of some dull-coloured metal.

‘Careful!’ he cried, dropping it down to Zen, who made the catch. ‘Apart from anything else, it’s solid silver.’

Leaning further out from the ladder, Lucchese retrieved from a still higher shelf a large rubber mallet.

‘You’re not squeamish, I hope?’ he said as he climbed back down the ladder.

‘Why?’

Lucchese smiled enigmatically.

‘Breaking hearts is a gory business. I’ll just get my bag of tricks, and we’ll be off.’

Aurelio Zen’s second journey to Palazzuole was a marked improvement over his first. They travelled in a pre-war Bugatti exhumed from a former stable in the courtyard of the Palazzo Lucchese and driven by Irena, now clad in a minimalistic black skirt and jacket. Zen reclined on the spacious rear seat with the prince, who proceeded to pursue a discussion which he and Irena had apparently been having earlier, involving quilling techniques in early eighteenth-century harpsichords, with particular reference to the relative merits of raven and crow feathers.

As they crossed the smoky ridge of hills surrounding Alba, Lucchese leant forward and pushed a button on the fascia of the rear compartment. An inlaid rosewood panel opened to reveal a drinks cabinet containing several thick glass decanters. Most appeared to be empty, or reduced to an unappetizing syrupy residue. Lucchese sniffed the two that looked most promising.

‘Cognac, query. And something that might once have been whisky.’

Irena passed back what looked like a fat twist of paper.

‘Try some of this.’

‘Is this wise?’ asked Lucchese. ‘You may not be aware, my dear, that Dottor Zen is an officer of the law.’

The massive car slowed majestically to a halt.

‘You want to walk?’ asked Irena pointedly.

Zen glanced confusedly at Lucchese.

‘Because the prince and I are planning to smoke some hash,’ Irena continued, ‘so if you don’t want to be a party to a crime, you’d better get out now.’

Zen gave her his most intimidating glare, with no discernible effect whatsoever.

‘Kindly drive on,’ he replied.

Lucchese lit the roll-up, took a few pungent puffs and then offered it politely to his fellow-passenger, who shook his head.

‘So who killed Aldo Vincenzo?’ asked the prince, passing the joint back to Irena.

Zen looked at him in astonishment.

‘ I don’t know!’

‘Really? Everyone else seems to.’

‘They do?’

The hash-laden cigarette passed back again.

‘So who was it?’ Zen demanded.

The prince was otherwise engaged for some time.

‘Ah, but we’re not telling!’ he said when he finally exhaled. ‘Around here, we like to hoard our little secrets. Keep them dark, like truffles. They’re the only thing we have, you see.’

‘ Cherchez la femme,’ commented Irena.

The car was now filled with fragrant dark smoke. Zen tried to open the window, but the handle spun round without effect.

‘So everyone knows, eh?’

The prince laughed merrily.

‘Of course! If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be knowledge.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Do you agree that things are either knowable or unknowable?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘In that case, the identity of the killer is either unknowable, in which case your question makes no sense, or it is knowable and therefore by definition known. I really don’t see your problem, dottore. To me it’s all as clear as day.’

He broke into another helpless fit of giggles and passed the joint back to Irena, who swerved to avoid a truck which had suddenly materialized in front of them.

‘Take the conversation which my protegee and I were having before you raised this interesting philosophical issue. Thanks to his treatise L’art de toucher le clavecin, we know a considerable amount about Couperin’s preferences in quilling and other matters, but we have no idea at all what Scarlatti expected of his instruments — or even if he gave a damn one way or the other. The man was clearly a total degenerate, probably an obsessive gambler, quite possibly a drug addict.’

More gales of giggles.

‘But nevertheless he was harpsichord tutor to the Infanta of Spain, and the molecular structure of the stone used to build several rooms in the Escorial must be impregnated with the sounds produced from whatever instruments he used. It’s like this eclipse this morning. We know how, why and when it will happen, but people used to think it was caused by a dragon eating the sun.’

‘The what?’

‘ The sun! ’ Lucchese replied loudly, as though to a deaf person.

‘What son?’

Outside the window, the landscape had started to ripple and break into waves, curling lazily over like the slow, spent wash of Adriatic storms fetching up on a mudbank in Zen’s native lagoons. But the sky looked threatening, the light had waned and the wind might get up at any minute.

‘Speaking of L’art de toucher,’ said Irena, hurling the Bugatti round a tight bend, ‘how long will it take to plant this relative of yours? Or maybe we could have a quickie at the cemetery? I’ve always wanted to do it on a grave.’

‘ What son?’ Zen shouted at Lucchese. ‘I never told you I had a son! And I don’t. He’s dead. She killed him, and I wasn’t even there!’

Eons passed in the blink of a celestial eye.

‘Right at the next turning, Irena,’ said a voice.

Everything came to a stop. There was a house and lots of cars. People, too, all wearing black.

‘I suggest you let me do the talking, dottore,’ said Lucchese, getting out of the car. Zen followed, hastily wiping the tears from his face. Irena kissed him on the cheek.

‘It’ll be all right,’ she said in a kindly voice. ‘It’s not your fault.’

Zen watched her fade in and out of focus for a while.

‘What was it you said? “ Cherchez la femme.” Do you mean a woman did it?’

But Irena had turned away to join her partner, who was surrounded by a dense knot of family members bent on lengthy and loud commiseration. The prince’s voice came floating back towards Zen like the commentary to an unwatched television programme.

‘… but before we go any further, I regret to say that I have an unpleasant but equally unavoidable duty to perform. Ah, there you are, my dear. This is my niece, Irena Francavilla, whom I have taken under my wing after she fell into some bad company in Turin. I’m glad to say that she’s now almost completely recovered, although as a safety measure I am continuing the treatment thrice daily on a regular basis for the moment lest any relapse occur.’

‘When’s my next shot due, principe?’ moaned Irena.

‘Soon, my child, soon. Where were we? Yes, of course, the unpleasant duty I referred to earlier. As you may be aware, it has been customary since time immemorial for members of my family to undergo cardiac puncture post-mortem. I have no reason to suppose that my dear cousin would have wished to break this tradition, although, given the tragic circumstances leading to his unexpected demise, it was naturally impossible for him to confirm this.’

‘What are you talking about?’ one of the women in mourning asked. ‘What tradition?’

‘In principle it dates back at least three hundred years, but in practice it was reinstituted by my great-great-grandfather, Guido Andrea.’

Andrea, thought Zen. Cherchez la femme! Suddenly it all made sense.

‘Guido’s morbid horror of being entombed alive was notorious in our family. Indeed, the memory of it survives to this day. I recall mentioning it on one occasion to my brother, and his replying that all we need do was to bury his portable phone with him! But, joking aside, I feel sure that poor dear Bruno would have wished to receive the usual formalities, and I have therefore come prepared. It won’t take long.’

‘What won’t?’

‘A simple medical procedure, my dear,’ the prince replied, ‘but you might prefer to be spared the details.’

‘ Medical? But Bruno’s not… I mean, he’s…’

‘Dead. Yes, I’m sure he is, to all appearances. But these things are not always as certain as they might seem. There have been several cases of “corpses” showing signs of life during their own funeral service, which, needless to say, is extremely embarrassing for all concerned. Still more distressing is the case of those for whom reanimation has occurred a little later — too late, in fact. Scarcely a graveyard is excavated without at least one skeleton being discovered in a kneeling position, straining in vain to lift the lid of the coffin lying under several tons of solid earth.’

The women gasped and clutched their throats. Prince Lucchese nodded gravely.

‘It was to avoid the possibility of just such a fate that my great-great-grandfather instructed the family physician to drive a spike into his heart prior to the funeral. I believe they originally used a simple nail, but some time later an instrument was specifically fashioned for this purpose out of solid silver by a local craftsman. It is presently in my possession, and I now propose to put it to use, thus allowing my beloved cousin to rest in assured peace. My colleague, Dottor Aurelio Zen, will assist me.’

He waved to Zen, who followed him inside the house.

Afterwards, of course, it was clear to Aurelio Zen that he had been a victim of passive smoking. Although he had declined Lucchese’s offer of the hashish-spiked cigarette, the fumes circulating in the closed car had been quite strong enough for him to become drugged by proxy. All this was clear in retrospect, but at the time he had only the evidence of his senses to go on, and they told him a completely different story.

There were, for a start, three versions of Prince Lucchese. One was preparing to do something, the next was doing it, while the third told Zen the results of whatever had been done by the other two. This activity was disturbingly ambiguous, at once a hideous scenario involving a dead body, surgical knives and some very primitive butchery, and an entirely innocent, even praiseworthy activity of vital importance for reasons which, however, were not immediately apparent.

Under the circumstances, Zen decided to take a back seat — literally, in this case. There was a wicker chair near the door where he sat down, watching the trinity of princes at work and responding as best he could to their baffling comments. The centre of the room was occupied by a dining table on which stood an ornate, oblong wooden chest. The threefold Lucchese opened the black bag he had brought with him and set to work on whatever was inside, talking in a low, purposeful voice the whole time.

‘No visible injuries apart from some superficial lesions to the thorax… Probably gouged himself on some metal edge on the way in… Massive loss of blood pre-mortem, though, and visible traumas don’t account for same… Now let’s have a look inside… God, look at this subcutaneous fat… Just hack through the costal cartilage and whip out the… Forgotten how easy all this is… That’s odd… No trace of wine in the lungs, but he must have sucked some in unless… Heart attack before he hit the surface, perhaps… Let’s take another look at that neck… Ah… Well, now, that’s interesting…’

The doctor and his two assistants left the room, returning in due course as one person. Confronted by this miracle, Zen emerged from his wake with a sense of panic.

‘What? Who? When?’ he spluttered, leaping to his feet.

‘Probable homicide, person or persons unknown, at or about the stated time of death,’ Lucchese replied succinctly, wiping his blood-stained instruments on a filthy rag.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure that he was dead when he went into the wine vat. And I’m almost sure that it was not a natural death. That lesion in his neck is a lot deeper than it looks. The artery is severed, and there are small fragments of broken glass embedded in the surrounding flesh.’

‘And you’ll testify to that?’

Lucchese looked at him haughtily.

‘Of course not. I haven’t been invited to examine the cadaver, and therefore no such examination has taken place. I’m merely performing the last secular rites for my cousin, according to a long-standing tradition in our family. Speaking of which, I suppose I’d better do the damned thing, just in case anyone checks.’

He took the silver spike and set it down on the dead man’s chest, then lifted the mallet. There were a number of dull-sounding blows, the last accompanied by a guttural grunt from Lucchese. Feeling nauseous, Zen went back outside. The cloud had burned off and the sun shone softly in a flawless azure sky.

‘The priest is here!’ a woman said excitedly. ‘Can we proceed?’

‘Out of the question,’ a voice proceeding from Zen’s throat pronounced. ‘It is my sad duty to inform you that your late relative’s body is evidence in a criminal case.’

Cries of astonishment burst out all around. The door of the house banged shut and Lucchese emerged, clutching his black bag.

‘This man,’ Zen continued, pointing to him, ‘has been apprehened mutilating a corpse in direct contravention of section 1092 paragraph 3A of the Criminal Code. He is now under arrest, and the said corpse is material evidence in the case. This house and its contents are therefore sealed and under my direct and personal jurisdiction. No one can enter and nothing can be removed until further notice.’

‘But the funeral!’ an elderly woman exclaimed. ‘It’s all arranged!’

‘I regret that it will have to be rearranged. The law is the law, and I’m here to uphold it.’

‘Me, too,’ said a voice behind him.

Turning, Zen found himself face to face with a plump, stolid man in a dark grey suit.

‘Enrico Pascal, maresciallo dei Carabinieri,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, dottore, but I’m not familiar with the article of the code you just cited.’

‘Of course not. I just made it up.’

The Carabinieri officer stared at him.

‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘Yes.’

It was only now that he was sure of this. He must definitely have gone out of his mind, because night seemed to be falling. It was not yet dark, but the light had been gutted and thinned down to a tenuous essence with no more substance than moonshine. Luckily no one was paying any attention to him. They were all looking up at the sky, many of them holding up wafers of plastic like a priest displaying the host. Occasional cries and exclamations broke the silence. Narrowing his eyes to a squint, Zen tried to look at the sun. Its hazy outline eluded him, but it seemed damaged.

‘Look through this,’ said a voice he recognized as Irena’s.

A piece of blank photographic negative was pressed into his hand. He raised it to his eyes and beheld in sudden terror the pallid disc of the sun occluded on one side, as though by a huge wing.

‘You were blinded by the light,’ said the voice.

At once fascinated and appalled by the spectacle unfolding in the skies, Zen did not turn for some time. When he did, Irena was nowhere to be seen. The landscape still had a ghostly pallor, but the eclipse had passed its peak and the light was gradually recovering its former vitality. The Carabinieri official materialized at Zen’s side.

‘That’s a nasty-looking cut you’ve got there, dottore,’ he said. ‘Quite fresh, too, by the look of it.’

He pointed down the hill, where the Bugatti could just be seen turning on to the road back to Alba.

‘It seems that your suspect in this alleged crime has escaped.’

Zen looked Pascal in the eye.

‘You must think I’m mad.’

The maresciallo made a puffing noise and performed a full-body shrug, indicating that he wouldn’t hold a little thing like madness against a colleague.

‘But there’s actually a good reason for this farce,’ Zen went on. ‘I have preliminary evidence leading me to believe that Bruno Scorrone was murdered. A full autopsy will prove that, and this gives us a pretext for ordering one. Can you call one of your men out here to guard the corpse until the ambulance arrives? Meanwhile I’d like to have a chat with you in private.’

Pascal returned his stare for a moment.

‘Well, this will set people’s tongues wagging!’ he said. ‘All right, I’ll play along. But you’d better be right about this, dottore. If it turns out that this really is a farce, I won’t be able to show my face in public again.’

While the maresciallo strode off to find a phone, Zen did some preliminary damage assessment. By now the light had almost completely recovered, and with it his grasp of the situation. He anxiously reviewed what he could remember doing and saying during his own partial eclipse. Most of it seemed acceptable, given the circumstances, although no doubt disconcertingly erratic to those who had not abused the substance in question. But there was one aspect that he felt less confident about, something he had now forgotten but which he could sense lurking at the fringes of his consciousness like a stage villain concealed behind a curtain.

‘ Buon giorno, dottore.’

Andrea Rodriguez was wearing a black suit whose cut and fabric suggested board meetings and power lunches rather than funerals.

‘Manlio insisted that I come and greet you,’ she continued in her laboured but correct Italian. ‘This is his coming-out party, you see, and he’s nervous about his reception. “They’ll never forgive me if I don’t go,” he said, “and if I do, they’ll cut me dead.”’

She nodded towards a knot of men standing in the centre of the courtyard.

‘He was wrong, I’m glad to say. But he thought that being seen fraternizing with you might be pushing his luck, so he sent me instead. Most of these people have rearranged their schedules specially in order to be here, you see, and then you burst in and cancel the whole event on some specious pretext. You’re not very popular with the locals just now, I’m afraid.’

Zen conceded the point with a nod.

‘Neither am I,’ Andrea Rodriguez added. ‘It’s not easy being a foreigner here, particularly when everyone expected you to be a man.’

The ironies of the situation had been borne in on Zen the day before, after their introduction at the Vincenzo house. In Italian, Andrea is a man’s name; in English, he had learned, a woman’s. When Aldo Vincenzo had read a letter addressed to his son and signed ‘Andrea’, he had drawn the seemingly obvious conclusion: the real reason why Manlio refused to entertain his suggestion of forcing a marriage with Lisa Faigano was that he had ‘come out’ during his stay in California.

Although undeniably Californian, Andrea was not only female but of Italian descent on her mother’s side, her father stemming from one of the presettlement Spanish families. Manlio had been so insulted by his father’s intransigent attitude that he had refused to explain.

‘Why should I deign to correct someone who assumed he already understood everything?’ he had demanded rhetorically. ‘In the end, I assumed, the truth would come out and I would be vindicated. Instead, my father died as he had lived — in ignorance.’

All this should have made Zen and Andrea natural partners, as outsiders and rejects from the community. But he saw things differently. Perhaps it was the last sigh of the hashish, undulating up from the bottom of his cranium like long weed from the seabed, or perhaps just a natural bloody-mindedness, but instead of accepting the olive branch being extended to him, Zen turned on the American with a bureaucratic glint in his eye.

‘I think you told me that your mother’s family was Sicilian, signorina,’ he said, emphasizing the final, status-diminishing epithet.

‘That’s right.’

‘From where, originally?’

‘A village called Corleone, up in the mountains behind Palermo. My grandfather emigrated in 1905, and…’

Zen’s expression intensified.

‘Corleone, eh? A notorious hotbed of the Mafia. No doubt you still have connections there. A word in the right ear, some cash up-front, plus a promise of more to come when the Vincenzo property is sold… After the village festa, Manlio lures his drunken father out to the vineyard where your hired assassins are waiting. They do the deed, then mutilate the corpse to look as if the whole thing was the result of some vicious local vendetta.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’

Zen looked at her seriously.

‘You’re the second person to ask me that.’

‘Well, maybe you should think about it!’ snapped Andrea Rodriguez. ‘You’ve already alienated everyone else here, and now you’ve made another enemy.’

‘I’ve executed your orders, dottore!’

Enrico Pascal was still twenty metres away, but his voice carried clearly to Zen — and to everyone else assembled in the courtyard. The underlying message was made equally clear as Andrea Rodriguez turned her back pointedly on Zen and strode off to join the others.

‘The ambulance will here shortly, and meanwhile my orderly has secured the premises,’ the Carabinieri official continued in the same parade-ground tones. ‘Do you have any further orders?’

‘Not at present!’ bellowed Zen in return. In an undertone he added, ‘Where’s the winery?’

‘Over there, down the hill,’ whispered Pascal, nodding to one side. ‘Just follow the track.’

‘Meet me there in fifteen minutes.’

Zen turned away. Pascal saluted ostentatiously and marched back towards the house as though he had been dismissed.

Realizing that the funeral ceremony was indeed not going to take place, the assembled mourners were by now heading towards their cars and driving away. Zen walked past them and started at a leisurely pace down the concrete-paved track which connected the Scorrone residence with its commercial appendage, discreetly tucked away out of sight over a ridge of the hillside.

Enrico Pascal appeared exactly fifteen minutes later, driving down the same track along which Zen had walked.

‘Make it brief,’ he warned, stepping out of the jeep. ‘Feelings are running high, I can tell you. You’re presently the most unpopular person in the Langhe, and if I’m seen consorting with you…’

Zen laughed.

‘The most unpopular? I’m glad to hear it. After all the flannel I’ve been getting from everyone here, it’s a relief to be hated and feared again. I need that edge to work properly.’

Enrico Pascal did not dignify this with a reply. Zen sighed.

‘All right, I’ll make it brief. My first question is what Bruno Scorrone was doing down here yesterday afternoon in the first place. I’ve taken a look around this installation. I don’t know much about vinification, but I can tell high technology when I see it. Once the controls are set, this equipment can run itself. In any case, Scorrone was not exactly in the fine wine business. Why should he cut short his Sunday lunch to come and check on the progress of some bulk wine which he was going to blend and sell for next to nothing anyway?’

‘According to his wife, he said that he had to take delivery of a shipment.’

‘On a Sunday?’

‘We haven’t been able to confirm it, but that’s not unusual. Bruno preferred to keep his paperwork to a minimum.’

‘You mean he was operating illegally?’

The maresciallo gestured in an anguished way, to indicate the impossibility of conveying the complexities of the situation to an outsider.

‘Let’s say that he operated in a grey area, not necessarily crooked but not strictly legal either. Lots of people around here do. On the one hand there are the legitimate demands of the market, on the other the often unreasonable stipulations of the myriad bureaucracies anywhere between here and Brussels. A man has to make a living. Bruno didn’t adulterate his wine, at least not usually, but he was sometimes — how shall I put it? — imaginative as to its origins.’

Zen looked around the concrete expanses of the winery. The staff had been given the day off, and in its stagnant desolation the place might have been any one of the ugly, light-industrial complexes of indeterminate purpose which littered the highways of the region. The only sign of its true function came in the form of a number of plastic-covered demijohns stacked on one of the loading platforms. Zen pointed them out to Pascal.

‘Do you think that could be the wine that was delivered the afternoon he died?’

The maresciallo shrugged.

‘Who knows? Bruno did a lot of business on a small scale. You saw the occasional tanker from Puglia or Calabria pulling up here, but it was mainly local products he used. All good stuff, but, as I said, imaginatively labelled.’

Zen led the way over to the cluster of flagons. There was no marking or other indication of origin on them.

‘These could have come from anywhere,’ he said.

‘Oh, I don’t know about anywhere.’

Pascal walked back to the office at the end of the loading bays, returning a few moments later with a pipette and a glass. Handing both to Zen, he pulled out the rubber bung securing the mouth of one of the damigiane, then reclaimed the pipette and lowered it through the layer of olive oil floated on the surface of the wine to keep the air out. He pumped the bulb a few times, and repeated the procedure to expel the wine into the glass. Swirling the wine around, he sniffed deeply.

‘Ah!’

He took a large sip, swishing it around his mouth like a gargle, and finally swallowing.

‘Yes,’ he said.

The procedure was repeated.

‘Definitely,’ Enrico Pascal pronounced.

Zen stared at him bemusedly.

‘Definitely what?’

Pascal emptied the remaining wine on to the ground and replugged the container.

‘I’d bet quite a large sum that this particular wine was made by the Faigano brothers.’

‘You can tell that just by tasting it?’

A shrug.

‘I drink a lot of Gianni and Maurizio’s wines and I’d be prepared to swear that this is one of theirs.’

Catching Zen’s glance, he added, ‘Off the record, of course. Anyway, there’s no proof that this is the delivery Bruno came to collect.’

Zen sighed histrionically.

‘That seems to be the keynote of this whole case. Lots of hints and indications, but no proof. What am I supposed to do?’

‘Ah, well, dottore, that’s for you to decide.’

Zen got back to his hotel late that afternoon, having hired a local driver to take him to Alba. Above the wavering outline of the darkening hills, the sky was a molten glory, ranging from a creamy peach to a delicate glowing pink like sunlight filtered through a baby’s ear. The taxi dropped Zen in Piazza Savona, and he spent some time just wandering around aimlessly, as delighted as a child with the sense of purposeful but mysterious activity all around his brief excursion into the rural hinterland. Nature was neither benign nor malign, his genes told him. However cropped, parcelled and inhabited, it remained other. This was its fascination but also its horror. A few hours was enough.

He crossed to the tree-lined promenade at the centre of the square and spent some time looking over the remaindered volumes offered for sale by the bancari. The east end of the central reservation was disfigured by an abstract fountain in early sixties’ Civic Modern style, beside which stood a pillar inscribed with the elliptical opening words from the book by Beppe Fenoglio about the heroic and tragic ‘Twenty-three days of Alba’, when the local partisans precipitately seized control of the city from the retreating Fascists: Two thousand of them took Alba on 10 October, and two hundred lost it on 2 November 1944.

As Zen walked slowly round to the entrance of the hotel, his mind was on those eighteen hundred young men whose deaths Fenoglio had celebrated by implication, and the two hundred who had survived. If they were still alive, they would now be in their seventies. How did they view it all, looking back? Had it been worth the suffering, the bloodshed, the deaths? Were they bitter at having fought and risked everything in a desperate conflict for ideals that were almost immediately betrayed or compromised? Or was it simply the most exciting thing which had ever happened to them, an experience never to be forgotten, immune from judgement or regret, like the first time a woman gives herself to you?

His room seemed a refuge, quiet and secure, against these and other doubts. Zen took off his jacket and shoes and collapsed on the bed, closing his eyes for what he thought of as a ‘little rest’ amply earned by his exertions. When he awoke, it was to the trilling of the telephone. Disoriented and resentful, he snatched up the receiver.

‘Yes?’

‘Good afternoon, dottore. I trust I’m not disturbing you.’

Zen groaned.

‘Who are you?’ he yelled into the phone. ‘Why can’t you leave me alone? What in God’s name do you want anyway?’

‘ To invite you to dinner this evening, if you’re free. Seven o’clock, at the Maddalena on Via Gioberti.’

The line went dead. Zen glanced at the clock. It was just after half-past six. At least eight hours had elapsed since he had inhaled hashish courtesy of the prince and his companion, but the room seemed to be moving slightly around him like a carousel which had been turned off but was still revolving just fast enough to make stepping off a hazardous affair. Nevertheless, this was what he was going to have to do. The appointment he had just been offered, whatever its purpose, could not be avoided. If he didn’t turn up, it would simply be reassigned to a later date.

His mind went back to the Burolo affair in Sardinia, of which he had spoken to Lucchese, when he had been hounded down and confronted by a gangster he had once sent to prison, who now sought his revenge. This must be something similar, he thought wearily. A policeman inevitably made many enemies. Reaching for the phone again, he called the local Commissariato.

‘Police!’ snapped a voice he recognized.

‘ Ciao, Dario.’

A brief indignant pause.

‘This is the Alba police station! What do you want?’

‘Too bad about that penalty,’ Zen continued smoothly. ‘But Juve are still looking good for the championship.’

‘Who the…’

‘Aurelio Zen, Vice-Questore, Criminalpol, Rome. I have just received a phone call summoning me to a restaurant in Via Gioberti, the Maddalena. I’m to be there at seven, and I have reason to think that the person I am meeting may be armed and dangerous. Quite apart from my own safety, I have no wish to endanger the lives of the other patrons of the establishment in question.’

Dario took a moment to digest this information.

‘In view of this,’ Zen went on, ‘I suggest that a uniformed officer meet me here at the hotel in fifteen minutes and accompany me to the restaurant.’

‘I’ll see to it in person, dottore!’

‘I appreciate it.’

‘To be honest, there’s no one else on duty.’

Ten minutes later, bundled up in an overcoat and with his hat in hand, Aurelio Zen patrolled the grotesquely ample spaces of the lobby, taking care to stay well away from the windows and door where he would be visible from the street.

‘Good evening!’ said a female voice.

Startled out of his increasingly paranoid meditations, he turned to find himself facing the young woman who had introduced herself to him as Carla Arduini. She, too, was dressed to go out.

‘ Buona sera, signorina.’

For a moment she seemed inclined to linger, and perhaps to say something else, but to Zen’s relief she walked on and vanished through the revolving door. The last thing he needed at this point was any further complications, such as her taking him up on the dinner invitation he had thoughtlessly extended the previous evening for reasons he could no longer remember. These speculations were abruptly cancelled by the appearance of a uniformed figure carrying a machinegun with the air of someone not only prepared but eager to use it.

‘ Dottore! ’ he said hoarsely, catching sight of Zen.

‘Good evening, Dario.’

The young policeman scanned the lobby rapidly, as though armed enemies might be concealed anywhere. Failing to locate them, he consulted his watch.

‘Shall we go?’

‘Not just yet.’

‘But it’s time.’

‘Never turn up when you’re expected,’ Zen pronounced solemnly. ‘Keep them waiting. Their nerve will start to fray and they’ll be more likely to make a mistake.’

Dario nodded as though all this made sense.

‘Let’s have a drink here and arrive about ten minutes late,’ Zen told him.

At the bar, Dario ordered a Coke, Zen a spumante.

‘Are you from these parts?’ he asked the patrolman, pushing the muzzle of the submachine-gun aside.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Barolo.’

‘Do you know anything about a woman named Chiara Vincenzo? Widow of the late lamented Aldo.’

‘She was my great-aunt.’

Zen stared at him.

‘Is everyone here related to each other?’

‘Well, not everyone. Not incomers.’

Zen gave him a still harder look.

‘Present company excepted, of course!’ Dario responded hastily.

‘I understand your great-aunt Chiara died recently,’ said Zen, pressing his advantage.

‘That came as no surprise. She had been suffering from cancer for some time.’

‘How old was she?’

‘Sixty-one.’

He made an apologetic gesture.

‘Women normally last to seventy at least, sometimes ninety. But Aunt Chiara seemed to have lost the will to live a long time ago. There was a story about some tragedy in her youth which she never got over, I can’t remember the details.’

‘So she died just before her husband?’ asked Zen.

‘I suppose so, yes. A matter of weeks.’

‘ Cherchez la femme,’ Zen intoned with a superior air.

‘Pardon?’

‘Nothing.’

He glanced at his watch.

‘Let’s go.’

Outside, the streets were dark and almost deserted. A fine drizzle was falling, backed up by a powerful but lazy wind lolling around like a drunken braggart at the street corners. The few pedestrians about glanced nervously at the tall man and his armed escort, and hastened past.

As they turned into Via Gioberti, Zen began to have serious doubts about the wisdom of his plan. If there were an assassin, resentment with a rifle, this is where he would be waiting, in a doorway or at a window opposite the restaurant. He would take down young Dario first, then the unprotected Zen. But it was too late to back out now.

There were no shots. When they reached the Maddalena, Dario burst inside ahead of Zen, brandishing his machine-gun. The restaurant was packed, but when Zen made his entrance, there was not a sound to be heard. Everyone in the place had come to a halt in the midst of whatever they were doing, the waiters poised in mid-delivery or removal of dishes, the diners stilled, forks half-way to their mouths.

‘Aurelio Zen,’ he heard himself say. ‘I’m meeting someone for dinner. Has he arrived?’

A deferential elderly man in a suit and tie emerged from behind a desk.

‘ Si, certo,’ he said imperturbably, as though the appearance of armed men in uniform were a daily occurrence. ‘This way, please.’

Accompanied by the ever-watchful Dario, Zen and the head waiter traversed the crowded room and another beyond it, to come to rest at a table at the very rear of the premises. It was occupied by Carla Arduini. She and Zen stared at each other in silence for a long time. Then the head waiter coughed self-consciously.

‘You may go,’ Zen told him. ‘You too, Dario.’

The patrolman pulled him aside.

‘This could be a set-up, chief! They put this young woman out front to get you relaxed and off your guard while the killer awaits his chance…’

‘I don’t think so.’

Dario looked distinctly disappointed that the promised excitements and risks of the evening had come to nothing, leaving him to return to his routine duties at the police station.

‘Don’t you think I should take a seat at one of those tables over there and just keep an eye on things, just in case?’ he asked hopefully.

Zen scanned the room.

‘Those tables seem to be reserved.’

Dario smiled and patted his machine-gun.

‘Believe me, I’m not going to have any problem getting seated.’

Zen sighed and nodded.

‘All right. I’ll have some food sent over. But don’t wave that thing around too much. You’ll scare the customers.’

Dario grinned impishly.

‘We’ll get great service, though!’

Indeed, waiters appeared with extraordinary promptness, bearing menus and wine lists of such complexity that Zen finally shrugged and said, ‘Just bring me something good to eat. A warm starter and a main course. I don’t care what it is, as long as it has truffles grated thickly all over it.’

He glanced at Carla Arduini, who nodded.

‘The same for me.’

‘And take some over to that lad over in the corner with the gun,’ Zen added. ‘He gets nervous if he isn’t fed properly.’

When the flurry of attendance had died away, he looked up at his companion.

‘So it was you?’

She nodded. Zen lit a cigarette and studied her.

‘And who is your collaborator? The man on the phone.’

‘I have no collaborator.’

‘But that voice…’

‘It’s an electronic device which alters your voice to any register you desire,’ Carla Arduini explained. ‘I bought one and hooked it up to my telephone at the hotel. It can make you sound like a man, a woman, a child, even an opera singer. For my purposes, a slightly metallic man’s voice seemed best.’

Zen puffed away, studying her face closely all the while.

‘And what were those purposes?’

She smiled wanly.

‘I planned to make a series of threatening phone calls, each with a vague clue to the mystery, and leave you to twist slowly in the wind, tormented by nameless fears. I’m not sure what I planned to do after that. I certainly didn’t intend you any physical harm, despite my threats. I just wanted to scare you.’

She gestured to the table where Dario was sitting.

‘It certainly looks as if I succeeded.’

A bottle of wine arrived. Zen poured them both a glass and drank his off at a gulp.

‘So why me? Or is it the police in general you have it in for? Did you just pick any officer at random?’

‘No, it was personal.’

Their first course arrived with the same promptitude as the menus, a mound of homemade pasta buried under a fall of truffle flakes so thick as to almost overflow the bowl.

‘Personal? We met for the first time two days ago, signorina.’

‘Yes, but I already knew who you were, you see. And as soon as I saw a news report saying that you had been sent up here to investigate the Vincenzo murder, I decided that I had to act.’

She paused.

‘No, “decided” is the wrong word. Something decided for me. Even at the time, I remember asking myself what I hoped to gain. But it was irresistible. So I booked a room next to yours in the hotel, and here I am.’

Zen wound a portion of truffle-scented noodles around his fork and began to eat. At least the food made sense.

‘Amalia mentioned your name only once,’ Carla Arduini went on, her own meal still untouched. ‘We’d had a terrible row about nothing, one of those things that happens when you have an adolescent girl and her mother living too closely together. I understand now. that I just resented her control. I wanted to create my own nest, my own way. It’s a very basic instinct.’

She pushed her dish of pasta away.

‘I can’t eat this.’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘I just can’t eat it. I can’t eat anything.’

Zen clicked his fingers. A waiter instantly materialized.

‘The signorina is feeling unwell. Please cancel her main course and offer this to my colleague over there.’

He pointed to Dario, who had already cleaned his plate. The waiter looked around uncertainly.

‘The one with the…’

‘Exactly.’

The waiter vanished.

‘So you and your mother had a row,’ Zen continued, pouring himself more wine. ‘I still don’t see where I come into it.’

Carla Arduini pushed a breadcrumb around the white tablecloth.

‘She made me swear not to tell anyone, never to mention it, least of all to you. I think that she had decided never to tell me, but the truth came out the night we had that stupid argument. I said something cheap and cruel, taunting her with not having a man, with not being able to hold the father of her child. I even accused her of feeling jealous of me. Several boys were taking an interest in me at that point, and she seemed to disapprove. I realize now that she was just being cautions. She didn’t want the same thing that happened to her to happen to me.’

Waiters arrived with more food. Zen waved them away.

‘And that’s when she told you?’

A nod.

‘That’s when she told me about Via Strozzi, number twenty-four, in Milan, where she used to live. That’s when she finally revealed the pain and the shame she had been hiding all those years with no one to comfort her, no one to support her, no one to hold her at night…’

Zen coughed awkwardly and lit a cigarette.

‘And that’s when she told me…’ Carla Arduini began, and then broke off, cradling her head in her arms.

‘Well?’ demanded Zen with an air of exasperation. ‘What did she tell you?’

The young woman’s face rose from her arms like the eclipsed sun Zen had beheld that morning: vast, obscure and terrible.

‘She told me the name of my father.’

And so, without warning, it all starts again. He had always known this, he realized now, ever since that morning out on the sandbanks of the Palude Maggiore in the northern lagoon. The trip, the longest he and his friend Tommaso had ever attempted, took a whole day’s hard rowing there and back, so they’d filched some blankets and an old army tent and camped out for the night on an island whose name, if it had one, he’d never been able to discover.

At dawn the next morning, as the dull, exhausted light strained to heave the insensible darkness off the lagoon like an elderly whore trying to get out from under a drunken client, he had wandered down to the shoreline. Tommaso was still asleep, emitting the thin, raucous snores which had kept Zen awake for much of the night. Where the glaucous water met the liquid mud, marsh birds puttered about like mechanical toys, their beady eyes on the look-out for food. An aeroplane passed high overhead, its remote presence merely emphasizing his solitude. The only other sound was an irregular succession of splashes somewhere nearby, like fish leaping or a bird diving.

When he first came on it, the stream seemed nothing much. Its gently flowing water, draining down from the marginally higher surface of the island, had cut a passage through the mudbank left by the receding tide, carving out a sequence of miniature bends, ravines and ox-bow lakes which had made him feel as though he were seeing the whole countryside from the plane which had just passed over. He had never been in a plane, of course.

He settled down to watch his private River Adige, gradually peopling the banks and highlands, surveying towns and villages and connecting them by road and rail, when a vast region of this imaginary terrain — a whole mountainside, with half the plateau beyond — cracked off and, with a terrible, slow inevitability, tumbled into the stream with one of the loud splashes he had heard earlier. The fractured surface thus exposed, as rugged and dense as a split Parmesan cheese, was riddled with scores of tiny red worms twitching frantically this way and that.

In the end he had stayed there so long that Tommaso started calling for him, warning him that they should start for home and the inevitable interrogations and punishments which awaited them. It hadn’t taken Zen long to work out that the landslides were the result of erosion by the stream, undercutting the cliffs it had created, but he was never able to predict where or when the next collapse would come. Outcroppings which looked shaky, worn and fragile seemed to survive for ever, while a fat chunk of ground you had just walked across with total confidence would suddenly reveal the tell-tale hairline crack, then slowly peel off and plunge into the current, damming it briefly before being scoured away.

For a time he had tried to influence the outcome, protecting one stretch with clumps of rushes and pieces of driftwood, undermining another with a stick. It was only after he had almost fallen into the stream himself, when the bank he was standing on suddenly gave way beneath him, that he understood that this process had its own rules which he could no more understand or alter than the scarlet worms wriggling helplessly in the exposed innards of the mudbank.

Which was how he felt now, hundreds of kilometres away and still more hundreds of years — or so it seemed — distant from that childish experience. Something had happened, that was clear, but he had no idea what it was, still less what it meant or might portend for the future. All he could do, as he rose at eight minutes past ten the next morning to address a meeting of the Alba police detachment in the city’s central Commissariato, was to try to remain faithful to this insight.

‘I have called you together to review recent developments in the Vincenzo case,’ he said in a speciously confident tone, ‘to explain my current thinking and outline the measures to be taken at this point.’

He looked around the narrow table, meeting and assessing everyone’s gaze. Present, besides himself, were Vice-Questore Tullio Legna, Ispettore Nanni Morino, and the only woman to have attained the higher echelons in the Alba command, one Caterina Frascana.

‘Since my arrival here,’ Zen continued, ‘we have been groping in the dark, stumbling into unexpected obstacles and talking to ourselves in mirrors. There’s been nothing solid to go on, no leads which didn’t turn out to be equivocal, nothing but insubstantial theories and disturbing rumours which could never be put to the test. It’s as if we’ve been collectively dreaming, even hallucinating.’

His audience sat in an awkward silence, as though at a concert of modern music, unsure whether it was over and time to applaud.

‘But that’s all in the past now!’ Zen exclaimed. ‘We can’t go on living with these doubts and uncertainties. The time has come to act, to put these nebulous suspicions to the test and determine the truth once and for all.’

The three police officials looked at him oddly, as well they might, since his speech was not directed at them but at a young woman they had never met. Zen had spent so much time wondering what to say to Carla Arduini at their rendezvous later that morning that he had quite neglected to prepare his discourse to the colleagues whom he had summoned to this meeting.

‘Someone once remarked that while fruit flies seem eager to drown in the wine you are drinking, they never show any interest in the discarded dregs,’ he went on with an air of slight desperation. ‘Perhaps you’ve noticed the same thing in your own lives. I know I have.’

The two men nodded sagely, but Caterina Frascana screwed up her face in a frown.

‘Fruit flies?’ she repeated.

Zen gave her a haughty glare.

‘I was speaking metaphorically, signora.’

‘Oh.’

La Frascana was clearly going to be a problem, thought Zen. The two men would sit there through any amount of bullshit, cowed into submission by Zen’s hierarchical eminence, but the woman’s eyes were lively and her sharp, alert face seemed predisposed to break into a mocking smile at any moment. With her around, he was going to have to try harder.

‘As a result of private initiatives I have undertaken, we now have a promising opening which with your support I intend to exploit to the full. I refer, of course, to the death of Bruno Scorrone. The autopsy and forensic examination I have ordered will, I believe, determine that Scorrone did not die accidentally, as everyone had assumed, but was in fact murdered.

‘According to Enrico Pascal, Scorrone went down to the winery that afternoon to pick up a delivery of wine. He didn’t say where it was from or who was bringing it. But when I inspected the site, I noticed a number of flagons of wine standing on a loading dock. They are unmarked, but Pascal tasted the wine and is of the opinion that it was made by the Faigano brothers.’

Caterina Frascana finally released the laugh she seemed to have been struggling to repress.

‘I’d love to see someone trying to make that one stand up in court!’

Her laughter died away in silence.

‘I mean, you can’t hope to make a case against anyone on that basis, dottore,’ she added in an exaggeratedly respectful tone.

Zen gazed at her in apparent astonishment.

‘I have no interest in making a case against Bruno Scorrone’s killer. My task is to solve the murder of Aldo Vincenzo. I assumed that that was understood.’

Tullio Legna recrossed his legs fussily.

‘But what’s the relevance of this Scorrone business to Aldo’s death?’ he asked.

Behind a confident smile, Zen was thinking furiously. What was the connection? He knew there had seemed to be one the previous evening, as he sat in his room reeling from Carla Arduini’s revelations and trying to anchor himself by getting a grip on work.

‘I was reading in the paper the other day that the beating of a butterfly’s wings in a South American jungle can cause a hurricane thousands of miles away,’ he began.

Caterina Frascana stifled another laugh.

‘Good thing we don’t have cc that size here!’

‘The fruit flies are bad enough,’ murmured Nanni Morino.

Zen did not deign to glance at them.

‘The same thing applies to this situation. There’s no point in our sitting around here trying to do everything by the rules. That would be like a group of eighteenth-century philosophers struggling to understand a world which is only explicable in terms of chaos theory.’

This time, the three officials exchanged a meaningful glance.

‘I’ll bear that in mind, dottore,’ said Tullio Legna, with an elegant little bow. ‘But what exactly is your point?’

Alone at the head of the table, Zen gave a disappointed sigh.

‘I assumed that that was obvious to the meanest intelligence. Very well, then, I’ll spell it out for you. Three men have died. My interest is only in the first, but the other two appear to be linked to that event in various ways. The knife found at Beppe Gallizio’s house may well be the one used to kill Aldo Vincenzo. Bruno Scorrone was in turn an important witness in the Gallizio affair.’

‘The forensic tests on the knife are not complete,’ Tullio Legna objected. ‘As for Scorrone, he merely mentioned having seen a truck near the scene. He didn’t make a sworn statement, and the person implicated turns out to have an alibi. With all due respect, dottore, I don’t quite see what measures we can take on this basis.’

Zen slapped the table with a force which startled even him.

‘We can stir things up! If we don’t understand the connection between these crimes, neither does anyone else. We can exploit that fact to crack this conspiracy wide open.’

‘Conspiracy?’ queried Nanni Morino with an incredulous grin.

‘Exactly! A conspiracy not of silence but of chatter. Down south, if you try to get people to cooperate with the police, they give you sullen looks and clam up. Here they smile and buy you a drink and you can’t shut them up, but the net result is the same. Everyone knows who killed Aldo Vincenzo, just like they knew that Lamberto Latini was sleeping with the tobacconist’s wife, and their response is to take refuge in garrulous evasiveness. They’ll tell you anything else you want to know, and a lot of stuff you don’t, but not that. Well, we’re going to dig it out of them just the same, and Scorrone’s death is the lever we’re going to use. Any questions?’

This time, no one dared speak.

‘Very good! Now to the details. I want Gianni and Maurizio Faigano brought in for questioning. They are to be transported and detained separately, under armed guard at all times.’

‘On what charge?’ asked Tullio Legna.

‘Suspicion of illicit trafficking in wine without due permits and papers.’

‘But we have no proof.’

‘I’ll deal with that. As soon as the brothers have been taken away, I propose to institute a search under a warrant I applied for before coming here. I’ll either find something or fake it.’

Tullio Legna frowned, then smiled nervously.

‘Is this how they operate down in Rome?’

‘It’s how I operate, wherever I may be, when the situation requires irregular measures. I take full responsibility for the means used and the eventual outcome. All I ask of you is prompt and efficient compliance with my orders. Do I have it?’

‘Of course, dottore!’ his cowed subordinates assured him.

‘Good. Let’s get going. I want an impressive show, the might of the state in action. Bring in some men from Asti if necessary. Put the fear of God into everyone concerned and give the neighbours something to talk about. I’ll return here as soon as the warrant is signed, and I’ll need a car and driver at my disposal. Any further initiatives will be decided after I have interrogated the Faigano brothers.’

He surveyed the table.

‘Any questions?’

There were none. Zen collected his overcoat from the hook near the door and left. In contrast to the shocked hush he had created in the room upstairs, the street was buzzing with activity and noise. Traffic was backed up by a builder’s truck attempting an almost impossible manoeuvre to reverse into the entrance to a building under renovation, and a variety of horns sounded at intervals like an orchestra warming up. The air was crisp and sunny, but distinctly colder than it had been, the first hint of winter’s rigour making itself felt.

Zen walked briskly up the street to the main piazza, feeling well pleased with his improvised performance. He had been true to his insight. Something had happened. The psychic stalemate he had suffered from for so long had been broken. Life had returned and things were on the move again. What more could anyone ask?

The far end of the piazza was closed off by the sober, restrained facade of the cathedral, a plain mass of brickwork broken only by a rose-window and a few saints in niches. Zen searched the curved portal for Carla Arduini, but there was no sign of her. They had agreed to meet here at ten o’clock, and it was now almost a quarter past. Zen felt a sense of his former paralysis return, like a cloud skimming the sun. He could boss the Alba police detachment about as much as he liked, but if Carla decided not to go through with it after all, there was nothing he could do about that.

He was about to turn away when she appeared from a nearby cafe, waving and calling out. Still some distance away, she stopped, confronting him.

‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’

Zen nodded decisively, his sense of energy and purpose flooding back.

‘Absolutely! It’s the only way.’

He led her around the corner, into the sheltered, decrepit courtyard of the Palazzo Lucchese. As before, Irena answered the bell. This time she was fully dressed, but seemed flustered.

‘The prince is playing,’ she announced.

The sweet clamour of some plucked instrument tickled the lugubrious silence of the massive hall.

‘How charming!’ exclaimed Carla Arduini, gliding effortlessly past Irena. ‘I just love music. Is he really a prince, this friend of yours?’

She strode off down the hallway towards an open door at the far end. Irena watched with a look of panic.

‘Wait! You can’t go in now!’

But Carla could and did, followed after a moment by Zen and the distraught Irena. It was a large corner room, spacious and completely bare except for an instrument like a small piano, with a painted lid and a Latin inscription on the body. But the sound which emerged was more like a band of gypsy guitarists than a piano: precise, sexy and urgent, with stabbing chords and rapid passage work in the high range and a dark, sonorous bass which rebounded off the walls and floor like gunshots.

At the keyboard, Lucchese looked imperious and incisive, all his anachronistic airs and graces scorched away by the intensity of the music. There were lots of wrong notes, or what sounded to Zen as such, but they were lost in the sheer impetus of the playing, intent only on completing its preordained trajectory, impervious to flaws and lapses.

At length the cascade of notes ended. To Zen’s horror, Carla Arduini started to clap.

‘Wonderful, just wonderful! I wish I could do that.’

Lucchese pushed back his stool and stood up, inspecting the intruders with a glare whose pedigree bespoke generations of arrogance and condescension.

‘Do what?’ he demanded after a terrible silence.

Zen was about to intervene, to try to save the situation, but too late.

‘Play Scarlatti like that, of course!’ Carla burbled on. ‘And what a magnificent instrument! Is it a Ruckers?’

The prince’s glacial hauteur was instantly replaced by an expression of almost childish pleasure.

‘Absolutely! Originally, that’s to say. It was remodelled by either Blanchet or Taskin a century later, of course.’

‘Of course,’ nodded Carla.

There was a brief pause.

‘And to whom do I have the honour…?’ Lucchese began.

‘My name’s Carla Arduini, and this is…’

The prince shot Zen a sour look.

‘I know who he is.’

‘… my father,’ Carla concluded.

‘Your father?’

‘We think so,’ Zen put in. ‘Now we want to find out.’

A beam of sunlight projected into the room between them. On the other side, Lucchese’s dim figure moved around the harpsichord and emerged into the glare.

‘First, let’s talk about this absurd charge that’s hanging over my head for having mutilated Scorrone’s corpse.’

Zen gestured languidly.

‘No problem. I’ve subsequently ascertained that you were merely carrying out a recognized medical procedure at the request of your deceased cousin. All charges have been dropped.’

Lucchese glanced at him.

‘Very well. I fancy the bass needs a tune-up, Irena.’

‘So do I!’ retorted the latter, stalking out of the room.

Lucchese shook his head sadly.

‘These highly strung modern instruments are so hard to keep sweet. So you want a blood test, is that it?’

‘If that’s what it takes,’ Carla replied.

‘Oh, and I want these stitches removed,’ added Zen. ‘If one more person tells me that it’s a nasty-looking cut I’ve got there, and quite fresh, too, by the look of it, I won’t be responsible for my actions. Then give me your bill and I promise never to disturb you again.’

Lucchese led them towards the door.

‘Ah, but I may still have to disturb you, dottore. Remember our agreement? Until that matter is resolved, my charges remain pending.’

‘What if I just run off without paying?’

Lucchese turned to him.

‘You’ve been doing that all your life,’ he said, his delicate fingers exploring the scar on Zen’s brow. ‘Look where it’s got you.’

Minot was under his truck, completing an oil-change, when Anna started barking. He listened intently to the sound of the approaching vehicle, then gave a satisfied nod. He’d been expecting this visit all day.

‘Basta!’ he yelled at the dog, which subsided into repressed whimpers.

Minot crawled out from under the truck as the Carabinieri jeep drew up alongside. The door opened and Enrico Pascal clambered out with ponderous gravity.

‘Minot,’ he said.

‘Marescia.’

The two men stood looking at each other, trying to divine the exact nature of the silence, the shape and heft of their unspoken thoughts.

‘Good thing you came by,’ Minot began. ‘I was going to call you anyway.’

‘You were?’

‘I’ve had a word with the friends I was out truffling with that night we were talking about.’

Enrico Pascal appeared to reflect.

‘Ah, yes. And?’

‘And they say it’s all right.’

‘Do they?’

‘Yes, they do.’

Enrico Pascal swept his eyes up and down Minot’s faded check shirt and corduroy trousers.

‘Nasty stains you’ve got there.’

Minot pointed to the truck.

‘I’ve been changing the oil.’

‘It looks more like wine to me. You didn’t have a demijohn break on you, did you?’

Minot hesitated just a moment.

‘As a matter of fact, I did.’

Pascal shook his head.

‘Temperamental buggers. Sometimes you can set them down with a wallop and nothing happens, other times they crack apart if you just look at them the wrong way.’

He sniffed deeply.

‘Over at Bruno’s, was it?’

Minot flashed him a look of genuine shock.

‘Bruno’s dead!’

The maresciallo nodded morosely.

‘Shame about the funeral. It’s this busybody we have up from Rome, you see, on account of the Vincenzo business. He decided to start throwing his weight around, and there was nothing I could do.’

‘So why did you mention Bruno?’

Pascal looked up at the cold blue sky.

‘Well, shortly before he died Bruno took delivery of a consignment of wine. We think it came from the Faigano brothers, and I naturally assumed that you handled the carriage for them. You normally do, right?’

‘Not this time. I didn’t even know about any delivery. You’ve probably got the wrong supplier. Bruno used to buy wine from all over the place.’

‘That’s true.’

A silence fell.

‘Well, I can always check with Gianni and Maurizio, I suppose,’ Pascal remarked, as though to himself. ‘I don’t know when I’m going to find the time, though. This man from Rome has really stirred things up, I can tell you, what with impounding Bruno’s body and ordering an autopsy…’

‘What?’

Pascal smiled and shook his head.

‘Absurd, isn’t it? And of course the family are absolutely furious at the idea of their beloved relative being cut up, all on account of some sliver of glass which this Zen claims to have found in his neck.’

There was another long silence. Pascal heaved a long sigh.

‘So who were those friends you were out with the night Beppe died?’

Minot did not reply for some time, and when he did it was in a strange, halting voice, as though he was still learning this new skill but had not yet mastered it.

‘Gianni and Maurizio.’

Enrico Pascal opened his eyes wide.

‘What a coincidence.’

The maresciallo stuck his fingernails under his starched collar and scratched his neck.

‘Well, I’ll be off,’ he said.

Minot watched the jeep drive away. At the cross-roads outside the village, it turned left, away from the Faigano property. He released the breath he had been holding all this time, leapt into the truck and revved up the motor. Why all these problems now? Was he losing his grip, his instinctive sense of what was and was not possible? At any rate, the key to the whole matter remained the Faigano brothers, he thought, pushing the truck as fast as he dared down the winding road. As long as they backed him up, he was in the clear. The trouble was that he didn’t know what they would do.

That was the problem with people, you could never be sure how they would react. If only they were like the rats, a collective whose apparent individuality was in fact an illusion, and whose behaviour was totally predictable. But people weren’t like that. They could do the craziest things, as Camillo had when the Fascists captured him. Instead of shutting up and taking his chances, he had danced — danced — in front of his captors and told them that, yes, he was a partisan and proud of it, and that they were doomed by history.

They’d shot him, of course, but not before he had taunted them one last time, when the Republican recruit detailed to pull the trigger had funked out and started to shake. One of the other prisoners, who had watched the whole scene, later reported what happened next. ‘So Camillo looked at the boy, and he smiled. “Go ahead and shoot,” he said. “You’re only killing a man. Nothing will change.”’

People did things like that all the time. Maybe Gianni and Maurizio would, too. What could he do to sway them, other than recite the usual formulas about their mutual interest and so on? Suppose they decided not to listen? Suppose, like Camillo, they just didn’t care? Since Chiara’s death, Gianni didn’t seem to care very much about anything.

It didn’t give him much to work with, not nearly enough, in fact. Perhaps he should try an alternative approach. Unpredictability, after all, was a game two could play. The thought of Chiara Vincenzo reminded him of Aldo’s death. That was what the cops were really interested in. Beppe and Bruno were just distractions, although inextricably linked to that main event. And if the Faigano brothers refused to help Minot, why should he protect them any longer?

Not only did he know exactly why and how Aldo had been murdered, but he could explain the grotesque and ferocious mutilations inflicted on the corpse as well. Once the truth about that crime had been established, the culprit would automatically become the chief and only suspect in the Gallizio and Scorrone killings. A community such as this didn’t run to two murderers, any more than it ran to two lawyers or newsagents. One was both necessary and sufficient, and once he was identified, no one would think of looking any further.

Minot pulled into the courtyard of the brothers’ house, strode up to the door and knocked hard several times. He had made his decision, and was in no mood to be kept waiting. There were footsteps inside and the door opened, but the person who appeared was not Gianni or Maurizio but the famous ‘busybody from Rome’ about whose activities Enrico Pascal had complained so bitterly.

‘I was looking for the Faigano brothers,’ Minot said hesitantly.

‘Come in.’

Caught unawares, Minot obeyed.

‘And Gianni and Maurizio?’

‘They’re not here.’

‘Out among the vines, are they? It’s a busy time of the year for wine-makers.’

The other held out his hand.

‘I think we’ve met. I’m Aurelio Zen. You were kind enough to give me a lift the other day. Minot, isn’t it?’

Minot clasped the proffered hand and gasped audibly. He turned away, trying to evaluate the inspiration which had been clear and powerful enough to force the spasm from him. He needed time to think it through properly, but time was just what he didn’t have. Gianni and Maurizio might return at any minute, but until then he was alone with the policeman in charge of the whole investigation — and no one would ever know that he’d been there!

‘Come through to the kitchen,’ the official told him, leading the way. ‘I want to show you something.’

The kitchen was where Gianni kept his butcher’s knives, lined up on the chopping block by the sink. One quick thrust would be enough, with a towel around the handle to eliminate fingerprints and staunch the blood. ‘Do it!’ said the voices in his head. What was that phrase the priest had explained to him once, long ago? Nihil obstat.

‘Who’s this?’ the policeman asked, pointing to a framed photograph standing all alone on one shelf of the sideboard. It was a studio shot, obviously quite old, showing a young girl dressed all in white, with a lace headscarf.

Minot hesitated. The question had no relevance to his plans, but he had grown up in a world where figures of power — schoolmasters, priests, commanding officers, policemen — were licensed to ask questions, and where you were expected to reply or face unpleasant consequences.

‘Chiara Cravioli,’ he said, eyeing the array of gleaming knives.

‘Cravioli?’

‘Aldo Vincenzo’s wife.’

‘But why is her photograph here?’

Before Minot could answer, the door opened and a teenage girl with an armful of schoolbooks walked in. She stared at both the men.

‘What are you doing here?’

Aurelio Zen inclined his head slightly.

‘We met at the market in Alba at the weekend. I’m a police officer.’

‘Where’s my father?’ demanded Lisa Faigano. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I’m afraid that your father and uncle have had to go into Alba to answer some routine questions.’

The girl dropped her books on the table.

‘And what about you, Minot?’ she demanded, seemingly more annoyed by his presence than that of the policeman.

‘I was hoping to see Gianni and Maurizio. No one told me they’d been arrested.’

‘They haven’t,’ put in Zen quickly. ‘We’re just taking statements from a number of people, including them. There’s nothing to worry about.’

Minot coughed.

‘Well, I’ll try again later.’

He sidled off to the door as if expecting to be stopped at any moment. But there was no challenge, and a moment later his truck roared away.

Left alone together, Lisa Faigano and Aurelio Zen surveyed each other warily.

‘Would you like a coffee?’ the girl said at last, as though grasping a little desperately at the rituals of hospitality.

‘Thank you.’

Zen had no interest in the coffee, but it would give him a pretext to stay longer without producing his search warrant. Lisa Faigano’s unexpected appearance had thrown him off-balance. Once Gianni and Maurizio were safely in custody, Zen had descended on the house and dismissed the patrolman on guard and his driver, telling them to return in an hour. He had wanted to be alone with the house, free to prowl and pry at will, to let the silence seep into his soul and reveal its secrets.

The arrival of Minot and then the girl had put an end to all that, and while he could have seen the former off the premises easily enough, he could hardly throw Lisa Faigano out of her own home. Nor did a bureaucratic approach seem likely to be fruitful. The brutally official questions he could so easily have posed sounded, as he rehearsed them in his mind, off-key and inappropriate. If he was to get anything out of her, Lisa had somehow to be managed. But how?

‘You’re the one they sent up from Rome about what happened to Vincenzo,’ the girl remarked as she filled the coffee machine.

‘That’s right, signorina.’

‘What’s that got to do with my father and uncle?’

Zen hesitated. It was hard to know who he had to deal with. The girl was at a stage where she could look thirteen one moment and thirty the next. Untuned features and awkward gestures suggested the former, but her brown eyes were shrewd and wary and did not give the impression of missing very much.

‘Nothing, so far as we know. But there appears to be a link to another crime which occurred recently, to which they may be material witnesses. Naturally we need to question them, if only to eliminate this possibility, and they have therefore been invited to headquarters to make their depositions. I’m glad to say that they were happy to comply.’

This was a lie. According to the officers who had carried out Zen’s orders, the Faigano brothers had been anything but happy at being hauled off at gunpoint in armoured vans emblazoned POLIZIA, the whole operation being conducted under the malicious scrutiny of their neighbours. They were particularly unhappy at losing a day’s work at a time when the weather finally seemed to be firming up for the vintage. But their happiness was not Zen’s concern.

‘When will they be back?’ Lisa asked, serving Zen his coffee.

He gave a helpless half-shrug.

‘That depends.’

‘So what am I supposed to do?’

‘About what?’

‘About dinner, of course! There’s hell to pay if it isn’t on the table on the stroke of seven, but if they’re not back by then…’

Zen coughed.

‘I think you can take it that they won’t be home to dinner, signorina.’

‘Not tonight at all, you mean?’

‘Are you worried about being alone?’

She laughed.

‘On the contrary! I can finally get through an entire game with no fear of being interrupted.’

Zen stared at her.

‘I play chess with this friend, you see,’ Lisa told him, sweeping a stray strand of hair off her face with one finger. ‘But either Dad or Gianni usually needs to use the phone at some point, and then everything’s ruined.’

Zen sipped his coffee and tried to look interested.

‘Perhaps you could go over to your friend’s house?’

Another laugh.

‘Hardly! He lives in Lima.’

Zen looked at her, smiling determinedly.

‘Lima,’ he repeated.

‘In Peru. Gianni got a computer last year to keep track of the accounts, and then when Aunt Chiara died she left me some money and I arranged for an Internet connection. But there’s still only one phone, so when they need to call someone, I have to go off-line.’

Zen nodded in a kindly, avuncular manner. The poor girl was clearly living in a fantasy world, imagining that she was playing chess on the telephone with Peruvians! Living all alone in this cold, comfortless house with a pair of grumpy, demanding geriatrics must have pushed her over the edge.

‘The last time I had an evening free was when Dad and Gianni went to the Festa della Vendemmia,’ the girl burbled on, her face alive with genuine enthusiasm for the first time. ‘It looked like we would finally get a chance to play a whole game without interruptions. I’d just tricked Tomas into a knight sacrifice which left him in a very weak position, when in walks Gianni and tells me to get off the line! Result, Tomas got twenty-four hours to analyse the situation and look up his reference books, and he came back and beat me.’

She heaved a sigh of frustration.

‘I wonder who your uncle could have called at that time of night,’ murmured Zen idly.

There was no answer, and for a moment he thought that the girl was trying to think of a suitable lie. Then he realized that she was still fretting about her missed opportunity to defeat Tomas.

‘What? Oh, it was Aldo Vincenzo. I overheard him telling Dad about it afterwards.’

Zen finished his coffee and set the cup down.

‘What did he say?’

‘I don’t know, I just heard the name. They clammed up as soon as I came in, as usual. I’m just a child, you see, and need to be protected from the harsh realities of life.’

Zen gave her an understanding smile.

‘And then they went to bed, I suppose.’

‘Dad did. Gianni went down to the cellar to check on something or other.’

‘And you? Didn’t you stay up to finish your game with Tomas?’

‘No, I went to sleep. Tomas would have been playing a different game by then. He has six or seven on the go at any one time, with people all over the world.’

A vehicle pulled up outside. Zen walked over to the window, then went to the door and called to the uniformed officer getting out of the police car.

‘Wait there! I’ll be out shortly.’

He came back into the room.

‘How do you get down to the cellar?’ he asked Lisa.

‘There.’

She pointed to a door in the corner.

‘But there’s another way in, too, I suppose. For deliveries and so on?’

‘At the far end of the house,’ she confirmed. ‘A flight of steps goes down from the yard. Why are you asking all these questions?’

‘I’m just trying to get things straight in my mind. Just two more questions, and I’ll leave you to get on with your homework.’

‘Actually, I’ll probably watch TV!’

Zen nodded and winked conspiratorially.

‘I’ll try to keep it brief. You mentioned just now that you inherited some money from an Aunt Chiara. Is that her picture?’

He pointed to the framed photograph. Lisa nodded.

‘It was taken the day she was confirmed. Isn’t her dress fabulous? I wonder what became of it.’

‘So Chiara Vincenzo was your aunt?’

Lisa laughed.

‘No, no, not really. I just called her that. And we never called her Vincenzo. She was always Signora Cravioli here.’

‘Did she come here often?’

‘Once a month or so. She walked here across the fields and stayed for about an hour. She’d never learned to drive, you see.’

‘Why did she come?’

Lisa thought about this, as if for the first time.

‘I’m not really sure. She used to sit in the front room with Gianni, and… I don’t know what they did, really. They didn’t seem to talk much. It was odd, I suppose. But she was always very kind to me, bringing me little presents, some fruit or a cake she’d baked. I just took it all for granted.’

Zen was silent for so long that the girl eventually added, ‘And your second question?’

‘Ah. I’m afraid that’s a little more delicate, signorina.’

Lisa Faigano gave an embarrassed laugh.

‘Go on.’

Zen looked down at his shoes.

‘Did Manlio Vincenzo ever propose marriage to you?’

‘Manlio? Of course not!’

‘He never mentioned the matter?’

Lisa blushed charmingly.

‘He mentioned once that his father was keen on the idea. But that was just to warn me, in case I heard about it from someone else. It could have been an awkward situation.’

‘So neither of you took the idea seriously?’

‘Of course not!’

Zen walked over to the dresser and inspected the photograph again.

‘Did you tell your father or Gianni about it?’ he asked, without turning round.

Lisa hesitated.

‘I wasn’t going to, but someone must have gossiped. We met in the village, and there were lots of people coming and going. One of them must have told Dad, because he brought it up over dinner.’

Another pause.

‘I used to have a bit of a crush on Manlio at one time you see,’ she said all in one breath. ‘Just silly adolescent stuff, nothing serious. He never even knew about it, and I’d have died if he’d found out. But I used to keep a diary at the time, and my father read what I’d written about Manlio. He got in a raging fury and made me swear on Mamma’s grave never to see him or to speak to him.’

Zen finally turned to face her.

‘Did he explain why?’

‘No. He just said there was a very good reason which he would tell me when I was older. But I was scared. I’d never seen Dad like that, so intense and angry. Of course I started imagining all sorts of things. I thought perhaps we might be related, Manlio and me. I’d always wanted a sibling, and it didn’t seem that far-fetched an idea, not round here. You hear all kinds of odd stories. About that man who was just here, for instance.’

‘Minot?’

The girl’s cheeks turned even brighter pink.

‘They say his father was also his grandfather, if you see what I mean.’

Zen clearly didn’t.

‘I mean that his mother was abused by her own father and Minot was the result,’ Lisa said quickly. ‘I don’t know if it’s true. He’s an odd sort, keeps to himself, and people are a bit afraid of him for some reason. They may just have made it all up, but I’ve heard similar things about other people, back in the old days. There wasn’t much else to do, I suppose, and this area was so isolated. Half the folk in the village had never even been to Alba.’

Zen scribbled something in his notebook.

‘When did you meet Manlio in Palazzuole?’

‘Oh, that was later, after he got back from abroad. He phoned and said he had something important to discuss, and would I meet him at the bar in the village. I didn’t see why not. I’d completely forgotten about Manlio by then. Besides, I’d heard he’d met someone in America. Anyway, that’s when he told me about Aldo’s plans. He was just being kind, trying to protect me in case the whole thing came out somehow.’

‘And how did your father react when he heard that you’d disobeyed him?’

Lisa looked away, out of the window.

‘It was even worse. He wasn’t angry. He just marched me to the telephone, made me phone Manlio and then stood over me while I told him never to call me again and a lot more cruel things I don’t want to repeat.’

‘What did Manlio say?’

‘He said, “Very well,” and hung up.’

There were tears in her eyes now.

‘Why does it all have to be horrible? I don’t understand! I just don’t understand.’

Zen was about to go and comfort her, but then thought better of it.

‘Well, thank you, signorina,’ he said, putting his notebook away. ‘I’m sorry I’ve brought back painful memories, but you’ve been very helpful. I’ll naturally let you know when you can expect your father and uncle home again. But supposing all this takes longer than I thought, is there somewhere you could go?’

‘There’s my aunt in Alba, my real aunt. But Dad’s not in any real trouble, is he?’

‘Not so far as I know. And, believe me, I’m just as anxious as you are to get this whole thing over with. In fact I can’t wait to get out of this place, to tell you the truth.’

The girl made a face.

‘You’re not the only one.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To Milan, to study mathematics.’

‘When?’

‘Next year. More precisely, in ten months, two weeks and six days. Do you know Milan?’

‘I used to work there.’

Lisa looked at him eagerly.

‘Is it as ghastly as everyone says?’

Zen smiled.

‘It’s even worse. Crowded, noisy, dirty and dangerous. I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time there, signorina. If I don’t see you again, let me wish you the best of luck.’

He opened the door and walked out, leaving the girl standing all alone in the large, empty house.

‘We want a lawyer,’ said Gianni Faigano.

‘That’s right,’ his brother added. ‘We have a right to legal representation.’

It was twenty-past five in the afternoon. The sky was dulling, draining away to the west, chased by the long night coming. Aurelio Zen took off his overcoat and hat and laid them on the desk in the centre of the room.

‘A lawyer?’ he said. ‘Whatever for?’

‘To protect our legal rights,’ replied Gianni.

‘With regard to what?’

‘Whatever this is about.’

Zen sat down behind the desk, surveying the two standing men. There was a hard wooden stool facing the desk, but the only other chair was occupied by Nanni Morino, resplendent in a tweed jacket, canary yellow pullover, sky blue shirt and red tie. A legal notepad was propped open on his knee, and in the intervals between taking down the proceedings in shorthand he concentrated on picking his teeth with a blade unfolded from a Swiss Army knife.

‘What do you think it’s about?’ Zen asked the Faigano brothers.

‘How the hell are we supposed to know?’ snapped Gianni. ‘The last time I saw you, you claimed to be a reporter for some paper in Naples!’

‘It’s for you to tell us what it’s about,’ Maurizio insisted stolidly.

‘Or our lawyer,’ added Gianni.

Zen surveyed them with an expression of bewilderment.

‘It’s about wine, of course.’

The two brothers conferred briefly and silently.

‘Wine?’ echoed Gianni.

‘That’s right,’ said Zen. ‘Specifically, the undocumented shipment you made to Bruno Scorrone the other day.’

The ensuing silence was broken by the click of Nanni Morino’s dental aid returning to join its numerous relatives and then the squeaks of his pen.

‘That’s all?’ Gianni Faigano blurted out.

Zen frowned.

‘What else would it be?’

Maurizio’s relief was evident in his laugh.

‘Well, you know, it’s just that we heard that you’d been sent up here from Rome to investigate Aldo Vincenzo’s murder. And then you tried to pump Gianni about it over lunch, so when your men came to bring us in we naturally assumed that…’

The scene was a second-floor office in the Alba police station. It was small and dingy and had been unused for some time. A thick layer of dust covered every horizontal surface like a natural secretion.

Zen got up from the desk and, with some difficulty, opened the window. It was evidently the first time in years that this had been done, and the musty, enclosed odours lingered in the air, mingled with currents from the cool darkness outside and the sounds of merriment and sociability drifting up from the street below.

‘Scorrone?’ Gianni Faigano remarked with exaggerated casualness. ‘Sure, we sent him some wine from time to time. When we had a back stock we couldn’t shift, or needed some cash right away. Bruno could always use some good stuff to bulk out his blend.’

He paused and shot Zen a shrewd glance.

‘But I don’t understand why someone like you should be taking an interest in this sort of thing, dottore. We might have been in technical violation of some law or other, but people round here do it all the time. It’s like borrowing a little oil or a couple of eggs from a neighbour. There’s no call for you to round us up at gunpoint over something like that.’

‘Let’s stick to the point, shall we? The sooner we get this cleared up, the sooner you can go home. Scorrone’s widow has testified that he went down to the winery after lunch to take delivery of a shipment of wine. We know that the wine was yours…’

‘We haven’t admitted that,’ Gianni put in sharply.

‘You don’t need to, although you would have improved your position by doing so. Scorrone kept an informal account book in which he recorded all shipments and deliveries, with the name of the producer, quantity and price paid. You’re clearly identified as the source of the two thousand litres of red wine due to be received that afternoon.’

He gave the brothers a moment to digest this piece of misinformation.

‘So what do you want from us?’ asked Maurizio.

‘The name of the person who made the delivery.’

Maurizio Faigano glanced away. Zen looked at his brother, who was studying a battered filing cabinet in the corner with mute intensity. A succession of disconnected noises wafted up from the street like fragments of wind-borne seed.

‘It was Minot,’ said Gianni.

Zen nodded.

‘I know.’

As though stunned by the failure of some party turn, Gianni Faigano stared at Zen with genuine rage.

‘Then what are we doing here, if you already know? First you tell us this is all you need to know, and now you claim that you knew all along!’

Zen fixed them with an intimidating glare.

‘The results of the autopsy held today confirm that Bruno Scorrone died as the result of injuries sustained in an assault with a broken bottle, the body later being dumped in the wine vat where it was found. Your friend Minot is thus our prime suspect at this point. I needed corroboration from you that he had indeed visited the winery at about the time Scorrone was killed.’

He looked back at the window, his back turned to the two brothers, observing their reflections in the glass.

‘Now we come to the matter of motive,’ he said. ‘After searching your house under the terms of a warrant I obtained this morning, I went to see Enrico Pascal, the local Carabinieri official. He told me various things of interest, notably that Bruno Scorrone had made verbal allegations which appeared to implicate this Minot in the death of Beppe Gallizio.’

‘What’s all this got to do with us?’ demanded Maurizio Faigano.

Zen turned round.

‘According to the maresciallo, Minot is citing you two as his alibi in the Gallizio affair.’

Another quick, mute, fraternal glance.

‘Apparently he claims that you were all three out after truffles that night. Is that correct?’

Silence.

‘Well?’

‘I want a lawyer,’ said Gianni.

‘So do I,’ said Maurizio.

Zen stared at them for a long time. Then he turned to Nanni Morino, who was just concluding another page of hieroglyphs.

‘How many cells do we have free?’

Morino consulted the ceiling.

‘All of them, at the moment. It’s been quite quiet recently.’

‘How many is all?’

‘Six. They’re down in the basement, three on one side and three on the other.’

Zen nodded lugubriously.

‘Do you like music, Morino?’

‘Music? How do you mean?’

‘I mean that half the cells here are going to be occupied overnight,’ Zen remarked dreamily, ‘and I don’t want any possibility of conversation between the detainees.’

It took Morino another moment or two to get it. Then his face lit up.

‘I’ve just got a new Sony boombox! Eighty watts RMS, with a superbass feature that makes the walls bulge.’

‘And what sort of music do you have?’

‘At the moment I’m into salsa. That’s a sort of Latin-American dance music which…’

‘Is it loud?’

Morino’s smile widened.

‘It’s loud.’

Zen yawned lengthily.

‘Excellent. In that case we can treat our house guests to an all-night crash course in the wonders of Latin-American culture.’

He picked up the phone.

‘Dario? Who else is on duty? All right, put him on the desk and get up to room 201 right away.’

‘Are you proposing to hold us here overnight?’ demanded Gianni Faigano.

‘That’s right.’

‘On what charge?’

‘Illicit trafficking in wine and probable tax evasion. You have indicated that you will not respond to my questions without the presence of a lawyer. It is too late to obtain the services of an avvocato at this hour, so I am obliged to detain you until tomorrow.’

There was a rap at the door and Dario appeared.

‘Take these two down to the basement,’ Zen instructed him. ‘Put them in separate cells as far apart as possible, and stay down there until relieved. I want you to make sure that they don’t have a chance to communicate before or after they’re locked up. Understood?’

Dario nodded.

‘No problem. Come on, you.’

‘And our third guest?’ queried Nanni Morino as the door closed. ‘This Minot, right?’

‘Ah, you’re the quick one!’ murmured Zen with a hint of irony. ‘Yes, I’m afraid you’re going to have to drive out to Palazzuole tonight and bring this character in.’

Morino got to his feet.

‘It’s been a pleasure to watch you at work, dottore! Round here, of course, we don’t have much call for those kind of skills, but it’s a privilege to watch a virtuoso in action.’

Zen gestured awkwardly.

‘There was nothing to it, really.’

‘Nothing to it? On the contrary! The way you manipulated that pair into giving crucial evidence against this friend of theirs, and then pinned them down on an alibi which both they and we know is false… It was masterly! And your strategy was a stroke of genius. When everyone was expecting a frontal assault on the Vincenzo case, you attack instead on the flanks with Gallizio and Scorrone. All three murders are linked, of course, so if you nail this Minot for one of them, it’s just a matter of time before we get him for the others as well.’

He started towards the door.

‘Just a moment!’

Nanni Morino turned back with an expectant look. Zen coughed and, perhaps by association, lit a cigarette.

‘Thanks for the compliments.’

‘I meant every word,’ Morino assured him. ‘It was an inspiration and a privilege to…’

‘But we seem to be at cross purposes. I want this Minot brought in so that we can go to work on him. But I don’t think he did it.’

Morino stared at him in amazement.

‘You don’t?’

‘No.’

‘Then who did?’

Zen jerked his forefinger towards the floor.

‘Our friends downstairs. At least, one of them.’

Nanni Morino looked down, scratching his eyebrow, as if reviewing the facts. Clearly they didn’t add up.

‘I don’t quite…’ he began.

‘Come and sit down,’ Zen told him.

Morino did so. Zen dragged his chair round from behind the desk and seated himself opposite the young inspector.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s go through the whole thing point by point. If we’re going to work this case together, we’d better get our agenda clear.’

The telephone woke him, a salvation as cruel as a harpoon descending fathoms to skewer a drowning man and haul him, gored but alive, back to the surface. Blind blunders with the lamp followed, then the brutality of light masking a tumbler of water which spread a glistening trail across the glass-topped table before rolling over the edge and landing on the ingrowing nail of his big toe. And when he finally got the receiver to his ear…

‘What’s going on? I heard screams. Are you all right?’

He did not answer.

‘Hello? Are you there? Is everything all right?’

‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Yes, everything’s all right.’

‘I’m sorry if I woke you,’ the robotic voice went on, ‘but I heard what sounded like someone yelling and I was worried. I thought you might have set the bed on fire or something.’

Zen took a succession of quick, short, shallow breaths.

‘Is it you, Carla?’

‘Of course it is!’

‘You sound funny.’

‘Do I? Oh, shit! Wait a moment…’

Various clicks and grunts.

‘Sorry about that!’ Carla Arduini resumed in her own voice. ‘I’d forgotten to disconnect the attachment I was using. No wonder the man from room service has been giving me odd looks.’

Zen glanced at the clock, marooned in the puddle of spilt water. It was twenty past five in the morning.

‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you,’ he said. ‘I must have been having a nightmare.’

‘What about?’

‘I can’t remember. Anyway, I hate discussing dreams. It seems to give them a credibility they don’t deserve, don’t you think? It’s like someone who mumbles things you can’t quite catch, and then when you ask him to speak up looks hurt and says, “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”’

‘Or those pieces of modern art entitled “Untitled”.’

‘Exactly,’ said Zen, although he couldn’t really understand the connection.

There was a pause.

‘Well, good night,’ said Carla.

‘Good night.’

Zen hung up with a sense of disappointment and loneliness. Sleep was out of the question, at least for the moment. His facetious persiflage about the insignificance of dreams had been pure bravado. While it was true that he couldn’t remember the precise content of the nightmare from which he had been awakened, its malign aura informed his every thought like the memory of an ancient atrocity in which he was somehow implicated.

His eye fell on the pile of papers he had brought back from the police station the night before. Confused memories of the case he was involved in surfaced like episodes from his dream, the events dimly recalled but their significance lost. When he outlined the whole thing to Nanni Morino, it had all made perfect sense, but now he had lost the connecting thread.

Then it came to him. The Faigano brothers! That had been the insight he had suddenly but quite characteristically had the day before, the sensed presence of a pattern which abruptly made the hitherto disparate elements of the puzzle picture snap into place. Long ago, after the war, Gianni Faigano had been in love with Chiara Cravioli, but Aldo Vincenzo had raped her and thus forced a marriage to obtain ownership of the family’s land. That was motive enough for the killing, and it also explained the subsequent mutilations. The violator’s body had been violated, the offending parts cut away and destroyed.

Lisa Faigano’s testimony showed that Gianni had made a phone call to the Vincenzo house that night, and had subsequently gone down to the cellar, from which he could easily have left the house without being observed. Manlio Vincenzo had testified that his father received a phone call at about the same time, and had then gone out for a walk claiming that he needed ‘to get some air’, had discouraged his son from accompanying him and finally provoked Manlio to return alone by an extraordinary and gratuitous display of brutal rudeness.

Let us suppose, Zen had told Morino, that Gianni Faigano lured his loathed rival out to the fields under some specious pretext and stabbed him to death. Manlio Vincenzo is arrested for the killing and everything looks good for Gianni, until he discovers that Zen has been sent up from Rome to conduct a fresh investigation. Sooner or later, he knows, the love affair between him and Chiara Cravioli in Vincenzo must come to light. The time to act is now, but he needs a suitable scapegoat.

He selects Minot, whose reputation as an odd and potentially violent recluse with dark secrets in the family cupboard makes him a perfect choice. Minot is also an associate of the Faigano brothers, so his movements are relatively easy to predict. One night when both Minot and Beppe Gallizio are out after truffles, Gianni enters the Gallizio house through the back door, which sticks slightly and is never locked. Using gloves to prevent fingerprints, he takes Beppe’s shotgun and leaves the knife with which he killed Aldo Vincenzo on the kitchen table. He then lies in wait for Gallizio…

‘What about Minot’s truck being seen down there?’ Nanni Morino had interjected.

‘I’m coming to that,’ replied Zen with a satisfied smile.

With Gallizio dead, possibly by his own hand, and the Vincenzo murder weapon found in his house, either he or his assailant becomes the primary suspect in the earlier case. But now something unforeseen arises. Bruno Scorrone has noticed a red Fiat truck down in the hollow where Gallizio was shot, possibly belonging to Minot, who is questioned by the Carabinieri. To cover himself, he goes to the Faigano brothers and requests an alibi for the night in question. A less astute pair of conspirators might have refused, but Gianni and Maurizio realize that the same alibi also protects them, and that they can withdraw it at any time. So they agree.

‘As for that truck,’ Zen continued, ‘Minot is not the only person round here with a red Fiat pick-up. It’s a common enough model, and it so happens that the Faigano brothers own one too. I saw it at the market here in Alba on Saturday.’

Nanni Morino nodded dumbly.

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘So when Bruno Scorrone contacted the local maresciallo and mentioned the vehicle he had seen, Gianni Faigano realized that with one more murder he could complete his grand design. Scorrone had not testified under oath, so once he had been silenced his previous evidence would not be admissible in court. Even better, his death could be made to tighten the noose around Minot’s neck. The Faigano brothers — I’m still not sure how much Maurizio was involved — set up a sale of wine to Scorrone and arrange for Minot to deliver it. Then they kill Scorrone and heave his body into the wine vat, leaving a trail of evidence connecting all three murders and pointing straight to Minot, whose sole alibi depends on them!’

He appealed to the younger man in triumph.

‘Well, what do you think?’

Nanni Morino shrugged.

‘It’s ingenious,’ he admitted. ‘And it all makes sense. But what about Manlio’s evidence? He told the judges that his father was still alive in the middle of the night, that he heard him snoring. If that’s true, Gianni Faigano couldn’t have killed him after the supposed assignation he made by telephone.’

‘ If it’s true,’ emphasized Zen. ‘But when he told the judges that, Manlio was trying to save his own neck. He repeated the same story to me, but he’s still a suspect, remember. There is no independent evidence to support his claim. He might easily be lying.’

Morino nodded dubiously.

‘I suppose so. But there’s another thing.’

‘What now?’ snapped Zen testily.

‘If this was a crime of passion, a premeditated act of revenge for some alleged incident dating back forty years or more, why did Faigano wait so long? Why was he so patient? After all this time, you would think he might have resigned himself to the situation. Why didn’t he kill Vincenzo years ago?’

Zen had had no reply to this the night before, and he had none now, but he felt sure that he was on the right track at last. The details would take care of themselves. What he had to do now was to hold on to the insight he had gained, and to get this Minot in the palm of his hand. He was the key to the whole affair, of that Zen was certain.

From behind the adjoining wall came a faint stirring and banging, then a sound of flushing water. Evidently Carla couldn’t sleep either. He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. He wished he could remember Amalia Arduini better, but she had faded to an impoverished set of fixed images, like worn snapshots endlessly reshuffled.

What remained? A vision of her supine and naked, her large breasts lolling around on her chest like half-trained puppies with a mind of their own. He recalled her crying one day at a restaurant when he’d said something — he had long forgotten what — which upset her, and the pleasure with which she greeted him at the door of her apartment in Via Strozzi, as if perpetually amazed that he’d actually shown up. And he also remembered moments when she would drift away from him, when his spell no longer held, and she was sucked back into personal and familial labyrinths from which he was excluded.

He sat up and reached for the phone.

‘Carla?’

‘Are you still up, too?’

‘It seems so.’

‘What are we going to do about it?’

A pause.

‘I wondered if you might want to drop by,’ Zen continued. ‘Or I could come there. I mean, you know, just so as…’

‘So as not to be alone?’

‘Yes, that’s it exactly. So as not to be alone.’

Another pause.

‘I’ll be there shortly.’

He hung up and went to put on his dressing-gown. A door closed in the hallway, and then there was a knock at his. Carla Arduini was wearing a stylish orange track-suit and a pair of running shoes. Her hair was combed back and secured by a sweat band. Zen gestured her into the room.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is odd.’

‘Isn’t it?’

She walked inside, looking around as though for a place to sit down, but in the end remained standing.

‘I was just thinking about your mother,’ said Zen, and immediately cursed his thoughtlessness.

Carla gave a hard little snort.

‘You never thought about her while she was alive. Why bother now she’s dead?’

Zen stared at her in shock.

‘Dead?’

She tossed her head.

‘But of course! Why do you think I made my move now, when I’ve known about it for years? I could easily have come to Rome and tracked you down. But she forbade me to do so. She was poor and proud. Pride was all she had left, once her looks went. She didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of knowing how much you’d hurt her. So I had to wait until she died before doing anything about it.’

Zen was now staring at her with manic intensity.

‘Until she died,’ he repeated.

A curt nod.

‘Which was recently?’

‘Back in the spring. A stroke.’

Zen looked away, his eyes narrowing.

‘So Irena was right. Of course!’

‘The doctor’s friend?’

‘Cherchez la femme,’ returned Zen. ‘I understand it all now. He had to wait until she died!’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, let alone how that bitch Irena comes into it.’

Carla laughed maliciously.

‘She couldn’t get over the fact that I was able to spot what Lucchese was playing and to name the harpsichord! She obviously doesn’t care for competition.’

Zen looked at her, frowning.

‘How did you know that, anyway?’

‘I used to have a boyfriend who listened to classical music a lot. Scarlatti was one of his favourites, and if you’ve heard one of those clattery, repetitive pieces, you’ve heard them all.’

‘And the instrument?’

‘Even easier! It was written right there above the keyboard. Andreas Ruckers me fecit. Latin was one of my best subjects at school. But you still haven’t told me what that Irena was right about.’

Zen waved the subject away.

‘It’s not important. Take no notice of me, I’m still half-asleep.’

Carla consulted her watch.

‘Why don’t we go and get a coffee? There’s a place I know which should be open, down by the station. I noticed it the morning you caught the train to Palazzuole.’

‘That was you?’ exclaimed Zen. ‘I remember seeing some woman standing there in the shadows.’

‘I heard you rummaging around in here, and when you went out I decided to follow you.’

‘And then phoned me later at the Vincenzo house. But how did you know I was there?’

‘I didn’t. But I heard you tell the guard to let you off at Palazzuole. I thought you might be going to the Vincenzo house, so I phoned up, pretending to be a reporter. To my surprise, the son himself answered, quite rudely, I must say. That confirmed my suspicions, so I kept trying until you showed up. It was a shot in the dark, but it hit the target. God, you must have been scared.’

She smiled wryly.

‘How long ago that seems now! Like years, not days. To think that I was set on terrorizing you with anonymous phone calls. But it all seemed to matter so much to me back then.’

Zen gazed at her expressionlessly.

‘And now?’

A shrug, brief, almost irritable. Zen looked away.

‘I’ll get dressed,’ he mumbled. ‘Then let’s go and try this cafe of yours.’

When they came for him, he was asleep, if you could call it sleep. Once again, there were two of them: one in plain clothes, the other a uniformed recruit cradling a machine-gun.

That first time, the evening before, Minot had just finished eating a bowl of the lentil soup he made every Sunday, and which sat in its cauldron on the stove for the rest of the week. Eating lentils made you rich, his father had told him; every one you swallowed would come back one day as a gold coin. Minot still believed this obscurely, even though he knew that they didn’t make gold coins any more.

He’d grated some raw carrot and onion into the warmed-up soup, poured in a fat slick of olive oil and then spooned it up, dunking in the heel of the day-old loaf he kept in a battered canister, where it was safe from his familiars. The lid was decorated with a faded picture of a smiling woman and the name of a once-famous brand of boiled sweets.

When he’d finished eating, Minot sluiced out the bowl under the tap and left it to dry. Then he went next door, sat down and turned on the television, an old black-and-white set given to him by a neighbour who had changed to colour. He could only get two channels, and either the picture or the sound was often indecipherable, but Minot didn’t care. He wasn’t interested in any of the programmes anyway. He just liked having the set on. It made the room more lively.

He was watching a film when the police arrived. There was heavy interference on the screen, with ghost doubles floating about and the picture skipping upwards repeatedly like the facial tic which used to afflict Angelin when things got tense. But the soundtrack was clear enough, and at first Minot thought that the noise of the jeep drawing up and the imperious knocking was part of the movie. It was only when the rat perched on top of the set swivelled towards the door, nostrils twitching, then leapt down and disappeared, that he had realized his mistake.

He was taken by surprise this second time, but for a different reason. Ever since they had locked him into his cell the previous evening, the air had been throbbing with loud music from a radio which someone had left on somewhere close by. He had tried shouting and banging on the door to get them to turn it off, but all in vain. In the end he had lain down on the bench provided and tried to get some sleep.

The bench made a primitive bed, but Minot was not fussy in this respect, any more than in others. The cot he slept on at home was no more spacious and hardly any softer, but the only time he’d ever had trouble sleeping was when the resident rodents used to scurry over the covers and tickle his face with their feet or whiskers. He’d solved that problem by fixing rounded wooden caps just below the frame, one at the top of each leg, so that the bed seemed to be resting on four giant mushrooms. The rats couldn’t climb past the caps, and after that Minot slept in peace.

As he would have done that night, too, if it hadn’t been for that damned music! He hadn’t made any fuss when the cops told him they were taking him into detention. He’d been more or less expecting something of the sort anyway, ever since the maresciallo had taken to dropping in — and to dropping heavy hints. In any case, Minot wasn’t the type to give them any satisfaction by getting upset.

But after being assaulted for several hours by that thudding, repetitive, tuneless barrage that he’d heard kids listening to in their cars or at the local cafe, he was finding it hard to remember the motto by which he lived: keep cool, say nothing, make them show their hand. In the end, he’d drifted off into a state which was neither sleep nor wakefulness, but seemed to combine the disadvantages of both. While in this stressful but disoriented condition, a succession of sounds detached themselves from the hellish cacophony with which he was being tormented, the light in his cell was turned on, and he awoke to find himself confronting the two policemen. The armed and uniformed one guarded the door, the other advanced into the cell.

‘Time to go,’ he said shortly.

Minot stood up. Time to go, the man had said, but what time was it? Minot never wore a watch, relying on his knowledge of the seasonal and diurnal rhythms, with occasional data from a distant church bell floating past on the breeze. Now he had a panicky feeling of being completely lost. It might be midnight or midday. Both made sense, so neither did.

The policemen gestured him out of the cell and escorted him upstairs. As the pounding of the music receded into the distance, Minot began to feel better. Passing a window on the stairs, he saw that the darkness outside the window, although still seemingly complete, had lost its inner confidence, sensing the inevitable defeat to come. Half-six to seven, he thought automatically, probably nearer seven. By the time the uniformed patrolman knocked at a door on the second floor, he was once again in control of the situation.

His new-found confidence was almost cancelled by the discovery that the officer sitting behind the desk inside was the one from Rome he’d seen the day before at the Faigano house. This was bad news, for it meant that the Vincenzo case was involved. The uniformed man led Minot to a stool opposite the desk and then returned to keep the door, his gun at the ready, while the plain-clothed cop plonked his ample bum down on a stool beside the desk and opened a notepad.

‘I suppose you want a lawyer,’ announced Zen.

Minot made a vestigial bow, just like everyone used to in such situations years ago.

‘A lawyer?’ he said, with an air of astonishment. ‘Eh, no, dottore! A lawyer? He would just waste your time and my money.’

Aurelio Zen looked at him with unfeigned interest.

‘Well, that’s an original approach, at least.’

He dragged some papers towards him.

‘All right, what’s your real name? Minot is what people call you, but it won’t do for our records. Official forms come with blanks which need to be filled in, you understand.’

Minot nodded briskly.

‘Piumatti Guglielmo, dottore.’

Zen noted this down, then got to his feet.

‘Right!’ he said. ‘You’ve declined the offer of legal representation, Signor Piumatti. This being so, I shall proceed directly to the interrogation. Present Inspector Nanni Morino and Patrolman Dario…’

He glanced at the uniformed man, who responded, ‘Tamburino, dottore.’

‘Date such and such,’ continued Zen, ‘time whatever, place etc, etc.’

While talking, he had moved around the desk and was now standing directly in front of Minot. Bending forward suddenly, he caught the prisoner by the jaw and pulled his entire head back by a fistful of hair.

‘We know you did it, you son of a whore! You’ll confess in the end. Why not save yourself any more pain?’

He glanced at Nanni Morino.

‘Delete that from the record.’

Zen smiled at Minot.

‘Sorry about that. Nothing personal, and thanks for the ride the other day. But I’ve had just about enough of this sleepy, friendly, crime-free community where everyone has been pissing me around ever since I arrived. I’m in a mood to do a little damage myself, and it’s your bad luck that it happened this morning.’

Minot looked him straight back in the eye.

‘Go ahead! Beat me up, if that’s what you want. But if you think you can get anything out of me that way, you’re even more stupid than I thought. I’ve seen far worse than you!’

Aurelio Zen shook his head slowly, holding Minot’s eyes all the while.

‘No,’ he said decisively. ‘You’ve never seen worse than me, Minot. I’m as bad as it gets.’

A contemptuous laugh.

‘I faced up to the Gestapo and the Republican death squads while you were still sucking on your mother’s tit! What can you do that they couldn’t?’

Zen continued to hold his eyes.

‘I can destroy you, Minot. Unless you cooperate, I will destroy you.’

Another laugh.

‘Go ahead!’

Zen leaned forward, his face a breath away from the other man’s.

‘Let’s talk about your father, Minot.’

The prisoner’s eyes flared briefly, then dulled again.

‘My father? What has he to do with anything?’

‘He had quite a bit to do with your mother, I’m told,’ Zen said evenly. ‘And not just in the usual way. I hear they had a — how shall I say? — a previous connection.’

Minot froze into a tense stasis.

‘Meaning,’ Zen continued, ‘that they were related not only in bed but by blood. Meaning that your father was also her father.’

He straightened up and took a step back.

‘Meaning that he fucked his own daughter and that you’re the outcome. Meaning that you’re not just a bastard but an incest bastard, Minot! A gene pool so swampy that nothing can live there, a cloning experiment gone badly wrong, an abortion on two legs…’

Minot sprang up like one of his rats, the raised stool in his hands. But his intended victim was no longer where he had been a moment before and then a huge pain erupted in his body — a pain without precedent, an unthinkable and outrageous intrusion.

‘Well done, Nanni,’ said Zen.

‘No problem, capo.’

Minot stared up through a mist of agony at the plain-clothed brute who had kicked him in the groin from behind.

‘You son of a bitch! You assaulted me! I’ll kill you, you scum!’

‘So you admit to murderous tendencies,’ commented Zen. ‘Note that down, Morino. As for assault, you assaulted me. That’s a crime in and of itself, and I hereby charge you with attacking a police official in the course of his duties and remand you in custody until further notice.’

Minot struggled to his knees, then clambered painfully back on to the stool.

‘That was a very silly thing to do,’ Zen told him condescendingly. ‘Not only are you on a charge, but I’m afraid that my colleagues will be tempted to have some fun at your expense while you’re in custody, particularly now that we know how sensitive you are about your family background. It’s highly unprofessional, I know, but I have a feeling that some of them won’t be able to resist the urge to tease you about it once in a while.’

‘You think I chose my stinking family?’ demanded Minot, his face taut with anger.

Zen sat down again, tapping the desk with the end of his pen.

‘Of course not,’ he said in a soft, soothing voice. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t care less about any of that. But I have a job to do, Minot, a case to solve. And at the moment you’re the prime suspect. We have witnesses who tie you into the killings of both Gallizio and Scorrone. The knife used to stab and mutilate Vincenzo was found at Gallizio’s house after he was shot. Scorrone told the Carabinieri about seeing your truck close to where Gallizio’s body was found, and a few days later he dies, too, and at about the time you made a delivery of wine to his azienda. There’s a pattern here, in other words, and it points to you.’

He paused, looking Minot in the eyes.

‘Unless, of course, you have any alternative suggestions to make.’

‘I have an alibi for Gallizio’s death,’ Minot gasped. ‘I was out after truffles with Gianni and Maurizio Faigano. They’ll vouch for me on that.’

Zen nodded.

‘Yes, but will you vouch for them?’

Minot looked at him acutely, his eyes dilating as though in an attempt to correct some error of vision.

‘But they’re not… I mean, you said…’

Zen gave him a devastatingly arch smile.

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t believe everything I say,’ he suggested.

Subject: interrogation of Faigano, Gianni Edoardo

Present: as above

Place and date: as above

Time: 08.11

Z: Not until ten? But I have an important case which I’m… Do you realize who you’re talking to? The suspect in question has requested the presence of a lawyer, as is his statutory right, and now you tell me… I thought I was in Piedmont, not Sardinia. Very well. All right. I’ll call back then. Dario, take him back down.

G: Wait a minute. What was that about?

Z: You told me last night that you weren’t prepared to make further statements without legal representation, Signor Faigano. I’ve just contacted our pool of court-appointed lawyers — I take it you don’t have someone on retainer yourself? — and find to my astonishment that the bastards… Substitute ‘lawyers’ for ‘bastards’, Morino. That they don’t get in to work until ten o’clock. I apologize for disturbing you. Were you asleep?’

G: What do you think?

Z: It’s too early to think. I’m just doing my job, that’s all. At least I’m awake, unlike those lawyers. Maybe a coffee would help. If anyone’s open at this hour. There’s a place I went to earlier, down by the station, but…

G: Alberto’s, on the corner where we met the other day. He’s open as soon as it’s light. He makes no money to speak of till mid-morning, but that’s the way Alberto is. If he isn’t working, he’s fretting.

Z: Got that, Dario? I’ll have it strong and short, in fact make it a double. And you?

G: The same. Why’s he taking notes?

Z: That’s his job. OK, Dario, off you go. No, leave the gun here. If Signor Faigano’s right, you won’t have any trouble getting served. Oh, for Christ’s sake, Morino, you’re not writing all this down, are you? This isn’t part of the interrogation, you idiot.

Z: For Christ’s sake, Morino, why aren’t you writing this down? That’s your job, you idiot. Don’t tempt me, Morino, I’ve had a hard night, just like Signor Faigano. Did you like the music we laid on, by the way?

G: It was all right. But we’ve got better stuff at home. My niece Lisa knows someone in Latin America who sends her tapes of the real thing, not these tame commercial groups.

Z: Your niece has good stuff, all right.

G: Meaning what?

Z: Speaking of her friend in Peru, she told me that she’d had to interrupt a chess game they were having the evening of the festa because you needed to make an urgent telephone call to Aldo Vincenzo. Oh, you don’t want to talk about that without your… I quite understand. No problem.

Z: I’ve been talking to Minot.

G: Who?

Z: What the hell’s his real name? Thank you, Morino. Signor Piumatti, popularly known as Minot, seemed convinced that you and your brother would give him the alibi he so desperately needs in the Gallizio case. Which would be a problem for me.

G: A problem? Why?

Z: Because this Minot is my principal suspect in the Vincenzo case. The problem is that I have no substantive evidence. It’s all a matter of circumstantial detail, a chain of connections and inferences. And, like any chain, it’s only as strong as its weakest link.

G: Meaning?

Z: The alibi I just mentioned. If Minot was out after truffles with you two the night Bruno Gallizio was killed, you see, then he can’t have killed Gallizio and planted the knife smeared with Aldo Vincenzo’s blood at the house. In which case there’s no proof that he killed Vincenzo either, and I’m back at square one.

G: That phone call.

Z: Yes?

G: I did make it.

Z: To Aldo Vincenzo?

G: Yes.

Z: A few hours before he was killed.

G: I didn’t know he was going to be killed.

Z: Of course not. But it was very late at night, and you’d both been at the festa earlier. Why didn’t you tell him whatever it was then?

G: Do you have children, dottore?

Z: Two, as it happens.

G: A boy and a girl?

Z: How did you guess? And you, Signor Faigano?

G: I’ve never had this great responsibility. But my brother… To me, Lisa’s like the ghost of some child I never had. I’m sorry, this sounds crazy.

Z: Not at all. I understand exactly what you mean. Unborn children are as real as the dead, after all. Or as unreal.

G: So when I heard that Vincenzo wanted that son of his to marry Lisa, I… Maurizio was calmer than me — how strange! He said there was nothing in it, that it was not like the old days any more, when a man could just… When he had this power to…

Z: But you were not so sure.

G: He was right, of course. I knew t?Ohat. But when Vincenzo started shouting at his son that evening across the table, calling him impotent and I don’t know what else besides, and then dragged Lisa’s name into it…

Z: What did he say?

G: If you’re that interested, you can find out from other people. There were plenty of them there, the whole village. It was about breaking a woman, the way you break a horse. I didn’t say anything at the time. It would only have drawn attention to his insults, and he would have repeated them still louder. But as soon as I got home I called him up and told him that if he ever mentioned my niece’s name in that way again…

Z: You’d kill him. Good for you. I’d have done the same.

G: I didn’t say that.

Z: It doesn’t matter. Now about this alibi. Are you prepared to swear in court that you were with Minot on the night Beppe Gallizio died? I need to know, you see, before I decide what to do next. God, this coffee certainly hit the spot. Careful with that gun, Dario. There’s one more thing you should know before you answer, Signor Faigano. After I’m finished with you, I’m going to have your brother up here and put exactly the same question to him. If your stories don’t match, of course, then that’s the end of that. You’ll both be entirely discredited as witnesses and will have no influence whatsoever on future developments. Just a thought.

G: There’s a problem.

Z: (grunt)

G: I need to talk to Maurizio.

Z: First it’s a lawyer you want, now it’s your brother. Maybe I should just have Dario take you downstairs and beat the shit out of you. Delete that, Morino. Dario, as you were. Very well, Signor Faigano, what do you need to talk to your beloved brother about?

G: It’s only fair. He’s in it as much as me.

Z: In what?

G: I can’t tell you until I’ve talked to Maurizio.

Z: Or maybe I’ll take care of it myself. Why should Dario have all the fun? Have we got any rubber truncheons, Morino? All right, get the little bastard up here. Jesus Christ, I can remember when interrogations used to be run by the police officer in charge. Now it’s like room service. Give me this, bring me that, and where’s the drink I ordered?

As above, plus Faigano, Maurizio Ernesto.

Z: Take off those cuffs and sit him down here. All right, Signor Gianni, he’s all yours.

G: It’s about Minot.

M: (gesture)

G: That alibi for the night Gallizio died. The dottore wants to know if we will support it in court. He thinks Minot is responsible for that murder and the other two as well, but he can’t arrest him if we say we were out with him after truffles when Bruno was shot.

M: (gesture)

G: (shrug)

M: (shrug)

G: We’re prepared to answer your question, dottore. But there’s a complication we want you to know about. Minot has had a hard life in many ways. He’s never really been accepted, you understand what I mean? As a result, he can be extremely vindictive on occasion. This might be one of them.

Z: Don’t worry, I can look after myself.

M: But what about us?

G: He won’t like us if we withdraw his alibi. He’ll probably tell you a pack of lies about us to get even. That’s the only reason we hesitated about cooperating.

Z: I’m used to dealing with lies. But why did you agree to perjure yourselves in the first place?

M: We didn’t.

G: We never swore an oath that this was true. We never even had any dealings with the police until you showed up. We were just doing a favour for a neighbour, that’s all.

Z: Putting yourself at risk with the law, and all out of the kindness of your hearts? That’s quite a favour.

G: Well, he sort of made a threat, too.

M: Not really a threat, but…

Z: What did he say?

G: He said he’d found some evidence connected to the Vincenzo case which could look bad for me, and that as former partisans we should all stick together.

Z: You fought together?

M: That was long ago.

G: Not for Minot. It was the only time he’s ever really been accepted, you see.

Z: Did he tell you what this supposed evidence was?

G: A button.

Z: That’s all?

G: From one of my jackets.

Z: What about it?

M: He said he’d found it near the spot where Vincenzo was killed.

Z: And what was he doing there?

G: He didn’t say.

Z: Did he show you the button?

G: No. He just mentioned it in passing, as though it wasn’t important. It was just a hint, not a threat.

Z: Have you lost a button recently?

G: There’s no woman to take care of us any more, except young Lisa, and she’s too modern to know anything about sewing. I’ve got a lot of missing buttons. What does that prove?

Z: Nothing. Even if Minot does have a button to show me, and we could match it to your jacket, it doesn’t amount to evidence of anything. Minot does deliveries and other work for you on a regular basis, so I’ve been told. He could have picked up one of your stray buttons, or even snipped it off. There’s nothing to tie it to the Vincenzo murder.

M: That’s what I thought. But Gianni said, ‘If the police drag us into this, we’ll never hear the end of it, and people will say there’s no smoke without fire. Better to agree to what Minot wants.’ And I saw what he meant. We didn’t know we would be dealing with a man like you, you see. Most of the cops round here are ignorant arseholes.

Z: Delete that reference, Morino. So do I understand that you unreservedly withdraw the story that you were out with Minot the night Beppe Gallizio died?

G: (nod)

Z: Say it, please.

M: Yes, we do.

G: That’s right, we do.

Z: So what were you doing?

M: Watching television.

Z: Was your daughter there?

M: She was staying with her aunt. Her school’s here in Alba, so she can go straight there on Friday, help us out at the Saturday market, then come home after school on Monday. I’d like to telephone her, by the way, to let her know that everything’s all right.

Z: That can be arranged. Well, I do believe we’re finally getting somewhere. I’m afraid I’m going to have to detain you for a little longer, until I’ve had a chance to interview Minot again. After that, the situation should sort itself out quite quickly. Take them down, Dario. Oh, and turn off the music. Apparently it’s just making us look bad. That’ll do, Morino. Save your wrist for our next client.

Aurelio Zen’s next client was at that moment sitting on the edge of the wooden bench which had also served him as a bed. All things considered, Minot was in good form. The music which had tormented him all night had abruptly ceased, and the rest he could easily live with. Indeed, it was even to his taste: bare, spartan, unfussy and impersonal.

Even the dimensions suited him. The house he had inherited from his mother was much too large for his needs, and he felt its size and scope not as a liberation, full of potential, but as a lack — of security, of controllable space. He had attempted to compensate for this by using just two rooms, the kitchen and the sala next door, but he was always aware of the rest of the house spreading its wings around him like the night sky, cold and dark and uncontainable.

By contrast, the cell they’d put him in was perfect. Already it had taken on the reassuring smell of his body, as close-fitting and homely as another set of clothes. Minot’s reluctance to wash himself or his garments was a staple joke in the local community, but when he overheard such comments — which was rarely, for people had learned to be guarded in his presence — he was not offended. His habits in the matter of personal hygiene had nothing to do with slovenliness or indifference. On the contrary, they were deliberate. Without those intimate odours to prompt him, he would have lost track of who he was.

And who was he? ‘An incest bastard’, the cop from Rome had said. Minot had gone for him then, riding a sudden surge of the energy which came to him at times, investing him as though with a halo of corpo santo, the fabled fire of Saint Elmo sometimes seen at the height of great storms at sea. His own storms, though as fierce, were no longer lasting than those of the physical world. Now, seated in his homely cell, he could calmly review what had happened, and make his plans accordingly.

During his brief fit, he had tried to assault the policeman with a stool before two witnesses, both cops themselves. They could put him away for months before the case even came to trial, and then for at least a year or two after that. More to the point, he would have no chance to return to the house and conceal or destroy the evidence stored in his fridge. If that came to light, it was all over.

And if he went to prison, it would. For years the villagers had speculated about Minot’s character, beliefs and ancestry, and always failed to pin him down. Somewhere in the house, they would argue, the key to the mystery must lie hidden: a set of documents, a photograph album, a bundle of letters. Some of the bolder ones would find their way in and search the place. They wouldn’t find what they were looking for, but they would find what was there.

The cosy security of his cell was therefore an illusion. His first priority was to obtain his release, and to do that he would have to make a deal. The problem was that this Aurelio Zen was as much an unknown and perhaps unknowable quantity to Minot as he himself was to his neighbours. In a way, they made a pair.

Minot smiled, instinctively covering his mouth, although he was alone and unobserved. That was the line to take, he realized. This Zen was not interested in the deaths of Gallizio and Scorrone. He had made it clear that the only thing he was concerned with was the Vincenzo case. That was what he had been sent up from Rome to solve. Once he had done so, he could go home, leaving the local authorities to mop up after him. Minot could deal with them, he felt sure. It was just a question of easing this unpredictable outsider out of the picture.

So when the patrolman named Dario appeared to escort him upstairs, Minot was feeling reasonably confident. This feeling strengthened when he was ushered into the room upstairs. One glance revealed that Aurelio Zen was tired — not just from lack of sleep, like Minot himself, but tired of the case, of his colleagues, of the town, and perhaps of life itself. He has other things on his mind, thought Minot, more important things. All he wants is a quick and tidy solution to this mess he finds himself in, and I can give it to him.

This sense of ease and assurance was soon put to the test, however.

‘The Faigano brothers have changed their minds,’ Zen announced once Minot was installed on the penitential stool.

‘About what?’

‘About your alibi for the Gallizio murder.’

Minot managed a puzzled smile.

‘About theirs, you mean.’

Zen shrugged wearily.

‘The alibi works both ways, of course. But they claim that it was you who asked them to provide it, and that you did so with menaces.’

This was a shock. Minot had expected Gianni and Maurizio to stick to the story that the alibi had been cooked up for their mutual convenience, to avoid unnecessary interference from the authorities. Instead, they had done the one thing he had never anticipated, something explicitly forbidden by the code he had invoked in discussing the matter with them. They had told their mutual enemy the truth.

Or rather, they had told him what they believed to be the truth. There was a difference, and a moment later Minot realized that he was free to take advantage of it, now that the brothers had by their own treachery renounced the freemasonry of the former partigiani.

‘Menaces?’ he laughed. ‘What could I do against two of them, both bigger than me?’

Aurelio Zen did not answer immediately. He was eyeing Minot in a way the latter found distinctly disquieting. Then he looked away at the window. The darkness outside had given way to a limp, unhealthy light which clung to every surface like some greasy substance strained through a piece of dirty muslin.

‘They said you tried to blackmail them with some story about a button,’ Aurelio Zen replied, with an ostentatious yawn.

‘How do you mean?’

‘A button that you supposedly found, supposedly at the scene of the crime, and which supposedly belonged to a jacket supposedly owned by Gianni Faigano.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘I know,’ said Zen. ‘I told them so. It’s all hearsay, and from someone who — if you’ll excuse me saying so — doesn’t exactly command huge respect in the community.’

This was the crux. Minot consulted his inner voices. ‘Do it!’ they said. As always, he obeyed.

‘Supposing it wasn’t a button?’

Aurelio Zen emitted another massive yawn.

‘I don’t really give a damn what it was you told them, Minot. I’m more interested in why you tried to extort an alibi for yourself in the Gallizio affair.’

‘But I didn’t. It was Gianni and Maurizio who asked me to give them one.’

‘That’s not what they say. And, as you just pointed out, there are two of them. Besides, how could they have come up with this story about the button unless you tried to pressure them?’

‘That’s obvious. They suspected that I had some evidence against them, but they didn’t know what it was. So to cover themselves, they invented this story about the button. I’m afraid you’ve been misled, dottore. This has nothing to do with the case you’re investigating. It’s a personal matter between me and the Faigano brothers.’

‘You mean I don’t come into it?’ murmured Zen.

Minot looked at him with an almost solicitous air.

‘Of course you do, dottore! Without you, I can’t do a thing.’

He gave Zen a crafty glance.

‘But without me, neither can you.’

Catching the incredulous gaze of the official taking notes, Zen quickly stood up, as though to assert his authority.

‘Allow me to remind you that you are in detention pending being charged with assault on a police officer, Minot.’

‘I didn’t lay a finger on you, dottore. You were much too quick for me.’

‘It’s the intent that counts.’

‘But what if my intent has changed? Supposing that I intend to cooperate fully with your investigation into the murder of Aldo Vincenzo, and that I’m the one person who can provide proof that will stand up in court. Would that be enough to get the charges against me revoked?’

Aurelio Zen stared at him.

‘You were right. You don’t need a lawyer.’

Minot fought to contain his exultant emotion.

‘So you agree?’

‘Agree to what?’

Minot regarded him fixedly.

‘I give you conclusive evidence of the killer’s identity. In return, you drop all charges and release me unconditionally.’

Zen snorted.

‘It’ll take more than a stray button to get anyone convicted, Minot. And to get you released.’

‘There is more.’

‘What?’

Minot smiled conspiratorially.

‘Ah, well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it? And I can’t very well do that until I know that you’re going to keep your end of the bargain.’

The plain-clothed cop shifted awkwardly in his chair.

‘Listen, capo,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you should be…’

‘That’ll do, Morino.’

Zen turned to Minot.

‘All right, so what do you propose? You can’t expect an unconditional discharge until I can evaluate what you’re offering in return, and you’re apparently not prepared to reveal that until I’ve handed over the papers, signed and sealed. In short, you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you.’

Minot nodded slyly.

‘So we need to find a third party. That’s what we do in the truffle business when we’re dealing with some outsider, use a go-between we can both trust.’

‘You mean a lawyer?’

Minot laughed.

‘Someone we could trust, I said!’

‘Do you know someone?’

‘Plenty of people, dottore, but you don’t know them. So let’s look at it the other way round. Can you think of someone round here that you trust? The chances are that I’ll know them, too, and perhaps we can do business.’

Zen considered a minute.

‘I suppose there’s Lucchese…’

Minot glanced at him in surprise.

‘You know him? Perfect.’

‘This is highly irregular, capo!’ protested Morino.

‘Shut up,’ Zen told him, lifting the phone. ‘And strike all references to a deal from the record. Hello? Ah, good morning, principe. This is Aurelio Zen.’

Minot did not bother to listen to the ensuing one-sided conversation, preoccupied as he was with reviewing his own position. As always, he had acted instinctively. That was his great strength. Plans that were not made could not be exposed later. It was just a question of checking that his spontaneous words and actions were consistent with the apparent facts of the case. He did, and they were.

‘… take receipt of the item and of the papers which I will give you,’ Zen was saying into the phone. ‘I will then examine the former and, if satisfied, authorize you to release the latter to the said third party. Agreed? Very good.’

He hung up and looked at Minot.

‘Lucchese agrees. Where is the evidence in question?’

‘At my house. I’ll go and pick it up, then bring the evidence back to the Palazzo Lucchese in person.’

‘Don’t trust him, capo!’ Morino burst out. ‘I’ll take a couple of men and go over the place with a fine-tooth comb. Whatever’s there, we’ll find it!’

Knowing what was at stake, it took Minot all his nerve to smile disdainfully.

‘I could have it on me right now and you’d never find it,’ he replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

Zen shot him a keen look.

‘It’s small enough to conceal, then?’

Minot smiled.

‘You could hide it under one finger. Or on it, for that matter.’

‘A ring?’ snapped Zen. ‘Without continuity of evidence, that’s no more use than your famous button!’

Minot stood up and stretched lazily.

‘What have you got to lose, dottore? If you don’t like the product, you don’t have to go through with the deal. But you will, I promise you that. Just get the papers for my release written up. We’ve wasted enough time as it is.’

As ten o’clock sounded, at various intervals and pitches from bell towers all over town, Aurelio Zen mounted the steps of the Palazzo Lucchese and pushed the recessed brass bell beside the door on the first floor. He rang five times, ever more lengthily, then sat down on one of the shallow stone steps leading up to the next floor and lit a cigarette.

The bells ceased and silence fell. Somewhere inside the building, Zen could now make out a brittle tinkling sound he associated with adjacent wine-glasses in the sink of his apartment back in Rome when the neighbouring refrigerator rattled into action. At length another sound intervened: a dull, regular clumping, as if someone were pounding with a hammer. It was coming, he realized, from the steps below. A few moments later an elderly woman emerged, formidably breathless, on the landing. She turned on Zen a face so creased and contoured that it could have been classified as an historic site, produced a large key from her dauntingly capacious handbag and set about unlocking the front door.