And then you die

Versilia

Aurelio Zen was dead to the world. Under the next umbrella, a few desirable metres closer to the sea, Massimo Rutelli was just dead.

The two men were different in just about every other respect too. Zen was wearing a short-sleeved cotton shirt, lightweight wool trousers and leather sandals, and lay back in his deckchair in the shade of the beach umbrella with the brim of a Panama hat lowered over his eyes. Massimo Rutelli was naked except for a minuscule black swimsuit and an orange towel loosely draped over his upper back, and was lying prone on the green canvas lounger provided for sun-worshippers, his hands resting on die surface of the perfectly smooth sand. But the main difference between them was that one was dead and the other was dreaming.

The dream was one that Zen had had recurrently for many months now. He had no clear idea how long exactly. His memories of the period since l’incidente were as partial, confused and unreliable as those of his childhood. As for the dream, it always involved three fixed elements – a bridge, an imminent disaster, and a happy ending – but the specific properties, locations and special effects varied from version to version.

The bridge, for example, could be as small as a concrete culvert under a motorway, or a massive structure so long that neither end was visible from the middle. On one occasion it had been a wooden trestle across a fast-flowing river. A steam locomotive pulling a train was approaching the far side while the ignited fuse fizzed down through the undergrowth towards the stacked sticks of dynamite. But it had been lit too late, and the carriages crossed safely before the trestles were flung spectacularly up into the air, to fall again like so many matchsticks.

Another instance had been a rope footbridge suspended across an abyss whose depths were concealed by thick, slowly coiling currents of mist. In this case the threat had come in the form of a plague of shiny black beetles nibbling away at the ropes with their

razor-sharp mandibles. It was only when the last strand seemed about to give way that it became apparent that the guy lines were not made of hemp but steel cable, against which the horde of insects was powerless.

This time, though, the ever-resourceful dream director had come up with yet another scenario. Since the 1960s, mere had been talk of building a bridge across the Straits of Messina to replace the slow and inadequate ferry services which provided the only link between Sicily and the mainland. At over three kilometres, it would be one of the longest in the world if ever completed, but it was not so much the engineering and construction problems which had stymied the project thus far as the economic and political ones.

The estimated cost was so vast that it was commonly expressed in dollars – $4.5 billion was one suggested figure – since the corresponding amount in lire was of an order comprehensible only to astrophysicists. During the long decades when the Christian Democrats had ruled the country, no one had had any doubt into whose hands that money would go, not to mention the inevitable cost overruns and top-ups for unforeseen circumstances which would probably at least double the original estimate. Unfinished motorways, power plants built on hastily drained swamps and steel mills erected hundreds of kilometres from the nearest source of iron ore had been a commonplace at that period, but even the most brazen politicians backed off from the prospect of being seen to hand their friends and supporters the best part of one per cent of the country's GNP. And so the bridge had never been built.

But in Aurelio Zen's dream it had, and he was in the middle of it, speeding away from Sicily, back to the safety of the mainland. The bridge itself was not the graceful suspension span which the real-life engineers had designed, but a rusty old wrought-iron girder affair originally designed to carry a railway track, now fitted out with a makeshift roadway in the form of wooden planks. The car Zen was riding in was also a period piece, a huge prewar convertible with bulgy cartoonish curves driven by a grim-looking uniformed chauffeur wearing aviator goggles. 'This is a dangerous road,' he muttered melodramatically. Zen took no notice. He was enjoying the bright sunlight, the invigorating breeze, the faint cries of the itinerant watermelon vendors on some distant beach.

They were going so fast that when the gaping hole in the planking appeared dead ahead they were almost on top of it. There was no time to brake, so the driver accelerated and the car leapt the gap, landing on the very edge of the further side, its rear wheels dangling over the void. Zen and the driver scrambled out just as the vehicle tilted back and slid off the edge of the planking. It was only now that Zen realized that there had been a third person in the car all along, a young man sitting in the back seat. He was neatly dressed in a suit and tie and seemed perfectly calm. The only odd detail was that his chest and feet were bare.

But Zen had no time to think about this, for no sooner had the -car disappeared than other cracks and cavities began to open up in the surface of the bridge. It had been designed to withstand an earthquake stronger than the one that had levelled Messina in 1908, but this one must have been stronger still. Whole sections went tumbling down into the water far below, until the only one remaining was the short length where Zen was perched, and it too was now growling and shuddering beneath his feet. But the cardinal rule of these dreams was that the hero always emerged unscathed, and at this point the director – clearly out of ideas about how to save him this time – brought the episode to an abrupt end. The screen went blank as Aurelio Zen woke up.

He raised the brim of his hat and looked about him. Everything was as it always was, of course. That was the charm of Versilia, the most essential of the many elements which drew people back there year after year. There were never any surprises. Nothing unpredictable ever happened. That’s what Franco's clients wanted. They weren't interested in the new, the exotic, the strange or the different. What they wanted was exactly the same as they'd been getting there for years, if not decades, and in some cases even generations. That was how long it could take to get a front row seat at the bagno. They were as sought after as their equivalent at La Scala, where many of Franco's patrons were regulars during the winter. Zen's allotted place was about a third of the way back from the water's edge, and he had only been able to get that because the rights in it belonged to a friend of various parties with a professional interest in keeping Zen alive and out of sight until they needed him. Without their pull, he wouldn't have been able to get a place right outside the toilets.

Not mat he'd been able to hang on to it for long, he thought bitterly, glancing to his left. The man was still there, arrogantly sprawled out face down on the lounger that was rightfully Zen's, the minimalistic swimsuit displaying his massive buttocks to rather too good advantage. Zen was pleased to note that the lower half of the man's body was fully exposed to the sun now, and a nasty reddish burn was already beginning to set in on the pale skin of his legs. Serve the bastard right, he thought, moving his own chair a little further back into the deepest shade. Although the rigidly hierarchical pecking order of the beach meant nothing to him, he had become enough of a regular by now to feel abstractly affronted at this unexpected and unwelcome irregularity. The whole point of Versilia was that such things were not supposed to happen there.

The scene before him looked as flat and notional as a theatrical backdrop, two dimensions passing uneasily for three. Above, the azure sky, streaked with diaphanous shreds of white haze. Below this vast benignity, the clustered ombrelloni, their bright primary colours an ensign declaring the ownership of each strip of beach. The ones in the foreground were all green, as were the chairs and loungers, but behind them came serried ranks of red, yellow, blue in various shades. The white poles beneath acted as the only vertical element in the scene, breaking the seemingly endless stretch of beach into manageable rooms and apartments lacking only walls and a ceiling.

Horizontally, the divisions were still more strongly marked. Each bathing establishment had an internal passageway in the form of a boardwalk bisecting its allotment. There were two rows of ombrellone on either side, each centred on its own parasol positioned exactly two and a half metres from its neighbours. At the end of the boardwalk, below the high tide line, was the sea, but no one except the children paid much attention to that. The sea was merely a necessary pretext for everything else: the sensual languor, the total indolence, the studied informality of manners, the varying degrees of nudity on display. If anything, the sand -immaculately cleaned, smoothed and groomed each morning by Franco and his two sons – was the more palpable attraction.

Soaking up the sun each day, until by lunchtime a pair of sandals became a necessity for those with sensitive soles, then radiating it back through the late afternoon and early evening, the dense expanse of tan granules responded to the serene sky above, the precession of the shadows cast by the parasols marking the progress of another flawless, utterly predictable day at the beach.

There were people in view too, of course. Indeed, the bagno was surprisingly hill for a weekday. But Zen was an outsider to all the complex and overlapping cliques, circles and extended families, so for him the human element was of less interest and importance than the setting, mere extras dotted about as part of the background. They were mostly female and mostly middle-aged, although there were more than a few younger mothers and their children. What men there were had a decidedly supernumerary air about them, and tended to sit slightly apart from the rest of the family. To Zen's right, near the top end of the beach, a young couple chatted in a desultory way while the girl painstakingly squeezed out the pustules on her boyfriend's back, but most people their age were either at work or further down the beach at Viareggio, where the action was. The majority of the bikinis in Versilia were being worn by women who didn't seem to realize or care that they had reached a point in life when any men around were more likely to be mentally dressing them than the reverse.

The exception was Gemma, if that was indeed her name. There was no reason to suppose that it wasn't, but ever since I'incidente Zen had been living in a world where people's names, assuming they bothered to offer one, were at best generic flags of convenience, polite formulae designed to ease social contacts, of no significance or substance in themselves.

But of course Gemma belonged not to that world but to the real one whose outline Zen could vaguely make out, ever clearer but still distant, from the middle of the bridge he was slowly and painfully traversing, hour by hour, day by day, week after week. One of the most delightful things about Gemma was that she knew nothing of all that. Apart from shopkeepers and taxi drivers, she was the only person Zen had come into contact with since the 'incident' who didn't know. This had lent an extra charm and interest to their brief and superficial encounters. Zen was using her, he realized, as a test case, looking anxiously to see if he could once again pass for normal. The results, so far, had been encouraging.

He had checked on Gemma as soon as he awakened. There had, of course, been no need. Like everyone else on the beach, with the exception of the pushy newcomer to Zen's left, she was exactly where she ought to be, exactly where he'd known she would be: stretched out on her own canvas lounger, her long delicate feet dangling over the end, the right one twitching from time to time like the tail of a cow bothered by flies. Her face was turned away from him, but he knew she wasn't sleeping. She was napping, a very different matter. They had once had a mock-earnest argument about this fine distinction, as near as they had so far come to moving beyond the strictly conventional.

Gemma had the ombrellone directly opposite Zen's, which made it possible for them to acknowledge each other's existence. Social life at Franco's was rigidly hierarchical. Those in the front rows, the old aristocracy of the establishment, 'knew' only each other, although they might occasionally so far unbend as to grant a nod and a word to a friend or close acquaintance – possibly even a superior in the world left behind where the sand began -who was stacked further back, in the faceless ranks of parvenus and hoi polloi. But in general casual fraternization was permitted only with those seated immediately to one side or facing your own designated place. This had made it possible for Gemma and Zen to exchange glances, nods and eventually greetings; the fact that they were much of an age, and apparently unattached, had made it inevitable. Once it had been established that they both avoided the beach when the weekend crowds descended, a sort of light, meaningless connection formed.

After a while Gemma started to stir, and then sat up lazily, looking around her. She was a slim, leggy, small-breasted woman, and surprisingly tall. She noticed Zen watching her, but didn't wave or smile. Instead she folded up the magazine she'd been reading, found the linen bag in which she kept her beach paraphernalia, put on her rubber sandals and then walked over the wooden pathway to where he was sitting.

'Signor Pier Giorgio,' she said. 'You're awake.'

Zen gave a self-deprecatory grimace.

'Just pretending,' he said.

Gemma tilted her eyes and head towards the intruder who had taken Zen's place and gestured interrogatively. Zen signed back that he didn't have a clue.

'I was just going to get a coffee’ Gemma said. 'Would you like one?'

"That's very kind’

'Espresso?'

'Please.'

Gemma turned without a word or gesture and walked up the beach towards the low shack in whose shaded bar Franco dispensed coffee, soft drinks, beer, light snacks and ice cream. I wonder if she can sew, Zen thought. Since his mother had died, his clothes were falling to pieces. He could always take them to a seamstress, of course, but paying for that kind of work seemed like paying for sex. It took all the goodness out of it.

He caught himself up with a shock. This was all too typical of the free-flowing, dreamlike way his brain was working these days. Whatever happened between him and Gemma, it would never be anything more than the classic beach romance, he reminded himself sternly, at whatever level from flirting to fornication. Nothing more. He had to start thinking straight again. He needed to get back to life, back to work. But there was nothing he could do about that. He was trapped in limbo, midway across the bridge, neither here nor there. He closed his eyes again.

The next thing he was aware of was a woman's cry. Gemma was standing about halfway between her place and the complex of changing rooms, showers and bar area. She held a coffee cup in each hand, and was staring down at her lower body. Behind her, a young man wearing a ‘I-shirt and jeans was running off at full tilt towards the street. Zen got to his feet, but Gemma was already surrounded by other people who had been seated closer to her. He could hear the excited chatter of voices expressing dismay and disgust. After a few moments, Gemma brushed off the crowd of sympathizers, saying something about needing to change, and returned to the bar. Zen followed.

It was blissfully cool and shady under the roof of straw matting supported on wires above the bar area. Gemma was nowhere to be seen. Zen sidled up to the bar, where Franco acknowledged his presence with the ghost of a nod. He had accepted the arrangement that his long-time client Girolamo Rutelli had imposed, allowing this stranger access to the facilities rented annually by the family for as long as anyone could remember, but he made a point of reminding Zen that this made him no more than an honorary member of the club, the guest of a member, to be accommodated correctly but without undue warmth.

If Zen had been a bit more forthcoming about his own circumstances, this might have changed, but he had no such inclination. His cover story was paper-thin, and depended for its success on no one taking the trouble to check it at all carefully. Franco's role in life, Zen had already realized, apart from milking the summer trade for all its three months' life was worth, was to act as the catchment area, filter and conduit for any local gossip worth knowing. Radio Franco was always on the air, and if Zen had allowed himself to be quizzed about the vague and unsupported fictions he had been provided with, he would have been exposed for the fraud he was in no time at all. On the other hand, refusing to reply to Franco's seemingly casual questions would have been equally inadvisable. Zen's strategy had been to keep his distance, treating Franco not as the universal uncle he aspired to be but simply as the owner of the bagno, a paid service provider of no personal interest whatever.

He seated himself at one of the metal tables in the bar area, but did not order anything. After a few minutes, Gemma emerged from her changing room, wearing her street clothes. Their eyes met, and Zen beckoned her over.

'What happened?' he asked.

Gemma tossed her head.

'Oh, just a stupid accident. I was on my way back with the coffee, when this young idiot barged into me and knocked it all over me. It was quite painful, and it stained my suit of course. I've washed it out, but I hate wearing wet clothes so I'm going to go home.'

'Was he the one who ran off?'

'Who? Oh, yes. The funny thing is he was standing there staring at you.' 'At me?'

'Yes. You were sitting there with your eyes closed, and this kid was standing on the boardwalk staring at you, as if you were some kind of star or something. Then he suddenly whirled round and ran straight into me with the coffee’

The word seemed to jolt Zen's memory. He looked up at the bar and directed the owner to bring them two coffees. The owner scowled and yelled inside for his wife.

'What did he look like, this man?' Zen asked Gemma.

She shrugged.

'Like anyone else that age.'

'What age?'

'About thirty, I suppose.' 'You don't remember anything else about him?' 'I only saw him for an instant. After that I was covered in scalding coffee and had other things to think about.' She reflected for a moment.

'He had something written on his shirt’ she said at last. 'What?'

‘I don't remember. Some slogan in English. What does it matter?'

Franco's wife brought their coffees. Zen smiled.

'It doesn't, as long as you're all right. If s just odd, that’s all. Nothing unusual ever happens here, and this is the second case today’

'What’s the first?'

"That man who's taken my place’

Gemma nodded.

'You should have called Franco, had him moved’ 'I didn't want to make a scene. What's the point? The Brunellis never come during the week anyway, so I just took their spot’ Gemma finished her coffee. 'Well, I'll be going,' she said. Zen stood up as she did.

‘I don't suppose you'd like to have dinner tonight,' he found himself saying.

She regarded him intensely. 'Dinner? But why?' He gestured embarrassedly. 'Why not?'

This seemed to give her pause. 'Why not?' she repeated at length.

'Good. About eight at Augusto's. Do you know it?'

'Of course, everyone knows it. Have you made a booking?'

Zen shook his head.

'Then we'll never get in’ Gemma said decisively. 'They're booked up weeks in advance.' 'I can get us a table. Trust me.'

Gemma looked at him again in that odd, intense way of hers. 'Very well,' she said. 'I'll trust you.'

She gave him a vague smile and walked off down the pathway at the side of the building leading to the car park. Zen headed back to the beach.

He noticed the police at once. There were three of them, two men and a woman, all young and looking very sporty in the starched sky-blue shorts and summer shirts of the municipal police. They were stretched out evenly across the beach from the tideline to the land end, walking slowly and checking everything and everyone in their range.

By the time Zen got back to his place, the female officer had just reached Franco's boardwalk. Zen went over to her.

'Excuse me,' he said with a pleasant smile backed up by a hint of the steely sheen of power. 'I'm in the police myself, down in Rome. Criminalpol. Is anything wrong?'

The woman gave him the merest glance and shook her head.

'Routine patrol’ she said. 'But we had some reports of someone passing as an itinerant trader, a vucumpra. Did you see anyone like that?'

'How do you mean, "passing"?'

'When he raised his sleeve, his skin was white from the elbow. And he didn't look African. That s what we were told, anyway.'

'I can't imagine any outsider wanting to cut a piece of that market’ Zen remarked.

'No, but he might have had other things in mind. People trust the Moroccans. Well, most of them are Sudanese actually, but the point is that they police themselves very effectively. They make a sale or they don't, but no one gets ripped off. Same with the Chinese masseurs and fortune tellers. But there have been several robberies reported on the beach recently, people's handbags and cameras disappearing while they're away from their place, and if some white person has made himself up to look like the immigrants, he might get away with it There are plenty of Albanians and gypsies about and they can be very imaginative. Normally they do houses, sometimes while the owners are asleep, but this might be a new angle’

She looked at her two companions, who had drawn ahead, and nodded goodbye to Zen. He picked up his scattered belongings and started pensively back. That was the third anomaly this afternoon, he thought. First the stranger taking his place, then the young man who had stared at him and then rammed into Gemma, and now somebody impersonating one of the African traders. Anywhere else, this would have been a very average day's haul of minor mysteries, but in the placid, predictable world of the beach it was a potential front-page news story. Perhaps there's a pattern, thought Zen, smiling sourly at his wishful thinking.

This enforced vacation was driving him slightly crazy, he realized. What he needed was to get back to work, but there was no prospect of that. The powers that be had their plans for him, and it had been made gently clear to him that these included an early and well-deserved retirement. 'We'll have to bend the rules,' one of the official visitants to his hospital bed had told him. 'But if s the least you deserve after all you've been through’

He walked back past the bar, nodding to Franco and getting a grudging raise of the chin in return, and out into the full glare of the sun. As always, he was surprised to see the line of craggy mountains dominating the skyline to the east, their gleaming white surfaces making them seem even higher than they were in the July heat, although their lustre was not, of course, snow but marble.

He crunched across the gravel parking lot and crossed the lungomare which ran all the way from Carrara to Viareggio, almost thirty kilometres in all, connecting the various villages and fishing ports which had now turned into a continuous strip of coastal development, retaining only their names and some vestiges of their original centres. Few of the buildings were more than a hundred years old, and the vast majority less than half that. Until the beach craze set in after the war, these marshy lowlands had been home to only a few stately villas set amidst the ribbon of wild pines which had once fringed the sea all the way south to Rome.

The main road was impressively broad, but the virtual absence of traffic gave it the same slightly unreal feel as the rest of the area. This was even more marked in the back streets beyond, which motorized vehicles entered strictly on sufferance, and at a crawl. The narrow lanes were filled with pedestrians and cyclists wandering about without so much as a cautious glance to check what was coming. Everything was clean, neat and safe, a privileged enclave where the normal chaos theory of Italian urban life was inverted. Zen had initially found it charming, just what he needed in his prolonged convalescence, but now it was starting to grate on him. There was no edge, no friction, no coefficient of resistance. There were moments when he had to curb the urge to start behaving badly, just to stir things up a little.

But that would not have done, any more than it would have done not to visit the beach every day. The truth was that Zen much preferred to avoid the sun, if at all possible, and also hated sitting still doing nothing for hours on end. But his instructions were to blend in, and to come to Versilia and not go to the beach would have made him an exception to the prevailing rule and thereby an object of interest and comment. So he put in his four or five hours a day, like going to the office, and then walked sedately home, resisting the impulse to bump into people, utter insulting innuendoes and make sarcastic remarks. It was a strain, but he had his orders.

Nor could he leave. His orders on this point too were clear. He was to remain exactly where he was until contacted. Besides, he had nowhere else to go. He had not returned to Rome since the death of his mother, and felt no desire to do so. To attempt another false return to Venice was even more out of the question. The mere thought of either alternative made him realize how cluttered with the past his life had become, how devoid of any viable future. This was still more depressing, and seemingly insoluble, so he tried to think of other things, or better still not to think at all. That was all he needed to do, he told himself for the umpteenth time, just stop thinking and enjoy this pleasant, calm, mindless existence that most people could only dream of. What was the matter with him? Why was nothing ever good enough?

He dropped in to the small alimentari where he did his daily shopping. His invitation to Gemma had been only partly motivated by a wish to know her better. The fact was that ever since his arrival he had been living off whatever cooked dishes the place had on offer that day, or those he could forage and prepare for himself, a very limited cuisine consisting largely of packet soups, frozen entrees, sandwiches and takeaway pizza. To dine out alone would be another anomaly of the kind he was not permitted by the terms of his contract. Even shopping alone, as a middle-aged male, was anomalous, but he had to eat.

He stocked up on coffee, milk, bread and a few eggs. The cashier looked at him in the same way that Franco did, as though she was confused by recognizing yet not being able to place him. That look, in another pair of eyes, could yet get him killed, he thought idly. The fact was that he didn't really care. The Mafia might not have killed him physically, but something in him had died, something without which life didn't really seem worth the effort. He just didn't care about anything, that was the real and lasting effect of l'incidente, and one which looked as though it might well stay with him throughout his long, tedious, enforced retirement, a nagging ache that no amount of therapy, exercise or hobbies would ever be able to dispel.

Opposite the grocery, from a white lorry parked at the kerb, fresh vegetables, fruit and eggs were being sold to a bevy of housewives, all of whom were giving the vendor a hard time about his quality, selection and prices, a daily ritual necessary to everyone's sense of dignity and self-esteem. The women knew that short of driving to one of the supermarkets on the highway inland, they were stuck with what Mario had on offer, in very much the same way that they were stuck with their husbands, children, relatives, homes and general lot in life. Their only perk was the right to bitch loudly and at length about the inequities of die situation, and in this they indulged freely. Mario, understanding that this was one of the costs of doing business, entered into the ensuing series of mini-dramas with gusto and vivacity, playing his part to the full.

Zen drifted back across to the shady side of the street, taking in the scene at the greengrocer's van, a cluster of young people on bicycles, a group of women cooing over a neighbour's baby, a man leaning against a concrete telephone pole eating an ice cream and eyeing the passers-by. He was wearing a ‘I-shirt with some sort of English slogan on it. Zen walked down two blocks to the end of the commercial area, then turned left into a street old enough to pre-date the rigid grid which had been imposed on later development, curving gently off past wrought-iron gates and spurts of greenery spilling over weathered walls. The villa which he had been assigned was about halfway along the curve, which ended at a crumbling gateway leading into one of the last remaining portions of the original pineta. There was virtually no traffic at all, and no sound to disturb the silence but the perpetual murmur of televisions and the occasional yapping of a small, neurotic dog kept by one of the neighbours.

He reached his gate, and for some reason paused before unlocking it to glance over his shoulder. There was no one in sight. So they already know where you live, said a voice in his head. 'Oh, shut up!' Zen muttered audibly. Such professional paranoia was like the vanity of one of those women on the beach who couldn't get used to the fact that the sexual stock she had been living off for the last thirty years had just tanked in the market. 'We're both yesterday's men,' he had told Don Gaspare Limina in Sicily, and he had been right. Why couldn't he accept that he was no longer a player, and never would be again? In the event the Mafia had failed to kill him, thanks to a stroke of luck and their own incompetence, but he was as good as dead just the same.

The gravel driveway inside the gate led to a stairway at the side of the house. At first-floor level this connected with a balcony running along the west face. Zen passed the shuttered windows and unlocked the door giving access to his domain. He took his groceries through to the kitchen immediately to the left of the front door and put them away neatly, then returned to the large salotto which took up most of the apartment and slumped down in an armchair, wincing slightly. The panoply of pain that he had lived with for so long had now lifted, but there were still a few malcontent twinges and jabs prepared to make his life a misery if he stretched too far in the wrong direction, or went to sleep in an unsuitable position, or generally overexerted himself in almost any way whatever. The doctors he went to consult once a week at the hospital in Pietrasanta had assured him that there was no permanent damage, and that any 'perceived discomfort' was purely superficial, temporary and nothing to worry about. He believed them, but these pains were less like the dramatic and evidently causal agony he had suffered in the months immediately following the explosion than the normal discomforts of age and decrepitude, telltale signs that the body was reaching the end of its useful life. This somehow made them even less bearable.

He closed his eyes, feeling the delicious cool of the high-ceilinged room begin to massage his stress away. How many such rooms had he passed through on the long journey back to his present convalescence? He would never know. Of the first few weeks, his mind retained only jagged little splinters of memory, precise yet totally specific and uncontextualized. For the rest, he had to rely on what he'd been told. The driver had hauled him out of the burning car and radioed for help, and they'd both been rushed to hospital in Catania. After the immediate operation for a collapsed lung, Zen had been transferred by air to a military hospital on the island of Santo Stefano, off the Sardinian coast, where he had spent weeks in traction. Later he had been moved again, first to a sanatorium in the Adige valley, then to a private nursing home in the hills above Genoa.

In all that time, he had seen no one that he knew or could trust, except in the impersonal sense in which you trust a garage mechanic to repair your car. His body had had the best of attention, but it was only gradually that he had come to understand that the reason why the authorities were lavishing such care on him was because they needed him alive and presentable to testify at an upcoming trial in the United States. The most informative and forthcoming of his visitors had been a young man from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who had managed to intimate, without of course naming any names, that the Americans had succeeded in arresting a number of prominent mafiosi who had been on the Italian 'most wanted' list for years, including two members of the Ragusa clan whom Zen had identified from photographs in the course of a preliminary debriefing at the military base on Santo Stefano. This tended to reflect rather poorly on the Italian authorities, the young diplomat had continued, and it was unanimously felt at the highest levels that to send a hero of the unceasing domestic struggle against 'the octopus' to the USA, to testify in person that he had seen Nello and Giulio Rizzo unloading illegal drugs from the plane on which he himself had just arrived from Malta, would help redress the balance and generally help the home side cut a better international figura.

Meanwhile, all he had to do was wait and make the most of the amenities of the accommodation that had been placed at his disposal. Which, he had to admit, were considerable. The property was apparently owned by two brothers named Rutelli, one based in Turin and the other in Rome, who divided it between them for vacation use. Zen had been allotted the upper storey, while the lower one had been empty until the day before, when he had heard noises indicating that someone had moved in. This someone was presumably the other brother, but Zen had been given no instructions to make contact with him, and had not done so.

The floor he had was more than ample for his needs. There were two bedrooms, a pleasant bathroom, the small but adequate kitchen, and this great living area which breathed an air of calmer, more spacious times. Zen had always believed that every building came with its own aura, a sort of immaterial scent you picked up the moment you crossed the threshold. But unlike a scent, this couldn't be sprayed on. It was unique and inalienable, and told the sensitive visitor much about the people who had lived in the space and the things that had happened there. Zen had been in beautiful houses he could hardly wait to get out of, so overwhelmingly oppressive was the sense of evil and despair which they radiated, and also in fetid inner-city tenements that felt as serene as a monastery cell. This room was visually pleasing, in a restrained, craftsmanlike way, but its real gift to him was the overwhelming sense of peace and contentment it radiated. He didn't know who had lived there, but he would have testified under oath to their moral character and general probity.

That was his last thought until he woke to find the room significantly darker and the clock showing twenty minutes past seven. It took him another moment to remember his dinner date with Gemma, for which he still had not made a booking. He had boastfully said that he could get them into Augusto's, counting on using Girolamo Rutelli's name to do the trick, but he hadn't counted on leaving it this late.

In the event, this proved to be no problem. He had only just dialled the number of the restaurant when the phone was answered by an obsequious voice saying, 'Augusta's. Good evening, Dottor Rutelli'

Zen was speechless for a moment. Then he said, 'How did you know it was me?'

'We have Caller Identification installed, dottore. I explained it to you last time, don't you remember? That way we can filter out the riff-raff and answer only the calls that matter. What can we do for you?'

'I'd like a table for two this evening. About eight, if that's possible.'

'Ma certo, dottore. Come no? Alle otto. Benissimo. Al piacere di rivederla.'

'I'll be dining with a friend named Pier Giorgio Butani,' Zen went on. 'If I'm a little late, please look after him.'

He took a shower and then carefully picked out some suitable clothing in the casually formal mode which was the evening norm in Versilia. Realizing that this was a tricky balance to bring off successfully, Zen had taken the bus to Viareggio shortly after his arrival and put himself in the hands of one of the men's outfitters there. As always, his aim was to remain invisible. 'Get lost in the crowd,' the young man from the Farnesina had told him. 'Keep your head down, melt into the background, don't draw attention to yourself. We have decided against providing you with a resident bodyguard for that very reason, although there will be people keeping an eye on you. But Versilia's full of tourists at this time of year, and as long as you're reasonably cautious there's no earthly reason why anyone should give you a second thought. Just remember who you're supposed to be, and try to look the part.' This last was a reference to one Pier Giorgio Butani, a distant cousin of Girolamo Rutelli. Butani really existed, just in case anyone checked, but he had moved with his parents to Argentina in the mid-Fifties, only rarely visited Italy and had never been to Versilia.

Zen left the house at a quarter to eight, which gave him just enough time to reach the restaurant in time by cutting across the park at the end of the street The sun was already down behind the umbrella pines, the air was fresh but still pleasantly warm. The birds that flocked in the gardens all around were chirping and chattering loudly, but there was no other sound. Zen passed under the gateway to the original estate, past the ruins of the porter's lodge, and over a hump bridge across one of the narrow canals constructed a century or more earlier to drain the malarial swamps.

In the wood, the shadows were gathering swiftly. The birds here were larger and louder, rarely showing themselves except to swoop in packs across the track in front. To either side, the undergrowth was dense and impenetrable, except to the various small animals which could be heard scuttling away at the sound or smell of this intruder.

It was only when he turned left on to the track leading back towards the shoreline that Zen noticed the other man. He was about thirty metres back, walking calmly along. By now it was almost dark beneath the tall pines. Zen could just make out that the man seemed to be wearing jeans and a short jacket of some kind, and was glancing about him to either side as though admiring the beauties of nature.

Zen ignored the warning signal which automatically sounded in his brain, and carried on towards the invisible strip of streets where Augusta's was situated. He had to learn to become an ordinary civilian again, he told himself. The days of danger and glory were over. No one was trying to kill him, no one was even interested in his existence except as a token witness at a foreign trial, flown in like a consignment of truffles or rare wine, a luxury import to impress the locals and make the old country look good. Nevertheless, he counted off another thirty metres, and then dropped his bunch of keys. Retrieving them, he noted that the other walker had also made a left turn at the parting of the ways.

For a moment, he was half inclined to force a confrontation and find out who the man was, but then it occurred to him that it might well be one of those whom he'd been told would be 'keeping an eye on him'. If so, that would be unprofessional and an embarrassment for all concerned. And if not, it would break the cardinal rule of his existence here in Versilia, which was not to draw attention to himself. In the end he decided to do nothing, but he lengthened his stride as much as possible, eager to see the bright lights and crowded streets again.

He was looking forward to his dinner with Gemma, even though he knew hardly anything about her. In the long wearisome months since the 'incident7 and the death of his mother, he had been alone almost the whole time, apart of course from the purely professional and usually painful attentions of doctors, nurses, policemen and bureaucrats. However the evening turned out, it would be a welcome change from all that. And if he knew nothing about Gemma, she knew even less about him. Almost everything he'd told her during their very brief exchanges had necessarily been a lie. He reminded himself that he was going to have to keep that up during the whole of the time they were together, adding new details where called for, but such as were consistent with what Gemma already knew. Maybe it wasn't going to be such a relaxing evening after all.

At last the gateway at the south-western edge of the former estate appeared in the gloom up ahead. This time, Zen risked an unmotivated glance behind. The man who had been there was nowhere to be seen, but they had passed many minor paths off through the undergrowth to either side, any one of which he might have taken. A moment later Zen had crossed another of the drainage canals, and was out in the streets leading down to the sea.

Da Augusto, as its folksy name suggested, looked like a perfectly ordinary fish restaurant anywhere from one end of the Versilia resort coastline to the other. It consisted of a nondescript two-storey building on a back street three blocks inland from the lungomare, with a glass extension jutting out to the kerb at the front and a garden area with a retractable awning at the rear. There was nothing to suggest that it was anything other than a reasonably decent eatery serving reasonably fresh fish cooked reasonably well at a more or less reasonable price. It was only when you tried to get a table that it became apparent that there was rather more to it than that.

The distinction was based not so much on the food, which was at best a notch or so above many other places in the area, as on the restaurant's unchallenged pedigree as the chosen haunt of almost every Italian political and show business personality of the last half century, many of whose personally inscribed photographs lined the walls. What had happened off camera was reputedly still more interesting. That table in the corner, according to some, was where Anita Ekberg was being entertained by Marcello Mastroianni on the memorable evening when she bent down to retrieve something from her handbag, causing her unsupported right breast to tumble out of her dress. According to others, that one over there, against the wall, was where Giulio Andreotti and a group of his closest allies had decided not to negotiate with the Red Brigades to secure the release of Aldo Moro. And over there, at the back of the main room, rumour had it that a groupie had crawled under the table and brought a certain pop star to orgasm in her mouth on a bet from another member of the band, who wanted to see if she could make the star in question bring the events in progress to the attention of the staff and customers. She had reputedly succeeded.

Zen was greeted by a functionary who managed to combine the glacial serenity of the traditional English butler with the menacing directness of a Mafia thug. His first glance at Zen amply revealed the extent to which he was unimpressed by this new arrival.

'My name is Pier Giorgio Butani,' Zen told him in a tone suggesting that he was even less impressed. 'I am dining with Dottor Rutelli.'

For a moment, the functionary's composure deserted him completely.

'Dottor Rutelli?' he whispered. 'But he's already here, thought Zen glumly. Damn. The doorman was staring at Zen with something approaching desperation. 'Massimo Rutelli?' he queried at length. Zen shook his head tetchily. 'What? No! His brother, Girolamo.'

The man laughed almost hysterically. He grabbed a leather-bound menu.

'Ah, yes, of course! Right! This way, please. Just over here. Be so good as to take-a seat. May I take your coat? Thank you, thank you.'

Zen sat down, took out his mobile phone and loudly faked a call.

'Girolamo?' he shouted, glancing idly at the menu. 'Oh, where the hell are you? I'm starving. Me? At Augusta's, of course.

What? What? Why? Really? Oh, too bad! Well, so be it. I'll call you tomorrow, okay? All right. Fine, fine.'

Just as he replaced the phone, a stunningly beautiful woman walked into the restaurant and stood looking around quizzically. It took Zen a moment to recognize her. He'd almost never seen her fully clothed before, he realized, pushing back his chair and hurrying over.

'Gemma, my dear! What a surprise! And what a great pleasure. Now you haven't eaten, have you? And what were your plans?'

He turned her away towards the wall and pretended to listen, nodding sympathetically while she explained her plans. In reality, Gemma was staring at him with an expression which mingled amusement and alarm.

'Oh no you're not!' Zen declared decisively, taking her arm and steering her into the room. 'Wasting your time with those boring little people? Out of the question! You're dining with me, my dear, and that’s that.'

He paused to confront the doorman.

'I just phoned Dottor Rutelli. Unfortunately he's been forced to cancel our dinner engagement due to urgent personal problems, but he was kind enough to invite me to use the booking on my own behalf. He specially recommended the lasagnette con pesce cappone. We'll have that as a starter.'

He ushered Gemma, who was by now almost giggling, over to the table.

'What on earth was that all about?' she demanded, taking off her cream linen jacket and hanging it on the back of the chair.

'Don't complain. I told you I'd get us a reservation, and I have.'

'So you know the Rutelli brothers. Of course, I should have realized, that’s who normally has that tavolo where you are now.'

'I don't really know them. Girolamo is the friend of a friend. But I knew he had a house here which he wouldn't be using until August, so I arranged to borrow it for a few weeks. The friend owes me a favour and Rutelli owes him one. The old story.'

'I only know them by sight myself. We nod and greet each other, of course, but to tell the truth I've never really managed to tell them apart. Rather ordinary little men, I always thought'

'Well, they have their uses. Apparently the staff here don't know that at the moment Girolamo's in Rome, so I used his name to get a booking. After that it was just a matter of faking a previous engagement for our supposed host and the table is ours.' Gemma laughed and shook her head.

'Well, at least you're not boring,' she said. 'I didn't realize you were so well connected locally.'

'I'm not at all. In fact I don't know a soul here except you.'

Always tell as much of the truth as possible, he reminded himself. Most liars got caught out unnecessarily falsifying or embroidering quite trivial details.

'And what about you?' he asked, gazing at her.

She was wearing an apricot-coloured short-sleeved blouse of what looked like coarse silk, open at the neck to reveal a flat gold chain at her tanned throat. Her auburn-tinged hair had clearly been redone since leaving the beach, and her fingernails were painted a bright orange to match her blouse and lipstick. She's dolled herself up, thought Zen, using a vulgar Venetian dialect expression. Then he realized that she would naturally have done so, not wanting to look out of place at Augusta's. There was no reason to assume that it had anything to do with him.

'Oh, I'm just a day tripper,' Gemma replied. 'I actually live in Lucca, so if s easy enough to get here and back.'

'Is it close?'

'Half an hour on the bretella. Quick enough to come back for dinner. Have you been there?' Zen was once again glad to be able to answer truthfully. 'Never.'

The waiter arrived with a bottle of the house white and a platter of insalata di mare. Another of the many traditions of Augusta's was that if you were too preoccupied to order,, as so many important clients naturally tended to be, dishes just arrived at the table.

'If s a dull little city,' Gemma went on, 'but very calm.' 'Is your family there?'

'My father lives close by, in a nursing home. My brothers and sisters have all moved away. I did myself, once, but I came back.' 'So you live alone?' Gemma hesitated.

'Except when my son comes to visit,' she said. Zen nibbled some marinated squid.

'How old is he?'

'Twenty. He's studying engineering in Florence. That s where my husband lives. Stefano stays with him. And you?'

Zen raised his head like a tennis player realizing that what he had thought to be an unreturnable volley was in fact skimming back to his side of the court.

'Me?'

'Family’ said Gemma. 'Children.' 'No’ said Zen. Gemma laughed. 'You're parthenogenetic?' – 'Sorry?' 'Yours was a virgin birth?'

'What? Oh no. My parents are both dead, and I have no children. That s all.'

Gemma blushed and looked a little flustered.

'I'm sorry, that must have sounded tactless. I must stop trying to make jokes. It never works.'

'Oh, don't do that. There's so little to laugh at as one gets older that even the intention is encouraging.'

They finished their starters and were silent for a while.

'So where do you live?' asked Gemma as the waiter came with the dish of lasagnette.

'In Rome,' Zen replied. 'I work for one of the ministries, in a mid-level bureaucratic position.'

'Which one?'

'Interior.'

'I thought you statali all got your holidays in August' 'Well, this is not really a holiday, as such. My mother died recently. I took it quite hard – she was all I had left really – and the Ministry granted me some compassionate leave.'

Noting Gemma's serious expression, he decided to lighten the tone.

'Come August, I'll be sweltering in my office, the one with the windows painted shut, while everyone else is at the beach or in the mountains’

He drank some wine.

'And what about you?'

'I own a pharmacy which I inherited from my father’

Zen smiled sourly.

'I've always thought that a permit to run a pharmacy or a tobacconist's was the next best thing to a licence to print money.' Gemma smiled aloofly.

'Well, I don't know about that, but we do quite nicely. The location is excellent, on Via Fillungo, one of the main streets, and I employ three very bright, competent women to look after the shop. The clients trust them, rightly, and their wages reflect that. The business more or less runs itself. Apart from keeping an eye on inventory and sales, I'm not that involved these days.'

Zen smiled and nodded. He was astonished at how well the evening was going. It was because they were where they were, he supposed. In Versilia, any encounter was by definition a holiday event, with no implications for the future. If he and Gemma had met anywhere else, and had been having dinner on such a casual basis, the whole evening would have been fraught with implied or perceived meanings, but here it was innocent. Nothing that mattered happened at the beach, and nothing that happened there mattered. It was as simple as that.

Zen had just launched into a rather amusing anecdote concerning a dentist in his native Canareggio district of Venice, when he realized firstly that Pier Giorgio Butani had not grown up in Venice, and secondly that Gemma was not listening. Or rather she was not listening to him. Her attention was completely distracted by an expansive women in her late forties who had materialized at their table. Zen vaguely remembered having seen her on the beach.

'Gemma, my dear, have you heard the news?' she cried. 'What news?'

Gemma seemed less than enchanted by this turn of events.

'Massimo Rutelli!'

'What about him?'

'You haven't heard? He's dead!'

Gemma gave a facial shrug.

'Really?'

The woman looked offended at Gemma's lack of response. 'You don't understand! He was dead all afternoon! Sitting there right beside us on the beach!' 'What do you mean?'

'He was lying on his lounger at Franco's and apparently he had a stroke or something! I saw him there with that towel stretched over his back. I thought oh yes if s Signor Rutelli, although I didn't know which one and all the time it was a corpse lying there! If s horrible, just horrible! I feel sort of unclean, you know what I mean? That such a thing should happen here, of all places.'

'Yes, well, death can come at inconvenient times. My maternal grandfather passed away on the lavatory. He always used to spend a long time in mere, and it was hours before we found him. Now that really did make us feel unclean. Never mind, it’ll all be forgotten in a few days.'

She flashed the woman a cool and very final smile, and turned back pointedly to face Zen. But the intruder was not to be put off so easily.

'Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?' she enquired cattily. 'The mystery man! We've all been wondering who was usurping the Rutellis' place.'

Zen stood up and held out his hand.

'Pier Giorgio Butani, signora. I am Girolamo Rutelli's cousin. I knew his brother only slightly, but needless to say I'm appalled at this dreadful news.'

This too was true. Anything which brought attention to the Rutelli family risked bringing attention to Zen and thereby blowing his cover.

'Teresa Pananelli,' the woman returned with a decidedly flirtatious smile. 'I'm so glad that you at least are treating this tragedy with the proper gravity, Signor Butani. But then Gemma's always been frivolous and flippant, haven't you, my dear? We were at school together, and I remember some of the tricks she used to play on our poor teachers…'

Zen smiled politely. Gemma said nothing. Signora Pananelli emitted a sound rather like a hiss. She leaned forward to Zen, touching him on the sleeve.

'And it didn't end there,' she confided in a stage whisper. "The stories I could tell! Particularly since Tommaso and she split up.'

She laughed loudly and insincerely.

'Anyway, be warned! When it comes to men. Gemma eats them up and spits them out. There was a tennis pro at the Club

Nettuno who lasted almost the whole season, but normally the turnover's much faster than that. Well, I must be getting back to my friends. A pleasure to have met you, Signor Butani. Ciao, Gemma!'

Zen sat down again.

'Well, she was certainly…' he began.

'Don't say anything!' snapped Gemma. 'Just don't say anything.'

She was staring at the tablecloth so furiously that it seemed she might burn a hole in it. Zen signalled the waiter to take their plates.

'Per secondo?' the waiter queried. 'Fish,' said Zen. 'What kind?' 'The freshest.'

'All our fish are fresh’ the waiter retorted grittily. 'Then it doesn't matter which kind. Grilled, with patate fritte and a dish of insalata di fagiolini verdi. And more and better wine.' The waiter took himself off in a huff. 'I hope you don't mind me ordering,' Zen said to Gemma. 'Why should I?' 'Some women might.'

'I'm not interested in tokenistic gestures. If I want to assert myself, you won't be in any doubt about it. Besides, your choice was perfectly correct’

'Thank you’ Zen replied with a smidgen of irony.

'That bitch.'

'La Pananelli?'

'What a fucking nerve. I mean, really! She was right, we were at school together. What she didn't mention was that she left a year after I arrived.'

'She was expelled?'

An abrupt shake of the head.

'A little question of age, caro. And she's been on my case ever since, peeking and prying, gossiping and insinuating. I don't know what her problem is. Except I do, which just makes it worse. Thank God I only see her here at the beach’

'What is her problem?'

'Don't try and pretend you're interested!'

Zen looked at her neutrally and said nothing. 'I'm sorry’ Gemma went on. 'She really got to me and I'm taking it out on you. I apologize.' 'That s all right'

'Her problem is that she sees me as her vicarious double. She's too stupid to realize it, of course, but that’s the situation all right. Teresa married her childhood sweetheart, a consulting engineer who knows everything there is to know about reinforced concrete. I was once at a birthday party she threw for him where he showed a selection of slides he had taken all over the world showing different types of rebar.'

'What’s that?'

Gemma laughed.

'Be thankful you didn't ask Sandro that question. It's the metal gristle that holds concrete together. It comes in various shapes and forms. Each country has its preferred kind. The differences are slight but extraordinarily significant.'

‘I get the picture.'

Their main course arrived, a succulent mullet grilled to perfection.

'But Sandro's own rebar seems to have rusted out, judging by various remarks which Teresa let drop in an attempt to get me interested in her affairs. Not that I needed her to tell me. Look at her, sitting over there. Go ahead, stare! Christ knows she and her pals are staring at us. Note the tremulous, pouting lower lip? A sure sign of the unfucked. Sad but true.'

She drank some wine as though to quench her thirst.

'Forgive me being so frank. I would have preferred to have carried on with the civilized evening we were having, but since Teresa made those comments about me, I thought I'd better try and put them in perspective.'

Zen noted that although Gemma had explained why her nemesis had made the allegations about her, she hadn't attempted to deny them.

'Anyway, at least we know who took my place at the beach and why,' he replied brightly. 'He paid a stiff price, the poor bastard.' He grinned at Gemma.

'And now let's change the subject, and try and at least pretend to be enjoying ourselves. After all, if that woman was trying to ruin your evening, we don't want to give her the satisfaction of thinking that she's succeeded.' Gemma grinned back.

'I like the way you think. God this fish is good! They've done nothing to it, just a hint of coriander and fennel. And have you tried the potatoes? Light as a feather.'

'All right, all right, don't overdo it'

'So where are you from?'

'Venice,' he answered without thinking.

'Really? But no one's from Venice any more.'

'I am that no one.'

'That explains why we're both so stubborn. Lucca's the only city in Tuscany that was never conquered by the Florentines, and Venice was never conquered by anyone.'

'Until the end.'

'Yes, and when it happened we both chose a championship conqueror in Napoleon, who handed both cities over to his uninspiring but well-intentioned Habsburg in-laws. Not a bad way to finish up, when you look at the alternatives.'

She pushed her plate aside.

'Now let’s get out of here.'

'No dessert, coffee, nothing?'

"There's a good gelateria just up the road, near where I parked. Lef s go there and get some ice cream and coffee, and then I'll run you home.'

'I can walk.'

'I wouldn't mind seeing the Rutellis' villa. From the outside, I mean. Is it nice?'

'Very pleasant. And you can come in, if you want. The interior's really good. All of a piece.'

'Well, let’s see how we feel.'

Zen obviously couldn't use any of his own credit cards, and his minders hadn't gone to the lengths of getting him any in his cover name. They had however provided an ample supply of large-denomination bank notes for his use, and he tossed a few of these on top of the bill before following Gemma outside.

It was now dark, the air mild and smooth as silk, the streets saturated with people standing or wandering about in animated clusters. Gemma and Zen joined them, she clacking along in her high-heeled beige sandals with delicate straps criss-crossing her feet and encircling her trim ankles. When they arrived at the gelateria they had a spirited argument about the appropriate choice of flavours. Zen attempted without success to enlist the owner's support in favour of his thesis that only fruit-based ice cream was healthy and proper at this time of year, and that by opting for hazelnut, pistachio and dark chocolate Gemma was making a fundamental dietary error which she would be lucky to live long enough to regret.

They took their overstuffed cones outside and sat licking them like a couple of children, giggling as they bent this way and that to try and avoid the melting ice cream from dripping on to their clothing. But behind Zen's mask of frivolity, he felt a little hollow. It was now clear what the situation was. Assuming that what Teresa Pananelli had said was even half true, men Gemma was a rapid recycler of summer lovers, and indeed possibly came to the beach at least partly with that in view. She seemed to like Zen, and he was certainly attracted to her. If he tried, they would probably end up going to bed together.

There was of course nothing whatever wrong with that, particularly for someone who hadn't been with a woman for over a year. Even the nuns who served as nurses at one of the sanatoria where he had stayed had started to look pretty good towards the end of his stay. The melancholy he could feel fermenting beneath his superficial gaiety was based on the clear and absolute realization that the affair would go no further than that. It would be a pleasant diversion, but no more. Afterwards they would go their separate ways, and the odds were that they would never meet again. And even if they did, nothing would come of it. Gemma had her own life, Zen his. And at their age, there was no force strong enough to fuse these disparate realities and bind mem together for good.

When they had finished their ice creams, Gemma led the way back up the street to a blue sports-utility vehicle which she unlocked and then manoeuvred out of a space which from inside seemed slightly smaller than the automobile itself. They threaded their way at a respectful crawl through the crowd of pedestrians taking full advantage of their unwritten right of way, then turned off down a side street and worked their way back to the villa where Zen was staying. Gemma parked and turned off the motor.

'I think I will come in for a quick coffee after all, if that’s all right'

'That would be wonderful,' Zen replied.

Maybe I'm going to get lucky, he thought His gloomy reservations of a few minutes earlier now seemed absurd. Why did he have to make everything so hard for himself? Other people just grabbed whatever they could, enjoyed themselves, and thought no more about it What was he trying to prove by doing otherwise?

He walked up to the gate and was searching for his keys when a car door opened across the street and a man in uniform got out.

'Buona sera, signora, signore’ he said in a tone of voice which Zen recognized instinctively. Sure enough, as the man came closer and caught the light of the security lamp on the exterior of the villa, his uniform turned out to be that of a junior officer in the carabinieri. Zen returned the greeting guardedly.

'Signor Pier Giorgio Butani?' the man continued.

'Yes.'

'I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour, but my superior needs to ask you some questions regarding an investigation we have in progress. I must therefore ask you to accompany me to headquarters.'

Zen's first thought was that they had come for him, and this was an elaborate charade made necessary by Gemma's presence.

'Very well,' he said. 'In that case, I take it that you have no objection to Signora Santini going home.'

The carabiniere peered at Gemma for the first time.

'Gemma Santini?' he asked.

Gemma nodded.

'That s a stroke of luck. You're on the list too, signora. Do you want to take your car and follow me? That way you can go straight home afterwards.'

'What’s all this about?' Gemma demanded tetchily.

‘I expect they'll tell us that when we get there,' Zen told her soothingly.

He turned to the carabinieri officer.

'We'll follow you.'

'Very well. If s not far. Just keep my tail lights in view.'

Gemma walked back and unlocked her vehicle, then turned back to Zen, who was still standing where he had been before, staring into space.

'What's the matter?' she said, as the carabiniere revved up his motor.

Zen shook his head and walked over to her.

'I don't know. I just had this incredibly strong sense of deja vu.'

'Get in,' Gemma said dismissively. 'Never mind your psychic experiences, let’s just deal with whatever bullshit this is.'

'It can't be anything serious or they wouldn't have let us drive there.'

'Didn't you say you worked for the Ministry of the Interior? Why don't you show them your documents and tell them to stop messing us about?'

"These are the carabinieri, cara. Different force, different ministry, no love lost. If I tried to pull rank, they'd keep us there all night. See his signal light? He's turning left.'

'Yes, I do see it. I like you calling me cara, but I don't like you telling me how to drive.'

'I'll never do so again.'

'Yes, you will.'

They followed the lead car a few kilometres south along the lungomare, finally turning off into one of the uglier developments of what had obviously been coastal marshland until very recently. Signora Pananelli's husband would have been in his element here. Tower-block apartment buildings and hotels divided the space with huge parking lots and supermarkets. They stopped in front of a relatively modest, and by the standards of the place old, two-storey concrete block sporting the carabinieri crest above the doorway.

Their escort led the way upstairs and into a room where a man in the uniform of a major looked up briefly from the papers he was studying.

'Signor Giorgio Butani and Signora Gemma Santini,' the man who had accompanied them announced. The officer at the desk nodded. 'Very good, Aldo. You may go.'

The door closed behind Aldo, but the carabinieri officer made no immediate move. Zen studied him with a professional eye.

Competent but unambitious, with a huge pool of resentment at having been passed over in favour of more motivated rivals and stuck away here as the holiday cop in a town which, like Brigadoon, only came into existence for brief spells at long intervals, and vanished off the map the rest of the time. He would be pompous, long-winded and a stickler for the rule book. The way to deal with him was to take the initiative, but without getting too pushy.

'May we sit down?' Zen asked, bringing a chair for Gemma from those stacked against the wall.

'Of course, of course,' the officer replied without looking up. 'Please excuse me, I'll be with you in a moment. I just have to finish perusing this report.'

Like hell you do, thought Zen, fetching himself a chair and sitting beside Gemma. He gave her an encouraging smile. She was glaring in a manner which suggested that she might lose her patience very rapidly, which with a man like this would be fatal.

The carabiniere stacked the papers he had been reading neatly together and looked at them both.

'I'm sorry to have to bring you here so late…' he began.

'Your colleague already apologized,' interrupted Gemma tartly. 'What do you want with us?'

The major gave her a glance evidently intended as a warning.

'It concerns the death today of one Massimo Rutelli,' he said after a significant pause.

'We know about that’ Gemma returned. 'I heard that he had a stroke. What’s that got to do with us?'

'There are various unresolved questions regarding the precise circumstances of the event which we are attempting to clarify. We have therefore compiled a list of all those clients of the bathing establishment where the body was discovered who were present on the beach today, with a view to interviewing them concerning what they may have seen or heard. Both your names appear on the said list.'

He pulled a notepad towards him.

'I propose to start with you, Signora Santini. You are resident in Lucca, I believe?' 'Yes.'

'At Via del Fosso number 73’ 'Correct.'

'You will be returning there tonight?'

It was said with just a hint of impertinent innuendo.

'Of course’ Gemma retorted.

"Then let us try and get you on your way as soon as possible, after which I will deal with your companion.'

'How do you know he's not coming with me?' demanded Gemma brazenly.

The carabinieri major gave her a look which Zen found himself quite unable to decipher. He seemed to be trying to think of a suitable answer to Gemma's question. Failing to do so, he ignored it and asked one himself.

'What time did you arrive at the beach today, signora?'

'I got there this morning at about ten and left again just before one, then returned after lunch.'

'According to the chart of the bagno drawn for us by the owner, Signor Rutelli apparently occupied the place immediately opposite yours.'

'Well, today he did. But in fact that’s Pier Giorgio's place.'

She glanced at Zen, who leaned forward and cleared his throat.

'It is actually rented by the Rutelli family’ he said, 'but Girolamo, the elder brother, is an acquaintance of mine and gave me permission to use it. Massimo Rutelli evidently didn't know about this arrangement, so when he showed up unexpectedly he naturally took their usual spot.'

The major nodded absently, as this was merely a confirmation of old news.

'Did you see Signor Rutelli arrive?' he asked Gemma.

'No. I must have been sunning myself. But when I started sorting out my stuff before leaving, I noticed that mere was someone else in Pier Giorgio's place.'

'Didn't you recognize him?'

'How could I? He was lying on his stomach with his face turned away from me. It could have been anyone.' 'So how did you know he wasn't Signor Butani?' Gemma gave a throwaway gesture, as though this was obvious. 'His fingers.' 'What about his fingers?'

'They were thick and blunt. Women notice men's bodies a lot, they just don't notice them in the same way that men notice women's bodies. Pier Giorgio has very fine, tapering fingers. This man's were quite different. You could imagine them building a wall or castrating a horse. You couldn't imagine them caressing your skin.'

Zen looked away. For the first time he could remember, he was blushing. The major harrumphed.

'So the victim was present when you left shortly before one o'clock?'

'Yes.'

'And when you returned in the afternoon?' 'He was still there.' 'What time was that?' Gemma shrugged.

'I went to the Bar Centrale and had a panino and some salad. About two, probably.' She turned to Zen. 'What time did you get there?'

‘I left home at one,' Zen replied. 'It takes about fifteen minutes to walk. I prefer the beach in the lunch hour. If s less crowded.'

'He was there when I arrived,' Gemma explained to the carabiniere. 'He'd taken the next place up and looked like he was asleep.'

'I was. I had lunch at home and finished off a bottle of Vermentino. As soon as I sat down on the beach, the heat just knocked me out'

The major stood up, as if to impose his authority on this mutual dialogue.

'Please respect the sequence of questioning,' he said testily. ‘I didn't realize there was one,' Gemma retorted. Don't push him too far, thought Zen, but fortunately at that point the phone rang.

'Yes?' barked the carabinieri major. 'Very well. Tell them to’ He hung up and turned to Gemma.

'We have established that, according to your testimony, Signora Santini, the victim arrived shortly before one o'clock and was still there at two. Is that correct?'

'Yes.'

'Did you notice a towel draped over his back?' Gemma reflected for a moment.

'No, I don't think so. Wait a minute. There was one when I saw him in the afternoon. I'm not sure about the morning.' 'When did you leave the beach?'

'About four, earlier than usual. There was a rather unpleasant incident.'

Everything the major had picked up from his seemingly avid perusal of the chapter on basic interrogation techniques in the training manual now deserted him. He leaned forward, eyes bulging, all agog.

'What was that?'

Having achieved her effect Gemma proceeded to dismiss it 'Oh, nothing really. Pier Giorgio woke up at about three-thirty or so. I was going to get a coffee from Franco's bar, and I asked him if he'd like one too. On my way back, someone ran into me and spilt the coffee all over my bathing costume. I didn't have a spare with me, so there was nothing for it but to go home.' "The man was running? Why?'

'I don't know. I mean, he wasn't running at first. He was just standing there on the boardwalk down the centre of Franco's strip. I thought he was staring at Pier Giorgio, to be honest'

A gleam came into the major's eye.

'Are you sure it was Signor Butani he was staring at? Might it not have been Signor Rutelli, who was sitting in the next chair?' Gemma made a moue of indifference.

'It could have been. I didn't have time to think about it. The next thing I knew, he'd whirled around and barged into me, spilling scalding coffee all over my belly and thighs.'

The major reflected a moment.

'Why did he run?'

'I haven't the slightest idea.'

'Was it because he heard you coming?'

'I don't think so. He was facing the other way, and I was barefoot so he couldn't have heard me. Besides, why should he be frightened of me?'

The major nodded and smiled the ironic, knowing smile of the master detective who alone has grasped the hidden clue concealed in the witness's seemingly ingenuous answer.

'Exactly. Why indeed should he be frightened of you?'

He turned to Zen.

'Did you notice this man, signore?'

'I saw him run off after he collided with Gemma, that’s all’

'Can either of you describe him?'

'No,' said Gemma decisively.

'You must remember something!' the major protested.

'Why? How many people do you think I see every day here? Hundreds, maybe a thousand, none of whom mean anything whatever to me. If I paid enough attention to them all to be able to describe them, I'd go mad. The man who ran into me was young, that’s all I can tell you. And when you've said that, you've said everything. He looked young, he moved young, he acted young and he dressed young.'

'How young?'

Gemma shrugged and looked at Zen.

'Thirty?'

Zen nodded.

'Early thirties, I'd say’

'That's right,' said Gemma. 'He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with some writing on the front. In English.'

'He was English?' demanded the carabinieri officer.

'No, no. At least, I don't mink so. He looked typically Italian, like any of the young Florentine teppisti who hang out down at Viareggio at the weekend’

'Do you remember what this writing said?'

'Only one word’

'What was that?'

'"Beach". La spiaggia. I recognized that from those signs the council put up everywhere in all the different European languages, warning people about the currents and all the rest of it. But mere was another word I didn't get’

'"Life",' said Zen unexpectedly.

The major regarded him with an air of professional triumph.

'Signor Butani, you have testified that you did not see this man until he was running away after his collision with Signora Santini. How then could you possibly have seen anything printed on the front of his clothing?'

'No, this wasn't him. Well, it might have been, I suppose, but it was later, after I left the beach. I was coming out of a shop in Via Puccini when I noticed some young man in a shirt like that. I didn't understand "beach", but the first word was "life's". That s the Anglo-Saxon genitive form, so the whole phrase must have been "A life's beach". La vita della spiaggia.'

His triumph at remembering this detail of English grammar from a long explanation once given to him by his American girlfriend Ellen was short-lived.

'La spiaggia di una vita,' Gemma corrected.

'It still doesn't make any sense!' the major rapped out.

'It's probably the name of some pop group,' said Gemma, rising. 'Well, is that all? Because if so I wouldn't mind getting home.'

'Just one more question. This is to both of you. Did either of you at any point during your time on the beach either hear or see anything unusual occurring in the immediate vicinity of your chairs?'

'Not apart from the incident I've mentioned,' said Gemma. The major looked at Zen, who shook his head. 'No, that’s all.'

'Very well. Signora Santini, you're free to go. Thank you for your cooperation and good night'

He now sounded eager to be rid of her. Gemma bent towards Zen, who immediately stood up.

'Thanks for a wonderful evening,' she said.

'I'm glad you enjoyed it'

‘I really did, despite all this nonsense.'

'So did I’

She pecked him briefly on both cheeks. 'See you tomorrow,' she said, and slipped out of the room. Zen turned back to find the major regarding him with his knowing smile.

‘I fear you may have to postpone that appointment, dottore,' he said.

Zen noted the title, which the carabinieri officer had not used before. He sensed that something was happening which he did not understand and could not control, for now at any rate.

'What more do you need from me?' he asked, sitting down again.

'Just a few brief questions.'

'But in that case I could have gone with Signora Santini!' Zen exclaimed, genuinely annoyed. 'She would have given me a lift. As it is, I'll have to call a taxi and…'

'No, you won't,' the major replied, sitting down heavily behind his desk.

He took a packet of cigarettes from a drawer and offered one to Zen, who accepted, mainly to see what this latest ploy forebode.

'Shortly after seven this evening,' the major went on, having lit their cigarettes, 'I received a phone call from my immediate superiors at provincial headquarters in Lucca. They relayed a message from their superiors at the Ministry in Rome, but I was given to understand that the original source lay still elsewhere.'

Zen smoked quietly and said nothing.

"The message was to the effect that a certain Pier Giorgio Butani, temporarily resident in this district, might fall within the scope of the murder enquiry I was undertaking.'

'What murder enquiry?'

"The one we've been discussing, dottore.'

'But Rutelli died of a stroke!'

'That s the story which the owner of the bagno in question has been putting out, for obvious reasons. We have made no official statement.'

'Rutelli was murdered?'

The major nodded.

'Shot once through the heart from very close range with a nine-millimetre pistol which was almost certainly silenced. The bullet was of the fragmenting type which breaks up inside the body, so there was no exit wound and very little bleeding. What there was was soaked up by the towel, which may have been placed there for that purpose. No one I have interviewed records having heard anything unusual, although many of them were sitting or lying just a few metres away. Nor does anyone recall a stranger going near the place where Rutelli was sitting, apart from the usual watermelon sellers and itinerant African merchants and the like. In short, it has all the hallmarks of a very professional job.'

Zen crushed out his cigarette..

'For reasons we won't go into, I have been staying for some time on the top floor of the Rutelli villa. The lower floor was unoccupied until yesterday, when I heard noises down there. This was presumably Massimo Rutelli arriving and settling in. For other reasons which need not concern us, I did not make myself known to him, and he clearly had no idea that I had been using the family's ombrellone at the beach. He therefore went there the next morning and settled in as usual. When I arrived, I saw someone in the place I had been using. I had no idea who it was, but since the place next to it had always been vacant during the week I sat down there instead. The towel was in place when I arrived, so Rutelli may already have been dead at that point. At no point did I hear or see anything remotely suspicious or untoward. Have you any other questions?' The major sighed histrionically.

'There are numerous questions which I would very much like to put to you, dottore, but it has been made abundantly clear to me that this is not an option. Instead I have been instructed to turn you over to two operatives of a parallel authority who have driven up from Rome. That phone call earlier was to tell me that they have arrived.'

'Which parallel authority?'

The major gave him an unusually incisive look which made Zen realize the fatuity of his question.

'The persons concerned are waiting for you downstairs,' he remarked dismissively.

And mere indeed they were, pacing the floor of the entrance hall to the carabinieri station, a man and a woman in their twenties, both unexceptionably dressed in civilian doming. The only thing that announced their profession was the single quick glance they both gave Zen as he appeared on the stairs, head to toe and back up again, like executioners mentally measuring him for the drop.

The man turned away and started speaking into a portable radio. The woman walked up to Zen.

'We have a car outside,' she said, gesturing at the door. Zen did not move.

'How do I know who you are?' he asked. The woman smiled grimly.

'How do you think we know who you are, Dottor Zen?'

'Do you have identification?'

'If we did, it would be from the same source as the papers you have identifying you as Pier Giorgio Butani. And just as reliable’

The man had finished his call.

'Come on!' he said. 'We've wasted enough time’

A blue saloon was parked right outside the door. Another, in the middle of the street further down, flashed its headlights as they appeared. Once again Zen stopped dead, struck by the overwhelming sensation that all this had happened to him before. Tail lights, headlights… What was the connection?

He had no time to think about it, as his escorts bundled him into the waiting car, which immediately drove off through the sleeping town, ignoring traffic signs and lights. Five minutes later they were heading south on the A12 autostrada.

'Where are we going?' he asked the female agent, who had seated herself with him in the back of the car.

'Pisa,' she replied. 'From there you'll be flown to another destination.'

'Where?'

'We are not ordered to know.'

The car sped along the almost deserted freeway with its central divider of tall flowering bushes.

'But what about my things?' protested Zen. 'My clothes and personal possessions. They're all back at the villa in Versilia’

'Someone will be sent to collect and pack them up and they will be forwarded to you in due course. In the meantime a supply of clothing and toiletries will be provided at your destination’

Zen sighed in disgust.

'You might have given me some notice,' he said. The woman turned to him.

'You don't seem to understand, dottore. The first we heard about all this was when Girolamo Rutelli contacted us with the news that his brother had been killed. He had been phoned by the authorities in Versilia, partly with a view to positively identifying the victim. Once we learned from him what had happened, we of course took urgent steps to remove you from the vicinity as soon as possible’

'What have I got to do with it?'

'All the evidence suggests that the killing of Massimo Rutelli was a case of mistaken identity, and that you were the intended victim. The modus operandi was that of a classic professional hit. The implication is that the Mafia discovered where you were staying and made an attempt to silence you before you could testify against the Rizzo brothers in the States. Having failed, they would of course have tried again, possibly even tonight.'

The car swept through the automatic payment lane at the Pisa Centro exit and accelerated away along the dual carriageway leading to the airport. When the female agent spoke again, she sounded more conciliatory.

'Don't worry, dottore. The danger has passed. Wherever they're sending you next, you'll be well looked after.'