And then you die

Roma

The first thing he did, after being flushed out of the side entrance of the Stazione Termini in a party of hearty young foreign backpackers and their parasitical horde of touts, rogue cabbies, beggars and pickpockets, was to get something to eat. Not that he had any excuse for feeling hungry. They'd fed him something called 'breakfast’ on the flight to Denmark, and something else called 'a snack' on the connecting plane to Fiumicino. But this wasn't a question of physical hunger. His needs were deeper and more complex than that, and luckily he knew just how to satisfy them.

He crossed the busy street, delighting in several near misses and a very ripe insult from one of the drivers vying for position, then headed towards Piazza della Repubblica. After a few more life-enhancing, near-death traffic experiences, he turned left along Via Viminale, humming a sprightly melody he eventually identified as the national anthem, last heard in truncated electronic form emanating from Snaebjorn Gudmundsson's cellphone. 'L’Italia chiamo, stringiamoci a coorte, siam pronti alla morte…'

Opposite a curvaceous section of a redbrick rotunda, once the southern corner of a vast complex of public baths erected by some Roman emperor, stood a poky little establishment about the size of a neighbourhood barber's shop. Inside the window, a roast piglet reclined languidly in a glass case as though taking an afternoon nap. Once through the doorway, there were a few rough wooden tables, chairs and benches. The proprietor, Ernesto, a short man who had come to closely resemble the product he sold, presided from a zinc serving bar at the back. He gave a mock start of astonishment as Zen walked in.

'I thought you were dead!' he exclaimed in a Roman accent that would have needed one of his own knives to cut.

Zen nodded.

'There was a rumour to that effect.'

The two men shook hands, the owner having wiped his off on his filthy apron.

'That shocking business in Sicily!' exclaimed Ernesto with a massive shrug which effectively erased that island from the atlas. 'It was all over the TV and papers, but of course De Angelis and the rest of the lads gave me the inside story. It's sickening, just sickening! What are we supposed to do with those people? We've tried everything, and nothing works. Let’s face it, they're just not like us. Never were, never will be. And now they're talking about building that bridge to the mainland, at the taxpayers' expense, needless to say. You know what I say? Forget it! Stop the ferries! Patrol the straits with gunboats and shoot the bastards if they try to smuggle themselves into the country. They're worse than the Albanians.'

At any other time, Zen might have been inclined to agree, but in his present state he felt like gripping Ernesto by the arms and trying to convince him that they were all – yes, even the Sicilians – fratelli d'Italia. He had enough common sense left, though, to realize that this would not do. Although open to the general public, Ernesto's establishment also functioned as a private club for a circle of privileged regulars, and like any club it had its rules. One of these was that a certain amount of purely rhetorical racism had to be tolerated in the spirit in which it was offered, as an innocuous way of establishing commonality and bonding, expressing solidarity and exasperation, and excluding outsiders. Like the human body, a community could only tolerate a certain degree of invasive otherness without internal collapse. The Romans had had fifteen hundred years of practice in the necessary strategies of passive aggression, and Zen for one did not feel that it was his business to criticize them. The baths which once covered this whole area of the city might have been pillaged and quarried and razed to the ground, but the people were still here.

'So where have you been all this time?' Ernesto went on. 'They told us you'd survived that Mafia bomb, but when you didn't show up here I began to wonder. Maybe they're not telling us the truth, I thought. Even De Angelis didn't seem to know anything definite. Maybe we're all out of the loop, I thought. Maybe the whole thing is just a huge lie! After all, it wouldn't be the first time, would it?'

Zen seated himself at one of the narrow tables.

'It certainly wouldn't.'

'So where were you?'

'At the end of the earth, Ernesto. If s a long story, and I've got an appointment at the office in fifteen minutes. Meanwhile I'm ready for some real food.'

'Right away, dottore, The usual?'

'The usual.'

Ernesto took one of the filled rolls from the glass cabinet, set it on a plate, then added two more thick slices from the roast and set it down in front of Zen along with a small carafe of white wine and a knife and fork.

‘I carved it extra fatty,' he said with a conspiratorial wink. 'You're looking a bit peaky, dottore. We'll have to feed you up.'

Zen cut a chunk of the pale, perfumed meat and started to chew. Apart from wine, Ernesto only served one thing: porchetta, choice young piglets from farmers personally known to him, stuffed with fennel and herbs, slowly roasted to moist perfection on a spit and served cold with chewy fresh bread. The crackling was a crisp layer of rich delights, the fat a creamy, unctuous decadence, the flesh tender and aromatic. Even the generic Castelli Romani wine, which couldn't have been given away free as a household cleanser in Venice, tasted blandly acceptable to Zen today.

As he turned his attention to the roll, having satisfied his immediate craving for flavourful protein, he began to wonder what lay ahead in his imminent interview at the Ministry just down the street. The name Brugnoli meant nothing to him, but this in itself was not surprising. Zen had been out of commission and away from his desk for almost a year, and in Italian politics a year is a very long time. Indeed, he had heard rumours that in his absence there had been yet another general election. But while the players might have changed, the game was likely to remain fairly predictable. The Craxis and Andreottis might be either dead or in retirement, just like their erstwhile enemies, the hard men of the Red Brigades, but to this day no one knew for sure how Aldo Moro had been kidnapped with such breathtaking ease and efficiency, nor why he had been killed. It was like Argentina after the collapse of the military dictatorship. The old regime had been swept away, but a general amnesty and a still more general collective amnesia were in effect.

The implications for Zen's career were not positive. From what the Foreign Ministry official had told him in coded euphemisms on the phone, the case against Nello and Giulio Rizzo, if it ever came to court, could be resolved without Zen's testimony. That removed any further threat to his life from Mafia hit men, but it also removed any interest that the Italian authorities might have had in him. The early retirement which had been hinted at back when he was still convalescing now beckoned. There would be polite speeches, perhaps even a few perks in the way of his pensionable grade and so on, but basically he would be out. At the very best, they might kick him upstairs to a position as Questore at some sleepy provincial police headquarters where he would shuffle files, oversee routine administrative work and generally watch the clock until he was eased out altogether.

But what he needed was work, and more urgently than ever before. He had never felt particularly zealous or committed to his job until now, when it was in danger of being taken away from him along with his mother, his adopted daughter and a whole way of life he had casually taken for granted, as though it would always be there. Now it looked like it very well might not be, he asked himself in a sort of panic what he was to do. He would have enough money to live on comfortably, but how was he going to get through the day? What would he do at nine o'clock and noon and six in the evening, and why? What would be the point of it all?

He wiped his mouth on the paper napkin, paid the modest bill, assured Ernesto of his satisfaction and continued custom in the future, and continued down the street to the cafe at the next corner, where he downed an espresso and smoked a cigarette which tasted as acrid as the one traditionally offered to the condemned man.

The guard at the gate of the Interior Ministry building did not recognize Zen, but after some discussion allowed him to proceed as far as the security checkpoint at the main entrance. The plain-clothed functionary who presided here was a big man with squidgy features, clumsy gestures and the embittered air of someone painfully coming to terms with the fact that his boyhood dream of some day becoming a small-time pimp in Centocelle had probably passed him by.

He demanded to see identification. Zen explained that he had been working undercover and was not carrying any. The failed pimp retorted that no one got in without identification, in a tone suggesting that the very fact that Zen had been unaware of this already made him a potential suspect.

'I have an appointment with someone named Brugnoli’ said Zen. 'Does the name ring a bell?'

'We don't disclose the identity of Ministry personnel.'

'Well, can you call him and let him know I'm here?'

The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

'The phone's at the main desk.'

Zen started forward, and was immediately restrained by an outstretched hand.

‘I can't let you in without valid identification.'

The official's tone of voice indicated clearly that there was no point in trying to reason with him. Zen turned away, walked down the steps into the courtyard of the building and dialled a number on his mobile phone. A voice he didn't recognize answered.

'Si’

•C’e De Angelis?' 'Un momentino.'

The voice receded, calling out, 'Giorgio! For you.' After a further pause, Giorgio De Angelis came on the line.

'Well?' he said bad-temperedly.

'Ciao, Giorgio. Sono Aurelio.'

There was a pause, then a deafening cry.

'Aurelio! How are you? Where are you?'

'Standing outside the front door to the building. I don't have my ID and the security guard won't let me in. Can you persuade him of the error of his ways?'

'I'll be right down.'

Zen was smoking another cigarette when De Angelis appeared outside the doorway and bounded down to embrace his friend.

'How wonderful to see you looking so well!' he exclaimed.

'If s good to be back. I don't know how long for, though.'

'But what are you doing here? I thought you were off for a working holiday in the States.'

Zen immediately took a certain distance.

'You're not supposed to know that’ he said. 'No one is.' De Angelis shrugged.

'If s just something someone said. You know how it is. I had no idea whether it was true or not’

'But you passed it on to a few other people anyway.' 'Only a couple. What happened to your hand?' 'I had an accident with a knife.' 'Are you free for lunch?'

'I've already eaten. Plus I have an appointment with someone called Brugnoli, whoever he may be.' De Angelis rolled his eyes. 'Ah, our new "facilitator"‘ 'What's that supposed to mean?' 'You'll see.'

At the security checkpoint, De Angelis showed his badge and obtained a temporary pass for Zen on his own recognizance.

'Top floor, naturally’ he said. 'If you feel like talking afterwards, I'll be at the Opera’

He inclined his head steeply backwards, seemingly inspecting the mock cupola above their heads as though for signs of earthquake damage.

'I mean really talking,' he added.

Brugnoli's office was the second on the left of the 'good' side of the top floor, the one with the view of the Quirinale. There was no sign on the door or beside it, but Zen had been assured by some young men hunched over computer screens in another room he had entered at random that this was the right place. There had been no identifying sign on their door, either.

The reception area inside the unmarked door was unlike anything Zen had ever seen at the Viminale. There was a leather sofa and matching armchairs, a low table covered in magazines and art books, a number of large potted plants with fleshy outsized leaves, a printed sign thanking Zen for not smoking, and a large video screen showing current stock prices on various international markets. In the opposite corner, next to an imposing internal door, a faux blonde in a pink lambswool twinset was picking fussily at a computer. The walls were painted a genteel pastel shade of peach and the Persian rug underneath the low table looked too threadbare and faded to be anything but a genuine antique. Gentle classical music made itself felt at a barely subliminal level, while recessed halogen lamps diffused a clear, restrained light on a space mat had either nothing or everything to hide. It looked less like the antechamber to the lair of a high-ranking ministry official than the premises of a dentist whose bill would prove to be even more painful than the treatment.

Zen introduced himself to the receptionist. She touched her computer screen in three places, like a priest blessing a communicant. A moment later, the inner door opened and a short, energetic man with receding hair and a jovial smile emerged.

'Dottor Zen! What a pleasure! You've had a smooth trip, I hope? The way back always seems shorter and sweeter than the way out, I find.'

He caught Zen staring slack-jawed at his open-necked shirt, stonewashed jeans and black running shoes.

'Dress-down Friday,' he explained. 'One of my little innovations around here. It has encountered a certain amount of resistance from some of the older team members, I'm afraid, but of course I don't insist. That's my whole philosophy of the workplace environment. "Personal choice, personal empowerment, personal responsibility." All that counts is results. Come in, come in!'

Zen followed Brugnoli through the doorway, feeling like a superannuated bank clerk in his fifteen-year-old suit, a shirt that felt as though it consisted mostly of starch, and shoes of the now extinct variety that could be and indeed had been resoled.

The room they entered was completely different from the reception area outside, but just as much of a surprise. It was about the same size and height as the entire upper floor of the Rutelli family's villa in Versilia, but looked as though it had been redecorated by Snaebjorn Gudmundsson. The floor was tiled, the walls studiously bare and neutral. A minimalist desk in some synthetic black material supported a flat-screen computer terminal and nothing else. No telephone, no drawers, no paperwork. There were no filing cabinets in evidence either, nor any of the usual bookshelves groaning under a weight of identically bound legal tomes. No portrait of the current occupant of the Quirinale Palace visible though the floor-length windows, no crucifixes or flags, no framed documents in cursive script certifying that

Dottor Brugnoli had been the recipient of this or that honour or award. In fact the only other objects on view in the huge space were a terracotta bust of a man's head, mounted on an exiguous metal stand which seemed to be performing a balancing act like a juggler on a high wire, and a framed Fascist-era poster showing two men in uniform chatting in the street while a sinister eavesdropper lurked in the shadows. 'Be Vigilant!' warned the caption in mock three-dimensional characters. 'Walls Have Ears.'

So this was what it had come to, thought Zen glumly. The received but always unspoken wisdom of his professional generation had now been recycled as public postmodern irony. It was definitely time for him to quit.

Meanwhile his host had retreated to the far corner of the room, where he was walking up and down talking intensely to himself. By now familiar with this epidemic which had recently started to afflict large numbers of the population, Zen turned politely away, pretending not to notice. That seemed to be the form. You'd be walking along the street, and this well-dressed and apparently successful man would come at you, head up and briefcase in hand, talking to himself. Sometimes even arguing with himself in a loud and insistent voice. It was as if all the drunks and schizos had been given million-lire clothing allowances and a middle-management job. Except that just as in the old days, when they lay in piss-stained doorways mumbling obscenities or screaming abuse, no one took the slightest notice. 'Pay no attention, he's harmless,' he recalled his mother telling him as a child in Venice about some veteran of the Great War whose mind had slipped its moorings. 'Just don't ever turn your back on them, that's all. Don't look them in the eye and never turn your back.'

He froze, frowning at some unrecovered thought. The gist of it was that he had ignored his mother's advice. That there was someone into whose eyes he had looked, and on whom he had then turned his back. One of 'them'. But that was as far as the insight went, and it made no sense.

Brugnoli terminated his conversation with a curt, 'It'll have to wait, I've got someone with me', then adjusted the microphone of his headset and turned back to Zen with a convivial smile.

'Can't offer you a chair, I'm afraid. I don't go in for that sort of thing. You know, the low chair, the high chair, the big desk, the status symbols and hierarchical markers. If you need that sort of nonsense to proclaim and bolster your standing, then you haven't got any. Besides, standing is more natural and more productive. Keeps oxygen flowing to the brain instead of the bum, don't you think?'

'I suppose so.'

'But of course I was forgetting your injuries! How thoughtless of me. Feel free to use the stool by the desk if you wish. If s a revolutionary design. You sort of kneel down into it. Works wonders for the spine and circulation.'

'I'm fine, thank you.'

'Completely?'

'More or less. I still get the odd twinge, but the doctors say that will pass. Apart from that, I'm back to normal.' Brugnoli gave a pleased smile.

'Excellent! In that case, dottore, I can give you some rather good news.'

He stood poised, his face densely pensive, as though posing for a news photographer.

'I have been thinking for some time,' he said, 'of setting up a rather special unit within Crirninalpol, and I would like to take this opportunity of inviting you to become its founding member.'

Zen said nothing. Brugnoli swung round with a dramatic, self-deprecating gesture.

'No, "unit ' isn't the right word. You'll have to forgive me, dottore. Even I sometimes fall into the old habits of speech. What I have in mind is enabling a team of experienced, dedicated individuals with a proven track record for intelligence, intuition and above all initiative. My own version of the famous "Three I's".'

He smiled wryly for the hypothetical camera.

'Personal initiative, like personal responsibility, is something which I fear has not traditionally been prioritized within this department. But believe me, that is about to change. In the new climate, with the new government, the new culture, the new society in the making, this Ministry is, in the last resort, simply a business organization like any other. We have goals to achieve, issues to address, targets to meet and, most important of all, a vision to implement The fusty old managerial skills of the past cannot rise to these challenges. We have to start thinking outside the box! We need fresh blood, fresh ideas and a fresh approach.

'Not all our present staff have proved to be responsive to this new outlook, I regret to say. To be perfectly frank, some have been downright hostile. I am therefore currently drawing up a plan for a phased retirement scheme designed to offer such individuals a non-negotiable golden handshake amounting to eighty per cent of the salary they would receive for their remaining years of service. I shall be putting it to the Minister shortly, but I'm happy to say that he has already indicated his agreement in principle. The union also seems favourably disposed, thanks to various peripheral clauses, so there's every chance that within a year or so at the most we'll be able to start cutting away a lot of the dead wood around here – and at a price considerably less than paying them to continue not doing their jobs!'

Brugnoli abruptly dropped the public persona and turned round with a man-to-man expression, as if Zen were a privileged viewer who was being shown the sections of the televised interview that were 'off the record'.

'But we must be careful how we wield the axe. The last thing I want is to deprive this concern of the services of more mature operatives who might well prove to be an invaluable asset as we confront the varying demands for our products and services in the future. Men like you, dottore.'

He stared pointedly at Zen, who nodded.

'What would be involved?' he asked cautiously.

'A substantial pay rise, for a start! On a par with Questore level, although I'm glad to say that you won't have that discredited title. One of my long-term goals is to restructure our entire organization, phasing out all those Fascist-era positions associated with authoritarianism, repression and control of territory, and replacing them with more flexible classifications that emphasize the wide-ranging public-service nature of our work. Crime issues today are no longer province-specific, they're national and, increasingly, inter- and supranational. In order to be able to respond effectively, we need to operate on the same level. Needless to say, any attempt to make such changes runs up against entrenched opposition and petty vested interests at every turn, which is why I have decided to start with this relatively modest initiative within Criminalpol itself.'

'But what would I actually do?' Zen replied.

'Very much what you have in the past, but without all the bother of coming into the office to deal with endless meetings, paperwork and routine drudgery. Your time and skills are too valuable to be wasted like that, dottore. The whole concept is completely outmoded, a relic left over from the early industrial era, when the factory could only function if all die workers showed up when the whistle blew. Now that we can communicate instantly and securely at any time and in any place, what on earth is the point of someone like you trudging in here every morning to sit at a desk taking phone calls and filing reports? I'm interested in results, not reports. Under the new system, you would save yourself two hours a day commuting all the way in here, not to mention freeing up valuable office space which could be used more productively and profitably. Do you see what I mean?'

I'm starting to get the idea, thought Zen.

'In your case, mere will be absolutely no need for you to come to the Ministry at all, except perhaps for a weekly progress meeting with a select group of other senior personnel.'

He laughed.

'A bit like turning up for mass on Sunday. And no one will make a fuss if you miss a week or two, as long as you make a full and frank confession of course! Apart from that you will operate strictly on a case-by-case basis. You will be fully briefed, then given a free hand to proceed as you see fit. Needless to say, you can depend on the full backing of this organization at all times, but there will be no attempt to monitor or control your activities. "Personal choice, personal empowerment, personal responsibility." As I've told you, thaf s my slogan. But if s not just a slogan, dottore, if s a way of life.'

Brugnoli held out his hand to Zen with a vigour which somehow suggested the eagle reaching for Prometheus's liver.

'I want to thank you for your valuable input and collaboration, dottore, and to be the first to congratulate you on your promotion to this challenging position. You will naturally need a transitional period to make the necessary arrangements before assuming your new duties, and I'm happy to tell you that the villa in Versilia where you were staying earlier is at your disposition for the remainder of the month. Go back to the beach, relax and recharge. If s been a pleasure doing business with you, and I can't wait to welcome you aboard again just as soon as you are fully recovered.'

Zen gracefully took both the hint and his leave. Outside in reception, the faux blonde called him over to the desk and gave him an envelope.

'You need to pick up some equipment that has been allocated to you,' she said. 'Take this docket down to Supplies.'

It's a gun, thought Zen as he made his way out into the corridor and down the stairs. They're giving me a gun so that I can do the decent thing and shoot myself.

'Supplies' turned out to be the department in the basement which had previously been known simply as the depository, presided over by Tullio Rastrelli, a sour, scrawny sottufficiale who had lost his right arm when he ran his patrol car into a train at a level crossing while in hot pursuit of a teenage driver who had made a rude gesture at him. Now, though, the counter was manned by a young woman who alarmed Zen by flashing one of those insincere smiles of the sales clerks you see in television commercials, and then asking in what way she could assist him. Zen handed over the envelope. The woman tore it open and read the contents.

'If you'll be so good as to wait one minute, I'll be right back,' she said with another smile. 'And if I'm not so good, you'll never return?' She gave him a startled glance. 'Pardon?'

Zen shook his head. 'Never mind.'

The woman walked off along the shelving stacked with weapons, ammunition, handcuffs, batons, shields, helmets, and all the other dismal tools of their brutal trade. Zen thought about other times he had come down here, then decided to stop thinking.

Some time later, the woman returned with a small cardboard box which she placed on the counter.

'If you'd be so good as to sign here’ she said, pointing to the docket. 'Yes?' said Zen. She looked at him. 'Pardon?'

'What’s in the box?'

'Oh, I'd be delighted to demonstrate the various features.' 'If I did what?' 'Pardon?' 'Never mind.'

The woman opened one end of the box and shook out a black plastic oblong that looked rather like one of the early mobile phones, except that there was no keypad. In its place were three large buttons, one green, one yellow and one red, the last covered by a clear plastic shield. She clicked a further button on the side and the other three glowed with a pale radiance.

'This unit combines functional efficiency with rugged durability and extreme ease of use’ she said in a practised tone. 'As you see, there are just three user options. The green button allows you to respond to an incoming call, the yellow initiates an outgoing call, while the red activates the dedicated alarm. Full range over the entire national territory is ensured by the use of military frequencies and facilities, but the really exciting feature is the GPS function.'

'Excite me.'

The woman smiled nervously.

'A chip in the unit continuously monitors the system of Global Positioning Satellites, and calculates the exact position and height above sea level to within a few metres. When the red button is depressed, that information is automatically encoded along with the distress call and forwarded to headquarters for the use of the designated back-up personnel. The installed cadmium battery lasts for up to seventy-two hours with average use. Ifs fully charged now, and can be recharged in under an hour with the adaptor pack included. And all this in a unit weighing less than three hundred grams!'

'Do you offer a quantity discount?'

'Pardon?’

'Never mind. So if the phone rings, I press the green button.'

'It doesn't ring, it vibrates.' 'Pardon? No, that's your line.'

'If you keep it in an inside pocket or on your hip, anywhere in contact with your body, you will feel a gentle tingling sensation.' 'That'll be the first time for a while.' 'Pardon?'

'Sorry. You were saying?'

'The reason for this feature is the operative may be in a situation where it is not expedient to reveal the fact that he is in communication with headquarters. In such a case, simply ignore the call and report back in when you are able by pressing the green button.'

She turned the unit off and replaced it in its box. 'Any other questions?'

'What happened to Tullio?' asked Zen, pocketing the box. 'Pardon?'

'Tullio Rastrelli. He used to run this place.' The woman's face almost imperceptibly glazed over. 'Ah, yes,' she said. 'He took early retirement.' 'When Dottor Brugnoli arrived.'

'That s right. It was probably a wise decision. Like a lot of the older members of staff, he didn't really fit into the new ethos here.'

'I can imagine.'

'Dottor Brugnoli's philosophy is that we should think as individuals but act as a team.' 'And Tullio wasn't a team player.' 'Not really, no.' Zen nodded.

'Brugnoli's full of new ideas, isn't he?' The woman's eyes glowed.

'Oh I know! He's just so inspirational. He's even having signs printed up for every workplace with phrases like that one, to help keep the staff motivated and focussed. I'm hoping to get one soon.'

Zen left the cardboard box on the counter and slipped the communication device and adaptor pack into his coat pocket.

'Don't get too motivated,' he said, turning towards the door. 'Brugnoli's ambitious, and this ministry is a political dead end.

Come the next cabinet reshuffle, he'll be gone. But those "older members of staff" you mentioned will still be around.'

Ten minutes later, he walked into the Bar Gran Caffe dell'Opera. Giorgio De Angelis was sitting at a table by the window.

'Tell me all,' he said as Zen sat down, 'then let’s see if we can work out what it really means.'

'I don't think that will be too difficult’ Zen replied sourly.

He gave Giorgio a paraphrased version of what Brugnoli had said, inserting a few of the choicer lines verbatim for comic effect, and they were duly effective.

When he'd stopped laughing, De Angelis said, 'I see you're already fluent in the new dialect Aurelio.'

'There was just one phrase I didn't understand. Something about "the Three I's".'

That's their motto for the way forward in this country’ De Angelis retorted in a tone of disgust. '"Inglese, impresa, Internet". This is the new Right, Aurelio. Statism with a human face. Well, with a business suit, anyway. No more canny old spiders like Andreotti spinning their intricate webs. Now if s all feel-good slogans and photo-ops carefully stage-managed by Publitalia. Christ, whoever would have thought that we'd miss the former regime so soon? Listen, if this new job doesn't work out, you're welcome to mine. When this retirement plan they've been threatening us with comes into effect, I'm going to cash in.'

'You don't understand, Giorgio. I can't have your job, or even my old one. That s the whole point.'

De Angelis looked at him, suddenly serious.

'How do you mean?'

‘I mean I'm being promoted out of harm's way.' 'They're kicking you upstairs?'

'Upstairs and to the left, all the way down the corridor to that little room at the end where no one ever goes. At least, that’s the way I read it'

'But why?'

‘I don't know.'

'What harm could you do them?'

'I have no idea. That s what's so worrying. If they simply wanted to get rid of me, they could have told me to take indefinite sick leave until this retirement deal comes through – the least we could do for un mutilato di guerra e del lavoro, etcetera, etcetera -and then handed me a cheque and kissed me goodbye. But for some reason I don't understand, they seem to want to keep me in the organization but not of it, if you see what I mean.'

'Out of touch but under control?'

Zen nodded.

'As I say, I have no idea why, but I can't read it any other way. Can you?'

De Angelis pondered this for some time. 'Maybe you're being too cynical,' he said at last. 'One can never be too cynical’

'That s pretty cynical. Try to be more positive. Maybe they really do respect your abilities and skills and want to put them to the best possible use’

Zen fixed him with a glassy eye.

'"To facilitate positive interactions and innovative strategies fostering enhanced productivity in the crime issue resolution sector"? I don't think so, Giorgio’

He turned to the window beside them.

'Anyway, who cares?' exclaimed De Angelis. 'It sounds like a hell of a deal to me, whatever their motives may be. No staff meetings, no routine paperwork, no supervision and no bullshit? Anyone in Criminalpol would kill for an offer like.. ‘

'Giorgio.'

'What?'

'Look out there’

De Angelis followed Zen's gaze to the street outside. 'What?'

'How many people can you see?'

Giorgio De Angelis attempted a laugh, which did not come off. 'What kind of question is that?' he demanded. 'How many?' insisted Zen, not turning to look at him. De Angelis sighed.

'One, two, three, four, five. Now four. Now six. Now five again. No, now it's.. ‘

'Can you see someone leaning against the wall right opposite, between that blue Fiat and the scooter?'

'That young jerk in the green shirt? Yes, Aurelio, I can. My distance vision is still remarkably good, although I have some difficulty reading small print. Speaking of which, would you mind telling me what this is all about?'

For a moment Zen was tempted to try and explain, but by now he was sane enough to restrain himself.

'Oh, nothing. I just thought I recognized him, that's all.'

De Angelis regarded him with unmitigated perplexity.

'How am I supposed to know whether you recognized him? Anyway, that's not what you said. You asked if I could see him.'

'Yes, I suppose I did. Never mind. Let's just forget it'

Giorgio De Angelis gave a perfunctory nod.

'Very well. He's gone now anyway. So you're not off to America after all?'

'No. One of the two brothers I was supposed to testify against has apparently worked out a sistemazione with the prosecutors.'

'As a result of which they don't need you any more.'

'Exactly.'

'Shame. I was there a few years ago. A private trip to visit relatives in Chicago. You'd have liked it.' Zen sniffed.

'I've never had any desire to go anywhere that wasn't part of the Roman Empire.'

As soon as the sentence was spoken, he realized how pompous it sounded. De Angelis looked at him in a way that made Zen realize suddenly that their friendship, if not over, had at least shifted in some important way. A moment later, he thought: he's envious.

'But if you'd been around at the time of the Roman Empire,' De Angelis replied, 'where would you have wanted to live? Carthage? Barcelona? Marseilles? London? Byzantium? Antioch? Alexandria? All very nice provincial cities with a low crime rate, state-of-the-art amphitheatres and immaculately maintained forums, and regularly topping the list of 'Ten Most Livable Cities in the Empire". No, you'd have wanted to live in Rome, at the heart of the beast, where the horrible action was. Well, today America is Rome.'

Zen nodded abstractedly.

'Have you heard about La Biacis?' De Angelis murmured. The last thing Zen wanted to hear about was Tarda Biacis, yet another former girlfriend who'd toyed with him for a while and then decided she could do better. But it would of course have been fatal to display the least reluctance to hear whatever Giorgio had to say. 'How is she?' he asked.

'Rich’ De Angelis replied. 'And I mean seriously rich. Remember that start-up company she founded to export authentic food and drink from the Friuli? Well, she branched out and started handling small quality producers in other areas of the country, nearly all in the south. When the Internet came along she saw her chance, hired a firm to design a killer web site, and started selling online. Agrofrul – now branded as Delizie – got big write-ups in a bunch of those glossy" food-porn mags, and the next thing you know she was deluged with orders from all over the world. I mean she was shipping Calabrian honey to America and Sicilian bottarga di tonno to Japan!'

Zen smiled thinly. He was thinking of his interview with Borunn Sigurdardottir, the Icelandic policewoman. Maybe Tania's private impresa, which she had used to run from her desk at the Ministry, had been the inspiration for the cover story he had given her. He hadn't thought consciously about Tania for years, though, and certainly didn't want to hear about her now. Nevertheless, he nodded.

'Good for her’

De Angelis laughed.

'No, no. That’s just the set-up. Then she got really smart. Just before the dot.com market crashed, she sold out to a multinational distributor looking for a high-end flagship line.'

'But why would she do that, if the business was so successful?'

De Angelis held up his right hand, the fingers outspread. Zen shrugged impatiently.

'Cinque miliardi,' pronounced De Angelis distinctly. 'Five billion lire. She'd already quit her job here, of course. The last I heard, she's bought a fabulous abandoned monastery near her native village in the Friuli and is restoring it as a luxury hotel and resort for the discerning rich.'

Zen nodded vaguely. De Angelis slapped him on the stomach with the back of his hand.

'You should have stuck with her, Aurelio. Then you could have told Brugnoli where to put this McJob he's dreamt up for you.'

He glanced at his watch. 'Well, I must be going.'

'All right. But keep in touch. Come up to Versilia for the weekend some time. I'll be there till the end of the month. Bring the wife and kids too, if you want. There's plenty of room’

‘I might take you up on that.'

'You should.'

The two men shook hands with a certain constraint, and then Zen walked back to the railway station, where he picked up his bags from the left-luggage office and took a cab to his home in the Prati district.

It was as his 'home' that he still thought of it, but the moment he turned the key in the lock and stood on the threshold, he realized that here, too, things had changed. A shaft of sunlight created a rectangle of brilliance on the floor, casting the rest of the room into comparative obscurity. The light looked as still and solid as a marble plinth, and yet it was changing even as he gazed at it. That was the real problem, he thought. The boundary between the darkness and the light was shifting all the time, but too subtly for us to be aware of it, except when it was too late.

He had not been in the apartment for almost a year, and then only to make the necessary arrangements for his mother's funeral. Every horizontal surface was covered in a fine layer of dust, while cobwebs hung like wisplets of high grey cloud from the ceiling. Maria Grazia, the housekeeper and latterly Giuseppina's nurse, had long wanted to retire to her native village, but given the demands of Zen's job and his mother's state of health had loyally agreed on various occasions to stay on 'for the time being'. Following Signora Zen's death, however, she had finally given her notice. Oddly, Zen found himself missing her presence more than he did that of his mother.

He lifted the phone and was greeted by silence. Evidently it had been cut off for non-payment of bills. He walked over to the kitchen door and flicked the light switch. Nothing. Probably the gas and water didn't work either. This bothered him less than the phone being dead. He already felt sufficiently isolated and forgotten, an honorary member of the huldufolk.

On instinct, he dug his mobile phone out of his baggage and dialled Gilberto Nieddu.

The number rang and rang. Zen was just about to give up when a voice answered.

'Fuck off’ it said. 'I don't care any more, understand? It’s over. Just leave me alone, all right? Is that too much to ask?'

'You're not talking to me, Gilberto’ said Zen.

'Who's this?'

'Aurelio.'

'Who?'

Zen didn't answer. There was a silence. 'Oh. Yes. Hi, Aurelio.'

Well, thought Zen, this is different. Since emerging from his shadow persona as Pier Giorgio Butani, everyone he'd spoken to so far had been all over him with questions and theories and opinions about what had or hadn't happened to him in Sicily and since. Yet here was Gilberto, his closest friend, acting as though Zen had just got back from a week's walking holiday in the Dolomites.

'So who did you think was calling?' Zen asked.

'Oh, it doesn't matter.'

'What are you doing?'

'Drinking.'

'Drinking what?'

'Who cares?'

'Are you all right, Gilberto?' 'No.'

'Why? What’s happened?'

'Nothing. It doesn't matter’

Zen took a deep breath.

'Where are you?'

'At home.'

'Can I come round?'

'Suit yourself.'

'In an hour or two?'

'Whenever.'

'I've been travelling all night and I'm exhausted.' 'So you're not feeling chirpy? Good. I couldn't stand chirpiness.'

'I don't think there's much risk of that.'

Gilberto hung up. Zen followed suit, wishing he hadn't called in the first place. Since leaving the police and setting up on his own account in the security and electronic surveillance business, Nieddu's career had been a roller-coaster ride of success, failure and close brushes with the law. When Zen had last been in touch, enlisting his friend's help in extricating himself from a difficult situation he had found himself in during his posting to Catania, the situation had seemed to be improving. This latest contact seemed to confirm that, once again, the Sardinian had not overlooked an opportunity to plunge himself back into crisis.

Gilberto and his wife Rosa lived in Via Carlo Emanuele, near Porta Maggiore. They owned an apartment in a modern block, which had been borderline affordable when they bought it By now, it must have been worth a fortune. Zen walked up the gleaming stairs to the first floor and rang the bell. Outside the tall metal-framed windows, it was already dark. He had slept for over three hours.

He had to ring twice before the door opened and a man's face appeared. Unshaven, unfocussed, at once haggard and bloated, it was barely identifiable as that of Gilberto Nieddu.

'Oh, if s you,' he said, throwing the door open so violently that it slammed against the wall, and instantly turning back inside.

Zen followed, closing the door quietly behind him. The smells hit him first, a whole orchestra of them tuning up before the conductor arrived and they unleashed their full power. Once inside, the visual aspect kicked in. The pleasant, bright, orderly apartment Zen remembered had been transformed into an unrecognizable state of squalid disorder and abandon. In the living room, dirty clothes lay across the furniture and floor, an array of empty bottles and used glasses covered the table, and the air was blue with cigarette smoke. The kitchen to the left had piles of dishes and saucepans on every work surface, while still more were stacked high in the sink.

'Well, this is the scene of the crime, Dottor Zen,' Gilberto remarked with arch jocularity, reaching for one of the half-empty glasses. 'What do you make of it?'

Zen coughed apologetically. He did not sit down.

'It looks like Rosa's left you’ he said.

Nieddu laughed.

'Bravo! Nothing can escape the eagle eye and awesome intelligence of the renowned Aurelio Zen. He takes a few seemingly insignificant and unrelated clues overlooked by less astute observers, processes them faster than a supercomputer and lays bare the mystery which had baffled the finest minds of Europe. Yes, the little bitch has left me.'

Zen sighed heavily.

'When?'

'Four days ago? Three? Six? I forget. Who cares? She's gone, that’s all that matters. She's gone and she's not coming back. She made that very clear.'

He collapsed on the sofa, grabbed a bottle and poured some colourless spirit into the glass he had been using.

'Very clear indeed,' he added quietly, as though addressing the bottle.

'So where is she now?'

'Back home in Sassari with her younger brother,' Nieddu continued in the same quiet tone, all bravado gone. 'Who is threatening to come over shortly and break my legs.'

'And the children?'

'With her, of course. I came home one day to find the place empty, all their clothes and belongings gone, and a note on the table.'

Zen lit a cigarette.

'What happened?'

'A friend of hers saw me and a member of my staff having dinner at a restaurant down at the beach in Lido di Ostia when I was supposedly in Turin, on business. Rosa had had her suspicions about me for years, but this was the first time she'd ever been able to prove anything. Her note gave me to understand that she was taking steps to ensure that it would also be the last.'

Zen nodded.

'So you've been doing this for years and finally got caught.' Nieddu refilled his glass.

'Want a drink? No? Good idea. Yes, I got caught, and you know why? Because I'd stopped trying so hard. That business in Lido di Ostia, I'd never have risked anything that stupid in the old days. If I said I was going to Turin, I'd go. What happened there was another matter. But I got lazy. Mobile phones haven't helped, either. Time was, you had to say where you'd be staying

and leave the number, but now you could be anywhere.' He took a large gulp of his drink. 'But that's not really it.' 'So what is?'

Nieddu lit a cigarette and lay down on the sofa.

'She got old, Aurelio. What else can I say? She got old.'

Zen did not reply. After a while, Nieddu leaned over and flicked the ash of his cigarette into his drink.

'You know that saying about generals? That they're always superbly prepared to fight the last war? It's not just generals, it's all of us.'

‘I don't understand.'

'Can you imagine if we were twenty again, or even thirty, how easy it would be for us to win at the kind of games people that age play? We'd be unbeatable, not least because we wouldn't care too much if we won, the way we did back then. We were under too much pressure, there was too much at stake. No wonder we fucked up.'

‘I still don't see what this has to do with you and Rosa.'

‘I thought I was one of those generals. I thought I had the situation all worked out. Basically, I thought I could get away with a certain amount of action on the side, providing I was discreet about it. But that wasn't the real point'

'So what was?'

'That it was still working for us in bed. Maybe she even did have some proof of what I was getting up to, I don't know, but as long as she was getting her share of attention it didn't bother her that much. But things were changing, like they always do. You don't notice it, any more than you notice the days growing shorter at this time of year. But they are, imperceptibly. The solstice is past and winter's on its way.'

Zen drowned his cigarette in the glass that Nieddu had previously used as an ashtray, then picked it up and carried it to the kitchen.

'Where did you take my drink?' Gilberto demanded. 'You don't heed another drink,' Zen responded from the hideous kitchen. 'What you need is some food.' 'I'm not hungry.'

"That's why you need some food. "Hunger comes from eating, thirst is quenched by drinking." But not if you're drinking whatever this is.' 'White rum.'

Zen reappeared in the doorway. 'You need to eat, Gilberto.'

'There's nothing here to eat Nothing you'd want to eat' 'Then we'll go out' ‘I can't.' 'Why?'

Nieddu rolled up off the sofa and confronted Zen blearily.

'They all know me in this neighbourhood. And they know what’s happened. The word's gone round. And if I show up, alone or with some male friend, the gossip and the sniggering is going to start. "Look, there's that Sardinian who cheated on his wife and got dumped." I can't take that, Aurelio. It used to be it was the women who suffered. "Her husband's run off with another woman." It was okay for the man, unless he was cornuto. But things have changed. I haven't been outside the building since it happened. I've been living on what was here, tinned stuff and pasta. I can't show my face in any of the restaurants round here.'

Zen smiled and took his arm.

'Fine, we'll go somewhere near my place. There are several good places – nothing fancy, good solid home cooking – and no one will know you from Adam. Come on!'

The cab Zen called, from the cooperative he always used, arrived almost too soon. He still had not decided where to go. In the end he asked for Piazza del Risorgimento. They could walk from there.

'She lost her looks,' said Nieddu as the lighted streets slipped past. 'Rosa?'

A single, stiff nod was the only response. 'That happens,' Zen replied.

'Yes, but it happens in different ways to different women. That’s what’s so cruel. If it was uniform, like…' He paused. 'Yes?' queried Zen.

'I don't know,' said Nieddu. 'Like something. There must be something if s like, right?'

'Probably’

This is going to be a long night, thought Zen. But he already felt better, just being outside that apartment with its air of acquiescent despair.

'One minute she looked thirty, the next she looked sixty’ Nieddu went on. 'No, that’s not quite right. There were a few years when she looked thirty most of the time, except in certain positions in a certain light when she suddenly looked sixty. After that, the balance tilted the other way. She looked sixty most of the time, except once in a while when she suddenly looked thirty again. That was the worst moment. Now she just looks sixty all the time.'

They had reached the embankment along the Tiber. Nieddu turned his eyes from the bright lights to the left and gazed out at the dark ditch on the other side.

'She had wonderful skin. Did you ever notice her skin, Aurelio? It was like a girl's, even when she was forty. And then it wasn't any more. It went all spongy and slack. It must have been dreadful for her, like wearing the finest silk all your life and then having to dress in cheap cotton. But it was tough on me, too. And so I stopped trying. With my affairs, I mean. It wasn't a conscious decision. I just didn't feel as guilty as I had before, so I didn't make as much effort’

He emitted a harsh laugh.

'I've even thought that maybe that’s what really pissed her off when she found out about me and Stefania. It wasn't just that I was fucking the help, it was that I couldn't even be bothered to cover it up properly. I'd got sloppy and unprofessional. That may have seemed like the last straw, the ultimate gesture of disrespect'

The taxi dropped them in Piazza del Risorgimento. This dingy clearing in the urban jungle, with its eclectic mixture of imposing umbertino facades, the manically raucous traffic through which quaintly retro trams made their stately way, the central island laid out with tall pines and shrubbery that had seen better days, the inevitable grandiose and birdshit-bespattered statue, and the imposing line of walls surrounding the Vatican City State, had always appealed to Zen for some reason he would have found difficult to explain, still less justify.

Steering Nieddu firmly away from various bars he seemed inclined to enter, Zen led him to a trattoria on a street just off Via Ottaviano. He himself went there seldom, precisely because he kept it as a resource for those times when he didn't want to be instantly recognized by the owner and subjected to the barrage of chat, gossip and nosy questions which were the inevitable lot of any regular. Zen ordered a bowl of vegetable soup and half a roast chicken with green salad. Giorgio said he'd have the same and a litre of red wine.

'Anyway, what about you, Aurelio?' he asked in painfully pro forma tone of voice. 'I heard the Mafia tried to kill you.'

'That was a long time ago.'

'So where have you been all this time?'

'In Iceland, just recently.'

The wine arrived. Gilberto poured himself a large glass and downed it in one go. 'Iceland, eh? What's it like? Icy, I suppose.' 'No, that's Greenland.' 'Logical.'

After that, the conversation rather flagged. Gilberto, in the throes of alcoholic anorexia, picked at his food with the tentative air of a stranger in a strangeland who has been invited to dine on unrecognizable local delicacies of whose nature and origin he is deeply suspicious. Zen ate his with a pleasure heightened by the fact that the soup had seen better days, the olive oil was of the industrial variety, the grated parmesan dried out, the chicken overcooked and too salty, and the salad leaves of the indestructible variety that resembled the rubber helmets that ladies at the Lido had used to wear during his childhood. It all reminded him very pleasantly of Maria Grazia's well-meaning culinary attempts, associated in his mind with the dull, cosy, slightly stifling family household from which he had spent a lifetime trying to escape, and which had now vanished, leaving only the empty shell for him to return to a little later in the evening.

'Do you want my advice, Gilberto?' he asked, pushing his plate away and lighting a cigarette.

'Not particularly. What do you know about it? You've never even been married.'

‘no’

'Yes I have! Damn it, you were my best man.' Nieddu made a gesture as if swatting at a fly he couldn't be bothered to kill.

'Oh, Luisella. That doesn't count'

'Oh no?' Zen felt suddenly angry. 'And why not, might I ask? Because she didn't have perfect skin like your immortal beloved Rosa? Or because I wasn't unfaithful to her for years on end with every woman who came within reach?'

Nieddu shook his head calmly.

'No, it’s because you didn't have kids.'

'It isn't a real marriage if you don't have children? That s absurd!'

'No, if s not. But you wouldn't know about that. Or about anything else concerning my situation. So you can keep your fucking advice to yourself, thank you very much.'

By now, Zen felt furious. He stood up, grabbed his coat, paid for his half of the meal and walked out. He had reached the corner of the main street when he heard a voice calling his name, and turned to see Gilberto Nieddu rushing after him, with one of the waiters from the restaurant in close pursuit.

'Aurelio! Stop!'

Zen stopped.

'Don't you dare talk like that to me, Gilberto,' he said frigidly. 'I don't give a damn about you or your problems. It serves you right.'

He turned away, only to be pulled back by Nieddu.

'No, no! It’s not about that! I haven't got any money to pay for dinner. Can you lend me some?'

By now the waiter had caught them up, and was staring from one to the other with an anxious expression. Zen suddenly burst into laughter. He gave the waiter the same amount as he had already paid inside, plus a small tip for his exertions. When that transaction had been taken care of, he turned to his friend again, all anger now gone.

'Go, Gilberto,' he said. 'Go to Sassari. Go to the house. Don't phone, don't write, don't tell her you're coming. Just go.'

Nieddu looked suddenly shifty.

'Well, I don't know about that. Maybe later, if she's lucky. Once she starts to see reason. Let a little time pass, eh? Let her suffer a bit, realize what she's lost. Then I might go.'

'By then Rosa will have become accustomed to the situation, maybe even started to persuade herself that she enjoys it. And in a month the children will have started at a new school and will have a new circle of friends. Go now. Go tonight, if there's a flight. And if there isn't, hire a plane. You've got the money. Take a cab to the house and tell her that you've got a jet waiting at the airport to take the family home again.'

'It wouldn't be a jet. More likely a turboprop.'

'It doesn't matter what kind of aircraft it is, Gilberto!'

'But what about the brother?'

Zen looked at him solemnly.

'You really are a loser, aren't you?' he said.

'I make five times what you do, Zen, and pay a quarter as much tax!' Nieddu retorted violently.

'So what? If you don't get over to Sardinia right now and bring back your wife and the mother of your children, then as far as I'm concerned you're a loser.'

He handed Nieddu a couple of thousand-lire coins.

'This'll get you home on the metropolitana. Call me when you have good news.'

When Aurelio Zen reached the address he still thought of as home, he had a very strange feeling: it was as if he were entering it for the first time. The spacious gloom of the entrance hall, the antique elevator in its wrought-iron cage, the neighbour's caged bird which mimicked the squeaky hinges of the front door to Zen's apartment; all these details, for years so worn with use as to have become transparent, now asserted themselves as fresh perceptions, potentially significant information about a territory never encountered before.

The lights still didn't work. By touch and instinct, aided at moments by the flame from his cigarette lighter, he found his way to the kitchen and then the cupboard where they had always kept a stock of candles for use during the power cuts which had at one time been a frequent occurrence. He bundled six of them together, tied them up with a length of twine chosen from the many odd pieces that Maria Grazia stored in a drawer because 'You never know when it might come in handy', then lit the wicks and made his way back to the living room, where he placed the bunch of candles on the table. The flames spluttered and wavered and then grew tall and steady, making the walls and ceiling glow in a way that reminded Zen irresistibly of the camera ardente at the funeral home where he had gone to view his mother's body.

"They don't put the body in the box,' said a voice in his head, 'they wrap the box around the body.'

No, that wasn't right. He'd been misled by the previous association with his mother's funeral. The word had been bottles, not body. 'They don't put the bottles in the box, they wrap the box around the bottles.' In some hospital, during one of the few lucid memories he had of that whole period. A young doctor was preparing to give him an injection of liquid drawn from one of a set of glass phials packed into a cardboard box on the trolley beside him. Zen had remarked, in an attempt at humour, that it must be hard work fitting all those tiny bottles into such a tight space. And the doctor had explained, adding that his brother worked in packaging and never tired of telling him that wraparound was the wave of the future.

But why had that voice come back to him now? He had often noticed that if he found himself humming some tune, there was usually a connection between the words, or title, or general context and associations of the music, and something that had been preoccupying him without his conscious awareness of it. The same must be the case here, he thought, but what possible connection could there be? Bottles, boxes, packaging, wraparound… None of these had any evident relevance. Nor did threats to his life and the resulting injuries, not to mention doctors or hospitals. He was finished with all that.

He moved his luggage into the bedroom where he used to sleep. Maria Grazia had stripped the bed before leaving. He didn't feel up to remaking it, so he fetched a pillow and some blankets from the linen cupboard in the hall, blew out the candles in the living room and groped his way back to the bedroom. The air was filled with the unctuous smoke of the candles, which made him realize that there had been a previous and not dissimilar odour in the apartment which he only now identified as the sweet-and-sour fetor of his mother's dying flesh. The thought made him close and lock the bedroom door behind him. A few minutes later he was lying fully clothed on his bed, wrapped up in his coat and the blankets. A few minutes after that he was asleep.

He awoke a moment later, or so it seemed. It was an instant and complete awakening with no memory of dreams, no drowsiness, and no evident cause. The room was silent and dark, apart from a faint glimmer coming up through the shutters from the street below. He lay on his back, staring up at the lamp hanging like a predatory bat from the ceiling. He had always loathed that lamp, he realized. Then he thought: Now that mamma's dead, I can get rid of it.

A sound broke the silence. It was difficult to say what might have caused it, but the source seemed clear. He lay quite still, listening intently. Eventually there was another sound, equally generic and almost inaudible, but it too had been located just outside the room, behind the locked door leading to the rest of the apartment. But that was absurd. Clearly there was no one out there. How could there be?

The silence then remained unbroken for so long that he almost convinced himself that he had imagined the earlier noises. Then he heard a distinct metallic scraping that he recognized instantly. Someone was turning the handle to his bedroom door.

'Who's there?' he shouted, sitting up in bed.

There was silence again, then a rapid series of ratchety clicks. Zen climbed out of bed as the door resounded under a tremendous blow.

'Who's that?' he yelled again.

Another blow, then another. The door was of seasoned oak, at least a hundred years old. It wouldn't give, unless the intruder had an axe, but sooner or later the catch must.

Zen groped in his coat pocket and found the device he had been given at the Ministry the previous afternoon. He clicked the button at the side to turn it on, then slid up the shield over the glowing red button and pressed it as another earthquake-like tremor hit the door.

What happened then was the last thing he had expected: the sound of a phone ringing in the room next door. It was only a moment later that he remembered that the phone had been cut off. There was a brief whisper of speech, followed by a number of unidentifiable sounds, then silence.

It was broken a few moments later by a distant siren that veered ever nearer and louder until it wound down from a strident shriek to a mild burble outside the building. Blue flashing lights added an intermittent brightness to the glimmer in the room, while a furious pounding and ringing sounded out in the stairwell and from the street. After a while it ceased, to be replaced by the sound of clattering boots on the stone steps and then in the room outside.

‘Polizia’'

Zen felt a wave of overwhelming relief that made him realize just how scared he had been. He had heard that voice countless times before, and knew it well. It was the voice of a raw young patrol officer, himself scared even more, and knowing that his only hope of saving his reputation and possibly his life was to sound overwhelmingly masterful.

Zen unlocked and opened the door, and was immediately pinned in the glaring beams from two flashlights aimed right at his face.

'Good evening,' he said, holding up his empty hands. ‘I am Dottor Zen.'

The two policemen in the room lowered their torches, creating a more even light. 'What's going on?' barked one.

'We received an all-points emergency call to assist you,' said a slightly steadier voice. 'Someone broke into my apartment.'

'The door was open when we got here,' replied the steadier voice immediately.

'Probably a burglar’ said the first patrolman.

'There have been a number of attempts on my life recently’ Zen replied in a studiously casual tone, as though this sort of thing was all in a day's work for him.

'The lights don't work’ said the steadier voice. 'Maybe they cut the wiring.'

'No, the fuse blew and I haven't had time to mend it. Now could you just check that whoever it was isn't still here, and perhaps try and find out how he got in?'

One of the two torches started searching the apartment. The other headed out to the stairway.

'No one’ reported the first voice, returning to the room. He and Zen gazed at each other in the gloom hacked apart by his torch beam.

There was a rush of boots on the steps and his partner reappeared.

'The skylight at the very top of the stairs is wide open,' he announced. 'He must have been an agile little monkey, though. That window's a good three metres off the ground.'

'Well, thank you for your prompt response’ Zen said conclusively. 'Evidently on this occasion the whole thing was a false alarm If you'll just inform headquarters about that, I won't keep you from your regular duties any longer.'

He saw them to the front door of the apartment, then bent down and examined the door itself. There was no sign that any force had been used to open it. It was only when he straightened up again that he noticed Giuseppe, the janitor of the building. He was clad in pyjamas and a worn plaid dressing gown, and was lurking on the flight of stairs leading up to the landing.

'Is everything all right, dottore?’ he asked.

Zen took out the key to his apartment.

'You didn't give this to anyone while I was away, did you?'

Giuseppe's face assumed an expression of righteous indignation.

'Absolutely not! It was locked up in the safe the whole time along with the duplicate sets.' Zen nodded.

'Very well. I just wondered.'

'If you'd told me you were coming back, I'd have arranged for the electricity and gas to be on’ Giuseppe added. 'I'll do it tomorrow, first thing.'

'Don't bother. I shan't be living here any more.'

Giuseppe took a few moments to digest this statement. So did Zen himself.

'You're moving?' Giuseppe queried.

'I'm leaving. A new work assignment. I shan't be based in Rome any longer. I'll contact the owners and tell them to cancel the lease as soon as possible. They should be able to find a new tenant quite quickly. Unless you have someone in mind, of course.'

Giuseppe nodded in a dazed way. Clearly this, coming on top of the break-in and the appearance of the policemen, was just too much to deal with at this hour of the morning. He started to turn away, then paused.

'Maybe that colleague of yours would like it’

'Which colleague?'

'I don't recall the name. It was a long time ago, right after that terrible bomb business. He came by to pick up some papers from work you'd left in the apartment. When he handed me back the key, he said what a nice place It was.'

'You gave him the key?'

'Of course. He showed me his identification card. It was just like yours, dottт. Well, different photo and name, of course, but the real thing. And he said he worked with you, so I let him in. I mean, I knew you were in hospital, so you couldn't come yourself. That was all right, wasn't it?'

'Yes. Yes, of course. Good night, Giuseppe.'

'Good night, dottт.'

Zen went back inside, closing but not locking the door. What was the point?

'Don't look them in the eye, and never turn your back.'

This time the voice was in the air, not in his head. He could feel its vibrations, although he knew there was no one there. Then another voice, this one internal, added, 'They don't put the bottles in the box, they wrap the box around the bottles.'

He lit the knotted candles on the table and stood there in the gradually waxing light, staring at the chair in which his mother had always sat to watch banal television programmes which her addled mind had transmuted into richer, stranger material. Something was trying to tell him something, but what was it?

For the first time, it occurred to him to look at his watch. It was a little after three in the morning. After a momentary hesitation, he went back into his bedroom and found the shelf on which he kept his Pozzorario railway timetable, the front cover festooned with anachronistic advertisements for various hotels con tutti i conforti a prezzi modici. Not for the first time, he wondered if anyone ever selected a hotel on the basis of these rather desperate-sounding appeals, and if so who. The timetable itself was a year out of date, but Zen knew that the schedules of the night trains were virtually invariable. After a few minutes' search, he found an express from Reggio di Calabria to Milan that stopped at the station of Roma Tiburtina just after four o'clock. He repacked his bags, then called for a taxi. The dispatcher said that Taranto 64 would be there in about ten minutes.

Zen spent the interval wandering about the apartment, apart from his mother's room, which he did not enter, and wondering if there was anything he wanted to keep. Nothing, he concluded, with a surprising shiver of pleasure. He'd hire a company to haul everything away and dispose of it for whatever price they could get. He wasn't even going to think about it. It could all go.

A car drew up outside. Zen took a last look around the disturbingly notional space which had been his home for so many years and then, failing once again to be moved, picked up his bags, closed and locked the door and walked downstairs.

Fortunately the driver of Taranto 64 proved to be one of the few night cabbies in Rome who didn't want to share his life story, political views, family problems and forecast for next season's football championship with his fare. He just shut up and drove. There was almost no traffic, and they arrived at their destination in fifteen minutes. Zen over-tipped the soothingly reticent driver, walked inside the station and bought a first-class single ticket to Florence.

The platforms were deserted. By day, Tiburtina was a busy suburban station serving commuters and shoppers, but at this hour of the night it functioned purely as a stopping place to switch crews on long-haul trains without going into the terminus and having to change locomotives as well. Zen wandered into the bar and bought a cappuccino which he nursed until the clangour of a bell and then an incomprehensible announcement over the loudspeaker system warned of the imminent arrival of his train.

It consisted mainly of sleeping cars, and most of the seating carriages were empty. Zen could easily have had a first-class compartment to himself, but for various reasons he chose instead to share one with two other men. One was almost caricaturally Sicilian, the other less easy to place. Both had evidently been dozing, and went back to stertorous sleep as soon as the train started again. After a while, Zen joined them.

When he woke, they were in the Arno valley and dawn was just starting to break. No details were yet visible outside, but the rugged mass of the Apennines to the east showed black against the gradually lightening sky. It felt good to be out of Rome. He would never live there again if he could help it, he realized.

He disembarked in Florence at the transit station of Rifredi, and grabbed an espresso before the arrival of an early local train to the terminus at Santa Maria Novella. In the piazza outside, the blue buses that served the region were starting to gather. One of the drivers told him that there was a service to Versilia leaving at eight o'clock. That left about an hour to kill. He went across the street to the Lazzi office, bought a ticket and left his luggage behind the counter, then set off towards the Mercato Centrale.

Zen had used this huge covered public market – the largest in Europe, as the locals characteristically claimed – as an early-morning breakfast venue before, in the course of brief trips to or through the city on assignments he could no longer remember. It was a short and pleasant walk from the station through the twisty, narrow, empty streets, and like all markets it came to bustling life at an hour when the rest of the city was still brushing its teeth.

When Zen arrived, the stallholders were still putting the finishing touches to their displays of produce and their clients had not yet materialized, but the food stands were doing a brisk trade from the market workers who clustered around each one, squabbling good-naturedly among themselves, joking, gossiping, miming excessive emotions of every kind, and from time to time breaking off to nag the unflappable serving staff into getting a move on with their order. No dainty pastries and lukewarm milky coffee for these men. They had a hard morning's work ahead, lugging around sides of meat and whole hams and cheeses, and were tucking into crusty rolls stuffed with boiled tripe or beef, washed down with tumblers of Chianti sloshed from plastic-wrapped flasks.

Zen fought his way to the front just as another lump of beef emerged from the steaming cauldron set over a gas ring. He pointed to it, then to the wine, handed over some money and edged back out of the throng to let someone else have a turn. Eventually he found a spot at an angle of the market building where he could park his glass of wine on the railing, and proceeded to munch away. Reaching into his coat pocket for the bunch of tissues he had grabbed from the dispenser to wipe off his greasy lips, he felt a more substantial paper product. Extracting it, he read 'Borunn Sigurdardottir', and felt so happy not to be in Iceland that he went straight back to the stand and ordered another roll and another glass of wine.

How ridiculous it all was! Everything that had happened to him in the last few weeks seemed like a dream which makes perfect sense until you wake up and realize just how gullible you've been. That business on the coast and in the plane, the voices in his head and all the rest of it… It all amounted to nothing more than a flurry of coincidental nonsense, swirls of mental mud thrown up by the physical and mental ordeal that he had been through. But now it was over.

He finished his second roll and the rest of the wine and checked his watch. Just ten minutes left to catch the bus back to the coast. Perfect. He wondered if Gemma would still be at the beach. Or had he dreamed her too? In a few hours he would find out.

Outside the covered market, the street traders were now setting up their stalls laden with clothing, leather goods, CDs, tapes and videos. Zen walked through them, thinking only of catching his bus, until his eye was caught by some items of clothing. They were T-shirts, hanging from a wire suspended at the end of one of the carts. The colours differed, but the words printed on them were all the same: 'Life's a beach'.

He stopped and fingered one of the garments. Noticing Zen's interest, the vendor came over and named a variety of prices in rapidly declining order. Zen shook his head, but.the man unhooked one of the shirts and turned it over to display the alleged quality of the cloth and manufacture. On the back of the shirt, in exactly the same lettering, was printed 'And then you die'.

Zen waved the salesman aside and hurried on his way, turning the foreign phrase over in his mind. La vita e una spiaggia e poi si muore. It made no sense. Perhaps it was some idiomatic expression he didn't understand. There were so many things about English speakers he didn't understand, like Ellen, his one-time American girlfriend asking him, 'Why are all the things I like either fattening or bad for me?' He'd shrugged and replied, 'Because you like the wrong things.'

It had seemed self-evident to him, hardly worth saying, but Ellen had reacted as though he'd slapped her. ‘I can't help what I like!' she'd wailed. He'd sensed then that Americans liked to like things that were bad for them. It added a frisson of sin to their indulgence, and a self-righteous glow to abstinence.

'Life's a beach and then you die.' Absurd. Another piece of dream jetsam with no significance. People would buy clothes with any nonsense on them as long as it was in English. For all they knew, they could be walking round sporting a shirt or jacket which said 'I'm a Complete Idiot.' It didn't matter. English was chic.

He emerged into the piazza in front of Santa Maria Novella, retrieved his baggage from the Lazzi office and climbed aboard the bus just as the driver started the engine in a cloud of diesel fumes.

The warm evening light washed down, its heat glowing back up off the worn flagstones where four boys were playing football. Couples and clusters of locals stood about gossiping in a drowsy harmony punctuated by the brief appearance of bicyclists transiting in a leisurely manner from one portal of the small oval piazza to another. In the midst of it all, at an outlying table of a cafe, protected from the sun's rays by a blue ombrellone, Aurelio Zen sat clad in a new cream linen suit and his Panama hat, lingering over the dregs of a coffee and smiling inanely at the sheer blissful pleasure of it all.

For the first time in his life, he felt himself to be a complete gentleman of leisure. He had spent the intervening ten days at the beach, sunning himself, relaxing, and lunching or dining with Gemma either at a variety of local restaurants – including one in a village perched on a crag at the end of a hair-raising mountain road up which she had driven without complaint or comment – or at the villa where he had reinstalled himself. Nothing had 'happened' between them, but there seemed every reason to suppose that something was about to, and it was their very sense of the inevitability of this that had precluded any hasty moves on either side. Nevertheless, the day before Gemma had definitely made a move of some kind by inviting Zen to dinner.

'I should invite you’ he had replied.

'You can't’

'Why not?'

'Because the invitation is to my house’

At these words, the ancient core of Zen's cerebrum, the only part he had ever really trusted, told him that something significant was going to happen this evening. Hence the new – and, truth be told, ruinously expensive – linen suit, hence the tingle of pleasurable anticipation transforming the mundane scenes in the piazza of this sleepy provincial town into signs and symbols of powers still in effect from when the place had been a Roman

amphitheatre. Unspeakable things must have happened in the space where those ragazzi were kicking their ball around, seemingly recklessly and with complete abandon, yet always ensuring that it did not cause any bother or inconvenience to any of the other players in the arena. That was part of the game, one of the rules.

Something was going to happen, of that he was sure, but he had no clear idea what, still less any sense that he could control the event in any decisive way. On his reappearance at the beach, Gemma had initially seemed a bit cool and distant. Zen had explained his abrupt absence as being due to 'business', to which she had responded by a curt nod, as if to say 'If you have your secrets, so have I’

Nevertheless, he could not help grudgingly admitting to himself that the prognostications were good. He hadn't heard a word from the Ministry over his misuse of the high-tech communication device they had given him, sending out an all-points urgent alarm over some burglar breaking into his apartment in Rome. He had, however, heard from Gilberto Nieddu, who had taken Zen's advice, made the necessary penitential pilgrimage to Sardinia, and convinced Rosa to return home with him and the children. Her terms, according to Gilberto, had been surprisingly mild: 'Very well, but next time – if there is a next time – I won't just leave you, I'll leave you for dead.' Zen had enthusiastically seconded Nieddu's opinion that coming from Rosa this amounted to a declaration of total forgiveness and eternal love.

Zen had also visited the hospital at Pietrasanta once again, this time to have the stitches on his knuckles removed. The doctors had taken the opportunity to examine his general progress one last time, and had pronounced him surprisingly well advanced on the way to total recovery. Better still, the last traces of the huldufolk had vanished along with the stitches. He had heard no more voices, had enjoyed dreamless sleep, and in general seemed fully integrated back into the common lot of humanity.

This of course included a general uncertainty, and a measure of anxiety, about the future. The fact of the matter was that he liked Gemma, to the extent that he had got to know her, and that he desired her as a woman. He had some reason to suppose that she felt something similar where he was concerned, but that was all.

He knew nothing about her in any depth, and almost everything she knew about him was either lies or a distortion of the truth. The most probable scenario therefore seemed to be that they would either end up in bed this evening, or some evening soon, or they wouldn't, but in either case that would be as far as it went. Both of them came with lengthy and elaborate histories, and neither had shown much interest in investigating or explaining them, much to Zen's relief. This made for a trouble-free divertimento in the short run, but suggested that the longer-term prospects were tenuous in the extreme. There was just not enough to hold them together, to give them a reason for not going their separate ways. Even with a marriage and children, not to mention decades of intimacy at an age when the personality is still malleable, Gilberto and Rosa had come within a breath of parting for ever. What lasting hope could there be for two strangers at mid-life, with nothing more in common than that they happened to be seated in opposite ombrelloni at Franco's bathing establishment, and seemed to get along and be mildly attracted to one another?

He glanced at his watch and stood up with a sardonic grin at his own fatuousness in taking all this so seriously. A brand-new suit, a bad case of stage fright, and, yes, some roses would be a good idea, just to complete the caricature. One little bomb under the car he'd been travelling in and a couple of half-hearted attempts by some Mafia thug to silence him, and here he was convinced that a casual and probably purely conventional dinner invitation – Gemma's way of paying him back for his hospitality to her – was the hour of destiny. But it would still be interesting to see her apartment. One could learn a lot from the things people had chosen to surround themselves with, especially if the choice had been made with a view to preventing you doing so.

A lengthy and lazily uncoordinated peal of bells from various churches and towers began to ring out seven o'clock as he walked the length of the piazza and out into the street beyond, which bent and narrowed at the point where it would have passed through the original Roman walls. The cramped space between the tall medieval buildings to either side was packed with tall, elegant Lucchesi on foot or on bikes who wove their way through the seemingly impenetrable mass of pedestrians with the same disinvoltura that the future soccer stars had displayed in the piazza.

A news-stand he passed was displaying copies of a satirical review whose headline read, 'Medical Breakthrough Reveals Why Pisans Are Born – No Cure In Sight.' Zen smiled indulgently and moved on. Unlike most other countries, at least Italy did not use neighbouring nations as its stereotype for crass stupidity. The universal butt of such low humour was the carabinieri, but every region had its own ritually despised city, whose inhabitants were depicted as cretinous scum who would believe anything and achieve nothing. In his native Veneto, the traditional target was Vicenza; here in Tuscany it was evidently Pisa, and such gags would have a particular appeal here in industrious, mercantile Lucca, so near to yet so far from the neighbouring citta di mare, with its untrustworthy crew of brigands and adventurers with a weather eye always out for one-off deals and a quick killing.

He found a flower shop and ordered a dozen red roses, then wondered if this might look a bit pointed. After a long discussion of the intricacies of the situation with the florist, who had the soft voice and perfect tact of all the townsfolk Zen had encountered, he emerged with a bouquet of yellow roses and turned left off the main street towards the address which Gemma had given him. I like this place, he thought as he strode along. I could be happy here. Despite being entirely landlocked, Lucca reminded him in some indefinable way of Venice. It was a question of its scale, its look and feel of placid security, and above all the politely reticent manners of its citizens, refined by centuries of trade and commerce.

The moment he turned into Via del Fosso, he felt even more at home. The name – Ditch Street – was not attractive, but the thing itself was: a broad avenue of fine buildings to either side of a stone-embanked canal. The trickle of channelled water here was evidently fresh rather than tidal, the buildings more recent and everything on a smaller scale, but the concept was as familiar to Zen as his own face. This was a miniature version of the neighbourhood in Venice where he had grown up. The district must originally have been outside the Roman and medieval city, open fields later enfolded within the imposing line of red-brick baroque walls visible ahead of him. This is where the middleclass merchants of that time would have built their spacious and imposing mansions, leaving the clogged centro and its anachronistic palaces and slums to the decaying nobles and penniless plebs.

He found the house and mounted the step. Gemma had warned him that there were no names beside the buttons of the entry phone, but that hers was the second from the bottom. Almost as soon as Zen rang, the buzzer sounded and the front door unlatched. For a moment he was disconcerted by the lack of any preliminary query, but then realized that there had been no need of that. Gemma was expecting him and him alone.

As if to confirm this impression, the door to her apartment was slightly ajar. Zen knocked lightly and then entered, the bunch of roses concealed behind his back.

'Gemma?'

There was no one in the hallway. She was probably in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches to their meal. Zen smiled, touched by this discreet message. He was being received as an old friend, a member of the family almost, one of the privileged few for whom complimenti would have been an insulting mark of coldness and distance. He walked down the hall and into the living room.

'Gemma?'

But the person in the room was not Gemma. To the left of the door, just out of immediate eyeshot, stood a youngish man with blond hair and a thin moustache, wearing faded jeans and an open-necked shirt in a brilliant shade of orange.

'Buona sera, dottore’ he said.

My God, thought Zen, if s what’s-his-name, Gemma's jealous husband. He'd imagined him like this – young, lithe, athletic -but then reminded himself that whenever he read or heard about someone called by the same name as his boyhood friend in Venice, he always imagined them like that. For him, anyone called Tommaso would be always be gifted with eternal youth. In this case, however, he had been right.

'Gemma's in the dining room,' the man went on. 'Over there to your right. No, please, after you.'

Feeling utterly ridiculous with his pathetic bouquet of roses, Zen obediently walked over to the doorway, the man following.

Had Gemma told her husband that he was coming? Was this some sort of weird humiliation she had decided to inflict on him in return for his unexplained disappearance from the beach?

The moment he crossed the threshold to the next room, these thoughts vanished. Gemma was there all right. She was sitting in one of the dining chairs right opposite Zen, turned away from a. small table elaborately laid for two. Twists of synthetic orange cord secured her arms and chest to the chair. Her mouth was covered by a wide strip of metallic silver tape and her eyes were wild.

Zen instinctively started towards her, only to be halted by a voice.

'Don't touch, please. You know the old saying. "Pretty to look at, delightful to hold, but if it gets broken consider it sold.'"

Zen swung round, letting the bouquet fall to the floor in front of Gemma. There was a different man behind him now, totally bald and clean-shaven. In one hand he held a blond wig and the wispy moustache, in the other an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer.

'Against the wall please, dottore,' he said, pointing with the gun. 'You are familiar with the position, I take it.'

Zen splayed himself out against the wall, hands and feet widely spaced. He felt the pressure of the gun barrel in his back.

'Don't stain my suit,' he stupidly said.

The man laughed.

'Don't worry. By the time I've finished with you, your suit will be the last thing on your mind.'

Hands frisked him quickly and professionally. That professionalism, and the sound of the laugh, finally made everything clear. The man's next words, as he found and removed the communication device that Zen had been given at the Ministry, merely served as confirmation.

'Ah, yes, your little squawkbox. Just as well I still have a few friends in the business. All right, turn around.'

The man tossed Zen's belongings down on the floor beside the wig and moustache he had been wearing.

'Still don't recognize me?' he asked teasingly.

Zen did, but the memory brought only despair. He said nothing.

'Really? Does the name Alfredo Ferraro mean anything to you?'

Zen creased his brow and then shook his head. 'I'm afraid not.'

'You're afraid not. Well, dottore, you're right to be afraid. But it's a shame you don't remember Alfredo. Some of us do. Some of us remember him very well, as well as what happened to him and who was responsible. Which of course is why I'm here’

He held out the hand holding the pistol in a mock salutation.

'Roberto Lessi.'

Zen forced his brow to furrow again.

'Lessi? Wait, I do remember someone by that name. Yes, thaf s right. He was an officer with the carabinieri's ROS division. He saved my life when I was on that assignment in Sicily.'

The man laughed his flat, hard laugh again.

'Very good, Dottor Zen, very good.'

'You're Lessi?' gasped Zen, as though the thought had only just struck him. "You look different, somehow. Or maybe that Mafia bomb affected my memory. Anyway, I only saw you that once, and at night'

Lessi stared at him with eyes that told Zen how close he was to death. He looked about him distractedly, taking in every detail of the situation.

'No, actually you saw me four times, if we're only counting last year.'

The man's leisurely tone gave Zen a flicker of hope for the first time. If Lessi wanted to talk, to explain and to justify himself, then there might conceivably be time to do what was necessary.

'That time out in the country near Etna was the last,' the gunman went on. 'Before that, there was the time we picked you up in the street outside your apartment, the time on the ferry to Malta, and then earlier that evening, when you gunned down my partner Alfredo Ferraro in cold blood.'

'What do you mean, cold blood?' Zen demanded instinctively. 'He had just strangled one man and was about to shoot me.'

Lessi smiled.

'Ah, so you do remember Alfredo after all. I rather thought you did, to be honest. Perhaps you remember the truth about that bomb, too. You must do.'

Zen glanced at the statically frantic figure of Gemma, just to check that her position was exactly as he had recalled it.

'Of course I do,' he said. 'The Mafia tried to murder me on the way back from my meeting with Don Gaspare Limina. He promised me safe conduct, but that was a lie. They just wanted time to get clear and to do the job far away from anywhere connected with them.'

Roberto Lessi shook his head in mock disappointment.

'Sorry, dottore. You're very convincing and I almost believe you, but in the end if s too much of a stretch. Your brain worked very well indeed when we met in Sicily and on the ferry to Malta, and I think it’s working just fine now.'

He was right, but that wasn't the point. The point was to start the ballet. Zen took a couple of apparently casual steps to his left.

'Of course it is!' he protested vehemently. 'That’s what happened. So what the hell are you doing breaking in here and threatening me and Signora Santini? You realize that this means the end of your career.'

Lessi had also moved slightly to the left, instinctively compensating to keep the same distance and angle between him and his adversary.

'My career has already ended, dottore. We screwed up, you see. Well, my ex-colleagues did.'

'What are you talking about?' Zen snapped irritably, fidgeting another step around the invisible circle.

'You remember when the Corleone clan killed Judge Falcone and his wife?' Lessi replied. 'They almost screwed up too. They planted a ton of explosives in that culvert under the motorway into Palermo from the airport, then blew the charge a second or two too early, for fear that Falcone's car would pass by before it detonated. They knew they only had one chance, and so they panicked. In the end Falcone was killed anyway, but only because he had insisted on driving when he was met at the airport. So he and his wife were sitting in the front seats of their car and took the full force of the blast, even though they were still some distance from the culvert. The carabinieri in the lead escort car, including some of my closest friends, were all wiped out. As for the chauffeur, he was seated in the back, where Falcone and his wife would have been if the judge hadn't had his little whim. So they were killed and he survived.'

Lessi had stopped moving, intent on his story, but Zen kept going, restlessly tracing a figure of short steps one way and another, but always two to the left and one to the right.

'Well, dottore, the reason you're alive is just the reverse of that scenario. The men who set the bomb and were responsible for detonating it were stationed on the hillside above the bridge your car crossed. Just for the record, they had no idea that you were in it. They had been told that the passengers were some Mafia thugs who we were eliminating as a routine "dirty war" tactic designed to stir up trouble between the rival clans.'

Zen kept moving, glancing down at his feet as though they hurt him. Like the professional he was, even while fixated on his tale, Lessi responded by keeping pace in the same clockwise direction, keeping Zen always opposite him and safely beyond striking range, about two metres distant.

'When they found out the truth, they were horrified, or at least pretended to be,' he went on. 'I tried to pass it off as a mistake, but I was forced to resign anyway. That hurt, I can tell you. I'd been expecting a little more cooperation and understanding from men I'd been working with for all these years.'

He coughed out another laugh.

'Loyalty doesn't mean a damn thing in this country any more.' Still continuing his ritualistic shuffle, Zen looked Lessi in the eye for the first time. 'But they blew the bomb.'

'They blew the bomb, just like our friends in the Mafia did with Falcone. Unfortunately in their case they blew it a couple of seconds too late. I watched the whole thing from the ridge on the other side of the river bed, counting down to give the signal by turning the motorbike's headlights on. But your driver seemed to speed up suddenly, and by the time I flashed and the others responded, the car had crossed the bridge. And since you were sitting in the front, it was that poor dumb cop who came along to hold your hand who was killed, while you and the driver got off with a few scrapes and bruises.'

'It was rather more serious than that.'

'Who cares? The only thing that matters is that you're still alive. Alfredo isn't. Plus you have enough evidence to send me away for life, if you could ever get anyone to believe you.'

‘I couldn't. You know that.'

'No, I don't. I'd like to think so. I'd even go so far to admit that it’s probable that no one would believe you. But it’s not certain. And I want certainty at this point in my life, Zen. I've been eking out an existence of sorts with my relatives in Pisa, but sooner or later my savings are going to run out, and you know what I can expect then? At best some dead-end job as a private guardia giurata standing like a target outside a bank all day.'

Zen took two more steps to his left.

'Stay put!' Lessi yelled suddenly, raising his pistol.

Zen shrugged self-deprecatingly.

'If s my feet. Bunions. Runs in the family. If I have to stand still for any time, they start acting up.'

'Fine. Just don't try acting up yourself. Can you imagine how I've felt? Fired from my job, my partner killed, and meanwhile your career is all set to go into orbit just as soon as the injured hero of the Mafia wars decides that he's sufficiently rested to trudge back to the office and tell the press and some keen young investigating magistrate with a reputation to make that his memory has suddenly come back and the true story of what happened that night in Sicily is rather different from what everyone has been led to believe.'

Lessi gestured with the pistol.

'Up against the wall again,' he said. 'It’ll be easier for both of us.'

Zen gestured frantically.

'But what about Signora Santini?' he said. 'She has nothing to do with any of this.'

'She does now. I've been monitoring your cellphone conversations, you see. Quite easily done, if you have access to the equipment. So I knew when you were expected this evening, and got here in plenty of time. Your girlfriend seemed quite surprised to see me, and naturally we got chatting once I'd tied her up. I needed to tell someone, you see, and I knew there wouldn't be time once you arrived. So I'm afraid it has to be both of you. It would anyway, if that’s any consolation. I'm a pro, just like you, Zen. We don't leave jobs half done.'

That was it, then. Still over two metres to go, and the clock had apparently run out. Lessi had explained everything he had to say to Gemma earlier, and now had no further need to talk.

Which left only one very risky possibility, totally dependent on Lessi being the 'pro' he claimed to be, in control of the situation, his trigger finger relaxed.

Zen shrugged helplessly and staggered to his left, in the direction Lessi had indicated. His shoe caught the base of a sideboard leaning against the wall, and he went tumbling down to the floor, a comic buffoon unable to make his way about the room without falling over.

Lessi laughed.

'Maybe I've been overestimating you’ he said. 'Come on, get up! On your feet and up against the wall.' Zen clambered up again, then slumped on to his knees. 'I can't believe this is happening,' he whined. 'Well it is’

Zen lurched up once more, glancing about him as though totally in shock. He had now made up the circular distance. All that remained was the final and most dangerous move, and the question of whether Gemma had understood. But there was no point in worrying about that.

Turning, he took two long, slow steps towards Lessi, his hands outspread in a gesture of appeal.

'Look, can't we just.. ‘

Lessi instantly stepped backwards, so as to maintain the distance between them. He was just starting to say something when Gemma kicked him viciously in the back of the knees. A shot went off, wide to the right, and then Zen sprang forward as Lessi crumpled, kicking him hard in the groin and following it up with a blow to the man's chin. He grabbed the hand holding the pistol, swung Lessi around and fell heavily on top of him.

For a moment Lessi lay limp on the floor, groaning. Zen raised his weight slightly off the man's body and went for the pistol. Instantly Lessi swirled up and around; In desperation, Zen grabbed a handful of the scattered roses and rasped the thorny stems across his opponent's face. Lessi screamed and instinctively brought up his hands to cover his eyes. Zen sank his teeth into the hand holding the gun, prised it loose by the barrel, and hit the other man again and again over the head with short, rapid blows, drawing blood from the scalp.

Lessi groaned and collapsed, murmuring something Zen didn't understand. When he was finally still, Zen transferred the butt of the pistol to his hand, crossed himself rapidly, stuck the barrel into the base of Lessi's skull and fired three times.

A long time seemed to pass. Finally Zen stood up, thinking of the time he had put up some shelving at the family home in Venice, years ago. He felt the same calm, quiet satisfaction now, the same modest pride at a job well done. That house must be worth a fortune now, he thought.

He was brought out of this complacent mood of professional satisfaction by a savage kick to his calf which almost brought him down on top of his victim. He immediately bent over Gemma, tore the metallic tape off her mouth and then kissed her impulsively. Some of the adhesive backing remained on her lips, and even when the kiss was over it took a moment for them to unglue themselves.

'Hang on,' Zen told her, heading for the kitchen. He returned with a bread knife with which he cut through the cord binding Gemma to the chair. Then he helped her to her feet, rubbing the sore patches on her wrists anxiously.

'Let's just make sure the bastard's dead first,' said Gemma, pulling herself free.

She bent over Lessi's body while Zen stood back, the pistol in one hand and the knife in the other.

'There's no pulse,' Gemma commented, standing up again.

'Are you sure?'

'All registered pharmacists have to take first aid courses and refreshers. Believe me, he's dead.' She sighed loudly and turned towards the living room. 'I'll call the police.' 'No!'

Zen's tone was so peremptory that she looked at him half in startlement and half in anger. 'What do you mean?' 'We mustn't do that.'

'Are you out of your mind? This man came here and tried to kill us. Instead you killed him and I've got a corpse on my floor. Of course I must call them. You're a policeman yourself, he told me. You of all people should realize that.'

'Did he tell you that he was a policeman too?' Zen asked.

Gemma looked irritatedly confused. 'No, but what’s that got to do with it?' 'Everything.'

'And what’s that supposed to mean?' she almost shouted.

Zen placed the knife on the sideboard, put the gun in his pocket and took her arm.

'The situation's a bit more complicated than you think. Or maybe it isn't. I'm still slightly in shock. Isn't adrenalin great stuff? Come into the next room and I’ll explain. It won't take long. Then go ahead and call 113 if you want.'

Gemma shook him off.

'We can do this right here,' she said, confronting him. 'First, a few questions. Your name is Zen?' 'Yes.'

'What sort of name is that? 'Venetian.'

'And you're a policeman?' 'Yes.'

'So everything you've told me up to now was a lie.' Zen shrugged.

'I don't know about everything. But I lied about quite a bit, yes.' 'Then why should I believe anything you say now?' 'Because now I don't need to lie. And I won't, Gemma. I won't ever tell you any more lies, whatever happens.' She looked for a moment as though she wanted to believe him. 'But why now? Why not then?'

Zen hesitated for a moment. Then he recalled the phrase that one of his escorts had used when they drove him to Pisa airport after the shooting on the beach.

'I was not ordered to tell the truth. If you like, I'll explain why. But first we have to decide what to do about this.'

He gestured at Lessi's corpse.

'We call the police,' Gemma answered. 'We explain what happened. You shot him in self-defence after he'd threatened to kill us both. I'll testify to that. There won't be any problems.'

Zen shook his head.

'It's not as easy as that. Come and sit down and I'll try and explain. Afterwards, if you still want to call the police, I won't try to stop you.'

He started towards the living room.

'Not in there’ Gemma snapped. 'It you insist on boring me, come into the kitchen. We're a couple of murderers, for God's sake! There's no point in being formal’

In the bright, modern kitchen she gulped down a large glass of water, then another. Then she produced a bottle of white wine from the fridge and poured a glass for each of them. For the first time, Zen noticed what she was wearing. The same bare legs, the same sandals, but for this evening at home a very simple sleeveless dress in some soft pale-green material, tied at the left side of her waist. She wore flat gold earrings, but her hair looked less studied this time, her nails were unpainted and her make-up minimal. She looked fabulous, he thought, as if that mattered.

'I'll try and make this brief’ he told her, 'because if you're going to call the cops, you'll have to do it in the next few minutes. But we're safe here for the moment. Lessi was almost certainly operating alone. An anonymous break-in and two dead bodies was his idea, hence the wig and moustache. Even if one of the neighbours had seen him enter, the description wouldn't have been recognized. He was counting on no one knowing what had really happened, and therefore he almost certainly didn't tell anyone else about it. He may have had friends who would help him out in minor ways, like giving him the odd tip as to my whereabouts, but he couldn't count on them backing him up when a double murder was involved.'

He paused, smiling ingratiatingly and hoping that Gemma believed all this.

'It's unlikely that anyone heard the shots, but if you decide to make this official then the time of death will be established more or less accurately. So we can't dither around too long. Here's all I have to say, and I'd just ask you to hear me out before making a decision. Lessi's dead, but he was a member of an elite unit with a very strong esprit de corps. He admitted himself that he still had…'

A voice sounded out in the courtyard outside. Gemma went over to the open window.

'Ciao, Antonella!' she called down.

The other woman said something Zen didn't catch.

'No, no, I was just opening a bottle of spumante’ Gemma replied. 'I have an old friend over to dinner.'

'Bene, bene,' the other voice replied. 'Allora buon appetite' 'Altrettanto.'

Gemma turned back to Zen. 'You were saying?'

'I said that Lessi must have still had "a few friends in the business", as he put it. They'll have friends too. Lessi may have been regarded as a rotten apple, but if they find out that I killed him all that will change. The ranks will close. Believe me, they'll get even, one way or another. They may not kill me, but the prospect will be something I'll be living with for the rest of my life. You too, if we're still together.'

Gemma looked at him in a startlingly new way which he couldn't interpret at all.

'But what's the alternative?'

Her voice had changed too. Zen shrugged wearily, suddenly aware how absurd it was to even be making this appeal.

'He'd have to disappear. If we're ever going to go back to leading normal lives, we'd have to dispose of the body in such a way that it would never be found, and would be completely unidentifiable if it were. That would, of course, make you an accessory. So you're right, come to think of it. Call the police. You'd be crazy not to.'

He turned away and took a swallow of wine.

'How could we do that?' asked Gemma.

Zen tightened his grip on the glass, but didn't turn round.

'Do what?'

'Hide the body in the way you mentioned.'

He laughed lightly, as though she had posed some theoretical philosophical problem of no real concern to either of them.

'Well, I don't know,' he said, turning to face her but not looking her in the eyes. 'I suppose there must be places up in the mountains where it might not be found for a while. Some abandoned mine or old railway tunnel. But I don't know of any, and I don't expect you do either.'

'What about at sea?'

He looked at her now, but laughed again.

'That would be perfect, of course, but how are we going to manage it? We can't very well take the corpse down to Livorno in the car and dump it over the rail of the Elba ferry.'

Gemma finished her wine and set her glass down with a distinct clink

Tommaso has a boat Well it belongs to both of us, theoretically’

This time, Zen didn't laugh. 'We can hardly drag Tommaso into this’ 'We don't need to. The marina has a set of keys. They'll give them to me.'

Zen stared at her in total perplexity. Gemma opened the refrigerator.

'If s all right, you don't have to decide right away’ she said. 'Shall we have something to eat?'

Zen pointed to the dining room, where Roberto Lessi's head was just visible.

'But what about…?' he said.

Gemma looked at his vaguely pointing hand, then turned back to the fridge.

'Fuck him, he's dead’ she replied. 'I bought this fabulous red mullet specially for tonight, but I can't face cooking it now. Would some starters and a little pasta do? If s about all I'm up for, frankly’

She set a dish of antipasti di mare and a loaf of bread on the small table near the window which must have served her and her husband as their breakfast nook, then turned up the heat under a cauldron of water on the stove. Zen noted that the pasta water had been started but then turned off.

'So he arrived about a quarter of an hour before I was due,' he said. 'Twenty minutes, more like. He had plenty of time to talk.'

'How do you know that?'

'I'm a detective. I'll explain later’

'Very well. Shall we eat?'

Zen just stood there staring.

'What is it?' demanded Gemma, sitting down.

'Nothing. If s just… I don't know. One moment you're all for telephoning the police, the next you're asking me to sit down and eat with the corpse of the man I've just shot lying in the next room. It seems a little sudden, that’s all.'

Gemma smiled at him over a forkful of marinated anchovies.

'It was something you said’

'What?'

'You said, "If s something I'll be living with for the rest of my life. You too, if we're still together."'

Zen looked at her indignantly, as though she'd faulted his logic

' Well, you will!' he said. Gemma laughed. 'That isn't the point, silly.' 'Then what is?'

'Never mind. Shame about the mullet. It was gorgeous. Fresh off the boat' 'We could still cook it' 'It won't be the same when we get back.' 'Get back from what?'

'Disposing of the body, of course. We'll have to get out into deep water. That 11 take hours. We couldn't be back here until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest'

'Back from where?'

A sudden hissing behind them announced that the pasta water had boiled over. Gemma got up and busied herself with the stove. The odours of garlic and oil filled the air.

'Portunciulla. That s where Tommaso keeps his boat. Our boat It's near La Spezia. About an hour on the autostrada, depending on traffic'

'But how are we going to get there?'

'My car has a back seat that folds down to make luggage space. He'll fit in there.'

Zen sat there, nibbling squid, sipping wine and thinking all this over with a clarity he found alarming.

'Can you operate the boat?' he asked.

Gemma waved impatiently.

'No, but you must be able to. You're Venetian, you told me.' 'Of course I can!' Zen retorted proudly. 'What sort is it?' 'A motor cruiser. The latest model, all the latest gadgets. Even I could probably drive it if I had to. A child could.' Zen considered some more.

'We'll need to wrap the body. Do you have any spare sheets or anything like that?' 'Tons.'

Gemma did more things near the cooker and the sink, then returned with a broad dish which she set down on the table with the air of someone who is quietly satisfied with her work. Just like I did after killing Lessi, thought Zen. The dish contained a heap of penne rigate dressed with chopped aubergines, green olives, basil,. capers and anchovies in a light tomato sauce tangy with garlic and chilli. Zen suddenly realized that he was famished.

'So how much did he tell you?' he asked as Gemma served the pasta.

'Pretty much everything, I think. He seemed to want to tell someone, to show off how brave and clever he'd been.' 'But that was all?' 'All?'

'I mean, he just tied you up. He didn't…' Gemma laughed.

'No, no. Nothing like that. I don't think he was interested in women, to tell you the truth. You can usually tell, even if you're dealing with a maniac. No, the one he wanted was you. Apparently he'd tried five times, but you hadn't come across. So he was getting pretty frustrated and desperate.'

'Well, he made his move, and it still didn't take.'

"Thanks to me.'

'Yes, you were pretty good in there. So what did he tell you?'

'Well, there was the bomb in Sicily, obviously. Are you really a detective? You don't seem the type.'

'That s the key to my success, such as it is. What about the others, the people he mistook for me?'

'Apparently he got chatting with one of those African traders who work the beach, and offered him a small fortune in exchange for borrowing his robes and stock of trinkets for the day. The man jumped at the chance, of course, and as an illegal immigrant he would never dream of going to the police after he learned what had happened. Then our friend blacked up with boot polish and hit the beach. The make-up wasn't that convincing, he said, but then "no one looks at those vucumpra anyway". When he got to Franco's, there was a man lying face down asleep in the place you always used. He'd been watching you for days, apparently. So he walked over, as though trying to interest the man in a sale, shot him once through the heart with that silenced gun, and then tossed the man's towel over his back to cover up the wound and shuffled away. No one took the slightest notice, he said.' She pushed her plate back.

'I'll tell you the rest later. We'd better get moving. I'm nervous suddenly, thinking of him lying in there.' Zen ate a final forkful of the pasta, then glanced at his watch. 'What time does it get light now?' he asked. Gemma shrugged. 'About five? Five-thirty, maybe.'

"Then we have plenty of time. Let’s aim to get to the boat around four. But if you're feeling anxious, we could do some of the preliminary work. If you're still sure you want to do this, that is.'

He paused significantly. Gemma nodded. Zen made a little conciliatory gesture, as though the whole thing had been her idea in the first place.

'Fine. Let me have a cigarette, then we'll make a start.'

He smiled at her.

"Thank you for the meal. It was delicious.' 'It would have been even better with the mullet.' 'Don't worry about that. Like they say, there are plenty of good fish in the sea.' Gemma stood up and started to clear the dishes. 'Not at our age’ she said.

It was dark outside when they started. Zen closed the shutters on the dining-room windows, then bent over Lessi's corpse and started removing the man's clothes while Gemma fetched the sheets. In the event of the body itself being discovered, Zen wanted no identifying material of any kind to be turned up at the scene. He searched the garments, but found nothing except some money which he pocketed. Then he turned to the body.

Lessi's nine-millimetre pistol must have been loaded with the same fragmenting shells that he'd used to kill Massimo Rutelli, for there were no exit wounds in the skull. The only sign of injury, apart from the superficial wounds to Lessi's scalp, was a trickle of blood from the mouth and the deep scratches inflicted by the rose thorns. It was seeing his victim naked that disturbed Zen most. He was normally unsqueamish about the dead, but Lessi's nudity he found problematic. It somehow entitled him to the status of a helpless and vulnerable baby. He felt instinctively protective towards the man he had just killed, and wanted to get him covered up as soon as possible.

Gemma returned with the sheets, and then gathered up the scattered roses to clear the floor.

'I've been wanting to get rid of these for years’ she said, spreading out the two layers of pale green cotton. 'A wedding gift from one of Tommaso's aunts.'

She took Lessi's ankles, Zen his shoulders, and together they shifted the body on to the sheeting. They then folded the flap at each end up over the feet and head, and rolled the corpse to one side to make a neat bundle which Zen secured with the lengths of rope that Gemma had been tied up with. She meanwhile fetched some plastic garbage bags into which they stuffed Lessi's shoes, clothing, the wig and false moustache, along with the roses. The pistol and the Ministerial communication device Zen put in his pockets.

'Will there be anyone at the marina at this hour?'

'There's always someone there, to guard the property and the boats.'

'Call and tell them…'

He broke off.

'What if your husband is using the boat?'

'He won't be. He hardly ever uses it, and then only for trips around the bay to show off to his business friends. He gets seasick if there's the slightest movement'

'All right. Call the marina and tell them mat you'll be arriving with a friend to take the boat out in the early hours of the morning. Say we're off to Corsica and want to make an early start. Oh, and ask them to top up the fuel and water.'

Gemma was heading into the living room when he had another thought.

'Is there an anchor on the boat?'

'Of course. Two, in fact.'

He waved her away and paced the room, thinking over his provisional plan and failing to find any obvious flaw in it. But they would get only one chance.

"That s done’ Gemma said, coming back. 'Now what?'

'Now we wait a while, until everyone around here is sound asleep. When will that be?'

'Most of them probably are already. Lucca is not really a nightlife town, apart from the kids who hang around Piazza Napoleone. This neighbourhood is very quiet.'

'Where's your car parked?'

'Just down the street'

'Can you back it up to the door?'

'Of course.'

Zen emitted a long sigh.

'Good. We'll wait a while to make sure that everyone is settled down. The really tricky bit is going to be getting the body and the other stuff into the car. Once we're under way, barring unforeseen circumstances, it should be fairly straightforward. But if someone sees us humping an oddly shaped bundle out of here in the middle of the night, they'll remember it. And if a police patrol car happens to pass by, they're going to check.'

Back in the kitchen. Gemma poured herself some more wine and lit a cigarette.

'If anyone does notice, we're loading up a very valuable rug that I'm giving my sister for her birthday’ she said.

'At this hour?'

'Yes. She lives in Milan and we want to be back by evening’ Zen nodded sceptically. 'It might work.' 'Of course it will’

'Unless I'm wrong, and Lessi did have a back-up plan.' 'How do you mean?'

'Those "friends in the business" he claimed to have. He might just have told one of them to send someone to this address if he hadn't called a certain number by a certain time. Something like that. But there's nothing we can do about that’

'He had friends all right,' Gemma said. 'That s how he found out that you were going to America’

Zen gazed at her.

'He did?'

She nodded.

'He also had some equipment, or code words, or access to some computers. I didn't understand all the details, but his friends told him that you were going to the States, and also the number and date of the flight you were booked on. Apparently he told them that he just wanted to confront you and "gain closure". In reality, he reckoned that was his last chance of getting even with you for what you'd done to his partner or whatever he was. Once you'd landed in America, you'd be whisked off into some secure accommodation pending the trial, and his contacts would be no use to him there. So everything depended on getting to you before that'

'And he booked himself on the same flight and attacked me in that street in Reykjavik. But supposing the plane hadn't been diverted? What was he going to do then?'

Gemma shook her head.

'No, you don't understand. He didn't buy a ticket on the plane. He travelled as one of the cabin attendants.' Zen laughed. 'That s impossible!' She looked at him gravely.

'No, it wasn't. And that’s what scares me most about this insane affair I suddenly find myself caught up in. It wasn't impossible at all. For people like that, and he isn't the only one by any means, nothing is impossible.'

'But how could he get through security? They must know who's going to be on any given flight. You can't just show up and be allowed on.'

'With the computer codes he had, he accessed the Alitalia database and got the details of the designated crew for the flight you were going to be on. Then he looked up the personal details, address and telephone numbers of male cabin attendants on the roster, discovered one who lived in Rome, and called him saying that a mutual friend had said they ought to get together. They went out to some gay club in the suburbs, then back home to the man's apartment. He didn't say what happened after that, except that he took the man's uniform and ID and changed the photo to one of him. That got him through security at Malpensa.'

'But surely the other members of the crew would have recognized that he wasn't… whatever his name was.'

'Enrico, I think. Yes, but once he was past security he didn't pretend to be Enrico any more. He was now someone else, who stepped in at the last moment because Enrico was ill. He'd got the story about the job out of Enrico at the club the night before. Everyone likes talking about their work. He wasn't assigned to the cabin you were in, but once the lights had been dimmed for the movie he made his way there and placed a glass of water on the tray table of the seat number you had been assigned. Everyone always drinks any water available on an aeroplane, he said’

'Except it wasn't me, and it wasn't water.'

'Exactly. You'd switched seats, so the person who'd taken yours drank the water, which contained some high-tech poison they supplied to that undercover unit he was in. Apparently it simulates the effects of a heart attack. But he didn't want to end up in the US, where he'd done some work assignments in the past and might be recognized by the agents who were expecting you, so he sabotaged half the toilets on the plane by bunging the pillows and blankets they hand out at night down them, and then drew the senior steward's attention to the problem. That forced a diversion. He'd got this idea from some story Enrico told him, he said.'

'Enrico sounds to have been good value for a couple of drinks and a blow job.' Gemma grimaced.

'I think the experience cost him rather more than that. Lessi was obviously a psychotic. Human life meant nothing whatever to him. Anyway, when, the plane landed in Iceland, he changed into the civilian clothes he had brought with him and slipped through immigration using a false passport he had "lost" before leaving the police.'

'So it was he who attacked me in the street that night.'

'Yes. He claimed it was a total coincidence. The earlier flights back to Europe were all fully booked, so he had to wait for a late-night one. He went into town and was wandering around when he happened to catch sight of you. He said that you were drunk.'

'Iceland has that effect on you.'

'Of making you drunk?'

'Of making you need to get drunk.'

'I see. Anyway, that didn't work either, so he flew back here, assuming that you were safely out of his reach in America. Then one of his contacts got in touch and told him that your trip had been cancelled and that you were coming back to Italy. He knew your address in Rome, of course, and went to visit you there.'

She walked over and closed the window.

'Right, now I think if s time that you told me all about yourself, Dottor Zen.' 'All?'

'Everything. I think I deserve that, don't you? Under the circumstances.' 'Yes, of course. I'm just not sure where to begin.' 'How about the beginning? Whaf s your first name for a start?' 'Aurelio.'

She turned and beamed at him. 'What a lovely name! Go on.' 'Ah. Right. Well…'

This was by far the hardest thing that Zen had had to do so far that evening. He hated talking about himself. At first, he planned to give Gemma a heavily edited version of the truth, but much to his amazement he found himself telling her everything, precisely as she had asked.

She didn't even have to ask follow-up questions in the end, although she prodded him fairly hard in the initial stages. But a point came when she got up and made a large pot of coffee, turning her back on him and generating the usual amount of noise, and he just went on talking anyway. He couldn't stop!

But finally he did.

'Now it's your turn,' he told Gemma, who was sipping a mug of strong espresso opposite him at the table. 'No, no. You'll have to find out bit by bit' 'But I told you everything!' he protested. 'You had to.' 'I didn't'

'Yes, you did. Otherwise I'd have called the police and told them everything.' He laughed. 'It's a bit late for that'

'No it isn't. Even tomorrow wouldn't be too late. Or the day after that. You have Lessi's gun. You murdered him and then threatened me with the same if I didn't agree to help you dispose of his body. I think they'd believe that Particularly if some of Lessi's friends are as vindictive as you suggest'

Zen felt dazed, shocked, stunned by the wine and jolted by the coffee.

'You're going to tell them that?' he asked. Gemma laughed.

'Of course not, silly. I'm just explaining the balance of power around here. You have to do what I say, but I don't have to do what you say.'

Zen thought about this for a moment, then smiled at her.

'I'll be delighted to do whatever you say.'

Gemma stood up, came round the table and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

'Good. Then let’s get going.'

While Gemma went to fetch the car, taking the two rubbish bags and a couple of old coats with her, Zen dragged the bundled body of Roberto Lessi across the dining room and through to the hallway. He opened the front door to the apartment and peered out. The light had automatically extinguished itself and the entire building was silent. Then he heard a clicking sound on the steps and Gemma reappeared.

'All set,' she said.

They lifted the bundle and carried it out on to the landing, leaving the door open to provide background lighting, then down the stairs. The car was parked right in front of the main door, the hatchback open. They heaved the body inside, next to the garbage bags, and spread the coats out over it. Then Gemma ran back upstairs and locked up, while Zen climbed into the passenger seat.

A circuit of the back streets of Lucca, deserted at this time of night, brought them to one of the gates through the enormous walls, and out on to the broad avenue that circumvented the city. Five minutes after that, they had left Italy and were on the motorway.

Years before, when he had finally accepted that his daddy would never come home again, Zen had used to calm himself to sleep by imagining that his bed was in a cabin of one of those international sleeping cars which his father had once showed him in the shunting yards near Santa Lucia station, all dark wood and velvet curtains and brass-shaded lamps and a bell to ring if you needed anything. The train was making its way through a landscape filled with dangers of every kind – battles and floods and towns ablaze – but inside everything was calm. The hideous scenes visible through the window, if you were bold enough to raise the blind a crack, merely emphasized your own seclusion and safety. Meanwhile, the wheels kept ticking along over the rail joints, clickety clack, clickety clack…

Although Zen rarely drove if he could possibly help it, the neutral, extraterritorial domain of the rete autostradale never failed to have a similar calming effect on him. For the modest price of the toll, you were admitted to a private club that stretched the length and breadth of the country, a club that displayed an aristocratic disdain for regional traditions or quirks of topography, and was just about the only institution in the country guaranteed to be open twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year. Whether you were just outside Turin or two thousand metres up in the Abruzzi mountains, the same rules applied and the same facilities were available. The real world stopped at the toll gates, its limits clearly marked by the chain-link fencing. Viewed from within that boundary, the scene was at best picturesque and at worst uninspiring. In that farmhouse over there, its one wan light just showing through the storm-whipped windbreak, the father might be beating his wife and screwing his daughters, with two bodies buried in the cellar and a crazed aunt chained up in the attic. It didn't matter, that was another world. Pretty soon there would be another all-night service station where you could get a hot snack and a cold drink, buy a newspaper or a cassette tape, make a phone call and catch up on the TV news.

Gemma drove prudently, keeping well within the speed limit as they passed through the tunnels and across the long viaducts of the An through the southern foothills of the Apuan Alps, and then cruised down the long curved section reaching down to the coastal plain to join the main north-south motorway at Viareggio. Traffic was heavier here, mostly foreign truckers getting a head start on their long itinerary before the tourists started clogging the road later in the morning. They glided effortlessly past the big rigs, the green kilometre signs ticking off their progress. A pert crescent moon peeked archly out over the mountain chain to the east.

'Someone knew,' said Zen at last, breaking their long silence.

'Knew what?'

'Or at least suspected,' Zen continued, working out the thought which had suddenly come to him. 'And not Brugnoli. He thinks he's a player, but he's not. On the contrary, they're using him.'

Gemma took her eyes off the road for an instant to glance at him.

'When you've got a moment, would you mind telling me what on earth you're talking about?'

Zen remained silent for another minute or so, then shifted in his seat to reach his cigarettes.

'My new job,' he said, lighting up and opening the window slightly.

'What about it?'

'I couldn't understand why they had bothered to go to all that trouble, supposedly setting up this new division and making me the "founder member". They could easily have pressured me into early retirement if they'd wanted to, even produced a fake report from some doctor which diagnosed me as unfit for active service. But that didn't suit them, because someone suspected, just as Lessi did, that I knew more than I was letting on. And once I left the service, they would have no further hold over me. I could sell my story to the newspapers, even write a book about it'

He laughed.

'As it is, they'll never let me retire! At least not until the whole cast has changed and no one cares any more.' 'Cares about what?'

Zen finished his cigarette and let the butt slide into the slipstream, then closed the window.

'That bomb attack in Sicily, the one which almost killed me? Until this evening, I thought the Mafia were responsible. I honestly did. I couldn't remember anything much about the events leading up to it One of the doctors told me that memory loss about events preceding an incident like that is quite normal. Apparently survivors of severe car crashes usually have no idea how they happened. Mind that truck.'

'Leave the driving to me, please.'

'Sorry. Anyway, I accepted the official line about the bomb. And so did everyone else, as far as I knew. But we now know that there was at least one exception.'

'Our friend in the back.'

Zen nodded.

'But someone else must have known, too. Someone higher up the hierarchy, with enough clout to have me moved to a position where I would be safely out of the way, but still under control.'

They drove on in silence for a while.

'In which case, this person might also know that Lessi was planning to kill you’ Zen shook his head decisively.

'No, no. The person I mean operates at a different level. He's probably someone quite high up in the carabinieri or the Defence Ministry. His only thought was to protect the reputation of his force. They dumped Lessi, knowing he wouldn't talk, but they weren't so sure about me.'

'So won't they get curious when Lessi mysteriously vanishes?'

'I think it’ll be a relief, quite frankly. Anyway, Lessi's murderous little plot was quite clearly a personal matter. He wanted to get even, both for what had happened to his career and also for what happened to Alfredo Ferraro, who may have been his partner in more than just a professional sense. No, he'll have kept his private vendetta to himself, I'm sure of that’

In reality, he was a lot less sure than he sounded.

At Magra, just before the turn-off for La Spezia, they stopped for a coffee. While Gemma bought some salami, cheese and rolls to see them through the rest of the morning, Zen lifted the garbage bags containing Lessi's personal effects out of the car and carried them round to the rear of the service station. He opened one of the big dumpsters and tossed the bags inside. A broken pallet was leaning against the wall. He pulled off one of the lateral slats and used it to push the bags down, then to collapse a mound of stinking rubbish over the top of them.

Gemma returned to the car with the plastic bag of provisions. She looked flustered.

'You're never going to believe this, but I just ran into someone I used to know!' she blurted out, spinning the car round in reverse and heading off to rejoin the main highway.

'Who?'

'Oh, an old boyfriend. He came up while I was waiting at the cash register. Wanted to chat.' 'What did you say?'

'I gave him the story we agreed earlier, about going to see my sister. I couldn't think of anything else on the spur of the moment' To his surprise, Zen found himself more jealous than worried. 'How old?' 'What?'

'The boyfriend.'

Gemma laughed harshly as the headlights devoured the darkness before them. 'Oh for God's sake! But he knows.' 'Knows what?'

'That I was here, in the middle of the night' 'Going to see your sister.' 'But I'm not'

Zen patted her knee in a reassuring rather than erotic way.

'Don't worry. It doesn't matter. Your ex-boyfriend doesn't matter. Neither does your husband, who'll find out sooner or later that we used his boat. None of them matters as long as we keep our wits about us and our mouths shut. The only people who can betray us are us. The rest is just hearsay.'

They ran into the roadblock the other side of La Spezia, rounding a sharp bend on a minor strada statale high above the glimmering sea to their left. A blue carabinieri jeep was parked beside the road and a uniformed officer stood on the median line waving a wand with a reflective red circular tip.

Zen swore loudly. Gemma braked to a halt. The officer approached the driver's window while his colleague watched from the car, speaking rapidly on the radio.

'Your documents, please.'

Zen handed over his personal identity card, Gemma her driving licence. The officer stepped back and scanned them by the light of his torch.

'Where are you going?' he demanded.

'To Portunciulla,' Gemma replied.

'Why so late?'

'We have a boat at the marina there. We're off to Corsica for a few days and we want to make an early start.' The officer shone his torch into the interior of the car. ‘What’s that in the back?' 'Just stuff we need for our cruise,' said Gemma.

'Open it up’

Gemma gave Zen a panicked look as she pulled a latch under the dashboard. Zen got out and walked back on the opposite side of the car from the carabiniere, who opened the hatchback and shone his torch inside. He swept aside the coats covering the bundled form of Roberto Lessi's corpse.

'What’s that?' he demanded.

'Spars,' Zen replied. 'And a new mizzen sail. What’s all this about, if you don't mind my asking?'

The officer stared suspiciously at Zen's linen suit, then slammed the hatchback shut again.

'Bank robbery in La Spezia. We're checking all the roads out of town. What's a mizzen sail?'

Zen smiled the smile of a man who is glad to have been asked that.

'If s the small triangular sail set aft on a ketch. Very much like a jib, only mounted on a boom. Its main function is to increase stability when sailing close to the wind, particularly when…'

The officer handed him back their documents.

'All right, all right,' he said wearily. 'You can go.'

As if by mutual agreement, they drove off in total silence until they had rounded the next hairpin bend. Then Gemma let out a long, almost silent scream.

‘I don't know how much more of this I can take.'

'Plenty. You're as tough as an ox. Besides, there was no real danger. Those lads were just bored. We were probably the first vehicle to come along for an hour. I've done roadblocks myself, many years ago. If s a hell of a job. Either the car you stop is not the one you're looking for, in which case the whole thing is a waste of time, or it is, in which case you stand a good chance of getting run over or shot.'

'How do you know all those nautical words you dazzled him with?'

'I told you, I'm from Venice. If s in our blood. We drink it in with our mother's milk.'

Twenty minutes later, they reached the village of Portunciulla. Judging by what Zen could make out from the car, it had once been a small fishing port, but had now been taken over by holiday lets, second homes and the pleasure-boat business. The marina was situated on the northern side of the original harbour, a series of floating docks lit by overhead floodlights and protected by an artificial breakwater. Gemma stopped at the gate and identified herself to a scruffy youth with a gormless expression. He nodded slowly and vaguely, as though remembering some incident from a previous life. Then he went inside the concrete hut he had emerged from and returned with a set of keys.

'You'll be needing a hand with your stuff,' he said, pointing to the rear of the car.

'No thanks, we-can manage’ Gemma replied crisply, slipping him a ten-thousand-lire note. 'Did you refuel the boat?'

'All taken care of’ the youth replied listlessly.

Gemma drove through the car park to the landward end of one of the docks, then turned and parked so that the car was in shadow. They both got out. The youth was standing at the door of his hut, watching them.

'You stay here and mind the luggage’ Gemma told Zen. 'I'll take the groceries and open up the boat, then come back with a cart for our friend in the back.'

She turned away into the shadows leading down to the dock. Zen lit a cigarette and watched her walk along the pier and board one of the motor cruisers moored there. What a piece of luck, he thought. What an incredible piece of luck! Whoever would have thought it?

'Look at the moon!' said a voice behind him. 'Quant'e bella!'

He turned to find the scruffy youth gazing at him with an ecstatic expression. Zen did not reply.

'If s always beautiful’ the youth went on earnestly, 'but we can't always see it'

'No’

'And even when we can, half the time we don't' 'How very true’

The youth strode up to him and grasped his right arm tightly.

'Just imagine if the moon only came out every fifty years, like an eclipse of the sun. People all over the world would stay up all night to look at it, dancing and singing and weeping for joy!'

'Quite possibly.'

The rapt expression vanished from the youth's face like a patch of condensation off glass.

'But if s there all the time,' he continued in a voice drained of all emotion. 'It's staring us in the face, so we take it for granted’ Zen threw away his spent cigarette. 'An interesting thought,' he said.

The youth was now gazing in through the rear window of the car. The shrouded body seemed to glow in the moonlight.

'If s right there in front of us, so we don't even see it’ he murmured in the same affectless tone.

'Mmm’

He turned to Zen with a piercingly intense stare.

'Maybe that’s why we don't see God either.'

Zen heard a rumbling sound. Gemma was wheeling a small handcart along the dock. He peeled off some money and handed it to the youth.

'Listen, I've just realized that we forgot to bring any matches with us. Stupid mistake, but ifs the kind of little thing that can ruin your holiday. Do you think you could find us some? Or a lighter. Keep the change.'

The youth nodded dolefully and headed back to his hut as Gemma emerged from the shadows.

'I forgot to tell you about Piero,' she said. 'He's a bit odd.'

'He's a lunatic, in the literal sense of the word, and he'll be back any moment. Let’s get the stiff on the cart, then I'll take it down while you deal with him. Tell him you're Astarte. He'll obey your every command’

He opened the hatchback and hauled Lessi's body half out of the car, then lifted it on to the trolley. Piero was already on his way back. Zen grabbed the handles and started to make his way down the path to the dock. Unfortunately the baggage cart, although built to carry heavy loads, was not designed to accommodate anything long and unstable. Halfway down the slope, one of the wheels hit a rock, the body slewed to one side and the whole thing overturned.

Before Zen could react, the youth had bounded up and started to lift Lessi's feet.

'Turn the cart over’ he said. 'I'll help you load it back on.'

'That s all right, we can manage.'

'No, no! It’s nothing.'

Zen set the cart back on its wheels, then lifted Lessi's head.

Together they set the bundle back in place. 'Whew, that’s heavy,' said Piero. Zen nodded distractedly.. 'What’s inside?' the youth enquired.

'A human corpse. My late brother-in-law. We're going to take him out to sea and throw him overboard. Saves a fortune on the funeral expenses.'

Piero gazed at Zen with a look of growing anger.

'You think I'm crazy, don't you?'

'No, I think you're brilliantly sane, but who cares what I think?'

Gemma materialized between them and turned the youth away, her arm around his shoulders.

'I'm sorry, Piero,' Zen heard her say. 'We've both had a long hard day planning this trip and we haven't slept. It was very kind of you to prepare the boat and give us the keys, and I'll tell the management what a good job you did when I…'

As she led Piero back towards his hut, Zen hefted the handles of the cart and continued down the path and on to the dock, where Gemma rejoined him.

'Are you out of your mind?' she hissed in a hoarse whisper.

'Probably we both are. If s just that you're handling it better.'

'If he tells anyone what you said, we're each facing a life sentence.'

'I'm sorry, I just snapped. But don't worry, no one's going to pay any attention to what Piero tells them.' "They'd better not' 'Of course they won't'

Once again, he was a lot less sure man he sounded.

Gemma didn't reply, and for a while Zen thought that she was furious with him, or understandably scared at the magnitude of what she had got herself into. But when she did speak, it was in a mild, relaxed tone.

'This one,' she said, nodding towards a huge teak motor cruiser bristling with chrome and brass fittings. Zen pushed the cart along the dock, stopping beside a short set of metal steps leading up to the afterdeck.

'Ready?' he said.

Gemma nodded. Together they lugged the increasingly stiff body of Roberto Lessi off the cart and up to the steps. Gemma went aboard while Zen lifted the cadaver so that it was vertical then hoisted it up by the feet while Gemma hauled it over the side. They had just succeeded in getting the centre of gravity inboard when the sound of splashing water drew their attention to the yacht in the next berth, where a man dressed only in a nautical cap, a blue blazer with brass buttons, and the lower half of a woman's bikini was urinating off the stern.

'What you got there?' he asked in a slurred voice.

'Freshly killed meat,' Zen replied.

He heard Gemma's intake of breath, and glanced quickly up at her as he raised himself up on the first of the steps and heaved the bundle over the side. He turned back to their neighbour with a broad smile.

'A whole porchetta. Some friends of ours are having a party at their villa up the coast and this is our contribution. Slaughtered a couple of days ago and then slow-roasted over a wood fire by a real artisan up in the mountains.'

The man adjusted the bikini bottom and sniffed loudly.

'Mmm! I can smell the stuffing from here. Wish I had friends like that. All mine have passed out, one of them on the lavatory. Hence the public display. Care for a drink?'

'No thanks, Arnaldo,' Gemma replied. 'We want to make an early start.'

'Suit yourselves.'

He pointed an admonitory finger at Zen.

'She tends to slew to one side a bitwhen the revs are low. Can make getting in and out tricky. Get all lined up and then give her all you've got. A word to the wise. Buon viaggio.'

He staggered down the companionway and disappeared.

Zen climbed aboard and looked at Lessi's body lying collapsed on the deck.

'Let’s get this stowed inside,' he said.

Gemma opened the doors to the main saloon. They carried the body through and laid it out on a row of bench seating. Zen placed Lessi's pistol in a knife drawer in the galley, and they returned to the afterdeck.

'All right,' said Zen. 'Time to go. Tell me when to cast off.'

Gemma regarded him with a puzzled expression.

'Me? I told you I don't know how to drive this thing. Tommaso always did that, when he did it at all. He would never let me near any of the little knobs and levers.'

Zen gave a world-weary smile.

'Wonderful’ he said.

Gemma leant over and kissed him on the cheek. 'Never mind! You'll do just fine. You're from Venice, remember? If s in your blood. You drank it in with your mother's milk.' Zen glared at her.

'Give me the keys and let go the mooring ropes.'

In the end, handling the boat turned out to be quite simple. All the controls in the cockpit mounted above the aft deck were marked with large metal plates clearly designed with the sort of people who bought these floating mobile homes in mind. Zen turned on the navigation lights and then the engine, which started immediately and settled into a low, reassuring growl. Gemma threw the lines on board and then scampered up the ladder, hauling it up after her. Once they were clear of the dock, Zen applied just enough reverse thrust and port wheel to bring the bow round, then engaged forward gear and minimal throttle while they glided slowly down the twin lines of moored boats. Once they were in the channel beyond, he brought the vessel round and revved up slightly. He didn't notice any tendency to slew to either side. Or had Arnaldo been referring to something else?

He steered past the end of the breakwater and out into the open sea beyond. The darkness was suddenly immense.

'Where are we going?' asked Gemma, appearing in the cockpit beside him and lighting a cigarette.

'Somewhere the water's deep. I don't suppose there's such a thing as a chart aboard.'

Gemma clicked her fingers decisively.

'Ah! Now that I do know about. Tommaso got it a few months before we split up. In fact I think it may well have been one of the reasons why. You know, those little niggly details that suddenly make you realize what you've known all along, namely that you're living with a complete jerk.'

'The chart, cara. You can tell me about your love life later.'

Gemma pushed a button on a video screen mounted to Zen's left. It flickered and then settled into a discreet glow.

'II mio caro sposo was a boy-toy fanatic. If he's talked me through this box of tricks once, he must have done it a dozen times. He just couldn't get over the fact that I couldn't get as excited about it as him.'

'I'm not interested in video games! I want a chart to the waters we're in, before we hit some reef and end up as dead as our stowaway.'

"This is a chart. I mean, all the charts are on here. There's a menu, but the default one – the one that’s showing now – will be the one you want. You jiggle this button here and then click this, and lo and behold a blob appears. That shows where we are. Then you move the cursor to where you want to go, like this, and click again. The dotted line shows you the course you've chosen.'

'That one cuts across the tip of the peninsula.'

'Then choose another. After that you press here, where it says "Set Course", and then here, "Engage Automatic Pilot. After that, if s just a matter of deciding how fast you want to go and keeping an eye out for other boats. Would you like some coffee?

'I'd love one. With a shot of grappa, if there is any.'

'Of course there is. Tommaso was a complete bastard, but he didn't cheap out. There's everything. Microwave, Jacuzzi, satellite TV, sound-surround stereo, DVD player, computers with Internet access, and of course a fully stocked bar.'

She turned to leave. Zen stopped her with one finger placed just above her left breast.

'Won't he be angry when he finds out?' he asked.

'Finds out about what?'

'That we've taken his boat without his permission.' Gemma smiled radiantly and kissed him very briefly on the lips.

‘I certainly hope so,' she said.

Zen throttled back, leaving just enough power to maintain steerage way, and studied the video screen more closely. It showed a detailed nautical chart of the Gulf of La Spezia, the white blob indicating their current position just off the coast at Portunciulla. He wiggled the button until the arrow lay over the entrance to the gulf to the south-west, then clicked the button Gemma had showed him. The dotted line reappeared. He inspected it closely. There were no marked rocks or other obstructions. He pressed the other two buttons. The dotted line became continuous, and the boat nudged round gently to starboard, then settled on the new course. 'SSW 15.8' read the display on the screen. Zen checked the compass. That was indeed the heading. He increased the engine power until the wavelets under the bow produced a healthy smacking sound, then settled back and lit a cigarette.

Gemma brought Zen his caffe corretto and seated herself in the other leather-dad stool in the cockpit.

'Aren't you having anything?' he asked.

She shook her head.

'Actually, I think I might take a nap, if that's all right with you. I'm pretty exhausted.'

As yet there was no sign of daybreak, but the jagged promontory to their right and the imposing mountain chain on the other side stood out velvet black in the incisive moonlight. All around, the undulating surface of the water stirred and shifted restlessly in continual permutations of some underlying pattern always alluded to but never stated. There were no other vessels in sight, and the only light was the insistent blinking of a lighthouse on the Isola del Tino at the very end of the peninsula.

'Well, I'm going to lie down,' said Gemma.

'Sogni d'oro!

Zen settled back into the comfortable chair, sipping his stiffened espresso, and watched the coastline slide past. Unlike Gemma, he didn't feel tired at all, but exhilarated and about twenty years younger. They'd done it! He'd never really believed they would until now, but they had. The boat was at sea, Lessi's body safely on board, and as far as he knew no paper trail behind them. Once they got into deeper water, he would detach one of the boat’s anchors, hitch it up to a spare rope, tie that around the corpse and heave the whole issue overboard. Then he'd toss the gun in after it, and they would be in the clear. No one could ever find out what had really happened.

Despite his apparent wakefulness, he must have dozed slightly, because he was summoned back to full consciousness by a beeping sound. At first he thought it was the secret communication device he had been given at the Ministry, but when he checked in his pocket the unit proved to be dormant. Then he realized that it was coming from the navigation screen on the ledge in front of him, signalling that they had arrived at the position previously entered.

By now it was almost light, one of those long, slow, summer dawns full of promise. Zen picked a point at random on the chart, far out in the Ligurian Sea, then confirmed the course and clicked the autopilot button. The boat obediently bobbed round to the west and thudded forward into the slightly steeper seas. He checked the horizon. A few sets of navigation lights were showing out in the main sea lane, but all at a considerable distance. He rubbed the slight chill of dawn off his hands and went below.

Inside the saloon, Gemma was lying quietly asleep under a blanket on the row of seating opposite Lessi's bundled body. They both looked very cosy. With the boat's computer systems apparently doing all the work, Zen was strongly tempted to join them, but resisted the impulse. Instead he found the bag of groceries and took it into the spacious galley, where he made himself a salami roll. He then removed a couple of cans of beer from the fridge and made his way back to the cockpit.

And it was just as well he did, for around the time he finished the roll and the first can of beer, the engine's reassuringly sexy murmur became raucous and intermittent, and shortly after that stopped altogether. The boat came to a halt, slurping and sloshing around at random in the shallow waves.

Zen grabbed the second can of beer and took a long pull. His knowledge of engines of any kind was strictly limited to knowing how to turn them on and off. This one had already turned itself off, though, and showed no inclination to start again no matter how many times he twisted the ignition key or pushed the starter button. He had no idea how to work the marine radio, either, still less what frequencies to use. Which left them adrift on a lee shore a couple of kilometres off the Tuscan coast, in water too shallow to risk disposing of Lessi's corpse. Sooner or later it would turn up in a fishing net or washed up by the currents on a beach, and then the investigation would begin. If that ever happened, Zen had no illusions about how it would end. His only hope – their only hope – was to ensure that it never started in the first place.

He tried his mobile phone, but couldn't get a signal. Using the Ministry's much-vaunted emergency device was clearly out of the question. The same applied to putting out a Mayday call on the radio, even supposing he could get it to work. The coastguards would eventually send someone out to tow them into port, but with Lessi's body still aboard. But if he didn't, they were bound to be spotted in the end by some passing boat or plane, with the same result. And if even that failed, the wind and waves would eventually carry the boat ashore.

Shallow water or not, then, the first priority was to get the murdered man overboard. He ferreted about in various drawers and cupboards until he found a heavy screwdriver that would serve as a marlinspike, then made his way out on deck. One of the vessels he had spotted earlier was a lot closer now. Not only that, but it seemed to be coming directly towards them. There wasn't a moment to lose.

The twin anchors, of the modern plough design, were stowed inboard at the bow. Both were attached to lengths of neatly coiled chain. Neither showed any sign of ever having been used. If you couldn't plug in the electrics and step ashore to restock the fridge, Tommaso wouldn't have been interested. Zen inserted the screwdriver into the shackle holding one of the anchors to its chain and heaved, without the slightest effect. He looked up. The oncoming vessel was a lot closer now. It looked very much like a coastguard cutter.

He moved over to the other anchor and twisted on the screwdriver with all his might. Finally the screw gave and reluctantly started to turn. Zen forced it round until it finally cleared the shackle, then pulled out the pin, releasing the anchor. Bending his knees, he gripped the anchor with both hands, lifted it with difficulty and began to make his way back aft. As he was negotiating the narrow passage between the saloon decking and the guard rail, a freak wave hit the port bow, causing the boat to corkscrew and sending him headlong on to the deck, falling on top of the anchor with a jolt that made him cry out.

He lay there, wondering if he had cracked his newly set ribs and then realizing that he could very easily have fallen overboard and drowned. I can't do this alone, he thought. If s all too difficult. I need help.

'Do you need help?'

The voice seemed to have come from everywhere and nowhere. Deafening, raucous and only just comprehensible, it was not a kind or a pleasant voice, but it was the voice of power. Zen raised himself up on one elbow and looked over the canvas screen at the base of the guard rail. A fishing boat of some kind was lying some ten metres off to port. A man on the bridge had a large yellow megaphone in his hand.

'Do you need help?' he repeated.

Zen got up quickly.

'No, we're fine, thanks,' he yelled back, cupping a hand to his mouth. "Thanks all the same. Much appreciated.'

A sign from the man on the bridge indicated that he couldn't hear. A moment later, the trawler reversed engines loudly, men went ahead at a slight angle to come alongside. A man dressed in a filthy green sweatshirt and jeans leapt nimbly across to the after-deck of the motor boat.

'What’s the problem?' he asked.

Zen smiled largely.

'Oh, nothing really. Just a little trouble with the engine. Once I've sorted out the gear I'll anchor and take the appropriate action.' The man looked at him incredulously. 'How many metres of chain have you got?' Zen, of course, hadn't a clue. 'Well…' he began.

'Ifs over fifty metres to the bottom here. The hook would never hold. Where's the motor? Let me take a look. It might be something quite simple.'

He turned and looked around, then strode into the main saloon where Gemma and Roberto Lessi lay stretched out opposite each other.

'No, wait!' Zen said feebly.

But it was too late. The man had found a recessed metal ring in one of the floorboards, and pulled it up to open a concealed hatchway down which he disappeared.

A door at the end of the saloon was open into a cabin with a large double bed. Zen went in, took a blanket from one of the closets and draped it quickly over Lessi's corpse. A moment later the trawlerman returned.

'Blockage in the fuel line,' he said, wiping his hands on his sweatshirt. 'Often happens if the boat’s not used that much. It should be all right now.'

He looked around at the gaudy, vulgar luxury of the saloon. 'Sleeping soundly, your friends.' Zen laughed.

'Yes, they are! We had a bit of a late night. So it's all working normally?'

The man headed out on deck, then ran up the steps to the cockpit and pushed the ignition button. The engine fired immediately and settled into its previous regular throb. Zen took out his wallet.

'How much do I owe you?'

'No, no, that’s all right. Law of the sea, isn't it? We all help each other out. Never know when you might need it next.' Nevertheless, he did not leave. Then Zen had an inspiration. 'Did you have good fishing?' he asked. 'Not bad.'

'Do you have a nice red mullet you could sell me?'

The man's face creased in a broad smile.

‘We got some beauties. Hold on a moment.'

They went down to the afterdeck and he shouted something to one of the men on the trawler. A moment later, the other man reappeared and a large silvery-red object came flying through the air between the boats. Zen's saviour caught it neatly and laid it out on the planking.

'Still twitching,' he remarked. 'Only been out of the water an hour or so.'

'How much?'

The man shrugged.

'Whatever you think.'

Zen handed him a hundred-thousand-lire note.

'Thanks,' he said. 'It’ll make a magnificent lunch.'

'Grazie a lei, e buon appetito’ he called, jumping back to the fishing boat, which nudged ahead and continued on its course.

Zen put the fish away in the fridge, then returned to the cockpit, engaged forward gear and revved die engine slightly. The boat obediently swung round on to its former course. He sat back on the stool and lit a cigarette, feeling pretty smug. He'd sorted everything out. It was all going to be fine.

When he finished the cigarette, he remembered that the anchor was still lying unsecured on the foredeck and went out quickly to retrieve it. A distant drone attracted his attention. To the south, a big twin-rotor military helicopter was making its way up the coast Zen bent down to pick up the anchor and then noticed a small rectangular black box lying just inside one of the scuppers. He recognized it immediately as the emergency communication device he had been given at the Ministry. It must have slipped out of his pocket when he fell. He bent and lifted it up, turning it to replace it. Only then did he notice that the red button on the front was glowing brightly.

It took him a moment to realize what had happened. The fall must have jarred the protective plastic cover loose, and then he had stepped on the device when he went aft to speak to the trawlerman. At which moment, at least fifteen minutes ago now, an all-points red-alert alarm call had gone out to the security services coded with the exact position of a boat carrying not just the indispensable Dottor Zen, supposedly menaced by an unknown but potentially deadly threat, but the bullet-ridden corpse of the late Roberto Lessi, late of the carabinieri's elite ROS unit.

The helicopter was closer now, and heading straight towards the boat. Zen grabbed the black box and hurled it as far as he could into the sea. Please God the thing didn't work underwater. He ran back to the cockpit and gunned the motor to its maximum power. The bow leapt up and a series of increasingly rapid smashing sounds from the oncoming waves made the entire hull shake. Everything not fastened down became mobile, pens and cigarettes and Zen's coffee cup and plate spilling down off the ledge to the deck. Then the helicopter was on them, directly overhead now, the noise of its engines deafening. The boat bucked and shuddered as it slapped down the waves, turning the sea to either side into a creamy vector of foam.

'What the hell's going on?'

The voice was Gemma's, but Zen did not turn. A moment later, she was in the cockpit with him.

'What are you doing? You're driving like a maniac!'

Zen could hear her clearly now, he realized, because the helicopter had gone, pursuing its unwavering course to the northwest. He watched it become small and insignificant, then throttled back and laughed abruptly.

'Couldn't help myself! The boy in me, you know. I just wanted to see how fast it would go.'

Gemma rolled her eyes.

'I fell off the seating and banged my head on the table leg.'

'Sorry, I wasn't thinking.'

All was quiet and calm again now.

'Apart from that, did you sleep well?'

'Like a baby. Boats always put me to sleep.'

'Always?' Zen enquired with an arch look.

'Well, almost always. How have things been here?'

'Very quiet'

'You must be exhausted.'

'Not really. I'm enjoying myself. I'd forgotten how much fun boats are. There's always something that needs attention. Keeps you awake and alert.'

'Don't you want a rest? I'll keep lookout and call you if anything happens.'

'Not until we've disposed of our passenger.'

'And when's that going to be?'

Zen pointed to the video screen.

'When we get here. I don't know exactly how long that will be’ Gemma pushed a button to one side of the screen and read the overlaid display. 'About forty minutes, at the present speed.' 'I can hold out till then. Particularly with another cup of coffee’ 'I'll make some’

Forty-three minutes later the beeper on the navigational display sounded again, announcing that they had arrived at the reference point which Zen had selected. By then he had brought the anchor aft and unhitched one of the mooring lines from its cleat and rolled it up beside the anchor.

Even Tommaso's state-of-the-art echo sounder couldn't cope with the depth of water under the hull, returning only nonsensically shallow readings based on some passing shoal of fish, but according to the chart they were in a zone over three hundred metres deep. Zen cut the motor and scanned the sea around them, first with the naked eye and then the binoculars Gemma found for him. The Italian coast was a ghostly memory swathed in haze, and the only vessels in sight were two freighters and a ferry, all hull-down on the horizon.

They carried the corpse out of the saloon and laid it down on the aft decking, leaning up against the gunwale. It was stiff as a board by now, and much easier to handle. Zen climbed down the steps to the bathing deck suspended over the water aft, while Gemma levered up the other end of the body and tilted the whole thing over the edge while Zen took the weight and guided it down on to the plastic deck. He then returned for the anchor, while Gemma followed him down with the length of mooring line.

So close to the sea, the air smelt fresh and invigorating. Little wavelets splashed them from time to time as they wound the rope round and round the corpse at the neck and ankles. Zen then secured each end with a series of half-hitches and passed both through the eye of the anchor, before finishing off the job with a final set of knots and tying the two loose ends together in a reef knot. He rose, surveying his work.

'That ought to hold him.'

'Should we say something?' asked Gemma.

'Say what?'

'I don't know. Isn't there some service for a burial at sea? "We commit thy body to the waves and thy soul to Almighty God." Something like that.'

Zen grimaced.

'Let's just take care of the body part. You roll it over, I'll lift the anchor.'

They worked the bundle to the very edge of the platform, where Zen laid the anchor gently on top of it like a wreath.

'Right,' he said with a sigh of relief. 'One, two, three…'

The resulting splash was almost derisibly insignificant. For a few moments they were able to make out the white form spiralling down through the water, gradually shrinking and losing substance until it disappeared altogether. Gemma crossed herself.

'What about the gun?' she asked. Zen clicked his fingers. 'Good point.'

They climbed back up the ladder to the afterdeck. Zen went into the saloon, removed Lessi's pistol from the drawer where he had stowed it, returned on deck and threw it overboard. Gemma emerged from the bathroom, where she had been washing her hands.

'What do we do now?' she asked.

Zen looked at her standing there in the sunlight with her sturdy, expectant expression. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, but it didn't seem the moment, particularly since he had not washed his hands. Then he had an idea so totally crazy that he knew at once he would have to do it.

'Let’s have lunch,' he said.

Gemma wrinkled her nose.

'Motorway cheese and salami? I don't think I'm that hungry.' 'I have other plans.'

He went back up to the cockpit and consulted the chart. Yes, there it was. He clicked around, set the new course and engaged the engine. The boat nosed about towards the south-east and set about its business of showing the waves who was boss.

'Where are we going?' asked Gemma.

'I'm going to sleep. Keep an eye out for other shipping, and wake me in plenty of time if anything is getting too dose.' 'All right, but where are we going?' Zen smiled mysteriously. 'To prison.' 'Prison?' He nodded.

'Like in that board game. "Go to jail. Go directly to jail.'" 'What are you talking about?' 'I'll tell you later.'

Being born is confusing. Dying may well prove to be even more so. Even waking up is pretty damn confusing. Such were Aurelio Zen's initial thoughts on emerging from a seamless, dreamless sleep. Why me? Why here? Why now?

The answer to these questions, when it popped up, seemed incontrovertible. In his mindless exhaustion, he had lain down on the very spot where Roberto Lessi's body had been lying for all those hours. This surely meant bad luck. Even monks and nuns were threatening enough, their presence demanding a discreet jiggle of the testicles as an antidote against that other world of chastity. But there was no gesto di scongiuro effective against death, and he had been rubbing up against it for hours, and asleep, to make it worse.

But was Lessi's spirit a threat, he wondered, still lying in the shallow depression which he and his victim's corpse had made in the leather cushions. His mother had spoken to him in the apartment in Rome, but that had come as no surprise. He had always known that she had the power to get in touch with him at any time she wanted. But Lessi? 'We commit thy body to the waves and thy soul to Almighty God.' No, Lessi didn't have that kind of power, of that Zen felt certain. Maybe his friends did, though.

'They don't put the bottles in the box, they wrap the box around the bottles.' That teasing phrase was clear enough now. He had been telling himself that there was more than one solution to a problem. His mind had always worked like that, in a facetious, allusive way, but its insights usually turned out to have been correct. Too bad he hadn't understood them at the time. And what had his mother told him? 'Just don't ever turn your back on them, that’s all. Don't look them in the eye and never turn your back.' She'd been right, as always. He'd got away with it this time, but as he stood up he vowed never to turn his back on anyone ever again.

It was only once he was vertical that he realized the real reason why he had woken in the first place. The boat was completely still and silent. His first thought was that the motor must have failed again, but that wouldn't explain the lack of motion. Really disturbed now, he ran out on to the afterdeck. A pile of woman's clothing lay strewn on the planking. He looked about him. The first thing he saw was land, some kind of rocky shoreline. They must have run aground, he thought guiltily. He'd fallen asleep and Gemma had somehow stranded the boat.

But where was Gemma? No sign of her in the cockpit or on deck, apart from her discarded clothing. He called her name loudly several times. No answer. God, no! Had she fallen overboard, as he himself so nearly had?

'Ciao, caro!'

The voice came from behind him, from the land. He turned and beheld through the midday heat haze the figure of Gemma waving to him from a sandy beach. Zen looked about in puzzlement. The boat appeared to be securely moored at anchor in a few metres of water in a small bay protected from such wind as there was by a low headland. The land behind the beach rose steeply in a jumble of shrubs, bushes and stunted trees. There was no sign of any paths down to the water, and no other boats in sight.

'It’s lovely here,' called Gemma. 'Come on over.'

'How?'

'Swim! I did.'

'I don't have my costume.'

'Neither do I. This is underwear.'

Zen gestured vaguely. There didn't seem to be any way out. He returned to the saloon and stripped off, then ventured back out on deck. Feeling as embarrassed as a schoolboy, he climbed down the ladder to the bathing deck again, then dived in and swam ashore. The water was warm and silkily salty. He shook himself off and walked up to where Gemma was lying, then threw himself down beside her on the hot sand.

'Where on earth are we?' he demanded.

'It’s called Gorgona. I noticed it coming up on the left and it just looked so gorgeous I drove over to take a closer look. Then I saw this bay, and came in and parked.'

'You should have woken me! There might have been rocks under water at the entrance. You could have wrecked the boat!'

'Well, I didn't. And isn't it wonderful? No one here, and not a single sign that anyone ever has been. It's paradise! Much nicer than wherever you were planning to take us.'

'This is where I was planning to take us.'

'But you said we were going to prison.'

'Gorgona is a prison island. That’s why there's no one here.'

Gemma looked at him in alarm.

'Oh my God, I suppose they'll be round with guns any moment to arrest us for trespassing!'

'I doubt it. The prison is for inner-city juvenile riff-raff. Not the sort who have friends who might organize a getaway in a power boat. Security's pretty minimal.'

'How do you know?'

'This is where they took me after I disappeared that evening in Versilia. I thought then how wonderful it would be to come back here with you some day, but of course I never thought it would be possible.'

Gemma smiled at him.

'I didn't know you were thinking of me then.'

'Well, I was. And now I'm thinking of lunch. I bought this fish…'

'I found it in the fridge. How did you get it?' 'Oh, I hailed a passing fishing boat.' She laughed. 'Like hailing a taxi?'

'Sort of. Anyway, it should be fabulous. What are we going to do with it?'

Gemma sat up and brushed the sand off her stomach. Her dark, prominent nipples showed through the wet brassiere.

'All taken care of,' she said. 'I cleaned and scaled it and set it to marinade in oil and lemon juice. It should be ready by now. Fifteen minutes or so under the grill and we can eat'

Zen got up and walked across the beach to the bottom of the rocky slope. The soil here was blisteringly hot. He took a few painful steps, inspecting the shrubbery and rubbing the leaves occasionally, then tore off two branches and skipped back to the sand, burying his seared soles for a moment in the cooler layer beneath the surface. When he could walk normally again, he returned to Gemma and handed her the branches.

'For you,' he said with a mock bow.

She inspected the gift.

'Wild thyme and rosemary. Perfect! But if 11 get ruined in the water.'

'I'll look after it. Come on, I'm starving.'

They swam back to the boat, Zen doing a back crawl with his legs alone, holding the herbs high above the water with one hand. Gemma took them from him on the bathing deck and went to shower in the impressively equipped bathroom. She reappeared wearing, judging by various subtle signs, only her outer layer of clothing.

Gemma laid amp; table on the afterdeck under a canvas canopy that Zen cranked down on her instructions. Then they brought out the food and some white wine which Gemma had placed in the fridge earlier. The dining space was cool, airy and delightful. They ate ravenously, mouthfuls of succulent fish and crusty bread washed down with the tart, prickly wine.

'God, this place is gorgeous!' Gemma exclaimed. 'Hard to believe that it’s a prison.'

Zen nodded.

'It is, though. And we're prisoners.' She frowned.

'You mean we can't leave? That’s all right with me.'

'No, we don't have to stay here. We're prisoners on parole, free to come and go as we wish, up to a point. But prisoners just the same.'

'What are you talking about, Aurelio?'

It was the first time she had called him that Zen laid his plate aside and lit a cigarette.

'I can't count how many cases I've dealt with that would never have been solved if one of the parties involved hadn't decided, for one reason or another, to cooperate with the police. Well, it’s the same here. I've killed a man and you've helped me dispose of the body. There's a very good chance that we'll get away with it, I think, but only as long as we keep faith with one another. And I don't just mean now, in the heat of die moment, here in this paradise. I mean back there in the real world, and for ever. That’s what I meant when I said that we're prisoners. Not of the state, but of each other.'

Gemma smiled mysteriously. She seemed to be considering various possible answers.

'Well, you'll just have to make sure always to be very nice to me,' she said at length.

'And vice versa.'

'But you've got more to lose. You actually shot him after all. I was tied up at the time, remember? A helpless female in peril. Anyway, the key thing is that we'll obviously have to stay closely in touch, so that we can keep an eye on each other and check that the other person isn't getting any dangerous ideas. In fact it would probably be best if you were to move in with me, for the time being at least. Otherwise I might lie awake worrying about what you were up to. I hate sleepless nights. Unless there's something better to do, of course.'

They looked at each other for a very long time. Then Gemma yawned loudly and stood up.

'All that food and wine's made me sleepy. I'm going to lie down for a bit. Come and join me, if you want.'

She went into the saloon and through into the forward cabin, where she removed her clothes and lay down on the bed. Zen remained where he was for a moment, staring up at the sky. A skein of high cloud was drifting in from the west. The weather was changing, and not for the better. They'd need to leave soon. He tossed his cigarette into the clear blue water and followed Gemma inside