Back to Bologna

7

There had always been aspects of life that Aurelio Zen had found problematic, even in the halcyon years before his midlife medical crisis had multiplied their number virtually to infinity. One of them was being brutally woken out of deep sleep, another was talking to total strangers on the phone. The morning following his return from Rome he got both.

He was first bawled and battered into consciousness by a sinister figure in a white hooded robe, who turned out on closer inspection to be Gemma. She had been washing her hair in the shower when the phone rang, and her exertions to rouse Zen caused a secondary shower to splash down on his face, which still bore the traces of a rapidly fading expression of blissful ignorance.

‘It’s for you!’ Gemma shouted, waving the telephone she was holding in one hand while covering the mouthpiece of the receiver with the other. ‘Your work! They say it’s urgent!’

She emphasised this fact with a kick, which went wide as Zen rolled over in bed at that moment. Gemma promptly lost her balance, dropped the phone in a failed attempt to steady herself, then sat down rather suddenly on the floor. This caused her to swear, and Zen to feel the onset of a rising tide of laughter which soon floated him back to full wakefulness.

As usual these days, Gemma failed to see the lighter side of the situation and flounced out of the room, loudly abusing Zen with a string of vicious expletives and slamming the door so hard that it bounced open again. He went to shut it properly, his initial humour fading fast. What had all that been about? One more irrational and unpredictable fit of hysteria. Welcome to another day at Via del Fosso. The phone lying on the floor seemed to be emitting gurgling sounds. He picked it up.

‘ Pronto? ’

‘Is this Aurelio Zen?’ a voice barked in his ear.

Zen wasted a sarcastically unctuous smile on the plastic mouthpiece.

‘It is indeed!’ he announced in a falsely jocular tone. ‘He himself, as ever was, larger than life and twice as real. And whom, pray, have I the honour of addressing?’

‘Gaetano Foschi.’

The name rang a bell, but it was only after the caller had testily supplied further information that Zen linked it with the short-tempered, workaholic southerner who was deputy head of the Criminalpol section of the Interior Ministry.

‘What the hell’s going on there?’ Foschi demanded. ‘The place sounds like a madhouse.’

‘It often feels like it too.’

‘What? Why aren’t you answering your duty issue phone?’

‘It’s not switched on.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m on sick leave.’

‘Says who?’

‘Dottor Brugnoli,’ Zen replied with the air of a chess master declaring checkmate.

‘Ah, you’re one of Brugnoli’s babies, are you? Well, I’m sorry to have to inform you that life around here has become rather more spartan during your prolonged absence. As in stake them out on the mountain and see who survives.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Call me back on your encrypted mobile. This line is not secure.’

When Zen did so, Foschi informed him that Brugnoli, Zen’s patron at the Ministry had taken up the offer of a consultancy position with a leading bank following a governmental ‘crisis’ and cabinet reshuffle of which Zen had heard nothing.

‘I didn’t know,’ he explained feebly. ‘I had to have an operation and I’ve been on indefinite sick leave ever since.’

‘Very indefinite,’ Foschi retorted. ‘So much so that there’s absolutely no record of the fact in the personnel database.’

‘Dottor Brugnoli told me that he would arrange everything.’

Foschi laughed shortly.

‘I’m sure he did, but that was before he arranged his own departure to greener pastures in the private sector. Since then we’ve gone back to playing strictly by the book of rules, according to which you are available for immediate active duty. Are you saying that such is not the case?’

Zen thought for a moment. He could probably get a letter from the consultant excusing him from service for another month or so, and explaining and documenting the record of his case. On the other hand…

‘What did you have in mind?’ he asked.

‘It’s this Curti business.’

Zen had no idea what he was talking about, but he had already created a bad enough impression for one morning. He decided to bluff.

‘What exactly do you want me to do?’

Foschi sighed deeply.

‘It’s a damn shame you don’t live here in Rome like everyone else, Zen. That’s something we may have to review in the light of the changed situation. It would make things so much easier if we could discuss this face to face.’

Zen said nothing.

‘Anyway,’ Foschi went on, ‘the Questura in Bologna are handling the actual investigation, but we need someone to go up there and liaise with the Ministry. Your name came up.’

‘Why should they tell me anything they don’t tell you?’

Instinct told him that bluntness was the best way to whatever organ had been substituted for Foschi’s heart.

‘They won’t. But they’ll tell you sooner, and above all you’ll be in a position to report back on what they’re not telling us.’

‘Why should they try and conceal the truth? We’re all playing for the same team.’

‘I’m not saying that they necessarily will. But they are going to be under enormous pressure to deliver results, and quickly. Lorenzo Curti was a figure of fame and notoriety not just in Emilia-Romagna but on a national and even international level, a millionaire entrepreneur who owned the Bologna football team and was also the majority shareholder in a dairy conglomerate currently under investigation for tax evasion and serious fraud. In short, this promises to be the highest-profile case in the Bologna jurisdiction since the Uno Bianca fiasco.’

After a moment, Zen recalled the spate of serial killings around Bologna in the late 1980s involving a white Fiat Uno. He also recalled that when the perpetrators had finally been brought to justice, they had almost all turned out to be policemen working out of the Bologna Questura, many of them involved in the investigation into their own crimes. It had taken years for morale in the Polizia di Stato to recover from this scandal.

‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ Foschi concluded. ‘Your assignment is not to take command of the investigation but to remain fully informed about progress and to report developments to me personally on a daily basis, and more frequently if necessary. That way, if the media vultures start to circle, we’ll be ready for them.’

‘I understand.’

‘How soon can you get there?’

Zen was about to remind Foschi that he hadn’t agreed to go yet, but instantly realised that as far as he was concerned he had.

‘In a few hours.’

‘Very good. I’ll tell them to expect you after lunch.’

When Gemma came in, Zen had already showered and dressed and was busy packing. Without offering a word of apology for the vile names she had called him at their last encounter, she started gathering together her clothes. Clearly this would be another day when they were ‘not talking’. Someone else, however, was.

‘…sure to tune in again next week, when Romano takes a pilgrimage to the temple of the one and only Parmigiano Reggiano!’

‘Believe it or believe it not, it takes no fewer than sixteen litres of the finest, richest, freshest milk to make a single kilo of this, the Jupiter of cheeses lording it over the rabble of minor gods. And then as much as two years of completely natural ageing, according to traditions handed down over seven centuries of continuous production…’

The television screen at the far end of the living room, visible through the open door, showed contented cows grazing, pails of creamy, pure milk being poured into vats and then cooked in a cauldron over an open fire, while authentic-looking peasants stirred the brew with wooden staves, all interspersed with close-ups of a Luciano Pavarotti lookalike got up in a chef’s outfit beaming toothily at the viewer while belting out extracts from Verdi’s ‘ Celeste Aida ’.

‘Aren’t you even going to apologise?’ Gemma demanded, pausing in the doorway with her bundle of clothing. As had become customary, she would dress in the spare bedroom. It seemed just a matter of time before one of them started sleeping there.

‘I might ask you the same,’ Zen replied mildly.

‘What have I to apologise for?’

‘Ditto.’

‘For cruelly mocking me when I fell over! You just lay there cackling instead of even offering to help me up or ask whether I was hurt. And the only reason it happened was because I got out of the shower to wake you for your stupid phone call.’

Zen slipped several strata of socks into a spare corner of the suitcase. He seemed to have only one clean vest. Oh well, he’d buy more in Bologna and then have them washed at the hotel. With the situation the way it was, the last thing he wanted was to raise the question of dirty laundry.

‘You’re leaving?’ Gemma went on, still hovering in the doorway.

Zen nodded. No, not that green horror, he decided. He hadn’t worn it for years, but the laws of thrift inculcated by his mother died hard. He laid the rest of the shirts flat on top of the other garments, then closed the case.

‘So where are you going to go?’

‘Bologna.’

The first flicker of some expression appeared on Gemma’s face, but was instantly suppressed.

‘Why Bologna?’

Zen was about to tell her, but then decided to let her twist in the wind for a while. It was the least she deserved after the way she’d treated him.

‘Years ago I was stationed in the city,’ he replied airily. ‘I loved it, and I’ve always wanted to go back.’

Gemma regarded him levelly for some time, then gave a light but studied laugh.

‘I could stop you, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, not stop you leaving. But I could certainly ensure that you enjoy this visit to La Grassa a lot less than your last. A single phone call would do it.’

He laughed mirthlessly in turn.

‘I doubt that one more of your tirades could ruin my stay. At least I won’t be in the same room to listen to it.’

‘Oh, the phone call wouldn’t be to you.’

Zen set the suitcase on the floor, straightened up and confronted her. She scrunched her face up and narrowed her eyes.

‘We have received a phone call, Dottor Zen,’ she said in a voice an octave lower than usual and with a passable imitation of the Bolognese accent. ‘A Signora Santini, resident in Via del Fosso, Lucca, alleges that just over a year ago you murdered an ex-officer of the Carabinieri, one Roberto Lessi, in her apartment and then forced her at gunpoint to assist you in disposing of the corpse at sea. She further asserts that you subsequently moved into her apartment and have terrorised her both mentally and physically with a view to ensuring her silence. She is prepared to testify to this effect in court. It is therefore my duty to…’

They regarded each other in wary silence.

‘Bullshit,’ remarked Zen finally.

‘Don’t be too sure. You keep accusing me of acting irrationally. There’s no telling what irrational people may do.’

Zen shrugged.

‘I’ve been summoned to Bologna for work, that’s all. To be honest, it might not be a bad thing for us to spend a bit of time apart. I’ve been through a bad patch recently, one way and another, and I’m sure I’ve been difficult at times. I know you have. Maybe what we need is a cooling-off period to help get things in perspective.’

Gemma’s expression softened marginally, but her body remained poised for either fight or flight.

‘That time on the boat, Aurelio, when we moored off Gorgona,’ she said dreamily. ‘Do you remember? You told me then that we were prisoners of each other. Well, that’s what I’m starting to feel like. Your prisoner.’

Zen nodded.

‘Me too. But perhaps we can both get over it. I hope so.’

He picked up his suitcase. Gemma backed into the living room, keeping her distance from him.

‘Do you want me to drive you to the station?’

‘No, thank you. I can manage.’

She shook her head sadly.

‘No, Aurelio. That’s just what you can’t do.’

He shrugged this off.

‘Well then, I’m going to have to learn.’