Cabal

6

The piazza in front of Rome’s Stazione Termini, normally thronged with buses, cars, traders’ vans and lorries, with crowds of commuters, tourists, beggars, transients and the forlorn Senegalese and Filipino immigrants who used the place as an informal clubhouse, information centre and canteen, was now a bleak, empty, rainswept wasteland. As Zen stared out of the window of the taxi at the porticoed arcade to one side and the blank wall closing off the vista, he slipped back into the dream from which the alarm clock had saved him less than half an hour earlier.

He’d been walking across just such a piazza, but in broad daylight, beneath a brutal summer sun. The light flattened the ground at his feet, reducing it to a featureless expanse bordered by a row of broken columns, the last of which cast a perfect shadow of itself on the hot paving, like the hands of a clock showing one minute to twelve. That was indeed the time, and he would never manage to catch the train, which left on the hour from the station whose enormous facade sealed off the perspective. Already he could see the plume of smoke as the locomotive pulled away from the invisible platform, inaccessible behind a high wall…

The taxi hit one of the kerbs delineating the bus lanes, jolting him awake again. The dream was still horribly vivid, though: the stillness, the stifling heat, the paralysis of his limbs, the sickening perspectives of the piazza, at once vertiginous and claustrophobic. He sat up straight, willing himself back to the here and now. It was only a dream, after all.

Having paid off the taxi, he carried his bag through the booking hall into the main concourse of the station. It was twenty past six. He’d spent a quarter of an hour blundering around the apartment, worrying that he’d remembered to pack everything except the one essential item, whatever it was, without which his journey would be in vain, and was just wondering whether to take the replica revolver when the taxi arrived, ten minutes early. In the end he’d thrown the thing into his suitcase along with a couple of spare shirts, grabbed his briefcase with the precious transcript, and rushed downstairs. As a result of that unnecessary haste, he now had forty minutes to hang around the draughty public spaces of the station.

The cafeteria was still closed, but a small kiosk was dispensing coffee to a huddle of early arrivals. Zen joined the queue, eventually obtaining a double espresso which he knocked back like a shot of spirits. The warming glow of caffeine hit his bloodstream, adding the depth of memory to his two-dimensional consciousness. He winced, recalling his parting from Tania the night before, the unforgivable things said on either side, the way he had walked out without any attempt at reconciliation. Well, what was the point? It was over, that was clear enough. Tania might be ludicrously mistaken about his supposed amours, but he certainly wasn’t about hers. There was too much evidence, both material and circumstantial, and he was too experienced an investigator to be led astray. Besides, Tania had made it plain that after the years of confinement in a joyless marriage to Mauro Bevilacqua she wasn’t prepared to submit to the strait-jacket of another exclusive relationship. Why insist on freedom and then leave it untasted?

Zen tossed the disposable plastic cup into the rubbish bag provided and turned to survey his fellow passengers. They looked bizarrely out of place, an elegant, wealthy throng clustered around the mini-bar like factory workers on the early shift. Power dressing was the order of the day, both men and the few women present discreetly flaunting an understated sartorial muscle based on cut, finish and quality fabrics. The only exception was a tense-looking man wearing the undress uniform of the Church the world over, a plain clerical suit and white collar clutching a locked attache case under his arm. Zen instinctively glanced at his own battered leather briefcase, leaning against the overnight bag at his feet.

After storming out of Tania’s apartment the night before, he had gone to the bar round the corner and shared some of his problems, suitably depersonalized, with the Neapolitans over a hot chocolate. Since he couldn’t very well ask Tania for her brother-in-law’s address, Zen looked it up in the phone book and then took a cab round there to pick up the transcript. Unfortunately, Tullio Bevilacqua was so proud of the part he had played in the relentless struggle against organized crime that he had invited his brother to witness this historic event.

The last time Zen had seen Tania’s husband, Mauro Bevilacqua was waving a gun in his face and threatening to exact revenge for the insult done to his family honour, so his unexpected appearance at this juncture seemed likely to result in all manner of problems, both professional and personal. In the event, the encounter was less fraught than it might have been. After a brief but violent internal tussle, Mauro opted for a pose of contemptuous indifference, as though to emphasize that the doings of his estranged wife were of no concern to him. Only at the end, when Zen was about to leave, did his mask slip for a moment.

‘We mustn’t detain our guest any longer, brother. He has important work to do keeping prostitution off the streets.’

Tullio frowned.

‘Dottor Borsellino isn’t in the Vice Squad.’

Mauro gave a smile of exquisite irony.

‘Borsellino?’ he enquired archly. ‘Ah, excuse me! I was confusing him with an official who used to work with all the sluts of the city. A slimy, venal little faccia di culo by the name of Aurelio Zen.’

He turned to face Zen.

‘Do you know him by any chance, dottore?’

Zen nodded.

‘I’ll tell him what you said.’

‘Yes, do that. Not that I’ve got anything personal against him, you understand. In fact he did me a favour once. Took this whore off my hands.’

Mauro Bevilacqua smiled reminiscently.

‘I wonder who’s she with now!’

Since Zen was wondering almost exactly the same thing, he was unable to come up with a suitably crushing reply. Back home, his mother had kept him up late with a long and involved story about some childhood friend of hers who had moved to Milan with her husband and been killed during the war when an Allied bomb struck the laundry where she worked. By the time he extricated himself, Zen had felt too tired to do more than go straight to bed and hope that he would feel better in the morning.

He walked over to the news-stall, which had just opened, and looked through the serried ranks of magazines. The cover of the new issue of Moda showed an extraordinary peacock of a man, a shimmering apparition in heavy grey and gold silks, his guileless blue eyes turned levelly towards the camera. The caption read ‘Falco: A Philosopher in the Wardrobe’. Just then a subliminal frisson spread through the group of men standing at the news-stall, leaping from one to another like an electric charge. Zen turned his head along with all the others, but it was too late. The woman who had generated all this excitement had already passed by, and all he could see of her was her shoulder-length blonde hair and the back of her darkcream trenchcoat, the hem oscillating back and forth above her suede bootees. With a sigh he picked up his luggage and followed her and the other passengers towards the platform where il pendolino, as the pride of the Ferrovie dello Stato was popularly known, was now boarding.

The eight carriages which made up the ETR 450 high-speed unit, with a bullet-shaped cab at each end, were mounted high above the bogies on which they tilted to maintain stability at speeds of up to 150 mph — hence its nickname, ‘the pendulum’. All seats were reserved and first class only. Zen’s carriage was towards the middle of the train. In the vestibule, a uniformed attendant checked his ticket and directed him to his place. Two rows of reclining seats ran the length of the coach, just as in an airplane. Indeed, the pendolino was the next best thing to a plane, covering the four hundred miles between Rome and Milan in under four hours.

Having stowed the suitcase in the luggage rack, Zen lowered the table attached to the back of the chair in front, opened his briefcase and extracted the sheaf of papers which it contained. Apart from the initial reference list of phone numbers, the transcript consisted of twenty-two pages headed UFFICIO CENTRALE DI VIGILANZA and covered in single-spaced typing, divided into blocks headed with a date, time and telephone number. Each represented one phone call which Ruspanti had made. Incoming calls did not figure. Ruspanti presumably hadn’t given his phone number to anyone, either because the 698 prefix would have revealed his presence in the Vatican City State, or because he knew or suspected that the line was being tapped.

There was a whistle blast from the platform outside, a whine as the automatic doors closed, then a slight jolt of movement. Zen glanced at his watch. Seven o’clock on the dot. A moment later the window was covered in a speckle of rain as the train emerged into the grey dawn. Inside, the broad strip of fluorescent panelling on the ceiling of the coach bathed everything in a coolly efficient radiance. Zen lowered his head over the papers again and started to read.

Some time later he sensed someone standing behind him, craning over him. He hastily covered the type-written page, but it was only one of the stewards, offering him an airplane-style breakfast tray, an assortment of sad pastries and unloved rolls in plastic shrouds. Zen waved it away, then reclaimed the cup and asked for coffee. Beyond the window, the flat expanses of the Tiber flood-plain slipped past like a video being fast-forwarded. They were on the new direttissima line by now, the train humming purposefully along at its top speed on the custom-built high-speed track.

Zen read quickly through the rest of the transcript, then laid it on the table, face down, and sighed. Giovanni Grimaldi had been felled in his shower like a beast at the abattoir because he had threatened to reveal the contents of this document, yet Zen had just read it from cover to cover and it meant almost nothing to him.

He turned back to the beginning and read it through once more. Whether Ruspanti had been aware of the tap on his own line, or was concerned about possible eavesdroppers the other end, he had gone to great pains to say nothing of any consequence. About half the calls amounted to little more than requests to be contacted ‘at the usual number’ or ‘in the normal way’. In others, Ruspanti referred to ‘the sum agreed’ or ‘under discussion’, or urged that ‘the measures previously outlined be put into immediate effect’. Only twice did he mention anything more specific. The first instance occurred in the course of the call to the pay-phone in the lobby of the Hotel Torlonia Palace the previous Thursday. His patience had finally run out, Ruspanti said. If ‘Zeppegno’ couldn’t be persuaded to ‘do the decent thing’ by the weekend at the latest, then he would ‘have no alternative but to make public the matter which you know about’.

This might well have some bearing on the circumstances of Ruspanti’s death, given the timing. But as the nature of the secret he threatened to make public was not even hinted at, and the name mentioned was presumably false, it did not amount to very significant evidence. The other call was to the last of the Milan numbers which Zen had tried the night before, but although it sounded an intimate note perceptible even in the unrelievedly literal transcription, its significance remained equally cryptic.

‘Hello?’

‘Ludo! Where are you? Are you coming here?’

‘I’m not in Milan, my love.’

‘Where, then?’

‘I’m… moving around a bit. Here today, gone tomorrow.’

‘Sounds like fun.’

‘In fact I was talking to someone about you just the other day, Ariana. Someone who works for a magazine.’

‘About me?’

‘That’s right. I told him all about your dolls. He sounded very interested. In fact he wants to write an article about them.’

‘Don’t make fun of me, Ludo. It isn’t fair.’

‘I’m not! This is quite serious.’

‘But why would anyone be interested in my dolls?’

‘You’d be amazed, Ariana. So would your brother!’

‘You haven’t told him, have you?’

‘No, I can’t seem to get hold of him. Why don’t you tell him? Tell him to get in touch and let me know what he thinks about the idea. He knows how to contact me, if he wants to.’

‘But when will I see you?’

‘As soon as all this is over.’

‘All what? There’s some problem, isn’t there? I can feel it. What is it, Ludo? Tell me!’

‘Oh nothing. Just the silly games we boys play. Girls are more sensible, aren’t they?’

Zen looked at the window, but the train was running through a tunnel, and all he could see was the reflection of his own features, baffled and haggard. Perhaps a reader more familiar with the details of the case against Ruspanti might glean something more substantial from the transcript. Since someone had been prepared to kill Grimaldi and bribe Zen to obtain the damn thing, there must be some clue hidden there. The reference to ‘dolls’ might be a code of some kind. What would Ruspanti’s mistress be doing playing with dolls? Perhaps Antonio Simonelli would know what it meant.

The roar of the tunnel faded as the train emerged into bright sunshine. A moment later they had crossed the Arno and rejoined the old line running through the outskirts of Florence. Zen replaced the transcript in his briefcase, which he locked and placed on his knee as the train drew into the suburban station of Rinfredi, which it used to avoid the timewasting turn-round at the Florentine terminus of Santa Maria Novella. The stop was a brief one, and by the time he had had a chance to skim La Stampa they were once again under way, along the fast straight stretch to Prato.

‘Good morning, dottore.’

Zen looked up from his newspaper. The voice was both distinctive and familiar, but it still took him a moment to recognize the man standing beside his seat, an umbrella in one hand and a briefcase in the other, gazing down at Zen with a smile of complicity. It was the man who had been in his thoughts just a few minutes earlier, the man he was going to Milan to see, Antonio Simonelli.

‘Have you brought the transcript?’

They had barely settled down in the seats to which Simonelli had led the way. When the magistrate suggested that Zen join him in the next carriage, he had at once agreed. Policemen are accustomed to obeying the instructions of the judiciary, and besides, seeing Simonelli was the reason for Zen’s trip to Milan. This chance meeting — the magistrate had apparently just joined the train at Florence, where he had been attending a meeting — was simply a happy coincidence. Or so it had seemed, until Simonelli mentioned the transcript.

Zen instinctively tightened his grip on the briefcase, which was lying on his knees. The train rounded a curve, and sunlight suddenly streamed in through the window. In the lapel of Simonelli’s jacket, something glimmered. Zen looked more closely. It was a small silver eight-pointed cross.

‘You’re a member?’

The magistrate glanced down as though noticing the insignia for the first time.

‘I am, actually.’

‘Like Ruspanti.’

Simonelli’s laugh had an edge to it.

‘Hardly! Ruspanti was a Knight of Honour and Devotion. You need at least three hundred years of nobility behind you to achieve that. I’m just a simple Donat, the lowest of the low.’

It was only when Zen felt the magistrate’s restraining hand on his wrist that he realized that he had reached for his cigarettes. Simonelli indicated the sign on the window with a nicotine-stained finger.

‘No smoking.’

Zen let the muscles of his eyes unclasp, projecting his point of focus out of the train, beyond the dirt-flecked window with its prohibitory sign and into the landscape beyond. The slanting winter light streaked the narrow gorge of the Bisenzio where road and railway run side by side until the river peters out in the southern flanks of the Apennines. Then the road, largely disused since the motorway was opened, begins the long climb to the pass thousands of feet above, while the railway plunges into the eleven-mile tunnel under the mountains.

Why had Simonelli reserved a seat in a non-smoking section when he was himself a smoker? There were plenty of single seats available in the smoking coach where Zen was sitting, but not two together. If Simonelli had already known that the seat beside his was unoccupied, this could only be because he had booked them both in advance. The implications of this were so dizzying that he hardly heard Simonelli’s next words.

‘After all, it wouldn’t do for a judge and a policeman to break the law, would it?’

Zen glanced round at him witlessly.

‘Or at least,’ corrected Simonelli, ‘to be seen to do so.’

‘Seen to… How?’

‘By smoking in a non-smoking carriage.’

Zen nodded. Antonio Simonelli joined in until both their heads were wagging in the same tempo. They understood each other perfectly.

‘It is the original, I trust.’

Once again the magistrate’s nicotine-stained finger was extended, this time towards the briefcase Zen was hugging defensively to his body.

‘As my colleague explained to you on the phone, we’re not interested in purchasing a copy.’

Zen’s mouth opened. He laughed awkwardly.

‘No, no. Of course not.’

Simonelli glanced out of the window at the landscape, which was growing ever more rugged as they approached the mountain chain which divides Italy in two. With its many curves and steep gradients, this difficult section of line was the slowest, and even the pendolino was reduced to the speed of a normal train. Simonelli consulted his watch.

‘Do you think we’re going to be late?’ Zen asked.

‘Late for what?’

The Maltese cross in the magistrate’s lapel, its bifurcated points representing the eight beatitudes, glinted fascinatingly as the contours of the valley brought the line into the sunlight.

‘For whatever’s going to happen.’

Simonelli eyed him steadily.

‘All that’s going to happen is that you give me the transcript, and I take it to an associate who is seated in the next carriage. Once he has confirmed that it is the original, I return with the money.’

Zen stared back at the magistrate. Marco Duranti had described the supposed maintenance man who hot-wired the shower to kill Giovanni Grimaldi as stocky, muscular, of average height, with a big round face and a pronounced nasal accent, ‘a real northerner’. The description fitted Simonelli perfectly. And would not such a humble task befit ‘a simple Donat, the lowest of the low’? Despite the almost oppressive warmth of the air-conditioned carriage, Zen found himself shivering uncontrollably.

Simonelli tugged at the briefcase again, more insistently this time. Zen held on tight.

‘How do I know I’ll get paid?’

‘Of course you’ll get paid! No one can get off the train until we reach Bologna anyway.’

As the train glided through the station of Vernio and entered the southern end of the long tunnel under the Apennines, Zen’s attention was momentarily distracted by the woman who had caused such a stir at the terminus in Rome. She was making her way to the front of the carriage, and once again he only saw her clothes, a cowlneck ribbed sweater and tightly cut skirt. She left a subtle trail of perfume behind her, as though shaken from shoulder-length blonde hair like incense from a censer.

‘If the transcript is safe with you, the money is safe with me,’ Zen found himself saying above the roaring of the tunnel. ‘So give it to me now, before you take the transcript.’

He had hoped to disconcert Simonelli with this demand, to force him to consult his associate and thus give Zen more time to consider his next move. But as usual, he was a step behind. With a brief sigh of deprecation at this regrettable lack of trust on Zen’s part, Simonelli opened his briefcase. It was full of serried bundles of ten-thousand-lire notes.

‘Fifty million,’ the magistrate said. ‘As we agreed.’

He closed the lid and snapped the catches, locking the case, then stood up and laid it on his seat.

‘Now give me the transcript, please.’

Zen stared up at him. Why struggle? What difference did it make? He had been going to hand the transcript over to Simonelli anyway, in Milan. This way the result was the same, except that he came out of it fifty million lire better off. Even if he wanted to resist, there was nothing he could do, no effective action he could take. The only weapon he had was the fake revolver buried inside his suitcase in the luggage rack at the end of the next carriage. But even if he had been armed to the teeth, it wouldn’t have made any difference in the long run. The Cabal would get their way in the end. They always did.

He lifted his arm off his briefcase. Simonelli reached across, opened the briefcase and removed the transcript.

‘I shall be no more than five minutes,’ he said. ‘We have several men on the train. If you attempt to move from this seat during that time, I cannot be responsible for your safety.’

He strode off along the carriage towards the vestibule where the blonde woman was now smoking a cigarette. The train seemed to be full of masochistic smokers, Zen reflected with a forlorn attempt at humour. He stared out of the window, trying to think of something other than the humiliation he had just suffered. Although he had been travelling this line for years, the ten-and-a-half-minute transit of the Apennines was still something which awed him. His father had impressed the young Aurelio with the history of the epic project which had gripped the imagination of the nation throughout the twenties. Although marginally shorter than the Simplon, the Apennine tunnel had been infinitely more difficult and costly to construct, running as it did a nightmarish schist riddled with pockets of explosive gas and unmapped underground lakes which burst forth without warning, flooding the workings for months on end. Zen was lost in these memories and speculations when, just like the previous Friday, all the lights went out.

A moment later the secure warmth of the carriage was gutted by a roaring torrent of ice-cold air. The train shuddered violently as the brakes locked on. Cries of alarm and dismay filled the carriage, turning to screams of pain as the train jerked to a complete stop, throwing the passengers against each other and the seats in front.

Once Zen’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he discovered that it was not quite total after all. Although the lights in this carriage had failed, those in the adjoining coaches reflected off the walls of the tunnel, creating a faint glimmer by which he could just make out the aisle, the seats and the vague blurs of the other passengers moving about. Then two figures wielding torches like swords appeared at the end of the carriage. A moment later, the fluorescent strip on the ceiling of the carriage came on again.

It was a perfect moment for a murder, Zen reflected afterwards. The killers would be wearing sunglasses, and while everyone else was blinded by the sudden excess of light, they could carry out their assignment as though in total darkness. Fortunately, though, the men who had entered the carriage were not assassins but members of the train crew. Zen followed them to the vestibule at the front of the carriage, where he made himself known to the guard, a grey-haired man with the grooming and gravity of a senior executive.

The gale-force wind which had stripped all the warmth out of the carriage had diminished now the train had come to a halt, but there was still a vicious draught streaming in through the opened door. Zen asked what had happened. The capotreno indicated a red lever set in a recess in the wall near by. Shouting to make himself heard over the banshee whining in the tunnel outside, he explained that the external doors on the train were opened and closed by the driver, but that this mechanism could be overridden manually to prevent people being trapped inside in the event of an emergency. The lever was normally secured in the up position with a loop of string sealed like a mediaeval parchment with a circle of lead embossed with the emblem of the State Railways. This now dangled, broken, from its support.

‘As soon as this lever is thrown, a warning light comes on in the driver’s cab, and he stops the train. Unfortunately some people like to kill themselves this way. I don’t know why, but we get quite a few.’

Just like St Peter’s, thought Zen.

‘But why did the lights go off?’ he asked.

The guard indicated a double row of fuses and switches on the wall opposite, protected by a plastic cover which now swung loose on its hinges.

‘The fuse for the main lighting circuit was missing. We’ve swapped over the one for the air-conditioning thermostat, just to get the lights back on before the passengers started to panic. He must have done it himself, so he couldn’t see what was going to happen to him.’

The toilet door opened with a click and the blonde woman stepped out. She looked slightly flustered by so much male attention.

‘Has something happened?’ she asked.

Close to, her skin showed a slight roughness that made her seem older. Her pale blue eyes looked at Zen, who sniffed. Apart from her perfume, there seemed to be another new odour present — the smell of burning.

‘Did you hear anything?’ he said.

The flaxen hair trembled as she shook her head.

‘Just the roaring noise when the lights went out. Has someone…?’

The capotreno dismissed the woman with a wave and told two of his assistants to keep the passengers off the vestibule.

‘We’d better have a look on the track,’ he said.

The pendolino had never seemed more like an airplane to Aurelio Zen than when he stepped out of its lighted sanctuary into the howling storm outside. The Apennines form a continuous barrier running almost the entire length of the Italian peninsula, and the prevailing climatic conditions are often very different on either side. This man-made vent piercing the range thus forms a conduit for violent air currents flowing in one direction or the other as the contrasting weather systems try to find their level.

The high pressure was in Tuscany that day, so the wind was flowing north, battering the faces of the men as they walked back along the track. While they were still alongside the train, the lights streaming from the windows high overhead, Zen found the experience just about tolerable. But when they passed the final coach and struck out into the midst of that turbulent darkness which corroded the fragile beams of their torches, wearing them away, using them up, until they could hardly see the track in front of them, he was gripped by a terror so real it made anything else appear a flimsy dream of security, a collective delusion provoked by a reality too awful to be contemplated.

The noise was already deafening, but as they moved forward, breasting that black tide that threatened at every moment to sweep them away with it, it became clear that its source lay somewhere in front of them. The five men trudged slowly on, leaning forward as though pushing a laden sledge, their feeble torch beams scanning the ballast, sleepers and rails. The occasional patch of toilet paper, a soft-drink can or two, an ancient packet of cigarettes and a newspaper was all they found at first. Then something brighter, a fresher patch of white, showed up. One of the train crew picked it up and passed it to the capotreno, who held up his torch, scanning the line of heavy type at the top: UFFICIO CENTRALE DI VIGILANZA.

As the clamour up ahead grew ever more distinct and concentrated, the movement of the air became stronger and more devious, no longer a single blast but a maelstrom of whirling currents and eddies fighting for supremacy. Without the slightest warning a giant beacon appeared in the darkness behind them and swept past, forging south into the gale. As the locomotive passed, the darkness was briefly swept aside like a curtain, revealing the vast extent of the cavity where they cowered, deafened by the howl of its siren. Then the darkness fell back, and all other sounds were ground out by the wheels of a seemingly endless succession of unlighted freight wagons.

At length two red lights appeared, marking the last wagon. As it receded into the distance, the men started to move forward again and the original, primitive uproar reasserted itself, an infinitely powerful presence that was seemingly located somewhere in the heart of the solid rock above their heads. The train crew shone their torches upwards, revealing a huge circular opening in the roof of the tunnel. It was almost impossible to stand here, in the vortex of the vicious currents spiralling straight up the mountaintop thousands of feet above.

The capotreno beckoned to Zen, who lowered his ear to the man’s mouth.

‘Ventilation shaft!’

They found the body a little further on, lying beside the track like another bit of rubbish dropped from a passing train in defiance of the prohibition in several languages. One leg had been amputated at the thigh and most of the left arm and shoulder was mangled beyond recognition, but by some freak the face had survived without so much as a scratch. The Maltese cross glinted proudly in the lapel of the plain blue suit, and the fingers of the right hand were still clutching several pages of the transcript which now appeared to have claimed its second victim.

The power and influence of Milan — Italy’s rightful capital, as it liked to call itself — had never appeared more impressive to Aurelio Zen than they did as he strode along the corridors of the Palazzo di Giustizia late that afternoon. The office to which he had been directed was in an annexe built on at the rear of the main building, and its clean lines and uncluttered spaces, and still more the purposeful air of bustle and business, was as different as possible from other sites sacred to the judiciary. If Milan was capable of influencing, even superficially, an organization in which the bacillus of the ‘Bourbonic plague’ was preserved in its purest and most virulent form, then what couldn’t it do?

He rounded a corner to find a woman looking towards him from an open doorway. A helmet of lustreless black hair cropped at the nape framed her flat, open face, the bold cheeks and strong features blurred by menopausal turmoil like a damp-damaged fresco. She wore a slate-grey wool jacket with a matching skirt cut tight just below the knee.

‘Antonia Simonelli,’ she said. ‘Come in.’

He followed her into an office containing two teak desks. One, pushed into a corner, was almost invisible beneath a solid wall of stacked folders reaching up to within a metre of the ceiling. The other was completely bare except for a laptop computer. At the other side of the room, a large window afforded an excellent view of the gothic fantastications of the cathedral and the glazed roofs and dome of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.

The woman sat at the bare desk and crossed her long legs. Zen took the only other seat, a hard wooden stool.

‘I must apologize for the spartan furnishings,’ the woman said. ‘My office is in the part of the main building which is being renovated, and meanwhile I’m sharing with a colleague whose tastes and habits are very different from mine. Gianfranco likes the blinds drawn and the lights on, even in high summer. That’s his desk. I sometimes feel I’m going to go crazy just looking at it.’

Zen looked at the rounded peak of her knee and the tip of her grey suede court shoe, which rose above the sheeny expanse of the desktop like a tropical island in a calm sea.

‘He didn’t have any ID,’ he murmured.

The woman bent forward, frowning slightly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Zen looked up at her.

‘The man on the train. He didn’t have any identification. But I suppose you do.’

He produced his own pass certifying him as a functionary of the Ministry of the Interior and laid it on the desk.

‘Anyone could walk in here,’ he remarked earnestly. ‘We’ve never met before. How would you know it wasn’t me?’

The woman regarded him fixedly.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ she asked guardedly.

Zen tapped the desk where his identification lay. The woman opened her black grained-leather bucket bag and passed over a laminated card with her photograph and an inscription to the effect that the holder was Simonelli, Antonia Natalia, investigating magistrate at the Procura of Milan. Zen nodded and handed it back.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I suppose I must have sounded a bit crazy.’

The woman said nothing, but her expression did not contradict the idea.

‘I’ve had a slight shock,’ Zen explained. ‘On the way here a man fell from the train. I had to help retrieve the body from the tunnel.’

‘That can’t have been very pleasant,’ the magistrate murmured sympathetically.

‘I had been talking to him just a few moments earlier.’

‘It was someone you know, then?’

He looked at her.

‘I thought it was you.’

The woman’s guarded manner intensified sharply.

‘If that was intended as a joke…’ she began.

‘I don’t think the people involved intended it as a joke.’

She eyed him impatiently.

‘You’re speaking in riddles.’

Zen nodded.

‘Let me try and explain. On Wednesday I received a message at the Ministry asking me to call a certain Antonio Simonelli at a hotel in Rome. When I did so, he identified himself as an investigating magistrate from Milan working on a case of fraud involving Ludovico Ruspanti, and asked me to meet him to discuss the circumstances of the latter’s death.’

The woman seemed about to say something, but after a moment she just waved her hand.

‘Go on.’

Zen sat silent a moment, considering how best to do so.

‘At the time I thought he was trying to obtain information off the record which might help him prosecute the case against Ruspanti’s associates. That risked placing me in a rather awkward position. When the Vatican called me in, I was asked to sign an undertaking not to disclose any information which I came by as a result of my investigations. I therefore answered his questions as briefly as possible.’

The woman opened a drawer of her desk and removed a slim file which she opened.

‘Go on,’ she repeated without looking up.

Zen pretended to look at the view for a moment. He decided to make no mention of the transcript of Ruspanti’s phone calls. That was lost for ever, scattered beyond any hope of retrieval by the gale which had sucked it away and strewn it the length of the eleven-mile tunnel. The only thing to do now was to pretend that it had never existed.

‘On the train up here this morning,’ he continued, ‘I was approached by the same man. He asked why I was travelling to Milan. I said I had an appointment with one of his colleagues at the Procura. He must have realized then that the game was up, I suppose. He went off towards the toilets, fused the lights and threw himself out.’

The woman looked steadily at Zen.

‘Describe him.’

‘Burly, muscular. Big moon face, slightly dished. Strong nasal accent, from the Bergamo area, I should say. Smoked panatellas.’

Antonia Simonelli selected a photograph from the file lying open on the desk and passed it to Zen. A paper sticker at the bottom read ZEPPEGNO, MARCO. Zen suppressed a gasp of surprise. There had been so many fakes and hoaxes in the case so far — including the fifty million lire, which had turned out to consist of a thin layer of real notes covering bundles of blank paper — that he had assumed that the names which appeared in the transcript were also pseudonyms. But perhaps Ruspanti had deliberately raised the stakes by mentioning the real name of one of the men he was threatening on a phone he knew to be tapped, making it clear that he was ready to start playing dirty. That would certainly explain why the individual concerned had been desperate to suppress the transcript by any means, including the murder of Giovanni Grimaldi.

Zen handed the photograph back.

‘You know about him, then?’

Antonia Simonelli nodded.

‘I know all about him!’

‘Including whether he is — was — a member of the Order of Malta?’

She looked at him with surprise.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

Zen said nothing. After a moment, the magistrate tapped the keyboard of the laptop computer.

‘Since 1975,’ she said.

‘It wasn’t an aspect of his activities that concerned you?’

She gave a frown of what looked like genuine puzzlement.

‘Only in that it was perfectly typical of him. Joining the Order is something that businessmen like Zeppegno like to do at a certain point. It provides social cachet and range of useful contacts, and demonstrates that your heart is in the right place and your bank account healthy. But I repeat, why do you ask?’

Zen shrugged.

‘He was wearing the badge, on the train. I asked him if he was a member, and he said he was. I just wondered if that was a lie too, like everything else he had told me.’

Antonia Simonelli wagged her finger at him.

‘On the contrary, dottore! Apart from the little matter of his identity, everything he told you was true.’

A smile unexpectedly appeared on the woman’s face, softening her features and providing a brief glimpse of the private person.

‘Antonio Simonelli, indeed!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have to hand it to the old bastard. What a nerve! Supposing we had been in touch before, and you were aware of my gender?’

‘He checked that by suggesting that we had. It was only when I said I didn’t know him — you — that he asked to meet me.’

She sighed.

‘So he’s dead?’

‘Well, the identification still has to be confirmed, of course, but…’

‘Who’s handling the case?’

‘Bologna. That took another half hour to work out. He jumped out right on the border between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. In the end we had to get a length of rope and measure the distance from the body to the nearest kilometre marker.’

‘And there’s no doubt that it was suicide?’

Zen looked away. This was the question he had been asking himself ever since the torch beams picked out the corpse sprawled by the trackside. The circumstances had conspired to prevent anything but the most cursory investigation at the scene. Short of closing the Apennine tunnel, and thus paralysing rail travel throughout Italy, the corpse could not be left in situ while the Carabinieri in Bologna dispatched their scene-of-crime experts. Fortunately there happened to be a doctor travelling on the train who was able to pronounce the victim dead. Zen then carried out a nominal inspection before authorizing the removal of the body. By the time the train reached Bologna, no one had the slightest interest in questioning that they were dealing with a case of suicide. The only remaining mystery was the victim’s identity, since there were no papers or documents on the body.

Zen shook his head.

‘The only person who was anywhere near him when he fell from the train was a woman who had gone to the toilet, and she wouldn’t have had the strength. Anyway, she was a German tourist with no connection with the dead man. No, he must have done it himself. There’s simply no other possibility.’

Antonia Simonelli got up from her desk.

‘I’m sure you’re right, dottore,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I’d come to know Zeppegno quite well, and if you’d asked me, I’d have said that he just wasn’t someone who would ever commit suicide. He thought too highly of himself for that.’

She waved at the file, the photographs, the computer.

‘For the past five years I have been painstakingly assembling a case against a cartel of Milanese businessmen. Zeppegno was typical. His family were provincial bourgeois with aspirations. His father ran an electrical business in a town near Bergamo. By a combination of graft and hard work, Marco gradually built up a chain of household appliance suppliers in small towns across Lombardy. As an individual unit, each of his outlets was modest enough, but taken together they represented a profitable slice of the market.

‘Like other entrepreneurs, Zeppegno hated paying taxes and wanted to be able to invest his money freely. The answer was to cream off a percentage of his pre-tax profits and invest them abroad. The problem was how to do it. Big businesses have their own ways around the currency control laws, of course. You order a consignment of raw material from a foreign supplier who is prepared to play along. This is duly invoiced and paid for, but the goods in question are never shipped, and the money ends up in the off-shore bank account of your choice. There’s an element of risk involved, but in a big outfit with a complex structure and a high volume of foreign trade the danger is minimal. The bogus orders can be hidden amongst a mass of legitimate transactions, and if all else fails i finanzieri have on occasion been known to look the other way.’

Zen acknowledged the gibe with a blink. The venality of the Finance Ministry’s enforcement officials was legendary.

‘The turnover of a company like Zeppegno’s was far too small to conceal that sort of scam successfully. Which is where the late Ludovico Ruspanti came in. It didn’t hurt that he was an aristocrat, of course. Self-made provincials like Zeppegno tend to retain the prejudices of their class. A title like “Prince” not only helped convince them that their money was safe in Ruspanti’s hands, but reassured them that what they were doing was nothing much to be ashamed of, since a man like him was involved. The procedure itself couldn’t have been simpler or more convenient. You simply wrote Ruspanti a cheque for whatever amount you wished to dispose of. If you preferred, of course, you could hand it over in cash. He deposited the money in his account at the Vatican bank, and it was then transferred — less his fee — to your foreign bank account.

‘The fascinating thing about this arrangement is that while the ensemble constitutes a flagrant breach of the law, each of the individual operations is in itself perfectly legal. There is no law against one Italian citizen donating a large sum of money to another. If the recipient happens to be one of the privileged few who enjoy the right to an account at the Institute for the Works of Religion, it is perfectly in order for him to deposit the money there. And since that institution is extraterritorial, what subsequently happens to the money is of no concern to the Italian authorities.’

She gave a bitter laugh.

‘They talk about the rival claims of London and Frankfurt as the future financial capitals of Europe, but what about Rome? What other capital city can boast the convenience of an off-shore bank, completely unaccountable to the elected government, subject to no verifiable constraints or controls whatsoever and located just a brief taxi-ride from the centre, with no customs controls or security checks to pass through? Ludovico Ruspanti could walk in there with a billion lire, and when he came out again that billion had effectively vanished! Poof!

‘The only weak point in all this was Ruspanti himself. The cut he took counted as unearned income, and of course he couldn’t declare it — even supposing he wanted to — without giving the game away. That was the lever I planned to use to squeeze Ruspanti for information on the whole operation, and I must say I was very hopeful of success. But without him, there is literally no case. I naturally couldn’t help wondering whether this might not have occurred to some of the other interested parties. That’s what I really want to know, dottore. Forget Zeppegno for a moment. You investigated Ruspanti’s death. Tell me, did he fall or was he pushed?’

Zen smiled.

‘Funnily enough, those were exactly the words that Simonelli used when I spoke to him in Rome.’

The magistrate stared at him coldly.

‘ I am Simonelli.’

‘Of course! Please excuse me. I meant Zeppegno, of course.’

He tried to think clearly, but his experiences on the train and in the tunnel seemed to have left him incapable of much more than reacting to immediate events. The only thing he was sure of was the single thread, flimsy but as yet unbroken, which he still held in his hand. It might yet lead him to the heart of this affair, but it would not bear the weight of a judicial process. So although he found himself warming to Antonia Simonelli, he was going to have to stall her for the moment.

‘Ruspanti was murdered,’ he replied. ‘So was the minder the Vatican had assigned to him.’

The magistrate stared at him fixedly.

‘But you were quoted in the papers the other day as saying that the allegations that there were suspicious circumstances surrounding Ruspanti’s death were mischievous and ill-informed.’

‘I wasn’t consulted about the wording of that statement.’

He had Simonelli hanging on his every word. The dirtier and more devious it got, the better she liked it. The case she thought was dead had miraculously sprung to life before her eyes!

‘The familiar tale,’ she said, nodding grimly.

Zen stood up and leaned across the desk towards her.

‘Familiar, yes, but in this case also long and complex. You will naturally want to get in touch with the authorities in Bologna, and possibly even go there in person. I therefore suggest that we postpone further discussion on the matter until then.’

She glanced at her watch.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But please don’t imagine that this is any more than a postponement, dottore. I am determined to get to the bottom of this business, whatever the vested interests involved. I hope I shall have your entire cooperation, but if I have any reason to suspect that it is not forthcoming, I shall have no hesitation in using my powers to compel you to testify.’

Zen held up his hands in a protestation of innocence.

‘There’ll be no need for that. I’ve been put in an impossible position in this case, but basically I’m on the side of the angels.’

Antonia Simonelli looked at him with a finely judged mixture of wariness and confidence.

‘I’m not concerned with angels, dottore. What I need is someone who’s on the side of the law.’

The house was not immediately recognizable as such. The address, in a back street just north of the Teatro alla Scala and west of the fashion alleys of Via Monte Napoleone and Via della Spiga, appeared at first to be nothing more than a slab of blind walling, slightly less high than the modern apartment buildings on either side. It was only as his taxi pulled away that Zen noticed the doors, windows and balconies painted on the plaster, complete with painted shadows to give an illusion of depth. The facade of a severe late-eighteenth-century Austro-French palazzo had been recreated in considerable detail, and the fact that the third dimension was missing would doubtless have been less apparent by daylight than it was under the intense glare of the streetlamps, diffused by the pall of fog which had descended on the city with the coming of dusk.

It took Zen some time to locate the real entrance, a plain wooden door inset in the huge trompe I’oeil gate framed by pillars at the centre of the frontage. There was no name-plate, and the grille of the entry-phone was disguised in the plumage of the hawk which rose in fake bas-relief above an illusory niche where the actual button figured as the nippled peak of a massive painted metal bell-pull. Zen had barely touched the button when, without a challenge or a query, the door release buzzed to admit him. Only after he stepped inside did he realize, from the shock he felt, what it was he had been expecting: some aggressively contemporary space defined by the complex interaction of concrete, steel and glass. The punch-line of the joke facade, he had tacitly assumed, must lie in the contrast with something as different as possible from historical gentility.

It was the smell which initially alerted him to his error. The musty odours which assailed him the moment he stepped over the threshold were quite incompatible with the processes of late-twentieth-century life. Nor could they be reproduced or mocked up. Dense and mysterious, with overlapping strata of rot and mould and fume and smoke, they spoke of years of habitation, generations of neglect. He looked around the cavernous hallway, a huge vaulted space feebly lit by a lamp dangling from a chain so thickly encased in dust and spider-webs that it seemed to be this rather than the rusted metal which was supporting the yellowing bulb. He had a sudden urge to laugh. This was a much better joke than the predictable contrast he had imagined. It was a brilliant coup to have the fake and the reality correspond. Evidently the house really was what it had been made to resemble, an aristocratic residence dating from the period when Milan was a city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

At one end of the hallway, an imposing stone staircase led upwards into regions of murky obscurity. There was no sound, no one in sight. ‘You remember how to get here?’ the voice on the phone had asked when he rang that afternoon from his hotel. The same girlish tones as before. For her part, though, she had remarked this time that he ‘sounded different, somehow’. He had got the address from SIP, the telephone company, via the Ministry in Rome. They had also supplied the names of the other two subscribers whom Ruspanti had called in Milan. One, predictably enough, was his cousin, Raimondo Falcone. The other was Marco Zeppegno. The woman had told him to arrive at eight o’clock. Apparently Carmela was taking her sister to the opera that night, and would have left by then.

The stairs led to a gallery running the length of the building on the first floor, which was conceived on a scale such as Zen had seen only in museums and government offices. Stripped of the trappings and booty which it had been designed to show off, the gallery looked as pointless and slightly macabre as a drained swimming pool. Such furnishings as there were related neither to use nor comfort. There were no chairs, but a wealth of wooden chests. A fireplace the size of a normal room took up much of one wall, but there was no heating. Acres of bare plaster were relieved only by a series of portraits of men with almost identical beards, whiskers, cravats and expressions of earnest insolence.

‘You’re not Ludo!’

He whirled round. The voice had come from the other side of the gallery, but there seemed to be no one there. Then he noticed what looked at first like a full-length oil portrait of the woman he had seen on the train, her light blue eyes turned towards him, her head surrounded by a nimbus of fine flaxen hair. He squinted at her. The air seemed thick and syrupy, as though the fog outside were seeping into the house, distorting distances and blurring detail.

‘He couldn’t come,’ Zen ventured.

‘But he promised!’

He saw now that the supposed canvas was in fact a lighted doorway from which the woman was observing his advance, without any alarm but with an expression of intense disappointment which she made no effort to disguise.

‘I spoke to him just this afternoon, and he promised he would come!’

She was wearing a shapeless dress of heavy black material which accentuated the pallor of her skin. Her manner was unnervingly direct, and she held Zen’s gaze without any apparent embarrassment.

‘He promised!’ she repeated.

‘That’s quite right. But he’s not feeling very well.’

‘Is it his tummy?’ the woman asked serenely.

Zen blinked.

‘Yes. Yes, his tummy, yes. So he asked me to come instead.’

She moved towards him, her candid blue gaze locked to his face.

‘It was you,’ she said.

Had she recognized him from the train?

‘Me?’ he replied vaguely.

She nodded, certain now.

‘It wasn’t Ludo who rang. It was you.’

He smiled sheepishly.

‘Ludo couldn’t come himself, so he sent me.’

‘And who are you?’ she asked, like a princess in a fairy story addressing the odd little man who has materialized in her bedchamber.

Zen could smell her now. The odour was almost overpowering, a heady blend of bodily secretions that was far from unpleasant. Combined with the woman’s full figure and air of childish candour, it produced an overall effect which was extremely erotic. Zen began to understand the Prince’s attraction to his cousin in Milan.

‘Do you remember Ludo mentioning that he’d spoken to someone who worked for a magazine?’ he said.

The woman’s face creased into a scowl, as if recalling the events of the previous week was a mental feat equivalent to playing chess without a board. Then her frowns suddenly cleared and she beamed a smile of pure joy.

‘About my dolls!’

Zen smiled and nodded.

‘Exactly.’

‘It was you? You want to write about them?’

She bit her lower lip and wrung her thin hands in agitation.

‘Will there be photographs? I’ll need time to get them all looking their best. To tell you the truth, I thought Ludo was only joking.’

She smiled a little wistfully.

‘He has such a queer sense of humour sometimes.’

Zen explained that although they would of course want to take photographs at some later stage, this was just an introductory visit to get acquainted. But Ariana Falcone didn’t seem to be listening. She turned and led the way through the doorway as though lost in the intensity of her excitement.

‘Just think! In the magazines!’

By contrast with the cold, formal, antiquated expanses of the gallery, the room beyond — although about the size of a football pitch — was reassuringly normal in appearance. The architectural imperatives of the great house had been attenuated by the skilful use of paint and light, and the furnishings were comfortable, bright and contemporary. But to Zen’s dismay, the place was filled with a crowd numbering perhaps fifty or sixty people, standing and sitting in complete silence, singly or in groups.

Their presence struck Zen with panic. Ariana might have accepted his story at face value, but it was unlikely to bear scrutiny by this sophisticated host. Zen had never been so conscious of himself as the dowdy government functionary, encased in his anonymous suit, as when he ran the gauntlet of that fashionable throng, each flaunting an outfit so stylish and exotic that you hardly noticed the person wearing it. And in fact it was not until Ariana swung round with a grand gesture and announced, ‘Well, here they are!’, that Zen realized they were all mannequins.

‘Some of them are upstairs, being fitted,’ she went on. ‘Raimondo gave me a copy of Woman’s Wear Daily recently. I got lots of ideas from that. Which magazine do you work for, by the way?’

‘Er… Gente.’

‘Never heard of it.’

You must be the only person in Italy who hasn’t, thought Zen. She didn’t know what had happened to Ludovico Ruspanti, either. Was there a connection?

‘It’s about famous people,’ he explained. ‘Stars.’

‘All Raimondo brings me are fashion magazines. And I can’t go out, of course, because of my illness. Anyway, what do you think?’

She pointed around the room, watching anxiously for Zen’s reaction.

‘It’s magnificent,’ he replied simply.

He meant it! Whatever the implications of this peculiar ensemble, the scale of the conception and the quality of the execution were quite astonishing. Each of the ‘dolls’ — a full-size figure of articulated wood — was fitted out with a costume like nothing Zen had ever seen. Sometimes the fabrics and colours were boldly contrasted, sometimes artfully complementary. The construction often involved a witty miracle in which heavy velvets apparently descended from gossamer-fine voile, or tweed braces supported a skirt which might have been made of beaten egg whites. Even to someone as deeply ignorant of fashion as Zen was, it was clear that these garments were very special indeed.

‘Raimondo is your brother?’ he asked.

Ariana’s face, which had been beaming with pleasure at his compliment, crumpled up. She nodded mutely.

‘And what does he do?’ Zen inquired.

‘Do? He doesn’t do anything. Neither of us do anything.’

Zen laughed lightly and pointed to the dolls.

‘What about all this?’

She made a moue.

‘Oh, that’s play, not work.’

He walked about through the throng of figures inclined in a variety of life-like poses. One costume in particular caught his eyes, a clinging cardigan of stretch panne velvet textured to resemble suede and dyed in clashing patches of brilliant primary colours. He had seen it before, and not on a mannequin.

‘Do you really make them all yourself?’ he asked.

‘Of course! I used to have little dolls, but that was too fiddly, so Raimondo got me these.’

She pointed to a male figure on Zen’s right.

‘I made that outfit last year. It’s based on something I saw in a men’s fashion magazine Raimondo left lying around, a leather blouson and jeans. I thought that was a bit boring, so I let those panels into the suede to reveal a false lining made of blue shot silk, which looks like bleached denim. The slacks are in brushed silk, mimicking the suede.’

Zen looked at it admiringly.

‘It’s wonderful.’

Her pixie face collapsed into a scowl.

‘ He doesn’t think so.’

‘Your brother?’

She nodded.

‘I’m surprised he agreed to let you come, actually. I think he’s a bit ashamed of my dolls. When I told him what Ludo had said about the magazine when he phoned last week, Raimondo got terribly angry.’

Zen gazed at the stretch panne-velvet cardigan, his mind racing. Was it possible?

‘And where is he now?’ he asked.

‘Raimondo? Oh, he’s away in Africa, hunting lions.’

Zen nodded sagely.

‘That must be dangerous.’

‘That’s just what I said when he told me. And do you know what he replied? “Only for the lion!”’

He looked at her, and then at the mannequins. The contrast between their astonishing garments and the woman’s shapeless black apparel, imbued with the heady reek of the living body within, could not have been more marked.

‘Do you ever wear any of the clothes yourself?’ Zen asked.

She frowned, as though he’d said something that made no sense.

‘They’re dolls ’ clothes!’

‘They look quite real to me.’

She shrugged jerkily.

‘It’s just something to keep me amused while I’m ill. When I get better again, and Mummy and Daddy come back, we’ll put them all away.’

He gestured around the room.

‘What a huge house!’

She looked at him blankly.

‘Is it?’

He was about to say something else when she went on, ‘Daddy used to say it was like a doll’s-house, with the windows and doors painted on the front.’

‘Why is it like that?’

She made an effort to remember.

‘It happened in the war,’ she said at last. ‘A bomb.’

‘Ah. And do you and Raimondo live here all alone?’

‘No, he’s got a place of his own somewhere. He doesn’t want to catch my illness, you see.’

Zen nodded as though this made perfect sense.

‘Is it infectious, then?’

‘So he says. He told me that if he stayed here any longer he’d end up as crazy as I am. That’s why Mummy and Daddy left, too. I drive people away. I can’t help it. It’s my illness…’

Her voice trailed away.

‘What is it?’ asked Zen.

She stood listening, her head tilted to one side. He peered at her.

‘Is something…?’

‘Ssshhh!’

She started trembling all over.

‘Someone’s coming!’

Zen strained his ears, but couldn’t detect the slightest sound.

‘It must be Carmela! I don’t know what’s happened! The opera can’t be over yet.’

She clapped her hands together in sheer panic.

‘Oh, what are we going to do? What are we going to do?’

Zen stood looking round uncertainly. Suddenly Ariana looked at him intently, sizing him up.

‘Take off your coat and jacket!’ she hissed.

She darted to the mannequin near by, removed the blouson he was wearing and tossed it to Zen. Then she bundled up his overcoat and jacket and stuffed them hurriedly under a chair. Feeling absolutely ridiculous. Zen struggled into the blouson. Ariana snatched a sort of fisherman’s cap off another dummy and put it on him.

‘Now stand there and don’t move!’

There was a sound of footsteps.

‘Ariana? Ah, there you are!’

Zen recognized the voice at once. Indeed, it seemed as if he’d been hearing nothing else for the past week. The speaker was out of sight from the position in which Zen was frozen, but he could clearly hear the tremor in Ariana’s voice.

‘Raimondo!’

‘Who were you expecting?’

‘Expecting? No one! No one ever comes here.’

You’re overdoing it, thought Zen. But the man’s brusque tone revealed no trace of suspicion.

‘Can you blame them?’

The woman moved away from Zen.

‘I thought you were in Africa,’ she said. ‘Hunting lions.’

He laughed shortly.

‘I killed them all.’

Zen’s posture already felt painfully cramped and rigid. To distract himself, he stared at the costume of the mannequin opposite him, an extraordinary collage of fur, leather, velvet and silk apparently torn into ribbons and then reassembled in layers to form a waterfall of jagged, clashing fabrics.

‘Did you see Ludo?’ the woman demanded suddenly.

The eagerness in her voice was unmistakable.

‘Cousin Ludovico?’ the man drawled negligently. ‘Yes, I saw him.’

‘When? Where? How is he? When is he coming back?’

‘Oh, not for some time, I’m afraid. Not for a long, long time.’

His voice was deliberately hard and hurtful.

‘Did a lion hurt him?’

She sounded utterly desolate. The man laughed.

‘What nonsense you talk! It wasn’t a lion, it was you. He can’t stand being around you, Ariana. It’s your own fault! You drive everyone away with your mad babbling. Everyone except your dolls. They’re the only ones who can put up with you any longer.’

There was a sound of crying.

‘I hope you’ve kept yourself busy while I’ve been away,’ the man continued.

‘Yes.’

‘Then stop blubbering and show me. Where are they? Upstairs in the workroom?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on then.’

Suddenly the man was there, close enough for Zen to touch. The woman followed, her head lowered, sobbing. She gave no sign of being aware of Zen’s presence.

‘I’ll have to keep an eye on you, Ariana,’ the man remarked coldly. ‘It looks to me as if you might be going to have one of your bad patches again.’

‘That’s not true! I’ve felt ever so well for ages now.’

‘Rubbish! You have no idea whether you’re well or not, Ariana. You never did and you never will.’

They went out of a door at the far side of the room, closing it behind them. Zen hastily removed the blouson and cap, retrieved his coat and jacket and put them on again. The gallery was as cold and silent as a crypt. Zen tiptoed across it and pattered downstairs to the hallway, where he opened the wooden door set in the painted gate and let himself out. The fog was thicker and denser by now, an intangible barrier which emerged vampire-like every night, draining substance and solidity from the surroundings to feed its own illusory reality. Zen vanished into it like a figment of the city’s imagination.