Medusa

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Zen walked slowly back along the street to the house, a satisfied smile on his lips. The day was cool and grey, with a scent of rain in the offing, but his spirits were not overcast. Among the various things that had become clear since he had moved in with Gemma, on a temporary basis which seemed to have become de facto permanent, was that he was the earlier riser of the two, and she had a sweet tooth and — without being in the least boring or demanding about it — quite liked to be pampered. The result was this expedition, which had become a tradition whenever he was at home.

Zen had discovered, in the course of the sort of casual enquiries and undirected researches that were part of his personality, that the bakery which supplied the most renowned cafe in Lucca was located a relatively short distance from their house. The cafe itself did not open until seven, but the pastries for which it was famous were ready long before that. It had only remained for him to make a private arrangement with the pasticciere, and he was able to combine the healthy and pleasant effects of an early-morning walk through the twisty, awakening back-streets of the town with the pleasure of seeing the delighted smile of a greedy child on Gemma’s face when he awoke her with some sumptuous confection and a freshly- made cup of milky coffee.

Their relationship, which Zen had characteristically assumed was going to be difficult if not doomed from the start, was proving on the contrary to be the easiest and most pleasant that he had ever known. It had a quality of lightness he had never come across before, an almost total absence of stress and effort, of painful compromise and problematic negotiation. It was as if they had both done all that, put in their time and paid their dues, and now wanted simply to relax and enjoy themselves. Not in any grand extravagant style, but in everyday details such as this daily breakfast ritual. Mild satisfaction and a total absence of fuss seemed to be their common, unspoken goal, to which each contributed as if by instinct.

When he entered the apartment this morning, however, he was surprised and slightly irritated to find Gemma in the kitchen, already showered and dressed, making coffee and listening to the news.

‘You’re supposed to be in bed,’ he told her grumpily.

She switched off the radio and kissed him.

‘Not today, darling.’

‘What’s so special about today?’

‘It’s my birthday.’

He set the parcel of pastries down on the counter, feeling obscurely aggrieved.

‘You should have told me. I could have got you a present.’

‘I don’t need anything. But you can take me to lunch, if you want.’

‘There are no decent restaurants here.’

‘Not in the town, no. The locals are too stingy to support anything worthwhile.’

She put on an exaggerated version of the local accent, which Zen could just about recognize but still not replicate. ‘“Why waste a lot of money going out when we can eat perfectly well here at home for a quarter of the price?”’

‘Venetians are the same.’

‘But there’s a good place up in the Serchio valley. At least, I like it. Simple and unpretentious, but the food’s genuine and the place is very pretty. Unfortunately today’s also the day I have to meet a sales rep from Bayer about their line of new products, as well as filing a mound of overdue paperwork with the regional authorities. That’s why I’m making such an early start. I was going to do it all while you were away, but those people from the gas company came round and just tore the place apart. I couldn’t leave them here unsupervised, of course, but it was impossible to work with them hammering and banging away.’

She poured coffee for them both.

‘There’s a problem with the gas?’ Zen asked.

‘Well, I didn’t have one. But they said they’d had a complaint from someone else in the building, so they sent some workmen around to check that the system was functioning normally.’

‘And?’

‘Well, they installed a new meter and replaced some of the piping. Apparently it’s fine now.’

Zen savoured a few bites of a brioche still meltingly warm from the oven.

‘When was this?’ he asked.

‘While you were in Bolzano.’

He nodded.

‘Dangerous stuff, gas. One takes it for granted, but it’s potentially lethal. We don’t want to be asphyxiated or blown up. Particularly on your birthday.’

Gemma looked at him oddly.

‘You checked their identification, I suppose?’ Zen continued.

‘Whose?’

‘The men who came about the gas. Sometimes petty criminals use a ruse like that to get into someone’s apartment, then tie up the occupant and clean the place out.’

‘Nothing like that happened. They had valid ID, were wear¬ ing uniformed overalls and obviously knew what they were doing.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

Gemma rose.

‘Well, I’d better get over to the pharmacy.’

She went to get her coat, briefcase and bag. Zen finished the remaining coffee, staring out of the window at the blank plastered wall opposite. When Gemma reappeared, he followed her out of the apartment on to the landing.

‘When the Ministry called here to arrange that appointment in Rome, was Brugnoli’s name mentioned?’ he asked in an unusually quiet voice.

‘How else would I have known it? It may even have been he who phoned, I don’t know. The caller just told me that he wished to see you the next day in Rome. I told you all this when I met you off the train in Florence.’

‘Sorry, I was rather distracted that morning.’

‘You certainly were.’

‘It was that case I was working on. Creepy business. But that’s all over now. Now, when do we go to lunch?’

‘I’ll be back by half past eleven. I’ll make a reservation from the shop, but we should aim to leave by twelve at the latest. Ciao!’

‘ A presto, cara.’

Gemma hurried down the stone steps and disappeared round the corner, the sound of her suede boots echoing back up the stairwell, while Zen made his way thoughtfully back to their apartment.

There was a lot to think about. He walked through to the kitchen, where he disassembled the caffettiera and rinsed it out, then stacked the breakfast plates and cups in the dishwasher with the load from last night, added detergent powder and switched it on. What a wonderful invention dishwashers were! You just piled all the dirty stuff in, listened to the machine making its soothing swooshy sound for an hour or so, then opened it up and everything was sparkling clean. If only there were a similar appliance for the other problems of life.

Having run out of tasks to take his mind off his worries, he lit a cigarette and reluctantly attempted to confront them. Until proven otherwise, he had to proceed on the assumption that the supposed visit from the gas company had in fact been a pre-emptive surveillance operation mounted by Brugnoli’s enemies at the Defence Ministry, or possibly even the secret services. If the ID and uniforms were fake, this indicated a high level of professionalism and resources.

The object of the exercise would presumably have been to tap the phone line and install area microphones linked to micro-transmitters. The only way to be certain would be to return to Rome, contact Brugnoli through the agreed cut-out and have him order in an electronic security team to sweep the apartment. But that would merely serve to confirm the opposition’s suspicions about Zen’s involvement. Better to leave the bugs in place and use them to convey disinformation.

A distant shrilling recalled him to the present. It was his mobile phone, which he had left in the pocket of his overcoat. He walked through to the hallway, retrieved the shiny slab, stepped back out on to the landing and closed the door behind him before answering the call.

‘ Pronto! ’

‘Dottor Aurelio Zen?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Here is Werner Haberl, the doctor you spoke to in Bolzano the other day.’

‘Ah, yes. How are you, doctor?’

‘Very well, thank you. I apologize for calling so early, but you asked me to get in touch if there were any further developments regarding the matter we discussed.’

‘Absolutely, but may I call you back? I’m on another call at the moment.’

‘No problem, I’m here all morning. I give you the number of my direct line.’

Zen noted it down and then folded up the phone with a mental note to use it with extreme caution in the future. If they had gone to all the trouble of bugging the apartment he shared with Gemma, they would almost certainly be monitoring his mobile.

Five minutes later, he was walking down Via del Fosso. It had started raining lightly, and there seemed to be no one about. At the corner he turned left towards the church of San Francesco, stopping at the tobacconist’s to buy a carton of Nazionali and a phone card. At the payphone opposite the church he inserted the card and dialled the number that Werner Haberl had given him in Bolzano. He checked the street while it rang. There was nothing unusual to be seen.

‘ Hallo.’

‘ Herr Doktor Haberl, bitte.’

‘ Am Apparat.’

‘It’s Aurelio Zen, doctor. My apologies for the delay. Now then, what were you saying about our friend in the tunnel?’

‘Yes. So, I have just heard from a colleague that a man named Naldo Ferrero has phoned the hospital yesterday. He claimed that he was legally entitled to take possession of the body and wished to know how he should go about it. When my colleague told him that the cadaver was no longer in our custody, he became quite agitated and threatened to make a formal denuncia to the police. It was then explained to him that the police themselves had removed the body.’

‘On what grounds did he lay claim to the corpse?’

‘Well, that’s why I thought you might be interested. This Ferrero said he is the dead man’s son.’

Zen was silent for a moment.

‘Did he leave a contact number?’

‘Yes, yes, we have all his details. We do that as a matter of routine, at the beginning of a call. Do you have a pen and paper?’

Zen wrote down the claimant’s address and phone number and thanked Werner Haberl profusely for his cooperation. Then he depressed the receiver rest and inspected the street again. As before, everything seemed normal. He dialled again. The phone rang over a dozen times before a weary-sounding woman answered.

‘La Stalla.’

‘May I speak to Naldo Ferrero, please?’

‘Just a moment.’

She set down the receiver and Zen heard her call ‘Naldo!’ distantly. The amount of credit left on the phone card had roughly halved in value before a man finally came on the line.

‘Yes?’

‘Good morning, Signor Ferrero. I’m phoning about your late father.’

He paused, but there was no reply.

‘I’m from an insurance company,’ Zen went on. ‘It seems that there is some dispute about the manner and date of your father’s decease. I was hoping that you might be prepared to let me have half an hour or so of your time with a view to clarifying these and other issues arising. There’s a good deal of money involved.’

More silence, then a contemptuous grunt.

‘Insurance company, my arse,’ said Ferrero. ‘My father died thirty years ago. His body was not recovered, but the fact of his death was not in dispute. Any outstanding insurance claims would therefore have been settled at that time. So who the hell are you?’

‘Someone who might be able to help you recover your late father’s remains after all these years.’

‘I’m perfectly capable of doing that myself. And if, as I suspect, you’re from the police, then it may interest you to know that I am in the course of preparing a formal appeal to the judiciary in Bolzano denouncing the illegal intervention that took place at the hospital there, resulting in the removal of my father’s corpse and the conspiracy of silence regarding its present whereabouts. And that’s all I have to say on the matter!’

The phone slammed down.

Zen’s final call was to the customer service desk at the local office of the gas company. He gave a false address in Via del Fosso and explained that he had heard that there had recently been an emergency call-out to another house in the street because of a reported leak. Could the company please confirm that this had been taken care of, and that there was no possible risk to nearby homes? After a computer search, the service representative told him that he must have been misinformed. There had been no gas leaks reported anywhere in Lucca within the previous month.

He left the cabin and walked back the way he had come. The only person he saw was a derelict with a broken nose and shaven hair nursing a bottle of wine on a bench next to the channelled river that flowed down the centre of the street.

When Gemma returned shortly before eleven-thirty, Zen was in the bedroom putting the finishing touches to his packing. He closed up the battered suitcase and carried it into the living room.

‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he told her.

‘You can’t cancel lunch! Not on my birthday.’

‘No, it’s not that. But I have to go away for a few days again.’

‘What now?’

‘I just had a call from the family lawyer in Venice. Had to take the call outside on the stairs, incidentally. Couldn’t get a clear signal here in the apartment, and then the damn thing died on me completely.’

This for the benefit of anyone listening in on the installed bugging devices.

‘Anyway, there’s apparently been some sort of snag over my mother’s will. Nothing serious, he says, but I’ll need to pop up there to sort it all out and sign some papers. And when I called the Ministry to request leave, just as a formality, they told me I could take advantage of being in the area to check progress in some murder case in Padua. It sounds unutterably boring, but I couldn’t very well say no. But I should be back in a few days, with any luck.’

‘You seem to have an awful lot of work all of a sudden.’

‘That’s the way this job always is. It comes in waves.’

‘Actually, that works out quite nicely. My son has apparently met someone who he thinks might turn out to be “quite serious” and wants me to vet her. This will give me a chance to spend a couple of days away. Now then, let’s get going.’

‘Perhaps you could drop me at the station afterwards,’ Zen said very distinctly. ‘There’s a train to Florence around five that connects with the Eurostar to Venice. That way I can see the lawyer first thing in the morning and get it over with as quickly as possible.’

Gemma put her briefcase down on the table, then clicked her fingers, opened the flap and extracted a number of sheets of paper.

‘I almost forgot. That friend of yours in Rome you asked me to exchange email addresses with sent you these pictures. He says that…’

Zen cut her off hurriedly.

‘I’ll look at them in the restaurant. Come on, let’s go out and celebrate your birthday!’

Under the pretext of being concerned about the off-side rear tyre of Gemma’s vehicle, Zen inspected the street carefully before they set off, and then again as they drove through the back streets. There was no obvious sign of a tail.

Like Zen’s native Venice, Lucca was a real civitas, though bounded not by water but its massive encircling walls. When you passed through one of the tunnel-like portals, you knew that you had left the city; when you passed in again, there was no doubt that you were back. He found this both relaxing and reassuring. They drove through the modest post-war suburban fringes of the town and up into the pleasant, winding valley of the Serchio. The rain was more intense here, but it suited the landscape, as intensely rural as Lucca was urban: unoppressively pretty and unspectacularly wild, unassuming, unspoilt and almost unvisited.

The restaurant was homely but attractive, with a smouldering wood fire that perfumed the entire room, and the food as good as Gemma had promised. They shared a bowl of homemade pappardelle with a sauce of wild porcini mushrooms, followed by a fritto misto of rabbit, lamb and chicken with astringent steamed greens. The wine was drinkable, the almond tart just right and only the coffee a bit of a disappointment, but at that point who cared?

Over cigarettes and a glass of the inevitable local amaro liqueur, whose digestive properties were extolled at some length by the proprietor, Gemma brought out the prints she had made from Gilberto Nieddu’s email attachment of the enhanced digital photograph.

‘What was it he said?’ Zen asked as he glanced through them.

‘There was a very brief cover note that I didn’t bother to print up. He just said to tell you that the mark on his arm is the same.’

Zen nodded. The prints presented the tattoo in various shades of distinction, as well as its original black on the ochre background of the shrivelled arm. It showed the head of a young woman enclosed in a thick square frame. Her hair was knotted, her eyes blank, her expression unfathomable.

Zen passed the pages to Gemma.

‘What do you make of these?’

‘It’s Medusa,’ she replied immediately.

‘Medusa?’

‘Well, one of the Gorgons. Medusa’s the best known, because of that legend involving Perseus. She turned whoever beheld her to stone, but he reflected her face in his shield, nullifying her power, and then cut off her head. One of those Greek myths. I read somewhere that it’s a classic symbol of male fears about women’s sexuality.’

‘I’m not afraid of your sexuality, am I?’

Gemma smiled and kissed him.

‘Not at all. In fact you seem to quite like it.’

Zen took the papers back, folded them up and tucked them into his inside pocket.

‘Thank you for lunch,’ said Gemma as they drove back down the wooded valley.

‘I’ll bring you a real present when I come back from this trip.’

‘I don’t need anything, Aurelio. I told you so.’

‘All right, but don’t you want anything?’

‘I want you to be happy.’

At the station in Lucca, Gemma accompanied Zen into the booking hall, where he ordered a single ticket to Florence in a very loud voice, repeating the name of his destination several times, as though the clerk were deaf or stupid or both.

‘There’s our gas-man,’ Gemma remarked once this laborious transaction had been completed.

‘What?’

Zen was still putting his ticket and money away.

‘One of the men who came to sort out that problem with the gas. Over there, standing in the corner.’

He glanced over quickly. It was a slightly more respectable version of the drunk he had seen that morning on a bench in Via del Fosso.

‘Well, well. Small world.’

Gemma gave him one of her charming deprecatory grins.

‘Small town, you mean,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek.

Zen boarded the train when it arrived from the coast, but in the event he did not travel to Florence. Smoking was prohibited on inter-regional trains, so when they reached Pistoia it was perfectly natural that he should go and stand just inside the automatic doors and enjoy a much-needed cigarette, bringing his bag with him for safety. When the alarm signalled that the doors were about to close, he waited until the last minute and then jumped through the gap down to the platform.

Once the diesel unit had pulled out, he bought another ticket, this time to Pesaro via Bologna, and then retired to a cafe opposite the station until it was time to board the last train of the day on the branch line north, one of the first ever constructed through the Apennine barrier and now hardly used for passenger traffic.