Medusa

XV

Of the various transport choices available from Luca Brandelli’s fog-bound apartment building, Zen opted for the M3 underground line, the political kickbacks from whose construction had brought down the Socialist government of the city in the early nineties. It turned out to be efficient, cheap and clean, an irony which he did not fail to appreciate.

In the centre, the fog was dense and pervasive. The lines of jammed traffic seemed as permanent a fixture as the rows of five-storey buildings to either side. On the pavements, visibility varied from a few metres to zero. Zen had to trust to luck, intuition and a few directions from passers-by, one of whom sent him totally out of his way. It was only when he stopped to light a cigarette outside a shuttered shop, trying to work out whether he had been going round in circles, that he realized t he had reached his goal. Chiuso per Lutto, read a rather faded handwritten sign on the window behind a lattice of steel barriers designed to foil thieves while allowing potential customers to view a selection of the books that would be available for purchase when the proprietor returned to work after coming to terms with his grief.

Some distance down the street, a nimbus of diffused light glowed through the surrounding gloom. On closer investigation, it turned out to be a bar. Most of the customers were ordering coffee stiffened with a shot of grappa or sweet liqueur. Zen followed their example. The cafe was a dingy, noisy place, but it felt warm and comforting after the streets. The clientele was seemingly a mix of tradesmen, clerks, shop assistants and low-grade functionaries postponing as long as possible the horrors of their journey home.

Zen slipped a banknote across the counter to attract the barman’s attention.

‘Do you have a hammer I could borrow for five minutes?’ he asked.

‘A hammer?’

‘I’ve got a flat tyre on my car, but the hubcap is dented and I can’t prise it off with my bare hands. And of course there’s no chance of calling out a tow-truck in this fog…’

The man nodded sympathetically.

‘There should be one out the back somewhere.’

He led the way into the rear of the premises, a wasteland full of spare furniture, mineral-water crates and assorted junk apparently being stored on the you-never-know-when-it-might- come-in-handy basis. There was also a payphone, now a historical relic from the days before the mobile revolution, and a framed aerial photograph showing one of the small towns of the Valpadana, presumably the one in which the proprietor of the bar had grown up: a little circular urban patch surrounded by a vast expanse of arable land dotted with the huge cascine farm complexes typical of the region.

‘Here you go,’ said the barman, returning from some inner sanctum with a hammer. ‘I’ll need it back, mind.’

‘Five minutes.’

Zen pocketed the hammer and proceeded back through the clammy murk to the bookshop. The front door and main window were too distant to reach, but the remaining panes angled out to either side, ending within arm’s length. A potential thief still wouldn’t have been able to grab the books on display, but Zen wasn’t interested in them. There was no sound of footsteps or cars in the street. Taking the hammer from his pocket, he thrust his arm as far as it would go through one of the rect¬ angular gaps in the shuttering, and then struck the window repeatedly. The glass first crazed, then cracked spectacularly. At the same moment, a yellow light flashed above and a piercing siren began to wail. Zen made his way back to the bar and returned the hammer.

‘Thanks very much, that sorted it out. Now I’ll go and change the tyre.’

‘What’s all that racket down the street?’ the barman asked with a worried expression.

‘No idea. Probably a faulty burglar alarm. Those things are always going wrong. More trouble than they’re worth.’

Before long, a different siren sounded in the streets, but what with the fog and the blocked traffic it was another ten minutes before the patrol car finally arrived at the bookshop. Zen showed his identification card to the crew, whose attitude instantly changed from truculent suspicion to awed respect.

‘I saw everything,’ Zen told them. ‘Pure chance. I was passing by on the other side of the street. I heard the noise of the glass smashing and went to investigate. The burglar ran off before he could steal anything. I gave chase, but he slipped away in the fog.’

At this point, a man named Fulvio intervened. He was the janitor of the building. No, the owner was away and couldn’t be contacted. A family tragedy. Long business. One of those. But he, Fulvio, could be trusted to have the window repaired and to board up the shop in the meantime. Other members of the family? Just for the record, to keep things regular and official. Well, he believed that there was a sister. Paola Passarini. Lived just off the motorway to Varese, in Busto Arsizio, out near Malpensa airport. He didn’t know the address.

The police computer did, however. The patrolmen offered to give Zen a lift, but advised that with driving conditions what they were he would be better off taking the train. Besides, the address was strictly speaking out of their territory, being just inside the Provincia di Varese.

They dropped him off at the nearby station of Porta Garibaldi, and Zen completed the journey by train and then taxi through a grim swathe of ‘industrialized countryside’. Busto Arsizio had once been a small market town on the fringes of the flood plain of the Ticino river, but the rural surroundings that had once given it a modest sense of identity had now been swallowed up by the ever-encroaching suburban sprawl of Milan.

The apartment was on the top floor of a neo-Stalinist slab at the intersection of two streets whose ridged and pitted surface suggested that the tarmac had been poured directly over a lightly-rolled ploughed field. Zen rode up in a lift bristling with cryptic graffiti, rang the bell and presented his identification.

‘Is it about Gabriele?’ the woman demanded.

‘That’s right.’

She started to shut the door.

‘I’ve already told you everything I know.’

‘We’ve never met before, signora.’

‘I mean your people. The police.’

‘Ah, they’ve been in touch already, have they?’ Zen continued smoothly.

‘Someone from the carabinieri. I told him I couldn’t help him.’

‘When was this?’

‘Yesterday.’

Zen nodded reassuringly.

‘Yes, of course. Those were the preliminary enquiries, at local level. I’m come from Rome to follow up. If you could just spare a few moments, it would be most helpful.’

Paola Passarini reluctantly opened the door again, and Zen followed her into the open-plan living area. She was in her late forties, with a childlike elfin face attached to a bottom-heavy body whose exact proportions were obscured by a loose ankle- length dress. Her general appearance suggested that at a certain point she had decided to let herself go and the hell with it. But then there couldn’t be much worth keeping up appearances for in Busto Arsizio.

‘Would you like a coffee, some tea…?’

Her voice trailed away.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Do sit down. So you think that Gabriele’s been kidnapped.’

‘Kidnapped?’

‘That’s what the other man said.’

Zen forced a smile.

‘Ah, yes, my colleague from the carabinieri. He was a low- level operative and was not fully briefed. I regret the error, signora. No, there’s been nothing that would point to a kidnapping. Nevertheless, we do have reason to believe that your brother’s life may be in danger. One of the men he served with in the army, many years ago, was recently killed in Campione d’Italia. A man named Nestore Soldani. A bomb was placed in his car. You may have seen the story on the news.’

Paola Passarini gestured vaguely.

‘But what has this Soldani got to do with Gabriele? I’ve never heard him mention the name.’

‘The hunt for the killers has led to the discovery of certain facts that I cannot disclose at this point, as the investigation is still in progress. Broadly speaking, evidence has emerged that your brother may unwittingly have been a party to the affair behind Soldani’s killing. I must stress that there is no suggestion that Signor Passarini was involved in any way in the mur¬ der. On the contrary, we fear that he may become the next victim. The fact that he disappeared from his home and place of work on the day following Soldani’s death tends to substantiate this theory. It is therefore of the utmost importance that we locate him as soon as possible.’

A mechanical series of bone-jarring bass chords shook the apartment.

‘Turn it down, Siro!’ Paola shouted.

The aural assault continued unabated. She got to her feet and waddled off towards a hallway at the other end of the living area, opened a door and disappeared. A moment later, tranquillity was restored. Paola Passarini came back and sat down again without comment.

‘Have you heard from your brother since his disappearance?’ Zen asked her.

‘No, I told you. I mean the other man. Nothing at all.’

‘Isn’t that unusual?’

‘Not at all. We’ve never been close. Months go by without me hearing a word from him. Gabriele is only interested in his books. He’s always lived in his own head.’

‘Yet he volunteered for the army.’

‘That was just to try and get Papa’s approval. When we were young, Primo was always the star of the family. Good at athletics, a soccer star early on, big and physical and full of energy. My father adored him, and ignored us two. That was¬ n’t such a problem for me, as I related more closely to my mother, but Gabriele was very hurt and retreated into himself.’

‘Yet he signed up for the army,’ Zen insisted.

‘After Primo died. A car crash. My father had been something of a hero in the war and had always wanted Primo to join the forces. He had always refused. Now he was gone, Gabriele tried to usurp his place by following my father’s wishes.’

‘Are your parents still alive? They might know where your brother is.’

‘My father died of a stroke twelve years ago and my mother then moved to Australia. She lives with our uncle on a cattle ranch. They are evidently much closer than my brother and I. Mind you, my father’s will didn’t help. It left half the estate to my mother and the bulk of the remainder to Gabriele. His idea was that a married daughter should be provided for by her husband. That explains how my brother was able to afford to set up that elegant little antiquarian book boutique of his, not to mention a very nice bijou apartment quite close to the centre.’

Zen mimed sympathy.

‘That must have been painful for you.’

‘It certainly was. A stab in the back from beyond the grave. Perhaps now you understand why Gabriele and I very rarely see each other.’

A young man walked in through the open door at the end of the room.

‘Paracetamol,’ he said.

‘Are you ill, darling?’ Paola Passarini responded in a tone of alarm, rising to her feet.

‘Just a hangover. But it’s bugging me.’

‘The bottle is on the second shelf of the closet behind the door in the bathroom. Do you want me to find it for you?’

‘No.’

‘Remember to drink a glass of milk with the tablets. Those drugs are all acidic. They’ll eat into your stomach lining if you don’t have some milk with them.’

‘Stop fussing.’

The man turned away irritably.

‘So you have no idea where your brother might be?’ asked Zen, feeling vaguely embarrassed by his presence at this scene.

‘None whatever. He might be abroad. He often travels to Paris or London or Amsterdam or wherever to search for new stock for the shop.’

‘Might he have gone to visit your mother in Australia?’

Paola Passarini shook her head decisively.

‘I would have heard about it if he had. “Why didn’t you come too? It’s at least a year since I’ve seen you!” Etcetera, etcetera.’

The phone rang but was answered before Paola Passarini could reach it. She hovered in the arch to the next section of the room, listening intently. The young man could be heard talking in a deliberately low voice.

‘And I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you,’ she said to Zen, coming back again.

Zen nodded and stood up.

‘What about your husband?’ he asked.

Paola Passarini looked startled.

‘My husband? What does he have to do with it?’

‘I thought that perhaps he might have some idea where your brother is.’

‘Well, by all means feel free to ask him.’

Her look was by now so intense that he finally understood.

‘I’m sorry, I meant…’

He gestured with his head towards the sound of the low voice mumbling away.

‘That’s my son, Siro,’ was the reply.

‘I see.’

‘He writes code.’

‘Code?’

‘For computers. He submits all his work online, so there’s no need to go in to the office every day. And he helps me out with the housekeeping bills. This arrangement makes sense for both of us.’

There was an aggressive quality to her declaration that merely served to undermine it. She’d married young, Zen guessed, quite possibly following a pregnancy intended, like her brother’s volunteering for the army, to make a point. But the marriage had been a failure and now she was holding on desperately to the one remaining man in her life, lest she be left all alone. He felt sorry for Paola Passarini, but there was also something unwholesome about her, like fruit picked green that rots before it ripens.

‘Thank you for your time, signora, and please excuse the disturbance.’

A door slammed and the young man strode back into the living area.

‘I’m going out for a while with Costanzo, Mamma.’

‘When will you be back?’

‘Don’t know. I may spend the night at his place.’

‘Well, be sure to phone and tell me. You know how I worry otherwise.’

In the end, the two men left the apartment almost at the same time, with the result that they found themselves waiting for the lift together. The resulting awkward silence was broken by Siro.

‘I think I know where my uncle might be.’

Zen, whose only thoughts had been about where he was going to spend the night, looked at him in astonishment, but Siro didn’t volunteer anything more.

Outside, the fog was thicker than ever. To Zen, it came as a merciful pall blanking out the horrors of the neighbourhood. Having grown up in Venice, it was hard for him to adjust to most other urban landscapes, let alone this psychotic collage of concrete brutalities unmitigated by any sense of order, never mind beauty. The young man pointed up the street, where a neon light blossomed in the plump miasma.

‘That’s where I’m meeting my friend. Come along and I’ll tell you my idea.’

They walked the twenty metres or so to a bleak cafe set back in the facia of the apartment block. It was empty, and the barman looked as though he had been about to close. A game show blared from the television suspended from a pivot above the bar. Zen ordered a coffee, Siro a Coke.

‘It was after the other guy left that it came to me,’ he said.

‘The carabinieri officer who came yesterday?’

‘If that’s what he was.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Mamma was in the bathroom when the doorbell rang, so I answered it. He introduced himself as being from the carabinieri. I asked to see his ID and he had a card to back him up. But in the window on the opposite side of his wallet was another card identifying him, under a different name, as a member of the military secret service. I read it upside down.’

Zen looked into the young man’s eyes for a very long time.

‘You don’t miss much,’ he said at last.

Siro shrugged.

‘Maybe that’s why I ended up writing computer programs. It’s all a matter of detail. I’m good at that, it seems.’

He shot Zen an incisive glance.

‘You didn’t know that the secret police were hunting for my uncle?’

‘I certainly hadn’t been informed,’ Zen replied evenly. ‘And SISMI is not noted for collaborating with other agencies. But there are often parallel investigations in progress. The right hand frequently doesn’t know what the left is doing.’

Siro seemed tempted for a moment to make a witty remark, perhaps of a political nature, but thought better of it.

‘What did he look like?’ asked Zen.

Siro shrugged.

‘A thug, basically. Broken nose, shaven head, workout shoulders. Gave me the creeps, to be honest. He kept asking Mamma about some “place in the country”. She told him that Gabriele doesn’t own any property other than his apartment in Milan. But that started me thinking. It was only when you showed up that I realized I had known the answer to his question all along.’

Zen finished his coffee and ordered them both another round.

‘It appears that your uncle may be a crucial witness in a very complex case that we are investigating,’ he said. ‘We naturally want to interview him as soon as possible, but to be frank we are also concerned about his safety.’

‘You think he may be in danger?’

‘I’m convinced of it.’

‘And the secret service? Are they part of the protection or part of the threat?’

Zen stared at the floor without answering for a very long time.

‘I don’t know the answer to that,’ he said at last.

Siro nodded.

‘It’s just that I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to Uncle Gabriele. I don’t see much of him these days, but he was always very kind to me when I was young. And my idea may be nonsense. But I don’t want to betray him if he doesn’t want to be found.’

Zen grasped the young man’s arm urgently.

‘If the servizi are after him, he will be found whether he wants it or not. So that’s no longer an issue. The only question is who gets there first. Would you rather it was them or me?’

Siro gulped down some more Coke.

‘In the past, Mamma’s family were landowners,’ he said. ‘It all started about a hundred and fifty years ago, when they got wealthy from a brickworks they owned here in Milan. They bought an agricultural estate in the country with the profits, and added to it over the years. And a century later, when Gabriele was a boy, that’s where the family used to spend the summer months. My grandfather finally sold the property in the late sixties. It had been operating at a loss for some time. The contadini were all moving here and finding jobs in construction or factories, and the ones that were left were demanding higher wages and better conditions. That era was over. So he sold up, but the buildings remained. They were of no use for modern mechanized farming, but would have been far too expensive to demolish.’

‘You see them all over the Po valley,’ Zen commented, ‘but I’ve never been inside one.’

‘I have. My uncle took me there on a day trip from Milan. I must have been eight or nine at the time. To be honest, I could¬ n’t understand why he’d bothered. Just this huge expanse of fields, flat as a pancake, and drainage ditches and irrigation canals and rows of trees, and then the cascina itself, which was already falling into ruin. All I understood at the time was that this was tremendously important to him, and because I wanted to please him I pretended to be interested as he showed me around the stables and the byre, the hayloft, the threshing floor and all the rest of it. The light, he kept saying, that pearly quality you only get here in the Valpadana. And then he showed me the little room he’d used when he was a child, up in the old dovecote above the family house, with all his books and a view for miles. “That was the only time in my life when I’ve been truly happy,” he told me. And I believed him, even though to me it was just a broken-down stinking ruin.’

Aman dressed in jeans and a leather jacket opened the door.

‘ Ciao, Siro!’ he called over. ‘Sorry about the delay, but this fog…’

Siro gestured to Costanzo to wait.

‘You think he’s there now?’ Zen asked.

‘He might be. He would feel safe there, I know that.’

‘And where is it?’

‘Ah, that I can’t tell you. We arrived at some small local railway station, I’ve forgotten the name, then cycled along these flat country roads for what seemed like hours. Somewhere north of Cremona, I think. And now I must go.’

The two young men left. The barman reached for the remote control to turn off the television.

‘Wait!’ Zen told him.

The television game show had given way to the news while he and Siro had been talking. The presenter was now running through the minor items at the end of the bulletin, the sweepings from the day’s events. It was the video of the hotel that had attracted Zen’s attention. An expressionless voice-over explained that a female Italian tourist had fallen to her death from the balcony of her room in Lugano. The Swiss police were treating it as an accident. Her name had been given as Claudia Giovanna Comai, a former resident of Verona.

‘Call me a taxi,’ Zen told the barman abruptly.

‘Where to?’

‘The station.’

The barman shrugged.

‘Frankly, with the weather like this it would be quicker to walk.’

Zen did exactly that. From Porta Garibaldi he took the metropolitana to the Central Station, where he caught the last train to Verona with twenty minutes to spare.