Ratking

TWO

‘The entire resources of the Questura of Perugia are at your disposal. Eager to obey, my men await only your commanding word to spring into action. Your reputation of course precedes you, and the prospect of serving under your leadership has been an inspiration to us all. Who has not heard of your brilliant successes in the Fortuzzi and Castellano affairs, to name but two? And who can doubt that you will achieve a no less resounding triumph here on Umbrian soil, earning the heartfelt thanks of all by succeeding where others, less fortunate or deserving, have failed? The city of Perugia has a long and historic relationship with the capital, of which your posting here is a concrete symbol. My men will, I am sure, wish to join with me in bidding you welcome.’

There was a feeble flutter of applause from the group of senior officials assembled in the Questore’s spacious top-floor office, all discreetly modern furniture, rows of law books, and potted plants. Aurelio Zen stood in their midst like a Siamese cat dropped into a cage full of stray dogs: tense and defiant, his eyes refusing to meet those fixed on him with expressions of more or less successfully concealed mockery. They knew what he was going through, poor bastard! And they knew that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

Salvatore Iovino, their chief, a corpulent, vivacious fifty-year-old from Catania, had given a masterly performance. Fulsome and vapid, laden with insincere warmth and hidden barbs, his speech had nevertheless left no legitimate grounds for complaint. He had spoken of Zen’s ‘reputation’, without actually mentioning that his abrupt departure from the Rome Questura in 1978 had been the subject of the wildest rumours and speculations throughout the force. The two cases he had mentioned dated from the mid-seventies, underlining Zen’s lack of recent operational experience. He had referred to the transfer as a ‘posting’, thus emphasizing that it had been imposed on him by the Ministry, and had called it a symbol of the historic relationship between Rome and Perugia, a relationship consisting of two thousand years of bitterly resented domination.

‘Thank you,’ Zen murmured, lowering his head in a proud and melancholy gesture of acknowledgement.

‘And finally,’ the Questore continued, ‘let me introduce Vice-Questore Fabrizio Priorelli.’

Iovino’s bland tone did nothing to prepare Zen for the glare of pure hostility with which he found himself transfixed by Priorelli. The Questore’s next words followed an exquisitely judged pause during which the silence in the room assumed a palpable quality.

‘Until today he was handling the Miletti case for us.’

Iovino laughed weightlessly.

‘To be perfectly frank, that’s one of the many problems your unexpected arrived has caused us. It’s a matter of protocol, you see. Since Fabrizio outranks you I can’t very well make him your second-in-command. Nevertheless, should you wish to consult him he has assured me that despite his numerous other duties he is in principle at your disposition at all times.’

Once again Zen murmured his thanks.

‘Right, lads, lunch!’ the Questore called briskly. ‘I expect you’re about ready for it, eh?’

As the officers filed out Iovino picked up the phone and yelled, ‘Chiodini? Get up here!’ Then he turned pointedly away and stood gazing out of the window until there was a knock at the door and a burly man with a bored brutal face appeared, at which point the Questore suddenly appeared to notice Zen’s existence again.

‘I’ll leave you in Chiodini’s safe hands, dottore. Remember, whatever you need, just say the word.’

‘Thank you.’

As they walked downstairs Zen studied his escort: hair closely cropped on a head that looked muscle-bound, ears cauliflowered, no neck to speak of, shoulders and biceps that formed one inflexible block, the ‘safe’ hands swinging massively back and forth. Chiodini would be the one they sent for when old-fashioned interrogation methods were required.

At the third-floor landing the man jerked his thumb to the right.

‘Along there, three five one,’ he called without turning or breaking his stride.

Zen just managed to stop himself intoning another ‘Thank you.’

Yes, it had all been consummately handled, no question about that. Iovino’s speech had been a brilliant set piece, systematically exploiting all the weaknesses of Zen’s position. Words are not everything, however, and the Questore had by no means neglected other possibilities of making his point, such as the contrast between the bombastic formality with which he had rolled out the red carpet and beaten the big drum and the perfunctory way he had then dismissed Zen into the ‘safe hands’ of the local third-degree specialist. The message was clear. Zen would be offered the moon and the stars, but if he wanted a coffee he’d have to go and fetch it himself.

He opened the door of the office and looked around warily. Everything seemed normal. On one wall hung the mandatory photograph of the President of the Republic, facing it on another the inevitable large calendar and a small crucifix. There was a grey metal filing cabinet in the corner, the top two drawers empty and the bottom one stuffed with plastic bags. In the centre of the office, dominating it, stood a desk of some sickly looking yellow wood which had seemingly been grown in imitation of one of the nastier synthetic materials. Like every other piece of furniture in the room this carried a tag inscribed ‘Ministry of the Interior’ and a stamped serial number. Screwed to the back of the door was a list itemizing every piece of furniture in the room, down to the metal rubbish bin, together with its serial number. It was not that the Ministry did not trust their employees. They were just tidy-minded and couldn’t sleep at night unless they were sure that everything was in its place.

Zen walked over to the window and looked out. Down below was a small car park for police vehicles. Facing him was a windowless stone wall with a heavy gate guarded by two men, one in grey uniform with a cap, the other in battledress and a flak jacket. Both carried submachine guns, as did another guard patrolling the roof of the building. So that was it: they had given him an office with no view but the prison. He smiled sourly, acknowledging the hit. Sicilians were notoriously good at this kind of thing.

And the phone? He would never forget those first months at the Ministry, sitting in a windowless office in the basement, his only link to the outside world a telephone which was not connected. The repair men were always just about to come, but somehow they never did, and for over three months that telephone had squatted on his desk like a toad, symbol of a curse that would never be lifted. And when it finally was repaired Zen knew that this was not a token of victory but of total defeat. They could let him have a phone now. It didn’t matter, because it never rang. Everyone knew about his ‘reputation’. He had broken the rules of the tribe and been tabooed.

Here in Perugia his phone worked all right, but the same logic applied. Who was he going to call? What was he going to do? Should he fight back? Call Iovino’s bluff and start throwing his weight around? The Ministry had sent him and they were bound to back him up, if only as a matter of form. With a bit of effort and energy he could soon bring the Questore and his men to heel. The problem was that he lacked the energy and was not going to make the effort. At heart he just didn’t care enough about these provincial officials and their petty pride. He didn’t even care about the case itself. Nine kidnappings out of ten were never solved anyway, and there was no reason to think that this one would be any different. In the end the family would pay up or the gang would back down. As a spectacle it was as uninspiring as an arm-wrestling contest between two strangers.

Outside the Questura he found the driver who had brought him there from Rome, a young Neapolitan named Luigi Palottino, still standing attentively beside the dark blue Alfetta. The sight of him just increased Zen’s humiliation by reminding him of the scene at his apartment that morning when he’d returned, having spent the night with Ellen, to find Maria Grazia and his mother trying to organize his packing while the driver stood looking on with a bemused expression and everyone had to shout to be heard above the cheery chatter of the television, which had apparently turned itself on so as not to be left out of things.

‘What are you doing here?’ Zen snapped at him.

‘Waiting for you, sir.’

‘For me? I’m not in the mood for company, frankly.’

‘I mean waiting for your orders, sir.’

‘My orders? All right, you might as well take me to my hotel. Then you can go.’

The Neapolitan frowned.

‘Sir?’

‘You can go back to Rome.’

‘No, sir.’

Zen looked at him with menacing attention.

‘What do you mean, “no”?’

‘My orders are to remain here in Perugia with you, sir. They’ve allocated me a bed in the barracks.’

They want to keep tabs on me, thought Zen. They don’t trust me, of course. Of course! And who could say what other orders Luigi Palottino might have been given?

Half an hour later Zen was sitting in a cafe enjoying a late lunch, when he heard his name spoken by a complete stranger. The cafe was an old-world establishment quite unlike the usual chrome-and-glass filling stations for caffeine junkies, a long, narrow burrow of a place with a bar on one side and a few seats and small tables on the other. The walls were lined with tall wooden cabinets filled with German chocolates and English jam and shelves bending dangerously under the weight of undrinkably ancient bottles of wine. There were newspapers dangling from canes and waiters in scarlet jackets who seemed to have all the time in the world, and faded pastoral frescos presided amiably from the vaulted ceiling. Zen took the only free table, which was between the coat-stand and the telephone, so that he was continually being disturbed by people wanting to get at one or the other. But he paid no particular attention to the other clients until he heard his own name being laboriously spelt out.

‘?,?,?. Yes, that’s right.’

The man was in his early sixties, short but powerfully built with an almost aggressively vigorous appearance that suggested a peasant background not many generations earlier. But this was no peasant. His clothes and grooming suggested wealth, and his manner was that of a man used to getting his own way.

‘So I’ve been told. Perhaps he hasn’t arrived yet? Ah, I see. Listen, Gianni, do me a favour, will you? When he comes back, tell him

… No, nothing. Forget it. On second thoughts I’ll call him myself later. Thanks.’

The receiver was replaced, and the man glanced down.

‘Sorry for disturbing you, eh?’

He walked slowly away, greeting various acquaintances as he went.

The elderly cashier seemed to have no idea how much anything cost, and by the time the waiter who had served Zen had told her and she had manipulated the Chinese box of little drawers to extract the right change, the man had disappeared. But as soon as Zen got outside he almost bumped into him, standing just to the left of the doorway chatting to a younger bearded man. Zen walked past them and stopped some distance away in front of a glass case displaying the front page of the local edition of the Nazione newspaper with the headlines circled in red ink.

‘TRAGEDY ON THE PERUGIA-TERNI: ATROCIOUS DEATH OF YOUNG COUPLE UNDER A TRUCK.’ He could see the two men quite clearly, reflected on the glass surface in front of him, the younger protesting in a querulous whine, ‘I still don’t see why I should be expected to deal with it.’ ‘BUSES IN PERUGIA: EVERYTHING TO CHANGE – NEW ROUTES, NEW TIMETABLES.’ ‘It’s agreed, then?’ exclaimed the older man. ‘But not Daniele, eh? God knows what he’s capable of!’ ‘FOOTBALL: PERUGIA TO BUY ANOTHER FOREIGNER?’ Zen scanned the newspaper for some reference to his arrival. Rivalries within the Questura usually ensured that an event which was bound to be damaging to someone’s reputation would be reported in the local press. But of course there had been no time for that as yet.

When he next looked up he found that the two men had now separated and the older one was walking towards him.

‘Excuse me!’

The man turned, suspicious and impatient.

‘Yes?’

‘I couldn’t help overhearing your telephone call just now. I believe you wish to speak to me. I am Aurelio Zen.’

The man’s impatience turned first to perplexity and then embarrassment.

‘Ah, dottore, it was you, sitting there at the table? And there I was, talking about you like that! Whatever must you have thought?’

His voice drifted away. He seemed to be rapidly searching his memory, trying to recall what exactly he had said. Then with an apologetic gesture he went on, ‘I am getting old, dottore! Old and indiscreet. Well, what’s done is done. Forgive me, I haven’t even introduced myself. Antonio Crepi. How do you do. Welcome to Perugia! Will you allow me to offer you a coffee?’

They returned to the cafe, where Crepi hailed the barman familiarly.

‘Marco, this is Commissioner Zen, a friend of mine. Any time he comes in I want you to give him good service, you understand? No, nothing for me. You know, dottore, they say we must be careful not to drink too much coffee. I’m down to six cups a day, which is my limit. It’s like a bridge, you know. You can reduce the number of supports up to a certain point, depending on the type of construction, nature of the soil and so on. After that the bridge collapses. For me the lower limit is six coffees. Fewer than that and I can’t function. Anyway, how do you like Perugia? Beautiful, eh?’

‘Well, I’ve only just…’

‘It’s a city on a human scale, not too big, not too small. Whenever I go to Rome, which nowadays is almost never, I feel like I am choking. It’s like putting on a collar that’s too tight, you know what I mean? Here one can breathe, at least. A friend of mine once told me, “Frankly, Antonio, the moment I set foot outside the city walls I just don’t feel right.” That’s the way we are! Provincial and proud of it. But listen, dottore, I want to be able to talk to you properly, not standing in some bar. Can you come to dinner this evening?’

Zen avoided a reply by taking a sip of coffee. He still hadn’t the faintest idea who he was talking to!

‘I’m sure this is very different from the way you do things in Rome,’ Antonio Crepi went on. ‘Maybe you even think it’s a bit strange, but I don’t care! The only thing that interests me is getting Ruggiero released. The only thing! Do you understand? It is wonderful that you’re here, your arrival gives us all new heart. Come to dinner! Valesio will be there too, the lawyer who’s been handling the negotiations. Talk informally, off the record. Say what you like, ask any question you like. Be as indiscreet as I am, if you can! No one will mind, and when you start work tomorrow morning you’ll know as much about the case as anyone in Perugia. What do you say?’

This time there was no way out.

‘I’ll be delighted.’

Crepi looked pleased.

‘Thank you, dottore. Thank you. I’m glad you understand. We Umbrians are just simple, forthright country folk. Rome is another world. If at first you find us a bit rough, a bit blunt, that’s just our way. After a while you’ll get used to it. We lack polish, it’s true, but the wood beneath is sound and solid. But you’re not from Rome, surely? Excuse me asking.’

‘I’m from the North.’

‘I thought so. Milan?’

‘Venice.’

‘Ah. A beautiful city. But Perugia is beautiful too! I’ll send someone to collect you at about eight. No, I insist. It’s easier than trying to give directions. You need to have been born here! Until this evening, then.’

As Zen walked back to his hotel he noticed several people staring at him curiously, but it was not until he caught sight of his reflection in a shop window that he realized that he was wearing one of those annoying little Mona Lisa smiles which makes everyone wonder why you’re so pleased with yourself. It was just as well that no one knew him well enough to ask, for he had no idea what he would have replied.

Whatever the reason might have been, by eight o’clock the smile had definitely faded.

Zen had spent the afternoon and early evening reading the background material he had been given on the Miletti case. Like most police drivers, Luigi Palottino clearly considered himself a Formula One contender manque, and the relentless high speeds and a succession of near misses had brought on a mild attack of the car sickness from which Zen often suffered, so that he just hadn’t been able to face the pile of documents Enrico Mancini had sent round with the Alfetta. Not that he needed them, of course, to know who Ruggiero Miletti was. To any Italian of his generation the name was practically synonymous with the word gramophone. Ruggiero’s father, Franco, had started the business, first repairing and later constructing the new-fangled machines in a spare room at the back of the family’s furniture shop on Corso Vanucci, the main street of Perugia. That was in 1910. Ruggiero had been born the previous year. By the time he left school Miletti Phonographs had become a flourishing concern which had outgrown the original premises and moved to a site convenient to the railway line down in the valley.

Although by no means cheap, the Miletti instruments had enjoyed from the first the reputation of being well made, durable, and technically advanced, ‘combining the ancient traditions of Umbrian craftsmanship with an irresistible surge towards the Future’, as the advertisements put it. Franco had a flair for publicity, and before long such notables as D’Annunzio, Bartali the cycle ace and the composer Respighi had consented to be photographed with a Miletti machine. Franco’s greatest coup came when he persuaded the Duce himself to issue a typically bombastic endorsement: ‘I declare and pronounce that your phonographs are truly superior instruments and represent a triumph of Fascist civilization.’ Meanwhile the radio age had arrived, and the Miletti company were soon producing the massive sets which formed the centrepiece of every wealthy family’s sitting-room, around which friends and hangers-on would congregate on Sunday afternoons to listen to the programme called ‘The Four Musketeers’, which eventually became so popular that the football authorities had to delay matches until it was over.

The family’s good fortune continued. Although Ruggiero’s elder brother Marco was killed in Greece, the Milettis had a relatively easy war. Having sacrificed one son, it was easy for Franco to persuade influential friends that Ruggiero’s brains were too valuable a commodity to be put at risk, and hostilities ended with them and the Miletti workshops intact. Both were quickly put to work. The post-war economic boom, artificially fuelled by the Americans to prevent Italy falling to the Communists, provided ideal conditions for rapid growth, while Ruggiero soon proved that he combined his father’s technical genius with even greater ambition and vision. In the next decade the company steadily expanded and diversified, though often in the teeth of considerable opposition from Franco Miletti. When his father died in 1959, Ruggiero found himself at the head of one of the most successful business concerns in the country, producing hi-fi equipment, radios, televisions and tape recorders, exporting to every other country in Europe as well as to many in South America, and often cited as a glowing example of the nation’s economic resurgence. In 1967 the firm became the Societa Industriale Miletti di Perugia, or SIMP for short, but this fashionably ugly acronym changed nothing. The Miletti family, which in practice meant Ruggiero himself, remained in absolute and sole control.

The kidnap itself was described in a few pages of material copied over the teleprinter from Perugia. The contents proved to be highly predictable, but at least Zen discovered who Antonio Crepi was: the retired director of a construction company with whom Ruggiero Miletti was in the habit of spending Sunday evening playing cards. One week Crepi would motor over to the Miletti villa, the next Ruggiero would drive down to his friend’s place, overlooking the Tiber valley. On the last Sunday in October, four and a half months earlier, it had been Ruggiero’s turn to visit Crepi. He had left home as usual at eight o’clock and arrived at Crepi’s twenty minutes later. The two had played cards and chatted until about a quarter past eleven, when Ruggiero left to drive home. He had never arrived.

The alarm had been given by Silvio, one of Ruggiero’s three sons. It was rare for Ruggiero not to be back by midnight, and since there was a hard frost Silvio began to worry that his father might have had an accident. He therefore phoned Crepi, who had already gone to bed, and learned that Ruggiero had set out on his return journey an hour earlier. But, as so often, no one thought of a kidnapping. Daniele, the youngest son, arrived home while his brother was speaking to Crepi, and instead of alerting the police the two decided to search the road themselves. When they arrived at Crepi’s villa without having found any trace of Ruggiero the police were finally informed. It was twelve thirty-seven.

Perugia is blessed with a crime rate among the lowest in Italy, and at that hour only a skeleton staff was on duty at the Questura. It took another quarter of an hour to call out the men on standby, and it was twenty past one before a complete set of roadblocks had been set up. Meanwhile the route Miletti had taken was thoroughly examined, revealing evidence of a struggle. Ruggiero’s hat, tie and shoe were found lying on the verge, and not far away lay a muslin wad soaked in ether. But it wasn’t until daybreak that the burnt-out shell of the car Ruggiero had been driving, one of a fleet of leased Fiat Argenta saloons used by both the family and the senior management of SIMP, was finally spotted by a helicopter in an abandoned quarry some eleven miles north of the city. The front bumper was dented and one of the headlamps cracked, indicating that the gang had front-tailed Ruggiero from the villa, then deliberately braked hard on a bend to cause a minor collision, immobilizing his car. They would have got out to examine the damage, all smiles and apologies. At the last moment their victim must have realized what was happening, for he had fought and kicked and struggled. But by then it was much too late. You could only defend yourself against kidnappers before they struck, by persuading them to strike somewhere else.

The remainder of the report on the Miletti kidnapping set out the investigators’ provisional conclusions. The gang had had about two hours altogether in which to seize Miletti, dispose of his car, and make good their escape. Assuming the first two stages took about thirty minutes, that left an hour and a half before the roadblocks went up. It was more than enough. If they had continued north they could have been on any one of a dozen remote roads high up in the Apennines within an hour. It was quite possible that they had gone to ground there, in some isolated farm or mountain hut. On the other hand they might well have left the area altogether, taking the link road west to the motorway and spending the rest of the night driving south. By dawn they could have reached the Aspromonte mountains behind Reggio di Calabria, a territory fifty times the size of San Marino and considerably more independent of the Italian State.

In short, it had been a typical professional kidnapping, well planned and well executed. The victim had been carefully chosen to combine the maximum potential return with the minimum possible risk. Like many others, Ruggiero Miletti had regarded kidnapping as something that happened to other people in less fortunate areas of the country, and had scorned to take any precautions. Like many others, he had been wrong. For months, his movements had been logged and analysed, until the kidnappers knew more about his way of life than he did. They had taken him at the weekend. By Monday morning the snatch squad would be back at the garages or factories where they worked. Their companions would laugh as they yawned their way through the day and make crude jokes about their wives being too much for them. They wouldn’t mind. They would be getting paid soon, their job over.

Meanwhile the central cell of the gang would be in touch with the family to get the negotiations moving. They wouldn’t be too impatient at first, although they would sound it, phoning up with bloodcurdling threats about what would happen to their victim if they weren’t paid by the day after tomorrow. But they had timed the operation for the autumn precisely to allow themselves the long winter months in which to break any resistance to their demands. By now though, in late March, they would be starting to grow restless, wanting to see some return on their considerable investment. Summer was just around the corner, and they wouldn’t want to risk missing their month at the seaside. Criminals have the same aspirations as everyone else. That’s why they become criminals.

More recent details were skimpy in the extreme. The gang had apparently contacted the family soon after the kidnapping and it was understood that a ransom had been agreed. The sum remained unknown but was thought likely to have been in the region of ten thousand million lire. Payment was assumed to have taken place towards the end of November, but the hostage had not been released, and a local lawyer named Ubaldo Valesio was now believed to be negotiating on behalf of the family. This last snippet was dated mid-December, and unless someone had filleted the file before it was put on the teleprinter it was the most recent piece of information the police in Perugia had. The message was clear: ‘… was understood that a ransom had been paid… remained unknown but was thought to have been in the region of… was assumed to have taken place towards the end… believed to be negotiating…’ Whoever had drafted the report wanted no one to be in the slightest doubt that the Miletti family had not been cooperating with the authorities.

There was nothing unusual in this, of course. The trouble with the authorities’ line on kidnapping was that it sounded just too good to be true. Free the victim, punish the criminals and get your money back! Besides, most people were happier doing business with the kidnappers, whose motives they understood and who like them had a lot to lose, than with the impersonal and perfidious agencies of the State. If Zen was unpleasantly surprised to discover how little the Milettis had been cooperating, it was because it put paid to the theory he’d evolved to explain his sudden recall to active duty.

The explanation Enrico Mancini had given him was obviously false. In the first place, provincial detachments never requested intervention of this kind. A local Questura might ask for an expert from Criminalpol to advise them on some technical problem, but that was a very different thing to handing over control to someone from Rome. Such a procedure was always imposed by the Ministry, and was regarded as a humiliating reprimand for inefficiency or incompetence. But an even more serious objection to Mancini’s story was simply that Mancini was telling it. Enrico Mancini was a very big fish indeed, whose natural habitat was the wider ocean of political life. At the moment he chose to swim in the local waters of the Interior Ministry, where indeed he had survived an abrupt change in the political temperature which had proved fatal to several of his species. But tomorrow he might well be sighted in one of the other branches of government, between which he moved as effortlessly as a porpoise moves from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic and back again. According to some observers, indeed, this rather too evident ease, together with Mancini’s brashly confident manner, might prove to be his downfall in the long run.

At all events, the likes of Mancini did not concern themselves with such normal everyday matters as staff movements. The implication was clear. Despite appearances, this particular staff movement was neither normal nor everyday. When you got a personal phone call from an assistant under-secretary to the Minister and were told you were leaving the next morning, someone had been pulling strings. The obvious candidates had been the Miletti family, but if the Milettis were not cooperating with the authorities they would hardly run to the Ministry complaining that those authorities weren’t doing enough. So what was going on?

Zen read and re-read the material, scribbling a few notes and a lot of convoluted designs in the margins. But it was no good. There were too many faceless names, or what was worse, names which had somehow acquired a totally misleading set of features and characteristics. Thus Pietro, Silvio, Cinzia and Daniele appeared as ‘The Miletti Children’, a quartet of child entertainers in matching outfits, and this despite Zen’s knowledge that the youngest, Daniele, was twenty-six years old, while Pietro was already in his late thirties, married and living somewhere abroad. As for Cinzia, she could hardly be a winsome little pre-pubescent charmer since she already had two children of her own, the eldest twelve years old.

Meanwhile it was getting late, and the full implications of accepting Crepi’s invitation were becoming clear to Zen. He’d acted without thinking, purely on reflex, paralysed by his ignorance of who Crepi was. But after what had happened at the Questura he could be in no doubt as to the weakness of his position in Perugia. To survive he must armour himself in authority, surround himself with as many of the signs and symbols of office as he could muster. Instead of which he had agreed to venture out on to dangerously ambiguous ground, half-social and half-official; a treacherous no man’s land where all manner of elaborate games might be played at his expense, where any points he scored would count for nothing but the slightest slip might compromise his position for ever. Well, at least he would go in style. He had phoned the Questura and arranged for Palottino to meet him outside the hotel. They could follow Crepi’s chauffeur back to the villa.

The call came at ten past eight.

‘ There’s someone here to collect you. He says he’s expected.’

‘I’ll be down at once.’

The lobby was empty except for a bearded man reading a newspaper and a French couple who were disputing some item on their bill with the receptionist. Zen had almost reached the revolving door when he was called.

‘Excuse me!’

Suddenly Zen had an unpleasant sense that events were getting out of hand. It was the bearded man Crepi had been talking to outside the cafe earlier that afternoon.

‘You are Commissioner Zen?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m Silvio Miletti. How do you do?’

‘I had no idea that you would be coming in person to fetch me,’ Zen murmured in some confusion. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered.’

‘It was no bother.’

The way this was said made it quite clear that exactly the opposite was the case. For a moment Zen was tempted to turn on his heel, refuse to go, invent some last-minute engagement. But they were outside now, and Silvio Miletti was pointing across the street.

‘My car’s over there.’

Palottino saved him. The Neapolitan had parked the Alfetta right in front of the hotel, practically blocking the entrance, and was now leaning in a nonchalantly heroic posture on the driving door, receiving the homage of the passers-by. As he caught sight of the superior from whom flowed his power to flaunt, dazzle and ignore the parking regulations, he snapped smartly to attention.

‘And mine’s right here,’ Zen replied.

‘No, no, dottore,’ Silvio Miletti insisted fussily. ‘You’re travelling with me. That’s why I’ve come, after all.’

‘Signor Miletti, my driver gets so little work he’s almost going crazy as it is. But if you would permit me to offer you…’

‘No, no, I insist!’

‘So do I.’

Zen softened the words with a pale smile, but there was nothing soft about his tone.

Silvio Miletti sighed massively.

‘As you wish, dottore, as you wish. Perhaps you would have the goodness to wait just one moment, however, if it’s not too much to ask.’

He walked across the street to a large blue Fiat saloon and spoke to someone inside. Zen stood watching, his brief triumph draining away. He had not only been rude, he had been uselessly rude. His petty insistence had demonstrated his weakness, not his strength. I’ve lost my touch, he thought bleakly. Then the blue saloon drove off and Zen saw that the driver was a woman. That made it perfect. He had succeeded in insulting not only Silvio Miletti but also his fiancee.

‘I didn’t realize you were with someone,’ he remarked as the two men took their places in the back of the Alfetta.

Silvio Miletti shrugged.

‘It’s only my secretary. I don’t drive.’

They followed the blue Fiat through a wedge-shaped piazza and down a steeply curving street. At the bottom it turned sharp right and disappeared through a narrow archway. Numerous scratches on the brickwork showed where drivers had misjudged the clearance, but Palottino revved up and took it like a lion going through a blazing hoop, almost crushing two pedestrians in the process.

Out of the corner of his eye Zen studied Silvio Miletti. Close to, Ruggiero’s second son looked like an overweight ghost, at once insubstantial and corpulent. His features, which might have been strong and full of character, had sagged like paint applied too thickly. He was sturdily built, yet gave an impression not of vitality but of enormous lethargy, of a weary disgust with everything and everyone, like a man who has never reconciled himself to what he sees in the mirror every morning. His gestures were oddly prim and fussy for such a lumbering frame, and his voice was high and slightly querulous, with an underlying whine of self-pity.

As suddenly as in a medieval fresco, the city ended and the countryside began. One moment they were driving down a densely inhabited street, the next they were on a country road that dropped so steeply Zen felt his ears aching. A yellow sign flashed by: ‘All vehicles using this road from 1 November to 31 March must carry snow-chains on board’. Palottino kept the Alfetta tucked tightly in behind the slowly moving Fiat, like a dog worrying a sheep.

‘Tell me, when did the kidnappers last make contact?’

Zen dropped the question idly, just to test the water.

‘The negotiations are being handled by Avvocato Valesio.’

Silvio Miletti’s tone was so uncompromising that Zen asked himself why he had agreed to be present in the first place.

‘Presumably he keeps you informed.’

‘No doubt he tells us everything he feels we should know,’ Miletti replied with a fastidious quiver, rearranging the folds of his coat. ‘On the other hand he fully understands how difficult this experience is for us, and I’m sure that he would avoid distressing us unnecessarily.’

He made it quite clear that the negotiator’s tact and consideration could well serve as a model to other less thoughtful people.

As the road bottomed out in the valley Palottino swung out and booted the accelerator, leaving the Fiat for dead.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ Zen exploded. ‘We’re supposed to be following that car!’

‘Oh, fuck. Sorry, sir, I forgot.’

‘I’ll tell you when to turn,’ Silvio Miletti told him with another sigh. These sighs were immensely expressive. The world, they seemed to suggest, had once again demonstrated its limitless capacity for stupidity, vulgarity and total insensitivity to his needs and desires. Not that this surprised him; on the contrary, he had long resigned himself to the unremitting awfulness of life. Nevertheless, each reminder was another pebble thoughtlessly tossed on to the already intolerable burden which he was expected to bear without complaint. It really was too bad!

‘So when did the gang last make contact, to the best of your knowledge?’ Zen continued remorselessly.

There was a rustle of clothing as Miletti changed position with a wriggle of his hips.

‘I’m afraid I really can’t discuss this. I’m sure you understand why.’

‘No, as a matter of fact I don’t understand at all. I’m aware that the Miletti family has not been cooperating with the police up to now, but since you have agreed to meet me tonight I assumed that you must have decided to change that attitude. I certainly can’t imagine what we’re going to talk about otherwise.’

The sigh emerged again in all its glory.

‘As far as cooperation goes, I think the fact that I was prepared to come and pick you up from your hotel is sufficient proof of my personal goodwill. In my father’s absence, however, decisions are being made jointly by the whole family, and the decision which had been made is that all dealings with the authorities are to be handled by our legal representative, Ubaldo Valesio. He will be present this evening and you will have ample opportunity to put your questions to him.’

The road ran along between two ridges, beside a small stream. The moon was almost full, and by its light the scenery looked flat and unconvincing, depthless shapes blocked out of black cardboard. Even the few clouds in the sky were as neat and motionless as a backdrop. To one side, up on the crest of the ridge, a row of cypresses and cedars led up to a ruin with a tall tower.

‘In other words, Valesio will be acting as intermediary not just between you and the gang but also between you and me?’

Zen made no attempt to conceal his irony, and Silvio’s reaction was to flare up.

‘Yes, dottore, that’s exactly what I mean! Despite what some people seem to think, I’m made of flesh and blood like everyone else and there’s only so much I can stand. I just can’t cope with anything more! I can’t be expected to!’

He broke off abruptly to tell Palottino to turn left up a narrow dirt track.

‘For over a month we have heard nothing,’ he continued in the same self-pitying tone. ‘Nothing!’

The headlights swept over rows of neatly pruned vines as the twists and turns of the steeply climbing track succeeded one another.

‘Before, they used to make threats, to rant and rave and say God knows what. That seemed bad enough at the time, but now I almost miss their threats. They seem almost reassuring, compared with this terrible silence.’

The track became a driveway lined with cedars and cypresses and suddenly the house was there before them, a fantastic affair of mock-medieval turrets and towers with fishtail embattlements and coats of arms embedded in the walls which Zen realized with a slight shock was the ruin he had caught sight of from the road below. With a satisfying spray of gravel, Palottino brought the car to a halt beside a white Volvo parked in the forecourt.

Antonio Crepi must have been on the lookout, for when Zen got out he found his host at the door to welcome him.

‘How do you like my little fortress? It’s mostly fake, of course, but nowadays such things have a charm of their own. No craftsman alive could do those mouldings. There’s even a romantic story behind it. Years ago, before the war with Austria, my grandfather met his future wife up here during a summer outing. There was nothing here then but the ruins of an old watchtower. Later he bought the land and had the ruins turned into this place as a present for their silver wedding anniversary. Look, this wall is original, over three metres thick! Pity you can’t see the view. The Tiber’s just down there, and on the other side the hills stretching away towards Gubbio. Better than any painting in the world in my opinion. Silvio, how are you?’

As they passed down a long hallway Zen had a confused impression of old furniture, elaborate paintwork in poor condition, of musty smells and cold, immobile air. Crepi opened one of the three sets of double doors opening off an anteroom at the end of the corridor and ushered his guests through into a large sitting room with a high frescoed ceiling. As they entered, a woman of about thirty moved quickly forward, her hand held out to Zen. She had a skiing tan and long honey-blonde hair and was wearing tawny leather slacks, a hazel-brown silk blouse and masses of gold everywhere.

‘Cinzia Miletti, dottore, pleased to meet you, so glad you could come. Wonderful, really. We’re counting on you, you know, please tell us there’s hope. I’m sure there is, I don’t know why but something tells me that father will be all right. Are you religious? I wish I was. And yet sometimes I feel I am. I don’t go to church, of course, but that’s not what religion is really about, is it? Sometimes I think I’m more religious than all the priests and nuns in Assisi. I have these tremendous feelings.’

Crepi broke in to introduce the other person in the room. Gianluigi Santucci, Cinzia’s husband, was a wiry little man in his late thirties, with carefully sculpted, thick black hair, a neat moustache and something almost canine about his sharp, wary features. Zen sensed hostility in the brief glance and minimal nod with which he acknowledged his greeting without budging from where he stood in front of the log fire. Then Cinzia swept him away again.

‘Where are you from? You’re not Roman, are you? I can’t stand Romans, arrogant, pushy people, think they still rule the world. Of course we have masses of friends in Rome. But your name, it reminds me of that book I keep meaning to read, a classic, by what’s-his-name, about the man who’s trying to give up smoking. Do you smoke? I really should stop, but I’ve been to the doctor and he told me to take pills which I simply refuse to do, it’s worse than smoking. You read these horror stories in the magazines, years later your children are born deformed, though there’s nothing wrong with my two, thank God. Have you got any children? But where are you from? No, let me guess. Sicily? Yes, you’ve got Norman blood, I can sense it. Am I right?’

‘Not quite, my dear,’ Crepi put in with heavy irony, and corrected her.

‘Venice? Well, it’s the same thing, an island.’

Just then a tall, plain woman came in from the hallway, closing the door quietly behind her. She was about forty years old, with medium-length mousy-brown hair tied up in a bun, and was dressed in a trouser-suit made from some synthetic material which reminded Zen of beach fashions at the Lido back in the fifties. It was meant to look stylish, but somehow succeeded in being both brash and drab at the same time. No one took the slightest notice of the newcomer. Gianluigi Santucci was saying something to Crepi in an intense whisper, while his wife wandered distractedly about asking everyone if they had seen her handbag and discussing how much easier life would be if handbags didn’t exist but how could you survive without them although of course her friend Stefania had given up using hers completely, just thrown it away one day, and she still managed so perhaps it was possible, with time all things were possible.

‘Are your brothers coming?’ Zen asked Silvio, who shook his head briefly.

‘Pietro’s in London. And Daniele is not interested in this sort of thing.’

But Zen remembered hearing Crepi tell Silvio that afternoon, ‘But not Daniele, eh? God knows what he’s capable of!’ So whatever sort of thing it was, the youngest Miletti was being deliberately kept out of it.

Gianluigi Santucci’s raucous voice suddenly cut loose, as if someone had flicked the volume control on a badly tuned radio.

‘Well, that’s his tough shit, in my opinion! If people arrive late they can’t expect everyone else to wait for them. It’s not as if he’s the head of the family or an honoured guest!’

Crepi explained to the others that they had been discussing whether or not to wait any longer for Ubaldo Valesio.

‘What’s the point in waiting?’ Cinzia’s husband demanded. ‘These lawyers are always stuffing themselves, anyway. Lawyers and priests, they’re the worst!’

‘Yes, let’s get on with it!’ Silvio agreed. Judging by his tone, he meant ‘Let’s get it over with’.

Crepi turned to Zen.

‘Dottore, you’re the neutral party here,’ he said with exaggerated heartiness. ‘What do you say?’

Fortunately Cinzia saved him.

‘Oh, I’m sure the Commissioner feels just the same as the rest of us!’ she cried. ‘Let’s eat, for heaven’s sake! I’m starving, and you know Lulu’s digestion is always a problem. Standing around waiting just gets the juices going, you know, eating into the stomach lining. Horrible, disgusting. But he bears it like a lamb, don’t you, Lulu?’

The dining room was cold and smelt damp. It was lit by a large number of naked bulbs stuck in a chandelier whose supporting chain ran up several metres to an anchorage planted with surreal effect in the midst of the elaborate frescos which covered the ceiling. Zen had plenty of time to study these buxom nymphs and shepherds disporting themselves in a variety of more or less suggestive poses as the meal proceeded at a funereal pace, presided over by an elderly retainer whose hands shook so alarmingly that it seemed just a matter of time before a load of food ended up in someone’s lap.

The tagliatelle was home-made, the meat well grilled on a wood fire, Crepi’s wine honest and his bottle-green oil magnificent, but the dinner was a disaster. Ubaldo Valesio did not arrive, and without him, by tacit consent, the kidnapping of Ruggiero Miletti could not be mentioned. With this tremendous presence unacknowledged there was nothing to do but be relentlessly bright and superficial. Cinzia Miletti thus came into her own, dominating the table with a breathless display of frenetic verbiage which might almost have been mistaken for high spirits. Antonio Crepi punctuated her monologues with a succession of rather ponderous anecdotes about the history and traditions of Umbria in general and Perugia in particular, narrated in the emphatic declamatory style of university professors of the pre-1968 era.

Silvio sat eating his way steadily through his food with an expression midway between a squint and a scowl, as though he were looking at something repulsive through the wrong end of a telescope. Gianluigi Santucci contributed little beyond occasional explosive comments that were the verbal equivalent of the loud growls and rumbles emanating from his stomach. The woman in the grotesque trouser-suit, who was apparently Silvio’s secretary, said not one word throughout, merely smiling ingratiatingly at everyone and no one, like a kindly nun watching children at play. As for Zen, he studied the ceiling and thanked God that time passed relatively quickly at his age. He could still remember half-hours from his childhood which seemed to have escaped the regulation of the clock altogether and to last for ever, until for no good reason they were over. Crepi’s dinner party made the most of every one of its one hundred and thirteen minutes, but shortly after half past ten its time was up and they all filed back into the other room.

But despite the slightly more relaxed atmosphere, the situation remained blocked. There was continued speculation about what could have happened to Valesio, whose thoughtlessness in not ringing to apologize and explain was agreed to be typical. The origins of the problem were traced back to his mother, a Swede who had fallen in love first with Perugia and then with a Perugian, and who as a foreigner could not be expected to know how to bring up her son properly. But Zen was beginning to suspect that Crepi had been outmanoeuvred, that Valesio was staying away deliberately under orders from the Milettis in order to prevent any discussion of the kidnapping. So why didn’t they all go, for God’s sake? The farce had been played out to the bitter end and there was nothing to stop them making a graceful exit. The fact remained that no one appeared to have the slightest intention of doing anything of the kind.

At last the sound of a motor was heard outside, and everyone perked up.

‘Ah, finally!’ cried Cinzia. ‘He’s impossible, you know, really impossible, and yet such a nice person really. My mother always told me whatever I did never to marry a lawyer. He’ll be late for his own funeral, she used to say, and I must say Gianluigi for all his faults is always on time.’

This paragon of punctuality exchanged a glance with Silvio.

‘That’s a motorcycle engine,’ he remarked.

Crepi got up and walked over to the window.

‘Well?’ Cinzia demanded. ‘Who is it?’

‘There’s nobody there.’

‘Exactly, there’s nobody here!’ a new voice exclaimed.

Six heads turned in unison towards the other end of the room, where the door had opened a crack.

‘Or rather I’m here,’ the voice continued. ‘It comes to the same thing, doesn’t it?’

‘Stop playing the fool, Daniele!’ cried Cinzia sharply. ‘You know what my nerves are like. What must you think of us, dottore? You must forgive him, he’s a good boy really. It’s my mother’s fault, God rest her. A good woman, a wonderfully warm person, but she hadn’t read Freud of course. I shudder to think how she must have toilet-trained us all.’

The door swung open, but Daniele remained standing on the threshold. He was tall and shared his sister’s good looks, which were set off by about a million lire’s worth of casually elegant clothing: Timberland shoes, tweed slacks, a lambswool sweater and a Montclair skiing jacket.

‘What are you doing?’ exclaimed Silvio in a tone of sullen irritation. ‘Come in and close the door!’

A contrived look of surprise and puzzlement appeared on Daniele’s handsome features.

‘What do you think I am, some kind of gatecrasher? Someone who just barges into parties he hasn’t been invited to? I wasn’t brought up on a farm, you know.’

Antonio Crepi gestured impatiently.

‘Oh, come along, Daniele! We haven’t got time for this kind of thing. You know very well that I invited the whole family. If you couldn’t be bothered to come that’s your business, but don’t waste our time with these childish scenes.’

‘Oh, the whole family, eh? That’s not what I was told.’

He came in and closed the door, staring pointedly at Silvio.

‘If you’re so fussy about your manners suddenly, then you might at least greet Antonio’s guest,’ chirped Cinzia. ‘This is Commissioner Zen, who’s come up specially from Rome to help save father. He’s from Venice, lucky man. What a beautiful city! I’m just crazy about Venice.’

Daniele swung around and peered at Zen’s feet with comically exaggerated interest. He frowned.

‘That’s odd. I’ve always been told that the policemen in Venice have one wet shoe. You know, because when they’ve finished their cigarettes they throw them in the canal and…’

He mimed someone stubbing out a cigarette with his foot and started to laugh loudly.

‘But Commissioner Zen’s feet are perfectly dry!’ he resumed. ‘So clearly he can’t be from Venice. Either that or he’s not a policeman.’

‘Shut your face!’

The reprimand came not from Silvio or Crepi but from Gianluigi Santucci. Daniele continued to smile genially as though he had not heard him. He did not speak again, however. Neither did anyone else, and so silence fell.

In the end it was left to Silvio’s secretary to save the situation.

‘Well, I expect Commissioner Zen would like to get an early night,’ she remarked, as she stood up.

It was the first thing Zen had heard her say all evening, and he realized with a shock that she was not Italian. Of course! With those clothes he should have guessed.

‘That’s very thoughtful of you, signora,’ he said, rising to his feet to ensure that her gesture did not go for nothing.

‘She’s not a signora,’ Cinzia corrected him. ‘She’s not married. Are you, Ivy?’

It was a horrible and quite deliberate insult. Any woman of a certain age is entitled to be addressed as signora whether or not she is married. Everyone tensed for the reaction, but it never came. The woman stood there like a statue, smiling as beatifically as she had all evening.

‘That’s quite true, Cinzia,’ she replied evenly in her deep, chesty voice, enunciating every word with almost pedantic clarity. ‘But the Commissioner hasn’t been here long enough yet to know all these little details. However, I expect in a few days he’ll know more about us than we do ourselves!’

It was a remarkable performance. The woman’s foreignness made Zen think of Ellen, and so it was with genuine warmth that he replied, ‘Good night, signora,’ and received a beaming smile in return.

Everyone stood up, except for Daniele.

‘I don’t want to leave yet,’ he complained. ‘I only just got here.’

Gianluigi Santucci strolled over to the sofa where he was slumped and grabbed him by the ear.

‘Ah, these young people today!’ he cried with vicious playfulness. ‘No energy, no initiative. It makes me sick!’

With a mocking laugh he hauled Daniele to his feet and pushed him over to join the others.

At the front door hands were shaken and formulas of farewell exchanged. At the last moment Crepi plucked at Zen’s sleeve, holding him back.

‘Not you, dottore.’

The Milettis exchanged a flicker of rapid glances.

‘I thought he wanted to get anearly night,’ Silvio objected.

‘Don’t you worry about Commissioner Zen,’ Crepi smiled, all cheerful consideration. ‘Mind how you go yourselves, that driveway of mine is quite dangerous in places. I keep meaning to have it resurfaced but what with one thing and another I never get around to it.’

‘And if Valesio comes?’

Gianluigi Santucci’s question, unlike that of his brother-in-law, had real meaning.

‘If Valesio comes he’ll get a dish of cold tagliatelle and a piece of my mind! But we won’t discuss the kidnapping behind your backs, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Santucci grimaced.

‘Worried? Why should I be worried? It’s for others to worry, not me!’

A few minutes later the disparate noises of the Fiat, the Santuccis’ Volvo and Daniele’s Enduro Trail bike had all faded to a distant intermittent drone that was finally indistinguishable from silence.

‘Well, what did you think of them?’ Crepi demanded as they returned to the living room. ‘But first let me offer you something to drink. Do you like grappa? I’m told this one is good. It’s from your part of the world. My youngest girl married a dentist from Udine and they send me a bottle made by one of the uncles every Christmas. Actually, my doctor has forbidden me to drink spirits, but I haven’t the heart to tell them that.’

He handed him a glass of liquid as limpid as spring water.

‘Now listen, dottore,’ Crepi continued. ‘You must be wondering why I should want to ruin your first evening in Perugia like this.’

Zen sniffed the grappa appreciatively.

‘I’m even more curious to know why they agreed to come.’

‘The Milettis? Oh, they came because each thought that the others were coming and no one wanted to be left out. This afternoon on the Corso, just before we spoke, I ran into Silvio. I mentioned the dinner and let him think that Cinzia and her husband were coming. Silvio didn’t care for the idea of Cinzia and Gianluigi discussing matters with you behind his back, so he agreed to come. Then I phoned Cinzia and told her that Silvio was coming, with the same result. And no one wanted to be the first to leave. If it hadn’t been for the foreigner I might have had to throw them out!’

He did not make this prospect sound too displeasing.

‘And Daniele?’

‘Daniele’s less predictable. But you can usually get him to do something by convincing him that you don’t want him to do it. I told Cinzia not to mention the dinner to him, which is like asking someone to carry water in a sieve. He assumed he was being excluded and barged in trying to be as rude as possible to everyone. Little did he suspect that that was precisely what I wanted! But there you are, you see. They think they’re so clever, these children, but once you understand how they work you can do anything you like with them. It’s just a shame that Valesio couldn’t make it. If only we’d been able to discuss the kidnapping you’d really have seen what we’re up against.’

Zen considered this for a moment.

‘I thought we were up against a gang of kidnappers.’

‘If only we were!’ Crepi exclaimed. ‘How simple that would be. But that’s why I invited you here this evening. Because if you’re to help, really help, the first thing you have to realize is that this is no ordinary kidnapping, for the simple reason that the Milettis are no ordinary family. Let’s start with Silvio. Of the whole brood, he’s the one who resembles his father most, physically I mean. In every other way they couldn’t be more different. Silvio hasn’t the slightest interest in the firm, or in anything else except his stamp collection, and one or two nastier hobbies. Ruggiero has never understood him. For example, when the time came for Silvio to do his military service everyone assumed that his father would make a few phone calls and get him exempted. Well, Ruggiero made the phone calls all right, but to make sure that Silvio not only did his full time but did it in some mosquito-ridden dump in Sardinia. He’d just begun to realize that his son was a bit of a pansy, you see, and he reckoned that was the way to make a man of him. I don’t think Silvio’s ever forgiven him for it. Not just the time in Sardinia, but above all the humiliation of having a father who thought so little of him he wouldn’t even play a few cards in Rome to get him off the hook.’

Crepi stood up, opened a small ceramic jar on the mantelpiece and extracted a short cigar. He offered one to Zen, who shook his head and extracted one of the four Nazionali remaining. He realized with dismay that he had forgotten to bring a supply of those deliciously coarse cigarettes made from domestic tobacco, costing only a few hundred lire a pack but as difficult to find as wild mushrooms. In Rome he could count on getting them from a tobacconist to whose son he had once given a break, but in Perugia what would he do?

‘I won’t waste time on Cinzia,’ Crepi continued. ‘She’s just a pretty child who’s growing old without ever having grown up. There are only two important things about her. One is that husband of hers. I must admit to a sneaking admiration for Gianluigi, although he’s undoubtedly one of the most appalling shits ever invented. He’s not from round here, of course. You spotted those ugly Tuscan ‘c’s, like a cat being sick? Santucci’s been on the make since the day he was conceived. Marrying Cinzia Miletti hasn’t done his career any harm, of course, but he would have risen anyway, anywhere, under any circumstances.’

Zen smiled slyly.

‘We have a saying in Venice. Whether the water is fresh or salt, turds rise to the top.’

He immediately regretted the comment. What was he doing talking to Crepi in this familiar fashion? But his host’s laughter sounded genuine enough.

‘Quite right, quite right! I’ve been at the top myself, so I should know! Oh yes, Gianluigi has done all right for himself. With Silvio taking no interest and Pietro abroad, he’s wormed his way into the senior management level at SIMP. But of course Ruggiero still makes all the final decisions, and there’s no love lost between those two, needless to say. It must be quite a relief for Gianluigi to have the old man out of the way. But we mustn’t forget the other important thing about Cinzia, which also applies to her little brother. It’s simply that when Ruggiero passes on, God forbid, they’ll each inherit twenty-five per cent of SIMP. A quarter of the company each! That’s quite a thought, isn’t it? Particularly when you realize that our foxy little Tuscan is married to one quarter and has the other very firmly under his thumb. Daniele ignores me and treats Silvio like shit, but he obeys his brother-in-law.’

Zen took another little sip of grappa, rolling it around his mouth. The rough, stalky taste burned down his throat and up into his brain. Why was Crepi telling him all this?

‘What about Pietro?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t it rather surprising that he’s not here in Perugia during his father’s ordeal?’

Crepi nodded.

‘He did come back at first, but when the negotiations began to drag out he claimed that he had to go back to London to look after his business interests. He takes after his father in that. Silvio inherited Ruggiero’s looks, Pietro got the brains. He’s extremely sharp, but much too intelligent to let it show. Ruggiero has a slow country manner which has deceived a lot of clever Milanese into not reading the fine print. Pietro trades on his ten years in London. He originally went there to organize the distribution of SIMP products that end, then talked his father into letting him set up a semi-autonomous subsidiary to import a range of products. But that’s just a cover. His real business is currency manipulation. He’s organized a chain of more-or-less fictitious companies and shifts funds around between them, turning a tidy profit each time. Clever, eh? But Pietro is clever, and fiercely ambitious, although you’d never guess it from his manner. He acts like the model of an English gentleman, all vague and shy and diffident. But don’t let it fool you. You could use his ego to cut glass.’

Zen felt his head beginning to swim.

‘I don’t expect to have much to do with the family. They’ve made it quite clear that they’re not prepared to cooperate with the authorities.’

‘I know. What bothers me is that they’re not prepared to cooperate with the kidnappers either.’

‘But haven’t they already paid up?’

Crepi made an ambivalent gesture.

‘They’ve paid once, back in November. We all thought that was that. But instead of releasing Ruggiero those bastards came back for more. That’s when all the trouble started.’

‘How much more did they want?’

‘The same again. Ten thousand million lire.’

Zen made a face.

‘God almighty, they’ve got it!’ Crepi snorted impatiently. ‘And if they haven’t there are a hundred ways they could raise it. But they felt they’d agreed to the first demand too easily, and that this time they should strike a harder bargain, arguing over every last lira. Then there was the question of how to raise the money. More problems, more bickering. Exactly what should be sold? Should they borrow? Couldn’t Piero help out? And what about Gianluigi’s idea of doing a deal with a foreign firm interested in acquiring a stake in SIMP? Et cetera, et cetera. I won’t bore you with all the details.’

‘What about the police, the judiciary? Are they aware that Valesio is in regular contact with the gang?’

Crepi waggled his hands again.

‘Yes and no. They know, of course. In Perugia everyone knows everything. But officially they’ve been kept out of it. You see, part of the problem all along has been that the investigating magistrate who’s handling the case, Luciano Bartocci, is a Communist who’s got it in for the Milettis on principle. Given half a chance Bartocci would like to use the kidnapping as an excuse to pry into the family’s affairs for political reasons.’

‘Couldn’t he be replaced?’

After a moment Crepi gave another long, loud laugh.

‘My answer to that, dottore, is the same as a certain politician gave his wife when they went to the Uffizi to see that Botticelli which was cleaned recently. The wife is in raptures. I can just see it over the fireplace at home, she says. Listen, her husband replies, I can’t do everything, you know!’

Zen joined in his host’s laughter.

‘Anyway, this is really beside the point,’ Crepi resumed. ‘If the family were united, all the Bartoccis in the world couldn’t touch them. As it is, they would starve to death for want of agreeing which sauce to have with their pasta if the cook didn’t decide for them. And meanwhile Ruggiero’s life is in the balance! He’s over seventy years old, dottore, and his health is failing. Ever since the accident that killed his wife he has suffered from bouts of semi-paralysis down one side of his body. Two years ago it looked as though he would have to give up working altogether, but in the end he pulled through. Who knows how he’s suffering at this very moment, while we sit here warm and well fed in front of the fire? He must be brought home! The family must pay whatever is being asked, immediately, with no further haggling! That’s what you must tell them, dottore.’

To hide his look of dismay, Zen brought the glass to his lips and drained off the last drops of grappa.

‘What makes you think they’ll listen to me?’

‘I don’t mean the family.’

‘Who, then?’

Crepi leaned forward.

‘Your arrival here in Perugia will be widely reported. I’ll see to that! You’ll be interviewed. They’ll ask you about your impressions of the case. Tell them! That’s all. Just tell them.’

‘Tell them what?’

‘Tell them that you wonder how serious the Milettis really are about getting Ruggiero back! Tell them that the family gives no impression of having understood the extreme gravity and urgency of the situation. In a word, tell them that you’re not convinced that the Milettis are in earnest! Naturally I’ll give you my fullest backing. We’ll shame them into paying! Do you see? Eh? What do you say?’

But at that moment the phone rang.