Ratking

SIX

Twenty-four hours later he was sitting out on the Corso. It was brilliantly sunny and the atmosphere was charged with vitality and optimism. One bar had even gone so far as to put a few tables outside, and on impulse Zen settled down to enjoy the sunlight and watch the show on the Corso. This broad, flat street was the city’s living room, the one place where you didn’t need a reason for being. Being there was reason enough, strolling back and forth, greeting your friends and acquaintances, window-shopping, showing off your new clothes or your new lover, occasionally dropping into one of the bars for a coffee or an ice-cream.

For about fifteen minutes he did nothing but sit there contentedly, sipping his coffee and watching the restless, flickering scene around him through half-open eyes: the tall, bearded man with a cigar and a fatuous grin who walked up and down at an unvarying even pace like a clockwork soldier, never looking at anybody; the plump ageing layabout in a Gestapo officer’s leather coat and dark glasses holding court outside the door of the cafe, trading secrets and scandal with his men friends, assessing the passers-by as though they were for sale, calling after women and making hourglass gestures with his hairy, gold-ringed hands; a frail old man bent like an S, with a crazy harmless expression and a transistor radio pressed to his ear, walking with the exaggerated urgency of those who have nowhere to go; slim Africans with leatherwork belts and bangles laid out on a piece of cloth; a gypsy child sitting on the cold stone playing the same four notes over and over again on a cheap concertina; two foreigners with guitars and a small crowd around them; a beggar with his shirt pulled down over one shoulder to reveal the stump of an amputated arm; a pudgy, shapeless woman with an open suitcase full of cigarette lighters and bootleg cassettes; the two Nordic girls at the next table, basking half-naked in the weak March sun as though this might be the last time it appeared this year.

At length Zen lazily drew out of his pocket the three items of mail he had collected from the Questura. One was a letter stamped with the initials of the police trade union and addressed to Commissioner Italo Pompeo Baldoni. He replaced this in his pocket and picked up a heavy cream-coloured envelope with his own name printed on it, and a postcard showing the Forum at sunset in gaudy and unrealistic colour with a message reading ‘Are you still alive? Give me a ring – if you have time. Ellen.’

Putting this aside, he tore open the cream-coloured envelope. It contained four sheets of paper closely covered in unfamiliar handwriting, and it was a measure of how relaxed he was that it took him the best part of a minute to realize that he was holding a photocopy of the letter written by Ruggiero Miletti to his family three days previously. My children, If I address you collectively, it is because I no longer know who to address individually. I no longer know who my friends are within the family. I no longer even know if I have any friends. Can you imagine how bitter it is for me to have to write that sentence? I remember one day, long ago, when I was out hunting with my father. He showed me a farmhouse, a solid four-square Umbrian tenant farm, surrounded by a grove of trees to break the wind. Look, he said, that is what a family is. Have many children, he told me, for children are an old man’s only defence against the blows of fate. I obeyed him. In those days children did obey their fathers. But what has it availed me? For you, my children, my only defence, my protection against the cruel winds of fate, what do you do? Instead of sheltering me, you turn to squabbling among yourselves, haggling over the cost of your own father’s freedom as though I were an ox brought to market. It is not you but my kidnappers who care for me now, who feed me and clothe me and shelter me while you sit safe and secure at home trying to find new ways to avoid paying for my release! No doubt this tone surprises you. It is incautious, ill-advised, is it not? I should not permit myself such liberties! After all, my life is in your hands. If you treat me like an ox to be bargained for, I should be the more careful not to annoy you. Swallow your pride and your anger, old man! Flatter, plead, ingratiate and abase yourself before your all-powerful children! Yes, that is what I should do, if I wished to match you in devious cunning. But I don’t. You have refused to pay what has been asked for my return, but if you knew what I have become, a fearless old man with nothing left to lose, you would pay twice as much to have me kept away! Whatever happens now, my children, we can never be again as we were. Do you imagine that I could forgive and forget, knowing what I know now, or that any of you could meet my eye, knowing what you do? No! Though the ox escape the axe, it has smelt the blood and heard the bellows from the killing-floor, and it will never be fooled again. I know you now! And that knowledge is lodged in my heart like a splinter. Nothing remains to me of the pleasures and possessions of my old life, which you now enjoy at my expense. I have been forced to give them up. But in recompense I have received a gift worth more than all the rest put together. It is called freedom. You laugh? Not for long, I assure you! For I shall prove to you how free I am. Not free to indulge myself, to be sure. Not free to come and go, to buy and sell, to control my destiny. You have taken those freedoms from me. Losing them was bitter, and my only reward is that now I can afford the one thing which with all my wealth and power I’ve never been able to permit myself until this moment. I can afford to tell the truth. I have paid dearly for it, God knows! More than a hundred and forty days and nights of anguish to soul and body alike! My leg, which never mended properly after the accident, has not liked being cooped and cramped and bound, and like a mistreated animal it has turned against its master, making itself all pain. Yes, I have paid dearly. So let me show you what I mean by freedom. Let me tell you what I know, what I have learnt. Let me tell each of you the truth, one by one. I shall start with you, Daniele, my youngest, the spoilt darling of the family. What a beautiful child you were! How everyone doted on you! Whatever happened to that little boy, all cuddles and kisses and cheeky sayings that set everyone in a roar? Back in the sixties, when the kids seemed to think of nothing but politics and sex, I used to pray God almighty that my Daniele would never turn out like that. It never occurred to me that he might turn out even worse, a vain, spineless, ignorant lout with no interest in anything but clothes and television and pop music, who would be rotting in gaol at this very minute if his family hadn’t come to his rescue. But when his own father needs to be rescued little Daniele is too busy to lift a finger, like the rest of you. Cinzia I pass over in silence. Women cannot betray me, for I have never made the mistake of trusting them. The worst she could do was to bring that Tuscan adventurer into the family, since when none of us has had a moment’s peace. I can’t claim to have had my eyes opened to your true character, Gianluigi, for they were wide open from the first. Ask my daughter what I said to her on the subject! However, she preferred to disobey me. You think you’re so clever, Gianluigi, and that’s your problem, for your cleverness gleams like a wolf’s fangs. I at least was never fooled. Take this business of the Japanese offer, for example. Certainly the scheme you’ve worked out is very cunning. I really admire the way the structure of the holding company leaves you in effective control of SIMP through an apparently insignificant position in the marketing subsidiary. I suppose you thought that old Papa Miletti would be too stupid to spot that, wrapped up in a lot of technical detail about non-voting share blocks and nominal investment consortia? Of course the kidnapping has given you an extra edge. All you had to do was to hold up the negotiations until I got desperate and then bully me into authorizing the Japanese deal on the pretext of raising money to pay for my release! In fact the kidnapping was very well timed from your point of view, wasn’t it? It wouldn’t even surprise me to learn that you set it up! Beware of in-laws, my father used to say, and when he’s Tuscan into the bargain I think we can expect just about anything. But none of this really bothered me, it was all piss in the wind as long as my eldest boy was true. Silvio I had already written off, of course. I realized long ago that the only thing he has in common with other men is the prick between his legs. God knows why – I made him the same way I made the rest of you – but there it is. There’s nothing manly to be expected from Silvio, unless that English witch knows something the rest of us don’t. Let him spit in her mouth and breed toads. He’ll never breed anything else, that’s for sure. But Pietro made up for all that and for everything else, or so I thought. The rest of you, choke on this last gobbet of my scorn! If he had been loyal I should never even have mentioned these playroom plots and tantrums of yours. But what I didn’t realize, and what has proved the gravest shock to me, is that Pietro is the worst of you all. What a superb role he has invented for himself, the English gentleman who stands disdainfully aside from the vulgar squabbles of this Latin rabble to whom he has the misfortune to be related! I’ve got to hand it to you, son, you’re the only one who really managed to deceive me, the only one who could break your father’s heart. And you have, you have. The others I could afford to lose, but you were too precious. I loved you, I needed you, and blinded by my love and need I never looked at you closely enough. But now I have, and I see what I should have seen a long time ago, the selfish, arrogant, unscrupulous fixer who has been quietly feathering his nest in London for the past ten years at our expense after turning his back on us as though we weren’t good enough for him, who couldn’t even be bothered to come home during this ordeal but just flew over on a weekend return when the mood took him, when he had nothing better to do, like the tourist he is! Gianluigi likes to think he’s clever, but you really are, Pietro. You’ve inherited my brains and Loredana’s morals, God rest her. You don’t instigate plots, because you know that plots get found out. Instead you manipulate the plots of the others to your own ends, playing one off against the others, letting them waste their energies in fruitless rivalries while you look on from a safe distance, waiting patiently for the moment to make your move, the day when I drop dead and you can come home and claim your own. Well, there we are, I’ve had my say. How do you like yourselves, my children? When you lie down tonight in your soft warm beds, think over what I have said. Get up and look at yourselves in the mirror. Look hard and long, and then think of your father lying here tormented with cold and pain and fear and despair. What follows has been dictated by my kidnappers. For some reason they seem to believe that you will obey them this time. First, then, the full ransom of ten milliard lire is to be paid immediately, in well-worn consecutively numbered notes…

There, at the foot of a page, the photocopy broke off. Zen inspected the envelope. It was of distinctive hand-laid paper with a griffin watermark and had been posted in Perugia the previous Thursday.

‘A personal and private family letter,’ Pietro Miletti had said. ‘A rather distressing document, not intended to be read by outsiders. Certain passages made very disturbing reading.’ Yes, it was easy to see why the family who, as Antonio Crepi had put it, couldn’t agree which sauce to have with their pasta, had found no difficulty in agreeing to burn Ruggiero’s letter on the spot. But this made it so obvious who had sent this copy that he was astonished that it had been sent at all. When Pietro Miletti thought Zen must have seen the letter, he’d burst out, ‘But that’s impossible!’ Then an idea occurred to him, and he added, ‘Unless…’ Now Zen knew what he had been thinking. If the letter had been burnt in the presence of all the members of the family immediately after being read, then the copy could only have been sent to him before they received it, by the person who went to pick it up from the rubbish skip.

But that could wait. This was urgent news and he must inform Bartocci at once. Besides, he had not yet had a chance to speak to the investigating magistrate about the pay-off. He tucked a two-thousand lire note under one of the saucers on the tray and went inside the cafe to phone.

Luciano Bartocci wasted no time on small talk.

‘ Jesus Christ almighty, Zen, what the hell do you think you’ve been up to? ’

He was too taken aback to reply.

‘ The family are absolutely incensed, and quite naturally so. How could you do such a thing? I thought you were an experienced professional or I’d never have let you go in the first place! Don’t you realize the position this puts me in? ’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘ I’m talking about what happened at the pay-off, when you were beaten up. The woman who drove you told us all about it. It’s no use trying to cover up now.’

‘I’m not trying to…’

Another voice broke in.

‘ Maurizio? Maurizio, is that you? ’

‘ It’s in use! ’

‘ What? Who is this? ’

‘ This line is in use, please put your phone down.’

There was a grunt and a click.

‘ Hello? Hello? ’

‘I’m still here,’

‘ The man who assaulted you called you a dirty cop, or words to that effect. So evidently they knew who you were. You must have given yourself away somehow. It’s absolutely unforgivable.’

‘They didn’t find out from me!’

‘ Then how did they find out? Eh? ’

Zen decided to give him the only answer he had been able to come up with.

‘Perhaps one of the family told them.’

‘ That’s nonsense! Why should they do that? ’

Zen put a hand out against the wall to steady himself.

‘How should I know? The last I heard you thought they were behind the whole thing!’

‘ Now, listen, that’s enough! I don’t want to hear any more talk of that kind. This is a very serious situation you’ve got us into. There’s no telling what the gang may do now.’

Zen lowered the receiver and stared at it, as though its expression might help him understand the words it was uttering.

‘ Hello? Hello? ’

Bartocci’s voice emerged in a comically diminished squawk, like a character in a cartoon film. The white-jacketed waiter scurried into the cafe carrying a tray on which a pyramid of empty cups and glasses was balanced. ‘Four coffees two beers one mineral water!’ he called to the barman. With a sigh Zen raised the receiver again.

‘Look, dottore, they knew I was there before I got out of the car, before they’d even had a glimpse of me.’

‘ I’d like to believe you, Zen. But it’s just not credible. If the gang knew you were coming why did they allow the pay-off to continue? Why didn’t they just cancel the whole thing? ’

‘I don’t know. All I know is that my presence was no surprise to them, but they decided to go ahead with the drop anyway. And afterwards they went to the trouble of calling out the Carabinieri to make sure I didn’t die of exposure. So there’s no reason to suppose that they’re going to do anything stupid now.’

‘ You and the kidnappers seem to have a perfect understand ¬ ing, Zen. They know what you’re doing, you know what they’re thinking. I just hope you’re right. For all our sakes.’

The line went dead.

A young man with a bad case of acne approached and pointed at the phone.

‘You finished?’

Yes, he had finished. There was no point now in telling Bartocci about the letter he had received. The young magistrate had embraced orthodoxy with the fervour of a recent convert. He was no longer interested in sensational revelations by anonymous informants.

As Zen turned away he glanced at the calendar hanging beside the phone, and suddenly realized what day it was. After all these years it had finally happened! Come hell or high water, he’d always managed to get his mother a present and to send her some flowers and a card. But this time he had forgotten, and tomorrow was her birthday.

Then he remembered Palottino. Since arriving in Perugia the Neapolitan’s days had been spent slumped in the Alfetta in the car park beneath Zen’s office window, reading comics and listening to the radio. Yet poor Luigi was not happy. He longed for action, yearned to be trusted with high responsibilities, to undertake prodigious feats requiring a cool head, a stout heart and nerves of steel. Delivering a gift to Zen’s mother didn’t quite come into that category, but it was better than nothing. Besides, he could pick up some Nazionali from Zen’s tame tobacconist as well. So it only remained to find a suitable present.

Forty minutes later he was still empty-handed and beginning to panic. It was a feeling which often came over him in shops, a paralysis of the decision-making faculty. Nevertheless he had to get something, and quickly, before the shops closed for lunch. It was at this point that he found himself face to face with Cinzia Miletti.

‘Show me where they hit you!’ she cried. ‘Oh, is that all? Surely it should be worse. But you must tell me all about it, I can’t wait to hear. Come and have coffee, I’m just on my way home, you can help carry this. Gianluigi’s away and if that woman thinks I’m going to wait one second longer…’

Zen murmured something about needing to find his mother a present, and Cinzia immediately took charge.

‘Well now, let’s see, it should be something traditional, characteristic, typical of the region. Embroidery, for example, or does she collect ceramics? I know, chocolates! We’ll get her a nice presentation pack, that one over there, local pottery.’

Even once Cinzia had bullied one of the assistants into offering Zen a discount, the item she had selected came to about three times what he had reckoned to spend, but he paid up. A few minutes later the Deruta vase containing about half a kilo of assorted chocolates had been placed on the rear seat of the Volvo and he was sitting in the front watching Cinzia tear up the parking ticket which had been tucked under the windscreen wiper.

Cinzia Miletti drove as she talked, in a prolonged spasm characterized by unpredictable leaps and frenetic darts and swerves, serenely unimpressed by the existence of other traffic. The drive to her house just outside Perugia was littered with miraculously unachieved collisions. Cinzia naturally also talked as she drove. If anything she seemed even more voluble than usual, which Zen put down to embarrassment. With her father’s fate still undecided, he had caught her cruising the shops as though she hadn’t a care in the world. She was therefore at some pains to explain that the only reason she had come into Perugia at all was because of an appointment with Ivy Cook, of all people, who had telephoned her earlier that morning.

‘I must see you urgently, she tells me, shall I come out there or could you meet me in town? So out of the kindness of my heart I agreed to come in.’

The kindness of Cinzia Miletti’s heart was a quality Zen had considerable difficulty in imagining where Ivy Cook was concerned, but he found it easy enough to believe that in her husband’s absence Cinzia had been feeling bored and had welcomed any excuse for going into Perugia.

‘Did she say what it was about?’

‘She didn’t want to discuss it on the phone, that’s all I know. First of all I had the most awful trouble starting this thing. We should never have got rid of the little Fiat we used to have which started first time every time and if anything did go wrong you could fix it with an elastic band or a bit of string, Gianluigi used to say, although personally I’m hopeless with machinery. Anyway, when I got to the cafe where we were supposed to meet there’s no sign of her! Well, you can’t get near her flat, they’ve closed the street, they’re turning the whole city centre into a museum, next thing they’ll be charging admission and closing in the afternoon. I had to walk all the way round there in these shoes, they look good but believe me they’re not meant for walking, and in the end she’s not even home. Have you ever heard anything like it? I mean, it’s really just the most infuriating thing conceivable, maddening, really.’

They were driving through the suburbs in the valley far below the ancient hill settlement forming the historic core of the city. In the midst of concrete towers and slabs, the office blocks and apartment buildings of the new Perugia, stood an old stone farmhouse, squat and sturdy, with its attendant chicken coops and vegetable garden, the walls dyed green by years of sulphur sprayed on the vines running up to form a pergola. Was this the one Franco Miletti had pointed out to his son Ruggiero as an image of the family? If so, the protective trees had gone, and the brutal buildings which had replaced them would channel the wind more fiercely, not screen it.

They crossed the strip of wasteland underneath the motorway link that came tunnelling and bridging its way through the hilly landscape, and entered a zone of fenced-off lots containing warehouses and sales-rooms, light industrial units and the offices of small businesses. The whole area was no more than ten or fifteen years old, straggling along either side of what had once been a country road and ending messily with the shell of an unfinished building of some indeterminate nature. Shortly afterwards Cinzia turned off along an unpaved minor road. High boundary fences marked the position of villas hiding coyly behind rows of evergreens. Guard dogs hurled themselves against the wire and then chased the car the length of the property, barking frantically, while Cinzia told Zen how she had persuaded Gianluigi to buy a place in the country although he couldn’t see the point, but to her nature was not a luxury but something fundamental, a source of sanity and order, did he understand what she meant?

They drew up in front of a pair of steel gates topped with spikes. While Cinzia searched the glove compartment for the remote control unit, Zen noted the heavy-duty fencing with angled strands of barbed wire at the top and electronic sensors at the bottom, and the video camera mounted on a pole just inside the gates, all of it brand new. The local security equipment retailers had clearly done well out of Ruggiero Miletti’s kidnapping. Bartocci should have noticed details like that, thought Zen. People don’t go out and spend millions turning their homes into prison camps unless there is real fear in the air.

They were barely inside the front door when the elderly housekeeper appeared and told Cinzia that Signorina Cook had been looking for her.

‘What?’ shrieked Cinzia. ‘Here? But she must be mad!’

‘She said you were supposed to meet her here. She waited about ten minutes and then left.’

‘What nonsense! Would I have bothered to go all the way into town if we had arranged to meet here?’

The housekeeper held up her hands in a conciliatory gesture and started saying something about a mistake. But Cinzia was not to be mollified.

‘Oh no, she did it deliberately! Well, I’ll teach her to play tricks on me!’

She strode to the telephone and dialled. After a moment or two she passed the receiver to Zen with an exclamation of disgust.

‘Just listen to this!’

‘… at the moment,’ Ivy’s recorded voice said. ‘ If you wish to leave a message please speak after the tone.’

‘I’ll leave her a message all right, when I see her,’ Cinzia exclaimed, slamming the receiver down.

She turned to Zen, her anger apparently gone.

‘I’m going to change. Look around, make yourself at home. Margherita, make us some coffee.’

Zen stood there in the elegant and spacious sitting room, listening to the insistent voices of the glass and steel coffee table supporting a spray of glossy magazines, the pouchy leather furniture over which a huge lamp on a curved stainless-steel pole craned like a vulture, the silver plates and the crystal bowls, the discreetly modern canvases, the shelves lined with works of literature, the expensive antiques, the handwoven rugs on the gleaming parquet floor, the baby grand piano with a Mozart sonata lying open on the stand, the fireplace piled high with logs. The view from the picture window showed a carefully landscaped garden, a swimming pool, a tennis court, and a field where a wiry old gardener in baggy peasant clothing and a felt hat was tending his master’s vines and olives. Even nature was made to chatter.

‘Ah, so you’ve found our little secret, with your policeman’s flair!’

The room had as many entrances and exits as a stage set. Cinzia had appeared almost at his elbow. She picked up a small statuette which he hadn’t been aware of before.

‘But we didn’t buy it from some grave-robber, you know. I mean, that’s totally wrong, taking the national heritage for your own selfish private use. But you see, Gianluigi’s cousin works in the museum and they’ve got so much stuff there they literally don’t know what to do with it all, it just sits and rots in boxes in the cellar, no one ever sees it. At least here it’s cared for, admired, which is what they would have wanted. Wonderful people, very sexual and full of life. I’m sure I have Etruscan blood in me.’

She was wearing a short skirt with a big broad belt, a soft woollen pullover with a deep V-neck and a double string of pearls. She had removed her shoes and stockings.

‘This wood is magic,’ she exclaimed. ‘In winter it’s warm and in summer it’s cool, can you explain that? I can’t, not that I want to. I hate explanations, they ruin everything. But you mustn’t peek at my feet like that, poor horrible ugly deformed things.’

She moved restlessly about the room, lifting and rearranging things without any evident purpose.

‘Kant,’ she remarked, taking a book down from the shelf. ‘Have you read Kant? I keep meaning to, but somehow I never get around to it.’

She curled up in the leather sofa that looked as comfortable as a bed and waved Zen into a matching armchair opposite.

‘So your husband’s away?’ he queried.

‘In Milan, lucky pig! Very urgent business which he’d been putting off. But there’s no point in him being here anyway, as far as I can see. I mean there’s nothing we can do, any of us. It’s just a question of waiting.’

Despite her alleged impatience to hear about his experiences during the pay-off, she made no attempt to refer to it again, launching instead into a blow-by-blow account of a film she had seen the previous evening, going on to explain that she loved films, really loved them, that the only place to see them properly was the cinema, that her favourite was a wonderful old place in the centre of town called the Minerva, and what a shame it was that no one went to the cinema any more.

The housekeeper brought in the coffee in an ornate silver tray which she deposited on one level of the Scandinavian wall-system. I’ve been in the family for generations, said the tray, so you can see that they’re not just a bunch of jumped-up farmers like so many around these days. Quite so, commented the wall-system, but despite their solid roots these are modern progressive people with a truly cosmopolitan outlook. Oh, shut up, Zen thought. Just shut up.

‘Is your husband’s trip to Milan connected with this Japanese deal I’ve been hearing about?’ he asked.

Cinzia’s air of boredom deepened significantly.

‘He never discusses business with me.’

And you would do well to follow his example, her eyes added, because while I’m not very good at business there are other things that I am good at, very good indeed.

A lanky girl with a moody look walked in, strolled selfconsciously over to the table and took a tangerine from a bowl.

‘Fetch me my cigarettes, will you, Loredana darling?’ Cinzia asked her.

‘Fetch them yourself. You could use the exercise.’

Cinzia shot Zen a dazzling smile.

‘Do forgive her manners. It’s a difficult age, of course. She’ll start menstruating soon.’

The girl threw the cigarettes at her mother.

‘Much better talk openly about it!’ Cinzia continued calmly. ‘There’s no need for us women to be ashamed of our bodies any more.’

‘It’s not your fucking body,’ the girl shouted as she ran upstairs.

‘She’s a crazy mixed-up kid,’ exclaimed Cinzia, as though this was one of her daughter’s main virtues. ‘At the moment she keeps threatening to become a nun, if you please. My other one’s about somewhere too, little Sergio. He’s a darling! Too much so, in fact. I’m reading him the Greek myths at bedtime and I just hope when we get to Oedipus the penny will drop. It’s perfectly normal at that age, of course. At least I haven’t taught him how to masturbate, like some mothers. Cigarette?’

As she leaned forward to offer them her pullover bellied out and he caught a glimpse of her breasts, almost adolescent in size, but with large and prominent nipples.

‘I’ve always tried to be an understanding parent,’ she continued. ‘I treat my kids as friends and equals.’

‘Is that how your parents treated you?’

‘My mother’s dead!’ she replied vaguely.

‘What about your father? Did he treat you as an equal?’

Cinzia laughed almost hysterically.

‘Well, it depends what you mean. I suppose he does his best. But take the business of Daniele’s arrest, for instance. That was typical. For years father had been nagging away at him to take some interest and prove he had the Miletti flair, yet as soon as he tried to show a bit of initiative everyone got on their high horse about it, father especially, calling him a worthless junkie and I don’t know what else besides. It was so unfair, I thought. I mean, I suppose what the others were doing was illegal, but it’s not as if they were forcing anyone to take the stuff. If they hadn’t sold it someone else would have. And as far as Daniele was concerned it was just a business arrangement, nothing else. He never actually took the stuff or got his hands dirty in any way.’

She rearranged herself in another pose, her legs curled under her like a cat. She was quite calm again now.

‘As it was, the poor kid ended up losing everything. Not just the money he’d invested but his allowance from father as well. Lulu’s been helping him out, but it’s still been very hard on him. Now I don’t call that being very understanding, do you? You’d think people would be more tolerant with their own family.’

Zen gulped down the rest of his coffee and announced that he had to be going.

‘Already?’ Cinzia queried with a pout. ‘Why not stay to lunch? Margherita’s a wonderful cook.’

Her disappointment appeared genuine, but he forced himself to phone Palottino. ‘The family are absolutely incensed’, Bartocci had told him. If Zen had survived more or less intact all this time it was thanks to the instinct that was telling him to leave now.

‘You still haven’t told me about your adventure,’ Cinzia reminded him as they waited for Palottino to arrive. ‘It must have been terrifying. I think you’re very brave. To sit in a car with that Cook woman for however many hours it was, I simply couldn’t do it! Did you talk a lot? Did she talk about me? She must have done. What did she say?’

‘We didn’t talk that much.’

‘Oh come on, I don’t believe that! I know the woman. What did she say? Whatever it was I’ve heard worse. Tell me. What did she say about me?’

He looked away, out of the window, then back at Cinzia.

‘She said you were terribly unhappy,’ he replied.

Her features abruptly slackened all over, making her look years older.

‘Unhappy?’

It was a shriek.

‘She’s crazy! I’ve suspected it for a long time, but now it’s absolutely clear! Absolutely and totally clear, plain and evident for everyone to see.’

She gripped Zen’s arm tightly.

‘I ask you, do I look unhappy? Do I seem unhappy?

Have I got the slightest reason in the world to be unhappy? Look at this house! Look at my husband and my children, look at my whole life. Then look at her! What has she got? Unhappy? What a joke!’

She walked away a little distance, then came back to him.

‘The truth is that she envies me,’ she went on more calmly. ‘She envies all of us, she’s riddled with envy! That’s the real problem. It’s not me who’s unhappy, it’s her! She’s projecting her problems on to me. I’ve read about it, it’s a well-known thing that mad people do.’

She shook her head and tried to smile.

‘I’m a little tense at the moment, with Gianluigi away and still no word about father.’

‘I’m sure he’ll be released very soon now,’ Zen said as reassuringly as he knew how.

But an oddly vacant look had come over Cinzia’s features. Deafened by thoughts he couldn’t begin to guess at, she hadn’t even heard him.

Back at the Questura Zen tried to put Cinzia Miletti out of his mind. He felt that a winning hand had been dealt him and that he had played it badly, perhaps even from a professional point of view. In any case, it was too late now.

He stuck his head round the door to the inspectors’ room.

‘Anyone know an officer called Baldoni?’

Geraci looked up.

‘Baldoni? He’s in Drugs.’

‘Three five one,’ Chiodini chimed in without raising his eyes from his newspaper.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Lucaroni told him. ‘This is three five one.’

Chiodini stuck one fat finger thoughtfully up his right nostril.

‘Used to be three five one,’ he pronounced at last.

Lucaroni consulted the directory.

‘He’s in four two five,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to…?’

‘That’s all right,’ Zen replied. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

Baldoni was a pudgy, balding man wearing a blue blazer with five silver buttons, a canary-yellow pullover and a red tie. He was picking his teeth with a match while someone on the phone talked his ear off. When he hung up Zen handed him the letter.

‘Fucking union,’ he frowned. ‘All they ever do is ask for money. The reason I joined was I thought they were going to get more money for me, not take it away.’

‘I’m on the Miletti kidnapping,’ Zen began.

Baldoni looked at him more warily.

‘Rather you than me.’

‘I understand that Daniele Miletti got himself into some trouble with your section some time ago.’

Baldoni laughed briefly.

‘Got himself into it and got himself out of it.’

He tried to sit casually on the edge of his desk, farted loudly and stood up again.

‘You know about the University for Foreigners?’ he demanded. His tone was suspicious and aggressive, as though the institution in question was missing and Zen was suspected of having stolen it.

‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘Forget what you’ve heard. I know what you’ve heard. You’ve heard about this symbol of the brotherhood of man set in welcoming Perugia with its ancient traditions of hospitality, where every year bright-eyed, bushy-tailed youngsters come from the four corners of the world to study Italian culture and promote peace and international understanding.’

He looked intently at Zen.

‘You’re not from round here, are you?’

Zen shook his head.

‘In that case I can tell you that in my humble opinion this place is the meanest, tightest little arsehole in the entire fucking country. International understanding my bum! Christ, the people in this dump are so small-minded they treat the folk from the village down the hill as a bunch of aliens. So why do they put up with the real foreigners? For one very simple reason, my friend. It’s spelt m, o, n, e, y.’

‘And Daniele?’ Zen prompted.

‘Don’t worry, I’m getting there. Now you also have to realize that the foreigners aren’t like the ones you’ve heard about either. They used to come down from the North – German, Swiss, English, American. Girls, mostly. They came to read Dante, drink wine, sit in the sun and get laid. But those days are long gone. Now the Arabs have moved in, because you-know-who in Rome has done a deal for oil rights, including a fat kickback for you-know-who, naturally. Meanwhile you and I get paid worse than his housekeeper and the fucking union writes to ask me to send them money!

‘So, anyway, all these Arabs start rolling up to learn engineering and dentistry and Christ knows what. Unfortunately the professors object to giving lessons in Arabic, so suddenly we’ve got hundreds of thousands of students who need to learn Italian. And where do they go? To the University for Foreigners, of course, right here in lovely medieval Perugia. Only these foreigners are a bit different from what we’ve been used to. Masculine like they don’t make them any more, don’t give a fuck about Dante, don’t touch alcohol, find it cold here after their own country and are more interested in praying and politics than getting laid. Bright eyes and bushy tails are at a distinct premium among this bunch, and as for the brotherhood of man, their idea of that is that if someone disagrees with you, you kill him. Remember, Ali Agca, the man who shot the Pope? He was here. Remember the Palestinian commando that murdered half the Israeli athletes at the Munich games? They trained at a farmhouse in the hills just outside Perugia. The Jihad Islamica suicide squads, the pro-Khomeini mob, the anti-Khomeini mob, KGB spies, Bulgarian hit-men, you name it, it’s been here. The Political Branch have installed a hot line direct to the Ministry’s central computer in Rome and even so they can’t keep up. At one time there were two and half thousand Iranians alone in town. Their consul in Rome came up on an official visit last year and there was nearly a diplomatic incident when he got thrown out of the new university canteen he’d come to inspect. Turned out the last time the staff had seen him he was a student here and he’d made such an arsehole of himself they’d sworn they’d never let him back in!

‘All right, so that’s the new Perugia, crossroads of international terrorism. A big headache for the Politicos upstairs but what’s it got to do with yours truly, you’re no doubt wondering, or with Daniele Miletti for that matter? Well, terrorists need cash. The official ones get it from the government back home, the rest have to earn it. And there’s no quicker way to make money than drugs, particularly if you happen to come from a country where the stuff is sold like artichokes. So we start to take an interest, and among other things we’re passed the names of a couple of Iranians who make frequent trips back home by train. That’s one hell of a way to travel to Iran, unless of course you want to avoid the screening procedures at the airports. The next time through we have them picked up and lo and behold they’ve got a suitcase full of heroin. So we get to work on them and forty-eight hours later we have the whole ring, including one Gerhard Mayer, twenty-nine, from West Berlin, their linkman into the local drug community. Which is where everything starts to fuck up, because the moment we turn our attention to Herr Mayer he tells us that the money he used to pay the Iranians was put up by the son of a certain well-known local citizen.’

‘Daniele Miletti.’

‘You know the feeling? One minute I had a nice clean case bust wide open, stiff sentences all round and bonus promotion points for yours truly. The moment that fucking kraut mentioned Miletti I knew I could kiss that sweet dream goodbye. We went through the motions and pulled him in, of course, but by the time the magistrate spoke to him Mayer had changed his mind. He’d never met Daniele Miletti, never seen him, never heard of him. The kid was back home in time for lunch.’

‘And Mayer’s statement?’ Zen queried.

‘Extorted under duress. Duress my bum! Mayer couldn’t fucking wait to shop his rich young pal.’

‘What happened to Mayer?’

‘He hopped on the first plane back to Germany.’

Zen gazed at him, frowning.

‘They let him out? With a drug trafficking charge hanging over him?’

Baldoni nodded.

‘Like I say, where the Milettis are concerned, rather you than me, my friend. Rather you than me.’

By the evening Zen was beginning to feel like a hostage himself. He had spent the entire afternoon in his office, pacing from the desk to the window, from the window to door and back to the desk again. It was now over forty hours since the money had been handed over, but there had been no word of Ruggiero Miletti’s release. Despite the fact that he was powerless to influence events in any way, Zen felt bound to remain on watch, like the captain of a ship. But in the end he could stand it no longer and went out for a walk.

The evening was warm and calm, but the side streets through which he wandered at random were almost deserted. Very occasionally his path crossed that of a couple walking home or a group of a young friends going up to the centre, and then the brief appraising glances they gave him left Zen feeling obscurely ill at ease, underlining as they did his lack of purpose or direction. Thoughts flitted to and fro in his brain like swallows: phrases from Ruggiero Miletti’s letter, an insinuation of Antonio Crepi’s, something Ivy had said in the car, what Valesio’s widow had told him, Luciano Bartocci’s brisk new manner, Italo Baldoni’s story, Cinzia Miletti’s breasts…

He felt simultaneously starved and stuffed, deafened and denied. It was the nature of the place, he thought, perched up there on its remote peak, its back turned to the world, all the more obsessed with its petty intrigues and scandals because it knew them to be of no interest whatever to anyone else. Nothing he had been told from the very first moment he had arrived in Perugia amounted to any more than salacious gossip, casual slanders, ill-informed rumours of no real value which elsewhere would never have reached his ears. But folk here were eager to let you into their neighbour’s secrets, particularly if they thought it might distract your attention from their own. ‘Mayer couldn’t fucking wait to shop his rich young pal.’ Yes, that was the style of the place. It was all a fuss about nothing, another example of the national genius for weaving intricate variations around the simplest event. Zen had always derived much amusement from Ellen’s simple-minded approach to current affairs. Despite her intelligence, she could be quite amazingly naive and literal in her judgements. She seemed to believe that the truth was great and would prevail, so why waste time spinning a lot of fancy theories? Whereas Zen knew that the truth prevailed, if at all, only after so much time had passed that it had become meaningless, like a senile prisoner who can safely be released, his significance forgotten, his friends dead, a babbling idiot.

But in the present case it was time to take a stand, to declare once and for all that on this occasion at least the truth was as obvious and evident as it appeared to be. The crimes which had been committed were manifestly the work of hardened professionals who had no more to do with the incestuous dramas of this city than Zen himself. Any suggestion to the contrary was simply an excuse for the locals to feel self-important and settle a few scores with their neighbours.

Inevitably, his steps led him in the end to the Corso, where the evening promenade was in progress. People paraded up and down, displaying their furs and finery, hailing their friends, seeing and being seen, streaming back and forth continually like swimmers in a pool. The stars of either sex clustered in twos or threes, massing their power, or strode out alone, shining soloists, while the less attractive gathered for protection in groups outside the offices of some religious or political organization. Part of the street was thronged with teenagers, and more were arriving every instant on their mopeds. The males dominated, bold gangling youths in brightly coloured designer anoraks and jeans turned up to reveal their American-style chunky leather boots. They threw their weight about with boisterous nonchalance while the girls, in frilly lace collars like doilies, tartan skirts and coloured tights, looked on admiringly. One of the most prominent of them was a tall youth with the extravagant gestures and loud voice of an actor who knows he’s going down well. Only at the last moment, when he’d been recognized in turn, did Zen realize that it was Daniele Miletti.

It was almost predictable. The young trendies of the soft right, like their Fascist counterparts of half a century earlier, bragged about not giving a damn. Nothing would do more to boost Daniele’s status than to be seen showing off on the Corso while his father’s life still hung in the balance.

‘A very good evening to you, dottore!’ the boy called out in a bad parody of a Venetian accent. ‘So sorry to hear about your accident. Do try and take more care in future!’

He turned to explain the joke to his companions, who all laughed loudly.

‘Don’t you dare beat me up, you nasty nasty man, I’m a policeman!’ one of them shrieked in a mocking falsettto.

Zen pushed on, understanding how Italo Baldoni must have felt when the young Miletti slipped through his fingers. Increasingly it seemed to him that there were people who needed to spend a few hours locked in a room with the likes of Chiodini. The trouble with the system was that they were the ones who never did. But he would never admit to such a thought, and in fact felt guilty for even thinking it. Then he felt resentful for being made to feel guilty, so that by the time he got back to the Questura all the benefits of his walk had been cancelled out.

He’d had an irrational feeling that something must have happened in his absence, simply because he hadn’t been there, but he was wrong. He was back where he’d started, staring at the wall with nothing to do but wait. As his eyes fell on the crucifix he realized that he’d always loathed it, and in a small gesture of defiance he lifted it off its hook and set it down on top of the filing cabinet. Then he remembered the copy of Ruggiero’s letter, and realized that there was something he could do after all.

‘ Seven double eight one eight.’

‘Good evening. This is Aurelio Zen. Am I disturbing you?’

‘ No, no. Not at all. Well not really…’

Ivy sounded ill at ease. Had she already guessed why he was calling?

‘I wanted to contact you this morning, but…’

‘ I was out. I’d arranged to meet someone.’

‘Yes, I know. I met Cinzia Miletti in town. She’d been waiting for you.’

‘ Well, I’d been waiting for her, too! We’d arranged to meet at her house.’

‘She told me that you phoned her and asked for a meeting in town.’

‘ I really can’t imagine why she should have said that, Com missioner. It’s exactly the opposite of what happened. She phoned me and asked me to come straight over. She didn’t say why, but obviously in my position…’

It occurred to Zen that while they were talking any incoming call announcing Ruggiero’s release would be blocked.

‘Never mind about that,’ he said briskly. ‘There’s something I want to discuss with you. It’s about a letter I’ve received.’

‘ A letter? What son of letter? ’

‘I’d rather not discuss it on the phone. Do you think you could drop into my office? It won’t take long.’

‘ Well, it’s a bit difficult. It’s a question of the family, you see. I’m not sure they’d approve, just at present.’

They’d approve still less if they knew what it was about, thought Zen.

‘ Perhaps later on, once this is all over.’

‘Very well. I’ll contact you later then.’

He hung up, his hand hovering hopefully above the receiver. But the phone remained sullenly silent.

His suspicions were confirmed. The uncharacteristic fuss and fluster in Ivy’s manner was surely a proof that she knew only too well which letter he was talking about and was in mortal dread of the family finding out.

He took out the letter and scanned the final lines again. That mistake was curious: ‘… well-worn consecutively numbered notes…’ For a moment it had made him inclined to doubt the authenticity of the whole thing. But it was only a detail, and it didn’t alter the fact that no one but Ivy could have done it. She must have taken the letter straight to a photocopy shop after collecting it from the skip and then posted the copy to Zen before returning to the house, calculating that if the copy came to light each of the Milettis would equally be under suspicion. But that calculation had gone up in smoke with the original letter, and since then she must have bitterly regretted her rashness. Why had she taken such a risk? Was it because she knew the Miletti family only too well, and was determined that this time at least everything should not be conveniently hushed up? Had sending Zen the letter been her humble way of serving the great principle upon which Luciano Bartocci had now apparently turned his back, of not letting the bastards get away with it? At all events, she had committed no crime, so there was no reason for him to pursue the matter any further.

He sat there until his eyelids began to droop, then phoned the switchboard and told them that he would be at his hotel. There was no point in continuing his lonely vigil.

But why couldn’t he rid himself of the eerie sensation that it had already happened, that everyone knew except him, that he was being deliberately kept in the dark?