Dead Lagoon - 4

by Michael Dibdin

  But things were changing fast in Italy. These days, the men who woke from nightmares between sweated sheets were the very ones who had inflicted the experience on Zen at the time of the Aldo Moro affair, and for many years after. Now their names were being spoken of in connection with that event, and with all the other horrors of post-war Italy – spoken not furtively, in corners, but in committees of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. In a world where a judge could go on record as saying that the Italian Mafia and the Italian government were one and the same, nothing and no one was sacred any longer.

  In such a world, it was no longer possible to calculate the odds with any certainty. The hand which had closed the Durridge file might even now be in cuffs, unable to influence even its own fate, never mind that of others. Or, on the contrary, it might still be hovering over the buttons of power, all the more dangerous and unpredictable for the knowledge that its days were numbered. There was simply no way of knowing.

  Zen stopped on a bridge, leaning over the railing. The walls of the canal, exposed by the tide, presented bands of colour ranging from brick red at the top through green and blue to a brown which turned slime grey underwater. He had no idea where he was. Time seemed to have stopped. The sky was overcast, an even grey. There was no breath of wind in the airless canyons of these back canals. The houses all around were shuttered, silent.

  Zen looked down, staring at the pitted black metal of the railing. It was the French who had added these refinements when they put an end to the Republic’s thousand-year independence. Until then the city’s bridges had been mere arcs of stone, to all appearances as weightless and insubstantial as their reflections, across which the inhabitants went nimbly about their business. Not only were guard-rails or balustrades unnecessary for a people who spent half their life in boats, but they were, as Silvio Morosini had once remarked, ‘an insult to the water’.

  Zen let go of the railing and straightened up. He crossed the bridge and turned right, then left, then right again, striding along with ever greater determination. He knew where he was now, and where he was going, and what he would do when he got there.

  *

  ‘Dating from when?’

  ‘Nineteen forty-five or six.’

  ‘If it still exists, it’ll be in Central Archives.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘On the Tronchetto. You have to send in a written request. The stuff is supposed to arrive next day, but don’t hold your breath. Some sections are either missing or inaccessible. It’s best to fax your requirements, mark it “extremely urgent”, and then send a follow-up every hour or so until something happens. Number’s in the directory.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Zen replaced the receiver. Taking a sheet of headed notepaper from the drawer, he wrote Denunzia fornita alla P.G. dalla parte di Zulian, Ada in re Dolfin, Andrea in the wide, curling script he had been taught at the little school just opposite the Ghetto in the years immediately after the war. He remembered thinking of the Ghetto then as something from ancient history, like the doges and the Ten and the galleys, a prison island where the Jews had been shut up in the far-off days when such minorities had been persecuted. The fact that there were almost no Jews living there any longer had merely seemed to confirm its anachronistic nature.

  He finished writing out his request for the archive file relating to the complaint which Ada Zulian had made about Andrea Dolfin at that time, now itself part of history, and was just about to take it downstairs to the fax machine when the phone rang.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Could I speak to Aurelio Zen, please?’

  ‘Cristiana! What a pleasure to hear you.’

  ‘How did you know it was me?’

  Zen sat back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk.

  ‘Your voice is very distinctive,’ he said.

  ‘No one else seems to think so.’

  ‘Then they must be stupid.’

  There was a gurgle of laughter the other end.

  ‘But then I was already thinking about you,’ Zen added.

  There was a pause while they waited to see who was going to make the next move, and what it would be.

  ‘I went to see your husband speak last night,’ Zen remarked.

  ‘Did the earth move for you?’

  Zen laughed.

  ‘No, I had to fake it. But he certainly knows how to work a crowd.’

  ‘You should see his way with women.’

  Zen was about to add another line of banter when the roar of a motor outside made the windowpanes rattle.

  ‘Just a moment,’ he told Cristiana.

  He got up and went over to the window. A police launch had just come alongside the quay below. In the cockpit, a muscular man wearing a pair of oil-stained overalls stood beside a uniformed patrolmen. Zen went back to the phone.

  ‘I have to go, Cristiana. Something’s come up suddenly. I’ll call you back.’

  ‘Don’t bother with that. I’ll see you later.’ ‘I don’t know exactly when I’m going to be able to get home.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ said Cristiana, and hung up.

  Zen replaced the phone slowly. The engine noise outside died away and was replaced by a babble of voices. He crossed back to the window. The launch had now moored. The man in overalls was standing on the quay beside his police escort, who was being harangued by another man. The patrolman shrugged largely several times and gestured towards the Questura. The other man turned round, looking straight up at the window where Zen was standing. It was Enzo Gavagnin.

  Zen ran quickly to the door, threw it open and sprinted along the corridor and downstairs, two steps at a time. The group of men had reached the vestibule by the time Zen got there. Enzo Gavagnin marched straight up to him.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  Zen was so breathless he could not answer at once.

  ‘Todesco tells me you authorized him to bring this man in,’ Gavagnin went on aggressively.

  ‘Have you some objection to that?’ Zen gasped.

  ‘Giulio is a friend of mine. I’m not letting him be persecuted by some arsehole from Rome who thinks he can come up here and throw his weight about as much as he likes!’

  Zen turned to the patrolman, a hulking, popeyed individual with a face like an over-inflated balloon.

  ‘Anything happen at Palazzo Zulian last night, Todesco?’

  ‘Nossir.’

  ‘No incidents of any kind?’

  ‘Nossir.’

  ‘Very good. Take Signor Bon up to my office.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  Enzo Gavagnin thrust himself in front of Zen, staring at him with an air of barely-contained fury.

  ‘Let me see your warrant!’

  Zen glanced at him.

  ‘Signor Bon is not under arrest.’

  ‘Then what the hell is he doing here?’

  ‘I need to ask him a few questions.’

  ‘With regard to what?’ snapped Gavagnin.

  ‘To a case I’m working on.’

  ‘Valentini said you were working on the Ada Zulian case. Would you mind telling me what the fuck Giulio has to do with that?’

  Zen shrugged.

  Everything connects in the end, Enzo,’ he remarked archly. ‘We’re all part of the great web of life.’

  Gavagnin scowled.

  ‘And what were you doing at the rally last night?’ he demanded. ‘Is that connected to the case you’re working on as well?’

  ‘What were you doing there?’ Zen shot back.

  ‘I happen to be a founder member of the movement, just like Giulio,’ Gavagnin replied stiffly. ‘Unlike you, we’re true Venetians, and proud of it!’

  Zen nodded solemnly.

  ‘But I hear your granny screws Albanians,’ he murmured in dialect.

  ‘What?’

  Ignoring him, Zen turned away and followed the clattering boots of Bettino Todesco leading his charge upstairs.

  Zen sat behind the desk, Bon
in front of it. A female uniformed officer stood over a reel-to-reel tape recorder on a metal stand, threading the yellow leader through the slit in the empty reel. Outside, the sky lowered dull and flat over the furrowed red tiles and tall square chimneys of the houses opposite, on the other side of the canal.

  The policewoman straightened up. ‘Ready,’ she told Zen, who nodded. The reels of the recorder started to revolve. Zen recited the date, the time, the place.

  ‘Present are Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen and Sottotenente …’

  He glanced inquiringly at the policewoman, a svelte but rather severe brunette who contrived to make her duty-issue uniform look as though it sported a designer label from one of the better houses.

  ‘Nunziata, Pia,’ she replied, having paused the tape.

  ‘… and Sottotenente Pia Nunziata,’ Zen continued. ‘Also present is Signor Giulio Bon, resident at forty-three Via della Traversa, Chioggia, in the Province of Venice.’

  He cleared his throat and turned to gaze at the subject of the interview.

  ‘What is your occupation, Signor Bon?’

  Giulio Bon had been staring at the floor between his feet. He shuffled uneasily, working the toe of his right shoe about on the fake marble, and mumbled something inaudible.

  ‘Speak up, please!’ Zen told him.

  ‘I’m a marine engineer.’

  The voice was hoarse and clipped, with the characteristic boneless accent of Chioggia.

  ‘Meaning what?’ Zen demanded.

  Bon shrugged.

  ‘I’ve got a diploma as a marine engineer.’

  ‘I don’t care if you’ve got a degree in Greek philosophy,’ snapped Zen. ‘I asked about your occupation, not your qualifications.’

  Giulio Bon stared mutely at the floor for some time.

  ‘I run a boatyard,’ he said at last.

  ‘You’re the sole owner?’

  ‘My brother-in-law has a financial interest, but I look after the work.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘I employ two men full-time, and there are others I can call on when it’s busy.’

  ‘Their names?’

  Bon mumbled a series of names which Zen noted down.

  ‘What sort of work does the yard handle?’ he asked.

  ‘Repairs, servicing, laying up.’

  ‘Do you also sell boats?’

  Bon became very still. Only his foot moved jerkily about on the glossy paving.

  ‘From time to time,’ he said.

  ‘How many do you sell every year?’

  ‘It varies.’

  ‘Roughly?’

  Bon shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps half a dozen.’

  Zen nodded. He lifted a paper from the desk.

  ‘I am passing Signor Bon the extract from the Register of Vessels supplied by the Provincial authorities, reference number nine five nine oblique six oblique double D stroke four.’

  Bon scanned the sheet of paper quickly. His expression did not change except for a minute tightening at the corner of the mouth.

  ‘Do you recognize any of the boats listed?’ Zen inquired.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I refer to the vessel identified as VZ 63923.’

  ‘I can’t be expected to remember the registration number of every boat that passes through the yard.’

  ‘This was rather a special boat. A topa. Beautiful craft, but they’re getting quite rare these days. Dying out, like so many of our traditions.’

  Bon did not respond.

  ‘And there’s another reason why you might remember this particular boat,’ Zen went on once Bon’s failure to reply had registered. ‘It was one of the very few which you sell each year. And you sold this one less than two months ago. On the fifteenth of December, to be precise.’

  Bon sat absolutely still and silent. Zen let the tape run some more.

  ‘Now do you remember?’ he demanded.

  His tone was as sharp as the crack of a whip. Bon flinched as though struck.

  ‘It’s possible,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Possible? It’s not possible that you don’t remember. You are on record as saying that selling boats is not your main business, just something you do from time to time, no more than half a dozen a year. How could you possibly forget selling a craft as rare as a topa just before Christmas?’

  ‘Okay, all right! Maybe we did sell it!’ shouted Bon, his restraint suddenly cracking. ‘So what?’

  ‘Where did you get it from?’

  Bon closed his eyes, breathing deeply.

  ‘I’d need to consult my records.’

  Zen lit a cigarette. He leant back in his chair, staring coldly at Bon across the desk.

  ‘According to a sworn statement made in this office this morning, you informed the purchaser that the vessel had been laid up for years prior to being overhauled and fitted with a reconditioned engine. The witness, Sergio Scusat, further deposed that the price had been substantially reduced owing to the fact that no documents were available for the boat. He said that you claimed this was because she had been out of the water for so long that no one could trace the previous owner and she would have to be re-registered. Is that true?’

  Guilio Bon shifted in his chair but said nothing.

  ‘Why are you being so evasive?’ murmured Zen silkily.

  ‘I’m not being evasive! I just can’t remember. Is that against the law?’

  Zen allowed the silence to frame this outburst before continuing tonelessly.

  ‘The Nuova Venezia has confirmed that you placed an advertisement in the paper to run for the second week of December, offering a diesel-engined topa for sale. Sergio Scusat has testified that he bought the boat from you on the fifteenth. All I’m asking you to do is to confirm or deny the truth of the account you then gave him as to the vessel’s provenance.’

  Bon looked at his knees, at the wall, at the ceiling.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘It’s all coming back to me.’

  Zen puffed a smoke ring which hovered in the air above the desk like a detached halo.

  ‘Of course!’ Bon continued. ‘It was that old hulk we found round the back of the shed when we resurfaced the yard. God knows how many years it must have been sitting there. The hull was still sound, though. They built them to last in those days. All we needed to do was replace a few timbers here and there.’

  ‘And install an engine,’ Zen put in, apparently addressing the neon light fitting.

  There was no reply. Zen lowered his head until his gaze met Bon’s.

  ‘Where did you get the engine?’

  Bon waved one hand vaguely.

  ‘There are various suppliers we use from time to time, depending on …’

  ‘You told Scusat that the engine was reconditioned. There can’t be many suppliers of reconditioned Volvo marine engines in this area.’

  ‘“Reconditioned” is a relative term. It was probably some engine we had lying around the yard somewhere which we’d stripped down ourselves and reassembled.’

  ‘But it would still have had a serial number,’ Zen mused quietly. ‘To sell a craft without papers is one thing, but no one’s going to touch a motor whose serial number has been filed off. Besides, as you probably know, these days there are techniques for recovering markings which are no longer visible to the naked eye.’

  There was a knock at the door. Zen gestured to the policewoman, who paused the tape. The door opened to admit a burly man with a bushy beard and a mass of fine wavy hair. In his grey tweed suit and black cape, he looked like a bear got up for a circus act.

  ‘Carlo Berengo Gorin,’ he said, thrusting out an enormous hand. ‘I represent Signor, er …’

  He gestured impatiently at Giulio Bon, then swung round on Zen.

  ‘Are you Valentini or Gatti?’

  ‘Aurelio Zen.’

  The avvocato’s eyebrows shot up.

  ‘Zen? Weren’t we at school together? Yes, of course! The basketball ace! The height, the grace, the movem
ents which so bewitched the opposition that they stood like statues while you danced your way through them to notch up yet another point!’

  Zen stared dumbly at the lawyer. Despite his height, he had never played basketball in his life. Gorin beamed reminiscently.

  ‘Happy days!’ he sighed. ‘Now then, will you kindly inform me of my client’s precise legal status?’

  Zen felt his stomach tense up. The revised Code governing police procedure which had come into effect in 1988 had changed many aspects of its predecessor, especially regarding the rights of witnesses and suspects and the degree of latitude accorded the police. In many ways this had been a positive step, putting an end to practices which had led to so many abuses in the past, when they had been justified by the need to win the battle against political terrorists such as the Red Brigades. Nevertheless, the new approach suited neither Zen’s habits nor his temperament.

  This possibly explained why he could never remember the precise norms and procedures which the revised Code prescribed. Like all senior officials, he had had to attend a course on the new system, but his position with the élite Criminalpol squad meant that in practice he had been largely spared any need to change his working practices. Criminalpol officials intervened only in the most important cases, and were usually accorded a fairly free hand by the magistrates involved.

  But this was very different. Not only was Zen not acting under the aegis of the Interior Ministry in the present instance, he was not even supposed to be investigating the Durridge case at all. He was on his own, and any initiatives he took would have to respect the letter of the new law if they were to pass the scrutiny of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. He had known this all along, but he had been counting on the fact that a small-time boatyard owner like Giulio Bon probably wouldn’t know his exact rights under the new system either, still less have access to a lawyer who could make them stick.

  Zen looked at the intruder, who was waiting expectantly for an answer. It was odd that a man like Bon should be prepared to pay the kind of money Gorin must charge. It was still odder that Gorin apparently did not know his client’s name.