Dead Lagoon - 4

by Michael Dibdin

  Noting the consternation on Zen’s face, Andrea Dolfin smiled artfully.

  ‘She was always a great favourite of mine. Weren’t you, dear?’

  The woman continued to gaze expressionlessly at Zen.

  ‘Her mother pretended to think there was something unnatural about it,’ Dolfin continued. ‘Wishful thinking! The plain truth was less palatable. Rosetta simply preferred my company to that of her mother.’

  He made a disparaging moue.

  ‘Not that that was any great accomplishment on my part. La contessa was obsessed to an absurd degree with considerations of her family’s lineage and gentility. The rest of us just laughed at her pretensions, but poor Rosetta had to live with them, day in, day out. Ada set rigorously high standards of behaviour and taste, but her conception of the aristocratic ideal didn’t allow much room for maternal love. On top of that, she wouldn’t permit her daughter to associate with the local girls of her age, whom she of course considered common. Since the Zulians scarcely mingled in the social circles that Ada might have regarded as acceptable, poor Rosetta was starved of both affection and company.’

  He exchanged a glance with his companion.

  ‘Her response was to come and visit me whenever she could, and to make a secret friend in the Ghetto, a world to which her mother had no access.’

  The woman smiled elliptically. There was something bizarre about her continuing silence, and the way that Dolfin was discussing her as though she weren’t present.

  ‘It shouldn’t be necessary to say it, but after what Ada has no doubt hinted I had better make it quite clear that there was never any question of carnal relations between us. Quite apart from anything else, my own proclivities in that regard – they have ceased to trouble me for many years – happened to be for my own sex. My lover was killed in 1941 fighting the British at Benghazi. He was the reason I joined the party in the first place. All that died with him, all the big ideas, the high hopes. I had to start again, like someone after an accident. I had to think about all the things I’d taken for granted. And that’s where Rosa helped me.’

  He looked at the woman and smiled.

  ‘She says I saved her life, but she’d already saved mine.’

  Zen looked at him sharply.

  ‘I thought it was Rosa Coin whose life you saved.’

  The woman looked at the old man and gestured impatiently. Then she spoke for the first time.

  ‘That’s enough bullshit, Andrea.’

  The voice was pure Venetian, as turbid and swirling as water churned up by a passing boat. She turned back to face Zen.

  ‘I am Rosa Coin.’

  Zen searched her eyes for a long time without finding any weakness. He shook his head feebly.

  ‘But she … she lives in Israel.’

  ‘I used to. Some cousins of mine who lived in Trieste went out there after the war, and once they were settled they invited me to join them. I didn’t know what else to do. Andrea had been hiding me in his house, but I couldn’t go on living there once the war was over. I wanted to make a fresh start, to begin again, a new life in a new nation.’

  Zen got out his cigarettes. After a moment’s hesitation he offered one to the woman, who took it with a shrug.

  ‘I shouldn’t, but …’

  ‘At this stage, my dear,’ Dolfin put in, ‘I can’t really see what you have to gain by giving up.’

  Zen lit their cigarettes.

  ‘You were talking about moving to Israel,’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘I lived there for almost ten years. It was a wonderful experience which I don’t regret for a single moment, but I never really felt at home. At first I assumed that that would pass. Where is a Jew at home if not in Israel? It was a long time before I realized that I must give up the idea of ever being at home anywhere. I would always be an Italian in Israel and a Jew in Europe. And once I accepted that, there seemed no reason not to come back to Venice.’

  Zen smoked quietly for a moment. Now that the fit of rage had left him, he felt dazed and drained.

  ‘And Rosetta?’ he murmured.

  ‘Everything I told you about her was true,’ said Andrea Dolfin. ‘She had the run of my house, and came and went as she pleased. One afternoon I came home to find a note from her on the dining table. She apologized for putting me to so much trouble, but she said she knew I’d understand.’

  He sighed.

  ‘I did, and I didn’t. In the end, it’s impossible to understand something like that. Anyway, it made no difference. She’d been dead for several hours.’

  Dolfin struck his fist hard on the table.

  ‘She should have told me! At the very least I could have given her some practical advice. She must have thought it would be quick and painless, like an execution. She didn’t know that without a drop, hanging is a form of slow strangulation. I could have told her. I’d seen enough partisans hanged that way, from lampposts and balconies. I knew how long it took them to die. She should have told me! She should have trusted me!’

  He broke off, struggling to control his emotion. The woman covered his trembling hands with her long, slim, articulate fingers, like a benign insect.

  ‘I’d failed Rosetta,’ Dolfin went on in a low voice, ‘so I decided to make amends by saving her friend. That meant concealing the truth from Ada Zulian. I could claim that that was a difficult decision over which I agonized long and hard, but it would be a lie. If her daughter had been driven to take her life, the contessa was at least partly to blame. If I’d failed Rosetta, what had her mother done? Perhaps it was just as well that she never knew the truth.’

  He took the woman’s hands in his.

  ‘The main cause of Rosetta’s despair was undoubtedly the fact that the Coin family were among those Jews who had been selected for the next round of deportations. The Ghetto had been cut off from the rest of the city, like in the old days, but with my position it wasn’t hard to persuade the guards to let me take Rosa Coin out for a few hours on my personal recognizance. I told them that she had been my secretary, and that I needed her to help put my papers in order before she was deported. I did not tell the Coins about Rosetta. I only said that I would do what I could to save their daughter.’

  The woman dropped her cigarette on the floor and stepped on it. She wiped her rheumy eyes on her sleeve.

  ‘When the police came, they never doubted the identity of the corpse. I’d dressed it in Rosa’s clothes, including the Star of David, and cut the hair to match. I told them she had hanged herself while I was out. They weren’t surprised, given the fate in store for her. They took the body away and told the Germans what had happened. And meanwhile the real Rosa was hiding in my attic, where she stayed for the rest of the war.’

  ‘I remember my father calling me,’ the woman said in a dreamy voice, as though talking to herself. ‘Andrea was sitting on the best chair, the one only visitors used. I had only met him once, when I was out walking with Rosetta, but she had told me how kind he had been to her since her father was killed. Papa said I was to go and stay with Signor Dolfin for a few days, until things got better again. He tried to make it sound casual, but his voice was hoarse and my mother was crying and I knew that something strange and terrible was happening.’

  She started to weep.

  ‘Afterwards, when Andrea told me the truth, I tried to imagine the unspeakable anguish they must have felt, knowing that they were seeing me for the last time, yet having to pretend that everything was all right so as not to scare me.’

  Zen was staring out of the window, his attention drawn by a movement on the other side of the square. A group of men had emerged from the sottoportego and were now standing in a circle, talking loudly and gesturing expansively. The sound of their voices could be heard faintly even inside the bar. Zen got to his feet.

  ‘I apologize for intruding, and for my rudeness. Please forgive me.’

  Andrea Dolfin glanced out at the square.

  ‘You’re surely no
t going to meet that band of hooligans, dottore?’

  Zen shook his head.

  ‘My interest in them is purely professional.’

  Dolfin raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got something on Dal Maschio!’

  ‘Would that surprise you?’

  Dolfin laughed harshly.

  ‘It would surprise me if you could make it stick.’

  The men in the square had concluded their discussion and were leaving in different directions in twos and threes. Zen buttoned up his overcoat and threw a note on the table to pay for his coffee.

  ‘After what you’ve just told me, I’m certainly going to try,’ he declared grimly.

  Dolfin frowned.

  ‘What has that got to do with Dal Maschio?’

  Zen looked at Rosa Coin.

  ‘Nothing. Everything.’

  The windswept expanse of Campo Santa Margherita was deserted when Zen emerged from the bar. He turned left, walking quickly. It was a clear night, the darkness overhead pinked with stars and a bright battered moon rising. In the distance, on the bridge over the canal, Zen could just make out the figure of Dal Maschio and his two companions. Slowing his stride to match theirs, he followed.

  The three men walked at a leisurely pace past the church of San Barnabà, through the dark passage burrowing beneath the houses on the far side, along walkways suspended over small canals or jutting out from the side of buildings linked by clusters of telephone and electricity cables and a washing-line from which an array of teddy bears dangled by their ears. The sound of their voices drifted back to Zen, resonant in the narrow streets, more faint in the open, sometimes snatched away altogether by the wind.

  They crossed the bowed wooden bridge over the fretful, jostling waters of the canalazzo and rounded the church blocking the entrance to Campo San Stefano, where the trio came to a halt. Concealed in the shadows cast by a neighbouring church, Zen looked on as they concluded their discussion and said good night. Dal Maschio saluted his cohorts with a last masterful wave and walked off down a street to the left. The other two continued on across the square. Deprived of their leader’s inspirational presence, they walked more quickly and in silence, eager to get home.

  Zen followed them along the cut to Campo Manin, past the hideous headquarters of the Cassa di Risparmio bank and into the warped grid of alleyways beyond. The bitter wind had sent the usual crew of fops and flâneurs scurrying for cover, clearing the streets for Zen and his quarry. By the church of San Bartolomeo the two men paused briefly to say good night. One turned up the street leading to the Rialto bridge while the other, with Zen in attendance, continued straight on towards Cannaregio.

  Lengthening his stride, Zen gradually closed the gap between them, and when they reached the broad thoroughfare of the Strada Nova he made his move. Hearing footsteps close behind him, the man looked round. Shock and suspicion mingled in his expression as he recognized his pursuer. Then, as though by an intense effort of will, he smiled.

  ‘How lucky we happened to meet! I was just going to ring you. I wanted to apologize for being so snappy at lunch.’

  A trace of an answering smile appeared on Zen’s lips.

  ‘Dal Maschio told you to smooth things over, did he?’

  Tommaso Saoner’s cheek twitched.

  ‘Don’t try and provoke me, Aurelio. I’ve offered you an apology and as far as I’m concerned the matter is closed. Just get on with your life and leave me to get on with mine, and we can still be friends.’

  Zen shook his head decisively.

  ‘That’s no longer possible, Tommaso.’

  Saoner stared fixedly at him for a moment. Then he shrugged.

  ‘So be it.’

  He began walking again. Zen followed, a few paces behind. They passed through Campo Santa Fosca and rounded the corner of Palazzo Correr. Shortly after the next bridge, Saoner turned off to the right. When Zen entered the alley after him, Saoner wheeled round.

  ‘This is not your way home!’

  ‘Venice belongs to all its sons,’ Zen declaimed rhetorically. ‘The whole city is my home.’

  Tommaso Saoner hesitated for a moment. Then he strode rapidly away, taking an erratic route through back lanes to the Ghetto Nuovo and across the San Girolamo canal, not pausing or looking round until he stopped in front of his house in Calle del Magazen. He was still fumbling in his overcoat pocket for his keys when Zen stepped between him and the door.

  ‘You can’t get away as easily as that, Tommaso.’

  Saoner stared at him truculently.

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It wasn’t just luck that we met this evening. I knew you’d be at the meeting and I followed you all the way from Campo Santa Margherita. We’ve got to talk.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

  Saoner tried to push past Zen to the door. There was a brief scuffle, which ended with Saoner sprawling on the pavement.

  ‘I wouldn’t try and push me around, Tommaso,’ Zen said quietly. ‘I’ve dealt with much tougher customers than you in my time.’

  Crouching on the ground, Saoner examined his glasses, which had fallen off.

  ‘I’ll have you charged with assault,’ he muttered, getting to his feet.

  ‘And I’ll have you charged as an accomplice in the kidnapping and murder of Ivan Durridge.’

  A silvery sheen crept over the walls and paving as the moon showed for the first time above the houses opposite.

  ‘They didn’t kill Durridge!’ Saoner declared passionately. ‘The man jumped out!’

  ‘If he did, it was because he preferred to die quickly rather than suffer what the Croatians had in store for him. But you didn’t know he was dead, did you? You thought Durridge was in Croatia awaiting trial for his war crimes.’

  ‘Ferdinando explained the whole thing to me this evening. The only reason he hadn’t told me before was that he didn’t want to implicate me.’

  Zen laughed in his face.

  ‘Don’t be so naive, Tommaso. The reason he didn’t tell you is that he doesn’t trust you. He thinks of you as another Massimo Bugno, a shallow, fair-weather vessel, useful for running errands around the city but not to be relied on when a storm blows up.’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  There was real pain in Saoner’s voice.

  ‘It’s of no importance,’ said Zen offhandedly. ‘The essential point is that Dal Maschio masterminded the kidnap of Ivan Durridge and piloted the helicopter from which he fell to his death. We’re talking about the man who may be the next mayor of this city – and that’s just the first item on his agenda. Dal Maschio is ruthless, cunning and ambitious. He’s going to go all the way to the top, unless he’s stopped now. And we’ve got to stop him, Tommaso. You’ve got to help me stop him.’

  Saoner grunted contemptuously.

  ‘You’re out of your mind. Who cares what happened to Ivan Durridge? The man was a war criminal, for God’s sake. All the Croats wanted was to do what the Israelis have done in the past, to grab the beast and bring him to trial. And all we did was to help them. It’s not our fault that the crazy bastard decided to jump out of the chopper. It’s got nothing to do with us, and nothing to do with the fine, positive ideals that the movement represents, and which I will never let you destroy with these shabby, cynical manoeuvres. Now get out of my way!’

  Zen stood aside. Surprised, Saoner hesitated for a moment, wary of this sudden capitulation. Then he stepped towards the door, groping in his pocket with an expression of growing puzzlement. A gentle tinkling sound drew his attention.

  ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’

  Zen dangled a set of keys in the air.

  ‘You dirty pickpocket! Give those to me!’

  Zen slowly shook his head.

  ‘You need to spend some time alone, Tommaso, thinking over what I’ve just said. I don’t want you to rush your decision. You can have till morning if you like. But in the end you�
�ll agree to testify. I know you too well to …’

  Saoner struck him across the face.

  ‘I’ll never betray the movement! Never, no matter what you do to me!’

  Zen regarded him steadily, rubbing his cheek where the blow had landed.

  ‘I’m not going to do anything to you, Tommaso. You have to do it yourself.’

  He dropped the keys into his pocket.

  ‘You can go anywhere you like, apart from crossing to the mainland. The use of phones is also prohibited, as is any attempt to involve anyone other than me. I won’t be far behind you, but as long as you don’t try and break these rules I won’t interfere.’

  The two men stared long and hard at each other.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Saoner muttered at last.

  Zen shrugged.

  ‘One of us is. Some time between now and dawn we’ll find out which.’

  At first Saoner made no attempt to get away. He set off at a moderate pace, as though out for a stroll to settle his stomach or thoughts before bed. By now the city had been given over to its cats. They appeared everywhere, perched singly on walls and lounging on ledges, clustered in silent congregation at the centre of a square, viciously disputing a scrap of food or absorbed in a fastidiously conscientious ritual of grooming.

  Saoner walked the length of one of the long straight canals which trisect the northern reaches of the Cannaregio, then turned down through the meandering passages leading to the Strada Nova. For a moment it looked as though he were retracing the route he had taken in the opposite direction earlier, but when he reached the Rialto bridge he turned right and crossed over to the market area. As Zen reached the peak of the bridge, the variously inclined roofs glittered in the moonlight as though covered in frost.

  Saoner was now some way ahead, threading his way through the stripped framework of the stalls used for the bustling vegetable market and into the covered portico of the Pescheria. Here the cats were especially sleek and numerous. They massed like rats, lured by the lingering odour of the fish-heads and entrails on which they gorged themselves by day, when the counters were loaded with slithering heaps of red mullet, sea bass, sardines, plaice, eels, crabs, scallops, cuttlefish, clams, mussels and all the rest whose names Zen knew only in dialect: branzin, orada, tria, barbon, peocio, passarin, dental …