Dead Lagoon - 4

by Michael Dibdin

  He started to walk away, mumbling to himself.

  ‘We were only trying to change things for the better. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? I never meant to get mixed up in anything illegal. I don’t remember how that happened. I just don’t remember …’

  He broke into a run, sprinting through the public gardens and across a bridge into a neighbourhood of turgid nineteenth-century apartment blocks like a chunk of Turin dropped down in the lagoon. Zen followed, calling out to him to stop. Down the broad, straight, eerily vacant moonlit streets the two men ran, their footsteps hammering on the flagstones. But Zen’s lungs were still raw from the cigarette he had just smoked, while Saoner was running with manic energy, like a man fleeing some unimaginable horror. As his quarry vanished over a bridge on to a grubby islet where the metal scaffolding of the football stadium reared up in the darkness, Zen gave up the chase.

  Breathless and cold, he walked slowly back through the deserted streets of Sant’Elena and across the strip of scrubby pine forest to the vaporetto stop. An immense weariness overwhelmed him and he sank down on a bench. Scurries of wind plucked at his clothing like invisible fingers. He felt utterly despondent. He had done all he could do, and it had not been enough. He had lied to Tommaso in the most blatant and hurtful way about Dal Maschio’s opinion of him, but all to no avail. He had underestimated the hold a man like Dal Maschio could exercise over his followers, and the potency of the atavistic cravings from which he had concocted his ideological designer drugs.

  The noise of an approaching ferry roused him from his stupor. Reluctantly he hauled himself to his feet and hobbled stiffly down the path to the landing-stage. Someone was already waiting there. Then Zen saw that the vaporetto was going to the Lido, not to the city. He was about to return to his bench when the waiting figure was caught in the boat’s lights as it nudged in alongside. It was Tommaso Saoner.

  Zen hurried down the gangway just in time to climb aboard. Saoner had already gone below. The helmsman reversed engines to clear the landing-stage, then eased the craft out into the deep-water channel, passing astern of a car ferry also bound for the Lido. Zen edged round the deck until he came to a window with a view of the cabin. Tommaso Saoner sat bolt upright on his seat, staring straight ahead, seemingly oblivious to the tears streaming down his cheeks. Zen drew back into the darkness, wrapping his coat tightly around him. The wind had eased, but it was colder than ever. A shattered image of the moon tossed and bobbed on the lumpy seas, permuting its scattered fragments like a shaken kaleidoscope.

  The wind dropped away as the ferry drew into the lee of the island. Zen waited to let Tommaso Saoner get off first, but it was not until the deck-hand went down to the cabin to rouse him that Saoner rose to his feet. At first he seemed unwilling to budge, but after a brief exchange with the mariner, who pointed out that the boat was going out of service, he climbed up the steps and went ashore.

  Of all the topographical freaks in the lagoon, the Lido had always seemed to Zen the most disturbing. In summer, its vocation as a seaside resort lent the place an illusory air of normality, but in the bleak depths of February its true nature was mercilessly exposed. Here was a perfectly normal contemporary urban scene, with asphalt streets called Via this and Piazza that, complete with road signs and traffic lights. There was the usual jumble of apartments and villas, offices and hotels, the usual roar of cars and lorries, scooters, bikes and buses. Everything about the place was perfectly banal, in short, except that it was built on an isolated sandbar a few hundred metres wide between the shallow reaches of the lagoon and the open expanses of the Adriatic.

  By the time Zen got ashore, Saoner was already fifty metres ahead, striding down the wide central avenue which led to the sea. Zen almost let him go, but at the last moment his curiosity got the better of him. A pair of headlights split the darkness at an intersection ahead. A car appeared and paused briefly before crossing the main street and disappearing to the right. It was immediately followed by a delivery van, three more cars, a lorry, and finally a milk tanker. Zen loped along the tree-lined pavement, trying to work out some rational explanation for this mysterious nocturnal convoy. Such was the state of his brain that it took him about a minute to realize that all the vehicles must have disembarked from the car ferry he had seen earlier. Satisfied, he scanned the street ahead to find that the figure he had been following had disappeared.

  Despite his immense fatigue, he ran all the rest of the way to the huge piazza where the avenue joined the lungomare. During the summer this was the heart of the fashionable tourist area, but now the gardens looked drab and tatty and the wind made the trees shudder as though in pain. Zen looked all round, from the moth-balled hulk of the Grand Hotel des Bains to the gleaming strip of the boulevard skirting the beach where surf foamed dimly at the limit of vision.

  ‘Tommaso!’ he shouted.

  The wind dismantled the word and flung the pieces away, but he called again and again.

  ‘Tommaso! Tommaso!’

  He walked all around the piazza and along the road in both directions, but there was no sign of any other living soul. Fugitive traces of light were beginning to appear in the east before he finally gave up and turned away to begin the slow journey back to the city.

  Winter sunlight, hard and brilliant, searched the grimy window and marked out a skewed square on the floor. Some vestige of childhood superstition made Aurelio Zen avoid setting foot in it as he went to and fro, collecting his belongings from all over the flat and returning them to the battered leather suitcase which had been the companion of his travels for almost thirty years.

  The chore did not take long. He had brought only the bare minimum with him, and much of that he had never got around to unpacking in the first place. At a loss again, he sank down in a chair, gazing down at the glaring patch on the tiled floor. It was a beautiful day, everyone agreed, for the time of year. Overcome by exhaustion, Zen closed his eyes. The sun-struck square was still visible, branded on his retinas as a throbbing block of darkness.

  He opened his eyes again, reached out a hand for the phone and dialled. Once again, no reply. He let it ring a long time, seeing the deserted apartment in Rome, hearing the bell shrilling periodically in the traffic-troubled stillness. At length he replaced the receiver and glanced at his watch. There were still almost two hours before his train left. He felt like a child again, waiting for school to end, for the bell to sound and real life to begin.

  As if in response to his thoughts, a bell did ring, gurgling throatily in the stairwell. Zen looked up apprehensively. On the wall opposite hung a large canvas supposedly painted by his mother’s uncle. He realized for the first time that he had no idea what, if anything, the turbid whorls of colour were supposed to represent. It had never occurred to him to ask. He had taken the thing for granted all his life, as though it had come with the wall.

  The bell rang again. He stood up and walked over to the window, but there was no one to be seen. He opened the window and dipped his face into the cold, clear air outside. On his doorstep, dressed in a grey tweed coat and a green headscarf, Cristiana Morosini stood gazing up at him. They looked at each other for a time without speaking. Then Zen turned back inside and pushed the door release button.

  When she entered the room, he was still standing by the window, facing the door. Cristiana hesitated in the doorway for a moment, then walked a little way into the room, coming to rest with her feet in the patch of sunlight. She looked around nervously, opening and closing her lips several times without any sound emerging. Then she saw the open suitcase.

  ‘You’re leaving?’

  Zen eyed her in silence for a moment.

  ‘Why didn’t you use your key to get in?’ he asked. ‘Or has your husband still got it?’

  Cristiana waved her hands vaguely. Zen felt a sentimental stab of pity for those plump white fingers which had explored his body so thoroughly and so satisfyingly. Whatever had happened certainly wasn’t their fault.

  �
��I was going to phone and let you know he’d be here,’ Cristiana faltered, ‘but Nando said he wanted it to be a surprise.’

  ‘And what Nando wants, Nando gets.’

  Her expression hardened slightly.

  ‘He’s still my husband.’

  ‘And what does that make me, Cristiana? What does it make you?’

  His voice was so strident that it made the windowpane shiver. Cristiana shrugged peevishly.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Aurelio. I thought it was just a fling. I liked you, and Nando had hurt me badly. I thought I deserved to get my own back, and to have a little fun too.’

  Zen looked away, shaking his head in simulated disgust.

  ‘Oh come on!’ Cristiana exclaimed with something like anger. ‘Imagine what you’d be saying now if this had turned out the other way round, and I was being possessive and clingy when all you wanted was to go home and forget it ever happened. I knew all along you had someone in Rome. It never occurred to me that you were taking it seriously.’

  ‘Of course I wasn’t!’

  He looked back at her with a fixed smile.

  ‘Apart from the sex, Cristiana, my interest in you was purely professional. I hoped you might let drop something about your husband which would be helpful to me in my investigation.’

  She gazed numbly at him.

  ‘No doubt you cultivated me for precisely the same reason,’ Zen went on, ‘to keep dear Nando informed about the progress I was making. We were each using the other. No one got hurt and neither of us has any right to complain.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ Cristiana retorted. ‘You told me you were investigating Ada Zulian’s problems. Why on earth should Nando care about that?’

  Zen shrugged.

  ‘Have it your own way. What does it matter, since you’ve won? I went to see Mamoli this morning. The judiciary is dropping the case. Bon and the others have been released. Your husband’s election triumph is assured and you can look forward to being Signora Dal Maschio, loyal wife of the local political supremo. Only you and I will know that you’re married to a kidnapper and a murderer.’

  ‘What?’

  Her face was rigid with shock.

  ‘Didn’t he mention that little exploit?’ murmured Zen. ‘How odd. I’ll bet he tells all his other women. Just the sort of thing to get them going.’

  Cristiana walked towards him.

  ‘What are you talking about? What are these horrible lies?’

  Zen held up his hands.

  ‘Since you’ve branded me a liar, there’s no point my saying any more. Why don’t you ask Tommaso Saoner? He knows all about it.’

  Cristiana stopped and stared at him, shaking her head slowly.

  ‘That’s an appalling thing to say.’

  ‘It was an appalling thing to do, Cristiana. Durridge may have been a war criminal, but …’

  ‘To joke about Tommaso like that, I mean!’

  He frowned.

  ‘Like what?’

  They confronted each other in silence.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ she said at last.

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘It’s been on the local news and …’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ snapped Zen irritably.

  Cristiana lowered her head.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Dead? Who’s dead?’

  ‘Tommaso Saoner.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Why, I saw him only …’

  His voice trailed away.

  ‘The body was washed up at the Lido this morning,’ said Cristiana. ‘Nando is devastated. Tommaso was one of his closest and most trusted associates. They met just last night. Nando even walked part of the way home with him.’

  She looked at Zen.

  ‘When did you see him?’

  He turned to the window.

  ‘Oh … before that.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘What happened?’ he muttered almost inaudibly.

  ‘It looks like suicide. The body was fully clothed, and there was no sign of violence. But Nando says he seemed perfectly normal last night. He even made a joke about you.’

  She shivered.

  ‘What could have suddenly driven him to do something like that? And what was he doing on the Lido in the first place? It doesn’t make sense!’

  There was a long, sombre silence. Cristiana looked at Zen, who was still facing the window.

  ‘I thought he was supposed to be a friend of yours,’ she remarked sharply.

  ‘He used to be.’

  ‘Well you don’t seem to care particularly that he’s dead!’

  This time the silence was even more oppressive.

  ‘I’m not sure I really know you,’ Cristiana muttered. ‘I’m not sure I really like you.’

  Zen turned slowly and looked at her.

  ‘Neither am I,’ he said.

  They exchanged a long glance, then Cristiana abruptly turned and walked out. The front door slammed shut. Zen stood gazing down at the quadrilateral of sunlight on the floor. It had moved slightly to the left, and was shorter and squatter than before. Zen stepped carefully around it and picked up the phone.

  ‘Mamma? At last! It’s me, Aurelio. I’ll be home this evening. In time for dinner, yes. Can you get Maria Grazia to make something really nice? I haven’t eaten properly all week. Rosalba? I ate there the first day, but since then … She’s fine. Who? Cristiana? She’s the daughter, isn’t she? I met her briefly. Anyway, how are you? Good. Are they? Glad to hear it. I’m looking forward to seeing you both this evening. You and Tania. What? What? Moved out? Where’s she gone? Why did she leave? I thought you two were getting on well together …’

  He sat down on the sofa, the receiver clamped to his ear.

  ‘Me? What did I do? I wasn’t even there!’

  His face gradually grew hard as he listened.

  ‘Sorry, Mamma, but I’ve got to go or I’ll miss my train,’ he said in a different voice altogether. ‘Goodbye. Yes. Goodbye. And you. Goodbye.’

  He got out his crumpled pack of Nazionali and sat there smoking one cigarette after another until the packet was empty and the ashtray full. Then he put on his coat and hat, closed his suitcase, and left.

  Out of the sun, the air was still chilly. Zen walked the length of the triangular campo without looking back, hefting his suitcase in his right hand, his shoulders hunched and his head lowered. As he rounded the corner into the long alley leading to the Lista di Spagna he collided with someone coming the other way. Zen muttered an apology and was about to pass by when the man spoke his name. Zen set down the heavy suitcase and looked at him, taking in the greasy grey hair, the shabby suit, the tartan carpet slippers, the non descript mutt trailing along at the end of a rope.

  ‘Daniele,’ he murmured without enthusiasm. ‘You must excuse me. I’m late for my train.’

  ‘You’re leaving?’

  ‘As you see.’

  ‘So soon?’

  Zen picked up his suitcase again.

  ‘I should never have come in the first place.’

  Daniele Trevisan scuttled up to him with amazing rapidity and grasped him by the arm.

  ‘You can’t go yet!’

  Zen looked down at the elderly face, as shrivelled as an old nut.

  ‘Ever since I saw you last week, I’ve been wondering whether or not I should say anything,’ Trevisan went on hesitantly. ‘God only knows when you’ll be back, and whether I’ll still be alive.’

  He shook his head helplessly.

  ‘I just don’t know what to do, Angelo.’

  Catching sight of Zen’s expression, the old man hastily corrected himself.

  ‘Aurelio, I mean.’

  Zen tried to tug himself free of the man’s fierce grip.

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘Stop! Wait!’

  Zen turned on him with a menacing glare.

  ‘Why can’t you leave me in peace?’ he sho
uted.

  The old man stared back at him mutely.

  ‘What do you want with me?’ demanded Zen.

  ‘Why, nothing! I just …’

  An ingratiating smile appeared on Daniele Trevisan’s face.

  ‘I only wanted to offer you a glass at Claudio’s new bar. Come on, Aurelio! You can’t leave Venice without having a last ombra.’

  Zen looked at him.

  ‘Please!’ the old man added unexpectedly.

  Zen glanced at his watch.

  ‘We’ll have to hurry. I’ve got a train to catch.’

  When they reached the bar, Zen found to his surprise that he recognized it. He had been taken there many times by his mother to watch television, at a time when only the super-rich could afford a set of their own. By stretching his credit to the limit, a barista in the Lista di Spagna had managed to acquire a set and thus transform what had previously been a perfectly ordinary wineshop, frequented solely by elderly males, into the social hub of the community, where men, women and children from all over the neighbourhood flocked to watch Mike Bongiorno’s quiz show ‘Double or Quits?’ – having paid the exorbitant surcharge on drinks ordered during the transmission.

  The television, in a more modern incarnation, stood on the same shelf at the end of the room, showing an American police series crudely dubbed into Italian, but the old magic had fled. The bar was empty but for scattered groups of foreign tourists who looked askance as Daniele Trevisan sidled up to the bar dragging his flea-ridden dog. Nor did Claudio seem particularly pleased to see them. He looked blank when Daniele introduced Zen.

  ‘Angelo’s son,’ prompted Daniele Trevisan.

  Claudio shrugged.

  ‘You drink too much, Daniele.’

  He set two glasses on the bar and filled them with the contents of an open bottle.

  ‘Take it down the back,’ he told them. ‘You’ll scare away the tourists.’

  They made their way to a dim, grubby area at the rear of the premises, stocked with damaged chairs and tables and crates of empty bottles.

  ‘It was just like meeting you today,’ Daniele said once they’d sat down. ‘I’d popped round to see if Ada was all right, when suddenly there he was, walking along the canal towards me.’