'And the passenger who had been sitting next to you then took your original seat, is that correct?'
'It is. May I ask why any of this is of the slightest significance?'
The uniformed woman spoke rapidly in her incomprehensible tongue. It didn't sound to Zen's ears much like English – it was probably some regional American dialect, he supposed – but he had no difficulty in understanding the tone of voice. This was confirmed when the consul translated.
'Signora Sigurdardottir has indicated that she wishes you to confine yourself to answering her questions.'
Zen beamed ingratiatingly.
'Please assure la signora ispettrice of my willingness to cooperate to the full with her enquiry, whatever it may concern.'
Snaebjbrn Gudmundsson duly translated, or at least said something to the woman, who had been eyeing Zen sharply. She nodded, then asked another question.
'What is the purpose of your journey to the United States?'
'Business.'
'What kind of business?'
Here Zen paused for the first time, at a loss how to answer. On me one hand, this woman was an accredited member of an American law-enforcement body, and therefore entitled to the truth. On the other, she had accepted Zen's passport in his cover name at its face value, and therefore evidently wasn't of a sufficiently high status to have been briefed about the real purpose of his trip. As usual, the safest option seemed to be a lie. He justified the pause with a laugh.
'I was just wondering how best to describe it, but actually if s very similar to that of the consul here, except that I deal in much less well-known names. High-quality olive oils, cheeses, dried mushrooms, honeys and preserves from small organic producers. It's a low-volume, high mark-up business. If the restaurants and boutique stores want the best, they have to come to me, but equally I have to come over every so often to…'
Borunn Sigurdardottir held up her hand and Zen turned off the flow.
'Do you have any commercial competitors?' 'Virtually none. As I said, this is very much a niche market, and I've just about cornered it.' 'What about personal enemies?' 'None that I know of.'
The woman made more notes whose length seemed out of all proportion to Zen's replies. Then she raised her startling blue eyes to Snaebjorn Gudmundsson and spoke at some length.
The consul stood up and looked at Zen.
'Let's go,' he said.
'What about my passport?'
'She needs to keep it for now. I'll explain outside.'
Zen assumed that this meant outside in the corridor, or at best back in the packed lounge with the other waiting passengers, but to his surprise Gudmundsson led the way through a set of double doors into the fresh air.
And fresh it was, too! Tangy, salted gusts swept across the car park in front of them with such boisterous energy that they almost knocked the two men over. The consul pointed to the left and strode off towards a small red Fiat which he unlocked. Zen stowed his cabin bag in the boot and got in to the car.
'Now then, I think it's time I explained the situation,' Snaebjorn Gudmundsson said when they were sheltered from the wind.
'It’s time someone did,' Zen replied pointedly.
'Feel free to smoke,' Gudmundsson remarked. 'I can smell it on
your clothing. A very pleasant odour which brings back happy memories of my misspent youth. No thanks, I've given up myself, but I remain a child of the Sixties. E proibito proibire and all that. So please go ahead.'
Zen lit a cigarette and rolled down the window slightly, creating an instant gale inside the car. The consul closed Zen's window and opened his own, on the leeward side.
'As you know,' he said, 'your flight was diverted here due to technical causes of a routine nature. Normally it would just have been a question of a few hours' delay at most for the necessary maintenance work to take place. But at the point when the passengers were being disembarked to facilitate this work – unblocking toilets can be a very smelly business – one of them failed to respond to the directions of the cabin crew. A doctor was summoned and subsequently pronounced him dead.'
"The one who was sitting in my place,' said Zen.
'Exactly. A certain Angelo Porri. This has placed the authorities here in a very difficult position. They of course have no wish to delay anyone's journey any longer than is necessary, but in the unlikely event that the cause of death turns out not to have been natural, everyone who was on board the plane will naturally become an important witness if not a potential suspect.'
'Yes, I see.'
'The corpse has been taken to a hospital in the city, where it will shortly undergo a post-mortem. Once that is concluded, you and your fellow passengers will most likely be free to leave.'
'And in the meantime?'
'For the time being, the rest of the passengers will remain in the holding area. They will be told that the repairs are taking longer than had been anticipated.'
Zen braved the wind long enough to throw his butt out of the window.
'So I'm being singled out for special treatment. Why?'
Snaebjorn Gudmundsson started the engine.
'This afternoon I received two telephone calls relating to my position as Italian consul. This in itself was highly unusual. I have to say that the position is an honorary one which I fill partly because it gives me a certain cachet in business and government circles here that is useful to my job with the Gruppo Campari. Even that is largely a part-time activity. My real work is quite different.' 'And what’s that?' 'I'm an artist.'
They drove out of the car park on to a dual-carriageway road.
'The first call was from the police here at the airport’ Snaebjorn Gudmundsson went on. 'They explained that an Alitalia flight had been diverted…'
'That’s the second time you've used that word’ Zen pointed out. 'Diverted from where?'
'From its flight in mid-Atlantic, of course’
Zen laughed.
'So what is this, Atlantis?'
'This is Iceland’
'I don't see any ice.'
'No, Greenland's the icy one. Some people say the original settlers deliberately named them like that, so as to send potential invaders to the wrong address. At any rate, as I was saying, the first call I received was from the airport authorities. They simply asked me to be prepared to come out to Keflavik in case any of the Italian passengers required assistance or refused to reboard the plane. People sometimes react in odd ways to emergency landings, even if the reason is completely routine’
'Someone said the lavatories were blocked. How did that happen?'
'The mind boggles. But apparently they were, and you can imagine what the result would have been. Anyway, the really interesting call I got was the second one. That was from the Foreign Ministry in Rome, which just about knocked me over. From time to time someone from the embassy in Copenhagen pops up to check that I'm not fiddling my expenses, but as far as direct contact goes that's about it. And here was a senior official at the Ministry -I didn't catch his name, but you could tell by his manner that he wasn't a subordinate – phoning me in person to brief me about a certain Dottor Pier Giorgio Butani who was travelling to Los Angeles on the diverted plane.'
Zen looked stolidly out of the window at the landscape through which they were passing, an undifferentiated jumble of jagged rocks of every size and shape separated by patches of boggy moor.
'What did they tell you about me?' he asked at last.
'Just that you were a VIP and that I was to accord you every possible assistance and protection during your enforced stopover here. I am not quite sure what they meant by "protection", but since it now appears that the delay to your flight may not be as brief as was first thought, I have obtained permission from the police to spare you a return to that squalid waiting area and take you somewhere more comfortable, Borunn Sigurdardottir will call on my cellphone if the flight's cleared for departure, and I can have you back at the airport in twenty minutes.'
They were now e
ntering the outskirts of a settlement whose planned sprawl was more orderly but no more attractive than that of the eroded lava fields through which they had just passed. It all looked quiet neat, functional and dull. These outer suburbs were succeeded by an older section, equally sterile and monotonous, but with buildings of stone and brick rather than concrete.
They went to a cafe on a pedestrianized street in what appeared to be the centre. Some people at the next table were eating slabs of pallid fish or meat smothered in an anonymous sauce, with boiled potatoes and a scattering of shrivelled vegetables. Zen thought longingly of the lasagne and the beef he had turned up his nose at on the plane, then ordered a cheese sandwich and a beer and tried to collect his thoughts. Despite his earlier volubility, Snaebjorn Gudmundsson now seemed quite prepared just to sip his coffee and not interrupt this process. Indeed, most of the other couples in the cafe" were sitting in a profound but seemingly unstressful silence which in Italy would have been the height of bad form.
There was a lot of information to process. First of all, he was in a remote northern country of which he knew absolutely nothing, starting with its exact geographical location. Secondly, the man who had taken his seat on the plane was now dead of causes as yet unknown. The parallels with the fate of Massimo Rutelli were disturbingly obvious, although fortunately not as yet to the Icelandic police. Thirdly, it was unclear when or even whether he would be free to resume his journey, and what action if any his sponsors at the Foreign Ministry might take about this. But what was finally most disturbing was that there was absolutely nothing that he could personally do to affect the outcome. Such powerlessness induced both frustration and anxiety. Zen had always found that happiness came from throwing himself into some, activity, even if it turned out later to have been futile. Work was relaxing, whereas this enforced, problematic and conditional idleness threatened to wreck his nerves in no time at all.
He had just reached this dispiriting conclusion when a series of loud electronic beeps sounded out the opening strains of the Italian national anthem. The other patrons of the cafe" turned with expressions of icy disapproval towards Snaebjorn Gudmundsson, who plucked out his cellphone and bolted for the door. An elderly man at the next table with a head like a block of wood squared off with an axe, prolific silver-black hair, the regulation-issue laser-blue eyes, monster teeth and no neck at all looked at Zen and said something incomprehensible but evidently uncomplimentary. Zen instinctively spread his palms wide, tossed his head back, shrugged, and replied 'Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh!', thus indicating that while he entirely agreed with the other man's deprecation of the indiscriminate use of mobile phones in public places, he was not his brother's keeper, still less Snaebjorn Gudmundsson's, and couldn't be held responsible for the tatter's thoughtlessness. The Icelander regarded this pantomime with growing alarm, then pointedly turned his back.
Zen followed suit, looking out of the plate-glass window to the street, where Gudmundsson was talking animatedly into the phone under the scrutiny of some swarthy vagrant standing barely a metre away and staring intently up at him. Finally the consul concluded his conversation and returned inside.
'Bad news, I'm afraid,' he said, sitting down at their table again. 'The results of the post-mortem were inconclusive. They want to consult the senior pathologist at the university, but he's away at a conference and won't return until tomorrow.'
'You mean we all have to stay here until then?'
'Not all. The police have decided that if a crime has taken place, the passengers seated outside the cabin in which the victim was seated can be ruled out. They and the crew are being allowed to leave tonight. The others, including you, must remain until a final verdict has been reached on the cause of death.'
Zen sighed disgustedly.
'But you have your orders from the Farnesina!' he protested. 'To expedite my departure in any way you can.'
'Unfortunately that exceeds my powers. All I can do is to offer you a comfortable bed and hospitality at my house until this matter is sorted out. I suggest we go there now, unless you'd like to return with me to the airport to collect your bags. They have been unloaded from the hold and are in storage.'
Zen thought for a moment.
'Did you tell the police that I would be staying with you?' he demanded.
'Yes. They naturally wanted to be assured of your whereabouts.'
'Who was that street person who was listening in to your conversation?' 'Who do you mean?'
'Some low-life standing there right beside you, listening to every word you said. You must have seen him.'
'I didn't. I was probably paying too much attention to what the police were telling me. But what about him?'
Zen shrugged.
'Nothing, probably. He just disturbed me somehow. I don't want everyone in town knowing where I'm going to be sleeping this evening.'
Snaebjorn Gudmundsson stared at him.
'You have reason to believe that you're in danger?' he asked.
Zen realized that he'd stumbled.
'A man in my position inevitably makes a lot of enemies,' he replied blandly. 'But never mind, I'm probably imagining the whole thing. I'm afraid this unexpected visit here has rather shaken me.'
'Of course, of course! So then, will you come with me, or go straight to my house?'
'Neither. I'd like to go out and walk around a bit, then meet you at your house later. I need some exercise, and some time to think.'
Gudmundsson looked doubtful for a moment, then nodded resignedly. 'Very well.' He got out his wallet.
'I'd better give you some money.'
'I can change some.'
'Not at this time of night.'
Zen glanced at the window again.
'What time is it?' he asked.
'A quarter to nine.'
'But when does it get dark?'
'It doesn't. The sun just dips briefly below the horizon around midnight and then comes up again about two in the morning. In between, there's a couple of hours of dusk, but no darkness. In the winter, of course, if s the other way round.'
He wrote something on the back of the receipt returned by the waitress, and handed it to Zen along with a couple of banknotes.
'That's my address and phone number,' he said. 'Just hand it to a taxi driver when you've had enough, or call me if you want company.'
Outside in the street, they separated. Zen drifted off, wondering at the invariable grey light. Summer days here in the north evidently didn't have the classic three-act structure that he'd grown up with. They just maundered on like some experimental film in which the whole point is that nothing ever happens. It was then that Aurelio Zen decided to do something he had not done for a very long time indeed, so long that the person who had done it seemed almost as much of a stranger as the genetically modified strangers thronging by in the street He decided to get quite deliberately and totally drunk.
He took out the banknotes which the consul had given him. They came to fifty thousand kronur, whatever that might amount to. He went into the first bar he came to and ordered a vodka. This was not something he normally drank, but it was one of those useful international products, like taxis, which were available everywhere and always called die same thing in every language. The vodka was served ice cold in a small shot glass. Zen downed three of them in short order, then headed out to the streets in search of more bars.
He found them quite easily. Indeed, after a while they began to find him. They were all more or less the same; dingy, poky, smelly little burrows with bad lighting and deafening music. But after a while he started to feel quite at home, despite the fact that the other clients were all half a metre taller than him and at least twenty years younger, with the studiously bored air of modern youth everywhere. On the streets he had noticed more of the short, dark, unkempt people like the one he had seen eavesdropping on Snaebjorn Gudmundsson's phone conversation, but they didn't seem to come into the bars. Couldn't afford the prices, probably. They looked a bit like the
East European refugees and migrants flooding into Italy from Albania and Romania, another race entirely, wearing clothes from another era.
That was outside, though, where Zen no longer had any desire to go. He'd found a cosy nook at the back of a subterranean den where a few youngsters were half-heartedly dancing, and a lissom blonde refilled his shot glass as soon as he emptied it.
Later on the action on the dance floor hotted up considerably, until Zen seemed to be the only person in the place not flinging himself about to the battering rhythms of the sound system. Several of the girls were now dancing topless, their breasts jiggling about in a touching, natural, slightly comical way. Their partners too had stripped down to the absolute minimum. The air was heavy with the smell of sweat and testosterone.
Later still, the place was half empty, the lissom blonde ignored him, and the lights came brutally to life. Zen consulted his watch, but it was still on Italian time. Anyway, they were evidently closing. He got to his feet and shuffled over to the door. The streets were even more packed than the bar had been earlier. No one was dancing, but a couple of drunken scuffles broke out and were quickly subdued. The little, dark, shabbily dressed people were much in evidence too, looking on at the proceedings with that sly, half-mocking expression they all had.
Zen's first priority was to find a taxi and get himself driven to the consul's house, but that was not so simple. The streets where he was were all pedestrianized, and his enquiries were either ignored or elicited a broad gesture and a string of verbiage he couldn't understand. In the end he set off walking along the main street, confident that sooner or later he would find a taxi rank.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a car in a side street with an illuminated sign on top. Someone was getting out of it. Zen started to run, but he was still some way away when the taxi revved up and drove quickly away. The person who had got out of it entered a nearby block of flats and closed the door. Disheartened, Zen turned back towards the main street. He was still some twenty metres away from it when the figure came rushing at him out of an alley to his right, a knife in its hand.
And then you die az-8 Page 7