More recent details were skimpy in the extreme. The gang had apparently contacted the family soon after the kidnapping and it was understood that a ransom had been agreed. The sum remained unknown but was thought likely to have been in the region of ten thousand million lire. Payment was assumed to have taken place towards the end of November, but the hostage had not been released, and a local lawyer named Ubaldo Valesio was now believed to be negotiating on behalf of the family. This last snippet was dated mid-December, and unless someone had filleted the file before it was put on the teleprinter it was the most recent piece of information the police in Perugia had. The message was clear: ‘… was understood that a ransom had been paid… remained unknown but was thought to have been in the region of… was assumed to have taken place towards the end… believed to be negotiating…’ Whoever had drafted the report wanted no one to be in the slightest doubt that the Miletti family had not been cooperating with the authorities.
There was nothing unusual in this, of course. The trouble with the authorities’ line on kidnapping was that it sounded just too good to be true. Free the victim, punish the criminals and get your money back! Besides, most people were happier doing business with the kidnappers, whose motives they understood and who like them had a lot to lose, than with the impersonal and perfidious agencies of the State. If Zen was unpleasantly surprised to discover how little the Milettis had been cooperating, it was because it put paid to the theory he’d evolved to explain his sudden recall to active duty.
The explanation Enrico Mancini had given him was obviously false. In the first place, provincial detachments never requested intervention of this kind. A local Questura might ask for an expert from Criminalpol to advise them on some technical problem, but that was a very different thing to handing over control to someone from Rome. Such a procedure was always imposed by the Ministry, and was regarded as a humiliating reprimand for inefficiency or incompetence. But an even more serious objection to Mancini’s story was simply that Mancini was telling it. Enrico Mancini was a very big fish indeed, whose natural habitat was the wider ocean of political life. At the moment he chose to swim in the local waters of the Interior Ministry, where indeed he had survived an abrupt change in the political temperature which had proved fatal to several of his species. But tomorrow he might well be sighted in one of the other branches of government, between which he moved as effortlessly as a porpoise moves from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic and back again. According to some observers, indeed, this rather too evident ease, together with Mancini’s brashly confident manner, might prove to be his downfall in the long run.
At all events, the likes of Mancini did not concern themselves with such normal everyday matters as staff movements. The implication was clear. Despite appearances, this particular staff movement was neither normal nor everyday. When you got a personal phone call from an assistant under-secretary to the Minister and were told you were leaving the next morning, someone had been pulling strings. The obvious candidates had been the Miletti family, but if the Milettis were not cooperating with the authorities they would hardly run to the Ministry complaining that those authorities weren’t doing enough. So what was going on?
Zen read and re-read the material, scribbling a few notes and a lot of convoluted designs in the margins. But it was no good. There were too many faceless names, or what was worse, names which had somehow acquired a totally misleading set of features and characteristics. Thus Pietro, Silvio, Cinzia and Daniele appeared as ‘The Miletti Children’, a quartet of child entertainers in matching outfits, and this despite Zen’s knowledge that the youngest, Daniele, was twenty-six years old, while Pietro was already in his late thirties, married and living somewhere abroad. As for Cinzia, she could hardly be a winsome little pre-pubescent charmer since she already had two children of her own, the eldest twelve years old.
Meanwhile it was getting late, and the full implications of accepting Crepi’s invitation were becoming clear to Zen. He’d acted without thinking, purely on reflex, paralysed by his ignorance of who Crepi was. But after what had happened at the Questura he could be in no doubt as to the weakness of his position in Perugia. To survive he must armour himself in authority, surround himself with as many of the signs and symbols of office as he could muster. Instead of which he had agreed to venture out on to dangerously ambiguous ground, half-social and half-official; a treacherous no man’s land where all manner of elaborate games might be played at his expense, where any points he scored would count for nothing but the slightest slip might compromise his position for ever. Well, at least he would go in style. He had phoned the Questura and arranged for Palottino to meet him outside the hotel. They could follow Crepi’s chauffeur back to the villa.
The call came at ten past eight.
‘ There’s someone here to collect you. He says he’s expected.’
‘I’ll be down at once.’
The lobby was empty except for a bearded man reading a newspaper and a French couple who were disputing some item on their bill with the receptionist. Zen had almost reached the revolving door when he was called.
‘Excuse me!’
Suddenly Zen had an unpleasant sense that events were getting out of hand. It was the bearded man Crepi had been talking to outside the cafe earlier that afternoon.
‘You are Commissioner Zen?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Silvio Miletti. How do you do?’
‘I had no idea that you would be coming in person to fetch me,’ Zen murmured in some confusion. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered.’
‘It was no bother.’
The way this was said made it quite clear that exactly the opposite was the case. For a moment Zen was tempted to turn on his heel, refuse to go, invent some last-minute engagement. But they were outside now, and Silvio Miletti was pointing across the street.
‘My car’s over there.’
Palottino saved him. The Neapolitan had parked the Alfetta right in front of the hotel, practically blocking the entrance, and was now leaning in a nonchalantly heroic posture on the driving door, receiving the homage of the passers-by. As he caught sight of the superior from whom flowed his power to flaunt, dazzle and ignore the parking regulations, he snapped smartly to attention.
‘And mine’s right here,’ Zen replied.
‘No, no, dottore,’ Silvio Miletti insisted fussily. ‘You’re travelling with me. That’s why I’ve come, after all.’
‘Signor Miletti, my driver gets so little work he’s almost going crazy as it is. But if you would permit me to offer you…’
‘No, no, I insist!’
‘So do I.’
Zen softened the words with a pale smile, but there was nothing soft about his tone.
Silvio Miletti sighed massively.
‘As you wish, dottore, as you wish. Perhaps you would have the goodness to wait just one moment, however, if it’s not too much to ask.’
He walked across the street to a large blue Fiat saloon and spoke to someone inside. Zen stood watching, his brief triumph draining away. He had not only been rude, he had been uselessly rude. His petty insistence had demonstrated his weakness, not his strength. I’ve lost my touch, he thought bleakly. Then the blue saloon drove off and Zen saw that the driver was a woman. That made it perfect. He had succeeded in insulting not only Silvio Miletti but also his fiancee.
‘I didn’t realize you were with someone,’ he remarked as the two men took their places in the back of the Alfetta.
Silvio Miletti shrugged.
‘It’s only my secretary. I don’t drive.’
They followed the blue Fiat through a wedge-shaped piazza and down a steeply curving street. At the bottom it turned sharp right and disappeared through a narrow archway. Numerous scratches on the brickwork showed where drivers had misjudged the clearance, but Palottino revved up and took it like a lion going through a blazing hoop, almost crushing two pedestrians in the process.
Out of the corner of his eye Zen studied Silvio
Miletti. Close to, Ruggiero’s second son looked like an overweight ghost, at once insubstantial and corpulent. His features, which might have been strong and full of character, had sagged like paint applied too thickly. He was sturdily built, yet gave an impression not of vitality but of enormous lethargy, of a weary disgust with everything and everyone, like a man who has never reconciled himself to what he sees in the mirror every morning. His gestures were oddly prim and fussy for such a lumbering frame, and his voice was high and slightly querulous, with an underlying whine of self-pity.
As suddenly as in a medieval fresco, the city ended and the countryside began. One moment they were driving down a densely inhabited street, the next they were on a country road that dropped so steeply Zen felt his ears aching. A yellow sign flashed by: ‘All vehicles using this road from 1 November to 31 March must carry snow-chains on board’. Palottino kept the Alfetta tucked tightly in behind the slowly moving Fiat, like a dog worrying a sheep.
‘Tell me, when did the kidnappers last make contact?’
Zen dropped the question idly, just to test the water.
‘The negotiations are being handled by Avvocato Valesio.’
Silvio Miletti’s tone was so uncompromising that Zen asked himself why he had agreed to be present in the first place.
‘Presumably he keeps you informed.’
‘No doubt he tells us everything he feels we should know,’ Miletti replied with a fastidious quiver, rearranging the folds of his coat. ‘On the other hand he fully understands how difficult this experience is for us, and I’m sure that he would avoid distressing us unnecessarily.’
He made it quite clear that the negotiator’s tact and consideration could well serve as a model to other less thoughtful people.
As the road bottomed out in the valley Palottino swung out and booted the accelerator, leaving the Fiat for dead.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ Zen exploded. ‘We’re supposed to be following that car!’
‘Oh, fuck. Sorry, sir, I forgot.’
‘I’ll tell you when to turn,’ Silvio Miletti told him with another sigh. These sighs were immensely expressive. The world, they seemed to suggest, had once again demonstrated its limitless capacity for stupidity, vulgarity and total insensitivity to his needs and desires. Not that this surprised him; on the contrary, he had long resigned himself to the unremitting awfulness of life. Nevertheless, each reminder was another pebble thoughtlessly tossed on to the already intolerable burden which he was expected to bear without complaint. It really was too bad!
‘So when did the gang last make contact, to the best of your knowledge?’ Zen continued remorselessly.
There was a rustle of clothing as Miletti changed position with a wriggle of his hips.
‘I’m afraid I really can’t discuss this. I’m sure you understand why.’
‘No, as a matter of fact I don’t understand at all. I’m aware that the Miletti family has not been cooperating with the police up to now, but since you have agreed to meet me tonight I assumed that you must have decided to change that attitude. I certainly can’t imagine what we’re going to talk about otherwise.’
The sigh emerged again in all its glory.
‘As far as cooperation goes, I think the fact that I was prepared to come and pick you up from your hotel is sufficient proof of my personal goodwill. In my father’s absence, however, decisions are being made jointly by the whole family, and the decision which had been made is that all dealings with the authorities are to be handled by our legal representative, Ubaldo Valesio. He will be present this evening and you will have ample opportunity to put your questions to him.’
The road ran along between two ridges, beside a small stream. The moon was almost full, and by its light the scenery looked flat and unconvincing, depthless shapes blocked out of black cardboard. Even the few clouds in the sky were as neat and motionless as a backdrop. To one side, up on the crest of the ridge, a row of cypresses and cedars led up to a ruin with a tall tower.
‘In other words, Valesio will be acting as intermediary not just between you and the gang but also between you and me?’
Zen made no attempt to conceal his irony, and Silvio’s reaction was to flare up.
‘Yes, dottore, that’s exactly what I mean! Despite what some people seem to think, I’m made of flesh and blood like everyone else and there’s only so much I can stand. I just can’t cope with anything more! I can’t be expected to!’
He broke off abruptly to tell Palottino to turn left up a narrow dirt track.
‘For over a month we have heard nothing,’ he continued in the same self-pitying tone. ‘Nothing!’
The headlights swept over rows of neatly pruned vines as the twists and turns of the steeply climbing track succeeded one another.
‘Before, they used to make threats, to rant and rave and say God knows what. That seemed bad enough at the time, but now I almost miss their threats. They seem almost reassuring, compared with this terrible silence.’
The track became a driveway lined with cedars and cypresses and suddenly the house was there before them, a fantastic affair of mock-medieval turrets and towers with fishtail embattlements and coats of arms embedded in the walls which Zen realized with a slight shock was the ruin he had caught sight of from the road below. With a satisfying spray of gravel, Palottino brought the car to a halt beside a white Volvo parked in the forecourt.
Antonio Crepi must have been on the lookout, for when Zen got out he found his host at the door to welcome him.
‘How do you like my little fortress? It’s mostly fake, of course, but nowadays such things have a charm of their own. No craftsman alive could do those mouldings. There’s even a romantic story behind it. Years ago, before the war with Austria, my grandfather met his future wife up here during a summer outing. There was nothing here then but the ruins of an old watchtower. Later he bought the land and had the ruins turned into this place as a present for their silver wedding anniversary. Look, this wall is original, over three metres thick! Pity you can’t see the view. The Tiber’s just down there, and on the other side the hills stretching away towards Gubbio. Better than any painting in the world in my opinion. Silvio, how are you?’
As they passed down a long hallway Zen had a confused impression of old furniture, elaborate paintwork in poor condition, of musty smells and cold, immobile air. Crepi opened one of the three sets of double doors opening off an anteroom at the end of the corridor and ushered his guests through into a large sitting room with a high frescoed ceiling. As they entered, a woman of about thirty moved quickly forward, her hand held out to Zen. She had a skiing tan and long honey-blonde hair and was wearing tawny leather slacks, a hazel-brown silk blouse and masses of gold everywhere.
‘Cinzia Miletti, dottore, pleased to meet you, so glad you could come. Wonderful, really. We’re counting on you, you know, please tell us there’s hope. I’m sure there is, I don’t know why but something tells me that father will be all right. Are you religious? I wish I was. And yet sometimes I feel I am. I don’t go to church, of course, but that’s not what religion is really about, is it? Sometimes I think I’m more religious than all the priests and nuns in Assisi. I have these tremendous feelings.’
Crepi broke in to introduce the other person in the room. Gianluigi Santucci, Cinzia’s husband, was a wiry little man in his late thirties, with carefully sculpted, thick black hair, a neat moustache and something almost canine about his sharp, wary features. Zen sensed hostility in the brief glance and minimal nod with which he acknowledged his greeting without budging from where he stood in front of the log fire. Then Cinzia swept him away again.
‘Where are you from? You’re not Roman, are you? I can’t stand Romans, arrogant, pushy people, think they still rule the world. Of course we have masses of friends in Rome. But your name, it reminds me of that book I keep meaning to read, a classic, by what’s-his-name, about the man who’s trying to give up smoking. Do you smoke? I really should stop, but I’ve been to the
doctor and he told me to take pills which I simply refuse to do, it’s worse than smoking. You read these horror stories in the magazines, years later your children are born deformed, though there’s nothing wrong with my two, thank God. Have you got any children? But where are you from? No, let me guess. Sicily? Yes, you’ve got Norman blood, I can sense it. Am I right?’
‘Not quite, my dear,’ Crepi put in with heavy irony, and corrected her.
‘Venice? Well, it’s the same thing, an island.’
Just then a tall, plain woman came in from the hallway, closing the door quietly behind her. She was about forty years old, with medium-length mousy-brown hair tied up in a bun, and was dressed in a trouser-suit made from some synthetic material which reminded Zen of beach fashions at the Lido back in the fifties. It was meant to look stylish, but somehow succeeded in being both brash and drab at the same time. No one took the slightest notice of the newcomer. Gianluigi Santucci was saying something to Crepi in an intense whisper, while his wife wandered distractedly about asking everyone if they had seen her handbag and discussing how much easier life would be if handbags didn’t exist but how could you survive without them although of course her friend Stefania had given up using hers completely, just thrown it away one day, and she still managed so perhaps it was possible, with time all things were possible.
‘Are your brothers coming?’ Zen asked Silvio, who shook his head briefly.
‘Pietro’s in London. And Daniele is not interested in this sort of thing.’
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