All he could recall were isolated incidents, such as the time he’d followed a small-time gangster to a tough suburban bar, where his target was menaced by a rival. Zen’s man responded by pulling out a flick-knife and driving it, almost up to the hilt, into his own leg. Then, without the slightest flicker of expression, he turned to the other thug and said, ‘That’s what I’m capable of doing to myself, Giorgio. Imagine what I would be capable of doing to you.’ The aggressor looked like he was about to faint and left in extreme haste, after which the gangster pulled out the knife, replaced it in his pocket, then rolled up his trouser leg and removed his prosthetic limb, to the general merriment of the company.
Or the time he went to interview a woman who claimed that her ex-husband had been stalking her. She’d sounded rather highly strung on the phone, and when Zen got to her apartment and asked some rather detailed and intimate questions she had first slapped his face, knuckles out, then burst into a lengthy and deafening fit of tears, and finally begged him to come to bed with her. In the end he’d agreed, and the results were so satisfactory that the following morning he’d suggested that they repeat the experience. To which the lady had icily replied, ‘You were Tuesday. This is Wednesday.’
And then there was the occasion when he had chased a notorious drug dealer and suspected murderer down the twisty, arcaded streets of the city centre, only to have the man disappear in front of his eyes. When Zen finally located the open door through which he must have turned, he was met by an expanse of black liquid a couple of metres below, one of the ‘lost’ canals of Bologna, now buried beneath buildings and car parks. Ripples on the surface of the water showed the escape route that the fugitive had chosen, but even at that relatively young age Zen had felt no inclination to follow.
But these were mere anecdotes, and the incidents involved might have happened elsewhere. What was lacking was any overall sense of the city as an entity in its own right, unique and unconfoundable with any other. The thing that struck him most today, in the brief taxi ride from the station to the centre, was the glaring comparison with Florence, so near and yet a world away. Bologna was already the north, home of hard workers, hearty eaters, heavy drinkers and dank, dour, depressing winters lacking any of the mitigating hints of vernal promise that regions south of the Apennines always kept up their sleeves. Unlike Zen’s other postings, moreover, the strongest impression this city seemed to have left was the efficiency of its civic mechanisms, which scored the highest possible mark on his rule-of-thumb criterion for such things, viz. the public garbage skips in the street are emptied (a) every day, (b) every week, (c) once in a while, (d) never. That and the food, which Zen sat down to sample as soon as he had installed himself at the hotel recommended by his cab driver as being conveniently close to the Questura. He had also recommended a restaurant, where Zen ate his way through an appetiser of superb culatello, that almost unobtainable delicacy which a fellow officer had once described as ‘Parma ham for grown-ups’, followed by deliciously thin and eggy layers of lasagna with the famous Bolognese ragù, and finally rabbit cooked in white wine and balsamic vinegar, a rich feast made palatable by a pleasantly astringent red wine still lively from its recent fermentation.
Considered merely from a nutritional point of view, this one meal represented more calories than his average daily intake, although he still had a hard time persuading the waiter that a dish of creamy baked custard would not provide a suitable conclusion. Instead he had a double caffè ristretto at a nearby bar and then set off to face whatever welcome awaited him at the Questura. This building was an example of Fascist grandiloquence and triumphalism at its most menacingly turgid, a massive temple to the power of the state out of all proportion to the modest piazzetta in which it was situated. Perhaps Bologna had been a left-wing hotbed even then. Certainly the message being sent couldn’t have been clearer: behind the boys in blue were the men in black.
The interior was on a scarcely less awesome scale, but Zen’s reception turned out to be reassuringly low-key. His contact was an officer named Salvatore Brunetti, whose manner resembled that of the many doctors he had encountered during his stay in the Rome clinic, who always gave the impression that Zen was a malingering crank who had nothing the matter wrong with him but must be humoured to prevent the possibility of violent outbursts.
‘So what exactly is your mission here?’ the Bologna police officer asked once the usual courtesies had been observed.
‘Perhaps it would be best if I tell you what it isn’t,’ Zen replied. ‘For example, I’m not here to intervene, take control, undermine your authority, nor above all to snitch on you to my superiors in Rome.’
Salvatore Brunetti looked back at him with the same polite, distant, mildly amused air.
‘My remit is very specific,’ Zen continued firmly, ‘and I intend to honour it to the letter. Given the identity of the victim and the circumstances under which he died, this is clearly going to be an extremely high-profile case, and has already generated a lot of media exposure and comment. My superiors at the Viminale naturally want to be kept informed of developments as they happen, in real time, with a view to exploiting them to maximum political effect if they are positive and minimising negative fallout as soon as possible if not. They have instructed me to facilitate that process. And that’s all.’
Brunetti waited a moment, then vaguely smiled.
‘That’s very frank of you, vice-questore.’
‘Too frank, you mean. Suspiciously so, in fact. But it happens to be true. I am of a slightly older generation than you, Dottor Brunetti, and I occasionally allow myself the luxury of saying what I actually mean. I am doing so now. I can quite understand that you don’t necessarily believe me, but frankly it would save us both a lot of time and bother if you did.’
Caught off guard, his interlocutor laughed nervously.
‘But of course I believe you!’
With a fastidious finger he indicated the thick file of documents on the teak desk between them.
‘Well, you’ll find everything that we know at this point in there. And if I can help to clarify or amplify any points involved, please don’t hesitate to ask.’
Zen picked up the file and put it away in his briefcase.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll give it my fullest attention as soon as possible. In the meantime, could you perhaps give me a brief summary of the basic facts?’
Brunetti nodded vigorously.
‘It’s quite straightforward. The autopsy and forensic examinations have confirmed that Lorenzo Curti was murdered in the driver’s seat of his car about an hour before the discovery of the vehicle by one of our patrols. He was first shot through the heart with a 7.62 millimetre bullet, which was recovered, then stabbed in the chest with a Parmesan cutting knife which was left in situ and also recovered. The presence of the latter item suggests foreknowledge of the victim’s family and business origins.’
‘And premeditation.’
‘Indeed. Curti had attended the away match between his football team and Ancona. After the game he spent some time with the manager and players in the dressing room, then left alone to drive home. The electronic toll records show that his Audi saloon entered the autostrada system at Ancona Nord shortly before seven that evening and exited at Bologna San Lázzaro just over ninety minutes later, very shortly before he was killed.’
‘Would that have been his normal route?’
‘No. He lived outside Parma. His reason for leaving the motorway there is still unclear. It’s a moderately rough area at that time of night, but the element of premeditation and the implicit message sent by the post-mortem stabbing with the cheese cutter virtually rules out the possibility that this was an opportunistic or casual crime committed by some hitchhiker, drug dealer or pimp. In fact it’s virtually certain that the killer was known to Curti, and extremely probable that they had either made an appointment to meet at the scene of the murder or had travelled back together from Ancona. Why else, on a dark, cold e
vening, should Curti have left the autostrada at San Lázzaro instead of continuing straight on to join the A1 for Parma?’
‘So you’ve been looking for someone among the victim’s social or business contacts with a motive to kill him?’ suggested Zen helpfully.
‘That’s naturally what we have been doing,’ Brunetti replied.
‘But so far without result.’
‘On the contrary! It turns out that just about everyone Curti knew personally or professionally had a reason to wish him dead. As you probably know, his business empire has virtually crumbled overnight, the shares are now worth next to nothing, and our friends over at the Guardia di Finanza are starting a serious fraud investigation which will almost certainly result in jail sentences for many of those involved–including Curti himself–had this not happened.’
‘But now he won’t be able to testify.’
‘Tempting hypothesis, isn’t it?’
There was a silence.
‘Unfortunately…’
Brunetti let the word hang heavily for a moment.
‘The bad news is that virtually all the potential suspects were either at the game, out with friends, or at home in the bosom of their families. Of the rest, several were abroad and one was in labour.’
‘A woman?’ Zen queried.
Brunetti kindly ignored him.
‘Meanwhile the Curti clan have issued a statement hotly denying any insider involvement, and offering a one million euro reward for the arrest and conviction of the killer. In short, we have a vast list of potential suspects, but no hard evidence against any of them, while almost all seem to have unbreakable alibis.’
‘What about the forensic tests on the car? Fibres, hairs and so on.’
‘Masses of it, ninety-nine per cent canine. Curti kept a Labrador. And swathes of fingerprints, too, but even if we made a match it would prove nothing. Almost all the suspects will have been in that Audi at one time or another, most of them very recently.’
‘And the gun?’
‘A spent cartridge case was found in the car, suggesting an autoloading pistol. It’s a rimless, brass-coated steel model with as yet unidentified headstamps, probably of foreign origin. Ballistics ran the markings on the bullet through the system. Nothing. It looks like a virgin.’
‘A hired assassin? It sounds as though plenty of people wanted Curti dead, just as long as they had an unbreakable alibi. And there’s any number of under-employed people with the necessary skills and equipment in eastern Europe these days.’
‘It’s conceivable,’ Brunetti acknowledged.
Zen stood up, clasping his briefcase.
‘Well, sounds like an interesting challenge. Please let me know if anything new should emerge. At any hour of the day or night. Otherwise I’ll just try to keep out of your way.’
He was walking with bowed head along the interminable corridors of the Questura when he heard running footsteps behind him. A young man in patrolman’s uniform appeared.
‘Dottor Zen! Forgive me, but we just passed and I recognised you.’
Zen stared at him blankly. The patrolman touched his cap.
‘Bruno Nanni, dottore. I was your driver during your visit last year to the Alto Adige.’
Zen smiled broadly.
‘So it all worked out?’ he said with genuine pleasure.
‘My transfer came through about ten days later. Incredible, eh? And all thanks to you, capo!’
Zen made a self-deprecatory gesture.
‘I had a word with a certain person, but that sort of thing doesn’t always work.’
‘Well, it worked this time, dottore, and I can’t thank you enough. But what are you doing here in Bologna, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Just another routine job. A temporary secondment to review and assess an ongoing case.’
‘Have you any plans for this evening?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘Then you might care to go to the stadium.’
‘The football stadium?’
Nanni nodded.
‘The club’s holding a memorial service for Lorenzo Curti. Funnily enough, I was the one who discovered the body. Anyway, all the players will be there, the rest of the staff, and of course the supporters. They’ll all pay tribute, in their different ways, to the late president of Bologna FC.’
‘Doesn’t really sound like my sort of thing, Bruno.’
‘It might be interesting from a professional point of view,’ Nanni remarked, rather too casually.
‘In what way?’
‘This case that you’ve come to look into. It has to be the Curti murder, right? The Ministry isn’t going to send a senior man like yourself up here for anything else that’s happened lately. Well, the event itself may be pretty dreary, but the stadium will be packed with every diehard fan in the city.’
‘So?’
Bruno Nanni smiled mysteriously.
‘What I’ve heard from friends is that a certain individual, one of the craziest and most violent of the ultra mob, has been putting the word about that he killed Curti. He’ll certainly be there tonight, and I know the bar where that gang goes to booze it up afterwards. It might just be worth your while taking a look at him.’
Zen weighed up the options. After all, what did he have to lose? The only alternative was to eat a solitary dinner and then spend a lonely evening in his hotel room watching television. He might even get desperate enough to read the copy of the file that Brunetti had given him.
‘Very well. I’m staying at the Hotel Roma, just round the corner.’
‘I’ll pick you up just before six, dottore.’
12
A blinding flash.
‘Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!’
Vincenzo straddled the doorway in an extravagantly debonair pose, one leg cocked up behind him and a tiny metallic object held to his eye. Another flash of halogen brilliance. Vincenzo laughed and tossed the object across the room to Rodolfo, who put down his book and just managed to make the catch.
‘Wicked, huh?’
Rodolfo turned the thing over. It seemed to be some sort of camera, but smaller than any he had seen, or indeed imagined possible. But Vincenzo was clearly high, so he decided to appear underwhelmed.
‘Very clever,’ he remarked coolly. ‘How much did it cost?’
Vincenzo laughed uproariously for some time.
‘Oh, I picked it up last night after the game. Along with another little toy that’s not bad either. What can I tell you? I got lucky. I finally got lucky.’
He started pacing restlessly about the room, occasionally kicking the furniture.
‘Have you been snorting Ritalin again?’ asked Rodolfo.
‘None of your fucking business. You’re not my mother.’
Rodolfo closed the book he had been leafing through and gently palpated the sturdy, plain, well-worn leather binding. He must return it today, he thought. Volumes as rare and precious as this were not supposed to be removed from the university library, but graduate students of Professor Edgardo Ugo enjoyed certain privileges.
‘I’m trying to study, Vincenzo,’ he lied.
His flatmate grinned aggressively.
‘So are you planning to just sit here all evening reading a musty old book and then scribble some shit for that cocksucking prof to sneer at? Jesus, what a pathetic life!’
‘At least I’m getting laid.’
‘Yeah, by some illegal immigrant from Christ knows where with a temporary job as a cleaner. Congratulations, terrone! You’ll make a great couple.’
Rodolfo was on his feet in a second. He grabbed Vincenzo by the shoulder and slammed him against the wall.
‘Take that back!’
Vincenzo looked stunned.
‘Fuck! Can’t you take a joke?’
Rodolfo held him pinned against the wall, staring the other intensely in the eyes until he looked away.
‘Fucking southerners,’ complained Vincenzo. ‘Bunch of freaking crazies.’
‘Quite right, my friend. And if you ever allow yourself one more insulting remark about my girlfriend, or for that matter my people, you’ll find out exactly how crazy we can be.’
Vincenzo shook his head weakly.
‘Va bene, va bene. Basta, oh!’
Rodolfo nodded sharply and with significance, then released the other man. Vincenzo shook himself with a certain hauteur.
‘Anyway, you’re not the only ones who can be a little crazy. It’s just that up here in the north we don’t make empty threats.’
Rodolfo went back to the sofa and opened Andrea de Jorio’s La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano at the illustration he had been examining earlier, marvelling at the quality and detail of the engraving.
‘Meaning what?’ he muttered through a long yawn.
‘Meaning this evening’s service of tribute down at the stadium.’
‘You speak in riddles.’
Vincenzo laughed scornfully.
‘If you ever got your head out of the library and into the real world, you’d know the answer.’
‘Unfortunately I’m not a spoilt brat like you, Vincenzo. I can’t afford to play at being the eternal student. My father has spent a lot of money sending me up here to get a degree. He naturally expects to see some return on that investment.’
And is going to be shattered and furious when he finds out that I have pissed it away, he thought.
‘All that interpretation shit you study with Ugo?’ Vincenzo retorted. ‘Well, interpret this! Someone killed Lorenzo Curti because he bought our team, with all its glorious history, for a song, then let all the best players go and was too cheap to get replacements. He’s been screwing us over for years, and last night he paid the price.’
‘They said on TV it was probably to do with his business dealings.’
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