‘They don’t bother cleaning here,’ Cecchi remarked. ‘No call for it.’
Halfway between the gallery and the floor, the roof of the baldacchino rose up towards them, surmounted by a massive gold cross. Bernini had not envisaged his showpiece being seen from this angle, and it had an awkward, clumsy look, like an actress glimpsed backstage without her costume or make-up. Immediately underneath the gallery ran a wide strip of gold, like an enormous hatband, with a Latin inscription in blue capitals: TV ES PETRVS ET SVPER HANC PETRAM EDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM. The air was filled with a sonorous squealing as the staff, far below in the body of the nave, manoeuvred the heavy wooden benches into place for the papal Mass. It reminded Zen of the sirens of fog-bound shipping in the Venetian lagoons.
Telling Cecchi and Grimaldi to wait there, he walked round this semi-circular section of the gallery, inspecting the railing and floor carefully. He sighed heavily and consulted his watch. Then he leant over the railing, looking up at the sixteen frescoed segments into which the interior of the dome was divided. Beneath each segment was a huge rectangular window consisting of thirty enormous panes, like a monstrous enlargement of an ordinary casement. The glass was dark and glossy, reflecting back the glare of the floodlights which Cecchi had turned on as they entered the dome. Each pair of windows was separated by a double pilaster whose cornices supported a ledge topped with what looked like railings.
Zen walked back to the waiting Vatican employees.
‘Is there another gallery up there?’ he asked.
Cecchi nodded.
‘It’s locked, though.’
‘So was this one.’
‘He had a key to this one,’ said Grimaldi, as though explaining the obvious to a child.
Zen nodded.
‘I’d like to have a look at the upper gallery, if that’s possible.’
Cecchi sighed heavily.
‘It’s possible, but what’s the point? There’s nothing to see.’
‘That’s what I want to make sure of,’ Zen replied.
On the landing outside, two doorways faced one another. The one on the right was the lighted public way leading down from the lantern. Cecchi turned to the other, a locked wooden door. After searching through his keys for some time, he opened it, revealing yet another ramp curving upwards into darkness. The ramp ended at a narrow spiral staircase bored through the stonework between the gargantuan windows. At the top, another door gave access to a second gallery in the floodlit interior of the dome, sixty feet above the lower one.
Zen looked over the railing at the vertiginous prospect below. From here, the tarpaulin was a mere scrap of blue. Again he told Grimaldi and Cecchi to wait while he walked slowly round the ledge, running his finger along the top of the railing and examining the floor. He had gone about a quarter of the way round when he stopped abruptly and glanced back at the other two men. They were standing near the door, chatting quietly together. Zen bent down beside the object which had caught his attention. It was a black brogue shoe, resting on its side between two of the metal stanchions supporting the railing. The toe, its polish badly scuffed, protruded several inches over the void.
A moment later he noticed the twine. Thin, colourless, almost invisible, it was tied to one of the stanchions against which the shoe rested. The other end dangled over the edge of the gallery. Zen pulled it in. There were several yards of it. He got out his lighter and burned through the twine near the knot securing it to the metal post. Straightening up again, he stuffed the twine into his pocket with the plastic bag in which the perfume had been wrapped.
Looking over the railing, he studied the scene below. The workmen were still shifting benches further down the nave, but the area below was deserted. With a gentle kick, Zen eased the black shoe off the edge of the gallery and watched it tumble end over end until he could make it out no longer. Whatever sound it made as it hit the floor of the basilica was lost in the squealing and honking of the benches. Rubbing his hands briskly together, Zen completed his circuit of the gallery, returning to the spot by the door where Grimaldi and Cecchi were in conversation.
‘Quite right,’ he told the building superintendent. ‘There’s nothing to see.’
Cecchi sniffed a told-you-so. Zen tapped Grimaldi’s two-way radio.
‘Does this thing work up here?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then get hold of Lamboglia and tell him to meet me by the body in ten minutes.’
He glanced at his watch again.
‘And then call a taxi to the Porta Sant’ Anna,’ he added.
When Zen and Grimaldi emerged into the amplitude of the basilica, like woodlice creeping out of the skirting of a ballroom, Monsignor Lamboglia was waiting for them. Zen regretted not having paid much attention to Sánchez-Valdés’s secretary earlier, since it meant dealing with an unknown quantity at this crucial juncture. If he played it smart, he could be back in bed with Tania in half an hour. He therefore studied the cleric as he approached, trying to gather clues as to how best to handle him. Lamboglia’s gaunt, craggy face, a mask of gloomy disapproval which looked as though it had been rough-hewn from granite, gave nothing away. But the rapid tapping of his fingers and the darting, censorious eyes betrayed the testy perfectionist who loved catching inferiors out and taxing them with inconsequential faults. It was this that gave Zen his opening.
‘Well?’ demanded Lamboglia brusquely, having dismissed Grimaldi with a curt wave of the hand.
Zen shrugged.
‘More or less, yes. Apart from the business of the shoes, of course.’
Lamboglia’s lips twisted in disapproval and his eyes narrowed.
‘Shoes? What do you mean?’
Zen pulled the edge of the tarpaulin back, exposing the victim’s feet and the brown suede slip-ons.
‘The archbishop said you people had learned a thing or two from the way Papa Luciani’s death was handled,’ he remarked contemptuously. ‘You wouldn’t know, judging by this sort of thing.’
By now Lamboglia looked apoplectic. For an instant, Zen caught a glimpse of the little boy, desperate to please, yet finding himself unjustly accused, fighting to restrain the tears, the panicky sense that the universe made no sense. The boy was long gone, but the strategies he had worked out in his misery still determined the behaviour of the man.
‘If you have noticed anything amiss,’ the cleric snapped, ‘then kindly inform me what it is without further prevarication.’
Zen handed him one of the shoes.
‘For a start, these shoes have only ever been worn by a corpse. Moreover they are mass-produced items totally out of keeping with the quality of the victim’s other garments. On top of that, they’re brown. A man like this wouldn’t be seen dead – to coin a phrase – wearing brown shoes with a blue suit. And finally, the stocking on the right foot is stained with blood all the way down to the toe, and must therefore have been uncovered when the body struck the ground.’
After inspecting the shoe carefully, Monsignor Lamboglia nodded. His panic was subsiding, converting itself into a cold anger which would eventually be discharged on the appropriate target.
‘And what conclusion do you draw from these observations?’ he demanded challengingly.
Zen shrugged.
‘You’d need to interrogate your staff to find out exactly what happened. My guess is that when the body was discovered, one of the shoes was missing. Some bright spark realized that this might look suspicious, and since they couldn’t find the missing shoe, a different pair was substituted. But people are superstitious about letting their shoes be worn by a dead man, so they used a new pair. Result, an amateurish botch-job calculated to arouse exactly the sort of suspicions it was meant to allay.’
Lamboglia measured Zen with a cold glare. It was one thing for him to criticize his underlings – and whoever was responsible for this was going to wish he had never been conceived – but that did not mean he was prepared to condone gratuitous insults from outsiders.
‘Nevertheless,’ he pointed out, ‘the problem remains. No one’s going to be prepared to believe that Ruspanti walked up to the dome with one shoe off and one shoe on.’
Zen nodded slowly, as if recalling something.
‘Ah yes, the shoe.’
Strolling over to the benches of pews lined up in the north transept, he walked along them until he saw the missing black brogue. He picked it up and walked back to Lamboglia.
‘Here you are.’
Lamboglia turned the shoe over as though it were a property in a magic trick.
‘What was it doing there?’ he demanded.
‘It must have got pulled off as Ruspanti clambered over the railings. Perhaps he changed his mind at the last minute and tried to climb back.’
Lamboglia thought about this for a moment.
‘I suppose so,’ he said.
‘There are no further problems as far as I can see,’ Zen told him briskly. ‘But you can of course contact me through the Ministry, should the need arise.’
Lamboglia glared at him. Although the man’s behaviour couldn’t be faulted professionally, his breezy, off-hand manner left a lot to be desired. Lamboglia would dearly have loved to take him down a peg or two, to make him sweat. But as things stood there was nothing he could do except give him the sour look which his subordinates so dreaded.
‘Are you in a hurry, dottore?’ he snapped.
‘I have a taxi waiting.’
Lamboglia’s glare intensified.
‘Another appointment? You’re a busy man.’
Zen looked at the cleric, and smiled.
‘No, I just want to get to bed.’
2
On the face of it, the scene at the Ministry of the Interior the following Tuesday morning was calculated to gladden the hearts of all those who despaired of the grotesque overmanning and underachievement of the government bureaucracy, a number roughly equal to those who had failed to secure a cushy statale post of their own. Not only were a significant minority of the staff at their desks, but the atmosphere was one of intense and animated activity. The only snag was that little or none of this activity had anything to do with the duties of the Ministry.
In the Ministerial suite on the top floor, where the present incumbent and his coterie of under-secretaries presided, the imminent collapse of the present government coalition had prompted a frantic round of consultations, negotiations, threats and promises as potential contenders jockeyed for position. On the lower floors, unruffled by this aria di crisi, it was business as usual. The range of services on offer included a fax bureau, an agency for Filippino maids, two competing protection rackets, a Kawasaki motorcycle franchise, a video rental club, a travel agent and a citywide courier service, to say nothing of Madam Beta, medium, astrologer, sorcerer, cards and palms read, the evil eye averted, talismans and amulets prepared. One of the most flourishing of these enterprises was situated in the Administration section on the ground floor, where Tania Biacis ran an agency which supplied speciality food items from her native Friuli region.
Tania had got the idea from one of her cousins, who had returned from a honeymoon trip to London with the news that Italian food was now as much in demand in the English capital as Italian fashion, ‘only nothing from our poor Friuli, as usual!’ At the time this had struck Tania as little more than the usual provincial whingeing, all too characteristic of a border region acutely aware of its distance from the twin centres of power in Rome and Milan. It had been the energies released by the breakup of her marriage which had finally driven her to do something about it. Claiming some of the leave due to her, she had travelled to London with a suitcase full of samples rounded up by Aldo, the husband of her cousin Bettina, whose job with the post office at Cividale gave him ample opportunity for getting out and about and meeting local farmers.
Posing as a representative, Tania had visited the major British wholesalers and tried to convince them of the virtues of Friuli ham, wine, honey, jam and grappa. Rather to her surprise, several had placed orders, in one case so large that Aldo had the greatest difficulty in meeting it. Since then, the business had grown by leaps and bounds. Aldo and Bettina looked after the supply side, while Tania handled the orders and paperwork, using the Ministry’s telephones and fax facilities to keep in contact with the major European cities, as well as New York and Tokyo. One of Agrofrul’s greatest successes was a range of jams originally made by Bettina’s aunt; this had now been expanded into a cottage industry involving several hundred women. Genuine Friuli grappa, made in small copper stills, had also done well, while the company’s air-cured hams were rapidly displacing their too-famous rivals from Parma as the ultimate designer charcuterie.
Tania had told Aurelio nothing of all this. Her nominal reason for reticence was that he was a senior Ministry official, and although everyone knew perfectly well what went on in the way of moonlighting, scams and general private enterprise, she didn’t want to compromise her lover by making him a party to activities which were theoretically punishable by instant dismissal, loss of pension rights and even a prison sentence. Tania was pretty sure that no one would throw the book at her. The rules were never enforced on principle, only as a result of someone’s personal schemes for advancement or revenge, and she simply wasn’t important enough to attract that kind of negative compliment. Moreover, as a result of her six years’ service in the Administration section she was now privy to most of her colleagues’ dirty little secrets, which in itself would make any potential whistle-blower think twice.
Aurelio’s situation was quite different. By nature a loner, his reputation damaged by a mistaken fit of zealousness at the time of the Moro affair, he was promoted to the Ministry’s élite Criminalpol squad as a result of an unsavoury deal during his comeback case in Perugia, and had subsequently been connected with a heavily compromised political party at the time of the Burolo affair. As a result, Zen was surrounded by enemies who would like nothing better than to implicate him in a case involving misuse of bureaucratic resources and conspiracy to defraud the state, not to mention a little matter of undeclared taxes amounting to several million lire.
The fact that they were lovers would just make the whole scandal even more juicy, but it also explained Tania’s unadmitted reason for not telling Aurelio about the success of Agrofrul. She was well aware that the story he had told her about the flat was not true. It supposedly belonged to an American who was out of the country on business for a few months and was happy to have someone looking after the place, but this was clearly nonsense. Where were this American’s belongings? Why did he never get any post? Above all, why had he handed it over free of charge to the friend of a friend, a person he’d never even met, when he could have sub-let it for a small fortune? Flats as gorgeous as that, in such a sought-after district, didn’t just fall into your lap free of charge. Someone was paying for it, and in the present case that someone could only be Aurelio Zen.
This put Tania in an awkward position. Eight years of marriage to Mauro Bevilacqua had left her with no illusions about the fragility of the male ego, or the destructive passions that can be unleashed without the slightest warning when it feels slighted. She knew that Zen had already been hurt by her refusal to move in with him, and she guessed that his belief that he was supporting her financially might well be the necessary salve for this wound. He could accept Tania’s independence as long as he was secretly subsidizing it, as long as he believed that she was only playing at being free. But how would he react if he learned that his mistress was in fact the senior partner in a business with a turnover which already exceeded his salary by a considerable amount? She had no wish to lose him, this strange, moody individual who could be so passionately there one moment, so transparently distant the next, who seemed to float through life as though he had nothing to hope or fear from it. She wanted to know him, if anyone could, and to be known in return. But not possessed. No one would ever own her again, on that she was quite adamant.
She pulled t
he phone over, got an outside line and then dialled a restaurant in Stockholm’s business district where a brambly refosco made by a relative of Aldo’s sister had become a cult wine. The distributor who had been importing Agrofrul’s produce had recently gone bankrupt and the restaurant now wanted to know if they could obtain supplies direct. Using her limited but serviceable English, Tania ascertained that the proprietor had not yet arrived but would call back. She lit a cigarette and turned her attention to the newspaper open on the desk in front of her, which was making great play with allegations of a cover-up in the death of a Roman nobleman in the Vatican.
Tania turned the page impatiently. She had no appetite for such things any more, the grand scandals which ran and ran for years, as though manipulated by a master storyteller who was always ready with some fresh ‘revelation’ whenever the public interest started to wane. The one thing you could be sure of, the only absolute certainty on offer, was that you would never, ever, know the truth. Whatever you did know was therefore by definition not the truth. Like children playing ‘pass the parcel’, the commentators and analysts tried to guess the nature of the mystery by examining the size, shape and weight of the package in which it had been concealed. But the adult game was even more futile, for once the wrappings had all been removed the parcel always proved to be empty.
The shrilling of the phone interrupted her thoughts. Pulling over the rough jotting of proposals she had prepared for the Swedish restaurateur, Tania lifted the receiver.
‘Good morning,’ she said in English.
‘Who the hell is this?’
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