Vendetta az-2

by Michael Dibdin

  Zen took his cup of undecaffeinated espresso and unwrapped the two lumps of sugar supplied by the bar, studying the 'Interesting Facts about the World of Nature' printed on the wrapper, while he waited for his host to proceed.

  'As you are no doubt aware, dottore, this has been a sad and difficult time for us. Naturally, we already knew what your report makes abundantly clear, namely that the evidence against Renato Favelloni is both flimsy and entirely circumstantial. There is not the slightest question that his innocence would eventually be established by due process of law.'

  Zen noted the conditional as the coffee seared its way down his throat.

  'But by then, alas, the damage will have been done!' the young man continued. His seemingly compulsive hesitations and rephrasings had now been set aside like a disguise that has served its purpose. 'If mud is thrown as viciously as it has been and will be, some of it is bound to stick. Not just to Favelloni himself, but to all those who were in any way associated with him, or who had occasion to, ah, call on his services at some time. This is the problem we face, dottore. I trust you will not judge me indiscreet if I add that it is one we were beginning to despair of solving. Imagine, then, the emotions elicited by your report! So much hope! So many interesting new perspectives! "Light at the end of the tunnel", as 1'onorevole saw fit to put it.'

  Zen set his empty cup back in its saucer on the leather surface of the desk.

  'My report was merely a resume of the investigations carried out by others.'

  'Exactly! That was precisely its strength. If you had been one of our, ah, contacts at the Ministry, your findings would have excited considerably less interest. To be perfectly frank, we have been let down before by people who promised us this, that and the other, and then couldn't deliver. Why, only a few days ago we asked our man there to obtain a copy of the video tape showing the tragic events at the Villa Burolo. A simple enough request, you would think, but even that proved beyond the powers of the individual in question. Nor was this the first time that he had disappointed us. So we felt it was time to bring in someone fresh, with the proper qualifications. Someone with a track record in this sort of work. And I must say that, so far, we have had no reason to regret our decision.

  Of course, the real test is still to come, but already we have been very favourably impressed by the way in which your report both exposed the inherent weaknesses of the case against Favelloni, and revealed the existence of various equally possible scenarios which, for purely political reasons, have never been properly investigated.'

  The young man stood quite still for a moment, his slender fingers steepled as though in prayer.

  'The task we now face is to ensure that we do not suffer as much damage from this innocent man being brought to trial and acquitted as we would do if he were really guilty.

  In a word, this show trial of Renato Favelloni, and by implication of l'onorevole himself, engineered by our enemies, must be blocked before it starts. Your report makes it perfectly clear that the evidence against Favelloni has been cobbled together from a mass of disjointed and unrelated fragments. Those same fragments, with a little initiative and enterprise, could be used to make an even more convincing case against one of the other suspects you mention.'

  Perched precariously on the low, fragile chair, Zen felt like a spectator in the front row of the stalls trying to make out what was happening on stage. The young man's expression seemed to suggest that the next move was up to Zen, but he was unwilling to make it until he had a clearer idea of what was involved.

  'Do you mind if I smoke?' he asked finally.

  The young man impatiently waved assent.

  'Which of the other suspects did you have in mind?' Zen murmured casually as he lit up.

  'Well, it seems to us that there are a number of avenues which might be explored with profit.'

  'For example?'

  'Well, Burolo's son, for example.'

  'But he was in Boston at the time.'

  'He could have hired someone.'

  'He wouldn't have known how. Anyway, sons don't go around putting out contracts on their fathers because they want them to study law instead of music.'

  The young man acknowledged the point with a prolonged blink.

  'I agree that such a hypothesis would have needed a good deal of work before it became credible, but the possibility remains open. In fact, however, Enzo Burolo has close links with one of our allies in the government, so it would in any case have been inopportune to pursue the matter. I cited it merely as one example among many.

  Another, which appears to us considerably more fruitful, is the fellow Burolo employed to look after those absurd lions he bought.'

  Zen breathed out a cloud of smoke.

  'Pizzoni? He had an alibi too.'

  'Yes, he had an alibi. And what does that mean? That half-a-dozen of the local peasantry have been bribed or bullied to lie about seeing him in the bar that evening.'

  'Why should anyone want to protect Pizzoni? He was a nobody, an outsider.'

  The young man leaned forward across the desk.

  'Supposing that wasn't the case? Supposing I were to tell you that the man's real name was not Pizzoni but Padedda, and that he was not from the Abruzzi, as his papers claim, but from Sardinia, from a village in the Gennargentu mountains not far from Nuoro. What would you say to that?'

  Zen flicked ash into a pewter bowl that might or might not have been intended for this purpose.

  'Well, in the first instance I'd want to know why you haven't informed the authorities investigating the case.'

  The young man turned away to face the window. The tall panes of glass were covered with a thick patina c)f grime which reflected his features clearly. Zen saw him smile, as though at the fatuity of this comment.

  'When one's opponent is cheating, only a fool continues to play by the rules,' he recited quietly, as though quoting.

  'This piece of information came to light as a result of research carried out privately on our behalf. We know only too well what would happen if we communicated it to the judiciary. The magistrates have decided to charge Favelloni for reasons which had nothing to do with the facts of the case. They aren't going to review that decision unless some dramatic new development forces them to do so.

  Isolated, inconvenient facts, which do not directly bear on the case they are preparipg, would simply be swept under the carpet.'

  He swung round to confront Zen.

  'Rather than squander our advantage in this way, we propose to launch our own initiative, reopening the investigation that was so hastily slammed shut for illjudged political reasons. And who better to conduct this operation than the man whose incisive and comprehensive review of the case has given us all fresh hope?'

  Zen crushed out his cigarette carelessly, burning his fingertip on the hot ash.

  'In my official capacity?'

  'Absolutely, dottore! That's the whole point. Everything must be open and above board.'

  'In that case, I would need a directive from my department.'

  'You'll get one, don't worry about that! Your orders will be communicated to you in the usual way, through the usual channels. The purpose of this briefing is simply and purely to ensure that you understand the situation. From the moment you leave here today you will have no further contact with us. You'll be posted to Sardinia as a matter of absolute routine. You will visit the scene of the crime, interview witnesses, interrogate suspects. As always, you will naturally have at your disposal the full facilities of the local force. In the course of your investigations you will discover concrete evidence demolishing Pizzoni's alibi, and linking him to the murder of Oscar Burolo. All this will take no more than a few days at the most. You will then submit your findings to the judiciary in the normal way, while we for our part ensure that their implications are not lost on anyone concerned.'

  Zen stared across the room at a detail in the corner of the tapestry, showing a nymph taking refuge from the hunters in a grotto.
r />   'Why me?'

  The young man's finely manicured hands spread open in a gesture of benediction.

  'As I said, dottore, you have a good track record. Once your accomplishments in the Miletti case had been brought to our attention, well, quite frankly, the facts spoke for themselves.'

  Zen gaped at him. 'The Miletti case?'

  'I'm sure you will recall that your methods attracted, ah, a certain amount of criticism at the time,' the young man remarked with a touch of indulgent jocularity. 'I believe that in certain quarters they were even condemned as irregular and improper. What no one could deny was that you got results! The conspiracy against the Miletti family was smashed at a single stroke by your arrest of that foreign woman. Their enemies were completely disconcerted, and by the time they re-formed to cope with this unexpected development, the critical moment had passed and it was too late.'

  He came round the desk, towering above Zen.

  'The parallel with the present case is obvious. Here, too, timing is of the essence. As I say, the truth would in any case emerge in due course, but not before l'onorevole's reputation had been foully smeared. We have no intention of allowing that to happen, which is why we are entrusting you with this delicate and critical mission. In short, we're counting on you to apply in Sardinia the same methods which proved so effective in Perugia.'

  Zen said nothing. After a few moments a slight crease appeared on the young man's brow.

  'I need hardly add that a successful outcome to this affair is also in your own best interests. I'm sure you're only too well aware of how swiftly one's position in a organization such as the Ministry can change, often without one even being aware of it. Your triumph in the Miletti case might easily be undermined by those who take, ah, a narrow-minded view of things. The size of the Criminalpol squad is constantly under review, and given the attrition rate amongst senior police officials in places such as Palermo, the possibility of transfers cannot be ruled out.

  On the other hand, success in the Burolo case would consolidate your position beyond question.'

  He reached behind him and depressed a lever on the intercom.

  'Lino? Dottor Zen is just leaving.'

  Once again, Zen felt the pale, cool touch of the young man's hand.

  'It really was most good of you to come, dottore. I trust that your work has not been… that's to say, that no serious disruption will make itself felt in…'

  The appearance of the stocky Lino rescued them both from these incoherent politenesses. Like a man in a dream, Zen walked back through the dim vastness of the room to the walnut door, which Lino closed behind them as softly as the lid of an expensive coffin.

  'This way.'

  'That's very good,' Zen remarked as they set off along the corridor. 'Have they trained you to say anything else?'

  Lino turned round looking tough.

  'You want your teeth kicked in?'

  'That depends on whether you want to be turned into low-grade dog food. Because that's what's liable to happen to anyone round here who fails to treat me with the proper respect.'

  'Bullshit! '

  'On the contrary, chum. All I have to do is mention that I don't like your face and by tomorrow you won't have a face.'

  Lino sneered.

  'You're crazy,' he said, without total conviction.

  'That's not what I'onorevole thinks. Now beat it. I'll find my own way out.'

  For a moment Lino tried bravely to stare Zen out, but doubt had leaked into his eyes and he had to give up the attempt.

  'Crazy!' he repeated, turning away with a contemptuous sniff.

  Zen left the portal of Palazzo Sisti with a confident, unfaltering stride, a man with places to go to and people to see. The moment he was out of sight around the nearest corner, his manner changed beyond all recognition. He might now have been taken for a member of one of the geriatric tourist groups that descend on Rome once the high season is over. Far from having an urgent goal in mind, he turned right and left at random, obeying impulses of which he wasn't even aware and which in any case were of no importance. All that mattered was to let the tension seep slowly out of his body, draining out through the soles of his feet as they traversed the grimy undulating cobbles, scattering pigeons and sending the feral cats scuttling for cover under parked cars.

  In due course he emerged into an open space which he recognized with pleasure as the Piazza Campo dei Fiori, almost Venetian in its intimacy and hence one of Zen's favourite spots in Rome. The morning vegetable market created a gentle bustle of activity that was supremely restful. He made his way across the cobbles strewn with discarded leaves and stalks, past zinc bathtubs and buckets full of ashes from the wooden boxes burned earlier against the morning chill. Now the sun was high enough to flood most of the piazza with its light. The stall-holders were still hard at work, washing and trimming salad greens under the communal tap. Elderly women in heavy dark overcoats with fur collars walked from stall to stall, looking doubtfully at the produce.

  Zen walked over to a wine shop he knew, where he ordered a glass of vino novello. He leaned against the doorpost, smoking a cigarette and sipping the frothy young wine, which had still been in the grapes when Oscar Burolo and his guests were murdered. A gang of labourers working on a house nearby were shouting from one level of scaffolding to another in a dialect so dense that Zen could understand nothing except that God and the Virgin Mary were coming in for the usual steady stream of abuse.

  A neat, compact group of Japanese tourists passed by, accompanied by two burly Italian bodyguards. The female guide, clutching a furled pink umbrella, was giving a running commentary in which Zen was surprised to make out the name 'Giordano Bruno', like a fish sighted under water. She pointed with her umbrella to the centre of the square, where the statue of the philosopher stood on a plinth, its base covered with the usual incomprehensible graffiti.

  Nearby an old woman bent double like a wooden doll hinged at the hips was feeding last night's spaghetti to a gang of mangy cats. Zen thought nostalgically of the cats of his native city, carved or living, monumental or obscure, the countless avatars of the Lion of the Republic itself. In Venice, cats were the familiars of the city, as much a part of it as the stones and the water, but the cats of Rome were just vermin to be periodically exterminated.

  It somehow seemed typical of the gulf which separated the two cities. For while Zen liked Campo dei Fiori, he could never forget that the statue at its centre commemorated a philosopher who was burnt alive on that spot at about the same time that the gracious and exquisite Palazzo Sisti was taking shape a few hundred metres away.

  As he took his empty glass back inside, Zen found himself drawn to the scene at the bar. One of the labourers, wearing dusty blue overalls and a hat made from newspaper like an inverted toy boat, was knocking back a glass of the local white wine. Further along, two businessmen stood talking in low voices. On the bar before them were their empty glasses, a saucer filled with nuts and cocktail biscuits, two folded newspapers and a removable in-car cassette player.

  Zen turned away. That was what had attracted his attention. But why? Nothing was more normal. No one left a cassette deck in their car any more, unless they wanted to have the windows smashed in and the unit stolen.

  It wasn't until Zen stepped into the band of shadow cast by the houses on the other side of the piazza that the point of the incident suddenly became clear to him. He had seen a cassette player in a parked car recently, in a brand-new luxury car parked in a secluded street late at night. Such negligence, coupled with the scratches and dents in the bodywork and the use of the floor as an ashtray, suggested a possibility that really should have occurred to him long before. Still, better late than never, he thought.

  Or.were there cases where that reassuring formula didn't hold, where late was just too late, and there were no second chances?

  Back at the Ministry, Zen phoned the Questura and asked whether Professor Lusetti's red Alfa Romeo appeared on their list of stolen vehicl
es. Thanks to the recent computerization of this department, he had his answer within seconds. The car in question had been reported stolen ten days earlier.

  He put the receiver down, then lifted it again and dialled another number. After some time the ringing tone was replaced by a robotic voice. 'Thank you for calling Paragon Security Consultants. The office is closed for lunch until three o'clock. If you wish to leave a message, please speak now.'

  'It's Aurelio, Gilberto. I was hoping to…'

  'Aurelio! How are things?'

  Zen stared at the receiver as thought it had stung him.

  'But… I thought that was a recorded message.'

  'That's what I wanted you to think. At least, not you, but any of the five thousand people I don't want to speak to at this moment.'

  'Why don't you get a real answering machine?'

  'I have, but I can't use it just at the moment. One of my competitors has found a way to fake the electronic tone I can send down the line to have it play back the recorded messages to a distant phone. The result is that he downloaded a hundred million lire's worth of business, as well as making me look an idiot. Anyway, what can I do for you?'

  'Well, I was hoping we could have a talk. I don't suppose you're free for lunch?'

  'Today? Actually that's a bit… well, I don't know.

  Come to think of it, that might work quite well. Yes!

  Listen, I'll see you at Licio's. Do you know where it is?'

  'I'll find it.'

  Zen pressed the rest down to get a dialling tone, then rang his home and asked Maria Grazia if everything was all right.

  'Everything's fine now,' she assured him. 'But this morning! Madonr.a, I was terrified!'

  Zen tightened his grip on the receiver. 'What happened?'

  'It was frightful, awful! The signora didn't notice anything, thanks be to God, but I was looking straight at the window when it happened!'

  'When what happened?'

  'Why, this man suddenly appeared!'

  'Where?'

  'At the window.'

  Zen took a deep breath. 'All right, now listen. I want you to describe him to me as carefully as you can. All right?.What did he look like?'