'Certainly, certainly! I shall be privileged to accompany you personally and…'
'Thank you, that will not be necessary. There is a caretaker at the house? If you will be good enough to ring and let them know that I am coming, I prefer to look around on my own. We Swiss, you know, are very methodical. I do not wish to try your patience!'
After some polite insistence, Angelo Confalone gave way gracefully. Double commission and no time wasted doing the honours! He could hardly believe his luck.
Zen emerged from the lawyer's offices to a chorus of horns, the street having been blocked by a lorry delivering cartons of dairy produce to a nearby grocery. He slipped through the narrow space between the lorry and the wall and made his way along the cracked concrete slabs with which the street was paved, well pleased with the way things were going. Back in Rome, the idea of forestalling his official mission with a bit of private enterprise had appeared at best a forlorn attempt to leave no stone unturned, at worst a foolhardy scheme which might well end in disaster and humiliation. But from his present perspective, Rome itself seemed an irrelevance, a city as distant and as foreign as Marseilles or Madrid. It was here, and only here, that Zen could hope to find the solution to his problems.
Not that he expected to 'crack' the Burolo case, of course. There was nothing to crack, anyway. The eviJence against Renato Favelloni was overwhelming. The only question was whether he had done the job personally or hired it out to a professional. The key to the whole affair gad been the video tapes and computer diskettes stored in the underground vault at Oscar Burolo's villa. Here Burolo had kept in electronic form all the information recording in meticulous detail the history of his construction company's irresistible rise. After the murders, this material had been impounded by the authorities, but when the investigating magistrate's staff came to examine them, they found that the computer data had been irretrievably corrupted, probably by exposure to a powerful magnetic field.
Insistent rumours began to circulate to the effect that the discs had been in perfect condition when they were seized by the Carabinieri, and these were strengthened about a month later when a leading news magazine published what purported to be a transcription of part of Burolo's records. The material concerned a contract agreed in 1979 for the construction of a new prison near Latina, a creation of the Fascist era on the Lazio coast, popularly known as 'Latrina'. Burolo Construction had undercut the estimated minimum tender for the project by almost 6o per cent.
Their bid was duly accepted, despite the fact that the plan which accompanied it was vague in some places and full of inaccuracies in others.
No sooner had work begun than the site proved to be marshy and totally unsuitable for the type of construction envisaged. Burolo Construction promptly applied to the Ministry of Public Works for the first of a series of revised budgets which eventually pushed the cost of the prison from the 4,ooo million lire specified in the original contract to over 36,ooo million. This much was public knowledge.
What the news magazine's article showed was how it had been done.
Although the article did not name the politician referred to in Burolo's electronic notes as 'l'onorevole', it left little doubt in the reader's mind that he was a leading figure in one of the smaller parties making up the governing coalition, who had been Minister of Public Works at the time the prison contract was agreed. According to his notes, Oscar Burolo had paid Renato Favelloni ggo million lire to ensure that Burolo Construction would get the contract. A comment which some claimed to find typical of Oscar's sardonic style noted that this handout exceeded the normal rate, which apparently varied between 6 and 8 per cent of the contract fee. The records also listed the dates and places on which Oscar had contacted Favelloni, and one on which he had met l'onorevole himself.
No sooner has this article appeared than the journalists responsible were summoned to the law courts in Nuoro and directed to disclose where they had obtained the information. On refusing, they were promptly jailed for culpable reticence. But that wasn't the end of the affair, for the following issue of the magazine contained an interview with Oscar's son. Enzo Burolo not only substantiated the claims made in the original article, but advanced new and even more damaging allegations. In particular, he claimed that six months prior to the killings his father had paid yo million lire to obtain the contract for a new generating station for ENEL, the electricity board. Despite this exorbitant backhander, Burolo Construction did not get the contract.
According to Enzo, Oscar Burolo was so infuriated that he vowed to stop paying kickbacks altogether. From that point on, his company's fortunes went into a nosedive. In a desperate attempt to break the system, Oscar had leagued together with other construction firms to form a ring that tendered for contracts at realistic prices, but in each case the bidding was declared invalid on some technicality and the contract subsequently awarded to a company outside the ring.
Burolo Construction soon found itself on the verge of bankruptcy, but when Oscar applied to the banks for a line of credit he discovered that he was no longer a favoured client. His letters were mislaid, his calls not turned, the people he had plied with gifts and favours vrere permanently unavailable. Furious and desperate, Oscar had played his last card, contacting Renato Favelloni to demand the protection of 1'onorevole himself. If this was not forthcoming, he warned Favelloni, he would reveal the full extent of their collaboration, including detailed accounts of the payoffs over the Latina prison job and a video tape showing Favelloni himself in an unguarded moment discussing his relationship with various men of power, l'onorevole included. Discussions and negotiations had continued throughout the summer, but according to Enzo this had been a mere delaying tactic which his father's enemies used to gain time in which to prepare their definitive response, which duly came on that fateful day in August, just hours after Renato Favelloni had left the Villa Burolo.
From that moment on, the case against Favelloni developed an irresistible momentum. True, there were stiII those who raised doubts. For example, if the destruction of Burolo's records had been as vital to the success of the conspiracy as the murder of Oscar himself, how was it that the magazine had been able to obtain an uncorrupted copy of one of the most incriminating of the discs?
Even more to the point, why did the killer use a weapon as noisy as a shotgun if he needed time to destroy the records and make good his escape'? But these questions were soon answered. The magazine's information, it was suggested, came not from the original disc but from a copy which the wily Burolo had deposited elsewhere, to be made public in the event of his death. As for the noise factor, there was nothing to show that the discs and videos had not been erased before the killings. Indeed, the metallic crash reproduced on the video recording seemed to strengthen this hypothesis. As for the weapon, this had presumably been chosen with a view to making the crime appear a savage act of casual violence. In short, such details appeared niggling attempts to undermine the case against Renato Favelloni and his masters at Palazzo Sisti, a case which now appeared overwhelming.
Luckily for Zen, the case itself was only peripherally his concern. There was no way he could realistically hope to get Favelloni off the hook. His aim was simply to avoid making powerful and dangerous enemies at Palazzo Sisti, and the best way to do this seemed to be to take a leaf out of Vincenzo Fabri's book. In other words, he had to make it look as if he had done his crooked best to frame Padedda, but that his best just hadn't been good enough.
This wasn't as easy as it sounded. The thing had to be handled very carefully indeed if he was to avoid sending an innocent man to prison and yet convince Palazzo Sisti that he was not a disloyal employee to be ruthlessly disposed of but, like Fabri, a well-meaning sympathizer who was unfortunately not up to the demands of the job. In Rome his prospects of achieving this had appeared extremely dubious, but he was now beginning to feel that he could bring it off. The tide had turned with the arrest of Giuliano Acciari and – yes, why not admit it? – with that lunch with T
ania and the embrace with which it had concluded. A fatalist at heart, Zen had learnt from bitter experience that when things weren't going his way there was no point in trying to force them to do so. Now that they were, it would be equal!y foolish not to take advantage of the situation.
He strolled along the street, glancing into shop windows and along the dark alleys that opened off to either side, scanning the features and gestures of the people he met. He felt that he was beginning to get the feel of the place, to sense the possibilities it offered.
Then he saw – or seemed to see – something that brought all his confident reasoning crashing down around him. In an alleyway to the left of the main street, a cul-de-sac filled with plastic rubbish sacks, a few empty oil drums and some building debris, stood a figure holding what looked like a gun.
A moment later it was gone, and a moment after that Zen found himself questioning whether it had ever existed. Don't be absurd, he told himself as he stepped into the ailey, determined to dispel this mirage created by his own overheated imagination. The man who had broken into his house in Rome was safely under arrest, and even if Spadola had taken up his vendetta in person, how could he have tracked his quarry down so quickly?
Zen had had every reason to take the greatest care when collecting the Mercedes ar.d driving it to Civitaveccia. He wasn't thinking of Spadola so much as Vincenzo Fabri and the people at Palazzo Sisti. But he hadn't been followed, he was sure of that.
The alley narrowed to a crevice between the buildings on each side, barely wide enough for one person to pass. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Zen saw that it continued for some distance, dipping steeply, and then turned sharply 1ef't, presumably leading to a street below. There was no sign that anyone had been there recently.
When he heard the footsteps behind him, closing off his escape, he whirled around. For a moment everythiny, seemed to be repeating itself in mirror-image: once again he was faced with a figure holding a gun. But this time the weapon was a stubby submachine-gun, the man was wearing battledress, and there was no doubt about the reality of the experience. At the end of the alley, in the street, stood a blue jeep marked 'Carabinieri'.
'Papers!' the man barked.
Zen reached automatically for his wallet. Then his hand dropped again.
'They took them at the hotel,' he explained, accentuating his northern intonation slightly.
The Carabiniere looked him up and down. 'This isn't the way to the hotel.'
'I know. I was just curious. I'm from Switzerland, you see. By us the towns are more rational built, without these so interesting and picturesque aspects.'
You're overdoing it, he told himself. But the Carabiniere appeared to relax slightly.
'Tourist?' he nodded.
Zen ran through his well-rehearsed spiel, taking care to mention Angelo Confalone several times. The Carabiniere's expression gradually shifted from suspicion to a slightly patronizing complacency. Finally he ushered Zen back to the street.
'All the same,' he said as they reached the jeep, 'it's maybe better not to go exploring too much. There was a case last spring, a couple of German tourists in a camper found shot through the head. They must have stumbled on something they weren't supposed to see. It can happen to anyone, round here. All you need is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.'
The jeep roared away.
I thought their deaths would change everything, but nothing chganged. Night after night I returned, as though next time the sentence might be revoked, the dream broken. In vain. Even here, were the darkness is entire, I knew I was only on parole.
Nothing would ever change that. E was banished, exiled for life into this world of light which divides and pierces, driving its aching distances into us.
Perhaps I had not done enough, I thought. Perhaps a further offering was required, "nother death. But whose? I i'ost myself in futile speculations. There is a power that punishes us, that much seemed clear. Its influence ertends everywhere, pervasive and mysterious, but can it also be influenced? Since we are punished, we must have offended.- Can that offence be redeemed? And so on, endlessly, round and round, dizzying myself in the search for some flaw in the walls that shut me in, that shut me out.
A good butcher doesn't stain the meat, my father used to say, though everything else was stained, clothes and skin and face, as he wrestled the animal to the ground and stuck the long knife into its throat, panting, drenched in blood from head to toe, the pig still twitching. Yet when he strung it up and peeled away the skin, the meat was unblemished. That's all I need be, I thought. A good butcher, calm, patient and indifferent. All I lacked was the chosen victim.
Then the policeman came.
Saturday, 20.10 – 22.25
By eight o'clock that evening, Herr Reto Gurtner was in a philosophical mood. Aurelio Zen, on the other hand, was drunk and lonely.
The night was heavy and close, with occasional rumbles of thunder. The bar was crowded with men of all ages, talking, smoking, drinking, playing cards. Apart from the occasional oblique glance, they ignored the stranger sitting at a table near the back of the room. But his presence disturbed them, no question about that.
They would much rather he had not been there. In an earlier, rougher era they would have seen him off the premises and out of the village. That was no longer possible, and so, reflected the philosophical Gurtner, they were willing him into non-existence, freezing him out, closing the circle against him.
Despite evident differences in age, education and income, all the men were dressed in very similar clothes: sturdy, drab and functional. In Rome it was the clothes you noticed first these days, not the mass-produced figures whose purpose seemed to be to display them to advantage. But here in this dingy backward Sardinian bar it was still the people that mattered. We've thrown out the baby with the bathwater, reflected the philosophical Gurtner. Eradicating poverty and prejudice, we've eradicated something else too, something as rare as any of the threatened species the ecologists make so much fuss apout, and just as impossible to replace once it has become extinct.
Bullshit, Aurelio Zen exclaimed angrily, pouring himself another glass of vernaccia from the carafe he had ordered.
The storm-laden atmosphere, the distasteful nature of his business, his sense of total isolation, the fact that he was missing Tania badly, all these had combined to put him in a sour and irrational mood. This priggish, patronizing Zuricher was the last straw. Who did he think he was, coming over here and going on as though poverty was something romantic and valuable? Only a nation as crassly and smugly materialistic as the Swiss could afford to indulge in that sort of sentimentality.
He gulped the tawny wine that clung to the sides of the glass like spirits. It was tasting better all the time. Once again he thought of phoning Tania, and once again he rejected the idea. The more he lovingly recalled, detail by detail, what had happened that lunchtime, the more unlikely it appeared. He must surely have imagined the light in her eyes, the lift in her voice. The facts were not in dispute, it was a question of how you interpreted them. It was the same with the Burolo case. It was the same with everything.
Zen peered intently at the tabletop, which swam in and out of focus in a fascinating way. For a moment he seemed to have caught a glimpse oc a great truth, a unified field theory of humar. existence, a simple hasic formula that explained everything.
This wine is very strong, Reto Gurtner explained in his slightly pedantic accent. You have drunk a lot of it on an empty stomach. It has gone to your head. The thing to do now is to get something to eat.
Well, it was easy to say that! Hadn't he been waiting all this time for some sign of life in the restaurant area? It was now nearly a quarter past eight, and the lights were still dimmed and the curtain drawn. What time did they eat here, for God's sake?
Once again the thunder growled distantly, reminding Zen of the jet fighter which had startled him at the villa.
There had been no hint of a storm then. On the contrary, the sky was
free from any suspicion of cloud, a perfect dome of pale bleached blue from which the winter sun shone brilliantly yet without ferocity, a tyrant mellowed by age. The route to the villa lay along the same road by which he had arrived, but in this direction it looked quite different. Instead of a forbidding wall of mountains closing off the view, the land swept down and away, rippling over hillocks and outcrops, reaching down to the sea, a shimmering inconclusive extension of the panorama like the row of dots after an incomplete sentence. The predominant colours were reddish ochre and olive green, mingled together like the ingredients of a sauce, retaining their individuality yet also creating something new. In all that vast landscape there was no sign of man's presence, except for a distant plume of smoke from the papermill near the harbour where he had disembarked that morning. The only eyesore was a large patch of greenery off to the left, on the flanks of the mountain range. Its almost fluorescent shade reminded Zen of the unsuccessful colour postcards of his youth. Presumably it was a forest, but how did any forest rooted in that grudging soil come to glow in that hysterical way?
The road looped down to the main road leading up over the mountains towards Nuoro, the provincial capital where Renato Favelloni now languished in judicial custody. According to the map, the unsurfaced track opposite petered out after a short distance at an isolated station on the metre-gauge railway. Zen turned right, then after a few kilometres forked left on to a road badly in need of repair which ran across the lower slopes of the valley, crossing the railway line, before climbing the other side to join the main coastal highway.
Some distance before the junction, a high wire-mesh fence came down from the ridge to Zen's left to run alongside the road. At regular intervals, large signs warned 'Private Property – Keep Out – Electrified Fencing – Beware of the Lions'. The landscape was bare and windswept, a desolate chaos of rock, scrub and stunted ~ees. After some time a surfaced driveway opened off the road to the left, leading to a gate of solid steel set in the wire-mesh fence.
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