‘Because it’s the first tiny crack in the wall of silence. Obviously everyone in the town knew that the car had been there and that it was subsequently removed by the person or people who murdered Newman. Moreover, it indicates the modus operandi, which was a very odd one. It looks as if Newman arrived alone in the Lancia and then voluntarily walked up the long, arduous track to the spot where his body was found, barefoot and wearing the ritual garb of a corpse laid out for burial. And all this in plain view of the people in the town, even though an alternative and much more secluded route exists, the one taken by that French tourist. Doesn’t that suggest anything to you?’
Sforza shrugged impatiently.
‘Only that the people concerned were crazy. Kidnappers are in it for the money. It’s just business to them. They may occasionally kill their hostage if negotiations break down or if the family tries to lure them into an ambush, but in this case they hadn’t even tried to get in touch. Why would they destroy a potentially very profitable piece of merchandise without even putting it on the market?’
Zen nodded noncommittally and gathered up his things.
‘Those are valid questions, Giovanni, but we shouldn’t let them mesmerise us. I don’t believe that whoever did this was crazy in the vulgar sense. The key to resolving these apparent oddities is to stop regarding them as odd, because the perpetrator almost certainly doesn’t. It all makes complete sense to him, so it might be helpful to try to see the whole ghastly business in the same way that he sees it, as a deeply deliberate and meaningful performance. The question then becomes, what was the significance of this performance and for what audience was it intended?’
‘Well, I’ll leave all that to you, Aurelio. I haven’t run a case in years. Out of training.’
He sipped his drink reflectively.
‘To change the subject, how are you adjusting to life in Calabria?’
Zen waved vaguely.
‘It depresses me. Not so much the gory details like this atrocity. It’s more the sense of a generalised and ineradicable sadness about the place, despite its natural beauty. In fact, that just makes it worse. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised you can stick it here. I can’t wait for whatever his name is to get healthy enough to take over the seat I’m keeping warm for him.’
‘The word is that you may not have to wait very much longer,’ Sforza commented. ‘As for why I can stick it here, the reason is quite simply that I am ambitious. Not an attractive quality, perhaps, but I can’t help it. I’m only too well aware of the thing you’re talking about, that pervasive tristezza, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it interfere with my career plans.’
He knocked back the rest of his whisky.
‘Whereas you, Aurelio, if you will permit me to say so, haven’t a gram of ambition in your body. Which is why I will be made questore in two or three years and you will be stuck on your current rung of the ladder until you retire. Shall we go and grab a bite to eat?’
‘I’m not hungry. And I have work to do.’
Sforza looked shocked.
‘At this hour? And with drink taken?’
Zen smiled weakly.
‘Your diagnosis of my character may well be correct, Giovanni. But if I’m not as well endowed with ambition as you are, I at least have a goal, which is to track down the people who kidnapped that poor bastard, persuaded him to walk to the place of execution they had selected and then blew his head off. Until I’ve done that, I won’t really have much interest even in a good meal, never mind the slop they serve here. Buon appetito, pero.’
The old woman tossed and turned on the lumpy, sagging mattress, but sleep wouldn’t take her. Maria lay waiting as though for a lover, but sleep didn’t come. She was too old. Sleep just didn’t want her any more.
The house was finally still once again, and the rest of the family asleep. The town too, save for the bleeping of a video game from the house across the alley, where Francesco Nicastro was playing the game he had been given for his ninth birthday. There was a lot of violence and bloodshed, but Francesco was enchanted by it. Apart from that, the town was superficially silent, but Maria could sense the whispers and rumours rustling through the streets and walls like rats, just as they had back at the beginning. Someone had been told then, and variously diluted and tainted versions had circulated through the community. The common denominator was that it was all the work of a certain person, and that no one was to interfere or intervene in any way. These stipulations had been observed. Various people had seen the dead man arrive, park his car and walk up the track leading to the old town. Some time later there had been a dull bang, its location impossible to place. Then night fell, and next day the parked car had gone. No one ever climbed up to the ruins above except on the feast of San Martino, and certainly no one had gone there now. In short, normal life had resumed as if the incident had never occurred, until this evening, when the police suddenly descended in force and invested the town, their horrible helicopters hovering overhead like vultures and their armoured vehicles sealing off all the exits.
Everyone agreed that nothing like it had been seen since the war, although Maria had longer and darker memories, of Fascist bullies descending on a town where the people had assembled for a rally to demand decent living wages and then shooting them down in cold blood. This time, however, she had not personally witnessed anything. For months now she had been bedridden with a flare-up of her arthritis, and had kept to her room. Some young policeman dressed like a soldier had had the nerve to open the door without knocking — she might easily have been in the altogether! — with his machine gun levelled. He’d had the grace to apologise and withdraw as soon as he understood the situation, but the rest of the family hadn’t been so lucky. They’d all been herded into the living room, then taken out one by one and questioned by two extremely unpleasant men in suits not unlike that which had been worn by il morto. When each person’s interrogation was over, they were taken to the kitchen and held there in isolation until the entire family had been individually questioned. Only then were they allowed to reassemble and exchange accounts of their experiences, at which point Maria had joined them.
Despite the pressure and threats — one of the thugs had demanded to see written authorisation for the illegal top floor of the house, which had been added to accommodate Maria when she couldn’t manage for herself any more — no one had said anything. What was interesting was what the police had said. The car which had been parked at the edge of town, what make was it? What colour? What was the licence number? When had it arrived? When had it been removed and by whom? These were much tougher questions to evade, particularly when the cops gradually revealed that they already knew the answers. How could a luxury hire-car like that have been left abandoned on the outskirts of a paese di merda like this without being noticed, probably broken into and possibly stolen? All six members and two generations of the family had stonewalled them, insisting that they hadn’t gone that way and had seen and heard nothing. But in all their minds, the same certainty had formed. No one outside the town except ‘him’ knew about the arrival and subsequent disappearance of the car. Now the police knew, so somebody must have talked.
Finally the helicopters had whirled away and the uniforms and suits had withdrawn, their show of power at an end. But this was not yet over, Maria sensed. Her seventy-eight years on earth had earned her many unwanted gifts, above all the dark secret she had carried intact for most of her life and would take with her to the tomb. So many years in this pitiless landscape, the only one she had ever known and which she loved beyond reason, had also given her a sixth sense for trouble. Despite the apparently baffled withdrawal of the forces of the state, she felt it very strongly now, which was perhaps why she was the only person in the household unable to sleep. To her finely tuned senses it was as obvious and irrefutable as an imminent storm is to birds. What she didn’t know, any more than them, was when it would strike and from which direction. She herself would be safe, but Maria no longer cared about herself. She wanted her family to be safe, but the auguries were clear. She had tried to deny them, just as she always tried to deny the first twinge that signalled the onset of one of her arthritic attacks, and just as uselessly. Now she was in no further doubt. With immense difficulty, Maria got up out of bed and knelt, very slowly and carefully, before the image of her namesake on the wall, hoping as always that the pain this caused her might increase the efficacy of her prayers, said as always in the Latin liturgy of her youth. Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis.
Tom Newman stretched his legs luxuriously, crossed them at the ankle and settled back to watch the show. It was, in his opinion, pretty spectacular. Beyond the clustered tables, chairs and folded parasols of the cafe’s enclave, the young beauties of the town were parading up and down the pavement in pairs, trios or larger groups, weaving their way past and through similar sets of young men. With a few rare exceptions, neither sex openly acknowledged the existence of its counterpart, but each was intensely aware of the other, as they were of everyone
