from Palermo pulled in at twenty to one in the morning, he was quite content to stretch out on his bed in a spacious Excelsior compartment and fall asleep for five and a half dreamless hours.
It was only when he was ejected from this sanctuary into the commuter rush hour at Rome that he realised to what extent he had become a provincial after just a few months in Calabria. He found it both physically difficult and emotionally repugnant to battle his way through the riptide of people coming at him from every direction, empty eyes trained like a gun on the personal zone immediately in front of them, attention absorbed by the loud songs or little voices in their heads, fingers fiddling with iPods and mobile phones, all oblivious of each other and their surroundings, marching relentlessly onwards like the ranks of the damned.
In the middle of the vast concourse of Termini station Zen gave up and came to a dazed halt. One of the zombies immediately approached. He automatically placed a cluster of small coins in its outstretched hand.
‘This way, Dottor Zen,’ it said.
‘How did you recognise me?’
‘We obtained a photograph.’
A Fiat saloon was illegally parked at the kerb. The man opened the rear door for Zen, then got into its equivalent on the far side.
‘Your document, please,’ he said as they drove away.
Zen handed over his police identification card.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To a house where you will meet the person you came to see. Our journey time will be approximately forty minutes, depending on the traffic. There will then be a short delay before the subject arrives.’
‘For security reasons?’
‘No, he wouldn’t agree to an earlier meeting. He’s an elderly man and doesn’t like making an early start.’
They drove south-east out of the city along Via Tuscolana, across the ring road and up into the foothills of the Colli Albani. When they reached Frascati, Zen’s escort announced that they were ahead of time and suggested stopping for a coffee. There were no parking spaces available on the edge of the main square, so the driver left their vehicle in the traffic lane of the main street outside the busiest and glossiest bar. One of the traffic wardens blew his whistle shrilly and came striding over, but the driver said a few words to him and the official slunk off. Frascati had been a playground for the rich and powerful since Etruscan times and the locals had learned a thing or two about dealing with such people.
Inside the bar, Zen was left to fend for himself. He ordered a cappuccino and an attractive-looking pastry and, having consumed both, eyed his minders with cold disdain. They stood at a distance, their mobile phones laid on the counter like pistols, apparently ignoring him although acutely aware of his presence. The driver, the younger and taller of the pair, was lean and hard, all prick and muscle. His superior was almost bald, with a superficially benign face, strongly featured and slightly inflated in appearance, like a wiser and sadder Mussolini.
Zen paid and walked outside to light his first cigarette of the day. As he smoked, he took in the scene all around with sharpened pleasure, eyeballing a sensational woman cradling a bottle of mineral water to her bosom like a baby. She gave him a lingering glance before moving on, the cheeks of her buttocks colluding furtively as she strolled away. Then he heard a familiar squillo and immediately reverted to his official self, striding up and down the pavement clutching his mobile phone like a life-support system.
‘Arnone, sir. You ordered me to report any developments.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘The Digos crew watching that house in San Giovanni report that the owner, Dionisio Carduzzi, has left the house only twice. Last night he went to a local bar and drank wine with some friends. This morning he bought a paper, then went to the same bar and had a coffee. After that he went home and hasn’t emerged since. His wife went to church yesterday and to the market this morning to buy vegetables and a chicken. That’s all. No one else has entered or left the house.’
He’s using pizzini, thought Zen, just like Bernardo Provenzano. Notes folded into a banknote and handed to the owner of the bar or the newsagent, or slipped under the table to one of those friends, or passed to a market vendor by his wife, or left in a missal at the church. The dilemma he had wrestled with the night before was now resolved. The only way to intercept such messages would be by mass arrests of essentially innocent people with no criminal history. That would be both clumsy and ineffective.
‘Anything else?’ he asked Arnone.
‘Two things, sir. The phone interception team reported that when Carduzzi came back from his morning expedition, he called the offices of a construction firm down in Vibo Valentia and asked for someone named Aldo. He told him that their mutual friend required the immediate services of a mechanical digger on a low-loader, two heavy-duty trucks, a dozen first-rate stonemasons and twenty unskilled labourers. The equipment and personnel were to assemble in the parking area of the Rogliano service station south of Cosenza on the A3, where they would be met and led to the work site. Payment would be in the normal way.’
‘Very well. Have someone at the meeting point and try and get photographs of the principals. Sounds like a classic abusive construction job. I can’t see it’s worth diverting manpower from ongoing assignments to follow them. Funny about them needing stonemasons, though. Cheap, poorly reinforced concrete is the mob’s trademark.’
‘Not if it’s one of their own houses,’ Arnone pointed out.
The two servizi thugs had now emerged from the bar. Mini-Mussolini walked over, touched Zen’s arm and jerked his head impatiently towards the car. Zen ignored him.
‘And the other thing?’ he asked Arnone.
‘Oh, just some crazy old woman here who insists on talking to you. Won’t say what it’s about and won’t talk to anyone else.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Name’s Maria Stefania Arrighi, resident in Altomonte Nuova. She got here at seven this morning and demanded to speak to the chief of police. She was told that you were out of town and wouldn’t be back until late, but she said she would wait. Plonked herself down on the bench in the entrance hall and has been there ever since. Do you want us to throw her out?’
‘Absolutely not, and if she leaves of her own accord, try to get a contact address and phone number.’
‘I’ll do my best, but basically she refuses to speak to anyone but you.’
Flanked by his two handlers, Zen got back into the car, which took a very steep minor road whose tight bends gave occasional views of the capital, the dome of St Peter’s just visible through the flat pall of pollution that covered the surrounding campagna, a modern equivalent of the malarial miasma that had decimated the population for centuries.
When they finally reached their destination, Zen was reminded of Arnone’s comment about the mob leaders’ private dwellings. Not that there was anything ostentatious about this long, low villa set among ancient olive groves and vineyards. The connection was more subtle, based on the fact that a good three kilometres back they had passed a sign marking the beginning of the Castelli Romani regional park. The villa clearly post-dated the creation of this protected area where new construction was strictly forbidden, but the important and powerful figure who owned it was almost certainly a member not of the Mafia but of the government — an entirely different organisation, needless to say.
The room into which Zen was shown provided no obvious clue to the identity of this person beyond the fact that he could afford to indulge in the sort of bad taste that comes with an exorbitant price tag. There were several huge oil paintings in the blandly ‘contemporary’ style favoured by Arab collectors, featuring nude females and rearing stallions in a vaguely abstract wilderness. There were also a number of coffee-table art books on display, but any attempt to investigate further the ownership of the property was prevented by Zen’s escort, who took up positions at opposite ends of the room. Twelve minutes passed before a passenger van drew up outside the house and a hydraulic lift deposited an elderly man seated in a wheelchair, which was pushed into the room by a formidable-looking woman in a starched uniform.
‘This nurse will take the sample you require and return with it so that tests may be undertaken,’ Mini- Mussolini announced.
‘Take it from whom?’ Zen demanded acidly.
‘From the person you requested to meet.’
