famous goldsmith, Michele Biafora. His work has been displayed in Naples, even in Rome. Madonna, che pioggia! It never used to rain like this.’
‘Why did he go there?’
‘We don’t know. Mantega hasn’t reported in, and once again our people couldn’t get close enough to observe the encounter. But we could easily pull Biafora in and question him directly.’
‘No, no. This is not an operation that can be performed incrementally. When the time comes, it will be all or nothing. Afterwards we can pick up the pieces, such as il professore and this goldsmith, at our leisure.’
They stood in silence for a moment, during which a dim, sickly, fuddled light made itself apparent in the room.
‘Ah, they’ve got the emergency generator working!’ Arnone cried with some pride.
‘Sort of,’ Zen replied. ‘Where’s Mantega now?’
‘Back at his office. Oh, one more thing. He also called young Newman, but not on his dedicated phone. He stopped at a service station on the autostrada and used a payphone. We picked up the intercept on Newman’s phone.’
Another series of spectacular rumbles stunned their ears, as if the remaining weakened masonry from the shattered dam were now tumbling down into the flooded valley below.
‘He asked what Tommaso was doing this evening,’ Arnone added.
‘Did he say why?’
‘No, and the American didn’t ask. He told Mantega that he would be spending the evening with his girlfriend. That’s the Digos agent you assigned to that task, Mirella Kodra.’
Zen noted the look on Arnone’s face.
‘Are you jealous?’ he enquired with a hint of malice.
‘No, no! Those Digos girls turn up their noses at ordinary cops like me. Besides, with a name like that she must be from one of the Albanian communities here. Those people are weird. It would never work out.’
He stifled a laugh.
‘Apparently that guy she teams up with when they need a young couple is openly gay. I heard he stuck his tongue in her mouth during one of their fake clinches. Mirella spat in his face and told him to go and ram a gerbil up his boyfriend’s arse!’
Arnone burst into further laughter, from the belly this time, then froze.
‘Sorry, sir. Don’t know what came over me.’
Zen had a pretty good idea, but did not comment on this aspect of the matter.
‘Very good, Arnone. Now then, I need to trace all persons by the name of Fardella or some dialect version thereof who were either born or have ever been resident in San Giovanni in Fiore. Check our own records, then get on to the town council. But discreetly. Make it sound like a routine bureaucratic enquiry of some urgency but no real significance. Report back as soon as possible.’
‘ Subito, signore! ’
Once Arnone had left, Zen called his wife.
‘It looks as though I’ll be home soon,’ he said.
‘Shall I put on the pasta?’ Gemma asked.
‘Not that soon, silly. But I’ve been reliably informed that my temporary posting here has just about reached the end of its shelf life.’
‘Good. I’ve been rather missing you. You’re an awful person to have around, Aurelio, but when you aren’t here life seems a bit boring.’
‘Accidie is a mortal sin, my child, a wilful failure to delight in God’s creation.’
‘On second thoughts, can’t you get transferred somewhere else? Maybe Iraq.’
‘I imagine that one of the few things the Iraqis don’t have to worry about at present is feeling bored.’
‘What kind of sauce do you want on the pasta?’
‘Anything you like, my love, as long as no tomatoes are involved.’
Mirella and Tom were walking up an inclined alley in the old town when the attack occurred. The evening had been a success so far, in Tom’s opinion, and he was looking forward to the rest of it. Mirella had suggested a restaurant he hadn’t known about, in the cellars of an ancient building in a mediaeval suburb called Arenella, outside the original city walls on the far side of the river. As soon as they entered the wide, low vaulted space, Tom realised that this was where he should have been eating all along.
How does one tell, he thought as they were shown to a table at the centre of the action, yet just far enough away from the glowing bed of hardwood embers covered by a wrought-iron grill where gigantic steaks were sizzling. In some indefinable way everything just felt and smelt right. There was an air of seriousness about both the diners and the waiters, although neither were in any obvious sense taking themselves seriously. Whatever that quality was, it was as much taken for granted on both sides as the silverware and glasses on the tables, or indeed the vaccination scar on Mirella’s arm. Her hair was loose and frizzy this evening, and she was wearing a sleeveless black satin top which displayed her bosom and those magnificent arms, on one of which, high up, appeared a tiny pale star that would never tan: shiny, almost translucent, infinitely touching and lovely.
No sooner were they seated than cuts of air-cured ham and other antipasti appeared on the table, together with freshly baked breadsticks and a carafe of water ‘from my own spring in the mountains’, the owner proclaimed with just the right air of arrogant nonchalance. He then announced that today he had managed to procure a supply of early mushrooms brought on by the recent unseasonable rain in the beech forests all around, and proposed a salad of ovali and rositi — ‘the finest for flavour’ — followed by pasta with more mushrooms and then a shared fiorentina steak, ‘since you are a couple, so young, so handsome and with such healthy appetites!’ His virtual commands having been approved, the owner bustled off to boss some other guests around while Tom and Mirella ate their way through shaved raw white and pink mushrooms sprinkled with oil and lemon juice, ribbons of home- made egg pasta overlaid with chunks of unctuous porcini, the best beef Tom had ever tasted, a fabulous salad, aged ewe’s-milk cheese and the slabs of Amedei dark chocolate — ‘seventy per cent pure cocoa’ the owner informed them — that came with their coffees.
It was all fabulous and shockingly nude, each course explicitly and proudly just what it was, no messing about. Tom was personally ecstatic and professionally envious. The restaurants where he had worked were capable of good things, but there was always a tendency to go that little bit too far, so as not to be left behind by other gastro-brothels in town that went way, way too far. These people had more dignity. The food they served not only tasted good, it was in good taste.
But Tom’s abiding memory of that evening, the one he knew would linger long after all else was forgotten, had nothing to do with their meal. The thunderstorm that had rocked the city that afternoon had been brief but extremely violent, and it had seemed reasonable to assume that the wrath of whichever vengeful gods ruled the region had been assuaged for that day. In Calabria, however, it was not always wise to let reason be your guide. Mirella and Tom were in the middle of their pasta course when the ‘Tuba mirum’ from Verdi’s Requiem resonated thrillingly through the tomb-like cavern of the restaurant. There was a flutter of nervous laughs all around and then everyone started eating again, but a moment later all the lights went out for the second time that day. In a brief harangue from the darkness, the owner informed his customers that alternative illumination would be provided immediately.
And so it was. By the light of the huge bed of glowing embers under the grill, the waiters carried candles to every table until little by little the place came to life again, but a finer, gentler, subtler life, more intimate and complicit than before.
‘Beeswax,’ remarked Mirella, leaning over to sniff and touch the honey-coloured column with its oval tip of flame.
Tom didn’t reply. He’d just realised that the hackneyed phrase ‘falling in love’ means precisely what it says. It felt just like falling, a blissful abandonment edged with shame and panic. God, she was beautiful! But it wasn’t about that. He felt an instinctive revulsion — what the Italians called pudore — at the idea of enumerating and rating her physical attributes, even to himself. Yeah, she had good stuff, but so did lots of other women. What they didn’t have was the mantle that surrounded Mirella like a saint’s halo. Tom had never understood that musty old artistic convention, but he realised now that it was simply a means of expressing the fact that the person portrayed was exceptional in some way which we can neither define nor deny. He also realised that he was nuts, and maybe a little bit drunk.
