‘Gilberto Nieddu.’
‘This is the Ministry of Finance, dottore. Following a raid by our officers on a leading firm of accountants, we have uncovered evidence which suggests that for the last five years your company has consistently failed to declare twenty-five per cent of its profits.’
There was silence at the other end.
‘However, we have no time to concern ourselves with such small-time offenders,’ Zen continued, ‘so we’d be prepared to overlook the matter in return for the services of a discreet, qualified electrician.’
This was greeted by a sharp intake of breath.
‘Is that you, Aurelio?’
Zen chuckled.
‘You sounded worried, Gilberto.’
‘You bastard! You really had me going there!’
‘Oh come on, Gilberto! You don’t expect me to believe that you’re fiddling a quarter of your taxes, do you?
‘Of course not, but…’
‘It must be a hell of a lot more than that.’
Nieddu made a spluttering sound.
‘Now about this electrician,’ Zen went on.
‘Look, Aurelio, it may have escaped your attention, but I’m not running a community information service. You need an electrician, look in the pagine gialle. ’
‘I’m not talking about changing a plug, Gilberto.’
‘So what are you talking about?’
Zen told him. Nieddu gave a long sigh.
‘Why do I let you drag me into these things, Aurelio? What’s it got to do with me? What’s it got to do with you, for that matter?’
He sighed again.
‘Give me the address.’
When they’d agreed a rendezvous, Zen called Tania again. The same male voice answered.
‘Who’s that?’ demanded Zen.
There was a brief interval of silence, then the receiver was replaced. Zen immediately redialled, but the phone rang and rang without any answer. He hung up, went to the bar and ordered a double espresso which he gulped down, searing his throat. He got out the red plastic-bound diary which he had removed from Giovanni Grimaldi’s room. It turned out to be dated the following year, a freebie given away with a recent issue of L’Espresso. He riffled through it, but the pages were blank except for a few numbers and letters scribbled in the Personal Data section. Replacing the diary in his pocket, Zen touched his packet of Nazionali cigarettes. He took one out and lit it, then returned to the phone. There was still no reply from Tania’s number, so he tried the Vatican again. This time the number answered almost immediately.
‘Yes?’
‘This is Signor Bianchi.’
‘Yes?’
It was a voice Zen didn’t recognize.
‘I’ve just seen Signor Giallo.’
He felt ridiculous, but Lamboglia’s instructions had been quite clear: even on this supposedly secure line, Zen was to refer to Grimaldi only by this code name.
‘He’s dead.’
There was a brief silence.
‘Is there anything else?’ asked the voice.
‘You mean any other deaths?’ Zen shouted. ‘Why, how many are you expecting?’
He slammed the phone down. When he turned, the barman and all five customers were staring at him. He was about to say something when he saw Marco Duranti emerge from the Carabinieri station and set off along the street at a surprisingly brisk trot. Zen tossed a five-thousand-lire note in the general direction of the barman and ran after him.
‘Excuse me!’
Duranti swung round with a wary, hostile expression. When he saw Zen he relaxed, but only slightly.
‘It’s about this maintenance man you saw in the building yesterday,’ Zen told him.
‘Yes?’
Zen pointed across the street.
‘Are you going home? We could walk together.’
Duranti shrugged gracelessly.
‘I was wondering if there might be a connection with this case I’m working on, you see,’ Zen told him as they set off together. ‘They could be using the sewers as a place to hide their drug cache. Where was he actually working?’
‘I didn’t look. All I know is he had the electric drill going for about half an hour just when I’m trying to have my siesta. Of course they would have to pick the week I’m on night shift.’
They were just passing the Porta Sant’ Anna, the tradesman’s entrance of the Vatican City State. A Swiss Guard in the working uniform of blue tunic, sleeveless cloak and beret set at a jaunty angle was gesturing with white-gloved hands to a driver who had just approached the security barrier. Meanwhile his colleague chatted to a girl on the pavement. A little further up the street was a second checkpoint, manned by the Vigilanza. Their uniform, dark blue with red piping, badly cut and with too much gold braid, made a sad contrast with the efficient elegance of the Swiss. Revolver on his hip, radio on his shoulder, the Guard held up his hand to stop the car, which had now been permitted through the first barrier, and swaggered over to give the driver a hard time.
‘What did this man look like?’ Zen asked.
Duranti shrugged.
‘Stocky, muscular, average height, with a big round face. He wasn’t Roman, I’ll tell you that.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The accent! All up here in the nose, like a real northerner.’
Zen nodded as though this confirmed his suspicions.
‘That’s very helpful. You make an excellent witness, signore. If only everyone was as observant.’
They had reached the corner of the street where Duranti lived. Zen thanked him and then waited until he had disappeared before following him down the street to the pizzeria where he had had lunch.
Normality had already returned to the neighbourhood. In an area where safety standards were rarely or never observed, domestic accidents were even more frequent than suicide attempts in St Peter’s. In the pizzeria, the owner and three cronies were discussing the recent and spectacular explosion of a butane gas cylinder which had blown a five-year-old girl clean through the window of the family’s third-floor apartment. The child landed on the roof of a car below, unhurt but orphaned, her father having been disembowelled by a jagged chunk of the cylinder while the mother succumbed to brain injury after part of the wall collapsed on her.
Zen elbowed his way through to the counter and ordered another slab of pizza to keep him going until, God willing, he finally got to eat a proper meal. The baker had just pushed a large baking tray filled with bubbling pizza through the serving hatch from the kitchen next door, and the pizzaiolo hacked out a large slice which he folded in two and presented to Zen with a paper wrapper. He moved to the back of the shop and leant against a stack of plastic crates filled with soft-drink bottles, munching the piping-hot pizza and awaiting the arrival of Paragon Security’s electrician.
A blowsy near-blonde of rather more than a certain age walked in and greeted the four men with the familiar manner of one who has seen the best and worst they could do and not been at all impressed. She ordered one of the ham and mozzarella pasties called calzoni, ‘trousers’. The men guffawed, and one remarked that that was all Bettina ever thought about. She replied that on the contrary, calzoni these days were usually a disappointment, ‘delicious looking from the outside, but with no filling worth a damn’. The owner of the pizzeria protested that his ‘trousers’, on the other hand, were crammed with all the good things God sends. Bettina remained unimpressed, claiming that while his father had known a thing or two about stuffing, the best the present proprietor could
