‘What can I do for you, dotto?’
A dwarf-like figure materialized at Zen’s elbow. The empty right sleeve of his jacket, flattened and neatly folded, was pinned back to the shoulder. The face, shrivelled and deeply lined, expressed a readiness to perform minor miracles and cut-price magic of all kinds.
‘Oh, Salvato!’ Zen replied.
‘Don’t tell me. You couldn’t get through on the phone.’
Salvatore ejected an impressive gob of spittle which landed on the concrete with a loud splat.
‘I had your boss Moscati down here the other day. Salvato, he says, I’ve been on the phone half an hour trying to get through, finally I decided it was quicker to come down in person.’
He waved his hand expressively.
‘But what can I do? All I’ve got is one phone. One phone for the whole Ministry to book rides, dotto! You need a switchboard down here, Moscati says to me. Don’t even think about it, I tell him. Look at the switchboard upstairs. The girls are so busy selling cosmetics and junk jewellery on the side that you can’t get through at all!’
They both laughed.
‘Where to, dotto?’ asked Salvatore, resuming his air of professional harassment.
Zen was about to confess his mistake, or rather the lift’s, when an idea sprang fully-formed into his mind.
‘Any chance of a one-way to Fiumicino in about half an hour?’
Salvatore frowned, as he always did. Then an almost incredulous smile spread slowly across his face.
‘You’re in luck, dotto!’
He pointed across the garage towards the source of the rumbling noise. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dimness, Zen could just make out a blue saloon with its bonnet open. A man in overalls was bent over the engine while another sat behind the wheel with his foot on the accelerator.
‘We’ve been having a spot of trouble with that one,’ Salvatore explained, ‘but it’s almost sorted out now. It’s the grace of God, dotto. Normally I’d have been a bit pushed to come up with a vehicle at such short notice.’
This was an understatement. The real point of the joke at which Salvatore and Zen had laughed a moment before was that the garage phone was largely tied up by the demands of the private limousine service which Salvatore and his drivers had organized. Their rates were not the lowest in Rome, but they had the edge over the competition in being able to penetrate to any part of the city, including those officially closed to motor vehicles. For a special rate, they could even lay on a police motorcycle escort to clear a lane through the Roman traffic. This was a boon to the wealthy and self-important, and was frequently used by businessmen wishing to impress clients from out of town, but it did have the effect of drastically restricting use of the pool by Ministry staff.
‘The airport in half an hour?’ beamed Salvatore. ‘No problem!’
‘Not the airport,’ Zen corrected as he stepped back into the lift. ‘The town of Fiumicino.’
In the Criminalpol suite on the third floor, Zen flipped through the items in his in-tray. It was the first time he had been into work since Friday, so there was quite a pile. Holding the stack of papers, envelopes and folders in his left hand, he dealt them swiftly into three piles: those to throw away now; those to throw away later, after noting the single relevant fact, date or time; and those to place in his out-tray, having ticked the box indicating that he had read the contents from cover to cover.
‘Dominus vobiscum,’ a voice intoned fruitily.
Zen looked up from an internal memorandum reading ‘Please call 645 9866 at lunchtime and ask for Simonelli.’ Giorgio De Angelis was looking round the edge of the hessian-covered screen which divided off their respective working areas.
‘According to the media, you’re dangerously ill with a rare infectious virus,’ the Calabrian went on, ‘so I won’t come any closer. This miraculous recovery is just one of the perks of working for the pope, I suppose. Pick up thy bed and walk and so on. How did you swing it, anyway? They say you can’t even get a cleaning job in the Vatican these days unless you have Polish blood.’
For some time after his transfer to Criminalpol, Zen had been slightly suspicious of De Angelis, fearing that his apparent bonhomie might be a strategy designed to elicit compromising admissions or disclosures. The promotion of Zen’s enemy Vincenzo Fabri to the post of Questore of Ferrara, combined with Zen’s coup in solving the Burolo affair to the satisfaction of the various political interests involved, had changed all that. With his position in the department no longer under direct threat, Zen was at last able to appreciate Giorgio De Angelis’s jovial good-humour without scanning everything he said for hidden meanings.
The Calabrian produced a newspaper article which quoted Zen as ‘reaffirming that there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Ludovico Ruspanti’ and dismissing the allegations in the anonymous letter as ‘mischievous and ill-informed’.
‘Impressive prose for a man with a high fever,’ he commented, running his fingers through the babyish fuzz which was all that now grew on the impressive expanses of his skull. ‘I particularly liked the homage to our own dear Marcelli.’
Zen smiled wryly. The phrase ‘mischievous and ill-informed rumours’ was a favourite of the Ministerial under-secretary in question, who had almost certainly penned the statement.
‘But seriously, Aurelio, what really happened? Is there any truth in these allegations that Ruspanti was murdered?’
Catching the eager glint in De Angelis’s eyes, Zen realized he was going to have to come up with a story to peddle round the department. At least half the fun of working there was the conversational advantage it gave you with your relatives and friends. Whether you spoke or kept silent, it was assumed that you were in the know. As soon as his colleagues discovered that Zen was no longer ‘ill’, they were all going to want him to fill them in on the Ruspanti affair.
‘Who’s to say it was Ruspanti?’ he replied.
De Angelis goggled at him.
‘You mean…’
Zen shrugged.
‘I saw the body, Giorgio. It looked like it had been through a food processor. I’d be prepared to testify that it was human, and probably male, but I wouldn’t go any further under oath.’
‘Can’t they tell from the dental records?’
Zen nodded.
‘Which may be why the body was handed over to the family before anyone had a chance. The funeral’s being held this afternoon.’
De Angelis gave a low whistle.
‘But why?’
‘Ruspanti was broke and had this currency fraud hanging over him. He needed time to organize his affairs and play his political cards. So he decided to fake his own death.’
De Angelis nodded, wide-eyed at the sheer ingenuity of the thing.
‘So who died in St Peter’s?’ he asked.
‘We’ll never know. You’d need a personal intervention by Wojtyla to get an exhumation order now. It was probably someone you’ve never heard of.’
De Angelis shook his head with knowing superiority.
‘More likely a person of the very highest importance, someone they needed to get out of the way.’
Zen gestured loosely, conceding that this too was possible.
‘Let’s talk about it over lunch,’ the Calabrian suggested eagerly.
‘Sorry, Giorgio, not today. I’ve already got an appointment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make a phone call.’
As his colleague left to circulate the true story behind the Ruspanti affair through the department, Zen pulled the phone over and dialled the number written on the message form.
‘Hotel Torlonia Palace.’
The calm, deep voice was in marked contrast to the usual Roman squawk which hovered as though by an effort of will on the brink of screaming hysteria. Zen had never heard of the Hotel Torlonia Palace, but he already knew that you wouldn’t be able to get a room there for less than a quarter of a million lire a night.
