were starving. Once the embarrassment and confusion of the initial confrontation in front of the lawcourts had been cleared up, there had been no time to do anything but arrange to meet later. Then Zen had accompanied Antonia Simonelli to her office, where he provided her with a detailed and largely accurate account of the circumstances in which Ludovico Ruspanti had died, while Tania had gone off to ‘talk business’ with Primo.
Now they were together again, other commitments suspended for an hour. But although both seemed eager to dispel the suspicions which had arisen as a result of past evasions, the explanations and revelations came unevenly, in fits and starts, a narrative line deflected by questions and digressions, forging ahead towards the truth but leaving pockets of ambiguity and equivocation to be mopped up afterwards. Amongst these was the one Zen had just tackled, and to which he returned once they had satisfied their immediate hunger.
‘So, about Primo…’
Tania wiped her lips with a napkin which looked as though it had been carved from marble.
‘Primo is a middleman representing a network of small producers stretching from Naples to Catanzaro.’
Zen nodded slowly.
‘Oh, you mean he works for the mob! No wonder he can afford to stay at that fancy hotel. They probably own it.’
Tania twitched the hem of her cream skirt.
‘Aurelio, I’m going to get really angry in a moment. Quite apart from anything else, it so happens that I’m the one who’s staying there.’
Zen raised his eyebrows, genuinely disconcerted.
‘Well, well.’
‘It’s my little indulgence.’
‘Not that little. You must be doing well.’
She nodded.
‘We are. Very well. But I’m increasingly realizing that the future is in the south. Up here, agriculture is getting more and more commercialized, more industrialized and centralized. You’re no longer dealing with individual producers but with large agribusinesses or cooperatives whose managers think in terms of consistency and volume. The south has been spared all that. It’s just too poor, too fragmented, too disorganized, too far from the centre of Europe. Those factors are all drawbacks for bulk produce, but once you’re talking designer food then the negatives become positives…’
She broke off, catching sight of his abstracted look.
‘I’m boring you.’
He quickly feigned vivacity.
‘No, no.’
‘It’s all right, Aurelio. There’s no reason why you should be interested in the wholesale food business.’
He pushed the last piece of veal cutlet around his plate for a moment, then laid down his knife and fork.
‘It’s just a shock to find that you’re so… so successful and high-powered. It makes me feel a bit dowdy by comparison.’
If his words sounded slightly self-pitying, the look he gave her immediately afterwards was full of determination.
‘But that’s going to change.’
‘Of course. You’ll soon get used to it.’
‘I don’t mean that.’
‘Then what do you mean?’
‘You’ll see.’
A pair of Carabinieri officers in full dress uniform strode by, murmuring to each other in a discreet undertone. With their tricorn hats and black capes trimmed with red piping, they might have passed for clergy promenading down the apse of this secular basilica, oriented not eastward, like the crumbling gothic pile in the square outside, but towards the north, source of industry, finance and progress.
‘So he works for you?’ asked Zen, lighting a cigarette.
Tania pushed her plate aside.
‘Primo? No, no, we don’t pay salaries. Piece-rates and low overheads, that’s the secret of success. Look at Benetton. That’s how they started out. Run by a woman, too.’
She took one of her own cigarettes, a low-tar mentholized brand. Zen had tried one once. It was like smoking paper tissues smeared with toothpaste.
‘No, Primo works for the EC,’ she said. ‘He goes round farms assessing their claims for grants. We pay him on a commission basis to put us in touch with possible suppliers.’
He nodded vaguely. She was right, of course. He wasn’t interested in the details of the business she was running. He was interested in the results, though. Tania had rejected the idea of moving in with Zen, on the grounds that his flat was too small. But if he could bring off the little coup he had planned for that evening, he would have the cash for a down-payment on somewhere much larger, perhaps with a separate flat for his mother across the landing. And as a double-income couple, they could pay off the loan with no difficulty.
He looked around the Galleria, smoking contentedly and running over the idea in his mind. This was a new venture for him. He had cut corners before, of course. He had bent the rules, turned a blind eye, and connived at various mild degrees of fraud and felony. But never before had he cold-bloodedly contemplated extorting a large sum of money for his personal gain. Still, better late than never. Who the hell did he think he was, anyway, Mother Theresa? Not that there was any great moral issue involved. Antonia Simonelli might succeed in embarrassing the Vatican, but she had no real chance of making a case against those responsible for killing Ludovico Ruspanti. One of them, Marco Zeppegno, was already dead, and with his death the other man had put himself beyond the reach of justice. But not beyond the reach of the Cabal, thought Zen.
He leant back, looking up at the magnificent glass cupola, a masterpiece of nineteenth-century engineering consisting of thousands of rectangular panes supported by a framework of wrought-iron ribs soaring up a hundred and fifty feet above the junction of the two arcaded aisles. The resemblance to a church was clearly deliberate: the four aisles arranged like an apse, choir and transepts, the upper walls decorated with frescoed lunettes, the richly inlaid marble flooring, the vaulted ceilings, the central cupola. Here is our temple, said the prophets of the Risorgimento, a place of light and air, dedicated to commerce, liberty and civic pride. Compare it with the oppressive, dilapidated pile outside, reeking of ignorance and superstition, and then make your choice.
‘What now?’ asked Tania.
He gave a deep frown, which cleared as he realized that she meant the question literally.
‘I’ve got to go to the airport.’
‘You’re not leaving already?’
‘No, no. I have to pick up something which is being air-freighted up here. Something I need for my work.’
‘What are you doing here, anyway?’
He shrugged.
‘Just following up some ramifications of the Ruspanti affair. Nothing very interesting.’
She signalled the waiter and asked for two coffees and the bill. Zen raised his eyebrows slightly.
‘I’ll put it on expenses,’ she said.
‘Fiddling already?’
‘Actually I’m saving money. If I hadn’t bumped into you, I’d be lunching Primo instead, the full five courses somewhere they really know how to charge.’
‘Whereas I get a snack in a cafe, eh?’ he retorted in a mock-surly tone.
Tania smiled broadly and stroked his hand.
‘I’ll make it up to you tonight, sweetheart.’
His face clouded over.
‘Is there a problem?’ she asked.
‘Well, I may not be free until nineish.’
She patted his hand reassuringly.
‘That’s all right. I shall just have to go and buy some very expensive clothes to while away the time. There’s a wonderful new outfit by Falco I just crave. Jagged strips of suede and silk and fur arranged in layers like a pile of
