scissors and produce something which looks like it has grown there. This was clearly not a possibility for Raimondo, who couldn’t cut a slice of panettone without wrecking the entire cake. Then he had his inspiration, one day when he was being interviewed on television. His sudden emergence on to the fashion scene, as though from nowhere, was already the stuff of legend. People were naturally curious about him, his background, his working methods, his philosophy. While he was telling the interviewer a pack of lies — ‘I always thought of it as a hobby really, I used to scribble ideas on the back of an envelope and then lose it somewhere…’ — it occurred to him that what people really wanted from their clothes was the kind of miraculous transformation like the one which so fascinated them about him. They wanted to be able to put on a new personality like putting on a shirt. Fashion wasn’t just about attracting sexual partners or showing off your wealth. It was a search for metamorphosis, for transcendence. And who better to offer it than a man who appeared unfettered by the constraints within which ordinary mortals were forced to operate?
From that moment, he had never looked back. It took no more than an occasional grudging, condescending word of praise from him to keep Ariana busy. Censored extracts from fashion magazines, from which all reference to Falco designs had of course been removed, kept her fantasy world in touch with the colours, lines and fabrics which were currently in vogue. Once he had succeeded in convincing her that she needed big dolls to play with now, being a big girl herself, the trick-photography and out-of-house sketches could be dispensed with. From time to time he removed a selection of the garments she made and handed them over to his subordinates, a tight, highly-paid and very loyal team who relieved the maestro of the tiresome day-to-day business of putting his creations into production from the original models. All he had to do was tour the country, appearing at shops and on television, telling people that they were what they wore, and that in the late twentieth century it was ideologically gauche to suggest otherwise.
He sat upright suddenly, listening intently. Then he heard it again, a distant metallic sound somewhere far below. Once again, a smile bent his lips. He knew what it was: the discarded filing-cabinet shell which had been sitting on the landing of the first floor for as long as anyone could remember. When he arrived, having smashed off the padlock used to secure the emergency exit since the break-in, he had pulled the metal cabinet out from the wall so that it all but blocked the way upstairs. Its faint tintinnabulation was as good as a burglar alarm to him.
He picked up the pistol and walked with rapid, light steps into the workroom, where he knelt down behind one of the tables with a clear view of the door. The moment it opened, the intruder would be framed in a rectangle of light, peering into a dark, unfamiliar territory where the only recognizable targets were the mannequins. But he would be ready, his eyes perfectly adjusted to the fog-muted glimmer from the Galleria outside, the pistol steadied against the edge of the table and trained on its target. It would be like shooting rabbits leaving the burrow.
Then a miracle occurred. That, at least, is how he explained it to himself in that initial instant of wordless awe. After that it was pure sensation, pure experience. Later he realized that the whole thing could have taken no more than a few seconds, but while it lasted there was nothing else, only the noise and the light. The light was the kind you might see if they skinned your eyeballs, pickled them in acid and trained lasers on them. As for the noise…
When he was a boy, he had once been allowed up the campanile of the family church. After endless windings, the spiral staircase broadened into a chamber where the bells hung, great lumps of dull metal, seeming no more resonant than so many rocks. Yet when the clapper struck, they could be heard over half the city. He had wondered ever after what it would have sounded like if they’d started pealing while he was standing there. Now he knew. His whole body thrilled and jangled, every cell and fibre quivering in exquisite agony as the overtones and reverberations of that blow died away. Another such would kill him, he thought as he lay in a heap on the floor, clutching his head. But there wasn’t another. This puzzled him at first. Once the clapper was set swinging with that kind of violence, it was bound to come back to strike the other side, just when you were least expecting it.
Hands moved lightly and rapidly all over his body, like a couturier fitting a client. He opened his eyes. A tall figure wearing a black clerical suit stood looking down at him, a revolver in each hand. Above the trim white collar rose a garish latex Carnival mask representing the bluff, benign features of John Paul II.
From the other side of the latex mask, Aurelio Zen surveyed the situation with a sense of satisfaction and relief. He had been extremely dubious about the outcome of this venture ever since picking up the package that afternoon at Linate. He had no idea what stun grenades looked like, but given what Gilberto had told him they were going to cost, he was expecting something pretty impressive. Gleaming stainless-steel canisters with spring-action triggers and time-delay settings, slightly greasy to the touch — that sort of thing. Above all, he was expecting them to weigh. ‘We are the goods,’ he expected them to tell him as he staggered away from the airline counter with a metal case marked DANGER — HIGH EXPLOSIVE.
Instead of which the clerk had casually tossed him a padded envelope which felt almost empty. Zen left feeling like the victim of a confidence trick. Matters did not improve when he opened the envelope in the taxi on the way back to the city. Inside, he found two grey plastic tubes, each about the size of a toothpaste dispenser, lashed together by a rubber band looped over on itself. At one end, a red plastic peg with a ridged grip protruded a few centimetres from the body of the tube, the junction being sealed with a pull-tab. There was also a note in Gilberto’s jauntily precise writing.
To avoid accidents, remove seal at last moment. After pulling out the red pin, you have 3 seconds to deliver the grenade and get out. The effects last 5 seconds or more, depending on the physical condition of the opposition, their degree of preparation and training, etc. One pack is enough for an average-sized room; larger areas may require two.
Just like air freshener, thought Zen disgustedly. Four hundred thousand lire each, Gilberto was charging him for these! ‘And that’s cost price, Aurelio. In fact below cost, because it’s what I paid three months ago. God knows what the replacement cost will be.’ As an added irony, the source was one of Zen’s colleagues. The reason the grenades were so expensive was that very few came on to the market. Any equipment on general military or police issue could be had at massive discounts, for that was very much a buyer’s market. But stun grenades were supplied only to a few specialist units in the police and Carabinieri. Nieddu’s supplier was connected to the Interior Ministry’s DIGOS anti-terrorist squad, whose morale was at an all-time low these days — which no doubt explained why they were resorting to private enterprise, like everyone else.
In the event, though, Zen had to admit that his doubts had been decisively confounded. The grenades might not look much, but they packed one hell of a punch. Even from the other side of the door, the effect had been that of the firework to end all fireworks. He hadn’t been sure how large the room was, but at almost half a million lire a go, Zen decided that one was going to have to be enough. Which it certainly had been. When he charged in, Falcone was lying on the floor, his hands to his head and his knees drawn up, like one of the victims over-whelmed by lava at Pompeii. Setting down his replica revolver, Zen grabbed the pistol which the man had been holding and frisked him swiftly for other weapons. Then he picked up his toy gun and stepped back.
After a few seconds, Falcone moaned and rubbed his eyes as though stirring from sleep. He stared incredulously at Zen, who smiled in the privacy afforded by the latex mask. The fancy dress had been another aspect of the affair which he had been unsure about. Some disguise was certainly necessary. He didn’t want to give the game away too soon, not without finding out as much as he could. This was his first deliberate attempt at criminal extortion, and he didn’t want to bungle it. The single card he had to play should certainly be enough to extract a cash settlement, but if his victim could be kept in suspense about who he was and what he wanted, then other potentially profitable facts might well emerge. At the very least, the aura of psychological domination thus established would work strongly to Zen’s advantage when it came to agreeing terms.
The moment he thought of disguises, he recalled the fancy-dress shop he had seen that morning in Via Pisani. At that time of year, they had an extensive selection available for hire, but in the end Zen had opted for a clerical outfit. The mask, a pudgy parody of Wojtyla’s Slavic features, had then been an obvious accessory. Nevertheless, it remained to be seen how it went down on the night. As it turned out, there were no worries on that score. Falcone couldn’t keep his eyes off it.
‘You’re a bit early for Carnival,’ he eventually remarked with a brave attempt at reasserting himself.
‘It’s for your protection,’ Zen replied in the singsong accent he had used on the phone.
‘For yours, you mean.’
The plastic pope’s face moved from side to side in a gesture of negation that made a macabre contrast with its expression of benevolent paternalism.
‘If I were not masked, you might recognize me,’ Zen explained. ‘Then we would have to kill you.’
