Zen frowned and pretended to consult his notebook.
‘Someone called… Wait a moment. Ah, here we are! Beppe Gallizio. So when I saw your stall in the market I asked the girl there — Lisa, is it? — where I could find you.’
Gianni Faigano turned his misty brown eyes on Zen.
‘I heard that Beppe met with an accident.’
‘That’s right. Which, of course, would make you even more of a suspect, if I were to tell the police what he said to me.’
Zen paused to light a cigarette.
‘But I’ve no intention of doing that. All I want to know is what happened the night Aldo Vincenzo was killed.’
A brief laugh from Faigano.
‘Eh, we’d all like to know that!’
‘What people think happened, then. What they’re saying about it. A bit of background for my story, and the more scandalous and colourful the better.’
Gianni Faigano glanced around, as though to check whether he could be overheard.
‘I’ve heard a couple of stories. I’m not saying there’s anything to them, mind you, but…’
‘Don’t worry, this is all off the record.’
The other man looked at him acutely.
‘But is it on… What do you call it?’
‘What?’
‘When the people who hired you pay for everything.’
‘On expenses? Of course.’
Gianni Faigano smiled slowly.
‘In that case, I think we should talk about it over lunch,’ he said.
The resulting meal was by no means the first time that Aurelio Zen had had occasion to dine out with men for whom the principal point of the exercise seemed to be to make themselves look good by giving the staff of the restaurant a hard time. Service, food, wine, the menu itself: nothing passed muster by their exacting standards. Other patrons — credulous, ignorant or weak — might be taken in, or too feeble to protest, but not them!
Dishes and bottles of wine would be sent back, or grudgingly accepted after a long critique of their multiple defects. The course of the meal would be interrupted by long negotiations with the waiter, the implication being that while the establishment was capable in principle of producing the genuine product, otherwise they would not have favoured it with their patronage, it equally obviously was not going to do so for just anyone, only for those who had aggressively demonstrated their credentials as true connoisseurs, not to be fobbed off with anything less.
So far from being the type to play games of this kind, Gianni Faigano had struck Zen as someone who would eat whatever was put in front of him and be grateful to have it. This erroneous impression was dispelled the moment they reached the restaurant his guest had suggested, in a side street just off the piazza where the weekly market was now winding down. Even before they were seated, Faigano had pointedly objected to the table they were offered. And once this was rectified, he proceeded to find fault with the selection of daily specials, and, most vociferously, with the truffle with which it was proposed to adorn their meal.
‘At least a week old,’ he declared, having taken a briefly dismissive sniff. ‘And it’s not even from the best area.’
A selection of other tubers was brought to the table, and one eventually met with Gianni’s grudging — sigh, grimace, shrug, not-much-but-what-can-you-expect-in-a-place-like-this? — gesture of heavily qualified approval.
Next it was the turn of the cellar.
‘Macche? Only a couple of bottles I’d drink, even on my deathbed, and they’re priced for the Swiss and German tourists. No, no, dottore! I may be your guest in one sense, but in another and more important one you’re mine. I can’t have you come all the way from Rome — I mean Naples — and be held to ransom like this. Wait here.’
He got up and stomped out of the restaurant. Zen sat glumly sipping mineral water and nibbling at a bread- stick, feeling fairly sure that Faigano had used this as an excuse to back out and that he would never see him again. But he was wrong. A few minutes later, his guest returned with an unlabelled bottle which he handed to the waiter and told him to open ‘with the greatest care’.
‘Our own,’ he explained to Zen. ‘Not one of the best years, but at least we’ll know what we’re drinking.’
Nor was that all. When the food began to arrive, Faigano proceeded to denigrate the quality of the insalata di carne cruda, finely minced raw veal seasoned with oil, lemon and garlic, then to complain that the risotto was overcooked and too dry, and finally to interrogate the waiter in considerable and sceptical detail about the provenance of the hare, which, stewed in wine and its own blood, formed the basis of the main course. Once these formalities had been disposed of, he glanced at Zen in a worldweary, man-to-man way and proceeded to eat his way through the whole five courses on offer while managing to suggest that he was doing so simply as a favour to the management, to avoid them losing face before a distinguished visitor from out of town.
In his spare time, he outlined his views on the Aldo Vincenzo case.
‘No one round here ever believed that Manlio did it. Quite apart from anything else, he doesn’t have the balls, if you’ll excuse the expression.’
‘But I was told that he and his father had a big row at the festa the night before Aldo died,’ Zen replied.
Gianni Faigano gestured dismissively.
‘They were always quarrelling about one thing or another. I don’t blame the boy. Aldo’s mistake was sending him abroad. He learned foreign ways and manners and got strange ideas in his head. When he left, he was a good, obedient son, but when he got back he had changed. Our little world here in the Langhe seemed provincial to him. Aldo tried to bring him back to heel, but the damage had been done.’
He finished the last of his risotto and looked round critically for the waiter.
‘That’s a nasty-looking cut you’ve got there, dottore,’ he remarked, still looking over his shoulder. ‘Quite fresh, too, by the look of it.’
‘I slipped in the shower.’
Now that the anaesthetic was wearing off, he could feel the stitches as a dull, persistent tugging in his forehead.
‘Probably a woman,’ said Gianni Faigano, signalling to the negligent minion.
Zen peered at him.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘They used to burn them for it, round here.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Zen replied, indignant yet oddly disturbed by the turn the conversation had taken. ‘I was completely alone. It was just an accident.’
Faigano smiled.
‘There are no such things as accidents, dottore. Everything that happens has its cause. And when a healthy man like you injures himself as badly as that, it’s almost certainly woman’s work. Someone’s put a hex on you, maybe even without knowing it herself. But there’s a way to break the spell.’
‘What’s that?’ Zen found himself asking, despite his better judgement.
Gianni Faigano leant forward, as though imparting some forbidden mystery.
‘Find another woman, one who really loves you. Then the other one won’t be able to harm you any more. Despite everything, good is more powerful than evil in the end.’
They were distracted from these abstruse speculations by the arrival of the lepre al civet, which Gianni Faigano proceeded to damn with praise so faint as to be practically imperceptible.
‘Let’s get back to the subject,’ Zen interrupted briskly. ‘You say that no one here believes that Manlio killed his father. So who do they think did it?’
‘That depends who you ask. Everyone’s got their own theory.’
And what’s yours?’
Gianni Faigano poured them both some more of the dark brick-red wine.
‘You like it?’ he asked, tapping his glass. The wrinkled skin of his finger contrasted oddly with the smooth, pink tip whose nail had apparently been torn away.
