he had lived — in ignorance.’
All this should have made Zen and Andrea natural partners, as outsiders and rejects from the community. But he saw things differently. Perhaps it was the last sigh of the hashish, undulating up from the bottom of his cranium like long weed from the seabed, or perhaps just a natural bloody-mindedness, but instead of accepting the olive branch being extended to him, Zen turned on the American with a bureaucratic glint in his eye.
‘I think you told me that your mother’s family was Sicilian, signorina,’ he said, emphasizing the final, status- diminishing epithet.
‘That’s right.’
‘From where, originally?’
‘A village called Corleone, up in the mountains behind Palermo. My grandfather emigrated in 1905, and…’
Zen’s expression intensified.
‘Corleone, eh? A notorious hotbed of the Mafia. No doubt you still have connections there. A word in the right ear, some cash up-front, plus a promise of more to come when the Vincenzo property is sold… After the village festa, Manlio lures his drunken father out to the vineyard where your hired assassins are waiting. They do the deed, then mutilate the corpse to look as if the whole thing was the result of some vicious local vendetta.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’
Zen looked at her seriously.
‘You’re the second person to ask me that.’
‘Well, maybe you should think about it!’ snapped Andrea Rodriguez. ‘You’ve already alienated everyone else here, and now you’ve made another enemy.’
‘I’ve executed your orders, dottore!’
Enrico Pascal was still twenty metres away, but his voice carried clearly to Zen — and to everyone else assembled in the courtyard. The underlying message was made equally clear as Andrea Rodriguez turned her back pointedly on Zen and strode off to join the others.
‘The ambulance will here shortly, and meanwhile my orderly has secured the premises,’ the Carabinieri official continued in the same parade-ground tones. ‘Do you have any further orders?’
‘Not at present!’ bellowed Zen in return. In an undertone he added, ‘Where’s the winery?’
‘Over there, down the hill,’ whispered Pascal, nodding to one side. ‘Just follow the track.’
‘Meet me there in fifteen minutes.’
Zen turned away. Pascal saluted ostentatiously and marched back towards the house as though he had been dismissed.
Realizing that the funeral ceremony was indeed not going to take place, the assembled mourners were by now heading towards their cars and driving away. Zen walked past them and started at a leisurely pace down the concrete-paved track which connected the Scorrone residence with its commercial appendage, discreetly tucked away out of sight over a ridge of the hillside.
Enrico Pascal appeared exactly fifteen minutes later, driving down the same track along which Zen had walked.
‘Make it brief,’ he warned, stepping out of the jeep. ‘Feelings are running high, I can tell you. You’re presently the most unpopular person in the Langhe, and if I’m seen consorting with you…’
Zen laughed.
‘The most unpopular? I’m glad to hear it. After all the flannel I’ve been getting from everyone here, it’s a relief to be hated and feared again. I need that edge to work properly.’
Enrico Pascal did not dignify this with a reply. Zen sighed.
‘All right, I’ll make it brief. My first question is what Bruno Scorrone was doing down here yesterday afternoon in the first place. I’ve taken a look around this installation. I don’t know much about vinification, but I can tell high technology when I see it. Once the controls are set, this equipment can run itself. In any case, Scorrone was not exactly in the fine wine business. Why should he cut short his Sunday lunch to come and check on the progress of some bulk wine which he was going to blend and sell for next to nothing anyway?’
‘According to his wife, he said that he had to take delivery of a shipment.’
‘On a Sunday?’
‘We haven’t been able to confirm it, but that’s not unusual. Bruno preferred to keep his paperwork to a minimum.’
‘You mean he was operating illegally?’
The maresciallo gestured in an anguished way, to indicate the impossibility of conveying the complexities of the situation to an outsider.
‘Let’s say that he operated in a grey area, not necessarily crooked but not strictly legal either. Lots of people around here do. On the one hand there are the legitimate demands of the market, on the other the often unreasonable stipulations of the myriad bureaucracies anywhere between here and Brussels. A man has to make a living. Bruno didn’t adulterate his wine, at least not usually, but he was sometimes — how shall I put it? — imaginative as to its origins.’
Zen looked around the concrete expanses of the winery. The staff had been given the day off, and in its stagnant desolation the place might have been any one of the ugly, light-industrial complexes of indeterminate purpose which littered the highways of the region. The only sign of its true function came in the form of a number of plastic-covered demijohns stacked on one of the loading platforms. Zen pointed them out to Pascal.
‘Do you think that could be the wine that was delivered the afternoon he died?’
The maresciallo shrugged.
‘Who knows? Bruno did a lot of business on a small scale. You saw the occasional tanker from Puglia or Calabria pulling up here, but it was mainly local products he used. All good stuff, but, as I said, imaginatively labelled.’
Zen led the way over to the cluster of flagons. There was no marking or other indication of origin on them.
‘These could have come from anywhere,’ he said.
‘Oh, I don’t know about anywhere.’
Pascal walked back to the office at the end of the loading bays, returning a few moments later with a pipette and a glass. Handing both to Zen, he pulled out the rubber bung securing the mouth of one of the damigiane, then reclaimed the pipette and lowered it through the layer of olive oil floated on the surface of the wine to keep the air out. He pumped the bulb a few times, and repeated the procedure to expel the wine into the glass. Swirling the wine around, he sniffed deeply.
‘Ah!’
He took a large sip, swishing it around his mouth like a gargle, and finally swallowing.
‘Yes,’ he said.
The procedure was repeated.
‘Definitely,’ Enrico Pascal pronounced.
Zen stared at him bemusedly.
‘Definitely what?’
Pascal emptied the remaining wine on to the ground and replugged the container.
‘I’d bet quite a large sum that this particular wine was made by the Faigano brothers.’
‘You can tell that just by tasting it?’
A shrug.
‘I drink a lot of Gianni and Maurizio’s wines and I’d be prepared to swear that this is one of theirs.’
Catching Zen’s glance, he added, ‘Off the record, of course. Anyway, there’s no proof that this is the delivery Bruno came to collect.’
Zen sighed histrionically.
‘That seems to be the keynote of this whole case. Lots of hints and indications, but no proof. What am I supposed to do?’
‘Ah, well, dottore, that’s for you to decide.’
Zen got back to his hotel late that afternoon, having hired a local driver to take him to Alba. Above the wavering outline of the darkening hills, the sky was a molten glory, ranging from a creamy peach to a delicate
