worse, and if he makes those bastards in Rome shit in their beds then he gets my vote!’
Zen stared at him.
‘Who did you say?’
‘Dal Maschio.’
‘Ferdinando Dal Maschio?’
‘Do you know him?’
Zen shook his head.
‘No, no.’
The boat slipped along the canal alongside the public gardens on the islet of Sant’Elena and then out, as if through a secret door, into the broad basin of San Marco. A big cargo vessel was gliding past, on its way from the docks to the breach in the littoral sandbar at Porto di Lido giving access to the open sea. A tug pulling two barges laden with rubbish ploughed past in the other direction, while ferries and fishing smacks crossed to and fro. Marco pointed the wherry’s bows towards the distant island of San Clemente, where Ada Zulian had spent two years in the mental hospital. Out here in the open lagoon there were short sharp waves which slapped vigorously at the planking and splashed gobs of salt water into the men’s faces. Marco throttled back to give way to a car ferry on its way to the Lido.
‘I forgot to tell you the best bit about the guy from Burano,’ he shouted as the waves slapped and hammered and the wherry wallowed in the swell. ‘Guess where he claims to have seen this ghost?’
Zen shook his head.
‘On Sant’Ariano!’ cried Marco. ‘The isle of the dead!’
His way clear again, he gunned up the engine and headed out of the shipping lane into the quiet backwaters behind San Giorgio.
‘But it’s no joke for Giacomo’s family,’ he concluded soberly. ‘Seems he just hangs around the house all day, muttering to himself. He can’t go to the toilet by himself, never mind handle a boat. His mother and brother have been driven nearly crazy themselves.’
The lagoon shimmered and shifted like fish scales in the sunshine. Aurelio Zen lay back, closed his eyes and tried determinedly to summon up an image of Tania Biacis, his… his what? Lover? Mistress? Partner? Part of the charm of their relationship was that it eluded definition. Despite this, it had always felt overwhelmingly real and solid, yet after only a few hours’ exposure to the pervasive vapours of the lagoon Zen felt these certainties dissolving. He no longer had any vivid sense of Tania, no clear image of her presence, no aching void created by her absence. This was doubly ironic in that she was the reason he had agreed to Ellen’s idea in the first place.
‘The family are seriously unhappy about the way the investigation has bogged down, Aurelio,’ Ellen had told him. ‘Bill — that’s my new guy, he’s a lawyer — the firm he works for has the Durridge account, and I mentioned to him that I just happened to know this Italian policeman.’
The moment Ellen stopped speaking, even for an instant, the line went dead.
‘I mean it’s your town, Aurelio. You know the people, you speak the language. Anyway, when Bill put it to the Durridges’ people they simply jumped at the idea.’
Despite the years since Ellen had left Zen and returned to her native America, her Italian had remained fluent, although her accent had deteriorated, the vowels flattened and denatured, whole phrases mumbled almost incomprehensibly, like an old man trying to eat without his dentures. It was chilling to recall that he had once found such mannerisms charming.
‘The bottom line is — I’m quoting Bill here — they need a body. Dead or alive. Preferably the former, of course, but if the worst comes to the worst…’
She paused, and a dumb white silence intervened. It was as if one of them had hung up, as if the whole conversation had been taped and edited. Then she spoke again, and everything resumed as if there had been no pause, no lacuna, no doubt.
‘Until then the whole estate is in turn-round. If you free up the cash flow, Bill says, you can name your fee. We’re talking serious money here.’
‘And a serious criminal offence,’ Zen had returned dryly. ‘It is strictly illegal for a state employee to engage in secondary paid employment…’
‘Oh come on, Aurelio! You guys only work mornings anyway. Plus Bill can arrange for the money to be paid indirectly — into a numbered Swiss bank account if you like.’
It was tempting, but he would never have accepted if Tania had not just received a court order to vacate the apartment in Parione which Zen had found for her, and on which he had been paying the rent. Her position there had always been precarious — the landlord had been trying to evict her for over a year — but she and Zen had shied away from talking about the future. Whatever happened, painful and disturbing decisions would have to be taken, and they had tacitly agreed to put them off as long as possible so as not to break the spell of a period of frivolous irresponsibility whose appeal lay partly in the knowledge that it could not possibly last.
The very fact that Tania had hinted that she might be prepared to live with Zen — and, inevitably, his mother — represented a major concession on her part. Only a few months earlier, he would have been overjoyed by this change of heart. Ever since Tania Biacis had broken up with her husband, Zen had been trying to persuade her to move in with him. Yet now the moment had arrived, he had immediately felt a stab of alarm, not least at the discovery that Tania and his mother got along. The two women had been introduced the previous month, and to Zen’s amazement the effect had been one of mutual self-recognition. He had counted on being able to divide and rule. If his mother and his lover liked each other, where did that leave him?
He must have dozed off, for the next thing he was aware of was a mighty bump which sent him tumbling over sideways on the bilge boards. Looking up, he saw an enormous expanse of brick walling towering over the boat.
‘Kidnapped!’
Marco made fast to a mooring ring set in the wall. He pointed disgustedly to the rickety metal ladder, slimy with weed, which scaled the face of the brick cliff.
‘How are you going to get an unwilling victim down from there?’ he demanded. ‘Even if he was unconscious, you’d need a crane to get him in the boat.’
He bent over Zen, finger raised didactically.
‘And on that particular afternoon you’d never have got the boat alongside in the first place. It was one of the lowest tides I can recall. The whole lagoon ground to a halt! You’d have thought someone had pulled the plug. Nothing but mud, as far as the eye could see.’
Marco Paulon lay back complacently on the after-decking.
‘Take it from me, Aurelio. This American of yours has done a bunk! He’ll turn up one day, safe and sound, just like Tonio Puppin. And who’s to blame them? There are probably times you wouldn’t mind dropping out of your own life for a while, hey?’
A miniature blizzard whirled up into the sunny air, momentarily enshrouding the figure of the man who stood talking into the pay telephone.
‘Immediately, yes,’ he insisted. ‘Aurelio Zen. Z, E, N. Vice-Questore, Criminalpol.’
The scurrying breeze eased once more, and the tubular bars of expanded polystyrene packaging immediately fell back to the nearest surface. The man picked one up off the ledge of the telephone booth and toyed with it as he talked.
‘Remind him of the Renato Favelloni case. Remind him that he told me if I ever needed anything I should get in touch. Tell him I’ll call back in thirty minutes exactly. If I don’t get a satisfactory response at that time, I shall have to reconsider my position.’
Once again the illusory snowstorm littered the air with flying white fragments caught up in the eddying wind currents at the corner of the square. Aurelio Zen snapped the one he had been playing with, replaced the receiver and plucked his phonecard from its slot.
There was no bar or cafe in this campo, which was dominated by the sprawling brickwork of a church as matter-of-fact as the abandoned factory belonging to the Zulian family. Zen turned down an alley tunnelling under the houses opposite. It crossed two low bridges over canals hardly wider than ditches. A torn plastic bag stamped with the name of a supermarket chain drifted slowly by on the incoming tide like a ragged jellyfish.
Zen turned in at a glazed door under a metal sign reading ENOTECA. In the small dark room inside, a few elderly men sat sipping wine and exchanging raucous remarks in slithering, sibilant dialect. Zen ordered a glass of
