it.
Many rich people aspire to own islands, but an island in the Venetian lagoon, within sight and easy reach of the city, yet perfectly private, verdant and isolated, is a privilege reserved for very few. Ivan Durridge got his chance when the Englishwoman, old and ailing, sold her ottagono for a small fortune. Expecting some ostentatious pleasure pavilion, Zen had been surprised by what awaited him at the top of the metal ladder leading up the brick walling. The floor of the artificial island was now covered in trees, shrubs and plants artfully arranged to form a dense, seemingly natural garden.
In its midst stood the guardhouse, a long low structure of military severity which had been skilfully transformed into a residence retaining the essential characteristics of the original while suggesting something of the rustic pleasures of a country cottage. The only visible security precaution was a faded notice warning intruders to beware of the dog. Of the dog itself there was no sign, and judging by the condition of the notice it might well have departed along with the previous owner. Zen wandered idly about the property, inspired less by the sense that there was anything to be discovered than by the beauty of the spot and the need to spend some time there in order to justify putting Marco to the trouble of bringing him. He was standing on the lawn in front of the house, looking up at the ragged blue patch of sky visible through the encircling foliage, when a cry disturbed his reverie.
‘Hey!’
Zen had grown so accustomed to the peace and quiet that he started violently. The thought that he might not be alone on the island had never occurred to him. He looked round. At the corner of the house stood an elderly man dressed in baggy dark overalls.
‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded gruffly.
Zen lit a cigarette with elaborate nonchalance.
‘Well?’ the man demanded, walking across the lawn towards him. ‘This is private property.’
‘Police.’
The man’s expression of mute hostility did not change. His face was marked with a series of concentric wrinkles, like ripples on water.
‘And you are…?’ barked Zen.
‘Calderan, Franco.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Doing? I live here! I’m the gardener and caretaker. I worked for the English signora, then for the American.’
Zen sniffed sceptically, as though this were a transparent fiction.
‘Where were you the day your employer disappeared?’
The man frowned.
‘I’ve already made my statement.’
‘So make it again!’ snapped Zen. ‘Or are you afraid the two accounts won’t tally? Maybe you’ve forgotten whatever pack of lies you made up the first time?’
Franco Calderan stared down at the lawn, on whose flawlessly even surface were imprinted two parallel lines like skidmarks. He glared at Zen, as though he were responsible for this blemish.
‘I told them the truth! It was Tuesday, my day off. I rowed over to Alberoni and caught the bus to go and see my sister and her family, same as every week. They can vouch for me!’
Zen’s sneer indicated the value he ascribed to alibis which depended on the corroboration of the suspect’s relations.
‘Who knew that Tuesday was your day off?’
‘Nobody! Everybody!’
‘First you say one thing, then another! Why are you lying? Who are you trying to protect?’
Zen broke off, appalled at himself. Why the hell was he browbeating this old man? But he had been a policeman too long not to try and make Calderan sweat a little in return for his surly welcome.
‘I’m not protecting anyone! Everyone knew that I went to see my sister on Tuesdays, and have done these thirty years!’
He took a step forward, confronting Zen openly.
‘Anyway, what are you doing coming out here and raking all this over again? I’ve been through it all often enough already! Or haven’t you bothered to read what I told your colleagues?’
Calderan’s eyes narrowed as a new suspicion struck him.
‘You say you’re from the police? Let me see your identification.’
Zen had obliged, and after some further acrimonious exchanges he had been able to depart in a relatively dignified manner. But the experience had merely had the effect of making his private investigation of the Durridge affair seem even more of a mockery. The case had already been fully investigated, and at a time when clues and memories were still fresh. What hope had he of solving the mystery now, three months after the event?
While these thoughts occupied Zen’s mind, his internal autopilot steered him through the viscera of San Polo and brought him out at a small wooden landing-stage on the sinuous waterway which dissected the city. The ferry which served it was at the other side, and Zen joined the young couple waiting on the pier. The man was gazing with glazed eyes at the water, a hiss like distant surf emanating from the personal stereo headphones inserted into his ears. His partner, who was heavily pregnant, was reading a copy of Gente magazine featuring an article on the home life of Umberto Bossi, ‘the charismatic leader of the separatist Leghe ’. Both were wearing dark glasses and energetically chewing gum.
As the ferry made its way towards them, Zen remembered that he must give Palazzo Sisti a fax number to which they could transmit the file on the Durridge case. No country had taken to the new electronic technology more avidly than Italy, where it had cut through the Gordian knot of the postal service at one stroke. For decades, people had debated ways and means for reforming la posta, with its endless rules and regulations, the surly arrogance of its superabundant staff, and above all its inability to get a letter to its destination in less than a week. Now the debate was over. Those who had access to one of the miraculous machines had leapt straight from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, while the rest — including Zen, in this instance — remained bogged in the quagmire of the twentieth.
The Questura had a bank of fax machines, of course, but given the degree of irregularity involved in this transaction it would be too risky to have the incriminating file sent there. Whom did he know with a fax machine? Marco Paulon, perhaps, but he’d asked Marco enough favours for one day. Besides, he wouldn’t be home. When he’d dropped Zen off in Campo San Stin, where he had a delivery to make, Marco had mentioned that he was going to visit his cousin on Burano and catch up on the latest stories of crazy fisherman and walking corpses.
The ferry bumped alongside and the passengers disembarked. Zen walked down the wooden steps, handed his five-hundred-lire coin to the boatman and stepped aboard. Tommaso Saoner would either have a fax machine or know someone who did, but Zen’s encounter with his former friend had been such an unsettling experience that he didn’t feel confident about enlisting his help in such a delicate matter. It was of course notoriously difficult to pick up the threads of a relationship which had once been so close — it is not only the houses of one’s childhood which seem diminished when one goes back — but Zen had been almost shocked by the change in Tommaso. This political movement he had got himself involved with seemed to have affected him like a religious conversion.
The only thing like it he could remember was the playboy son of one of his colleagues at the Questura in Milan who had become a Maoist. One evening he walked into a dinner party in the family home and shot one of the guests, a leading judge, with his father’s revolver. Almost more chilling than the act of violence itself had been the boy’s unshakeable conviction that he had acted rightly, in the only manner either comprehensible or justifiable, and that anyone who did not do likewise was either a hypocrite or a cretin, and in either case condemned to the dustbin of history. But that was back in 1978. No one got excited by politics any more. How could Tommaso have fallen hook, line and sinker for some fringe party whose programme, from what Zen had heard of it, sounded like total lunacy? Christ, he’d probably be the only other person at this rally he’d promised to attend!
The ferry headed out into the crowded waters of the canalazzo. Zen and the young couple, standing amidships, swayed back and forth as the wash of passing vessels struck the hull. The ferrymen standing at bow and stern rowed steadily, pushing their oars into the water in short thrusts, as though turning over soil. Soon they nosed in at the pier on the other bank, where another cluster of passengers stood waiting to cross. Zen set off along the alley leading back from the water, walking on the boards which had been laid down to cover a trench for a new gas main.
