Durridge’s boat. It was the same.
He was just thanking the boatyard owner when Aldo Valentini walked in, yawning loudly.
‘Are you here already?’ he exclaimed. ‘I thought you Romans lived in lotus land.’
Zen replaced the receiver with a bang.
‘Where the hell do you keep the street directory?’ he demanded.
‘There’s only one copy that I know of,’ Valentini replied through another mighty yawn, ‘and it’s jealously guarded by Bonifacio down in Admin. He might let you consult it if you suck his cock nicely. On the other hand you might prefer to take a walk to the bar where we went the other day. They keep a copy under the counter. Come to think of it, I’ll come with you.’
In front of the Questura a gleaming wooden launch was drawn up, its idling engine puking out water from time to time. A self-consciously good-looking man in a tweed suit and cashmere overcoat was just stepping ashore. He nodded minimally to Aldo Valentini as he walked past.
‘The chief,’ muttered the Ferrarese to Zen. ‘Francesco Bruno, son of a teacher from Calabria. Currently spends most of his time sticking his bum out of the window trying to decide which way the wind is blowing. You and I may have our problems, not least trying to make ends meet on our salaries, but it’s really tough at the top these days. How are you supposed to know whose orders to ignore?’
A black-headed gull swooped down as though to attack its reflection in the water. With a loud splash it seized a chunk of sodden bread and flew off, dropping a line of soggy bomblets along the canal.
The Bar dei Greci was empty apart from a child sitting on a table swinging his legs as he read a comic. The barman had been replaced by a stout woman wearing a flowery pinafore. Zen asked her for the directory and looked up
Sergio Scusat’s address while Valentini skimmed the local paper. The headline read POLICE QUESTION DROWNED MAN’S BROTHER.
‘Enzo’s gone out on a limb on this one,’ Valentini remarked as they sipped their coffee. ‘Under the new Code he’s only got till six o’clock tonight to screw something out of Filippo Sfriso to justify having held him in the first place, and by all accounts he isn’t going to get it.’
Zen inspected the photographs of the Sfriso brothers: blurred images evidently blown up from a family snapshot or identity card mugshot.
‘What’s the story?’ Zen asked politely, not really wanting to know.
‘In my humble opinion, it’s a concatenation of absurdities,’ Valentini pronounced with a theatrical gesture.
He paused, then repeated the phrase with evident pleasure.
‘A concatenation of absurdities! I spent several hours interviewing the family before Gavagnin took over. The mother kept insisting that no son of hers would take his own life, but she couldn’t suggest why anyone else would either. He was only a fisherman. Why would anyone bother killing him?’
‘In that case, why is Gavagnin giving the brother such a hard time?’
Valentini shrugged.
‘Because that’s how he gets his kicks. But I don’t think he’ll get much change out of Filippo Sfriso. As for Enzo’s drug angle, Sfriso told me that his brother had got involved with some girl in Mestre who’s into hallucinogenics. Obviously Giacomo must have taken a trip that went wrong and started seeing corpses. That’s all there is to it. What’s Enzo want to do, bust some no-hope users trying to take a break from the grim realities of life in Mestre? Christ, I’d probably use the stuff myself if I had to live there.’
As they strolled back along the quay, Aldo Valentini repaid Zen’s courtesy by asking how the Zulian case was coming along.
‘Too well!’ Zen returned. ‘The way things are going, I’ll have to come up with an excuse to stay on a few more days.’
‘Aren’t you missing the dolce vita down south?’
A fugitive smile appeared on Zen’s lips.
‘Perhaps I’ll try and muscle in on the Sfriso case,’ he murmured.
Aldo Valentini stared at him blankly a moment before bursting into laughter.
‘You and your Roman humour!’ he cried. ‘You nearly took me in for a moment there!
Back at the Questura, the two men shook hands and went their separate ways, Valentini to open a file on a case involving the hijacking of a barge conveying two removal lorries loaded with the entire possessions of a Dutch millionaire, Zen to engage one of the police launches with a view to calling on Sergio Scusat.
As though to give the lie to the sneering comments he had made earlier to Marco Paulon, the helmsman turned out to be an excellent and experienced seaman. Mino Martufo was from Palermo, and he had spent most of his time in boats from his earliest childhood. He handled the launch with a nonchalant panache which left Zen hovering between exhilaration and apprehensions as they went careening round corners and under bridges, siren blaring and lamp flashing, totally ignoring the posted speed limits and leaving all other traffic wallowing queasily in their wake. But all to no avail: Sergio Scusat was not at home. His sister, who was looking after the children, told Zen that her brother might be found at a construction site on the Sacca San Biagio, one of three small islands at the western tip of the Giudecca.
The launch roared off again through the back canals of Dorsoduro, narrowly avoiding a collision with a taxi full of fat men with video cameras and skinny women in furs, past tiny intricate palaces and vast abandoned churches, under bridges so low they had to duck and through gaps so narrow they touched the fenders of the moored boats. Then at last, with a dramatic suddenness that took Zen’s breath away, they emerged into the Giudecca channel, the deepest and broadest of all the waterways within the city.
The wind seemed much stronger here, chopping up the water into short, hard waves which shattered under the hull of the launch. The car ferry to Alexandria was steaming slowly down the channel, and Martufo sent the launch veering dangerously close under the towering bows of the huge vessel, keeling over with the force of the turn, the gunwales sunk in the surging torrent of white water. Then they were across the channel and into the sheltered canals separating the Giudecca from the sacce.
These small islands were some of the last areas in the city to be built on, remaining undeveloped until the 1960s. Zen could remember rowing across to them when they were still a green oasis of allotments and meadows. Now Sacca Fisola was covered in streets and squares, shops, schools, playgrounds and six-storey apartment blocks. Except for the eerie absence of traffic, it was all exactly identical to suburbs of the same period in any mainland city. But here there were no cars, no lorries, no motorbikes or scooters. The children played in the street, just as children everywhere had done a century earlier, but in a street flanked by the sort of brutalist architecture associated with chaotic parking, constant horns, revving two-strokes and blaring car radios. Here, the only sound was the lapping of the water at the shore. The overall effect was extremely unsettling, as though the whole thing were a hoax of some kind.
The construction site where Sergio Scusat was working was on a small islet to the south of the Sacca Fisola, with a fine view of the garbage incinerator which occupied the eastmost island. Scusat was the foreman of a team of labourers repairing an apartment block. Access was by a concrete jetty jutting out into the water. As the tide was still high, they were able to come alongside. Zen stepped ashore and walked over to the other side of the jetty, where a broad-beamed boat with a curving prow was tied up. He climbed down into the stern and opened the engine housing.
‘Where’s the serial number on these things?’
Mino Martufo joined him and pointed to a series of numbers etched into a small plaque to the left of the block letters reading VOLVO.
‘Hey! What do you think you’re doing?’
The shout came from the scaffolding on the apartment block. Two men were slapping mortar on a section of external walling. A third stood staring down at the jetty.
‘Scusat?’ Zen called back.
‘Well?’
‘Police!’
The man slipped down through the scaffolding as nimbly as a monkey and walked over to where Zen was standing.
‘What’s all this about?’ he demanded.
