Sergio Scusat was a short, wiry man, his sallow face covered as though in make-up powder by plaster dust. His paper hat, folded from a newspaper page, had a party air at odds with his morose expression.
‘Is this your boat?’
‘Well?’
‘How did you acquire her?’
Scusat looked at Zen and blinked.
‘I bought her.’
‘When?’
‘Just before Christmas. I answered an advertisement in the Nuova Venezia.’
‘Who was the vendor?’
‘A boatyard. It was all legal and above-board. She’d been out of the water for years, but they’d overhauled her and put in a reconditioned engine. She’s a good boat and the price was right. What’s all this about, anyway?’
Zen regarded him for a moment.
‘Have you got any proof of sale?’
‘It was a cash deal. I handed over the money, they handed over the boat. What’s the problem?’
‘So you have no way of proving that you in fact acquired the vessel in the manner you have just described?’
‘Why should I need to prove it?’
Zen glowered at him.
‘The boat is stolen property.’
‘I paid good money for that boat!’ Sergio Scusat retorted truculently. ‘There were no documents for her because she’d been laid up for so long. That was why they had to sell her cheap.’
Zen eyed the man sceptically.
‘And who are “they”?’
‘The boatyard I bought it from! Down at Chioggia.’
Zen eyed him.
‘Would the owner’s name be Giulio Bon, by any chance?’
‘That’s right! Why?’
‘Ah!’
Zen closed his eyes for a moment, then looked back at Scusat.
‘I must ask you to come with me to the Questura, signore.’
The man shot him a look of sullen fright.
‘I’ve done nothing wrong!’ he cried.
‘No doubt, but I need to take a written statement of everything you have told me before I can proceed further.’
He pointed to the launch, gurgling quietly beside the concrete jetty.
‘This way, please.’
Aurelio Zen strolled slowly through the east end of the city, the maze of former slums crushed in between the Pieta canal and the high fortress walls of the Arsenale. This was a secretive and impenetrable district, of no particular interest in itself and on the way to nowhere else. In Zen’s childhood it had had a tough — even dangerous — reputation, and he had rarely ventured there. The rest of the city was etched into his mind like a map, but this one forgotten corner was a blank where he could still get lost.
And that was the idea: a sense of physical disorientation to match the one he felt inside. His initial spasm of elation at the breakthrough in the Durridge case was now just a fading memory. That had been young love, aware only of its own delight. Now it was time to get serious, to decide whether to make something of it, to settle down and found a family, or to break off the affair, walk away and try and forget the whole thing ever happened.
All this dangerous excitement was the more unwelcome in that Zen had anticipated nothing of the kind. His purpose in searching for Durridge’s boat had been the search itself. He hadn’t remotely expected to find anything of interest, only to be able to lay his labours before the family like a dog panting mightily before its owner in lieu of the stick it has failed to fetch. When he’d phoned Ellen the night before, after returning from the NRV rally, he had got the impression that some such gesture in return for the fee the Durridges were paying him — not that he had seen any of it yet — was desirable if not essential.
On the face of it, the reappearance of the missing topa was just what Zen needed to make the family feel that they were getting value for money, particularly in view of the link to Bon, one of the three men who had trespassed on Durridge’s island home a month before the American disappeared.
But what was good news for the Durridge family was not necessarily good news for Zen himself. The material which had been made available to him through the good offices of Palazzo Sisti seemed to suggest that the Durridge case had been closed down because of its political sensitivity. If that was so, then any policeman or magistrate who sought to reopen it would be putting himself at risk to some extent. The question was how grave this risk was. Did it justify giving up the Durridges’ money? The terms of Zen’s private investigation were not only generous in themselves, but Ellen had passed on the news that the family had offered an additional lump sum of one hundred thousand dollars payable in the event of the discovery of the missing man, dead or alive, and the arrest of those responsible.
That was more than twice Zen’s annual salary, which like that of all police officials had been frozen for the past five years as part of the government’s drive to reduce public spending in a country where each newborn baby came into the world owing over half a million lire. Nevertheless, even a year earlier Zen would have had no real doubt as to which decision to take. Money might be very desirable in all sorts of ways, but it was no substitute for life and health and nights free from gnawing anxiety and bad dreams.
But things were changing fast in Italy. These days, the men who woke from nightmares between sweated sheets were the very ones who had inflicted the experience on Zen at the time of the Aldo Moro affair, and for many years after. Now their names were being spoken of in connection with that event, and with all the other horrors of post-war Italy — spoken not furtively, in corners, but in committees of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. In a world where a judge could go on record as saying that the Italian Mafia and the Italian government were one and the same, nothing and no one was sacred any longer.
In such a world, it was no longer possible to calculate the odds with any certainty. The hand which had closed the Durridge file might even now be in cuffs, unable to influence even its own fate, never mind that of others. Or, on the contrary, it might still be hovering over the buttons of power, all the more dangerous and unpredictable for the knowledge that its days were numbered. There was simply no way of knowing.
Zen stopped on a bridge, leaning over the railing. The walls of the canal, exposed by the tide, presented bands of colour ranging from brick red at the top through green and blue to a brown which turned slime grey underwater. He had no idea where he was. Time seemed to have stopped. The sky was overcast, an even grey. There was no breath of wind in the airless canyons of these back canals. The houses all around were shuttered, silent.
Zen looked down, staring at the pitted black metal of the railing. It was the French who had added these refinements when they put an end to the Republic’s thousand-year independence. Until then the city’s bridges had been mere arcs of stone, to all appearances as weightless and insubstantial as their reflections, across which the inhabitants went nimbly about their business. Not only were guard-rails or balustrades unnecessary for a people who spent half their life in boats, but they were, as Silvio Morosini had once remarked, ‘an insult to the water’.
Zen let go of the railing and straightened up. He crossed the bridge and turned right, then left, then right again, striding along with ever greater determination. He knew where he was now, and where he was going, and what he would do when he got there.
‘Dating from when?’
‘Nineteen forty-five or six.’
‘If it still exists, it’ll be in Central Archives.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘On the Tronchetto. You have to send in a written request. The stuff is supposed to arrive next day, but don’t
