until you overdid it and he drowned. And then you set your bent policemen on me to make sure I went along with your story that his death was an accident. Just fuck off, will you? Kill me too if you want, but while I’m still alive let me grieve in peace.’
He tossed his cigarette overboard and strode back to the lights and warmth of the saloon, leaving Zen alone in the seething dark studded with faint, misleading beacons.
It was late when Zen got back to the city. He walked home feeling tired, cold and dispirited. Despite his best efforts, everything kept going wrong. His encounter with Filippo Sfriso had merely served to emphasize the degree to which he was out of his depth. The idea had been to shake Sfriso till he rattled and see what tumbled out, in hopes of uncovering something he could use to get even with Enzo Gavagnin. But in the event it had been Zen who had been shaken to the core by what Sfriso had told him, and still more by what he had evidently assumed Zen already knew.
At best Zen had been hoping to come up with some information which, given the right presentation and packaging, would make Gavagnin look foolish or incompetent in the eyes of his superiors at the Questura. Valentini had remarked that Gavagnin had gone out on a limb over the Sfriso case; Zen’s idea was to saw through the branch behind him. Gavagnin was already vulnerable to a charge of procedural irregularity in wresting the case away from a colleague and then detaining the brother of the drowned man for two days without any apparent evidence that foul play was involved. All that had been needed to complete his discomfiture were a few piquant details such as Filippo Sfriso should have been well placed — and amply motivated — to supply.
Instead of which the Buranese, assuming that Zen was one of the people ‘pulling the strings’, had turned the official version of the case inside out. Not only had Giacomo Sfriso been murdered, but Enzo Gavagnin was apparently acting on behalf of his killers. That was not at all what Zen had wanted. His intention had been to leave Gavagnin with egg on his face, not facing disciplinary proceedings which might result in a fifteen-year jail sentence. Besides, nothing could be proved. Even if Filippo Sfriso could be persuaded to make public his allegations, it would still come down to the word of a common fisherman against that of a senior police officer.
Zen entered a small square whose sealed well had been replaced by a standpipe. The tap was dribbling water into a red plastic bucket from which a mangy cat was drinking. The animal fled as Zen approached, cowering in the shadows to watch him pass. Suddenly a church clock started to strike the hour, nine clangorous blows which served to turn Zen’s thoughts to the evening before him.
It offered little consolation. His arrangement with Cristiana had clearly fallen through. He had warned her that he might be late, but at the time he had had no idea just how much he would be delayed. There was nothing to eat or drink in the house, and by now the shops were all closed. Even the restaurants would be starting to shut their doors, except for the youth-oriented pizzerie such as the one he and Cristiana had visited the night before, and the prospect of going there without her seemed too grim to contemplate.
He unconsciously slowed his pace the closer he got to his destination, as though trying to delay the inevitable. But all too soon he found himself standing before his own front door. Having tried and failed to think of any alternative, he dug out his keys and went in. The air inside reeked of the damp seeping up through the stone flooring from the waterlogged soil beneath the houses. Zen checked the metal letterbox, which contained an advertising flyer and a dead leaf, and then stomped wearily upstairs. He had not felt so low since the night he arrived.
He opened the door to the living room and was about to switch on the light when he noticed that the darkness in the room was not quite complete. The woman sitting on the sofa laid down the book she had been reading and rose to her feet with a smile.
‘Cristiana!’ he cried.
He smiled with pleasure and amazement.
‘You are late,’ she said, in a tone devoid of reproach.
‘I had no idea you were here or I’d have phoned,’ he said, taking off his coat. ‘But I thought you’d have gone home ages ago.’
‘I don’t really have a home.’
‘At your mother’s, I mean.’
She shrugged, walking towards him.
‘Mamma is wonderful, but I feel like a child around her.’
‘You’re not a child.’
She nodded, holding his eyes.
‘And while being an adult has its drawbacks, the great advantage is that you can do what you like.’
‘Within reason.’
‘Even without, sometimes.’
He stood staring at her, beaming like an idiot.
‘It’s wonderful to see you, Cristiana!’
Judging by the slightly severe suit and silk blouse she was wearing, she had come straight from work.
‘Have you had dinner?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘You?’
‘No. And there’s nothing in the house.’
‘I brought some stuff. Nothing fancy, but at least we won’t starve.’
Embarrassed by his emotion, Zen walked over to the sofa and picked up the book which Cristiana had been reading, a thick volume entitled The History of the Venetian Republic, 727-1797. The title page was inscribed ‘To my dear wife, this testimony of our glorious heritage, with love, Nando.’
Zen looked up at Cristiana.
‘Gripping stuff?’ he inquired ironically.
‘It’s not bad. Your family’s mentioned quite a lot. One of them was a rabble-rousing reformer and another one a famous admiral.’
‘And if I remember correctly, they both made a habit of winning all the battles and then losing the war. It must be a family trait. Living proof of that “glorious heritage” your husband makes so much of.’
Cristiana raised her eyebrows slightly.
‘You really don’t like Nando, do you?’
Zen shrugged.
‘I don’t like politicians in general.’
‘But there’s more to it than that.’
He nodded.
‘Yes, there’s you.’
She smiled and turned away. There seemed to be something about her which did not quite fit the crisply professional clothes, some hint of intimacy, some chink in her armour.
‘I’m starving,’ she said. ‘I’ll put the pasta water on.’
Zen followed her out to the kitchen. On the table stood a stoppered litre bottle of red wine, a packet of spaghetti, a fat clove of purple-skinned garlic, a small jar of oil which was the opaque green of bottle glass abraded by the sea, and a twist of paper containing three wrinkled chillis the colour of dried blood.
‘Aglio, olio e peperoncino,’ he said.
‘I told you it was nothing fancy.’
As she set the heavy pan on the stove and tossed a hail-flurry of coarse salt into the water, Zen suddenly understood the rogue element in her appearance. Her breasts moved waywardly inside the sheath of silk, belying the brisk message of her formal clothing with their seditious whisper.
‘Presumably all this overtime means that your work is going well,’ she remarked casually. ‘Or are you just trying to beef up your pay cheque?’
‘I thought I was on to something today, but then someone stepped in and spiked it. Local politics.’
‘Politics?’
‘I mean interests, alliances,’ he said, taking a broad-bladed knife out of a drawer. ‘Mutual protection.’
‘Nando says that’s all politics is anyway.’
‘And he ought to know.’
‘I mean that’s all he thinks it should be. He says the rest is just dogma and outdated ideology.’
