‘The man in the skeleton costume. Bettino was so concerned about me that he didn’t even try and stop him. Martufo was looking after the canal side, but the man got out by the street door and ran off.’
Zen nodded.
‘It’s all right, I’d thought of that. Now then, can you walk or shall I get a stretcher?’
Grimacing with the pain, Pia Nunziata got to her feet. Zen took her elbow to help her up.
‘Not that fucking arm!’ she screamed.
She looked at him.
‘Sir.’
Downstairs, the doors at either end of the andron had both been thrown open and a gentle current of air flowed through the echoey space, emptying out the odours of mould and decay. As Zen and Pia Nunziata made their way slowly down the staircase, two patrolmen in uniform entered through the street door, escorting a lanky figure in handcuffs dressed in a skintight black costume with the outline of a skeleton superimposed in white fluorescent paint.
‘Sons of whores!’ the young man shouted angrily. ‘This is an outrage!’
‘Load him into the boat,’ Zen told the policemen.
‘We’ve committed no crime!’ the skeleton protested. ‘We’re members of the family!’
‘Wait!’ called Zen. ‘On second thoughts, dump him over there in the corner for now. We’ve got to get our colleague to Emergency, and we can’t hang about waiting for an ambulance.’
He pointed to a massive iron hook protruding from the stonework.
‘If he gives you any trouble, suspend him by his cuffs from that for a while.’
‘You’ll regret this, you heap of shit!’ shrieked the skeleton.
Taking no notice of this outburst, Aurelio Zen led the injured policewoman across the worn marble slabs and out of the waterdoor of Palazzo Zulian.
Gobs of slush fell in slanting lines through the air, tautening at moments to rain which drummed on umbrellas and slapped against skin, colder and harder than the sleet. The crowds in the narrow streets manoeuvred like craft in a crowded channel, tilting or raising their umbrellas to avoid fouling or collision. As if all this were not bad enough, hooligan gusts of wind played rough and tumble with anyone they caught, slitting open seams and sneaking in at cuff and collar until your clothes felt wetter in than out.
Despite the weather — to say nothing of a night both shorter and a good deal more stressful than the one he had spent with Cristiana — Aurelio Zen entered the Questura the next morning with the air of a conquering hero. Not only had he demonstrated in the teeth of professional and public scepticism that the case on which he was engaged existed independently of the workings of Ada Zulian’s florid imagination. He had also solved it, and in the most dramatic and absolute fashion, capturing the persons responsible in the act and at the scene of the crime. It was a coup such as every official dreamed of, an unqualified success, secure from any of the stratagems by which judges and juries contrive to frustrate the police and deny them their rightful triumphs.
This euphoria lasted all of two minutes, such being the time it took Zen to climb the stairs to his office, where he was greeted by a familiar figure, beaming jovially and exuding an air of collusive bonhomie.
‘Good morning, dottore. I wasn’t hoping to see you again so soon. God, it’s cold! There’s snow on the way, if you ask me.’
Zen eyed Carlo Berengo Gorin with open hostility.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Same as yesterday! I’d like to be more original, but I’m only a hireling, when all’s said and done.’
Zen stared at the lawyer truculently. Then he turned and slammed the door shut behind him.
‘Another visit? This must be costing Enzo Gavagnin a fortune.’
Gorin frowned.
‘I think you must have…’
‘How much do you charge to take on a case like this, avvocato?’ Zen demanded, hanging his rain-spattered overcoat on the stand. ‘Whatever it is, a type like Giulio Bon doesn’t have that kind of money to throw around. He’d rather sweat it out for the duration and then tell me to fuck off when my time’s up. He knows the rules. He’d no sooner hire a lawyer to spring him from a routine questioning than he’d hire a limousine to take him to the airport. And if by any chance he did, he’d go for the cut-price end of the market.’
He sneered at Gorin as he brushed past and sat down at his desk. Success in the Zulian case had made him confident.
‘I worked out that much at the time,’ he said, lighting his first cigarette of the day. ‘And when I saw you leaving Gavagnin’s office, and remembered how he’d carried on when Bon arrived, I knew that he must have summoned you. Nice gesture for an old friend, I thought. Shitty thing to do to a colleague, but nothing more to it than that.’
‘Excuse me, but…’
‘But then I realized that what’s true for Bon is true for Gavagnin. If he’d called a lawyer, why the most expensive in the city? It’s a routine case, after all.’
Zen gazed intently at Gorin.
‘Or perhaps it isn’t. And perhaps you have special rates for certain… friends.’
The lawyer stroked his beard, in which bright beads of water were nesting.
‘I believe we’re at cross-purposes, dottore, ’ he said with an embarrassed smile. ‘When I said that the purpose of my visit was the same as yesterday, I was speaking generically.’
Zen shook a parcel of ash off his cigarette into the metal wastebin.
‘Then perhaps you’d be good enough to get to the point, avvocato. I have work to do.’
‘Perhaps not as much as you think, dottore.’
‘Meaning what, avvocato?’
Gorin shrugged and heaved a long sigh.
‘You’re going to have to let them go, you know.’
Zen nodded lightly, as if this were something he had foreseen and which made perfect sense.
‘Let them go,’ he repeated.
‘I’m afraid so.’
There was another pause.
‘Who are we talking about?’ Zen inquired urbanely.
Carlo Berengo Gorin looked taken aback for a moment.
‘Why, the clients of mine you arrested last night! The Ardit brothers.’
Zen felt himself starting to hyperventilate. He drew largely on his cigarette.
‘Ridiculous!’ he snapped.
‘What’s ridiculous?’
Feeling the need to assert himself, Zen stood up and walked over to the window. In the canal below, a collapsed red umbrella edged past on the incoming tide. Zen turned to face Gorin.
‘The men in question were arrested last night at Palazzo Zulian, which they had entered illicitly, in the act of carrying out an assault on the owner. The timely intervention of the police, led personally by myself, prevented their criminal designs and the pair were arrested in flagrante delicto. The entire matter has been communicated to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is in the process of opening a dossier on the case. The matter is therefore in the hands of the judiciary, and I fail to see how I can be of any assistance to you.’
‘Who’s handling it?’
Zen consulted his notebook.
‘Dottore Marcello Mamoli.’
Gorin shook his head sadly.
‘In that case, I doubt there’s anything I can do for you. Marcello and I were at law school together. He was always a stickler for procedure.’
Zen scowled at him.
‘I don’t need you to do anything for me! Save that for your clients, avvocato. They’re the ones who need help.’
‘On the contrary, dottore. Why do you think I bothered coming here in the first place? I wanted to give you a chance to avoid getting covered in shit. You’re one of us, after all.’
