basically we’re talking dirty weekend.’
She touched Zen’s hand.
‘Have you got a cigarette?’
He dug out his battered pack of Nazionali. It had a rumpled, collapsed look. Zen squeezed the sides experimentally.
‘Precisely one,’ he said, shaking the remaining cigarette free.
‘Oh, I won’t take it if it’s your last.’
He removed the cigarette from the packet and placed the tip against her lips.
‘Let’s share,’ he said.
‘It wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t been trying so hard to act the good little wife for the benefit of the press,’ Cristiana went on, inhaling deeply.
Zen squeezed her hand sympathetically.
‘Quite apart from that,’ he murmured, ‘it might not be such a bad idea to keep a certain distance from Dal Maschio.’
Cristiana passed him the cigarette.
‘You mean he’s in some sort of trouble?’
He put the tip, damp from her saliva, into his mouth.
‘Would that bother you?’
She glanced at her watch.
‘I’d better see what Mamma has found out before she gets impatient, tries Wanda’s number and discovers that she hasn’t seen me since yesterday.’
Rosalba Morosini had evidently found out quite a lot, and proceeded to give her daughter a lengthy account which Cristiana subsequently passed on to Zen in abridged form.
‘Ada’s all right. They were about to call a doctor when she came out of it. The nephews tried to get her to lodge a complaint, but Daniele refused to testify against you.’
‘Good for him.’
Cristiana stared at him.
‘Do you really know what became of the little girl?’
Zen handed her back the cigarette.
‘No more than I know what became of my father.’
She crushed out the cigarette and poured them more wine.
‘And Nando?’
Zen tried to shrug it off.
‘Oh, I expect I’m just jealous, that’s all.’
She looked at him acutely.
‘That’s not all.’
He looked away.
‘Not quite all, perhaps.’
She took his hand between hers and carried it to the upper slope of her breast. They looked at each other.
‘This is strictly confidential, of course,’ he began.
‘Of course.’
Somewhere in the distance, a ship’s hooter sounded a long, mournful note.
‘There is no evidence against Dal Maschio himself,’ Zen murmured, moving his hand slightly. ‘But some of his associates appear to be implicated in a number of investigations currently proceeding…’
He broke off.
‘I sound like a policeman,’ he said.
‘You are a policeman.’
‘I don’t want to be. Not now.’
‘Have you got any more cigarettes?’
‘Upstairs.’
She nodded slowly.
‘Upstairs,’ she said.
He was woken by a cry below the window.
‘ Spazzino PRONTI!!! ’
Zen lay back in bed, listening to the other tenants tossing down their bags of rubbish for the street sweeper to add to the pile in his hand-cart. He felt clear-headed, relaxed and lucid. There was no doubt about it: Cristiana was good for him.
This time she had not been able to stay the night. Rosalba was expecting her home and would have phoned Wanda Dal Maschio if her daughter had not reappeared. It would have been perfect if she had still been there, a warm, sleepy presence, a token that what had happened the night before had indeed been real. Unlike the previous occasion, Zen now had no anxieties about facing Cristiana by the cold light of morning. On the contrary, he was already missing her. They had stayed up talking late the night before, and there had been no moment of awkwardness or strain. Everything had seemed perfectly easy and normal, as though they had known each other all their lives.
The house did not feel quite as cold as the day before, and when he threw open the window it was clear that a thaw had set in. All but the largest heaps of snow were already gone, leaving only a faint sheen of water which made the worn paving stones gleam like a fishmonger’s slab. Diffuse sunlight lent a vernal suppleness to the bright, clean air. It was a day for assignations and excursions, a day to tear up your plans and arrangements and make things up as you went along, preferably in the company of a friend or lover.
As he set out in search of his morning coffee, Zen’s heart sank at the very different prospect before him. It seemed absurd to spend such a day sitting in poky, neonlit offices being lied to by the likes of Giulio Bon. He no longer cared one way or the other about the Durridge case. But there was no alternative. It would be as dangerous now to abandon the investigation as to pursue it — perhaps more so. The only way he could justify the measures he had already taken was by seeing the thing through to the end.
At the Questura, he surveyed the various options open to him and tried to decide how to proceed. Based on the way the men had reacted to being taken into custody the day before, Bugno seemed the weakest link in the chain, so Zen sent for him first. While he waited, he skimmed through the man’s file. Born in 1946, married with three children, an employee of the muncipal transport company ACTV, Bugno had no previous convictions. The only black marks against him were a failure to vote in a recent general election and the complaint of trespass made the previous year by Ivan Durridge.
Massimo Bugno had a big bald head, a deeply-indented broken nose, a weak chin, bushily compensatory moustache and the general air of someone who fears that he has forgotten to turn off the bath water. He was evidently considerably less refreshed than Zen by the night he had spent in a cell in the windowless annexe behind the Questura. Zen invited him to sit down. He glanced at his watch.
‘What shift are you on this week, Massimo? Your workmates will be starting to wonder what’s become of you.’
‘Why are you holding me here?’ Bugno whined. ‘What have I done?’
Zen lifted the file off the desk in front of him.
‘On the 27th of September last year, you and two other men landed on a private ottagono near Malamocco. The owner called the police, and you were subsequently apprehended by a patrol boat.’
Bugno frowned.
‘That’s all over!’ he protested. ‘No charges were ever brought. It was all a fuss over nothing, anyway. We were…’
He hesitated.
‘We were fishing. The motor packed up. We drifted on to the island. We left as soon as we could.’
Zen raised his eyebrows.
‘Fishing? That’s not what you told us at the time.’
Bugno dampened his lips rapidly with his tongue.
