When the ship sailed at six that morning, Viviani had still not returned. He had been listed as absent without leave and his details circulated to the relevant authorities, but so far no trace of him had been discovered.
'What about Pastorelli?' demanded Zen.
'He finally called in. He got the cuffs off with the key we gave him and is lying low at home.'
'All right, here's what we do. Bertolini's killing is out of our hands. The Questura will handle that. As far as the stabbing goes, our line remains the same. The prisoner was being transported to hospital when a totally unforeseeable attack took place, as a result of which he fled without trace. Our investigations are on-going and we have no comment to make. Got it?'
A swift nod.
'Got it, chief.'
'I'm going to go and make some, er, parallel enquiries.'
But it turned out this wasn't so easy. When he got downstairs, Zen discovered a guard on the main door of the police station, a man he had never seen before, kitted out in battledress and machine-gun. Undeterred by Zen's imperious manner, he demanded to see his ID.
'I am Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen, in command of this detachment. And who might you be?'
'Landi, Proculo,' the man replied. 'Anti-Terrorist Squad/ He nodded towards a jeep parked outside, containing four men similarly equipped and armed.
'In view of the threat posed by the assault yesterday,'
Landi continued, 'we've been posted here until further notice with strict orders not to let anyone enter or leave without proper identification.'
It took Zen only a second to sum up the realities of the situation. The Questura had taken over. His little fief dom, such as it had ever been, was no more.
He walked back upstairs and tapped on an office door. Inside, Giovan Battista Caputo was in the middle of a telephone conversation in dialect. Zen turned idly towards a notice-board on the wall, feeling like a foreigner again, an alien intruder to be isolated and repelled. It was some time before he emerged from this slough of self-pity sufficiently to realize what he was looking at. The notice-board was covered in various official communications relating to events in which the local force was expected to take a professional interest.
Most had been there for some considerable time, judging by the colour of the paper.
But there were two new ones, freshly circulated by the Questura. One featured a mug shot of the escaped prisoner in the stabbing case, with a warning that he was to be regarded as armed and dangerous. The other featured a military-issue photograph of Viviani, John, a US naval officer presumed missing after failing to report to his ship. It showed a pleasant, open-faced lad in his twenties with crew-cut hair and the wary look of someone trying to appear tougher and more competent than he really felt himself to be. Zen detached both from the board, folded them carefully and put them away in his pocket.
'Don't waste your time, chief!' Caputo told him, hanging up the phone. 'Those guys always turn up after a couple of days on the town, once they sober up or run out of money/ 'I need to get out of here the back way,' Zen said. 'Like our prisoner did.'
Caputo barely raised an eyebrow.
'No problem.'
Zen went over to the desk and dialled a number.
'I'm coming home,' he said.
'Home?' queried Valeria.
'I need some money. My wallet got stolen. Do you have some cash? I'll pay you back.'
'How about lunch?'
A pause.
'If you're hungry/ added Valeria.
Unseen, Zen smiled.
'I'm always hungry/ 'Just the sort of man I like.'
Una donna che non vol due soldi Which was more than the whore at Via Francesco Proscopi 53c felt about either of the young men with hard eyes and tough bodies who had so rudely talked their way into her home.
She didn't like them calling her a whore, for a start-off, and particularly not in front of Daniele, who had immediately picked the word up and was now trumpeting it proudly about the apartment as he no doubt would later about the entire neighbourhood: 'Putta! Putta!'
Still less did she like them using Roberto's name to get past the door, when it was clear within seconds — but too late — that they had no connection with this local fixer and power-broker beyond knowing his name. Heaven only knew who they were connected to. Someone powerful, for sure, or they wouldn't have dared throw their weight around in this arrogant way. There was a name out there, all right, but she preferred not to think too much about who it might be.
But all this paled into insignificance compared with what happened next. She had admitted bringing the car to the underground depot run by Lorenzo, who ran the place for Roberto, who in turn ran all manner of things for…
'Where did you get it?' demanded one of the men.
He was the one she had been most afraid of all along wrongly, as it now turned out. For no sooner had she repeated the line she used with Lorenzo — 'I saw it on the street, unlocked and with the key in the ignition' — than the other man, to whom she hadn't so far paid much attention, grabbed Daniele as he ran past, still yelling 'Putta!', and hauled him up to perch on his knees. Then, still smiling, he took out a pistol and aimed it at the back of the child's head, which he was holding in such a playfully tight grip that Daniele had no idea what was happening. 'Putta!' he yelled, encouraged by this welcome male attention. 'Putta!'
'For Christ's sake, Sabatino!' the other man hissed, loud enough to be heard.
So that's the deal, she thought, the good cop and the bad cop. Not that they were cops, of course, but the pattern was the same.
'Oh, putta!' shouted the one called Sabatino, mimicking her son's voice and grinning from ear to ear. 'Where did you get it?'
If only there was a simple answer, she would have told them. But there wasn't. She'd seen the news, and knew now who the owner of the car was. And she knew — or rather, like everyone else, didn't know — what had become of him. All she was sure of was that some gang of terrorists was involved, and that the lean, cruel, unknown young man across the room had just cocked the revolver pointing at the nape of her son's neck, his blank eyes boring into her like some scary trick's cock.
'From a client!' she blurted out.
'When?'
'Friday night.'
'Who was he?'
'I don't know! I hardly saw him.'
'Putta! yelled Daniele merrily.
His mother started to weep. For the first time, the child looked alarmed. Sabatino slid his pistol back inside his jacket.
'Go and play outside,' he said.
Daniele glanced at his mother, who nodded.
'But no tricks!' warned the other man.
The woman held her arms open to her son, who came runnning.
'Go and see Aunt Clara,' she told him. 'But don't say anything about these men being here/ 'Same as usual?' lisped Daniele brightly.
His mother sighed and nodded gravely.
'Same as usual/ Daniele turned bravely away, pleased to be helpful. He went out, closing the door behind him, same as usual, leaving his mother alone with the strange men.
'I'd never seen him before/ the woman said. 'He asked for some very… unusual services. But the money was good, so I agreed. I got into his car and we were about to drive off to his place when the accident happened/ 'Accident?'
This from the other man, the one whose name she didn't know.
