Baccio Sinico gave a massively expressive shrug.
‘It seems it wasn’t the Limina kid after all.’
‘It wasn’t?’
‘It seems not.’
Zen frowned at him.
‘How do you mean, “seems”? Either it was or it wasn’t.’
Sinico smiled his humourless smile once again.
‘With all due respect, dottore, it’s easy to see that you’ve only just arrived here. The dualistic, northern approach to life is completely alien to the Sicilian mind. So far from there being just two possibilities, there are, in any given case, an almost infinite number.’
‘Skip the philosophy, Sinico,’ Zen retorted gruffly. ‘I’ve never had a head for it.’
The young officer smiled, this time with genuine warmth.
‘I apologize, dottore. A hobby of mine. It’s what I studied at university, until I realized that the job market in that particular subject was rather restricted. And for that matter I make no claims to understanding the Sicilian mentality either. You have to be born here to do that. But to get back to the point, it seems that the judiciary has seen fit to accept the statement of the Limina family that their son is alive and well, on holiday in Costa Rica, despite their reluctance to say exactly where he is, still less produce him in person.’
‘So you don’t think their story is true?’
Baccio Sinico laughed again.
‘If you start asking yourself questions like that here in Sicily, you’ll drive yourself mad. I’m just telling you what’s happened. The case is closed and that’s that. As for the truth, who knows? Or cares?’
Aurelio Zen considered this in silence for a while.
‘What about the magistrate who was investigating the case?’ he asked at length.
‘Nunziatella? She’s been taken off it. The case has been officially downgraded to a routine accidental death enquiry. They’re no doubt writing up the press release as we speak. It’ll be all over the papers and the television tomorrow, if you’re interested.’
He sniffed and lit a cigarette.
‘Besides, the judge in question has her own problems, if the office gossip is to be believed.’
‘How do you mean?’
Sinico gave him a quick glance.
‘The word is that la Nunziatella doesn’t like men.’
Zen shrugged.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that she does like women.’
Another shrug.
That’s not illegal.’
Baccio Sinico sighed again.
‘Despite some recent changes, this is a very conservative society, dottore. I’ve heard that there is a photograph in existence, showing Corinna Nunziatella and another woman in a restaurant.’
‘So?’
‘They’re kissing,’ Sinico went on. ‘On the mouth.’
Zen got out his battered pack of Nazionali cigarettes and lit up.
‘Who took the photograph?’ he asked.
‘No one knows.’
‘Well, where is it now?’
‘No one knows.’
There was a brief silence.
‘But in a sense it doesn’t even matter whether the photo actually exists or not,’ Sinico went on. ‘All that matters is that the word is out that it does. And if it were to be sent to the local paper and printed on the front page, all of which could easily be arranged by certain people, then it would become difficult, if not impossible, for Judge Nunziatella to continue to carry out her duties in a satisfactory manner. In which case, of course, she would have to be replaced.’
Walking over to the window at the rear of the apartment, overlooking the courtyard, Aurelio Zen unlatched the twin panes. It was like opening the door of an oven which is no longer turned on, but still stocked with heat from the long hours when it was blazing away. A spent wave of exhausted air invested the room, scented lightly with the basil and rosemary, thyme and oregano which a neighbour grew in pots on her balcony.
The doorbell sounded. It was Carla, looking relaxed in loose, wheat-coloured linen trousers and a peach ribbed cotton-knit top, her radiance and energy instantly enlivening the room. All Zen’s previous apprehensions about the success of the evening were swept away. Together they rummaged through the kitchen cupboards for cooking utensils, then poured the soup from its jar into a saucepan that proved to be too small, getting a stain on Carla’s trousers in the process. It didn’t matter. They laughed and sorted it out and put the soup on to warm, opened a bottle of wine and gossiped about the latest political and social scandals, and discussed what to do about Carla’s birthday, which fell on the following Saturday.
The conversational tempo slowed a bit once they had eaten, and at length Zen found himself resorting to a rather tired old standby.
‘So how’s work?’
‘The usual,’ said Carla. ‘I can never understand why so many people seem to find computers interesting. To me, they’re about as fascinating as a light switch — which is really all they are, when you get down to it. That’s why I like working with them. They’re soothing company.’
She paused, pushing the salt cellar to and fro across the table.
‘I found something interesting today, though.’
‘Yes?’
Another pause, followed by an embarrassed shrug.
‘I probably shouldn’t tell you. All this stuff is supposed to be highly confidential. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork they made me sign.’
‘Oh, come on, Carla! We both work for the same side, after all. And anyway, I’m family’
Carla conceded the point with a smile.
‘Well, someone’s been pinging the DIA system. I discovered a sequence of packet hits, all in the middle of the night, when none of the registered users was logged on.’
Zen smiled weakly.
‘Well, that does sound interesting.’
Carla laughed.
‘Actually, it is, sort of. In plain language, it means that someone outside the DIA has been looking at their work, checking their files and opening their mail. And what’s really interesting is that this doesn’t look like your average hacker. These people seem to be coming in with virtual sysadmin status, which means they can open, alter or even delete any file — even so-called “closed” files, inaccessible to other co-users. And they can do that not just here in Catania, but over the entire DIA network.’
‘So who are they?’
Carla shrugged.
‘That I can’t say, yet. But I’ve identified the string code of the machine they’re using, code name “nero”. That’s like a fingerprint. It doesn’t tell you who or where the user is, but there are ways of tracking it back. Which is what I plan to do next.’
She fumbled around in her bag and produced a folded piece of paper.
‘Look at this. This is just one of the entries I found on the DIA server’s var-log-messages file.’
Zen took the sheet of printout and read: Aug 12 23:19:06/falcone PAM_pwdb[8489]: (su) session opened for user root by nero (uid=o)
Carla pointed a finger at the page.
This means that at nineteen minutes and six seconds past eleven at night on Tuesday last, someone identified as “nero” accessed the DIA system and used the “su” command to switch to user root status. Don’t look
