temperatures, none of the corpses showed any sign of post-mortem deliquescence, but they were almost unrecognizable just the same. Ironically enough, the only undamaged one was that of Binu’s grandson, the reason being that his left leg had been removed before he had entered the ‘death chamber’, and so he had been in no condition to try to escape. It was the thigh portion of this leg, suitably wrapped, which had been flung on to their doorstep. Examination of the severed stump suggested that the amputation had been performed with a chainsaw.
The bar in Piazza Carlo Alberto was as packed as ever, but the crowd was more evenly distributed now that the exclusion zone created by Carla Arduini’s presence was no longer in effect. There was perhaps a momentary flicker of the former tension when Aurelio Zen made his appearance, but it was instantly dissipated in a renewed rumble of discussion and comment.
Zen made his way to the counter and ordered a coffee. The barman appeared oddly frenetic and distracted. He said not a word, going about his business in a jerky, mute, compulsive frenzy, like an actor in a silent film.
‘Where’s the young lady who used to meet me here?’ Zen enquired as the coffee touched down on his saucer.
The barman ran through a range of facial expressions as if trying on a selection of hats, none of which really suited.
‘How should I know?’ he said at length, furiously wiping the gleaming counter with a rag. ‘She didn’t come today. I don’t know why. She just didn’t come. Maybe tomorrow…’
Zen knocked his coffee back.
‘No,’ he said. ‘She won’t be coming tomorrow, either. She won’t be coming ever again.’
He smiled mirthlessly.
‘Neither will I, for that matter.’
His eyes never leaving those of the barman, he produced his wallet and extracted a two-thousand-lire note which he tossed on the counter. With it came a spray of what looked like dust. Noticing it, Zen turned his wallet upside down. A stream of reddish grains poured out, forming an uneven pile on the stainless-steel counter.
‘What’s that?’ the barman demanded.
‘It’s called “blood rain”,’ Zen told him. ‘Think of it as a message.’
‘A message?’
Zen nodded.
‘A message from Rome.’
His arrival at the Questura appeared to be ill-timed. The guard in his armour-plated sentry box looked taken aback, as though he had seen a ghost. So did two fellow officers whom Zen met on the stairs inside. But the biggest surprise was his office, which was draped in lengths of cloth sheeting speckled and blotched in various hues and stank of paint thinner. At the top of a high and rickety-looking step-ladder, a short dark man in overalls and a paper hat was coating the ceiling with a large brush.
‘Attenzione!’ he called loudly. ‘Don’t step on the drop-sheets, there are wet splashes. And mind that paint!’
Zen abruptly jerked his arm away from what had once been his filing cabinet, and in so doing knocked over a can containing about five litres of off-white paint.
‘Capo!’
It was Baccio Sinico, standing in the doorway with an expression which seemed to Zen to be identical to that of everyone he had met so far: And we thought we’d seen the last of him.
‘They’re repainting,’ Sinico added redundantly, while the painter scuttled down from his roost, declaiming loudly in dialect. Fortunately for Zen, the can had landed with its mouth pointing away from him, so the main damage was to the floor and furniture. Meanwhile a crowd of his colleagues, subordinates and superiors, had formed in a semicircle discreetly situated just inside the door, away from the spreading puddle of paint. A chorus of voices rose up on all sides, lilting conventional laments and litanies of commiseration. To have a daughter killed! And coming so soon after the death of a mother! Such a cruel destiny would turn the strongest head. No one could be expected to resist this lethal hammer blow of fate.
Zen turned to Baccio Sinico.
‘I need to talk to you.’
The junior officer looked around the assembled crowd with the embarrassed expression of someone being importuned by a harmless madman.
‘I’m sorry, dottore, but I can’t. No time, what with my official responsibilities and so on.’
Sinico extracted a wallet and inspected its contents. With what seemed like exaggerated care, he folded up a fifty-thousand-lire note and handed it to Zen.
‘Here’s half of what I owe you,’ he said with false bonhomie. ‘You’ll get the rest just as soon as I can afford it. Meanwhile, since you’ve been given a month’s compassionate leave because of this awful tragedy, I think you should take full advantage. Eh, boys?’
He eyed the chorus, which nodded as choruses do.
‘So why not go and have a nice cup of coffee on me, dottore?’ Sinico concluded, patting Zen’s arm in an overtly patronizing way.
He turned away to the assembled crowd with the air of someone bestowing a knowing wink on the insiders who knew the truth of the matter. Zen headed for the stairs, clutching the crushed banknote. Half-way down, he unfolded it. Inside was a small slip of white paper printed with writing and figures. It proved to be a printed ricevuta fiscale, the legally required receipt from the cash register proving for tax purposes that a commercial transaction had taken place. The heading named a bar in Via Gisira, a few hundred metres from the Questura.
He had been there less than ten minutes when Baccio Sinico appeared. Zen handed him the fifty-thousand- lire note.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ he demanded.
Sinico ordered a coffee, then turned to Zen.
‘First of all, let’s get one thing clear. You never came here, we never met, and I never said this.’
‘Is it that bad?’
Sinico shrugged.
‘Possibly. Probably. At any rate, let’s assume so. That way, we might be pleasantly surprised later.’
Zen lit a cigarette and peered at Sinico.
‘But why? All I’m doing is meeting a fellow officer for a coffee and a chat. We’ve done that often enough before. Why is it any different now?’
Sinico looked carefully around the bar.
‘Because of la Nunziatella, of course.’
‘But what’s that got to do with me?’
Sinico sighed lengthily, as though dealing with some foreigner whose grasp of the language was not quite up to par.
‘Listen, dottore, your daughter died with her, right?’
‘So?’
‘So the view has been taken that your inevitable emotional involvement as the father of the secondary victim disqualifies you from active duty at this time.’
Zen laughed.
‘I didn’t realize that the Ministry had become so warm and caring about its staff. Anyway, there’s no problem. I had a bad patch for a few days, after I heard the news. But I’m fine now. I’ve got a plan, you see. A goal.’
‘Which is?’
‘I’m going to find out who killed Carla.’
‘No one meant to kill your daughter! She was just caught in the crossfire.’
‘That doesn’t make her any less dead. And I’m going to find out who did it.’
Sinico shook his head.
‘The whole Direzione Investigativa AntiMafia is working on that, dottore! When one of our judges gets killed, we drop everything else. If we can’t solve the case and identify the murderers with all the resources at our command, how can you possibly hope to do so?’
