‘If you want to find out the truth,’ he said, ‘then you’re going to need help. And for different reasons, which do not concern you, we need help from you. Perhaps we can make a deal.’
Zen gazed out across the sea with an air of complete boredom.
‘My friends didn’t kill Tonino Limina, either,’ said Spada.
The waves shattered and re-formed on the rocks beneath.
‘The Limina family have denied that their son is dead.’
‘He’s dead, all right.’
‘Then why did they deny it?’
‘Because Don Gaspare is a control freak, even though he doesn’t control anything worth a piss these days. But he doesn’t want to look bad. Plus he didn’t want the authorities taking an interest. He would have his revenge when the time came. Which it just has. Five of the Corleone clan frozen to death in a meat truck.’
‘I’ve heard nothing about this.’
‘It hasn’t been made public. The Corleonesi don’t want to look bad either. I’m just presenting my credentials. Go back to your friends at the DIA and check it out. It’s true.’
Zen looked up to the north where Etna was spewing out fat white clouds into a heartbreakingly pale blue sky.
‘What’s all this got to do with me?’ he demanded. ‘I’m a policeman. I should arrest you right now. Take you down to the basement and have the hard boys go to work on you!’
He turned away, shielding his face from the wind in an attempt to light a cigarette. On the breakwater, perhaps ten metres away, a young man wearing dark glasses was staring at him. Zen stared back. The man turned away, took out a cellphone and walked off down the mole.
‘We didn’t kill Limina,’ Spada repeated, playing his line.
Zen turned to him with an expression of bored cynicism.
‘All right, let’s pretend that you’re telling the truth. Your friends didn’t do it. So who did?’
Spada raised his rod and plied the reel furiously. About five metres from the edge of the breakwater, a fish broke surface. He hauled it in, twitching and struggling in vain, a small red mullet. Spada inspected it briefly, unhooked the line, and threw the fish back.
‘Maybe yours,’ he said.
Zen tossed the butt of his cigarette after the fish.
‘I don’t have any friends.’
‘Then you’re dead, dottore. Professionally speaking, of course. But here in Sicily, without friends…’
There was a silence.
‘And just who would these friends of mine be, supposing they existed?’ asked Zen.
A large shrug.
‘Who knows? What I’m hearing is that the operation was planned and carried out by people from the continent.’
‘From Rome?’
Spada did not answer for so long that his silence became an answer in itself. He leaned back and looked at Zen as though seeing him for the first time. Then Zen realized that the other man was looking not at him but past him.
‘I think we’ve been here long enough, dottore,’ Spada remarked.
He scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Zen.
‘Come to this address after eight this evening. A relative of mine is the caretaker. We’ll be able to talk without any risk of disturbance.’
He quickly dismantled his rod and line, packing everything away into the wicker hamper he had brought with him. Zen turned away and clambered from rock to rock until he regained the concrete breakwater. Gulls swooped overhead, but there was no one in sight.
He was still three streets from his apartment block when they grabbed him. It only occurred to him later that this meant that he must have been followed all the way.
Along with five or six other passers-by, he had stopped to watch a peculiar courtship spectacle involving two dogs: a young dalmatian and a rather more mature spaniel. Their respective owners were a portly woman in a long coat and another, young enough to be her daughter, wearing a black pantsuit. Both dogs were leashed, and the spaniel was evidently in heat. The dalmatian was making frantic attempts to mount her, and the owners were making equally frantic attempts to drag the two lovers apart. Meanwhile a small crowd had gathered to offer advice and make the predictable jokes.
Zen sensed their presence a moment before one of them caught him by the arm.
‘Dottor Zen? I’m Roberto Lessi of the Raggruppamento Operazioni Speciali, currently seconded to the DIA. You’re to come with us, please.’
There were two of them, in their thirties, both wearing jeans and sports jackets. Zen found himself hyperventilating.
‘Come with you where?’ he asked.
A blue saloon pulled in alongside the rank of parked vehicles by the kerb. The two men took Zen by the elbows, one on each side, and steered him towards it.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.
‘It’s for your own protection,’ the other man said flatly.
The back door of the car opened and Baccio Sinico stepped out.
‘Baccio!’ Zen called to him. ‘What the hell’s happening?’
Sinico made a gesture like swatting a fly. The two Carabinieri agents released Zen.
‘You can’t go back to your apartment, dottore, not after we discovered that bomb there. These people, if at first they don’t succeed, they try and try again until they do. And they own the building, so access won’t be very difficult.’
‘But what’s the alternative?’
Sinico beamed a smile.
‘You’ve been put on the high-security risk roster, dottore! They’ve allocated you quarters in the Carabinieri barracks. You’ll be perfectly safe there, under armed guard night and day. And if for any reason you need to leave the barracks, you’ll have a full escort of armed officers with you at all times.’
‘I noticed what a good job they did with that judge,’ Zen retorted sourly.
Sinico looked indignant.
‘That wasn’t our fault! She deliberately broke security rules and took off on her own. There was nothing we could do. But don’t complain, dottore! This is an honour that many of your colleagues would die for.’
He gave a loose shrug.
‘So to speak.’
Zen nodded.
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘All right, let’s go.’
‘What about my personal effects?’
‘Everything will be packed up and transferred to your allotted quarters at the barracks.’
Zen looked down at the pavement and shook his head slowly.
‘What a narrow escape!’ he exclaimed in a tone of voice which might have raised the eyebrows of someone who knew him better than Baccio Sinico. ‘I can’t thank you enough for taking all this trouble. Thank heavens I’ll be properly protected from now on! But listen, there’s just one thing I need to collect from my apartment.’
‘As I said, all your belongings will be…’
‘This is not one of my belongings, strictly speaking. It’s something which…’
He broke off, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘Something which belonged to my mother, Giuseppina.’
Baccio Sinico nodded respectfully.
‘It makes no difference. Everything that’s there except the furniture will be delivered to you at…’
‘That’s the problem. You see, this is a piece of furniture. Well, actually it’s a picture which I brought from our
