house in Rome after she…’
‘Just tell us where it is, and we’ll bring it.’
Zen sighed heavily.
‘That’s what’s embarrassing, you see. I don’t remember. I just grabbed it at random, as something to remember her by, but I can’t recall where I put it or even what the subject of the picture is. All I know is that I’ll recognize it the moment I see it.’
He gripped Sinico’s arm.
‘Look, even the Mafia are not going to try again so soon after the failure of this attempt. Let’s go to my place right now, just the two of us. I’ll pick up the picture and then we’ll drive straight to the barracks.’
Baccio Sinico shook his head.
‘I’m sorry, dottore, I don’t have the authorization to…’
‘And then there are the papers,’ said Zen.
Sinico looked at him sharply.
‘Papers?’
‘Legal documents.’
Sinico was now staring at him with a mute intensity.
‘Relating to my mother’s will,’ Zen added. ‘I hid them away for safety. It would be impossible for anyone else to find them. You can imagine how important they are.’
‘The papers,’ Sinico repeated.
‘Yes. Those legal documents. If they fell into the wrong hands…’
Baccio Sinico nodded almost maniacally.
‘Of course, of course. The wrong hands.’
‘We wouldn’t want that.’
‘No, no! Certainly not.’
He sighed.
‘Very well. It’s highly irregular, but…’
They took off at high speed for the short drive to Zen’s home, emergency lights flashing and sirens wailing. If they had wanted to draw the Mafia’s attention to the fact that their target was returning home, thought Zen, they could hardly have done a better job. The car drew up in front of the building, providing a further visual clue by parking the way the police always park: so as to create the maximum inconvenience for everyone else. While one of the two ROS agents secured the front door, Zen and Sinico walked upstairs with the second, who then stood guard at the door to Zen’s apartment while the two men went inside.
Zen looked around quickly. The Toshiba laptop had of course gone. Maybe it really had been a bomb, as they claimed. He would never know. More to the point, the papers which Corinna Nunziatella had ‘posted’ to herself, using Carla as a cut-out, and which Zen had left on the sofa, had also disappeared.
‘Through here,’ he told Sinico, leading the way towards the bedroom. As Sinico crossed the threshold, Zen smashed the door into his face. The younger officer reeled back, clutching his forehead and staring wildly at Zen, who grabbed him by the arm and hair and hurled him forward into the bedroom, tripping him up as he passed so that he fell sprawling on the gleaming aggregate floor.
After a moment, Sinico got to his knees and then his feet, pulling a revolver from a holster at the back of trousers, but he was too shocked and too slow. Zen yanked him forwards by the arm holding the gun, chopped the weapon free with a blow to the wrist, then kneed Sinico in the chest as he went down for the second time. He picked up the revolver and checked it quickly, keeping an eye all the while on the figure splayed out on the floor, panting hard as though he were about to burst into tears.
‘I’m sorry, Baccio,’ Zen said quietly ‘I had no choice.’
Sinico looked up at him.
‘You’re mad!’ he croaked.
‘That’s conceivable, but I can’t afford to take the risk of finding out that I’m not. Don’t worry, I won’t bother you again, as long as you don’t bother me. Remember that “compassionate leave” you told me about? I’ve decided to take your advice.’
Sinico crawled up into a sitting position.
‘They’ll kill you, dottore! They’ve tried once already, and they won’t give up. You need us! You need our help, our protection!’
Zen put the revolver in his coat pocket and stared bleakly down at the younger man.
‘Who are they, Baccio? Whose friends are they?’
Sinico shook his head despairingly.
‘This is all madness!’ he said. ‘Paranoia run wild!’
Zen inclined his head.
‘As I said, that’s conceivable. It’s also conceivable that you’re just trying to keep me talking until one of those ROS thugs comes to see why we’re taking so long.’
He walked over to the doorway.
I’m leaving now,’ he told Sinico. ‘If you try to stop me, I’ll shoot you.’
Once in the living room, he crossed rapidly to the front door and opened it. The ROS agent named Lessi looked at him in surprise.
‘We’ve found something!’ Zen said in an urgent undertone. ‘Baccio thinks it might be another bomb. He wants you to take a look.’
Lessi nodded and ran inside. Zen closed the door and locked it with the complicated double-sided key, formed like a gondola’s prow, turning it four times to insert the metal security bolts into the retaining block. Without a key, it could not be opened from the inside.
He ran quickly downstairs and slunk into the shadows at the rear of the entrance hall. About twenty seconds later, the front door flew open and the other ROS man ran in, a pistol in his hand, talking urgently on his cellphone.
‘He locked the door? Don’t worry, I’ll be right there!’
Zen listened to the man’s footsteps receding above, then walked to the door and out into the night.
A few minutes after eight o’clock sounded from the massive church of San Nicolo in Piazza Dante, Zen arrived at the address to which he had been directed, in a side-street off Via Gesuiti. He was under no illusion about the value of the assurances which the man known as Spada had given him as to his safety, but neither did he care very deeply one way or the other. If his mother had still been alive, it would have been different, as it would if he’d ever had children. As it was, he discovered that it didn’t really matter what happened, although this did not prevent him from carefully checking the revolver he had taken from Baccio Sinico while he waited inside the portico of San Nicolo for eight o’clock to arrive.
The building assigned for his appointment with ‘Signor Spada’ was a handsome two-storey baroque palazzo with widely spaced windows, ornate cornices and shallow balconies protected by metal railings. The main entrance seemed to be on Via Gesuiti itself, but the address to which Zen had been directed was a door about half-way along the left-hand side. Rather to Zen’s surprise, it was open. He knocked tactfully but without result, then stepped inside. The light from the lamp strung on a wire at first-floor level across the street revealed a set of stone steps leading down to another door about a metre lower down.
Leaving the street door open, Zen made his way down. The lower door was not locked. With a very faint creak, it opened into an unlit but acoustically larger space beyond. Zen stood still, sniffing the musty air and trying to decipher a faint sound which he thought at first might be the echoes of the creaking door, amplified by the resonant chamber beyond. The interior seemed at first completely dark, but as Zen’s eyes began to adjust he became aware of a tepid luminescence which seemed to emanate from…
From whatever they were, those rows and ranks of massive structures, identical in shape and height, which ran the length and breadth of the room. Except for their size, they might almost have been old-fashioned school desks, with sloping tops which caught what little light there was and reflected it. Only they didn’t reflect it, he soon realized, they radiated it. By now, his night vision was good enough for him to make out some other features of the place, such as two hulking human forms each about three metres tall standing against the wall at the far end of the room. A warehouse of glowing furniture managed by giants? Well, he had no problem with that. That was just fine!
