‘And why do all your shirts have that word on them?’ asked Zen.
‘Arsenal? It’s a football club. We won a competition at this place where we all work, in Croydon, just outside London. Know where London is? Best sales team in the company. Free week’s holiday in Malta. Came over to Italy on a day trip, had one too many, missed the hydrofoil back. One of the lads is an Arsenal supporter. I’m a Celtic man myself, but he bought the shirts for all of us, so we sort of have to wear them. Would look a bit thankless else. Can I get you a drink?’
‘That’s very kind of you. A grappa, please.’
Zen stood there amid the swirling alien mass while the other man fought his way to the bar. He already felt very foreign, and very reassured. They — whoever they might be — certainly couldn’t get him here. In the centre of the saloon, the girl who had earlier been asleep on the quay was now dancing alone to some inaudible music. Her breasts, Zen noted with some interest, were even better than her legs.
The Glaswegian returned with Zen’s grappa and one for himself.
‘Never tried this stuff before,’ he said. ‘Not bad, and cheap too.’
‘Are you Norman?’ asked Zen.
‘No, Norman’s the one sitting on the beer supply. I’m Andy.’
‘Why is that girl dancing all alone?’
‘Stephanie? Well, you know how it is on trips like this. Couples form and couples fall apart. Hers fell apart.’
He looked sharply at Zen.
‘Do you want to meet her?’
Zen shrugged.
‘Why not?’
After that, one thing led to another with astonishing rapidity. Eventually they all ended up on the afterdeck of the ferry, under a clear sky and an almost full moon, surrounded by the benign vastness of the sea. Zen was getting on very nicely with Stephanie, who seemed both easy to please and also quite intrigued by this distinguished- looking foreign gent who kept trying out his incomprehensible English on her while peeking down her cleavage in a sexy but respectful way. Wit flowed like wine, and the wine — well, grappa, beer and whisky, actually — flowed like the softly enveloping air of the Mediterranean night.
The other noise, when it first became apparent, seemed at first just a slight annoyance, a minor case of interference which might disturb but could not obliterate the experience they were all sharing. But it persisted, and at last someone went to the stern rail to see what was going on.
‘It’s a boat,’ he reported. ‘Got writing on the side. C, A, R, A, B, I, N…’
Zen dragged himself away from Stephanie’s side and went to look. It was true. A dark-blue Carabinieri launch was closing rapidly with the ferry, its searchlight scorching the gentle wavelets between them. A few moments later, it was alongside. A rope ladder was thrown down, and a man swarmed up it from the launch.
Zen felt himself sobering up rapidly. He knew who had come aboard, and why he was there. Reluctantly he got Baccio Sinico’s revolver out of his pocket and hurled it into the sea. Then he returned to Stephanie. She said something which, like all the things she had said, he did not understand. He shook his head and clutched her hand tightly. She looked alarmed. He forced a smile.
Then he remembered the other piece of incriminating evidence. He searched in his pockets until he found the object he had stolen from the museum. It was a silver cross, with forked ends and intricate engraving on the surface. Zen pressed it into the palm of the hand he had been holding.
‘For you,’ he said.
Stephanie looked down at the cross, turning it this way and that so that it gleamed gently in the moonlight. Then her face suddenly crumpled, she turned away and burst into tears. Panicked, Zen looked around for the Italian-speaking man.
‘What did I do wrong?’ he demanded. ‘I didn’t mean to insult her! Christ, can’t I get anything right?’
The Glaswegian came over and spoke rapidly to Stephanie, then turned her back to face Zen. The girl was still weeping and making little sniffing noises as she spoke.
‘It’s not what you think,’ Andy told Zen.
The girl started to talk, seemingly not to the two men but to the silver cross cradled in the palm of her hand.
‘She says it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen,’ Andy translated. ‘She says she didn’t know that such beauty existed in the world. She says she feels ashamed because she doesn’t deserve to have it.’
At the end of the deck, adjoining the superstructure, a man appeared.
‘Tell her that no one deserves such beauty,’ Zen said quickly. ‘Tell her that it is indeed very precious, but no more than she is. Tell her to care for it, and for herself.’
He stood up as the ROS agent appeared in front of him.
‘Aurelio Zen,’ he said. ‘You evaded our plan of preventative detention and are therefore officially considered to be at risk. I am are here to accompany you back to Catania.’
Zen gestured defeatedly.
‘And if I say no?’
Roberto Lessi tossed his head contemptuously.
‘Let’s go. The boat’s waiting.’
And there indeed was the Carabinieri launch, lying about ten metres off to port, wallowing slightly in the softly bloated seas.
‘Excuse me,’ said Andy, in Italian. ‘He’s a friend of ours.’
Lessi gave him a hard glance.
‘So?’ he replied.
The Glaswegian smiled.
‘So, if you want to take him, you’re going to have to take all of us. And I’m not sure that we’d fit on that wee boat of yours. That’s always supposing that you were able to get us on board in the first place, which personally speaking I wouldn’t be inclined to place a bet on.’
The ROS agent turned furiously to Zen.
‘Tell this little prick to fuck off before I break his balls!’ he spat out.
‘What did he say?’ asked Andy ‘I can’t understand when they speak so quick.’
Zen racked his brains. What was the name of that other English team? Leaver, Leever… And what was the phrase that taxi driver in Rome, the vociferous Lazio supporter, had used?
‘He said that Arsenal are a clan of degenerate wankers and marginal know-nothings,’ Zen confided to Andy. ‘According to him, the only half-decent English team is Liverpool, and compared to Lazio they suck too.’
The Glaswegian spoke loudly and rapidly to his red-shirted companions, who dropped whatever they were doing and clustered tightly around the ROS man. The latter pulled out and displayed a police identity card embedded in his wallet.
‘I am a police!’ he declared in cracked English.
‘Is that right?’ Andy replied, plucking the wallet from the Carabiniere’s hand and tossing it overboard. ‘Awful hard job, they say’
The Carabiniere looked around at the towering Arsenal supporters with a furious but cornered expression.
‘You are all under arrest!’ he screamed. ‘Outrage to a public official! Surrender your papers immediately! You are all…’
At which point a whisky bottle slammed into his skull.
‘Liverpool, my arse,’ said Norman.
Stephanie giggled.
When thieves fall out read a sub-headline in the copy of the newspaper La Sicilia which Zen bought the next morning in Valletta. ‘A brutal strangulation concludes a successful break-in to the Civic Museum of Catania. The presumed killer makes a daring escape by leaping from a window and remains at large. A twelfth-century Norman crucifix “of inestimable value” is missing.’
Zen smiled sourly. So that’s how they had decided to pitch the story. But why was there no mention of
