got into the one in front.
‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ he asked. ‘They tied me up for a long time and I’d like to be able to stretch my legs.’
‘Of course, dottore,’ said Sinico. Then, to the driver, ‘Let’s go, Renato! Follow the bike.’
Zen lit a cigarette with trembling fingers.
‘But how on earth did you manage to talk the Limina clan into letting you go?’ Sinico demanded, leaning forward from the back seat. ‘They have a reputation for cruelty second to none. Their speciality is slow drowning in a bath of water followed by disposal of the corpse in one of the side vents of Etna.’
Zen opened the window to clear the smoke from his cigarette.
‘Oh, I told them a pack of lies,’ he said dully.
‘What sort of lies?’
‘I turned the facts of the affair inside out and suggested that some secret government agency in Rome was behind the whole thing. A campaign of destabilization and so on.’
Sinico gave an incredulous laugh.
‘And they believed you?’
‘I don’t know if they believed me, but they let me go.’
Sinico leaned forward between the two front seats and spoke quietly into Zen’s ear.
‘But you don’t believe this conspiracy theory, do you?’
‘Of course not.’
They hurtled along the twisting road, following the tail-light of the Moto Guzzi.
‘By the way, do you have my revolver?’ asked Sinico.
‘I’m afraid I lost it. I’ll take full responsibility. Fill out a docket for a replacement and I’ll sign it.’
‘Only there’s a problem, you see. One of Roberto’s colleagues has been killed. I think you met him too. Alfredo Ferraro.’
‘I seem to remember the name.’
‘Well, he was shot. Late last night, in that rough area just north of Piazza San Placido, where the whores and the extra-communitari hang out.’
Zen took another drag at his cigarette and tossed it out of the window.
‘That’s where they found the body?’
‘Yes, at about midnight. And the problem is that it seems that he was almost certainly shot with my revolver. As you know, we have to perform test firings whose ballistic characteristics are kept on file. They found one of the bullets fired at the scene, and forensic tests show that the characteristics of my revolver are identical to those of the murder weapon.’
Zen nodded.
‘Unfortunately I can’t help you, because the gun was taken from me much earlier that evening, just an hour or so after I left you.’
‘Taken? How?’
‘A pickpocket. You know that Catania is notorious for petty crime. I was walking down a street near San Nicolo when a woman stopped me and asked me for a light. While I was holding it out to her, a man pushed into me from behind. The next thing I knew, they had both disappeared down an alley. Your gun and my wallet had disappeared with them.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Sinico doubtfully.
‘This Alfredo Ferraro probably saw the couple trying something similar in the Via San Orsola area. He challenged them, and the man pulled out your gun and shot him.’
‘I suppose so. All the same, it’s awkward.’
‘Don’t worry, Baccio, I’ll sort it all out. We’re alive, that’s the main thing. The rest is just details.’
Ahead of them, the red light had turned brilliant white, shining straight back at them from the other side of a small valley where the road curved down across a seasonal torrente, now a bone-dry mass of lava boulders.
‘Get a move on, Renato!’ Sinico told the driver. ‘We’re getting left behind.’
‘This is a dangerous road,’ the man grumbled.
Nevertheless, he jammed his foot to the floor and the car shot forward on to the low concrete bridge across the riverbed. At the top of the hillside opposite, the man on the motorcycle flashed his headlight on and off. An answering flash of light appeared in the darkness above. A moment later, the bridge exploded.
The motorcycle rider replaced his helmet and turned his machine around. It had been an impressive blast, even though they’d had very little time. The quantity of explosives used was only a fraction of the amount which the Mafia had used to kill the judges Paolo Falcone and Giovanni Borsellino. But this too would be perceived as a message. After all, Zen was just a policeman.
