you to know that I am in the course of preparing a formal appeal to the judiciary in Bolzano denouncing the illegal intervention that took place at the hospital there, resulting in the removal of my father’s corpse and the conspiracy of silence regarding its present whereabouts. And that’s all I have to say on the matter!’
The phone slammed down.
Zen’s final call was to the customer service desk at the local office of the gas company. He gave a false address in Via del Fosso and explained that he had heard that there had recently been an emergency call-out to another house in the street because of a reported leak. Could the company please confirm that this had been taken care of, and that there was no possible risk to nearby homes? After a computer search, the service representative told him that he must have been misinformed. There had been no gas leaks reported anywhere in Lucca within the previous month.
He left the cabin and walked back the way he had come. The only person he saw was a derelict with a broken nose and shaven hair nursing a bottle of wine on a bench next to the channelled river that flowed down the centre of the street.
When Gemma returned shortly before eleven-thirty, Zen was in the bedroom putting the finishing touches to his packing. He closed up the battered suitcase and carried it into the living room.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he told her.
‘You can’t cancel lunch! Not on my birthday.’
‘No, it’s not that. But I have to go away for a few days again.’
‘What now?’
‘I just had a call from the family lawyer in Venice. Had to take the call outside on the stairs, incidentally. Couldn’t get a clear signal here in the apartment, and then the damn thing died on me completely.’
This for the benefit of anyone listening in on the installed bugging devices.
‘Anyway, there’s apparently been some sort of snag over my mother’s will. Nothing serious, he says, but I’ll need to pop up there to sort it all out and sign some papers. And when I called the Ministry to request leave, just as a formality, they told me I could take advantage of being in the area to check progress in some murder case in Padua. It sounds unutterably boring, but I couldn’t very well say no. But I should be back in a few days, with any luck.’
‘You seem to have an awful lot of work all of a sudden.’
‘That’s the way this job always is. It comes in waves.’
‘Actually, that works out quite nicely. My son has apparently met someone who he thinks might turn out to be “quite serious” and wants me to vet her. This will give me a chance to spend a couple of days away. Now then, let’s get going.’
‘Perhaps you could drop me at the station afterwards,’ Zen said very distinctly. ‘There’s a train to Florence around five that connects with the Eurostar to Venice. That way I can see the lawyer first thing in the morning and get it over with as quickly as possible.’
Gemma put her briefcase down on the table, then clicked her fingers, opened the flap and extracted a number of sheets of paper.
‘I almost forgot. That friend of yours in Rome you asked me to exchange email addresses with sent you these pictures. He says that…’
Zen cut her off hurriedly.
‘I’ll look at them in the restaurant. Come on, let’s go out and celebrate your birthday!’
Under the pretext of being concerned about the off-side rear tyre of Gemma’s vehicle, Zen inspected the street carefully before they set off, and then again as they drove through the back streets. There was no obvious sign of a tail.
Like Zen’s native Venice, Lucca was a real civitas, though bounded not by water but its massive encircling walls. When you passed through one of the tunnel-like portals, you knew that you had left the city; when you passed in again, there was no doubt that you were back. He found this both relaxing and reassuring. They drove through the modest post-war suburban fringes of the town and up into the pleasant, winding valley of the Serchio. The rain was more intense here, but it suited the landscape, as intensely rural as Lucca was urban: unoppressively pretty and unspectacularly wild, unassuming, unspoilt and almost unvisited.
The restaurant was homely but attractive, with a smouldering wood fire that perfumed the entire room, and the food as good as Gemma had promised. They shared a bowl of homemade pappardelle with a sauce of wild porcini mushrooms, followed by a fritto misto of rabbit, lamb and chicken with astringent steamed greens. The wine was drinkable, the almond tart just right and only the coffee a bit of a disappointment, but at that point who cared?
Over cigarettes and a glass of the inevitable local amaro liqueur, whose digestive properties were extolled at some length by the proprietor, Gemma brought out the prints she had made from Gilberto Nieddu’s email attachment of the enhanced digital photograph.
‘What was it he said?’ Zen asked as he glanced through them.
‘There was a very brief cover note that I didn’t bother to print up. He just said to tell you that the mark on his arm is the same.’
Zen nodded. The prints presented the tattoo in various shades of distinction, as well as its original black on the ochre background of the shrivelled arm. It showed the head of a young woman enclosed in a thick square frame. Her hair was knotted, her eyes blank, her expression unfathomable.
Zen passed the pages to Gemma.
‘What do you make of these?’
‘It’s Medusa,’ she replied immediately.
‘Medusa?’
‘Well, one of the Gorgons. Medusa’s the best known, because of that legend involving Perseus. She turned whoever beheld her to stone, but he reflected her face in his shield, nullifying her power, and then cut off her head. One of those Greek myths. I read somewhere that it’s a classic symbol of male fears about women’s sexuality.’
‘I’m not afraid of your sexuality, am I?’
Gemma smiled and kissed him.
‘Not at all. In fact you seem to quite like it.’
Zen took the papers back, folded them up and tucked them into his inside pocket.
‘Thank you for lunch,’ said Gemma as they drove back down the wooded valley.
‘I’ll bring you a real present when I come back from this trip.’
‘I don’t need anything, Aurelio. I told you so.’
‘All right, but don’t you want anything?’
‘I want you to be happy.’
At the station in Lucca, Gemma accompanied Zen into the booking hall, where he ordered a single ticket to Florence in a very loud voice, repeating the name of his destination several times, as though the clerk were deaf or stupid or both.
‘There’s our gas-man,’ Gemma remarked once this laborious transaction had been completed.
‘What?’
Zen was still putting his ticket and money away.
‘One of the men who came to sort out that problem with the gas. Over there, standing in the corner.’
He glanced over quickly. It was a slightly more respectable version of the drunk he had seen that morning on a bench in Via del Fosso.
‘Well, well. Small world.’
Gemma gave him one of her charming deprecatory grins.
‘Small town, you mean,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek.
Zen boarded the train when it arrived from the coast, but in the event he did not travel to Florence. Smoking was prohibited on inter-regional trains, so when they reached Pistoia it was perfectly natural that he should go and stand just inside the automatic doors and enjoy a much-needed cigarette, bringing his bag with him for safety. When the alarm signalled that the doors were about to close, he waited until the last minute and then jumped through the gap down to the platform.
Once the diesel unit had pulled out, he bought another ticket, this time to Pesaro via Bologna, and then
