Zen looked suitably impressed.
‘Which might seem to make them professionals rather than amateurs,’ he remarked.
Brandelli clapped his hands together.
‘Exactly! Everything contradicts itself. Frankly, I’ve given up any hope of ever finding out the truth in this matter.’
Zen rose stiffly from his perch at the edge of the sofa.
‘Have you really given up journalism entirely?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, supposing that I uncovered further information tending to confirm the existence of the Medusa conspiracy, would you be interested in writing a piece about it?’
Brandelli made a non-committal gesture.
‘That would depend entirely on the nature and the authenticity of the information.’
‘Of course. But in principle?’
‘In principle, yes.’
‘And could you get it published?’
Brandelli now looked distinctly dubious.
‘Why would you want me to do that? You’re a policeman. ’
‘As I said earlier, I’m operating off the record. Anyway, that’s no concern of yours. Any material I bring you will be genuine. What I need to know is whether you could get it published.’
Brandelli drew himself up with a certain hauteur.
‘My name may not be a household word these days, but I still have my contacts and a certain reputation in some quarters. If there is a story here, I will certainly write it up. I could certainly get it published in Il Manifesto. I might even be able to get it into La Repubblica. Subject to there being a documented story in the first place. But do you really think there is one?’
‘Do you?’
Brandelli made a tired, defeated grimace.
‘I would love there to be, of course. But no, I don’t really believe it. It’s all too long ago. Anyone who knew what really happened, assuming anything did, is either dead or covering their tracks. They’re not going to talk. And now that the new regime has successfully cowed the judiciary into a comatose state of inertia, there’s no one in a position to make them do so. So to be honest I don’t think there’s any chance that we’ll ever find out what happened to Leonardo Ferrero, or whether there really was a right-wing military conspiracy to take over the country back in the seventies. Anyway, that’s all history. And no one will care even if we do. Nowadays people think that history is what was on TV last night.’
Zen buttoned his coat against the chilly streets.
‘This is not just a question of setting the historical record straight. Certain high-ranking people in the government have taken a public line on this affair. If it turns out to be false, and you can arrange for the truth to be published, then the whole affair will be on TV not just tonight but tomorrow night and every night for the foreseeable future. Wouldn’t people be interested then? And wouldn’t you?’
Brandelli considered this.
‘Of course I would,’ he replied finally. ‘And maybe so would they.’
‘Never underestimate the power of the people,’ was Zen’s parting shot.
XV
Of the various transport choices available from Luca Brandelli’s fog-bound apartment building, Zen opted for the M3 underground line, the political kickbacks from whose construction had brought down the Socialist government of the city in the early nineties. It turned out to be efficient, cheap and clean, an irony which he did not fail to appreciate.
In the centre, the fog was dense and pervasive. The lines of jammed traffic seemed as permanent a fixture as the rows of five-storey buildings to either side. On the pavements, visibility varied from a few metres to zero. Zen had to trust to luck, intuition and a few directions from passers-by, one of whom sent him totally out of his way. It was only when he stopped to light a cigarette outside a shuttered shop, trying to work out whether he had been going round in circles, that he realized t he had reached his goal. Chiuso per Lutto, read a rather faded handwritten sign on the window behind a lattice of steel barriers designed to foil thieves while allowing potential customers to view a selection of the books that would be available for purchase when the proprietor returned to work after coming to terms with his grief.
Some distance down the street, a nimbus of diffused light glowed through the surrounding gloom. On closer investigation, it turned out to be a bar. Most of the customers were ordering coffee stiffened with a shot of grappa or sweet liqueur. Zen followed their example. The cafe was a dingy, noisy place, but it felt warm and comforting after the streets. The clientele was seemingly a mix of tradesmen, clerks, shop assistants and low-grade functionaries postponing as long as possible the horrors of their journey home.
Zen slipped a banknote across the counter to attract the barman’s attention.
‘Do you have a hammer I could borrow for five minutes?’ he asked.
‘A hammer?’
‘I’ve got a flat tyre on my car, but the hubcap is dented and I can’t prise it off with my bare hands. And of course there’s no chance of calling out a tow-truck in this fog…’
The man nodded sympathetically.
‘There should be one out the back somewhere.’
He led the way into the rear of the premises, a wasteland full of spare furniture, mineral-water crates and assorted junk apparently being stored on the you-never-know-when-it-might- come-in-handy basis. There was also a payphone, now a historical relic from the days before the mobile revolution, and a framed aerial photograph showing one of the small towns of the Valpadana, presumably the one in which the proprietor of the bar had grown up: a little circular urban patch surrounded by a vast expanse of arable land dotted with the huge cascine farm complexes typical of the region.
‘Here you go,’ said the barman, returning from some inner sanctum with a hammer. ‘I’ll need it back, mind.’
‘Five minutes.’
Zen pocketed the hammer and proceeded back through the clammy murk to the bookshop. The front door and main window were too distant to reach, but the remaining panes angled out to either side, ending within arm’s length. A potential thief still wouldn’t have been able to grab the books on display, but Zen wasn’t interested in them. There was no sound of footsteps or cars in the street. Taking the hammer from his pocket, he thrust his arm as far as it would go through one of the rect¬ angular gaps in the shuttering, and then struck the window repeatedly. The glass first crazed, then cracked spectacularly. At the same moment, a yellow light flashed above and a piercing siren began to wail. Zen made his way back to the bar and returned the hammer.
‘Thanks very much, that sorted it out. Now I’ll go and change the tyre.’
‘What’s all that racket down the street?’ the barman asked with a worried expression.
‘No idea. Probably a faulty burglar alarm. Those things are always going wrong. More trouble than they’re worth.’
Before long, a different siren sounded in the streets, but what with the fog and the blocked traffic it was another ten minutes before the patrol car finally arrived at the bookshop. Zen showed his identification card to the crew, whose attitude instantly changed from truculent suspicion to awed respect.
‘I saw everything,’ Zen told them. ‘Pure chance. I was passing by on the other side of the street. I heard the noise of the glass smashing and went to investigate. The burglar ran off before he could steal anything. I gave chase, but he slipped away in the fog.’
At this point, a man named Fulvio intervened. He was the janitor of the building. No, the owner was away and couldn’t be contacted. A family tragedy. Long business. One of those. But he, Fulvio, could be trusted to have the window repaired and to board up the shop in the meantime. Other members of the family? Just for the record,
