THREE
As the car leaned further and further into the curve he tensed for the inevitable smash. Cheated again! There was no getting used to it.
‘If that’s Valesio with his apologies I’ll tell him what he can do with them!’ Crepi had muttered as he went to answer the phone. ‘Hello? Who? Oh. Yes? I don’t understand. What? No! Oh, my God! Oh, Jesus!’
He bent over, taking deep breaths.
‘What’s happened?’
Crepi was panting as though about to faint. Zen took the receiver from him.
‘Hello? Who’s there?’
The line went dead.
‘They’ve killed him,’ Crepi murmured as he lurched towards the door, ignoring Zen’s questions.
Zen dialled the Questura, but they didn’t know anything. He told them to find out and call him back.
He walked over to the hearth, picked up a log and threw it on the embers. Some dried moss and a section of ivy still clinging to the bark flared up. Gradually the wood itself took hold, first smoking furiously and then bursting into flame.
A ladybird appeared from a crack and began exploring the surface of the log, now well alight. Zen took a splinter from the hearth and lowered the end of it into the path of the little creature, which promptly veered away. Again and again he tried to tempt the ladybird to safety, until his hand began to ache from the heat. Just as he had finally succeeded, the phone rang again. The insect fell and flamed up on the glowing embers at the front of the grate.
‘ The Carabinieri are handling it and they’re not giving much away. The gist of it seems to be that someone’s been killed out near Valfabbrica.’
He walked downstairs calling for Palottino, who emerged from the kitchen where he’d been watching television. It wasn’t till they were getting into the car that Crepi appeared, looking for the first time like the old man he was.
‘I’m coming too.’
It had been his contact in the Carabinieri who had called, he said. Ruggiero Miletti had been found murdered in the boot of a car.
The night was still mild and luminous, but a big gusty southerly breeze had sprung up and was pushing the clouds along, and when they cleared the moon the landscape was revealed, distinct and yet mysterious, in a way that made daylight seem as crudely functional as neon strip-lighting. Then the clouds closed in again and it was night, the headlights punching holes in the darkness. Black metal bicycle torches gripped tight as they ran shrieking barefoot through the sand dunes. At the Lido, it must have been, with Tommaso and that lot, more than forty years ago. To think that single memory had lain undisturbed in some crevice of his brain all these years, lovingly, uselessly preserved.
‘There it is!’
Crepi’s voice was uncomfortably close to Zen’s ear. He just glimpsed the blue and white sign reading ‘Valfabbrica’.
The main street was dark and tightly shuttered. Outside the Carabinieri station three men in uniform were chatting beside a dark blue Giulietta. A burly individual with a sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve responded to Zen’s request for directions by jerking his head at the open doorway behind him, but before Zen could get out Palottino leaned across him and started speaking in tongues. The sergeant said something in return and then got into the Giulietta.
‘He’s going to take us there,’ the Neapolitan explained.
‘Friend of yours?’
Palottino shook his head. The emergency was having a relaxing effect on his manners.
‘He’s from Naples, I recognized the accent. Says this is the first interesting thing that’s happened here.’
‘And what exactly has happened?’
Wonderful, thought Zen. I’m reduced to getting my information on the dialect grapevine.
‘Somebody found shot in a car.’
Crepi groaned as though knifed.
About a kilometre outside town they turned left on to a dirt road winding through a desolate landscape created by the seasonal floods of the nearby river. After a while the Giulietta slowed, lights appeared ahead and the road was blocked by vehicles parked at all angles across it.
The scene was illuminated like a film set by a powerful searchlight mounted on a Carabinieri jeep. As they got out Zen made out a group of men standing talking near a large grey car. Then everything disappeared as the searchlight went out.
‘Till tomorrow, then!’
‘Excuse me!’ Zen called.
‘Who is it?’
‘I’m from the police.’
The silence was broken only by the incomprehensible squawks and crackles of a short-wave radio.
‘You’re rather late.’
Someone laughed.
‘As usual!’
‘It’s gone.’
‘And we’re off.’
‘Is it true, then?’
It Was Crepi’s voice, just in front of Zen.
‘Is what true?’
‘He’s dead?’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Antonio Crepi. Who are you?’
Someone drew in their breath sharply.
‘Forgive me, Commendatore, I had no idea! For God’s sake, Volpi, tell your men to put that light back on. Ettore Di Leonardo, Deputy Public Prosecutor. My apologies, I thought you said you were from the police.’
‘I’m from the police,’ Zen began. ‘Commissioner Aurelio…’
‘Answer me!’ Crepi repeated. ‘Is he dead?’
The searchlight crackled back into life and they all covered their eyes.
‘Unfortunately, Commendatore. Unfortunately.’
‘The first murder victim I’ve ever seen,’ said a younger man with a full black beard. ‘And it wasn’t a pretty sight, I can assure you.’
‘Show a little respect, for Christ’s sake!’ Crepi protested angrily. ‘He was my friend!’
The younger man shrugged.
‘Mine too.’
‘You, Bartocci?’ Crepi’s tone was bitterly sarcastic. ‘A friend of Ruggiero Miletti? What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Who said anything about Ruggiero Miletti?’ asked the older of the two civilians.
‘I was referring to the murdered man, Ubaldo Valesio,’ explained his bearded colleague.
Crepi looked at the third man, a major of the Carabinieri.
‘But I was told that it was Ruggiero who had been killed!’ he exclaimed.
‘There was initially some confusion as to the identity of the victim,’ the officer replied smoothly.
The older civilian had turned his attention to Zen. He was short and stout, with a face as smooth and featureless as a balloon, and he glared at everyone, as though he knew very well how foolish he looked and had decided to brazen it out.
