‘You’re from the police? Di Leonardo, Deputy Public Prosecutor. I’m by no means happy with the way this investigation has been handled. In my view the police have shown a lack of thoroughness bordering on the irresponsible, with the tragic results that we have seen tonight.’
Zen shook his head vaguely.
‘Excuse me, I’ve only just arrived…’
‘Quite, quite. This is in no sense intended as a personal reflection on you, Commissioner. Nevertheless I find it quite incredible that no attempt has been made to exploit the dead man’s contacts with the gang, really quite incredible. If his movements had been monitored much might have been learned. As it is we now have a corpse on our hands without being any closer to tracing either the gang or Ruggiero Miletti’s whereabouts. It is most unsatisfactory, really most unsatisfactory indeed.’
Zen gestured helplessly.
‘As I say, I’ve only just arrived here, but I must point out that electronic surveillance of the kind you mention requires the cooperation of the subject. If no such attempt was made it’s presumably because the police were respecting the wishes of the Miletti family.’
The Public Prosecutor waggled his finger to indicate that this wouldn’t do.
‘The constitution states quite clearly that the forces of the law operate autonomously under the direction of the judiciary. The wishes of members of the public have nothing whatever to do with it.’
‘But the police can’t be expected to contradict the wishes of the most powerful family in Perugia without specific instructions from the judiciary,’ Zen protested.
Major Volpi intervened, holding out his hand as though he was directing traffic.
‘I cannot of course speak for my colleagues in the police,’ he remarked smugly, ‘but I can assure you that in this case as in any other my men will at all times do whatever is necessary to ensure a successful outcome, regardless of who may be involved.’
A fierce rivalry had always existed between the civil police, responsible to the Ministry of the Interior, and the paramilitary Carabinieri controlled by the Defence Ministry. Indeed, it was deliberately cultivated on the grounds that competition helped to keep both sides efficient and honest.
‘There you are, you seel’ Di Leonardo told Zen. ‘You can’t expect us judges to do all your thinking for you, Commissioner. We expect to see some initiative on your part too.’
With that he turned away to speak to Antonio Crepi. The Carabinieri officer went off to supervise a tow-truck which had just arrived from the direction of the main road. Bartocci, the young investigating magistrate, was standing beside the car in which Valesio’s body had been found, a grey BMW, almost new by the look of it. Zen walked over and looked down into the open boot. There was nothing to be seen except a small dark pool of blood held back by the edge of a plastic pouch containing an instruction booklet on the use of the jack.
‘His wife’s very close to my sister,’ Bartocci remarked. ‘She’s only thirty-one. They’ve got three children.’
Zen had enough sense to keep quiet.
‘The worst of it is that this wasn’t his line at all! Ubaldo was a labour lawyer. Union disputes, contracts, that sort of thing. A good negotiator, of course.’
Luciano Bartocci provided the strongest possible contrast to his senior colleague from the Public Prosecutor’s office. They had both been called out unexpectedly, but while Di Leonardo was turned out immaculately in a suit, pullover and tie complete with gold pin, the younger man was wearing a skiing jacket, open-necked shirt and jeans. He was about thirty-five years old, athletic and vigorous, with a frank and direct gaze. His beard almost hid his one weakness, a slight facial twitch, as if he were constantly restraining an impulse to smile.
‘Why should they do such a thing?’ he murmured.
‘Perhaps it was a mistake.’
Zen was hardly conscious of having spoken until Bartocci rounded on him.
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen him! They put the gun in his mouth, it blew the back of his head clean off. There was no mistake about it.’
‘No, I meant…’
But before he could explain Bartocci was called away by Di Leonardo. All the vehicles were revving up their engines ready for departure. Without warning the searchlight went out again.
Zen hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings and at first he was afraid to move a step in case he walked into a ditch. But as his eyes adjusted he started to make his way towards the Alfetta, slowly at first, then with growing confidence. He was moving at almost his normal pace when he ran into someone.
‘Sorry!’
‘Sorry!’
He recognized Bartocci’s voice.
‘Is that the Police Commissioner from Rome?’ the young magistrate asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Listen, I’d like to see you tomorrow morning. Can you come to my office?’
The voice was moving away.
‘I’ll have to break the news to his wife,’ Bartocci continued, more and more distantly. ‘I don’t know how long that’ll take. Shall we say nine o’clock? If I’m late perhaps you could wait.’
‘Is there anything in particular you want?’
There was no reply. Zen walked cautiously forward, hands outstretched before him, but when the moon came out again he found that he was alone.
The Uncle of Italy, Sandro Pertini, looked down with his inimitable air of benevolent authority on Aurelio Zen, who stared blankly back. This apparent lack of respect was due to the fact that he was not looking at the President of the Republic but at the glass covering the photograph, which reflected the doorway open to the adjoining room where his two assistants were sifting through the mound of documents that had been removed from Ubaldo Valesio’s home and office that morning. Or rather, that is what they were supposed to be doing: the glazing of the presidential portrait revealed that in fact one of them was engaged in an intense whispered discussion with the other, punctuated by furtive glances in the direction of Zen’s office.
Zen’s face was even paler and more drawn than usual, and his eyes glittered from the combined effects of too little sleep and too much coffee. It had been after three o’clock before he’d finally got to bed. He awoke four hours later with the taste of blood in his mouth, the tip of his tongue aching fiercely where his teeth had nipped it. That was a bad sign, a sign of tension running deep, of nerves out of control. He got out of bed and opened the window for the first time. The noise of traffic from the broad boulevard directly below rushed in along with the icy pure air. In the middle distance two churches marked the route of a street running out of the city through a medieval suburb. The nearer was a broad structure of rough pink stone with a solid rectangular bell-tower, squatting amidst the cramped and jumbled houses with the massive poise of a peasant woman in the fields. The other, by contrast, was a complex conglomerate of buildings topped by a tall, slim spire. Far beyond them both, fifteen or twenty kilometres away, a mountain as round and smooth as a mound of dough rose from the plain. Zen had never seen it before, but he had the oddest sensation that he had known it all his life.
He had got up and searched through his luggage, still scattered untidily about the room, until he found the little transistor radio he took with him on his travels. The news had just begun, and he listened with one ear as he shaved. A minister had decided to respond with ‘dignified silence’ to calls for his resignation following claims that his name appeared on a list of those involved in a kickback scandal involving a chain of construction companies. The leader of one party had described as ‘absolutely unacceptable’ a statement made the day before by the secretary of another, whom he accused of ‘typical arrogance and condescension’. A senior police officer in Palermo had been shot dead as he left a restaurant. The Pope had announced a forthcoming tour of ten countries. Flights were likely to be disrupted later that month by a planned strike by air traffic controllers. An accident on the Milan-Venice motorway had left three people dead and eleven more injured and had strengthened the calls for the building of an extra carriageway. The murder of a lawyer in Umbria had been squeezed in just before the weather forecast; the Carabinieri were said to be investigating, but there was no mention of Ruggiero Miletti.
Zen jerked his chair back, making it squeak loudly on the floor, and the two heads reflected in the rectangle of glass immediately bent over their respective piles of papers, covered with almost illegible notations in Ubaldo Valesio’s minuscule handwriting. Zen shifted his gaze to the right, towards the small crucifix and the calendar showing cadets on parade at the training school at Nettuno. The calendar was still turned to February, although it was now March and his mother’s birthday was in less than a week. He absolutely must not forget to get her a
