present.
On the desk in front of him lay the Nazione newspaper. The headline read ‘BUTCHERED, THE MILETTIS’ MOUTHPIECE: A MESSAGE TO THE “SUPERCOP” FROM ROME?’ Below it appeared a photograph of a scene which had become as familiar a part of Italian life as a bowl of pasta. Lying in a stiff and unnatural foetal crouch with a rather fatuous lopsided grin on his face, Ubaldo Valesio made an extremely unconvincing corpse. But conviction was amply supplied by the pictures of the other side of the lawyer’s head which Bartocci had shown him earlier, the pulpy mass of the brain hollowed out like a watermelon seeded with bits of shattered bone.
But he had not died in vain! Thanks to this development Zen had been able to enforce payment of the blank cheque which the Questore had so boldly dashed off the day before. He had requested and obtained the services of two inspectors and a detective-sergeant, together with an extra office and various communications and vehicle privileges which he had no reason to suppose he would need but had thrown in for good measure. But as the news had made clear, the Carabinieri had taken a stranglehold on the murder inquiry, and all that remained for the ‘supercop from Rome’ was to check Valesio’s movements on the previous day and sift through the material which had been removed from his home and office. Lucaroni, one of the two inspectors, was handling the first chore, while the other, Geraci, was at work next door on the second. He was being assisted, if that was the word, by Chiodini, whose services Zen had specifically requested. The sight of the big brute straining to decipher Ubaldo Valesio’s finicky jottings was some small compensation for the way he had treated Zen the day before.
Zen had arrived at Bartocci’s office promptly at nine o’clock. The law courts were housed in a rambling Renaissance palace forming one side of the inevitable Piazza Matteotti. The portal was surmounted by a lunette containing a statue of Justice flanked by two creatures apparently consisting of a vulture’s head and wings attached to the body of a hyena, a motif repeated extensively elsewhere in the building. Zen had plenty of time to admire the architectural features of the palace, since Luciano Bartocci did not put in an appearance until shortly after ten.
By day the young magistrate conformed rather more to the sartorial norm for members of his profession: a tweed jacket, lambswool pullover, check shirt, woollen tie and corduroy trousers. He, too, looked haggard, having been up until almost five o’clock that morning dealing with the victim’s widow. Patrizia Valesio, it seemed, had at first reacted with eerie calm to the news of her husband’s death.
‘She was still up when we got there,’ Bartocci explained, ‘still waiting for her husband to come home. I’d taken my sister along to help out. I think Patrizia must have realized what had happened the moment she opened the door, but she invited us in as though nothing was the matter. We might have been paying a normal social call, except that it was the middle of the night. I told her that her husband had been involved in an accident. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she replied. “They’ve killed him.” I just nodded.’
They were outside the law courts, waiting for Palottino to bring the Alfetta over. Bartocci had explained that he wanted Zen to accompany him to Valesio’s home and office, where he planned to remove any documents which might have a bearing on the lawyer’s murder or his contacts with the kidnappers. The street was brilliantly sunny and busy, with people going into and out of the market building, whose entrance was through an arcade beneath the law courts.
‘She stayed perfectly calm until I mentioned something about the car,’ Bartocci went on. ‘Then she went crazy. “No, it’s not possible!” she shrieked. “It was brand new, I gave it him for Christmas! Don’t tell me it was damaged too!” Marisa and I just stood looking at each other. It sounded like the ultimate consumerist nightmare, a woman who accepts her husband’s murder without blinking an eyelid and then breaks down because the car’s been scratched. Then she started to get hysterical and incoherent, snatching up things from the shelves and throwing them across the room. Marisa tried to calm her while I rang for a doctor. It took him forty minutes to get there. I’ll never forget that time as long as I live.’
A woman who looked like a barrel wearing a fur coat was waiting for the bus. Her son, perfectly dressed as a miniature man, stood staring unbelievingly up at the balloon whose string he had just lost hold of, now floating away high above the arriving Alfetta.
‘The calmness was all a facade, of course,’ Bartocci continued once they were settled in the car. ‘Patrizia had been so terrified by what her husband was doing that she had convinced herself that nothing could happen to him. But she’d forgotten to extend this magic immunity to the BMW, which is why she went into hysterics as soon as I mentioned it.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘With relatives, under sedation.’
The Valesios’ house was one of a number of modern apartments forming an exclusive development on the lower slopes of the city, all pink brick and double glazing and concrete balconies dripping with creeper. In the absence of Patrizia Valesio the family interests were represented by her mother, a formidable woman who followed Bartocci and Zen from room to room, personally checking every single item that was removed while bemoaning the fact that the authorities were permitted to make free with the private papers of a man above suspicion, a pillar of the community and a repository of every known human virtue. Ubaldo Valesio himself made a ghostly fourth presence, smiling at them from photographs, haunting a wardrobe full of clothes, proclaiming his taste in books and records, even trying to lay claim to a non-existent future by way of a scribbled note on his desk jotter reading ‘Evasio Thursday re plumbing’.
It was not until they were driving back to the city centre that Bartocci produced the photographs.
‘Just in case you still think it was a mistake,’ he commented as Zen studied the images of horror.
‘No, I meant that Valesio may have accidentally caught sight of one of the gang,’ Zen explained. ‘These would have been the top men, don’t forget. No one else would be entrusted with the negotiations. They might well have been worried that he would be able to identify them.’
Bartocci seemed to be about to say something, but in the end he just turned away and looked out of the window, leaving Zen to wonder once again why he had been invited along on this routine errand.
The studio which Ubaldo Valesio had shared with two other lawyers was in the centre of the city, just behind the cathedral, in a street so narrow there was barely room for Palottino to park. It consisted of one wing of the first floor of the building, two huge rooms divided into separate work areas by antique screens and potted shrubs. Valesio’s partners were both present. They were very correct, very polite, and very unhelpful. Yes, they had known that Ubaldo was acting for the Milettis. No, they had never discussed it. They watched discreetly but attentively as the two representatives of the State looked through diaries, memo books, files and folders. Then they drew up an inventory of what had been taken, obtained a receipt, said goodbye, and went back to work.
‘When may I expect your report on this material?’ Bartocci asked Zen when they got back to the law courts.
‘Tomorrow, I hope. But if anything important comes up I’ll phone you.’
He turned back and started to get into the car, but Bartocci called him back.
‘Listen, there are a few things I’d like to discuss with you. Off the record, as it were.’
Zen gazed at him, his face perfectly expressionless.
‘In fact I thought we might have lunch. That little restaurant down the street there is where I usually eat, the one with the neon sign and the awning.’
‘Today?’
‘If that’s convenient.’
Bartocci’s tone was polite, almost deferential. It scared Zen stiff.
‘I’d be delighted,’ he replied with a ghost of a smile.
As Palottino drove him back to the Questura he saw that the restaurant Bartocci had indicated was called the Griffin and displayed a sign with a beast similar to those he had seen at the law courts.
Back in his office, Zen thought about griffins and Luciano Bartocci and Ubaldo Valesio. Griffins, he discovered from the dictionary kept in the desk drawer to help the less literate officials write their reports, were mythical creatures having the head and wings of an eagle and the legs and tail of a lion. He was still not quite sure why they had been carved above the entrance to the law courts. Were they symbols of Justice? Certainly Luciano Bartocci seemed to be something of a hybrid. Zen had never been invited to lunch by a member of the judiciary before, and he found the prospect as unattractive as the invitation to Crepi’s the previous evening. Once again he felt that he was being drawn into an area where the stakes were high and the rules not clearly defined. ‘A few things I’d like to discuss with you, off the record.’ What was Bartocci up to?
Almost with relief, his thoughts turned back to Ubaldo Valesio. Although they had never met, Zen felt he knew the dead man well: a successful and ambitious lawyer in a city which despite its recent growth was still a
