might have another corpse on his hands, another death on his conscience. But Geraci was able to reassure him: Ivy had arrived home three hours earlier, badly shocked but unharmed. The money had been taken but there had been no communication from the kidnappers.
While Zen waited for his driver to arrive, his hosts tried politely to find out who he was and what he’d been doing, but he remained deliberately vague. Even with Palottino he had been discreet, not mentioning what the kidnapper had said to him. And when the Neapolitan asked, ‘You don’t think they knew?’ Zen had pretended not to understand.
‘Knew what?’
‘That you were from the police.’
‘How could they?’
Palottino had no answer to that, any more than Zen himself, though the question had tormented him for the whole drive back to Perugia. How could they have known? But they had, that was certain. ‘Fuckarse cocksucker of a cop,’ the man had said. So they knew that their orders had been deliberately disobeyed. This gang had already killed one man for less. The thought of what they might even now be doing to Ruggiero Miletti took the sparkle and warmth out of the morning and made Zen realize how exhausted he was.
As he passed through a small piazza there was a shout and a boy appeared at a window holding a bulging plastic shopping bag which he let drop to a friend in the street who stood, arms raised to catch it. But it was immediately obvious that the bag was too heavy and was falling much too fast. At the last moment the boy below ran back. The bag struck the paving, bounced, and now the boy caught it and peeled away the bag to reveal a football which he struck in a high, curling shot which ricocheted off the wall slightly to the left of a priest who had emerged from the large church which closed off one end of the piazza. Through the open door Zen could just make out the huge ornate crucifix above the high altar.
‘How could they?’ he murmured to himself again.
SIX
Twenty-four hours later he was sitting out on the Corso. It was brilliantly sunny and the atmosphere was charged with vitality and optimism. One bar had even gone so far as to put a few tables outside, and on impulse Zen settled down to enjoy the sunlight and watch the show on the Corso. This broad, flat street was the city’s living room, the one place where you didn’t need a reason for being. Being there was reason enough, strolling back and forth, greeting your friends and acquaintances, window-shopping, showing off your new clothes or your new lover, occasionally dropping into one of the bars for a coffee or an ice-cream.
For about fifteen minutes he did nothing but sit there contentedly, sipping his coffee and watching the restless, flickering scene around him through half-open eyes: the tall, bearded man with a cigar and a fatuous grin who walked up and down at an unvarying even pace like a clockwork soldier, never looking at anybody; the plump ageing layabout in a Gestapo officer’s leather coat and dark glasses holding court outside the door of the cafe, trading secrets and scandal with his men friends, assessing the passers-by as though they were for sale, calling after women and making hourglass gestures with his hairy, gold-ringed hands; a frail old man bent like an S, with a crazy harmless expression and a transistor radio pressed to his ear, walking with the exaggerated urgency of those who have nowhere to go; slim Africans with leatherwork belts and bangles laid out on a piece of cloth; a gypsy child sitting on the cold stone playing the same four notes over and over again on a cheap concertina; two foreigners with guitars and a small crowd around them; a beggar with his shirt pulled down over one shoulder to reveal the stump of an amputated arm; a pudgy, shapeless woman with an open suitcase full of cigarette lighters and bootleg cassettes; the two Nordic girls at the next table, basking half-naked in the weak March sun as though this might be the last time it appeared this year.
At length Zen lazily drew out of his pocket the three items of mail he had collected from the Questura. One was a letter stamped with the initials of the police trade union and addressed to Commissioner Italo Pompeo Baldoni. He replaced this in his pocket and picked up a heavy cream-coloured envelope with his own name printed on it, and a postcard showing the Forum at sunset in gaudy and unrealistic colour with a message reading ‘Are you still alive? Give me a ring – if you have time. Ellen.’
Putting this aside, he tore open the cream-coloured envelope. It contained four sheets of paper closely covered in unfamiliar handwriting, and it was a measure of how relaxed he was that it took him the best part of a minute to realize that he was holding a photocopy of the letter written by Ruggiero Miletti to his family three days previously. My children, If I address you collectively, it is because I no longer know who to address individually. I no longer know who my friends are within the family. I no longer even know if I have any friends. Can you imagine how bitter it is for me to have to write that sentence? I remember one day, long ago, when I was out hunting with my father. He showed me a farmhouse, a solid four-square Umbrian tenant farm, surrounded by a grove of trees to break the wind. Look, he said, that is what a family is. Have many children, he told me, for children are an old man’s only defence against the blows of fate. I obeyed him. In those days children did obey their fathers. But what has it availed me? For you, my children, my only defence, my protection against the cruel winds of fate, what do you do? Instead of sheltering me, you turn to squabbling among yourselves, haggling over the cost of your own father’s freedom as though I were an ox brought to market. It is not you but my kidnappers who care for me now, who feed me and clothe me and shelter me while you sit safe and secure at home trying to find new ways to avoid paying for my release! No doubt this tone surprises you. It is incautious, ill-advised, is it not? I should not permit myself such liberties! After all, my life is in your hands. If you treat me like an ox to be bargained for, I should be the more careful not to annoy you. Swallow your pride and your anger, old man! Flatter, plead, ingratiate and abase yourself before your all-powerful children! Yes, that is what I should do, if I wished to match you in devious cunning. But I don’t. You have refused to pay what has been asked for my return, but if you knew what I have become, a fearless old man with nothing left to lose, you would pay twice as much to have me kept away! Whatever happens now, my children, we can never be again as we were. Do you imagine that I could forgive and forget, knowing what I know now, or that any of you could meet my eye, knowing what you do? No! Though the ox escape the axe, it has smelt the blood and heard the bellows from the killing-floor, and it will never be fooled again. I know you now! And that knowledge is lodged in my heart like a splinter. Nothing remains to me of the pleasures and possessions of my old life, which you now enjoy at my expense. I have been forced to give them up. But in recompense I have received a gift worth more than all the rest put together. It is called freedom. You laugh? Not for long, I assure you! For I shall prove to you how free I am. Not free to indulge myself, to be sure. Not free to come and go, to buy and sell, to control my destiny. You have taken those freedoms from me. Losing them was bitter, and my only reward is that now I can afford the one thing which with all my wealth and power I’ve never been able to permit myself until this moment. I can afford to tell the truth. I have paid dearly for it, God knows! More than a hundred and forty days and nights of anguish to soul and body alike! My leg, which never mended properly after the accident, has not liked being cooped and cramped and bound, and like a mistreated animal it has turned against its master, making itself all pain. Yes, I have paid dearly. So let me show you what I mean by freedom. Let me tell you what I know, what I have learnt. Let me tell each of you the truth, one by one. I shall start with you, Daniele, my youngest, the spoilt darling of the family. What a beautiful child you were! How everyone doted on you! Whatever happened to that little boy, all cuddles and kisses and cheeky sayings that set everyone in a roar? Back in the sixties, when the kids seemed to think of nothing but politics and sex, I used to pray God almighty that my Daniele would never turn out like that. It never occurred to me that he might turn out even worse, a vain, spineless, ignorant lout with no interest in anything but clothes and television and pop music, who would be rotting in gaol at this very minute if his family hadn’t come to his rescue. But when his own father needs to be rescued little Daniele is too busy to lift a finger, like the rest of you. Cinzia I pass over in silence. Women cannot betray me, for I have never made the mistake of trusting them. The worst she could do was to bring that Tuscan adventurer into the family, since when none of us has had a moment’s peace. I can’t claim to have had my eyes opened to your true character, Gianluigi, for they were wide open from the first. Ask my daughter what I said to her on the subject! However, she preferred to disobey me. You think you’re so clever, Gianluigi, and that’s your problem, for your cleverness gleams like a wolf’s fangs. I at least was never fooled. Take this business of the Japanese offer, for example. Certainly the scheme you’ve worked out is very cunning. I really admire the way the structure of the holding company leaves you in effective control of SIMP through an apparently insignificant position in the marketing subsidiary. I suppose you
