string of pearls. She had removed her shoes and stockings.
‘This wood is magic,’ she exclaimed. ‘In winter it’s warm and in summer it’s cool, can you explain that? I can’t, not that I want to. I hate explanations, they ruin everything. But you mustn’t peek at my feet like that, poor horrible ugly deformed things.’
She moved restlessly about the room, lifting and rearranging things without any evident purpose.
‘Kant,’ she remarked, taking a book down from the shelf. ‘Have you read Kant? I keep meaning to, but somehow I never get around to it.’
She curled up in the leather sofa that looked as comfortable as a bed and waved Zen into a matching armchair opposite.
‘So your husband’s away?’ he queried.
‘In Milan, lucky pig! Very urgent business which he’d been putting off. But there’s no point in him being here anyway, as far as I can see. I mean there’s nothing we can do, any of us. It’s just a question of waiting.’
Despite her alleged impatience to hear about his experiences during the pay-off, she made no attempt to refer to it again, launching instead into a blow-by-blow account of a film she had seen the previous evening, going on to explain that she loved films, really loved them, that the only place to see them properly was the cinema, that her favourite was a wonderful old place in the centre of town called the Minerva, and what a shame it was that no one went to the cinema any more.
The housekeeper brought in the coffee in an ornate silver tray which she deposited on one level of the Scandinavian wall-system. I’ve been in the family for generations, said the tray, so you can see that they’re not just a bunch of jumped-up farmers like so many around these days. Quite so, commented the wall-system, but despite their solid roots these are modern progressive people with a truly cosmopolitan outlook. Oh, shut up, Zen thought. Just shut up.
‘Is your husband’s trip to Milan connected with this Japanese deal I’ve been hearing about?’ he asked.
Cinzia’s air of boredom deepened significantly.
‘He never discusses business with me.’
And you would do well to follow his example, her eyes added, because while I’m not very good at business there are other things that I am good at, very good indeed.
A lanky girl with a moody look walked in, strolled selfconsciously over to the table and took a tangerine from a bowl.
‘Fetch me my cigarettes, will you, Loredana darling?’ Cinzia asked her.
‘Fetch them yourself. You could use the exercise.’
Cinzia shot Zen a dazzling smile.
‘Do forgive her manners. It’s a difficult age, of course. She’ll start menstruating soon.’
The girl threw the cigarettes at her mother.
‘Much better talk openly about it!’ Cinzia continued calmly. ‘There’s no need for us women to be ashamed of our bodies any more.’
‘It’s not your fucking body,’ the girl shouted as she ran upstairs.
‘She’s a crazy mixed-up kid,’ exclaimed Cinzia, as though this was one of her daughter’s main virtues. ‘At the moment she keeps threatening to become a nun, if you please. My other one’s about somewhere too, little Sergio. He’s a darling! Too much so, in fact. I’m reading him the Greek myths at bedtime and I just hope when we get to Oedipus the penny will drop. It’s perfectly normal at that age, of course. At least I haven’t taught him how to masturbate, like some mothers. Cigarette?’
As she leaned forward to offer them her pullover bellied out and he caught a glimpse of her breasts, almost adolescent in size, but with large and prominent nipples.
‘I’ve always tried to be an understanding parent,’ she continued. ‘I treat my kids as friends and equals.’
‘Is that how your parents treated you?’
‘My mother’s dead!’ she replied vaguely.
‘What about your father? Did he treat you as an equal?’
Cinzia laughed almost hysterically.
‘Well, it depends what you mean. I suppose he does his best. But take the business of Daniele’s arrest, for instance. That was typical. For years father had been nagging away at him to take some interest and prove he had the Miletti flair, yet as soon as he tried to show a bit of initiative everyone got on their high horse about it, father especially, calling him a worthless junkie and I don’t know what else besides. It was so unfair, I thought. I mean, I suppose what the others were doing was illegal, but it’s not as if they were forcing anyone to take the stuff. If they hadn’t sold it someone else would have. And as far as Daniele was concerned it was just a business arrangement, nothing else. He never actually took the stuff or got his hands dirty in any way.’
She rearranged herself in another pose, her legs curled under her like a cat. She was quite calm again now.
‘As it was, the poor kid ended up losing everything. Not just the money he’d invested but his allowance from father as well. Lulu’s been helping him out, but it’s still been very hard on him. Now I don’t call that being very understanding, do you? You’d think people would be more tolerant with their own family.’
Zen gulped down the rest of his coffee and announced that he had to be going.
‘Already?’ Cinzia queried with a pout. ‘Why not stay to lunch? Margherita’s a wonderful cook.’
Her disappointment appeared genuine, but he forced himself to phone Palottino. ‘The family are absolutely incensed’, Bartocci had told him. If Zen had survived more or less intact all this time it was thanks to the instinct that was telling him to leave now.
‘You still haven’t told me about your adventure,’ Cinzia reminded him as they waited for Palottino to arrive. ‘It must have been terrifying. I think you’re very brave. To sit in a car with that Cook woman for however many hours it was, I simply couldn’t do it! Did you talk a lot? Did she talk about me? She must have done. What did she say?’
‘We didn’t talk that much.’
‘Oh come on, I don’t believe that! I know the woman. What did she say? Whatever it was I’ve heard worse. Tell me. What did she say about me?’
He looked away, out of the window, then back at Cinzia.
‘She said you were terribly unhappy,’ he replied.
Her features abruptly slackened all over, making her look years older.
‘Unhappy?’
It was a shriek.
‘She’s crazy! I’ve suspected it for a long time, but now it’s absolutely clear! Absolutely and totally clear, plain and evident for everyone to see.’
She gripped Zen’s arm tightly.
‘I ask you, do I look unhappy? Do I seem unhappy?
Have I got the slightest reason in the world to be unhappy? Look at this house! Look at my husband and my children, look at my whole life. Then look at her! What has she got? Unhappy? What a joke!’
She walked away a little distance, then came back to him.
‘The truth is that she envies me,’ she went on more calmly. ‘She envies all of us, she’s riddled with envy! That’s the real problem. It’s not me who’s unhappy, it’s her! She’s projecting her problems on to me. I’ve read about it, it’s a well-known thing that mad people do.’
She shook her head and tried to smile.
‘I’m a little tense at the moment, with Gianluigi away and still no word about father.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be released very soon now,’ Zen said as reassuringly as he knew how.
But an oddly vacant look had come over Cinzia’s features. Deafened by thoughts he couldn’t begin to guess at, she hadn’t even heard him.
Back at the Questura Zen tried to put Cinzia Miletti out of his mind. He felt that a winning hand had been dealt him and that he had played it badly, perhaps even from a professional point of view. In any case, it was too late now.
He stuck his head round the door to the inspectors’ room.
‘Anyone know an officer called Baldoni?’
Geraci looked up.
