surrounding the Miletti property, a lugubrious baroque monstrosity built on a shoulder of land jutting out from the steep hillside.
Zen walked past it for another hundred and fifty metres to the separate entrance marked ‘Societa Industriale Miletti di Perugia’. At this depth the mist was still unwarmed by the sun, clinging glaucously to every surface. This was the site of Franco’s original workshops, built just below the house. In those days captains of industry were not ashamed to live close to the source of their wealth. Since production had been moved out to Ponte San Giovanni the buildings had been gutted and transformed into the administrative headquarters of SIMP. He’d been expecting tight security at the entrance, but in the event the gates were open and unmanned, and a passing employee directed him along a concrete road leading to the garage where a man in blue overalls was washing one of the Fiat saloons. Behind him a dozen or so more of the cars were lined up, their paintwork gleaming.
Zen flashed his identification with contemptuous brevity and then allowed a little time for the mechanic’s fear to be fruitful and multiply. Everyone has some reason to be afraid of the police, and fear, like money, can be spent on something quite unrelated to what has created it. When Zen judged that he had enough for his purposes he pointed to the Fiats.
‘Are you responsible for these cars?’
The man nodded. Zen gave a satisfied smile, as though he had obtained a damning admission.
‘Then what have you done with my cigarette lighter?’
‘Cigarette lighter?’ the mechanic stammered. ‘What sort of cigarette lighter?’
Zen’s smile vanished.
‘Why, how many have you found?’
‘None! I haven’t found anything.’
‘Then why did you ask what sort, eh? Think you can keep anything you find, eh? Supplement your lousy wages with a little private enterprise, is that it?’
The man flung his sponge down angrily.
‘I’ve found nothing! I’ve just cleaned them all ready for this afternoon. There was no cigarette lighter in any of them.’
‘They’re going to use the company cars for the funeral?’ Zen queried in a tone of deep disgust. ‘Talk about cheap!’
‘It’s what Signor Ruggiero would have wanted.’
‘Don’t try and change the subject! You claim not to have found any lighter, is that it?’
‘I don’t claim anything! I didn’t find any lighter and that’s all there is to it. Have a look for yourself if you want, I’ve got nothing to hide!’
‘Oh, I’m going to! Don’t you worry about that, I’m going to.’
The mechanic watched him out of the corner of his eye as he went from car to car, making an elaborate pretence of examining the interiors.
The mud surrounding the building site where Ruggiero Miletti had been murdered had proved a rich source of impressions. A preliminary investigation, completed while Zen was still present, had yielded five different footprints and two distinct sets of tyre marks. One of the two sets consistently overlaid the other, and it was distinctive, in that one of the tyres did not match the other three. Zen had imagined that this would be a rarity, but in fact four of the cars in the garage had one odd tyre. Only one configuration, however, matched that found at the murder scene.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Zen?’
It was Gianluigi Santucci. The Tuscan turned on the mechanic.
‘What has he been asking you, Massimo? If you’ve told him as much as the time, you’re out!’
‘Nothing!’ protested the mechanic energetically. ‘I’ve said nothing!’
‘That’s true,’ Zen confirmed. ‘He’s been most unhelpful.’
‘I haven’t found any lighter, I don’t know anything about any lighter,’ Massimo went on. ‘I told him so, but he wanted to look for himself. But he didn’t touch anything, Signor Gianluigi. I kept my eye on him the whole time.’
Gianluigi Santucci glared at Zen.
‘Cigarette lighter my bollocks! What are you up to? Come on!’
‘I’ve lost my lighter and I thought I might have left it in the car the other day. I didn’t want to disturb the family at a moment like this so I came to check in person. But I don’t understand what you’re getting so excited about. I mean, is this garage a secret research area or something?’
Too late, Gianluigi realized his error. In an attempt to compensate he forced a smile.
‘You haven’t understood, have you?’ he sneered. ‘You think you’re still in the game, but you couldn’t be more wrong. You’re a foreigner here. No one wants you, no one likes you, no one needs you. If you haven’t got your marching orders yet it just means no one can be bothered to tell you what’s happening any more! Now kindly fuck off out of here and don’t come back.’
When Zen reached the gate the security guard was back in his place, but he was so intent on the spluttering exclamations of his walkie-talkie, cradling it to his face and murmuring to it like a mother trying to calm a baby, that Zen’s departure went as unremarked as his arrival.
He walked on down the hill until the lane joined the main road. At the corner stood a green plastic rubbish skip, presumably the one where Ruggiero’s letter had been left. Opposite there was a bakery, an office furniture showroom, a driving school and a tobacconist displaying the familiar public telephone symbol of a blue receiver in a yellow circle. Zen went in, got two thousand lire’s worth of tokens and dialled a number in Rome.
‘Gilberto?’
‘ Who’s this? ’
‘Aurelio.’
‘ Aurelio! How’s it going? ’
‘Can you do me a favour?’
‘ Such as? ’
‘It means coming up here.’
‘ Where’s here? ’
‘Perugia. I’ve got problems.’
‘ What kind of problems? ’
‘Can you come up this afternoon?’
‘ This afternoon! Jesus.’
Even at this depth the sunlight had finally started to filter down through the mist. There was a grove of olive trees opposite the shop, on the other side of the main road. Above the rush and scurry of the traffic they stood in monumental stillness, each leaf precisely outlined against the deep blue sky.
‘ What do you want done? ’
‘Can we talk on this line?’
‘ Listen, I’m in industrial espionage, you know. How long do you think I’d stay in business if I didn’t keep my lines clean? You worry about your own end.’
Zen told his friend briefly about the murder and the large blue car that matched both the witness’s description and the tyre marks found at the scene. Then he told him what he wanted him to do and Gilberto said he would, although it might mean losing a contract to proof a leading Rome estate agent against electronic surveillance. They arranged to meet at half past four at a village a kilometre or so beyond the cemetery.
That left lots of time to kill, so Zen rode a bus back up to the centre and wandered along the Corso. The steps of the cathedral were being used as a grandstand by some of the local young people and a few early tourists. A German youth whose exaggerated features looked as though they had been moulded from foam rubber explained loudly to his companion how he needed the sun, the sun for him was a physical necessity. The two Nordic girls he had seen two days before were now basking like seals outside another cafe. One of them had even contrived to get sunburned. Her friend was delicately pulling little wafers of flaking skin off her chest, watched hungrily by a group of young men in leather jackets, narrow ties and mirror sunglasses.
All at once Zen saw a vigorous bulky figure in a dark grey overcoat with a black armband walking towards him across the piazza. It was Antonio Crepi. He prepared a greeting, but the Perugian passed by without a word or gesture, leaving Zen with his hand still uncertainly raised in salutation.
