It was the first time that someone had cut him dead, and it was a shock. He had always thought of it as a superficial and outmoded gesture found only in old novels. But what had just happened had nothing to do with etiquette: Antonio Crepi had made it clear that for him, and by extension for the whole of the Perugia that mattered, Zen had ceased to exist. That’s why ghosts wail, he thought, condemned to haunt a world which has no further need of them. He walked away quickly, trying to shake off the unnerving effect of the encounter.
The air was carved into blocks by the buildings, soft and warm where the sun reached, chill and unyielding in the shadows. The continual passage from one to the other was initially as refreshing as a succession of hot and cold showers, and ultimately as enervating. Zen stopped in a small grocery and ordered a roll filled with anchovies sprinkled with vinegar and a little crushed chilli, which he ate with a glass of white wine. There was a newspaper open at the local pages on top of the freezer, and as he munched the roll Zen read an article describing the life and times of the late head of the Miletti family in such exorbitantly fulsome terms that Zen wondered in his dour Venetian way whether such a paragon would find Paradise quite good enough for him. He also wondered whether Ruggiero’s daughter had seen the article, and if so what she thought of it. Cinzia had told him what kind of drinkers the Perugians were, and what kind of lovers. What he needed to know now was what kind of murderers they were.
By four o’clock the last of the mist had disappeared, even down in the valley below the cemetery. The warm air was scented with the heady reek of diesel oil from the bus which had brought him there and was now parked in the terminus circle near by. The driver was sitting on the step, smoking and reading a newspaper. Zen stood in the fading sunlight watching the courtship of two pigeons on the tiled roof of a shed below. The gurgling male, alternately bowing down and rearing up, chased the female from one row of tiles to the next. Eventually he appeared to lose interest, disheartened by her lack of appreciation, and turned away. Instantly the female stopped too, so that both birds came to a halt like toys whose batteries have run down. It seemed the end. Relationships were just too difficult, the sexes would never see eye to eye, it was all too much bother. Something essential had broken down and next year there wouldn’t be any pigeons. Then, just as suddenly as he had stopped, the male was off again, perking up his feathers and hopping after his mate with a meaningful glint in his beady eyes. Zen had watched this cycle a dozen times or more when he felt a touch on his shoulder and turned to find Gilberto grinning up at him.
Gilberto Nieddu was so small that it wasn’t clear how he had ever managed to get into the police force. There were the inevitable rumours of bribery and favouritism, but since Gilberto’s father was only a small-time lock-smith from Nuoro this seemed unlikely. Zen preferred to think that some alert recruiting officer somewhere, realizing the appalling threat a disgruntled Gilberto would pose outside the law, had bent the rules to let him in. For four years they had worked together in Rome. The Sardinian had resigned a week after Zen’s transfer, and he was the only one of his former colleagues whom Zen still saw regularly.
‘Any problems?’ Zen asked him.
‘Only getting back here after I dumped it. You had to choose a place in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Close to the scene. Local colour.’
Gilberto was as compact as a squash ball, sallow, ugly and muscular, yet amazingly deft in his movements. For a bet, he had once broken into the flat where a certain Vice-Questore was entertaining a lady friend and removed the couple’s clothes so stealthily that the Vice-Questore thought something supernatural must have occurred and came over all religious for a while. No, Gilberto wouldn’t have had any problems stealing an unguarded car from outside a cemetery.
‘Is this all really worth it?’ the Sardinian asked Zen, who merely shrugged.
‘How much do I owe you?’
Gilberto Nieddu spat thoughtfully at the pigeons on the roof below.
‘Take me out to lunch when you get back. At the Pergola.’
‘The Pergola! Wouldn’t it work out cheaper just to pay your normal rates?’
‘Now, don’t try and wriggle out of it or I’ll send Vittorio round to see you. He’s my new enforcer. A great success. You may think you have problems now, but Vittorio can make them seem like fond memories.’
Zen handed him a key with a number stamped on the shaft.
‘This opens a luggage locker at the station. There’s something inside, wrapped up in a plastic bag. I’d like to know what it is.’
The Sardinian looked at him long and hard, shaking his head slowly.
‘You know something, Aurelio? You aren’t really cut out to be a cop.’
‘Imagine living in a country where the cops are all people who’re cut out for the job.’
‘I’ll phone you tomorrow morning.’
Zen shook his head.
‘ I ’ll phone you.’
The Sardinian spat once more.
‘Christ, you have got problems.’
The bus driver started his engine again. Zen just had time to cross to the phone booth, dial the police emergency number and give the message he had prepared before boarding the bus as the doors were closing. A few moments later they passed Gilberto walking back up the hill to the place where he had left his own car, just below the massive wall of the columbarium in the cemetery where Ruggiero Miletti had been interred two hours previously.
The switchboard on the ground floor of the Questura was manned by a chubby youth who was holding a large roll, turning it from one side to the other and studying it closely like a wrestler looking for a hold. As Zen came through the door he suddenly saw an opening and lunged forward, so that for the next thirty seconds or so he was unable to reply to his visitor’s question.
‘He wouldn’t give his name,’ he said finally. ‘Probably a hoax.’
‘What exactly did he say?’
‘Just said he wanted to report a blue Fiat abandoned on the road to Cannara, near the scene of the murder.’
He kept glancing warily at his roll out of the corner of his eye, as though it might attack him. Zen leant forward on the top of the switchboard.
‘Listen, this could be very important. I want that car brought in, turned over to the laboratory and given the works.’
‘They’ll need confirmation in writing.’
‘They’ll get it.’
The telephonist nodded. He was too eager to get back to his roll to ask how Zen had found out about the anonymous phone call.
Upstairs on the third floor Zen stepped into the inspectors’ room, but there was no one there. He was about to leave when he froze in an awkward position midway across the room. Then he heard it again, a slight but unmistakable sound from next door. Someone was in his office.
He moved as quietly as he could towards the connecting door, grasped the handle and with a single movement flung the door open.
‘About time too! I was beginning to think I’d have to spend the night here.’
He leant back against the door, his body slowly un-tensing.
‘Ellen.’
‘Ah, so you remember my name!’
‘It’s wonderful to see you.’
‘Really? I certainly wouldn’t have guessed it from the way you’ve been behaving. Why haven’t you telephoned me?’
‘I did!’ he lied automatically. ‘You were never there!’
‘I was!’
‘Not when I phoned.’
‘I’ve been home almost every evening. When did you phone?’
‘Well, anyway, let’s not quarrel. The important thing is that you’re here. How long can you stay?’
‘I’ll have to see. It depends.’
He tried to kiss her, but she evaded him in a half-angry, half-flirtatious way, so they were in the middle of a
