Mumbling something about emergencies, Zen pulled away from the woman’s grasp and crossed the concourse towards the distant neon sign reading POLIZIA FERROVIARIA.
‘Welcome home,’ he muttered under his breath. His earlier mood already seemed as remote and irrelevant as a childhood memory.
The heavy front door closed behind him with a definitive bang, shutting him in, shutting out the world. As he moved the switch the single bulb which lit the entrance hall ended its long, wan existence in an extravagant flash, leaving him in the dark, just back from school. Once he had kissed his mother he would run out to play football in the square outside. Astonishingly, he even seemed to hear the distant sound of lapping water. Then it faded and a didactic voice began pontificating about the ecology of the Po Delta. Those liquid ripples overlaying the constant rumble of traffic came not, of course, from the backwater canals of his childhood, but from the television.
He moved blindly along the passage, past pictures and furniture which had been part of his life for so long that he was no longer aware of their existence. As he approached the glass-panelled door the noise of the television grew louder. Once inside the living room it was deafening. In the dim mix of video glare and twilight seeping through the shutters he made out the frail figure of his mother staring with childlike intensity at the flickering screen.
‘Aurelio! You’re back!’
‘Yes, mamma.’
He bent over her and they kissed.
‘How was Fiume? Did you enjoy yourself?’
‘Yes, mamma.’
He no longer bothered to correct her, even when her mistakes sent him astray not just in space but in time, to a city that had ceased to exist a third of a century earlier.
‘And what about you, mamma? How have you been?’
‘Fine, fine. You needn’t worry, Maria Grazia is a treasure. All I’ve missed is seeing you. But I told you when you joined! You don’t know what it’s like in the services, I said. They send you here and then they send you there, and just when you’re getting used to that they send you somewhere else, until you don’t know which end to sit down on any more. And to think you could have had a nice job on the railways like your father, a nice supervising job, just as secure as the police and none of this roaming around. And we would never have had to move down here to the South!’
She broke off as Maria Grazia bustled in from the kitchen. But they had been speaking dialect, and the housekeeper had not understood.
‘Welcome home, dottore!’ she cried. ‘They’ve been trying to get hold of you all day. I told them you hadn’t got back yet, but…’
At that moment the phone started to ring in the inner hallway. It’ll be that old fascist on the train, Zen thought. That type always has friends. But ‘all day’? Maria Grazia must have exaggerated.
‘ Zen? ’
‘Speaking.’
‘ This is Enrico Mancini.’
Christ almighty! The Veronese had gone straight to the top. Zen gripped the receiver angrily.
‘Listen, the little bastard had a gun and he was standing too far away for me to jump him. So what was I supposed to do, I’d like to know? Get myself shot so that the Commendatore could keep his lousy watch?’
There was a crackly pause.
‘ What are you talking about? ’
‘I’m talking about the train!’
‘ I don’t know anything about any train. I’m calling to dis¬ cuss your transfer to Perugia.’
‘What? Foggia?’
The line was very poor, with heavy static and occasional cut-outs. For the hundredth time Zen wondered if it was still being tapped, and for the hundredth time he told himself that it wouldn’t make any sense, not now. He wasn’t important any more. Paranoia of that type was simply conceit turned inside out.
‘ Perugia! Perugia in Umbria! You leave tomorrow.’
What on earth was going on? Why should someone like Enrico Mancini concern himself with Zen’s humdrum activities?
‘For Perugia? But my next trip was supposed to be to Lecce, and that’s not till…’
‘ Forget about that for now. You’re being reassigned to investigative duties, Zen. Have you heard about the Miletti case? I’ll get hold of all the documentation I can and send it round in the morning with the car. But basically it sounds quite straightforward. Anyway, as from tomorrow you’re in charge.’
‘In charge of what?’
‘ Of the Miletti investigation! Are you deaf? ’
‘In Perugia?’
‘ That’s right. You’re on temporary secondment.’
‘Are you sure about this?’
‘ I beg your pardon? ’
Mancini’s voice was icy.
‘I mean, I understood that, you know…’
‘ Well? ’
‘Well, I thought I’d been permanently suspended from investigative duty.’
‘ First I’ve heard of it. In any case, such decisions are always open to review in the light of the prevailing circumstances. The Questore of Perugia has requested assistance and we have no one else available, it’s as simple as that.’
‘So it’s official.’
‘ Of course it’s official! Don’t you worry about that, Zen. Just concentrate on the job in hand. It’s important that we see results quickly, understand? We’re counting on you.’
Long after Mancini had hung up Zen stood there beside the phone, his head pressed against the wall. At length he lifted the receiver again and dialled. The number rang for a long time, but just as he was about to hang up she answered.
‘ Yes? ’
‘It’s me.’
‘ Aurelio! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you till this evening. How did it go in wherever you were this time? ’
‘Why did you take so long to answer?’
She was used to his moods by now.
‘ I’ve got my lover here. No, actually I was in the bath. I wasn’t going to bother, but then I thought it might be you.’
He grunted, and there was a brief silence.
‘Look, something’s come up. I have to leave again tomorrow and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Can we meet?’
‘ I’d love to. Shall we go out? ’
‘All right. Ottavio’s?’
‘ Fine.’
He hung up and looked round the hallway, confronting the furniture which having dominated his infancy had now returned to haunt his adult life. Everything in his apartment had been moved there from the family house in Venice when his mother had finally agreed, six years earlier, to leave. For many years she had resisted, long after it had become obvious that she could no longer manage on her own.
‘Rome? Never!’ she cried. ‘I would be like a fish out of water.’
And her gasps and shudders had made the tired phrase vivid and painful. But in the end she had been forced to give in. Her only son could not come to her. Since the Moro affair his career was nailed down, stuffed and varnished, with years of dreary routine to go before they would let him retire. And there was simply no one else, except for a few distant relatives living in what was now Yugoslavia. So she had moved, avoiding the fate she had feared by the simple expedient of bringing all her belongings with her and transforming Zen’s apartment into an
