‘Look, I’ve read the letter Ruggiero sent to his family,’ he told the prisoner. ‘He made it clear that you treated him well. As far as the kidnapping goes you were small fry, manual workers. You’ll go to prison, certainly, but with good behaviour and a bit of luck you’ll get out one day. But if you’re sent down for killing a defenceless old man in cold blood then that’s the end. They won’t bother locking your cell, they’ll just weld up the door. And you’ll know that whatever happens, however society changes, whichever party comes to power, you’re going to die in prison and be buried in a pit of quicklime, because if any of your relatives still remember who you are they’ll be too ashamed to come and claim your body.’
The prisoner stared stoically at the floor. Zen consulted his watch again.
‘Tell me about the day you released Miletti.’
There was no reply.
‘If I’m to help you I need to know!’
Eventually the deep voice ground unwillingly into action.
‘We drive him there and leave him. That’s all.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Before light.’
‘On Monday? Four days ago?’
A grudging nod.
‘And when did you phone the family?’
‘Later.’
‘Later the same morning? On Monday?’
Another nod.
‘Which number did you phone?’
‘The same as before.’
‘When before?’
‘When we go to get the money.’
He seemed bored, as if none of this concerned him and he simply wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.
‘And who did you speak to?’
‘I don’t speak.’
Of course. The gang would have picked someone more articulate as their spokesman.
‘You don’t know anything about who answered? A man? A woman? Young? Old?’
‘A man, of course! Not of the family. Like you.’
‘Like me?’
‘From the North.’
Zen nodded, holding the man’s eyes. Time must be getting desperately short, but he didn’t dare break the concentration by glancing at his watch.
‘The man who hates the police because of what they did to his brother, how did he know who I was?’
‘He say he can smell them.’
Zen’s foot hooked the man’s ankles and pulled him off balance so that he fell forward with a short cry of pain.
‘That was very brave of you,’ Zen commented as the prisoner struggled back to his feet. ‘But we don’t have time for bravery. Who told you I was coming on the pay-off?’
The man stood motionless, eyes closed, breathing the pain away.
‘Some people say Southerners are stupid,’ Zen continued. ‘I hope you’re not going to prove them right. I can’t help you unless I know who your contact was.’
He moved closer to the prisoner, inside the portable habitat of mountain odours that surrounded him like a sheath.
‘Was it one of the family?’
No response.
‘Or someone in the Questura?’
The man’s eyelids flickered but did not open.
‘Someone called Lucaroni?’
Zen’s gaze swarmed over the prisoner’s face.
‘Chiodini?’
Behind him the doors banged open and boots rapped out across the parquet flooring.
‘Geraci?’
Suddenly the eyes were on him again, pure and polished and utterly empty of expression.
‘Everything go all right?’ asked the sergeant, appearing at Zen’s side. ‘Didn’t give you any trouble, did he?’
Zen turned slowly, rubbing his hands together.
‘It went just fine, thank you.’
The sergeant unlocked the handcuffs and the prisoner straightened his arms with a long groan. Zen buttoned up his overcoat.
‘I’ll be going then.’
‘Didn’t know you were here,’ the sergeant remarked.
The Alfetta was parked on the pavement outside, forcing pedestrians out into the street jammed with traffic. Palottino sat inside reading a comic featuring a naked woman with large breasts cowering in terror before an enormous spider brandishing a bloodstained chainsaw. It was drizzling lightly and the evening rush hour was at its peak, but thanks to a judicious use of the siren and a blatant disregard for the rules of the road the Neapolitan contrived to move the Alfetta through the traffic almost as though it did not exist. Meanwhile Zen sat gazing out at the narrow cobbled streets, teeming with quirky detail to an extent that seemed almost unreal, like the carefully contrived background to a film scene. But it was just the effect of the contrast with that other world, a world of carefully contrived monotony, designed for twenty thousand people but inhabited by more than twice that number, of whom several hundred killed themselves each year and another fifty or so were murdered, a world whose powerful disinfectant would seep into the blood and bones of the violent, gentle shepherds who had kidnapped Ruggiero Miletti, until it had driven them safely mad.
Zen lit a Nazionale and stretched luxuriously. What the Calabrian had told him made everything simple. All he had to do was get in touch with Rosella Foria before she left for Florence and pass on the information he had received and he could return to Rome exonerated and with a clear conscience. The key was that the kidnappers had telephoned on Monday, not on Tuesday, and that the number they had called was the one communicated to them by the family before the pay-off, as stipulated in Ruggiero’s letter. Whoever had answered this telephone call was at the very least an accessory to Ruggiero’s murder and could be arrested at once. The rest would follow.
As they hit the motorway, surging forward into the rain-filled darkness, Zen suddenly felt slightly lightheaded, and he told Palottino to stop at a service area so that they could get something to eat. Ten minutes later they were sitting at a formica-topped table in a restaurant overlooking the motorway. Zen was chaffing his driver about a toy panda he had bought for his brother’s little daughter, a great favourite of his. Palottino produced a number of photographs of the child, which they both admired. Encouraged by his superior’s good humour, the Neapolitan asked how things were going, and Zen felt so relaxed and obliging that he told him what had happened in Florence. Palottino laughed admiringly at the clever ruse Zen had used to gain access to the kidnappers, and at his description of the languid young captain who had fallen for it. But when it came to the prisoner’s revelations he unfortunately got the wrong end of the stick.
‘Called another number on another day!’ he jeered. ‘Oh, yes, very clever! What do they take us for, idiots?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, I mean no one’s going to believe that, are they? Not when there’s a recording, logged and dated, of them actually making the call on Tuesday. I mean, it’s a clear case of pull the other one, right?’
Zen stared at him. He seemed to be having difficulty focusing.
‘No. No, you don’t understand. They called another number, not the Miletti house. On Monday.’
Quickly reading the signals, Palottino did an abrupt U-turn.
