The civic library was staffed by the usual sullen crew, as though it were a branch of the prison service. Since Zen was not a registered member it took his police identity card even to get him past the door. He climbed up to the periodicals room on the second floor and announced to the female attendant that he wished to consult back numbers of the local newspaper.
‘Fill in a request form,’ she replied, without looking up from her knitting.
There were no forms to be seen, but one of the other inmates explained that they were kept in the corridor on the next floor up.
‘And the accession number?’ the woman demanded when Zen brought his form back. The tip of her steel knitting needle hovered over a space as blank as Zen’s face.
‘I don’t know what the accession number is.’
‘Look it up!’
‘Can’t you do it?’
It’s not my job to fill in the forms. You have to look in the card catalogue.’
The card catalogue was in the basement. It took Zen twenty minutes to locate the section dealing with the newspaper he wanted. Since each month’s copies had a separate accession number he then had to make out six different forms, which meant going back to the third floor and copying out his name, address, profession, and reason for request twelve times.
By half past ten he was back. The woman’s knitting was making good progress. She pushed his forms away.
‘No more than three requests may be submitted at one time.’
He handed back the forms corresponding to the last three months. The woman scrutinized them in vain for further errors or omissions, laid down her knitting with a reluctant sigh and trotted off. As soon as she was out of sight Zen took out his pocket-knife and cut through a stitch in the middle of the work she had completed.
He needn’t have hurried. A further ten minutes elapsed bef ore she returned, pushing a trolley bearing three large folders fastened with black tape.
‘Keep pages in order edges straight corners aligned do not crease crinkle or tear leave at your position after use,’ she told him.
As he began his search through the classified advertisements columns, Zen realized why the kidnappers had chosen boats as their cover. Perugia is about as far from the sea as any Italian city can be, and particularly during the winter interest in buying and selling boats is low. As a result there was little chance of the gang overlooking one of the messages intended for them. The discovery of the advertisements which confirmed Geraci’s story was gratifying, but what really excited Zen was an announcement which had appeared the previous Friday, the day after the Milettis received Ruggiero’s letter giving the instructions for the final ransom payment. ‘Two-way radio for sale,’ it read. ‘Phone 8818 after 7.’
It looked innocuous enough, and yet Zen felt like an astronomer sighting a planet whose existence he had predicted from his calculations. This was the clincher, the thing that made everything else make sense. It was like in a dream where, tired of beating your fists against a locked and bolted door, you step back and notice for the first time that there is no wall on either side. Of course! It was so simple, so obvious.
In the bar opposite the post office a street-sweeper was explaining how he would sort out the national football team.
‘Too many solo artists, that’s the problem. One of them gets the ball and sees a bit of open space, all he thinks about is going forward, the rest of the team might as well not exist. When it comes off it’s magnificent, I grant you, but how often does that happen, eh? No, it’s percentages that add up in the end, this is what they don’t realize. What we need is more discipline, more organization, more teamwork.’
‘Well, this is it,’ the barman said, turning to the new customer with an interrogatory lift of the chin.
Zen identified himself and was handed a white envelope which was tucked between two bottles of fruit syrup. He opened it and took out a photocopy of a typed page: INTERCEPT: Yes? CALLER: Verona. INTERCEPT: What? You’ve got the wrong number. CALLER: OK, listen. We have released Dottor Miletti. Understand? But someone’ll have to go and pick him up. It’s his leg, he can’t walk. Here’s haw to find him. INTERCEPT: Wait a moment! Turn down that music, Daniele! CALLER:… the road to Foligno. Just beyond Santa Maria degli Angeli turn right, the Cannara road. Go to the telegraph pole with the mark and turn left. Take the second right and go about a kilometre until you see a building site beside the road on the left. The Milettis’ father is there. INTERCEPT: Wait a minute! The second on the right or the left? Hello? Hello?
Zen looked up, his breath coming short and fast. He sealed up the photocopy in the envelope enclosed and handed it back to the barman. Then he got a telephone token and dialled the police laboratory. Hair is either fair or yellow, Lucaroni had told him. But all that’s yellow isn’t hair, the laboratory confirmed. The yellow threads found in the Fiat they had examined were strands from a cheap synthetic wig.
He emerged into the bright sunlight, blinking like a mole. The last piece of the puzzle was in place. He knew who had done it and how it had been done, and with the exception of the murderer he was the only person who did know. For a few more hours the whole situation would remain fluid and he held the key cards in his hands. If he played them right then perhaps just this once the bastards wouldn’t get away with it after all. He tried not to think about what might happen if he played them wrong.
TEN
Gianluigi Santucci sat at the head of the dining table watching his family feed. Although he had hardly noticed his wife take a mouthful, her plate was already empty. He wondered how she managed to do it, given that she had been talking almost uninterruptedly since the meal began. His daughter Loredana had originally taken only four pieces of ravioli, subsequently increased to five under sustained pressure from her mother. But since she had eaten only half of them this apparent victory revealed itself, like so many in the family circle, as illusory. Gianluigi didn’t need to read Cinzia’s trashy psychology magazines to know that Loredana worshipped the ground he trod on. One of the ways in which this manifested itself was by her mimicking of the meagre diet to which her father was reduced by his digestive problems. For though Gianluigi was proud of the good fare he provided for his family, that was about the only pleasure he could take in it since this vicious intruder had taken up residence in his gut.
How his mother would have triumphed! As a child Gianluigi had resembled not fastidious Loredana but little Sergio there, his face cheerily smeared with tomato sauce, putting away the sticky pouches with a single- mindedness he would soon devote to masturbation. Gianluigi too had been a stuffer, eating as though he had a secret mission to devour the world. His mother had never left him in peace on the subject. ‘Don’t eat so fast, it’s bad for you. Don’t eat bread before your pasta, it’s bad for you. Don’t put oil on your meat, it’s bad for you.’ But she had never understood the secret source of her son’s appetite: a gnawing envy of an elder brother who seemed so much bigger and more successful. Pasquale could dominate a room just by walking into it, and even his absence usually appeared to be of more interest than Gianluigi’s presence. ‘If you don’t eat you won’t grow,’ his mother told him. Gianluigi turned this logic on its head and determined to eat his way into a future where he would be bigger and better than anyone around. But the only result had been a stomach condition which left him unable to do more than nibble a few scraps while this pain roamed his innards like a rat.
His hunger hadn’t disappeared, however. It had just taken a different form. His physical size he could do nothing about, but on every other score he had beaten his brother hollow! Pasquale was now a dentist responsible for curing half the tooth problems in Siena and causing the other half, as he himself liked to joke. But his three children were all girls, his wife was a whore – Gianluigi himself had had her three times last summer – and although his earnings were respectable enough, his rival could already match him lira for lira twice over. And that was only the beginning. The events of the past week had opened up perspectives which even Gianluigi found slightly dizzying.
Not that he was by any means unprepared for the pickings that Ruggiero’s death promised to bring with it. On the contrary, he had been working towards that very goal from the moment he met Cinzia Miletti. For in the end Pasquale had proved to be a disappointment. Like many young achievers he had gone into an early decline, growing fat and complacent, no challenge for the pool of unused ambition that ached and burned like the excess gastric acids in Gianluigi’s stomach. He needed roughage, and his solution had been to marry into a family full of brothers
