'Come!' a distant voice instructed.
The room was long and relatively narrow. One wall was covered by an enormous tapestry, so faded that it was impossible to make out anything except the general impression of a hunting scene. Facing this stood a glassfronted bookcase, where an array of more or less massive tomes lay slumbering in a manner that suggested they had not been disturbed for a considerable time.
At the far end of the room, a young man was sitting at an antique desk in front of a window that reached all the way up to the distant ceiling. As Zen came in, he put down the sheaf of typed pages he had been perusing and walked round the desk, his hand held out in greeting.
'Good morning, dottore. So glad that you felt able to see your way clear to, ah…'
He was in his early thirties, slim and refined, with thin straight lips, delicate features, and eyes that goggled slightly, as though they were perpetually astonished by what they saw. His fastidious gestures and diffident manner gave him the air of a fin de siecle aesthete, rather than a political animal.
He waved Zen towards a chair made of thin struts of some precious wood, with a woven cane seat. It looked extremely valuable and horribly fragile. Zen lowered himself on to it apprehensively. The young man returned to the other side of the desk, where he remained standing for a moment with hands outspread, like a priest at the altar.
'First of all, dottore, let me express, on behalf of… the interest and, ah… that's to say, the really quite extraordinary excitement aroused by your, ah…'
He picked up the pages he had been reading and let them fall back to the desk again, as a knock resounded in the cavernous space behind.
'Come!' the young man enunciated.
A waiter appeared carrying a tray with two coffee cups.
'Ah, yes. I took the liberty of, ah…'
He waggled his forefinger at the two cups.
'And which one is…? 'With the red rim,' the waiter told him.
The young man sighed expressively as the door closed again.
'Unfortunately caffeine, for certain people…'
Zen took his cup of undecaffeinated espresso and unwrapped the two lumps of sugar supplied by the bar, studying the 'Interesting Facts about the World of Nature' printed on the wrapper, while he waited for his host to proceed.
'As you are no doubt aware, dottore, this has been a sad and difficult time for us. Naturally, we already knew what your report makes abundantly clear, namely that the evidence against Renato Favelloni is both flimsy and entirely circumstantial. There is not the slightest question that his innocence would eventually be established by due process of law.'
Zen noted the conditional as the coffee seared its way down his throat.
'But by then, alas, the damage will have been done!' the young man continued. His seemingly compulsive hesitations and rephrasings had now been set aside like a disguise that has served its purpose. 'If mud is thrown as viciously as it has been and will be, some of it is bound to stick. Not just to Favelloni himself, but to all those who were in any way associated with him, or who had occasion to, ah, call on his services at some time. This is the problem we face, dottore. I trust you will not judge me indiscreet if I add that it is one we were beginning to despair of solving. Imagine, then, the emotions elicited by your report! So much hope! So many interesting new perspectives! 'Light at the end of the tunnel', as 1'onorevole saw fit to put it.'
Zen set his empty cup back in its saucer on the leather surface of the desk.
'My report was merely a resume of the investigations carried out by others.'
'Exactly! That was precisely its strength. If you had been one of our, ah, contacts at the Ministry, your findings would have excited considerably less interest. To be perfectly frank, we have been let down before by people who promised us this, that and the other, and then couldn't deliver. Why, only a few days ago we asked our man there to obtain a copy of the video tape showing the tragic events at the Villa Burolo. A simple enough request, you would think, but even that proved beyond the powers of the individual in question. Nor was this the first time that he had disappointed us. So we felt it was time to bring in someone fresh, with the proper qualifications. Someone with a track record in this sort of work. And I must say that, so far, we have had no reason to regret our decision.
Of course, the real test is still to come, but already we have been very favourably impressed by the way in which your report both exposed the inherent weaknesses of the case against Favelloni, and revealed the existence of various equally possible scenarios which, for purely political reasons, have never been properly investigated.'
The young man stood quite still for a moment, his slender fingers steepled as though in prayer.
'The task we now face is to ensure that we do not suffer as much damage from this innocent man being brought to trial and acquitted as we would do if he were really guilty.
In a word, this show trial of Renato Favelloni, and by implication of l'onorevole himself, engineered by our enemies, must be blocked before it starts. Your report makes it perfectly clear that the evidence against Favelloni has been cobbled together from a mass of disjointed and unrelated fragments. Those same fragments, with a little initiative and enterprise, could be used to make an even more convincing case against one of the other suspects you mention.'
Perched precariously on the low, fragile chair, Zen felt like a spectator in the front row of the stalls trying to make out what was happening on stage. The young man's expression seemed to suggest that the next move was up to Zen, but he was unwilling to make it until he had a clearer idea of what was involved.
'Do you mind if I smoke?' he asked finally.
The young man impatiently waved assent.
'Which of the other suspects did you have in mind?' Zen murmured casually as he lit up.
'Well, it seems to us that there are a number of avenues which might be explored with profit.'
'For example?'
'Well, Burolo's son, for example.'
'But he was in Boston at the time.'
'He could have hired someone.'
'He wouldn't have known how. Anyway, sons don't go around putting out contracts on their fathers because they want them to study law instead of music.'
The young man acknowledged the point with a prolonged blink.
'I agree that such a hypothesis would have needed a good deal of work before it became credible, but the possibility remains open. In fact, however, Enzo Burolo has close links with one of our allies in the government, so it would in any case have been inopportune to pursue the matter. I cited it merely as one example among many.
Another, which appears to us considerably more fruitful, is the fellow Burolo employed to look after those absurd lions he bought.'
Zen breathed out a cloud of smoke.
'Pizzoni? He had an alibi too.'
'Yes, he had an alibi. And what does that mean? That half-a-dozen of the local peasantry have been bribed or bullied to lie about seeing him in the bar that evening.'
'Why should anyone want to protect Pizzoni? He was a nobody, an outsider.'
The young man leaned forward across the desk.
'Supposing that wasn't the case? Supposing I were to tell you that the man's real name was not Pizzoni but Padedda, and that he was not from the Abruzzi, as his papers claim, but from Sardinia, from a village in the Gennargentu mountains not far from Nuoro. What would you say to that?'
Zen flicked ash into a pewter bowl that might or might not have been intended for this purpose.
'Well, in the first instance I'd want to know why you haven't informed the authorities investigating the case.'
The young man turned away to face the window. The tall panes of glass were covered with a thick patina c)f grime which reflected his features clearly. Zen saw him smile, as though at the fatuity of this comment.
'When one's opponent is cheating, only a fool continues to play by the rules,' he recited quietly, as though quoting.
