But there was no need to read it to understand the import of the document. It was enough to scan the brief phrases inserted by hand in the spaces left blank by the printer. 29 April 1964… Milan… Spadola, Vasco Emesto… culpable homicide… life imprisonment… investigating magistrate Giulio Bertolini…'
It was enough to scan the spaces, read the messages, make the connections. That was enough, thought Zen. But he had failed to do it, and now it might be too late.
Back at his desk in the Criminalpol offices, which were deserted that morning, Zen phoned the Ministry of Justice and inquired about the penal status of Vasco Ernesto Spadola, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment in Milan on zg April xg64. A remote and disembodied voice announced that he would be rung back with the information in due course.
Zen lit a cigarette and wandered over to the window, looking down at the forecourt of the Ministry with its pines and shrubbery which flanked the sweep of steps leading down to the huge shallow bath of the fountain in Piazza del Viminale. Although the implications of the facts he had just stumbled on were anything but cheering, he felt relieved to find that there was at least a rational explanation for the things that had been going on. It was not just an uncanny coincidence that Zen had happened to ask for the Spadola file the day that he had read about the killing of Judge Bertolini. At some level beneath his conscious thoughts he must have recalled the one occasion on which his and the murdered judge's paths had crossed. As for Parrucci, the reason why the name had meant nothing to Zen was that he knew the informer only by his codename, 'the nightingale'. When Parrucci agreed to testify against Spadola, his name had been revealed, but by that time Zen's involvement with the case was at an end.
A thin Roman haze softened the November sunlight, giving it an almost summery languor. At a window on the other side of the piazza a woman was hanging out bedding to air on the balcony. A three-wheeled Ape van was unloading cases of mineral water outside the bar below, while on the steps of the Ministry itself three chauffeurs were having an animated discussion involving sharp decisive stabs of the index finger, exaggerated shrugs and waves of dismissal, cupped palms pleading for sanity and attention-claiming grabs at each other's sleeves. Zen only gradually became aware of an interference with these sharply etched scenes, a movement seemingly on the other side of the glass, where the ghostly figure of Tania Biacis was shimmering towards him in mid-air.
'I've been looking for you all morning.'
He turned to face the original of the reflection. She was looking at him with a slightly playful air, as though she knew that he would be wondering what she meant. But Zen had no heart for such tricks.
'I was down in Archives, sorting out that video tape business. Where is everyone, anyway?'
A distant pl ione began to ring.
'Don't go!' Zen called as he hurried back to his desk.
He snatched up the phone.
'Yes?'
'Good morning, dottore,' a voice whispered confidentially. It sounded like some tiny creature curled up in the receiver itself. 'Just calling to remind you of our lunch appointment. I hope you can still make it.'
'Lunch? Who is this?'
There was long silence.
'We talked last night,' the voice remarked pointedly.
Zen finally remembered his arrangement with Fausto Arcuti.
'Oh, right! Good. Fine. Thanks. I'll be there.'
He put the receiver down and turned. Tania Biacis was standing close behind him and his movement brought them into contact for a moment. Zen's arm skimmed her breast, their hands jangled briefly together like bells.
'Oh, there you are,' he cried. 'Where's everyone gone to?'
It was as though he regretted being alone with her! 'They're at a briefing. The chief wants to see you.'
'Immediately?'
'When else?'
He frowned. The Ministry of Justice might phone back at any minute, and as it was Friday the staff would go off duty for the weekend in half-an-hour. He had to have that information.
'Would you do me a favour?' he asked.
The words were exactly the ones she had used to him two days earlier. It was clear from her expression that she remembered.
'Of course,' she replied, with a faint smile that grew wider, as he responded, 'You don't know what it is yet.'
'You decided before I told you what I wantecl,' she pointed out.
'But I had reasons which you may not have.'
Tania sighed.
'I don't know what you must think of me,' she said despondently.
'Don't you? Don't you really?'
They looked at each other in silence for some time.
'So what is it you want?' she asked eventually.
Zen looked at her in some embarrassment. Now that his request had become the subject of so much flirtatious persiflage, it would be ridiculous to admit that he had only wanted her to field a phone call for him.
'I can't tell you here,' he said. 'It's a bit complicated, and well, there're various reasons. Look, I don't suppose you could have lunch with me?'
It was a delaying tactic. He was counting on her to refuse.
'But you've already got a lunch engagement,' she objected.
It took him a little while to understand.
'Oh, the phone call! No, that's… that's for another day.'
Tania inspected her fingernails for a moment. Then she reached out and lightly, deliberately, scratched the back of his hand. The skin turned white and then red, as though burned.
'I'd have to be home by three,' she told him. She sounded like an adolescent arranging a date.
Zen was aboat to reply when 'he phone rang again.
'Ministry of Justice, Records Section, calling with reference to your inquiry in re Spadola, Vasco Ernesto.'
'Yes?'
'The subject was released from Asinara prison on y October of this year.'
Zen's response was a silence so profound that even the disembodied voice unbent sufficiently to add, 'Hello?
Anyone there?'
'Thank you. That's all.'
He hung up and turned back to Tania Biacis.
'Shall we meet downstairs then?' he suggested casually, as though they'd been lunching together for years.
She nodded. 'Fine. Now p1ease go and see what Moscati wants before he takes it out on me.'
Lorenzo Moscati, head of Criminalpol, was a short stout man with smooth, rounded features which looked as though they were being flattened out by an invisible stocking-mask.
'Eh, finally!' he exclaimed when Zen appeared. 'I've been able to round up everyone except you. Where did you get to? Never mind, no point in you attending the briefing anyway. All about security for the Camorra trial in Naples next week. But that won't concern you, because you're off to Sardinia, you lucky dog! That report you did on the Burolo case was well received, very well received indeed. Now we want you to go and put flesh on the bones, as it were. You leave on Monday. See Ciliani for details of flights and so on.'
Zen nodded.
'While I'm here, there's something else I'd like to discuss,' he said.
Moscati consulted his watch. 'Is it urgent?'
'You could say that. I think someone's trying to kill me.'
Moscati glanced at his subordinate to check that he'd heard right, then again to see if Zen was joking.
'What makes you think that?'
Zen paused, wondering where to begin.
'Strange things have been happening to me recently.
