Someone's picked the lock to my apartment and broken in while I'm not there. But instead of taking anything, they leave things instead.'
'What sort of things?'
'First an envelope full of shotgun pellets. Then something which had been stolen from me at the bus-stop a couple of days earlier.'
'What'?'
Zen hesitated. He obviously couldn't tell Moscati about the theft of the Ministry's video.
'A book I was carrying in my pocket. I assumed some thief thought it was my wallet. But last night I got home to find my apartment covered in paper. The book had been torn apart page by page and scattered all over the floor.'
'Sounds like some prankster with a twisted sense of humour,' Moscati remarked dismissively. 'I wouldn't…'
'That's what I thought, at first.' He didn't mention that his principal suspect had been Vincenzo Fabri. 'Then I remembered that the widow of the judge who was shot said that exactly the same things had happened to her husband just before he was murdered. Meanwhile someone has been watching my apartment from a stolen Alfa Romeo recently, and yesterday I was followed half-way across the city. Nevertheless, it didn't seem to add up to anything until I heard that an informer named Parrucci had been found roasted to death near Viterbo. Parrucci was the key witness in a murder investigation case I handled twenty years ago, when I was working in Milan.
The investigating magistrate in that case was Giulio Bertolini.'
All trace of impatience had vanished from Moscati's manner. He was following Zen's words avidly.
'A gangster named Vasco Spadola was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released from prison about a month ago. Since then both the judje who prepared the case and the man who gave evidence against Spadola have been killed. It doesn't seem too far-fetched to conclude that the police officer who conducted the investigation is next on his list.'
A strange light burned in Lorenzo Moscati's eyes.
'So it's not political, after all!'
'The killing of Bertolini? No, it was straight revenge, a personal vendetta. You see, the evidence against Spadola was faked and Parrucci's testimony paid for by the victim's family. Presumably Bertolini didn't know that, but…'
'Do you realize what this means?' Moscati enthused.
'The Politicals have been holding up this Bertolini affair as proof that terrorism isn't finished after all and so they still need big budgets and lots of manpower. If we can show that it's not political at all they'll never live it down!
That bastard Cataneo won't dare show his face in public for a month!'
Zen nodded wearily as he understood the reasons for his superior's sudden interest in the affair.
'Meanwhile my life is in danger,' he reminded him.
'Two men have been killed and I'm number three. I want protection.'
Moscati grasped Zen's right arm just above the elbow, as though giving him a transfusion of courage and confidence.
'Don't worry, you'll get it! The very best. A crack squad has been set up to handle just this sort of situation. AII hand-picked men, weapons experts, highly skilled, using the very finest and most modern equipment. With them looking after you, you'll be as safe as the President of the Republic himself.'
Zen raised his eyebrows. This sounded too good to be true.
'When will this become effective?'
Moscati held up his hands in a plea for patience and understanding.
'Naturally there are a lot of calls on their time at the moment. In the wake of the Bertolini killing, everyone's a bit anxious. It'll be a question of reviewing the situation on an on-going basis, assessing the threat at it develops and then allocating the available resources accordingly.'
Zen nodded. It had been too good to be true.
'But in the meantime you'll put a man outside my house?'
Moscati gestured regretfully. 'It's out of my hands, Zen.
Now this new squad exists, all applications for protection have to be routed through them. It's so they can draw up a map of potential threats at any given time, then put it on the computer and see if any overall patterns emerge. Or so they claim. If you ask me, they're just protectirig their territory. Either way, my hands are tied, unfortunately. If I start allocating men to protection duties they'll cry foul and we'll never hear the end of it.'
Zen nodded and turned to leave. From a bureaucratic point of view, the logic of Moscati's position was flawless.
He knew only too well that it would be a sheer waste of time to point out any discrepancy between that logic and common sense.
As the working day for state employees came to an end, doors could be heard opening all over the Ministry. The corridors began to hum with voices which, amplified by the resonant acoustic, rapidly became a babble, a tumult which prefigured the crowds surging invisibly towards the entrance hall where Zen stood waiting. Within a minute they were everywhere. The enormous staircase was barely able to contain the human throng eager to get home, have lunch and relax, or else hasten to their clandestine afternoon jobs in the booming black economy, 'the Italy that works', as Fausto Arcuti had joked.
Ever since Tania Biacis had accepted his invitation to lunch, Zen had been racking his brains over the choice of restaurant. Given her wide and sophisticated experience of eating out in Rome, this was not something to be taken lightly. The only places he knew personally these days were those close to the Ministry and therefore regularly patronized by its staff, and it would clearly be unwise to go there. Quite apart from the risk of compromising Tania, Zen didn't want to have to deal with winks,. nudges or loaded questions from his colleagues. Again, it was important to get the class of establishment right. Nothing cheap or seedy, of course, but neither anything so grand or pretentious that it might make her feel that he was trying the crude old 'I'm spending a lot of money on you so you'll have to have to come across' approach. Finally, there were the practicalities to consider. If Tania had to be home by three, it had to be somewhere in the centre, where by this time most of the better restaurants might well be full.
Every possibility that occurred to Zen failed one of these tests. He was still at a loss when Tania appeared.
'So, where are we going?' she demanded.
She sounded tense and snappy, as though she was already regretting having agreed to come. Zen panicked.
He should never have confused his fantasies with reality like this. The situation was all wrong. It would end in disaster and humiliation.
'There's a place in Piazza Navona,' he found himself saying as he led the way out into the pale sunlight. '1t's crowded with tourists in summer, but at this time of year…'
He didn't add that the last time he was there had been with Ellen.
Outside the Ministry Zen hailed a taxi. The brief journey did nothing to alleviate his fears that a major fiasco was in the offing. He and Tania sat as far apart as possible, exchanging brief banalities like a married couple after a row.
The taxi dropped them by the small fountain at the south end of the piazza. As they walked out into its superb amplitude, two kids sped past on a moped, one standing on the pillion grasping the driver's shoulders. The noise scattered a fiock of pigeons which rose like a single being and went winging around the obelisk rising above the central fountain, while a second flock of shadows mimicked its progress across the grey stones below. The breeze caught the water spurting out of cleavages in the fountain, winnowing it out in an aerosol of fine drops where a fragmentary rainbow briefly shimmered. Just for a moment Zen thought that everything was going to be all right after all. Then he caught sight of the restaurant, shuttered and bolted, the chairs and tables piled high, and knew that he'd been right the first time. 'Chiuso per turno' read a sign in the window.
Tania Biacis looked at her watch. 'It's getting late.'
Zen nodded. 'Perhaps we'd better leave it till another hme.'
He knew that there would be no other time.
