in front of him. It seemed impossible that he had escaped notice, but the car kept going. A few moments later it had disappeared.
He stood up cautiously, rubbing the cuts on his face and hands caused by his crash-landing in the prickly shrubbery. Now that he knew it was there, he could see the thin grey line of asphalt cutting through the landscape just ahead of him. There was no time to lose. Spadola had taken the direction leading down into the valley. He would soon see that the Mercedes was not there and couldn't have climbed the other side, and would cross this road off his list, turn back and try again. Zen's only consolation was that Spadola had not yet found the abandoned car, and therefore did not know that Zen was on foot.
He ran across the raised strip of asphalt and on through the scrub on the other side, hurrying forward until the contours of the hill hid him from the road. He could see the railway now, running along a ledge cut into the slope below. Rather than lose height by climbing down to it, he continued across the top on a coverging course which he hoped would bring him more or less directly to the station.
Meanwhile the bits and pieces of the puzzle continued to put themselves together in his mind without the slightest effort on his part.
As with Favelloni, it was impossible to know whether Padedda had actually carried out the killings or mer ly provided access to the villa. On balance, Zen thought the latter more likely. The Melegas, like Vasco Spadola, would have wanted the satisfaction of taking vengeance in person. This also explained the bizarre fact that no attempt had been made to destroy the video tape. It was possible that such unsophisticated men, unlike Renato Favelloni, might have ignored the camera as just another bit of the incomprehensible gadgetry the house was full of. Afterwards the Melegas would have had no difficulty in persuading a few of the villagers to come forward and claim that they had seen Padedda in the local bar that evening, while the age-old traditions of omerta would stop anyone else from contradicting their testimony. It all made sense, it all fitted together.
Zen hurried on, forcing himself to maintain a punishing pace. To his right, he could see the whole of the valley stretching across to the ridge on the other side where the Villa Burolo was visible as a white blur. Further up towards the mountains, the unnatural green of the forest fed by the leaking dam stained the landscape like a spillage of some pollutant. A distant rumble gave him pause for a ~pment, until he realized that it was not a car but two aircraft. After some time he made out the speeding black specks of the jet fighters swooping across the mountain slopes on their low-altitude manoeuvres. Then they disappeared up a valley and silence fell again. He pushed on, torn between satisfaction at having finally cracked ghe Burolo case and frustration at the thought that unless he managed to get to a telephone before Spadola caught up with him, the villagers' silence would remain unbroken for ever, and Renato Favelloni would be sent tp prison for a crime he had not committed. Of course, Favelloni no doubt royally deserved any number of prison terms for other crimes which would never be brought home to him, protected as he was by l'onorevole.
But, as Vasco Spadola had remarked, that was not the point.
The going was not easy. The red earth, baked hard by months of drought, supported nothing but low bushes bristling like porcupines, with wiry branches, abrasive leaves and sharp thorns that snagged his clothing continually. Fortunately, the plants didn't generally grow very close together, and it was always possible to find a way through. But the constant meandering increased the distance he had to cover, and made his progress much more tiring. And he was tired. His dissipations the night before had resulted in a shallow, drunken sleep that had only scratched the surface of his immense weariness.
At last he reached the crest of a small ridge which had formed his horizon for some time, and caught sight of the station for the first time, about half a kilometre away to his right, a squat building with a steeply-pitched roof.
The railway itself was invisible at that distance, so the buildings looked as if they had been set down at random in the middle of nowhere. Below, the track that he had originally planned to take in the car wound through the scrub. Zen ran down the hill to join it. The track showed no signs of recent use. Low bushes were growing on it, and rocks had sprouted in the wheel ruts. But now he was within sight of his goal, walking was almost a pleasure.
The first hint of what was to come was that one end of the station roof had fallen in. Then he saw that the windows and doors were just gaping holes. By the time he reached the yard, it was evident that the station was a complete ruin. The ground-floor rooms were gutted, strewn with beams and plaster from the fallen ce!ling, the walls charred where someone had lit a tire in one corner.
Outside, the gable wall still proclaimed the name of the village in faded letters, witn the height in metres above sea-level, but it was clearly many years since the station had been manned. The whole line was a pointless anachronism whose one train a day served no purpose except to keep the lucrative subsidies flowing in from Rome.
Zen shook his head. He couldn't believe this was happening. It was 1!ke a bad dream. Automatically he reached for a cigarette, only to remember that Spadola had taken his lighter. He blasphemed viciously, then tried to force himself to think. It was tempting to think of spending the night at the station and catching the train the next morning, but that would be as short-sighted as staying in the shepherd's hut. It would be equally foolish to try and make off across country. The Barbagia was one of the wildest and least populated areas of the country. Without a map and a compass, the chances of getting lost and eventually dying of starvation or exposure were very high, That left just two possibilities: he could walk back along the track to the main road and then walk or try and hitch a lift to the nearest town, or he could follow the railway line up into the mountains. The problern with taking the road was the high risk ot Spadola coming along it. Walking along the railway would be a long and tiring business, and he might have to spend a night in the open. But if the worst came to the worst he could flag down the train the next morning, or even jump aboard, at the speed it would be going. The decisive advantage, however, was that the railway was out of sight of the road, which Spadola would now be patrolling with increasing frustration.
The unlit cigarette clenched between his lips, Zen stepped across the disused passing-loop where pulpy cacti ran riot, and started to walk along the line of rusty rails which curved off to the left, following the contours of the hillside. He had imagined walking along the railway as being tedious but relatively relaxing, but in fact it was every bit as demanding as negotiating the scrub. The ancient sleepers, rough-hewn, weathered and split, were placed too close together to step on each one and too far to take them two at a time, while the ballast in between was jagged, uneven and choked with plants.
A thunderous rumble sounded in the distance once again. Zen stopped and looked up to spot the jets at their sport in the mountains. It was only moments later that he realized another sound had been concealed in their cavernous booming, a rhythmic purr that was quieter but much closer. For a moment it seemed to be coming from the railway line, and Zen's hopes flared briefly. Then he swung round and saw the yellow Fiat driving along the track to the station.
Instinctively he crouched down, looking for cover, but this time it was too late. Its engine revving furiously, the Fiat had left the track and was smashing its way through the scrub towards him. Zen leapt up and started to run as fast as he could away from the car. Almost immediately he tripped over a rusty signal-wire and went fiying, landing on a small boulder and turning his ankle over agonizingly.
Behind him, the frantic roaring of the car engine reached a peak, then abruptly died. A car door slammed. Zen forced himself to his knees. Some fifty metres away the yellow Fiat lay trapped in a thicket of scrub. Beside the car, a shotgun in his hand, stood Vasco Spadola.
Zen tried to stand up, but his left ankle gave way and he stumbled. He tried again. This time the ankle held, although it hurt atrociously. But although he now knew that Spadola was going to kill him, he couldn't just stand there and let it happen, even though it meant torturing himself in vain. He started to hobble away as fast as he could, gasping at every step. Repeatedly he tripped, lost his precarious balance and ended up on his hands and knees in the rocky dust. He did not look back. There was no point. At the best pace he could manage, Spadola would catch up with him in a matter of minutes. He wondered how good a shot Spadola was, and whether he would hear the blast that killed him.
When he finally stopped to look round, he found that Spadola was still some fifty metres away, dawdling along. the shotgun balanced losely in the crook of his arm. With a groan, Zen hobbled off again. So that was how it was going to be. Spadola was in no hurry to finish him off. On the contrary, the longer he could draw out the agony, the more complete his revenge would be. Only the approach of night would force him to close in for the kill, lest his prey escape under cover of darkness. But that was many hours away yet. In the meantime, he was content to dog Zen's footsteps, not trying to overtake him but not letting him rest either, harrying him on relentlessly towards the
