She waited for him to spell it out.
'Would you think of… I mean, I don't suppose you're free or anything, but…'
'I'd love to.'
'Really?'
She laughed, this time without malice.
'Don't look so surprised!'
'But I am surprised.'
Her laughter abruptly subsided.
'So am I, to tell you the truth. I can't quite see how we got here. Still, here we are.'
'Here we are,' he agreed, and signalled to the waiter.
On the broad pavement outside, Zen pulled Tania against him and kissed her briefly on both cheeks in a way that might have been purely friendly, if they had been friends. She coloured a little, but said nothing. Then, having agreed to meet at the restaurant that evening, Tania hailed a taxi to take her to Palazzo di Montecitorio, the parliament building, where she had to run an errand for Lorenzo Moscati, while Zen returned to the Ministry on foot.
The winter sunlight, hazy with air pollution, created a soothing warmth that eased the lingering aches in Zen's body. A surgeon in Nuoro had spent three hours picking shotgun pellets out of his limbs and lower back, but apart from those minor subcutaneous injuries and a slightly swollen ankle, his ordeal had left no permanent scars. He strolled along without haste, drinking in the sights and sounds. How precious it all seemed, how rich and various, unique and detailed! He spent five minutes watching an old man at work collecting -ardboard boxes from outside a shoe shop, deftly collapsing and fiattening each one. An unmarked grey delivery van with reflecting windows on he rear doors drove past with a roar and pulled in to the side of the street, squashing one of the cardboard boxes. he old man waved his fist impotently, then retrieved the ox, straightened it out and brushed it clean before adding it to the tall pile already tied to the antique pram he used as cart.
Zen walked past the open doorway of a butcher's shop, rom which came a series of loud bangs and a smell of lood. The delivery van roared by and double-parked at he corner of the street, engine running. Outside a pet hop, a row of plastic bags filled with water were hanging om a rack. In each bag, a solitary goldfish twitched to and fro, trapped in its fragile bubble-world. A mechanical treet-cleaner rolled past, leaving a swathe of glistening sphalt in its wake, looping out round the obstruction caused by the grey van. No one got in or out of the van.
Nothing was loaded or unloaded. A tough-looking young man, clean-shaven, with cropped hair sat behind the wheel, staring straight ahead. He paid no attention to Zen.
Up in the Criminalpol suite on the third floor of the Ministry, the other officials were in the midst of a heated discussion with Vincenzo Fabri at its centre.
'The British have got the right idea,' Fabri was prolaiming loudly. 'Catch them on the job and gun them down. Forget the legal bullshit.'
'But that's different!' Bernardo Travaglini protested.
'The IRA are terrorists.'
'There's no difference! Sicily, Naples, Sardinia, they're our Northern Ireland! Except we're dumb enough to respect everyone's rights and do things by the book.'
'That's not the point, Vincenzo,' De Angelis interrupted. 'Thatcher's got an absolute majority, she can do what she wants. But here in Italy we've got a democracy.
You've got to take account of people's opinions.'
'Screw people's opinions!' Fabri exploded. 'This is war!
The only thing that matters is who is going to win, the state or a bunch of gangsters. And the answer is they are, unless we stop pissing about and match them for ruthlessness.'
He caught sight of Zen sidling past and broke off suddenly.
'Now there's somebody who's got the right idea,' he exclaimed. 'While the rest of us are sweating it out down in Naples, trying to protect a bunch of criminals who would be better off dead, Aurelio here pops over to Sardinia and turns up, quote, new evidence in the Burolo case, unquote, which just happens to put a certain politician's chum in the clear. That's the way to do things! Never mind the rights and wrongs of the situation. Results are all that matters.'
Resignedly, Zen turned to face his tormentor. This was a showdown he could not dodge.
'What do you mean by that?'
Fabri faked a smile of complicity.
'Oh, come on! No hard feelings! In your shoes I'd have done the same. But it just goes to prove what I've been saying. Do things by the book like us poor suckers and what do you get? A lot of headaches, long hours, and a boot up the bum when things go wrong. Whereas if you look after number one, cultivate the right contacts and forget about procedures, you get covered in glory, name in the paper and friends in high places!'
'To be fair, you should take some of the credit,' Zen replied.
'Me? What are you talking about?'
'Well, you recommended me, didn't you?'
Fabri's eyes narrowed dangerously.
'Recommended you to who?'
'To Palazzo Sisti.'
A moment's silence was broken by a rather forced laugh from Vincenzo Fabri.
'Do me a favour, will you? I don't go to bed with politicians, and if I did I certainly wouldn't choose that bunch of losers!'
'It's all right, Vincenzo,' Zen reassured him. 'They told me. I asked who had put them on to me and they said it was their contact a: the Ministry.'
Fabri laughed dismissively.
'And what's that got to do with me?'
'Well, they said this person, this contact, had already tried to fiddle the Burolo case for them, except he'd made a complete balls-up of it. As far as I know, you're the only person here who's done any work on that case.'
'You're Iying!'
It was Zen's turn to switch on a smile of complicity.
'Look, it's all right, Vincenzo! We're among friends here. No hard feelings, as you said yourself. I for one certainly don't hold it against you. But then I'm hardly in a position to, of course.'
Fabri stared at him furiously.
'I tell you once and for all that I have nothing whatever to do with Palazzo Sisti! Is that clear?'
Zen appeared taken aback by this ringing denial.
'Are you sure?'
'Of course I'm fucking sure!'
Zen shook his head slowly.
'Well, that's very odd. Very odd indeed. All 1 can say is that's what I was told. But if you say it's not true…'
'Of course it's not true! How dare you even suggest such a thing?'
'Admittedly I can't prove anything,' Zen muttered.
'Of course you can't!'
'Can you?'
The reply was quick and pointed. Fabri recoiled from it as from a drawn knife.
'What? Can I what?'
'Can you prove that the allegations made by I'onorevole's private secretary are untrue?'
'I don't need to prove it!' Fabri shouted.
No one had moved, yet Zen sensed that the arrangement of the group had changed subtly. Before, he had been confronted by a coherent mass of officials, united in their opposition to the outsider. Now a looser gathering of individuals stood between him and Fabri, shuffling their feet and looking uncertainly from one man to the other.
'Don't you?' Zen replied calmly. 'Oh, well in that case, of course, there's nothing more to be said.'
