raised in dispute about the merits and demerits of the new Fiat hatchback. He recognized the voices of Vincenzo Fabri and another official, Bernardo Travaglini. Then a flicker of movement nearby caught his eye and he looked round to find Tania Biacis standing by his desk.
'Sorry?' he muttered.
'I didn't say anything.'
'Oh.'
He gazed at her helplessly, paralysed by his desire to reach out and touch her. These exchanges, full of non sequiturs and dead ends, were typical of their conversation.
Presumably Tania just assumed that Zen was a bit scatterbrained and thought no more about it. He hoped so, anyway.
'This is for you.'
She handed him an envelope from the batch of internal mail she was delivering.
'So what was it last night?' Zen asked. 'The opera, the new Fellini?'
'The Opera's on strike,' she said after a momentary hesitation. 'As for Federico, we gave up on him after that last one. Granted the man used to be a genius, but enough's enough. No, we went out to eat at this little place out in the country near Tivoli. Have you been there? It's all the rage at the moment. Enrico Montesano was there, with the most peculiar woman I've ever seen in my life, if she was a woman. But you'd better hurry, if you want to go.
The food's going downhill already. In another week it'll be ruined.' ?en sat looking at her, hardly heeding what she said.
Tall, large-boned and small-breasted, with brows that arched high above her deep brown eyes, prominent cheekbones, a strong neck and a light down on her protruding upper lip, which was usually curved as if in suppressed amusement, Tania Biacis resembled a Byzantine Madonna come down from her mosaic in some chilly apse, a Madonna not of sorrow but of joy, of secret glee, who knew that the universe was actually the most tremendous joke and could hardly believe that everyone else was taking it seriously. Like himself, Tania was a northerner, from a village in the Friuli region east of Udine. This had created an immediate bond between them, and as the days went by Zen had learned of her interest in films, music, sailing, ski-ing, cookery, travel and foreign languages. He also discovered that she was fourteen years younger than him, and married.
'I don't care what your dealer told you,' Vincenzo Fabri proclaimed loudly. 'Until a gearbox has done ioo,ooo kilometres – under on-road conditions, not on some test track in Turin – not even Agnelli himself knows how it's going to hold up.'
'What do I care?' retorted Travaglini. 'With the discount I'm getting I can drive it until the warranty runs out and still break even on the trade-in. That's a year's free motoring.'
'Would you do me a favour?' Tania whispered hurriedly.
'Of course.'
'You don't know what it is yet.'
'It doesn't matter.'
Zen saw nothing wild or extravagant in this claim, which represented the simple truth. But as she turned away with a disconcerted look he realized that it had sounded all wrong, either too gushing or too casual.
'Forget it,' she told him, disappearing through a gap in the screens like an actor leaving the stage.
Zen sat there taking in her absence with a sharp pain he'd forgotten about, the kind that comes with love you don't ask for or even necessarily want, but which finds you out. It was normal to suffer like this in one's youth, of course, but what had he done to deserve such a fate at his age?
He tore open the memorandum she had brought him.
'From: Dogliotti, Assistant Registrar, Archives.
'To: Zeno, Vice-Questore, Polizia Criminale.
Subject: 46429 BUR 4gg/K/95 (Video cassette, one).
You are requested to return the above item at your earliest convenience since it is… in the blank space, someone had scrawled an illegible phrase.
Zen stuffed the memorandum into his pocket with a weary sigh. He had been so concerned about the largescale repercussions if the tape fell into the wrong hands that he had completely forgotten the immediate problems involved. The Ministry's copy of the Burolo video was of course just that, a copy, the original being retained by the magistrates in Nuoro. Technically speaking its loss was no more than an inconvenience, but that didn't mean that Zen could just drop down to Archives and tell them what had happened. In theory, official files could only be taken out of the Ministry with a written exeat permit signed by the relevant departmental head. In practice no one took the slightest notice of this, but the moment anything went wrong the letter of the law would be strictly applied.
Once again, Zen turned to the task in hand as an escape from these problems. The next section of the report was considerably less straightforward than the one he had just written. While the facts of the Burolo case were simple enough, the interpretations which could be placed on them were political dynamite. Zen's completed report would be stored in the Ministry's central database, accessible by anyone with the appropriate terminal and codeword, his views and conclusions electronically enshrined for ever. At least he didn't have to deal with the dreaded glowing screens himself! The use of computers was spreading inexorably through the various law enforcement agencies, although the dream of a unified electronic data pool had faded with the discovery that the systems chosen by the Carabinieri and the police were incompatible, both with each other and with the quite different system used by the judiciary. It was a sign of their elite status that those Criminalpol officials who wished to do so had been allowed to retain their battered manual Olivettis with the curvy fifties' styling that was now fashionable once more.
Zen lit another of the coarse-flavoured domestic cigarettes, looked up at the rectangular tiles of the suspended ceiling for inspiration, then began to pound the keys again.
'Because of the exceptional diffiiwlty of unauthorized access to the villa, the number of suspects was extremely limited. Nevertheless, five possibilities have at various times been considered worthy of investigation. The first, chronologically, concerns Alfonso and Giuseppina Bini.
Bini acted as caretaker and general handyman at the villa, while his wife cooked and cleaned. Both had worked for Burolo for over ten years. At the time of the murders, the couple claim to have been watching television in their quarters in the north wing of the property. This is separated from the dining room by the width of the whole building, including the massive exterior walls of the original farm house. As Giuseppina Bini is slightly deaf, the volume of the television was turned quite high. Subsequent tests confirmed the couple's story that the gunshots were at first almost inaudible. It was only when they were repeated that Alfonso went to investigate.
'The evidence against the Binis never amounted to more than the fact of their presence at the villa at the relevant time, but since the only other people present were all dead, and it was apparently impossible for any intruder to have entered the property, it is understandable that the couple came under suspicion. However, the case against them, which already lacked any viable motive, was further weakened by the discovery of the video tape recording Alfonso Bini's evidently genuine shock on discovering the bodies, and by the fact that a meticulous search failed to uncover any trace of the murder weapon at the villa, where the couple had remained throughout.'
Zen paused to give his numbed fingers a chance to xecover. Next on his list was the vendetta theory, which involved filling in the background about the attempted kidnapping of Oscar Burolo. This had surprised no one, except for the fact that the intended victim had got away with nothing but a scratch on his shoulder. God damn it, peopie had murmured in tones of exasperated admiration, how does he do it? Kidnapping was notoriously a way of life in Sardinia, and what had Burolo done but choose a property on the very edge of the Barbagia massif itself, the heartland of the kidnapping gangs and the location of the underground lairs where they hid their victims? He was asking for it!
And he duly got it. Fortunately for Oscar, the Lincoln Continental he had been driving at the time was a rather special model, built for the African president who figured in the fictitious 'slave' story. Oscar did a lot of work in Africa, which he liked to describe as 'a land of opportunity', rolling his eyes comically to suggest what kind of opportunities he had in mind. The president in question was unfortunately toppled from power just after taking delivery of the vehicle and just before Oscar could collect on the contract the president had signed for the constructiov, of a new airport in the country's second-largest city, a job which had promised to be even more
