No, that wasn't right. He'd been misled by the previous association with his mother's funeral. The word had been bottles, not body. 'They don't put the bottles in the box, they wrap the box around the bottles.' In some hospital, during one of the few lucid memories he had of that whole period. A young doctor was preparing to give him an injection of liquid drawn from one of a set of glass phials packed into a cardboard box on the trolley beside him. Zen had remarked, in an attempt at humour, that it must be hard work fitting all those tiny bottles into such a tight space. And the doctor had explained, adding that his brother worked in packaging and never tired of telling him that wraparound was the wave of the future.
But why had that voice come back to him now? He had often noticed that if he found himself humming some tune, there was usually a connection between the words, or title, or general context and associations of the music, and something that had been preoccupying him without his conscious awareness of it. The same must be the case here, he thought, but what possible connection could there be? Bottles, boxes, packaging, wraparound… None of these had any evident relevance. Nor did threats to his life and the resulting injuries, not to mention doctors or hospitals. He was finished with all that.
He moved his luggage into the bedroom where he used to sleep. Maria Grazia had stripped the bed before leaving. He didn't feel up to remaking it, so he fetched a pillow and some blankets from the linen cupboard in the hall, blew out the candles in the living room and groped his way back to the bedroom. The air was filled with the unctuous smoke of the candles, which made him realize that there had been a previous and not dissimilar odour in the apartment which he only now identified as the sweet-and-sour fetor of his mother's dying flesh. The thought made him close and lock the bedroom door behind him. A few minutes later he was lying fully clothed on his bed, wrapped up in his coat and the blankets. A few minutes after that he was asleep.
He awoke a moment later, or so it seemed. It was an instant and complete awakening with no memory of dreams, no drowsiness, and no evident cause. The room was silent and dark, apart from a faint glimmer coming up through the shutters from the street below. He lay on his back, staring up at the lamp hanging like a predatory bat from the ceiling. He had always loathed that lamp, he realized. Then he thought: Now that mamma's dead, I can get rid of it.
A sound broke the silence. It was difficult to say what might have caused it, but the source seemed clear. He lay quite still, listening intently. Eventually there was another sound, equally generic and almost inaudible, but it too had been located just outside the room, behind the locked door leading to the rest of the apartment. But that was absurd. Clearly there was no one out there. How could there be?
The silence then remained unbroken for so long that he almost convinced himself that he had imagined the earlier noises. Then he heard a distinct metallic scraping that he recognized instantly. Someone was turning the handle to his bedroom door.
'Who's there?' he shouted, sitting up in bed.
There was silence again, then a rapid series of ratchety clicks. Zen climbed out of bed as the door resounded under a tremendous blow.
'Who's that?' he yelled again.
Another blow, then another. The door was of seasoned oak, at least a hundred years old. It wouldn't give, unless the intruder had an axe, but sooner or later the catch must.
Zen groped in his coat pocket and found the device he had been given at the Ministry the previous afternoon. He clicked the button at the side to turn it on, then slid up the shield over the glowing red button and pressed it as another earthquake-like tremor hit the door.
What happened then was the last thing he had expected: the sound of a phone ringing in the room next door. It was only a moment later that he remembered that the phone had been cut off. There was a brief whisper of speech, followed by a number of unidentifiable sounds, then silence.
It was broken a few moments later by a distant siren that veered ever nearer and louder until it wound down from a strident shriek to a mild burble outside the building. Blue flashing lights added an intermittent brightness to the glimmer in the room, while a furious pounding and ringing sounded out in the stairwell and from the street. After a while it ceased, to be replaced by the sound of clattering boots on the stone steps and then in the room outside.
‘Polizia’'
Zen felt a wave of overwhelming relief that made him realize just how scared he had been. He had heard that voice countless times before, and knew it well. It was the voice of a raw young patrol officer, himself scared even more, and knowing that his only hope of saving his reputation and possibly his life was to sound overwhelmingly masterful.
Zen unlocked and opened the door, and was immediately pinned in the glaring beams from two flashlights aimed right at his face.
'Good evening,' he said, holding up his empty hands. ‘I am Dottor Zen.'
The two policemen in the room lowered their torches, creating a more even light. 'What's going on?' barked one.
'We received an all-points emergency call to assist you,' said a slightly steadier voice. 'Someone broke into my apartment.'
'The door was open when we got here,' replied the steadier voice immediately.
'Probably a burglar’ said the first patrolman.
'There have been a number of attempts on my life recently’ Zen replied in a studiously casual tone, as though this sort of thing was all in a day's work for him.
'The lights don't work’ said the steadier voice. 'Maybe they cut the wiring.'
'No, the fuse blew and I haven't had time to mend it. Now could you just check that whoever it was isn't still here, and perhaps try and find out how he got in?'
One of the two torches started searching the apartment. The other headed out to the stairway.
'No one’ reported the first voice, returning to the room. He and Zen gazed at each other in the gloom hacked apart by his torch beam.
There was a rush of boots on the steps and his partner reappeared.
'The skylight at the very top of the stairs is wide open,' he announced. 'He must have been an agile little monkey, though. That window's a good three metres off the ground.'
'Well, thank you for your prompt response’ Zen said conclusively. 'Evidently on this occasion the whole thing was a false alarm If you'll just inform headquarters about that, I won't keep you from your regular duties any longer.'
He saw them to the front door of the apartment, then bent down and examined the door itself. There was no sign that any force had been used to open it. It was only when he straightened up again that he noticed Giuseppe, the janitor of the building. He was clad in pyjamas and a worn plaid dressing gown, and was lurking on the flight of stairs leading up to the landing.
'Is everything all right, dottore?’ he asked.
Zen took out the key to his apartment.
'You didn't give this to anyone while I was away, did you?'
Giuseppe's face assumed an expression of righteous indignation.
'Absolutely not! It was locked up in the safe the whole time along with the duplicate sets.' Zen nodded.
'Very well. I just wondered.'
'If you'd told me you were coming back, I'd have arranged for the electricity and gas to be on’ Giuseppe added. 'I'll do it tomorrow, first thing.'
'Don't bother. I shan't be living here any more.'
Giuseppe took a few moments to digest this statement. So did Zen himself.
'You're moving?' Giuseppe queried.
'I'm leaving. A new work assignment. I shan't be based in Rome any longer. I'll contact the owners and tell them to cancel the lease as soon as possible. They should be able to find a new tenant quite quickly. Unless you have someone in mind, of course.'
Giuseppe nodded in a dazed way. Clearly this, coming on top of the break-in and the appearance of the policemen, was just too much to deal with at this hour of the morning. He started to turn away, then paused.
'Maybe that colleague of yours would like it’
'Which colleague?'
