‘See? Where?’
‘On TV.’
Gemma pointed to the screen, now showing the President of the Republic inspecting a guard of honour in the quaintly ornate capital of some eastern European state which had recently come in from the cold war.
‘Caffe, liquore?’ enquired the waiter, surfacing again with such animus that they both relented to the extent of ordering coffees.
‘You have no idea what I’m talking about, have you?’ said Gemma, laughing again. ‘You must be the only person in the country who doesn’t!’
She reached over and touched Zen’s wrist on the tabletop, only for a moment, but enough to set off another of the intestinal twinges which reminded him again of that scene from a science fiction film they had once rented on video, where one of the crew of a spaceship discovers in the most unpleasant way that an alien parasite is nesting in his innards.
‘You know that TV show you hate?’ she went on blithely. ‘ Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta? Well, I’d heard that the star was going to be performing live today at the food fair that’s on here, so I naturally took advantage, seeing that I was coming up anyway.’
Zen nodded.
‘To see me,’ he murmured.
Gemma’s expression blurred for a moment.
‘Well, actually Stefano asked me to come up over the weekend. Some domestic business he wants to discuss. You know about him and Lidia, right? They’re living here in Bologna and apparently something has happened. I’m pretty sure I can guess what it is, but of course they want to make a big fuss about it, and rightly so. Anyway, it meant I could see you, and also drop in on this mano a mano between Rinaldi and Ugo. Of course no one thought that it would be any contest. I mean, the biggest celebrity chef in the country up against a total amateur!’
She laughed, throwing back her head and revealing her beautiful throat.
‘Well, guess what? It was indeed no contest, because the contest never took place!’
Their coffees were gracelessly delivered. Zen slurped his, lit a cigarette, and tried his best to enter into the spirit of whatever this was.
‘Did one of them cancel at the last minute?’ he asked.
‘Much better than that. Or worse. Ugo just pottered around his kitchen, getting on with the job and not making a fuss about it. In fact I sort of liked him. He looked all sweet and cuddly and a bit incompetent, not at all what I’d imagined from trying to read that impossible novel that everyone bought and then pretended they’d read. In fact I wouldn’t mind running into him while I’m here in Bologna.’
‘I don’t imagine there’s much chance of that.’
‘Of course not, but a girl can dream. Anyway, over on the other side of the stage, Lo Chef was doing his usual act, all very dramatic and “look at me”, chatting up the audience the whole time and then breaking into some fake operatic aria. Unfortunately he gets so carried away that he forgets he has left a pan full of oil on the stove, and right in the middle of one of his big numbers it goes up in flames! The set itself was obviously cobbled together at the last minute from flimsy wooden panels and they’re ablaze before anyone can do anything about it. Next thing, the auditorium is filled with smoke, fire alarms are going off everywhere and the whole place has to be evacuated. And I mean the whole fiera site, the entire Enogastexpo show! Thousands of people milling around in the car parks, the fire engines pouring in, police helicopters overhead, utter chaos!’
Zen let a few moments elapse before saying, ‘So tonight you’re seeing your son and his…’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s that about?’
Gemma looked at him with a slightly coy smile.
‘Well, Stefano didn’t want to say on the phone, but I have a feeling that I may be going to become a grandmother.’
Zen grazed on this thought for some time.
‘Which would make me…’ he finally began.
‘Nothing.’
They confronted each other for a moment over this.
‘Nothing at all,’ said Gemma in a harder voice. ‘We’re not married, and for that matter neither are they. So it’s of no consequence at all, really. To you, at least.’
Zen tried to think of something suitable to say.
‘Are you staying the night?’ he managed at last.
Gemma shook her head.
‘They can’t put me up. It’s just a one-bedroom apartment that her parents are letting them use.’
Zen gave her the look he often used on a suspect who had just revealed more than he knew.
‘So she wears the trousers,’ he said.
Another moment of confrontation.
‘They’re a couple,’ Gemma said very distinctly, as though speaking to a foreigner with a limited understanding of the language.
‘But she’s in charge,’ Zen insisted.
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘She owns the house, cara. Just like you.’
Their eyes met, and he instantly realised that he’d gone too far. A moment later he felt another pang in his gut and saw a chance to lighten the mood.
‘Get out!’ he ordered the imaginary resident alien with an exaggerated gruffness that was intended to be comic. ‘Get out, get out!’
But Gemma had forgotten the movie involved in this reference and couldn’t have been expected to understand the connection anyway. Assuming that Zen was addressing her, she sprang to her feet and ran to the door.
22
Edgardo Ugo was cycling home, when something happened.
He was feeling serene and light-hearted, totally at ease with himself, with the city he knew so well and loved so much, and with life in general. To his utter amazement, he had scored an incontrovertible triumph in the much- publicised contest with Rinaldi. Admittedly this had been due to the other man’s unbelievable incompetence, but the result had been no less conclusive. Let the bastard try and sue him now! After that, refusing to comment on the proceedings to the throng of journalists clustered outside the evacuated exhibition centre, he had taken a cab straight to the university and delivered his famous weekly lecture with his usual calm professionalism, as though he’d just returned from a visit to the library.
Now he was heading back to the little urban pied-a-terre that he maintained a short distance from the university, to freshen up and change out of his smoke-poisoned clothes before going to lunch with a visiting academic from the University of Uppsala. By bicycle, of course. In Bologna, bicycles were associated with the populace: impoverished students, pensioners scraping by, penny-pinching housewives and the like. For a world- famous author and academic, with untold millions in the bank, to be seen on one instantly transformed his battered though structurally handsome 1923 Bianchi S24 from a humble means of transport into what semioticians called a ‘sign vehicle’, thus making one of those arcane jokes for which Ugo was famous. God, he was cool.
And then something happened.
Afterwards, of course, it was perfectly obvious what this was, but the instant offered nothing but fleeting and confused impressions, followed by a sickening loss of balance, the jarring impact, and multiple aches and pains. The next thing he was distinctly aware of was a man standing over him. Ugo himself appeared to be lying on the cobbled street with the handlebar of the bicycle lodged somewhere in his kidneys.
‘Aurelio Zen, Polizia di Stato,’ the man snapped, displaying some sort of identification card. ‘You’re under arrest for dangerous driving.’
