Vendetta: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (12 page)

The woman burst into hoots of laughter. A phone started ringing shrilly in the lodge. Throwing them both a look of deep disgust, the porter went to answer it.

“Yes? Yes, dottore. Yes, dottore. No, he just got here. Very good, dottore. Right away.”

Emerging from his lodge, the porter jerked his thumb at a flight of stairs opposite. “First floor. They’re expecting you.”

“And the Youth Section?” the young woman asked.

“How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t know!”

The staircase was a genteel cascade of indolently curving marble which made the one at the Ministry look both vulgar and cheap. As Zen reached the first-floor landing, a figure he had taken to be a statue detached itself from the niche where it had been standing and walked toward him. The man had an air of having been assembled like Frankenstein’s monster from a set of parts, each of which might have looked quite all right in another context but which didn’t get along at all well together. He stopped some distance away, his gaze running over Zen’s clothing.

“I’m not carrying one,” Zen told him. “Never do, in fact.”

The man looked at him as though he had spoken in a foreign language.

“You see, it’s no use carrying a gun unless you’re prepared to use it,” Zen went on discursively. “If you’re not, it just makes matters worse. It gives you a false sense of security and makes everyone else nervous. So you’re better off without it, really.”

The man turned away expressionlessly for a moment, then turned his back.

“This way.”

He led Zen along a corridor which at first sight appeared to extend further than the length of the building. This illusion was explained when it became clear that the two men walking toward them were in fact their own reflections in the huge mirror that covered the end wall. The corridor was lit at intervals by tall windows that opened to the courtyard. Opposite each window a double door of polished walnut gleamed sweetly in the mellow light.

Zen’s escort knocked at one of the doors and stood listening intently, holding the wrought silver handle.

“Come!” a distant voice instructed.

The room was long and relatively narrow. One wall was covered by an enormous tapestry so faded that it was impossible to make out anything except a general impression of a hunting scene. Facing this stood a glass-fronted bookcase where an array of massive tomes lay slumbering in a manner that suggested they had not been disturbed for some considerable time.

At the far end of the room, a young man was sitting at an antique desk in front of a window that reached all the way up to the distant ceiling. As Zen came in, he put down the sheaf of typed pages he had been perusing and walked round the desk, his hand held out in greeting.

“Good morning, dottore. So glad that you felt able to see your way clear to, ah …”

He was in his early thirties, slim and refined, with thin straight lips, delicate features, and eyes that goggled slightly, as though they were perpetually astonished by what they saw. His fastidious gestures and diffident manner gave him the air of a
fin de siècle
aesthete rather than a political animal.

He waved Zen toward a chair made of thin struts of some precious wood with a woven cane seat. It looked extremely valuable and horribly fragile. Zen lowered himself onto it apprehensively. The young man returned to the other side of the desk where he remained standing for a moment with hands outspread like a priest at the altar.

“First of all, dottore, let me express on behalf of … the interest and, ah … that’s to say, the really quite extraordinary excitement aroused by your, ah …”

He picked up the pages he had been reading and let them fall back to the desk again as a knock resounded in the cavernous space behind.

“Come!” the young man enunciated.

A waiter appeared carrying a tray with two coffee cups.

“Ah, yes. I took the liberty of, ah …”

He waggled his forefinger at the two cups.

“And which one is …?”

“With the red rim,” the waiter told him.

The young man sighed expressively as the door closed again.

“Unfortunately, caffeine for me …”

Zen took the remaining cup of espresso and unwrapped the two lumps of sugar, studying the Interesting Facts About the World of Nature printed on the wrapper while he waited for his host to proceed.

“As you are no doubt aware, dottore, this has been a sad and difficult time for us. Naturally we already knew what your report makes abundantly clear, namely that the evidence against Renato Favelloni is both flimsy and entirely circumstantial. There is not the slightest question that his innocence would eventually be established by due process of law.”

Zen noted the conditional as the coffee seared its way down his throat.

“But by then, alas, the damage will have been done!” the young man continued. “If mud is thrown as viciously as it has been and will be, some of it is bound to stick. Not just to Favelloni himself, but to all those who were in any way associated with him or who had occasion to, ah, call on his services at some time. This is the problem we face, dottore. I trust you will not judge me indiscreet if I add that it is one we were beginning to despair of solving. Imagine, then, the emotions elicited by your report! So much hope! So many interesting new perpsectives! ‘Light at the end of the tunnel,’ as
l’onorevole
saw fit to put it.”

Zen set his empty cup back in its saucer on the leather surface of the desk. “My report was merely a summary of the investigations carried out by others.”

“Exactly! That was precisely its strength. If you had been one of our, ah, contacts at the Ministry, your findings would have excited considerably less interest. To be perfectly frank, we have been let down before by people who promised us this, that, and the other, and then couldn’t deliver. Why, only a few days ago we asked our man there to obtain a copy of the video tape showing the tragic events at the Villa Burolo. A simple enough request, you would think, but even that proved beyond the powers of the individual in question. Nor was this the first time that he had disappointed us. So we felt it was time to bring in someone fresh, someone with the proper qualifications. Someone with a track record in this sort of work. And I must say that so far we have had no reason to regret our decision. Of course, the real test is still to come, but already we have been very favourably impressed by the way in which your report both exposed the inherent weaknesses of the case against Favelloni and revealed the existence of various equally possible scenarios which for purely political reasons have never been properly investigated.”

The young man stood quite still for a moment, his slender fingers steepled as though in prayer.

“The task we now face is to ensure that we do not suffer as much damage from this innocent man being brought to trial and acquitted as we would do if he were really guilty. In a word, this show trial of Renato Favelloni—and by implication,
l’onorevole
himself—engineered by our enemies, must be blocked before it starts. Your report makes it perfectly clear that the evidence against Favelloni has been cobbled together from a mass of disjointed and unrelated fragments. Those same fragments, with a little initiative and enterprise, could be used to make an even more convincing case against one of the other suspects you mention.”

Perched precariously on the low, fragile chair, Zen felt like a spectator in the front row of the stalls trying to make out what was happening on stage. The young man’s expression seemed to suggest that the next move was up to Zen, but he was unwilling to make it until he had a clearer idea of what was involved.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked finally.

The young man impatiently waved assent.

“Which of the other suspects did you have in mind?” Zen murmured casually as he lit up.

“Well, it seems to us that there are a number of avenues which might be explored with profit.”

“For example?”

“Well, Burolo’s son, for example.”

“But he was in Boston at the time.”

“He could have hired someone.”

“He wouldn’t have known how. Anyway, sons don’t go around putting out contracts on their fathers because they want them to study law instead of music.”

The young man acknowledged the point with a prolonged blink. “I agree that such a hypothesis would have needed a good deal of work before it became credible, but the possibility remains open. In fact, however, Enzo Burolo has close links with one of our allies in the government, so it would in any case have been inopportune to pursue the matter. I cited it merely as one example among many. Another, which appears to us considerably more fruitful, is the fellow Burolo employed to look after those absurd lions of his.”

Zen breathed out a cloud of smoke.

“Pizzoni? He had an alibi too.”

“Yes, he had an alibi. And what does that mean? That half a dozen of the local peasantry have been bribed or bullied to lie about seeing him in the bar that evening.”

“Why should anyone want to protect Pizzoni? He was a nobody, an outsider.”

The young man leaned forward across the desk. “Supposing that wasn’t the case? Supposing I were to tell you that the man’s real name was not Pizzoni but Padedda and that he was not from the Abruzzi, as his papers claim, but from Sardinia, from a village in the Gennargentu mountains not far from Nuoro. What would you say to that?”

Zen flicked ash into a pewter bowl that might or might not have been intended for this purpose.

“Well, in the first instance I’d want to know why you haven’t informed the authorities investigating the case.”

The young man turned away to face the window. The tall panes of glass were covered with a thick patina of grime which reflected his features clearly. Zen saw him smile, as though at the fatuity of this comment.

“When one’s opponent is cheating, only a fool continues to play by the rules,” he recited quietly, as though quoting. “This piece of information came to light as a result of research carried out privately on our behalf. We know only too well what would happen if we communicated it to the judiciary. The magistrates have decided to charge Favelloni for reasons which have nothing to do with the facts of the case. They aren’t going to review that decision unless some dramatic new development forces them to do so. Isolated, inconvenient facts which do not directly bear on the case they are preparing would simply be swept under the carpet.”

He swung round to confront Zen.

“Rather than squander our advantage in this way, we propose to launch our own initiative, reopening the investigation that was so hastily slammed shut for ill-judged political reasons. And who better to conduct this operation than the man whose incisive and comprehensive review of the case has given us all fresh hope?”

Zen crushed out his cigarette, burning his fingertip on the hot ash.

“In my official capacity?”

“Absolutely, dottore! That’s the whole point. Everything must be open and aboveboard.”

“In that case, I would need a directive from my department.”

“You’ll get one, don’t worry about that! Your orders will be communicated to you in the usual way through the usual channels. The purpose of this briefing is simply and purely to ensure that you understand the situation fully. From the moment you leave here today, you will have no further contact with us. You’ll be posted to Sardinia as a matter of absolute routine. You will visit the scene of the crime, interview witnesses, interrogate suspects. As always, you will naturally have at your disposal the full facilities of the local force. In the course of your investigations you will discover concrete evidence demolishing the lion-keeper Pizzoni’s alibi and linking him to the murder of Oscar Burolo. All this will take no more than a few days at most. You will then submit your findings to the judiciary in the normal way, while we for our part ensure that their implications are not lost on anyone concerned.”

Zen stared across the room at a detail in the corner of the tapestry, showing a nymph taking refuge from the hunters in a grotto.

“Why me?”

The young man’s finely manicured hands spread open in a gesture of benediction.

“As I said, dottore, you have a good track record. Once your accomplishments in the Miletti case had been brought to our attention, well, quite frankly, the facts spoke for themselves.”

Zen gaped at him. “The Miletti case?”

“I’m sure you will recall that your methods attracted, ah, a certain amount of criticism at the time,” the young man remarked with a touch of indulgent jocularity. “I believe that in certain quarters they were even condemned as irregular and improper. What no one could deny was that you got results! The conspiracy against the Miletti family was smashed at a single stroke by your arrest of that foreign woman. Their enemies were completely disconcerted, and by the time they reformed to cope with this unexpected development, the critical moment had passed and it was too late.”

He came round the desk, towering above Zen.

“The parallel with the present case is obvious. Here, too, timing is of the essence. As I say, the truth would in any case emerge in due course, but not before the reputation of, ah, one of our most respected and influential leaders had been foully smeared. We have no intention of allowing that to happen, which is why we are entrusting you with this delicate and critical mission. In short, we’re counting on you to apply in Sardinia the same methods which proved so effective in Perugia.”

Zen said nothing. After a few moments a slight crease appeared on the young man’s brow.

“I need hardly add that a successful outcome to this affair is also in your own best interests. I’m sure you’re only too well aware of how swiftly one’s position in an organisation such as the Ministry can change, often without one even being aware of it. Your triumph in the Miletti case might easily be undermined by those who take, ah, a narrow-minded view of things. The size of the Criminalpol squad is constantly under review, and given the attrition rate among senior police officials in places such as Palermo, the possibility of transfers cannot be ruled out. On the other hand, success in the Burolo case would consolidate your position beyond question.”