Dead Lagoon - 4 (23 page)

‘Sounds good. When are you free?’

‘Let me just check the computer … The earliest slot would appear to be tomorrow afternoon.’

‘What time?’

‘The flight leaves at … Ah, we can drop the charade.
La signora
has gone to powder her butt. Where were we?’

‘When are you free tomorrow?’

‘I’ve promised to take Mamma shopping in the morning, and we’re having people to lunch. Say between two and three?’

Zen sighed.

‘That seems like a long way off.’

‘It’s the best I can do.’

He pulled himself together.

‘Of course. I just can’t wait to see you again.’

‘Till tomorrow.’

She hung up. Zen relinquished the receiver more gradually, loath to slip back into the mental miasma he could already feel rising to claim him.

The next thing of which he was distinctly aware was the arrival of Aldo Valentini, a cigar between his lips and an air of infinite self-satisfaction on his glowing features.

‘Ah, the pleasures of food!’ the Ferrarese exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘What is sex compared to a great lunch? Am I glad Gavagnin took that Sfriso case away from me! What’s up with our Enzo anyway? I just passed him on the stairs and he looked through me as though I were a ghost.’

‘A well-fed ghost, evidently,’ commented Zen, who had eaten nothing but a mass-produced pastry during his trip to the mainland.

‘You have no idea, Aurelio! Those lads at the Gritti really know their stuff, I can tell you.’

Zen looked suitably envious.

‘The Gritti Palace? Did you win the pools?’

Valentini smiled.

‘In a manner of speaking.’

He flopped down in a chair and put his feet up on Zen’s desk.

‘I have just seen the new, clean, honest, dynamic Italy of the nineties, Aurelio, and it works! In fact it works just like the old one.’

He puffed on his cigar a moment.

‘The only difference is that the payment’s in kind these days. The way things are, no one can afford to leave a paper trail. Even cash is getting too risky now that the banks are starting to co-operate with the judges. You can’t draw a thousand lire from your account without ending up on a database, but in a few hours the meal I just consumed will be just a glorious memory and another gob of sewage in some
pozzo nero
.’

‘I see. Who was your host?’

‘A local citizen who has an interest in the outcome, or the lack of it, of a case I’m presently working on.’

Zen frowned.

‘You could have been seen together.’

‘So what? In order to express the nature of his interest in greater detail, the citizen in question proposed that we meet for lunch. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Management are always going on about the need to forge closer links with the general public and thus promote a softer, more caring image of the force.’

Zen yawned.

‘I think I’d better go home and get some sleep. I’ve got to work this evening.’

‘How’s the Zulian business coming along?’ demanded Valentini, heading for his cubicle.

‘Well, I haven’t been offered any free lunches so far.’

Valentini laughed.

‘On the other hand,’ Zen continued as he headed for the door, ‘I have a feeling that things might be about to get interesting in other ways.’

*

‘Three tens.’

‘King and queen beats that.’

‘And ace wins.’

‘Shit.’

The four figures sat huddled around a low table. The flame of a wax nightlight flickered in the tangled currents of their breath, thickly visible in the unheated air. The only sounds were the flutter of the cards being shuffled and dealt, and the soft patter of wavelets against the hull. Once more the players bent forward, trying to make out what kind of hands they were holding without tilting their cards too far towards the light and the eyes of the others.

‘Chief?’

‘I’ll take two.’

‘Discard.’

‘Pass.’

‘Oh shit!’

‘There’s a lady present, Martufò.’

‘And the worst of it is she keeps winning.’

For a few minutes there was only the slap of cards on the table.

‘I’m out,’ called a man’s voice.

‘
Dottore
?’

‘Me too.’

‘Nunziata?’

‘Three jacks.’

‘Not again!’

‘I always said it was a mistake letting women join the force,’ commented a man with a strong Southern accent.

The speaker yawned loudly.

‘Christ, but it’s cold!’ someone else remarked.

‘Keep your voice down,’ murmured the tallest figure, opening the curtain over the cabin window a crack and looking out.

‘What time is it, anyway?’ demanded the man on his left.

‘Just gone ten,’ said a woman’s voice.

A pulsing orange light suddenly appeared in the corner of the confined space. The tall man reached over and threw a switch.

‘Yes?’

‘Contact,’ said a tinny voice.

‘How many?’

‘Two.’

‘Don’t let them spot you.’

He switched off the radio and blew out the candle.

‘Is it them, chief?’ asked the man to his left.

‘How the fuck do I know?’ the tall man snapped back. ‘Total silence from now on. If anyone screws this up, they’ll be on foot patrol in Palermo next week.’

‘Is that a promise?’ muttered the man with the Southern accent.

‘Shut up!’

The four sat perfectly still in the darkness, listening to the play of the water beneath them. Only after some time, and then very gradually, did another set of sounds become apparent, a different and more purposeful rhythm complicating the gentle ostinato to which they had grown so accustomed that they had almost ceased to be aware of it. The disturbance gradually approached and passed by. A moment later it ceased altogether. There was chink of metal, several thuds, a grunt. Then silence fell.

‘Let’s go!’

There was a flurry of movement in the darkness. Someone slipped outside, making the boat rock. Then they were mobile, gliding silently across the darkened water towards a wall towering over them like the face of a cliff. A distant streetlamp, hidden from where they had been moored, cast its pallid flickers on the scene. By its light they could make out Mino Martufò crouched on the foredeck, hauling in the sodden hempen rope which he had secured to a mooring post on the other bank of the canal on their arrival three hours earlier.

As the unmarked motor launch came alongside, its bow nudging the inflatable rubber dinghy tied up by the crumbling steps greasy with weed and mud, the Sicilian leapt ashore and made fast to a rusty ring-bolt in the wall. He then held the launch alongside the steps while Zen and Pia Nunziata disembarked. Bettino Todesco drew his service revolver and covered Zen as he mounted the steps and pushed open the massive water-door at the top.

‘Wait here,’ he whispered to the others.

Once inside, the darkness was complete. The few feeble glimmers which filtered in through the doorway were at once swallowed up by a resonant, cavernous reservoir of darkness. Zen stepped cautiously forward, following the wall with the tips of his fingers until he reached the stairs. He glanced back at Todesco and Nunziata, framed in the open doorway. Overcoming a strong sense of reluctance, Zen turned away and started up the stone staircase.

There was not a sound to be heard in the house. When Zen reached the hallway running the length of the first floor, he paused uncertainly. The light was better here, a dimness informed by faint reflections of a streetlight somewhere outside. He turned left and began to climb the next flight of stairs. This had been forbidden territory when he had visited the house as a child. An absolute distinction existed between the show spaces of the
piano nobile
and the private rooms on the floor above. The young Aurelio had had the run of the former, but the latter were taboo, and even now he had to overcome a sense of dread at venturing up the staircase mimicking the public one he had just climbed, but on a smaller, more intimate scale.

He had gone about halfway up when a sound in the yawning darkness above brought him to an abrupt halt.
Sounds
, rather: shifting, superimposed layers of keening edged at moments with shrill, grating shrieks. Zen felt his skin and scalp bristle all over. A shiver passed down his spine. Then a long, lingering scream split the night like lightning.

The sheer intensity of fear in it acted as a trigger, releasing Zen from his stupor and sending him dashing up the shallow steps, scrabbling for the rail to regain his balance, tumbling clumsily out on to the landing where the stairs ended. The cacophony was louder here, the strands more distinct: a continuous groaning and wailing punctuated by dull blows and panic-stricken howls of terror. Groping his way towards the source of these sounds, Zen blundered into something hard and hollow which resounded loudly from the contact.

The din inside at once faltered, then broke off altogether, dying away in a succession of grunts and heavy breathing. Then a panel opened in the darkness, a rectangle flickering and shimmering with a ghostly luminescence. Zen rushed forward and abruptly collided with a figure which appeared in the doorway. It gave a startled cry and tried to push past. When Zen held on, they both went tumbling to the floor.

A woman started screaming for help. Another figure burst out of the dimly lit room. It rushed at Zen, and a sharp blow struck his head. He twisted away, still grappling with the first assailant, and was gratified to feel the next kick cushioned by that body. He looked up at the figure standing over them, and gasped. Above him stood a skeleton, the skull grinning horribly, the bony structure glowing white in the darkness.

The sight momentarily paralysed him, and by the time he had recovered the figure with whom he had been grappling had wriggled away and sprung to its feet. It towered above him, lanky and loose-limbed in a flowing white Pierrot costume and an expressionless mask whose rounded features were as smooth as alabaster. Zen crawled backwards, trying to get to his feet, as the clown and the skeleton closed in.

A shot rang out somewhere below, incredibly loud, precise and authoritative. There was an answering scream and a series of shouts, then two more shots. Leaping nimbly over Zen, the skeleton disappeared from view. Zen twisted round just in time to see the clown’s foot lash out at him. He took the blow on his chest and hung on, wrenching the foot around, but it came off in his hand. He looked again, and found he was holding a Nike trainer.

The clown staggered away through the doorway. Zen struggled to his feet and followed, ignoring the shouts echoing up the stairwell. The door slammed shut in his face, but he barged it open again with his shoulder and stumbled into the room. He took in at a glance the elderly woman in bed, her face a mask of terror, and the figure running towards the open window on the other side of the room.

‘Police!’ he yelled. ‘Freeze!’

The clown sprang on to a dressing-table and jumped out through the window. A moment later there came a loud splash, a succession of confused voices, then an incredibly brilliant light. Zen ran over to the window and looked out. The searchlight on the forward deck of the motor launch was trained down at the canal, pinpointing the flowing white costume spreading like a stain on the water. The figure had been trying to swim away, but now it turned, blinded by the light, and caught hold of the boathook which Mino Martufò was holding out from the stern of the launch.

Zen closed the window and turned round. Ada Zulian had sat up in bed, the covers clutched around her, staring indignantly at him as though
he
were the intruder.

‘It’s all right,
contessa,
’ Zen told her. ‘You’re safe now. We’ve got the bastards.’

He hurried to the door and downstairs, turning on the lights as he went. When he reached the
portego
he almost tripped over someone lying sprawled on the marble paving. He stopped, gazing in horror at the blue police uniform, the long hair, the puddle of blood all around. Pia Nunziata opened her eyes and attempted a pallid smile.

‘It isn’t as bad as it looks,’ she muttered.

Zen knelt down beside her.

‘I had no idea they’d be armed,’ he said helplessly.

‘They weren’t.’

‘But …’

‘It was Bettino.’

‘
What?
’

The policewoman’s attempted shrug turned into a wince and a groan.

‘It was an accident. He didn’t know I was following him. We heard the racket upstairs and came running. I happened to bump into him, and he must have thought …’

Zen shook his head wearily.

‘Where are you hit?’

‘My arm. The upper part, where it’s soft. It’s just a flesh wound. I don’t think there’s any danger.’

She glanced down at the fingers of her left hand, clutched tightly around the sleeve of her uniform jacket.

‘It’s starting to hurt, though.’

Zen straightened up.

‘We’ll get you to hospital right away.’

‘The worst of it is, the bastard got away.’

‘Todesco?’

‘The man in the skeleton costume. Bettino was so concerned about me that he didn’t even try and stop him. Martufò was looking after the canal side, but the man got out by the street door and ran off.’

Zen nodded.

‘It’s all right, I’d thought of that. Now then, can you walk or shall I get a stretcher?’

Grimacing with the pain, Pia Nunziata got to her feet. Zen took her elbow to help her up.

‘Not that fucking arm!’ she screamed.

She looked at him.

‘Sir.’

Downstairs, the doors at either end of the
andron
had both been thrown open and a gentle current of air flowed through the echoey space, emptying out the odours of mould and decay. As Zen and Pia Nunziata made their way slowly down the staircase, two patrolmen in uniform entered through the street door, escorting a lanky figure in handcuffs dressed in a skintight black costume with the outline of a skeleton superimposed in white fluorescent paint.

‘Sons of whores!’ the young man shouted angrily. ‘This is an outrage!’

‘Load him into the boat,’ Zen told the policemen.

‘We’ve committed no crime!’ the skeleton protested. ‘We’re members of the family!’

‘Wait!’ called Zen. ‘On second thoughts, dump him over there in the corner for now. We’ve got to get our colleague to Emergency, and we can’t hang about waiting for an ambulance.’

He pointed to a massive iron hook protruding from the stonework.

‘If he gives you any trouble, suspend him by his cuffs from that for a while.’

‘You’ll regret this, you heap of shit!’ shrieked the skeleton.

Taking no notice of this outburst, Aurelio Zen led the injured policewoman across the worn marble slabs and out of the waterdoor of Palazzo Zulian.

Gobs of slush fell in slanting lines through the air, tautening at moments to rain which drummed on umbrellas and slapped against skin, colder and harder than the sleet. The crowds in the narrow streets manoeuvred like craft in a crowded channel, tilting or raising their umbrellas to avoid fouling or collision. As if all this were not bad enough, hooligan gusts of wind played rough and tumble with anyone they caught, slitting open seams and sneaking in at cuff and collar until your clothes felt wetter in than out.

Despite the weather – to say nothing of a night both shorter and a good deal more stressful than the one he had spent with Cristiana – Aurelio Zen entered the Questura the next morning with the air of a conquering hero. Not only had he demonstrated in the teeth of professional and public scepticism that the case on which he was engaged existed independently of the workings of Ada Zulian’s florid imagination. He had also solved it, and in the most dramatic and absolute fashion, capturing the persons responsible in the act and at the scene of the crime. It was a coup such as every official dreamed of, an unqualified success, secure from any of the stratagems by which judges and juries contrive to frustrate the police and deny them their rightful triumphs.

This euphoria lasted all of two minutes, such being the time it took Zen to climb the stairs to his office, where he was greeted by a familiar figure, beaming jovially and exuding an air of collusive bonhomie.

‘Good morning,
dottore
. I wasn’t hoping to see you again so soon. God, it’s cold! There’s snow on the way, if you ask me.’

Zen eyed Carlo Berengo Gorin with open hostility.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Same as yesterday! I’d like to be more original, but I’m only a hireling, when all’s said and done.’

Zen stared at the lawyer truculently. Then he turned and slammed the door shut behind him.

‘Another visit? This must be costing Enzo Gavagnin a fortune.’

Gorin frowned.

‘I think you must have …’

‘How much do you charge to take on a case like this,
avvocato
?’ Zen demanded, hanging his rain-spattered overcoat on the stand. ‘Whatever it is, a type like Giulio Bon doesn’t have that kind of money to throw around. He’d rather sweat it out for the duration and then tell me to fuck off when my time’s up. He knows the rules. He’d no sooner hire a lawyer to spring him from a routine questioning than he’d hire a limousine to take him to the airport. And if by any chance he did, he’d go for the cut-price end of the market.’

He sneered at Gorin as he brushed past and sat down at his desk. Success in the Zulian case had made him confident.

‘I worked out that much at the time,’ he said, lighting his first cigarette of the day. ‘And when I saw you leaving Gavagnin’s office, and remembered how he’d carried on when Bon arrived, I knew that he must have summoned you. Nice gesture for an old friend, I thought. Shitty thing to do to a colleague, but nothing more to it than that.’

‘Excuse me, but …’

‘But then I realized that what’s true for Bon is true for Gavagnin. If he’d called a lawyer, why the most expensive in the city? It’s a routine case, after all.’

Zen gazed intently at Gorin.

‘Or perhaps it isn’t. And perhaps you have special rates for certain … friends.’

The lawyer stroked his beard, in which bright beads of water were nesting.

‘I believe we’re at cross-purposes,
dottore,
’ he said with an embarrassed smile. ‘When I said that the purpose of my visit was the same as yesterday, I was speaking generically.’

Zen shook a parcel of ash off his cigarette into the metal wastebin.

‘Then perhaps you’d be good enough to get to the point,
avvocato
. I have work to do.’

‘Perhaps not as much as you think,
dottore
.’

‘Meaning what,
avvocato
?’

Gorin shrugged and heaved a long sigh.

‘You’re going to have to let them go, you know.’

Zen nodded lightly, as if this were something he had foreseen and which made perfect sense.

‘Let them go,’ he repeated.

‘I’m afraid so.’

There was another pause.

‘Who are we talking about?’ Zen inquired urbanely.

Carlo Berengo Gorin looked taken aback for a moment.

‘Why, the clients of mine you arrested last night! The Ardit brothers.’

Zen felt himself starting to hyperventilate. He drew largely on his cigarette.

‘Ridiculous!’ he snapped.

‘What’s ridiculous?’

Feeling the need to assert himself, Zen stood up and walked over to the window. In the canal below, a collapsed red umbrella edged past on the incoming tide. Zen turned to face Gorin.

‘The men in question were arrested last night at Palazzo Zulian, which they had entered illicitly, in the act of carrying out an assault on the owner. The timely intervention of the police, led personally by myself, prevented their criminal designs and the pair were arrested
in flagrante delicto
. The entire matter has been communicated to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is in the process of opening a dossier on the case. The matter is therefore in the hands of the judiciary, and I fail to see how I can be of any assistance to you.’