Dead Lagoon - 4 (42 page)

‘The body was washed up at the Lido this morning,’ said Cristiana. ‘Nando is devastated. Tommaso was one of his closest and most trusted associates. They met just last night. Nando even walked part of the way home with him.’

She looked at Zen.

‘When did you see him?’

He turned to the window.

‘Oh … before that.’

There was a long silence.

‘What happened?’ he muttered almost inaudibly.

‘It looks like suicide. The body was fully clothed, and there was no sign of violence. But Nando says he seemed perfectly normal last night. He even made a joke about you.’

She shivered.

‘What could have suddenly driven him to do something like that? And what was he doing on the Lido in the first place? It doesn’t make sense!’

There was a long, sombre silence. Cristiana looked at Zen, who was still facing the window.

‘I thought he was supposed to be a friend of yours,’ she remarked sharply.

‘He used to be.’

‘Well you don’t seem to care particularly that he’s dead!’

This time the silence was even more oppressive.

‘I’m not sure I really know you,’ Cristiana muttered. ‘I’m not sure I really like you.’

Zen turned slowly and looked at her.

‘Neither am I,’ he said.

They exchanged a long glance, then Cristiana abruptly turned and walked out. The front door slammed shut. Zen stood gazing down at the quadrilateral of sunlight on the floor. It had moved slightly to the left, and was shorter and squatter than before. Zen stepped carefully around it and picked up the phone.

‘Mamma? At last! It’s me, Aurelio. I’ll be home this evening. In time for dinner, yes. Can you get Maria Grazia to make something really nice? I haven’t eaten properly all week. Rosalba? I ate there the first day, but since then … She’s fine. Who? Cristiana? She’s the daughter, isn’t she? I met her briefly. Anyway, how are you? Good. Are they? Glad to hear it. I’m looking forward to seeing you both this evening. You and Tania. What? What? Moved out? Where’s she gone? Why did she leave? I thought you two were getting on well together …’

He sat down on the sofa, the receiver clamped to his ear.

‘Me? What did I do? I wasn’t even there!’

His face gradually grew hard as he listened.

‘Sorry, Mamma, but I’ve got to go or I’ll miss my train,’ he said in a different voice altogether. ‘Goodbye. Yes. Goodbye. And you. Goodbye.’

He got out his crumpled pack of
Nazionali
and sat there smoking one cigarette after another until the packet was empty and the ashtray full. Then he put on his coat and hat, closed his suitcase, and left.

Out of the sun, the air was still chilly. Zen walked the length of the triangular
campo
without looking back, hefting his suitcase in his right hand, his shoulders hunched and his head lowered. As he rounded the corner into the long alley leading to the Lista di Spagna he collided with someone coming the other way. Zen muttered an apology and was about to pass by when the man spoke his name. Zen set down the heavy suitcase and looked at him, taking in the greasy grey hair, the shabby suit, the tartan carpet slippers, the non descript mutt trailing along at the end of a rope.

‘Daniele,’ he murmured without enthusiasm. ‘You must excuse me. I’m late for my train.’

‘You’re leaving?’

‘As you see.’

‘So soon?’

Zen picked up his suitcase again.

‘I should never have come in the first place.’

Daniele Trevisan scuttled up to him with amazing rapidity and grasped him by the arm.

‘You can’t go yet!’

Zen looked down at the elderly face, as shrivelled as an old nut.

‘Ever since I saw you last week, I’ve been wondering whether or not I should say anything,’ Trevisan went on hesitantly. ‘God only knows when you’ll be back, and whether I’ll still be alive.’

He shook his head helplessly.

‘I just don’t know what to do, Angelo.’

Catching sight of Zen’s expression, the old man hastily corrected himself.

‘Aurelio, I mean.’

Zen tried to tug himself free of the man’s fierce grip.

‘Let me go!’

‘Stop! Wait!’

Zen turned on him with a menacing glare.

‘Why can’t you leave me in peace?’ he shouted.

The old man stared back at him mutely.

‘What do you want with me?’ demanded Zen.

‘Why, nothing! I just …’

An ingratiating smile appeared on Daniele Trevisan’s face.

‘I only wanted to offer you a glass at Claudio’s new bar. Come on, Aurelio! You can’t leave Venice without having a last
ombra
.’

Zen looked at him.

‘Please!’ the old man added unexpectedly.

Zen glanced at his watch.

‘We’ll have to hurry. I’ve got a train to catch.’

When they reached the bar, Zen found to his surprise that he recognized it. He had been taken there many times by his mother to watch television, at a time when only the super-rich could afford a set of their own. By stretching his credit to the limit, a
barista
in the Lista di Spagna had managed to acquire a set and thus transform what had previously been a perfectly ordinary wineshop, frequented solely by elderly males, into the social hub of the community, where men, women and children from all over the neighbourhood flocked to watch Mike Bongiorno’s quiz show ‘Double or Quits?’ – having paid the exorbitant surcharge on drinks ordered during the transmission.

The television, in a more modern incarnation, stood on the same shelf at the end of the room, showing an American police series crudely dubbed into Italian, but the old magic had fled. The bar was empty but for scattered groups of foreign tourists who looked askance as Daniele Trevisan sidled up to the bar dragging his flea-ridden dog. Nor did Claudio seem particularly pleased to see them. He looked blank when Daniele introduced Zen.

‘Angelo’s son,’ prompted Daniele Trevisan.

Claudio shrugged.

‘You drink too much, Daniele.’

He set two glasses on the bar and filled them with the contents of an open bottle.

‘Take it down the back,’ he told them. ‘You’ll scare away the tourists.’

They made their way to a dim, grubby area at the rear of the premises, stocked with damaged chairs and tables and crates of empty bottles.

‘It was just like meeting you today,’ Daniele said once they’d sat down. ‘I’d popped round to see if Ada was all right, when suddenly there he was, walking along the canal towards me.’

He risked a smile.

‘
He
wasn’t watching where he was going either. Must run in the family.’

The old man bit his lip.

‘I knew at once it was Angelo.’

Zen’s arm jerked convulsively, knocking his wine over. The glass rolled across the table and fell to the floor, bursting like a bulb. A moment later Claudio appeared, marching towards them with a furious expression.

‘Right, that’s it! Out!’

Zen got out his wallet and handed over a two-thousand-lire note.

‘It was an accident. That should cover it.’

‘I don’t want your money! I want you out of here! I’m not running a refuge for drunken louts!’

‘No,’ Zen retorted, ‘you’re running a cheap scam whose sole purpose is to rip off tourists who don’t know any better by selling them shitty sandwiches at ten times the proper price and wine that tastes like bat piss.’

The barman looked as though he were about to have a fit. He kicked away Trevisan’s dog, which was sniffing at the seat of his pants.

‘If you don’t get out of here right now I’m calling the cops!’

Zen flipped his wallet over, revealing his police identity card.

‘They’re already here.’

The barman’s shoulders slumped. He turned away, hastily palming the banknote. Zen plucked it back again.

‘People might think I was trying to bribe you,’ he smiled sweetly.

‘For a lousy two thousand lire?’

Zen shrugged and handed the note back.

‘You’re right. I could buy four like you for a thousand.’

Daniele Trevisan burst into malicious cackles as Claudio retreated.

‘That’s the way to treat them!’

The spilt wine had formed a puddle which was inching imperceptibly across the table towards Zen. He dipped his finger into it, creating a canal through which the liquid emptied itself safely over the opposite edge.

‘You were saying something about having seen my father,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s impossible, of course.’

His eyes averted, Daniele Trevisan shook his head.

‘It was him all right. Two years ago. Two and a half actually. July, it was. The city was sweltering.’

His eyes became vague and distant.

‘I spoke to him in dialect. At first he didn’t seem to understand, and answered me in some strange language. Then he began to speak, haltingly at first, like a child.’

Zen stood up.

‘You’re either mad or mischievous. Either way, I’m not going to listen to this pack of lies a moment longer.’

He picked up his suitcase and buttoned his coat, glancing from time to time at Trevisan. The old man did not look at him. After a moment Zen sat down again.

‘You’ve got ten minutes,’ he said coldly.

Trevisan stared into his wineglass as though it were a clairvoyant’s crystal ball.

‘He asked about you and your mother. I explained that you’d both moved to Rome. “We’ve already been there,” he said. He was with a group of Polish tourists on a cultural and religious trip. The borders had just been opened and they were taking advantage of the new freedom to visit Italy and see the Polish pope. “Don’t tell me you’ve turned religious, Angelo!” I said, but he said it was just that the tours organized by the Church were the cheapest. They’d driven all the way from some city with a name I forget.’

‘This is absurd!’ exclaimed Zen. ‘What has Poland got to do with it?’

‘That’s where he lives.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

Daniele Trevisan consulted his wineglass once more.

‘It seems he deserted from the army in the Ukraine. He and a couple of other lads from the city decided they’d had enough. Do you remember Fabio Fois and what’s-his-name, the elder of the two Vivian boys? I suppose you’d have been too young.’

He sighed.

‘They didn’t make it, of course. The other two died. Angelo was taken in by a peasant woman whose menfolk had all been killed. He stayed there, lying low, helping to work the farm, until the war was over. By that time the woman was pregnant. Later on they moved to the city. The Communists were in control and the borders had been sealed. That’s when Angelo learned that he was in Poland. And there he had to stay.’

Zen smiled in a superior way.

‘Even supposing this preposterous story were true, as a foreign national he’d only have needed to show his documents and they would have had to let him out.’

‘He’d destroyed his Italian papers when he was on the run, for fear of being shot as a deserter. He was passing as one of the woman’s dead brothers.’

Zen slapped his palm on the surface of the table.

‘He could have gone to the Italian embassy in Warsaw! He was a displaced person, for God’s sake, a refugee. He could have come home any time he wanted to!’

Daniele Trevisan looked at Zen for the first time.

‘Perhaps he didn’t want to.’

Their eyes clashed briefly.

‘I don’t believe any of this,’ Zen muttered in an undertone. ‘You’re making it up.’

‘It’s true, Aurelio. I swear it.’

‘So where is this person now?’

The old man shrugged.

‘Back in Poland, I suppose. The tour group was leaving that afternoon. I asked if he’d be coming back, but he said no. “It’s been too long,” he said. “It’s another life.” Then I asked him if he was going to …’

He broke off, fiddling with the stem of the glass.

‘Going to what?’ demanded Zen.

Trevisan gestured awkwardly.

‘If he was going to get in touch with you and your mother. But he said he wouldn’t. “They think I’m dead,” he told me. “It would only cause trouble.” I tried to argue with him, but he wouldn’t listen. He made me swear on my mother’s grave never to tell you or Giustiniana anything about this. And I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen you …’

He looked at Zen and nodded.

‘You’re right. You shouldn’t have come.’

Zen held the old man’s eyes for a long time. Then he picked up his suitcase and walked out. The street was packed with people heading to and from the station. Zen was immediately caught up in a large group calling animatedly to each other in some language which was opaque to him. A counter-current flowed back along the other side of the street. Where the two met there was an area of turbulence and confusion, while the drag caused by the shops and houses to either side created a further set of whorls and eddies. Several times a blockage momentarily slowed the progress of the human current, with a consequent backing-up and an increase in pressure which made everything move faster when the obstruction was finally swept aside.

At length the walls fell back. The crowd lost its cohesion and impetus, spreading out across the courtyard in front of the station. People wandered about, seemingly at random, looking bewildered and lost. Somewhere in the distance a massive, muffled voice read out a succession of unintelligible announcements. A gypsy beggar hunched over an accordion played a snatch of a military march over and over and over again. An excess of sunlight had blinded the clock. A child cried.

‘Excuse me!’

A middle-aged couple, oddly but neatly dressed, stood beaming at Zen. The man said something incomprehensible. Zen shrugged and shook his head. The man repeated the phrase more slowly, pointing to a map in the guidebook he was holding. Zen understood only that he was asking directions to somewhere in English. He closed his eyes and tried to summon up a few words in that language.

‘I’m sorry,’ he replied with an apologetic smile. ‘I’m a stranger here myself.’

The Zen Series from Michael Dibdin

Ratking

Zen is unexpectedly transferred to Perugia to take over an explosive kidnapping case involving one of Italy’s most powerful families.