Authors: Michael Dibdin
‘How was it?’ he asked mindlessly, as she took a place beside him at the bar.
‘It was the mass,’ she replied. ‘What did you expect?’
She ordered an orange soda from the barman and turned to Zen with an unsympathetic eye.
‘Well?’ she enquired pointedly.
‘What? Oh, well, it’s nothing really. It’s just …’
He broke off.
‘You see, I’m investigating the Vincenzo case, as you know, and … Well, it’s beginning to look as though an arrest is imminent. Probably two, in fact. They’re local and have a teenage daughter who lives with them. The press has gone quiet about the case recently, for lack of new developments, but when this gets out, they’re going to be back in force. I don’t want the girl to be hounded, but there’s nothing I can do officially. So I was just wondering whether by any chance you might know someone in Turin who has a spare room where she could hide out.’
‘For how long?’
‘Just a few days, a week at most. Until the media lose interest again. It won’t take long.’
Carla Arduini finished her drink and set the glass down with a decisive clack.
‘She can stay with me. I’m going back today anyway.’
Zen grasped her arm.
‘You’re leaving?’
She shrugged dismissively.
‘Why not? There doesn’t seem much point in staying here, does there? I did what I came to do, or rather failed to do it. It was a silly idea anyway. It’s time to put it behind me and get on with my life.’
Now she was avoiding his eyes, looking studiously out of the window at the passers-by in the piazza. Zen took a deep breath.
‘About that blood test …’
Carla laughed briefly.
‘Oh, that! Send me the results when you get them. It’ll take months, probably. Anyway, it’s of no importance.’
Zen removed his hand from her arm.
‘Of no importance? But I thought …’
‘What did you think?’
‘I thought …’ He paused lamely. ‘I thought it was.’
‘I used to think so, too, but I’ve changed my mind. Now it just seems absurd. I mean, here am I, spending a fortune staying for a week at a hotel in a dreary provincial town, and all for what? Because my mother told me a story about having slept with some policeman the year before I was born!’
She sniffed scornfully.
‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but when I started looking into this business, I kept running into the names of men my mother had slept with in the years before I was born – and after, for that matter. Not that I blame her for that! God knows, she had little enough else in the way of pleasure. But the chances of you being my real father, Dottor Zen, are frankly next to nothing. She couldn’t even get the story straight herself towards the end. Half the time it was you, and half the time it was Paolo or Piero or Pietro. But I had no way of tracing them, so when you showed up here …’
She took a two-thousand lire note out of her purse and dropped it on the bar.
‘Send this Lisa to the hotel. I’ll be glad to take care of her for you. Consider it a way of apologizing for the distress I’ve caused you. And don’t worry, I won’t bother you again.’
With a vague, mislaid smile, she turned and walked out.
‘Carla! Wait!’
He caught up with her in the piazza.
‘Listen, I …’
‘Look,
dottore
, I don’t want to seem rude, but will you please leave me alone? Every time I see you, I’m reminded of what a fool I’ve made of myself. In a few hours I’ll be gone, and I promise that you’ll never hear from me again. All right?’
‘No! No, it’s not all right!’
She looked at him with astonishment.
‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’ she demanded angrily.
They were speaking so animatedly that a small crowd had formed around them, but Zen had eyes for no one but Carla Arduini.
‘You didn’t make a fool of yourself,’ he said.
She smiled scornfully.
‘Very kind, I’m sure. I happen to disagree.’
‘Those tests you mentioned? They’re already complete.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Lucchese’s brother runs the clinic where they’re done. He put our samples to the top of the pile and faxed the results through this morning. I’ve seen them, Carla. I’ll show them to you if you want, not that they’ll make any sense to you, or to me for that matter. But the prince explained them all to me, and the result is perfectly clear.’
They stared at each other with silent intensity.
‘Well?’ Carla burst out at last.
‘I’m afraid it may be bad news. But there’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘Tell me!’
Zen sighed and looked away.
‘The tests prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are indeed my daughter.’
Carla Arduini took a step back.
‘You’re joking.’
‘Do you think I would joke about something as important as this?’
He shook his head sadly.
‘You’re stuck with me, Carla. I may not be much of a father, but you’ll have to make the best of it, because I’m the only one you’ll ever have.’
There was a seemingly endless silence. Then Carla Arduini rushed at Zen and flung her arms around his neck.
‘Daddy!’
‘It wasn’t in vain!’ he murmured in her ear. ‘Everything your mother went through, everything you’ve been through. None of it was in vain.’
She broke the embrace and stepped back, biting her lip.
‘I’d given up hope.’
‘So had I.’
A ripple of polite applause recalled them to the realities of the situation. The assembled onlookers beamed their good wishes and congratulations, then tactfully dispersed.
‘Now then!’ said Zen decisively. ‘I’ve still got work to do, but I think this calls for a glass of
spumante
, don’t you?’
‘It won’t work,’ said Tullio Legna, chopping his right hand through the air as though to finish off this sickly idea once and for all.
Zen shrugged.
‘It might. And if it doesn’t, we still have the evidence to fall back on. But that will take longer. I think we should go in for the kill.’
‘You really believe the evidence will stand up?’
‘Why not? Minot may be an odd type in many ways, but he’s not stupid. He knows we can prove or disprove his assertions, and he knows we will. He has nothing to gain by lying, and everything to lose.’
The Alba police chief raised his eyebrows and emitted an expressive sigh.
‘He’s not the only one,
dottore
!’
Zen frowned.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nanni Morino gave me an account of the methods you’ve been using so far,’ Legna continued in a bureaucratic tone. ‘I must say that I find them highly irregular, to say the least. I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, Dottor Zen. Maybe your approach is standard procedure at Criminalpol. I don’t know anything about that. All I know is that you’ve been interviewing individuals without a lawyer present, telling each a different story, and then doing a deal with one of them in exchange for a piece of supposed evidence whose value and authenticity we have had no chance to evaluate. And now you tell me that you’re going to invent a pack of lies and use them to get a confession out of someone who wasn’t even a suspect until now!’
‘He wasn’t, was he? Which is somewhat surprising, given the fact that he had both a strong motive and a perfect opportunity.’
‘I wasn’t aware of that!’ Tullio Legna insisted with undisguised anger.
‘Maybe that’s why I’m handling this case and not you, Dottor Legna,’ remarked Zen sweetly.
He turned to Dario.
‘Go and find Morino, then bring the Faigano brothers up here.’
The patrolman glanced at Tullio Legna, who stalked out of the room. Dario followed. Left alone, Zen wandered over to the window, collecting his thoughts for the coming performance. He had no doubts about the course he was taking. The encounter with Carla, and its unexpected but wholly logical conclusion, seemed to have clarified his mind like a breeze carrying off mist. He had been sleepwalking for too long. Now he was awake once more, responsible for his actions, and confident about the result.
Nevertheless, despite the bravado with which he had answered Tullio Legna, he was well aware that it could all go very wrong. He felt like a sculptor confronting a block of expensive marble, sheer to all appearances but with a slight internal flaw. If he selected an instrument of the correct size and shape, and applied it with precisely the proper force at exactly the right place, the whole mass would open up and reveal its inner essence to him, and he could finish his work with ease. But if he miscalculated, he would be left with a botched lump of masonry which no amount of subsequent labour could ever repair.
He turned round expectantly as the door opened, but it was only Nanni Morino, shuffling in with his notepad and a sheepish expression.
‘Ah, it’s you!’ Zen remarked coldly. ‘I gather you’ve been ratting on me to the chief.’
‘I was just keeping him informed about developments in the case,’ Morino replied with righteous embarrassment. ‘He has a right to know what’s going on in the section under his command.’
‘That’s all right. In your position, I’d probably have done the same. There’s no reason why you should risk your own career just to follow me.’
‘On the contrary,
dottore
,’ Morino protested, as Dario ushered in the Faigano brothers, ‘I’d follow you anywhere!’
In a barely audible undertone, he added, ‘If only out of morbid curiosity.’
‘Ah, there you are!’ Aurelio Zen exclaimed, going round the desk to greet the new arrivals, his right hand held out. With expressions of mild bemusement, both brothers automatically responded. Maurizio’s hand was given a perfunctory shake, but Zen grasped Gianni’s and brought it up to his face for closer examination.
‘One of your nails is missing,’ he observed.
Gianni snatched his hand away.
‘So?’
‘How did it happen?’
‘Working the land isn’t a desk job,’ Gianni returned with a touch of contempt.
‘Do you remember the occasion?’
Gianni looked at his brother, frowning.
‘It was when we were bottling last year’s wine,’ Maurizio prompted. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘Oh, that’s right! I’d forgotten.’
‘It’s common enough round here,’ Maurizio explained. ‘And that’s not counting the ones from the war. The Fascists used to specialize in that, when they ran out of more inventive ideas. They used to do it properly, with pliers. And slowly. Half the men round here are still missing a few. Once the roots get ripped out, the nail never grows back.’
He glanced keenly at Zen, as though suddenly recalling the situation.
‘But why are you asking about this?’
For a moment, Aurelio Zen looked puzzled. Then he waved at Nanni Morino, who was assiduously noting all this down.
‘Just “morbid curiosity”, to quote my colleague. I’ll only need to keep you a moment, and then Dario will take you downstairs and do the necessary for your release.’
The brothers glanced at each other.
‘Release?’ queried Gianni.
‘Yes, it’s all over. Once I got the confession, of course …’
‘Minot has confessed?’
Zen nodded briskly.
‘And that’s why I need your help. It was off the record, you see. No lawyers present, no witnesses, no notes taken. The cunning bastard waited until everyone else had left, and then confessed to the whole thing!’
Zen burst into laughter.
‘I’ve never seen anything quite like it!’ he exclaimed in a tone of aggrieved admiration. ‘This Minot is certainly quite a character. He even told me why he’d done it, but as a challenge. “Now try and prove it!” he said. “You won’t be able to. There isn’t a scrap of evidence. You’ll never be able to take me to court, much less get a conviction.”’
Gianni Faigano nodded sourly.
‘That sounds like Minot all right. But where do we come in?’
‘Because I accept his challenge, and to win I need some background information.’
‘About what?’ asked Maurizio.
Zen gave a declamatory sigh.
‘When I searched your house yesterday, following your arrest, I noticed an old photograph on display. It was a portrait of Chiara Cravioli, later Signora Vincenzo.’
The silence which followed had a new quality, like a fresh sheet of sandpaper replacing one worn smooth.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ snapped Gianni.
‘Well, you see, Minot claims that she’s the reason he murdered Aldo.’
‘That’s absurd! He didn’t even know Chiara!’
Zen gestured for calm.
‘One thing at a time, Signor Faigano, if you please. I’m sorry, it’s my fault. I’m telling the story back to front. It’s been a long night for all of us, and I’m getting confused. Let’s begin at the beginning.’
He sat down, looking over some notes scribbled hastily on the back of various envelopes and departmental circulars.
‘Yes, here we are. According to Minot, he and this Chiara Cravioli were lovers long ago …’
Gianni Faigano took a step forward.
‘That’s bullshit!’
‘Oh!’ called Dario from the door.
His weapon was cocked and levelled. Maurizio gripped his brother’s arm and drew him back to his place.
‘As I was saying,’ Zen continued in the same bored tone, ‘Minot claims that he and Chiara used to be lovers. In itself, this is of no particular interest. But he also claims that the relationship did not cease once
la
Cravioli
married Aldo Vincenzo. In fact, he went on to say, Manlio Vincenzo is not Aldo’s son at all, but the fruit of Minot’s loins.’
Gianni Faigano stepped forward again, unable to control himself.
‘That’s a damned lie! A filthy blasphemy!’
Zen gestured helplessly, as though to apologize for an unintentional gaffe.
‘I’m only telling you what Minot said. And the reason I’m mentioning it is in the hope that you might be able to corroborate his story. It would give me a motive, you see, which is the one thing I don’t have at present. Once I’ve got that, I’ll call a lawyer and formally charge Minot with murder.’
He got to his feet, shaking his head.
‘But first I need a credible reason for him to have killed Aldo. If the victim first stole his girlfriend and then claimed Minot’s only son as his own, it all makes sense. Even the timing fits in. According to Minot, he’d wanted to get even with Aldo for years, but Chiara had forbidden it. She was apparently a conventional person, in that sense at least, and even though Vincenzo allegedly raped her to force the marriage …’