Vendetta: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (25 page)

It made no sense, no sense at all, although Zen had a tantalising feeling that the solution was actually right under his nose, simple and obvious. But that was no concern of his. His reason for visiting the villa had nothing to do with viewing the scene of the crime. Nevertheless, for the sake of appearances he asked Bini to show him the cellar before they went outside. The caretaker duly levered up a brass ring and lifted the hatch to reveal a set of worn stone steps leading down.

“It’s not locked?” Zen asked.

Bini clicked a switch on the wall and a neon light flickered into life below. “There are no locks here,” he said. “If you keep your jewels in a safe, you don’t need to lock the jewel case.”

The cellar was large, stretching the entire width of the original farm. Zen sniffed the air.

“Nice and fresh down here.”

The caretaker indicated a narrow fissure at floor level.

“The air comes in there. They used to cure cheeses and hams here in the old days. Even in the summer it stays cool.”

Zen nodded. This constant temperature was no doubt why Oscar had used the place as a storage vault. But now the twin neon bars illuminated an empty expanse of whitewashed walls and bare stone floor. There was nothing to show that this had once been the nerve centre of an operation which had apparently succeeded in fulfilling the alchemists’ dreams of turning dross into gold.

Once they got above ground again, the caretaker led Zen out on to the terrace.

“The swimming pool,” he announced.

Wild follies and outrageous whims die with the outsized ego that created them, and their corpses make depressing viewing. Even drained and boarded over, a swimming pool is still a swimming pool, but Oscar’s designer beach was an all-or-nothing affair. Once the plug had been pulled and the machinery turned off, it stood revealed for what it was: a tacky, pretentious monstrosity. The transplanted sand was dirty and threadbare, the rocks showed their cement joints, and the mystery of those azure depths laid bare as a coat of blue paint applied to the vast concrete pit, where the body of some small animal lay drowned in a shrinking puddle of water.

“We can get everything going again,” Bini assured his visitor. “It’s all set up.”

But he sounded unconvinced. Even if some crazy foreigner did buy the place, nothing would ever be the same again. Villa Burolo was not a house, it was a performance. Now that the star was dead, it would always be a flop.

“Well, it certainly seems to be a very pleasant and impressive property,” Zen remarked with a suitably Swiss lack of enthusiasm. “I’ll just have a look around the grounds on my own.”

Bini turned back into the house, clearly relieved that his ordeal was over.

When he had gone, Zen strolled slowly along the terrace, rounding the corner of the original farmhouse. Despite the encircling wire, there was no sense of being in a guarded enclosure, for the boundaries of the property had been cleverly situated so as to be invisible from the villa. The view was extensive, ranging from the sea across the wide valley he had crossed in the Mercedes, to the mountain slopes where the village was just visible as an intrusive smudge.

When he reached the dining-room window, Zen looked round to ensure that he was unobserved, then crouched down to examine the slight discolouration of the flagstones marking the spot where Rita Burolo had bled to death. Another thing that made no sense, he thought. None of the investigators had commented on the remarkable fact that the murderer had made no attempt to find out whether Signora Burolo was dead or not. As it happened, she had gone into an irreversible coma by the time she was found, but how was the killer to know that? A few minutes either way, a stronger constitution or a lesser loss of blood, and the Burolo case would have been solved before it began.

Nor was this the only instance in which the killer had displayed a most unprofessional carelessness. For although Oscar Burolo had concealed video equipment about the villa to tape the compromising material he stored in the vault, he camouflaged these clandestine operations behind a very public obsession with recording poolside frolics and informal dinner parties. Thus no attempt had been made to disguise the large video camera mounted on its tripod in the corner of the dining room. No glimpse of the murderer had been recorded on the tape, but how could he have been absolutely sure of that? And if there was even the slightest possibility that some damning clue had been captured by the camera, why had the assassin made no attempt to remove or destroy the tape?

Once again, Zen felt his reason swamped by the sense of something grossly abnormal about the Burolo case. What did this almost supernatural indifference indicate if not the killer’s knowledge that he was
invulnerable?
There was no need for him to take precautions. The efforts of the police and judiciary were as vain as Oscar Burolo’s expensive security measures. The murderer could not be caught any more than he could be stopped.

He walked back along the terrace to the west face of the villa. Beyond the sad ruins of the pool, the land sloped steeply upward toward the lurid forest he had noticed earlier. The trees were conifers of some kind, packed together in a tight, orderly mass that looked like a reforestation project. Beyond them lay the main mountain range, a mass of shattered granite briefly interrupted by a smooth grey wall, presumably a dam. Zen continued along the terrace to the wall which concealed the service block and helicopter pad, a half-hearted imitation of the traditional pasture enclosures, higher and with the stones cemented together. On the other side was a neat kitchen garden with a system of channels to carry water to the growing vegetables from the hosepipe connected to an outside tap. Zen took a path leading uphill toward a group of low concrete huts about fifty metres away from the house and partially concealed by a row of cherry trees.

As he passed the line of trees, a low growl made the air vibrate with a melancholy resonance that brought Zen out in gooseflesh. There were three huts, one small one and two larger structures which backed on to an enclosure of heavy-duty mesh fencing. Both of these had metal doors mounted on runners. One of them was slightly open, and it was from here that the noise had come.

The inside of the hut was in complete darkness. A hot, acrid odour filled the air. Something rustled restlessly in the further reaches of the dark. As Zen’s eyes gradually adjusted, he made out a figure bending over a heap of some sort on the ground. The resonant vibration thrilled the air again, like a giant breathing stertorously in a drunken slumber. The bending figure suddenly whirled round, as though caught in some guilty act.

“Who are you?”

Zen advanced a step or two into the hut.

“Stay there!”

The man walked toward him with swift, light strides. He was short and stocky, with wiry black hair and the face of a pugnacious gnome.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking over the house.”

“This is not the house.”

Zen switched on his fatuous Swiss smile. “Looking over the property, I should have said.”

The man was staring at him with an air of deep suspicion. “Who are you?” he repeated.

Zen held out his hand, which was ignored. “Reto Gurtner.”

“You’re Italian?”

“Swiss.”

The low growl sounded out again. Inside the hut, its weight of emotion seemed even greater, an expression of grief and loss that was almost unbearable.

“What was that noise?” Zen asked with polite curiosity.

The man continued to eye him with open hostility, as though trying to stare him down.

“A lion,” he said at last.

“Ah, a lion.”

Zen’s tone remained conversational, as though lions were an amenity without which no home was complete.

“Where in Switzerland?” the man demanded.

He was wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt. A large hunting knife in a leather sheath was attached to his belt. His bare arms were hairy and muscular. A long white scar ran in a straight line from just below his right elbow to his wrist.

“From Zurich,” Zen replied.

“You want to buy the house?”

“Not personally. I am here on behalf of a client.”

Before the man could speak again, something inconceivably huge and fast passed overhead, blocking out the light for an instant like a rapid eclipse of the sun. An instant later there was an earth-shattering noise, as if a tall stone column had collapsed on top of the hut. Even after the moment had passed, the rumbles and echoes continued to reverberate in the walls and ground for several seconds.

The lion-keeper was on his knees at the far end of the hut, bent over the heap on the ground. Zen started toward him, his shoes rustling on the straw underfoot.

“Stay there!” the man shouted.

Zen stopped. He looked around the hot, fetid gloom of the hut. Two pitchforks, some large plastic buckets, a shovel, and lengths of rope and chain were strewn about the floor in disorder. A coiled whip and a pump-action shotgun hung from nails hammered into the roof supports.

“What was that?” Zen called.

The man got to his feet.

“The air force. They come here to practise flying low over the mountains. When Signor Burolo was …”

He broke off.

“Yes?” Zen prompted.

“They didn’t bother us then.”

I bet they didn’t, thought Zen. A few phone calls and a hefty contribution to the officers’ mess fund would have seen to that.

The low melancholy growl was repeated once more, a feeble echo of the jet’s brief uproar like a child softly imitating a word it does not understand.

“It does not sound happy, the lion,” Zen observed.

“It is dying.”

“Of what?”

“Of old age.”

“The planes disturb it?”

“Strangers, too.”

The man’s tone was uncompromising. Zen pointed to the scar on his forearm.

“But it is still dangerous, I see.”

The man brushed past him toward the door.

“A very neat job, though,” Zen commented, following him out. “More like a knife or a bullet than claws.”

“You know a lot about lions?” the keeper demanded sarcastically as they emerged into the brilliant sunlight and pure air.

“Only what I read in the papers.”

The man walked over to the smaller hut and brought out a plastic bucket filled with a bloody mixture of hearts, lungs, and intestines.

“I notice that you keep a shotgun in there,” Zen pursued, “so I assume there is reason for fear.”

The man regarded him with blank eyes. “There is always reason for fear when you are dealing with creatures to whom killing comes naturally.”

Seeing him standing there in open defiance, the bucket of guts in his hand, ready to feed the great beasts that he alone could manage, it was easy to see Furio Padedda’s attraction for a certain type of woman. It was to these concrete huts that Rita Burolo had come to disport herself with the lion-keeper, unaware that their antics were being recorded by the infrared video equipment her husband had rigged up under the roof.

How had Oscar felt, viewing those tapes which—according to gloating sources in the investigating magistrate’s office—made hard-core porno videos look tame by comparison? Had his motive for making them been simple voyeurism or was he intending to blackmail his wife? Was she independently wealthy? Had he hoped in this way to stave off bankruptcy until his threats forced
l’onorevole
to intervene in his favour? Supposing he had mentioned the existence of the tapes to her and she had passed on the information to her lover. To a proud and fiery Sardinian, the fact that his amorous exploits had been recorded for posterity might well have seemed a sufficient justification for murder. Or rather, Zen corrected himself as he left the Villa Burolo, it could easily be made to appear that it had. Which was all that concerned him, after all.

Zen stared blearily at his watch, eventually deciphering the time as twenty to nine. The bar had emptied appreciably as the men drifted home to eat the meals their wives and mothers had shopped for that morning. Zen pushed his chair back, rose unsteadily, and walked over to the counter where the burly proprietor was rinsing glasses.

“When can I get something to eat?”

Reto Gurtner would have phrased the question more politely, but he had stayed behind at the table.

“Tomorrow,” the proprietor replied without looking up from his work.

“How do you mean, tomorrow?”

“Out of season the restaurant’s only open for Sunday lunch.”

“You didn’t tell me that!”

“You didn’t ask.”

Zen turned away with a muttered obscenity.

“There’s a pizzeria down the street,” the proprietor added grudgingly.

Zen pushed through the glass doors of the hotel. The piazza was deserted and silent. As he passed the Mercedes, Zen patted it like a faithful, friendly pet, a reassuring presence in this alien place. A roll of thunder sounded out, closer yet still quiet, a massively restrained gesture.

In the corner of the piazza stood the village’s only public phone box, a high-tech glass booth perched there as if it had just landed from outer space. Zen eyed it wistfully, but the risk was just too great. Tania would have had time to think things over by now. Supposing she was offhand or indifferent, a cold compensation for her excessive warmth the day before? He would have to deal with that eventually, of course, but not now, not here with all the other problems he had.

The village was as still and dead as a ghost town. Zen shambled along, looking for the pizzeria. All of a sudden he stopped in his tracks, then whirled around wildly, scanning the empty street behind him. No one. What had it been? A noise? Or just drunken fancy? “They must have stumbled on something they weren’t supposed to see,” the Carabiniere had said of the murdered couple in the camper. “It can happen to anyone, round here. All you need is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

As the alcoholic mists in Zen’s mind cleared for a moment, he had an image of a child scurrying along an alleyway running parallel to the main street, appearing at intervals in the dark passages with steps leading up. A child playing hide and seek in the darkness. But had he imagined it or had he really caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye on the extreme periphery of vision, something seen but not registered until now?