Vendetta: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (32 page)

The bare soil, soft with composted droppings, squelched underfoot. It was the sound that could give him away, he realised. In the deathly hush beneath the trees, the least noise would betray his position, and it was impossible to move without making a lot of noise. But by the same token, Spadola could only hear Zen if he himself stopped moving, in which case he would fall ever further behind, the sounds would grow fainter and his bearings on their source less precise. So Zen’s strategy was to plough on without once stopping or looking back and then, once he was deep inside the forest, stop and stay absolutely still. Then the tables would be turned. Deprived of any clue as to Zen’s whereabouts, Spadola could only beat about at random, while the noise he made doing so would give Zen ample warning of his approach. If necessary, he could simply repeat the process until darkness fell. The advantage now lay with him.

The floor of the forest sloped gently to the east, following the contours of the invisible mountainside. Zen pushed on, his arms held up to protect his face from the dead twigs sticking out from the tree trunks. Once he stumbled on a root surfacing like a monstrous worm and fell against a broken branch that laid his forehead open. But he felt nothing until he stopped, satisfied that he had gone far enough. Surrendering to his exhaustion, Zen stretched out on the ground and closed his eyes.

The noises woke him, crashing sounds close at hand, their source invisible in the eerie gloom. He looked round wildly, forgetting for a merciful moment where he was. Then he saw the line of scuffed footmarks running back across the undulating surface and the dangling branches he had broken in his reckless flight, and he understood. So, far from vanishing into the trackless wastes of the forest, he had left a trail a child could have followed. But the creature following him was no child, and it was almost upon him.

He knew this was the end. Physically exhausted by his ordeal, weakened by hunger, thirst, and loss of blood, this final blow had crippled his morale as well. Further resistance was futile. Nothing he had done since leaving the village had made the slightest difference to the outcome. He might just as well have ordered a last drink and sat in the bar waiting to die. Yet to his disgust, for it seemed a kind of weakness, a cowardice, he was unable to let things take their course even now. Instead he must stagger on through that sunken landscape, that lumber room of dead growth, without direction or purpose, out of control to the last.

In this frame of mind, he was incapable of surprise, even when he stumbled across the path weaving through the forest like a road across the bed of a flooded valley. The trodden surface showed signs of recent use, no doubt by animals, though there were no signs of any droppings. In one direction it ran downhill, presumably leading out of the lower flank of the forest. Zen turned the other way. Encroaching branches were already broken off, and his own footsteps were invisible in the general disturbance of the forest floor. If Spadola went the wrong way when he reached the path, Zen would have gained ample time to find a secure sanctuary. Hope teased his heart, banishing the deathly calm of his fatalistic resignation.

The path wound uphill in a lazily purposeful way that lulled Zen’s attention, until he suddenly found himself standing on the brink of a deep chasm in the forest floor, scanning the trough of darkness in front of him. He could see nothing: no path, no ground, no trees. It was as if the world ended there.

After standing there indecisively for some moments, he realised the ravine offered the perfect hiding place he had been seeking, if he could manage to scramble down the precipitous slope below him. Nevertheless, he had to overcome a strong reluctance to descend into that black hole. It was not the dark he should be afraid of but Spadola. He lowered himself onto a rocky outcrop and started to clamber down.

At first the descent was easier than he had imagined, with numerous ledges and projections. But the further down he went, the fainter grew the glimmers of light from the surface far above, until at length he could hardly make out his next foothold. The idea of losing his footing and plunging off into nothingness made his palms sweat and his limbs shake in a way that greatly increased the chances of this happening. The only measure of how deep the chasm was came from the falling rocks he dislodged. Gradually the clattering became briefer and less resonant, until he sensed rather than saw that he had reached the bottom.

As his pupils dilated fully, he could just make out the hunched shapes of boulders all around and suddenly realised that he was standing in the channel cut by the river which had flowed down from the lake above before the dam was built. The huge rocks littering its bed would have been washed down in the former torrent’s spectacular seasonal surges.

When he heard the scurry of falling stones behind him, Zen’s first thought was that the dam had given way and the black tide, unpenned, was surging toward him, sweeping away everything in its path. Then he realised the sound had come from above.

Frantically he began to pick his way down the riverbed, crawling round and over the shattered lumps of granite, desperately trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the killer on his trail. As soon as the noises of Spadola’s descent ceased, Zen would go to ground in some obscure nook or cranny. It would take an army weeks to search that chaotic maze.

But to his dismay, the channel ended almost immediately, widening out into a circular gully closed off by a wall of dull white rock rounded like the end of a bath. The foliage above was thinned out by this space where nothing grew, allowing a trace more light to filter down to the depths. Zen gazed at the freakish rock formation surrounding him. He did not understand what could have caused it, but one thing was clear. The wall of smooth white rock was at least ten metres high and absolutely sheer. Zen couldn’t possibly climb it, and with Spadola hard on his heels he couldn’t turn back. He had fallen into a perfect natural trap, a killing ground from which there was no exit.

The sound of tumbling rocks announced the approach of the hunter. With a weary slackness of heart, as though performing a duty for the sake of appearances, Zen knelt and squeezed himself into a narrow crevice underneath a tilting boulder. As soon as Spadola reached the end of the gully, he would realise that Zen could not have climbed out and must therefore be hiding nearby. He would flush him out almost at once. This time it really was the end. There was nothing to do but wait. He lay absolutely still, as though he were part of the rock pressing in on him.

“Well, fuck me!”

Zen felt so lonely and scared that the words, the first he had heard since leaving the village, brought tears to his eyes. He was suddenly desperate to live, terrified of death, of extinction, of the unknown. How precious were the most banal moments of everyday life, precisely because they were banal!

A mighty roar scoured the enclosed confines of the gully. As the shot echoed away, Spadola’s peals of manic laughter could be heard.

“Come on out, Zen! The game’s over. Time to pay up.”

The voice was close by, although Zen could see nothing but a jumble of rocks.

“Are you going to come out and die like a man, or do you want to play hide-and-seek? It’s up to you, but if you piss me about I might just decide to kill you a little more slowly. Maybe a little shot in the balls, for openers. I’m not a vindictive man, but there are limits to my patience.”

Like rats leaving a doomed ship, all Zen’s faculties seemed to have fled the body wedged in its rocky tomb. He was incapable of movement, speech, or thought, as good as dead already.

Spadola laughed. “Ah, so there you are! Decided to spare me the trouble, have you? Very wise.”

Zen still couldn’t see Spadola, but somehow he had been spotted. The anomaly didn’t bother him. It was perfectly consistent with everything else that had happened. Footsteps approached. Zen tried to think of something significant in his last moments and failed. After all the ballyhoo, it looked as though death was going to prove a disappointment.

Something stirred the air close to his face. Less than a metre away, close enough to touch, a boot hit the ground and a trousered leg swished past.

“There’s no point in trying to hide,” Spadola shouted, his voice echoing slightly. “I can still see you. Let’s just get it over with, shall we? It’s been fun, but …”

There was a loud gunshot, followed by a scream of rage and fury. Then two more shots rang out simultaneously, one deafeningly close to Zen, the other a repetition of the first. Pellets bounced and rattled against the rocks, ricocheting about like hailstones.

It seemed impossible that the silence could ever recover from such a savage violation, but before long the echoes died away as though nothing had happened. Zen had no idea what
had
happened, so he waited, sampling the silence before emerging from his hiding place. He found Spadola almost immediately. His body was flung backward across the rocks, a limp, discarded carapace. Something had scooped a raw crater out of his belly, around which circles of lesser destruction spread out like ripples on a pond. The shotgun lay close by, wedged between two rocks.

Zen searched dispassionately through the dead man’s pockets until he found his lighter, then sat down on a rock and lit a cigarette. From this perch he could see the end of the gully. Beneath the wall of white rock the ground opened up to form a cavernous sluice funnelling downward, the edges clean and rounded. As he sat there, the cigarette smoldering peacefully between his fingers, Zen recalled what Turiddu had said about the soft rocks and the hard rocks and realised that the white surface closing off the gully was the limestone that overlaid the granite at this point, rubbed to a smooth curve by the whirling water before it disappeared underground into the pool of darkness beneath, which was now the main entrance to the cave system underlying the whole area.

After that, things started to fall into place almost faster than he could keep up with them. Before the cigarette had burned out, the whole picture was clear in his mind: Spadola’s death, the murders at the Villa Burolo, the villagers’ hostility, everything. He’d had all the clues in his hand for some time, but he hadn’t been able to put them together until now.

As he got up to start making his way back to civilisation, he caught a glimpse of something glinting in the darkness below. Like the immortal he had once seemed to be, playing God with the video of the Burolo killings, Zen made his way down as though immune to danger. Just inside the mouth of the cave he found the other shotgun, a double-barrel pump action Remington. The rock nearby was heavily stained with sticky, drying blood. It was merely a confirmation of what Zen already knew when, by the flickering flame of his cigarette lighter, he read the inscription engraved on the barrel of the gun:
To Oscar, Christmas 1979, from his loving wife Rita.

How wrong I was! And how right! Yes, a death was needed, and he brought it. But how did I fail to see that the person whose death would set me free was me?

The darkness is closing in, touching me, taking me like a lover. There was blood then, too. He seemed to expect it, but I was shocked. No one had told me anything. I thought I was going to die. I didn’t, though, not that time. But now my long labour is finally accomplished, and the death I have been carrying all these years is about to be delivered. A little more pain and everything will be over. There’s nothing more to do, nothing to be done.

And then? I’ve tried to be a good girl, but trying is not enough. Everything depends on his mercy or his inattention. It’s surprising what you can get away with sometimes, then at others he’ll beat you viciously for nothing at all. So in the end justice is done. Who can say? Will my sufferings count for anything, my good deeds? Will I be judged worthy of forgiveness this time? Will I be judged worthy of love?

Rome

FRIDAY: 1120–2045

“H
E THREATENED TO KILL ME
?”

“Oh, yes! Me too, for that matter. But it’s only talk. He has to call his mother if he finds a spider in the bath. Now if
she
’d said it we might have something to worry about.”

The cafe on Via Veneto accurately reflected the faded glories of the street itself. The mellow tones of marble, leather, and wood predominated. Dim lighting discreetly revealed the understated splendours of an establishment so prestigious it had no need to put on a show. Its famous name appeared everywhere, on the cups and saucers, the spoons, the sugar bowl and ashtray, the peach-coloured napkins and tablecloth and the staff’s azure jackets. The waiters conducted themselves like family retainers, studiously polite yet avoiding any hint of familiarity. A sumptuous calm reigned.

The cafe was too far from the Viminal to be one of the regular haunts of Ministry personnel, who in any case would have balked at paying four thousand lire for a cup of coffee they could get elsewhere for eight hundred with a hefty dose of Roman pandemonium thrown in for free. This was one reason why Zen had invited Tania there for their first meeting since his return from Sardinia. The other was a desire he still didn’t completely understand, to do things differently, to break free of old habits, to change his life, himself.