Back to Bologna By Michael Dibdin

Synopsis:

When the corpse of the shady industrialist who owns the local football

team is found both shot and stabbed with a Parmesan knife, Italian

police inspector Aurelio Zen is called to Bologna to oversee the

investigation.

Recovering slowly from surgery, and fleeing an equally painful crisis

in his personal life, Zen is only too happy to take on what at first

appears to be a routine and relatively undemanding assignment.

But soon a world-famous university professor is shot with the same gun,

immediately after publicly humiliating Italy's leading celebrity

television chef, and the case intertwined with the fates of an earnest

student of semiotics and a mysterious young immigrant who claims to be

from Ruritania spins out of control, and Zen is in no condition to rise

to the challenge.  There's also a wild card in the pack Tony Speranza,

Bologna's most flamboyant private detective.

Back to Bologna is dazzlingly plotted, features a cast of vivid and

idiosyncratic characters, and along the way delivers both comic and

serious insights into the realities of today's Italy.

by the same author

THE LAST SHERLOCK HOLMES STORY A RICH FULL DEATH

THE TRYST

DIRTY TRICKS

THE DYING OF THE LIGHT

DARK SPECTRE

THANKSGIVING

Aurelio Zen Series

RAT KING VENDETTA

CABAL

DEAD LAGOON COSI FAN TUTTI A LONG FINISH

BLOOD RAIN

AND THEN YOU DIE

MEDUSA

MICHAEL DIBDIN

Back to Bologna faber andfaber

First published in 2005

by Faber and Faber Limited

3 Queen Square London WC1N 3AU

Typeset by Faber and Faber Limited Printed in England by Mackays of

Chatham, plc

All rights reserved Michael Dibdin, 2005

The right of Michael Dibdin to be identified as author of this work has

been asserted in accordance with Section II of the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act 1988

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library isbn

0-571-227759

Askews

10.00

2468 10 97531

To Kathrine

"Someone should kill him."

Bruno didn't reply.

"Well, I don't actually mean that, of course," Nando went on.

"Not literally."

"No."

"As in a knife through the heart."

"For example."

"You were speaking allegorically."

"Er... yes."

"My client's intention in allegedly uttering the phrase "Someone should

kill him" was entirely euphemistic, not to say parabolic'

"Right.  It's just that if the smarmy bastard should happen to drop

dead ..."

"Which God forbid."

'... then that would solve all our problems."

"Says who?  The next one could be even worse."

"Worse than Curti?  You must be joking."

"Plus you're assuming that anyone in his right mind would be prepared

to buy a club where half the players are on a loan or time-share deal

with other teams, and the rest will be sold off at the end of the

season to meet the budgetary shortfall.  It would take years, not to

mention very deep pockets, to turn i rossoblu around."

"All right, so hold the heart attack, cancel the stroke.  Now what? One

more season like this and I'll..."  d

Nando broke off as the car's headlights picked out an amazing pair of

black legs displayed up to the white silk triangle of the crotch.

"Keep your eyes on the road," Bruno grunted sourly.

"Get stuffed."

"By her?  Any time."

"Or him."

"With legs like that, who cares?  God, I'm bored."  ;

Nando turned the radio back up.

'... created several good chances, particularly in the second half, but

this merely served to underline the thing that Bologna fans have been

talking about all season, and in all honesty for many seasons past,

namely the lack of a world-class striker who could capitalise on the

many opportunities going to waste out there and put the ball in the

net.  The service from the wings and the midfield is always reliable

and occasionally inspired, but when it comes to finishing it's the same

sad story week after week..."

Bruno yawned massively.

- "So how are the kids?"  he asked, cutting the volume of the radio to

a plaintive whine.

"All doing well except Carmelo.  He's got some sort of canker on his

ribs just below the wing.  It must be bothering him because he keeps

gnawing at it."

"Can't you put some sort of bandage on it?  Or just tie him up till it

heals?"

They drove past a rare prominence in this two-dimensional landscape,

one of the vast tumuli where the city's garbage was interred, its

burning vapours a perpetual flame of remembrance.

"They go crazy if you try and restrain them.  I'm taking him to the

doctor tomorrow.  He needs to get on a course of antibiotics."

"They say now you shouldn't overdo that stuff.  Lowers your immunity to

flu or something."

"Birds don't get flu."

"Sure they do.  Remember that Chinese chicken scare?"

"Carmelo isn't a chicken."

Nando was a handsome hunk from some village down in the Abruzzi that

Bruno had never heard of, whose latest doomed dream was to get his

hands on the ten-cylinder, 500 bhp, 300 km/h Gallardo coupe which the

Lamborghini company had recently donated to the Polizia di Stato for

mutual public relations purposes.  Built like a wrestler, with a neat

black beard and an amiable but unfocused smile, he had for some reason

married himself off to a skinny, neurotic harridan from Ferrara.

Presumably to compensate for the fact that their marriage was and would

remain childless, the couple kept a total of eleven parrots and

cockatoos in their two-bedroom apartment.  The birds perched on your

shoulder, nibbled your ear and shat on your jacket, and the whole place

stank.  Bruno had been there for dinner.  Once.

He and Nando were on their way back to headquarters after having been

called to the scene of an alleged burglary out in Villanova.  The

complainant was a slyly pugnacious electrical contractor whose wife had

just left him and gone home to live with her mother, taking their

six-year-old son with her.  He claimed to have come home after work to

find the apartment gutted of just about everything except the

plumbed-in washing machine.  Since the sophisticated alarm system that

he had himself installed had failed to respond, then clearly his

estranged spouse, the only other person who knew the deactivation code,

must be the guilty party.

It had taken over three hours to take the man's statement and to

question his neighbours, none of whom had noticed anything amiss. Bruno

more than half suspected that the electrician had cleaned the place out

himself over a period of several days, put the stuff in storage under a

false name, and was now making a formal den uncia to back up an

insurance claim and ensure that the 'thankless bitch' who had made his

life hell got a fair ration in return.  As far as the police were

concerned, it would almost certainly be a total waste of time,

demanding wads of completed forms, written reports and lengthy

communication with the authorities in Ferrara, and never getting

anywhere.

Bruno didn't care, even though being rostered that night had meant

missing Bologna FC's local derby at Ancona, postponed from shortly

before Christmas after the original fixture was cancelled due to a

pitch invasion.  He was bored and hungry and tired and looking forward

to going off shift as soon as they got back to the Questura, but at a

deeper level he was still blissed out, even though months had elapsed

since the miracle had occurred to cut short his 'hardship posting' in

the far north of the country and bring him back to Bologna.  The young

patrolman had stopped going to mass when he left home, but he had

recently paid several visits to San Domenico, his neighbourhood church,

and on each occasion had set ten euros worth of votary tapers burning

before an image of the saint in a chapel where they still provided real

sweet-smelling beeswax candles, not the moulded plastic electric bulbs

that were replacing them these days and which always reminded Bruno of

an amusement arcade.  Maybe it had even been fifteen euros the first

time.  Anyway, at least he'd paid for them, unlike some people, hence

the coin-in-the-slot replicas.  %

On a rational level, of course, he knew precisely how his early return

from the German-speaking Siidtirol region had come about, but this

didn't alter the fact that a miracle of some sort had definitely been

involved.  Consider the odds.  First, this high-flyer from the

Criminalpol squad in Rome named Aurelio Zen gets sent up to Bolzano on

some shady case with important political ramifications the exact nature

of which Bruno had never understood.  Second, he, Bruno, is detailed to

drive the ministerial envoy or whatever he was to a windswept inn on a

God-forsaken pass way up in the mountains on a back road to Cortina.

Third, Bruno himself stuck in said inn for the rest of the day while

his passenger goes off with a young Austrian witness to pursue his

investigations -finally cracks up under the dour cloud of graceless

silence and the glares of loathing lasered his way by the locals, and

finally freaks out completely at a cafe where he and Zen stop on the

way back down the mountain, screaming action ably offensive abuse at

the stocky, stolid Teutonic blockheads who have made his life and those

of all his fellow recruits a misery for months on end.  Fourth, instead

of putting him on a charge for grossly inappropriate behaviour such as

to cause serious unrest in an area notorious for its political

sensitivities and separatist aspirations, this Vice-Questore Zen

offers, without even being asked, to try and have Bruno transferred

back to Bologna immediately, despite the fact that his posting still

had over three months to run.  Fifth, and most unlikely of all, his

benefactor delivers.  Was that a miracle, or what?

The two patrolmen were taking the shortest way back into the city

centre, along the state highway that parallels the A14 autostrada from

Ancona and the Adriatic coast, looping through the unlovely dormitory

suburbs to the north of Bologna to connect with the spinal cord of the

Ai.  There was little traffic about, so when a huge eighteen-wheeler

overtook them aggressively by running the orange signal at an

intersection it made quite a statement.

"Let's take that cocksucker," Nando said, reaching for the siren and

lights.

Bruno laid a hand on his arm.

"Calm down.  There's some German name on the front end and the trailer

has Greek plates.  Probably on his way north from Barl out of his mind

on amphetamines, pulled off the autostrada to have his personal needs

attended to by a colleague of that young lovely we spotted back there.

Okay, he was blatantly disrespecting us, but do you really want to

spend hours of overtime this evening finding an interpreter, phoning

whichever consulate is involved, and then dealing with the lawyer his

firm will hire, not to mention the mountains of paperwork?  We've had

enough aggravation for one day."

"All right, all right!"

Nando sounded peeved.

"You're right about Curti, though," Bruno added in a conciliatory

tone.

"That stinking parmigianol As far as he's concerned, Bologna's just

another glitzy status toy like his yachts and his whores and his villa

in Costa Rica.  The only thing he couldn't buy was his hometown club.

Sorry, Lorenzino, Parma FC is not for sale.  No problem, he just jumps

in his Mercedes, drives a few exits south on the Ai and buys the

red-and-blues instead.  But he doesn't give a damn about us!"

"You're right.  The fans could forgive almost anything else, but

there's no sense of passion, no deep commitment."

"Above all, no money."

Bruno yawned again, staring sightlessly at the neat rows of identical

six-storey apartment blocks now sliding past the car like packaged

goods on a conveyor belt.

"Well, he's got problems in that department."

"How do you mean?"

"This tax scandal'

"Tough.  Why should he pull the club down with him?  And now they say

that half the sponsors are going to pull out to avoid the risk of being

tainted if the case ever comes to court."

"Which it won't."

"Of course not, but that doesn't help us.  The damage has already been

done.  We're just..."

It was then that they saw the car parked at the roadside, its emergency

blinkers flashing.  Nando braked hard, swerving sharply to the right in

a controlled skid, and pulled up behind it.

"Blow job," he said.

"Or breakdown," Bruno replied.  "I'll go and check."

He stepped out into the freezing February night.  For some reason, the

cold seemed colder here than it had in Bolzano, harder and seemingly

obdurate.  Maybe it was the humidity seeping down from the Po delta, he

thought, or more likely the pollution.  Average winter temperatures

were a good ten degrees lower up north, but there the air was bone-dry

and crystal clear.  Still, spring would soon be here, and he was home.

That was all that mattered.

The illegally parked vehicle was a blue Audi A8 luxury saloon.  Bruno

automatically noted down the licence number.  That was about all he

could make out in the glare from the patrol car's headlights behind.

The headrests on the front seats made it impossible to see whether

there was anyone in the car.  Bruno walked round to the passenger side

and peered in through the window, then rapped sharply on the glass.

There seemed to be a man sitting in the driving seat, but he did not

respond and the door was locked.

Bruno was about to return to the patrol car for a torch when the full

beams of a van coming in the other direction bathed the interior of the

Audi in light.  The illumination lasted only a few moments, but it was

enough.  The driver of the Audi was sitting quite still.  The

expression on his face suggested that he was struggling to achieve some

trivial but impossible task, like drawing out the plosive 'p' into a

long dying murmur.

Bruno stepped away from the car and called in on his radio.  He spoke

little but listened intently, shielding his left ear against the roar

of traffic on the banked and cambered curve of the motorway above. When

he returned to the patrol car, his face was blank.

"It's not a Merc," he said, slamming the door shut and shivering.

Nando looked at him askance.

"I know, it's an Audi.  So what?"

"That conversation we just had?"

"About Curti?"

Bruno did not look at him, just sat staring ahead at the blue Audi

saloon.  v

"Just don't mention it, that's all.  When they get here."

"When who gets here?"

Bruno slammed his open palm loudly on the dashboard.

"We never discussed the matter, all right?  We don't give a shit about

football."

"But that's all I do give a shit about!  That and my birds.  Oh, and

Wanda, of course."

"That a new purchase?"

"Wanda's my wife!"

"Oh, right."

Right!  Worked as a PA for some lawyer downtown.  Nando did not deign

to reply.  A heavy silence fell.

"That car is registered in Lorenzo Curti's name," Bruno remarked

quietly.  "There's a man sitting in the driving seat.  It's hard to

tell in this light, but he looks quite a bit like the photographs and

TV footage I've seen of Curti.  Quite tall, slim, a well-trained beard,

salt-and-pepper hair."

"Did you talk to him?  Why did he stop?"

Bruno opened the window a fraction and cocked his head as though

listening.

"You know those knives they use for splitting blocks of Parmesan

cheese?  Well, they're not really knives, more like triangular chisels.

Thick, sharp and very rigid."

"For fuck's sake, Bruno, you're starting to sound like that singing

chef on TV.  What have Parmesan knives to do with anything?"

The man in that car has what looks like one of them sticking out of his

chest.  As in a knife through the heart."

Through the opened window, a loud and rapid chopping sound asserted

itself in the distance.  Bruno opened the door.

"Help me get the flares out and clear a space where the helicopter can

land."

At about the time that the blue Audi A8 covered in a tarpaulin, with

the driver's body still behind the wheel was being winched on to a

low-loader for transport to the police garage, Aurelio Zen and his

phantom double were deep underground somewhere in the wilds of

Tuscany.

It had been a long day, a long month, indeed a long life, thought Zen.

Or maybe it was his double who had these thoughts.  It had never been

established whether he could think, but the question was of no real

importance.  The essential point was that unlike Zen, whom he outwardly

resembled in every last detail, he had no feelings.  Perhaps this

explained why he looked so disgustingly hale and hearty.  There might

be a few silver tints in the lustrous black hair, a heightened tautness

of skin over bone here and there, but these merely added to his general

air of distinction and maturity.  Here, one felt, was a man who had

lived and learned much, and now, in full command of this accumulated

experience, was in charge of his life like an accomplished horseman of

his mount, not striving fretfully to dominate and control, but serenely

conscious of and responsive to every eventuality.

It was difficult not to envy such a man, although he showed no more

hint of possessing any sense of superiority than the Matterhorn or

indeed of having any feelings at all.  To Zen, who nowadays seemed to

have, and indeed to be, nothing but feelings, this was in itself

supremely enviable.  Whether physical (throbs, tingles, twinges) or

mental (despondency, dizziness, dread), feelings had so intensely taken

over his consciousness as to banish even the memory of other

perspectives.  He had once been someone else.  That much seemed

probable, although it could not of course be verified.  The fact that

he no longer was that person, on the other hand, was irrefutable.  All

the personal qualities, opinions, skills, ideas, habits, likes and

dislikes, together with similar data subsumed by the words "I' and 'me'

in short, everything about Zen, except for his feelings had apparently

been transferred as though by electronic download to the Doppelganger

currently visible beyond the darkened carriage window.  As for the

discarded husk and its prospects for the future, the less said the

better.

It had to be admitted that the specialist whom Zen had gone to Rome to

consult had viewed matters rather differently.

"A good recovery," had been his verdict after inspecting the X-rays,

inserting a monocular catheter like some giant tropical worm down Zen's

oesophagus, and vigorously kneading the flesh around the surgical wound

as if intending to barbecue it later.

"But I feel terrible," Zen had murmured in response.

"Are you in pain?"

"It's not so bad now.  But I feel totally exhausted all the time.  The

slightest effort, and I have to lie down for half an hour to recover.

Walking up a flight of stairs leaves me breathless and dizzy.  Even

talking drains me."

His voice dispersed like smoke.

"That's to be expected," the consultant replied with heartless

nonchalance.  "Your system is still healing.  That leaves it less

disposable energy for other tasks."

"I know, but there's more to it than that.  I just don't feel myself

any more.  I don't feel like me.  And perhaps I'm not."

The consultant closed Zen's file with a flourish, then tapped the cover

several times as though to emphasise the professional significance of

this gesture.

"Medically speaking, as I have already explained, the prospects for a

full recovery are excellent.  The duration of that process depends upon

too many variables to quantify with any precision."

He glanced pointedly at the clock, his interest in the case clearly at

an end.  Like a policeman who knows there is nothing more he can

usefully do, thought Zen.  In the past, he too had often made it

brutally clear that he had no time to waste, but now any such attempt

would ring hollow.  The plain fact of the matter was that time to waste

was all he did have.  Perhaps the consultant had allowed himself to be

touched by the expression on his patient's face, or perhaps he was more

subtle than Zen had given him credit for.  At all events, as they shook

hands at the door, he asked an unexpected question.

"Is your wife being supportive?"

Zen did not answer for so long that the silence finally became

embarrassing.  First he had to work out that his 'wife' must be a

reference to Gemma, who had made the appointment for him at a time when

he had felt too weak to deal with hard-bitten Roman personal assistants

with an attitude as long as their credit card statements.  As for the

query itself, that seemed unanswerable.  The story was far too long and

complex to sum up in a few words.  It would take hours to explain even

the bare outlines of the situation.

"Supportive?"  he managed at last.

The consultant clearly wished that he had never spoken.

"Oh, just generally," he said dismissively.  "You've got to remember

that the whole business must have been disturbing for her too.  In fact

it's often harder for family members than for the patient, oddly

enough."

Zen thought, but no words came.

"She's been ..."  he began, and broke off.

The consultant nodded with transparently fake enthusiasm, murmured

"Good, good!"  and walked quickly away.

One feature of Zen's condition that he had not bothered mentioning was

that bits of his body he had never used to think about now demanded his

constant attention, while others, on which he had unconsciously

depended, were now conspicuous by their absence.  It thus came as no

particular surprise that the dull roar in his ears suddenly receded to

a distant murmur, while the shrilling of his mobile phone a moment

later sounded perfectly normal.  He studied the strip of transparent

plastic where the incoming call was identified for the length of five

rings before answering.

I'm on the train.  We were in a tunnel."  ,;

"How did it go?"

It took Zen some time to answer.

"It was a normal tunnel," he said at last.  "Perhaps a bit longer than

most."

"Tell me what the doctor said."

"I just did."

"Are you feeling all right?"

"The doctor says I'm fine.  It's just that I'm in a long tunnel."

"But there's light at the end of it?"

"No, it's dark now.  It must be there too, surely'

A sound like some cushions make when sat upon.

"What time do you get in?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want me to pick you up?  I was thinking of going to a movie."

"Go, go!  I'll take a cab.  Or walk."

"What about dinner?"

"I had a huge lunch and I'm not hungry.  Go to your movie.  I'll let

myself in and ..."

He broke off, realising from the increased background noise and air

pressure that the train was sheathed in yet another tunnel, cutting off

the conversation between him and Signora Santini.

Not that it took much to do that these days.  The cut-offs, drop-outs,

robotic acoustics, phantom voices and dead silences in their

communications were becoming more frequent all the time, as if the

entire network had gone bust and was being progressively run down.  He

could have sworn that her very voice the voice he had fallen in love

with on the beach in Versilia that memorable summer had become harder

and more strident, appending an unspoken 'take it or leave it' edge to

the most commonplace remark.  And he sensed that authentic anger,

concealed like the raw hurt of his own mangled bowels, lay just below

the surface of quotidian banality, securely rooted and feeding, for the

moment, on itself.  In short, the affectionate, calm and dependable

woman he had fallen in love with had grown distant, capricious and

tetchy.  So it seemed, at least, but Zen accepted that he was the least

reliable of witnesses.  A stranger to himself, what could he know of

others?

The earlier mention of food pushed him out of his seat and along the

carriage, grabbing at each seat-back to keep his balance, precarious

everywhere these days.  In the buffet car he bought a plastic-wrapped

ham roll and a can of beer and carried them over to an elbow-high ledge

by one of the windows, where his double was already installed.  Maybe

she had met someone else when he was in hospital.  Or indeed before,

during the period when he had been away on his last case.  Or before

that.  It wasn't unlikely.  Both partners are always at least

subliminally aware of the balance of power in their relationship, and

the fact was that Gemma was younger than him and still very beautiful.

Moreover, he knew that she had enjoyed a certain reputation for

flightiness before they got together.

He munched his way ravenously through the roll, having lied to Gemma

about his 'huge' lunch.  In his present state, Zen could only achieve

anything by breaking the task down into small, achievable subsets and

then concentrating wholly on performing them, to the exclusion of all

else.  Today his chosen assignment had been to get to the consultant in

Rome in time for his appointment.  He had accomplished this, but at the

price of forgetting totally about other matters, such as making an

appearance at the Ministry and possibly seeing his friend Gilberto.  He

had even forgotten to eat.  There were times when he remembered his

period in the clinic almost with nostalgia.  Everything had been so

simple then.  No one expected you to be competent or to take any

initiatives.  On the contrary, such behaviour was frowned upon.  The

staff told you what to do and when to do it, and you obeyed them. There

was no need to plan or act.  In retrospect, it had all been very

relaxing.

He finished the rather dry roll, washing it down with the rest of the

beer.  To be honest, he realised, the visit to the consultant had been

just a pretext.  His real reason for going had simply been to go, to

escape the encircling walls of Lucca.  This massive brick barrier had

once seemed reassuring, but after one month bedridden and another

confined to the apartment in Via del Fosso, it had become as

spiritually suffocating as it literally became in high summer, shutting

out every open perspective and refreshing breeze.  No doubt that was

why he had arrived in Rome hours before his appointment, killing the

time by sitting around in cafes and gazing mindlessly at everyone who

came and went, like a tourist.  And afterwards, instead of taking the

first train north, he wasted further hours at a cinema in a seat so

close to the screen that the movie was an incomprehensible blur.  Now,

though, he was on his way home, this brief spell of parole at an end.

It could be prolonged slightly by deliberately missing the connection

at Florence, so that by the time he arrived back at the apartment,

Gemma would with any luck be asleep.

But there was still tomorrow, and the day after, and all the days after

that.  Once upon a time he could have turned to his work for

distraction, but it seemed doubtful, feeling the way he did, that he

would even be able to hold down the sort of routine administrative job

he had been allocated years before during a period when he was in

disfavour, doing the rounds of provincial headquarters to check that

the petty pilfering and misappropriation of funds were being kept

within broadly acceptable limits.  In a word, his career was over.  He

had been granted indefinite sick leave once the extent of his medical

problems became clear, and the temptation now was to string that out

for as long as possible, then parlay it into early retirement.  He had

a powerful backer at the Ministry, and was clearly of no use to anyone.

A gilt handshake seemed to offer the most painless solution to this

embarrassing situation for everyone concerned, and he could see no

reason why it should be refused.

Which left the question of his personal life.  Zen had had

relationships go wrong before, of course, and had felt amazed, dismayed

and at a loss, but this time the effect was much more intense, perhaps

because the possibility of its happening had never occurred to him.

Neither Zen nor Gemma had bothered to get a divorce from their previous

partners, and so the question of their remarrying had never arisen. But

to all intents and purposes they had acted, and had seemed to feel, as

if they were indeed husband and wife.  More often now, though, they

resembled two boxers circling each other warily, occasionally jabbing

out, then getting into a clinch and pounding each other at close

quarters with no referee to pull them apart.  There was never any

winner, only two losers, and the contest invariably ended with Gemma

stalking out and slamming the door behind her.

Turning to the window, Zen eyed his spectral other, so smugly solid and

substantial.  He felt as if he were the reflection and that image the

original.  "A shadow of his former self,"

as the stock phrase went.  A hopeless invalid.  A sad case.  The long,

sleek train poured out of the final runnel and clattered over the

bridge across the Arno.  In the past, on his weekly visits to the

Ministry, Zen had always felt a lifting of the heart at this moment,

because it was when he felt that he was almost home.  Now, for exactly

the same reason, it filled him with foreboding.

When Vincenzo burst in, Rodolfo was lying naked on the bed and

savouring one of those rare moments when, to quote a German poet

recently cited by Professor Ugo, 'a happiness falls'.  What had he done

to deserve this?  The answer appeared to be nothing.  At the advanced

age of twenty-three, Rodolfo was reluctantly coming to terms with the

fact that he was not one of life's natural achievers, a doer of deeds,

attainer of goals and winner of women.  If he had won Flavia, for the

moment at least, it was only because she had fallen into his hands.

There was nothing wrong with his intellect, but when it came to

everything else, he seemed to be an under-motivated if well-meaning

lightweight who had always taken, and no doubt always would take, the

path of least resistance.

A happiness had fallen, and he had been fortunate enough to be there to

catch it, but you couldn't count on such luck indefinitely.  Normally

what fell broke, or broke you if you were standing unawares beneath.

Rodolfo's father had continually striven to remind his son of such

basic facts, in a weary but dutiful tone of voice which suggested

indeed, almost proudly advertised that while he had accepted the utter

futility of any such attempt, he would not have it said of him that he

had shirked his paternal responsibilities.

The thought of his father had brought to mind, by natural degrees of

progression, the family home, the little market town, and the whole

intimately immanent landscape of his youth.  Puglia!  So when Vincenzo

burst in, resembling an Enrol Flynn lookalike after a particularly hard

night's carousing, his flat mate felt naked in more ways than one.

"Siamo in due," he hissed angrily, yanking the covers up over Flavia's

torso and his own genitals.

The intruder leant on the door frame like a drunk against a lamppost.

"Where the fuck's my fucking jacket, you cunt?"

As always, Rodolfo marvelled at how repulsively attractive Vincenzo

was, with his sleek black hair, aquiline features, intense eyes, slim

body and devastating devil-may-care manner.

"Jacket?"  he replied, getting out of bed and pulling on his jeans.

"My football jacket!  It's disappeared!"

Vincenzo grasped the shapeless, acid-green polyester garment that he

was wearing over an incongruously fashionable dress shirt.

"I had to borrow this piece of shit from Michele.  I want my own jacket

to go to games in, God damn it!  My signature jacket!"

Rodolfo steered his flat mate out into the living room and softly

closed the bedroom door behind them.

"You mean the black leather one with the Bologna FC crest on the

back?"

"Of course I do!  I've worn it to every single match since ... For

years and years.  For ever!  It's the team's lucky charm!  When I don't

wear it we lose, just like we did tonight."

Rodolfo gestured apologetically.

I'm sorry, Vincenzo.  My coat was stolen at the university.  I haven't

been well, as you know, and it's freezing cold out there so I borrowed

one of your jackets.  You weren't around, so I couldn't ask, I just

took the shabbiest one I could find.  I didn't realise it was so

precious to you.  You've got tons of clothes, after all."  i

Vincenzo Amadori's extensive and eclectic wardrobe was indeed one of

the principal reasons why he and Rodolfo were sharing this relatively

luxurious apartment in the first place.

"I'm really sorry," Rodolfo repeated.  "Your jacket's safe next door,

but I don't want to turn the light on and wake Flavia."

But Vincenzo, typically, had already lost interest in the subject.

"Who cares?"  he said, dismissively waving a limp hand.  "It's all

hopeless anyway'

"We lost?"

"We lost.  But it doesn't matter."

"How come there was a game tonight?  It's midweek."

"Postponed from the original fixture.  Cancelled due to a spot of

nastiness engineered by yours truly.  So we all had to go back to

Ancona.  The fans, the player, the manager, the owner..."

"And we lost."

Vincenzo roused himself briefly, felt in various pockets and finally

produced a bottle of limoncello.

"Leading at half-time and then pissed it away, with a little help from

the ref as usual.  Three-one final."

"You just got back?"  Rodolfo remarked, to get off the subject of the

match before Vincenzo started insulting him as a shit brained

southerner, a Barl supporter whose sister did it with Albanians.  It

was just a matter of time before Vincenzo twigged that Flavia was from

the unfashionable side of the Adriatic and made some remark which

Rodolfo would not be able to overlook.

"Shit happened," his flat mate replied with that raffish smile he could

switch on and off at will.  "I was out of it, Rodolfo.  Way, way

out!"

He took a long, gargling swig of the lemon liqueur.  Rodolfo noted that

it was the genuine pricey product made exclusively with fruit from the

officially guaranteed zones in Capri and Sorrento.  Nothing but the

best for Vincenzo, even when his goal was oblivion.

"Well, I'm glad you got back all right," he said, making a show of

concern before returning to the bedroom and Flavia.

Vincenzo again smiled the raffish smile that he could switch on and off

at will.

"Somebody gave me a lift.  And then..."

He broke off, clutching his stomach, then tried unsuccessfully to stand

up.  Familiar with these symptoms, and mindful of the fact that he

would have to clean up any resulting mess, Rodolfo went to help him.

"And then?"  he prompted, trying to keep Vincenzo's brain engaged and

his reflexes dormant.

Vincenzo shook his head urgently and plunged down the hall to the

bathroom.  A moment later came loud groans followed by the sounds of

repeated vomiting.  Rodolfo sighed and returned to bed, locking the

door behind him.

"I don't like your friend," said a quiet voice.

"He's not my friend.  We share this apartment, that's all."

Flavia edged herself upright in the bed on each elbow alternately, the

fleece of dark-red hair tumbling over her shoulders and breasts.  She

cleared it off her face, lay back on the pillow and reached for the

pack of cigarettes on the bedside table.

"Why?"  she asked.

As so often, out of sheer ignorance of the basic logic of the language,

she had wrong-footed him.  That was what happened if you had affairs

with foreigners, Rodolfo reflected sourly.  Next thing you'd be falling

in love and deciding that their banal gaffes were actually profound

insights into the human condition.

"Why what?"  he asked irritably, his idyll now completely disrupted. He

was equally angry with Vincenzo for waking Flavia, and with Flavia for

allowing herself to be woken.

"Why do you share with him?"  %

Rodolfo lay down on the bed beside her.

"I don't know.  It just happened.  Like you and me."

Flavia smoked quietly and made no reply, her startling blue eyes

regarding him with no little concern.

"I got back after Christmas to find that there'd been a fire in the

building where I had been living," Rodolfo went on.  "It was a question

of finding alternative accommodation, and fast.  On the allowance my

father gives me I didn't have a lot of choice, and of course most

places were already let for the whole academic year.  So I photocopied

some ads with those tear-off strips and pinned them up all over the

university district, but nothing came of that.  Then someone who was

moving out of this apartment tipped me off about it.  It was out of my

price range, but I came round to take a look anyway and ran into

Vincenzo as I was leaving.  He'd heard about the place independently,

and of course money's no problem for him.  He paid the landlord a

deposit right away and then suggested that we go and have a drink

together as he had a proposition to put to me.  I didn't know him, but

he seemed pleasant enough.  Anyway, classes had already started and I

couldn't afford to be choosy.  Over coffee well, he had something

stronger he suggested that since there were two bedrooms we should

share the apartment and split the rent.  When I told him that even half

would be a stretch for me, he said, "All right, you pay a third, on

condition that I get the big bedroom.  I don't care about the money,

but I need my space and I don't like living alone."  So there you are.

Pure chance."

"There's no such thing as chance."

Rodolfo laughed.

"If you kept up with the news, you'd know that there's nothing else."

The girl frowned.

"So you're not what is it?  - credente?"

"A believer?  Of course.  I'm a fervent Protestant."

"Really?"

"Absolutely.  I protest against everything."

Flavia's frown deepened.

"I try to watch the news, but I can't always understand."

He leaned over and kissed her pale face.

"I don't mean the small screen, I mean the big picture.  And there's

nothing to understand.  Or better, nothing that can be understood.

Deterministic materialism is the only game left in town.  The

intellectual high rollers have figured out the odds down to the last

decimal point, and basically they agree with Vincenzo.  Details aside,

the deal is that shit happens."

From the hallway, as if on cue, came the sound of the toilet flushing.

There followed various unidentifiable thumps and bumps, and finally the

slam of the other bedroom door.

"Yes," said Flavia.

"Yes what?"

"Yes, I understand.  But..."

She fell silent.

"What?"  Rodolfo insisted.

But Flavia shook her head in that decisive way she had.

"Never mind," she said.  "It's none of my business anyway.  What do I

know about this country, what's normal and what's not?  I'm just

passing through.  Another piece of shit working its way through the

system."

Rodolfo chose to regard this as a challenge.

"Tell me anyway," he insisted, rolling over and holding her.  o. It

would be invadente."

This gave him a chance to lighten the mood.

"But you are an invader!"  he declared, clutching his chest with one

hand and flinging the other out dramatically.  "Not only have you

invaded my country, but also ..."

He was about to add 'my heart', but realised just in time that under

the circumstances this might not sound like ironic hyperbole but simply

hurtful.  Lost in her own thoughts, Flavia seemed to pay no attention

to the unfinished sentence.

"He reminds me of..."

She broke off to shake the ash from her cigarette into the saucer by

the bed.

"He's very beautiful," she finally added inconsequentially.

Again Rodolfo made an attempt at humour.

"Believe me, if I had a single gay gene in my body ..."

Flavia seemed uninterested in this speculation.

"But he's wicked," she said, as if pointing out the logical conclusion

of her argument.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Flavia did not seem troubled by either his manner or the question.

"I probably used the wrong word.  Or maybe this thing doesn't exist

here."

A radiant smile appeared for a moment, transfiguring her intimidatingly

regular features.

"But you spoke of genes in your body," she continued, expressionless

again.  "Well, I have my own genes, and one of them gives me a very

clear sense of this thing, whatever you call it."

She stubbed out her cigarette and lay back.

"Vincenzo's just a spoilt brat," Rodolfo said in a dismissive

undertone.  "Father's a lawyer, mother has a pretend job with the

giunta region ale fixing up artsy exhibitions and the like.  Typical

Bolognese upper middle class, in short, with a history of mild

political activism when young that makes them socially acceptable now,

and enough disposable income to take pricey "alternative" vacations in

the Lofoten Islands or wherever.  It's all the usual cliches, so

Vincenzo's done the cliched thing and rebelled against the family life

he can return to any time he wants.  He skips his classes and exams,

hangs out with a bunch of lowlifes at the football stadium, and drinks

to excess.  But evil?  He doesn't have the balls to be evil.  Or

anything else for that matter.  The guy's just a wanker."

Flavia just lay there, gazing up as though at a distant light faintly

visible through the ceiling.

"Nevertheless, I know such people," she said at last.  "Even though I

never met them, I know them.  Can you understand?  Ion Antonescu,

Gheorghiu-Dej, Corneliu Codreanu ... I know them very well'

Rodolfo yawned.  It was late, and he had a lot of revision to do for

Ugo's seminar the following day.  His attitude to his renowned tutor

had become much more overtly confrontational of late, so he'd better be

able to demonstrate a flawless grasp of the subject.

"Who are they?"  he murmured.

"Which one?"

"Any of them.  The last one."

"Codreanu?  King Carol had him killed in 1938.  Two years later

Antonescu overthrew the monarchy and turned the state into a

dictatorship run by the Legion of the Archangel Michael, otherwise

known as the Iron Guard."

Rodolfo yawned again and embraced her.

"You're Scheherazade, spinning me crazy stories to keep me awake all

night.  You and your Ruritania!  I don't believe the place even

exists."

Flavia nodded.

"It's never been very real, particularly if you happened to be a

"stateless alien" of Hungarian or Jewish origin.  But it does exist.

And some of the things that happened there definitely weren't

imaginary."

"Like what?"

It was Flavia's turn to rise, though with evident reluctance, to the

perceived challenge.

"Like the sealed rooms.  They couldn't afford gas chambers, so they

just locked them up and left them to suffocate."

Rodolfo leaned over her and took a cigarette.

"What's all this got to do with Vincenzo, precisely?"  he enquired in

the pedantic tone, unwittingly borrowed from Professor Ugo himself,

that he employed in the latter's classes.

Flavia took a long time to answer, as though her reply had to travel

all the way back from the planet she had been observing earlier,

situated at a distance that made even light lame.

"I'm not sure," she said at last.  "I know only that he is very strong.

So am I, but I may not be here to take care of you.  And you are not

strong, caw mio.  You're very sweet and intelligent, but you're weak.

The man you are living with is none of those things.  So be careful."

Gemma Santini stood in her nightdress, dispassionately surveying the

ravages of time in the mirror above the dressing table.  Not too bad,

all things considered, was her conclusion.  Some decorative details

might have succumbed to wear and tear, and the odd patch of pediment

gone missing, but the Goths and Vandals had yet to lay waste to

everything in sight.  In short, she still felt reasonably confident

that she could get a date, if it should come to that.

Which it very well might, she reflected.  This was an uncomfortable

thought, but Gemma had never felt at ease with anything but the truth,

however inconvenient it might be.  Facts had to be faced, whether they

were the facts about her own face, as reflected in the bedroom mirror,

or about the man in her life, as reflected in the kaleidoscopic

sequence of grotesque and disturbing patterns into which their life

together had recently disintegrated.  Gemma took a modest pride in

being a truth-teller who did not spare herself or others; a realist

who, whatever mistakes she might make, could recognise them as such and

learn to stop making them.  And she was beginning to consider her

relationship with Aurelio Zen as just such a mistake.

Another characteristic of hers was that having come to this decision or

at least contemplated the possibility of doing so she had not the

slightest interest, unlike her partner, in endlessly analysing the

hows, whats, whens and whys of the situation.  At the same time she

took a certain satisfaction from knowing that if she had chosen to play

this game, she could have beaten Zen hollow.  There were, for instance,

two crucial factors involved of which he remained totally unaware.  One

he might be forgiven for, since it was a family matter which Gemma had

kept from him.  He had only himself to blame for his ignorance,

however.  If you make it abundantly clear that certain concerns of

other people are of not the slightest interest to you, it is only to be

expected that they will spare you any details of subsequent

developments.

The other factor was Zen's hypochondria, in the broadest sense of the

term, encompassing not only a morbid anxiety about his health but also

chronic depression.  Of this, Gemma had originally been as unaware as

Zen still was that she herself might be going to become a grandmother.

Looking back, she had perhaps been a little slow on the uptake, but

then she'd had plenty of reasons for wishing it not to be true.  But by

now the evidence appeared incontrovertible.  First there had been Zen's

endless complaints about abdominal pains and a vague sense of

lassitude.  Then, once it became clear that he had no intention of

seeing a doctor of his own free will, Gemma had had to browbeat and

virtually strong-arm him into doing so.  Diagnosis had proved to be

another series of hurdles, involving trips first to the local hospital

and then to a private clinic in Rome, where the consultant that Zen was

revisiting that day had prescribed a surgical intervention which was

reported to have been 'routine and without complications'.  The

patient, on the other hand, seemed to regard this everyday procedure as

a nightmarish and potentially lethal ordeal comparable with being the

first-ever recipient of a brain transplant.

And so it had gone on ever since.  Like any pharmacist in a culture

where, even by strictly legal criteria, the profession is granted

considerable discretionary powers, Gemma had her share of regulars who

frequently dropped in to discuss their latest ailments and general

state of health before asking her to supply 'a little something' to

alleviate their symptoms which, however, were 'not worth bothering the

doctor with'.

Nevertheless, she had never before encountered a full-blown case of

paranoid hypochondria until Zen returned home to recuperate after his

discharge from the clinic.

She had initially been indulgent, reasoning that he would soon pull

himself together and return to normal.  Not only was there still no

sign of this, but he seemed to come up with a fresh complaint every

day.  If it wasn't backache, it was toothache.  When those afflictions

lost their novelty, he claimed to have terrible migraines that made

sleep impossible, so that he felt there was a lot about his feelings

utterly exhausted, confused and depressed.  He couldn't think straight,

he couldn't remember anything, and he certainly couldn't go back to his

job.  He'd finally realised how important his work was to him, and now

he would never be able to work again.  In short, he no longer

recognised himself.  "I just don't feel like me any longer," he'd

moaned.  "It's as if a thread has broken somewhere and the whole fabric

is unravelling before my eyes."  These melodramatic displays had

finally pushed Gemma's patience to its limits, and the result had been

some quite lively rows, followed by long periods of sullen silence. Zen

had apparently adopted the tactic of pointedly 'not speaking' to her,

which she was only too happy to reciprocate.  But things plainly

couldn't go on like this much longer.

When the phone rang, she nearly didn't answer it, suspecting that it

would be her former lover, as she now thought of him, soliciting a lift

from the station, or even from Florence.  But the caller turned out to

be her son.  This was as welcome as it was unusual.  It had almost

always been Gemma who initiated contact with Stefano, particularly

after she had made the mistake of touching ever so lightly on various

aspects of his new situation which she privately found worrisome in the

extreme.  Neither mother nor son had much small talk, but both made a

show of chatting briefly about neutral topics such as the weather and

Zen's health before Stefano got to the point.

"Actually, Lidia and I were wondering if you could come up here some

time."

"To Bologna?"

"Well, yes.  This weekend, if you're free."

"Has something happened?"

She tried to keep an edge of urgency out of her tone, without complete

success.  Stefano had obviously been expecting this question.

"We've got lots to tell you, but let's wait till you come.  If you're

able, that is.  But it's hard for us to get away, and ..."

"Don't be silly!  Of course I'll come."

She replaced the phone with mixed emotions.  On the one hand she was

looking forward to getting away from her own domestic problems, on the

other she was already concerned about those that might await her at the

other end.  She could think of at least three main possibilities, none

of them good.  But they would have to be faced anyway, and a change of

scenery was a definite bonus.

The echo of a door shutting in the stairwell, followed by a series of

trudging, faltering footsteps, warned her that her significant other

had returned.  She quickly turned off the light, dived into bed, pulled

the covers over her face, and was to all appearances deeply asleep by

the time that Aurelio Zen hesitantly pushed open the door.

Flanked by two beaming bimbettes wearing smiles as big as their boobs

and very little else, Romano Rinaldi grasped the wooden handle of the

Parmesan dagger and held it dramatically above his head.

"And now, like an Aztec priest performing the ultimate sacrifice, I

open the heart of this cheese, the very heart of Italy!"  he cried,

plunging the cutter home and simultaneously bursting into a rendering

of Verdi's "Celeste Aida' that went on, and on, and on.

In the soundproofed control booth, Delia's glance met that of the

director.

"Coked again," she muttered.

"You amaze me," the director replied drily.

He touched a button on the console before him.

"Technical edit," he said.  "Romano, the tele prompt script to camera

three, please."

He switched off the microphone link to the studio beyond the

triple-glazed window.

"I'll cut in some of that promotional footage the producers'

association sent us," he said with a brief, harsh laugh.  "Maybe one of

those scenes with lots of cows.  Then lay Lo Chef's big aria under,

fade it out and meld to the tele prompt VO with cutaways to him gabbing

to camera."

"You're a star, Luciano."

"Thank God for digital is all.  The trailer segment has to be ready to

air tomorrow.  In the old days, that would have taken Christ knows how

many man-hours.  Even with the money the parmigiani are slipping us

under the table, we'd still have had a hard time costing out."

Delia nodded vaguely.  She looked, and was, preoccupied.

"How much longer till wrap-up?"  she asked.

"Where our Romano's involved, who knows?  The studio's booked till

noon, just to be on the safe side.  As long as he doesn't manage to

eviscerate himself with that Parmesan cleaver, we should be finished by

then."

Lo Chef's voice boomed out over the speakers set against the padded

wall.

'... sixteen lit res of the finest, richest, freshest milk to make a

single kilo of this, the Jupiter of cheeses lording it over the rabble

of minor gods.  And then as much as two years of completely natural

ageing, according to traditions handed down over seven centuries of

continuous production, with no artificial manipulation to influence the

process ..."

Delia walked over and kissed the director lightly on the forehead.

"Do me a favour, Luciano.  Keep him at it for at least another fifteen

minutes.  I'll have to hose him down and mother him when it's over, but

I need a coffee first."

"No problem.  If he goes all speedy and rushes through the rest of the

script, I'll just tell him he was a bit flat on a couple of bars of

that Verdi aria and get him to repeat the whole thing."

Delia smiled her thanks.

"Hey, did you see that thing that Edgardo Ugo wrote about him in Il

Prospetto?"  Luciano added.  "Got him bang to rights, no?  I laughed

myself sick!"

Without answering, Delia went out to the corridor.  Almost immediately

her mobile started to chirp.  She checked the screen and said "Damn!"

before answering.

"Have you told him?"  the caller asked.

"Not yet," she replied, ignoring the stairs down to the street.  "He's

in one of those moods this morning.  You know what he's like when he's

taping."  ...... __ ,.___ ___

"Delia, he's going to find out sooner or later, probably within a few

hours.  The damn magazine is on the streets now.  It's essential that

he hears the bad news from us.  How are you going to spin it?"

Delia pushed open the door to the fire escape, blocking its automatic

closing mechanism with her briefcase, and stepped out on to the metal

platform.

"More or less as we discussed.  The big question is how he'll react.

You know how he feels about having his competence called into

question."

"Naturally, since he hasn't got any.  But the show is making a fortune

for us here at the station, another fortune for Lo Chef and a very nice

career for you, my dear.  Don't let's screw any of that up just because

Romano Rinaldi can't take a joke.  And that's all it was meant to

be."

A plane flying low overhead on the final approach into Ciampino put the

conversation on hold for some time.

"You're sure about that?"  Delia yelled over the final resonant

rumbles.

"One hundred per cent.  My people checked with Ugo's people today.  In

any case, none of our audience is going to care less what some

professor of semiotics in Bologna thinks.  All Romano needs to do is

ignore the whole incident and it'll be forgotten in a couple of

days."

Delia checked her watch.

"I've got to go.  He'll be off-stage at any moment."

Actually there were at least five minutes to go, but Delia had never

mastered the art of taking a mobile phone call and lighting a cigarette

at the same time, and it was the latter rather than a coffee that she

desperately needed before bearding her highly-strung client. Unmarried,

very ambitious, with a baker's dozen years of ova already addled and a

molto sint-patico but totally ineffective significant other, Delia knew

that she couldn't afford to lose this job.

After graduating with a modest degree, she had worked her way up

through several jobs in corporate communications and public relations

before landing her present position as personal assistant to the

celebrity chef whose television show, Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta,

regularly pulled in millions of faithful viewers every week.  Moreover,

the figures were always rising, and there had even been approaches from

other European broadcasters interested in acquiring the rights for

their own territories.  And then this left-wing academic and obscure

novelist pops up and lets the cat out of the bag, jokingly or

otherwise, thereby threatening to ruin the whole sweet deal.

She tossed her cigarette down into the car park below and went back

inside.  To her horror, the light mounted above the door to the studio

was glowing green.  She was late, and Romano Rinaldi didn't like to be

kept waiting.  She shoved the door open and ran up to the stage where

he stood, sweating and hyperventilating, in the toque and white uniform

which had had to be changed four times that morning after being

spattered with assorted ingredients.

"I'm so sorry, Romano!"  Delia said breathlessly.  "I had to pop out

for a moment to take a very sensitive business call.  I didn't want

Leonardo listening in.  Actually, it was about something we need to

..."

"It's nothing," the star interrupted, jerking both hands outwards as

though to symbolise the jettisoning of redundant cargo.  "I don't need

any praise or applause.  The great artist is always a great critic as

well.  Today I was magnificent.  I know that instinctively, in my

belly, in my heart!"

He grasped her arm and broke into the gaping, toothy, beard-framed

smile that was one of his professional hallmarks, an image of which

featured on the labels for the ever growing list of sauces, oils,

cookware and other products branded under the Lo Chef trademark.

"I'm getting better and better, Delia," he confided.  "This is only the

beginning of the rich, prolific middle period for which I shall always

be remembered.  The years to come ..."

Lost for words to describe adequately the splendours of the future that

awaited him, he relapsed into a long heartfelt sigh.  Delia patted his

shoulder.

"I understand, Romano, and I completely agree.  Now you go and get

changed, and then we must have a brief discussion.  I realise that this

is a difficult moment for you, after putting on such a superb

performance, but there are some very important and urgent issues that

we need to address."

"Yes, yes!  Give it to me!  Give it to me hot and hard!"

King Antonio perched naked on his throne, sweating, groaning,

imploring.  Then his expression changed to one of alarm, almost of

fear.

"Oh my God, it's coming!  Ah!  Oh!  No, I can't!  It's too big!  It'll

tear me apart!  Please God, I can't take it!"

At the last moment, just when he knew from the pangs below that he was

about to do himself a serious injury, his sphincter relaxed that

crucial millimetre or so.  After that there were only the gasps, tears

and moans, followed by a triumphal flush and the glowing sense of

absolute fulfilment.

Next came an invigorating shower, but Tony emerged totally un

invigorated  After a moment's reflection, he swallowed six paracetamol

tablets washed down with water gulped from the hand-basin tap.  They

wouldn't do his liver any good, particularly given his rigid regime of

a bottle of bourbon a day, but at least they would ease the vicious

headache that had been with him since he awoke.

Straightening up, he caught sight of himself in the mirrored door of

the bathroom cabinet.  The reflected image was a shock.  His forehead

was swollen to twice its normal size and, when he touched it, proved

very sensitive.  Tony immediately thought about malignant cysts, but

the thing definitely hadn't been there the day before, so a bruise

seemed the more likely solution.  The skin was a rainbow in shades of

pink, red, purple, blue and black, but didn't seem to be broken.

He walked through to the bedroom, trying to calm down and get the

situation into perspective.  It was all part of the job, after all.

Being the top investigatore privato in Bologna was tough work, but

somebody had to do it.  Still, he wished he could recall a little more

clearly what had happened the previous night.  He knew that he had

fired his current girlfriend, but only because he did that to whoever

happened to occupy that position on the last day of each month. Private

eyes couldn't have stable, long-term affairs.  They were complex,

alienated loners who had to walk the mean streets of the big city, men

who might be flawed but were neither tarnished nor afraid. Above all,

they had to suffer.

Tony Speranza was certainly suffering as he laboriously put on his

clothes and went through to the kitchen to make coffee.  The resulting

brew produced still more suffering, to alleviate which Tony lit an

unfiltered Camel, cracked open the Jack Daniels and knocked back a

stiff shot.  What the hell had happened last night, apart from the

screaming match with Ingrid or whatever her name was?

Screaming match.  Football match.  Of course, he'd been to the stadium

to check up on the target's pals.  Photograph them at the bar

afterwards with that ultra-cool digital camera he'd just bought, barely

bigger than a matchbox.  It had taken all the experience of the total

pro he was to do so without being spotted, but he'd accomplished his

mission.  Now it was just a matter of downloading the picture files to

his desktop and em ailing them to I'avvocato.  Only where was the

camera?  He checked his overcoat pockets, then patted his suit.  His

wallet and keys, notebook and pen, were all present and correct.  But

not the camera.  And not... Oh shit, he thought.  Oh fuck.  Oh my

God.

To be honest, Tony didn't really need a gun.  Ninety-nine per cent of

his work came from divorce cases, jealous husbands, and keeping tabs on

the children of local families worried that their costly offspring were

getting into bad company and worse habits.  La sicurezza di sapere tut

to sempre!!!  was the slogan

he used for his ad in the Yellow Pages and on the fliers stuck under

the windscreen wipers of parked cars.  The work itself was mostly a

question of being equipped with the latest surveillance technology, and

occasionally putting in a sleepless night staked out in front of the

property where an adulterous liaison or drug party was going on.  There

was almost never any violence, certainly none involving firearms.

But Tony Speranza knew and respected the rules of the genre.  Private

eyes have to have a gun, so he had acquired one from a Serbian former

special policeman who had done some freelance work for him at one time.

It was an M-57 semi-automatic, manufactured to the highest

specifications in strictly limited quantities by the Zastava State

Arsenal.  The pistol fitted unobtrusively into the capacious pockets of

the double-breasted trench coat and had a gorgeous walnut grip and

silky blued finish into which Tony had had his name engraved in fancy

cursive script.  A little beauty, in short.  The only problem was that

he didn't seem to have it any more.  "The assurance of knowing

everything, always'.  Ha!  Right now, Tony would have settled for

feeling reasonably sure about anything, once in a while.

This train of thought was derailed by the phone.

"Tony Speranza, investigatore private," he said automatically.

"This is the office of Awocato Giulio Amadori," a female voice

stated.

Tony laughed and took a hit of bourbon.

"Hey, I never talked to an office before!"

"Awocato Amadori wishes to be informed of the current status of the

unresolved issues in the matter in which he has employed you."

"Put him on, darling, put him on."

"Awocato Amadori is presently away from his desk."

"Then let me speak with the desk."

It concerns the photographic evidence which you and he have

discussed."

Tony laughed again and lit another Camel.  !

"You know what?  I bet you're not an office at all.  You were just

kidding around.  I see you as a ravishing blonde with a come-hither

look that can melt platinum at twenty metres, who knows where all the

bodies are buried, and has the murder weapon tucked into her garter

belt."

"To ensure quality service and for your protection, this conversation

is being recorded.  If Awocato Amadori considers your attitude

inappropriate, he reserves the right to take the necessary steps."

"Oh yeah?  What does he do when he gets mad, run up the bell tower of

San Petronio and make like Quasimodo?"

"Thank you.  Awocato Amadori will be informed of your response in due

course."

"Listen, I'm on the job, okay?  But discretion is of the essence and so

far a suitable opportunity has not presented itself."

But he was talking to a dead line.

He put the phone down and poured himself another bourbon.  I knew the

Amadori case would be trouble from the beginning, he fantasised.  Of

all the PI offices in all the towns in all the world, she walks into

mine.  In point of hard fact, it was a routine surveillance operation

for a fortyish yuppy whose kid had left home and was refusing to

communicate with him.  Giulio Amadori's main worry seemed to be that

Vincenzo would end up in trouble with the cops and that this would

reflect badly on his own law practice, although he had made a cursory

gesture towards fashionable sentimentality by fore grounding the family

reputation and his wife's feelings.  He was prepared to pay five

hundred up front for details of his son's whereabouts, habits and

associates, with the possibility of more to come for follow-up

investigations or interventions based on the primary information.

Tony Speranza would much rather have been hired to look into a

seemingly casual disappearance that led him to a sexy but dangerous

babe with plenty to hide both physically and criminally, but in his

experience that sort of thing rarely happened in Bologna.  All he had

to go on was a snapshot of the young man and the information that he

affected to be a diehard supporter of the Bologna football club.  Such

fans invariably had season tickets at the Curva San Luca end of the

ground, and sure enough when Tony headed out to the stadium on Via

Costa the evening of the next home fixture he soon identified Vincenzo

emerging in a group of his fellow ultras from one of the stepped

concrete culverts leading down from the stands.  He had then followed

them through prolonged post-game festivities in various bars and clubs

before tailing the target home to an apartment right in the centre of

the city.

Thanks to his superb professional skills, Tony had remained unobserved

by Vincenzo and his associates on this occasion, but he knew that it

would be too risky to repeat the operation regularly enough to provide

the total surveillance which his client expected.  A remote device was

therefore called for, and the question became where to install it.  The

most convenient location was the target's car, but Tony had already

established that Vincenzo didn't own one.  The normal alternative was

some personal possession or item of clothing in frequent use, and here

Tony had better luck.

The Amadori kid spent a lot of time asleep or hanging around the

apartment he shared with one Rodolfo Mattioli, a harmless, ineffectual

graduate student who didn't appear to socialise with the target.  There

was also a girl involved, a redheaded stunner that Tony had tracked to

her nest and planned to visit in the very near future, but the

activities that I'avvocato was concerned with invariably involved some

or all of the crew of football fans, and when he went out with them

Vincenzo equally invariably donned a rough-looking black leather

jacket, the back of which was decorated with an oval of shiny metal

studs surrounding a painted image of the official club logo and the

heading BFC 1909.

The next problem was access.  Tony considered various possibilities,

but in the end fate handed the solution to him on a plate.  The

occasion was a home game against the mighty Juventus, for which the

Renato Dall'Ara stadium was packed to capacity.  In the end Bologna

lost to a disputed penalty, so the mood of the emerging fans was far

from serene.  The police were present in force and made an attempt to

direct the tifosi of either team away from the stadium separately, but

the hardcore elements on either side had had long experience of much

more ruthless crowd control than the local authorities, accustomed to

keeping a low profile in left-wing Bologna, could bring themselves to

impose.  Pretty soon those who had come not just to watch the match but

to get into a fight managed to drift away down side streets and alleys,

reassembling in the car park of a nearby Coop supermarket as soon as

the police dispersed.  Tony Speranza followed the group that included

Vincenzo, keeping a discreet distance and trying to look like an

ordinary citizen on his way home.

When they reached the deserted, dimly lit car park, it became apparent

that the Juve supporters outnumbered their opponents by about two to

one.  This advantage increased as some of the rossoblu yobs disappeared

into the bushes screening off the street, on the pretext of needing to

pee, and did not return.  It soon became clear that they had made a

wise decision.  The brawl lasted no more than two minutes, at the end

of which the Bologna contingent slunk away to the jeers and laughter of

the Torinese.  All except Vincenzo Amadori.  He stood his ground,

hurling obscenities and abuse at his enemies and taunting them to come

and get him.  This they duly did.  Amadori ended up in a foetal crouch

on the bare asphalt, where he received a few more vicious kicks before

the aggressors tired of the sport and trooped off up the street.

Tony Speranza had been concealed behind a delivery van parked in the

far corner of the lot.  He now emerged and ran quickly over to Vincenzo

Amadori, who was groaning feebly.  None of his companions seemed to be

coming to his assistance, so Tony unzipped and folded back one side of

the leather jacket.  The satin lining was quilted in a diamond pattern.

Tony took out an Xacto knife and made a small incision in the stitching

of one of the diamonds, then inserted the handle of the knife and tore

the opening a little more.  Into it he slipped an object about the size

of a cigarette packet, but as smoothly rounded as a pebble on the

seashore and weighing no more.  This he positioned in the centre of the

padded sac, then pressed both sides hard so that the Velcro wrap would

adhere to the fabric.  Thirty seconds later he was in a phone box

further up Via Costa, summoning an ambulance anonymously to the Coop

parking lot.  Now the bug was successfully planted, it was in his

interests to get Amadori back on his feet and active again as soon as

possible.

The device in question was essentially the innards of a mobile phone,

stripped of its cumbersome microphone, speaker and other frills, but

containing microchips responsive to a number of different networks.

Once an hour the unit turned itself on and made contact with the

nearest receiver-transmitter mast for each company and then phoned the

data in to the computer in Tony's office, where a nifty bit of software

translated the resulting triangulation into a time-dated map with a

star indicating the position of the target at that moment.  Tony was

therefore covered if any questions arose about Vincenzo's whereabouts

at any particular moment, and without the tedious and potentially

tricky chore of actually following the little bastard and his mates

around.

So two elements of the assignment had been completed.  The third was

the set of photographs that he had taken the previous evening, but

which had gone missing when he had been mugged and his miniaturised

camera and gun stolen.  How the hell had that happened?  Vincenzo

Amadori and his pals certainly hadn't spotted him, Tony reflected as he

slipped on the double-breasted trench coat, trilby and aviator shades

he had bought online from an American retailer special ising in 1930s

retro gear.  He would have known instantly if they had.  A trained

investigator could always tell when he'd been 'made', to use the

technical term.

He let himself out of the apartment and walked downstairs to the

street.  The windscreen of his battered Fiat was dusted with a coating

of grey, granular snow from which a parking ticket protruded, one end

trapped under the wiper blade.  Comune di Ancona, it was headed.  Below

that, in handwriting, appeared the amount of the fine payable within

thirty days under penalty of... He groaned as the details of the

previous evening finally came back to him.  Of course!  He had indeed

been to a football match, only not at the stadium here in Bologna.  The

fixture, played midweek for some reason, had been an away game with

local rivals Ancona, and Tony had duly driven down to that city with a

view to completing the photographic record of Vincenzo's cronies.

He started up the car, blotting out the view in a dense pall of exhaust

fumes.  He had it now, he thought.  He'd located the clique he sought,

despite the fact that for some reason the target wasn't wearing his

leather jacket.  After the game he had followed them to a bar and very

cautiously taken good-quality shots of the whole group.  Mission

accomplished, he had then gone to the lavatory at the rear of the bar

for a quick pee before heading home.

After that, he had only a confused memory of the door bursting open and

someone slamming his head forward against the tiled wall.  When he

recovered his senses, it had been to find himself on his hands and

knees with his face in the trough of the urinal.  By the time he had

cleaned himself up and returned to the bar, Vincenzo Amadori and his

friends were no longer there.  Tony had ordered a couple of large

whiskies to fortify himself, and must somehow have driven home and got

into his apartment before passing out fully clothed on the bed.

In short, he had made one mistake, he thought with some satisfaction as

he put the car in gear and backed out of the parking slot.  So intent

had he been on snapping the circle standing around Vincenzo Amadori

without being observed by them that he had overlooked the fact that

there were other people in the bar.  This wouldn't have mattered in

law-abiding Bologna, but Ancona was a port city, crawling with

down-and-outs, illegal migrants and criminal elements of every

description.  One of them must have noted the chic little Nikon

nestling in Tony's fingers and determined to make it his own.

He shrugged nonchalantly as he turned right on to the main road into

town.  All things considered, it was no big deal.  He could buy a new

camera and didn't really need the gun.  Indeed, the lone thief had

actually done him a favour.  Incidents like that merely validated his

status as an authentic investigatore private Everyone knew that private

eyes got sapped all the time.  It was part of the job description,

particularly if you had to operate in a tough, pitiless part of the

world like Emilia-Romagna.

There had always been aspects of life that Aurelio Zen had found

problematic, even in the halcyon years before his mid life medical

crisis had multiplied their number virtually to infinity.  One of them

was being brutally woken out of deep sleep, another was talking to

total strangers on the phone.  The morning following his return from

Rome he got both.

He was first bawled and battered into consciousness by a sinister

figure in a white hooded robe, who turned out on closer inspection to

be Gemma.  She had been washing her hair in the shower when the phone

rang, and her exertions to rouse Zen caused a secondary shower to

splash down on his face, which still bore the traces of a rapidly

fading expression of blissful ignorance.

"It's for you!"  Gemma shouted, waving the telephone she was holding in

one hand while covering the mouthpiece of the receiver with the other.

"Your work!  They say it's urgent!"

She emphasised this fact with a kick, which went wide as Zen rolled

over in bed at that moment.  Gemma promptly lost her balance, dropped

the phone in a failed attempt to steady herself, then sat down rather

suddenly on the floor.  This caused her to swear, and Zen to feel the

onset of a rising tide of laughter which soon floated him back to full

wakefulness.

As usual these days, Gemma failed to see the lighter side of the

situation and flounced out of the room, loudly abusing Zen with a

string of vicious expletives and slamming the door so hard that it

bounced open again.  He went to shut it property' his initial humour

fading fast.  What had all that been about?  One more irrational and

unpredictable fit of hysteria.  Welcome to another day at Via del

Fosso.  The phone lying on the floor seemed to be emitting gurgling

sounds.  He picked it up.

"Pronto?"

"Is this Aurelio Zen?"  a voice barked in his ear.

Zen wasted a sarcastically unctuous smile on the plastic mouthpiece.

"It is indeed!"  he announced in a falsely jocular tone.  "He himself,

as ever was, larger than life and twice as real.  And whom, pray, have

I the honour of addressing?"

"Gaetano Foschi."

The name rang a bell, but it was only after the caller had testily

supplied further information that Zen linked it with the

short-tempered, workaholic southerner who was deputy head of the

Criminalpol section of the Interior Ministry.

"What the hell's going on there?"  Foschi demanded.  "The place sounds

like a madhouse."

"It often feels like it too."

"What?  Why aren't you answering your duty issue phone?"

"It's not switched on."

"Why not?"

"I'm on sick leave."

"Says who?"

"Dottor Brugnoli," Zen replied with the air of a chess master declaring

checkmate.

"Ah, you're one of Brugnoli's babies, are you?  Well, I'm sorry to have

to inform you that life around here has become rather more spartan

during your prolonged absence.  As in stake them out on the mountain

and see who survives."

"I don't follow you."

"Call me back on your encrypted mobile.  This line is not secure."

When Zen did so, Foschi informed him that Brugnoli, Zen's patron at the

Ministry had taken up the offer of a consultancy position with a

leading bank following a governmental 'crisis' and cabinet reshuffle of

which Zen had heard nothing.

"I didn't know," he explained feebly.  "I had to have an operation and

I've been on indefinite sick leave ever since."

"Very indefinite," Foschi retorted.  "So much so that there's

absolutely no record of the fact in the personnel database."

"Dottor Brugnoli told me that he would arrange everything."

Foschi laughed shortly.

"I'm sure he did, but that was before he arranged his own departure to

greener pastures in the private sector.  Since then we've gone back to

playing strictly by the book of rules, according to which you are

available for immediate active duty.  Are you saying that such is not

the case?"

Zen thought for a moment.  He could probably get a letter from the

consultant excusing him from service for another month or so, and

explaining and documenting the record of his case.  On the other hand

... "What did you have in mind?"  he asked.

"It's this Curti business."

Zen had no idea what he was talking about, but he had already created a

bad enough impression for one morning.  He decided to bluff.

"What exactly do you want me to do?"

Foschi sighed deeply.

"It's a damn shame you don't live here in Rome like everyone else, Zen.

That's something we may have to review in the light of the changed

situation.  It would make things so much easier if we could discuss

this face to face."

Zen said nothing.

"Anyway," Foschi went on, 'the Questura in Bologna are handling the

actual investigation, but we need someone to go up there and liaise

with the Ministry.  Your name came up."

"Why should they tell me anything they don't tell you?"  ;

Instinct told him that bluntness was the best way to whatever organ had

been substituted for Foschi's heart.

"They won't.  But they'll tell you sooner, and above all you'll be in a

position to report back on what they're not telling us."

"Why should they try and conceal the truth?  We're all playing for the

same team."

"I'm not saying that they necessarily will.  But they are going to be

under enormous pressure to deliver results, and quickly.  Lorenzo Curti

was a figure of fame and notoriety not just in Emilia-Romagna but on a

national and even international level, a millionaire entrepreneur who

owned the Bologna football team and was also the majority shareholder

in a dairy conglomerate currently under investigation for tax evasion

and serious fraud.  In short, this promises to be the highest-profile

case in the Bologna jurisdiction since the Uno Bianca fiasco."  i

After a moment, Zen recalled the spate of serial killings around

Bologna in the late 1980s involving a white Fiat Uno.  He also recalled

that when the perpetrators had finally been brought to justice, they

had almost all turned out to be policemen working out of the Bologna

Questura, many of them involved in the investigation into their own

crimes.  It had taken years for morale in the Polizia di Stato to

recover from this scandal.

"Forewarned is forearmed," Foschi concluded.  "Your assignment is not

to take command of the investigation but to remain fully informed about

progress and to report developments to me personally on a daily basis,

and more frequently if necessary.  That way, if the media vultures

start to circle, we'll be ready for them."

"I understand."

"How soon can you get there?"

Zen was about to remind Foschi that he hadn't agreed to go yet, but

instantly realised that as far as he was concerned he had.

"In a few hours."

"Very good.  I'll tell them to expect you after lunch."

When Gemma came in, Zen had already showered and dressed and was busy

packing.  Without offering a word of apology for the vile names she had

called him at their last encounter, she started gathering together her

clothes.  Clearly this would be another day when they were 'not

talking'.  Someone else, however, was.

'..  . sure to tune in again next week, when Romano takes a pilgrimage

to the temple of the one and only Parmigiano Reggiano!"

"Believe it or believe it not, it takes no fewer than sixteen lit res

of the finest, richest, freshest milk to make a single kilo of this,

the Jupiter of cheeses lording it over the rabble of minor gods.  And

then as much as two years of completely natural ageing, according to

traditions handed down over seven centuries of continuous production

..."

The television screen at the far end of the living room, visible

through the open door, showed contented cows grazing, pails of creamy,

pure milk being poured into vats and then cooked in a cauldron over an

open fire, while authentic-looking peasants stirred the brew with

wooden staves, all interspersed with close-ups of a Luciano Pavarotti

lookalike got up in a chef's outfit beaming toothily at the viewer

while belting out extracts from Verdi's "Celeste Aida'.

"Aren't you even going to apologise?"  Gemma demanded, pausing in the

doorway with her bundle of clothing.  As had become customary, she

would dress in the spare bedroom.  It seemed just a matter of time

before one of them started sleeping there.

"I might ask you the same," Zen replied mildly.

"What have I to apologise for?"

"Ditto."

"For cruelly mocking me when I fell over!  You just lay there cackling

instead of even offering to help me up or ask whether I was hurt.  And

the only reason it happened was because I got out of the shower to wake

you for your stupid phone call."

Zen slipped several strata of socks into a spare corner of the

suitcase.  He seemed to have only one clean vest.  Oh well, he'd buy

more in Bologna and then have them washed at the hotel.  With the

situation the way it was, the last thing he wanted was to raise the

question of dirty laundry.

"You're leaving?"  Gemma went on, still hovering in the doorway.

Zen nodded.  No, not that green horror, he decided.  He hadn't worn it

for years, but the laws of thrift inculcated by his mother died hard.

He laid the rest of the shirts flat on top of the other garments, then

closed the case.

"So where are you going to go?"

"Bologna."

The first flicker of some expression appeared on Gemma's face, but was

instantly suppressed.

"Why Bologna?"

Zen was about to tell her, but then decided to let her twist in the

wind for a while.  It was the least she deserved after the way she'd

treated him.

"Years ago I was stationed in the city," he replied airily.  "I loved

it, and I've always wanted to go back."

Gemma regarded him levelly for some time, then gave a light but studied

laugh.

"I could stop you, you know."

"Really?"

"Well, not stop you leaving.  But I could certainly ensure that you

enjoy this visit to La Grassa a lot less than your last.  A single

phone call would do it."

He laughed mirthlessly in turn.

"I doubt that one more of your tirades could ruin my stay.  At least I

won't be in the same room to listen to it."

"Oh, the phone call wouldn't be to you."

Zen set the suitcase on the floor, straightened up and confronted her.

She scrunched her face up and narrowed her eyes.

"We have received a phone call, Dottor Zen," she said in a voice an

octave lower than usual and with a passable imitation of the Bolognese

accent.  "A Signora Santini, resident in Via del Fosso, Lucca, alleges

that just over a year ago you murdered an ex-officer of the

Carabinieri, one Roberto Lessi, in her apartment and then forced her at

gunpoint to assist you in disposing of the corpse at sea.  She further

asserts that you subsequently moved into her apartment and have

terrorised her both mentally and physically with a view to ensuring her

silence.  She is prepared to testify to this effect in court.  It is

therefore my duty to ..."

They regarded each other in wary silence.

"Bullshit," remarked Zen finally.

"Don't be too sure.  You keep accusing me of acting irrationally.

There's no telling what irrational people may do."

Zen shrugged.

I've been summoned to Bologna for work, that's all.  To be honest, it

might not be a bad thing for us to spend a bit of time apart.  I've

been through a bad patch recently, one way and another, and I'm sure

I've been difficult at times.  I know you have.  Maybe what we need is

a cooling-off period to help get things in perspective."

Gemma's expression softened marginally, but her body remained poised

for either fight or flight.

"That time on the boat, Aurelio, when we moored off Gorgona," she said

dreamily.  "Do you remember?  You told me then that we were prisoners

of each other.  Well, that's what I'm starting to feel like.  Your

prisoner."

SI

Zen nodded.

"Me too.  But perhaps we can both get over it.  I hope so."  He picked

up his suitcase.  Gemma backed into the living room, keeping her

distance from him.

"Do you want me to drive you to the station?"

"No, thank you.  I can manage."

She shook her head sadly.

"No, Aurelio.  That's just what you can't do."

He shrugged this off.

"Well then, I'm going to have to learn."

"Mattioli, would you remain here?"  the professor remarked casually as

the rest of the class left the seminar room.

He caught the flash of anxiety in the young man's eyes.  He had

intended that it should be there.  It was part of the charm and style

of Edgardo Ugo's post-1968 faded leftist persona that he always

addressed his graduate students in the familiar tu verbal form, and

insisted that they do the same to him.  This time, however, he had used

the impersonal, distancing lei.  That, and the use of Rodolfo's

surname, made the message quite clear.

"Sit down, please."

Ugo gathered up his belongings and then proceeded to take some

considerable time arranging them in his evidently expensive, but of

course artis anal rather than designer, briefcase before paying any

further attention to the student.

"You're a bright lad, Mattioli, so I'm sure you'll understand that

after that last outburst I can no longer admit you to my seminars.

There's nothing personal about this.  Indeed, I find it painful in many

ways.  But to do otherwise would be a dereliction of my duty to the

other members of the class.  They have understood and accepted the

principles of the course, and are attending these classes, often at

considerable personal or familial financial sacrifice, in the hopes of

bettering themselves and making a serious contribution to this academic

discipline.  They are certainly not here to listen to cheap jokes and

mocking asides from someone who, despite his evident intellectual

capacities, is at heart nothing but a farceur."

The boy stared back with his unblinking black eyes, as expressionless

as the muzzles of a double-barrelled shotgun,

It i-'l but said nothing.  Typically southern, thought Ugo.  He knows

that there's been a war, that he lost, and that there's nothing to talk

about.  Later he might come round with a knife and cut my throat, but

he's not going to humiliate himself further by pointless protests and

weak entreaties.

"Should you so wish, you may of course continue to attend my lectures,"

Ugo continued.  "Under the rules and regulations of the University of

Bologna, you are also entitled to sit your final exams and present a

thesis, but to avoid wasting everyone's time I feel obliged to tell you

now that I very much doubt whether this would result in your receiving

a degree.  Besides, the only career possibilities open to a graduate in

semiotics are in the academic field.  I would naturally be contacted as

a referee and I should find it impossible, as a matter of professional

principle, to recommend you.  I further doubt whether you would prove

suited to such a career, in the unlikely event that one were offered

you.  There are so many talented and excellently qualified applicants

these days, and so few vacancies.  Quite often the decision comes down

to a question of whom the other members of the faculty care to have to

meet and deal with on a daily basis, and prickly, rebarbative

individuals who like to show off their supposed wit and spirit of

independence by making mock of their superiors are, to be honest,

rarely anyone's first choice.  In short, I suggest that you look into

the possibility of an alternative line of study more adapted to your

temperament and mentality.  Engineering, perhaps.  Or dentistry."

With which he walked out, leaving the young man sitting there in

silence.  On Via de'Castagnoli Ugo called a taxi, which he directed to

his country retreat.  His original intention had been to cycle back to

the nearby townhouse that he used as a place of refuge during the day

and an occasional overnight bolt hole but now he felt an urge to get

out of the city.  Why this feeling of unease?  His decision had been

correct and correctly executed, excepting perhaps those last two

phrases.  But Mattioli had had it coming for some time.  The little

bastard had been provocative from the very start.

One of Edgardo Ugo's seminarial chestnuts was that, in our post-meaning

culture, to move from the sublime to the ridiculous and vice versa no

longer required even a single step, merely an alternative selection

from an infinite interpretation-al menu.  When he'd brought this line

up in the opening seminar of the semester, Rodolfo had replied, "Excuse

me, profess ore  Are you saying that if a recording of the slow

movement of Mozart's K364 is being played in the cell where a political

prisoner is undergoing torture, his or her resulting experience is

simply a function of consumer choice?"  Ugo had sensed that Mattioli

was trouble right then and there.  Knowing the Kochel catalogue number

of the Sinfonia Concertante, for example.  That was a leaf straight out

of Ugo's own book: awe them with your command of arcane documented

minutiae, and they'll swallow your big contentious thesis without a

murmur.

But today Mattioli had gone too far, not only proclaiming that words

had meanings, but that the relationship between language and reality,

although labile and demanding constant and close attention, was by its

nature (!) both authentic and verifiable.  "The fact remains that there

is a real world which exists independently of any possible

representation of it, and which in turn conditions any such

representation," he had concluded, with the air of the young Luther

nailing his theses to the church door.

Edgardo had handled this arrant nonsense with his usual urbane charm,

even getting a round of appreciative laughter from the other students

for his learned humour when he suggested sarcastically that to invoke

Giambattista Vico's 'sensus communis generis hutnani' was hardly

Scienza Nuova more laughter at this late date.  Nevertheless, enough

was enough.  Standards had to be maintained and essential truths

upheld.  As he had told Rodolfo, it would have been dereliction of duty

for him to have acted otherwise.  So why did he have this slight sense

of uncleanliness, as when you get a bit of meat or spinach stuck

between your teeth and can't quite remove it with your tongue?

Twenty minutes later he was back in the spacious landscaping and clear

air of his villa, set back from a secluded lane winding through the

spine of hills above Monte Donato between the Reno and Savena rivers; a

mere five kilometres from the city laid out beneath like a map, yet to

all intents and purposes another world.  For some reason the

confrontation with Rodolfo Mattioli was still troubling him, though, so

he decided to dismiss it by getting to work.

Two hours passed, and the dusk was curdling beyond the window, before

Edgardo laid down his Mont Blanc 4810 Series Limited Edition fountain

pen, as thick as a stumpy but fully erect cock, on the sheet of heavy,

deckle-edged Fabriano paper, rich in linen and made by hand using

methods essentially unchanged since the thirteenth century, then

thoughtfully replaced the solid black sculpted cap over its rhodinised

18-carat gold glans.  He had chosen these writing tools as appropriate

to the task he had just completed, a piece of cheap journalistic fluff

designed to promote the recently-released film very loosely based on a

misreading of the superficial plot level of his best-known novel in

some American celebrity gossip rag sold to semi-literate sad sacks at

supermarket checkouts.

But as always, the choice had not been easy.  Each of the rooms on the

upper floor of the villa was a scriptorium, and each quite differently

designed and equipped.  It was a question of selecting the right one

for the assignment in hand, and

Edgardo always had at least five on the go at any given time.  For an

article due to be published in the prestigious learned journal

Recherches Semiotiques, tentatively entitled "The Coherence of

Incoherence' - a play on the celebrated treatise Tahafut al-Tahafut by

the twelfth-century Muslim scholar known in the West as Averroes, whose

Arab name Ibn Rushd opened up the possibility for the type of puns on

the author of The Satanic Verses for which Ugo was justly celebrated he

was working at an IBM workstation linked by a fibre optic cable to the

University of Bologna's Unix mainframe.  Meanwhile, substantial

sections of his new meta fiction Work In Regress, were rapidly losing

shape by being sent via his laptop to a primitive on-line translation

site, where they were first mangled into Bulgarian or Welsh and then

back again into Italian.

Composition of his contribution to a forthcoming academic seminar on

the semiotics of text-messaging at the Universite de Paris, on the

other hand, took place standing atop a fifteenth-century carved stone

pulpit removed from the private chapel of a now-demolished palazzo, the

text being dictated in a sonorous voice into a Sony digital recorder.

Yet another room was kept permanently shuttered, the only light being

from a bare hundred-watt bulb dangling above the hardy, ravished desk.

It was here, in shirt sleeves and wearing a green eye-shade, that Ugo

banged out his weekly column for a glossy, mass-circulation news

magazine on a manual upright Olivetti M44 dating from the year of his

birth.  It was almost impossible to find carbon paper nowadays, so from

time to time he had a few dozen boxes flown in from India.

The column generated both money and publicity, but Edgardo already had

plenty of both.  Indeed, despite his eminent post-modernist

credentials, his whole career was living proof that reports of the

death of the author had been greatly exaggerated.  As for the

journalism, he did it for fun, to provide

an outlet for his opinions and a way of showing off his versatility.

Every writer is all writers, he liked to tell his students, mentioning

that Jorge Luis Borges had already pointed out in the 1940s that to

attribute the Itnitatio Christi to Celine or Joyce would serve to renew

the work's faded spiritual aspirations, adding that this esempio was

subversively enriched by the fact that Borges, a slipshod scholar, had

probably been thinking of the much more influential De Imitatione

Christi, and would in any case have attributed both titles to the now

discredited Jean de Gerson rather than to Thomas a Kempis.

Nevertheless, Borges's idea provided a powerful tool for further

deconstructionist analysis.  Would not our view of Samuel Beckett's

work be both deepened and enriched if it were to be postulated that he

had also written a humorous weekly column for the The Irish Times,

styling himself Myles na Gopaleen and arranging for delivery and

payment through an alcoholic Dublin novelist who went under a string of

aliases ranging from Brian 6 Nuallain to Flann O'Brien?

They loved him, it went without saying.  Ugo's great insight had been

that the way to people's hearts was to flatter them.  He did it in

class, and even more so in the series of erudite fictions which had

turned an obscure professor of semiotics at a provincial Italian

university into one of the richest and most famous authors in the

world.  Impress the pants off them with your range of knowledge, then

leave them feeling that they're more intelligent and sophisticated than

they ever suspected, and they'll always come back for more.  With his

academic peers worldwide he adopted a subtly different approach,

appealing not to their cleverness they were in no doubt about that but

to their often non-existent charm, humanity and sense of humour.  Even

they, who didn't much like themselves, let alone anyone else, loved

Edgardo.

His phone rang.  It was Guerrino Scheda, his lawyer.

"Ciao Guerrino.  Good news, I hope."

"I think so.  It's a little unusual, and I don't as yet have anything

in writing, but I'm reasonably hopeful that I'll be able to pull it

off.  In which case it would be the perfect solution."  s

"Don't be a tease.  What's happened?"

"Well, at first I walked into a Berlin Wall of threats and menaces.  I

wasn't able to speak to Rinaldi personally, but I was given to

understand that he's absolutely furious and wants to sue your balls

off.  He's not interested in a settlement, he claims.  Money's not an

issue, it's a matter of pride and honour, etcetera.  In other words, he

wants his day in court and is prepared to pay whatever it costs to have

it."

When the original letter from the legal advisers of Lo Chef's company

arrived, threatening an action for 'very substantial' damages on the

grounds of personal and professional defamation, Edgardo's initial

reaction had been one of disbelief.  He had never intended anyone to

take his throwaway comment about Rinaldi's cooking skills literally. It

was merely an illustration of his basic thesis in the article, namely

that we now live not in a consumerist but a post-consumerist society.

Our actual needs having been satisfied, we no longer consume products

but process.  Thus film footage the photographic record of actual

persons, places and times is increasingly little more than crude raw

material to be transformed by computerised post-production

techniques.

Ugo had quoted Walter Pater's remark that all art aspires to the

condition of music, adding that nowadays all art, including music,

aspired to the condition of video games.  And in one of those knowing

references to the vulgarities of contemporary media culture in which he

specialised, he had gone on to point out that no one knew whether

Romano Rinaldi, the star of the smash hit TV show Lo Chef Che Canta e

Incanta, could actually cook at all.  Nor did it matter, he had

hastened to add,

any more than it had mattered when the President of the United States

arrived in Iraq on Thanksgiving Day and was photographed in the troop

canteen carrying to table what was actually a raw turkey whose skin had

been scorched with a blowtorch.  Ugo wasn't sure how seriously he

really took any of this, but of course the whole point was that in the

cultura post-post-mode rna taking things lightly was of the essence.

But apparently Romano Rinaldi saw things differently.  - "Suppose you

can't pull it off," he asked the lawyer.  "What are our chances?"

"If it goes to court?  Evens, I'd say.  Maybe better.  After all, you

never stated that Rinaldi was a fraud, merely that there's no actual

evidence that he can even boil an egg.  So we might win."

"I sense a "but" in the offing."

"Correct.  The two problems with that scenario are that it'll cost a

fortune we're very unlikely to be awarded costs and generate masses of

really stinky publicity whatever the outcome.  Rinaldi is certainly a

pompous jerk, and for all I know a fraud too, but the fact of the

matter is that he's also a national superstar and icon.  The people

have taken him to their hearts.  Particularly women, and you know what

they're like when roused.  You don't want the latter-day tricoteuses on

your case.  Lo Chef comes across as a cuddly, lovable rogue with a

charming light tenor voice who makes the daily grind of cooking seem

fun and sexy.  You, on the other hand, are an arrogant intellectual who

writes pretentious tomes on incomprehensible subjects and secretly

despises his fellow men despite a shallow veneer of trendy leftist

solidarity."

"Maybe I should sue you, Scheda."

"I'm just telling you how it's going to look if we contest this action.

We might might win the judgement, but Rinaldi will win the PR battle

and you'll come out of it, at considerable cost, looking like a

mean-spirited shit."

"But you said that he's insisting on going to court.  What can I do

about it?"

"Show up at the Bologna exhibition centre two days from now."

"What are you talking about?"

"This is still at the negotiation stage, but I've already roughed it

out with his personal assistant, a very intelligent woman called Delia

Anselmi.  She's totally in agreement and seems to have a lot of

influence over Rinaldi.  Between the two of us I think we can swing it.

But first I need your agreement."

"To what?"

"Taking part in a cookery contest with Rinaldi during the Enogastexpo

food fair that's on there now."

Edgardo Ugo laughed.

"You must be mad.  Or think I am."

"On the contrary, it's a perfect arrangement for all concerned."

"But he's bound to win!"

"Of course he is.  So you're going to lose a cook-off with the leading

celebrity chef in Italy.  If you challenged Roger Federer to a game of

tennis you'd lose too.  How humiliating is that?  There are plenty of

other aspects of life where you're an acknowledged world champion.  All

you need to do is show up, shake hands with Lo Chef on stage, maybe

join him in a duet can you sing?  and generally make it clear that the

whole affair was just a ridiculous mistake that the media have blown up

out of all proportion.  In return, he will sign a document that I will

prepare, renouncing any legal action whatsoever against you now or in

the future.  End of story."

Ugo was silent.

"Plus," Scheda added, 'and this is the beauty part, the whole show will

be broadcast live and as part of the deal I'll arrange for you to have

a few minutes solo to camera.  There will be multiple repeats later in

the day and throughout the weekend.  Overall projected viewer numbers

are around twenty million."

"I'll do it."

Ugo put down the phone.  All this talk of food made him realise that

he'd forgotten to have lunch.  He walked downstairs to the gigantic

kitchen and peered despondently into the fridge.  There were the

remains of the dinner to which he'd invited a group of friends and

colleagues the previous weekend, all the dishes being prepared

communally from Marinetti's tract on Futurist cooking.  As the generous

quantity of leftovers indicated, the preparation had been more

satisfying than the actual food, but it had all looked very striking

and had been beautifully photographed for an article about the event in

La Cucina Italiana good publicity for everyone concerned.

He selected a few of the chunks of mortadella and cheese sculpted into

letters that had formed part of the dish "Edible Words', from which all

the guests were supposed to eat their own names, then walked through to

the former housekeeper's office.  This is where he paid his bills, kept

his domestic files, and checked his emails.  There were very few of the

latter today, only twenty-eight new messages.  He skimmed through the

titles, opening some and deleting others unread.  An offer for

Lithuanian rights to two of his books, a request from the BBC for him

to contribute to a documentary on the cultural significance of

professional sport, an invitation to give a series of vapid but very

highly-paid lectures in Japan, plus a selection of the usual academic

little-tattle sent or forwarded by his friends and admirers all over

the world.

He clicked open the last unopened email message.  The subject header

was blank and the "From' box contained only a Hotmail address

consisting of a string of apparently random numbers.  As for the

message itself, there was no text, just a line drawing an engraving,

rather of a male hand, the thumb and index finger almost joined to form

a circle.

Ugo gazed at it for some time, then walked through to his library,

located in the former living and reception rooms of the villa, now

knocked through to form one vast and tranquil space.  Here he opened a

drawer in a handsome rosewood cabinet and consulted the well-thumbed

handwritten index cards inside.  A minute or so later he had located

the position of the volume and, having hauled over the wheeled ladder

used for accessing the higher of the eight rows of shelves, was leafing

through Andrea de Jorio's classic 1832 text about southern Italian

gestures and their origins in classical antiquity.

Yes, there it was: "Disprezzo', contempt.  Although the tactful

Neapolitan cleric had no more than hinted at this, the root

significance of the sign was of course blatantly sexual.  It was the

most powerful non-verbal insult that existed, what de Jorio had termed

'the superlative form' of other offensive gestures.

Basically, someone was telling him to fuck off.

Barefoot and wearing her raincoat as a dressing gown, Flavia was

savouring a cigarette and stirring a pan of sauce when there came a

pattern of heavy raps at the door.  She went to squint at the caller

through the fish-eye lens, getting only a general impression of a hat,

dark glasses and a heavy overcoat.

"Who is it?"

"Police."

She took another peek, then unbolted and opened the door.  The man

flashed a plastic card from his wallet.  Flavia made out the word

"Speranza' but nothing more.

"May I come in?"  he asked.

He looked more like a secret policeman than the regular sort, thought

Flavia, although such men did not present identification or ask

permission to come in.  But there was only one reason why the police

should be interested in her and the other girls living in those rooms,

and that was to effect their immediate deportation under the new

immigration laws that had been rushed through to satisfy the xenophobic

electorate of various politicians whose support was essential to the

survival of the governing coalition.

The intruder stood at the centre of the room, looking about him at the

mattresses on the floor, the fruit crates used as cupboards, the pot of

pasta sauce simmering on the hot plate the length of blue nylon cord

suspended between two bent nails and serving as a communal wardrobe. In

an inversion of its normal function, Flavia wrapped the raincoat

tightly about her body, still wet and cold from the primitive shower in

the opposite corner.

"Nice place," the man remarked.

This was too obvious a provocation to merit a reply.  i

"You sharing?"

Flavia shook her head.  There was just a chance of saving the other

girls, if she could somehow get word to them before they came home.

Didn't they have to allow you a phone call here in Europe?  The man was

staring at their meagre possessions, in full view all around.  There

was still a chance, though, since these added up to less than a quarter

of what the average Italian woman would have regarded as the basic

minimum.

The policeman took a studio photograph from the inside pocket of his

double-breasted coat and showed it to Flavia.

"You know this person," he said.

She recognised Rodolfo's flat mate immediately, although she had never

seen him wearing a jacket and tie, but shook her head again.  The

intruder replaced the photograph and produced a shiny metal hip flask

from which he took a long gurgling drink.

"Sure you do," he said, wiping his lips.  "Name's Vincenzo.  Vincenzo

Amadori."

He swapped the flask for a packet of cigarettes from yet another pocket

of his capacious coat.

"Mind if I smoke?"

She shook her head again.

"Want one?"

Her instinct was to refuse tell nothing, take nothing but a much older

superstition reminded her that three denials brought bad luck.  The

packet was labelled Camels and the cigarette the man lit for her had a

pleasant toasty flavour.  American imports, she thought

inconsequentially.  Definitely the secret police.  She decided to call

him Dragos.

"Sure you know him," the intruder insisted.  "Number seventy-four Via

Marsala, second floor at the back."

Flavia realised that further evasion was in vain.  Clearly she had been

followed.

"I am see him there I think," she declared in a laborious chant.

"Hey, it talks as well!"  Dragos remarked with a jocular leer.  "Tell

me you mix a mean martini, darling, and you've got yourself a date.

Actually, all you need to do is sit down and cross your legs."

He looked around hopefully, but chairs were among the many items of

furniture the room lacked.

"You go there to see him?"  Dragos continued.  "Or is it the other

kid?"

"The other."

A sharp nod.

"Smart girl.  Strictly between you, me and anyone who may be listening

in behind these cardboard walls, our little Prince Vince is bad

news."

"I already know these.  But he is not a prince I think."

The secret policeman's attention had seemingly wandered again, this

time to the electric hot plate that was the household's only cooking

facility.  He walked over and sniffed the simmering sauce

appreciatively.

"Have you ever met any of his friends?"  he remarked in a tone of

studied indifference.

"Of this Vincenzo?"

"The very same."

Drago sucked at his cigarette,

"He's fallen into bad company, you see.  His parents are very

worried."

"My friend he is not bad company'

"Mattioli?  No, he's okay, for a student.  But there's this crew that

Amadori hangs out with at football matches.  They're a different

story."

"These I never see."

"Never, eh?"

Dragos picked up a spoon, dipped it into the pasta sauce and slurped

down the contents, turning to Flavia with a patronising smirk that was

abruptly wiped from his face.  He dropped the spoon and clutched his

throat, then doubled over and began bawling incoherently.

Flavia ran to the washbasin and filled the tooth glass with water, but

the sufferer had already grabbed a beaker of colour less fluid from a

nearby shelf and downed it in one.  The result was a series of piercing

shrieks which blasted openings into that wing of the palace which the

Princess had ordered to be abandoned and sealed up years before.

"Merda di merda di tnerda di merda di met da di merda di..."

It was only after administering a lengthy course of plain yoghurt

diluted with lemon juice that Flavia was able to get her visitor into a

fit state to leave, which by then was all he showed any desire to do.

Unfortunately the interruption left her no time to complete and then

eat the late lunch she had been eagerly anticipating before going to

work.  She was particularly resentful about this since the sauce

despite the unprintable things the secret policeman had said about it

-was a personal favourite which she could only prepare on very rare

occasions when the necessary ingredient was to hand.

There were few enough things that Flavia missed about her native

country, but the relish which formed the basis of this sauce was one.

It consisted of sliced red and yellow goat shorn peppers, robustly hot

and subtly sweet, steeped in oil with garlic and lemon zest and

mysterious spices.  The wonderfully intense flavour suffused your

entire system for hours afterwards, warming and reinvigorating both

flesh and spirit.  It was a perfect pick-me-up for this vicious cold

spell that had lasted for weeks, and Flavia had been overjoyed when six

large and priceless jars emerged from the parcel she had received the

day before from the woman who had been her closest friend during their

long childhood years in the House of Joy.

But enough water to cook the pasta would take at least twenty minutes

to come to the boil on the feeble electric ring, and in half an hour

she was due at work.  The managerial underling she had to deal with was

an obnoxious little tyrant who had already made it abundantly clear

that he regarded women like Flavia as expendable casual labour, and

that the least infringement of her verbal terms of engagement would

result in instant dismissal.  So she mopped up as much of the delicious

sauce as she could by dunking chunks of day-old bread into it, happily

chomping it down.  Why on earth the policeman had made such a fuss

about the mouthful he'd tasted was utterly beyond her, although the

remains of a glass of the homemade plum brandy that Viorica had also

sent was probably not the ideal antidote.

Nevertheless, she felt that she had scored a point in some way.  By the

time he finally left, Dragos had been very tractable, indeed almost

tearfully grateful for Flavia's ministrations, and had insisted on

leaving her his phone number with a line about her Ireing well

rewarded' for any information she passed on about Vincenzo Amadori.

Flavia would of course never have dreamt of voluntarily telling the

police anything about anyone, let alone a person associated, however

insignificantly, with Rodolfo, but she definitely felt that she had won

that particular encounter, and arrived at the bus stop in the freezing

gloom with a light, lively smile on her lips.

The subject of Romano Rinaldi's private life had generated a good deal

of speculation, the more so in that next to nothing was known about it.

For that matter, he himself barely knew anything definite about his

true origins and as he had explained to his publicist when Lo Chef's

growing fame made it necessary to hire one what he did know, or

suspected, was far too lurid to form a basis for the type of public

persona he wished to create.

The publicist had listened to a rambling account of an informal and

peripatetic childhood under the tutelage of a number of 'aunts', all of

whom had originally formed part of the female entourage of a certain

Italian pop idol of the 1960s whose star had now faded, but who was

still alive and known to be extremely litigious.  One by one these

guardians had disappeared from the scene, until the last had brought

the pubescent Romano with her when she joined a religious cult based in

an abandoned complex of troglodytic dwellings out in the wilds

somewhere east of Potenza.

At this point the publicist a smugly jovial man with the air of a

retired circus ringmaster held up his hand.

"Has anyone from that period ever tried to contact you?"  he asked.

"No."

"Any family members still living?"

"None that I know of."

"If someone shows up claiming to be related to you, do we have

deniability?"

"Why not?  I can't even prove anything myself."

The publicist beamed and released a long, lingering sigh.

"I've been waiting all my life for someone like you," he said.

An alternative version of the star's early years had duly been

invented, featuring a poor but happy upbringing in working-class Rome,

with a classic salt-of-the-earth mother who ruled her numerous brood

with a rod of iron but saw them through the hard times, of which

needless to say there were many, and above all served up the delicious,

nourishing traditional meals that had first awakened the young Romano's

interest in cooking.  For a time, an out-of-work actress had been hired

to represent this redoubtable personage, but she had threatened to sell

her story to a celebrity gossip mag and had had to be bought off and

written out of the plot.  After that the surrogate family had been kept

strictly off-stage, ostensibly to protect the sanctity of Lo Chef's

private life, which was particularly precious to him following his

mother's tragic stroke.

Romano's actual roots had however left their mark on him, not least in

his conviction that the only thing worth achieving was the long-term

certainty of short-term pleasure, and that any attempt to analyse or

understand life was a complete waste of time.  He was therefore unaware

of the irony involved in the fact that once the money started rolling

in to the point where he could invest in the construction of new

apartment blocks, he himself had chosen to live exactly where he had

grown up: illegally in a hole in the ground.  The owners of properties

such as his typically had a phantom abusivo dwelling constructed on the

roof and classified for rating purposes as a storage facility; Romano

had done something similar, but deep underground, and it was in this

bunker that he was now planning the opening blitzkreig of his total war

against Professor Edgardo Ugo.

To be honest, he was still furious with Delia, although a smidgin or

two of the good stuff had phased his anger down

from the screaming fit he had treated her to when she originally

pitched the idea to him after the recording session that morning.  But

his core position hadn't changed one iota, and the sooner she realised

this the better.  He had no interest in a negotiated solution to Ugo's

scandalous provocation.  What he wanted was the arse hole arse on a

plate, and Delia's job, as his highly-paid gofer, was to jiggle her

brisket cutely under his nose and enquire sweetly if he wanted fries

with that, not tell him that he should have ordered something else.

The computer emitted a soft gong-like sound, indicating the arrival of

an email.  Sensing his mood starting to darken again, Rinaldi quickly

snorted another line.  Cooking might be problematic for him, but when

it came to co king he was a wizard.  He crossed the minimalistically

furnished expanses of the concrete coffer-dam that had been constructed

amid the foundations of the apartment block and glared at the screen.

I can't take your refusal as absolute, Romano, there's just too much at

stake.  This was potentially a great crisis.  I've turned it into an

equally great opportunity.  I completely understand your justifiable

feelings of hurt, but the fact remains that you'd be a fool not to grab

this chance of both clearing your name and garnering positive publicity

for the show, the products and the Lo Chef brand name.  FWIW, the whole

team is in agreement on this.

Rinaldi sat down at the keyboard and fired off his reply.  I don't do

live.

The little bitch was obviously handling this in real time her own job

was on the line, of course, although so far she hadn't mentioned this

because she came right back at him.

The jury will be rigged.  I explained all this to you when we met. I've

already got five judges signed up and am working on the rest. You

will also be informed of the list of ingredients in advance in fact we

can more or less dictate them and will be intensively coached by Righi

as usual.  By the time the show goes on stage even you will be able to

whip up an acceptable pasta dish within the time limit.  You have

everything to gain and nothing to lose.  For God's sake think about

it.

He let the coke reply to this one.

There's nothing to think about.  Where I grew up, down in the streets,

among people who had nothing but their pride, we had a saying.  "If you

lose your money, nothing is lost.  If you lose your health, much is

lost.  If you lose your honour, all is lost."  This arrogant bastard

has impugned my honour.  He shall pay for that.

Romano clicked this off and then fiddled around until he had programmed

the stress-reducing "Pure White Noise' audio file.  Barely had the

unvarying swishing pervaded the room than the computer gonged again.

Rinaldi was tempted to ignore it, but he knew that this issue had to be

resolved, and far better by email than in person.

Fine, go right ahead.  FYI, our legal consultant has advised us that

our chances of winning a court case are at best fifty-fifty.

Technically speaking, Ugo did not libel you.  His comments were simply

a 'hypothetical illustrative example' designed to sex up one of his

the-way-we-live-now pieces.  But if you sue, he will hire the | very

best lawyers in the country and quite possibly a few muckraking hacks

to dig around and see what they can come up with.  Disgruntled former

employees, etc.  Remember little Placida, who turned out not to be?

It could get really nasty.  At best we'll win a 'moral victory' that no

one will care about, which will cost a fortune ?  in fees and still

leave everyone wondering whether you can actually cook or not.  But

once you have demonstrated your skills and superiority live on TV at

the Bologna food fair and don't forget that the contest is sewn up in

your favour whatever happens in the kitchen -then the prospects for

your future career are assured, not just here in Italy but world-wide.

Professor Ugo may be an arrogant bastard, but he is also a huge

international personality.  Out-takes from this event are going to be

shown on hundreds of foreign channels, maybe thousands.  You know those

little feel-good stories they stick in at the end of the news after the

politics and wars and atrocities?  "And now, on a lighter note ..."

You're going to own that slot, Romano.  I personally guarantee you that

if you accept the opportunity that I've set up then by the end of the

year Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta will be global, and all the spin-off

branded products along with it.  We're talking potentially millions.

And one more thing, for what it may be worth.  If you pigheadedly

insist on going to court despite all the above, consider me fired.

Feeling his resolution beginning to weaken, Rinaldi sidled over to the

modest kitchenette, where he occasionally warmed up a cup of instant

soup or burnt a defrosted slice of bread under the grill, and snapped

open a bottle of Coke.  He well remembered the days before his current

success, when he had eked out an exiguous livelihood voicing jingles

for advertisements to be aired on local radio stations.  It had been a

studio director for one of these who had come up with the original idea

for the Lo Chef show, and originally it had been intended as little

more than a joke.  But the director had contacts at various television

production companies, and after a few embellishments, such as the

singing, had been added to the pitch, one of these had agreed to make a

pilot at a discounted fee refundable if they could find a broadcaster

willing to take it on.

They had, and the ratings had been good enough for the TV station to

come back for a mini-series of six episodes.  Ratings had climbed by

leaps and bounds with each screening all

word of mouth and Rinaldi got a contract to do a full series for the

rest of the year.  When that expired, he was in a position to negotiate

a very much more lucrative contract with the nation's most-watched

channel, plus a prime-time slot right after the smash hit Filthy Rich

Stupid Sluts reality show.  At first the friend involved had run the

production company, but the momentum of the product had soon exhausted

his meagre skills and Romano Rinaldi had reluctantly been forced to

dispense with his services.

Like all ideas of genius, this one was basically very simple.  Italian

cooking was dying.  Not at the restaurant level, but in the home.  Men

had never dreamt of learning how to cook, and nowadays most women were

too tired and preoccupied to do so.  In any case, they wouldn't know

how.  The oral tradition that had passed down recipes and techniques

from mother to daughter for countless centuries had virtually died out,

along with the extended family and stay-at-home wives.

Hence Lo Chef's appeal.  His warm, unthreatening, campily flirty screen

persona tapped deeply into his viewership's culinarily challenged

subconscious, allaying its anxieties and sense of inadequacy while

validating its dream and aspirations.  The popularity of his show was

not based on educating the younger generation in the basics of putting

food on the table, although the scriptwriters were constantly reminded

that their target audience included people who thought that milk came

fresh from the cow at 5 C, and even those who had never realised that

cows were involved at all.  But Lo Chef's viewers didn't want

instruction, they wanted glamour, a few 'authentic' tips from the top,

and above all a bit of fun.

This was where the singing came in.  Sections of the recipe,

directions, ingredients, preparation methods all floated out in

Rinaldi's very serviceable light tenor another link to his childhood,

and possibly even his parentage to the melodies

of famous operas and popular songs.  Everyone relaxed and smiled as the

chubby, lovable TV personality whipped up another stunning, authentic

dish 'from our incomparable and timeless gastronomic tradition',

accompanied by two scantily clad, inanely grinning bimbettes with

pneumatic boobs who got the male audience on board while giving the

average housewife the satisfaction of jeering at their utter

incompetence, for which they were always being indulgently scolded by

the star, his eyes raised to heaven.

It had been a dynamite concept, and one he had managed carefully.  By

now he was less interested in direct revenue from the TV station than

in exposure for the ever-expanding line of products marketed under the

Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta trademark.  This was the sweetest aspect of

the whole enterprise, since it required no effort on Rinaldi's part

whatsoever.  Even initially, all he had had to do was to find a

reasonably good product available at a knockdown wholesale price, then

contact the producer and make a bid for exclusive retail rights.  Now,

of course, the producers contacted him.  He was deluged with offers.

Then it was just a matter of hiring some marketing hack to write a

lyrical blurb to print on the label beneath a cheery image of the star

in his white coat and chef's hat, his hand held out and mouth open as

he reached for a high C, and ship it out to the supermarkets.

He had started with the Coop chain that controlled most mass food

outlets in central Italy, then moved on to Conad and the other national

chains.  He knew just how women felt as they trudged up and down the

aisles in those smelly, crowded food marts.  They longed for the

personal contact and preferential treatment they got at the small,

old-fashioned shops, but doing the rounds of all those was just too

much of a bother after a hard day at work.  The supermarkets were

quick, convenient and cheap, but they felt chilly and impersonal.  So

when Signora Tizia spotted Romano's cheerful, friendly features on the

distinctive red and yellow label, she reached for it as if he had been

holding her arm.  No need for expensive hit-or-miss advertising either.

The shelves of the studio where he recorded his show were stacked with

those very same products, all with the labels turned outwards and

sporting the Lo Chef logo that was also back-projected on the false

rear wall of the set.  And whenever a new product was introduced to the

range, Rinaldi would extol its virtues in an extended aria based on the

rhapsodic publicity gush.

He took another swig of Coke, then headed back to the glass-topped

table.  He knew he was overdoing it, but he had a tough decision to

make.  Quite some time passed before he realised that he had in fact

made it, and he reached for the phone.

"All right, I'll do it."

There was an audible intake of breath at the other end.

"That's wonderful, Romano!  You've absolutely made the correct

decision.  But time is pressing.  You need to come to Bologna this

evening, okay?  As in right now.  I'll arrange a car and book a hotel

and email you the details ASAP.  And once again, congratulations!"

As a parting shot on learning of Zen's imminent departure from Lucca,

Gemma had reminded him of their collusion in the death of Roberto Lessi

and the subsequent disposal of his body at sea.  In his view, this had

been a clumsy manoeuvre -Gemma was brandishing a weapon they both knew

was far too dangerously destructive to be used.  She would have done

better to have reminded him that on the occasion to which she had

referred, when the truth about his identity had finally emerged, he had

promised her that whatever happened he would never tell her any more

lies.

Despite itself being a barefaced whopper of some considerable

magnitude, this had passed without comment, perhaps because at the time

Zen had believed it himself.  And until recently the atmosphere of the

relationship, seemingly charged with infinite promise, had indeed

appeared to make lies an irrelevant anachronism.  Incredibly enough, he

really had believed that in getting together with Gemma, and in the

move from his apartment in Rome to hers in Lucca that resulted, he had

magically reinvented himself.  The events of recent months, however,

had returned a different verdict, namely that this belief had been just

another coil in the spiral of illusions that his life had come to

resemble.

As with the gradual deterioration of the body, it was hard to say

exactly when it had all started, but the rows were coming more

frequently, and with them the lies.  A trivial example had occurred

when Gemma had asked why Zen was going to Bologna, mistakenly believing

this to be a free choice on his part.  "Years ago I was stationed in

the city and I loved it," he'd replied.  It was true that he couldn't

wait to leave, but it was not going back to Bologna that he was looking

forward to; anywhere would have done.  During the journey up in the

train, he tried to remember the last time he had been posted to the

city, some time during the 1970s, the terrorist anni di piombo, when

'red' Bologna had been one of the hotbeds of unrest.  But that side of

police work was handled by the DIGOS and other specialised

anti-terrorist units, while Zen, as a very junior officer attached to

the criminal investigation department, had been left to deal with the

usual routine crimes committed by people whose interest was not in

overthrowing the state but in lining their pockets or settling some

personal dispute.

All he could recall were isolated incidents, such as the time he'd

followed a small-time gangster to a tough suburban bar, where his

target was menaced by a rival.  Zen's man responded by pulling out a

flick-knife and driving it, almost up to the hilt, into his own leg.

Then, without the slightest flicker of expression, he turned to the

other thug and said, "That's what I'm capable of doing to myself,

Giorgio.  Imagine what I would be capable of doing to you."  The

aggressor looked like he was about to faint and left in extreme haste,

after which the gangster pulled out the knife, replaced it in his

pocket, then rolled up his trouser leg and removed his prosthetic limb,

to the general merriment of the company.

Or the time he went to interview a woman who claimed that her

ex-husband had been stalking her.  She'd sounded rather highly strung

on the phone, and when Zen got to her apartment and asked some rather

detailed and intimate questions she had first slapped his face,

knuckles out, then burst into a lengthy and deafening fit of tears, and

finally begged him to come to bed with her.  In the end he'd agreed,

and the results were so satisfactory that the following morning he'd

suggested that they repeat the experience.  To which the lady had icily

replied, "You were Tuesday.  This is Wednesday."

And then there was the occasion when he had chased a notorious drug

dealer and suspected murderer down the twisty, arcaded streets of the

city centre, only to have the man disappear in front of his eyes.  When

Zen finally located the open door through which he must have turned, he

was met by an expanse of black liquid a couple of metres below, one of

the 'lost' canals of Bologna, now buried beneath buildings and car

parks.  Ripples on the surface of the water showed the escape route

that the fugitive had chosen, but even at that relatively young age Zen

had felt no inclination to follow.

But these were mere anecdotes, and the incidents involved might have

happened elsewhere.  What was lacking was any overall sense of the city

as an entity in its own right, unique and unconfoundable with any

other.  The thing that struck him most today, in the brief taxi ride

from the station to the centre, was the glaring comparison with

Florence, so near and yet a world away.  Bologna was already the north,

home of hard workers, hearty eaters, heavy drinkers and dark, dour,

depressing winters lacking any of the mitigating hints of vernal

promise that regions south of the Apennines always kept up their

sleeves.  Unlike Zen's other postings, moreover, the strongest

impression this city seemed to have left was the efficiency of its

civic mechanisms, which scored the highest possible mark on his

rule-of-thumb criterion for such things, viz.  the public garbage skips

in the street are emptied (a) every day, (b) every week, (c) once in a

while, (d) never.  That and the food, which Zen sat down to sample as

soon as he had installed himself at the hotel recommended by his cab

driver as being conveniently close to the Questura.  He had also

recommended a restaurant, where Zen ate his way through an appetiser of

superb culatello, that almost unobtainable delicacy which a fellow

officer had once described as "Parma ham for grown-ups', followed by

deliciously thin and eggy layers of lasagna with the famous Bolognese

ragu, and finally rabbit cooked in white wine and balsamic vinegar, a

rich feast made palatable by a pleasantly astringent red wine still

lively from its recent fermentation.

Considered merely from a nutritional point of view, this one meal

represented more calories than his average daily intake, although he

still had a hard time persuading the waiter that a dish of creamy baked

custard would not provide a suitable conclusion.  Instead he had a

double cafferi stretto at a nearby bar and then set off to face

whatever welcome awaited him at the Questura.  This building was an

example of Fascist grandiloquence and triumphalism at its most

menacingly turgid, a massive temple to the power of the state out of

all proportion to the modest piazzetta in which it was situated.

Perhaps Bologna had been a left-wing hotbed even then.  Certainly the

message being sent couldn't have been clearer: behind the boys in blue

were the men in black.

The interior was on a scarcely less awesome scale, but Zen's reception

turned out to be reassuringly low-key.  His contact was an officer

named Salvatore Brunetti, whose manner resembled that of the many

doctors he had encountered during his stay in the Rome clinic, who

always gave the impression that Zen was a malingering crank who had

nothing the matter wrong with him but must be humoured to prevent the

possibility of violent outbursts.

"So what exactly is your mission here?"  the Bologna police officer

asked once the usual courtesies had been observed.

"Perhaps it would be best if I tell you what it isn't," Zen replied.

"For example, I'm not here to intervene, take control, undermine your

authority, nor above all to snitch on you to my superiors in Rome."

Salvatore Brunetti looked back at him with the same polite, distant,

mildly amused air.

"My remit is very specific," Zen continued firmly, 'and I intend to

honour it to the letter.  Given the identity of the victim and the

circumstances under which he died, this is clearly going to be an

extremely high-profile case, and has already generated a lot of media

exposure and comment.  My superiors at the Viminale naturally want to

be kept informed of developments as they happen, in real time, with a

view to exploiting them to maximum political effect if they are

positive and minim ising negative fallout as soon as possible if not.

They have instructed me to facilitate that process.  And that's all."

Brunetti waited a moment, then vaguely smiled.

"That's very frank of you, vice-ques tore

"Too frank, you mean.  Suspiciously so, in fact.  But it happens to be

true.  I am of a slightly older generation than you, Dottor Brunetti,

and I occasionally allow myself the luxury of saying what I actually

mean.  I am doing so now.  I can quite understand that you don't

necessarily believe me, but frankly it would save us both a lot of time

and bother if you did."

Caught off guard, his interlocutor laughed nervously.

"But of course I believe you!"

With a fastidious finger he indicated the thick file of documents on

the teak desk between them.

"Well, you'll find everything that we know at this point in there.  And

if I can help to clarify or amplify any points involved, please don't

hesitate to ask."

Zen picked up the file and put it away in his briefcase.

"Thank you," he said.  "I'll give it my fullest attention as soon as

possible.  In the meantime, could you perhaps give me a brief summary

of the basic facts?"

Brunetti nodded vigorously.

"It's quite straightforward.  The autopsy and forensic examinations

have confirmed that Lorenzo Curti was murdered in the driver's seat of

his car about an hour before the discovery

of the vehicle by one of our patrols.  He was first shot through the

heart with a 7.62 millimetre bullet, which was recovered, then stabbed

in the chest with a Parmesan cutting knife which was left in situ and

also recovered.  The presence of the latter item suggests foreknowledge

of the victim's family and business origins."

"And premeditation."

"Indeed.  Curti had attended the away match between his football team

and Ancona.  After the game he spent some time with the manager and

players in the dressing room, then left alone to drive home.  The

electronic toll records show that his Audi saloon entered the

autostrada system at Ancona Nord shortly before seven that evening and

exited at Bologna San Lazzaro just over ninety minutes later, very

shortly before he was killed."

"Would that have been his normal route?"

"No.  He lived outside Parma.  His reason for leaving the motorway

there is still unclear.  It's a moderately rough area at that time of

night, but the element of premeditation and the implicit message sent

by the post-mortem stabbing with the cheese cutter virtually rules out

the possibility that this was an opportunistic or casual crime

committed by some hitchhiker, drug dealer or pimp.  In fact it's

virtually certain that the killer was known to Curti, and extremely

probable that they had either made an appointment to meet at the scene

of the murder or had travelled back together from Ancona.  Why else, on

a dark, cold evening, should Curti have left the autostrada at San

Lazzaro instead of continuing straight on to join the Ai for Parma?"

"So you've been looking for someone among the victim's social or

business contacts with a motive to kill him?"  suggested Zen

helpfully.

"That's naturally what we have been doing," Brunetti replied.

"But so far without result."

"On the contrary!  It turns out that just about everyone Curti knew

personally or professionally had a reason to wish him dead.  As you

probably know, his business empire has virtually crumbled overnight,

the shares are now worth next to nothing, and our friends over at the

Guardia di Finanza are starting a serious fraud investigation which

will almost certainly result in jail sentences for many of those

involved including Curti himself had this not happened."

"But now he won't be able to testify."

"Tempting hypothesis, isn't it?"

There was a silence.

"Unfortunately..."

Brunetti let the word hang heavily for a moment.

"The bad news is that virtually all the potential suspects were either

at the game, out with friends, or at home in the bosom of their

families.  Of the rest, several were abroad and one was in labour."

"A woman?"  Zen queried.

Brunetti kindly ignored him.

"Meanwhile the Curti clan have issued a statement hotly denying any

insider involvement, and offering a one million euro reward for the

arrest and conviction of the killer.  In short, we have a vast list of

potential suspects, but no hard evidence against any of them, while

almost all seem to have unbreakable alibis."

"What about the forensic tests on the car?  Fibres, hairs and so on."

"Masses of it, ninety-nine per cent canine.  Curti kept a Labrador. And

swathes of fingerprints, too, but even if we made a match it would

prove nothing.  Almost all the suspects will have been in that Audi at

one time or another, most of them very recently."

"And the gun?"

"A spent cartridge case was found in the car, suggesting an autoloading

pistol.  It's a rimless, brass-coated steel model with as yet

unidentified head stamps probably of foreign origin.  Ballistics ran

the markings on the bullet through the system.  Nothing.  It looks like

a virgin."

"A hired assassin?  It sounds as though plenty of people wanted Curti

dead, just as long as they had an unbreakable alibi.  And there's any

number of under-employed people with the necessary skills and equipment

in eastern Europe these days."

"It's conceivable," Brunetti acknowledged.

Zen stood up, clasping his briefcase.

"Well, sounds like an interesting challenge.  Please let me know if

anything new should emerge.  At any hour of the day or night. Otherwise

I'll just try to keep out of your way."

He was walking with bowed head along the interminable corridors of the

Questura when he heard running footsteps behind him.  A young man in

patrolman's uniform appeared.

"Dottor Zen!  Forgive me, but we just passed and I recognised you."

Zen stared at him blankly.  The patrolman touched his cap.

"Bruno Nanni, dot tore  I was your driver during your visit last year

to the Alto Adige."

Zen smiled broadly.

"So it all worked out?"  he said with genuine pleasure.

"My transfer came through about ten days later.  Incredible, eh?  And

all thanks to you, capol'

Zen made a self-deprecatory gesture.

"I had a word with a certain person, but that sort of thing doesn't

always work."

"Well, it worked this time, dot tore and I can't thank you enough.  But

what are you doing here in Bologna, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Just another routine job.  A temporary secondment to review and assess

an ongoing case."

"Have you any plans for this evening?"

"Not a thing."

"Then you might care to go to the stadium."

"The football stadium?"

Nanni nodded.

"The club's holding a memorial service for Lorenzo Curti.  Funnily

enough, I was the one who discovered the body.  Anyway, all the players

will be there, the rest of the staff, and of course the supporters.

They'll all pay tribute, in their different ways, to the late president

of Bologna FC

"Doesn't really sound like my sort of thing, Bruno."

"It might be interesting from a professional point of view."  Nanni

remarked, rather too casually.

"In what way?"

"This case that you've come to look into.  It has to be the Curti

murder, right?  The Ministry isn't going to send a senior man like

yourself up here for anything else that's happened lately.  Well, the

event itself may be pretty dreary, but the stadium will be packed with

every diehard fan in the city."

"So?"

Bruno Nanni smiled mysteriously.

"What I've heard from friends is that a certain individual, one of the

craziest and most violent of the ultra mob, has been putting the word

about that he killed Curti.  He'll certainly be there tonight, and I

know the bar where that gang goes to booze it up afterwards.  It might

just be worth your while taking a look at him."

Zen weighed up the options.  After all, what did he have to lose?  The

only alternative was to eat a solitary dinner and then spend a lonely

evening in his hotel room watching television.  He might even get

desperate enough to read the copy of the file that Brunetti had given

him.

"Very well.  I'm staying at the Hotel Roma, just round the corner."

"I'll pick you up just before six, dot tore

A blinding flash.

"Smile, you're on Candid Camera!"

Vincenzo straddled the doorway in an extravagantly debonair pose, one

leg cocked up behind him and a tiny metallic object held to his eye.

Another flash of halogen brilliance.  Vincenzo laughed and tossed the

object across the room to Rodolfo, who put down his book and just

managed to make the catch.

"Wicked, huh?"

Rodolfo turned the thing over.  It seemed to be some sort of camera,

but smaller than any he had seen, or indeed imagined possible.  But

Vincenzo was clearly high, so he decided to appear underwhelmed.

"Very clever," he remarked coolly.  "How much did it cost?"

Vincenzo laughed uproariously for some time.

"Oh, I picked it up last night after the game.  Along with another

little toy that's not bad either.  What can I tell you?  I got lucky. I

finally got lucky'

He started pacing restlessly about the room, occasionally kicking the

furniture.

"Have you been snorting Ritalin again?"  asked Rodolfo.

"None of your fucking business.  You're not my mother."

Rodolfo closed the book he had been leafing through and gently palpated

the sturdy, plain, well-worn leather binding.  He must return it today,

he thought.  Volumes as rare and precious as this were not supposed to

be removed from the university library, but graduate students of

Professor Edgardo Ugo enjoyed certain privileges.

"I'm trying to study, Vincenzo," he lied.

His flat mate grinned aggressively.

"So are you planning to just sit here all evening reading a musty old

book and then scribble some shit for that cocksucking prof to sneer at?

Jesus, what a pathetic life!"

"At least I'm getting laid."  A

"Yeah, by some illegal immigrant from Christ knows where with a

temporary job as a cleaner.  Congratulations, terronel You'll make a

great couple."

Rodolfo was on his feet in a second.  He grabbed Vincenzo by the

shoulder and slammed him against the wall.

"Take that back!"

Vincenzo looked stunned.

"Fuck!  Can't you take a joke?"

Rodolfo held him pinned against the wall, staring the other intensely

in the eyes until he looked away.

"Fucking southerners," complained Vincenzo.  "Bunch of freaking

crazies."

"Quite right, my friend.  And if you ever allow yourself one more

insulting remark about my girlfriend, or for that matter my people,

you'll find out exactly how crazy we can be."

Vincenzo shook his head weakly.

"Va bene, va bene.  Basta, oh!"

Rodolfo nodded sharply and with significance, then released the other

man.  Vincenzo shook himself with a certain hauteur.

"Anyway, you're not the only ones who can be a little crazy.  It's just

that up here in the north we don't make empty threats."

Rodolfo went back to the sofa and opened Andrea de Jorio's La mitnica

degli anti chi investigata nel gest ire napoletano at the illustration

he had been examining earlier, marvelling at the quality and detail of

the engraving.

"Meaning what?"  he muttered through a long yawn.

"Meaning this evening's service of tribute down at the stadium."

"You speak in riddles."

Vincenzo laughed scornfully.  i

"If you ever got your head out of the library and into the real world,

you'd know the answer."

"Unfortunately I'm not a spoilt brat like you, Vincenzo.  I can't

afford to play at being the eternal student.  My father has spent a lot

of money sending me up here to get a degree.  He naturally expects to

see some return on that investment."

And is going to be shattered and furious when he finds out that I have

pissed it away, he thought.

"All that interpretation shit you study with Ugo?"  Vincenzo retorted.

"Well, interpret this!  Someone killed Lorenzo Curti because he bought

our team, with all its glorious history, for a song, then let all the

best players go and was too cheap to get replacements.  He's been

screwing us over for years, and last night he paid the price."

"They said on TV it was probably to do with his business dealings."

Vincenzo shrugged impatiently.

"What do those jerks know?  Anyway, the important thing is the

bastard's dead, and there isn't a true-hearted Bologna fan who isn't

totally over the moon.  So of course we're all going along to this

memorial thing they're putting on, only get this!  we're going to laugh

all the way through it.  Sure, I'm a little stoned.  The others will be

too.  We won't do anything outrageous, but up there in the stands we'll

be holding our own private commemorative service.  And I promise you,

the tone will be rather different from the official one down on the

pitch.  So give me that jacket of mine you stole."

Rodolfo retrieved the battered, black leather garment and handed it to

Vincenzo, who stomped out of the apartment without another word,

slamming the front door behind him.

Blissfully solitary once more, Rodolfo took one last lingering look at

the Disprezzo engraving that he had scanned and downloaded using the

university's state-of-the-art technical facilities and then forwarded

to Professor Ugo.  Knowledge of his email address and mobile phone

number was another of the privileges that Ugo made available to

graduate students.

Not that Rodolfo was one any more.  His tutor had made it very clear

that he had been barred from attending the seminar course and stood no

chance of receiving his final degree, although like any other member of

the public he was at perfect liberty to attend the professor's

celebrated weekly lectures, the next of which was tomorrow.  Rodolfo

smiled reflectively.  Maybe he would go along and hold his own 'private

commemorative service', just like Vincenzo and the rest of the yobs at

the stadium tonight.  Nothing outrageous, as Vincenzo had put it, but

he might put in an appearance.  He'd have to go back to the uni soon

anyway, if only to return the Andrea de Jorio book and all the others

that he had borrowed over the past months, most of which were long

overdue.

He walked through to his bedroom and was scanning the shelves for the

necessary titles when the phone rang.

"It's your old dad, Rodolfo.  Just my usual weekly call.  Like to keep

in touch, you know."

"Yes, of course."

"So how are things?"

"Fine, dad.  Fine."

"Wish I could say the same."

"What's happened?"

"Oh, nothing really."

The voice paused.

"At least, nothing I want to talk about over the phone.  You

understand?"

"What's happened?"

The resulting silence was finally broken by a bitter guffaw.

"What do they teach you up there at the university?"  his father mused

quietly, as though to himself.  "You know nothing.  Less than you did

when you were ten.  Five, even.  Nothing, nothing ..."

The voice died away.

"I know a few things," Rodolfo replied truculently, hoping that he

wouldn't be asked to provide an example.

But now his father sounded contrite.  i

"Of course you do, of course.  You're very learned, I'm sure.  You must

forgive me, it's just..."

"What, dad?"

"Nothing.  Just keep talking, that calms me.  It's probably just that

I've been overworking."

"On what?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter."

"Tell me!"

"Well, we've been rebuilding a retaining wall on a bend in the road up

past Monte Iacovizzo, up there in the Gargano.  It's in the national

park, so we have to use the original granite blocks.  An absolute

bitch.  We've been there all month, and we're not done yet.  It's going

to be way over budget, but it's for the government so of course there's

no problem about cost overruns."

Silence fell.

"What's a retaining wall?"  asked Rodolfo artlessly.

His father laughed harshly.

"Don't pretend you give a damn!"

"I do."

Another long silence.

"Well," his father began hesitantly, as though still suspicious of a

trap, 'basically they support unstable ground.  And they're

always problematic, especially old ones like the one we're mending."

"Why?"

"Because they defy the laws of gravity and of soil mechanics.  There

are so many ways they can fail."

"Such as what?"

"Sliding, foundation failure, you name it.  Overturning is the most

common.  What most people don't realise is that mortar isn't a glue,

it's just to level out the irregularities in the stone blocks and keep

the pressure diagram constant.  That sort of wall is a simple gravity

structure, so you need to calculate the overturning moment."

"You can predict when it will fall down?"

His father laughed again, with indulgent contempt this time.

"Not that kind of moment, idiot!  The outward push at a given distance

from the base.  The weight of the blocks times the horizontal distance

from the front of the wall gives the restoring moment.  That obviously

has to be greater than the overturning moment if the thing's going to

stand up."

"I never knew anything about this," Rodolfo remarked.

His father laughed cannily.

"You're taking the piss, aren't you?  Patronising your dumb old dad

banging on about stuff the Romans knew as if it was breaking news!"

"It's news to me."

"I'm sure it is, but why should you care?"  ;

"What about failure?"  his son replied.

"It can happen for lots of reasons.  Rising water levels during the

rainy season, seasonal shrinkage and swelling."

Rodolfo murmured his comprehension.

"So failure is the key to everything," he said.

"How do you mean?"

"Well, the possibility of failure.  That's the truth maker, as

philosophers say.  The only authentic tasks are those at which you can

fail."

A silence fell.  No, there was a sound of the sea, or maybe the

soughing of a breeze in the oak grove around the house.  Then he

thought that his father was laughing quietly.  But as the sound went

on, Rodolfo realised that he was weeping.  K

"What's the matter, dad?"  he cried with genuine alarm.  "

"I'm just lonely.  Since your mother died, I've been all alone, and

with so many problems, professional and personal.  I want you here, but

all I get is a disembodied voice down the phone line.  I hate

telephones, I hate computers, I hate this technology that is stealing

our souls! Laugh at me all you like, the fact remains that I want you

to be here. Here in Puglia, here at home.  You, my only son."

Yet another silence.

"Now do you understand?"  his father asked.

"Well, I'm not sure.  I mean, what exactly do you have in mind?"

"No, you don't," his father retorted, plainly ashamed of having let his

feelings show for the first time.  "Your problem, Rodolfo, is that

you've been educated beyond your intelligence.  What the hell is this

semiotica all about, anyway?  Can you explain it to me the way I just

explained retaining walls to you?  If you have to waste more of your

time and my money at university, why not go the whole hog and study

ottica?  That way you could at least make some money as an eye doctor

when you finally graduate, if ever.  People always need help with their

sight.  I can't tell a tension crack from a spider's thread without my

glasses any more."

Absurdly, Rodolfo found himself defending the very position he had

repeatedly attacked in Ugo's seminars.

"You're confusing the etymology, Dad.  The Latin prefix "semi" is

derived from the Sanskrit sami, meaning a half or

I,

part, whereas semiotics is from the Greek semei on a sign.  It means

the study of signs."

"Like road signs?"

"Well, it's a bit more complex than that.  Rightly considered,

everything's a sign."

There was a resonant thud.

"This isn't a sign.  It's a damned table, for the love of God!"

Rodolfo instantly saw the massive scored and scorched surface, as

though it were standing before him.  But he had been trained by

masters.

"In itself, it's nothing.  Now that you've so designated it, then its

signifier is indeed "a table" for the purposes of this text."

"What do you mean, it's nothing?"

His father's voice had now taken on an edge of rage which Rodolfo found

only too familiar.

"I built this bugger with my own hands from timbers I pulled out of the

house where I was born!  Hard, seasoned holm oak, at least four hundred

years old.  Christ, I could hardly cut or plane it even with the most

powerful equipment.  And you're telling me that it's nothing?"

"No word or other sign has any meaning except within the context of a

specified discourse.  That table is evidently laden with significance

for you, given its physical sourcing in the construction material of

your natal home, the notion of "the family board", and by extension the

altar in church where communion is taken.  But none of these

intrinsically or necessarily adhere to the physical object you just

struck.  Surely that's obvious."

His father sighed.

"All I know is that I built this table, and that my construction

company now builds walls, bridges, roads, office blocks, apartment

buildings, you name it.  They either stay up or they fall down."

"That's not the point.  If someone says "This book's really good",

they're not referring to an object that weighs so much and is such and

such a size.  They're talking about the text, the discourse, and the

infinite variety of possible interpretations that it offers."

"You and your damn books!"

There was a dry click as the receiver went down.

You and your damn books.  Rodolfo surveyed the crowded shelves on his

bedroom wall.  Yeah well, they were going to have to go.  Flavia too,

for that matter.  Might as well make a clean break.  Apart from

anything else, his father would go berserk if he learned that his only

son had not only been expelled from university but was virtually living

with an illegal immigrant from an eastern European country that no one

had ever heard of, and whose real name almost certainly wasn't

Flavia.

Which just left Ugo.  Ideally he would have liked to draw a line there

too, but couldn't imagine how it could be done.  He began lifting the

heavy volumes down and stacking them on the bedside table.  As he

pulled out Umberto Eco's La struttura ass ente he noticed a dull

metallic gleam peeking out from behind the next book on the shelf.  He

gazed at it for a moment, then reached in and removed a semi-automatic

pistol.  The wooden grip sported an elaborate metallic crest surmounted

by a large red star, and the words "Tony Speranza' were engraved on the

barrel.

The door banged open and her supervisor walked in.

"So this is where you've been hiding!"

"I'm not hiding," Flavia replied calmly.  "I'm putting away the

equipment.  My work is over."

The balding gnome stared at her maliciously.  He was sweating, and the

array of pores on his nose resembled the backside of a bad cep.

Conscious of the unearned superiority afforded by her looks and

stature, Flavia felt a certain disinterested pity for him, although she

would have killed him without a thought if the need had arisen.

"No it's not!  The construction crew just finished putting up the set

in Bi, but everything's filthy, the event's at ten tomorrow morning and

all the other girls have gone home."

He put his head in his hands and sighed deeply.

"God, the day I've had!  At the very last minute they decide to hold

this stupid event, and guess who has to organise everything on less

than twenty-four hours' notice?  I managed to beg, borrow or steal the

stoves, pans and all the rest of it from the exhibitors here, but then

the stoves had to be hooked up and the whole fucking set constructed

from scratch in less than eight hours.  I've been going mad!  Anyway,

it's all done now, but the place is a total mess and we'll have the TV

crew in here at crack of dawn tomorrow to set up.  So get your illegal

arse out there right now," he snapped, stomping out, 'or I'll have it

shipped back to wherever the hell it came from."

Ruritania, she thought.  I am the Princess Flavia, and mine is a

Ruritanian arse.

She stacked her mop, pail, rags, bottles of cleanser and other

equipment on to the trolley, and pushed it and the vacuum cleaner out

into the vast arena, its ceiling festooned with an intricate mass of

yellow piping like a giant molecular model.  Another half-kilo metre

past stands displaying every kind of food, wine and kitchen equipment

brought her to the double doors of hall Bi.  She shoved the door open

with her Ruritanian arse, moved the gear inside and then turned to

survey the extent of the task before her.

Any lingering feelings of self-pity and indignation instantly left her.

The vast space was in darkness except for the brilliantly lit stage

area, where two kitchens had been constructed, one on each side, with a

fake dining room walled off between them.  Flavia was instantly

enchanted.  It looked like a full-sized version of the doll's house she

had played with as a child, before that and all the other family

possessions, and indeed the family itself, had been dispersed.  She had

named it the House of Joy, and then transferred that epithet to the

state orphanage to which she had later been sent, as if the concrete

walls of that formidable institution could also be folded back and its

roof lifted off to reveal a multitude of nooks and crannies where all

manner of secrets could be kept accessible but safely out of sight. The

memory of the books she had read so many times that she had them by

heart, for example.  As soon as she discovered the Italian text of one

of them at a market stall in Trieste, she realised that it was a key

that would unlock this odd dialect of her own sweet tongue.  In the

event, it had also served as the go-between in her introduction to

Rodolfo.

It was, he had told her later, the first time he had ever set foot in

La Carrozza, and he had only done so that evening because it had

started pouring down with rain, and he was recovering from a bad cold.

The arcades had protected him so far, but the next stage of his journey

home was in the open and he would have got drenched to the skin if he

had continued.  Since there was nowhere else free, he had asked the

young woman seated alone, who had finished her meal and was reading a

book, if she would mind his joining her.  The pizzeria was a

no-nonsense establishment where questions like this were a mere polite

formality, and Flavia had murmured agreement and waved to the empty

chair without even looking up.  Rodolfo had ordered some olive ascolane

and a beer.  Flavia was sitting over a cup of mediocre coffee,

laboriously picking her way through the battered paperback garishly

emblazoned with the title II Prigioniero di Zenda.

"Excuse my asking," the young man had said at length, 'but what are you

reading?"

"I am learning Italian," she'd replied.  "This is my textbook."

He could easily have left it at that, or made some stupid remark which

would have put an end to everything there and then.  Instead, he nodded

sagely, as though she had said something profound.

"Books are good, but to learn a language properly you really need a

teacher."

This had confused her, with its offered plethora of responses, but only

for a moment.

"I can't afford such luxuries.  Besides, I prefer to find things out by

making mistakes."

He had laughed, seemingly spontaneously, so that she forgave the

impertinence of his next remark.

"God almighty, a woman who can make me laugh!  Where have you been all

my life?"

His name was of course already as familiar to her as her own, which

perhaps helped to explain the ease with which things took their course,

quite as though it had already been written in a book she knew by

heart.  But all books come to an end.  Now, two months later, she

sensed that the pack of unread pages was running low.

Never mind, there was work to be done.  She walked out on

to the stage and set to work with a will, thinking about what she had

overheard from another of the cleaning staff about what was to happen

the next day.  Some sort of duel, it seemed to be, like the one between

Black Michael and King Rudolph's double, only with pots and pans

instead of swords and pistols.

About ten minutes later a man and a woman came out on to the set from

the wings, treading straight through the area that Flavia had just

washed and waxed.  She glared at them but said nothing.

"So, this is it," the woman said to the man.  She was about thirty,

with fashionably distressed hair, was clad in a beige business suit and

carried an imposing briefcase.  "This one will be your kitchen.  Ugo's

is on the other side.  Both are visible to the audience, but not to

each other or to the judges, who will be seated at the table in ..."

"Delia!"

The man jogged her arm and pointed at Flavia.  He was large and

bearded, with the air of someone who would have liked to have a good

time but didn't know how.  That pushy crow he was with certainly

wouldn't be able to help, thought Flavia, instinctively moved to take

Lo Chef under her battered wings.  Such scavengers had descended on her

own country too, she had heard.  Maybe Viorica had even become one. You

needed serious wealth and clout to ship food parcels such as the one

she had just received intact across so many frontiers.

The woman strode over to where Flavia was leaning on her mop.

"I'm sorry, but I must ask you to leave.  I'm having a very important

meeting with Signor Romano Rinaldi about his event tomorrow and we

cannot be interrupted."

Flavia shrugged.

"No cap ire  Di Ruritania."

She waved her hand vaguely, as though indicating some large but

undefined shape at the rear of the set.  Delia gave an irritable shake

of the head and walked back to her companion.

"It's all right, she's just some asylum seeker.  Doesn't understand

Italian.  Now, as I was saying, the jury will be in the central dining

area through there, again visible to the audience but not to either of

the competitors."

The man took about half a dozen very short, very loud breaths.  He

grabbed a bottle of pills from his pocket and twisted the knob of a

gleaming tap in the kitchen area.  Nothing emerged.

"The water's not hooked up!"  he squealed.

"It will be by tomorrow.  Here, I've got some Ferrarelle."

She passed him a plastic bottle and he downed the pills with a

grimace.

"So, how many are ours?"  he croaked.

"Paleotti, Aldrovandi, Sigonio, Colonna and Gentileschi," Delia

replied.  "Zappi and Giovio are leaning towards us, but could go either

way, while Orsini will certainly vote for Ugo.  They have the same

publisher, apart from anything else.  But that will just make it look

better.  The main thing is that whatever happens you're bound to win.

So relax, okay?  There's nothing to worry about."

"That's easy for you to say!  You're not the one who's going to have to

stand up in front of Christ knows how many million viewers and actually

do it."

Flavia made a show of passing her mop over the false-tile vinyl floor,

but in reality she was listening carefully.  Her spoken Italian was not

perfect as yet, although by no means as primitive as her reply to the

crow had suggested, but she understood the language very well indeed.

When you are a young woman, poor, powerless and alone in a strange

land, you learn fast.

The woman called Delia gave a snort of what sounded like

exasperation.

"Listen, Romano, everything's going to be all right.  Trust me.  You'll

do fine, you'll look fabulous, and above all you'll clear your name of

this ridiculous slur once and for all.  If you're nervous, just double

your normal dose of beta blockers."

She paused and looked at him significantly.

"But nothing else, all right?  No coke, no speed, and none of whatever

those pills are that you've been popping.  Not until the event's over.

Understand?  After that you can do what you like."

The man nodded grudgingly.  Delia indicated a large video screen

hanging at an angle above the set.

"The list of ingredients will be displayed there.  Glance at it briefly

but with apparent interest.  Remember, it's supposed to be the first

time you've ever seen it.  Scrutinise it with a nonchalant, relaxed

expression, as if your mind is running through all the possibilities

offered before making a spontaneous decision.  Then turn decisively

away, go to the stove and get the pasta water going before starting in

on the sauce.  Do everything with panache and naturalezza.  Maybe sing

a bit.  But not too much, okay?"

She pointed to the kitchen counter.

"The ingredients will be laid out here.  Just pick out the ones we've

been through with Righi and leave the rest alone.  No last-minute

improvisation, please.  I'll arrange for a litre bottle of Lo Chef Che

Canta e Incanta oil to be placed here.  Naturally a celebrity such as

you wouldn't dream of using an inferior product, plus it'll give our

label some nice exposure."

She looked around.

"What else?  Knives here, next to the cutting board.  Pans over here.

When the dish is ready, press this buzzer.  Someone will come and take

the pasta bowl from you and carry it out behind the set and in through

the back of the dining area, so that in theory the jurors don't know

which kitchen it came from.  In fact your bowl has a distinctive orange

patterning at the rim, subtly different from Ugo's.  Our people will be

in no doubt about which one is which."

She looked at him.

"Any questions?"

"Something's going to go wrong," the man replied in a dull voice.  "I

just know it."

"For God's sake, Romano!  Nothing will go wrong.  Nothing can.  I've

covered all the angles.  All you have to do is be here on time, with a

clear head, and put together a simple bowl of pasta that even I could

make blindfold.  Besides, it doesn't matter if it's any good or not.

Haven't you understood yet?  You're bound to win!  It's all been

arranged."

She glanced at her watch.

"Right, let's go back to the hotel.  The press conference starts in

half an hour."

When they had left, Flavia finished up her cleaning, then returned all

the equipment to the storage room before leaving the concrete wasteland

of the fiera complex and heading for the bus stop.  The video display

indicated that a smog alert was in effect, all vehicles with uneven

numbered plates being banned from the streets, and that her bus would

arrive in six minutes.  She took out her phone and dialled.

"It's me.  I had to work overtime because of this chef's duel they're

having tomorrow.  Where are you?  Oh.  Well, I'm starving.  La Carrozza

in half an hour?  Yes, I know you're going through a bad patch,

Rodolfo, but it will do you good to get out.  Ah, here's my bus.  A

presto, cam."

Flavia climbed aboard the bus with a smile on her lips that had nothing

whatever to do with the silly intrigues on which she had been

eavesdropping.  I'm going to meet my prince, she thought.

Aurelio Zen's mind was wandering, and he was happy to let it do so. The

air was acrid and savagely cold, the night starkly bright.  On a

frozen, floodlit field far below, men in suits and dark overcoats stood

in line, heads bowed respectfully, awaiting their turn to step up to

the podium and deliver a speech concerning the various virtues of

Lorenzo Curti, their personal sense of loss and their perspectives on

the unspeakable tragedy that his untimely death represented to everyone

fore gathered there, to the wider foot balling community united at this

moment in grief and remembrance, to the city of Bologna and indeed the

nation and the world in general.

The surrounding environment consisted of concrete, steel and rows of

blue plastic bucket seats which the spectators had lined with

newspapers to protect their clothing from the residue of filth

deposited there by the polluted void above.  Apart from the amplified

eulogies, the only sound was from the crowd of hardcore ultra fans at

the far end of the stadium, who kept up a continuous low ululation,

presumably a spontaneous expression of respect.

"I'll see you in the bar," Zen told Bruno Nanni, getting up and

starting along the narrow row between the seats towards the nearest

aisle.

A total stranger whose foot Zen inadvertently stepped on looked up at

him truculently.

"Leaving already?  You might show a little respect."

"I'm sorry," Zen replied, shaking his head.  "I just can't take any

more.  It's like a death in the family.  Do you understand?"

The man's expression changed to one of sympathy and he nodded.

Zen made his way through the cavernous vaults and vomitories of the

stadium until he finally emerged in the bleak piazzetta outside, its

scruffy grass borders and failed shrubs and trees exposed beneath the

powerful and pitiless lighting ranged high overhead on steel poles.

On their arrival, Bruno had pointed out a bar in a neighbouring street

as the unofficial clubhouse of the diehard Bologna supporters.  At

present the latter were still all inside the stadium, and the bar was

almost empty.  The most conspicuous figure was a bulky man wearing a

double-breasted overcoat, a grey trilby and dark glasses.  He was

leaning casually against the rear wall, sipping a tumbler of whiskey

and smoking an unfiltered American cigarette, and was fairly obviously

a private detective.  Apart from him, there were just three elderly men

playing cards at the rear of the premises, and a woman of about their

age who was sipping a glass of Fernet Branca and murmuring in a

sustained monologue to a Pekinese dog that was a triumph of the

taxidermist's art.

'... personally I want to be burnt when the time comes, even though it

turns out you pay the same either way, well of course you don't pay

but..."

The ceiling was festooned with banners and flags in the team's red and

blue colours, and the walls were covered in photographs of cup and

league-winning squads dating back to well before World War Two.  Zen

ordered a coffee with a shot of grappa and took it over to a table.

Almost half an hour passed before the crowd started drifting out of the

stadium.  The bar soon filled up with young males wearing baseball

caps, floppy jackets, even floppier pants, and synthetic sports shoes

constructed along the lines of a club sandwich.  They adopted a

wide-legged stance, taking up as much room as possible, and loitered

there with indefinite but vaguely menacing intent, talking and staring

and drinking and twitching.

Feeling slightly overwhelmed, Zen stood up and found an elbow-level

ledge against the mirror-clad pillar in the centre of the bar.  The man

dressed up as a private eye had now removed his shades and was gazing

with intense concentration at a knot of particularly obnoxious

newcomers who had taken up position to Zen's right.  He kept bringing

his right hand up to his face to inspect something in the palm, a

mobile phone perhaps.  The thought spurred Zen to check his own, which

he had switched off in the stadium out of respect for the occasion.  A

text message appeared: coming bo tomorrow lunch?  He hit the speed-dial

buttons for the Lucca number, but there was no reply.

One of the fans came lurching back from the bar, a tall glass of some

yellow liqueur in his hand.  He was wearing a woolly hat, a black

leather jacket with the club crest on the back, torn jeans and sports

shoes, and walked straight into the mirrored pillar, spilling most of

his drink over Zen's coat.

"Cazzol' he spat out.  Tuck you doing here, Vecchione?  Buy me another

drink, you ..."

But Zen had apparently been seized by a violent coughing attack, which

caused him to lose his balance and lurch towards the younger man.  A

moment later the latter screamed and then collapsed on the tiled floor,

just as Bruno appeared.

"He hit me!"  the man on the floor yelled, thrashing wildly about.  "He

kneed me in the fucking balls!  Christ it hurts!"

All conversation in the bar ceased, but no one intervened.  The

complainant struggled painfully to his feet and turned on Bruno.

"You with him, Nanni?"  he demanded aggressively.

Bruno nodded.

"So who is the old bastard?"  o

"A friend."

There was a moment then when various things might have happened, then

three of the man's companions came over and led him away.

"Sorry about that, dot tore the patrolman remarked.

"He knows you, Bruno?"

Nanni shrugged.

"I'm not part of his tight set, but we all more or less know each

other.  The ones who go to away matches, I mean."

"Does he know you're a policeman?"

"You think I'm crazy?"

He leant forward.

"Actually, he's the one I wanted you to meet."

"The one who's bragging that he killed Curti?"

Bruno nodded.

"So who is he?"

"Name of Vincenzo Amadori.  His father's a lawyer and his mother works

for the regional government.  One of the better families in town, as

they say here.  But the kid likes to act the desperate emarginato with

nothing to lose.  Comes on like he's one of the hardest cases at the

stadium."

"And the others accept him?"

Bruno shrugged.

"They tolerate him.  Of course, it helps that he's got money.  All the

drinks tonight for that clique over there are on him, for example.  He

just hands the barman his credit card."

"But he's not really liked?"

"I didn't notice anyone rushing to his aid just now."

He looked wonderingly at Zen.

"Did you really knacker him?"

But Zen chose not to hear.

"Why is there nothing about any of this in the interim report on the

Curti case?"  he demanded.

Bruno dismissed the question with a wave.

"No one knows except me.  In any case, it's just stadium gossip."

"Or malicious misinformation put about by some rival gang of supporters

who resent this Vincenzo Amadori's attitude and influence, and are

trying to make trouble for him."

"That's possible," Bruno conceded.  "But there is one potentially

substantive detail.  That pack always hires a coach to take them to the

away fixtures, so that they can travel together and stoke up on booze

and God knows what before being shaken down by the cops at the entrance

to the ground.  I was rostered for duty the night Curti was shot, so I

couldn't go to the game myself, but I've heard that Vincenzo travelled

down to Ancona with the rest of them as usual, only when the coach left

for the return trip he wasn't on it."

Zen noticed the man in the trench coat and trilby heading for the door.

He handed Bruno some money.

"Get us both a drink.  A hot toddy for me.  And a damp cloth to clean

this muck off my coat."

"Nervoso?  Macche?  For me, the cooking is the life!  I wait tomorrow

like a promised spouse his moon of honey!  Believe it, to be nervous,

it is more the timorous adversary of me which is feeling himself in

this mode!  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"

The Dutch journalist nodded in a mystified way and started muttering to

his neighbour.  Romano Rinaldi looked around the company with that

trademark beaming smile, showing his very white teeth above the beard

and generally radiating relaxed bonhomie.  He could only stand another

five minutes, he thought, catching Delia's eye meaningfully.  She

responded with a minimal vertical movement of her head, and Romano

smiled even more largely and headed for the bathroom.

Safely locked in a cubicle, he took out one of the origami sachets

stashed in his wallet and inhaled the contents off the back of his

hand.  Just the one, he thought, relishing the immediate, overwhelming

rush of clarity and assurance.  Well, maybe one more, what the hell.

The main thing was that the evening was a success.  More than that, a

triumph!  Everything was sparkling: the plates, the glasses, the

lights, the company, and above all he himself, the star!  He hadn't

sampled the varied and delicious canapes the hotel had laid on, not

having any appetite for anything but the crystalline powder all right,

one more line couldn't hurt but this too fitted in perfectly, an act of

genius demonstrating to the assembled contingent of foreign food

pornographers that Romano Rinaldi disdained the products of even the

best kitchen in Bologna.  Nothing was good enough for Lo Chef but his

own cooking.

The press conference had been hastily arranged with a view to promoting

a version of his show abroad.  The domestic market was pretty well

saturated now, but there was a potentially vast audience elsewhere,

above all the US.  Italian food was hot.  With his usual casual

mastery, Romano had learnt to speak perfect English in a few months, as

he had just demonstrated.  The assembled journalists had clearly been

astonished, even disconcerted, by his fluency.  Most people in Europe

understood at least some English, and if they didn't then they'd have

to put up with subtitles or a voice-over.  But the concept itself was

solid, as he proceeded to explain in rapid Italian to the press corps

when he floated back into the large private room that Delia had

booked.

"For we Italians, cooking is not a thing apart.  It is not just a skill

or a trade, it is life itself!  This is impossible for foreigners to

understand.  You people just eat something, anything, to stay alive,

gobbling down your filthy meals like a bunch of neolithic savages in a

cave!  For we Italians it is very different.  When we create un plat to

autentico, genuino e tipi co it isn't just to satisfy our bodily

hunger.  No!  We want to take inside ourselves all of Italy, her

history, her culture, her language, her incomparable cities and

landscapes.  We want to imbibe the very heart and soul of this earthly

paradise that is our native land!  To you barbarians, food is a mere

physical substance, so many calories and grams of fat, so much vitamin

C and roughage.  To us, this is a sacrilege!  For we Italians, dining

is like taking holy communion, tasting the very body and blood of our

sacred culture that we consume in this daily domestic mass!"

Surrendering as always to the instinctive grasp of the public pulse

that never deserted him, Rinaldi launched into a free adaptation of

Verdi's "Va, pensiero'.  Then he abruptly broke off in mid-phrase.  His

face darkened.

"Mind you, it hasn't always been easy for me.  On the contrary!  My

enemies say I only do this for the money, the fame,

III

the women, the fast cars, the jet-set lifestyle.  And of course like

every other talented and successful person in this country, I have many

enemies.  Only enemies, you might even say.  They're all out to get me!

You stupid foreigners visit Italy and think, "Beautiful villas,

magnificent countryside, wonderful art, cooking and culture, a truly

civilised country, an earthly paradise".  You blind fools!  You see

only the pretty face and don't have the wit to realise that this

stinking nation is nothing but a bloated corpse whose apparent signs of

life only prove that the maggots are already heaving within!  Paradise,

my arse!  Rather a Third World shithole inhabited by vicious, envious

swine whose only thought is to try and drag me down to their own

miserable level of insignificance!"

He breathed deeply for several seconds, then smiled at everyone seated

around the table to indicate the utter futility of any such attempt.

"And now Professor Edgardo Ugo dares to suggest that I do not know how

to cook!  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!  What does he know about Italian food and

culture?  He's spent so long locked up with his musty books that he's

no better than you foreigners!  Him, challenge me to prove myself?

Don't make me laugh!  He lives in an ivory tower, like all academics.

He cares nothing for the bel paese, but me, I love it with all my body

and soul.  That's why I have dedicated my life to making the immortal

masterpieces of our Italian cuisine accessible to the people, so that

our long, proud and unbroken tradition may continue for many

generations into the future!"

He burst into totally sincere tears.  Several of the journalists began

to gather their things together and eye the door.

"For him, it is all the head, not the heart!"  Lo Chef continued,

drying his eyes openly, unashamed of his worthy emotion.  "He is a

thinker, but Romano Rinaldi is a lover!  I COOK WITH MY COCK!!"

no

Delia had long since given up any attempt at translating this speech,

and was now bustling around speaking to the departing journalists.

Sensing the prevailing mood, Rinaldi switched effortlessly into his

perfect English.

"Ugo dares quarrel me?  Well!  Soon he gets his want!  This bastard say

I know fuck nothing, but he is in error, my friends.  Tomorrow I

demonstrate once and for ever to you here, to my public, and to the

entire world, that I know FUCK ALL!!!"

In the lobby, Rinaldi pressed the flesh assiduously, with Delia keeping

a cautious eye on the proceedings.

"What I do now?"  he replied to an unasked question.  "I walk!  I

inhale the air, I mingle with the people, I absorb the unique culture

of Italy that lies all around, and I draw inspiration for the contest

tomorrow.  Buona notte a tutti!"

He walked out and up the street, turned several corners at random, then

crossed Via Rizzoli, stepped up under the massive nineteenth-century

arcade, ignoring the nasal whine of a crouched beggar, and strode in

through a door beneath a neon sign depicting two golden arches.

"Give me a Big Tasty, a McRoyal Deluxe, a Crispy McBacon and five large

fries," he told the girl at the counter.

"Is that for here or to go?"

"Togo, to go!"

"So apparently the whole thing's fixed!  It's supposed to be a

free-for-all followed by an impartial blind tasting, but the jury's

been rigged.  They'll know which bowl Lo Chef's stuff is in and then

vote for it whatever it tastes like.  So I'm afraid your Professor Ugo

is bound to lose."

Listening to Flavia chatter away, Rodolfo wished that he could enjoy

his sense of power more.  Killers were supposed to, by all accounts.

That was what made it all worthwhile.

"He's going to lose all right."

His doomed girlfriend had already devoured her entire pizza, including

the crusts, and was now digging into a hefty slab of one of the

setnifreddo pies from the glass-fronted cooler near the door.

"Besides, Lo Chef has been told the list of ingredients in advance,"

she went on, blithely unaware of her imminent fate.  "He's already

chosen a recipe and practised it over and over again, just like my

sister used to do with her piano test pieces at the conservatory.  Mind

you, there was always a sight unseen as well."

Rodolfo looked up from the slice of pizza he had been morosely nibbling

at for longer than it had taken to prepare.

"I didn't know your sister was a pianist," he remarked in a stilted,

stagey drawl.  "Does she have a thing?"

"I beg your pardon?"  ;

"You know, a career.  Sort of like a job, only more glam."

Flavia finally displayed the first signs of sensing that something was

wrong, although she couldn't of course have imagined in her wildest

dreams that she was about to be shot through the heart.

"I don't know," she replied guardedly.  "We've rather lost touch."

"One always worries so much about these creative people.  A gal's reach

exceeding her grasp or is it the other way around?  Soaring dreams

brought crashing down to earth, the inevitable brutal awakening to the

harsh realities of life, and all that crap."

Flavia made a moue he would have kissed, had it not been time to pull

the trigger and have done.

"For my people, this is normal," she said.

The waiter appeared with an unmarked litre bottle and two glasses, all

frosty from the freezer.  This was the home-made liqueur that was a

speciality of La Carrozza, pure alcohol flavoured with a mixture of

wild berries, lemon and spices, which was left on the table without

appearing on the bill, a tradition of the house for regular customers.

The upper two-thirds of the contents were a very light pinkish-purple,

while the swamp of macerated berries occupied the lower section.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?"  Flavia asked.  "You never talk

about your family."

Rodolfo poured them both a drink, knocking his back to brace his

nerves.

"Just a father.  He phoned me today and we talked a lot, for the first

time in ages.  Maybe the first time ever."

Flavia smiled warmly.

"That's nice.  What did you talk about?"

"Failure.  Professor Ugo expelled me from his course this morning.  But

I've decided that he unwittingly did me a favour.  Failure's the key to

everything.  That's what these post-modern wankers don't realise, or

won't accept.  For them it's all relative.  There's no such thing as

failure, only alternative interpretations.  It's all a state of mind. I

believed that bullshit for a while myself, but now my eyes have been

opened.  I've definitely failed.

Shame about my academic career, shame about you, but that's the way it

is.  I just have a couple of things to take care of this was one, by

the way and then I'm off home."

Flavia sipped her drink.

"Ah, home," she said, lighting a cigarette.

"Yes, but my home is a real place."

Flavia drained the liqueur, immediately poured herself another and then

lit a cigarette.  She sat smoking in silence, looking all about the

room at the other clients, the hefty padrone who made the pizzas, the

two waiters who looked like that American silent film duo.

"I had to go to the university library today to return some overdue

books," Rodolfo said mechanically.  "I took the opportunity of

consulting the index in the latest edition of the Times atlas.  No

Ruritania."

He paused, still not meeting her eyes, but there was no response.

"So then I went to a computer terminal and did an online search.

Apparently it's the name of a fictional country invented by some minor

English writer as the locale for a trashy swashbuckling romance.  The

one you were reading when we first met, in fact.  What you called your

"Italian textbook".  But the fact of the matter is that Ruritania

doesn't exist."

Flavia lowered her face to the filthy tablecloth as tears welled up in

her eyes.

"It does exist!  It does, it does, it does!"

Rodolfo smiled in a superior way and shrugged.

"If you say so.  Of course, some people might say you were mad, but I

prefer to assume that you've just been lying to me all along.  And I

don't care to be lied to."

He placed some banknotes on the table.

"Well, I must be going.  I've got a biggish day tomorrow.  That'll

cover the meal and a coffee, should you want one.  Addio."

The next morning, Aurelio Zen decided to raid the Amadori family

residence.  At least, this was how he jokingly put it to himself, over

a coffee and the crispy, deep-fried batter wafers named sfrappole, in a

bar on Via D'Azeglio almost opposite his hotel.

The breakfast buffet at the latter was an uninspiring concession to

northern European businessmen visiting the city's famous trade fairs,

who expected to start the day with a selection of cheeses, cold meats

and hard-boiled eggs, washed down with watery coffee or tea.  By

contrast, II Gran Bar was almost aggressively mono cultural  The

espresso was first-rate, and came with a complimentary glass of

sparkling mineral water.  The pastries were handmade and fresh, the

waiters impeccably attentive, the clientele well-dressed and quietly

spoken, but what was most striking were the decorative plaques and

flags mounted on the walls, each bearing the emblem of a divisional

unit of the anti-terrorist DIGOS squad and other elite units of the

Polizia di Stato.  In the context of historically 'red' Bologna, the

message was clear: this was an unashamedly right-wing establishment in

the rich 'black' area south of Piazza Nettuno, located comfortingly

close to the central police station and the Prefettura, the bastions of

state rather than local power.

Zen was of course an agent of that power, and had amused himself with

the idea of using a little of it for the first time in months.  After

his visit to the football stadium with Bruno Nanni, he had spent a

dreary and dispiriting evening alone -the first of many, no doubt

followed by a restless night during which he had skimmed through the

written report on the

"5

Curti case with which Salvatore Brunetti had fairly blatantly tried to

fob him off.  This had been made clear by the Bologna officer's remarks

when they parted.  "I really must try and find time to look into the

possibility of allocating you a suitable office, Dottor Zen.  For the

moment there just doesn't seem to be anything available.  I do

apologise, but your transfer here was very sudden.  All leave has of

course been cancelled and the entire staff is working three shifts

around the clock, so the situation's a bit difficult.  I hope you

understand."

Zen understood all right, and in normal circumstances would have been

quite happy to stay well out of harm's way and keep his head down until

the initial flurry of fuss about Curti had calmed down.  But the

circumstances were no longer normal, as he had been reminded, vividly

and disturbingly, the night before.  While going through his personal

belongings in search of the generous selection of pills that he was

supposed to take a varying number of times every twenty-four hours, he

had discovered an envelope that the consultant had handed him on his

visit to Rome, saying that the contents related to Zen's treatment and

that he might find them 'of interest'.

Feeling that they might prove all too interesting in his current state

of mind, or rather mindlessness, Zen had promptly forgotten the

envelope until it turned up in a side pocket of the briefcase where he

had packed his supply of drugs.  In hopes of dispelling the vague fears

that continued to haunt him, he had opened it and started to read the

enclosed document, a technical report concerning his operation.  This

had been a mistake.  Within moments, he felt himself reduced once again

to the status of a helpless object, a piece of worn-out and much abused

machinery consigned to the mechanics for short-term running repairs.

'..  . soft tissues were dissected away and the fascia was demonstrated

on all sides of the necrotic tissue ... a fine 11

blade was then used to incise the interface .. . and a site was

selected distal to the area of involvement, the mesentery cleared

adjacent to ... which specimen was then presented to pathology... it

was felt to be unwise to use mesh material for repair of the defect and

... blood loss during the procedure was ... the sponge count, needle

count and instrument counts were correct and the patient tolerated the

procedure quite well..."

The remainder of the night had passed miserably, and it was largely to

try and regain a sense of initiative and competence that he formed the

plan of visiting the Amadori family home.  True, he had assured

Salvatore Brunetti that he would be taking no active part in the Curti

case, merely serving as an intermediary with the Ministry in Rome, but

the detectives at the Quesrura were apparently not investigating the

Vincenzo Amadori hypothesis either because they didn't know about it,

or had dismissed it as stadium little-tattle so Zen felt justified in

undertaking a modest preliminary investigation himself.  Besides, one

way or the other he had to escape from his pleasant but very small

hotel room, its high ceiling freakishly out of proportion with the

other dimensions owing to the intrapolated bathroom.  This errand at

least gave him a destination and the shadow of a pretext.

After breakfast, he walked down the street and out into the ac ant

paved expanses of the city's main square, flanked by e uninspiring,

red-brick mass of the cathedral towering above its unfinished marble

facing, the modest but well-proportioned Palazzo del Podesta, the

ornate Palazzo De'Banchi where luxury shops lurked beneath an imposing

arcade, and the austere medieval facade of the Palazzo Communale, whose

original delicate balance had been defaced by a monumental baroque

excrescence erected in honour of one of the many popes who had sucked

the city treasury dry over the centuries.  There was nothing

particularly wrong with any of

this, but in his snobbish Venetian way Zen regarded it as not quite

good enough.  The enormous space seemed to make claims which the

standard of the individual buildings couldn't justify.

The temperature was still below freezing, and he pushed briskly on into

a warren of narrow streets that had obviously been the city's central

food market for centuries.  These were crowded with traders and their

customers, mostly short, stout, elderly women enveloped in utilitarian

fur coats from which their head and legs protruded as stubby

appendages, giving them the appearance of so many furry pods.  Zen's

smugness instantly evaporated before the array of small shops to either

side, displaying a dizzying selection of fruit, vegetables, cheeses and

fresh meats infinitely more enticing than anything that either his

native city or indeed Lucca had to offer.  After weeks on a heavily

restricted diet, the delights on offer had an almost sexually direct

appeal, and made Zen impatient for lunch.

Fortunately the barrow-boy delivering cartons of Sicilian blood oranges

to the kerb was strong, nimble, and had his wits about him, so when the

signore who had been striding purposefully along the street suddenly

stopped dead right in his path at the exact point where he was planning

to set the heavy cart down, he was able to slew it to one side just far

enough to prevent a collision that might otherwise have resulted in an

interesting opportunity to compare the juice of the oranges with the

liquid after which they were named.

Zen retreated rapidly with ritualistic apologies, but his mind was

elsewhere, 'coming bo tomorrow lunch?"  He switched on his phone. There

was no reply from their home number, but at the tenth tone Gemma

answered her mobile.

"Can't talk now, we're just going into the hall."

Her voice was a faint graffito scratched across a concrete wall of

noise.

"I tried to call!"  Zen hurled back.  "I tried several times, but there

was no answer!"

He waited to be challenged about yet another egregious lie, but there

was only the background babel.  In reality, after that first attempt in

the cafe outside the football stadium, he had never tried to contact

Gemma about the message she had left him.  He hadn't even remembered to

neglect to do so.

"It's about to begin, I'll call you later," he thought he might have

heard someone say before hanging up.

The Amadori house, whose address Zen had earlier extracted from the

Questura's records, was located in a quiet street west of the two

medieval towers, one leaning at an alarming angle, that were among the

city's most famous landmarks.  The pavements here were raised about

half a metre above the roadway, and protected from the elements by a

set of infinitely varied yet harmonious portici.  The house itself was

of modest outward appearance, blending with grace and tact into the

gently curving line of the whole block while nevertheless contributing

its individual variation on the underlying architectural theme.  It

must have been worth well over a million euros.

Bruno Nanni had described the elder Amadori as a lawyer, and it was a

very imprudent policeman who called uninvited on such a man without an

excellent cover story, and preferably a judicial warrant.  Zen had

therefore planned his 'raid' carefully.  There would of course be no

mention of Lorenzo Curti, except as the subject of the memorial event

at the football stadium the previous evening, following which Zen had

been physically assaulted and verbally abused by a young man identified

to him as Vincenzo Amadori.  At this stage he had no wish to press

charges or otherwise make an issue of the incident, but he considered

it best that Vincenzo's parents should be informed so that they might

take any action they considered appropriate.  At the very least, it

would be interesting to see what sort of reaction, or lack of it, he

got to these allegations.

The front door was opened by a woman of about sixty, wary but unafraid,

wearing a starched white blouse over a brassiere resembling a major

engineering project, a gingham pinafore and pink rubber gloves.  Zen

presented his police identification card and asked to see Dottor

Amadori.

"L'avvocato is not here," the woman replied.

"Do you happen to know when he'll be back?"

"I couldn't say, I'm sure.  He's away on business.  You'd need to ask

at the office."

"And la signora?"

"Also not at home."

Zen smiled, pleasantly enough, but with just a hint of professional

steeliness.

"To anyone?  Or just to the police?"

The housemaid looked slightly affronted.

"What's this about?"  she asked.

"A personal matter.  I need to speak to a member of the family.  What

about the son, Vincenzo?"

A shake of the head.

"He doesn't live here any more."

"Where does he live?"

The woman shrugged in a way suggesting that it was a mockery even to

ask.

"Signora Amadori will be back in an hour or so."

Zen nodded.

"Might I wait for her, do you think?  It's a fairly routine matter, but

we need to get it sorted out as soon as possible, and I'm a busy man.

Since I'm already here ..."

He gestured significantly.  The maid hesitated a second, then opened

the door fully and beckoned him across the threshold.

From the street, the house like its guardian angel had looked

pleasingly plain and ordinary, with the subdued dignity of elderly

people who no longer have anything they either can or need to prove.

The interior, on the other hand, had been remodelled at some point in

the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, so that in entering

one moved instantly but imperceptibly into a space not only mindful of

its history and place in the greater scheme of things, but marginally

more elegant and formal.  The present owners had respected its simple,

harmonious values, adding only a couple of inoffensive abstract oils in

a now dated manner to the otherwise studiously neutral walls.

"This way, signore," said the housemaid, peeling off her work gloves.

She led him up a steep stairway of marble steps with rounded edges

flanked by elaborate wrought-iron banisters.  The first-floor landing

offered three doors.  Zen was shown into what was obviously the formal

salotto, at the front of the house, used on rare occasions as an

impressive but impersonal 'receiving room'.  It was large, with a

ceiling even higher than the one in Zen's hutch at the hotel, and

furnished with the type of 1970s 'contemporary' furniture designed to

be admired rather than enjoyed.  It was also bitterly cold.

"Would you care for a coffee?"  the woman asked.

Zen reflected for a moment, and then gave her his warmest "smile.

"That's very kind of you, signora.  I'd love one, if it's not too much

trouble.  Would it be all right if I came down and had it with you in

the kitchen?"

He laughed, as though in slight embarrassment.

"This room's a little chilly, and at my age ..."

"Eh, the heating's always turned off in here, unless there are guests.

Yes, of course, signore, come down.  It's nothing grand like this but

you'll be nice and snug there, and I'll announce you as soon as Signora

Amadori returns."

They walked together to the stairs, which as Zen had noted on the way

up were of old marble, heavily worn and polished to a lustrous sheen.

He insisted that his companion go first, and about half-way down staged

a carefully controlled fall backwards, accompanied by an impressive and

convincing cry of pain.

, The housemaid turned to him with horrified eyes.  "Jesus, Mary and

Joseph!"

She came back up to where Zen lay and bent over him solicitously.  He

moaned and groaned a bit, then smiled and clambered unsteadily to his

feet with the air of one bravely making light of a harrowing

experience.  Faking pain came easy after the crash course in the real

thing that he had so recently undergone.

"Are you all right?"  the donna cried.

"Nothing broken!"  Zen replied, with a transparently faked if gallant

attempt at jaunty humour.  "I'll be fine in a moment.  But..."

He looked her in the eyes.

"What's your name, signora?"

"Carlotta."

"Would you mind taking my arm as far as the bottom of the stairs,

Carlotta?"

"Of course, of course!"

"It's disturbing, suddenly losing your balance like that.  Makes you

think about the day when you'll lose everything else too, eh?"

"Eh, eh!"

The two of them proceeded cautiously down, step by step.  At the foot

of the stairs, Zen did not withdraw his arm, nor did Carlotta release

it.  They shuffled back along the ground-floor passageway to a door at

the far end that stood open into a dimly-lit, low-ceilinged area filled

with odours and warmth.  Leaving Zen to stand alone for a moment,

Carlotta pulled over a chair and eased him into it.  ;

"Now stay there," she admonished him.  "I'm going to prepare a tonic.

It'll make you feel much better."

She bustled rapidly about the kitchen, opening cupboards, extracting

containers, measuring ingredients, and then pouring, grinding and

stirring.  Carlotta's domain was evidently the one remaining original

section of the house, saved by the cost factor no need to impress the

servants from the upwardly-mobile renovations of some two centuries

earlier.  Although spotlessly clean, every surface looked worn, uneven,

imperfect, and somehow denser than its actual physical consistency. The

single fifty-watt bulb had no doubt been imposed by her employers for

the same reasons of economy that had preserved the integrity of the

whole space, but the gentle ingratiation of its dim glow, reflected

back up off the worn flagstones, was beyond price.

"What's this?"  Zen asked when Carlotta finally brought him a tumbler

full of some brownish liquid.

"Just drink it down.  All in one go, mind."

He did so.  Once the initial shock of the alcohol had subsided, he

vaguely identified nutmeg, orange zest, cardamom and raw garlic.  He

nodded several times and handed the glass back, beaming at her.

"You're a wonder, Carlotta!"

"Now stay sitting where you are for five minutes, and you'll be as

right as rain."

She took the glass to the sink, shaking her head sorrowfully.

"I blame myself!  To think that I'd polished those steps only five

minutes before you arrived."

"No, no, no!"  Zen insisted.  "It was all my own fault, not looking

where I was going.  And these old leather-soled shoes are as smooth as

..."

Their increasingly intimate colloquy Zen was starting to think that he

might well be able to get some interesting information out of Carlotta

before he left was interrupted by a dry, metallic snap in the resonant

distance.

"That'll be the signora," the maid declared.  "You stay here.  I'll

settle her down, then announce you as though you'd just arrived."

She went out to the hallway, from which a duet of voices drifted back

to where Zen sat idly waiting.  Carlotta's he could recognise.  The

newcomer indeed sounded feminine, but there was a feeble, plaintive

tone to the voice which ill suited the mental image he had formed of

Signora Amadori.  The words themselves were alternately ballooned and

baffled as if by contrary winds, but they grew ever louder and closer

until Carlotta reappeared in the kitchen, accompanied by a young man

whom Zen didn't immediately recognise.

"Well, you should have told me!"  the housemaid was saying.  "How was I

supposed to know you'd had a nosebleed?  I assumed it was a wine stain.

If you'd told me it was blood then naturally I'd never have washed it

in hot water, but how was I to know?"

"Why didn't you ask?"

"Don't you talk like that to me, Vincenzo!  I've cleaned your nappies

in my time, never mind your designer shirts.  Take your precious stuff

to a laundry if you're going to be so fussy."

She broke off, realising that the young man had noted the police

officer's presence, but seemed unable to come up with a satisfactory

solution to this unforeseen social conundrum.

"What are you doing here?"  Vincenzo demanded, advancing threateningly

on Zen.

His intentions were clear enough, but his execution let him down.  His

voice was still modulating from the plangent whine he had employed with

the housekeeper to his peer-speak stadium bark, and when he reached the

chair where Zen was seated he stopped short, seemingly uncertain how to

follow through.  Zen ignored him.

"That medicine of yours really did the trick," he said to Carlotta,

getting to his feet.  "I feel even better than when I arrived!"

Vincenzo swung round on the elderly donna.

"What's he doing here?  What the fuck's going on?"

"You mind your tongue!"  Carlotta fired back.  "Such language, and

before a guest in your parents' house!"

Zen glanced at his watch.

"It's beginning to look as though Signora Amadori must have been

delayed, and I've got other business to attend to.  The matter's really

of no urgency'

"Just a moment, you!"  Vincenzo shouted aggressively, although keeping

his distance.  Carlotta stood looking from one of them to the other,

understandably out of her depth.  Zen grinned at her roguishly.

"In fact, it might be better if you don't mention that I came at all,"

he confided in a low voice.  "You know what lawyers are like.  If

Avvocato Amadori finds out that I fell on those slippery steps, he

might lie awake at night worrying that I'm going to sue him."

"Hey, you can't get out of it that easily ..."  Vincenzo began.

"As for you," Zen cried, deigning to regard him for the first time,

'treat your mother with a little more respect!"

Vincenzo and Carlotta answered in chorus.

"She's not my mother!"

"He's not my son!"

Zen sighed, then shook his head in evident bafflement and walked out.

fry

Gemma Santini reached the Bologna trade fair complex forty minutes

before the event was due to begin, assuming that this would allow ample

time to pick up her reserved ticket and get seated.  She was wrong.

i The area around the row of ticket booths was packed with people, some

of whom gave every impression of having been there all night.  Most

were waiting their turn in a more or less orderly way for the strictly

limited number of free passes being handed out to pack the hall, but a

few had resorted to what Gemma privately called Neapolitan granny

tactics, screaming their needs, demands and special circumstances at

the attendant in the hope that they would be given what they wanted

just to shut them up and get them out of there.

The moment she had learnt about the cook-off between her favourite TV

personality and the awe-inspiring Edgardo Ugo which was to take place

in the very city to which she was going anyway, her thoughts had turned

to Luigi Piergentili.  Although now a moral and physical wreck of the

kind that dear Aurelio fondly imagined himself to be, in his former

capacity as the dominant consigliere at the Monte dci Paschi bank Luigi

had wielded a power in Tuscany and beyond second only to the equally

fond imaginings of certain now-forgotten politicians.  His own season

of influence had been brought to an end not entirely fortuitously, some

held by an unpleasant hit-and-run accident which had left the victim

addicted, as he freely admitted, to a powerful morphine-based

painkiller.  Unfortunately, all of the many doctors he had consulted

ultimately declined to continue prescribing this medication, citing

normative pharmaceutical criteria, contra-indicative long-term

LL,

health risks and, above all, a fear of losing their licences to

practice medicine.  It was at this point that Signor Piergentili had

appealed to Gemma.

Luigi had been far too canny to make this appeal to her pity, or even

her venality.  Instead, with a shrewdness she had appreciated almost as

much as the implicit delicatezza, he had murmured over tea at the Caffe

di Simo that a very close friend of his, a professor at the University

of Florence, had happened to mention to him that Gemma's son Stefano

was studying engineering there.

"How is he doing?"  he added, with a serene Etruscan smile.

The answer was spectacularly bad, but the smile made it clear that

Luigi's friend had also mentioned that.  Moments later, a mutually

advantageous marriage of convenience had been arranged.  Both parties

had thus far remained faithful, but following Stefano's graduation cum

laude Gemma, while duly grateful for the intercession concerned, had

become the creditor in the relationship.  She had therefore felt no

qualms about phoning Luigi the day before, and telling him to work his

network of contacts and fix her up with a comp ticket for the culinary

showdown between Lo Chef and II Professore.  He had called back at

dawn, after 'a blissfully dreamless night, thanks to you, my dear',

with the news that she need only present herself at ticket counter 7 of

the fiera compound in Bologna the next morning, and all would be taken

care of.

This turned out to be true enough, as far as it went.  What Gemma had

not taken into account was the sheer crush of humanity attracted by

this unique event.  She didn't mind waiting, but like everyone else she

was aware that since this event was being televised live, timing was of

the essence.  Once the broadcast began, the doors would be closed and

locked, and even Luigi's pull wouldn't be able to get her in.

In the end, with a discreet elbow jab here, a piscine slither there,

and a good deal of old-fashioned argy-bargy, she made it to the

threshold of the hall with about a minute to spare, only for her mobile

phone to go off.  It was Aurelio, blathering away about something or

other.  She dealt with him very summarily and then processed into the

arena with the other latecomers.

There must have been at least five hundred people present, Gemma

estimated.  Many of them wore identifying badges and name-tags on a

cord round their necks, and busied themselves with tape-recorders,

cameras and notebooks, but many were ordinary citizens who had queued

up since dawn for a ticket to a contest that had been the talk of Italy

ever since it had been announced.  Her seat turned out to be a good

one, about a third of the way up, with an excellent view of both

kitchens and of the central dining area.

At ten o'clock precisely, the house lights went down and a man wearing

shiny shoes, tight black trousers and a patterned silk shirt open to

the navel, revealing a gold necklace nestling in his spectacular chest

hair, stepped forward to the edge of the stage.  With no particular

surprise, other than the fact that he was so much smaller than she had

imagined, Gemma recognised him as the presenter of a TV variety show

broadcast on the same channel as Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta.  He

proceeded to welcome the audience effusively, and then introduced the

event and the participants in his usual bombastically jokey manner.

Gemma noted, however, that once he got down to business the text of

what he was evidently reading off a screen beneath one of the on-stage

cameras had been very carefully scripted indeed, and almost certainly

with a team of lawyers representing each party in the room.

In brief, it stated that Professor Edgardo Ugo, the noted Bolognese

academic and world-famous author, had inadvertently written something

in his column for Il Prospetto which might conceivably have been

construed by the inattentive or ill-intentioned as casting doubt on

Romano Rinaldi's culinary abilities.  Such a thing had of course never

remotely been Professor Ugo's intention.  His comment had been made

purely from a humorous and the next word seemed to cause the presenter

some trouble metonymic perspective, and he unconditionally rejected any

literal interpretation that might be placed on it.  Nevertheless, to

settle the matter once and for all, and also celebrate the glories of

Italian cooking and the prestigious Bologna food fair, the two men

would now 'meet as equal slaves over a hot stove [pause for laughter]

before you all gathered here today and watching at home' in order to

put a definitive end to any unpleasantness that might mistakenly have

been perceived to have arisen.

"And now please welcome ..."

The presenter gestured towards the kitchen area to the left of the

stage as Edgardo Ugo walked in from the wings.  The professor was

wearing an English style tweed jacket, khaki cords, a rumpled

dark-green shirt and a clashing lime-green tie, and looked as though he

couldn't care less about the whole event.  Acclaim from the audience

was respectful but subdued.

"And in the opposite corner ..."

Clad in his trademark white uniform and toque, Lo Chef made his

appearance at a leisurely, relaxed pace, grinning confidently and

waving to the crowd.  The applause was tumultuous and so prolonged that

after a considerable time the presenter was forced to appeal for

silence.

The judges then filed in and were briefly introduced as leading chefs,

cookery writers and culinary experts before taking their places at the

dining table in the central section.  After that the presenter began to

explain the rules of engagement, and Gemma felt her interest slipping

away.  It was all about food, and she didn't feel in the least hungry,

not least because it brought to mind Aurelio, whom she had unwisely

contacted in a moment of elation the evening before with a virtual

invitation to lunch and an implied reconciliation.  She now felt very

dubious about both, besides which she had been invited to dinner by

Stefano and Lidia, who would be sure to take any lack of appetite on

her part personally.  Flicking idly through the brochure covering the

Enogastexpo fair that she had been handed along with her pass, she

noticed an advertisement for what sounded like a fashionable snack bar

right in the centre, and texted Aurelio the name and address.  That was

the solution, she decided.  A meaningless encounter, a quick bite, e

poi via.

On stage, the presenter flung his arms wide, his expression one of

astonishment and awe.

"And now, let battle commence!"

Gemma put the glossy brochure down and studied the two very different

contestants.  To the left, Edgardo Ugo had clearly resigned himself to

his inevitable defeat.  He sloped confusedly around his kitchen set

under the brilliant TV lights in his pathetically homely garb like a

parody of the drab, ineffectual bachelor wondering where everything was

and what to do first.

Romano Rinaldi could not have presented a clearer contrast.  From the

very first moment, it was clear that he owned the space he had been

allotted.  He glanced at the display panel, then moved rapidly to turn

up the flame under a pan of water for the pasta before turning his

attentions to the ingredients and the chopping board.  While Ugo

pointedly ignored the onlookers and the cameras, turning his back all

the time and never saying a word, Lo Chef romanced his audience

constantly, chatting aloud, sharing his thoughts and cracking jokes.

Then he suddenly froze rigid for a long moment, as though struck by a

spontaneous inspiration.

"Ci vuole una cipolla!"  he proclaimed.  "I know it!  How do I know it?

Because the onion is calling out to me!"

Launching into "Recondita armonia', he sloshed copious quantities of

his name-brand olive oil into a pan and set it on a high flame.  The

pasta water was now rising to the boil.  Still singing and grinning,

Rinaldi poured in the spaghetti and swirled it about a bit with a

wooden spoon before seizing an onion from the array on the counter.  He

skinned and chopped it, then turned dramatically to the audience and

walked downstage.

"The onion has spoken to me," he said softly, wiping mock tears from

his eyes.  "And what it has to say makes me weep."

This provided an irresistible segue into Donizetti's "Una furti va lag

rima during which the pot of pasta boiled over, flooding the right side

of the stove and extinguishing the flame.

Rinaldi proved unable to relight the burner, despite hammering away

repeatedly at the spark lighter function and then looking around in

vain for matches.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the stage, Edgardo

Ugo was lumbering about like the caged bear he rather resembled, adding

something to the sauce, keeping an eye on the pasta, and generally

displaying complete indifference to whatever might be happening

elsewhere.  Eventually a businesslike woman of about thirty came

running on to Rinaldi's kitchen set, moved the pasta pan to a different

burner and ignited the flame before hastening offstage.  Lo Chef turned

to the audience, showing his teeth in a huge smile above his bearded

chin.

"What a thing it is to have a woman around!"  he declared in a tone at

once humble and triumphant.

The audience burst into laughter and applause.  Rinaldi acknowledged

their appreciation of his wit and poise with a rendition of the famous

aria from Rigoletto, changing the lyrics to "La donna e mobile, ma

indispensabile'.  This led to still more applause.  Keenly in tune with

the mood of his public, he proceeded with the rest of the piece,

interpolating or altering lyrics as he went, before ending on a high

and long-held note at the very edge of his vocal range.

It was at this moment that the pan of oil on the stove behind him burst

into flames.  ill

Tony Speranza made his way jauntily along Via Oberdan, a satisfied

smile and a smouldering Camel on his lips.  Passing a rather chic bar

where he was known very well indeed, he turned in and ordered a double

espresso and a whiskey.  This fine establishment stocked not only Jack

Daniels but also Maker's Mark, and on this occasion Tony decided to

indulge himself with a large glass of the latter, even though designer

bourbon was a little prissy for a true investigatore private, strictly

speaking.

But he had done the job, even if he hadn't yet been paid.  This was

becoming something of a sore point, particularly given the expense of

replacing the miniaturised camera that had been stolen along with his

beloved M-57 pistol back in Ancona.  Nevertheless, he had got the

photographs, which was the main thing.  The digital shots of Vincenzo

and his associates that Tony had taken in the cafe after the Curti

memorial service the night before had been printed up on heavyweight A4

paper first thing that morning and delivered by hand to the client

together with an itemised bill.

Actually his client had been out of the office when Tony called, but he

had handed the sealed envelope, marked "Urgent, Private and Personal',

to a receptionist whose looks and manner suggested that her rates would

put a high-class hooker to shame, with instructions to hand it to

Vavvocato immediately on his return.  For form's sake, he had then

flirted a bit with the leggy lovely, who had coyly pretended to be

interested only in her work, before returning to the mean streets.

After lunch he would phone Amadori senior and press for immediate

payment of the fee they had agreed, as well as his substantial expenses

to date, including of course the Maker's Mark, of which he ordered

another glass.  In short, everything was great, except for the gnawing

sense of existential emptiness that always came over him once a case

was closed.  How much longer before the day came, as he knew it must,

when the moral and physical strain became too much to bear?  Tony had

been a gumshoe for over twenty years now, ever since the day he was

dismissed from the police force after shooting two passers-by while

failing to arrest a sneak thief who had fled with a pocketful of

discount coupons after holding up one of the cashiers in a Conad

grocery store.  Twenty years was a long time in this filthy trade.

He knocked back the second bourbon and lit another Camel.  Hell, he was

good for another twenty, as long as his luck held and he didn't stop a

shell from some punk in a speakeasy down by the docks.  Actually there

weren't any docks in Bologna, but one of his cases might take him down

the road to Ravenna some day.  Now there was one tough town.  But that

was the way it was with this stinking job.  You never knew what was

coming your way next, except that it wouldn't be good news.

As if to demonstrate this, he caught sight of something in the big

mirror at the rear of the bar, which reflected the front window and the

street beyond.  He threw some cash at the barman and hustled out.

There, about ten metres away, was the unmistakable battered black

leather jacket bearing the crest of the Bologna football club on the

back.  Tony began to follow circumspectly.  It was good to see that

Vincenzo had started wearing the bugged garment on occasions other than

his visits to the stadium.  That would make life so much easier if

Vawo-cato decided to hire Tony for the long-term maintenance service

that he always recommended to his clients in the interests of their

continuing peace of mind.

The man in front turned left and cut through the side streets to Via

Zamboni, Tony keeping a constant ten metres back.  Then it was left

again, past the church of San Giacomo and the theatre to the

university, where the subject ran up the steps and into the main

building.  At this, Tony shrugged and turned back.  He couldn't

possibly keep up a covert tail in that maze of corridors packed with

people half his age.  What was the point, anyway?  Apparently Vincenzo

Amadori had decided to start studying again.  Fine.  That would be some

good news that Tony could use to sweeten the pill when he called the

kid's father to demand his money, while the fact that he was aware of

it provided conclusive proof that he was tirelessly on the job,

fulfilling his promise to provide the assurance of knowing everything,

always!

"When I speak of mimicking mimesis, an exact parallel is to be found in

contemporary cosmology, where there is much discussion about the

problem of the apparent "fine-tuning" of our observable universe. Since

any appeal to a divine author, with an independent existence hors du

texte, is clearly out of the question, scientists have advanced and

indeed largely accepted the so-called multi verse or "all possible

worlds" theory.  This postulates an infinite number of parallel

universes exhausting every conceivable permutation of the physical

constants.  It is thus unsurprising that we happen to find ourselves in

the statistically insignificant instance where those constants are such

as to make human life possible.  This is the only universe that we can

experience, but in order to make sense of its apparently purposeful

calibration we must I repeat, must presume the existence of all

possible variants, since any other outcome is a nonsense a priori.

"By analogy, each text necessarily implies the existence of an infinite

number of other and in many cases contradictory texts.  Over a century

ago, Nietzsche proclaimed that "There is no such thing as facts, only

interpretation".  In one or another parallel universe, Noam Chomsky's

notorious example of a grammatically correct yet semantically

meaningless statement, "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously", would

sound as banal as "The cat sat on the mat".  Hence the inherent

instability of any given interpretation, despite the competing claims

of the various class, power and gender structures that it might appear

to endorse."

The lecture hall was a classic seventeenth-century aula resembling the

theatres and opera houses of that period:

, 136

chaste, intimate, and with perfect acoustics.  Professor Edgardo Ugo's

conversational voice carried, without any effort or amplification, to

the seat high in the back row where Rodolfo Mattioli sat.  He knew that

he would be invisible to Ugo from there, but he was in any case wearing

Vincenzo's scuffed leather jacket once again, this time to avoid

recognition.

Professor Ego, as he was known to students and fellow academics alike,

had now reached his peroration.  Characteristically, this combined

witty and learned references to Eugenio Montale, the video game Final

Fantasy X-2, Roman Jakobson, the Schrodinger's cat paradox, St.  Thomas

Aquinas, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, transcendental number theory

and the Baghdad blogger.  He then accepted the plaudits of his audience

with an equally characteristic gesture indicating that while he

understood, as they of course did, that none of this was of any real

importance, they also understood that nothing else was either.  Or as

Ugo liked to put it, adapting Oscar Wilde, "We are all in the gutter,

but some of us no longer pretend to be looking at the stars'.

Rodolfo filed out with the rest of the auditors, several of whom

glanced at him with embarrassment, and then looked away.  The news of

his expulsion from Ugo's course had clearly got around the other

students involved.  He was now taboo.  If only they knew, he thought,

fingering the pistol pocketed in the leather jacket.  The previous

evening Rodolfo had extracted and carefully examined the weapon he had

discovered concealed behind the books in his room.  It was a very

high-quality piece of hardware, of Soviet origin judging by the red

star on the grip, and to all appearances brand-new, but a faint odour

of cordite in the barrel and the fact that there were only seven

cartridges in the magazine, which was designed to hold eight, suggested

that it had been fired at least once.

Rodolfo was no novice when it came to guns.  On his arduous ascent

through the lower echelons of the post-war construction business in

Puglia, his father had been obliged to learn how to maintain and use a

variety of firearms.  He had passed this knowledge on to Rodolfo as a

father-son bonding exercise, taking the boy out into the wilds from

their country property for target practice.  He had graduated from cans

and bottles to vermin and birds, and in hopes of pleasing his father

had developed into quite an accomplished shooter.

Well, today he was going to put those long-neglected skills to the

test.  He walked down the corridor and staircases with the rest of the

student throng, amusing himself abstractly with the thought that at any

moment he could kill seven of them.  That wasn't going to happen, of

course.  Apart from anything else, the random, motiveless crime was so

last century, one of the great cliches of modernism both artistically

and politically.  Someone like Vincenzo, who hadn't realised that the

only stars he could see were the flashes in his head as a result of

collapsing in the gutter, might still get a kick out of that sort of

thing, but not Rodolfo.  His acre was not going to be gratuite so much

as in omaggio.  His gestural rhetoric would be flawless, and then he

would catch the first southbound train, turn up on the family doorstep

at dawn, admit his academic disgrace and humiliation and beg his father

to give him a real job.

After his weekly lecture, Rodolfo knew, Edgardo Ugo left the building

by a side door leading to the bicycle shed reserved for the faculty.

There the professor retrieved his machine and cycled the short distance

to his town house to relax and prepare for lunch.  Rodolfo therefore

posted himself at the gate leading from this area to the main street.

He himself didn't have a bicycle, but he had noted in the past that, in

keeping with the traditions of his city, Ugo proceeded on two wheels at

a civilised, leisurely pace barely faster than a brisk

jog.  What with the inevitable traffic delays, Rodolfo had no doubts

about his ability to keep up with his quarry for the kilo metre or so

separating the university from Ugo's bijou residence in Via dell'

Inferno  And there, he thought to himself, remembering Vincenzo's

taunting remark, I'll give the smug bastard something to interpret.

Gasping in pain, he lurched to his feet, overturning the row of stools

like so many dominoes, and ripped open his shirt.  Beneath the violated

fabric of his belly, mighty worms stirred.  The flesh glowed

incandescently red and yellow, casting into black outline the scalpel

scar curved like a question mark about his navel.  Then the over

strained sutures finally unclasped, releasing a scalding discharge of

foul-smelling pus and blood that drenched the other diners, all of whom

carried on eating and chatting as if nothing at all had happened, which

in fact it hadn't.

"Caffe, liquore?"  enquired the waiter.

Zen shook his head peremptorily.  There was a sudden burst of laughter

and one of the people perched at the counter near by pointed to the

huge flat-screen television displaying images of a bearded man dressed

as a chef running wildly about in a kitchen on fire.  The dangling TV

was all of a piece with the high concept behind the eatery, in effect a

very pricey snack bar with deliberately uncomfortable furniture, a

selection of wines by the glass at by-the-bottle prices, and patrons

who apparently relished colluding with the staff in creating a

spuriously sophisticated atmosphere of mutual disdain.  All this tucked

away on a narrow cobbled street that went nowhere in particular, with a

frontage that was diffident in the extreme.  Not for the first time,

Zen reflected that while prostitution might be the oldest trade in the

world, the catering business ran it a close second, and that there were

other similarities.

But none of this was of any importance compared with the fact that he

was still alone.  Well over an hour now, and no sign of Gemma.  He had

tried repeatedly calling her mobile, but either the battery had run out

or it was switched off.  After waiting thirty minutes, he had ordered

the dish of the day he couldn't even remember now what it had been and

eaten it with a morose appetite.  He checked her text message again.

There it was, the name and address of this ghastly place, even the

phone number.  Impossible there could be any mistake.  Anyway, she had

the number of his mobile, which he had left turned on all this time.

The only possible conclusion, therefore, was that she had deliberately

stood him up.  He hadn't expected anything quite so crude from Gemma,

even at her worst, but there it was.

He had already asked for his bill when the door opened and in she

walked, wearing a stylish but rather stern outfit.  Her face, by

contrast, was flushed and open, and her manner bubbling with barely

suppressed hilarity.

"Sorry I'm late," she cried, collapsing at the table and lighting a

cigarette.  "You'll never guess what happened!  Or did you see it?"

She burst into laughter, which turned to a long series of coughs,

during which the supercilious waiter appeared.

"Nothing, thanks," she said, waving him away.

"You don't want to eat?"  asked Zen.

I grabbed a panino at a bar near the exhibition grounds while I was

waiting.  There wasn't a taxi to be had for ages, of course."

She erupted with laughter again.

"Did you see what happened?"

Zen stared at her, still half-suspecting a trap, but her de fences were

clearly down.  The only problem was that he still had no idea what she

was talking about.  ;

"See?  Where?"

"On TV."

Gemma pointed to the screen, now showing the President of the Republic

inspecting a guard of honour in the quaintly ornate capital of some

eastern European state which had recently come in from the cold war.

"Caffe, liquore?"  enquired the waiter, surfacing again with such

animus that they both relented to the extent of ordering coffees.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, have you?"  said Gemma,

laughing again.  "You must be the only person in the country who

doesn't!"

She reached over and touched Zen's wrist on the tabletop, only for a

moment, but enough to set off another of the intestinal twinges which

reminded him again of that scene from a science fiction film they had

once rented on video, where one of the crew of a spaceship discovers in

the most unpleasant way that an alien parasite is nesting in his

innards.

"You know that TV show you hate?"  she went on blithely.  "Lo Chef Che

Canta e Incanta?  Well, I'd heard that the star was going to be

performing live today at the food fair that's on here, so I naturally

took advantage, seeing that I was coming up anyway."

Zen nodded.

"To see me," he murmured.

Gemma's expression blurred for a moment.

"Well, actually Stefano asked me to come up over the weekend.  Some

domestic business he wants to discuss.  You know about him and Lidia,

right?  They're living here in Bologna and apparently something has

happened.  I'm pretty sure I can guess what it is, but of course they

want to make a big fuss about it, and rightly so.  Anyway, it meant I

could see you, and also drop in on this mono a memo between Rinaldi and

Ugo.  Of course no one thought that it would be any contest.  I mean,

the biggest celebrity chef in the country up against a total

amateur!"

She laughed, throwing back her head and revealing her beautiful

throat.

"Well, guess what?  It was indeed no contest, because the contest never

took place!"

Their coffees were gracelessly delivered.  Zen slurped his, lit a

cigarette, and tried his best to enter into the spirit of whatever this

was.

"Did one of them cancel at the last minute?"  he asked.

"Much better than that.  Or worse.  Ugo just pottered around his

kitchen, getting on with the job and not making a fuss about it.  In

fact I sort of liked him.  He looked all sweet and cuddly and a bit

incompetent, not at all what I'd imagined from trying to read that

impossible novel that everyone bought and then pretended they'd read.

In fact I wouldn't mind running into him while I'm here in Bologna."

"I don't imagine there's much chance of that."

"Of course not, but a girl can dream.  Anyway, over on the other side

of the stage, Lo Chef was doing his usual act, all very dramatic and

"look at me", chatting up the audience the whole time and then breaking

into some fake operatic aria.  Unfortunately he gets so carried away

that he forgets he has left a pan full of oil on the stove, and right

in the middle of one of his big numbers it goes up in flames!  The set

itself was obviously cobbled together at the last minute from flimsy

wooden panels and they're ablaze before anyone can do anything about

it.  Next thing, the auditorium is filled with smoke, fire alarms are

going off everywhere and the whole place has to be evacuated.  And I

mean the whole fiera site, the entire Enogastexpo show!  Thousands of

people milling around in the car parks, the fire engines pouring in,

police helicopters overhead, utter chaos!"

Zen let a few moments elapse before saying, "So tonight you're seeing

your son and his ..."

"Yes."

"What's that about?"

Gemma looked at him with a slightly coy smile.

"Well, Stefano didn't want to say on the phone, but I have a feeling

that I may be going to become a grandmother."

Zen grazed on this thought for some time.

"Which would make me ..."  he finally began.  "Nothing."

They confronted each other for a moment over this.

"Nothing at all."  said Gemma in a harder voice.  "We're not married,

and for that matter neither are they.  So it's of no consequence at

all, really.  To you, at least."

Zen tried to think of something suitable to say.  "Are you staying the

night?"  he managed at last.

Gemma shook her head.

"They can't put me up.  It's just a one-bedroom apartment that her

parents are letting them use."

Zen gave her the look he often used on a suspect who had just revealed

more than he knew.

"So she wears the trousers," he said.

Another moment of confrontation.

"They're a couple," Gemma said very distinctly, as though speaking to a

foreigner with a limited understanding of the language.

"But she's in charge," Zen insisted.

"I wouldn't know."

"She owns the house, cam.  Just like you."

Their eyes met, and he instantly realised that he'd gone too far.  A

moment later he felt another pang in his gut and saw a chance to

lighten the mood.

"Get out!"  he ordered the imaginary resident alien with an exaggerated

gruffness that was intended to be comic.  "Get out, get out!"

But Gemma had forgotten the movie involved in this reference and

couldn't have been expected to understand the connection anyway.

Assuming that Zen was addressing her, she sprang to her feet and ran to

the door.

Edgardo Ugo was cycling home, when something happened.

He was feeling serene and light-hearted, totally at ease with himself,

with the city he knew so well and loved so much, and with life in

general.  To his utter amazement, he had scored an incontrovertible

triumph in the much-publicised contest with Rinaldi.  Admittedly this

had been due to the other man's unbelievable incompetence, but the

result had been no less conclusive.  Let the bastard try and sue him

now!  After that, refusing to comment on the proceedings to the throng

of journalists clustered outside the evacuated exhibition centre, he

had taken a cab straight to the university and delivered his famous

weekly lecture with his usual calm professionalism, as though he'd just

returned from a visit to the library.

Now he was heading back to the little urban pied-a-terre that he

maintained a short distance from the university, to freshen up and

change out of his smoke-poisoned clothes before going to lunch with a

visiting academic from the University of Uppsala.  By bicycle, of

course.  In Bologna, bicycles were associated with the populace:

impoverished students, pensioners scraping by, penny-pinching

housewives and the like.  For a world-famous author and academic, with

untold millions in the bank, to be seen on one instantly transformed

his battered though structurally handsome 1923 Bianchi S24 from a

humble means of transport into what semioticians called a 'sign

vehicle', thus making one of those arcane jokes for which Ugo was

famous.  God, he was cool.

And then something happened.

Afterwards, of course, it was perfectly obvious what this was, but the

instant offered nothing but fleeting and confused impressions, followed

by a sickening loss of balance, the jarring impact, and multiple aches

and pains.  The next thing he was distinctly aware of was a man

standing over him.  Ugo himself appeared to be lying on the cobbled

street with the handlebar of the bicycle lodged somewhere in his

kidneys.

"Aurelio Zen, Polizia di Stato," the man snapped, displaying some sort

of identification card.  "You're under arrest for dangerous driving."

Ugo tried to say something, but the man had turned away and was loudly

phoning for an ambulance.  It was then that Ugo saw a woman leaning

groggily against the nearest parked car.  There was blood on her face

and she was breathing rapidly.

"Immediately!"  the policeman named Zen yelled.  "It's a matter of the

highest urgency.  My wife has been run over."

I'm not your damned wife!"  the woman retorted.

The man folded up his mobile and strode over to Ugo, who had by now

regained his feet.  He looked absolutely beside himself with fury, or

worry, or both.

"I can't effect an arrest now," the policeman told him, 'as I need to

accompany the victim to hospital.  But if she turns out to be seriously

injured, God forbid, then I shall take further steps.  Give me your

details."

Ugo got out his wallet and handed Zen his identity card, along with

another giving his home address and title, position and contact numbers

at the university.  That might get him a little respect, he thought,

picking up his bike as a siren made itself heard in the distance.

"Excuse me!"

He turned.  The woman he had struck was looking at him.  i

"Aren't you Edgardo Ugo?"  #

He nodded.  She smiled and her bloodied face lit up.

"I've always wanted to meet you," she went on.  "I was at your cook-off

with Lo Chef this morning.  I thought you were wonderful!"

For possibly the first time in his life, Edgardo Ugo found himself at a

complete loss for words.

"I'm so sorry that this happened," he said at last.  "I can't apologise

enough."

The woman laughed lightly.

"Not at all, it was all my fault."  She jerked a thumb at Zen, who was

anxiously scanning the far end of the street for the ambulance.  "We

just had a row and I couldn't get away from the restaurant quickly

enough.  I dashed out without even looking to see what was coming.

There was no way you could have done anything about it."  "Here it

comes!"  called Zen.

"And don't pay any attention to him," Gemma confided to Ugo.  "All that

stuff about arresting you?  That's just bluff and bluster."

Then the ambulance was there, the paramedics stepping out.  Ugo mounted

the Bianchi and tried to cycle discreetly away, but the collision had

dislodged the drive chain.  He didn't want to get his fingers filthy,

or to linger, so he set off on foot, pushing the bike.

At the corner of the street, beneath the arch marking the entrance to

the former ghetto, he turned to look back.  Apparently the ambulance

crew didn't consider the woman's condition serious enough to put her on

a stretcher and were getting her seated in the back of the ambulance.

The incident had drawn quite a crowd, including one young man wearing a

black leather jacket decorated with the crest of the local football

club.  He also noticed that the policeman who had threatened him did

not in fact get into the ambulance, as he had said he would, but

watched it depart, then turned and started walking in Ugo's

direction.

Ugo turned the corner with a shrug.  If the cop wanted to find him, he

had the address anyway.  Meanwhile he marvelled at the day's

extraordinary events.  To knock someone down in the street and then

have her tell you how wonderful you were!  Incredible.  He just hoped

that she wasn't concussed.  Anyway, that was enough excitement.  A hot

shower and a change of clothes, then off to a leisurely late lunch with

Professor Erik Lonnrot.  He leant the bicycle against the house wall,

between the front door and the marble copy of Marcel Duchamp's 1917

ready-made Fountain.  He found his key and turned sideways to force it

into the sticky lock.

And then something else happened.

Romano Rinaldi paced restlessly and at random through the many rooms of

his hotel suite, a continual gyration with no purpose except to relieve

the intolerable pressure in his skull.  He knew, beyond the slightest

doubt, that he was going to die at any moment.  What was it called?  An

aneurysm, a stroke, a cerebral haemorrhage.  Basically your brain blew

up.

He walked through to the main bedroom, then over to the insulated glass

doors giving on to the balcony over the street.  The temptation to gasp

down some fresh air was almost overwhelming, but he couldn't risk

showing himself, not with the ranks of paparazzi lined up like a firing

squad detail below, fingers hovering over the shutter release for the

front cover "HIS SHAME' shot.  Instead it was through into the spare

bedroom and then down the internal hall to the lounge that stretched

the entire width of the building.  Despite his best efforts, he could

hardly avoid catching sight of himself in the vast mirror that

dominated the end wall.

I'm fucked, he thought, staring at his sagging features, totally and

utterly fucked.  And it's all my own fault.  It was mine to leave

alone, but I agreed to take it on.  After that it was mine to screw up,

and I did just that, in front of an audience of millions.  The TV news

channels would show the highlights again and again and again, until the

whole country had witnessed his utter humiliation.  He would be laughed

at in the street and people would snigger when he was introduced to

them.  As for his career as Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta, forget it.  He

would be carrying his shame about with him for the rest of his life,

like those dogs you saw with a plastic bag of their own shit hanging

from their collars.

He clutched his head and stared in the mirror.  That prominent vein on

his temple was surely even more engorged than it had been five minutes

ago.  Get Delia to call an ambulance.  There had been good hospitals in

Bologna ever since the Middle Ages.  Back then they let blood to

relieve the pressure.  Leeches.  That obscene object he'd been offered

in a ben to box when he visited Tokyo last year, some sort of raw snail

out of its shell.  An elegantly lacquered casket with a skinned penis

inside.  Well, after this he wouldn't be invited to any more

international culinary conferences, that was for sure.

On leaving the fiera complex fortunately his production company had

laid on a car in the V.I.P section of the parking lot, so he hadn't had

to face the mob outside the main entrance -Rinaldi had gone straight

back to his hotel, entering through the kitchens, where his sudden

appearance had generated a good deal of mirth and sight gags involving

fire extinguishers among the lage red-up, sweated-out peons.  Then up

the emergency stairs to his suite, where he had double-locked and

chained the door, taken the phone off the hook and switched off his

mobile before snorting his entire remaining stash of cocaine.

Unfortunately there hadn't been that much left, and by now the effects

had worn off.  He switched the mobile on again, ignoring the backlog of

messages, and dialled Delia.

"Bring me two bottles of vodka and a bucket of ice," he said, cutting

off the speech into which she immediately launched.  "Personally.

Now."

Five minutes later there was a timid tap at the door.  Rinaldi peeked

through the spy-hole and verified that it was indeed Delia, and that

she was alone, before dismantling his barricade and letting her in.

"Put it down there," he said, pointing to the floor of the entrance

hall.

But Delia kept going straight into the lounge, where she

deposited the two bottles and the silver bucket on a glass-topped

table.

"Get out of here!"  Rinaldi shouted, coming after her.  "I need to be

alone."

"We have to talk, Romano."

"There's nothing to talk about."

Delia sank into a sofa the size of an average family car.

"Carissimo, I've been trying to call you for hours!"

Rinaldi dropped four large ice cubes into a tall tumbler, filled it to

the brink with vodka, and drank deeply.

"Why didn't you answer my messages?"  Delia went on in an irritating,

deep-down-inside-I'm-just-a little-girl whine.  "How can I help you if

you won't even speak to me?"

"Nobody can help me.  And I can't help your career along any more, so

don't pretend to be personally interested.  It's over.  Me, you, the

series, the company, everything."

"That's absurd, Romano!  You can't just chuck the whole thing away

because of a silly accident."

He gulped some more vodka and almost choked as he burst into

incredulous laughter.

"Silly accident!  I almost burnt down the Bologna exhibition centre!

For all I know the police are after me."

"It wasn't your fault!  How were you to know that the dial controlling

the burners on the stove hadn't been calibrated properly?  All the

kitchen equipment was rounded up at the last moment from the

manufacturers exhibiting at Enogastexpo.  They have a few functional

demonstration models, but most of the hardware is on static display. It

was one of those units that was placed in your kitchen area.  The

fitters connected it to the gas supply, but they didn't have time to

fine-tune all the various functions.  So you put that pan of oil on

over what you thought was low heat, then turned away to do other things

and entertain your fans.  In fact, the flame under the pan was hotter

than the safety regulations allow for that kind of stove even at the

very highest setting!  The outcome was inevitable."

Rinaldi finished his drink and immediately poured another.

"No one will believe that."

Delia got to her feet and eyed him levelly.

"They will when the managing director of the company that manufactured

the stove confirms it tomorrow morning, having conducted a personal

examination of the unit in question."

A contemptuous shrug.

"Why should he want to help?"

"Well now, I wonder.  Maybe the hundred thousand from the broadcasters

had something to do with it."

Rinaldi stared at her in wonderment.

"They've bribed him?"

"Of course they have.  You're one of their premium products for the

foreseeable future, Romano.  They aren't going to give you up without a

fight."

She came over and stood very close to him, looking him unblinkingly in

the eyes.

"All you have to do is keep your head down for the next few days.  No

interviews, no comments, no phone calls except to and from me.  In fact

it would be best if you didn't even appear in public.  Why don't you

just stay here?"

Rinaldi shook his head violently.  r

"Out of the question!"

Apart from anything else, he couldn't possibly show his face in any

restaurant in town, where most of the clients would be attending the

Enogastexpo.  Even room service would be risky.  "Sorry, sir, Bologna

fire regulations prohibit the preparation of flambeed dishes in the

rooms, heh heh heh."

Delia nodded.

"In that case, we go to Plan B. One of the directors of our TV

channel owns a villa in Umbria.  It's luxurious and very remote.  At

seven this evening I'll have a car waiting for you at the back door of

the hotel to whisk you off.  There'll be a well-stocked larder and

cocktail cabinet, not to mention a selection of your favourite

recreational drugs.  When everything's prepared, we'll bring you down

to Rome for a well-rehearsed press conference.  You'll have been

coached with an answer to every conceivable question.  Then, at the

end, you publicly challenge Edgardo Ugo to a replay'

Rinaldi jolted so violently he spilled most of his drink.

"Go through that again?  Are you crazy?"

Delia laid her hand on his arm.

"You won't have to, Romano.  Ugo's lawyer is already in possession of a

document guaranteeing that we will not pursue any claims against his

client regardless of the result of today's contest.  Ugo has nothing

left to gain, so he will decline our offer.  But you will have made it,

which makes you look good.  After that it's back to business as usual,

planning the summer series of the show.  Va bene?"

Rinaldi thought this over for some time.  Actually it didn't sound too

bad.  Maybe there was hope after all.

"Va bene."

He saw Delia to the door, and bolted and chained it after her.  Back in

the lounge, he replenished his glass and started to wander about again,

but at a more relaxed pace than before.  Vodka was good stuff, taken in

sufficient quantities, but after the day he'd had Rinaldi reckoned that

he deserved some of the very best.  He wouldn't be able to get that

here, of course, but even a relatively modest product would be better

than nothing.  Once it got dark and the press corps gave up, he would

slip out and try asking in a few bars around the university area.  It

never hurt to ask.

The moment the automatic doors of the Policlinico Sant'Orsola swished

to behind him, Zen felt at home.  It was good to be back in that calm,

purposeful, well-ordered world, where an atmosphere of assured

competence prevailed and questions of life and death were discussed in

cool, measured undertones.  Of course, it wasn't like that in Palermo

or Naples or even Rome, which is why Zen had gone to a private clinic

but the high civic values of the Bolognese ensured that their public

hospital was a model of its kind.

Nevertheless, the lowly and marginal status of non-patient, lacking the

talismanic plastic wrist-strap, meant that passing through the various

internal frontiers took a lot longer.  Zen's police identity card

helped to an extent, but when he finally reached the waiting room

outside the surgery where Gemma was being treated, admission was

categorically refused.  To make matters worse, the orderly in charge

made it clear that this was at the patient's request.

"Nonsense," Zen retorted.  "She doesn't even know I'm here."

"The patient stated upon admission that if someone named Aurelio Zen

asked to see her, permission should be refused."

"But that's absurd!  We live together!"

"The policy of the hospital is to respect the patient's wishes in such

matters."

The orderly turned away and began looking through a pile of files.

"How long will it be before the preliminary diagnosis is complete?" Zen

demanded.

"That depends on the physician."

"I'm asking for an estimate."

"At least half an hour."

Zen sighed loudly and wandered to the doorway shaking his head, nearly

colliding with a tiny, wizened woman whose worn-out coat was at least

five sizes too large for a physique heavily discounted by age.

"Bastards, they think they own you," Zen muttered.

The woman tittered, an unexpectedly liquid ripple of sound.  Zen

suddenly recognised her as the person who had been talking to an

apparently stuffed Pekinese in the bar near the football stadium the

night before.

"Eh, no, it's the undertaker who owns you!"  she replied.

Zen noted the time and went outside to have a cigarette, the ban on

smoking inside the hospital apparently being observed in Bologna even

by the doctors.

An ambulance had drawn up to the ramp outside the Pronto Soccorso

department, and staff and paramedics were unloading a stretcher case

under the supervision of two officers of the Carabinieri.  In the

tradition of policemen the world over, they had parked their car where

it was most convenient for them and least so for everyone else, in this

case blocking the wheeled route into the hospital.  One of the officers

went to move it, and on his way back Zen waylaid him and, having

displayed his warrant card, enquired with mild professional curiosity

what was going on.

"Gunshot wound," the Carabiniere replied as the victim was conveyed

inside.

Zen eyed the familiar bulging plastic bag that one of the paramedics

held high, filled with colourless fluid feeding the intravenous drip,

formerly his sole sustenance for days on end.

"Self-inflicted?"

"We don't know yet.  He was in no condition to answer questions."

"All part of the job," Zen commented in a tone of trade solidarity.

"It's going to be news, though," the other officer went on, seemingly

piqued by the implication that this was just another routine chore. a

"How so?"

"We checked his documents in the ambulance.  Professor Edgardo Ugo.  A

big noise at the university, apparently'

Zen frowned.  The name sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it there

and then.  So much had happened in the past few hours.

"Well, I'd better go and see about taking a statement," the patrolman

remarked, straightening his cap.

"I'll tag along."  said Zen.  "I've got someone in there too."

He was hopeful that Gemma might be undergoing treatment in one of the

curtained-off areas of the emergency ward, and that by circumventing

the orderly at the desk he might be able to talk to her.  There must

have been some mistake or confusion when she was checked in.  She had

very likely been mildly concussed.  In any case, she would never refuse

him in person.

Unfortunately the efficiency of the Bologna hospital and its deplorably

adequate manning levels brought this scheme to nothing.  Zen was

intercepted and asked his business by a nurse, and once his identity

and intent had been established he was referred to the ward sister, who

ordered him to leave in no uncertain terms.  As she escorted him to the

door, they passed the cubicle where the Carabinieri patrolman stood

watching the most recent admission being given an injection prior to

the doctors cutting his clothing away.  Zen smiled nostalgically.  He

had come to love those gleaming pricks of pain, as bright and shiny as

the freshly unwrapped hypodermic itself, particularly when morphine was

involved.

"That's him!  That's him!"

The patient had raised himself up and was gesticulating wildly.

Everyone turned to look, but by this time Zen and his wardress were out

of sight behind the curtained side-screens, and a moment later the

patient had slipped into unconsciousness.  . original contract

specifically stipulated that payment would be made on receipt and

acceptance I emphasise the latter term of a written report detailing

your means, methods and findings in full."

"I've told you what you wanted to know."

"The presumption that you know what I "want to know" is impertinent."

"But..."

"These photographs, for example," Awocato Amadori continued.  "I need

to know where and when they were taken, with affidavits from credible

witnesses in support of the foregoing facts."

"Well, it was in this bar ..."

"Has the proprietor of the establishment assented in writing to the

photographic recording and subsequent reproduction and distribution of

images of clients taken on his premises?"

"What?"

"I take it that means no."

"Well..."

"So the said images are legally worthless."

At the beginning of his solo career, Tony had considered making his

slogan "The hope of knowing everything, always', playing catchily on

his surname.  Plus he could have offered two plans at different rates,

the Hope scheme and the Assurance scheme.  "Let me put it like this,

Signora Tizia.  "Assurance" is going to cost you a little more

up-front, but think of it as an investment.  It'll be well worth the

extra in the long run, particularly if you ever decide to take the

cheating son of a bitch to court."  In the end, though, he had rejected

the

Hope option as too tentative.  Now it seemed a massive presumption.

"You told me you wanted pictures of your son's low-life pals, avvocato.

I've provided them, together with details of his address and movements

over the last few days."

"All you have provided me with is an assortment of photographs of

various unappealing young men apparently in a state of advanced

inebriation.  Without objective evidence of their alleged connection

with Vincenzo, over and above your verbal say-so, they are of merely

anecdotal interest."

With a father like this, no wonder the kid left home, thought Tony.

"And then there's the matter of your alleged expenses.  You not only

claim to have spent over three hundred euros on "refreshments and

incidentals", but have the cheek to add a further five hundred and

eighty to cover "depreciation of professional inventory"!"

"In the course of my investigations, I was mugged and robbed of a very

valuable digital camera, which I had to replace in order to take those

photographs, and of an equally expensive pistol."

"I decline to be held responsible for losses due to your

incompetence."

"If you think I'm incompetent, avvocato, then why did you hire me?"

"To keep my wife quiet.  The whole thing was her idea.  Personally I'd

be more than happy to let our ungrateful son discover the error of his

ways in the fullness of time and at his own expense, but to maintain a

semblance of peace in the household I judged it best to make a token

gesture of concern.  Not to the tune of almost fifteen hundred euros,

however.  On receipt and my acceptance of the full written report to

which I have already alluded, I shall send you a cheque for the amount

we originally agreed, together with a nominal five per cent per diem to

cover your incidental out goings

The line went dead.  So, for a moment, did Tony.  Then he reached for

the bottle of Jack Daniels on his desk.

The offices of Speranza Investigazioni SpA occupied a small room at the

back of a building whose legal status was currently indeterminate

pending the outcome of a divorce case based largely on evidence

gathered by Tony himself, who had foregone a percentage of his fee in

return for the temporary use of this facility to house the 'janitorial

security service' that he was supposedly providing, all on the strict

understanding that when instructed to vacate the premises he would

already have left, and indeed never have been there in the first place.

Meanwhile Tony figured it was worth every cent, as he had been

delighted to discover that the new European small change was called. It

gave him a public face, a city centre letterhead, a window on the world

and the opportunity to do all the things he would be doing at home in

his suburban apartment anyway, only downtown.

It also gave him a base for his online operations, thanks to a tap into

the DSL circuit installed in an apartment on the second floor.  "If I

ain't heard of it, it never happened', Tony liked to say.  Taken

literally, this maxim would have erased almost all human knowledge from

the record, but in practice it meant little more than a free

subscription to a "Headline HeadsUp' service that bombarded its

clientele with news snippets in return for selling their email

addresses to spammers offering cut-price, over-the-virtual-counter

Viagra.

Feeling utterly defeated by his client's surly arrogance, Tony fired up

the computer, logged on to his surveillance website and quickly tracked

Vincenzo Amadori's movements that day, just in case the matter came up

in future negotiations.  They were fairly predictable: at home until

eleven, half an hour in a

If cafe, and then the walk to the university that Tony had witnessed in

person.  An hour there, then back by a different route through the

narrow streets of the former ghetto to the apartment he shared with

Rodolfo Mattioli, the boyfriend of that cute illegal redhead.

"BREAKING NEWS' flashed the screen below a picture of a man graced with

the aura of the modern celebrity: making you feel vaguely uneasy for

not immediately recognising who he was.  "World-famed academic and

author Edgardo Ugo shot in Bologna.  The attack occurred outside the

professor's house on Via dell' Inferno in the heart of the city,

shortly after one o'clock this afternoon.  The victim was rushed to

hospital but no details of his condition have yet been released.

Earlier today, Professor Ugo was involved in a cookery contest against

Romano Rinaldi, the star of the show Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta, in an

attempt to settle the issue of possible defamation resulting from Ugo's

comments in his column for the weekly magazine 11 Prospetto.  The

Carabinieri have stated that they are anxious to trace Signor Rinaldi's

present whereabouts with a view to eliminating him from their ongoing

enquiries."

Tony felt a thought stir sluggishly in its comatose stupor.  He

couldn't care less if some professor had got shot by that celebrity

chef, of course.  No money in it for him.  Nevertheless, something in

that news bulletin had caught his attention.  Via dell' Inferno the

Street of Hell, in the mediaeval ghetto shortly after one o'clock that

afternoon... He shot back to the online surveillance site, and

carefully checked times and locations once again.  Well now, he

thought.  Well, well.  Well, well, well!

Ten minutes later he was in Amadori's law office.  The receptionist put

on a brave show of pretending that she hadn't been daydreaming about

Tony ever since his previous visit, and then announced in a

transparently insincere voice that Ijawo-cato was jaway from his

desk'.

"I don't care if he's under it, honey," Tony replied.  "Get him.  But

soon."

By now visibly weak at the knees with barely repressed desire, the

receptionist managed to blurt out that her employer could not be

disturbed and suggested that Tony might care to make an appointment for

the following month.

Tony Speranza eyed her appreciatively.  The right age, he thought.  Not

that gleamy, raw look of uncooked sausages the flesh of the young ones

had.  This babe had been hanging just long enough.  The meat was nicely

cured without the casing getting too wrinkly.

"How much they paying you?"  he said.

"Miscusi?"

"Never mind.  But if you want to make some extra, breathe the name

Edgardo Ugo into your boss's shell-like ear."

"Edgardo Ugo?"

Tony nodded.

"The great, and for all we know late, Professor Ugo."

"What might this be regarding?"

"You going to go conditional on me, the possibilities are endless.

Let's just say that Vincenzo Amadori, a young hooligan not entirely

unrelated to your employer, was present in Via dell' Inferno at the

time when Professor Ugo was shot, and that I can prove it with

documented evidence that will stand up in any court of law.  You got

that, Wanda?"

The receptionist, damn her, blushed.

"How did you know my name?"

Mindful of the desirability of preserving his professional mystique,

Tony fore bore to point out the framed photograph that stood on the

filing cabinet, with "To Wanda, with all my love, Nando' scrawled

across it.  Some muscle-bound meatball with a chicken perched on his

shoulder.

"Hey, once in a while you get lucky!  And we just did,

Wanda.  Because what I just told you is true, but so far you and I are

the only people who know.  I imagine that I'avvocato will want to keep

matters that way, which gives us a certain leverage.  Are you following

me?  So you go and drag him back to that old desk, by main force if

necessary, and impress on him that if either of us were to make the

Carabinieri a party to our exclusive knowledge, then those gentlemen

would no doubt issue a pressing invitation for Vincenzino to assist

them with their enquiries."

He smiled and walked to the door.

"You make your deal, I'll make mine."

"My husband's a policeman," Wanda replied provocatively.

Tony just laughed.

"Great!  Let me know next time he's working nights, and we'll have

dinner and compare notes."

He was back in the bar he had patronised that morning, lingering over a

quadruple Maker's Mark, when Amadori phoned.  The conversation did not

go entirely as Tony had foreseen.  Not only did I'avvocato flatly

refuse to offer any money in return for Tony's silence, still less to

negotiate an appropriate sum, but proceeded to dismiss his hireling on

the spot and with immediate effect, and threatened to have Speranza's

private investigator's licence revoked for attempted extortion.

Tony switched to Jack Daniels for his second shot, feeling a need for

its asperity to help him work out how to respond.  This took less than

five minutes.  He then tossed back the bourbon and marched down the

street to the junction with Via Rizzoli, where one of those museum

pieces from an unimaginably primitive past, a public telephone box, had

been retained as a heritage item.  Tony stepped in and dialled

Carabinieri headquarters.  The response was a recorded woman's voice.

"Welcome to the Carabinieri helpline for the province of Bologna.  If

you know the extension number of the person you are calling, you may

dial it at any time.  To report a crime, please press 1. Alternatively,

hang up now and dial 112 to reach our pronto intervento section.  For

information on our products and services, please press 2. To learn

about career opportunities with the force, please press 3. To speak to

a representative, please press 4 or hold the line."

Tony Speranza did so, and was rewarded with an endless silence

punctated at intervals by a different voice telling him that his call

was important to them but that all operators were currently busy and

the approximate wait time would be nine minutes.  He slammed the phone

down and called the Polizia di Stato.  A surly male voice answered

almost immediately.  Tony wrapped the lapel of his greatcoat over his

mouth and spoke rapidly in a generalised approximation of the local

dialect.

"Listen, I know who shot that professor this afternoon.  Name's

Vincenzo Amadori, the lawyer's son.  Can't give mine, but he's your man

all right.  I've got proof of that."

He left the booth and walked quickly away.  The police might trace the

call eventually, but thanks to his gloves there would be no prints.

Once the judicial machinery ground into motion then il grande awocato

Amadori might well decide that it had been rash of him to dismiss

Tony's original offer.  In fact, when the time came he might well raise

the starting price, just to teach the smug bastard that you didn't fuck

with Tony Speranza.

%$.

The original thirty minutes within which Zen had been told that he

could expect to hear word of Gemma's condition stretched to an hour and

more, divided between a series of coffees in a bar opposite the

hospital complex and smoke breaks outside one or another of the doors,

where a louring dusk was already well advanced.  And when he finally

lost patience on his fifth return to the desk, where a different

orderly had now come on duty, and demanded to see Gemma at once, he was

informed that she was no longer there.

"What do you mean?"

"She discharged herself."

"Where did she go?"

The orderly shrugged.

"I have no idea."

"Then let me speak to someone who does."

"And who are you, signore?"

Zen decided that this was not the moment for worrying about the

niceties of his civil status.

"Her husband."

"Un memento."

It was actually about twenty minutes before Zen was directed to an

office on the second floor of the building where he was greeted by a

tired-looking young man in a white coat.

"Signor Santini?"  he said.

Zen nodded.

"Your wife left the hospital twenty minutes ago."

"And you permitted this?"

The doctor shrugged.

"We have no power to detain patients.  There were certain additional

tests I would have preferred to perform, but she refused them."

"Where was she going?"

"I have no idea.  Home, presumably."

"Home?"

The doctor looked at him curiously.

"Back to Lucca, signore.  Where she lives."

"Was she in a fit state to drive?"

"I couldn't offer a qualified opinion on that question."

Zen jerked his head angrily.

"If it had been your wife, would you have let her take the wheel?"

"No."

Zen turned away feeling utterly cut adrift.  He called Gemma's mobile.

No reply.  He was walking down the stairs to the foyer when, with a

lift of his heart, he heard the muffled chirps of his own phone.  But

it turned out to be Bruno Nanni.

"Buona sera, capo.  I'm so sorry to hear about your wife's accident.

Those damn bikes can be as dangerous as a car.  I had a near miss

myself just the other day.  I hope she's all right."

"Oh yes, just minor scrapes and bruises.  In fact she's already gone

home."

"Ah, right.  So are you free this evening, by any chance?"

"Why?"

"Some interesting information has just come in.  I don't want to

discuss it on the phone, but it might potentially be an important lead

and I think you should know about it as soon as possible.  Is there any

chance we might meet a bit later on?"

"Why not?  God knows I've got nothing better to do."

"There's a place in the university district called La Carozza.  Five

minutes walk from your hotel.  Nothing fancy, just good pizzas and

simple dishes, but we can talk freely there."

"Sounds good."

"Around nine?"

"I'll be there."

But it soon began to look as though he wouldn't.  As he crossed the

hospital foyer, heading for the taxi rank, he was approached by a young

man wearing the plainest of plain clothes who identified himself as an

officer of the Carabinieri.

"You are Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen."

It was not a question, so Zen did not reply.

"I have been ordered to place you under provisional arrest and take you

to regional headquarters for questioning."

Zen was so astonished that he could only murmur, "On what charge?"

"Suspicion of attempted murder."

A rancid darkness had fallen by the time Romano Rinaldi set out in

search of sustenance for his soul.  The cold that had gripped the city

all week seemed if anything to have intensified, so it was perfectly

natural that he should be wearing a scarf drawn up over his nose to

ward off dangerous germs and potential lung infections, and

coincidentally concealing his famous face.  He had been worried about

slipping out of the hotel unobserved, but ironically enough all

attention in the lobby had been focused on two reporters pretending to

be police detectives who were trying to browbeat the assistant manager

into giving them a pass key to Signor Rinaldi's suite, and he felt

reasonably confident that none of the other pedestrians trudging about

the streets with an air of aimless intent would recognise him.  As for

the locales he planned to cruise, they would be dimly lit and packed

with students, addicts, artists, anarchists and suchlike demographic

flotsam and jetsam that definitely didn't form part of the core

viewership of Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta.  Then, once he had restored

his spirits, he would be off to that villa in Umbria, never to return

to this accursed town.

He made his way slowly through the narrow streets of the university

district, inspecting various locations with care.  He was tempted for a

moment by a pizzeria-cum-snack bar called La Carrozza, which had a

handwritten sign in the window reading "Temporary Kitchen Help Urgently

Wanted', and appeared to be patronised by exactly the sort of people he

was in search of.  But service was at tables only, and once seated it

would be difficult to make the kind of approach he had in mind.

Besides, he would have to remove his scarf to eat or drink anything.

Too risky, he decided.

One or two bars also looked likely propositions, particularly one

darkened and smoke-filled dive where youths of various sexes wearing

ethnic-looking knitted hats with earflaps perched on bar stools

listening to American popular music beneath posters acclaiming II

popolo di Seattle and denouncing the World Trade Organization.  But the

place had almost the atmosphere of a private members' club, and Rinaldi

would be the oldest person in the room and far too conspicuous.

In the end he found what he wanted on Via Zamboni, the main street of

the quarter.  It was one of the "Irish pubs' that were now

proliferating all over Italy.  Cluricaune, as this one was called, was

very spacious, on two levels, and packed with likely targets.  Rinaldi

fought his way to the bar and ordered a vodka martini.  Although the

place was stuffed with posters and statuettes of leprechauns, the use

of the Irish language was limited to the name.  Details of the

cocktails and beers on offer, and of the establishment's "Happy Hour',

which was now in force, were all in English.

Drink in hand, Rinaldi nudged through the assembled throng, looking

about him carefully.  After a few moments he spotted a young man

propped up on his elbows at the far end of the bar, an empty glass

before him and his head lowered.  He was wearing a black leather jacket

with some sort of crest on the back, and looked drunk and very

depressed.  Rinaldi made his way through the crowd and stood to the

man's left, close enough to attract his attention but not so close as

to give offence.  He lowered his scarf, which was beginning to

suffocate him, downed his drink in one and signalled the barmaid.

"A large vodka martini," he told her.  "And bring my friend here one

too."

The young man glanced at him sideways for a moment without

straightening up.

"Sono rovinato," he said tonelessly.

"Ruined?"  Rinaldi echoed.  "Well, maybe I can help."

He waited until the barmaid had come and gone before flashing some

high-denomination banknotes at the other man.

"Good quality coca," he said.  "The best on the market, the more the

merrier, and immediately.  If you can't deliver, there's a hundred in

it for you to introduce me to someone who can."

At first the youth did not react.  I've picked the wrong man, thought

Rinaldi, adjusting his scarf and preparing to move away.  Then his

companion straightened up with a weary sigh, downed his drink and

laughed harshly.

"Sure, I can do that!  Who cares now anyway?  Let me make a few

calls."

He stepped back from the bar and immediately lurched sideways,

completely off balance, clutching at Rinaldi with both arms for

support.  They clung together like two lovers for fully half a minute,

before the younger man managed to stand upright on his own two feet,

albeit swaying alarmingly.

I'll be right back," he announced defiantly.

Rinaldi had his doubts about that, but the youth hadn't asked for any

money up front, so at worst the approach would have cost him a little

time and the price of a drink.  He cradled his glistening cocktail

glass and gazed up idly at the TV mounted on brackets above the bar.

Some game show was on, while a crawl bar at the bottom unscrolled the

latest news headlines.  Rinaldi watched idly, slurping his drink, as

gnomic references to atrocities in the Middle East, domestic political

feuding and the transfer of some football star danced across the

screen.  Then he almost dropped his glass.  He thought he had seen his

own name.  But that item had already exited stage left, and he had to

wait for the whole chorus line to go through their act again before it

reappeared.

When it finally did, he wrapped the scarf around his face and made his

way as quickly as the crush allowed to the door.

"Famous author Professor Edgardo Ugo shot in Bologna after cookery duel

with star of Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta.  Police confident of imminent

arrest'.  This can't be happening, thought Rinaldi, striding head down

along the tunnel of the long arcade.  The wall and pillars were covered

in hand-written "Wanted' ads that now suggested something very

different than the innocent pursuit of accommodation or employment. And

maybe those two men who had been trying to get to him back at the hotel

hadn't been reporters after all.

Still, it would surely be easy enough to establish his innocence.  He

had driven straight from the exhibition centre to his hotel and

remained there all afternoon.  Not only hadn't he shot Ugo, he couldn't

possibly have done so.  There was nothing to worry about.

A moment later, he realised that there was no way of proving that he

had remained in his room all that time.  He had locked the door, turned

off the phone, instructed the management to refuse all visitors and had

not been seen or heard by anyone until he finally summoned Delia to

bring him the vodka, which might very well look as though he had

belatedly been trying to establish an alibi.  From the cops' point of

view, of course, his public humiliation that morning would constitute

one hell of a motive.  Did anyone else have such good cause to shoot

Ugo on this particular day?  If not, he was inevitably going to be the

prime suspect.  And whatever ultimately came of it, his arrest at this

crucial moment really would mean the end of everything.  Not even Delia

could spin him out of a murder charge.

"Well, Aurelino mio, here's another nice mess you've got us into."

The speaker was a Carabinieri major in full uniform whom Zen recognised

with subdued surprise as Guido Guarnaccia, a fellow Venetian who had

served with the Carabinieri in Milan when Zen had been posted there

many years previously.  They had had professional dealings at the time,

and even developed a sort of friendship, but when Zen had been

transferred to Bologna, ironically enough they had lost touch.

Guarnaccia waved the detainee into a chair and dismissed his escort. He

himself remained standing behind his desk.

"So, how are the children?"  he asked after a stiffish silence.

"I don't have any children."

"Ah.  Right."

"Although I may be about to become a grandfather."

Guarnaccia stared at him.

"By proxy," Zen explained.

"Ah, by proxy.  By proxy.  Right, right."

Another silence supervened.

"And yours?"  asked Zen.

Guarnaccia ignored this.

"You've put me in rather an awkward position, Aurelio."

"Really?"

"Yes.  Very awkward indeed."

"I'm sorry."

"Yes, well, it's all very well being sorry ..."

Guarnaccia broke off.

"Luisetta got married last year," he said.

"Congratulations," Zen replied, wondering who the hell Luisetta was.

"To a photojournalist from Madrid."  : .  , ,

"Ah."

"They'll speak Spanish."  "At home?"

"The kids, I mean."

Guarnaccia sighed deeply.

"I suppose you're aware that Professor Edgardo Ugo was shot this

afternoon."

"So I've heard."

"The bullet struck some sort of sculpture outside his house and

ricocheted into the poor man's left buttock.  He's seriously injured

and in considerable pain."

"What's that got to do with me?"

"The victim alleges that he was involved in an accident in the adjacent

street shortly before the shooting took place.  He was cycling home

after giving a lecture at the university when a woman came running out

of a restaurant and collided with him.  They both ended up on the

ground.  He further claims that a man then emerged from the restaurant,

identified himself as one Aurelio Zen of the Polizia di Stato, and

threatened to place Ugo under arrest for dangerous driving.  Is this

true?"

Zen limited himself to a confirmatory nod.

"Ugo says that you then called an ambulance.  When it arrived, you told

him that you couldn't proceed with an arrest since you had to accompany

your lady friend to the hospital, but threatened to "take further

steps" should she turn out to be seriously injured.  According to his

statement, however, you did not enter the ambulance when it left, but

followed Ugo towards his house, where the shooting took place a few

minutes later.  His back was turned, so he was unable to identify his

attacker, but the implication is obvious."

Zen laughed lightly.

"Guido, I'm a Vice-Questore on special duties with the

Ministry in Rome.  I don't run around waving pistols."  '

Guarnaccia produced the same Delphic smile.

"Yes, I'd heard that you've risen quite high."

"You too."

"No fault of mine, I just outlasted the competition.  Anyway, to

clarify this point, you deny being armed at the time that this incident

took place?"

"I haven't carried a gun for years, and if for some reason I needed one

I would draw it from Supplies at the Ministry, where it would be duly

logged out in my name.  One phone call will prove that I have not done

so."

"Where were you on the evening that Lorenzo Curti was shot?"

Zen recalled that his former acquaintance, despite his lackadaisical

manner, had not been without a certain glutinous intelligence.

"Tuesday evening?"  he replied.  "Coming back from Rome.  Why?"

"Because it looks as though the bullet that hit Ugo was fired from the

same weapon that killed Curti.  Unfortunately the bullet was too

damaged by the impact with the sculpture to yield much forensic data,

but the ejected cartridge case is a perfect match."

Zen laughed again, as though trying gamely to enter into the spirit

of his host's bizarre and slightly distasteful sense of I humour.

"Well, in that case I'm in the clear!  I was on the train between Rome

and Florence at the time that Curti was murdered."

"Can you present any witnesses to that effect?"

"Witnesses?  Of course not.  I mean, there were other people the train.

Not many, though.  I bought a ham roll or some-F thing in the buffet

car.  The attendant there might remember me, although I doubt it.

Little brunette.  Uniform didn't suit her, or rather she didn't suit

the uniform, which was designed by some misogynous fag in Trastevere

who's decided that tits aren't being worn this year.  I didn't get her

name, but..."

"There are three problems from my point of view," Guarnaccia broke in.

"First, pending a definitive forensic examination, the indications are

that the weapon used in the Curti murder and the Ugo attack was almost

certainly identical.  Second, Ugo's statement, which is coherent and

damning and has been confirmed by you, provides at least the semblance

of a motive."

He paused to light a cigarette, and possibly for effect.  "And the

third problem?"  asked Zen, digging out his battered pack of

Nazionali.

"Ah!"

Guarnaccia's lips curled enigmatically once more.  He really loved that

smile, thought Zen.  Perhaps he practised it in the bathroom mirror

every morning after showering.  "The third problem is that you're a

policeman."  Zen savoured his cigarette for a luxurious moment, then

laughed lightly.

"Isn't this taking inter-service rivalry a bit too far, Guido?"  "It's

no joking matter," Guarnaccia retorted with a touch of asperity.  "My

reference is to the spate of serial killings that occurred in and

around Bologna between 1987 and 1994, the so-called Uno Bianca

slayings.  Twenty-four victims in all, of whom six were members of this

force.  They were apparently selected opportunistic ally and gunned

down by a gang of men driving a white Fiat Uno.  The conspiracy

theorists naturally believed that it was another segre to di stato like

the bombing of the waiting room at the station, a right-wing plot to de

stabilise the political situation and punish "red" Bologna.  Others,

including myself, thought and continue to think that it was just a

bunch of homicidal maniacs out on a thrill spree.  But whatever the

truth about that, when the gang was finally captured it turned out to

include five members of your force.  In fact the leader, Roberto Savi,

was assistant chief of police at the Questura here in Bologna at the

time.  It's thus hardly surprising that the Procura has directed us to

undertake this investigation, and that I had no option, on the basis of

the points I have mentioned, but to have you brought in for

questioning."

Zen made a conciliatory gesture.

"I understand that, Guido, and I'll do everything I can to cooperate.

In fact, we can do better.  I was sent up here by the Viminale

specifically to report back on the Curti investigation.  That will suit

the Procura's conspiracy theory perfectly."

"Why didn't you accompany your friend Signora Santini in lithe

ambulance as you had allegedly told Ugo that you would?"

"The paramedics said there was no space and told me to take a taxi. You

don't argue with doctors."

This had the ring of truth, but was in fact the first lie that Zen had

told Guarnaccia.  It had been Gemma herself who had insisted that Zen

should not accompany her in the ambulance.  "He's not my husband!"

she'd kept shouting, much to everyone's embarrassment.  "I told him

that and he yelled at me to get out!  That's why all this happened!

Don't let him near me!"

"Ugo claims that you followed him."

"I may have taken the same direction.  I wasn't paying any attention to

him.  It was simply the quickest way to the taxi stand just off Piazza

Maggiore.  I wanted to be with my wife, that's all."

"According to the reports I have received, Signora Santini denied with

some heat, I believe that she is your wife."

"Well, she isn't, strictly speaking, but..."

There was an embarrassed silence while they both waited to see if

Guarnaccia was going to pursue this point, but in the end he chose

another tack.

"How long did it take you to get a taxi?"

"I don't know.  Ten minutes, perhaps."

"So yet again you have no alibi for the time of the shooting."

Zen shrugged impatiently to indicate that this joke was in poor taste

and had gone on quite long enough.  The resulting silence was broken by

the ringing of the phone.  Guarnaccia picked it up and listened in

silence for some time.  Then he turned to Zen with his patented

smile.

"Well, Aurelino, you're in luck.  That was Brunetti at the Questura. It

seems that they've had an anonymous phone call identifying the man who

shot Ugo.  The informant also claims to have proof."

"What sort of proof?"

"He didn't say'

"So where does that get us?"

"It tips the balance ever so slightly.  I personally never suspected

for a moment that you were culpable, of course, but following Ugo's

allegation I couldn't have been seen to take no action.  Under these

new circumstances, however, I feel that I can exercise my discretionary

authority to release you, on condition that you undertake not to leave

Bologna for the moment.  Agreed?"

Zen thought of the cold bed that awaited him in Lucca.

"I'll be only too happy to remain here as long as you wish," he

replied.

111!

Rodolfo Mattioli sat on an obdurate chair in a waiting room on the

third floor of the hospital, a pile of magazines much thumbed by other

hands on the table beside him.  He was wearing a suit, his best shirt

and tie, and had polished his shoes.

That afternoon, he had walked the streets and ridden the buses at

random for hours before ending up in Cluricaune, where he had been

approached by some bearded wrinkly who wanted to score cocaine.

Normally Rodolfo wouldn't have got involved in anything like that,

particularly with a stranger who might well be a nark, but after what

he had already done, nothing seemed to matter any more.  He'd feigned a

near collapse at the bar and then, while apparently clutching him for

support, had not only got rid of the incriminating pistol into his

prospective client's overcoat pocket but also lifted the man's bulging

wallet.  After that he left the bar and ran back to the apartment he

shared with Vincenzo.

There was no sign of the latter.  Rodolfo peeled off the leather jacket

he'd borrowed and flung it on to the pile of assorted clothing

scattered on the floor of Vincenzo's bedroom, then quickly showered and

changed into his most respectable outfit.  He knew now, and with

overwhelming certainty, what he needed to do, but there was no time to

waste.  He had been just about to leave when his mobile rang.

"I'm in deep shit, Rodolfo," a dull, self-pitying voice declared.  "My

dumb parents just called.  Apparently the silly bastards hired a

private investigator to find out where I was living and what I was

doing.  Now he's trying to blackmail them by claiming he has proof that

I committed some crime."

"What crime?"

"It's all bullshit, of course, but with a record like mine the cops

will be after me in a Milan moment if he spills what he has to them. So

I'm going to have to hide out for a while."

"This all sounds a bit weird, Vincenzo.  Are you fucked up?"

"No!  This is real, God damn it!  And what really pisses me off is that

it's all my lousy parents' fault.  Anyway, like I said, I'm going to

have to go into deep cover for a while, only there's some stuff I need

and I can't risk going back to the apartment.  Can you meet me tonight

with a bag full of clothes and some spare shoes?"

"Where?"

"Doesn't matter."

Rodolfo thought a moment.

"Do you know a place called La Carrozza?  Opposite San Giacomo."

"I can find it."

"I'll be there after nine with your stuff."

Typical Vincenzo, thought Rodolfo as he hung up.  Despite his denials,

he was almost certainly on a paranoid stoner.  If the cops did come

round to their apartment asking questions, those questions would

concern not Vincenzo but himself.

But that wouldn't happen, because he was going to forestall them by

making a full and frank confession to the victim in person before

turning himself in to the police right after seeing Flavia that

evening.  On the phone she had sounded guarded, almost cool,

understandably enough after the way he had treated her the night

before, but had agreed to meet him at La Carrozza.  It would be tough

to say goodbye to her, almost as tough as the inevitable prison

sentence he would have to serve, but there was no other way to put a

definitive end to the madness that had swept over him in the past few

days.

In retrospect, Rodolfo conceded that Flavia might have been right about

Vincenzo being a bad influence.  Certainly his own behaviour had been

unrecognisable, first taking the pistol that he had found hidden behind

the books in his room, then following Edgardo Ugo back from the

university lecture hall to his house in the former ghetto.  For a

moment it had looked as though he would be foiled by bad luck, when Ugo

was involved in an accident with some woman who had come running out of

a restaurant and collided with his bike.  In the end, though,

everything had gone according to plan.  Well, almost everything.

Outside his town dwelling, Edgardo Ugo had caused an art work to be

(re-recreated, the high concept behind which he recounted to anyone who

would listen which necessarily included all his graduate students at

every possible opportunity.  The house to the left of his stood

slightly proud of the general alignment in the street, leaving a dark

corner just beside Ugo's front door where drunks and homeless people

were wont to urinate.  A man as influential as Ugo could certainly have

persuaded the city authorities to bar it off with a metal grid, as was

normally done in the case of such illegal facilities, but he had

instead come up with a typically witty and post-post-cultural

solution.

Marcel Duchamp's 1917 ready-made Fountain, consisting of a

mass-produced glazed ceramic urinal rotated on its horizontal axis, had

long been an icon of the modernist movement.  Ugo's stroke of genius

had been to subject this signifier itself to a further stage of se

miotic transformation (invoking the process of 'unlimited semiosis' and

Lacan's 'sliding signified') by having it reproduced in the finest

white Carrara marble and finished to the intense, glossy sheen

associated with the sculptures of Antonio Canova or, for that matter,

mass-produced glazed ceramic ware.  As with Duchamp's 'original', the

finished piece had been mounted at ninety degrees to the vertical, in

the filthy corner where derelicts went to pee furtively.  But thanks to

them this object functioned as a literal fountain,

the urine pouring out through the aperture for the mains inlet pipe on

to the miscreant's trousers and shoes.

When Rodolfo had fired the pistol, while Ugo had his back turned to

unlock his front door, this sculpture had been his intended target. The

gesture was intended to be purely symbolic, a way of saying, "Fuck you

and your clever jokes and everything you stand for!"  Instead, the

bullet had deflected off the polished marble and must have ended up

somewhere in Ugo's body.  The victim had screamed and fallen over,

while Rodolfo had taken to his heels.  But now the time for running

away was over.

A nurse came into the waiting area and approached him.

"Professor Ugo will see you now."

Head bowed like a man on his way to the gallows, Rodolfo followed her

down a long corridor.  The nurse knocked lightly at one of the doors.

"Signor Mattioli is here."

"Va bene," said a familiar voice within.

The nurse withdrew.

"Ah, Rodolfo," the voice said languidly.  "How very good of you to

visit me.  You of all people."

The room was in almost total darkness.  After the bright lights in the

waiting area and corridor, Rodolfo could discern nothing.

"On the contrary, profess ore it's very good of you to receive me," he

replied haltingly.  I'm sorry to disturb you, only .. . Well, I've come

in a hopeless but necessary attempt to apologise for..."

The answer was a soft laugh from the figure on the bed that Rodolfo

could now just identify as such.

"That's all nonsense," Ugo said.

Meaning, who cares about your apologies when I'm going to have you

arrested the moment you leave, thought Rodolfo.

"Sit down, sit down!"  Ugo went on.  "There's some sort of chair over

there in the corner, I believe.  I've been ordered by the powers that

be to lie on my right side, so I can't turn to look at you, but we can

still talk."

Rodolfo found the chair and seated himself.

"Giacometti," said the voice from the bed.

"Alberto?"  queried Rodolfo, utterly at a loss.

"What do you know about him?"

Rodolfo scanned his memory.

"Italian Swiss, a sculptor and painter, born around 1900.  Died some

time in the 1960s, I think.  Famous for his etiolated figures which

express, according to some commentators, the pain of life."

Ugo's laugh came again, louder and longer this time.

"Bravo!  You were always my best student, Rodolfo, although of course I

never told you that.  Unless perhaps I did, by barring you from the

class."

"I want to apologise for that too.  Absolutely and without any

reservations.  I think I must have gone slightly mad recently, but you

see ..."

He broke off.

"Yes?"  queried Ugo.

Rodolfo hesitated a long time before replying.

"I think I'm in love, profess ore he heard himself say.

"Ah.  In that case I won't detain you long.  Anyway, what you may not

know about Giacometti is that during his years in Paris he was run down

by a bus while crossing the street.  A friend he was with reported

later that the artist's first words after the accident were, "Finally

something has happened to me!"  I've always thought it a good story,

although I never really understood what Giacometti meant by that

comment.  But now I do, perhaps because something has finally happened

to me."

He fell into a silence which Rodolfo did not attempt to break.

I've been thinking of writing a book," Ugo said at last.  "For years, I

mean.  Cornell, early 1980s.  Wonderful campus, magnificent library.

Some reference text in English.  I've never been able to remember

which."

"The Anglo-American Cyclopedia," Rodolfo replied without thinking.

After a moment, Ugo laughed heartily, then moaned.

"Owl  Yes, yes, very good.  Borges' Uqbar.  But this wasn't the

forty-sixth volume of anything.  Much earlier in the alphabetical

series of voci.  It was entitled, in gold-blocked letters on the spine,

"BACK to BOLOGNA", those being the headings of the first and last

articles in that particular volume."

"A completely random phrase."

"Utterly.  You may remember the fuss that Zingarelli ran into when the

eleventh edition of their dictionary featured mastur-bazione as the

head word in bold type on one page.  Anyway, most of the volumes of the

work I saw on the stacks at Cornell were entitled with quite

meaningless phrases.  "HOW to HUG", for example.  Ridiculous."

"I'm not so sure about that."

Ugo's smile, if not visible, was audible.

"Well, you may of course be better informed than I. At all events, this

experience made me realise two things.  One was the obvious fact that I

was homesick, my research project was stalled, and the only way that I

could salvage something from it was by going back to Bologna."

"Which you did?"

"I came home, yes.  And, as it turned out, wrote the book that really

launched my career.  What I didn't write was the second thing suggested

to me by that reference work in the library at Cornell, namely Back to

Boulogne, a mystery in which the detective solves nothing.  For my

protagonist I had in mind a certain Inspecteur Nez, playing on the

French word for nose, as in "has a nose for" but also "led by the

nose".  In short, at once a deconstruction of the realistic,

plot-driven novel and an homtnage to Georges Simenon, the master of

Robbe-Grillet and hence in a sense of us all.  Any amount of atmosphere

and sense of place, in other words, but no solution, just a strong

final curtain line."

Rodolfo stole a glance at his watch.

"Why not scrap the sense of place too?"  he murmured.

The patient was silent for a moment.

"Like a late Shakespearian romance, you mean?"

"Why not?"

"Located in a notional site named Illyria or Bohemia or ..."

"Ruritania."

"That's been done."

"Surely the whole point is that everything's been done."

Professor Ugo was silent for some time.  When he spoke again, it was in

a distinctly crisper tone.

"Possibly.  At any rate, the reason I gave the nurse permission to

admit you, Mattioli, was that I wanted to announce a decision that I've

come to regarding what has happened."

Rodolfo sighed.  Here it comes, he thought.

"I just don't know what to say, profess ore  Apologies are obviously

useless.  No one could forgive what I've done to you."

"That seems a little extreme," Ugo replied.  "But even if I couldn't

forgive, I can at least forget.  In fact, I've already forgotten.  So

come back to the seminar, write your thesis and take your diploma.

You're an intelligent if rather forthright young man with your life to

lead, a life in which many things will happen to you.  Perhaps one

already has.  I believe you said that you were in love."  .  ,

"I think I am."

"The distinction is specious.  And now I must ask you to go.  I'm still

quite weak, but the doctors say that I'll be back on my feet, if not my

bum, by next week.  So I expect to see you in class then.

Understand?"

Rodolfo didn't understand in the slightest.

"Grazie infinite, profess ore he said, and left.

After his conditional release from the clutches of the Carabinieri, Zen

felt like a drink.  On the other hand, he didn't fancy returning to the

bar near his hotel, where half the clientele, judging by the stacked

trophies and plaques on display, (were high-ranking officers from the

Questura.  He'd had enough of cops for one day.

In the end he stumbled on the perfect refuge in a side street off the

market area.  The customers here were drawn from a much broader social

range than at II Gran Bar, and were less I interested in showing off

their status and style than in chatting animatedly, drinking deep and

pigging into the astonishing range of non-fat-free appetisers piled

high on the bar: glistening cubes of creamy mortadella, chewy chunks of

crisp pork crackling, jagged fragments of golden stravecchio Parmesan.

| The Lambrusco was of the increasingly scarce authentic vari-fety,

unfiltered and bottle-fermented.  On that bleak evening, [ when the

gelid smog in the streets seemed not just a meteorological fact but a

malign presence, its rich purple froth pr ovid-led a welcome

confirmation that there was more to life than I hospitals, police

stations and faithless lovers.

Most people are familiar with the temporary euphoria produced by a few

glasses of wine, but few would claim that the I experience had saved

their marriage.  For Zen, however, this jmay just have been the case,

because when his phone rang he [was in a particularly mellow and

affable mood, amenable to Janything and treating it all lightly.  "It's

me," Gemma's voice said.  "At last!  How are you?  Where are you?"  "In

a bar."

BJI

"Me too."

He laughed.

"We really must stop meeting like this."

There was no reply, but instead of regretting his flippancy and moodily

clamming up in turn, he signed the bartender to refill his glass and

carried on as though there had just been a brief lapse in transmission,

of no personal intent or significance.

"Which bar?  I'll come immediately."

"No, no, don't.  Stefano's here."

"Stefano?"

"My son."

"Oh, Stefano!  Yes.  Yes, of course.  I thought you said .. . er, "sto

telefono"."

"You're the most awful liar, Aurelio."

"That's because I never get any practice."

"Anyway, the reason I'm calling is ... I'm having dinner with them, as

I told you.  Then I was planning to drive home, but after what's

happened I'm not so sure that would be a good idea."

"Don't dream of it, particularly in the dark.  The truckers on the

autostrada are vicious.  The doctor I spoke to at the hospital was

horrified that you'd even discharged yourself.  He said you needed more

tests and ..."

"It's not just that.  But I really need a bed for the night, only

because of this trade fair there don't seem to be any hotel rooms to be

had."

"Do you want to sleep with me?"  Zen replied in a lighthearted tone

that he had thought he would never be able to manage again.

"If that's what it takes."

"It's a sort of bed and a half rather than a full double."

"Ill take it."

He laughed again, quite naturally.

"It's yours, signora.  We'll just need a credit card number to secure

the deposit.  I had an appointment this evening, but I'll cancel it."

"Don't do that.  I won't be free till later anyway.  Probably much

later.  They've had some bad news, you see.  That's why Stefano

arranged to meet me here before dinner, so that he could break it to me

alone.  Anyway, it looks like being a long evening in every sense."

"What's happened?"

I'll tell you later.  But the upshot is that I'm not going to be a

grandmother after all."

This was a much staffer check, but once again Zen carried blithely

on.

"That's a shame.  Still, they're young.  There's plenty of time."

"Not necessarily.  It sounds as though this has put the relationship at

risk.  I get the feeling that Stefano's relieved, quite frankly. Lidia,

on the other hand, is naturally shattered.  So a long evening, and I

may be a bit weepy when we meet.  It's been a difficult day, one way

and another."

Zen took another hearty gulp of the effervescent wine and started

toying with one of the pork ciccioli.

"Yes, shame about lunch.  You misunderstood me.  I was talking to my

stomach."

"I'd rather been looking forward to knitting little bootees and

jackets."

"Well, I could use a new pullover."

"It wouldn't be the same."

He laughed again, by now quite impervious to anything she might throw

at him.

"I should hope not!  It would never fit otherwise.  I'll tell the hotel

to expect you.  Just ask at the desk and they'll give you a key if I'm

not back."

"Thank you."

"All part of the service, signora.  We know you have a choice.  We work

hard to be both your first choice and your last."

He hung up, grinning widely, and grabbed a lump of Parmesan the size of

an inoperable tumour.

"But this is crazy!"  the barber protested.  "You have a magnificent

head of hair, a superb beard!  All that's required is a delicate and

discreet trim, a snip here, a hint more shape there ..."

"Do what I say!"  snapped Romano Rinaldi.

For a moment the barber, reflected in the mirror facing the swivel

chair in which Rinaldi was seated, looked as though he might be about

to refuse.  The man must have been in his sixties, with a moonlike face

and the expression of a priest struggling to bring an unrepentant

sinner to the foot of the cross, while his shop looked as though it had

been furnished about the time of national unification and left

untouched ever since.  The proprietor clearly regarded himself as one

of the city's top professionals, and was more accustomed to advising

his clients on which interventions needed to be undertaken than merely

carrying out their orders, particularly when these were eccentric and

wilful in the extreme.  Nevertheless, he picked up his scissors with a

heavy sigh of disapproval and set to work.

His eyes fixed on the antique sink in front of him, Rinaldi sat there

impassively as his shorn locks fell on to the wrap that covered his

upper torso.  The police would be watching the hotel, the railway and

bus stations, and the airport, as well as monitoring both his and

Delia's mobile phones.  He had instructed the barber to shave his scalp

bald, remove his eyebrows and trim his beard down to a very thin

moustache.  That should prevent any casual recognition on the street.

His plan was to find a small, seedy hotel of the kind used by young

backpackers on a tight budget, pass himself off as a foreigner and tell

the proprietor that his passport had been stolen but he had informed

the consulate and a replacement would arrive within the week.  That and

a hefty deposit should do the trick in the short term.  After that it

would be a matter of keeping an eye on the news and seeing how the

affair played out.

The barber finished his job, scowling his disapproval, and whisked away

the hair-covered wrap.

"Fifty euros."

Getting to his feet, Rinaldi stared speechlessly at his reflection in

the mirror while the barber brushed him down like a horse.  Even Delia

wouldn't recognise him like this, he thought.  He reached for his

wallet, but encountered only an alien object, smooth, cool and heavy.

Pulling it out impatiently, he found to his amazement that he was

holding what looked like an automatic pistol.

It took him only a moment to work out that the little rat at the Irish

bar had ripped him off after all.  He'd faked that collapse to give him

the chance to grab hold of Rinaldi, then lifted his wallet and

substituted this cheap replica gun to simulate its bulk and weight.  A

wave of sheer panic swept over him as the implications sunk in.  All

his cash and credit cards were gone, and since he was wanted by the

police he could not report the incident and get replacements in the

usual way.

He turned to the barber, flashing his radiant Lo Chef smile.

"Look, I seem to have left my wallet at home."

The man did not reply.  He stood very still, gazing down at the pistol

in his client's hand.  Rinaldi hastily replaced it.

"I'll leave my watch as surety while I go and fetch my wallet," he went

on.  "It's a vintage Rolex, platinum band, worth at least a thousand.

I'll be back in about half an hour."

"I close in ten minutes," the barber stated in a voice like an

automated recording.

"Then tomorrow."  , , .,. -, .

He thrust the watch at him and walked out.  As soon as he reached the

corner, he turned left and ran until he was out of breath.  The night

air felt cruelly cold in his newly shorn state, but at least there was

no one about.  A few metres further on, lost in the overarching shadows

cast by the portici, stood a municipal rubbish bin.  Rinaldi rooted

about in it until he found an empty plastic bag, and then stuffed his

pigskin gloves, cashmere scarf and camel hair overcoat into it.  Then

he roughed up his blazer, pullover and trousers against the rough

plaster on one of the pillars of the arcade, scuffed his immaculately

polished brogues repeatedly against a neighbouring doorstep, and set

off again looking rather more like a common vagrant, battered bag of

belongings in hand.

But where to?  The loss of his wallet changed everything.  He was not

only homeless and wanted by the police, but down to four euros and

sixty-three centesimi in small change, most of which he promptly spent

in the first bar he came to, just to warm up.  He was staring at the

drying stain in his coffee cup, as though hoping to read his fortune in

the grounds, when a memory of something he had seen earlier that

evening came back to him.  He cringed with humiliation at the very

idea.  What a comedown!  Talk about riches to rags.  But there was no

obvious alternative, and it might just prove to be what he needed to

see him through the next few days, until things sorted themselves out.

It was certainly worth a try.

Hi

Flavia looked up from her battered paperback at the clock above the

alcove where the proprietor was busily crafting raw pizzas beside the

maw of the oven.  One of the two waiters reappeared, the skinny Stan

Laurel lookalike.  He regarded her quizzically.

"Ready to order?"  he asked, when Flavia did not react.

"I'm waiting for someone."

And he was more than twenty minutes late, she thought, as the waiter

sidled off.  It had been absurdly naive to imagine that he would come

at all.  Her relationship with Rodolfo had been intense, diverting and

instructive, but she had never allowed herself any illusions about the

ultimate outcome, even before he started acting in this strange, angry,

icily controlled way.  But with his university career in ruins, there

was no longer any reason for him to remain in Bologna, or with her.

That was what he had been hinting at last night, taunting her with

lying about her origins and then refusing to sleep with her.  As for

this evening, he simply wouldn't show up, leaving her to get the

message.  But she already had.

She glanced up hopefully as the door opened, but it was a stranger, as

tall and austere in appearance as her own dead father.  Flavia finished

the chapter she had been reading and then consulted the clock again.

The thirty minutes grace she had allowed Rodolfo had passed.  She put

on her coat and headed for the door.

"I'm sorry," she said to the fat waiter, who was serving two pasta

dishes to a nearby table.  "My boyfriend just phoned to say he can't

make it."

Ollie inclined his head sideways in a way that could have meant

anything or nothing.

In the street just outside, she literally ran into Rodolfo.  He dropped

the duffle bag he was carrying and kissed her on the mouth.

"Everything's all right!"

They returned together to the table that Flavia had vacated, the only

one free now that half of the rest had been pushed together to form a

large rectangular area seating about a dozen, presumably for a group

that would arrive later.  Rodolfo stowed the nylon bag in the corner

and then, in a breathless rush, told Flavia that he had been to see

Professor Ugo in hospital, had been readmitted to the course, and could

finish his thesis and graduate.

"That's wonderful," said Flavia coolly.  "Then what?"

Rodolfo shrugged.

"Come the summer, I'll want to go back to Puglia, at least for a while.

My father says he needs me, although who knows how long that will last.

Anyway, I'm sick of this damned place.  Afterwards we'll see."

Flavia nodded vaguely.

"What's the weather like in Puglia?"

"Ah, much warmer than here!  The people too."

She pointedly did not respond.

"And in Ruritania?"  he asked with a self-deprecating smile.

"The weather in Ruritania?  It doesn't exist."

Rodolfo took her hand.

I'm sorry, Flavia.  I was so angry about what had happened, almost

insane, and I took it out on you.  I apologise."

There was a silence.

"What's in the bag?"  Flavia asked at length.

"Oh, just some clothes Vincenzo asked me to bring him.  Apparently he's

going to be away for a while and couldn't get

back to the apartment.  The reason that I was so late getting here is I

had to go back and pick that up after visiting Ugo."

He smiled at her..

"Anyway, enough about all that.  Let's talk about us."

"Us?"

"Will you come with me to Puglia?"

She gazed at him for at least a minute, levelly and without the

slightest expression.

"As what?"

Rodolfo mimed exaggerated shock and horror, silent film style.

"As my fidanzata, of course!  They'd stone us both to death

otherwise."

Stanlio manifested himself at the table.

"Two margheritas with buffalo mozzarella," Rodolfo told him, not

breaking eye contact with Flavia.  "And a bottle of champagne."

'... a bottle of spumante," the waiter repeated, writing on his pad.

"No, not spumante.  French champagne."

The waiter looked doubtful.

"I could get some from the bar down the street.  But the price ..."

Rodolfo produced a well-stuffed designer wallet, an evidently expensive

item that Flavia didn't recall having seen before.

"Is irrelevant," he said.

As a newcomer to La Carrozza, Aurelio Zen had been allocated a small

table set apart between the end of the bar and the front door.  This

afforded a close-up view of interactions between the overworked waiters

and the foulmouthed owner, with much interesting commentary on both

sides, and a blast of freezing air whenever the door opened to offset

the searing heat of the wood-burning pizza oven at Zen's back.  He

ordered a glass of beer but no food, on the grounds that he was waiting

for someone.

"Eh, like everyone!"  the thinner of the two waiters had replied

cryptically.

Zen looked around the premises, but the only person who seemed to fit

the waiter's comment was a young woman sitting at a table near by, who

kept glancing up from her book at the front door.  She had surveyed Zen

for a moment when he entered, with a look of hopeful eagerness that

immediately faded as recognition failed.  She had blue eyes of the most

astonishing clarity, as bright and guileless as ice, but much warmer.

She was very attractive in other ways too, and Zen found his own gaze

returning to her both for this reason and because the title of the book

that she was reading seemed to be The Prisoner of Zen, although her

plumply elegant forefinger partially covered it.

In the end she gathered up her things and left, rather to his I

disappointment, only to collide in the street outside with a young man

who kissed her spectacularly and then led her back to her table, where

the couple were now ca noodling and chatting enthusiastically over a

bottle of bubbly wine.  "Ah, youth!"  thought Zen, glad to have someone

to feel happy for.

Now that his brief interlude of high spirits probably a delayed

reaction to the shock of his arrest had passed, his own prospects for

the evening seemed considerably less promising.  The news that

Stefano's girlfriend had miscarried promised to add a vast new

uncharted minefield to the blighted war-zone that his relationship with

Gemma had become.  He had apparently acquired an almost infinite

capacity for saying or doing the wrong thing, and this new development,

which could hardly fail to be the main topic of conversation between

them in the immediate future, offered plenty of scope for his talents

in this respect.

It was then that a thought occurred to him.  As matters stood, he had

no real standing in the Santini family, but as Stefano's stepfather he

would have to be accorded at least a grudging toleration.  So if the

situation started to get out of hand back at the hotel later that

evening, he would simply make a proposal of marriage to Gemma.  That

would at least clarify the situation, whatever the result.  If she

turned him down, they would have to part.  If she accepted, they would

have to put up with each other.  It might not be the most romantic

solution, but it was eminently practical.

Another ten minutes passed before Bruno Nanni finally turned up.

"So what's this "important lead" you mentioned?"  Zen demanded once

they had ordered their pizzas.  "You were very mysterious about it on

the phone."

Bruno leant forward.

"Well, apparently some anonymous informant called the Questura this

afternoon ..."

"Claiming he knows who shot Edgardo Ugo," Zen interrupted.  "Stale

news, Bruno.  The Carabinieri told me hours ago."

"You've been in touch with the Carabinieri?"

"They got in touch with me.  The officer in charge of the Ugo shooting

is an old friend of mine and a fellow Venetian.  He naturally wanted to

compare notes."

"Did they tell you the name that the caller mentioned?"

Zen thought back.

"No, actually they didn't mention a name."

Bruno smiled smugly.

"They couldn't, because we haven't told them."

"How come you know all this, Bruno?"

"Got it out of the duty sarge who took the call."

Their pizzas arrived, and for some time both men were absorbed in

eating.

"Do you also know the name involved?"  asked Zen when his first wave of

hunger had passed.

Bruno was in the middle of chewing a gargantuan bite and couldn't reply

immediately.

"Vincenzo Amadori," he finally replied in a choked whisper.

"Probably just a nuisance call."

Bruno shook his head.

"There's been no public reference to the ballistics tie-in between the

two cases," he pointed out.  "The buzz around the Questura is that the

same gun was definitely involved, but they're not going to release that

news to the media for fear of setting off an Uno Bianca feeding frenzy.

It looks like they're going to keep it under wraps for a while, with

the excuse that further tests are needed, and hope to get a quick break

in the case before they have to come clean."

He finished his beer and signalled the waiter to bring a refill.

"And without the knowledge that the same gun was used, there would be

no point in anyone trying to smear Vincenzo with the Ugo affair.  I

doubt he even knew who Ugo was, never mind had a motive to shoot

him."

Zen felt a sudden sense of lassitude and indifference, a brief backwash

from the storm that had so recently threatened to overwhelm him.

"Well, that's the basic problem with the whole investigation," he heard

himself say, as though at a great distance.  "On the face of it, the

two victims had nothing whatever in common beyond the fact that they

were well-known public figures in Bologna.  There are plenty of killers

who attack only certain demographic groups, usually prostitutes, but

celebrity stalkers are invariably obsessed with one particular person.

No others need apply'

"Perhaps there were two men involved," Bruno suggested, waving a fork

load of pizza in the air.  "One shot Curti for reasons of his own, the

other Ugo ditto, but with the same pistol."

"You should retire and write thrillers."  said Zen sarcastically.

"Anyway, it no longer has anything to do with us.  On the basis of the

possible analogy you mentioned, the judicial authorities have handed

over the Ugo case to our colleagues in the Carabinieri.  Assuming that

the ballistics tests verify the identity of the weapon concerned, they

will get de facto control of the Curti murder as well, leaving us free

to deal with such really important issues as policing football

games."

He broke off as a party of about a dozen entered the establishment,

laughing and chatting loudly, filed past Bruno and Zen and took their

places at the large table that had been assembled at the back of the

room.  One of the waiters appeared and collected the empty pizza

plates.

"Tuttobene, signori?"

Zen nodded, but Bruno scratched the back of his neck.

"You go if you want, capo, but I'm still hungry."

A man in a filthy apron had just emerged from the rear of the premises

to lay two plates of pasta on the counter next to the pizza oven.  He

was pudgy, with a bald head, a vestigial moustache, no eyebrows and an

air of immense resentment.

"Who's that?"  Bruno asked the waiter.

"The new help.  Normo's mother's been taken poorly, so we had to get

someone at short notice to do the made dishes."  v

"Is he any good?"

"He's only just started.  A foreigner.  I haven't had any complaints.

La nonna is keeping a close eye on him."

"God help him.  Well, let's see how good a team they make.  Bring me a

bowl of pen ne all'arrabbiata and half a litre of red."

"In that case, I'll have a dessert," said Zen.  "That chocolatey thing

on the bottom shelf of the cooler."

Behind them, the whoops, giggles and guffaws from the large table soon

rose to such a level that there was no need for Bruno and Zen to try

and find something to talk about.

"One pen ne all'arrabbiata," the waiter shouted to the chef.

Shit, thought Romano Rinaldi, how the hell do I make that?  But the

vigilant crone perched on a tall stool in the corner was already on the

job.

"Don't just stand there gawping!  Get the pasta in!  Two handfuls Stir

it well until it comes to the boil, the water's getting gluey and it

might stick.  Drain that pot, refill it and switch to the backup. Warm

up a ladleful of tomato sauce, add a pinch of chilli and ..."

For the second time that day, Romano Rinaldi set a huge pan of pasta

boiling.  This time, though, he made sure that it didn't boil over.

This totally sucks, he thought.  From being the celebrated and beloved

Chef Che Canta e Incanta to being bullied and ordered around by some

vicious granny who had once again got her hands on a man whose life she

could make a misery, and was relishing every opportunity to do so.

And Romano gave her plenty.  Not only did he not know how to cook, he

deeply and indeed viscerally loathed the entire process.  What he loved

was celebrating the idea of tradition, of authentic shared experience

and a stable and loving home life around the family hearth.  Cooking

was the medium he had chosen for this, but in itself it was a messy,

painstaking, unrewarding and as he had demonstrated so spectacularly

that morning potentially very dangerous form of drudgery that demanded

total concentration and offered at best a sense of relative failure.

Who has not always the impression of having eaten a better meal than

the one set before them?  It was a mug's game, which was no doubt one

reason why it had traditionally been left to women.

These large philosophical questions apart, Romano Rinaldi had ample

specific reasons for feeling utterly miserable.  A splitting headache

for one, the result of his earlier indulgences and current lack of

either drugs or alcohol to satisfy his urgent medical needs.  Then

there was la nonna, of whom the less said the better, and the

unutterably vile surroundings in which he was forced to go about his

distasteful and humiliating chores.

The pizzas that were the mainstay of the establishment were prepared

and baked by the owner and his son in a spotlessly clean extension of

the bar, in full view of the clientele.  The kitchen area at the rear

of the premises where he was penned up, well out of sight, was

substantially smaller than any of the walk-in cupboards in Rinaldi's

Rome residence, and every surface was exuberantly filthy.  The place

looked like the scene of some Mafia settling of accounts after the

bodies had been removed.  Red splashes covered the pitted plaster

walls, which were marked by long vertical gouges that might well have

been made by the fingernails of some dying mobster.  The floor was

sprinkled with what at first looked like capers flung about with mad

abandon, but turned out on closer inspection to be rat droppings.

Rinaldi had been sorely tempted several times already to walk out and

take his chances with the police.  Even if he ended up getting

convicted, could a prison term with hard labour be any worse than

this?

When he had asked about the job a few hours earlier, the surly

proprietor had at first shaken his head, then abruptly changed his mind

and told the supposed illegal immigrant that he would give him a trial,

starting immediately, but only because there was a large birthday party

booked for that evening and he was desperate for someone, anyone, to

help out in the kitchen.  It had also been made clear to Rinaldi that

he was to follow the orders of Normo's grandmother to the letter, she

being ninety years old and unable to do the work

herself.  "She's the brain, you're the robot," was how the charm less

owner had succinctly summed up the situation.  "And don't even fucking

dream of showing your horrible face in the dining area.  Just bring the

dishes out when they're ready, set them down here on the counter and

get straight back to work."

The only upside of the whole situation was that his anonymity appeared

to be complete.  No one had given the slightest sign of realising who

he was, or indeed of being aware of him at all except as an object for

their use or in their way.  He had become part of the immigrant stealth

population, fully visible yet barely perceived, less real in his actual

being than he had been as a two-dimensional image on television.

Certainly no one would ever remark on the similarity between the two,

or if they did would instantly dismiss the thought as a category error

of the most basic kind.  For the moment, anyway, he was safe.

But not from la nonna.

"Don't stand there scratching your arse!  Drain the pasta, then empty

and refill the pot, saving a splash of the cooking water to loosen the

sauce."

As usual, her orders were not in sequence, and he had to try and work

out what to do first.  Being a good cook was all about timing, he was

beginning to realise, and his was terrible.  Worse was to come.  The

pot of pasta water, as thick as soup after many uses, was hotter and

heavier than Rinaldi realised, until a blossoming cloud of steam from

the sink ward gush scalded his face and he dropped it on his foot.

"Macche?"  the stooled crone howled, glaring at her cringing serf. "Did

your mother have to teach you to shit?  Leave it, leave it!  Dish the

pasta, add the sauce and a sprig of parsley and take it out. Quick,

quick, before it gets cold!"

Then, in a terrible screech: "ANTOOOOOOONIO!!!"

It was a blessed relief to escape from the kitchen, even limping and

for only a few seconds.  Having set the plate down, Rinaldi stole a

look at the group assembled for the birthday festivities, exactly the

kind of extended family occasion that he had so often hymned on his

show.  To think that just that morning he, Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta,

would secretly have despised such people and their vulgar

piccolo-borghese jollifications.

The waiter snatched the dish of pasta from the counter and handed

Rinaldi a piece of paper.

"Nine orders for the large party.  All to be ready together, so move

it!"

It was a tribute to the vigorous if crude skills of Vincenzo Amadori's

hair stylist that when he entered La Carrozza, neither Bruno nor

Rodolfo recognised him at first.  Vincenzo had spent much of the

afternoon at a hair salon in an unfashionable suburb having his rug

cut, dyed pink and spiked in retro-punk mode.  Spotting Rodolfo and his

Ruritanian tart at their usual table, Vincenzo slouched over and

plonked himself down.

"Got the bag?"

Rodolfo jerked a thumb at the corner behind his chair.

"Right then, I'll be off."  said Vincenzo, getting to his feet again.

"Oh, calm down!"  Rodolfo replied.  "And sit down.  No one's going to

pick you up here looking like that.  In either sense of the phrase.  So

stay and have a drink with us, at least.  Flavia and I have something

to celebrate."

He signalled to the waiter to bring another glass.  Vincenzo leered at

the bottle.

"Veuve Clicquot?  Sort of pricey shit my parents and their set drink to

impress each other.  What the fuck's this all about?  You win the

lottery or something?"

"In a way," Rodolfo replied with a long look at Flavia.  "We just got

engaged."

Vincenzo slewed his head like a startled horse.  The extra glass

arrived, and Rodolfo did the honours.

"Here's to all of us!"  he proposed gaily.

He and Flavia clinked glasses.  Vincenzo downed his dose in one,

scowled and lit a cigarette.

"You don't seem very happy for us," Flavia remarked.

Vincenzo shrugged.

"For you, maybe.  Not for me."

"Why not?"

"Other people's happiness brings me bad luck."

A soggy silence followed.

"So what exactly is all this about?"  asked Rodolfo, jerking a finger

at Vincenzo's hairdo and a thumb at the bag of clothing he had

brought.

Vincenzo drew a small bottle of some clear spirit from his pocket and

had a long slug.

"I told you, fuck wit

"You said that the private detective your parents hired to check up on

you claims to have evidence that you committed a crime.  What crime?"

Vincenzo squirmed uneasily in his chair.

"It doesn't matter."

"Meaning you don't trust us."

"It doesn't matter, that's all.  Okay, it was the thing that happened

today.  That prof at the uni got plugged."

"You didn't do that!"  Rodolfo exclaimed.

"Of course I didn't!  Even if the cops find me, they'll never be able

to prove a thing.  I just don't need the hassle, that's all.  That's

why I'm going to lie low for a while."

"Can't you prove that you were somewhere else at the time?"

"I was asleep."

"Alone?"

"Listen, I didn't fucking do it, okay?  This time I'm completely and

utterly innocent."

Rodolfo nodded seriously.

"I know you are," he said.  "You see ..."

"This time?"  Flavia put in.

Vincenzo gave her a hard look, as though recognising her as an equal.

He's never looked at me like that, Rodolfo thought.

"Well, I did Curti!  I've been telling everyone that until I'm blue in

the face, but of course the bastards don't believe me when it's the

truth.  Instead they try and nail me over this lie."

"So you killed Lorenzo Curti," Rodolfo remarked, just to remind them

both that he was still there.

"Sure.  I'd been carrying that Parmesan cutter around for weeks.  My

first idea was to carve up the paintwork on his car when he was at one

of the games down here and leave the knife at the scene to make a

statement."

He laughed raucously.

"Get under his skin a bit, know what I mean?  But I never had a chance.

He always had one of his minders with him, or some business buddy'

He jerked back another drink.

"But that night in Ancona everything came together.  After the game I

hung around the V.I.P entrance to the stadium, and for once Curti came

out alone.  He knew my father and he'd seen me around the house back

when I used to live there.  So when I told him that I'd missed the fan

bus and asked for a lift back to Bologna he waved me into his Audi.  He

came off the autostrada at San Lazzaro to let me out, and when he

pulled over I let him have it.  Then I stuck the cheese cutter in his

chest and walked home.  Nice touch, don't you think?  The Parmesan

knife, I mean."

"What did you talk about on the drive back?"  Flavia enquired.

Vincenzo stared at her in utter bewilderment.

"What the fuck's that got to do with it?"

"Where did you get the gun?"  Rodolfo demanded, in an intentionally

ironic parody of the typical commissa rio di polizia, given to fixed

ideas and the third degree.  Vincenzo laughed uneasily and flashed one

of his rare radiant smiles, switching effortlessly into his alternative

persona as someone gifted with

beauty to burn, who could not only get away with anything but make you

long for him to try.

"I came by it," he said, waving his hand as though to suggest that

firearms regularly fell into it by some process that he did not

understand but was powerless to prevent.

"Oh come on!"

"No, really.  There was this old guy in the bar, right?"

"Where?"

"At Ancona, after the game.  He was taking photographs of me and the

boys with that camera I showed you and I sussed that he must be the

snooper my parents had hired.  They hadn't told me, natch, but the

housemaid gave me a heads-up.  So when the guy goes to pee I go in

after him and smash his head against the wall, then go through his

pockets.  And I find the camera, very nice job too, full of digital

shots of us, and also a pistol."

Vincenzo frowned.

"And then someone took it!  From our apartment.  I'd hidden it behind

the books in your bedroom."

He shot Rodolfo a glance.

"It was you, wasn't it?"

"Of course not!"

"Then who?"

"The private detective, of course," said Flavia.  "He must have been

keeping a watch on the house, because he followed me back to mine and

then came round later and tried to pump me for information."

"You never told me that!"  Rodolfo protested.

"I thought it might disturb you after your bad news at the university.

Anyway, Dragos must have recognised your friend here when he attacked

him, then raided the apartment when you were both out and taken his gun

back."

"Who's Dragos?"  both men asked in unison.

"Oh, that's just my name for him.  I thought he was a secret

policeman."

i Vincenzo drained the last drops from his bottle.  !  "Anyway, the

only thing for sure is that this Ugo business had nothing to do with

me.  I didn't even know the old fart.  Was he really famous?"

"In some circles," Rodolfo replied airily.

He was tempted to end Vincenzo's anxieties by confessing the truth, but

that would start a crack in his relationship with Flavia that could

never be made good.  He decided to let Vincenzo sweat it out overnight

and contact him in the morning.  Besides, there was just the remotest

possibility that he was telling the truth about the Curti killing.  The

pistol definitely existed, after all, and he had presumably concealed

it in Rodolfo's room to throw suspicion on him if it were discovered in

the course of a police search.  No, he didn't owe Vincenzo any

favours.

A gale of laughter swept over from the large table in the centre of the

room.

"Who are these wankers?"  yelled Vincenzo, whirling around.  "More

happy fucks!  Jesus, my luck's certainly run out tonight."

"It's that young girl's birthday."  said Flavia.  "They're just having

fun."

"Fun?  Fun?  You think that's what life's about, having fun?"

"Then what?"

Vincenzo's lips crinkled in a contemptuous sneer.

"Stopping other people having fun," he said.  "That's what it's all

about, sweetheart."

Flavia sniffed dismissively.

"Well, you're not going to stop us having fun.  Is he, Rodolfo?

But Rodolfo did not seem inclined to answer.  His eyes held Flavia's,

and his gaze was deeply disturbed.

'... and add the garlic.  Now the oil.  No, not like that!  In a slow

drizzle, like the rain from heaven!  Did your mother have to teach you

to pee?  How can anyone be so cack-handed?  Listen to nature, only to

nature!  She always tells you what to do."

Rather her than you, thought Rinaldi.

"Now a fine grating of nutmeg, like the winter snow dusting down from

the mountains ..."

"How much?"

Her lullaby-like reverie disturbed, the crone glared at him.

"How much what?"

"How much nutmeg!"  screamed the chef.

She stared at him in apparently genuine amazement.

"Ma quello die basta, stupido!"

Just enough.  Thanks, grandma.

"Enough, but not too much," Rinaldi's mentor continued dreamily.  "For

us it's traditional.  How could a foreigner like you understand?  Are

you a Catholic or a Turk?  Never mind, you're a man, that's the

problem.  Men should stay out of the kitchen.  They don't have a clue

about cooking.  How can they, when they're not in tune with the rhythms

of nature?  We women have them in our bodies like the tides.  Listen to

nature, only to nature!  Follow your innermost impulses and you can

never go wrong!"

Romano Rinaldi just succeeded in resisting the temptation to follow

this advice by swinging the frying pan round and beating the old bat to

death with it, but it was touch and go.  He knew that he wouldn't be

able to hold out much longer.  Somehow he finished the order and

carried the dishes out to the serving counter two at a time.  As he

took the last one, the now familiar howl erupted from his tormentor.

The waiter duly appeared and arranged four of the plates on each arm,

but the ninth defeated him.

"Bring that," he ordered Rinaldi.

Lo Chef followed him out into the dining area, where the birthday

celebrations were now in full swing.  The waiter curtly directed

Rinaldi to present the dish he was carrying to a girl of about sixteen

who was sitting at the head of the table, a string of pearls which

might or might not have been genuine about her neck, and a glow that

certainly was on her face.  The padded case in which the necklace had

been presented lay open on the table.

Romano Rinaldi laid her pasta down with a flourish.

"It's your birthday, signorina?"  he enquired.

The girl nodded.  Rinaldi bowed deeply.

"Tanti auguri.  May I ask your name?"

She shrugged awkwardly and blushed.

"Mi chiamano Mitni, ma il mio nome e Lucia."

Romano Rinaldi touched her hand for the briefest of moments, then

turned to the table in general and launched into the big tenor aria

from the end of the first act of La Boheme, wittily changing Rodolfo's

description of himself to "Who am I?  I'm a chef.  What do I do?  I

cook."  This provoked much laughter and applause, but the real pleasure

for Rinaldi was the realisation that his voice was perfectly adapted to

the intimate acoustics of this space, and absolutely on key.  In the

studio he had to be miked up and his vocal interventions electronically

tweaked in post-production to raise flat notes, lower sharp ones, and

generally boost the volume, but now he didn't need any of those tricks.

All that mattered here was pitch, range and style, and he had all three

in spades.

As he forged forward, he realised with a certain pleased astonishment

that he wasn't just imagining this in his usual

drunken or stoned stupor.  It was real, and everyone else in the room

felt it.  The entire company fell silent, transfixed by the narrative

thrust of Puccini's melodic line and the naked glory of the human

voice.  Every eye was fixed on Rinaldi in respectful silence as he

completed the entire aria with inexhaustible confidence, climaxing

effortlessly on the difficult high "La sper-anza!"  which he held for

fully ten seconds, bringing cries of "Bravo!"  before lowering his

voice to a tender pianissimo for the concluding bars.

The result was a spontaneous and prolonged ovation from everyone in the

restaurant.  Standing there in his sauce-spattered apron, Rinaldi

acknowledged his audience with appreciative bows, then turned to the

overwhelmed birthday girl, kissed her hand lightly, and floated back

towards the kitchen.  As he passed the pizza oven, Normo stared at him

in stunned silence.  Rinaldi smiled casually and rounded the corner

into the corridor, where he promptly slammed into some punk dropout

with pink hair on his way back from the lavatory.

The youth, who was evidently drunk, ended up on the floor.  When

Rinaldi offered him a hand he received a torrent of obscene abuse in

return, but just ignored it and walked on down the passageway.  In that

moment of exaltation, nothing could touch him.  This was even better

than la coca Not only was he the star of the evening, but he'd just had

a fabulous insight that would save his career from the disgrace of that

disastrous cookery contest and propel it to still greater heights of

glory and riches.  Real Work: a new concept, a new show, a new book, a

new ... Something hot, wet and sticky exploded on the wall beside him.

The street kid he'd accidentally knocked over grabbed another of the

plates of pizza that Normo had set out on the counter and hurled it at

Rinaldi.

"Stronzo di merda, vaffanculol'

"You're barred, you bastard!"  screamed Normo ritualistically, but he

couldn't take any action, shut away as he was behind the counter.  As

for the two waiters, they seemed disinclined to enter the fray.  The

aggressor reached for another pizza.  Rinaldi stepped smartly into the

kitchen and dug the replica pistol out of the pocket of his jacket.

Waiting until the third pizza and its plate exploded against the door

to the lavatory, he stepped back into the corridor.

"Out," he said decisively, waving the barrel of the pistol at the

intruder.

The youth stared at the weapon with fascination rather than fear.

"Hey, that's my gun!"

"Out!"  Rinaldi repeated, whirling the troublemaker around by his left

arm and marching him towards the door.

"Remember what I said about us being left free to concentrate on public

order issues?"  Zen murmured to Bruno sarcastically.

He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder.

"Here's your chance to make the big arrest that brings promotion."

The patrolman rolled his eyes.

"It's just one of those little punkabestia creeps who hang out under

the portico of the Teatro Communale and in Piazza Verdi.  We don't

bother much with them.  The drug dealers take care of the really

violent ones.  They don't want any trouble on their turf."

"Neither, apparently, does lo chef," Zen remarked as the troublemaker

passed their table on his way to the front door, escorted by the

foreign cook who was screaming "Out!  Out!"  and prodding the younger

man in the back with what was presumably some kitchen implement.

"Holy Christ!"  said Bruno.  "That's Vincenzo Amadori."

"What a charmer."

"What do we do?"

Zen shrugged.

"No longer our case, is it?"

"Don't forget your stuff, Vincenzo!"

The cry came from the boyfriend of the young woman whom Zen had noticed

earlier.  He had grabbed the blue nylon duffle bag he had brought and

was now squeezing through the tables towards the door.

"There could be evidence in that bag," said Bruno urgently.  "We should

take him!"

Zen lit a cigarette.  Time to buy a new pack, he thought.  The

tobacconists would be closed by now, which just left the machines.

"Suit yourself," he said.  "There'll be a lot of paperwork, you can say

goodbye to the rest of your evening, and in the end the Carabinieri

will get all the ..."

But Bruno was already on his feet and gone.  Ah, youth!

Out in the street, the situation had already changed.  The short-order

cook stumbled on the edge of the doorstep and the yob he was ejecting

took advantage of this momentary loss of balance to turn on him.  He

emerged from the ensuing scuffle holding an automatic pistol.  Aurelio

Zen stubbed out his cigarette and called in on his work mobile to

explain the situation and order the immediate dispatch of a squad car.

Rising from the table, he collided with the young woman he had been

eyeing earlier, who was now rushing towards the door with the skinnier

of the two waiters in hot pursuit.

"And the bill?"  he called plaintively.  "Over a hundred with the

champagne!"

Zen followed the woman out to the street, where her companion had been

grabbed and hoisted under the armpits by the punkabestia person, who

was holding the pistol to the side of his head.

"Back off or the puppy gets it!"  he yelled.

"Police!"  Bruno retorted, keeping his distance and evidently uncertain

what to do next.  "Lay down the gun!  You're under arrest!"

The gunman didn't even glance at him, his attention entirely absorbed

by the imposing spectacle of the young woman closing in on him.

"Put my boyfriend down this instant or you'll have me to deal with!"

she shouted.

A patrol car swept around the corner, light bar pulsing but siren

stilled, and screeched to a halt a few metres away.  Vincenzo Amadori

surveyed the situation, then lowered his weapon, released Rodolf o and

burst into laughter.

'. "Ah, fuck!  "he said..  .. .

Flavia took the pistol from his fingers and handed it to Bruno.  Nobody

else approached Vincenzo, who stood swaying about, alternately screwing

up and widening his eyes like someone learning a potentially

enthralling new skill.

"Are you a friend of his?"  Zen asked Rodolfo.

"Who are you?"

"A police officer."  "We share an apartment."  "What's in the bag?"

"Just some clothes he asked me to bring him."

While Bruno, aided by his fellow patrolmen, handcuffed Amadori, Zen

started looking through the contents of the duffle bag.  He lifted out

a striped cream silk shirt bearing the Versace label and held it up to

the light of the restaurant's neon sign.  Several brown stains were

visible on the right-hand chest panel.

Zen called Bruno over.

"It looks like you may have been right about there being evidence in

the bag."

Bruno peered at the shirt, unimpressed.

"A couple of wine stains?"

"Let's see what the DNA tests say.  But if it's blood rather than wine,

as I have reason to suppose, then we'll have stolen both the Curti and

Ugo cases back from the Carabinieri, and you'll be a sergeant next

month."

Tony Speranza woke up feeling like hell.  Actually, he woke up feeling

like hell every morning, but as he could never remember much about the

day before, still less the days before that, this always came as a

surprise.  I

He shuddered out of bed and padded through to the kitchen, where he

cracked a bottle of Budweiser before proceeding to the living room and

un muting the TV, which had been on all night.  A post-breakfast talk

show for bored housewives was in progress, some hermetically groomed

babe in a power suit.  When Tony's eyes finally focused, he saw that a

title in the corner of the screen identified her as Delia Anselmi,

personal assistant to the famous star branded as Lo Chef Che Canta e

Incanta.

"Romano's new concept is just awesome," she was gushing.  "To think

that he's actually been working in disguise at an ordinary

neighbourhood trattoria, doing research for this fabulous new series.

Returning to his roots, as he put it to me last night, Stella.  And I

want you to know that he was weeping!"

The buxom, genetically modified presenter beamed.

"That's just great, Delia!  I want you both to know that we're all

weeping too, but we're weeping tears of joy."

"Thanks for sharing, Stella!  I'm really moved, and I just know that

Romano will be too.  I can't of course disclose the location of the

restaurant where Romano decided to go "back to the rock face", as he

put it to me.  That would compromise the integrity and authenticity of

the whole experience, but it's also for legal reasons following

Romano's heroic and decisive intervention in the dramatic arrest of

Lorenzo Curti's assassin last night.  But we will shortly be filming

him there, fly-on the-wall style, and the resulting series, Real Work,

will be shown..."

'... exclusively on this channel," the presenter put in.

'..  . early in the autumn.  I just know that this is a breakthrough

concept that is going to entirely change the whole way we look at..."

Tony Speranza hit the mute button and shambled over to his phone.  No

messages from the Amadori family, despite the turn of the screw he had

administered the day before by calling the Questura and shopping

Vincenzo as Edgardo Ugo's attacker.  Of course, they might not have

been told yet.  The police were so inefficient.  He returned to the

kitchen, swapped the Bud for a Jack Daniels and then shambled back to

collapse in front of the TV, surfing to a twenty-four-hour news channel

which was showing footage of some botoxed presenter heavy-lip ping a

huge microphone as if it were a phallus.  "Supercop from Rome Cracks

Curti Case' read the title.  Tony's hand darted for the remote

control.

'... can confirm that Vincenzo Amadori is in custody.  He will face

charges later today in regard to the murder of Lorenzo Curti and also

the shooting of Professor Edgardo Ugo.  Forensic tests indicate that

the weapon used in both crimes is that which was in possession of the

accused at the time of his arrest late last night by a crack team of

Polizia di Stato operatives under the leadership of Vice-Questore

Aurelio Zen.  At a news conference earlier this morning, Dottor Zen and

the officer in charge of the investigation, Commissario Salvatore

Brunetti, stated that..."

He pushed the mute button again and glumly watched footage of two men,

one in police uniform, the other in a suit and overcoat, addressing a

group of journalists.  Fuck, he thought.  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.  So

much for his pension plan.

Then he had an idea.

It was about eleven o'clock when Tony Speranza arrived at the Questura.

A blanket of cold, hard smog enveloped the entire city.  Tony was

wearing a powder-blue suit with a dark blue shirt and tie and black

brogues.  He was neat, clean, shaved and relatively sober, and didn't

care who knew it.  He was everything the well-dressed private detective

ought to be.  He was calling for one million euros.

Tony stated his business to the sergeant at the desk, who asked him to

wait and then made a number of whispered phone calls.  About five

minutes later, two armed officers in uniform approached the desk.

The sergeant said tonelessly, "Commissario Brunetti will see you now,

Signor Speranza."

The two officers escorted him up the wide staircase to the first floor.

Neither spoke nor looked at him, but he was pleased -proud, even of

their presence.  It proved that he was finally being taken seriously,

with the respect that he deserved.

Having traversed a lateral corridor, he was ushered into a large

office.  There were two men present.  Tony recognised them as the pair

he had seen earlier on the TV news report.  Better and better!  He was

going straight to the top!

The shorter of the men looked at him, but did not invite him to sit

down.

"We understand that you have come to claim the reward offered by the

Curti family for information leading to the arrest of the killer," he

said.

"Correct."

"As it happens, the person we believe to be the killer is already under

arrest.  On what basis are you therefore claiming the reward?"

Tony had rehearsed this scene many times on the way in and had his

answer ready.

"Your case against Vincenzo Amadori rests on the fact that at the time

of his arrest he was holding the gun used to shoot not only Curti but

also Professor Edgardo Ugo.  That is merely circumstantial evidence. I,

on the other hand, have definitive proof that Amadori was indeed in the

place and at the time that Ugo was shot.  On the basis of the

information that I possess, there can be no doubt that he will be

convicted of that crime.  But since the same weapon was used in both

incidents, and was in his possession, it follows that he must have shot

Curti too.  It will be an open and shut case."

The taller man now spoke.

"Just what is the nature of this information, Signor Speranza?"

Tony laughed lightly to indicate that he hadn't been born yesterday.

"I would naturally only be prepared to disclose its full extent once

the payment of the reward has been agreed by the Curti family.  But I

can reveal that it involves electronic surveillance techniques with a

logged computer record and will stand up in court."

He smiled at the two officials.

"We're talking the information age equivalent of blood on the hands."

The taller man glanced at the uniformed officers, who had remained in

the room, one to either side of Speranza.

"All right," he sighed.  "Take him down to the cellars and sweat it out

of him.  The works, okay?  I want every detail by three at the latest.

Including the stuff he's forgotten he knew."

The uniforms moved in and grasped Speranza by either arm in the manner

known to pulp fiction as 'vice-like'.  It did indeed feel very

vicious.

"But... but... but..."  Tony spluttered.

The official smiled enigmatically.

"The criminal always makes one fatal mistake," he said.  "You came here

demanding a reward on the basis of having proof that the person who

murdered Lorenzo Curti also shot Edgardo Ugo with the same gun."

"But it's true!"

The other man nodded.

"It's certainly true.  What you overlooked, however, is that it's your

gun."

Tony looked at him in complete bewilderment.

"Mine?  But how can you know that?"

"Ah, that might well have taken some considerable time.  The weapon had

almost certainly been acquired on the black market, and was not

officially registered.  Fortunately, however, we were in possession of

a clue that eventually led us, after a sleepless night and much

profound cogitation that tested our professional skills as never

before, to the irrefutable truth."

Tony laughed bravely.

"You're bluffing!  What clue?"

"Your name is engraved on the barrel, signore," said Aurelio Zen.

Michael Dibdin was born in 1947, and attended schools in Scotland and

Ireland and universities in England and Canada.  He currently lives in

Seattle and is the author of the internationally best selling Aurelio

Zen series, including Blood Rain, And Then You Die and, most recently,

Medusa.