A news-stand he passed was displaying copies of a satirical review whose headline read, 'Medical Breakthrough Reveals Why Pisans Are Born – No Cure In Sight.' Zen smiled indulgently and moved on. Unlike most other countries, at least Italy did not use neighbouring nations as its stereotype for crass stupidity. The universal butt of such low humour was the carabinieri, but every region had its own ritually despised city, whose inhabitants were depicted as cretinous scum who would believe anything and achieve nothing. In his native Veneto, the traditional target was Vicenza; here in Tuscany it was evidently Pisa, and such gags would have a particular appeal here in industrious, mercantile Lucca, so near to yet so far from the neighbouring citta di mare, with its untrustworthy crew of brigands and adventurers with a weather eye always out for one-off deals and a quick killing.
He found a flower shop and ordered a dozen red roses, then wondered if this might look a bit pointed. After a long discussion of the intricacies of the situation with the florist, who had the soft voice and perfect tact of all the townsfolk Zen had encountered, he emerged with a bouquet of yellow roses and turned left off the main street towards the address which Gemma had given him. I like this place, he thought as he strode along. I could be happy here. Despite being entirely landlocked, Lucca reminded him in some indefinable way of Venice. It was a question of its scale, its look and feel of placid security, and above all the politely reticent manners of its citizens, refined by centuries of trade and commerce.
The moment he turned into Via del Fosso, he felt even more at home. The name – Ditch Street – was not attractive, but the thing itself was: a broad avenue of fine buildings to either side of a stone-embanked canal. The trickle of channelled water here was evidently fresh rather than tidal, the buildings more recent and everything on a smaller scale, but the concept was as familiar to Zen as his own face. This was a miniature version of the neighbourhood in Venice where he had grown up. The district must originally have been outside the Roman and medieval city, open fields later enfolded within the imposing line of red-brick baroque walls visible ahead of him. This is where the middleclass merchants of that time would have built their spacious and imposing mansions, leaving the clogged centro and its anachronistic palaces and slums to the decaying nobles and penniless plebs.
He found the house and mounted the step. Gemma had warned him that there were no names beside the buttons of the entry phone, but that hers was the second from the bottom. Almost as soon as Zen rang, the buzzer sounded and the front door unlatched. For a moment he was disconcerted by the lack of any preliminary query, but then realized that there had been no need of that. Gemma was expecting him and him alone.
As if to confirm this impression, the door to her apartment was slightly ajar. Zen knocked lightly and then entered, the bunch of roses concealed behind his back.
'Gemma?'
There was no one in the hallway. She was probably in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches to their meal. Zen smiled, touched by this discreet message. He was being received as an old friend, a member of the family almost, one of the privileged few for whom complimenti would have been an insulting mark of coldness and distance. He walked down the hall and into the living room.
'Gemma?'
But the person in the room was not Gemma. To the left of the door, just out of immediate eyeshot, stood a youngish man with blond hair and a thin moustache, wearing faded jeans and an open-necked shirt in a brilliant shade of orange.
'Buona sera, dottore’ he said.
My God, thought Zen, if s what’s-his-name, Gemma's jealous husband. He'd imagined him like this – young, lithe, athletic -but then reminded himself that whenever he read or heard about someone called by the same name as his boyhood friend in Venice, he always imagined them like that. For him, anyone called Tommaso would be always be gifted with eternal youth. In this case, however, he had been right.
'Gemma's in the dining room,' the man went on. 'Over there to your right. No, please, after you.'
Feeling utterly ridiculous with his pathetic bouquet of roses, Zen obediently walked over to the doorway, the man following.
Had Gemma told her husband that he was coming? Was this some sort of weird humiliation she had decided to inflict on him in return for his unexplained disappearance from the beach?
The moment he crossed the threshold to the next room, these thoughts vanished. Gemma was there all right. She was sitting in one of the dining chairs right opposite Zen, turned away from a. small table elaborately laid for two. Twists of synthetic orange cord secured her arms and chest to the chair. Her mouth was covered by a wide strip of metallic silver tape and her eyes were wild.
Zen instinctively started towards her, only to be halted by a voice.
'Don't touch, please. You know the old saying. "Pretty to look at, delightful to hold, but if it gets broken consider it sold.'"
Zen swung round, letting the bouquet fall to the floor in front of Gemma. There was a different man behind him now, totally bald and clean-shaven. In one hand he held a blond wig and the wispy moustache, in the other an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer.
'Against the wall please, dottore,' he said, pointing with the gun. 'You are familiar with the position, I take it.'
Zen splayed himself out against the wall, hands and feet widely spaced. He felt the pressure of the gun barrel in his back.
'Don't stain my suit,' he stupidly said.
The man laughed.
'Don't worry. By the time I've finished with you, your suit will be the last thing on your mind.'
Hands frisked him quickly and professionally. That professionalism, and the sound of the laugh, finally made everything clear. The man's next words, as he found and removed the communication device that Zen had been given at the Ministry, merely served as confirmation.
'Ah, yes, your little squawkbox. Just as well I still have a few friends in the business. All right, turn around.'
The man tossed Zen's belongings down on the floor beside the wig and moustache he had been wearing.
'Still don't recognize me?' he asked teasingly.
Zen did, but the memory brought only despair. He said nothing.
'Really? Does the name Alfredo Ferraro mean anything to you?'
Zen creased his brow and then shook his head. 'I'm afraid not.'
'You're afraid not. Well, dottore, you're right to be afraid. But it's a shame you don't remember Alfredo. Some of us do. Some of us remember him very well, as well as what happened to him and who was responsible. Which of course is why I'm here’
He held out the hand holding the pistol in a mock salutation.
'Roberto Lessi.'
Zen forced his brow to furrow again.
'Lessi? Wait, I do remember someone by that name. Yes, thaf s right. He was an officer with the carabinieri's ROS division. He saved my life when I was on that assignment in Sicily.'
The man laughed his flat, hard laugh again.
'Very good, Dottor Zen, very good.'
'You're Lessi?' gasped Zen, as though the thought had only just struck him. "You look different, somehow. Or maybe that Mafia bomb affected my memory. Anyway, I only saw you that once, and at night'
Lessi stared at him with eyes that told Zen how close he was to death. He looked about him distractedly, taking in every detail of the situation.
'No, actually you saw me four times, if we're only counting last year.'
The man's leisurely tone gave Zen a flicker of hope for the first time. If Lessi wanted to talk, to explain and to justify himself, then there might conceivably be time to do what was necessary.
'That time out in the country near Etna was the last,' the gunman went on. 'Before that, there was the time we picked you up in the street outside your apartment, the time on the ferry to Malta, and then earlier that evening, when you gunned down my partner Alfredo Ferraro in cold blood.'