And then you die

'I think the experience cost him rather more than that. Lessi was obviously a psychotic. Human life meant nothing whatever to him. Anyway, when, the plane landed in Iceland, he changed into the civilian clothes he had brought with him and slipped through immigration using a false passport he had "lost" before leaving the police.'

'So it was he who attacked me in the street that night.'

'Yes. He claimed it was a total coincidence. The earlier flights back to Europe were all fully booked, so he had to wait for a late-night one. He went into town and was wandering around when he happened to catch sight of you. He said that you were drunk.'

'Iceland has that effect on you.'

'Of making you drunk?'

'Of making you need to get drunk.'

'I see. Anyway, that didn't work either, so he flew back here, assuming that you were safely out of his reach in America. Then one of his contacts got in touch and told him that your trip had been cancelled and that you were coming back to Italy. He knew your address in Rome, of course, and went to visit you there.'

She walked over and closed the window.

'Right, now I think if s time that you told me all about yourself, Dottor Zen.' 'All?'

'Everything. I think I deserve that, don't you? Under the circumstances.' 'Yes, of course. I'm just not sure where to begin.' 'How about the beginning? Whaf s your first name for a start?' 'Aurelio.'

She turned and beamed at him. 'What a lovely name! Go on.' 'Ah. Right. Well…'

This was by far the hardest thing that Zen had had to do so far that evening. He hated talking about himself. At first, he planned to give Gemma a heavily edited version of the truth, but much to his amazement he found himself telling her everything, precisely as she had asked.

She didn't even have to ask follow-up questions in the end, although she prodded him fairly hard in the initial stages. But a point came when she got up and made a large pot of coffee, turning her back on him and generating the usual amount of noise, and he just went on talking anyway. He couldn't stop!

But finally he did.

'Now it's your turn,' he told Gemma, who was sipping a mug of strong espresso opposite him at the table. 'No, no. You'll have to find out bit by bit' 'But I told you everything!' he protested. 'You had to.' 'I didn't'

'Yes, you did. Otherwise I'd have called the police and told them everything.' He laughed. 'It's a bit late for that'

'No it isn't. Even tomorrow wouldn't be too late. Or the day after that. You have Lessi's gun. You murdered him and then threatened me with the same if I didn't agree to help you dispose of his body. I think they'd believe that Particularly if some of Lessi's friends are as vindictive as you suggest'

Zen felt dazed, shocked, stunned by the wine and jolted by the coffee.

'You're going to tell them that?' he asked. Gemma laughed.

'Of course not, silly. I'm just explaining the balance of power around here. You have to do what I say, but I don't have to do what you say.'

Zen thought about this for a moment, then smiled at her.

'I'll be delighted to do whatever you say.'

Gemma stood up, came round the table and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

'Good. Then let’s get going.'

While Gemma went to fetch the car, taking the two rubbish bags and a couple of old coats with her, Zen dragged the bundled body of Roberto Lessi across the dining room and through to the hallway. He opened the front door to the apartment and peered out. The light had automatically extinguished itself and the entire building was silent. Then he heard a clicking sound on the steps and Gemma reappeared.

'All set,' she said.

They lifted the bundle and carried it out on to the landing, leaving the door open to provide background lighting, then down the stairs. The car was parked right in front of the main door, the hatchback open. They heaved the body inside, next to the garbage bags, and spread the coats out over it. Then Gemma ran back upstairs and locked up, while Zen climbed into the passenger seat.

A circuit of the back streets of Lucca, deserted at this time of night, brought them to one of the gates through the enormous walls, and out on to the broad avenue that circumvented the city. Five minutes after that, they had left Italy and were on the motorway.

Years before, when he had finally accepted that his daddy would never come home again, Zen had used to calm himself to sleep by imagining that his bed was in a cabin of one of those international sleeping cars which his father had once showed him in the shunting yards near Santa Lucia station, all dark wood and velvet curtains and brass-shaded lamps and a bell to ring if you needed anything. The train was making its way through a landscape filled with dangers of every kind – battles and floods and towns ablaze – but inside everything was calm. The hideous scenes visible through the window, if you were bold enough to raise the blind a crack, merely emphasized your own seclusion and safety. Meanwhile, the wheels kept ticking along over the rail joints, clickety clack, clickety clack…

Although Zen rarely drove if he could possibly help it, the neutral, extraterritorial domain of the rete autostradale never failed to have a similar calming effect on him. For the modest price of the toll, you were admitted to a private club that stretched the length and breadth of the country, a club that displayed an aristocratic disdain for regional traditions or quirks of topography, and was just about the only institution in the country guaranteed to be open twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year. Whether you were just outside Turin or two thousand metres up in the Abruzzi mountains, the same rules applied and the same facilities were available. The real world stopped at the toll gates, its limits clearly marked by the chain-link fencing. Viewed from within that boundary, the scene was at best picturesque and at worst uninspiring. In that farmhouse over there, its one wan light just showing through the storm-whipped windbreak, the father might be beating his wife and screwing his daughters, with two bodies buried in the cellar and a crazed aunt chained up in the attic. It didn't matter, that was another world. Pretty soon there would be another all-night service station where you could get a hot snack and a cold drink, buy a newspaper or a cassette tape, make a phone call and catch up on the TV news.

Gemma drove prudently, keeping well within the speed limit as they passed through the tunnels and across the long viaducts of the An through the southern foothills of the Apuan Alps, and then cruised down the long curved section reaching down to the coastal plain to join the main north-south motorway at Viareggio. Traffic was heavier here, mostly foreign truckers getting a head start on their long itinerary before the tourists started clogging the road later in the morning. They glided effortlessly past the big rigs, the green kilometre signs ticking off their progress. A pert crescent moon peeked archly out over the mountain chain to the east.

'Someone knew,' said Zen at last, breaking their long silence.

'Knew what?'

'Or at least suspected,' Zen continued, working out the thought which had suddenly come to him. 'And not Brugnoli. He thinks he's a player, but he's not. On the contrary, they're using him.'

Gemma took her eyes off the road for an instant to glance at him.

'When you've got a moment, would you mind telling me what on earth you're talking about?'

Zen remained silent for another minute or so, then shifted in his seat to reach his cigarettes.

'My new job,' he said, lighting up and opening the window slightly.

'What about it?'

'I couldn't understand why they had bothered to go to all that trouble, supposedly setting up this new division and making me the "founder member". They could easily have pressured me into early retirement if they'd wanted to, even produced a fake report from some doctor which diagnosed me as unfit for active service. But that didn't suit them, because someone suspected, just as Lessi did, that I knew more than I was letting on. And once I left the service, they would have no further hold over me. I could sell my story to the newspapers, even write a book about it'