‘Oh, dottore! They want to see you up in Personnel.’
Zen rode the lift up to the office on the fourth floor where Franco Ciliani, a tiny balding tyrant given to Etna-like eruptions of temper, presided over the thankless task of trying to complete the jigsaw of staff allocation when over half the pieces were missing at any one time.
‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded as Zen appeared.
‘Ciccillo said you wanted to see me.’
‘That’s not what I mean! As far as I’m concerned, you’re in Milan.’
Zen gestured a comically excessive apology.
‘Sorry, but I’m not, as you see.’
Ciliani gave a brutal shrug.
‘I don’t give a damn where you are in reality. That’s entirely your affair. I’m talking about what’s down on the roster, and that tells me you’re in Milan. So when I get a call yesterday asking why you haven’t turned up, I naturally wonder what the hell.’
‘Who did you speak to?’
Ciliani made a half-hearted attempt to locate something in the chaos of papers on his desk.
‘Shit. Sermonelli? Something like that.’
‘Simonelli?’
‘That’s it. Antonia Simonelli.’
‘Yesterday?’ queried Zen, ignoring the little matter of Simonelli’s gender.
‘That’s right. Real ball-breaker. You know what the Milanese are like.’
‘There must be some mistake. Simonelli’s here in Rome. We met yesterday.’
‘I said you’d be there by tomorrow at the latest.’
‘But I just told you…’
‘Told me?’ demanded Ciliani. ‘You told me nothing. We aren’t even having this conversation.’
‘What do you mean?’
Ciliani sighed deeply.
‘Look, you’re in Milan, right? I’m in Rome. So how can I be talking to you? It must be a hallucination. Probably the after-effects of that fever you had.’
Zen stared up at the fault-line of a huge crack running from one end of the ceiling to the other.
‘When did the original notification come through?’
Ciliani consulted his schedule.
‘Monday.’
‘I was off sick on Monday.’
He suddenly saw what must have happened. Simonelli had summoned Zen to Milan on Monday, then decided to come to Rome himself to investigate Grimaldi’s continuing silence. He had then got in touch with Zen direct, but presumably his secretary in Milan — the officious woman Ciliani had spoken to — had not been informed of this, and was still trying to complete the earlier arrangement.
‘Fine!’ said Ciliani. ‘I’ll give Milan a call and explain that your departure was unavoidably delayed due to medical complications, but you have since made a swift and complete recovery and will be with them tomorrow. Speaking of which, it’s tough about Carlo, eh?’
‘What?’
‘Romizi, Carlo Romizi.’
‘Oh, you mean his stroke? Yes, it’s…’
‘Haven’t you heard the news?’
‘What news?’
Ciliani stuck his finger in his ear and extracted a gob of wax which he scrutinized as though deciding whether to eat it.
‘He went last night.’
‘Went? Went where?’
Ciliani looked at him queerly.
‘Died.’
‘No!’
Such was the emotion in Zen’s voice that Ciliani lowered his voice and said apologetically, ‘Excuse me, dottore, I didn’t know you were close.’
We are now, thought Zen. Trembling with shock, he left Ciliani and joined the human tide which was beginning to flow in the opposite direction, as those dedicated members of staff who had reported for duty on time rewarded their efficiency by popping out for a coffee and a bite to eat at one of the numerous bars which spring up in the vicinity of any government building like brothels near a port. Zen scandalized the barman by ordering a caffe corretto, espresso laced with grappa, a perfectly acceptable early-morning drink in the Veneto but unheard of in Rome.
He stood sipping the heady mixture and gazing sightlessly at the season’s fixture list for the Lazio football club. From time to time he took a stealthy peek at the idea which had leapt like a ghoul from the grave when Ciliani gave him the news of Carlo Romizi’s death. It didn’t go away. On the contrary, every time he glanced at it — surreptitiously, like a child in bed at the menacing shadows on the ceiling — it looked more substantial, more certain.
The pay-phone in the bar was one of the old models that only accepted tokens. Zen bought two thousand lire’s worth from the cashier and ensconced himself in the narrow passage between the toilet and a broken ice-cream freezer. A selection of coverless, broken-spined telephone directories sprawled on top of the freezer. Zen looked up the number of the San Giovanni hospital. The first four times he dialled, it was engaged, and when he finally did get through the number rang for almost five minutes and was then answered by a receptionist who had taken charm lessons from a pit bull terrier. But she was no match for a man with twenty-five years’ experience as a professional bully, and Zen was speedily put through to the doctor he had spoken to the week before.
All went well until Zen mentioned Romizi’s name, when the doctor suddenly lost his tone of polite detachment.
‘Listen, I’ve had enough of this! Understand? Enough!’
‘But I…’
‘She’s put you up to this, hasn’t she?’
‘I’m simply…’
‘I refuse to be harried and persecuted in this fashion! If it continues, I shall take legal advice. The woman is mad!’
‘Please understand that…’
‘In a case of this kind prognosis is always speculative, for the very good reason that a complete analysis is only possible post-mortem. I naturally sympathize with the widow’s grief, but to imply that the negligence of I or my staff in any way contributed to her husband’s death is slanderous nonsense. There were no unusual developments in the case, the outcome was perfectly consistent with the previous case-history. If Signora Romizi proceeds with this campaign of harassment, she will find herself facing charges of criminal libel. Good day!’
There were two columns of Romizis in the phone book, so Zen got the number from the Ministry switchboard. Carlo’s sister Francesca answered. Having conveyed his condolences, Zen asked if it would be possible to speak to Signora Romizi.
‘Anna’s just gone to sleep.’
‘It must have been a terrible shock for her.’
‘We’ve both found it very hard. They’d warned us that Carlo might not recover, but you never really think it will happen. He had seemed better in the last few…’
Her voice broke.
‘I’m sorry to distress you further,’ Zen said. ‘It’s just that I heard from someone at work that Signora Romizi felt that the hospital hadn’t done everything they might to save Carlo.’
There was no reply.
‘I was wondering if I could do anything to help.’
‘It’s kind of you.’ Francesca’s voice was bleak. ‘The problem is that Anna is finding it hard to accept what has happened, so she’s taking it out on the people there. And of course there’s plenty to complain about. Carlo had a bed in a corridor, along with about thirty other patients, some of them gravely ill. There are vermin, cockroaches and ants everywhere. The kitchen staff walked out last week after some junkie’s relatives held them up at gun point, and the patients might have starved if the relatives hadn’t got together and provided sandwiches and rolls. That’s on top of taking all the sheets home to wash, of course. Meanwhile when the politicians get ill, they go to the Villa Stuart clinic and get looked after by German nuns!’
‘If it’s not too painful, could you tell me what actually happened?’
Francesca sighed.
‘We had been taking it in turns to sit up with Carlo round the clock, so that there would always be a familiar face there at his bedside if he regained consciousness. Last night it was Anna’s turn to stay up. She says she dozed off in her chair and some time in the middle of the night a noise woke her. She sat up to find a doctor standing by the bed, someone she had never seen before. He seemed to be adjusting the controls of the life-support apparatus. When Anna asked him what he was doing, he left without…’