‘A bad one,’ Zen told him. ‘They blew his head off with something, a shotgun at very close range or maybe explosives. The killing occurred in situ, an abandoned village in the middle of nowhere.’
Giovanni nodded morosely, as though this merely confirmed his long-standing views about the awfulness of life in Calabria.
‘Is it the American?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know yet. It looks as though the victim was stripped and then dressed in a cheap suit like a corpse laid out for a traditional funeral. No form of identification. But the height and weight correspond with the data for Peter Newman.’
He paused, as though he had been about to add something and then changed his mind.
‘I should have a definitive answer by this evening.’
Sforza gave him a heavily ironic smile.
‘Just as well you’re here, Aurelio. Otherwise the Ministry would have sent down some hotshot from Rome to boss us all around.’
By now, Zen was immune to the charms of irony. He swung round on the deputy questore.
‘Well, since I am here, I plan to nail the bastards who did this! I’m sick to death of this romantic mystique of the south and the people’s self-proclaimed status as eternal victims ground beneath the tyrant’s boot throughout the ages. I’m particularly fed up with hearing how crime down here is ineradicable because it feeds off an unfathomable collective tradition of blood, honour and tragedy which we northerners can never presume to understand. To hell with that! It’s time they all woke up and started taking responsibility for their actions, and I plan to be their alarm clock.’
Sforza nodded.
‘A noble speech. Many of us have made it before, at least in our own minds.’
Zen waved his hands in a gesture of apology and lowered his voice.
‘I’m sorry, Giovanni, but it was really horrific. It looked very much like a ritual killing, almost a pagan sacrifice, and it’s somehow got under my skin. I have no idea how the investigation will play out, but I do know that it will be a constantly evolving situation and that timing will be of the essence. I may need to take extraordinary measures and make extraordinary demands on our available resources. So I’m asking you, in the name of the questore, to give me permission to do so in advance, sight unseen, using your name and rank as authorisation.’
Giovanni Sforza regarded him in silence.
‘It is of course an insane request,’ Zen added.
‘There’s nothing wrong with a little insanity,’ said Sforza, ‘as long as it’s employed in the service of reason. Do what you like. But I warn you — ’
He broke off.
‘What?’ asked Zen.
Sforza shook his head.
‘Never mind. Those were brave words about the public perception of the south and the need for Enlightenment values, but dare I say that they sounded ever so slightly callow? After all, just what are we doing with those values? Take the internet. Here’s the most powerful intellectual tool in the history of the human race and we use it to write narcissistic online journals and to “have our say” like a swarm of squabbling starlings. Enlightenment values? We’re playing hide-and-seek in the library of Alexandria.’
Zen’s dismay must have shown in his expression. Sforza laughed.
‘Oh, take it as a compliment, Aurelio! This case seems to have rejuvenated you. It’s just that I have a different paradigm for the problems of policing the south. It’s like arguing with a woman. You may win small victories, at a high cost, but afterwards everything goes on very much as it did before.’
He gestured self-deprecatingly.
‘Take no notice of me. I’m just an old cynic.’
‘You’re a year younger than me, Giovanni,’ Zen said acidly.
‘Time in the south cannot be measured by the clock,’ was the mock sententious reply.
Back in his office, Zen summoned Natale Arnone and briefed him on the situation.
‘Right, here’s my shopping list. The cadaver is on its way to the hospital for autopsy and further forensic tests. I want an immediate comparison of the dead man’s fingerprints with those of the American sent to us by the consulate, and after that a DNA profile. I’ll get on the phone and give the relevant orders, your job is to ensure that the people who promised me the earth don’t try and fob me off with a handful of dirt. Got that?’
‘Of course, sir.’
Arnone got up.
‘I’m not finished yet,’ Zen told him. ‘I also want you to track down Thomas Newman, the American’s son. He’s staying at the Hotel Centrale. If he’s not there now, leave a man in the lobby until he returns. Finally, I need to trace any surviving relatives of Ottavia Calopezzati as well as the man cited on that birth certificate as Pietro’s father, Azzo whatever it was.’
Arnone looked mystified by this last request, but held his tongue.
‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘By no means all, but it should be enough to keep you busy until eight this evening. That’s your deadline for delivery of all the foregoing items. Buon coraggio.’
When Arnone had gone, Zen lit a cigarette, then picked up the phone and dialled the extension of the officer in charge of operations.
‘I am ordering a house-to-house search of the new town of Altomonte, beneath the hilltop where that corpse was discovered today. All road access and egress is to be sealed by personnel carriers with officers in battledress and armed with machine guns. Helicopters hovering low overhead to spot anyone who tries to escape on foot. Inside the net, every individual is to be questioned separately by plain-clothed officers concerning the arrival and killing of the victim, his identity and that of those responsible. The level of duress is to exploit the legal limits to the maximum and slightly exceed them should the situation appear to warrant it. As with the discovery of the body, the whole operation is to be subject to a total media blackout until further notice. Authorisation for these orders has been given by the questore’s office.’
The official coughed lightly.
‘Very good, sir.’
He sounded doubtful.
‘Is there a manning problem?’ Zen demanded. ‘Pull everyone off other jobs, cancel all — ’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Then what the hell is it?’
‘Well, sir, I don’t want to be critical or anything, only I know you’re new to the area and I have to say that operations like this haven’t proven very productive in the past. In fact, you might almost say that they’ve been counter-productive. People around here, the more you squeeze them, the harder they get.’
‘Admirable attempt to save your colleagues from hours of irksome overtime,’ Zen commented. ‘Admirable, but doomed. I don’t remotely expect any of the inhabitants of the place to talk. That isn’t the object of the exercise. Execute the orders you have been given.’
Martin Nguyen held that one of the ways you distinguished winners from losers was by how many times they had to change planes to get to their destination. He had therefore been appalled to discover that to reach the godforsaken hole in the ground down which Rapture Works was pouring its millions, he needed to transfer not just in Los Angeles but also in Rome. On the up side, the transatlantic flight lasted almost ten hours and the time difference was in Martin’s favour. He worked the twenty-dollar-a-minute credit-card phone in the armrest of his first-class seat to good effect, arranging to hire a European mobile — when was the rest of the world going to get over its hissy fit and switch to the US standard? — as well as a limo and driver, all to be delivered to him on arrival at Fiumicino airport.
The driver spoke extremely limited English, but he was there on time and proved to possess the skills, nerve and coolness of a Formula One professional. A little jaded after the long flight, Martin sat back in the rear of the Mercedes S-Class saloon and admired the Italian’s amazing ability to overtake and undertake, using the hard shoulder or a notional third lane which he conjured into being for precisely the duration of opportunity required, as well as the shamelessly thuggish tactics he employed on slower vehicles, which in effect meant everything else on the road, accelerating towards them at well over a hundred m.p. h., braking at the very last moment to fetch up less than a metre from the victim’s rear bumper and then repeatedly flashing his halogen high beams and sounding a series of aggressive and discordant horn blasts. The long section of single-lane working resulting from the reconstruction of the Salerno- Reggio autostrada proved almost excessively interesting, with plastic cones flying in all directions and at least one moment when Martin knew without a shadow of doubt that he was going to die.