‘Go ahead.’
‘The Digos crew watching that house in San Giovanni report that the owner, Dionisio Carduzzi, has left the house only twice. Last night he went to a local bar and drank wine with some friends. This morning he bought a paper, then went to the same bar and had a coffee. After that he went home and hasn’t emerged since. His wife went to church yesterday and to the market this morning to buy vegetables and a chicken. That’s all. No one else has entered or left the house.’
He’s using pizzini, thought Zen, just like Bernardo Provenzano. Notes folded into a banknote and handed to the owner of the bar or the newsagent, or slipped under the table to one of those friends, or passed to a market vendor by his wife, or left in a missal at the church. The dilemma he had wrestled with the night before was now resolved. The only way to intercept such messages would be by mass arrests of essentially innocent people with no criminal history. That would be both clumsy and ineffective.
‘Anything else?’ he asked Arnone.
‘Two things, sir. The phone interception team reported that when Carduzzi came back from his morning expedition, he called the offices of a construction firm down in Vibo Valentia and asked for someone named Aldo. He told him that their mutual friend required the immediate services of a mechanical digger on a low-loader, two heavy-duty trucks, a dozen first-rate stonemasons and twenty unskilled labourers. The equipment and personnel were to assemble in the parking area of the Rogliano service station south of Cosenza on the A3, where they would be met and led to the work site. Payment would be in the normal way.’
‘Very well. Have someone at the meeting point and try and get photographs of the principals. Sounds like a classic abusive construction job. I can’t see it’s worth diverting manpower from ongoing assignments to follow them. Funny about them needing stonemasons, though. Cheap, poorly reinforced concrete is the mob’s trademark.’
‘Not if it’s one of their own houses,’ Arnone pointed out.
The two servizi thugs had now emerged from the bar. Mini-Mussolini walked over, touched Zen’s arm and jerked his head impatiently towards the car. Zen ignored him.
‘And the other thing?’ he asked Arnone.
‘Oh, just some crazy old woman here who insists on talking to you. Won’t say what it’s about and won’t talk to anyone else.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Name’s Maria Stefania Arrighi, resident in Altomonte Nuova. She got here at seven this morning and demanded to speak to the chief of police. She was told that you were out of town and wouldn’t be back until late, but she said she would wait. Plonked herself down on the bench in the entrance hall and has been there ever since. Do you want us to throw her out?’
‘Absolutely not, and if she leaves of her own accord, try to get a contact address and phone number.’
‘I’ll do my best, but basically she refuses to speak to anyone but you.’
Flanked by his two handlers, Zen got back into the car, which took a very steep minor road whose tight bends gave occasional views of the capital, the dome of St Peter’s just visible through the flat pall of pollution that covered the surrounding campagna, a modern equivalent of the malarial miasma that had decimated the population for centuries.
When they finally reached their destination, Zen was reminded of Arnone’s comment about the mob leaders’ private dwellings. Not that there was anything ostentatious about this long, low villa set among ancient olive groves and vineyards. The connection was more subtle, based on the fact that a good three kilometres back they had passed a sign marking the beginning of the Castelli Romani regional park. The villa clearly post-dated the creation of this protected area where new construction was strictly forbidden, but the important and powerful figure who owned it was almost certainly a member not of the Mafia but of the government — an entirely different organisation, needless to say.
The room into which Zen was shown provided no obvious clue to the identity of this person beyond the fact that he could afford to indulge in the sort of bad taste that comes with an exorbitant price tag. There were several huge oil paintings in the blandly ‘contemporary’ style favoured by Arab collectors, featuring nude females and rearing stallions in a vaguely abstract wilderness. There were also a number of coffee-table art books on display, but any attempt to investigate further the ownership of the property was prevented by Zen’s escort, who took up positions at opposite ends of the room. Twelve minutes passed before a passenger van drew up outside the house and a hydraulic lift deposited an elderly man seated in a wheelchair, which was pushed into the room by a formidable-looking woman in a starched uniform.
‘This nurse will take the sample you require and return with it so that tests may be undertaken,’ Mini-Mussolini announced.
‘Take it from whom?’ Zen demanded acidly.
‘From the person you requested to meet.’
‘And where is he?’
The man pointed to the occupant of the wheelchair, who sat mutely cradling a battered leather briefcase.
‘I have your word for that?’
‘You have my department’s word for it.’
Zen levelled him with a look.
‘I don’t even know which department you’re talking about, but if it’s the one I think it is, then I hope for all our sakes that you’re not the sharpest knife in their drawer. For my coming here to make any sense, I require documentary proof that the donor of the sample is Roberto Calopezzati. I further require to take possession of the sample and convey it personally to a police laboratory, where it will be entrusted to a technician of my choice. If you seek to impose any other solution, this has all been a complete waste of time.’
‘Go away, Gino,’ said the man in the wheelchair. ‘You two as well. This experience is difficult enough for me without having you all standing around aimlessly like characters in some Pirandello play.’
The two minders and the nurse trooped meekly out.
‘I apologise for this pantomime,’ the man said to Zen. ‘It was the idea of my successor as head of the agency you referred to. Not a bad fellow in many ways, but somewhat heavy-handed. Yes, I know you’re listening, Rizzardo, but that happens to be my opinion, for what it’s worth. Sit down, signore, sit down. I am Roberto Calopezzati, and I have brought the necessary documents to prove it. Before I present them, may I ask why I have the honour of being an object of attention to the police?’
Calopezzati was a bulky man with a strongly featured face set off by a white beard trimmed short and contrasted with jet-black cropped hair and two huge eyebrows of the same colour that lounged across his brow like furry caterpillars. His olive-green eyes were intense, direct and demanding, while his lips were thin but sensual. Only the lower half of his body, truncated at the knees, detracted from the general impression of vigour and power.
‘I assumed that your successor would have explained that,’ Zen replied.
‘Well, I suppose we could always ask him. I don’t actually know if he’s listening in “real time”, as they say these days — when did time stop being real, by the way? — but our conversation is certainly being recorded for quality-assurance purposes and for my protection. Anyway, all I have been told is that our meeting is with regard to the investigation of a murder in Cosenza.’
‘You weren’t informed of the identity of the victim?’
‘No.’
‘And you didn’t see my press conference on television?’
‘I don’t have a television.’
‘Ah well, in that case, barone, I’m afraid that I must be the bearer of bad news. All the prima facie evidence suggests that the victim was your nephew.’
Calopezzati sagged physically and looked his age for the first time.
‘Pietro?’ he whispered.
‘That’s what I’ve come here to ascertain. On the face of it, the victim was an American citizen travelling under the name of Peter Newman. When he disappeared some weeks ago while in Calabria on a business trip, the assumption was that he had been kidnapped for ransom. My investigations during that period suggested that his original identity was Pietro Ottavio Calopezzati, the son of your late sister Ottavia. The main reason why I’ve come here is to obtain a DNA sample from you which will confirm or rule out that hypothesis.’