‘I was lonely and frightened. I made friends with one of the other skivvies in that cold sepulchre, where in the first few months I sometimes got lost amongst all the corridors and stairs. Her name was Caterina Intrieri. I was fifteen years old, she was eighteen. After that we looked after each other. It made life a little easier for both of us. And then one day in the week after Pentecost, Caterina told me that she was with child. She wouldn’t say who the father was. As far as I know, she told no one else but a levatrice, a wise woman who said that she would be brought to bed about Christmas. And so she would have, except for what happened.’
Maria clasped the battered bag she held on her knees like a chicken she was bringing to market and now feared might escape.
‘What did happen?’ prompted Zen.
‘Caterina died, but the child survived and was taken by la baronessa as her own. What with the war and the constant changes of government, life was chaotic in those days. No one knew who was in charge, no one cared for anything but their own survival. With an unknown father and a dead mother, it was easy for Signora Ottavia to claim Caterina’s child as her own and have it registered with the authorities as Pietro Ottavio Calopezzati.’
‘How did the boy’s mother die?’
‘In the usual way.’
‘In childbirth?’
Maria did not respond to this question.
‘The baby was given to a wet-nurse in Camigliatello,’ she said. ‘He was with her when the fire broke out.’
Zen coughed and then lit a cigarette.
‘Tell me, what was it like, la bastiglia? I’ve never seen a photograph or a sketch. What did it look like? How did it strike the eye?’
Maria tried to remember. This was not a question she had expected to be asked, or even the same kind of question. But she was talking to the chief of police for the entire province. She wasn’t sure of the answer, but she couldn’t just sit there and say nothing. It was like being back in school.
‘There were many storeys,’ she began. ‘Four in all, not counting the underground. But we were only allowed to visit three of them. The piano nobile on the first floor was only for the family and their personal attendants.’
‘What else do you remember about it?’ asked Zen sleepily.
There was a long silence.
‘I remember the way the facade changed, depending on the time of day.’
‘Go on.’
‘It looked like something that had come from the heavens and been stuck down here like the heel of a boot. It faced west, so in the morning it was a blank wall, only with all those windows, like some insect’s eyes! During the day, it was just there. At sunset all the windows gleamed and glinted red, and at night under the full moon it looked like a ghost with its arms raised up to scare you.’
Zen smiled faintly.
‘What a pity it burned down. How did that come about, by the way?’
Maria preferred to lie as little as possible, but she had to see the matter through.
‘It was a dark and stormy night. The most violent thunderstorm that’s ever been seen in these parts. La bastiglia was by far the tallest building up in the old town. It was struck several times. Many fires broke out all at once. We servants did what we could, but all water had to be fetched one bucket at a time from the deep well that supplied the palace. It was a hopeless task.’
‘And Ottavia Calopezzati was unable to escape in time?’
Maria nodded. Stunned by a blow from a fire-iron whilst she was sleeping and then trussed like a chicken with baling twine, the murderess had indeed been unable to escape the flames.
‘So what became of her adopted child?’
‘I have no idea. After the fire, the household broke up and returned to their families, if they could find them. As I said, everyone was looking out for themselves.’
Now the police chief seemed to be suffering from a headache, no doubt brought on by overwork. He leant forward, scowling, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘I wonder how relevant all this is, signora. The motive for this murder is still unclear. Kidnappings go wrong for all kinds of reasons. For example, the victim may see or overhear something which would make his release perilous for the gang at any price. The question of whether or not he was the son of someone called Caterina Intrieri seems moot, to say the least.’
‘No,’ said Maria firmly. ‘He was killed because they thought he was a Calopezzati, but they were wrong.’
‘Who are “they”?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then how can you know what they may or may not have thought?’
‘I’m just telling you what everyone says.’
‘Everyone is of no use to me. What I need is someone, a specific individual prepared to come forward and identify those responsible for this crime and for the atrocities that happened in your own town shortly afterwards. I had hoped that you might be that someone, signora. Why else would you have come here yesterday, and again today, and spent hours on end waiting to see me?’
‘I wanted justice for Caterina. Her only child has been killed because it was tainted with the name of the family that made her life a misery, and the lives of everyone who lived around here then, if you could call it living.’
Zen glanced at his watch.
‘Is that all you have to say?’
‘It’s all I know,’ Maria replied stubbornly.
‘I don’t believe that for a moment, but I don’t intend to press you. However, I may need to get in touch at some point in the future. Doing so in the normal way might cause difficulties for your family. Do you understand my meaning?’
Maria got a pen and a used bus ticket out of her handbag, wrote down a telephone number in large, plump numerals and handed the ticket to Zen.
‘Call this number. If someone else answers, tell them that you work at the hospital and need to speak to me about the results of those tests I had. They’ll fetch me and then we can talk.’
Zen stood up to indicate that the interview was over.
‘You’re an interesting person, Maria,’ he said, using her name for the first time. ‘What you’ve said is extremely interesting. What you haven’t said might well be more interesting still. Do you know someone called Giorgio?’
Maria almost faltered then, dazzled by the feints setting up the knockout punch. But she too could hold herself together by sheer willpower.
‘It’s a very common name,’ she replied.
The chief of police seemed to acknowledge her fortitude with an ironic smile.
‘Excessively common, I’m inclined to think. The world would be a better place if there were fewer Giorgios in it. Or at least one fewer. I wish you a safe and speedy journey home.’
Since his son had made his own arrangements for the day, Professor Achille Pancrazi spent the afternoon working on a rather tricky review of a book by a former colleague at the University of Padua. He had initially been slightly taken aback by Emanuele’s announcement that he was going to spend the day with an unnamed school friend, largely because even after years of separation he still lived in fear of his ex-wife and knew that he would be held to account if anything went wrong. But of course nothing would, and frankly an interval of free time in these welcome but somewhat tiring visits was always welcome.
Needless to say, he hadn’t bothered to read Fraschetti’s latest effusion. He was familiar with both the subject and the author, so a perusal of the introduction and table of contents sufficed as far as content went. As for style, a brief skim of a few paragraphs taken at random was enough to show that his rival’s love affair with the jargon of the trade was by no means over. He was particularly amused by the constant references to ‘desire’, given that he knew for a fact that Fraschetti had never desired anyone of either sex in his life. But Pancrazi’s real problem was how to pitch his critical response, which would be published in the Cultura insert of a national newspaper and read by just about everyone in the scholarly world for whom the subject matter was relevant. In other words, it wasn’t so much a question of how he wanted to make his eminent — but well past his peak, despite his current fame — colleague look, but of how he wanted it to make him look. If he sounded too negative, then charges of professional envy could and would be brought, and not without a certain justification.