Zen didn’t reply. Indeed, he hadn’t really been paying attention to Gilberto’s rant, but rather to the sounds and feel of the car’s progress around corners, piazzas and junctions, over cobblestones, paving blocks and asphalt pitted by tram lines.
‘I didn’t know there were any good restaurants in Prenestino,’ he remarked at length.
Gilberto laughed indulgently.
‘Very good, Aurelio! I should have known better than to try and fool you. But in fact we’re going a bit further out than Prenestino. It’s not exactly a restaurant, either, more the staff canteen. But you’ll eat well, and the price is definitely right. Anyway, enough of this. What do you want from me this time?’
‘Nothing. I told you.’
‘And my mother told me that la befana wouldn’t bring me any presents at Christmas if I wasn’t a good boy. I didn’t believe her either. Come on, Aurelio. I really don’t mind, but let’s just get it over with so that we can both enjoy our lunch in peace.’
Zen slapped his friend on the thigh.
‘Gilberto, I swear by all that’s holy that when I called you this morning from the train I just wanted to have lunch and catch up on how things are going. But as it happens something did come up subsequently that you might be able to help with. It’s a question of some digital photographs that I need to have enhanced. Well, one of them anyway. I’ve got a compressed file on disk with me. It would need to be unzipped, of course.’
He sat back, feeling slightly smug at his command of this jargon. Gilberto, on the other hand, took not the slightest notice.
‘Of course,’ he said, opening a cabinet invisibly recessed in the walnut facia before them and taking out a flask of clear liquid and two small glasses. He filled the glasses on the shelf provided by the hatch of the cabinet, then added mineral water from a small plastic bottle. The liquid in the glasses turned a cloudy white. Gilberto passed one to Zen.
‘ Salute!’
Zen sniffed the glass. The odour was overpowering, but it took him a moment to realize what it was. Liquorice was one of those childhood delicacies that he had forgotten about.
‘Like it?’
Gilberto had downed his glass and was lighting a cigarette.
‘What is it?’ Zen asked, taking a sip.
‘Damned if I know. A variety of arak, I suppose. They’re not supposed to drink at all, of course, but…’
‘Who are you talking about?’
Nieddu turned to him with a teasing smile.
‘You’re supposed to be a detective, Aurelio. I’ve already given you three clues.’
Zen dug out his own cigarettes.
‘I’m a police investigator, Gilberto,’ he said in a stiff tone that immediately sounded silly to him.
‘Ah, right. So what are you investigating at present?’
The car had left the main road and was turning this way and that through a grid of side streets, often slowing or braking sharply.
‘You can’t expect me to tell you that. Particularly when you won’t even tell me where we’re going.’
‘Fair enough. I just thought it might have something to do with Nestore, you see.’
‘Who?’
‘Nestore Soldani. A former business associate of mine.’
‘Never heard of him.’
Gilberto peered at him with something like disbelief.
‘Don’t you watch the news? It’s been a big story for the last two days. Someone planted about a kilo of weapons-grade explosive under the driving seat of his car.’
‘I’ve been away. Work. Haven’t had time to watch TV.’
The car made a left turn on to a deeply potholed surface, then veered sharply right and came to rest. The driver leapt out and opened the door on Gilberto’s side. He then ran around to assist Zen, but he had already managed for himself. The car was parked in the yard of what looked like a factory dating from the abusivo building boom of the sixties or seventies. Nieddu opened a rusting metal door in the wall, then led the way along a corridor and up a flight of bare concrete steps.
‘This way,’ he said, opening a door to the left.
The room inside was cramped, stuffy and unattractive. A desk piled with papers and computer equipment stood at one end, a low coffee table and two chairs at the other. A dour- looking elderly woman appeared at a door at the far end of the room and said something incomprehensible. Without glancing at her, Nieddu replied in the same manner.
‘What language is that?’ asked Zen.
‘Kurdish.’
‘You speak Kurdish?’
‘A few phrases. It’s all I need. Give me the file with the photographs.’
Zen handed it over. Nieddu slipped it into the computer and busied himself with the mouse and the keyboard for a few moments.
‘OK, here they are,’ he said. ‘Which one was it you wanted enhanced?’
Zen studied the images on screen, then pointed.
‘That one.’
The gallery disappeared and was replaced by a full-size dis¬ play of the picture he had selected, showing an almost unrec ognizably broken body.
‘Hmm, very dead,’ commented Nieddu.
‘A climbing accident,’ Zen explained.
‘Don’t bother lying, Aurelio. It’s boring for both of us. Which bit do you want to know more about?’
‘Right here, the mark on his arm.’
Gilberto examined the screen more closely for some time, then stood up and looked Zen in the eyes.
‘You said you weren’t investigating that business,’ he said very quietly.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about Nestore Soldani! You tell me you’d never heard of him, then hand me a disk containing a shocking image of his corpse, hoping that I’ll crack, break down and spill the beans. They said in the papers that no traces of the body had been found, but of course that was just another lie. Still the old- style hard-line commissariato techniques, eh Aurelio? The country’s changed all around you, but you’re too busy working to keep track of what’s going on, just like Berlusconi’s opponents. You’ve learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.’
Zen gripped his friend’s arm tightly.
‘For the love of God, Gilberto, calm down! Listen, this friend of yours, this Nestore, what happened to him?’
‘You know what happened!’
‘I swear to you that I don’t.’
‘Everyone else in the country does! He was blown up in his car at the entrance to his villa in Campione.’
Zen released Nieddu’s arm.
‘Then there’s no connection. This photograph is of a corpse which was found in a remote area of the mountains east of Bolzano. No villas, no cars.’
Nieddu stabbed at the screen.
‘Then what about the tattoo? Nestore had one just like that on his arm.’
Zen shrugged.
‘Plenty of men have tattoos. Even women, these days.’
‘It’s the same, I tell you!’
They were interrupted by the elderly woman barging in with a large tray which she set down on a low table. It was covered with dishes of food of a kind utterly unfamiliar to Zen. Gilberto said something in the guttural language he had used before. The woman bowed to both men and left, closing the door behind her.
‘You swear you knew nothing about this?’ Gilberto asked Zen solemnly.
‘On my mother’s grave.’
Nieddu nodded curtly.
‘All right, let’s eat.’
‘What is this stuff?’ Zen asked as they sat down at the low table.