Over cigarettes and a glass of the inevitable local amaro liqueur, whose digestive properties were extolled at some length by the proprietor, Gemma brought out the prints she had made from Gilberto Nieddu’s email attachment of the enhanced digital photograph.
‘What was it he said?’ Zen asked as he glanced through them.
‘There was a very brief cover note that I didn’t bother to print up. He just said to tell you that the mark on his arm is the same.’
Zen nodded. The prints presented the tattoo in various shades of distinction, as well as its original black on the ochre background of the shrivelled arm. It showed the head of a young woman enclosed in a thick square frame. Her hair was knotted, her eyes blank, her expression unfathomable.
Zen passed the pages to Gemma.
‘What do you make of these?’
‘It’s Medusa,’ she replied immediately.
‘Medusa?’
‘Well, one of the Gorgons. Medusa’s the best known, because of that legend involving Perseus. She turned whoever beheld her to stone, but he reflected her face in his shield, nullifying her power, and then cut off her head. One of those Greek myths. I read somewhere that it’s a classic symbol of male fears about women’s sexuality.’
‘I’m not afraid of your sexuality, am I?’
Gemma smiled and kissed him.
‘Not at all. In fact you seem to quite like it.’
Zen took the papers back, folded them up and tucked them into his inside pocket.
‘Thank you for lunch,’ said Gemma as they drove back down the wooded valley.
‘I’ll bring you a real present when I come back from this trip.’
‘I don’t need anything, Aurelio. I told you so.’
‘All right, but don’t you want anything?’
‘I want you to be happy.’
At the station in Lucca, Gemma accompanied Zen into the booking hall, where he ordered a single ticket to Florence in a very loud voice, repeating the name of his destination several times, as though the clerk were deaf or stupid or both.
‘There’s our gas-man,’ Gemma remarked once this laborious transaction had been completed.
‘What?’
Zen was still putting his ticket and money away.
‘One of the men who came to sort out that problem with the gas. Over there, standing in the corner.’
He glanced over quickly. It was a slightly more respectable version of the drunk he had seen that morning on a bench in Via del Fosso.
‘Well, well. Small world.’
Gemma gave him one of her charming deprecatory grins.
‘Small town, you mean,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek.
Zen boarded the train when it arrived from the coast, but in the event he did not travel to Florence. Smoking was prohibited on inter-regional trains, so when they reached Pistoia it was perfectly natural that he should go and stand just inside the automatic doors and enjoy a much-needed cigarette, bringing his bag with him for safety. When the alarm signalled that the doors were about to close, he waited until the last minute and then jumped through the gap down to the platform.
Once the diesel unit had pulled out, he bought another ticket, this time to Pesaro via Bologna, and then retired to a cafe opposite the station until it was time to board the last train of the day on the branch line north, one of the first ever constructed through the Apennine barrier and now hardly used for passenger traffic.
XI
The weight-and-pendulum clock in its tall, coffin-shaped case at the far end of the cavernous space marked the time as seventeen minutes past ten. The taxi driver had made it very clear that he would remain on call no later than eleven.
No lights were to be seen through the miserly windows, and those inside consisted of low-wattage bulbs as yellow as old newsprint. The room was so cold that the breath of both men was visible. A bone-chilling north-easterly outside alternately scuttered and slashed at the building, raising weird moans and wails punctuated by the death-watch beetle sounds of the clock. Zen leaned forward across the bare refectory table, his fingers interlaced.
‘I repeat, Signor Ferrero, the only real chance you have of finding out what happened to your father is through me.’
‘Which father?’
In other circumstances, Zen might have suspected an attempted joke, but he had already established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the other man had absolutely no sense of humour.
‘The one whose name you bear and of whose remains you are presently attempting to claim custody. I am prepared to assist you in that attempt, to the limits of my ability, in return for your full cooperation.’
Naldo Ferrero stared at him with open hostility.
‘What business is that of yours?’
Zen did not reply. Having had his ear talked off for the best part of an hour about the evils of globalization, the birth of the ‘Slow Food’ movement, and the need for a new rural economy based on sustainable organic farming practices, he was pretty sure that Naldo wouldn’t be able to tolerate silence for very long.
‘I don’t need to do any deals with the police,’ Ferrero retorted. ‘My judicial application is perfectly in order, and my claim can be proven by DNA testing. Besides, since when have you people been so caring?’
Zen made the mistake of smiling ironically.
‘It’s all part of the reforms of the new administration. We’re here to serve the public.’
The other man’s face became even tighter and darker.
‘So! You permit yourself to joke about it now, do you? On balance, I think I preferred the old naked face of power to this new mask, Dottor Zen.’
‘Me too, but for some reason they didn’t see fit to consult us. Now then, do you want to play cards or do you want to piss around?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘A Venetian saying. God is getting beaten at a game of scopa with Saint Peter, so He performs a quick miracle that changes the cards so that Peter is left holding a losing hand. My question to you was the apostle’s response.’
Ferrero gazed blankly back at him. The poor man had no idea how to deal with either silence or humour. An earnest garrulousness was his only means of confronting the world.
‘I’ve already told you everything I know,’ he declared stolidly.
‘All right, let’s try and separate the wheat from the chaff and summarize what you have told me, omitting any reference to agriculture, foodstuffs and grass-roots movements dedicated to putting the “commune” back into “Communist”.’
Zen consulted the notebook lying open on the table between them.
‘You learned of the discovery of an unidentified body in a system of abandoned military tunnels from the television news. Your mother, Claudia Comai, resident in Verona, had already informed you, following the death of her husband Gaetano, that your biological father had in fact been one Leonardo Ferrero, who had died before your birth in a plane crash over the Adriatic. She now phones to say that the body that has turned up in the Dolomites is his and instructs you to make a formal application to take possession of it.’
‘Those are the facts.’
‘Very well, but let’s try and put a little flesh on them, shall we? And may I remind you once more that you are not under oath and will not be required to sign a written statement on this occasion. That will of course change if I suspect that you are attempting to conceal anything or to protect anyone.’
A particularly violent gust of wind hacked at the house like an axe. The still, stale air inside seemed to vibrate under its assault.
‘I have nothing to hide,’ Naldo Ferrero stated truculently.
‘That’s as may be. But your mother certainly does.’
‘Leave my mother out of this!’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible, assuming that she told you the truth. Did you believe her?’
‘Why would she make up a story like that?’
‘Well, it would be easy to suggest a number of reasons. Let’s assume that she’d had an affair with this Ferrero, had been genuinely in love with him, and that he’d broken off with her and then died. She might have tried to convince herself that you were his son so that something of him would remain.’