The time to move had not yet come. Absolute stillness was demanded now.
‘I made my statement to the police at the time,’ she replied, as though he were an impertinent journalist and she a star caught in an indiscretion. ‘They questioned me on several occasions and I said everything I have to say then, while it was all fresh in my mind. The report must still be on file somewhere. I really don’t know what you expect me to add now.’
It was a bold sally, but it apparently worked. This Zen suddenly looked discomfited, ill at ease. She glanced at her watch again, then out of the window at the darkening lake.
‘Naldo Ferrero told me that he was your natural son by Leonardo Ferrero, and that you had encouraged him to apply for legal custody of a body recently discovered in the Dolomites on the grounds that it is that of his father.’
For a moment, Claudia herself felt thoroughly confused. Don’t try and work out his strategy, she told herself. Boldness had worked once. Maybe it would work again.
‘That’s absurd!’
She sighed and made a gesture indicating how painful it was for her to admit this.
‘The fact is, Naldo is something of a fantasist. He always was as a child, but that’s natural enough. Now, though… My husband, Gaetano, was a hard man in many ways. The barracks and the home were all one to him. Orders were orders, and the slightest disobedience was punished. Naldino took after my side of the family rather than his, which of course made matters worse for both of them. As Gaetano became more intransigent and repressive, his son grew ever more rebellious. And this was an era when rebellion was in the air, remember. Anyway, after Gaetano died in that unfortunate accident, Naldino somehow convinced himself that he was not his son at all, that his real father had been someone quite different. He even changed his name, as though to try and prove it. It’s quite a common psychological phenomenon. I believe there’s even a word for it, although it escapes me at the moment.’
Zen nodded sympathetically.
‘But how could he have known which name to change his to? Where could he have got the idea that his real father was someone who died before he had been born? Someone he had never met or even heard of?’
This was a more difficult question, and one that she hadn’t had to face during her earlier questioning.
‘Oh, he’d heard of Leonardo,’ she found herself replying.
‘How?’
‘From friends.’
‘Friends of his?’
‘No, no. Friends of ours.’
‘Of you and Leonardo?’
‘Of me and my husband, of course.’
Zen took out a packet of cigarettes and offered them to her. Claudia shook her head.
‘May I?’ he asked.
She nodded distractedly. When was the ferry? There was something in the man’s polite manners, long silences and seemingly ingenuous questions that made her absolutely certain that he already knew all the answers and was merely toying with her to see what more he could get her to admit to before his final lethal pounce. Had he found The Book? She’d been a fool to keep it, but it had never occurred to her that anyone would take any interest in events which now seemed, even to her, like ancient history.
‘I’m sorry, signora, I don’t quite understand. Your son was born in 1974, correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘While your husband died in 1987?’
She nodded.
‘So Naldo was thirteen at the time of his death.’
Suddenly she saw her way clear.
‘Yes. A very delicate age, very difficult. Which is probably why he came to terms with the tragedy by denying that he had ever been his father in the first place.’
Zen’s brow remained comically furrowed.
‘But, I repeat, why choose as his surrogate father someone who was also dead, and had been from shortly before his own birth?’
Claudia made a large gesture.
‘Well, one would have to be some sort of Freudian doctor to explain that! All I know is that he decided at a certain point that his biological father, as they say these days, was a young man who formed part of what we jokingly called the ‘stable’, the group of junior officers that Gaetano had assembled around him in the regiment, and who all came quite frequently to our house.’
‘That group included Leonardo Ferrero?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Nestore Soldani?’
She looked at him in surprise.
‘Yes, him too.’
‘Who else?’
‘I can’t remember all their names. It’s so long ago.’
A tiny white speck in the gloaming announced the imminent arrival of the ferry.
‘But, I repeat, how could your son possibly have heard of Leonardo Ferrero, who died in an accident involving a military aircraft the year before he was born?’
He glared at her across the table, all charm now stripped away.
‘Unless of course Naldo really is your love child by Leonardo Ferrero, as he claims you told him. That would also explain your late husband’s animosity to him, assuming, as I think we may under the circumstances, that he had either found out or guessed the truth.’
Claudia scooped up her bag and got to her feet, saying something about needing to visit the washroom for a moment. She rounded the table, pushing against Zen’s back. A moment later she was through the door and running as fast as she could towards the ferry dock about thirty metres away. The boat was already alongside, the lines secure. She waved frantically, praying that the deckhand would see her and hold the gangplank long enough for her to board.
He did. She clomped breathlessly down the short flight of steps into the forward saloon and sank into one of the plastic upholstered seats. The boat’s engines revved up, then settled back into a steady purring rhythm for the ten-minute crossing to Paradiso, the southern district of Lugano where her hotel was located. She’d done it!
But so had he, she realized as a figure appeared at the far end of the empty saloon. For a moment she was terrified that he was going to come at her as Gaetano had when she’d confronted him with the truth about her pregnancy, slapping and punching her face and breasts and screaming ‘ Puttana! ’
Nothing like that. He just sat down opposite her, quite calmly, another passenger on his way back to Lugano. The deck¬ hand came round and clipped her return, sold Zen a single, and then went back to join his colleague in the wheelhouse, leaving them alone.
‘Did he have a tattoo?’
Say nothing.
‘The body they found, the one that your son is trying to reclaim, had a tattoo. A woman’s face.’
Say nothing.
‘So did Nestore Soldani, another of your husband’s “stable”. I spoke to his widow earlier this afternoon.’
‘His widow?’
‘Soldani, also known as Nestor Machado Solorzano, was murdered here a few days ago. Blown up in his car as he returned home to Campione after a meeting with a person or persons unknown.’
Claudia stood up. They were a good hundred metres off the eastern coast of the lake now, surely back in Swiss waters. She could finally allow herself to get angry.
‘I don’t want to listen to any more of this nonsense! I’ve had enough of all your tricks and teasing, understand? He fell down the stairs! That’s what happened and you have no proof to the contrary. He was a cripple by then, for God’s sake! He fell down the stairs. That was the conclusion arrived at by the investigating magistrate at the time and it’s never once been queried, not once in all these years. How dare you poke your nose in here now, in a foreign country where I’m on holiday, trying to find a little peace and happiness after so much pain, and bring up the whole horrible business again? How dare you? You have no standing here. The Swiss wouldn’t let you clean the toilets in their country!’
The ferry was approaching the dock. Claudia went up the staircase and out on deck. Zen followed, catching up with her as the ferry came alongside.
‘Signora…’ he began, but got no further.