Reaching the crest of the roof, he produced another banger from his bag and launched it down into the courtyard. The explosion was satisfyingly loud, but this time there was no return shot. He worked his way along the rooftop to the slightly higher eaves of the factor’s house, and then went flying as a loose tile slipped free under his weight.
By stripping his fingers on the remaining tiles he managed to save himself from going over the edge, but the net result was a twisted ankle which all but put paid to his original strategy. Grunting from the pain, he worked his way along the roof to the small stone tower housing the bell whose peals, audible for kilometres over the flatlands all around, had once governed every stage of the working day of everyone on the estate.
Footsteps sounded out in the courtyard. Alberto had evidently either failed to open the trapdoor, or given up trying to find his way in the maze of buildings, a palimpsest dating from between the fifteenth and early twentieth centuries. In one of his few lighter moments, his father had once joked that even the rats must get lost sometimes.
‘Stop playing these stupid games, Gabriele! We need to talk! I mean you no harm, I swear it. You startled me with that firework. Come out in the open. We just need to discuss what’s happened and agree on a strategy. You must know that that’s inevitable sooner or later. Let’s get it over and done with now. Then you can go back to Milan and get on with your life.’
Gabriele’s plan at this stage of the performance had been to drop down through the hatch at the base of the belfry, go downstairs through the factor’s house, then dash across the remaining open side of the courtyard to the safety of the barchessale. Once there he would show himself briefly at intervals, always moving to his left. Alberto would intuitively assume that he would then proceed to the one remaining side of the rectangular structure, and would head for that to cut him off. Meanwhile Gabriele would pick up his bicycle from the niche where he had stored it and slip away through the gateway at the south-eastern corner of the cascina, through which the farm wagons used to enter and leave without disturbing the gentry, for whom the main entrance was reserved. While Alberto was fruitlessly searching the hayloft and byre, he could be off and away without anyone inside being any the wiser. He had done it often enough in the past.
In those days he had simply sauntered over to the open- sided sheds and spent some time chatting with old Giorgio, who was responsible for the upkeep and repair of the wagons and farm equipment stored there, before slipping out of the porta dei carri, but now he needed to sprint rather than saunter, and with his ankle in the state it was, that was out of the question. In short, his concept had been perfect but his performance, as so often before, had let him down. Real t’ai chi masters didn’t twist their ankles.
And the stakes were high. Despite the weasel words that continued to echo around the courtyard below, Alberto’s three shots had left no doubt in Gabriele’s mind about his intentions, and at ground level, in his present condition, he would be an easy target. As for the rear of the property, it was now overgrown with brambles at the north-east corner. That left only the roofs.
The gently sloping ridges and troughs of terracotta tiles had been familiar territory to him in his teens, but even then he had never ventured there after sunset, in misty late autumn, with a throbbing ankle and a killer ready to shoot him down the moment he presented a silhouette against the dying light. The tiles were slippery with moss and dead leaves, many were missing and all were loose. In one spot, the roof of the wagon shed had collapsed entirely, leaving a gaping hole. It took more time than he had ever imagined to crawl and hobble round to the hay loft on the southern side of the complex. If his memory served, there was an elm somewhere about there which jutted out over the roof. He wasn’t looking forward to shinning down it, but there was no alternative, and at least he would be in complete cover the whole time.
By now the light had almost completely gone, and he was still searching in vain for the remembered overhanging bough when the roof gave way beneath him. It was a gradual process lasting perhaps ten seconds: a gentle crack, a slow subsidence like sinking into a pile of pillows, then a deafening series of detonations and a terrifyingly quick descent.
‘Gabriele!’
Alberto’s booming tones recalled him to the realities of the situation. He was aching, but otherwise uninjured. The fall had been short, ending on a mound of festering hay. He was inside the raised and open loft, lying on top of the section of collapsed roof. The only exit was over the side giving on to the courtyard. Then he heard the scrape of a ladder being lift¬ ed off its metal hook and placed against the wall.
So prone to lethargy and despair in his everyday life, Gabriele showed no symptom of either now. His first thought was to fling one of the fallen tiles at his enemy the moment his head cleared the edge of the floor. Then he had an even better idea.
Alberto’s torch and gun appeared before he did, the former’s cold barrel of compressed light scouting out the space before coming to rest on the freshly-fallen tiles and timbers lying on the hay. Its owner climbed up the remaining rungs of the ladder and stepped out on to the brickwork paving.
‘Gabriele?’
There was no sound at all. Alberto walked over to the debris and inspected it with his torch, then turned and shone the powerful beam all around the floor of the loft. Then he started to search the space more carefully, pistol at the ready, obviously suspecting that his quarry was hiding under or behind one of the many pieces of agricultural detritus that littered the barn.
Perched on the main roof-beam above, Gabriele awaited his moment, gripped the knotted climbing rope as he had so many times in the past while playing the game that he and his brother had called ‘flying skittles’. As Alberto returned towards the centre of the floor after overturning two casks and a wooden wheelbarrow, Gabriele launched himself into space, hurtling down and then twisting at the last moment on the rope to ram his uninjured foot into Alberto’s back.
It was then that everything went out of control. Gabriele’s intention had simply been to disarm and subdue his opponent, but Alberto rolled over and slipped into the botola, the aperture designed for pushing hay down to the cattle in the byre below. For a moment his fingers clung desperately to the slimy brickwork, but there was not sufficient purchase and Gabriele could not reach him in time. There was a dull thump from below, then a scream that went on and on.
A moment later, Gabriele heard another voice in the courtyard. So Alberto had brought back-up after all. He picked up the pistol and torch, but privately he acknowledged defeat. He would go down fighting, but he had exhausted his stock of feints and dodges and had no illusions about the final outcome.
XIX
‘Gabriele Passarini!’
There was a long silence, broken only by a monotonous series of muffled bellows, as of an animal in pain, emanating from the shed below the loft. But how could there be an animal there? The farm had been abandoned for decades.
Zen did not speak further, nor did he move. He just maintained his position at the centre of the former threshing floor, amid the weeds poking up between the paving slabs, as silent and immobile as the harmless if slightly dull statue in a town piazza.
At long length, a voice sounded out from inside the hay loft.