'We can get everything going again,' Bini assured his visitor. 'It's all set up.'
But he sounded unconvinced. Even if some crazy foreigner did buy the place, nothing would ever be the same again. Villa Burolo was not a house, it was a performance. Now the star was dead it would always be a flop.
'Well, it certainly seems to be a very pleasant and impressive property,' Zen remarked with a suitably Swiss lack of enthusiasm. 'I'll just have a look around the grounds, on my own.'
Bini turned back into the house, clearly relieved that his ordeal was over.
When he had gone, Zen strolled slowly along the terrace, rounding the comer of the original farmhouse.
Despite the encircling wire, there was no sense of being in a guarded enclosure, for the boundaries of the property had been cleverly situated so as to be invisible from the villa. The view was extensive, ranging from the sea, across the wide valley he had crossed in the Mercedes, to the mountain slopes where the village was just visible as an intrusive smudge.
When he reached the dining-room window, Zen looked round to ensure that he was unobserved, then crouched down to examine the slight discolouration of the flagstones marking the spot where Rita Burolo had bled to death. Another thing that made no sense, he thought.
None of the investigators had commented on the remarkable fact that the murderer had made no attempt to find out whether Signora Burolo was dead or not. As it happened, she had gone into an irreversible coma by the time she was found, but how was the killer to know that? A few minutes either way, a stronger constitution or a lesser loss of blood, and the Burolo case would have been solved before it began.
Nor was this the only instance in which the killer had displayed a most unprofessional carelessness. For although Oscar Burolo had concealed video equipment about the villa to tape the compromising material he stored in the vault, he camouflaged these clandestine operations behind a very public obsession with recording poolside frolics and informal dinner parties. Thus no attempt had been made to disguise the large video camera mounted on its tripod in the corner of the dining room. In the event, no glimpse of the murderer had been recorded on the tape, but how could he have been absolutely sure of that? And if there was even the slightest possibility that some damning clue had been captured by the camera, why had he made no attempt to remove or destroy the tape?
Once again, Zen felt his reason swamped by the sense of something grossly abnormal about the Burolo case. What did this almost supernatural indifference indicate, if not the killer's knowledge that he was invulnerable? There was no need for him to take precautions. The efforts of the police and judiciary were as vain as Oscar Burolo's expensive security measures. The murderer could not be caught any more than he could be stopped.
He walked back along the terrace to the west face of the villa. Beyond the sad ruins of the pool, the land sloped steeply upwards towards the lurid forest he had noticed earlier. The trees were conifers of some kind, packed together in a tight, orderly mass that looked like a reafforestation project. Beyond them lay the main mountain range, a mass of shattered granite briefly interrupted by a smooth grey wall, presumably a dam. Zen continued along the terrace to the wall which concealed the service block and helicopter pad, a half-hearted imitation of the traditional pasture enclosures, higher and with the stones cemented together. On the other side was a neat kitchen garden with a system of channels to carry water to the growing vegetables from the hosepipe connected to an outside tap. Zen took a path leading uphill towards a group of low concrete huts about fifty metres away from the house and partially concealed by a row of cherry trees.
As he passed the line of trees, a low growl made the air vibrate with a melancholy resonance that brought Zen out in goose-flesh. There were three huts, a small one and two large structures which backed on to an enclosure of heavyduty mesh fencing. Both of these had metal doors mounted on runners. One of them was slightly open, and it was from here that the noise had come.
The inside of the hut was in complete darkness. A hot, smothering, acrid odour filled the air. Something rustled restlessly in the further reaches of the dark. As Zen's eyes gradually adjusted, he made out a figure bending over a heap of some sort on the ground. The resonant vibration thrilled the air again, like a giant breathing stertorously in a drunken slumber. The bending figure suddenly whirled round, as though caught in some guilty act.
'Who are you?'
Zen advanced a step or two into the hut.
'Stay there!'
The man walked towards him with swift, light stridei.
He was short and stocky, with wiry black hair and the fac~: of a pugnacious gnome.
'What are you doing?'
'Looking over the house.'
'This is not the house.'
Zen switched on his fatuous Swiss smile. 'Looking over the property, I should have said.'
The man was staring at him with an air of deep suspicion.
'Who are you?' he repeated.
Zen held out his hand, which was ignored.
'Reto Gurtner.'
'You're Italian?'
'Swiss.'
The low growl sounded out again. Inside the hut, its weight of emotion seemed even greater, an expression of grief and loss that was almost unbearable.
'What was that noise?' Zen asked.
The man continued to eye him with open hostility, as though trying to stare him out.
'A lion,' he said at last.
'Ah, a lion.'
Zen's tone remained politely conversational, as though lions were an amenity without which no home was complete.
'Where in Switzerland?' the man demanded.
He was wearing jeans and a blue tee-shirt. A large hunting knife in a leather sheath was attached to his belt.
His bare arms were hairy and muscular. A long white scar ran in a straight line from just below his right elbow to the wrist.
'From Zurich,' Zen replied.
'You want to buy the house?'
'Not personally. I am here on behalf of a client.'
The words of the young man at Palazzo Sisti echoed in his mind. 'You will visit the scene of the crime, interview witnesses, interrogate suspects. In the course of your investigations you will discover concrete evidence demolishing Furio Padedda's alibi and linking him to the murder of Oscar Burolo.
All this will take no more than a few days at the most.'
Something inconceivably huge and fast passed overhead, blocking out the light for an instant like a rapid eclipse of the sun. An instant later there was an earthshattering noise, as if a tall stone column had collapsed on top of the hut. Even after the moment had passed, the rumbles and echoes continued to reverberate in the walls and ground for several seconds.
The lion-keeper was on his knees at the far end of the hut, bent over the heap on the ground. Zen started towards him, his shoes rustling on the straw underfoot.
'Stay there!' the man shouted.
Zen stopped. He looked around the hot, still, fetid gloom of the hut. Two pitchforks, some large plastic buckets, a shovel and lengths of rope and chain were strewn about the floor in disorder. A coiled whip and a pump-action shotgun hung from nails hammered into the roof supports.
'What was that?' Zen called.
The man got to his feet.
'The air force. They come here to practise flying low over the mountains. When Signor Burolo was…'
He broke off.
'Yes?' Zen prompted.
'They didn't bother us then.'
I bet they didn't, thought Zen. A few phone calls and a hefty contribution to the officers' mess fund would have seen to that.