‘ To invite you to dinner this evening, if you’re free. Seven o’clock, at the Maddalena on Via Gioberti.’
The line went dead. Zen glanced at the clock. It was just after half-past six. At least eight hours had elapsed since he had inhaled hashish courtesy of the prince and his companion, but the room seemed to be moving slightly around him like a carousel which had been turned off but was still revolving just fast enough to make stepping off a hazardous affair. Nevertheless, this was what he was going to have to do. The appointment he had just been offered, whatever its purpose, could not be avoided. If he didn’t turn up, it would simply be reassigned to a later date.
His mind went back to the Burolo affair in Sardinia, of which he had spoken to Lucchese, when he had been hounded down and confronted by a gangster he had once sent to prison, who now sought his revenge. This must be something similar, he thought wearily. A policeman inevitably made many enemies. Reaching for the phone again, he called the local Commissariato.
‘Police!’ snapped a voice he recognized.
‘ Ciao, Dario.’
A brief indignant pause.
‘This is the Alba police station! What do you want?’
‘Too bad about that penalty,’ Zen continued smoothly. ‘But Juve are still looking good for the championship.’
‘Who the…’
‘Aurelio Zen, Vice-Questore, Criminalpol, Rome. I have just received a phone call summoning me to a restaurant in Via Gioberti, the Maddalena. I’m to be there at seven, and I have reason to think that the person I am meeting may be armed and dangerous. Quite apart from my own safety, I have no wish to endanger the lives of the other patrons of the establishment in question.’
Dario took a moment to digest this information.
‘In view of this,’ Zen went on, ‘I suggest that a uniformed officer meet me here at the hotel in fifteen minutes and accompany me to the restaurant.’
‘I’ll see to it in person, dottore!’
‘I appreciate it.’
‘To be honest, there’s no one else on duty.’
Ten minutes later, bundled up in an overcoat and with his hat in hand, Aurelio Zen patrolled the grotesquely ample spaces of the lobby, taking care to stay well away from the windows and door where he would be visible from the street.
‘Good evening!’ said a female voice.
Startled out of his increasingly paranoid meditations, he turned to find himself facing the young woman who had introduced herself to him as Carla Arduini. She, too, was dressed to go out.
‘ Buona sera, signorina.’
For a moment she seemed inclined to linger, and perhaps to say something else, but to Zen’s relief she walked on and vanished through the revolving door. The last thing he needed at this point was any further complications, such as her taking him up on the dinner invitation he had thoughtlessly extended the previous evening for reasons he could no longer remember. These speculations were abruptly cancelled by the appearance of a uniformed figure carrying a machinegun with the air of someone not only prepared but eager to use it.
‘ Dottore! ’ he said hoarsely, catching sight of Zen.
‘Good evening, Dario.’
The young policeman scanned the lobby rapidly, as though armed enemies might be concealed anywhere. Failing to locate them, he consulted his watch.
‘Shall we go?’
‘Not just yet.’
‘But it’s time.’
‘Never turn up when you’re expected,’ Zen pronounced solemnly. ‘Keep them waiting. Their nerve will start to fray and they’ll be more likely to make a mistake.’
Dario nodded as though all this made sense.
‘Let’s have a drink here and arrive about ten minutes late,’ Zen told him.
At the bar, Dario ordered a Coke, Zen a spumante.
‘Are you from these parts?’ he asked the patrolman, pushing the muzzle of the submachine-gun aside.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Barolo.’
‘Do you know anything about a woman named Chiara Vincenzo? Widow of the late lamented Aldo.’
‘She was my great-aunt.’
Zen stared at him.
‘Is everyone here related to each other?’
‘Well, not everyone. Not incomers.’
Zen gave him a still harder look.
‘Present company excepted, of course!’ Dario responded hastily.
‘I understand your great-aunt Chiara died recently,’ said Zen, pressing his advantage.
‘That came as no surprise. She had been suffering from cancer for some time.’
‘How old was she?’
‘Sixty-one.’
He made an apologetic gesture.
‘Women normally last to seventy at least, sometimes ninety. But Aunt Chiara seemed to have lost the will to live a long time ago. There was a story about some tragedy in her youth which she never got over, I can’t remember the details.’
‘So she died just before her husband?’ asked Zen.
‘I suppose so, yes. A matter of weeks.’