‘And what sort of music do you have?’
‘At the moment I’m into salsa. That’s a sort of Latin-American dance music which…’
‘Is it loud?’
Morino’s smile widened.
‘It’s loud.’
Zen yawned lengthily.
‘Excellent. In that case we can treat our house guests to an all-night crash course in the wonders of Latin-American culture.’
He picked up the phone.
‘Dario? Who else is on duty? All right, put him on the desk and get up to room 201 right away.’
‘Are you proposing to hold us here overnight?’ demanded Gianni Faigano.
‘That’s right.’
‘On what charge?’
‘Illicit trafficking in wine and probable tax evasion. You have indicated that you will not respond to my questions without the presence of a lawyer. It is too late to obtain the services of an avvocato at this hour, so I am obliged to detain you until tomorrow.’
There was a rap at the door and Dario appeared.
‘Take these two down to the basement,’ Zen instructed him. ‘Put them in separate cells as far apart as possible, and stay down there until relieved. I want you to make sure that they don’t have a chance to communicate before or after they’re locked up. Understood?’
Dario nodded.
‘No problem. Come on, you.’
‘And our third guest?’ queried Nanni Morino as the door closed. ‘This Minot, right?’
‘Ah, you’re the quick one!’ murmured Zen with a hint of irony. ‘Yes, I’m afraid you’re going to have to drive out to Palazzuole tonight and bring this character in.’
Morino got to his feet.
‘It’s been a pleasure to watch you at work, dottore! Round here, of course, we don’t have much call for those kind of skills, but it’s a privilege to watch a virtuoso in action.’
Zen gestured awkwardly.
‘There was nothing to it, really.’
‘Nothing to it? On the contrary! The way you manipulated that pair into giving crucial evidence against this friend of theirs, and then pinned them down on an alibi which both they and we know is false… It was masterly! And your strategy was a stroke of genius. When everyone was expecting a frontal assault on the Vincenzo case, you attack instead on the flanks with Gallizio and Scorrone. All three murders are linked, of course, so if you nail this Minot for one of them, it’s just a matter of time before we get him for the others as well.’
He started towards the door.
‘Just a moment!’
Nanni Morino turned back with an expectant look. Zen coughed and, perhaps by association, lit a cigarette.
‘Thanks for the compliments.’
‘I meant every word,’ Morino assured him. ‘It was an inspiration and a privilege to…’
‘But we seem to be at cross purposes. I want this Minot brought in so that we can go to work on him. But I don’t think he did it.’
Morino stared at him in amazement.
‘You don’t?’
‘No.’
‘Then who did?’
Zen jerked his forefinger towards the floor.
‘Our friends downstairs. At least, one of them.’
Nanni Morino looked down, scratching his eyebrow, as if reviewing the facts. Clearly they didn’t add up.
‘I don’t quite…’ he began.
‘Come and sit down,’ Zen told him.
Morino did so. Zen dragged his chair round from behind the desk and seated himself opposite the young inspector.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s go through the whole thing point by point. If we’re going to work this case together, we’d better get our agenda clear.’
The telephone woke him, a salvation as cruel as a harpoon descending fathoms to skewer a drowning man and haul him, gored but alive, back to the surface. Blind blunders with the lamp followed, then the brutality of light masking a tumbler of water which spread a glistening trail across the glass-topped table before rolling over the edge and landing on the ingrowing nail of his big toe. And when he finally got the receiver to his ear…
‘What’s going on? I heard screams. Are you all right?’
He did not answer.
‘Hello? Are you there? Is everything all right?’
‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Yes, everything’s all right.’
‘I’m sorry if I woke you,’ the robotic voice went on, ‘but I heard what sounded like someone yelling and I was worried. I thought you might have set the bed on fire or something.’
Zen took a succession of quick, short, shallow breaths.
‘Is it you, Carla?’