‘As I was saying,’ Zen continued in the same bored tone, ‘Minot claims that he and Chiara used to be lovers. In itself, this is of no particular interest. But he also claims that the relationship did not cease once la Cravioli married Aldo Vincenzo. In fact, he went on to say, Manlio Vincenzo is not Aldo’s son at all, but the fruit of Minot’s loins.’
Gianni Faigano stepped forward again, unable to control himself.
‘That’s a damned lie! A filthy blasphemy!’
Zen gestured helplessly, as though to apologize for an unintentional gaffe.
‘I’m only telling you what Minot said. And the reason I’m mentioning it is in the hope that you might be able to corroborate his story. It would give me a motive, you see, which is the one thing I don’t have at present. Once I’ve got that, I’ll call a lawyer and formally charge Minot with murder.’
He got to his feet, shaking his head.
‘But first I need a credible reason for him to have killed Aldo. If the victim first stole his girlfriend and then claimed Minot’s only son as his own, it all makes sense. Even the timing fits in. According to Minot, he’d wanted to get even with Aldo for years, but Chiara had forbidden it. She was apparently a conventional person, in that sense at least, and even though Vincenzo allegedly raped her to force the marriage…’
Maurizio grasped his brother’s shoulders and held him still.
‘… Chiara took the view that she was married to him for better or worse, and made Minot swear on the ashes of their youthful love that he would not harm Aldo. So it wasn’t until she died that he was able to carry out his long-premeditated revenge.’
Zen clapped his hands together.
‘It’s a pretty tale, and of course the press will eat it up. “Ex-partisan kills to avenge teenage sweet-heart! A love affair that triumphed over death!” But what I need is independent confirmation of this alleged love affair between Minot and Chiara Cravioli. And that’s where I was hoping that you might be able to help.’
He gave the Faigano brothers an inane smile. Maurizio glanced hesitantly at his brother.
‘I’ve never heard anything about that,’ he said.
‘And you, Signor Gianni?’ asked Zen.
Gianni Faigano did not reply. He no longer seemed agitated. He stood perfectly still, gazing down at the tiled floor with an air of almost beatific calm, his features relaxed, his bearing simple and natural.
‘Presumably one of you knew this Cravioli woman?’ Zen went on. ‘To keep her photograph in the living room like that, I mean. I didn’t notice any other pictures.’
‘I knew her,’ said Gianni Faigano at length.
‘And was she in love with Minot?’
‘Of course not! The whole idea’s a joke. A sick joke.’
Zen shrugged.
‘Minot isn’t anyone’s idea of Adonis, to be sure, but women can be funny that way. It isn’t so much the looks that get to them, I always say, it’s the force of personality. And Minot certainly has plenty of that, even now. Forty years ago, I can see him bowling over some impressionable young girl and…’
‘It’s an obscene pack of lies,’ Gianni Faigano stated in a quiet, hard tone. ‘A total travesty of justice.’
Zen frowned.
‘I don’t see how justice comes into it. Minot’s not even under arrest yet. But since you two apparently can’t help me, I’ll have to try elsewhere. Somebody must know something. Why would Minot make up a story like that?’
‘Because he’s a dirty, scheming, treacherous piece of shit!’ retorted Maurizio Faigano.
‘Possibly, but I still don’t see what he hopes to get out of lying about it. Anyway, the local newspaper has been trying to get an interview from me ever since I arrived. This might be the moment to arrange for a non-attributable leak. I’ll make sure Minot’s story about him and Signora Cravioli gets maximum exposure and hope that something comes of it.’
‘You mustn’t do that,’ Gianni Faigano said with an air of finality.
Zen looked at him oddly.
‘I mustn’t?’ he repeated with a sardonic smile. ‘And why not, might I ask?’
For a moment it seemed as if Gianni was not going to answer this question. Then he pushed his shoulders back and looked straight at Zen with an air of renewed resolution.
‘Because it would make a mockery of everything.’
‘I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,’ Zen said impatiently. ‘In any case, I have no choice. There’s a murder to solve, and this is the only way to do it.’
‘It’s not the only way,’ replied Gianni Faigano.
Zen stared at him in silence.
‘What would you need to get a proper confession?’ Gianni asked. ‘Not a teasing perjury like the one Minot tried to make you fall for. I mean something that would stand up in court, and which no one could challenge?’
‘Well, we’d need a lawyer to represent the deponent and certify that no improper methods had been used in obtaining the statement…’
He waved his hands helplessly.
‘But it’s no use! Minot will never repeat what he said under those conditions.’
‘I’m not talking about Minot,’ Gianni Faigano remarked, as though Zen should have grasped this obvious fact.
‘Then who?’
Maurizio grabbed hold of his brother once more, but with a desperation which suggested that he knew the effort to be futile. Gianni Faigano brushed him off and turned to Aurelio Zen with a perfectly serene expression.
‘I killed Aldo Vincenzo. Get a lawyer up here and I’ll tell you the whole story.’
Like some children, the following day was born with a mild, sunny disposition which time merely focused and intensified. The air was still and bright, with just a hint of winter to add some welcome edge, the sky a flawless, bleached blue whose diffident haziness made it seem infinitely distant and desirable.
On such a day, Zen felt, it would be a kind of sacrilege to stay cooped up in Alba, particularly after the spectacular breakthrough which had crowned his labours and brought his mission to a triumphant conclusion. He therefore arranged for a car to pick him up at his hotel and prepared to perform in person a task he could equally well have accomplished by telephone, or delegated, or even neglected.
Before doing so, he called Carla Arduini. Following Zen’s declaration in the piazza outside the cathedral, her planned return to Turin had been delayed for twenty-four hours, at his expense. At this rate, he explained, outlining the successful conclusion of his investigation, they might even be able to leave together — with or without Lisa Faigano, who had angrily rejected Zen’s offer of asylum from the press once she learned that her uncle and father had been arrested for conspiracy to murder Aldo Vincenzo. In the meantime, at any rate, he had an errand to run in the country near Palazzuole. Would Carla care to join him?
Twenty minutes later they were sitting side by side in the back seat of an unmarked police car provided through the offices of Tullio Legna. The only aspect of the situation which troubled Zen’s pleasure was that the Alba police chief himself was at the wheel. On the surface, Legna was his usual urbane self, but Zen quickly detected an undercurrent of pique, not to say hostility, in his continual expressions of amazement at the way in which Zen had ‘succeeded where all others had failed, and in so short a time, knowing nothing of the people and background involved’.
Despite his conviction that Legna had insisted on acting as chauffeur in order to spy on Zen’s last hours in his domain, and possibly even wring some last-minute credit from a casual indiscretion, Zen appeared to take it all in good spirits. He had merely been lucky, he claimed, and sooner or later the truth would have emerged anyway. But when they reached the gates to the Vincenzo property, he told Legna to pull up and let them out.
‘My daughter and I will walk the rest of the way.’
‘But don’t you want me to stay and run you back to town?’ Tullio Legna protested.