Zen sat back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk.
‘Your voice is very distinctive,’ he said.
‘No one else seems to think so.’
‘Then they must be stupid.’
There was a gurgle of laughter the other end.
‘But then I was already thinking about you,’ Zen added.
There was a pause while they waited to see who was going to make the next move, and what it would be.
‘I went to see your husband speak last night,’ Zen remarked.
‘Did the earth move for you?’
Zen laughed.
‘No, I had to fake it. But he certainly knows how to work a crowd.’
‘You should see his way with women.’
Zen was about to add another line of banter when the roar of a motor outside made the windowpanes rattle.
‘Just a moment,’ he told Cristiana.
He got up and went over to the window. A police launch had just come alongside the quay below. In the cockpit, a muscular man wearing a pair of oil-stained overalls stood beside a uniformed patrolmen. Zen went back to the phone.
‘I have to go, Cristiana. Something’s come up suddenly. I’ll call you back.’
‘Don’t bother with that. I’ll see you later.’ ‘I don’t know exactly when I’m going to be able to get home.’
‘I’ll be there,’ said Cristiana, and hung up.
Zen replaced the phone slowly. The engine noise outside died away and was replaced by a babble of voices. He crossed back to the window. The launch had now moored. The man in overalls was standing on the quay beside his police escort, who was being harangued by another man. The patrolman shrugged largely several times and gestured towards the Questura. The other man turned round, looking straight up at the window where Zen was standing. It was Enzo Gavagnin.
Zen ran quickly to the door, threw it open and sprinted along the corridor and downstairs, two steps at a time. The group of men had reached the vestibule by the time Zen got there. Enzo Gavagnin marched straight up to him.
‘What the hell’s going on?’
Zen was so breathless he could not answer at once.
‘Todesco tells me you authorized him to bring this man in,’ Gavagnin went on aggressively.
‘Have you some objection to that?’ Zen gasped.
‘Giulio is a friend of mine. I’m not letting him be persecuted by some arsehole from Rome who thinks he can come up here and throw his weight about as much as he likes!’
Zen turned to the patrolman, a hulking, popeyed individual with a face like an over-inflated balloon.
‘Anything happen at Palazzo Zulian last night, Todesco?’
‘Nossir.’
‘No incidents of any kind?’
‘Nossir.’
‘Very good. Take Signor Bon up to my office.’
‘Yessir.’
Enzo Gavagnin thrust himself in front of Zen, staring at him with an air of barely-contained fury.
‘Let me see your warrant!’
Zen glanced at him.
‘Signor Bon is not under arrest.’
‘Then what the hell is he doing here?’
‘I need to ask him a few questions.’
‘With regard to what?’ snapped Gavagnin.
‘To a case I’m working on.’
‘Valentini said you were working on the Ada Zulian case. Would you mind telling me what the fuck Giulio has to do with that?’
Zen shrugged.
Everything connects in the end, Enzo,’ he remarked archly. ‘We’re all part of the great web of life.’
Gavagnin scowled.
‘And what were you doing at the rally last night?’ he demanded. ‘Is that connected to the case you’re working on as well?’
‘What were you doing there?’ Zen shot back.
‘I happen to be a founder member of the movement, just like Giulio,’ Gavagnin replied stiffly. ‘Unlike you, we’re true Venetians, and proud of it!’
Zen nodded solemnly.
‘But I hear your granny screws Albanians,’ he murmured in dialect.