Zen shook a parcel of ash off his cigarette into the metal wastebin.
‘Then perhaps you’d be good enough to get to the point, avvocato. I have work to do.’
‘Perhaps not as much as you think, dottore.’
‘Meaning what, avvocato?’
Gorin shrugged and heaved a long sigh.
‘You’re going to have to let them go, you know.’
Zen nodded lightly, as if this were something he had foreseen and which made perfect sense.
‘Let them go,’ he repeated.
‘I’m afraid so.’
There was another pause.
‘Who are we talking about?’ Zen inquired urbanely.
Carlo Berengo Gorin looked taken aback for a moment.
‘Why, the clients of mine you arrested last night! The Ardit brothers.’
Zen felt himself starting to hyperventilate. He drew largely on his cigarette.
‘Ridiculous!’ he snapped.
‘What’s ridiculous?’
Feeling the need to assert himself, Zen stood up and walked over to the window. In the canal below, a collapsed red umbrella edged past on the incoming tide. Zen turned to face Gorin.
‘The men in question were arrested last night at Palazzo Zulian, which they had entered illicitly, in the act of carrying out an assault on the owner. The timely intervention of the police, led personally by myself, prevented their criminal designs and the pair were arrested in flagrante delicto. The entire matter has been communicated to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is in the process of opening a dossier on the case. The matter is therefore in the hands of the judiciary, and I fail to see how I can be of any assistance to you.’
‘Who’s handling it?’
Zen consulted his notebook.
‘Dottore Marcello Mamoli.’
Gorin shook his head sadly.
‘In that case, I doubt there’s anything I can do for you. Marcello and I were at law school together. He was always a stickler for procedure.’
Zen scowled at him.
‘I don’t need you to do anything for me! Save that for your clients, avvocato. They’re the ones who need help.’
‘On the contrary, dottore. Why do you think I bothered coming here in the first place? I wanted to give you a chance to avoid getting covered in shit. You’re one of us, after all.’
‘What do you mean, one of us?’ asked Zen.
Gorin looked at him but said nothing.
‘And what do you mean by covered in shit?’ shouted Zen angrily. ‘It’s your clients who’re in it up to their necks!’
‘What’s the charge?’ murmured Gorin.
Zen counted on his fingers.
‘Breaking and entering. Resisting arrest with consequent injury to a police officer. Intimidation. Attempted extortion.’
‘Breaking and entering is out. They had a key.’
‘They stole a key.’
‘They were given one by their aunt, the contessa.’
‘A key to the street door, yes. But not to the waterdoor, which is how they came and went.’ Gorin shrugged.
‘If you give someone a key to your house, you are granting them access to the property. The fact that my clients chose to travel by water rather than on foot is of no legal significance whatsoever.’
He grinned maliciously.
‘As for the injury to your officer, I have to say that I think it unwise of you to bring that up, since I gather that the individual in question was wounded by a gunshot inflicted by one of her colleagues. Certainly neither of my clients could have been responsible, since they were not armed. Why would they be? They were visiting their aunt.’
‘They weren’t visiting her!’ Zen exploded. ‘They were terrorizing her! They were trying to drive her mad, or rather trying to make everyone believe she was mad!’
Carlo Berengo Gorin looked pained.
‘There is no evidence whatsoever to support such wild allegations.’
‘No evidence! This has been going on for weeks, avvocato! What would they have had to do, in your view, for there to be evidence? Kill her?’
Gorin waggled his forefinger in the air.
‘There is absolutely no proof that my clients were responsible for the earlier intrusions — or indeed that they ever took place at all.’
‘But that must be the presumption.’
Gorin oscillated his hand in the air, fingers outstretched, as though turning a large doorknob back and forth.
‘If it weren’t for the testimony of the contessa herself, perhaps,’ he murmured. ‘But that alters the balance of probability quite dramatically.’
‘What testimony?’