Medusa - 9 (25 page)

Some distance down the street, a nimbus of diffused light glowed through the surrounding gloom. On closer investigation, it turned out to be a bar. Most of the customers were ordering coffee stiffened with a shot of grappa or sweet liqueur. Zen followed their example. The café was a dingy, noisy place, but it felt warm and comforting after the streets. The clientele was seemingly a mix of tradesmen, clerks, shop assistants and low-grade functionaries postponing as long as possible the horrors of their journey home.

Zen slipped a banknote across the counter to attract the barman’s attention.

‘Do you have a hammer I could borrow for five minutes?’ he asked.

‘A hammer?’

‘I’ve got a flat tyre on my car, but the hubcap is dented and I can’t prise it off with my bare hands. And of course there’s no chance of calling out a tow-truck in this fog…’

The man nodded sympathetically.

‘There should be one out the back somewhere.’

He led the way into the rear of the premises, a wasteland full of spare furniture, mineral-water crates and assorted junk apparently being stored on the you-never-know-when-it-might- come-in-handy basis. There was also a payphone, now a historical relic from the days before the mobile revolution, and a framed aerial photograph showing one of the small towns of the Valpadana, presumably the one in which the proprietor of the bar had grown up: a little circular urban patch surrounded by a vast expanse of arable land dotted with the huge
cascine
farm complexes typical of the region.

‘Here you go,’ said the barman, returning from some inner sanctum with a hammer. ‘I’ll need it back, mind.’

‘Five minutes.’

Zen pocketed the hammer and proceeded back through the clammy murk to the bookshop. The front door and main window were too distant to reach, but the remaining panes angled out to either side, ending within arm’s length. A potential thief still wouldn’t have been able to grab the books on display, but Zen wasn’t interested in them. There was no sound of footsteps or cars in the street. Taking the hammer from his pocket, he thrust his arm as far as it would go through one of the rect¬ angular gaps in the shuttering, and then struck the window repeatedly. The glass first crazed, then cracked spectacularly. At the same moment, a yellow light flashed above and a piercing siren began to wail. Zen made his way back to the bar and returned the hammer.

‘Thanks very much, that sorted it out. Now I’ll go and change the tyre.’

‘What’s all that racket down the street?’ the barman asked with a worried expression.

‘No idea. Probably a faulty burglar alarm. Those things are always going wrong. More trouble than they’re worth.’

Before long, a different siren sounded in the streets, but what with the fog and the blocked traffic it was another ten minutes before the patrol car finally arrived at the bookshop. Zen showed his identification card to the crew, whose attitude instantly changed from truculent suspicion to awed respect.

‘I saw everything,’ Zen told them. ‘Pure chance. I was passing by on the other side of the street. I heard the noise of the glass smashing and went to investigate. The burglar ran off before he could steal anything. I gave chase, but he slipped away in the fog.’

At this point, a man named Fulvio intervened. He was the janitor of the building. No, the owner was away and couldn’t be contacted. A family tragedy. Long business. One of those. But he, Fulvio, could be trusted to have the window repaired and to board up the shop in the meantime. Other members of the family? Just for the record, to keep things regular and official. Well, he believed that there was a sister. Paola Passarini. Lived just off the motorway to Varese, in Busto Arsizio, out near Malpensa airport. He didn’t know the address.

The police computer did, however. The patrolmen offered to give Zen a lift, but advised that with driving conditions what they were he would be better off taking the train. Besides, the address was strictly speaking out of their territory, being just inside the Provincia di Varese.

They dropped him off at the nearby station of Porta Garibaldi, and Zen completed the journey by train and then taxi through a grim swathe of ‘industrialized countryside’. Busto Arsizio had once been a small market town on the fringes of the flood plain of the Ticino river, but the rural surroundings that had once given it a modest sense of identity had now been swallowed up by the ever-encroaching suburban sprawl of Milan.

The apartment was on the top floor of a neo-Stalinist slab at the intersection of two streets whose ridged and pitted surface suggested that the tarmac had been poured directly over a lightly-rolled ploughed field. Zen rode up in a lift bristling with cryptic graffiti, rang the bell and presented his identification.

‘Is it about Gabriele?’ the woman demanded.

‘That’s right.’

She started to shut the door.

‘I’ve already told you everything I know.’

‘We’ve never met before,
signora
.’

‘I mean your people. The police.’

‘Ah, they’ve been in touch already, have they?’ Zen continued smoothly.

‘Someone from the
carabinieri
. I told him I couldn’t help him.’

‘When was this?’

‘Yesterday.’

Zen nodded reassuringly.

‘Yes, of course. Those were the preliminary enquiries, at local level. I’m come from Rome to follow up. If you could just spare a few moments, it would be most helpful.’

Paola Passarini reluctantly opened the door again, and Zen followed her into the open-plan living area. She was in her late forties, with a childlike elfin face attached to a bottom-heavy body whose exact proportions were obscured by a loose ankle- length dress. Her general appearance suggested that at a certain point she had decided to let herself go and the hell with it. But then there couldn’t be much worth keeping up appearances for in Busto Arsizio.

‘Would you like a coffee, some tea…?’

Her voice trailed away.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Do sit down. So you think that Gabriele’s been kidnapped.’

‘Kidnapped?’

‘That’s what the other man said.’

Zen forced a smile.

‘Ah, yes, my colleague from the
carabinieri
. He was a low- level operative and was not fully briefed. I regret the error,
signora
. No, there’s been nothing that would point to a kidnapping. Nevertheless, we do have reason to believe that your brother’s life may be in danger. One of the men he served with in the army, many years ago, was recently killed in Campione d’Italia. A man named Nestore Soldani. A bomb was placed in his car. You may have seen the story on the news.’

Paola Passarini gestured vaguely.

‘But what has this Soldani got to do with Gabriele? I’ve never heard him mention the name.’

‘The hunt for the killers has led to the discovery of certain facts that I cannot disclose at this point, as the investigation is still in progress. Broadly speaking, evidence has emerged that your brother may unwittingly have been a party to the affair behind Soldani’s killing. I must stress that there is no suggestion that Signor Passarini was involved in any way in the mur¬ der. On the contrary, we fear that he may become the next victim. The fact that he disappeared from his home and place of work on the day following Soldani’s death tends to substantiate this theory. It is therefore of the utmost importance that we locate him as soon as possible.’

A mechanical series of bone-jarring bass chords shook the apartment.

‘Turn it down, Siro!’ Paola shouted.

The aural assault continued unabated. She got to her feet and waddled off towards a hallway at the other end of the living area, opened a door and disappeared. A moment later, tranquillity was restored. Paola Passarini came back and sat down again without comment.

‘Have you heard from your brother since his disappearance?’ Zen asked her.

‘No, I told you. I mean the other man. Nothing at all.’

‘Isn’t that unusual?’

‘Not at all. We’ve never been close. Months go by without me hearing a word from him. Gabriele is only interested in his books. He’s always lived in his own head.’

‘Yet he volunteered for the army.’

‘That was just to try and get Papa’s approval. When we were young, Primo was always the star of the family. Good at athletics, a soccer star early on, big and physical and full of energy. My father adored him, and ignored us two. That was¬ n’t such a problem for me, as I related more closely to my mother, but Gabriele was very hurt and retreated into himself.’

‘Yet he signed up for the army,’ Zen insisted.

‘After Primo died. A car crash. My father had been something of a hero in the war and had always wanted Primo to join the forces. He had always refused. Now he was gone, Gabriele tried to usurp his place by following my father’s wishes.’

‘Are your parents still alive? They might know where your brother is.’

‘My father died of a stroke twelve years ago and my mother then moved to Australia. She lives with our uncle on a cattle ranch. They are evidently much closer than my brother and I. Mind you, my father’s will didn’t help. It left half the estate to my mother and the bulk of the remainder to Gabriele. His idea was that a married daughter should be provided for by her husband. That explains how my brother was able to afford to set up that elegant little antiquarian book boutique of his, not to mention a very nice bijou apartment quite close to the centre.’

Zen mimed sympathy.

‘That must have been painful for you.’

‘It certainly was. A stab in the back from beyond the grave. Perhaps now you understand why Gabriele and I very rarely see each other.’

A young man walked in through the open door at the end of the room.

‘Paracetamol,’ he said.

‘Are you ill, darling?’ Paola Passarini responded in a tone of alarm, rising to her feet.

‘Just a hangover. But it’s bugging me.’

‘The bottle is on the second shelf of the closet behind the door in the bathroom. Do you want me to find it for you?’

‘No.’

‘Remember to drink a glass of milk with the tablets. Those drugs are all acidic. They’ll eat into your stomach lining if you don’t have some milk with them.’

‘Stop fussing.’

The man turned away irritably.

‘So you have no idea where your brother might be?’ asked Zen, feeling vaguely embarrassed by his presence at this scene.

‘None whatever. He might be abroad. He often travels to Paris or London or Amsterdam or wherever to search for new stock for the shop.’

‘Might he have gone to visit your mother in Australia?’

Paola Passarini shook her head decisively.

‘I would have heard about it if he had. “Why didn’t you come too? It’s at least a year since I’ve seen you!” Etcetera, etcetera.’

The phone rang but was answered before Paola Passarini could reach it. She hovered in the arch to the next section of the room, listening intently. The young man could be heard talking in a deliberately low voice.

‘And I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you,’ she said to Zen, coming back again.

Zen nodded and stood up.

‘What about your husband?’ he asked.

Paola Passarini looked startled.

‘My husband? What does he have to do with it?’

‘I thought that perhaps he might have some idea where your brother is.’

‘Well, by all means feel free to ask him.’

Her look was by now so intense that he finally understood.

‘I’m sorry, I meant…’

He gestured with his head towards the sound of the low voice mumbling away.

‘That’s my son, Siro,’ was the reply.

‘I see.’

‘He writes code.’

‘Code?’

‘For computers. He submits all his work online, so there’s no need to go in to the office every day. And he helps me out with the housekeeping bills. This arrangement makes sense for both of us.’

There was an aggressive quality to her declaration that merely served to undermine it. She’d married young, Zen guessed, quite possibly following a pregnancy intended, like her brother’s volunteering for the army, to make a point. But the marriage had been a failure and now she was holding on desperately to the one remaining man in her life, lest she be left all alone. He felt sorry for Paola Passarini, but there was also something unwholesome about her, like fruit picked green that rots before it ripens.

‘Thank you for your time,
signora
, and please excuse the disturbance.’

A door slammed and the young man strode back into the living area.

‘I’m going out for a while with Costanzo, Mamma.’

‘When will you be back?’

‘Don’t know. I may spend the night at his place.’

‘Well, be sure to phone and tell me. You know how I worry otherwise.’

In the end, the two men left the apartment almost at the same time, with the result that they found themselves waiting for the lift together. The resulting awkward silence was broken by Siro.

‘I think I know where my uncle might be.’

Zen, whose only thoughts had been about where he was going to spend the night, looked at him in astonishment, but Siro didn’t volunteer anything more.

Outside, the fog was thicker than ever. To Zen, it came as a merciful pall blanking out the horrors of the neighbourhood. Having grown up in Venice, it was hard for him to adjust to most other urban landscapes, let alone this psychotic collage of concrete brutalities unmitigated by any sense of order, never mind beauty. The young man pointed up the street, where a neon light blossomed in the plump miasma.

‘That’s where I’m meeting my friend. Come along and I’ll tell you my idea.’

They walked the twenty metres or so to a bleak café set back in the facia of the apartment block. It was empty, and the barman looked as though he had been about to close. A game show blared from the television suspended from a pivot above the bar. Zen ordered a coffee, Siro a Coke.

‘It was after the other guy left that it came to me,’ he said.

‘The
carabinieri
officer who came yesterday?’

‘If that’s what he was.’