Dead Lagoon - 4 (32 page)

He broke off.

‘I sound like a policeman,’ he said.

‘You
are
a policeman.’

‘I don’t want to be. Not now.’

‘Have you got any more cigarettes?’

‘Upstairs.’

She nodded slowly.

‘Upstairs,’ she said.

He was woken by a cry below the window.  

‘
Spazzino
PRONTI
!!!
’  

Zen lay back in bed, listening to the other tenants tossing down their bags of rubbish for the street sweeper to add to the pile in his hand-cart. He felt clear-headed, relaxed and lucid. There was no doubt about it: Cristiana was good for him.  

This time she had not been able to stay the night. Rosalba was expecting her home and would have phoned Wanda Dal Maschio if her daughter had not reappeared. It would have been perfect if she had still been there, a warm, sleepy presence, a token that what had happened the night before had indeed been real. Unlike the previous occasion, Zen now had no anxieties about facing Cristiana by the cold light of morning. On the contrary, he was already missing her. They had stayed up talking late the night before, and there had been no moment of awkwardness or strain. Everything had seemed perfectly easy and normal, as though they had known each other all their lives.

The house did not feel quite as cold as the day before, and when he threw open the window it was clear that a thaw had set in. All but the largest heaps of snow were already gone, leaving only a faint sheen of water which made the worn paving stones gleam like a fishmonger’s slab. Diffuse sunlight lent a vernal suppleness to the bright, clean air. It was a day for assignations and excursions, a day to tear up your plans and arrangements and make things up as you went along, preferably in the company of a friend or lover.

As he set out in search of his morning coffee, Zen’s heart sank at the very different prospect before him. It seemed absurd to spend such a day sitting in poky, neonlit offices being lied to by the likes of Giulio Bon. He no longer cared one way or the other about the Durridge case. But there was no alternative. It would be as dangerous now to abandon the investigation as to pursue it – perhaps more so. The only way he could justify the measures he had already taken was by seeing the thing through to the end.

At the Questura, he surveyed the various options open to him and tried to decide how to proceed. Based on the way the men had reacted to being taken into custody the day before, Bugno seemed the weakest link in the chain, so Zen sent for him first. While he waited, he skimmed through the man’s file. Born in 1946, married with three children, an employee of the muncipal transport company ACTV, Bugno had no previous convictions. The only black marks against him were a failure to vote in a recent general election and the complaint of trespass made the previous year by Ivan Durridge.

Massimo Bugno had a big bald head, a deeply-indented broken nose, a weak chin, bushily compensatory moustache and the general air of someone who fears that he has forgotten to turn off the bath water. He was evidently considerably less refreshed than Zen by the night he had spent in a cell in the windowless annexe behind the Questura. Zen invited him to sit down. He glanced at his watch.

‘What shift are you on this week, Massimo? Your workmates will be starting to wonder what’s become of you.’

‘Why are you holding me here?’ Bugno whined. ‘What have I done?’

Zen lifted the file off the desk in front of him.

‘On the 27th of September last year, you and two other men landed on a private
ottagono
near Malamocco. The owner called the police, and you were subsequently apprehended by a patrol boat.’

Bugno frowned.

‘That’s all over!’ he protested. ‘No charges were ever brought. It was all a fuss over nothing, anyway. We were …’

He hesitated.

‘We were fishing. The motor packed up. We drifted on to the island. We left as soon as we could.’

Zen raised his eyebrows.

‘Fishing? That’s not what you told us at the time.’

Bugno dampened his lips rapidly with his tongue.

‘Well, it was something like that. I don’t exactly remember.’

Zen nodded.

‘Let’s see if your memory is any better when it comes to your next visit to the island.’

‘You’re mistaken. I’ve never been back there.’

Zen was surprised and dismayed in equal measure. For the first time, Massimo Bugno had spoken with a casual ease which carried complete conviction. Suddenly Zen had the horrible sensation that his whole theory about the Durridge kidnapping was totally and utterly wrong. His reaction was to lash out.

‘Still feeling big and brave, are we?’ he sneered at Bugno. ‘Your wife isn’t, I can tell you that much. She’s been ringing every five minutes wanting to know what’s going on and when she can expect you home. She’s worried, the kids are terrified, the neighbours are gossiping, but what can I tell her? It all depends on you, Massimo.’

Bugno wrung his hands piteously.

‘What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say?’

 ‘The truth!’ Zen shouted.

‘But I’ve told you the truth!’

Zen swung his fist as though to strike him, then drew it aside at the last moment and drove it into his palm with a resounding smack.

‘Stop messing me about, Bugno!’

Bugno looked abject.

‘I’m sorry,
dottore
! I’m really sorry! I just don’t know what you want me to say.’

‘What were you doing on the eleventh of November last year?’

Massimo Bugno frowned.

‘November?’

‘November, yes! Are you deaf? Answer the question!’

Suddenly Bugno’s face cleared.

‘The eleventh? Ah, well, that weekend I would have been out of town.’

Zen laughed contemptuously.

‘Had the alibi nice and pat, didn’t you? Now I
know
you’re guilty, Bugno, and so help me God I’ll get a confession if I have to beat it out of you.’

‘It’s the truth! I was on the mainland, near Belluno, at my father-in-law’s farm. I can prove it!’

‘Oh I’m sure you can dig up a few relatives who are prepared to perjure themselves on your behalf.’

‘It’s my father-in-law’s birthday!’

‘The eleventh?’

‘The eighth.’

‘What’s the eighth got to do with it? Don’t try and confuse the issue!’

‘You don’t understand. His birthday is on the eighth, but the kids were in school and Lucia and I had to work. We drove up there at the weekend and stayed over till Sunday evening. I was nowhere near the city on the eleventh!’

Bugno stared fixedly at Zen, as though trying to hypnotize him into belief. There was no need for that. Zen had no doubt that Bugno was telling the truth. On the other hand, he couldn’t afford to turn him loose until he had questioned the other two men.

‘Have it your own way!’ he snapped, and called the guard to have Bugno taken back to the cells.

Before dealing with Massimo Zuin, Zen phoned down to the local bar for a
cappuccino
and a pastry. A few minutes later Aldo Valentini breezed in, followed almost immediately by Pia Nunziata, her right arm in a sling, carrying a beige envelope in her left hand.

‘What are you doing here?’ Zen asked her indignantly. ‘You’re supposed to be taking the week off.’

The policewoman nodded.

‘I was going to, but all my friends, relatives and neighbours kept popping in and ringing up every five minutes to ask how I was. In the end I decided I’d rather be at work.’

She handed him the envelope and walked out, almost colliding with the waiter carrying Zen’s breakfast. Zen gave him a tip calculated to ensure an equally prompt response next time, then tore open the envelope and scanned the four sheets of flimsy paper inside, headed
Heyman, Croft, Kleinwort and Biggs, Attorneys
at Law
. In the next cubicle, Aldo Valentini was typing frantically.

‘How’s it going, Aldo?’ Zen called.

‘Still waiting for the gang to call, Sfriso’s at home with a tap on the line, I’m trying to organize a rapid response for any of the scenarios they might throw at us, enough to drive you round the bend, didn’t sleep a wink all night.’

Zen dipped the last bite of pastry in his coffee, then stood up and put on his hat and coat. Domenico Zuin was going to have to wait.

Outside, a gentle drowsiness pervaded the air. Zen turned left, walking north towards the hospital complex behind the church dedicated to the hybrid San Zanipolo. A boy on a miniature bicycle was dashing about the square at high speed, ignoring the ritualistic cries of ‘Come here!’ from his mother, who was chatting expansively to a friend by the bridge. Zen walked along the quay lined with mooring posts painted in blue-and-white stripes like barbers’ poles, and entered the imposing courtyard of the hospital.

The pathology department was located in a remote outbuilding on the other side of the huge ex-conventual complex. Zen made his way through groups of patients in dressing gowns and visitors clutching flowers and fruit and walked down a tree-lined alley to a green door marked HISTOPATHOLOGY. A dingy corridor inside led to a room packed with laboratory equipment. A young woman in a white coat directed Zen to a small room on the other side of the lab, where he donned a gown and rubber boots. Already the air was tainted with the cloying odour of formaldehyde.

Inside the post-mortem room there were six metal tables, three of them occupied. An assistant was sewing up a female corpse whose body cavity now contained a pair of rubber gloves, strips of bloodsoaked muslin and a copy of the morning’s
Corriere dello Sport
. At the next table, another assistant pulled the caul of cut scalp down over a male cadaver’s face and set about sawing the skull open. Zen asked him where he could find the pathologist. The man waved vaguely with the bone-flecked saw at a glass-fronted office in the end wall where a florid man in a white plastic cape and rubber boots was talking loudly on the telephone.

‘… and then once Anna and Patrizio finally turned up, nothing would do but we all had to sit through the whole thing again from the beginning! Do you believe it? And when Claudio tried gently to tell him that enough was enough, he got completely pissed off and started asking what kind of friends we were … It’s absurd! He’s only had the damn thing a month and already he thinks he’s Visconti.’

He glanced up at Zen.

‘Anyway, Marco, I must go. What? That’s right, the corpses are getting restless, heh heh. Speak to you later.’

He put the phone down.

‘Now then, what can I do for you?’

Zen introduced himself and inquired about the progress of the autopsy on cadaver 40763, such being the number assigned to the remains which had been found on Sant’ Ariano.

‘Done, finished, complete,’ the pathologist remarked carelessly. ‘I like to get the really putrid stuff out of the way early on, if at all possible.’

Zen handed him the sheets faxed over by the law firm representing the Durridge family.

‘I believe this is medical information relating to a missing person,’ he said. ‘It’s in English, but …’

‘So’s half the literature,’ the pathologist retorted. ‘You want to know if it’s the same man?’

He glanced at the material, then walked over to the door, beckoning to Zen. The pathologist led the way to the far end of the post-mortem room. On an isolated table lay a long plastic bag with a zipper running from one end to the other. He opened the bag, releasing a stench which overpowered even the pervading odour of formaldehyde. Inside lay a partially reassembled skeleton and an assortment of bones, some of which had bits of flesh and gristle clinging to them. The pathologist removed the jawbone and compared the teeth to a sketch in the fax, then bent over the skull and repeated the process with the upper jaw.

‘Looks like a perfect match,’ he murmured. ‘There’s a couple of missing teeth, but they probably broke loose on impact.’

He pointed to a row of jars at the foot of the table, where various organs were floating in pink liquid.

‘Tough organ, the heart. It survived even this degree of decomposition.’

He patted the skull lightly.

‘Our subject suffered from coronary artery disease. According to these medical records, so did this American.’

‘So it’s the same man?’ Zen asked eagerly.

The pathologist gestured a disclaimer.

‘I can’t issue an official identification without running some tests on the other data in here.’

‘But off the record …’ Zen insisted.

‘Off the record, I’d say there’s very little question that it’s the same man.’

Zen released a long sigh.

‘I suppose it’s impossible to determine the cause of death with the body in this condition?’

‘In most cases it would certainly have been very difficult,’ the pathologist replied. ‘But this one is perfectly straightforward.’

He pointed to the base of the skull.

‘Observe this lesion. The cervical vertebrae have been driven straight up into the skull. And again here, the fracture dislocation of the hips and the multiple pelvic fractures.’

He looked at Zen.

‘The evidence speaks for itself.’

‘And what does it say?’ Zen inquired dryly.

‘The man fell to his death.’

Zen gaped at the pathologist.

‘Fell?’

‘Oh yes. And from quite a considerable height. At least the fourth floor, and probably higher.’

Zen laughed.

‘That’s impossible!’

‘I beg your pardon?’ the pathologist returned with a piqued expression.

‘There are no buildings where this man was found! There are no structures of any kind, only bushes and shrubs.’

The pathologist zipped up the body bag.

‘Perhaps he died elsewhere and the corpse was subsequently moved to the site where you found it. There is no way of telling once the flesh has gone. But I can assure you that injuries such as these can occur only in the way I have described.’

Zen nodded meekly.

‘Of course,
dottore
. I didn’t mean to …’

‘There are minor variations, depending on the primary point of impact. I recall a case a few years back, an air force trainee whose parachute failed to open. He landed on his head, with the result that the vault of the skull was driven down over the spine. That presents very similar lesions to this one, but with cranial impact you also get extensive fracturing of the vault and the base of the skull. That is absent here, so he must have come down feet first. It’s purely a matter of chance.’