Dead Lagoon - 4 (7 page)

‘How do you mean?’

Paulon shrugged.

‘If you ask me, it was like with Tonio.’

A double sheet of newspaper drifted slowly past. Looking at it, Zen recognized it as the same one which the barman had been reading when he had had coffee with Aldo Valentini that morning. As he scanned the headline – THE OLD FOX FIGHTS FOR HIS POLITICAL LIFE – he suddenly thought of a way to get access to the closed files on the Durridge case. But if the article was correct, he would have to move fast.

‘Antonio Puppin,’ Marco went on, answering the question Zen had ill-manneredly neglected to ask. ‘Went hunting out on the salt-marshes one day and never came back. When his boat turned up adrift everyone feared the worst, although the body was never found. Anyway, a couple of years later he got caught by the Carabinieri at a roadblock near Grado – this was back in the terrorist years, and they were asking for everyone’s papers …’

They swept under a high arched bridge and emerged with startling suddenness into the open lagoon just beside the busy ferry piers at Fondamente Nove. ‘It turned out he’d done a bunk,’ Marco shouted above the roar of the engine he’d just gunned up to full revs. ‘He’d been working for the brother of an ex-girlfriend who ran a garage …’

Zen stopped listening. He’d lost track of Marco’s story, let alone its bearing on the Durridge affair. That was how things were on the lagoon, where the hazy light and the pervasive instability of water defeated every attempt at clarity or precision, but also tempered the arrogance and aggression so prevalent on the mainland. This was what had formed him, he realized. This was the code he carried with him, the basic genetic circuits burned into his very being.

In the extreme distance, to the right of the cemetery of San Michele, the remote islands of Torcello and Burano were visible as smudges on the horizon, the latter distinguishable by its drunkenly inclined bell tower.

‘What was that about someone seeing ghosts on Burano?’ he murmured to Marco.

‘Not
on
Burano. That’s where the guy’s from. Name’s Giacomo Sfriso. He and his brother have a drift trawler they take out to sea, as well as a lot of tidal nets. Both in their mid-twenties, and doing very well for themselves by all accounts. Very well indeed.’

They rounded the mole of reclaimed land beyond the Arsenale, forming dry-docks and a sports field.

‘Then one evening last month Giacomo went out in a
sandolo
,’ Marco continued. ‘No one paid any attention. Everyone knew the Sfriso boys worked round the clock. That’s how they got so rich, people said. Darkness fell and he didn’t come back, but still no one worried. Giacomo knew the lagoon like his own backyard.’

He swung the tiller over, dipping the gunwale in the water and sending the boat careening round towards the large white mass of San Pietro.

‘Only when he finally got back to Burano, at five o’clock the next morning, still pitch dark out, he was babbling like a madman! No one could make out what the hell he was talking about. His brother Filippo called the doctor, who stuck a needle in him, but when he came around he was just as bad. Gibbering away about walking corpses and the like. Since when, according to my informants, that particular fish has been several centimetres short of its minimum landing length.’

The boat slid under the elaborate iron footbridge connecting the island of San Pietro to the Arsenale. These were the hinderparts of the city, a dense mass of brick tenements formerly inhabited by the army of manual labourers employed in the dockyards. Nowhere were there more dead ends and fewer through routes, nowhere were the houses darker and more crowded, nowhere was the dialect thicker and more impenetrable. It was not for nothing that the Cathedral of San Pietro, symbol of Rome’s claims on the Republic, had been relegated to these inauspicious outskirts, while the Doges’ private chapel lorded it over the great Piazza.

Marco brought the wherry alongside a quay opposite a slipway where a number of old
vaporetti
were drawn up awaiting repair or cannibalization. Securing a rope fore and aft to the stripped tree trunks sunk in the mud, he set about foraging among the packages in the hold.

‘Give me a hand, will you?’ he called to Zen.

Together they tugged the pile apart, separating crates and boxes until Marco at length dived in and emerged with a small cubical pack which, from the way he bent his knees to lift it, obviously weighed a lot.

‘What’s that?’ asked Zen.

Marco heaved the pack on to the quay and wiped his brow. Leaping ashore, he tore open the pack and extracted a yellow leaflet which he handed to Zen.

‘Back in a moment,’ he said, and disappeared into an alley with the package, leaving Zen to peruse the leaflet. Like the poster he had seen earlier, it was headed NUOVA REPUBBLICA VENETA over the emblem of a lion couchant. The text concerned some complicated issue of city versus regional funding for improvements to the refuse disposal facility on Sacca San Biagio, and was clearly the latest instalment in a serial you needed to have been following from the beginning to understand. Zen had just reached the slogan in block capitals at the bottom – A VENETIAN SOLUTION TO VENETIAN PROBLEMS – when Marco jumped aboard again and cast off.

‘Next stop your island,’ he announced, revving the engine.

Zen waved the leaflet.

‘What’s all this?’

‘Municipal elections the week after next.’

‘But which party?’

Marco paused to yell a greeting at the skipper of a wherry proceeding in the other direction.

‘Just a few local lads who think they can take on Rome and win.’

‘And can they?’

Marco shrugged.

‘I’d like to see someone do it. Everyone says it’ll be a disaster, but what have the last forty years been for us? The city has turned into a geriatric hospital, there’s no work, no houses, and all our taxes go to line the pockets of some Mafia fat cats down south. Christ knows if Dal Maschio will be any better, but he sure as hell can’t be any worse, and if he makes those bastards in Rome shit in their beds then he gets my vote!’

Zen stared at him.

‘Who did you say?’

‘Dal Maschio.’

‘Ferdinando Dal Maschio?’

‘Do you know him?’

Zen shook his head.

‘No, no.’

The boat slipped along the canal alongside the public gardens on the islet of Sant’Elena and then out, as if through a secret door, into the broad basin of San Marco. A big cargo vessel was gliding past, on its way from the docks to the breach in the littoral sandbar at Porto di Lido giving access to the open sea. A tug pulling two barges laden with rubbish ploughed past in the other direction, while ferries and fishing smacks crossed to and fro. Marco pointed the wherry’s bows towards the distant island of San Clemente, where Ada Zulian had spent two years in the mental hospital. Out here in the open lagoon there were short sharp waves which slapped vigorously at the planking and splashed gobs of salt water into the men’s faces. Marco throttled back to give way to a car ferry on its way to the Lido.

‘I forgot to tell you the best bit about the guy from Burano,’ he shouted as the waves slapped and hammered and the wherry wallowed in the swell. ‘Guess where he claims to have seen this ghost?’

Zen shook his head.

‘On Sant’Ariano!’ cried Marco. ‘The isle of the dead!’

His way clear again, he gunned up the engine and headed out of the shipping lane into the quiet backwaters behind San Giorgio.

‘But it’s no joke for Giacomo’s family,’ he concluded soberly. ‘Seems he just hangs around the house all day, muttering to himself. He can’t go to the toilet by himself, never mind handle a boat. His mother and brother have been driven nearly crazy themselves.’

The lagoon shimmered and shifted like fish scales in the sunshine. Aurelio Zen lay back, closed his eyes and tried determinedly to summon up an image of Tania Biacis, his … his what? Lover? Mistress? Partner? Part of the charm of their relationship was that it eluded definition. Despite this, it had always felt overwhelmingly real and solid, yet after only a few hours’ exposure to the pervasive vapours of the lagoon Zen felt these certainties dissolving. He no longer had any vivid sense of Tania, no clear image of her presence, no aching void created by her absence. This was doubly ironic in that she was the reason he had agreed to Ellen’s idea in the first place.

‘The family are seriously unhappy about the way the investigation has bogged down, Aurelio,’ Ellen had told him. ‘Bill – that’s my new guy, he’s a lawyer – the firm he works for has the Durridge account, and I mentioned to him that I just happened to know this Italian policeman.’

The moment Ellen stopped speaking, even for an instant, the line went dead.

‘I mean it’s your town, Aurelio. You know the people, you speak the language. Anyway, when Bill put it to the Durridges’ people they simply jumped at the idea.’

Despite the years since Ellen had left Zen and returned to her native America, her Italian had remained fluent, although her accent had deteriorated, the vowels flattened and denatured, whole phrases mumbled almost incomprehensibly, like an old man trying to eat without his dentures. It was chilling to recall that he had once found such mannerisms charming.

‘The bottom line is – I’m quoting Bill here – they need a body. Dead or alive. Preferably the former, of course, but if the worst comes to the worst …’

She paused, and a dumb white silence intervened. It was as if one of them had hung up, as if the whole conversation had been taped and edited. Then she spoke again, and everything resumed as if there had been no pause, no lacuna, no doubt.

‘Until then the whole estate is in turn-round. If you free up the cash flow, Bill says, you can name your fee. We’re talking serious money here.’

‘And a serious criminal offence,’ Zen had returned dryly. ‘It is strictly illegal for a state employee to engage in secondary paid employment …’

‘Oh come on, Aurelio! You guys only work mornings anyway. Plus Bill can arrange for the money to be paid indirectly – into a numbered Swiss bank account if you like.’

It was tempting, but he would never have accepted if Tania had not just received a court order to vacate the apartment in Parione which Zen had found for her, and on which he had been paying the rent. Her position there had always been precarious – the landlord had been trying to evict her for over a year – but she and Zen had shied away from talking about the future. Whatever happened, painful and disturbing decisions would have to be taken, and they had tacitly agreed to put them off as long as possible so as not to break the spell of a period of frivolous irresponsibility whose appeal lay partly in the knowledge that it could not possibly last.

The very fact that Tania had hinted that she might be prepared to live with Zen – and, inevitably, his mother – represented a major concession on her part. Only a few months earlier, he would have been overjoyed by this change of heart. Ever since Tania Biacis had broken up with her husband, Zen had been trying to persuade her to move in with him. Yet now the moment had arrived, he had immediately felt a stab of alarm, not least at the discovery that Tania and his mother got along. The two women had been introduced the previous month, and to Zen’s amazement the effect had been one of mutual self-recognition. He had counted on being able to divide and rule. If his mother and his lover liked each other, where did that leave him?

He must have dozed off, for the next thing he was aware of was a mighty bump which sent him tumbling over sideways on the bilge boards. Looking up, he saw an enormous expanse of brick walling towering over the boat.

‘Kidnapped!’

Marco made fast to a mooring ring set in the wall. He pointed disgustedly to the rickety metal ladder, slimy with weed, which scaled the face of the brick cliff.

‘How are you going to get an unwilling victim down from there?’ he demanded. ‘Even if he was unconscious, you’d need a crane to get him in the boat.’

He bent over Zen, finger raised didactically.

‘And on that particular afternoon you’d never have got the boat alongside in the first place. It was one of the lowest tides I can recall. The whole lagoon ground to a halt! You’d have thought someone had pulled the plug. Nothing but mud, as far as the eye could see.’

Marco Paulon lay back complacently on the after-decking.

‘Take it from me, Aurelio. This American of yours has done a bunk! He’ll turn up one day, safe and sound, just like Tonio Puppin. And who’s to blame them? There are probably times you wouldn’t mind dropping out of your own life for a while, hey?’

A miniature blizzard whirled up into the sunny air, momentarily enshrouding the figure of the man who stood talking into the pay telephone.

‘Immediately, yes,’ he insisted. ‘Aurelio Zen. Z, E, N. Vice-Questore, Criminalpol.’

The scurrying breeze eased once more, and the tubular bars of expanded polystyrene packaging immediately fell back to the nearest surface. The man picked one up off the ledge of the telephone booth and toyed with it as he talked.

‘Remind him of the Renato Favelloni case. Remind him that he told me if I ever needed anything I should get in touch. Tell him I’ll call back in thirty minutes exactly. If I don’t get a satisfactory response at that time, I shall have to reconsider my position.’

Once again the illusory snowstorm littered the air with flying white fragments caught up in the eddying wind currents at the corner of the square. Aurelio Zen snapped the one he had been playing with, replaced the receiver and plucked his phonecard from its slot.

There was no bar or café in this
campo,
which was dominated by the sprawling brickwork of a church as matter-of-fact as the abandoned factory belonging to the Zulian family. Zen turned down an alley tunnelling under the houses opposite. It crossed two low bridges over canals hardly wider than ditches. A torn plastic bag stamped with the name of a supermarket chain drifted slowly by on the incoming tide like a ragged jellyfish.

Zen turned in at a glazed door under a metal sign reading ENOTECA. In the small dark room inside, a few elderly men sat sipping wine and exchanging raucous remarks in slithering, sibilant dialect. Zen ordered a glass of red
raboso
wine and a roll smeared with the creamy white paste made from salt cod, garlic and olive oil. He settled back in a corner, glancing at his watch. He had given Palazzo Sisti thirty minutes, and five were gone already. It wouldn’t do to be late. This was his one tenuous connection to the levers of power, the ‘rooms with the buttons’. He had to handle it right. But there was no saying what
was
right, these days.