surviving relatives of Ottavia Calopezzati as well as the man cited on that birth certificate as Pietro’s father, Azzo whatever it was.’
Arnone looked mystified by this last request, but held his tongue.
‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘By no means all, but it should be enough to keep you busy until eight this evening. That’s your deadline for delivery of all the foregoing items. Buon coraggio .’
When Arnone had gone, Zen lit a cigarette, then picked up the phone and dialled the extension of the officer in charge of operations.
‘I am ordering a house-to-house search of the new town of Altomonte, beneath the hilltop where that corpse was discovered today. All road access and egress is to be sealed by personnel carriers with officers in battledress and armed with machine guns. Helicopters hovering low overhead to spot anyone who tries to escape on foot. Inside the net, every individual is to be questioned separately by plain-clothed officers concerning the arrival and killing of the victim, his identity and that of those responsible. The level of duress is to exploit the legal limits to the maximum and slightly exceed them should the situation appear to warrant it. As with the discovery of the body, the whole operation is to be subject to a total media blackout until further notice. Authorisation for these orders has been given by the questore’s office.’
The official coughed lightly.
‘Very good, sir.’
He sounded doubtful.
‘Is there a manning problem?’ Zen demanded. ‘Pull everyone off other jobs, cancel all –’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Then what the hell is it?’
‘Well, sir, I don’t want to be critical or anything, only I know you’re new to the area and I have to say that operations like this haven’t proven very productive in the past. In fact, you might almost say that they’ve been counter-productive. People around here, the more you squeeze them, the harder they get.’
‘Admirable attempt to save your colleagues from hours of irksome overtime,’ Zen commented. ‘Admirable, but doomed. I don’t remotely expect any of the inhabitants of the place to talk. That isn’t the object of the exercise. Execute the orders you have been given.’
Martin Nguyen held that one of the ways you distinguished winners from losers was by how many times they had to change planes to get to their destination. He had therefore been appalled to discover that to reach the godforsaken hole in the ground down which Rapture Works was pouring its millions, he needed to transfer not just in Los Angeles but also in Rome. On the up side, the transatlantic flight lasted almost ten hours and the time difference was in Martin’s favour. He worked the twenty-dollar-a-minute credit-card phone in the armrest of his first-class seat to good effect, arranging to hire a European mobile – when was the rest of the world going to get over its hissy fit and switch to the US standard? – as well as a limo and driver, all to be delivered to him on arrival at Fiumicino airport.
The driver spoke extremely limited English, but he was there on time and proved to possess the skills, nerve and coolness of a Formula One professional. A little jaded after the long flight, Martin sat back in the rear of the Mercedes S-Class saloon and admired the Italian’s amazing ability to overtake and undertake, using the hard shoulder or a notional third lane which he conjured into being for precisely the duration of opportunity required, as well as the shamelessly thuggish tactics he employed on slower vehicles, which in effect meant everything else on the road, accelerating towards them at well over a hundred m.p. h., braking at the very last moment to fetch up less than a metre from the victim’s rear bumper and then repeatedly flashing his halogen high beams and sounding a series of aggressive and discordant horn blasts. The long section of single-lane working resulting from the reconstruction of the Salerno– Reggio
Arnone looked mystified by this last request, but held his tongue.
‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘By no means all, but it should be enough to keep you busy until eight this evening. That’s your deadline for delivery of all the foregoing items. Buon coraggio .’
When Arnone had gone, Zen lit a cigarette, then picked up the phone and dialled the extension of the officer in charge of operations.
‘I am ordering a house-to-house search of the new town of Altomonte, beneath the hilltop where that corpse was discovered today. All road access and egress is to be sealed by personnel carriers with officers in battledress and armed with machine guns. Helicopters hovering low overhead to spot anyone who tries to escape on foot. Inside the net, every individual is to be questioned separately by plain-clothed officers concerning the arrival and killing of the victim, his identity and that of those responsible. The level of duress is to exploit the legal limits to the maximum and slightly exceed them should the situation appear to warrant it. As with the discovery of the body, the whole operation is to be subject to a total media blackout until further notice. Authorisation for these orders has been given by the questore’s office.’
The official coughed lightly.
‘Very good, sir.’
He sounded doubtful.
‘Is there a manning problem?’ Zen demanded. ‘Pull everyone off other jobs, cancel all –’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Then what the hell is it?’
‘Well, sir, I don’t want to be critical or anything, only I know you’re new to the area and I have to say that operations like this haven’t proven very productive in the past. In fact, you might almost say that they’ve been counter-productive. People around here, the more you squeeze them, the harder they get.’
‘Admirable attempt to save your colleagues from hours of irksome overtime,’ Zen commented. ‘Admirable, but doomed. I don’t remotely expect any of the inhabitants of the place to talk. That isn’t the object of the exercise. Execute the orders you have been given.’
Martin Nguyen held that one of the ways you distinguished winners from losers was by how many times they had to change planes to get to their destination. He had therefore been appalled to discover that to reach the godforsaken hole in the ground down which Rapture Works was pouring its millions, he needed to transfer not just in Los Angeles but also in Rome. On the up side, the transatlantic flight lasted almost ten hours and the time difference was in Martin’s favour. He worked the twenty-dollar-a-minute credit-card phone in the armrest of his first-class seat to good effect, arranging to hire a European mobile – when was the rest of the world going to get over its hissy fit and switch to the US standard? – as well as a limo and driver, all to be delivered to him on arrival at Fiumicino airport.
The driver spoke extremely limited English, but he was there on time and proved to possess the skills, nerve and coolness of a Formula One professional. A little jaded after the long flight, Martin sat back in the rear of the Mercedes S-Class saloon and admired the Italian’s amazing ability to overtake and undertake, using the hard shoulder or a notional third lane which he conjured into being for precisely the duration of opportunity required, as well as the shamelessly thuggish tactics he employed on slower vehicles, which in effect meant everything else on the road, accelerating towards them at well over a hundred m.p. h., braking at the very last moment to fetch up less than a metre from the victim’s rear bumper and then repeatedly flashing his halogen high beams and sounding a series of aggressive and discordant horn blasts. The long section of single-lane working resulting from the reconstruction of the Salerno– Reggio
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