small town at heart, a place where rumours spread as silently and effectively as a virus. His partners had been telling the truth, Zen felt sure, and the two men next door were almost certainly wasting their time. People like Valesio, who knew everything about someone and something about everyone, not only stopped talking to others about their affairs, they very soon stopped talking even to themselves. Above all they would never commit anything to paper unless it was absolutely necessary. Ubaldo Valesio would have kept the details of his dealings with Ruggiero Miletti’s kidnappers in the only place he considered safe, his own head. With a shiver, Zen remembered the photographs Bartocci had shown him.
A clangour of bells suddenly rang out from churches near and far, calling the faithful to Mass and reminding the rest that their lunch was just an hour away. Zen fetched his coat and hat and walked through to the next room. Geraci looked up at him with an expression of intense anxiety. His face was heavy and fleshy, and the two deep furrows running from the corners of the nose to the edge of the mouth gave him a hangdog look. His chin had a weak and skimpy look, as though the material had run out before the job was quite finished, while his eyebrows were absurdly thick and bushy, with a life of their own.
‘Anything?’ Zen enquired.
Geraci shrugged. Chiodini pretended to be so intent on his labours that he did not even notice Zen’s presence.
Outside, the sun illuminated every surface with uncompromising clarity. The air seemed full of disquieting hints of summer, but the illusion lasted no longer than it took to turn the corner into a narrow alley sunk deep in shadow, where the wind whetted the cold edge of the air like a knife. Bare walls faced with crumbling plaster rose up on both sides, pierced by the high, inaccessible windows of the prison, covered with heavy steel mesh. After going about a hundred metres Zen was beginning to feel he had made a mistake in turning off the broad avenue that led directly up to the centre, but he persisted, and was rewarded when the street widened out into a little square where the wind disappeared and a cherry tree was in sumptuous blossom in a garden high above. But at the next corner the wind was back, keener than ever. He turned left down a long flight of steps to get away from it.
In the grocery at the corner a sad, pale pig of a girl, a greasy sliver of cooked ham dangling from her mouth, jerked her thumb at a set of steps opposite in response to his request for directions to the centre. It was a staircase for mountain climbers, the steps seeming to get progressively higher as he climbed. The wall it ran up looked like the face of history itself. It was founded on massive blocks of rock whose dimensions were those of ancient days, presumably Etruscan. Above this layer came another, Roman work, where the blocks, though still large, had lost the epic scale. Then came a long stretch of small cubes of pinkish stone forming the wall of a medieval house, and finally an upper storey tacked on in brick and concrete.
He stopped to catch his breath, leaning against one of the giant blocks which had weathered to form intricate niches and cavities. In several of them tiny plants had somehow contrived to put down roots in a trace of dust, in another someone had wedged an empty Diet Coke can. On the other side a breathtaking view stretched away, line after line of hills rippling off into the hazy distance. He stepped carefully over a dead pigeon on the next step and clambered grimly to the top. The street in which he came out continued upwards without respite through an ancient gateway, and still up, darkly resonant and clangorous, past basement workshops where carpenters and furniture repairers and picture framers were at work. The air, fresh and cold and delicately flavoured with wood smoke, was a luxury in itself, an air for angels to breathe.
On the wall of a nearby building was a
A clangour of bells suddenly rang out from churches near and far, calling the faithful to Mass and reminding the rest that their lunch was just an hour away. Zen fetched his coat and hat and walked through to the next room. Geraci looked up at him with an expression of intense anxiety. His face was heavy and fleshy, and the two deep furrows running from the corners of the nose to the edge of the mouth gave him a hangdog look. His chin had a weak and skimpy look, as though the material had run out before the job was quite finished, while his eyebrows were absurdly thick and bushy, with a life of their own.
‘Anything?’ Zen enquired.
Geraci shrugged. Chiodini pretended to be so intent on his labours that he did not even notice Zen’s presence.
Outside, the sun illuminated every surface with uncompromising clarity. The air seemed full of disquieting hints of summer, but the illusion lasted no longer than it took to turn the corner into a narrow alley sunk deep in shadow, where the wind whetted the cold edge of the air like a knife. Bare walls faced with crumbling plaster rose up on both sides, pierced by the high, inaccessible windows of the prison, covered with heavy steel mesh. After going about a hundred metres Zen was beginning to feel he had made a mistake in turning off the broad avenue that led directly up to the centre, but he persisted, and was rewarded when the street widened out into a little square where the wind disappeared and a cherry tree was in sumptuous blossom in a garden high above. But at the next corner the wind was back, keener than ever. He turned left down a long flight of steps to get away from it.
In the grocery at the corner a sad, pale pig of a girl, a greasy sliver of cooked ham dangling from her mouth, jerked her thumb at a set of steps opposite in response to his request for directions to the centre. It was a staircase for mountain climbers, the steps seeming to get progressively higher as he climbed. The wall it ran up looked like the face of history itself. It was founded on massive blocks of rock whose dimensions were those of ancient days, presumably Etruscan. Above this layer came another, Roman work, where the blocks, though still large, had lost the epic scale. Then came a long stretch of small cubes of pinkish stone forming the wall of a medieval house, and finally an upper storey tacked on in brick and concrete.
He stopped to catch his breath, leaning against one of the giant blocks which had weathered to form intricate niches and cavities. In several of them tiny plants had somehow contrived to put down roots in a trace of dust, in another someone had wedged an empty Diet Coke can. On the other side a breathtaking view stretched away, line after line of hills rippling off into the hazy distance. He stepped carefully over a dead pigeon on the next step and clambered grimly to the top. The street in which he came out continued upwards without respite through an ancient gateway, and still up, darkly resonant and clangorous, past basement workshops where carpenters and furniture repairers and picture framers were at work. The air, fresh and cold and delicately flavoured with wood smoke, was a luxury in itself, an air for angels to breathe.
On the wall of a nearby building was a
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