Michael Dibdin - Cosi Fan Tutti

If Aurelio Zen had reduced his working week to the minimal level necessary to sustain a professional existence, his weekends were totally sacrosanct. No more overtime for him, no more broken sleep or cancelled social arrangements.

The mistake had been going home. He had been bent and battered by previous setbacks, but his experience in Venice had broken him. To cap it all, the local politician at the centre of the case Zen had been investigating had not only got off scot-free, but shortly afterwards the regionalist party he led had been lifted from their provincial marginality to the heart of the government as part of a disparate group of untried, untested and therefore untainted personalities and movements united under the brash, breezy slogan 'Go for It, Italy!'

Nor had the one positive outcome been such as to enhance Zen's sense of professional responsibility. The American family for whom he had been moonlighting in Venice had initially baulked at paying out the reward they had promised, on the grounds that the murderers had not been brought to justice. But when Zen threatened to make public some of the information he had uncovered about their kinsman's war record, they had rapidly backed off and agreed to a kill fee amounting to a substantial proportion of the original sum.

Despite this, Zen had come to Naples in a mood of bitterness and defeat. At first he had dealt with this by pretending that he was not really there at all. He put in token appearances at the office, and spent the rest of his time in the hotel where he had made an advantageous arrangement for a single room Monday to Thursday nights inclusive.

Each Friday he caught the train back to Rome, remaining there until Monday, when he caught an early morning express back to Naples.

Not that the situation back home was exactly ideal, either. Most of his friends and acquaintances were linked with his previous job in the Criminalpol squad, and seeing them inevitably served to remind him of the effective demotion he had been forced into taking. Nor were the prospects any brighter romantically. Thanks to an opportunistic dalliance in Venice — misconceived and ill-fated, like everything else that had happened to him there — Tarda Biacis was now out of the picture, seemingly for good.

So he was largely thrown back on the company of his mother, who viewed the whole country south of Rome as a bottomless pit of vice and degradation, with Naples as one of its deepest and most vicious abysses. That her son had been transferred there was cause for endless complaint and commiseration. When he revealed that he had requested the transfer himself, she concluded that he must have taken leave of his senses (a remark he let slip about his father not being dead provided further proof of this) and started treating him with a creepily solicitous reserve.

Then, imperceptibly, things began to change. The first sign was when he started returning to Rome less often and for shorter periods. But it was Valeria Squillace's offer of the house on Salita del Petraio which tipped the balance decisively. This property was eventually intended for the use of Orestina and Filomena when they completed their education and got married to young men the family approved of. Since there was no immediate prospect of this, and perhaps as a gentle hint to her daughters, Signora Squillace had kept her word and given Zen a short-term lease on the upper apartment, renewable quarterly, at a rate considerably less than he was paying at the hotel.

Even once he had moved in, it was a while before he regarded the place as anything more than a dormitory.

But gradually that too began to change. He started rearranging the furniture to suit his needs, removed a couple of pictures that were getting on his nerves, and even smuggled a few items out of the flat in Rome to make his new home more attractive or convenient. His visits there became ever rarer and more grudging, an onerous duty which he soon came to resent having to perform every month. If it hadn't been for his mother, he eventually realized, he wouldn't have gone at all.

For, much to his amazement, he found himself liking Naples. Not as he had on his previous sojourn there, as an up-and-coming officer with every prospect of a brilliant career ahead of him, for whom Naples was one of a series of appointments to major provincial cities paving the road to Rome. Now he liked it for its own sake, not for what it could do for him but for what it was. He was enchanted by every aspect of the city which he had expected to drive him mad. He loved the noise, the crowds, the traffic, the chaos, the pushiness and resilience of the people, their innate sense of tolerance, negotiation and endurance.

Above all he prized his anonymity in the midst of a city which neither knew nor cared where he was from, what he did, or even who he was.

Since Zen had never got around to correcting his new landlady's impression that his name was Alfonso Zembla, this was the name inscribed on the rental contract, and which eventually appeared on the bell-push outside the front door. Partly to avoid confusion, partly on a whim, he had decided to adopt it. He knew no one in Naples and no one knew him. Why not accept the pseudonym which fate had handed him? It would serve to mark the radical break between his old and new lives, and also between his professional persona and his private life, and to keep the latter private. At work he would remain Aurelio Zen, a dedicated slacker. In every other aspect of his life, he would become Alfonso Zembla, whose personality and attributes remained, for the moment, fascinatingly vague.

When the phone rang that morning, Zen was sitting out on the terrace sipping coffee, enjoying the sun and planning his weekend. At ten the carpenter, a nephew of Don Castrese, was coming to give an estimate of cost and time — above all time — needed to extend the shelves in the living room. After that, he'd go to the local restaurant he usually patronized, and then, if he felt up to it, wander around the side-streets around Via Duomo in search of a bedside lamp to replace the bronze horror he had deposited at the back of a cupboard. After so much frenetic activity, a slow start to Sunday seemed in order, punctuated by a visit to the cafe at the top of the steps which did such wonderful pastries. Then a stroll in the gardens of the nearby Monastery of San Martino, followed by a leisurely lunch somewhere at one of the good places down by the water before proceeding to the rendezvous where Orestina and Filomena Squillace were to break the news of their imminent departure to their undesirable lovers.

So it was with both incredulity and dismay that he answered the phone and heard Giovan Battista Caputo telling him that his presence was 'urgently required' at work. The deadline which he had given the Questura, and then completely forgotten, was about to expire, and according to his deputy the case was no further advanced than it had been then.

'The bastard just sits there grinning at us! We've tried everything — sweet-talking him, knocking him about but nothing works.'

This, evidently, was as far as Caputo's interrogational skills extended. The carrot and the stick having both failed to produce any result, he was at a loss.

'But it's Saturday!' Zen protested. 'You don't mean to tell me the Questore's working today?'

'Not in person,' Caputo replied. 'But Piscopo is. She's his deputy, and a regular martinet. She's already phoned twice to find out what progress we're making.'

'Christ, what's happening to this country? Work isn't everything. I've got my own life to lead, you know.'

'Eh, eh! Me too, chief, believe me. But this case has raised a lot of dust, and until we either wrap it up or figure out a way to pass it on to someone else He left an expressive silence. Zen sighed deeply.