Michael Dibdin - And then you die

'I should invite you’ he had replied.

'You can't’

'Why not?'

'Because the invitation is to my house’

At these words, the ancient core of Zen's cerebrum, the only part he had ever really trusted, told him that something significant was going to happen this evening. Hence the new – and, truth be told, ruinously expensive – linen suit, hence the tingle of pleasurable anticipation transforming the mundane scenes in the piazza of this sleepy provincial town into signs and symbols of powers still in effect from when the place had been a Roman

amphitheatre. Unspeakable things must have happened in the space where those ragazzi were kicking their ball around, seemingly recklessly and with complete abandon, yet always ensuring that it did not cause any bother or inconvenience to any of the other players in the arena. That was part of the game, one of the rules.

Something was going to happen, of that he was sure, but he had no clear idea what, still less any sense that he could control the event in any decisive way. On his reappearance at the beach, Gemma had initially seemed a bit cool and distant. Zen had explained his abrupt absence as being due to 'business', to which she had responded by a curt nod, as if to say 'If you have your secrets, so have I’

Nevertheless, he could not help grudgingly admitting to himself that the prognostications were good. He hadn't heard a word from the Ministry over his misuse of the high-tech communication device they had given him, sending out an all-points urgent alarm over some burglar breaking into his apartment in Rome. He had, however, heard from Gilberto Nieddu, who had taken Zen's advice, made the necessary penitential pilgrimage to Sardinia, and convinced Rosa to return home with him and the children. Her terms, according to Gilberto, had been surprisingly mild: 'Very well, but next time – if there is a next time – I won't just leave you, I'll leave you for dead.' Zen had enthusiastically seconded Nieddu's opinion that coming from Rosa this amounted to a declaration of total forgiveness and eternal love.

Zen had also visited the hospital at Pietrasanta once again, this time to have the stitches on his knuckles removed. The doctors had taken the opportunity to examine his general progress one last time, and had pronounced him surprisingly well advanced on the way to total recovery. Better still, the last traces of the huldufolk had vanished along with the stitches. He had heard no more voices, had enjoyed dreamless sleep, and in general seemed fully integrated back into the common lot of humanity.

This of course included a general uncertainty, and a measure of anxiety, about the future. The fact of the matter was that he liked Gemma, to the extent that he had got to know her, and that he desired her as a woman. He had some reason to suppose that she felt something similar where he was concerned, but that was all.

He knew nothing about her in any depth, and almost everything she knew about him was either lies or a distortion of the truth. The most probable scenario therefore seemed to be that they would either end up in bed this evening, or some evening soon, or they wouldn't, but in either case that would be as far as it went. Both of them came with lengthy and elaborate histories, and neither had shown much interest in investigating or explaining them, much to Zen's relief. This made for a trouble-free divertimento in the short run, but suggested that the longer-term prospects were tenuous in the extreme. There was just not enough to hold them together, to give them a reason for not going their separate ways. Even with a marriage and children, not to mention decades of intimacy at an age when the personality is still malleable, Gilberto and Rosa had come within a breath of parting for ever. What lasting hope could there be for two strangers at mid-life, with nothing more in common than that they happened to be seated in opposite ombrelloni at Franco's bathing establishment, and seemed to get along and be mildly attracted to one another?

He glanced at his watch and stood up with a sardonic grin at his own fatuousness in taking all this so seriously. A brand-new suit, a bad case of stage fright, and, yes, some roses would be a good idea, just to complete the caricature. One little bomb under the car he'd been travelling in and a couple of half-hearted attempts by some Mafia thug to silence him, and here he was convinced that a casual and probably purely conventional dinner invitation – Gemma's way of paying him back for his hospitality to her – was the hour of destiny. But it would still be interesting to see her apartment. One could learn a lot from the things people had chosen to surround themselves with, especially if the choice had been made with a view to preventing you doing so.

A lengthy and lazily uncoordinated peal of bells from various churches and towers began to ring out seven o'clock as he walked the length of the piazza and out into the street beyond, which bent and narrowed at the point where it would have passed through the original Roman walls. The cramped space between the tall medieval buildings to either side was packed with tall, elegant Lucchesi on foot or on bikes who wove their way through the seemingly impenetrable mass of pedestrians with the same disinvoltura that the future soccer stars had displayed in the piazza.

A news-stand he passed was displaying copies of a satirical review whose headline read, 'Medical Breakthrough Reveals Why Pisans Are Born – No Cure In Sight.' Zen smiled indulgently and moved on. Unlike most other countries, at least Italy did not use neighbouring nations as its stereotype for crass stupidity. The universal butt of such low humour was the carabinieri, but every region had its own ritually despised city, whose inhabitants were depicted as cretinous scum who would believe anything and achieve nothing. In his native Veneto, the traditional target was Vicenza; here in Tuscany it was evidently Pisa, and such gags would have a particular appeal here in industrious, mercantile Lucca, so near to yet so far from the neighbouring citta di mare, with its untrustworthy crew of brigands and adventurers with a weather eye always out for one-off deals and a quick killing.

He found a flower shop and ordered a dozen red roses, then wondered if this might look a bit pointed. After a long discussion of the intricacies of the situation with the florist, who had the soft voice and perfect tact of all the townsfolk Zen had encountered, he emerged with a bouquet of yellow roses and turned left off the main street towards the address which Gemma had given him. I like this place, he thought as he strode along. I could be happy here. Despite being entirely landlocked, Lucca reminded him in some indefinable way of Venice. It was a question of its scale, its look and feel of placid security, and above all the politely reticent manners of its citizens, refined by centuries of trade and commerce.

The moment he turned into Via del Fosso, he felt even more at home. The name – Ditch Street – was not attractive, but the thing itself was: a broad avenue of fine buildings to either side of a stone-embanked canal. The trickle of channelled water here was evidently fresh rather than tidal, the buildings more recent and everything on a smaller scale, but the concept was as familiar to Zen as his own face. This was a miniature version of the neighbourhood in Venice where he had grown up. The district must originally have been outside the Roman and medieval city, open fields later enfolded within the imposing line of red-brick baroque walls visible ahead of him. This is where the middleclass merchants of that time would have built their spacious and imposing mansions, leaving the clogged centro and its anachronistic palaces and slums to the decaying nobles and penniless plebs.

He found the house and mounted the step. Gemma had warned him that there were no names beside the buttons of the entry phone, but that hers was the second from the bottom. Almost as soon as Zen rang, the buzzer sounded and the front door unlatched. For a moment he was disconcerted by the lack of any preliminary query, but then realized that there had been no need of that. Gemma was expecting him and him alone.