Michael Dibdin - Vendetta

Zen sank back in the seat, wondering why on earth he had come. As soon as the driver returned from his snack he would go home. Tania must have left long ago, while the taxi was lost in this bewildering urban hinterland. Not that he had really intended to follow her, anyway. Putting together her comment about her husband that morning and then her request that Zen phone up with a fictitious reason for her to leave the house, it seemed pretty clear what she was up to. The last thing he wanted was proof of that. He had accepted the fact that Tania was happily and irrevocably married. He didn't now want to have to accept that, on the contrary, she was having an illicit affair, but not with him.

A silhouetted figure appeared at one of the windows of the nearby block. Zen imagined the scene viewed from that window: the deserted street, the parked car. It made him think of the night before, and suddenly he understood what he had found disturbing about the red car.

Like the taxi, it had been about fifty metres from his house and on the opposite side of the street, the classic surveillance position. But he had no time to follow up the implications of this thought, because at that moment a woman emerged from one of the staircases of the apartment block.

She started to walk towards the taxi, then suddenly stopped, turned, and hurried back the way she had come.

At the same moment, as if on cue, the taxi driver reappeared from the bar and a swarthy man in shirtsleeves ran out into the car park underneath the apartment block, looking round wildly. The woman veered sharply to her left, making for the bar, but the man easily cut her off.

They started to struggle, the man gripping her by the arms and trying to pull her back towards the door of the block.

Zen got out of the taxi and walked over to them, unfolding his identity card.

'Police! '

Locked in their clumsy tussle, the couple took no notice. Zen shook the man roughly by the shoulder.

'Let her go!'

The man swung round and aimed a wild punch at Zen, who dodged the blow with ease, seized the man by the collar and pulled him off balance, then shoved him backwards, sending him reeling headlong to the ground.

'Right, what would you like to be arrested for?' he asked. 'Assaulting a police officer…'

'You assaulted me!' the man interrupted indignantly as he got to his feet.

'… or interfering with this lady,' Zen concluded.

The man laughed coarsely. He was short and slightlybuilt, with a compensatory air of bluster and braggadocio which seemed to emanate from his neatly clipped moustache.

'Lady? What do you mean, lady? She's my wife!

Understand? This is a family affair!'

Zen turned to Tania Biacis, who was looking at him in utter amazement.

'What happened, signora?'

'She was running away from her home and her duties!' her husband exclaimed.' His arms were outstretched to an invisible audience.

'I… that taxi… I thought it was free,' Tania said. She was evidently completely thrown by Zen's presence. 'I was going to take it. Then I saw there was someone in it, so I was going to the bar to phone for one.'

Mauro Bevilacqua glared at Zen.

'What the hell are you doing lurking about here, anyway? It's as bad as Russia, policemen on every street corner!'

'There happens to be a terrorist alert on,' Zen told him coldly.

Tania turned triumphantly on her husband.

'You see! I told you!'

Having recovered her presence of mind, she appealed to Zen.

'I work at the Ministry of the Interior. I was called in for emergency duties this evening, but my husband wouldn't believe me. He wouldn't let me use the car. He said it was all a lie, a plot to get out of the house!'

Zen shook his head in disgust.

'So it's come to this! Here's your wife, signore, a key member of a dedicated team who are giving their all, night and day, to defend this country of ours from a gang of ruthless anarchists, and all you can do is to hurl puerile and scandalous accusations at her! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'

'It's none of your business!' Bevilacqua snapped.

'On the contrary,' Zen warned him. 'If I choose to make it my business, you could be facing a prison sentence for assault.'

He paused to let that sink in.

'Luckily for you, however, I have more important things to do. Just as your wife does. But to set your fears at rest, I'll accompany her personally to the Ministry. Will that satisfy you? Or perhaps you'd like me to summon an armed escort to make sure that she reaches her place of work safely?'

Mauro Bevilacqua flapped his arms up and down like a flightless bird trying vainly to take off.

'What I'd like! What I'd like! What I'd like is for her to start behaving like a wife should instead of gadding about on her own at this time of night!'

He swung round to face her.

'You should never have gone to work in the first place! I never wanted you to go.'

'If you brought home a decent income from that stinking bank I wouldn't have to!'

Mauro Bevilacqua looked at her with hatred in his eyes.

'We'll settle this when you get home!' he spat out, turning on his heel.

Zen ushered Tania into the back of the taxi. He got into the front seat, beside the driver.

'What were you doing there?' Tania asked after they had driven in silence for some time.

He did not reply. Now that their little farce had been played to its conclusion, all his confidence had left him. He felt ill at ease and constrained by the situation.

'You weren't really on a stake-out, were you?' she prompted.

Zen usually had no difficulty in thinking up plausible stories to conceal his real motives, but on this occasion he found himself at a loss. He couldn't tell Tania the truth and he wouldn't lie to her.

'Not an official one.'

He glanced round at her. As they passed each streetlamp, its light moved across her in a steady stroking movement, revealing the contours of her face and body.

'You sounded very convincing,' she said.

He shrugged. 'If you're going to tell someone a pack of lies, there's no point in doing it half-heartedly.'

With the help of Tania's directions, they quickly regained Via Casilina, and soon the city had closed in around them again. Zen felt as though he had returned to earth from outer space.

'How can you stand living in that place?' he demanded.

As soon as he had spoken, he realized how rude the question sounded. But Tania seemed unoffended.

'That's what I ask myself every morning when I leave and every evening when I get back. The answer is simple.

Money.'

You could always economize on your social life, thought Zen sourly, cut out the fancy dinners and the season ticket to the opera and the weekends ski-ing and skin-diving. He was rapidly going off Tania Biacis, he found. But he didn't say anything. Mauro Bevilacqua had been quite right. It was none of his business.

'So where's it to?' the driver asked as they neared Porta Maggiore.

Zen said nothing. He wanted Tania to decide, and he wanted her to have all the time she needed to do so.

Although Zen had aided and abetted her deception of her husband, he actually felt every bit as resentful of her behaviour as Mauro Bevilacqua, though of course he couldn't let it show. He was also aware that Tania would have to invent a different cover story for his consumption, since the one she had used with her husband clearly wouldn't do. He wanted it to be a good one, something convincing, something that would spare his feelings. He'd done the dirty work she'd requested. Now let her cover her tracks with him, too.

'Eh, oh, signori!' the driver exclaimed. 'A bit of information, that's all I need. This car isn't a mule, you know. It won't go by itself. You have to turn the wheel. So, which way?'