Michael Dibdin - Vendetta

'Hello, Aurelio!' she called gaily, beaming a distracted smile in his direction. 'Everything all right?'

Without waiting for his response, she turned back to the children. 'No, not there! Otherwise I'll gobble you up like this, bang bang bang bang bang!'

The girls tittered nervously. 'But Auntie, you can't go there, it's the wrong way,' the elder pointed out.

'Oh! So it is! Silly old me. Silly old Auntie.'

Zen felt a pang of jealous hurt, all the stronger for being completely absurd. She's not your auntie, he felt like shouting. She's my mamma! Mine! Mine!

Taking Rosella Nieddu aside, he hesitantly broached the subject of his mother staying one more night.

'That's wonderful!' she replied, interrupting his deliberately vague explanations. 'Did you hear that, kids?

Auntie Zen's not leaving today after all!'

A look of sheer delight instantly appeared on the children's faces. They rushed about, doing a sort of war-dance around the old lady, screaming at the top of their voices while she looked on happily, a benign totem-pole.

'What a treasure your mother is!' Rosella Nieddu enthused.

'Why, er, yes. Yes, of course.'

'She's been absolutely tireless with those two. I love them dearly, of course, but sometimes I think they're going to drive me round the bend. But your mother has the patience of a saint. And she knows all these wonderful games and tricks and stories! I haven't had to do a thing.

It's been a real holiday for me. I've finally been able to catch up with my own life a bit. Gilberto helps as much as he can, of course, but he's so busy at work these days.

Anyway, we've arranged that your mother's going to come round every week, once she goes home, I mean.

That's all right, I hope.'

Zen stared at her.

'You want her to come?'

Rosella Nieddu's serene features contracted in puzzlement.

'Of course I do! And just as important, she wants to. She said she was… Well, anyway, she wants to come.'

Zen eyed her.

'What did she say?'

'I don't expect she meant it.'

'Meant what?'

'Well…'

'Yes?'

'It was just a manner of speaking, you know, but she said she'd had enough of being locked up at home.'

'Locked up?' Zen shouted angrily. 'What the hell do you mean? She's the one who refuses to set foot outside the flat!'

'Well, she's been out a lot while she's been with us.'

'She never wanted to move here in the first place. She hates Rome!'

'No she doesn't! We all went to the Borghese Gardens on Sunday. She couldn't believe all the joggers and cyclists, and the fathers pushing babies. Afterwards we went to the zoo and then had lunch out. We had a really good time. She said she hadn't enjoyed herself so much for years.'

Zen stood open-mouthed. This is not my mother, he wanted to protest, it's an impostor! My mother is a crabby old woman who spends her time shut up at home in front of the television. I don't want this wonderful, patient, inventive old lady with a zest for life! I want my mamma! I want my mamma! 'I'm glad to hear it, I'm sure,' he said drily. 'So it'll be no trouble if she stays another night, then?'

'It'll be a pleasure.'

Zen rode the lift downstairs feeling irritated, relieved and obscurely guilty. It wasn't his fault, of course. How could it be? He hadn't locked his mother up in the flat.

She'd locked herself up. It was true that he had accepted that, because it was convenient, because it had left him free to do what he wanted, particularly when he'd been seeing Ellen. He'd always avoided confronting his mother with that relationship, preferring to shut her out of that area of his life. That was apparently one of the things that had made Ellen leave him in the end. Perhaps it was partly his fault, in a way. He hadn't created the situation, but he'd connived at it, used it, acquiesced. He hadn't been cruel, but he'd been lazy. He'd been thoughtless and selfish.

He stopped in the first cafe he came to and phoned the caretaker at home. Then he walked back to Porta Maggiore and took a number nineteen tram all the way round the city to its terminus a short walk from where he lived. As he had expected, there was no sign of the grey van, but the chances were that the house was under surveillance. Zen walked casually down the street and into the shop next door to his house, an outmoded emporium selling everything from corkscrews and hot-water bottles to dried beans and herbal remedies. It had the air of a museum rather than a shop, and the elderly woman who ran it had the haughty, disinterested manner of a curator.

'You're from the Electricity?' she demanded as Zen threaded his way through the shelves and cupboards to the counter.

'That's right.'

She jerked her thumb at a door at the rear of the shop.

The array of mops and brooms which normally concealed it had been cleared to one side.

'Don't you dare touch anything!' she admonished. 'I know where everything is! If anything's missing, there'll be trouble, I promise you.'

Zen opened the door. Inside was a dark passageway almost completely filled with boxes of various sizes. At the end was a second door, opening into the courtyard of his own house. In the hall he found Giuseppe and thanked him for getting the shopkeeper to unlock the doors.

'So what's the problem, dottore?' the caretaker asked anxiously.

'Just a jealous husband.'

Giuseppe cackled and waggled a finger on either side of his forehead.

'He has good reason, I'll bet!'

Zen shrugged modestly. Giuseppe redoubled his cackles.

'Like we say in Lucania, there may be snow on the roof but there's still fire in the furnace! Eh, dottore!'

Once he had showered and shaved, Zen put on a suit of evening dress exhumed from the oak chest in which it had laid entombed since the last time he had had occasion to attend a formal gathering. He wandered dispiritedly through to the living room, struggling with a recalcitrant collar-stud. In the absence of his mother and Maria Grazia, the lares and penates of the place, the flat felt hollow and unreal, like a stage set which despite its scrupulous accuracy does not quite convince.

Catching sight of himself in the mirror above the sideboard, Zen was surprised to find that he did not look flustered and absurd, as he felt, but elegant and distinguished. What a shame that Tania would not see him in his finery! But it was clearly out of the question to keep their appointment as long as hired assassins were pursuing Spadola's vendetta from beyond the grave. He had already put her life at risk once too often.

He picked up the smooth pasteboard card propped against the mirror and scanned the lines of engraved italic copperplate requesting the pleasure of his company at a reception at Palazzo Sisti that evening at seven o'clock.

Even 1'onorevole and his cronies didn't have the gall to celebrate openly the collapse of the case against Renato Favelloni, so the reception was nominally in honour of one of the party's rising stars, who had recently been appointed to a crucial portfolio in the government's newly reshuffled cabinet. Zen had been very much in two minds about attending, particularly after Vincenzo Fabri's attack on him that morning, but the appearance of the grey van had removed his lingering doubts.

There was no point in him trying to buy off the people Spadola had hired. Even if he'd had the money to do so, the underworld had a strict code of consumer protection in such matters. Spadola would have made a substantial payment up front, with the balance in the hands of a trusted third party. The deposit was unreturnable now that Spadola was dead, so any failure to carry out the hit would amount to breach of contract. These rules of conduct were extremely rigid. Zen's only recourse was to try and persuade the organization involved that it was in its own interests to make an exception in this case. He himself didn't have the necessary clout to do this, but 1'onorevole should, or would know who did. And l'onorevole owed him.