Read Cosi Fan Tutti - 5 for Free Online

perpetually struggling to suppress an ironic smile.
    But none of this was enough to persuade Zen to try and follow up on the encounter, nor had Valeria Squillace given the slightest hint that she would welcome such an attempt. So it came as a complete surprise when he received a telephone call from her two days later at the hotel where he was staying at the time. She reminded him of their meeting, explained that she had got his number from their mutual acquaintance at the Consulate, apologized for disturbing him at home and then got to the point.
    “I understand you work for the police, Dottor Zembla. I have a personal problem which you might be able to help me with. In return, I would be prepared to offer you a limited lease at a very reasonable rent on a small property I own near San Martino.’
    Zen was lying on the bed, nude except for his socks, watching a Japanese cartoon featuring children with enormous eyes engaging in hand-to-hand combat with evil adversaries whose eyes were undesirably small.
    ‘What sort of problem?’ he said guardedly, flipping over to the neighbouring channel, where an overweight egomaniac with insincere hair was direct selling a 64piece set of silver-plated cutlery.
    ‘It’s something I’d rather not discuss on the telephone/ his caller replied coyly. ‘Do you think it would be possible for us to meet briefly, say tomorrow?’
    They made a date for the following afternoon in the bar of Zen’s hotel. That morning at work he asked Giovan Battista Caputo if he knew anything about the Squillace family.
    Caputo screwed his face into a mask of mental effort.
    ‘Name rings a bell/ he said. ‘Let me make a few calls.’
    He returned fifteen minutes later with a precis of his efforts. Manlio Squillace, the capofamiglia, had died of a heart attack two years earlier following his arrest on
     charges of ‘financial irregularities’. He had been an eminent local entrepreneur who had made a fortune from speculative land transactions in the sixties and seventies, and was widely rumoured to have been associated with organized crime. He was survived by his wife Valeria and two daughters, Orestina and Filomena.
    It was the latter, Zen discovered that afternoon, who were the problem which Signora Squillace hadn’t been prepared to discuss over the phone. They were in their
    early twenties, language students in their final year of university. With their looks and qualifications, to say nothing of the family connections, they could have had their pick of any number of nice boys from good homes and with excellent career prospects.
    ‘Instead of which they want to throw themselves away on a couple of gangsters!’ Valeria Squillace wailed over her cappuccino and brioche. ‘At times I worry that it must be in the blood, something they got from their father. Not that he was a criminal himself, of course, but he had to associate with all sorts of people in his line of work, and some of it must have rubbed off on Orestina and Filomena.
    How else do you explain them taking up with those hoodlums?’
    It didn’t seem to Zen that an explanation was that far to seek, but he sensed that it wouldn’t be helpful to say so.
    Instead he asked Signora Squillace how he could help her.
    ‘The worst of it is that they don’t seem to realize what they’re getting themselves into/ she replied. ‘Whenever I raise the matter with them, they simply accuse me of snobbery and prejudice. And of course I have no proof that those two are criminals, but I can sense it in my bones.’
    She looked at Zen.
    ‘If you were to look through the police records, Don Alfonso, perhaps you would be able to find something definite, some hard evidence I can use to open their eyes to the truth before it’s too late.’
    Intrigued and amused, Zen had agreed. The next day he sent in a routine request to the Questura for information relating to Troise, Gesualdo and Capuozzo, Sabatino.
    The results were unexpected, to say the least. First