'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 came a written reply, via fax, stating that no records existed in those names. Given that the police maintained a dossier on just about every man, woman and child in the country, even if only to list whether or not they had fulfilled their legal duty of voting in every local and national election, the complete absence of the men's names was itself a form of negative proof that something was amiss.