No longer young, but rich enough to keep age at bay for a few years yet, the men ponderous with professional gravitas, like those toy figurines which cannot be knocked over because they are loaded with lead, the women exuding the sullen peevishness of those who have been pampered with every luxury except freedom and responsibility. The remaining couple were different.

Zen reversed the tape again briefly, hauling the swimmer up out of the water once more, and then froze the picture, studying the man who had dominated the news for the previous three months. Renato Favelloni's sharp, ferrety features and weak chest and limbs, coupled with greasy hair and an over-ready smile, gave him the air of a small-town playboy, by turns truculent and toadying, convinced of being God's gift to the world in general and women in particular, but quite prepared to lower himself to any dirty work in the interests of getting ahead. At first Zen had found it almost incomprehensible that such a man could have been the linchpin of the deals that were rumoured to have taken place between Oscar Burolo and the senior political figure who was referred to in the press as '1'onorevole', the formula reputedly used by Burolo in his secret memoranda of their relationship. Only gradually had he come to understand that it was precisely Favelloni's blatant sleaziness which made him acceptable as a go-between. There are degrees even in the most cynical corruption and manipulation. By embodying the most despicable possible grade, Renato Favelloni made his clients feel relatively decent by comparison.

His wife, like Renato himself, was a good ten years younger than the other four people present, and exactly the kind of stunning bimbo that Rita Burolo must have been at the same age. This cannot have recommended Nadia Favelloni to Oscar's wife any more than the younger woman's habit of wandering around the place half-naked.