‘I don't suppose you'd like to have dinner tonight,' he found himself saying.

She regarded him intensely. 'Dinner? But why?' He gestured embarrassedly. 'Why not?'

This seemed to give her pause. 'Why not?' she repeated at length.

'Good. About eight at Augusto's. Do you know it?'

'Of course, everyone knows it. Have you made a booking?'

Zen shook his head.

'Then we'll never get in’ Gemma said decisively. 'They're booked up weeks in advance.' 'I can get us a table. Trust me.'

Gemma looked at him again in that odd, intense way of hers. 'Very well,' she said. 'I'll trust you.'

She gave him a vague smile and walked off down the pathway at the side of the building leading to the car park. Zen headed back to the beach.

He noticed the police at once. There were three of them, two men and a woman, all young and looking very sporty in the starched sky-blue shorts and summer shirts of the municipal police. They were stretched out evenly across the beach from the tideline to the land end, walking slowly and checking everything and everyone in their range.

By the time Zen got back to his place, the female officer had just reached Franco's boardwalk. Zen went over to her.

'Excuse me,' he said with a pleasant smile backed up by a hint of the steely sheen of power. 'I'm in the police myself, down in Rome. Criminalpol. Is anything wrong?'

The woman gave him the merest glance and shook her head.

'Routine patrol’ she said. 'But we had some reports of someone passing as an itinerant trader, a vucumpra. Did you see anyone like that?'

'How do you mean, "passing"?'

'When he raised his sleeve, his skin was white from the elbow. And he didn't look African. That s what we were told, anyway.'