‘It’s for you!’ Gemma shouted, waving the telephone she was holding in one hand while covering the mouthpiece of the receiver with the other. ‘Your work! They say it’s urgent!’

She emphasised this fact with a kick, which went wide as Zen rolled over in bed at that moment. Gemma promptly lost her balance, dropped the phone in a failed attempt to steady herself, then sat down rather suddenly on the floor. This caused her to swear, and Zen to feel the onset of a rising tide of laughter which soon floated him back to full wakefulness.

As usual these days, Gemma failed to see the lighter side of the situation and flounced out of the room, loudly abusing Zen with a string of vicious expletives and slamming the door so hard that it bounced open again. He went to shut it properly, his initial humour fading fast. What had all that been about? One more irrational and unpredictable fit of hysteria. Welcome to another day at Via del Fosso. The phone lying on the floor seemed to be emitting gurgling sounds. He picked it up.

‘ Pronto? ’

‘Is this Aurelio Zen?’ a voice barked in his ear.

Zen wasted a sarcastically unctuous smile on the plastic mouthpiece.

‘It is indeed!’ he announced in a falsely jocular tone. ‘He himself, as ever was, larger than life and twice as real. And whom, pray, have I the honour of addressing?’

‘Gaetano Foschi.’

The name rang a bell, but it was only after the caller had testily supplied further information that Zen linked it with the short-tempered, workaholic southerner who was deputy head of the Criminalpol section of the Interior Ministry.

‘What the hell’s going on there?’ Foschi demanded. ‘The place sounds like a madhouse.’

‘It often feels like it too.’

‘What? Why aren’t you answering your duty issue phone?’

‘It’s not switched on.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m on sick leave.’

‘Says who?’