And lo and behold, just a few weeks later, Reto Gurtner pad telephoned. He had inspected several properties in the north of the island, he said, but his client had specifically asked him to look on the east coast, where he had vacationed several years earlier and of whose spectacular and rugged beauty he retained fond memories. If Dottor Confalone by any chance knew of any suitable properties on the market…
A man wearing even one of the many hats mentioned on Angelo Confalone's business plate should perhaps have been shrewd enough to frown momentarily at this happy coincidence, but the young lawyer was too busy calculating his percentage from the sale of the property, which was now of course in a very different price bracket from the subsistence-level farm whose original purchase by Oscar Burolo he had also negotiated.
Confalone regarded his visitor complacently.
'As you are no doubt aware, Herr Gurtner, properties of a standard high enough to satisfy your client's requirements are few and far between in this area. As for one coming on the market, you would normally have to wait years. It so happens, however, that I am in a position to offer you a villa which has only just become available, and which I can truly and honestly describe, without risk of hyperbole, as the finest example of its type to be found anywhere in the island, the Costa Smeralda included.'
He went on in this vein for some time, expatiating on the imaginative way in which the original farmhouse had been modernized and extended without sacrificing the unique authenticity of its humble origins.
'The original owner was a man of vision and daring who brought his unlimited resources and great expertise in the construction business to bear on the…'
'He was realizing a dream?' Zen suggested.
Confalone nodded vigorously.
'Exactly. Precisely. I couldn't have put it better myself.
He was realizing a dream.'
'And why is he now selling it, his dream?'
The lawyer's vivacity vanished.
'For family reasons,' he murmured. 'There was… a death. In the family.'
He awaited Herr Gurtner's response with some trepidation. For the kind of money the Burolos were offering, Confalone was quite prepared to try and conceal the truth.
But money wasn't everything. He had his career to consider, and that meant that he couldn't afford to lie.
But Reto Gurtner appeared satisfied.
'I should like to see this most interesting property at once,' he declared, rising to his feet.
Confalone's relief was apparent in his voice.
'Certainly, certainly! I shall be privileged to accompany you personally and…'
'Thank you, that will not be necessary. There is a caretaker at the house? If you will be good enough to ring and let them know that I am coming, I prefer to look around on my own. We Swiss, you know, are very methodical. I do not wish to try your patience!'
After some polite insistence, Angelo Confalone gave way gracefully. Double commission and no time wasted doing the honours! He could hardly believe his luck.
Zen emerged from the lawyer's offices to a chorus of horns, the street having been blocked by a lorry delivering cartons of dairy produce to a nearby grocery. He slipped through the narrow space between the lorry and the wall and made his way along the cracked concrete slabs with which the street was paved, well pleased with the way things were going. Back in Rome, the idea of forestalling his official mission with a bit of private enterprise had appeared at best a forlorn attempt to leave no stone unturned, at worst a foolhardy scheme which might well end in disaster and humiliation. But from his present perspective, Rome itself seemed an irrelevance, a city as distant and as foreign as Marseilles or Madrid. It was here, and only here, that Zen could hope to find the solution to his problems.
Not that he expected to 'crack' the Burolo case, of course. There was nothing to crack, anyway. The eviJence against Renato Favelloni was overwhelming. The only question was whether he had done the job personally or hired it out to a professional. The key to the whole affair gad been the video tapes and computer diskettes stored in the underground vault at Oscar Burolo's villa. Here Burolo had kept in electronic form all the information recording in meticulous detail the history of his construction company's irresistible rise. After the murders, this material had been impounded by the authorities, but when the investigating magistrate's staff came to examine them, they found that the computer data had been irretrievably corrupted, probably by exposure to a powerful magnetic field.
Insistent rumours began to circulate to the effect that the discs had been in perfect condition when they were seized by the Carabinieri, and these were strengthened about a month later when a leading news magazine published what purported to be a transcription of part of Burolo's records. The material concerned a contract agreed in 1979 for the construction of a new prison near Latina, a creation of the Fascist era on the Lazio coast, popularly known as 'Latrina'. Burolo Construction had undercut the estimated minimum tender for the project by almost 6o per cent.
Their bid was duly accepted, despite the fact that the plan which accompanied it was vague in some places and full of inaccuracies in others.
No sooner had work begun than the site proved to be marshy and totally unsuitable for the type of construction envisaged. Burolo Construction promptly applied to the Ministry of Public Works for the first of a series of revised budgets which eventually pushed the cost of the prison from the 4,ooo million lire specified in the original contract to over 36,ooo million. This much was public knowledge.
What the news magazine's article showed was how it had been done.
Although the article did not name the politician referred to in Burolo's electronic notes as 'l'onorevole', it left little doubt in the reader's mind that he was a leading figure in one of the smaller parties making up the governing coalition, who had been Minister of Public Works at the time the prison contract was agreed. According to his notes, Oscar Burolo had paid Renato Favelloni ggo million lire to ensure that Burolo Construction would get the contract. A comment which some claimed to find typical of Oscar's sardonic style noted that this handout exceeded the normal rate, which apparently varied between 6 and 8 per cent of the contract fee. The records also listed the dates and places on which Oscar had contacted Favelloni, and one on which he had met l'onorevole himself.
No sooner has this article appeared than the journalists responsible were summoned to the law courts in Nuoro and directed to disclose where they had obtained the information. On refusing, they were promptly jailed for culpable reticence. But that wasn't the end of the affair, for the following issue of the magazine contained an interview with Oscar's son. Enzo Burolo not only substantiated the claims made in the original article, but advanced new and even more damaging allegations. In particular, he claimed that six months prior to the killings his father had paid yo million lire to obtain the contract for a new generating station for ENEL, the electricity board. Despite this exorbitant backhander, Burolo Construction did not get the contract.
According to Enzo, Oscar Burolo was so infuriated that he vowed to stop paying kickbacks altogether. From that point on, his company's fortunes went into a nosedive. In a desperate attempt to break the system, Oscar had leagued together with other construction firms to form a ring that tendered for contracts at realistic prices, but in each case the bidding was declared invalid on some technicality and the contract subsequently awarded to a company outside the ring.