The eyes were yellow and brown, the iris was solid and the gaze never shifted, were riveted on him. There was life in them, not the dead and the cold that Jago thought would have been obvious if the creature was about to savage him. He took it from the eyes that the threat was not imminent, but what did he know? Sod all. Jago Browne had no knowledge of a wild creature’s mood swings.
He thought his breath would have been in the wolf’s nostrils. They twitched, seemed to take in the scents that came from his mouth. The lower part of the snout, where the hair was short, was scarred. At least three lines were etched there and all had healed. Below the nostrils was the mouth: a long tongue, reddish interior with pink streaks, ranks of teeth. Jago concentrated on the teeth: bright, clean, sharp. Behind them were the shoulders that would give the jaw the purchase it needed to tear him apart.
The wound gaped in front of him. It was behind the right shoulder, low on the flank and near to immature nipples, long, deep and nearly clean, but flies buzzed around it. He thought the animal young, hungry and separated, at the peak of the storm, from its pack. It would be frightened, hurt, lost. It was a bad wound—
It was gone. The wolf went over the rim of the platform in front of him. He heard it land, not a controlled fall but a stumble. A branch snapped and smaller stones tumbled further down. Then silence. The dogs at the kitchen door were aware of the movement and had their ears back, but didn’t bark.
How long? Jago thought he had shared space with the wolf for not quite a minute. He felt good.
‘Can you see it?’ Ciccio asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘On a rock.’
‘I saw it move once, then lost it.’ Ciccio grimaced.
‘It’s on a rock and I can see its haunches.’ It was licking itself, working solidly on one place.
‘First time I’ve seen one.’
‘There are just two or three packs in the entire Aspromonte. It’s incredibly rare.’
‘It was injured.’
‘A cut, a lateral one. It couldn’t move properly.’
‘It’s young. The family will kill it.’
‘They’ll shoot it or the dogs’ll get it,’ Fabio muttered.
‘Not our problem.’ Ciccio usually led their conversations. A listener could have been less than five metres from them and heard nothing. Often Ciccio talked while Fabio slept – it comforted him. ‘We might get a city stake-out after this, with rats. I’d rather have a wolf at a distance than rats.’
Fabio understood the need to talk, and the crisis in Ciccio’s life, with Neomi’s degenerative condition. ‘Makes no difference to me. We’ll have some beer, a shower and sleep, then go on to the next job. I don’t care who the target is. More important, if the dogs come again, will the spray keep them off? You saw Mamma then and Giulietta, both looking up here – because he scratched the car. Why the fuck did he do that? Makes it more difficult for us – even worse for that young wolf. What are you thinking?’
‘That he’s in front of us.’
‘Close to the wolf?’
‘Just a feeling,’ Ciccio muttered.
‘And he didn’t spook it?’ Fabio could see the wolf’s tail and part of its rear. If he strained to his left he could watch the animal working to clean the wound – it had to or gangrene would set in. He had heard they killed the wolves not to protect the goats and sheep but for sport and because the government had issued a protection order for them. ‘I don’t know. We’re on the final countdown. Maybe we’ll have a chance tomorrow, if it’s warm, to get some more scorpion flies . . . I’m exhausted and I need some sleep – but I can’t. When I get home I’ll watch crap TV and hit the gym. Last time I went round rubbish bins looking for cast-off clothes to use on street surveillance, or I hiked in the mountains. Where is the target?’
Ciccio didn’t answer. He couldn’t have said anything sensible. Fabio was tempted to slide forward on his belly and find the man who was sharing the hillside with them. Why was he there?
It wasn’t the wolf that was a problem but the dogs. If the dogs came for the intruder, what would they do? Not their job to do anything. He wondered if the man had a courier, but there had been no indication of back-up. He and Ciccio watched, as they were paid to. Two little cogs in the slow engine that confronted the ’Ndrangheta machine, which was sleek, oiled, expensively maintained. He watched the wolf, too, and bonded with it a little. He had come to care about the wound. It was a quiet late afternoon, with sunshine, the damp steaming off the rocks and from the ground at the base of the trees. He waited.
As she came into the room she was watched. There was no welcome for her. Only Piero did not look up. Instead he studied, pointedly, the laptop that lay on his knees. A meeting was in progress and she had intruded. She had rung the bell. They would have known who was at the door because there was a camera above it and the picture would have been beamed inside. They had made her wait until Piero had finished speaking. He and six others were there, the hard-core, the believers. Consolata smiled, ducked her head to them and put her bag on the floor.