An explanation was demanded of her, she felt, and gave it.
She regretted her actions in moving out of Headquarters, and apologised for her rant about direct action. She had been away from them long enough to reassess the virtues of non-violent confrontation. She wanted, she told them, more leaflets to hand out in central Reggio. She had reflected sufficiently to realise the errors in her attitude.
Why? She was hungry. Why again? She craved to belong. And why once more? Because being with them purged her guilt at having broken her end of a bargain: a rendezvous.
She was accepted without enthusiasm. Her room in the squat had been assigned to a new volunteer, but she could have a camp bed in the store room in the basement. She went down, set up the bed, found a sleeping bag stuffed into a corner and put on her radio. Consolata needed company and to be busy. She didn’t like the thought of another night on the beach at Scilla or in her parents’ small apartment – they would question her incessantly on her plans for the future, when would she work, why had she no man . . .
The radio was on an orange box that would be her bedside table. Nothing about him. Instead she heard a litany of stories on the aftermath of the storm, and that arrests had been made in Rosarno for ‘Mafia association’; a trial dragged on in the aula bunker and the financial crisis was rampant.
She had no plans for her future. She would work as an unpaid volunteer, would beg and borrow from her mother and father. She had a man: slim body, pale skin, flat belly, thin legs and arms, bright eyes and a dream. She had guided him to a hillside on the far slopes of the Aspromonte, and could tell no one what she had done. She could not be alone, not while he was . . .
Consolata went upstairs. ‘What can I do?’ she asked cheerfully. ‘How can I help?’
She would do leaflets, then try to get across country and close to him. The guilt was crushing: she was warm, dry and fed. She had failed to make a rendezvous.
‘I have roadblocks in place.’ The colonel sipped coffee. It had not been brought in from a bar but made in the Palace of Justice and tasted disgusting. He was in the building because a meeting was due to start in a few minutes. A major investigation, centred on the town of Taurianova, was to be planned. It had priority.
The prosecutor answered, ‘I’m exceptionally grateful for the allocation of resources.’
‘Only the main roads. I can’t seal off the village.’
‘A show. Sometimes all we can do is make gestures.’ The prosecutor’s tiredness was poorly hidden. That morning, his wife had suggested forcefully that he call in sick, rest and try to clear his mind. He had ridiculed the idea.
‘A display of force for two more days.’
‘Would there be . . . I wondered if . . .’ The prosecutor hesitated. An indication of a failing cause was the inability to make specific demands. ‘If it were possible to . . .’
He was helped. He enjoyed the company of the colonel. The senior officer had done time in Iraq and that other ‘bad land’, the flat plain inland from Naples where the Camorra families ruled. He was straight-speaking and thinking. He seemed sympathetic. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want the property of Bernardo Cancello searched by an experienced team. He’s there, I’m sure of it. Months of work committed, resources I’ve fought for. It’s all slipping away from me. Please. I need a cordon set up close to the house and a quality team.’
The answer came fast – it might have been rehearsed. ‘I can’t authorise that. Too many men, too many hours, too much preparation, and no prior intelligence. Get me the man’s location and I’ll be there. No location, no search.’
‘He’s there. La presenza e potenza. He has to be there.’ But he’d said the obvious, which wouldn’t change the colonel’s mind. All of those who worked from the Palace took as a maxim for any padrino who had dropped out of sight that ‘presence is power’: they must be close to their contacts, dominate their heartland, be known to have control. He had aerial photographs of the house where the wife lived, with the daughter, and where the grandson was staying at the moment. When he gazed at the roof, the small backyard, the washing lines, the shed, and the old car at the front, he could also see caves, gullies, rock clefts and herdsmen’s tracks, a landscape that could swallow an army.
‘If you find intelligence, you’ll have support.’
He had no intelligence, and had the added complication of the man who had hidden near to the house. They shook hands and he let the carabinieri officer go to his meeting.
The door closed. He was alone – and had been for several days – and would soon be even more isolated. In the corridors people would whisper to each other behind their hands, and voices would drop when he passed.
They stood, facing the door.