He had not been in church but was at the cemetery. For many years in the village, he had been pliant. His mind was almost made up. A road stretched ahead of him, and it was not yet too late for him to reverse back the way he had come. He stood among tall gravestones, apart from the small group of mourners. None of the dead man’s family was present. They would have stayed in the village and might have worn bright clothing to demonstrate that nothing deserved any show of grief. A son had died, a brother and husband, but not a tear would be shed in that home, and no word of covert sadness would reach the padrino, whose home was high on the hill. Father Demetrio had barely known the pentito, had baptised and christened him, had rarely heard his confession, had kept away from the man’s home when Rocco and Domenico Cancello had been convicted on his sworn evidence.
The low light threw long shadows and made the stones huge and grotesque. The cemetery was outside the town of Melito di Porto Salvo, north of the E90 highway, and the throb of lorries’ engines drowned the words that were spoken. It was a little less than an hour’s drive from the village. The man had been brought back to Calabria, but was distanced from his bloodline. Father Demetrio tested himself by his presence – he was not a fool. A retired schoolmaster was there and would have taught the turncoat, a carabinieri officer, who might have watched over him before he had given his testimony, two young women, who wore the T-shirts of the Addio Pizzo movement, a gravedigger and a junior priest, who had gabbled the prayers. Father Demetrio thought the priest would have experienced real fear if a camera was present to record him officiating: few volunteered to stand against the current’s flow. The mayor was present.
Father Demetrio understood. Something about the way the padrino had eyed him at the old woman’s lunch. Something about the old City-Van that had followed him for a time that morning, or the scooter that had trailed him the previous evening. He knew so much. It was often done in the aftermath of a substantial meal. A man slipped unseen behind the victim’s chair and hands gripped the throat. Death by strangulation: said to take four or five minutes. He suspected it. It had been a gesture of defiance to come to the cemetery; he had challenged his conscience, his courage – and his cowardice. The grave was in a corner of the cemetery, with only one bouquet. He mouthed the prayers, wished he had had the nerve to take the service himself. Father Demetrio harboured ever-present shame for having said similar obsequies over a mound in the hills.
He toyed with the decision, as yet unmade.
‘Rubbish’: that was what he called the Englishman he had met.
The Englishman was ‘useless’, ‘boastful’ and ‘boring’. He snapped through the figures. The cosca of Bernardo bought fifty kilos of 80 per cent pure, and paid twelve hundred dollars per kilo to the agents at the Latin-American end of the supply route. It arrived in Europe and the family must pay transportation costs before selling on to an agent in northern Italy, who paid forty-five thousand dollars per kilo for 50 per cent purity. When the cocaine was offered for sale in London, a kilo, further diluted with baking powder, would bring in ninety-five thousand dollars. The man hadn’t known where he wanted to buy: he could buy in Calabria and be responsible for all shipments onwards, or he could buy in Rotterdam, Felixstowe or Hamburg. Alternatively, he could take his chance in the port cities of Venezuela, the jungle of northern Peru or in Medellín with the cartels. He said that tomorrow Giulietta could visit the hotel in Brancaleone to find out what the man would pay and under what terms, but the money should be up front. ‘Perhaps he should stick to cigarettes,’ Marcantonio had told his grandfather. He knew the figures and the profit margins, and thought the Englishman incapable of getting his mind around the monies involved. He had come on the scene too late in life. The newspapers in Germany had recently focused on an Italian academic study. In the city of Brescia, population 200,000, it was estimated that $750,000 was spent on cocaine every day – every day. He had escorted his grandfather back to the bunker, had crawled after him down the concrete piping and smelt the damp.
The lights were on. His grandfather sat in his chair.
Marcantonio thought the old man might be better off in a cell at Novara or Ascoli, where his father and uncle were. Scarface had ended in the shoot-out because Al Pacino would not be taken. He said he would be outside for hours that evening with a shotgun and the dogs. He would be careful, he promised. He was told that a road accident would be arranged for the priest. He accepted that, but asked, ‘Why not send him away with money, padrino?’
Because Father Demetrio was an old man and had no use for it.
‘But you can buy anyone – a judge, a clerk, a colonel, a mayor.’
He wouldn’t want money, only to cleanse his soul.
‘Grandfather, is your own soul in need of washing?’
The boy laughed. He did not see the flash in his grandfather’s eyes, when he repeated that it would be a road accident, on a bend where there was a cliff. Marcantonio left, and the quiet closed round him. He scrabbled to find the television zapper – he needed company. He wondered who was watching his home and what they had learned . . .
Fabio said, ‘Should we have done that? Given him food?’