His stomach rumbled. He had attempted to eat slowly but had failed. Pain stabbed in his upper belly: he had been given tortellini, wurstel, a can of condensed milk, and a toothbrush impregnated with powder. They could have shot him, but Jago believed they had decided to trust him not to betray their position. He had a mission, and it would not be shoved into the sidings. Compatible? Perhaps – perhaps not. He was flattered that they’d had his photograph but he could have told them it was an image of a man who no longer existed. He was reborn, proud of it, and thought himself free. Confused . . .
The pigeons were quieter than the crows but in greater numbers. They thrashed for space and bickered, but were quicker than the crows to settle. He believed he could see the wolf but his eyes might have tricked him.
He had never seen the old man and wanted to trap him – a rat in a cage. He had seen him only from a monochrome image that had been up on a screen for a few seconds. He knew that Bernardo Cancello exercised power and had wealth beyond imagination, that he was inside the ’Ndrangheta syndicate, which turned over more in a year than Microsoft or Apple. A coarse face in the photograph, a stubby nose, and unforgiving eyes that had not been cowed when he had posed, many years ago, for the police photographer. And the old man took precedence over the grandson who had split open the girl’s face.
He knew where the cable was. He would find the place where he had seen it, now screened by a sheet and . . . He thought he heard a faint whimper, a small child’s cry or that of an animal in pain.
He watched and waited for the darkness to be total, the light in the house bright. Then he would hurt them.
13
Jago had pushed himself out of the cleft under the two great boulders, and had tied the laces of his trainers tightly. He had flexed his hands, then shoved them into the pockets of the coat, where they’d clasped the tyre wrench and the penknife. Then he stood up and rocked backwards and forwards, toe to heel. It was time to do it or to crawl away.
A couple of months back one of the German girls in the bank had talked – over a sandwich and some juice – about her first ski jump: Innsbrück or somewhere. She’d described, with a giggle, being at the top of the ramp and hesitating, looking for an excuse, but knowing it was too late for a bullshit cop-out. She’d taken a great gulp of the winter air, someone might have given her a shove. She’d stopped rocking back and forth, gone down, then been airborne. The elation, after she’d landed that first time, had been – said with a droll German grimace – better than sex. There had been a guy in the City office, a couple of years ago, who’d signed up, in support of a worthy cause, for a virgin parachute jump. Everyone at work had been so awestruck that they’d dug deep and the charity had gained more than five thousand pounds. He’d said that if, getting to the aircraft, he’d been told it was too windy, too cloudy, too any-bloody-thing, he would have screamed for joy. He’d rocked those last few seconds, forward and back, then had the heave and gone.
No one there could give Jago a shove or a heave.
He didn’t know the route he would take. The way down to the sheets that camouflaged the path and the disturbed soil had been hidden from him by foliage. He might find an animal track or a cliff face that fell away. He would go near to the wolf – if it was still there. He thought he had heard it a half-hour before, but it might have been the leaves or branches rubbing. He thought he had heard a light cry of suffering.
He rocked again. He believed there was a cellar or an excavated hole under the derelict building. If he cut the power, if he created a panic the like of which the man had never known, if he had him shrieking in pitch darkness, all his wealth, power and authority would be meaningless. That was Jago’s aim. He would have bet his life on it: a man could kill, could order others to kill, could inflict misery and pain, but trapped without power in darkness he would crumple in terror. He supposed, at the heart of it, he felt a sort of jealousy at what the old man had achieved: if the padrino glanced at others, they would feel fear rising at the nape of the neck; if he smiled, he would leave others brimming with happiness because he approved of them. In Jago’s terms, the old man had bypassed the grandson.
He was exposed on his ledge and it was totally dark. He had no excuse. He reached forward and felt for a hazel sapling, let his fingers run down it, then broke it off and stripped away the lesser branches. It was now a blind man’s stick and he would feel his way with it.