It was the only one of his ‘incidents’ that had kicked back. He sat on the chair. It was beyond his capacity to understand: why?
The man might have worked in a tower block of offices – an accountant, a lawyer, a banker or – any of the professions that the family employed to ease the acquisition and multiplication of their wealth. He had twice crossed the road to intervene, then had found Marcantonio’s Berlin address and had scraped the side of his pride and joy, the car that was his statement of who he was. Unimportant, even the car. What was bigger than anything else that had intruded into Marcantonio’s life was that the man had come in the night to the family’s house and used a key, a coin or a knife to leave a mark on the old City-Van. He had pissed on Marcantonio. No one, before, had done that. He sat examinations at school and always passed, well. He wanted a girl, and she was available. He laughed and all those with him laughed. He showed anger and anyone near him looked away. That was the circle enclosing him. He sat on the chair, watched, waited and listened.
When he strained to hear, sometimes, there was a light moan – almost a trick in his ears – and the dogs would stiffen. He could, of course, have called out the village, brought together all the men and had them form scrambling lines to track across the rocks and ravines, poke in the caves and clefts. He could, of course, have told them that in the German capital he had played a second-rate gangster, raising pizzo payments, and had been faced down by a guy off the streets. He would not. It was close to night, and the moon was high, throwing rinsed light on the high hillside.
Minutes passed, then hours.
He stood, his back resting against the cleft in the boulders.
There was light from the moon so he could see the outline of the sheets and the dark shape of the trellis but it might have been an hour since he’d last seen the lighter flame’s flash. Questions exercised him. From where he was, could he have seen Marcantonio go back to the kitchen? No light had come on in there. It was probable that Marcantonio was still keeping vigil with the dogs and the shotgun.
Jago had never known a soldier. They were of a world divorced from his. Neither had he known a policeman. A man had come from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency to lecture the City bankers and had talked about money-laundering. Jago was ignorant about how covert forces operated – he supposed that the men further up the hill, hidden among the rocks, would be endowed with patience, which Jago was short of. He heard nothing but the wind, the trees rubbing, and the sharper sounds of the wolf’s pain. He saw nothing because the moon was still low. Would he take the chance and go down? Would he wait – and for how long?
In the bank, the traders were the elite – aloof young men and women who accepted risk. Supposedly Jago belonged among the teams known for circumspection and calm evaluation, those who were sensible. Uncharted waters, new ground . . . The time would come when he went down, did the ‘hell or high water’ bit.
He thought the wolf’s pain was worse. He couldn’t help it – he could barely help himself. When he had tried to help a young woman in Charlottenburg he had made a poor fist of it . . . It had gone beyond her, and beyond the girl who had swum with him on the beach. Now it was about himself.
But not yet. He would go later.
He had never killed a priest – he didn’t know anyone who had. He hadn’t heard of a priest being killed in the Aspromonte.
Marcantonio knew every corner, every bend in the road out of the village and up into the heights of the Aspromonte. It was to be an accident. Along the routes towards the summits, the church of the Madonna and the great bronze cross of Christ, there were stretches where the safety barriers had never been installed and cliffs plummeted towards old mountain streams. It could be done in daylight or darkness. There was never much traffic. He would use a HiLux, one from the village, and would easily tip aside Father Demetrio’s small car. He could not refuse.
His throat was dry and he had brought no water. Sometimes the dogs would slip away from him to drink from the bowl in the yard, then return and slobber on his trousers. He loved the dogs, believed they loved him. His grandfather had told him to do it, and Marcantonio could not refuse or argue. He was dead himself if he did so. Any number of men would come up from the village and hold him. Likely it would be Stefano’s hands on his throat. A killing such as this was always arranged with deceit. A phone call to the priest’s house. Someone was sick and slipping, or bedridden and needing confession; an address would be given for a location in the mountains, only reached on a particular road, and the rider would be that the padrino himself had said that Father Demetrio should be called, not his curate. Simple to execute.