Marcantonio had never had any quarrel with Father Demetrio. His grandmother almost worshipped the ground on which Father Demetrio walked.
He would gain nothing from the killing, but his grandfather believed it necessary for his own safety. It tossed in his mind and his concentration on the noises of the night slackened. He barely noticed that the dogs were restless, or cold. Instead he saw the smile on the priest’s face, the steepest cliff on a bend in the road towards the village of Molochio, beyond Plati. He saw the car bounce and jump, roll and disintegrate. It was impossible to refuse, and the burden of it distracted him.
‘It’s not worth what you’re doing to yourself,’ his wife said, and sat up on her side of the bed.
The prosecutor was late home again. He slumped on to the bed and bent to take off his shoes. He had explained little to her but she was familiar with the script. She had been asleep, had woken up and now vented her feelings.
‘You put your work before yourself, your health and me. You ignore the children. The job is a monster.’
He stood up. He put the shoes neatly into the bottom of the wardrobe. He didn’t look at her. He slipped off his trousers and put them on a hanger. He padded towards the bathroom. He had come quietly into the house but the slamming of the car doors might have woken her. Usually she suppressed her feelings – not that night.
‘The work is killing you. You get no thanks – and you can’t win. God knows, we try to support you, but there’s a limit.’
She had left a plate for him on the kitchen table – cheese, an apple and some ham under cling-film. He had said to his escort that he had no appetite.
‘If we have any life at all it’s like a stray dog’s – shunned, fearful, desperate for love and not finding it.’
In the bathroom he dumped his underwear in the laundry basket, then brushed his teeth hard. He saw himself in the mirror, bags below his eyes, which had the haunted dullness of failure. He couldn’t have argued with a word she had said. What hurt most was that the boys in the escort would have heard it all. Normally he and his wife made a pretence of harmony. He and his team had come from an expensive restaurant, above the city. A dinner had been in progress, a family party to celebrate a birthday, and an officer of the Squadra Mobile had been a principal guest. He had sat in the back of the car, smoked half a packet of cigarettes, drunk two bottles of water, gone behind flowering oleanders to relieve himself and waited for the policeman to come and speak to him. The delay might have been because the officer had received a call from a carabinieri colonel.
The two men had paced in the car park. His own people had carried their machine pistols openly and had sanitised the perimeter. He was not refused help from the Squadra Mobile – a blunt denial would have been unthinkable. Anyone who dealt with the Palace of Justice had the attuned antennae that enabled them to recognise whose star climbed and whose was barely seen. Of course he could count on co-operation, but . . . The sort of mission that required a substantial search team, and another deployed for cordon security, couldn’t be plucked from the skies. The prosecutor had been promised that a planning team would be put together when the necessary officers were available. They would be tasked to draw up a comprehensive plan for the containment of, and hunt for, a fugitive. It would be – why not? – a priority. Music had spilled out through the restaurant doors. He had thanked the man brusquely and walked back towards his car. He had muttered, and his guards would have heard him, ‘A priority – for when? Christmas?’ The clock was ticking and time was running out. They had come home.
‘Why are you spending so much time on this case? Can’t you make a start on another? Is it the only fish in the sea? Calabria is awash with corrupt, evil men.’
She was crying. He was in his pyjamas. He crawled into bed and switched off the light. She shivered. He thought they shared the pain. He was loath to move on and let the investigation slide. He would suffer if he did, and no colleague would share the pain. And there was the Englishman . . . A pleasant-looking lad, from the employee identification-card picture . . . No, he was irrelevant, as were the men who had come to apologise. He might sleep, might not.