The light was on. He heard the whine of the air-conditioner, the hum of the refrigerator and the regular drip of condensation. It would soon be the start of an important day for him, for Giulietta, for Marcantonio. A grim smile. In vest and underpants, he padded towards the basin where his toothbrush was and his shaver. He would not go back to sleep. He would watch something on television. It would be an important day for his daughter, his grandson and for Father Demetrio, who had been his friend. He took no pleasure from what would happen that day to the priest, nor any sadness. After Giulietta had been to Brancaleone she would go for her weekly rendezvous with the clerk from the Palace of Justice in Reggio. She would meet him near the uppermost peaks of Montalto, and he would tell her the latest developments. Bernardo’s privation in the bunker was nearing its end and she would bring confirmation of it. But first she would go to Brancaleone.
He used to go to Brancaleone every Thursday afternoon. He smiled to himself. Peering into the mirror he saw his ravaged old face crack in the lines of his smile. It was a private moment. Sometimes – not often – he went on a Tuesday afternoon as well. A fine woman. She had made him laugh, and almost made him fall in love. A woman who had lived for three and a half years in Brancaleone in an apartment that he had paid for in cash and overlooked the beach. She had summoned the courage to deliver an ultimatum. She had called a halt to their relationship because he would not divorce his wife. To separate legally from Mamma, to marry again, was impossible. It would have broken a relationship of convenience with a family from Locri, and he did good business with that family. It was an alliance of substance. That woman now lived in Sicily. It had happened a long time ago, when Giulietta was a child.
He had not flaunted her, had maintained the greatest discretion, had never embarrassed Mamma, had never told anyone: a lawyer from Milan had handled the purchase of the apartment. When he went, less often now, to Brancaleone he always looked for the apartment and the balcony, expecting to see her . . .
A busy day ahead. Excitement still stirred in him at the thought of a killing done in his name.
Stefano had been out for a half-hour and had used his time well. He had polished the interior of the City-Van, using a spray on the plastic, then working at it with a cloth, and had brought out a stiff brush to clean the seat on which she would sit. He loved Giulietta alone among the family.
She came out of the house wearing a smart suit and carrying a lightweight briefcase, which would be for effect only and was probably empty. He heard the drone of the scooter and the kid’s lights powered up the track. He might have been her father. For that he would have been killed – not pleasantly. But the risk had fuelled the thrill.
It had not happened often, in days long past, often when the heat was suffocating and the padrino was away for a day’s discussion with allies. There would have been lemonade on the kitchen table. Mamma had begun it. He would not have dared to. Surprisingly, she was tender. Stefano would sit on a hard chair and she would pour the lemonade, then crouch over him, unbutton his fly, and put the rubber on him. Then she would hitch up her skirt and lower herself onto him. If the padrino had known, Stefano’s death would have been nightmarish, and his corpse would never have been found. Would Mamma have survived? He had seen the family’s reaction when the scandal of Annunziata’s affairs became known – and she had refused to follow the constraints of the vedova bianca. Slow, exquisite lovemaking. She’d had a sensitivity that he doubted she ever offered to her husband. A hot day, no wind, sweating from outside work, and the supply of condoms had run short. They had done it, and that night, after his return, she had given herself eagerly, as she told it, to her husband and had not made him withdraw. The dates matched. There was a chance that Giulietta was Stefano’s, and a chance that she was not. It was many years since he had been with Mamma, on the chair by the kitchen table, and now she touched him only rarely with a little gesture of shared intimacy.
He spoke briefly to the kid, and they checked their phones. The scooter went and its lights caught the men who were down the lane, watching – close enough, if called.
He opened the door for Giulietta. He had used a scent spray in the car so that she would not be put off by the smell of old oil and accumulated sweat. He thought it good that she was going to meet the Englishman early: she would catch him when his concentration was lowest and do the best deal. It was unusual, in an ’Ndrangheta family, for a woman to play such a part. He thought she did it well – better than the little shit, Marcantonio. She might have been his daughter but Stefano was not over-familiar with her. She sat on the cleaned seat, thanked him absently, and he closed the door for her. His phone did not trill so the road ahead would be clear.
He pulled away. He heard the cockerel crowing and wondered how much longer Marcantonio would sit in the yard with the shotgun, and what legacy the little shit had left them. He wondered how the day would eke out – and why a man would come so far and risk so much to end up with parallel scratched lines on a worthless vehicle. He assumed that by now he would have gone back to where he had come from.
He set off for Brancaleone, the coast and saw, in the distance, the first smear of dawn.