Then Teresa was back, the children in her wake. She came running. Jago couldn’t understand why she wore smart clothes but lived in an out-of-the-way village. She might have had no life other than the visits he had seen her make to the house. But what did he know? The priest had backed away. Teresa was on the ground, holding her boy’s head and the world could hear her sobbing. Jago was a new man, unrecognisable to himself.
He did not regret having hurled the tyre iron. Neither was he triumphant. Other kids from school had supported West Ham, and in the City several of his colleagues had raved about Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur or Arsenal. When there was a ‘result’ the excitement was electric. It seemed to Jago that the death of a juvenile crime boss, groomed for high levels of violence, corruption and extortion, should have stacked higher than a goal scored on a September afternoon. He had felt no need to clench his fist and celebrate the moment. He felt very little. He had presided over a killing and now considered that what he had done was nothing special. That was why he was new and unrecognisable to himself.
He often walked from Stresemannstrasse towards the old Gestapo house, then along Niederkirchner-strasse. The pavement ran beside a wall behind which there had been the holding cells from which men and women were taken for interrogation or execution. He imagined that the men who inflicted pain or killed others would have gone home at the end of a day’s work and played with the kids, had a beer or shagged the wife. Similar men had tortured, then killed the remembered martyrs of St Bonaventure’s heritage – the Blessed Henry Heath, Arthur Bell and John Forest. He felt neither better nor worse for it.
Now Giulietta appeared, the handyman behind her. He took off his flat cap. She stood back and did not howl like the old woman’s or the boy’s mother. She stood tall and said a prayer – Jago saw her lips move – then crossed herself. He thought she wouldn’t have wanted to hold the shattered head under the tea-towel for fear it would stain her blouse.
Would the grandfather come, the old man? Had he been told? Plenty to watch, much to wait for.
The phone rang beside his bed. He reached for it, knocking away his spectacles. When he was younger there might have been a Beretta automatic pistol there, but his career had supposedly prospered and now he warranted a security detail. He had no personal firearm within arm’s reach.
The prosecutor answered it, and listened. He was told what was known.
The call came from the barracks at Locri. The duty officer had first referred the news of the death by gunshot – as relayed by a parish priest – to the operations centre in the region’s capital city, Reggio Calabria, but had been directed to call the prosecutor in person. He sat in his pyjamas on the side of the bed, his paunch hanging over the cord. His top was open and his wife massaged the knot of muscle at the back of his neck as he was briefed on what little information was available. Was an ambulance present, with paramedics? They had been refused entry by men blocking the track to the family’s residence, but the priest had confirmed death. No pulse, and half of the skull had been removed.
Were investigators present and had there yet been qualified examination of the location? Not yet. The priest had been told that the discharge of the shotgun was ‘accidental’. He considered, but took little time over it. A little sunlight came into the bedroom to play on the sheets and his wife’s hair. One of the children was at the door, woken by the phone, and he heard his car start outside, as his boys always did when there was a dawn call and they might be leaving in a hurry. He remembered the faces, expressions, sneers, of the families when a man was taken, the lingering hostility he could feel in the glares from the gallery when he appeared in court and worked towards a conviction. He recalled the arrogance of the men, who were punctilious in their politeness, and would have ordered his killing if it had suited them. And the loathing of the women, whose faces contorted with hatred for him.
‘Get there. Put a team in,’ he rasped into the phone. ‘Turn the place over. Look for the old man, any sign of him. It’s a gift from Heaven. Don’t waste it.’ The caller from Locri put in another request for guidance. The prosecutor barely considered the answer, agreed to it – an irrelevance.