She told him about the Englishman.
Bernardo let rip his feelings. He swore, flooding the small area with obscenities. Her eyes seemed to say that he belittled himself. The man, meeting overseas policemen in the place where she had been to visit him, had insulted him grievously. He had never met him, had never seen a photograph of him. He had only the recommendation of an English lawyer living in a housing development up the coast from Brancaleone. He condemned the man. It was to pass sentence on an individual he didn’t know. She told him that the matter was safe in her hands. He raised the question of the priest. She would think about it. He sensed the passing of power: the shift from nephew to aunt. All his life he had never been dependent on any one person, not his father, his uncles, his brothers or Mamma. She should think urgently about the priest. And how much longer was he to be shut away under the earth, recycled air to breathe, a proper wash every two days? How much longer? She told him what the clerk had said. Another twenty-four hours maximum, and the pressure of close investigation would be lifted, resources moved and he would have something of his freedom. He asked her opinion: had Marcantonio brought the possibility of ruin on them, the scratched vehicles, or was it his imagination? Was there danger? Were they threatened, or safe?
She told him she didn’t know. Then she was gone and he was alone again. He sat, his head in his hands, but his eyes were dry.
There had been negotiations, which Jago had witnessed.
A uniformed carabinieri officer had come forward. The man who had held the assault rifle – it had gone – spoke for the family. Jago assumed that ‘respect’ was called for. The old woman remained in her chair and refused to meet the officer’s eyes, and Teresa was still on her knees. Her children had been escorted away. The men kept a perimeter around the body.
Jago wondered how the officer felt to find himself in the den of an organised-crime family, studying the body of a juvenile criminal whose offences went beyond delinquency. Other movements had attracted Jago’s eye. ‘Follow the money’ was the diktat of the fraud investigators: his was ‘Follow Giulietta, the daughter.’ He had seen the direction she had gone, past where the cable had been exposed. He thought himself clever. He would wait for an opportunity.
The negotiations were over.
The officer had departed. An ambulance was now coming up the track from the village. In its wake were two all-terrain long-wheel-base vehicles in carabinieri colours. Teresa was eased aside by other women. The principal mourner was helped up from her chair. The women, family and spectators, backed towards the kitchen door. A man and a woman crew, neither looking comfortable, came towards the body from the ambulance. They were ringed by the village men, and the handyman was there but stayed back. Jago saw, too, the kid who drove the scooter and handled the dogs. The tea-towel was lifted away. The woman paramedic gulped and sat back on her haunches. Her colleague felt at the neck for a pulse, then shook his head. They had a collapsible stretcher, but were waved away: the scene-of-crime team, after a fashion, took over. The shotgun was bagged in a plastic sack. The tea-towel was removed and they took photographs. The uniforms kept back, leaving the area around the body to the forensics team. They were dressed in brilliant white coveralls, their faces hidden, and Jago wondered how their breath might contaminate the yard. They seemed to take few samples. They were not given the tyre iron.
The wolf carcass was dragged out and examined. It was noted that there was already a considerable wound behind the creature’s right shoulder and pellets in the chest and face. They spent time examining the eyes.