Later, at home, the major personalities from Locri and the foothills where his village was would come to pay their respects to him and Mamma. He had no friends in whom he confided, to whom he let slip his worries or to whom he crowed about successes. He had allies and associates, but no friends. That morning he had used, at Giulietta’s prompting, a new method of leaving home.
Giulietta had walked down the track to Teresa’s villa and borrowed her car. Beppe, once a postman in the village and semi-retired, still wore his old uniform each day and always brought the mail – usually tax demands – on foot to the house. Beppe sat in the kitchen and Mamma give him lunch, breakfast or coffee. Bernardo put on the postal uniform, pulled the cap well down on his forehead, took the sack and swung it over his shoulder, then walked back down the track, where Giulietta picked him up. A change of clothes behind a cow byre – another of Giulietta’s ideas.
The sun beat down on him as he left the market.
She said, ‘Not long now, Papa. What else do you want to do?’
‘We shouldn’t waste time, but I’d like to see the sea, be close to it.’
‘Have you any idea what we’re here for now?’ They were on the beach.
The excitement of the early morning had dissipated. Carlo thought he had seen a lens flash in the sun’s brightness, and Fred thought it odd that the washing had been left out overnight – ‘No one with a cadaver in the backyard is going to go out at first light with a mouthful of pegs.’ Fred reckoned his colleague had an itch that needed scratching. He carried his trunks and his towel, rolled together. He couldn’t even begin to estimate what sort of payback might be called in at some time in the future for the help given them. He had sensed a failure in morale, a cliff-edge drop in confidence, among the men he had been alongside when he had made two visits to Calabria and been embedded. He thought the mood worse now than when he had first come nine years ago, and when he had been back three and a half years previously.
He didn’t answer – Fred was rarely short of words. Which was why Carlo’s itch needed scratching. He wanted a response to ‘Why?’ It was the fourth time he had asked the question which had gone unanswered. It was not a pretty beach and now contained too much debris from the storm. It was unlikely that it would be cleaned before the following spring when the tourists came back. The water would be too cold to swim, but better than the Baltic. The banker boy was up on that slope. Where the lens might have flashed but there would have been a covert team in position there, with a chance to scoot out, but the backup would have been closer. Did he feel responsible for the girl who had been scarred for life? That was what happened, and the boy who had done it had lost his life that morning: was that a fair return? Fred was unsettled because answers should have come easily, and it annoyed him that they didn’t. Why were they there?
Carlo said, ‘I suppose I want – not that I’d admit it anywhere close to where I work – to help. I’d like to support the people, at the end of the chain, shield them against what’s around them. That’s narcotics, kids being trafficked, extortion, so that the little money they have is bled out of them, the corruption that means they have to pay a pizzo, a bribe. Anything I can do that puts some or all of that family into gaol, I’m in support of it. A guy turns up and isn’t governed by endless regulations, well, I can criticise him to my superiors. Out of earshot, I’ll cheer him on. If I said as much, and was heard, I’d be sacked. My feet wouldn’t touch the ground – I’d be down the stairs on my backside. Why am I here? Because I’m rooting for that young man. He’s a fool, and should be well clear of there by now, on the road and into the airport soonest . . . I have a bad feeling, Fred, and there’s not much I can do about it. I reckon he’ll want to hang around, think himself invincible. I’m saying we do what we can. We don’t get in line and wait for citations to be read out, but we contribute if possible, then head off back to our tidy little desks. No one, thank the Lord, knows our names. How’s that?’
‘Have you finished?’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have started. I’m trying to say that he’s gone rogue in a hostile environment.’
‘Difficult world out there . . .’
‘Sorry to have spoiled the walk.’
Fred let his hand rest on Carlo’s arm. They had nothing in common except the confused feeling about what was ‘right’ and what was ‘wrong’. It was as if they were bumping around in a darkened room, a brotherhood. He thought of where they were, of the great history of the beach and the town that flanked it, the marvel of the Greek civilisation that had been there millennia before, the artefacts that remained, their writings and sophistication, then of the people who cared nothing for that heritage, polluted it with toxins and ran the cocaine trade. He kicked at the sand. He was only an investigator.
An old man was watching them from close to a statue, a younger woman beside him. When he looked again, they had gone.
It would be good to swim.