‘You’ve finished here – you’ve done what you came for. What’s the matter, Jago?’
He could have told her what he had finished and what he had yet to do. He could have spoken of the freshly washed sheets, which had been left on the line during the storm, and how a new cable ran in a shallow trench from the back of the house to a building that was semi-derelict. He could have told her about the death of a wolf – could have sat her down beside him and talked for an hour. He had seen so much, and there was still much to do. He supposed he should have thanked her for driving across the Aspromonte, but he said nothing.
‘You have finished, haven’t you? What else?’
He ate another sandwich and finished the water in the bottle. He started to dress. Clean underwear, fresh socks and a shirt, then eased back into his jeans and pulled the laces tight on the trainers. A light fleece over his body, then the camouflage coat. He collected up the sandwich wrappings, and the empty bottle, then bagged them with the food he hadn’t eaten. His dirty clothes went into the second bag, he gestured for her to dump them. It would have been the same if she had asked about his rucksack – it was of no further use to him. She dressed, clumsily, her eyes blazing but moist. He had needed the dry clothing and the sandwiches, which would last him for the time remaining: not long, two nights under the great boulders where he looked down on the sheets and knew where the join was in the freshly buried cable. A brief smile. It was the smile that a man might give a woman he had sat beside on a bus from Clerkenwell to the City. Uninvolved, strangers passing. No kiss, no handshake, but he let her look into his eyes for whatever she might find. She stared at him, still half dressed.
Jago slipped away, watching the ground where his feet would land. He didn’t turn or wave.
Bernardo held court.
It was a continuation of his promenade around the fruit and vegetable market, but now he was at home, and the postman’s uniform had been returned to its owner. In his kitchen, the blinds lowered, old men had gathered around the table. Some were more important, more influential than him, and others ran lesser clans.
Their presence showed respect for him.
Outside the front door there was a line of cars, models from the Fiat, Lancia and Alfa production lines that were now discontinued. The men were all of an earlier generation. Their own sons had demanded greater affluence, flaunted wealth, and were either in maximum-security prisons, dead or in hiding abroad. Their grandsons either wore fashionable clothes, drove fast cars and behaved with a stereotypical recklessness or had enrolled on a business-studies course. The men who had come to visit Bernardo had one thing in common: they were as much at ease in dealing with a consignment valued at a hundred million American dollars as they were in resolving a dispute in the village where they lived. An altercation might involve a perceived verbal slight, the location of a market stall or the breaking off of an engagement between a foot-soldier and a man of honour’s daughter. A peasant who worked in the olive groves might have an old pushbike stolen: he would expect his padrino to identify the thief, retrieve the bicycle and punish. The power of the leader was total. They did not like, individually or collectively, to hand down a sentence of death and order its execution, which attracted unwelcome attention, but would do so if challenged or betrayed.
Now they drank sparingly, wine, coffee, locally made brandy and water, and did not press Bernardo on his future or quiz him on the role his daughter would play. Long silences featured. The language was the dialect of those mountain slopes: something of the ancient Greek settlers and something of old links with Albanian seafarers. A carabinieri officer from Rome or Milan – headphones clamped tight on his ears – would understand no more than one word in ten.
Stefano would be outside, and would have brought out jugs of lemonade and plastic cups for the drivers and bodyguards. All of the old men headed families, and the extent of their power, if based on terms of commercial turnover, would have exceeded a billion American dollars each year, if their interests in the region, in Italy and across Europe were put together. Their politeness was marked, but they watched him.