She turned, called, seemed almost to stamp her foot in impatience. She waited, perhaps half a minute. The birds chorused and a strange fly danced on the rock in front of him – wide-winged, camouflage colours, with a tail that suggested it might sting. The pigeons and crows were stirring above him, and the dogs followed her, close to her legs. She was by the chair she had sat on when the boy’s life had bled away on the uneven concrete. She was only a few yards from where she had kicked the head of the injured wolf. She had not cried then, or shivered in grief. Her composure had been iron strong. He knew it was the start of the last day and was glad.
The handyman came to her and she cuffed him behind the ears. Jago saw it. He wasn’t sure if it was offensive or friendly. A familiarity, but it had hurt the man – his head had flipped sideways. He was given the sheets. The ritual began. He unfastened the old ones from the line and folded them over his arm. He lifted the one handed to him and pegged it, checked the length so that the hem hung within a centimetre of the pathway. She hovered near to him, approved or made him adjust the peg. It was good that it was the last day, near the end. Jago was calm.
At this time of the morning, the old man would have gone with the bucket, water bottles and food to the cave. There had been a child – Jago knew because he had seen the dress – a prisoner, with a chain to hold her. The cave had been abandoned and the evidence left where it was. He assumed the child had died. He could judge her age from the size of the dress. He remembered himself at that age, a kid in Canning Town, not yet at St Bonaventure’s. The streets around his home had been a kind of a jungle, but he had not been chained in darkness, alone and drifting towards death. At this time of day, the child would have heard the soft brush of footsteps on the ground – it might have lasted days or weeks, even months, and each morning the man would have come before the sun was up. He might have spoken and might not; he might have hit the child if she screamed and might not.
Those thoughts left Jago confused, so he moved on. He found new points on which to concentrate. The fly had deserted him. He would have liked something to eat, but could go without for a few hours longer. There was no warmth yet in the sun but the sky brightened slowly, the grey was softer and the haze thicker beyond the house and the small City-Van. Down the track and towards the slight bend the men had their fire in an oil drum. He had seen nothing unusual.
He was trained to observe clients, and credited with the knack of understanding their moods. The FrauBoss might talk to them and engage their attention while he watched and evaluated. They would find excuses for moments together out of earshot: most likely the client would need a comfort break or they would go to make coffee or bring fresh water. He would advise: a business approach, calculated and without eye contact, but with reference to the performance pamphlets. A softer approach to the client, a smile, understanding of what was needed, and empathy. He couldn’t read the old woman, and didn’t know how to interpret the smack she had given the handyman.
The sheets were up. He assumed that Bernardo would now return to the bunker – lit, heated, served by the cable that had been reburied, the join where the third sheet met the fourth – after a night in his own bed.
He thought it would be a busy day at the house because of the body.
Bernardo lay on his bed, facing the bright strip ceiling light.
He had been careless, which annoyed him. He had spent the night keeping vigil beside the open coffin, had stayed there after the old men had driven back to their own villages or down the hill to Locri. He had stayed too long. The men of the cacciatori team pulled victims from their beds at dawn. It was easier then for them to secure a building, and easier for the helicopter to make a safe landing. A target of importance, such as himself, would have warranted a helicopter flight – in handcuffs – to the barracks in Reggio on the far side of the mountains. He should have moved an hour earlier. Had they come, he would have been trapped in the old bed where he had been conceived and born, where he had made his sons and daughter – then given minutes to dress, yesterday’s shirt, socks and underpants, and spirited out. If it had happened he could have guaranteed he would not die in that bed. The end for Bernardo would have come in a prison cell, or a guarded room in a public hospital, a chain holding his ankle to the bed frame. He had overslept. They might well come that day. The clerk at the Palace of Justice was the provider of much information – all of it proving genuine. He was a necessity on the payroll but cheap: a hundred euros a week. But he would not have known whether a last-resort raid was to be launched. Bernardo shivered. Tomorrow would be different. He had the clerk’s guarantees that, as matters stood, the surveillance would be lifted and the file slid onto a high shelf to be forgotten.
He shivered because he had overslept after the long night with the open coffin.