The bird had woken him – his fingers must have fumbled when he set the alarm clock, which hadn’t roused him. And much would happen that day. He must be seen in his own home, scrutiny must be at its most intense and danger to his freedom constantly evaluated. He had made a list and briefed Giulietta on what was required of her.
So much to be completed that day – there always was when death came to a family – and other matters concerned him. So much to be done. The ceiling light flickered. It was newly installed – Stefano had done it – but it flickered. The annoyance fuelled his tiredness, but he couldn’t rest.
The pigs were the product of Italian Large White sows and a Calabrese boar, noted for their size and the quality of the meat they produced. Also on that small farm, high beyond the foothills and at the edge of the most remote mountain ridges, there were specimens of the locally bred Black Pig. Their owner farmed some seventy of them. They were valuable to him when the slaughter man came and also when requests of a different nature were made – which also paid well.
The few boars were kept apart, but the sows had areas, when not farrowing, where they foraged among the scrub and thin woodland. They seldom found enough to gorge themselves but had to search for food and stayed lean. It was said that the meat they provided was the finest in that small area of the region. They were never bloated, always hungry. At all hours, such was the reputation of the farm, customers called to be sold meat – fresh or smoked – and visited for other services.
The kid arrived on his scooter.
The reason for his visit had not been explained to him but there was an envelope in his hip pocket. He thought the place was as lonely as anywhere he had ever been in his short life. He rejoiced in the trust placed in him. He was two and a half years younger than Marcantonio and had been regarded as a shepherd – good with goats and dogs – until the grandson of the padrino had travelled to Berlin. The kid had not been outside Italy, or the Calabrian region, and had been over the Aspromonte to Reggio only once, with a school trip to the museum to see the bronzes. He parked the scooter, put it on its stand. Two men came from a hut away from the main house, where washing hung and smoke spilled from a chimney. One wore a rubber apron stained with blood. They eyed him.
He told them, stammering, who had sent him, produced the envelope and passed it to them. A hand was wiped on the seat of its owner’s trousers, then took the envelope. The man read what had been written on a small sheet of paper, then took from his pocket a cigarette lighter, set fire to the paper and held it until the flame was against his skin. Then he let it fall and ground his heel into it. What was asked of him would be ready, the kid was told. Nothing more.
Pigs were around him, big, comfortable and reassuring. They butted at his legs with their snouts and seemed no threat to him, broad enough for a child to ride on. He went back to his scooter, swung his leg across the saddle and fired it up. He started on the journey down the mountainside on the rough track. It was good to be trusted.
Massive concentration. Two men wholly focused. A plastic jar was held ready. The target was in front of them.
Fabio would respond first. His call, not Ciccio’s. They had been talking about their wives. They would be out by the end of the day – not allowed to call ahead, of course not, from the stake-out site, but they would ring home when the transport brought them to the barracks and after the debrief. It might be midnight or into the small hours. The job had wreaked havoc on his marriage, on any relationship, and the surveillance teams were flooded with guys trawling foreign dating sites. He and Ciccio were from the same town, Cittanova, and their parents’ homes were separated only by the park with the old trees in it, near to the war memorial and the school where they had been pupils. Fabio and Chiara never went back together to the town to see their families. She could; he could not. When he wanted to see his own parents a rendezvous had to be agreed in Cosenza or further north: he would don the disguise of a priest, or a crippled beggar, and all the time he’d watch for cars coming out of a steel-fronted gate. Chiara hated the job, and one day he’d have to choose. Fabio had the plastic jar, but it might be that he’d cede authority to Ciccio, who had the handkerchief.