At home his wife would be setting out breakfast for herself and the children. He had rarely talked to her about his work, but today she had given her opinion, then sunk back into the pillows.
He took the Scorpion Fly files from the shelf where they had been untidily wedged, and made certain that the strings binding them were fastened securely, carried them to the appropriate cupboard and opened it. A sight well known to any Italian government servant confronted him: layer upon layer of paper. A near lifetime’s work was in front of him, crazily organised, the successes and failures of his career. Successes against ’Ndrangheta? A few – not many, but some. At that moment, he could have wallowed in the self-pity that had governed him over the last several days, or he could have flicked through the pages of those that had produced better results. One detailed the investigation, under his leadership, that had convicted Rocco and Domenico from that family of adders. It might have been labelled ‘success’, but their convictions had been based on the testimony of a turncoat, a pentito. They had not been able to safeguard the wretch’s life: the man was barely cold in his newly dug grave. Did he and others at the Palace of Justice care sufficiently about the men and women who came forward, putting their lives on the line, to testify? He doubted it. He heaved the file into the cupboard and shut the door.
A new file welcomed the prosecutor. There were similar cupboards in every ministry of central and local government, in courthouses and police buildings – anywhere bureaucracy ruled: agriculture and forestry, tax, VAT and Customs, health, utilities . . . the Italian curse. The new file was slim; the family was based in Monasterace.
The Greek colonists had been to Monasterace and had called their settlement Caulonia. The town was built on a hilltop, once fortified, and holidaymakers came in the summer to use the beach and the marina. The case would involve alleged murder, extortion, narcotics trafficking, the sale of military weapons. Only the names would be different. Next week he would go there to walk on the esplanade by the marina, then drive up the hill into the town and stroll in the narrow medieval streets, sniff the air and test the atmosphere. He would regain the keen sense of the hunt that he had last felt when he had first gone to the village in the foothills of the mountains where the padrino, Bernardo Cancello, held court. He lit another cigarette, sat at his desk and thought they were mocking him. Sheets of paper, held together with string and cheap cardboard, surveillance photographs, a few witness statements: all mocked him. Freedom was short-lived. The ache in his mind returned.
The family were laughing at him, and Scorpion Fly was in its last hours. It was a failure. What else could he do?
When she stretched, her bones and joints creaked, the sound of branches cracking. She had food and water, but Consolata didn’t eat or drink. Her back against a tree, knees hard up against her chest, she had slept after a fashion. In the distance a cockerel had crowed. Above her, birds had flapped and called, the wind had sung in the trees and a church bell had chimed, but she had been alone in a pit of misery. Above all she was insulted. The dent to her pride hurt more than rejection.
A punch or a kick would have been easier to bear. She might have kept some of her dignity if she had turned on her heel, left the wood, found the car and headed home, but she had reached for him and he had pushed her away. He had said nothing, just indicated that she was surplus to his requirements.
Consolata knew what she should have done. She had waited throughout the day, having convinced herself he would come back, then through the night. She had woken, expecting him to be sitting opposite, watching her. Consolata would go to look for him. She would find him on the hillside, slap his face, then hold him hard and . . . She stretched fiercely. She was from the city, the streets of Archi, and all she knew of the countryside was what a lover had taught her.
She would go slowly. How would she find him? She didn’t know.
The kid came back.
There were carabinieri further down the track, on the far side of the men who kept the oil drum burning through the night. They monitored who came to the padrino’s house. Many were allowed through that morning, and all would have been photographed discreetly by the carabinieri.
His scooter tyres sprayed gravel when he turned sharply.