The women would be in one room. Teresa would bring them coffee and juice and they would sit with Mamma – who often fed the kid and might have been fond of him. The men would be in the room with the wide-screen television and the copy of Scarface. It was likely that the big man would be there now. The kid knew about the bunker: he had not been told but had realised where it was. Stefano came from the side of the house and greeted him. The kid thought Stefano took liberties, that he was over-familiar with the family – he didn’t understand why. The man had no blood link with them, and no skills other than driving.
The kid reported what he had been told at the farm, and asked what he should do now. He always looked for more work because that was how he would gain the family’s trust. There was a network of cousins and nephews, couriers who went to Gioia Tauro and were sent to the north, or Germany and Spain. One travelled twice each year to Venezuela, and two others went together once a year to Melbourne in Australia and Toronto in Canada. He thought that if he worked hard, the matter of his blood would be less important and the family would come to value him. The kid thought he might become a killer for the family, if he was trusted enough. He had been inside the house and had seen Marcantonio in the open-topped coffin, much of his face covered with white silk to hide the damage. He did not know what it would be like to kill. He felt no grief at the death of the old man’s grandson.
Stefano told him to keep watch at the back of the house with the dogs. There was always juice for him in the fridge in the kitchen and he was permitted to go inside and take it. He did so now, and the dogs crowded against his knees. He knew all the paths, tracks and footholds on the steep slopes behind the house.
They had come through the village. A maresciallo – pale face, rimless spectacles, and a well-pressed uniform – explained the geography of the village, where the priest lived with his housekeeper, the shopkeeper, the butcher, and the collector of any produce that could be taken to Locri vegetable market. At a shuttered building he had slowed and told the story of a dead pentito, a man who had been promised protection then denied it. He had served his purpose and was dumped as flotsam.
Carlo liked him – he thought he was at the level in the carabinieri where corruption, politics and watching your back were inappropriate. When they had come disguised as scenes-of-crime officers, they had been in the back of a van and had seen little. The village was a series of jerry-built homes; some had rusted scaffolding poles round them. Many had outside walls that were not yet rendered, the window frames held in position by daubed cement, without paint. There was a football pitch near to the school but ponies grazed on it, and two male goats, tall and haughty, were tethered near the centre circle. The place seemed to him to exude rank poverty, with one exception. He did not need to remark on the sort of cars that stood outside the unfinished buildings: Mercedes saloons, BMW coupés’ off-road Audis.
The maresciallo parked the jeep. They smoked and reflected . . . Carlo asked himself, What am I contributing? What is my good deed for the day? When did anyone here last change anything? He was glad he wasn’t required to give any answers. He did his job, didn’t he? Same as Fred and the Italian – same as an army of men and women low on the promotion ladder in Britain, Germany and Italy. No rubbish on the street, expensive cars. Men at the junctions, where rough tracks led to the olive groves, wore grubby trousers and shirts, cupped their fags and watched. A big place for watching. The maresciallo said he’d appreciate it if his guests stayed low-key; they were not to take photographs or produce their phones.
Two jeeps were across the road, parked to make a chicane. Their engines idled. Carlo and Fred were invited to get out and did so. The sun’s warmth flared back from the tarmac surface. Fifty or sixty yards ahead they could see an oil drum spewing smoke and half a dozen men. Carlo didn’t doubt that firearms were readily to hand, and pickaxe handles. He and Fred were watched, impassively or indifferently. Tomorrow there would be a funeral but they would not be there. The maresciallo would, and the spotters with their telescopic lenses, but Carlo and Fred would be on their way, excuses to stay exhausted. They were told the approximate area where the surveillance post was in place, and the assumption was made that the intruder – they called him the crociato, the crusader – was nearer to the building, lower on the hill.
What was he doing? Why was he still there? Fred said a compulsion drove him. ‘He was never been anywhere that is remotely a front line, never experienced close-quarters danger and may never have another opportunity to match this so he is reluctant to leave. What will he go back to? Driving a taxi? A factory bench? The work of a ledger clerk in an insurance company? Of course it is difficult for him to prise himself away from what he has here.’