Carlo was swaying on his feet, suffering. Fred prodded him.
‘I was reflecting, my friend, on my senior officer’s view of this affair. And you?’
‘I was about asleep on my feet. My gold commander will be with a chum on a golf course. I won’t figure among the bogies.’
‘And nothing’s happening.’
‘My experience,’ Carlo said, ‘is that when nothing seems to be happening, all hell is about to break loose. Remind me to tell you a few old tales that prove it. It’s confusing, sudden, chaotic and . . .’
Fred was no longer listening. The maresciallo was peering through his binoculars, not scanning and searching but focused and following. He slipped them towards Fred and pointed. Fred locked on the kid. Dogs barked far away, the sound they made when they’d found a scent or a target. The kid followed them, skipped between rocks, then was lost among trees that towered up behind the house. He was above the line of sheets to the right of the house. The binoculars were taken from him. He asked the maresciallo what his orders were. His response: to observe, monitor and have a presence, no more, until dusk. In the evening there would be a farewell gathering.
‘Confusing, sudden and chaotic’: when was it ever different? Where was their boy? Why was he there? When would he appear? The mood had changed, as if the sun had cooled. The lenses watched the hillside.
She drove well and was calm. The priest led and she followed on the Reggio road, past the Montalto turning, and past the place they called Serro Juncari. Her father liked to talk about it. He had not been there but her grandfather had. A great meeting of important men held in secret one misty morning on a high plateau, hidden from view by wild pine trees. An informer had betrayed them: carabinieri had crept close and attempted a mass arrest. Her grandfather had escaped but many had not. Those captured had spent a short time in the San Pietro gaol in Reggio. The combination of political influence, judicial complicity and well-targeted envelopes had ensured that life soon, in the mountains, regained normality. The role of the informer had hurt the families, the whispers of the soffiato; different from a pentito, more dangerous. The latter ended up in a police cell, then called for a prosecutor and appeared in court. The damage could be contained. The soffiato was the murmur in the wind, unknown and unsuspected, probably liked and certainly trusted. The leeching of information went on over months and even years; the details of arrests were muddied at the Palace of Justice and the role of the informer was hidden. When her father had used the word – soffiato – he had spat.
Her father thought that Father Demetrio, booked to conduct the funeral of Marcantonio the next day, might be about to betray the family. Good enough for her. She trailed the priest towards Reggio, staying two or three vehicles back. She had lost any opportunity to drive him off the road. It was against her leg, hidden from view.
If the Beretta was needed, and the chance came, she was experienced in its use.
Shaken, but more determined, Father Demetrio crossed a high point and could see the city below. A group of men and women were spread out close to the road, standing behind telescopes and tripods. He identified them as a group of the foreign birdwatchers who came to Reggio to monitor migrating species. They straggled along ground left rough after road widening, and would have been half suffocated by vehicle fumes. He had read about them in a newspaper: they complained persistently about the old sport of shooting as practised in Calabria. Enough. Calabrians did not need foreigners to dictate their behaviour. It should be done from within. The future was in the hands of persons such as himself, and conscience tore at him, leading him towards his ultimate destination that day. He saw the city and the brilliant blue of the sea, the hazy outline of Sicily and the massive shape of Etna, capped with a wisp of thick cloud. He was looking for the piazza that lay in front of the Duomo, his destination.
He left the bird watchers behind. The road dropped ahead of him. His hands shook and his leg muscles were wire tight. He glanced into the rear-view mirror several times but he didn’t see the black vehicle again.
He drove down the steep, winding hill and accepted that his life had changed.