Jago Browne was where he wanted to be, not in an air-conditioned office, not in front of a bank of screens, not looking up to see the big TV suspended from the ceiling that carried information from Bloomberg and CNBC, not wearing a suit and impressing a client who had made millions, not pounding on a bike in a gym or running on a treadmill. He thought the place raw, fresh, and felt no fear. He had a sense that it was where he belonged, and lingered for a few seconds, then was gone. There was still work to be done, more challenges in front of him.
He eased away, left the chickens disappointed. He went back past the shed with the broken window frame and sagging door, the stone wall, and the slope where the soil and stones were different and fewer weeds grew. There, Jago strained to hear a sound – evidence of his work – but heard nothing. He began to climb. As he went up small cliffs, traversed little gullies, and tried to find the ledges for his feet, he thought himself most vulnerable. His eyes were inches from rocks and foliage and he was unable to twist his neck to see what was behind him – the women from the house, or the kid and the dogs could have crept up behind him to snatch him when he could not defend himself. He went on until he thought himself out of sight of the kitchen door. Then he rested.
Jago had seen Consolata. Her appearance and capture had not involved him. He had seen Marcantonio, with the raised shotgun and the wounded wolf, and had hurled the tyre iron, then had seen the flash of light and smoke spurt from the barrel but had felt no involvement. Life and death moved on, and he went with the flow. He moved, did not rush to be back at the road and looking for a ride out. He had no torch, just his fingers to help him.
Dusk hurried on him, and the colours around him greyed. He blundered onto it. He thought that once, long ago, it might have been a man-made path – there were places where the slope had been cut away and it was level. It was narrow, wide enough only for one person, and wove around the bigger rocks. For the first fifty yards or so, he would have been in deep cover, hidden from the house and the yard. Not what he wanted: he had to see the shed, the sheets, the door and the yard.
There was a rock beside the path.
He could lever himself to the top by taking hold of a birch sapling and dragging himself up. He lurched onto it and looked down, panting. Deep tiredness gripped him. He lay on the rock and thought of the squat castle keep perched on the summit of the mass at Scilla, which dominated the beach below. He was rewarded. He had a gap between trees and foliage to peer through, a vantage point. He had a good view, better than the one from the cleft under the two boulders, from the shed to the kitchen door.
And what Jago couldn’t see, he could imagine.
Pitch darkness. He couldn’t see his hand.
He was off the bed. There were power cuts often enough in the winter when the storms came in off the Ionian Sea and when the poles carrying the electricity were undermined by subsidence, or when trees came down on the lines. Usually, then, there was warning – the power would go, come back, go again. This time there had been none.
He was Bernardo Cancello. He was the padrino of his cosca. He had authority over the village and responsibility for events far beyond it. If there was a power cut, the first house in the village to have its electricity restored would be his . . . but he had never been in the bunker when the power had failed, always in the house. Mamma knew where everything for such an emergency was kept.
The blackness was total.
His leg was bleeding. He could feel the moisture on his skin and the wound smarted. He had come off the bed and had not thought where he was going or where the torch was, but had stood, taken a step forward – a blind man – and hit a chair, scraping his shin against it. He hadn’t bled since he and Stefano had changed a tyre on the City-Van. The jack had slipped and he had caught his hand on the mudguard. He had blamed Stefano, cuffed him hard and . . . He didn’t know what to do. The power was never off for long unless there was a massive storm, as there had been three or four days ago. Then there had been no cut, not even a flickering of the lights.