He had fallen over. His head had caught on the table where the TV sat. Blood ran from his nose. He hadn’t found the torch, the matches or the candles. The nightmare played out. When he had been with the other older men Bernardo had shown, he thought, composure and dignity in the face of disaster. The loss of his heir had weakened him, left him adrift. He had met their eyes as they observed him, searching for signs of a loss of willpower. Not now.
He howled. He had found the door and tried to open it, but had failed. He was trapped, like a man laid in a coffin who recovers his senses and can hear the blows as the lid is nailed down but cannot move or make himself heard. He was on the floor, on thin carpet, and he screamed towards the ceiling. Nobody was listening and his voice was hoarse. Mamma wouldn’t come – she never did. Stefano would, but he’d gone to the place where the pigs were bred. Giulietta was tracking the priest, the bastard Demetrio, whom he had identified as a traitor. The kid, who was around the house, did not know the workings of the bunker. Marcantonio did, but he was cold in a box on trestles. His nose bled freely. The shouts had become a scream. An old man’s call, pathetic.
No one came. He couldn’t see his hand. When he moved he hit himself. Each movement seemed to Bernardo to show his growing weakness.
When the child had been in the cave, at the start, they had left a candle to burn during the night in a jar that had once held jam. They had come one morning and it had toppled over. The flame had scorched part of the bedding. If it had caught seriously alight, the child might have been burned alive. She could not have escaped from the flames because the chain secured her leg to the wall at the back of the cave. They had not lit it again. The child had been left in darkness. It would have been the same total darkness in the cave as it was now in the converted container. No glow from distant streetlights or car headlights. No light. The child would have cowered on the bedding they’d brought her. He was as frightened as the child would have been.
He had watched on the television in the kitchen – many years before – a programme made by the RAI featuring the ‘kidnap industry’, as they had called it. The parents had been interviewed. The father had said a few words, tears streaming down his face, but the mother had cursed him: the money had been paid six months or more after the child had been buried on the hillside, higher than the cave. The mother had hurled abuse at them because the money had been paid and the child had not been returned. Then he had been unmoved by her voice. All had changed now.
His voice was failing so his cries were weaker. No one came. He went unheard. The blood dribbled from his nose and he lay on the floor.
It involved a man he had never met. Jago Browne thought he knew how it would play out. He felt strong.
There had been shouting and Jago assumed there was a vent near to him, for fresh air, that the noises from inside the bunker were funnelled up to him. They had started as inconsistent, deep-pitched yells, part impatience and growing annoyance. Later they had become angry, aggressive, but with an element of self-control. Last, the breakdown: screams and what he thought might be whimpers. Jago had felt good. He had thought himself close to achieving his objective. Now there was no sound.
He would stay long enough to see him.
The climax would come when he looked into the eyes of the man, whose chin would shake. He did not think himself in danger, did not consider that he had been there too long, putting his life at risk.
Jago had folded the coat and sat on it, making himself as comfortable as possible, hidden on the rock. He didn’t know how long he would have to wait, and didn’t particularly care. His mission was in its last hours. That he knew.
19
Something to watch, at last, other than the chickens.
The lights were feeble in front of the house, but headlights approached and threw a fiercer beam. Jago saw it from his vantage point – it was a while now since he had last heard the distant sounds of yelling, then crying. The dogs bounded round the side of the house and the kid strolled after them, smoking. Jago noted that some of the men from down the track had moved closer to the house. The handyman parked the car and killed the engine. He called the kid and dismissed him.