It was nearly over. Jago wanted to put a living face to the photograph he held in his mind. He wanted to see the man collapse, and be able to tell himself that his work had achieved it. He cut out the role of the girl in Charlottenburg and on the beach in the moonlight. He had done it.
This was his territory. He didn’t know anywhere else as well as he knew the narrow panorama in front of him. Not the street in front of the one-parent family home in Canning Town, not the walk from the bus stop in Barking Road, or the stretch from St Paul’s Underground station to a tower block in the City. The hike to the bank in inner Berlin was already a faded glimpse. He knew everything about this place. He had absorbed each sprouted shrub in the apology for a garden, the trees and grass. He knew how many paving slabs made up the patio and how many struts held the hard chair’s legs in place. He knew the volume of the grapes on the trellis, the colours of the dogs’ coats and their pecking order. He could smell what they cooked in the kitchen. He could assess the old woman’s hip or pelvic problems. He knew the range of the sheets used on a bed in the house. He felt a sense of belonging to this place, was reluctant to leave it . . . and the time had run its course. Like a curtain coming down. People walked urban streets often enough to know where they could stand, see into a lit window, watch the life of a family with children and become a part of it in loneliness. Jago hated the thought of leaving. Here he viewed extreme power and excessive wealth.
The kid came back with a steaming bucket and cloths. He had an extension lead, too, which ran from an outside power point, and a vacuum cleaner. Under the older man’s direction, he was to clean the City-Van. It might have been fifteen years old, Jago thought, and they worked hard. It was easy enough for the one-time banker to fathom. The vehicle was being cleansed of clues left by a passenger sitting in the front. A murder – not a wounding or an assault. The handyman had been the driver and Jago saw nothing different in his bearing from the other times he had seen him. It shouted at him that a killing was no big deal and was rounded off with a methodical car wash. He watched it all, and waited. He should have been on his way up to the road.
They were thorough. The bag from the vacuum cleaner went into the incinerator at the back, and sparks flared up. The interior surfaces were washed carefully, the cloths frequently rinsed. The water went down a drain. Then, the kid was sent for a hosepipe, which was plugged into a tap on the patio. The wheels were jet-sprayed. There would have been evidence on them of where the City-Van had been driven to and from. Jago wondered how often they needed to clean the vehicle, and why a man with the affluence of the padrino, and the authority, denied himself a better set of wheels. He had much to learn, but the course was nearly run.
He thought, when the work was done, that the handyman might be sent to bring the family leader out from his hole. He wanted to see it and would hold his position until he did.
He’d have to wait longer. The old woman had come out of the front door with a scrap of paper. The kid had gone to feed the dogs.
There was a moment when the handyman and the old woman were together. Jago saw it. A little gesture – fingers on an arm. He hadn’t seen it before. A girl from Sales might have stayed in the pub with a guy from Investments after the others had left. The next morning the gestures and the eye contact would tell the story: his place or hers. Everyone knew. He’d learned more about the family and their home – the handyman and the wife of the padrino. They’d taken a massive risk.
He thought she had given the handyman a short shopping list. Now he drove away to fetch what was wanted, which meant he would not go into the bunker yet. Jago had to wait, but could revel in imagining the degree of torture he had inflicted.
He had given up.
His father never had. He had fought right up to the moment when they had taken his life in the open-air market. His uncles had been fighters, too, and his brothers – one knifed in gaol, the other bound and thrown into a ravine – would have struggled until they had drawn their last breath. In their own ways, his sons in their northern gaols would fight to maintain their pride. They would never capitulate. Bernardo almost did.
No one saw it. When men looked at him they assessed his strength by his posture, whether his hands shook as tension mounted, if he blinked too much. The men with him at the vigil beside his grandson’s coffin would have watched him to see if he had a grip on his future.
Now he was not watched. He was not seen or heard. Bernardo didn’t know if anyone would come soon or whether they would leave him until morning.