She crouched, looked for and found the shiny cartridge cases ejected from the Beretta, picked them up and dropped them into her pocket. A plastic bag would have been better: her good suit trousers, from the new mall outside Locri on the Siderno road, were contaminated now, as was her top. She noted that blood trickled from his head, and that there were no convulsions nor gasped breathing.
She thought it had been easy, but she did not feel elated or excited. A job had been satisfactorily completed. She had to step over him – a wide stride because of his size and she had to avoid the blood.
Rifles and handguns were armed. She heard shouts. Inside the HiLux, she jammed it into gear, then swung into the oleanders, planted to separate the rows of bays, bumped over them and reached the far side of the parking area. She used an emergency entrance, designed for fast access to ambulances or police vehicles, and was gone.
Giulietta might have congratulated herself, but did not. She went into the city and cut down onto Corso Vittorio Emanuele. She thought she had left chaos behind her, which was good, and with it stark confusion, which was better. She wanted to get home and tell her father what she had achieved. She wanted to see his smile spread, feel his hand on her shoulder or cheek. He never looked at her nose or spoke of it. She heard sirens but they were far away. She felt confident because the Blocker spray, purchased in Locri, would reflect off the registration plates and disable any cameras efforts. Giulietta accelerated. She thought her father would be proud of her and praise her.
Pandemonium spread clumsily at the Palace of Justice. The police, carabinieri, soldiers and the prosecutor’s escorts, who had waited at the door, were hit by the depth of the failure.
The medical team came, and the blame game began before the body was cold. Whose fault was it? Everyone’s, except each accuser’s. Some claimed to have seen the taillights disappearing and there were CCTV cameras. How many were working? Some. There would be a few images. They would show a woman with a face mask and a handgun, a HiLux but the registration would have been tampered with to prevent the number being read. There had been hopeless efforts to revive the victim. It was agreed that the assassin had been trained, expert and was formidable. The priest was identified from his wallet. One of the escorts made the call on his mobile to the office high in the Palace.
He came, ashen-faced. The prosecutor had dared to hope. All he had been told in the priest’s phone call was his name and his village, which had been enough to whet the appetite of a starving man. His joy had been huge, but short-lived. The ambulance had arrived. He had been promised that roadblocks were in place around the city on all principal routes to north and south, and on the main road heading up into the mountains. Useless. Why? Myriad routes led from the outskirts of Reggio towards the high villages of the Aspromonte.
When he arrived beside the body, the recriminations ceased. A man of dignity, wedded to his work, had been dealt a crushing blow. He was handed the contents of the pockets and a phone, and saw that the last call made was to himself. It was the nature of his work: the Lord in his wisdom gave and the same Lord with the same wisdom took. The flashes were from the photographer. The forensics and scenes-of-crime people were impatient to collect what was left in the way of evidence that had not been trampled over. The prosecutor saw, under arc lights, the face of the priest. The colour had drained from it and the jowl hung slack. He reflected that death had not treated the corpse kindly. He had not met but had known of him, and would have regarded him as one of the professionals who wormed close to the families and facilitated respectability.
His guards hovered close to him. The phone vibrated in his shirt pocket. They closed round him, feeling his frustration. He noted the number, answered it, then listened to what he was told from the control room. He thought himself a man who clutched at dreams. It was a calm voice, without the emotion of the chase, and he could gain no impression of whether he was offered a good chance, an average chance, or a chance with no provenance. He was told of a young man of above average intelligence, but of junior rank and limited experience. He could have demanded answers to a cascade of questions. He stood within two or three metres of the body of the priest, who might have resurrected an investigation and had been silenced. He was nudged aside and the ambulance team began to heave the cadaver onto a gurney. He thought one question important.
‘Is he sure?’
Carlo said, ‘What you have to understand, Luca, is that – to quote – ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men . . .’ You have to jump on it and ride the wave up the beach. Know what I mean?’