Nothing justified the comfort factor.
The screen showed Stefano – identified by the maresciallo – playing football on the gravel in front of the house. The children with him, they were told, belonged to Annunziata who was a ‘disappeared’, buried or cut into pieces and scattered – who had taken a lover while married to one of the family’s men.
They looked for a sign, a moment of significance, and didn’t find it. The woman named Teresa, dressed for a promenade along the shore at Naples or on the Via Veneto in Rome – anywhere that wasn’t up a track from a mountain village – watched the football from the front door, smoking and holding a wine glass.
Nothing that was any good.
The men by the oil drum, between the carabinieri and the house, had left the warmth of the fire. Some had gone along narrow paths across the olive groves and others had walked down the road, through the chicane that the vehicles made, talking quietly among themselves. They didn’t spare a glance for the guns of the cordon, Carlo or Fred. Luca pointed out one, in big glasses with a cyst on his nose, and said he was the close cousin of a pentito executed that week in Rome; he had to work hard to demonstrate that he was no threat or he would himself be shot.
The screen showed the kid, the scooter boy, with the dogs around the chicken coop. They saw the heap of dumped stones at the side of the building and beyond the washing line. The dogs ran around the kid. Carlo and Fred didn’t need to be told, but Luca said it: the scent was confused, the trail muddied. But there was the pile of stones, which was precious. It was all they had to cling to.
‘Did we screw up, Fabio?’
‘Maybe, maybe not.’
‘Because we packed too early?’
‘We took out the batteries, too, Ciccio, and the lenses.’
‘What did you see?’
‘Nothing. Was it Scorpion Fly?’
‘That’s what it was called, Fabio.’
‘Significant about the scorpion fly, Ciccio, is that it appears to have a sting in the tail but doesn’t. It’s harmless. I might get a badge made that shows it. Time for the pretty boys to deploy.’
The ‘pretty boys’ were the cacciatore. They packed again. If they were challenged they would claim ‘communications malfunction’. They had done their job to the best of their abilities and reckoned themselves above the dross but below the elite of the army that fought the long war. It hurt to fail but success was rare.
Carlo had the sense that his water told him the truth. Men like him, with his professional experience of hitting targets in the small hours, knew when success was guaranteed or failure beckoned.
Ahead of them were the cacciatore, off the helicopter now. Good guys. Berets worn jauntily, camouflage fatigues and pistol holsters slapping their thighs, grenades on their belts and machine guns carried warily, balaclavas over their faces, they’d sprinted up the track. The football was over and the washing hadn’t been replaced. The dogs barked round them and were kicked away. Carlo was with Fred, the maresciallo and some of his people. They were Wave Two, the back-up. The older man, Stefano, faced the wall, his hands on his head, the kid beside him, his hands at the back of his neck. Teresa was with them too, and they had brought a chair for Mamma – the one that had been on the patio. The crack guys had gone ahead and Wave Two followed. To Carlo it was always obvious when the cogs of a mission didn’t mesh.
They reached the house. The old woman stared defiantly ahead, appeared undisturbed by the crisis. Carlo’s experience told him that the women were always the bellwether of a win or a loss, of whether the handcuffs would be used or the target was clear of the location. The kid and the older man gazed at the wall. They gave no sign of interest but were not cocky. Carlo and Fred walked past the yard, skirted the patio and went under the trellis. Fred reached up and plucked a bunch of grapes—
The first explosion. The chickens squawked. It shook Carlo, and Fred choked on the first of his stolen grapes.
A second flash-bang. Carlo counted. He liked them because they disoriented the opposition – better than gas in the eyes when a doctor had to give clearance. They usually made a bollocks of their first statement: always a good one to get in the bag before the lawyers were on the scene. He and Fred went past the washing-line, Luca with them. He saw the derelict shed, the stone wall, the heap of rocks and the hole that gaped in front of the cacciatore boys. He heard a shout behind him, shrill with warning. He turned.
The boot had a shiny toecap but the instep was coated with dirt. It was Luca’s, and he had used it to scrape out loose earth where it had been disturbed. Bloody lucky he wasn’t up there with the angels singing anthems. Among the earth in the little excavated pit were the ends of two sections of wire. Fred was at his side.