After she had gone down into the tank he had carefully wiped all trace of the spittle from his face, and Stefano would have burned the clothes they had worn, and the clan who had provided the facilities for a lupara bianca would have removed anything left in the sludge. He would tell his grandfather what had happened.
The shop manager, tall, blond and aloof, stood behind the girl who had wrapped his shirts and taken his money. He was gazing at Marcantonio as if he were dog shit on a shoe. So German . . . but Marcantonio’s people owned much of the country, used it like a goat they milked regularly. He could have bought that shop, that franchise, its stock and the girl, and would have regarded the outlay as small change.
He left. Time for lunch, some pasta – not as good as that prepared by his grandmother. It annoyed him that the girl that morning had not cowered in front of him. The next morning he would be back. He sauntered across the pavement to his car.
Bernardo slipped out of the kitchen door.
His route was skilfully prepared. Near to the door was a vine trellis, the leaves not yet shed, then a high wall. Beyond the wall was Mamma’s washing line, always with double sheets and large towels on it, then a second section of wall, a vertical cliff face – the path led right against it, perhaps ten metres up – then a retaining wall beside the steps that led to the old shed.
Every man had a price, which was often surprisingly low. Sometimes favours were offered for nothing. A clerk in the Palace of Justice or at the Questura, in the headquarters of the carabinieri might cost a couple of hundred euros a month if he needed it for medical expenses, or he might supply information for free because he was screwing on the side and the truth would kill his elderly mother, or he gambled . . . There were so many reasons.
He knew he was under close investigation.
He took this route from the house each evening. He used neither telephone, nor computer, so he left no electronic trace. The ROS, the GICO and the Squadra Mobile worked on the principle that the best weapon in their hands was intercepts of messages, BlackBerry or email, so he denied them that chance. He would be vulnerable only to human surveillance, and their teams could not come to the village and sit in a closed van with spy-holes drilled into it. Strangers were not tolerated in their village. If electricity cables needed repair after a winter storm, local men did the work, not outsiders. His home could be watched only from the high ground behind it. There might be cameras there, or listening equipment, and it was possible even that men might be inserted in hiding places. Most of the picciotti, who owed him and his family total loyalty, had his blood in their veins: they regularly searched the upper slope with the dogs. But Bernardo was still careful.
A combination of the vine, the walls and the washing protected from any viewer or lens, and he used the route each day to go to and from his home. At the end of the path, beside the shed, there might, many years earlier, have been an earth slip beside the retaining wall. That was how it would appear to a stranger. Underneath the earth, stones and scrub was the steel cargo container, his refuge.
The retaining wall seemed solid. One stone could be removed to expose an electrical switch with a waterproof covering. When the switch was thrown a section of the wall eased quietly to the side. The first stone was then replaced and . . . He hated it. He had to get down on his old hands and knees and crawl through a tunnel of concrete pipes that, dimly lit, stretched ahead of him. Another switch closed the wall. He would have disappeared, no trace left of him. He could not stand or crouch in the tunnel, which was barely a metre high, but had to drag himself the five or six metres to the entrance in the iron side of the container, his other home.
The pentito had known the location and the timing of the meeting to which his sons, Rocco and Domenico, were travelling when they were blocked, pinioned, handcuffed, taken. He had not known of the hidden container. Twice in the last nine months Bernardo’s home had been raided by the ROS teams – before Annunziata had died and afterwards. If he had not been in the bunker, he would now be in a gaol cell in the north, isolated, his power diminishing. He moved forward, pads protecting his knees. Bernardo would have given up a great deal to sleep in his own bed, with his wife, but not his freedom.
He seemed to hear the voice, no spoken words, just a whimper. A child’s voice. Recently he had heard it more often than he had last year. Extraordinary that he would be aware of it when his hearing was fading. He had first heard the sound thirty-six years before, then forgotten it. For decades he had been free of it, but he heard it again now that he had to go like a rat down the tunnel to his room.
But tomorrow night the boy would be home. A smile cracked his lined, weathered face as he reached the prefabricated door, opened it, straightened and stepped into his other home. It would be so good to have the boy back. Warmth again flowed in his veins, and a degree of happiness.
‘Consolata reckons life is about confrontation.’