She had heard them discuss her.
‘She wants drama – sirens, flashing lights. I just don’t think she grasps the virtues of non-violence.’
She had her own room, with space for a single bed, a rack for her clothes, boxes for the rest of her possessions – shoes, underwear, books and one photograph.
‘Consolata should leave our group.’
The photograph, framed in cheap plastic, showed her father and mother standing proudly outside their shop in Archi. It had been taken a year before they were approached and made an offer – take it or leave it – that amounted to grand theft. The photograph lay in a cardboard box, covered with books and papers on the regime of the ’Ndrangheta in Archi, Rosarno, at the port of Gioia Tauro and in Reggio Calabria, knickers, old trainers, T-shirts and more jeans. She had been a good student at her school, not obsessed with work but performing more than adequately – she was thought by the staff to have an anarchic streak, which they liked, and had run the shop on any Saturday morning when her parents could not be there. She knew the price of paint and wallpaper, and was imaginative on colour co-ordination. Everything had been predictable, unremarkable. Now the certainties had gone, picked up, tossed, scattered, but the scars remained. She had kept her past from the committee.
‘She’s with Massimo for the next two days. He’s steady . . . a good influence.’
Later that night there was to be a meeting at the university. A prosecutor was due to speak. He would flatter them, talk up their influence and bolster morale. She had already decided not to attend, pleading a headache. It was that time in the afternoon when the squat went quiet. Some would read and others would smoke. Consolata couldn’t be bothered to read and had no stomach for learning more on the influence of the clans, how their empire stretched from Calabria, their wealth, the bribery they practised and the virus of corruption. She punched the pillow. They didn’t know her name and they were not aware of her efforts to sabotage them – if handing out leaflets and going to meetings qualified as sabotage. She didn’t do drugs, and had no boyfriend to take to bed.
But she couldn’t break away. Consolata couldn’t see herself, with a packed duffel bag, going out into the dawn, leaving the front door to swing on its hinges, then trekking to the station for the journey to Reggio. She just couldn’t believe herself capable of it. Massimo was a true believer: it would be torture to endure two days with him . . . And the city was quiet. When it was quiet that didn’t mean ’Ndrangheta was too nervous to be about its business: on the contrary. It was how they liked it and how they functioned best. They did not know her name, and the chance that they would learn it soon seemed remote. She punched the pillow again and again.
If she had been going to the prosecutor’s address at the university, she would have asked, ‘How do you know when you’re losing?’
And his answer, if he was truthful, would have been ‘I know I’m losing if they ignore me.’
The question the prosecutor was never asked: ‘Against the ’Ndrangheta, how do you know if you’re winning?’
He was in the Lancia, wheels low on the tarmac because of the weight of the armour plating in the doors and the chassis. One of his boys drove fast from south to north across Reggio Calabria, and another held a machine-gun on his lap; three more were in the car behind, blue lights flashing. It was hard for him to concentrate because of the wail of the sirens. He was going to give a talk: it seemed important for him to be seen and to attempt to engage a younger generation. His address would not be brilliant but would satisfy his audience. He was a servant of the state, a work horse, and lived inside a fragile bubble of supposed protection. The name of the padrino of a remote village on the far side of the Aspromonte was at the top of his in-tray. Bernardo Cancello was uppermost in his mind, dogging and taunting him.