The car went away down the hill. Stefano always drove slowly. Bernardo saw the headlights bounce from the trees. He knew each of those trees, and every metre of the stone walls flanking the lane. He went back inside and closed the door. The house, expanded now, had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. He was in the kitchen.
He had seen a photograph of the gallery owner. A short man, he had a beard, which was carefully trimmed. From the photograph, Bernardo reckoned that he took time each morning to tidy it. Within two hours the dark hair would be blood red. Stefano would rip the man’s trousers down to his knees, and Marcantonio would use the knife to slice off his penis, then force it into his victim’s mouth. He would hit the man with the heavy hammer, one blow or two, to stop the struggling, then leave him in the beach hut. It might be weeks before he was found. The job would be done quickly, any shrieks carried away on the wind – they might sound like the cries of gulls. He imagined it all and felt only satisfaction.
Mamma was at the sink, washing up, even though they had a dishwasher. She washed his and her clothes by hand, too, and didn’t use the German washing-machine built into the kitchen units. Their daughter, Giulietta, was with Nando and Salvo, as she was every time Annunziata went out at night. Each Tuesday, Giulietta took care of the children and was like a mother to them. She would not have her own. She was ugly, he thought, especially with the large-framed spectacles she wore. She knew that by midnight the children would have no mother, and approved. Giulietta was skilled with a computer. She knew how to deal with passwords and cut-outs.
Bernardo should not have been in the house. He had been conceived and born, in the big bed at the front with the view down the track towards the centre of the village. His boys and Giulietta had been born in it too. It was the bed in which Mamma slept, when Bernardo slipped away to the narrow divan in his hiding place, where he felt safest. It hurt him that he could not be in his own bed, with Mamma’s heavy hips against him.
He checked through the window. The car lights had gone. By now Annunziata would have left for the coast. He felt his age in his bones, especially his knees.
Bernardo was of the older generation of clan leaders and enjoyed the discipline of tradition in language, behaviour, or in the drawing up of agreements where a man’s word was his bond the spoken word pledged a deal. Tradition applied also to methods of killing. A favourite of this group of clans, a loosely tied association known as the ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria in the extreme south of Italy, was the lupara bianca. The lupara was the sawn-off shotgun used by goatherds against wolves, but lupara bianca meant something different. Marcantonio had been told that in particular circumstances a body should never be found and no announcement of a death would follow. Bernardo had determined that Annunziata would suffer lupara bianca. He glanced at his watch. Soon the gallery owner would open the beach hut, spread the rugs, light the candle and open the wine.
He had nothing to read. There were no submissions from bankers, accountants or investment managers that he could pore over. He fidgeted. Bernardo, a clan leader, held information in his head: he kept no compromising documents in a safe at his home.
He and Mamma had been married for forty-three years: she had not waited for his death to replace her coloured clothing with black blouses and stockings, skirts and cardigans. Marcantonio was Mamma’s creation. She had shaped and moulded him from the time he had sat on her knee.
Annunziata would receive no mercy from her nephew. She was from a clan family herself, had come no more than twenty kilometres to her new home. Now she might have travelled a thousand kilometres but her own people would not have saved her. She had broken the disciplines that were valued by her own and her husband’s family. Her eyes showed a challenging haughtiness, as if she thought herself superior to the peasant society into which she had married. Marcantonio would pinion her while Stefano bound her legs and arms. They would show her the corpse of the gallery owner and push her head down so that she could see the blood in his beard and what filled his mouth. She, too, would be allowed to scream.