Bernardo went outside and filled a watering can from the tap, then the plastic jug that held the chickens’ feed. He moved warily, his three dogs close to him, their ears back as they listened for disturbance. They would hear if a fox was close enough to threaten the chickens. He was between a line of trees and the sheets that Mamma had hung out, which would not dry that evening.
He had called for a lupara bianca. A family in a village higher in the mountains owed him a favour, and tonight he would call it in. It was about disposal and disappearance. Several families kept pigs, which would eat anything, alive or dead. But the family that owed him the favour owned a tank of strengthened steel. It was available to him, he had been told, and might contain sulphuric acid or the chemical that unblocked clogged drains. That was where Annunziata was going tonight . . . The chickens hustled towards him. Each had a name and he cooed at them. He was bonded to each fowl and the dogs that were close to his heels. The last unwanted litter of puppies had been put into a sack two years before and Marcantonio had carried it, oblivious of the squeals from inside, to the stream below the house.
The family had relations in Berlin, the German capital. Marcantonio would spend a useful period – several months – out of sight, far from the carabinieri. He could learn the arts of cleaning money and evaluating potential investments. Questions would be asked after the boy’s aunt had disappeared and an inquiry launched, but he would be far away. He had said to his grandson that he must be discreet in the city and not attract attention.
When they went to the building, with the woman tied and weeping, knowing already that pleas for her life were in vain, Stefano and Marcantonio would carry her inside. Then Annunziata might see the tank and smell its contents. She would know that, by morning, she would be sludge at the base. He would almost have guaranteed that she would be alive as she went into the liquid, eased down so that she did not splash them. She would go in slowly, probably feet first. Who in that part of the mountains would report hearing screams in the middle of the night? No one. When the next visit to Domenico was due, Mamma would go to Ascoli with Giulietta. Although their conversation would be monitored with microphones and cameras, he would be told. It was possible to give serious news to a prisoner held under Article 41bis, and Domenico would be glad to hear that his wife had been punished for her treachery. She would go in alive.
Afterwards, Stefano would drive fast to Lamezia airport. There was a late flight to Rome, which met a connection to Berlin’s Tempelhof. Bernardo had never been outside Italy – never outside Calabria. He tipped the last of the feed onto the ground and the chickens scurried and pecked around him. The dogs sat quietly. God’s truth, he would miss the boy, yearn for him to return.
Now it was time for him to go to his bunker, sneak away like a rat to its den . . . He saw again the grin that had played on his grandson’s lips and hoped the boy would heed his advice. A camouflaged door opened. His torch showed a tunnel made from concrete pipes. He went to bed.
1
He could have flapped a hand and distracted the fly. It was on the branch of a pruned rose, close to a carefully constructed spider’s web. It was a trap – and a work of art. Jago Browne had time to kill, more than twenty minutes, and had settled on a bench. The autumn sunlight was low and at that hour of the morning the frost had not dispersed. The grass around the tidy beds was whitened, the earth sparkled, and the web’s intricate lines were highlighted in silver. The fly was doomed – it seemed unaware of the danger. It took off, then seemed to charge the patterned fibres of the web.