Bernardo heard the entry sounds. The outer doorway squeaked when it was opened or closed. Scrapes and scuffles came to him from the tunnel’s pipes. A smile lit his face.
In his mind he had been with the child in the cave, on one of those days when he had brought food to her and she lay on her side, convulsed in coughing, no longer crying. By the second week only Bernardo would take food to her – bread, cheese, perhaps an apple, water – and the dogs with him wouldn’t come into the cave. They stayed outside, their ears flat to their heads. His torch would find her in the far corner of the cave, beyond the lichen, and she cowered away from him. He never brought his boys, Rocco and Domenico, to the cave because he didn’t trust their reaction. The girl had given the family everything. She had been a sound, shrewd investment, and was the basis of the family’s success.
He heard the light knock on the outer wall of the container, scrambled across the interior and unfastened the makeshift doorway. Fresh air engulfed him as he held the boy who was his future, the dynasty’s.
They hugged, the clasp of two men, one old, one young, who had for each other the love that kept the family alive and was its strength. He remembered when he had struggled with his hands on the man’s throat and had called his fifteen-year-old grandson to his side, shown him the grip and had him finish the strangulation. He hadn’t seen him for six months. He had missed him. Now his grandson led the way. Bernardo switched off the lights, closed the inner door after him and started the long crawl up the sewer pipe.
Coming into the daylight was like breaking the surface of the sea after a dive – not that Bernardo could swim, but he had seen divers on the films. The chickens were round his feet, and Marcantonio had the bowl for their corn. They took the hidden path, passed Mamma’s sheets, then the trellis. He was in the kitchen, and had forgotten the child in the cave. He saw the pure joy on Mamma’s face.
A call came to the private-wealth section at the bank. A junior in the analysis unit, on a weekend watch, had had a query from a client in Bad Godesberg. The client, a widow, Frau Niemann, was persistent. She had been talking to her nephew, who was with Deutsche, and needed to know whether her account was listed as medium or low risk. She was an important client because her investment portfolio was worth some ten million euros. The junior was sitting at the end of a long work area, no natural light, and promised the client he would get straight back to her with an answer.
He rang the manager of the sales section, with overall responsibility for the client’s account, at home. He reached her as children flooded into her apartment for a birthday party. He heard the din, apologised to Wilhelmina for bothering her and was told to call Jago Browne immediately. Was Jago Browne not listed on the weekend duty sheet as being on stand-by? If he wasn’t, he should have been. Jago Browne knew about Frau Niemann’s affairs. He had been sick but was in the office the previous evening so had obviously recovered.
The junior found Jago Browne’s corporate mobile number, dialled it and let it ring. It went unanswered. The client’s enquiry was only about medium or low risk, and could have waited forty-eight hours to be dealt with on Monday morning. He called the number again.
Within a half-hour he had tried it seven times. It was unprofessional for any stand-by executive to be away from their phone for as long as thirty minutes. He rang the client, apologised and grovelled. He would be able to get back to her again within an hour.
He walked along the beach, the soft dry sand trapped between his toes. Fred Seitz felt free. His wife was nearer the sea, paddling and looking for shells. He almost felt free.
It was where he was happiest. Almost free, because the beach was almost a naturist venue. Nothing could be quite perfect. His work lingered because the break they had taken was not long enough for him to shrug it off entirely: he dealt with muggings and burglaries – not the small-scale thieves and pickpockets but those in large gangs with serious turn-over – day-to-day, but had responsibility at the station for organised crime with international implications. It could be Russian-originated, Albanian or Lithuanian, or it might have the stamp of the ’Ndrangheta. If it had been a ‘listed’ beach, Hilde would not have gone there.