The team manager had phoned Magda. She’d left her boyfriend in the club and taken a taxi to Stresemannstrasse.
Wilhelmina knew something of her father’s background. The family was prosperous and had settled in west Berlin, with a fine house in the suburbs. The business had thrived, and Magda’s father’s past occupation had been erased, almost. He had served in the State Security Service, had risen to warrant officer in the political police and headed a small team responsible for the internal security of the Democratic Republic. On a frozen December morning in 1989, he had dumped his uniform, abandoned his flat, crossed the Wall with his family, then taken a train to the Tegel district on the other side of Berlin and had not looked back. Before he had gone into business, he had burgled and bugged his way the length and breadth of the former East Germany. The first time Magda had lost the key to her school locker, she had called home in a panic and been told what to do. Once, when a filing cabinet at the bank jammed, she had shown her talent.
The Englishman, Jago Browne, had long intrigued and attracted her, but he had always declined her invitations. She had sensed crisis in the air, and she was the last resort before the police were called. If a bank employee was ‘missing’ and worked in a department with knowledge of wealthy investors’ affairs, the situation was serious. She’d heard the edge in Wilhelmina’s voice: no panic yet, but it wasn’t far away. The outer door was a challenge, but she’d managed it. The inner door, leading into the apartment, was easier.
So neat, so tidy, so soulless. The two rooms, the bathroom and kitchen, she thought, had been cleaned specifically, and the occupant would not be back in the morning.
It was child’s play to Magda, no need to call her father. A notepad beside the telephone. A clean sheet uppermost.
She did not need to scatter black powder from a printer toner on the top sheet of the pad. She crouched, tilted her head, let her auburn hair flop over her face and read. She phoned, even though it was past three in the morning. ‘Wilhelmina? He was in touch with a travel agent by phone, one on Friedrichstrasse. He bought an economy ticket, via Rome, to Lamezia Terme, which is in Calabria, southern Italy. Lamezia is the final destination. It was a one-way ticket. There is no indication of a hotel booking, or that he called ahead to arrange to be met by friends. Didn’t he intervene in a fight among Italians? You have enough, Wilhelmina?’
‘I think so.’
‘May I suggest . . .’
‘You may.’
‘I apologise, but it is a police matter. The client list, the portfolios, the one-way ticket, the brawl in the street . . . it is for the police.’ Magda owed Jago Browne nothing: he had deflected her. He could sink or swim: it wasn’t her problem. The bank’s client security was paramount.
She drove and she collected. Between stops, where she picked up what she wanted, Consolata talked. She told him the history of the ’Ndrangheta movement – the word came from the old Greek dialect of the peninsula – of the great military drives of the nineteenth century to eradicate the brigands, the ferocity of the Napoleonic generals, the brutality of executions, and the survival of hard, ruthless men in the mountains. She explained it all, Mussolini’s failed attempts to combat the threat, then the indifference of the American occupiers. Even Rome had tried at the end of the last century. Too late, and now it was endemic. They climbed high, leaving the coast behind.
A collection of small homes were built into a rock face, and the headlights of the Fiat 500 captured a line of washing, perhaps done that evening. It was a clear night and there would be no frost. He would not have seen the heavy bottle-green trousers pegged to a line in front of one house. She was gone only moments from the car, and whacked them into his lap. After history came geography. The great families of Reggio Calabria, Archi, Gioia Tauro and Rosarno lived on the Tyrrhenian Sea; family groups from San Luca, Plati and Locri were on the Ionian. The Aspromonte mountains – from which the ‘second coming’ of the ’Ndrangheta had appeared, then the wisdom of investing in the cocaine market – separated them.
Higher, where the air was cold and mist had gathered between the trees, there was a woodman’s hut with a decent padlock. She stopped, rummaged under the back seat for a toolbox, took a tyre lever and broke the lock. She found a camouflage coat, a forestry warden’s, and a pair of heavy boots.