A smile curled Marcantonio’s lips. ‘You understand? I can’t make it any clearer. A thousand euro each month. For that you’ll have total protection and your business will prosper.’
The man’s face was sheened with sweat. There was no heat in the pizzeria, not enough sunshine yet on the windows for warmth and Marcantonio’s cousin filled the open doorway. Marcantonio posed as a friend, almost a business associate. He was there because he was bored.
‘A thousand euro a month. I don’t negotiate. You’ll pay in advance and I’ll come tomorrow to collect. A thousand to start with, but when your business is doing well, it’ll attract more attention from rivals so my fee will go up. For now, though, a thousand a month.’
The man jabbered something. Marcantonio couldn’t understand him. The pizzeria had been open for two weeks in a fashionable quarter of the city. The rent would be high but the rewards, potentially, were good. The man seemed as timid as a rabbit cornered by dogs.
Marcantonio had been in Berlin just over six months. Home – the village, his grandfather – seemed increasingly distant. His cousin in the doorway, Alberto, was a long-term resident in the city and his minder – his subordinate in the clan’s pecking order. He had collected rents from properties owned by the family, cleaned sums paid in Hamburg and Rotterdam, and inspected proposed leisure or business sites on the Baltic coast and in the Ruhr district. Old habits died hard and boredom irked Marcantonio. He knew how to create fear.
‘Without protection, you risk a petrol bomb through the windows and then fire. Same time tomorrow.’
A girl hovered at the back by the cash desk. She wasn’t as dark as girls in Calabria and the high Aspromonte villages. He saw hatred in her eyes. She hadn’t spoken. He hadn’t addressed a word to her. No reason why he should have. Where Marcantonio came from, the women and girls kept silent and were obedient. Any who were not went into the tank as Annunziata had. To ease the boredom, Marcantonio wanted to set up his own ring of protected businesses, draw an income and see eyes blink in fear, smell the sweat and hear the gabbled answers. This would be the first, and already he felt better. His car was outside. In Berlin he drove an Audi R8. Sometimes, on the open roads, going south or west out of the city, he laughed at the thought of his grandfather and Stefano in the City-Van, the engine chugging when it climbed hills. He was not supposed to draw attention to himself . . .
The man slumped, shaking into a chair as Marcantonio strolled to the door. Marcantonio had been polite and specific. His behaviour could not have been faulted. He went outside, lit a cigarette and began to walk towards where the Audi was parked. It was capable of acceleration to speeds above 160 k.p.h. on the Autobahns.
His arm was grabbed.
He turned. The girl’s fingers were locked into the fabric of his windcheater. Alberto had spun and was ploughing towards her.
She hissed, ‘We won’t pay you pizzo. This is not Naples, Palermo or Reggio. We don’t pay thieves. You’re scum. Don’t come back.’
Alberto caught her shoulder and tried to pull her back, but her grip on Marcantonio’s arm was too tight. Her nails came up towards his face. He saw them as they came for his eyes. He hit her with the back of his hand. She reeled away, freeing him, and screamed.
The elderly woman’s face showed no change of expression, but she would have heard the scream. He swung round and saw the girl who had been sweeping the pavement at the entrance to the pizzeria. She reeled away from the guy and would have fallen if a bigger man hadn’t held her upright, making her a better target.
She spat at the one who had hit her, and kicked the shin of the man who held her arms. The two men were speaking Italian – Jago had learned some in his sessions at the language laboratory in Prenzlauer. The boy hit her again with a clenched fist, first her head, then her stomach. Her nose bled. Now he kneed her in the back.
What to do?
Jago was wearing one of his two work suits; the bank expected him to be formally dressed. That day, with a client to visit and an error to be corrected, he needed to be at his best. The elderly woman had disappeared.
Different for Jago.
How different? Quite different . . . the scream had been anger but the punch to the stomach had squeezed the air from her and she had first wheezed, then coughed, then choked on a squeal, and there had been another gasp as the knee went into her back.
A man was at the door to the pizzeria. He didn’t move – as if he had decided that intervention would gain him nothing. At work Jago Browne was assessed on his ability to ‘care for clients’, his ‘dedication’ to his employer, his ‘work ethic’ and ‘attention to detail’. For that he received a touch north of four thousand euros per month, plus bonuses. He was not paid to rescue distressed girls.