The engine started. The City-Van was driven away.
He had watched the coming power of the family. The destination, Jago reckoned, would be a bar where other local bucks gathered. What story might he tell an audience? About a girl, may be, or a young man who had intervened, an arsehole, or about blood and a kicking. It wouldn’t be about damage done to a car. He saw the City-Van disappear, a shield of spray chasing it. That was the vehicle the big man, unseen, had chosen; the house was unattractive, unfinished; the clothes of the women were unremarkable; the family reeked of money. They had the cash to own a football club or racehorses, to live in a spread with a view of the sea and a private beach, and did not. It was a lesson of critical importance Jago reckoned: money was secondary, and power supreme.
He did not yet know what he could do, what would jolt the power.
In Canning Town Jago had not known power other than in the boxing ring. In the City he had not known power, except on hearing one girl say to another, ‘He just walked in here, a chance many would kill for, on the say-so of a chap wanting to salve his conscience.’ In Berlin, at the bank, he had known power when he had cleared his desk, wiped his computer and gone out through the door without a backward glance. Here, on the hillside, he felt a degree of power because he could watch them.
The message came up on the prosecutor’s screen.
He read it, a cigarette in his hand.
A young man from Berlin . . . British nationality . . . witness to an assault outside a pizzeria . . . protection and extortion . . . a subsequent, more serious assault, the girl scarred for life . . . two interventions by the Briton, beaten up both times, no hospitalisation . . . a one-way ticket to Reggio Calabria . . . an idiot who targeted Marcantonio, grandson of Bernardo, and . . .
He stubbed out the cigarette. It was a good ashtray, heavy, cut-glass, a present to his father a half-century before.
Men were coming from Berlin and London to liaise, and it was hoped that the unfortunate presence of Jago Browne, merchant banker, would not jeopardise his investigations into that particular family. Two words lingered: unfortunate and jeopardise. He had the ashtray in his hand and hurled it at the window. It hit bulletproof glass and shattered. A column of ash and embers made a glowing cloud around the impact point. It would have sounded like a pistol shot. Two of his men were in the room, weapons drawn.
He held his head in his hands, then loosed one to wave them away. He had once been told by an old fighter against an earlier generation of the ’Ndrangheta that it was always necessary to employ extreme care: ‘A small mistake in any investigation can cause infinite damage’. An amateur, on a crusade, was blundering towards a target and would – as night follows day – alert him or her. The clock moved towards countdown, and the hours still available to him were fucked. Months of work, in their final hours, were jeopardised, which was unfortunate. Had there been another ashtray on his desk he would have thrown that after the first.
‘You want a confession?’
‘Always good for the guts.’
The only movements they made were to tilt their heads fractionally when they spoke so that a mouth was against an ear, then to reverse the movement.
‘The sneeze,’ Fabio whispered. ‘My sneeze.’
‘Does a priest need to hear about a sneeze?’ Ciccio asked.
‘What did we say about my sneeze?’
‘That didn’t matter, the noise, because no one would be out in the storm.’
They lay close for warmth. They often had long conversations to pass the time. They were there as a last resort. There was no bug in the house, or hidden outside the back door, and most mornings the old man, Stefano, swept the vehicle for a tracker. They did not use mobile phones or computers for deals or planning, but relied on written text and couriers. The daughter organised communications. The last resort was having two men in a cleft, almost a cave, and hoping they had the staying power to notice any small but important ‘mistake’. The families always made a ‘mistake’, but it had to be seen, noted and evaluated. They were looking for the old man but hadn’t found him.
‘What does a priest need to hear?’
‘We didn’t flag a message through. A man came past us. We couldn’t identify or place him. Where’s he gone?’ Ciccio’s voice was lower than the moan of the wind. ‘No name, no description, no reason for him to be on the slope. The significance of this? He didn’t emerge.’
‘Shit.’
‘We haven’t seen him come out at the bottom – and his route would have taken him below the track where they come with the dogs. He hasn’t shown himself.’
‘Shit again.’ Fabio’s teeth ground. It was the work of survivors not intellectuals, for those without imagination but strong on discipline and able to analyse what they saw.
‘He’s still there.’