It was a little lighter over the sea. Giulietta was at her computer; the screen showed the returns on investments in hotel resorts on the Brazilian coast, made comparisons with Florida, and threw up launch costs and profit margins. She shut it down. Nothing illegal there. Nothing that could justify a charge of ‘Mafia association’ if the house was raided and the hard drive taken. She shrugged on a coat, went out into the rain and lit a cigarillo, stronger than a cigarette. It was her problem that she had not been born a boy. What power she had would soon be stripped away from her when Marcantonio came home for good.
She felt contempt for her nephew. Had she been born a boy she would by now have been undisputed head of the family and her father would have been an old man with memories and little else. He had left her with a twisted nose: when she was fourteen months old, he had dropped her on a stone floor. Her nose had been broken and allowed to knit by itself. She had no lover because of her status. A young man in the village could not have considered walking out with her. A young man from another family, equal in importance to her own, would have raged if his father had told him that Giulietta Cancello was his chosen bride. She had no girlfriends with whom she could go to a disco at a hotel in Locri, Brancaleone or Siderno. Love was beyond her reach.
Teresa, her sister-in-law, had once bought her some clothes from the new boutique in the mall outside Locri but she didn’t wear them – her mother would cluck with disapproval if she did. Annunziata had treated her as if she were an imbecile. Giulietta had denounced Annunziata, condemning her.
She threw away the cigarillo. Marcantonio would go back to Berlin. Word would seep from the Palace of Justice that a prosecutor’s investigation had run its course. They owned enough men in the Palace for the information to be reliable. Her father would emerge from his bunker, and Marcantonio would return from Germany. She would spend more time at the computer, offering advice, seeing it ignored, as age chased her.
A shipment was coming into Gioia Tauro in the rudder trunk of a cargo ship from Venezuela. An Englishman was installed at Brancaleone and would stay there until the family was prepared to meet him, hear his proposition and determine whether or not he was safe as a commercial partner. Her nephew would be in a bar and other boys would be around him, hanging on his stories. At the tables, girls hoped to be noticed and that a finger would beckon them over. Stefano would be by the door, in the City-Van, the rainwater sloshing dirt off the bodywork. No one called for Giulietta, or waited for her, or hoped she would notice them. She kicked a pebble, which ricocheted into the bushes. She had seen how her mother smiled only when Marcantonio was near her, and that the porcelain Madonna was positioned prominently on the window ledge. It was quiet and the dogs were alert. She would have sworn that nothing moved near the house, that no one was close, that there was no threat. She went inside.
Nine calls had been received at a bed-and-breakfast on the north side of the city. The same answer was given each time: the guests had not yet arrived. No message was left. The rain made a river of the street, and the hills – usually a fine sight – were buried in cloud.
Carlo said, ‘I wasn’t on the street here. I would have liked to be around when they took him. He was one of the men who controlled the whole of Reggio, and blood would have been dripping off his fingers. I saw him when the carabinieri took him past the cameras. I was there for a meeting, about stuff going into London. Anyway, they lifted the guy on this street.’
It was the Via Pio. Rain came off the roofs, and gutters over-flowed. No point in wearing their coats.