While the man had been in hiding he had needed someone he trusted to be his courier. His son-in-law was among thirty who ran messages, brought food and set up meetings. He had been using eleven different safe houses. All thirty had to be located, bugged and tracked, but the son-in-law – the most trusted – was the bad link in the chain and blew him out. It had taken four years to pinpoint where the guy was. He was armed when they went in, but didn’t try to use his weapon, went quietly. Four years for one man, with scores of people working on the case. Carlo told the story. It was important to him – the only time he had been there when the cameras flashed. The guy would have been worth hundreds of millions of euros. To go after a target for four years and believe that the investigation would be successful was dedication.
They were two old men, who stood on a pavement, had no protection against the rain and seemed not to notice. A German and a Briton . . . They might have been veterans of Cassino on the road to Rome, in opposite slit trenches, now meeting in a graveyard, or at Juno Beach and falling on each other’s necks, but instead, they had war stories of Rosarno and the Via Pio. It was important to demonstrate that they knew what the game was about.
Carlo said, ‘If, towards the end of that stake-out, a fly-by-night had screwed up what they had, the anger would have been indescribable. We’re not going to be anyone’s favourite visitors. We put all the money towards anti-terrorism now, but the real threat to our society is the corruption and criminality of the gangs. It’s a cancer. Does a young banker go to war in a grey suit with a neutral tie? I don’t know. I do know that he’s gone into acute personal danger. Do we cheer him on or call him fucking stupid?’
‘If only it were that simple. . .’
Carlo said, ‘You told me his boss spoke poorly of him. I can cap that. His own mother bad-mouthed him. A confusing picture. I believe you win some and lose some. Nothing’s personal. How do you see your future?’
The walls of the gaol were behind them and a little queue of women, black clothes and inadequate umbrellas, were waiting for visiting time.
‘I hope Carlo, to be on a naturist beach and feel freshness on my skin.’
‘I rate the boy. Are you going to strip off? I’ve never been driven by a bare-arsed chauffeur. It was good to come here, see the place.’
Fred said, ‘Nobody I’ve spoken to has had a good word for him. He has no friends, no champions. It makes him more interesting and less predictable. Do I sound like a profiler? I hate them. He’s independent – and not liked.’
‘Irrelevant. Who said, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’? If he bloodies a nose or kicks a shin, that’s good enough. I don’t have to like him. You met him. How will he strike me?’
The pipe was out. Fred shielded the bowl as he tried to relight it. A cascade of failed matches fell to the pavement. ‘He is a banker, investment and sales. They are not impetuous. He will wait. It will be similar to the market performing as he wishes it. He will be patient. It will be in his time of choosing. I think he will be out there, in this weather, and it will not concern him. I think he has the talent to surprise us. Time to go.’
‘It can’t be put off.’
‘We face the music, and it’ll be an orchestra, full blown.’
They went to the car.
Jago set himself puzzles. They had started as mental arithmetic on the portfolios at the bank. The light dipped fast, and it was almost the time that the majority of the team would be leaving the building, heading for the bars or coffee shops, the gymnasium along the street and the launderette. None of that had any relevance to where he was and what he was doing.
He had found a good teaser. It had legs and ran.
The sheets on the line attracted him.
The rain fell on them and, though sodden and heavy, they flapped in the wind. Some of the pegs had been dislodged, but as day disappeared and grey dusk settled, those remaining seemed to do a job. They were good sheets, for king-sized beds, a rich blue that was similar to the sea. Four sheets, and they obscured a stretch of the route between the trellis and the wall short of the dilapidated shed. Trees blocked his view of most of the building, but the sheets . . . He turned the matter in his mind.
And remembered.
A shower in Canning Town, washing out on the lines in the little back gardens or slung along the balconies of the blocks, and the women were straight out quick with white plastic baskets to scoop the clothes and bedding off the lines. They did it at speed. Nobody in Canning Town left the washing on the line when it rained. The mother could have taken it in, or the daughter, or even the driver while he waited for Marcantonio, slasher of a girl’s face, to come out. Even Marcantonio might have done it. But the bedding had been abandoned on the line through a storm, as dusk merged with night.
The rain had eased but not stopped. The skies melded with the ground and distant lights brightened. Through the kitchen window he saw the mother and thought she was preparing vegetables. The cold had set in. Had it not been for the teaser – why was the washing still on the line? – he might have frozen solid. He had to keep on his clothing because to take it off would expose him to the water and the wind.