Consolata made a list: apples, milk, water, ham, bread, cheese and energy bars. That was the first. The second should have contained items such as trainers and waterproofs – but she hadn’t enough money. She was loath to borrow or steal from her mother, and wasn’t prepared to go back to the squat and demand a float from expenses, so, it remained empty. She could afford to buy some of the food but she’d get the rest from her mother.
She was at her parents’ home. They had gone to bed, and their car was in the lock-up at the back. She had the foldaway bed in the room that had once been hers and was now her mother’s workroom – she should not have had to take in sewing. A guest at the hotel had a jacket that had shed a button: Consolata’s mother would take it home, return it the next day, and a little more cash would slip into her purse. If the business had not been stolen she would have worked in the shop, and Consolata’s father would not have had to drive a delivery truck in Sicily.
She had thought of Jago during the night. He was rarely out of her mind. He would have been cold and drenched. The certainty would have oozed out of him. She would go back. It was important that she kept her word. The radio news said nothing about ’Ndrangheta but was filled with stories of floods, landslips, closed roads and power cuts. He might be on the road. She had imagined him struggling along, shoes waterlogged, no cars stopping on such a night. She had no idea whether her journey, after daybreak, would be wasted. She might see him at the rendezvous or on the road, if his resolve had cracked – perhaps even where she was now: Consolata had his rucksack. She did not know how he would have survived the storm.
Consolata had thought she understood the na?ve Englishman who had come to Reggio and whom she had accosted. She had searched his rucksack, expecting to learn more about him. He had not touched her on the beach and had not looked back when they’d arrived at the drop-off point, just stared through her. The rucksack had told her nothing. It held the bare necessities – no book, pictures or music. Spare underwear, socks, another shirt, and a pair of trousers. Consolata could not have said what she’d hoped to find in the bag, but she had looked for a degree of meaning and found nothing.
She was annoyed that he confused her. But what he achieved would be on the radio, and she would feel a private pride. She wouldn’t share it.
‘I sit around all day, half the night, watch the rain falling . . . and wait. What sort of message am I supposed to get from that?’
‘Different people from us, Bent, without our sense of timekeeping,’ the lawyer, Humphrey, soothed him. ‘Not an easy place to do business, but the rewards . . .’
‘Do they know who I am? Answer me.’
‘I’ve learned – the hard way – that it’s best to relax and go with the flow. Always best, Bent, to keep calm.’
‘I might as well go home.’
Jack had been down to Torbay, in south Devon, when Humphrey had last slipped over for a few days with his elderly father, using the Brittany Ferries route from Spain to Plymouth. Humphrey had not enthused at the prospect of Bentley Horrocks making the journey. Jack had insisted. ‘He’s a big man who’s getting bigger.’
Humphrey had grimaced. ‘They’re picky about who they do business with. They’re not just thugs, Jack. They’re thugs and businessmen.’
They had been in a working men’s club and Humphrey had been moaning about the absence in Calabria of English beer, as they’d talked in a corner – no way Crime Squad detectives would have had a wire in there.
Jack had said, ‘He’s got young dogs snapping at his heels, and he’s static at the moment, needs to move into a bigger league. Big fish in a puddle. You can fix it.’ Most of that day, Jack had wished that the old solicitor – good at what he did and always close to the wind – had turned him down. He hadn’t. Now they were in the crap hotel in Brancaleone and a whole day had gone by with barely a view of the beach. He had tried to set some ground rules and top of the list was keeping the mobiles switched off, all six that they had brought with them.
‘Sorry and all that, Bent, but walking out won’t help. Cutting off your nose to spite your face. I can’t—’
‘Tell me what you can do.’
‘—hurry these people up. They’re the major players in the world. They have people knocking on the door most days. You have to be patient.’
Another shrug. Jack wondered what they could do to kill time. The food here wasn’t great, there was a noisy party going on in the dining room and the pool had been drained. The shops were long closed, and they couldn’t even use the phones. There was no Scrabble and he doubted Bent could play chess. Jack thought it interesting that Humphrey, who’d licked arses in London till his tongue was raw, had tried to pacify Bent, stop him pacing and jabbing his finger. He’d stood up for himself. Jack understood: Humphrey now ran with serious players and did little jobs for them. He fed off the crumbs from their table – while Bentley Horrocks was at the level of ‘Take it or leave it’.
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying they know you’re here, and they’ll come when they’re ready.’