. . . He could see a join in the centre of a length of cable – electrician’s tape had been used to join two lengths, then wrapped in transparent plastic. The cable had been buried along the part of the path that was hidden by the sheets. Not now.
At Canary Wharf, they’d rated him as intelligent. They’d thought the same of him at the university, where he’d done a business course, and in the City, where he had been recruited by the bank and reckoned worthy of the transfer to Berlin. They had rated him sharp and bright enough to go after prospective clients and meet those who had already signed up. The sun was on the cable. In Jago’s estimation, it had been laid recently – the plastic coating was not yet stained with damp or deterioration. It ran from the back of the house, below the path and towards the derelict shed. Then it continued alongside the building to a slope where rubble and earth were heaped high. Thorn and broom bushes grew there, but no trees.
It was as if his lottery numbers had come up. A special moment. A new challenge screamed at him that good times lay ahead. Jago was always at his best when he was challenged – and that was why he hadn’t run when he’d done the car.
The back door opened.
He felt elation. It wasn’t a moment for punching the air – as some in the City did when news of bonuses came through – but more as if he’d sipped a good whisky in front of a blazing log fire. He felt contented, as he had that Christmas when he he’d stayed in the country-house hotel. Answers tumbled towards him.
The old woman came out of the back door, the dogs close to her, and saw her sheets on the ground. In her black cardigan and skirt, black socks and black shoes, with the black scarf knotted over her head, it was clear she had no truck with sunshine. She would despise ‘luxury’, he thought. No silk underwear for her, no stylists queuing to do her hair. A stupid thought: he’d bet what little money he had in his wallet that she’d have cooked him an amazing pasta dish, and would have dried his clothes, then ironed them expertly. Nothing about her was attractive. Her photograph had been on the policeman’s file in the station on Bismarckstrasse so she had flitted into Berlin and was linked, therefore, to a slashed face. He was there, in part, because of her and what she would have taught her grandson.
A second stupid thought: she would fight to her last breath to protect her family.
She smacked her hands together, then spread her feet so that she could bend down to collect the sheets. She moved along the path and stopped short of where the ground had slipped. The hole was in front of her and one more sheet lay on the far side. She whistled, a note he recognised: it was the one the kid used when he had the dogs on the hills. The dog closest to her knee was brindled, a crossbreed. The command – from between her teeth – was faint but clear. It bounded forward, reached the last sheet, scratched it into a tighter ball, then clamped its jaws on it and dragged it to the woman. Jago looked for a sign of appreciation shared between the dog and its mistress. He saw no love, no gratitude. She looked towards the end of the path, stared at the honeysuckle that grew up the building’s wall, still in flower. Her mouth twitched. Then she wiped the back of her hand across her nose and went back to the house.
The sun rose. The cable was now in dense shadow.
Jago understood. What to do with his knowledge would exercise him. What to do that was more than scratching vehicles. He thought her magnificent, uncompromising.
Jago checked his watch, worked out when he could make the rendezvous with Consolata and have water, food and clothing. He wondered briefly what she would bring, but was more concerned with the exposed cable.
‘What could you see?’
Fabio answered, ‘I can’t see from here where the sheets were – that rock blocks it – but she’s picked them up, the four sheets.’
Ciccio tapped the newest message into the keypad.
‘And what do they make of what happened last night?’
‘Not my problem.’
They lapsed into silence and the message was sent. Ciccio had one certainty: it was someone else’s problem. He didn’t know who that someone was, had seen only a shadow moving, and the image-intensifier glasses had not shown him a face. The shadow had crawled out of the night and attacked the home of a noted player, the head of a medium-ranking family. He had not dynamited the place or splashed petrol on the door and tossed a match or sprayed the upper windows with automatic fire from an AK. He had scratched a car. Why? And the consequences?
That was easier to answer. Ciccio had seen the results of ’Ndrangheta killings, those who had been strangled, starved to death in makeshift gaols and shot in the street. Once, part of a corpse had not quite dissolved because the acid in the vat had been used too often. As a consequence there would be a body. They had done their job, had observed and reported, and it was for others to pick over the information they had provided. It seemed to have no relevance to the Scorpion Fly surveillance operation. The clock ticked, and time slipped by.
‘Can I tell you something?’