‘What?’
‘The scorpion flies we collected are dead and useless. We tried. Is that good enough?’
‘Always. We tried and there’s a reward.’
It diverted them to talk about the insect that looked like a killer and was harmless. The fate of the scorpion fly collection mattered almost as much as sighting the target. The wretched little creatures gave them a degree of sanity. They treated themselves to a dawn lunch, wurstel and a can of fruit cocktail. The combination would play havoc with their digestion, but they reckoned they deserved it. To Ciccio, the consequence for the shadowy figure was inevitable – as night follows day.
‘You’ve been here before?’ Carlo snapped, from the side of his mouth.
They were escorted up wide stairs – it hadn’t seemed worth waiting for the lift. A uniformed man was ahead. They had been through a metal detector – they had dumped their change and phones in a tray for X-ray, and their ID cards and passports had been photocopied. ‘Yes. Nothing’s different,’ Fred answered him.
‘We have an agenda?’
‘Bend the knee, apologise, be helpful. Say as little as possible.’
It was a best-clothing occasion, trousers, jackets, ties. The walls had been recently painted but institutional grime seemed to cling to them. There were no works of art, and the paintwork was a dull cream. On the landing there were ranks of closed doors, numbered, the occupants’ names not displayed. They walked the length of a corridor. Ahead they could see an open lobby area.
Men pushed up from the sofas and hard chairs where they smoked, read magazines or watched their phones’ screens. They were not those who had entertained them in the Ciroma bar the previous night. Carlo had drunk too much and Fred had matched him beer for beer. It was the story of his life that, too often, he was half-cut when he needed to be stone-cold sober, his antennae alert. He felt flushed and sweaty. The German looked better, which was a bitter pill for Carlo to swallow: Fred could hold his beer better than himself.
The men were the protection team. Some carped that they were superfluous, and, he’d heard, when he’d done the liaison from Rome, that they provided a visual symbol of ego. He knew enough of the differing Mafia groups to believe they sensed weakness and exploited it. They would kill their enemies, if it suited them.
He had been told a story about the killing of Paolo Borsellino, in Palermo, when that prosecutor had been a ‘walking cadaver’ and it was known he had been condemned. He’d had a team of five guards, always with him, in as much danger as he was. It was said that Borsellino used to evade the team and go out, when he needed cigarettes, that he hoped he would be shot then, alone, so that their lives would be spared. They had all died with him, four policemen and a policewoman.
These men would be the prosecutor’s family. Their anoraks and denim jackets were on the arms of the sofa and they wore their shoulder holsters. They would know that their man was facing ever-increasing isolation, and that an investigation was close to failure – all in the ‘briefing’ at the bar. He and Fred added to the burden on the man’s shoulders. The Mafia sent out their gunmen and their bombmakers when a target was isolated. Now he and Fred faced cold stares. He would have expected nothing else. One checked their names, their ID, went to an unmarked door and spoke into a microphone. They were waved inside. He doubted a single prosecutor in London or Berlin grasped this man’s lifestyle.
A cigarette burned in a cheap tourist ashtray, already half filled with butts, and the day had barely started. He wore braces, his shirt was unbuttoned low on his chest – a crucifix hung from a chain round his neck – and his fingers were stained mahogany with nicotine. The shirt cuffs were open, the links undone. He had three or four days’ stubble on his cheeks and his spectacles were balanced high on the crown of his head. The wall, predictably, was covered with the shields of other forces: German, French, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Spain, Greece and an elaborate one from Colombia. A carabinieri cap lay on a shelf, with a child’s model of a helicopter in carabinieri livery. In Carlo’s experience, some men carried the burden of their work easily and could muster a smile of welcome. In a few, hope had died. The other shelves groaned under the weight of the files stacked on them.
Nothing had changed. It was as Carlo remembered it. They dealt in paper, made mountains of it, and the burden grew. In London, in Green Lanes, Peckham, Deptford or out on the Essex fringes, there might be a celebration in a bar if a big player was brought in. There was nothing as crude here as a rogues’ gallery of wanted men: there wasn’t room – it would have covered all of the walls and maybe the ceiling.
The prosecutor sat down. They were not offered chairs.