She had done her shopping early at the mini-mart, put fuel in her parents’ car and was on the road. Nothing on the radio that involved her, except reports of flooding in the north and landslips on a railtrack south of Naples, the usual shit about a month’s rain falling in a day. Consolata had gone through his rucksack again and taken out dry clothing.
She drove north of Archi, then turned off the main road at Gallico towards the mountains and began the climb. Had anyone been with her, she would have said that you left civilisation at Santo Stefano in Aspromonte. There were few road signs but she was comfortable enough with the route. Boys herding goats, women collecting mushrooms, hikers in columns, cars travelling fast and lorries hugging cliff edges. The sun was higher and the road gleamed in her face. She had the window down and let the wind ripple the skin of her arms and throat. She was east of Varapodio, making good time, while the radio played soft music between news bulletins and weather reports and— She hit the brake.
The tyres screamed, burned. If she hadn’t stamped on the pedal, she would have hit the car in front of her. In front of it, a tractor was towing a trailer and in front of the tractor there was a roadblock.
She didn’t know what had happened on the hill above the house. Didn’t know what he had done. Didn’t know if they had her name. Didn’t know whether he was alive, dead or hunted. She had food for him. His rucksack was in the back of her car, with travel documents in his name; she had fuel for the vehicle in a plastic litre bottle. The roadblock was mounted by carabinieri, but not the ones with the fancy uniforms. These men wore military combat clothing, with sub-machine guns. Their protective vests were weighed down with reserve ammunition magazines and they carried gas, pistols and handcuffs on their belts. She thought she was about five kilometres from the point above the village where she had parked and left him.
What to do? The tractor driver was being interrogated. He was not handed back his papers and waved through. This was planned and thorough. If they had his and her names, she would go into a cage.
Consolata swung the wheel – she did the equivalent of tiptoeing away. A discreet three-point turn, and then she hit the zigzags. So, he had no food, no water and wet clothing – if he was still there. She shrugged. She’d come back when the roadblock had gone. She didn’t know him and the radio had said nothing about him. She retraced her route. She barely understood him and he hadn’t helped. She resented that – she wanted to know him . . .
He watched Giulietta.
The confirmations came in a line . . .
Jago knew the bus route to school that went along Barking Road. The shelter was inadequate if it rained, but he’d have to wait ages – then three would come at once. Old rule. Predictable. Three confirmations in a line, like London buses.
There was Giulietta and the washing for the line. The handyman was following with a spade. The chickens and the dogs were with them.
He could see enough.
Giulietta would have been barely older than the girls at the bank, but Renate, Elke and Hannelore wouldn’t have been seen dead in clothing like hers or have left their hair to its own devices, as Giulietta did. She had a plastic basket tucked under one arm, which she put on the ground. She shook out the folded sheets, then started to peg them to the line. Each time a sheet was placed in position, it denied Jago a view of that section of the path. The sheets made a screen. To a casual observer, they were there to dry. The second fell off at one end and she had to go back to refasten it.
The handyman was in front of her with the spade and dug a trench, then toed the cable into it and patted the earth back into place, stamped on the loose soil, and manoeuvred the slabs so that the walkway was smoother. He worked where earth had subsided and Jago had seen the join in the cable. Giulietta jabbed her finger at him, issued instructions and flounced about in annoyance at the time he took. The chickens squawked and bustled at her feet. Twice she aimed a kick at them. When all the sheets were hung, and the path had been levelled, Jago could no longer see the cable.
The join in it had been a yard left of where the third and fourth sheets overlapped. Jago took two small twigs, fallen in the night and scratched a line with his penknife on a rock; beyond it he worked the twigs into the ground. He had a pointer to the overlap of the sheets and the join in the cable.
There was a whistle and a shout. Marcantonio was at the back door, dressed. The sunlight caught the muscles in his arms and his hair. The dogs came to the whistle, and the kid to the shout.
Jago couldn’t see either Giulietta or the handyman on the path because they were on the far side of the sheets. He breathed an oath. The young man, Marcantonio, had called the dogs and the kid, then had gone back into the kitchen and retrieved a shotgun. The barrels were sawn off a little more than halfway down.