It was years since he had fired a shotgun, and then it had been at a cardboard box, at a range of twenty metres. The spread would have brought down a running man or crippled a deer, but that was the limit. He was poor with a pistol, had seldom been out with other teenagers to fire at cans – for fear of failing. It was not in the nature of the ’Ndrangheta to kill at random. His grandfather had always said that killing was done to exert extreme pressure on enemies and remove obstacles to a quiet life. He had enough reason to carry the shotgun, which was loaded, and it would have been the work of three or four seconds to lock it, draw back the hammer, squeeze and fire.
Two lines had been scratched on the body of the car – done with a knife or keys. The second stumble had pitched him onto his knee and ripped his jeans – Ralph Lauren, bought on the Ku’damm, when he had put them on he hadn’t realised how difficult it would be to scramble around the rocks with the dogs. His knee was bleeding. As he went higher, Capo, the alpha dog, was close to him. There were moments when it seemed to go after a scent, but there would have been rabbits here, and small deer or a boar or— He slipped again, went down several metres on his backside. He couldn’t use his hands to steady himself because they were on the shotgun. Eventually a bush broke the fall, but his pride was dented. He heard the kid whistling for his dogs, then Capo above him, and Stefano banging the new wheel into position. He was high above the bunker. It was sad that his grandfather had to live in that hole . . . He thought of how it would be when he headed the family and the old man was buried in the cemetery at the bottom of the village. Marcantonio would be a man of status, his name displayed in the files of the carabinieri and the Squadra Mobile. There would be meetings in the Palace of Justice to discuss evidence that could be brought against him.
It was a diversion. He was on a hillside, being teased and laughed at. The old City-Van had had twin lines drawn on it and Marcantonio alone knew why. He barely remembered the girl’s face. A man had come to taunt him.
His knee hurt.
He sat down. He had not been with a woman since he’d got home. He had listened as his grandmother had talked interminably about the priest, the Madonna of the Mountains and the small children, Annunziata’s. His mother, Teresa, had watched him with suspicion: Berlin might have alienated him from his home and if he became part of a city’s life the family would fail. His grandfather was old and whined . . . and above him, some way distant, he heard a dog growl.
It had come upon them. Fabio had the Beretta pistol, cocked. Ciccio had the Sabre Red, law-enforcement strength, CS tear gas/red pepper canister.
Fabio had not spent a day on the range for eight months. Ciccio had seen a demonstration of the spray’s effect two years before.
Their bodies were fused, Siamese style, thigh to thigh, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, the canister and the pistol pointed at the dog’s head. It snarled, showing its teeth. Some were missing or broken, but Ciccio reckoned there were enough in place to do serious damage. The dog had its front feet forward and was ready to spring. There were more dogs to their right, but this was the one that mattered. The brute had almost passed them, had been at the edge of the little parapet in front of their hole. They had lain stock still and stifled their breathing. It had stopped, sat on its arse, and scratched, then faced them. Ciccio knew it was his call, and that Fabio would not shoot. He sensed that sound welled deep in the dog’s throat. It would bark, high-pitched, urgent, and the kid would come with others. Marcantonio was carrying a sawn-off shotgun. They couldn’t run and abandon their gear. They knew why the hillside was being searched. They’d had a message: a man was on the hill, had scraped a car of Marcantonio’s in Berlin, had travelled to Calabria and scratched the car here. Dry mouths, hearts pounding, slow breathing – and fear. Ciccio thought it not a dog to be bought off with a biscuit.
He used the spray, his target the centre of the dog’s face, at less than two metres range. On the canister the instructions gave four metres as the maximum effective distance. Two fast squirts – not enough to blind, but enough to irritate.
The dog backed away, blinked and whined. Its tail was locked under its legs.
It came down, reached Marcantonio and moaned. It was bouncing off the bushes, trying to rub its nose with a front paw. Marcantonio did not know why dogs had facial irritations. He looked for the kid and saw him high on a crest, above the back of the house. He had business to do and time was running out. It was possible he had been mistaken: perhaps the City-Van had been out of sight when they were at the docks, close to Villa San Giovanni. He waved, caught the kid’s attention, pointed back down. The boy started his descent. In front of the house the wheel was on and Stefano had gone. In his opinion, Stefano was arrogant, too much listened to. He would be cut down to size when Marcantonio took control of the family’s affairs.
‘I want my breakfast,’ Bernardo had shouted.
He had been told to wait. Either Mamma or Stefano, sometimes Giulietta, gave him the all-clear to leave the bunker.
‘Wait,’ had been Stefano’s surly response.
‘I want my breakfast in the kitchen, not in this hole.’