by David Hewson
Peroni took the soap from her and sniffed it. The curious citrus fragrance was exotic and alluring. ‘I’ll take those.’
‘The book could take a week to turn up. Sorry. Perhaps longer.’
‘We’ll be gone by then.’ He flourished a hundred. ‘We just sold a business in Rome. We’ve got a little money to spend. Maybe we could invest it here. Who knows? Back home they rip you off, every single day.’ He watched her and said, ‘The city’s full of thieves.’
‘That’s the world, isn’t it?’
He extended his right hand. She took it gingerly. ‘Gianni. Gianni Romano.’
‘Elena Sposato.’
He nodded at the cottage and then the sea. ‘Your husband’s a fisherman?’
‘My husband’s dead,’ she said straight away as she packed his goods into two old and wrinkled plastic bags.
He tried to see into her eyes but it was impossible. ‘I’m sorry. A watermelon, please. And some oranges.’ There was no change in the till. The hood had taken everything. ‘No worry, signora. I’ll be back another time. The coffee here. The view …’ He patted Roberto on the head. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘What sort of business?’ she asked.
‘Public relations,’ Peroni said, then threw a few coins on the bar as a tip, wished them both farewell and walked back to the road.
The black Fiat had gone. But Falcone was there and he looked furious.
‘You might at least keep your phone turned on,’ he grumbled as they left the village.
‘Apologies,’ Peroni said with a shrug. ‘I wanted to listen in on someone’s conversation. It was work, Leo. I assure you.’
He was driving, Falcone in the passenger seat, Teresa was in the back. Silvio Di Capua had stayed in Cariddi to work the machines in the house, liaising with Rome if needed. It seemed a futile exercise. Until they could understand more of the task ahead none of them had a clue how to act, though Peroni’s gut instinct told them this was not necessarily bad news, or perhaps even unexpected. If the mob had wanted to kill a couple of cops they would have left the corpses on the doorstep. Not what was posted through the door of their rented house while they were dining: an envelope with a map marked with latitude and longitude co-ordinates for a satnav unit and a simple message written in a cultured hand: ‘We have your man. We do not want your woman. Pick her up. Both are safe and will remain so if you do as we say. The car we will take care of ourselves. It will find a good home.’
He navigated the first of the series of sharp hairpin bends that crossed beneath the main A3 autostrada running from Salerno to Reggio then pointed the hire car up into the hills.
‘Listen to what?’ Teresa asked.
He glanced at her in the mirror. Only briefly. He was trying to follow the constant spoken instructions of the satnav. It was taking them onto a single track road as steep and circuitous as any mountain lane he’d ever encountered.
‘A young widow getting hassled for money by some creep.’ He looked at Falcone. ‘Maybe he was the one who dropped off that message. The moron had thug written all over him. They don’t even bother to hide it here.’
He couldn’t forget the look of fear and loathing on the woman’s face when the jerk reached out and stroked her breast. Or his lascivious, expectant smile.
‘I don’t think she had enough to keep him happy. Not money anyway. I’d like to know why her husband’s dead. There must be a library in the village somewhere. Newspapers. Up the hill where the modern houses are. I’d like to go there. I’d like to talk to this woman some more. She’s got a lovely kid—’
‘What?’ Falcone snapped. ‘What? Two of your colleagues are out there somewhere and all you can think about is going to a library?’
Teresa, puzzled, asked, ‘Since when did you start reading?’
‘What else is there to do? The message said they’re safe.’
‘The message? You trust a bunch of crooks?’
Peroni turned and looked at the irate man in the passenger seat. ‘We trusted them enough to send them Nic and Rosa in the first place, didn’t we?’
Falcone was going red and the language, for him, was getting unusually rich.
There was a narrow passing space on the corner of the next bend. Peroni watched the view open up as he approached it. The panorama was astonishing. It ran back to the ragged coastline and across the strait to Sicily. Etna stood majestic in the distance, a puff of smoke near the summit. A little to the north he could see what he presumed to be the Aeolian Islands and, nearby, Stromboli rising like a sea limpet just as Roberto, the widow’s kid, had promised.
Peroni pulled in, turned off the engine and waited for the man next to him to calm down a little. When Falcone finally shut up he said, very calmly, ‘Let’s get this straight once and for all, Leo. We’re not police officers here. You’re not my superior. I’m not yours to order around as you see fit. As far as Calabria’s concerned we have no legal status, none of us. No authority. Nothing. I value your opinion. I admire you. We’re friends. A mark of true friendship is that we get to speak frankly with one another. So listen. I don’t have to take your pompous crap and bite my tongue as if we’re in Rome. OK?’
He leaned forward. Falcone’s angular, tanned face had lost a little of its colour. There was still anger in the man’s eyes but something a little like self-recognition too.
‘I’ve got more of a feel for what’s going on here than you’ll ever have and you’re smart enough to know that,’ Peroni added. ‘You got that note for two reasons. First, to let us know our people are safe and that we should come and collect one while the other gets to talk with someone important. Second, it’s their way of telling us we’re here at their discretion, their pleasure. They know where we live …’
‘How’s that possible?’ Falcone demanded. ‘We arranged that house through Rome—’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Peroni cut in, waving him into silence. ‘There’s no point in worrying about it. This is another country. It belongs to them. I’d be amazed if they didn’t know who we are, what we’re doing, from the moment we turned up. I know you hate that idea. I appreciate you want to be in control. But listen to me please. We’re not.’
He took Falcone by the arm and repeated, ‘We’re not, Leo. If we ever begin to think we are, or worse, behave that way, then Nic or Rosa or maybe all of us could be in danger. We’re at their mercy. That doesn’t make me happy either but we’d better learn to live with it. Don’t forget. If what they’re offering is real, and we have to assume it is, they’re risking a lot more than any of us. Remember what happened to Bonetti and his family? He was a minion. Imagine what they’d do to one of their bosses.’
Teresa was silent, watching him in a guarded way he didn’t see often.
‘As long as they feel they’re running this show we’ve nothing to fear. They want something from us. Something that’s in our gift. That’s why they asked us here.’
‘What could we have for them?’ she asked. ‘Aside from the obvious—’
‘The obvious being solitary exile for a man who’s currently king of his castle here,’ Peroni cut in. ‘Why would he exchange that for a life in which everyone in his family could get killed at any moment?’
They were silent.
‘You see the problem,’ he added. ‘Maybe they’ll tell Nic once they trust him. Maybe they’ll keep him too until they get the answer they want.’
He thought twice about saying what was in his mind then realized he had to. It was foolish to pretend they could approach this case as if it were some routine inquiry handed down from on high in the Questura.
‘Put yourselves in their shoes. What would you do? Would it be any different? We’ve got to learn to see things from their point of view. To work with them. Like I told you earlier. We don’t bring in people like this by thinking we’re sweet-talking nuns. You may have to hold your nose from time to time because some of this is going to stink.’
Falcone watched him then shook his head.
‘Oh that’s right. Turn clever.’
‘I mean it.’ Falcone breathed a deep sigh then repeated, more softly, ‘Really. You’re right. I’m out of my depth here. I should have passed the whole business on to someone else.’
There was a reason they were out on a limb, a good one.
‘We’re here because we’re the only ones smart enough, or dumb enough, to meet the job description. Oh. And the answer’s no. I won’t run the operation for you. The things that you’re good at are important. Discovery. Intelligence. Planning. You can be doing all that stuff while these people in the hills think we’re sunning ourselves by the beach. Me …’ He thought of the pretty woman and her shy, scared little kid and found himself taking his eyes away from the mirror. ‘I’d just like to hang around Cariddi. Talk to people. Get a feel for what’s going on. We may need that.’
He gazed down at the coast. It was beautiful, utterly unspoilt. Perhaps, from the point of view of those who’d owned this remote green jewel for a few centuries, worth fighting for.
‘You know what separates us?’
Falcone stared at him. ‘What?’
‘You just want to bring in the bad guys. Throw them in court. See them go to jail and then move on to whatever happens next. I want more than that. I want to talk to them. They’re interesting. You can learn things. You realize we’re not so far apart. They just come from a different place and the way they see things is as strange to us as we are to them.’
‘I don’t even want to think about that,’ Teresa complained from the back.
‘Then leave it to me,’ Peroni said and started the car.
Rosa Prabakaran was waiting for them outside a little hovel of a shack set against a dark clump of trees at the end of a stony path. Peroni took a good look around. There were tyre tracks in the brown dirt and, close to the door, a half-smoked cigar. Nothing else. He scanned the rocky outcrop above them. Someone was probably watching from there right now. Not that it mattered.
‘Are you all right?’ Teresa asked.
‘How did you find me?’
They told her about the note and what it said.
‘They took Nic …’ The young agente seemed upset. ‘They made him think they were keeping me as hostage. It was … a lie. An act. A performance. Everything. The things they said …’
Peroni thought there was a little extra colour in her cheeks at that moment.
‘There was a woman. A santina …’
She led them into the little shack. Something was cooking on the stove. He thought it smelled good. Meaty, like the best country food. There were two bottles of mineral water on the table, one sparkling, one still, and a basket of bright red apples.
‘That’s what the witch leaves you, isn’t it?’ Rosa muttered looking at the fruit. ‘The woman said to stay here and wait. You’d come. Then she took our car. I wasn’t going to walk anywhere, was I? I don’t know where we are. I don’t know how far it is to the nearest village.’
A long way, Peroni thought.
Falcone asked her about Costa and what had been discussed. Peroni listened, not wanting to intervene. He meant what he’d said earlier. Falcone was good at detail, at chasing down hints and rumours, turning them into fact. These were rare skills, ones Teresa shared, and quite unlike his own.
But people … people were more difficult. Unpredictable. Hard to pin down. Peroni liked that. Not many of his colleagues felt the same way.
Rosa left the most significant part to the last.
‘They said they would give us Andrea Mancuso. From Sicily. In person.’
‘Jesus,’ Peroni whispered. ‘What have we got ourselves into? Do you believe that, Leo?’
Falcone didn’t seem to be listening. He was wandering round the shack, lost in thought.
‘The woman … the santina … she lived here,’ Rosa added.
Peroni went to the sideboard by the front window where the curtains were closed. There was a portable TV and, in an ancient wooden frame, a photo of an old man with very white hair. He looked kindly and intelligent, with a knowing smile. Like everyone’s favourite grandfather. He wore a black hat and behind him there were mountains, the bare rocky outcrops of Aspromonte.
‘What’s a santina?’ Teresa asked and looked unimpressed by Rosa’s answer: a kind of Calabrian fortune-teller.
Peroni pressed the button to turn on the little TV. Nothing happened. He followed the cable. There wasn’t even a plug on the end.
‘Nobody lives here,’ he said. ‘It’s just a … prop.’ Like the envelope with the directions that came through the door while they ate. ‘Somewhere they use when they need to. They’ve probably got scores of places like this around Aspromonte.’
But would they all have a photo of what looked like someone’s grandfather? He wondered. Behind the back of the sideboard with the TV he saw something else and bent down to retrieve it. Teresa looked at the object in his hands. It was a rag cloth with a stain on it.
‘Blood,’ she said, with the authority of the professional. ‘I guess. Old. I’d rather not think what they got up to here.’
‘Did they say how they’d get in touch?’ Peroni asked.
‘No. When Nic offered to go with them that was it. I thought the old woman would stay with me. That I’d be here for weeks. She said she’d be a manu … manu …’
‘Manutengola?’ Peroni suggested. He’d read about them in the files.
‘That’s it.’
‘It’s what they call someone paid to keep a prisoner. For kidnapping or something.’
Rosa picked up an apple. ‘An hour after the others had left she offered me one of these and said goodbye.’
He stifled the amusement inside him. ‘Not what you expect the first time you meet the ’Ndrangheta, is it?’
Falcone placed a finger over his silver goatee beard and held it to his thin-lipped mouth, thinking. Tall, urbane, he looked quite out of place here in the wilds.
‘They’re uncertain of themselves too,’ Peroni suggested. ‘We’re just going to have to wait for them to make a move. If they have to pretend Nic’s one of their own … if that’s what it takes to get him close to whoever this man is … it could take a while.’
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Rosa said.
The others waited. ‘There’s a summit. A council or something. All the mob bosses are coming somewhere here. He’s offering a time and a place. So we can take them.’
Peroni groaned. ‘We’d need the army for something like that.’
‘It’s what they said, Gianni. There was a man and woman too. They looked like brother and sister. They said … they said there could be violence.’ She looked close to tears. ‘We can’t let this happen. We can’t leave him in there. I wouldn’t trust any of them. They’d kill him just like that.’
‘We have no choice …’ Falcone looked at Peroni. ‘Do we?’
‘None at all.’
‘But …’ Rosa’s voice was close to breaking. ‘We can try to find them. There has to be something here we can use.’
Teresa picked up the stained cloth and the glasses on the table then pulled out a plastic evidence bag and placed them inside. After that she got an old cardboard box in the corner and started packing away the plates and cooking utensils. There would be prints. They would not, Peroni thought, be easy to check.
‘You should leave them,’ he said.
She looked aghast. ‘Leave them?’
‘Yes. What can you do? What forensics lab would you trust? We can’t talk to anyone outside. They’d know, however well you disguise it. Can’t you see? They’re more scared of their own people than they are of us. When they want us to know who they are they’ll tell us. Besides, how does it look? We’re trying to build trust. And all the while you want to walk round one of their little lairs picking up everything you can find and stuffing it in an evidence bag.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Gianni,�
�� Rosa cried. ‘He’s your friend. He’s … one of us.’
‘That’s precisely why we do nothing,’ he said, watching Teresa carry on putting things in bags.
‘Leave it,’ Falcone ordered. ‘Leave it all. He’s right.’
She stopped and asked, ‘Is there nothing we can do?’
‘I keep saying it,’ Peroni grumbled.
‘I’ve got a name,’ Rosa chipped in hopefully. ‘They’re called Bergamotti. We can start with that.’
‘True,’ Peroni agreed with a quick grin none of them understood. ‘We can.’
PART THREE
The Fist of Rock
Calabrian Tales
Chapter XI: A Place Called Manodiavolo
The belief that the world is not entirely as man sees it lies deep in the heart of every true inhabitant of Aspromonte. Perhaps it stems from our Greek blood. A pagan relic in our character that centuries of Catholic teaching have failed to erase. I believe this to be true but only in part for the land itself is as much to blame as the breeding of its inhabitants.
This is the territory of enchantresses and demons, of magicians and those who fall under the spell. Walk through the bare hills of Aspromonte in mid-summer, smell the fragrance of the mountain herbs crushed beneath your feet, and you find yourself in a kind of Arcadia where the modern world is far distant. What lurks behind that brittle patch of brushwood? Dionysus with his ithyphallic satyrs? A mischievous covey of Pan’s thuggish fauns, half-man, half-goat? Or simply the snake of Eden, waiting, fangs bared, for the next innocent Eve to wander past, wide-eyed and waiting for the fall?
In our solitary corner of the Mezzogiorno no one knows. And so we tread these winding mountain paths with trepidation, constantly aware that mysteries lurk unseen, not least within ourselves.
Manodiavolo – Hand of the Devil – is now a ghost village, an unkempt collection of ruins set beneath the squat peak which gives the place its name: four low round outcrops that serve as clenched fingers, and a slender plateau that, with a squint, may be deemed to resemble a thumb. From the position of the latter it’s clear to see this is a left hand. The hand of the devil. Hence the name it has lived with since the Middle Ages.
