The Namesake cab-3

by Conor Fitzgerald

  He heard a footfall on the stairs. The first step was quiet and careful, but the next were louder and more careless as they drew closer, and there were other feet coming up the stairs behind that and more behind that. At least three of them. Five perhaps. He could not count or reason.

  Ruggiero touched the side of his brother’s sleeping head. The temple was still soft, and the child’s brain was pulsing with innocent thoughts beneath. There were voices in the hall outside. He went over and placed himself in front of the door, and pushed his chest out. He realized he had gone completely numb from his feet to the bottom of his neck, and it made no difference in the end if he was bare-chested or not.

  They checked his room, and there was a surprised grunt as they found it empty.

  Now the door was swinging open, and Ruggiero stood up. He put his arms behind his back and braced himself.

  The man who entered the room strode over to Ruggiero, embraced him hard, kissed him on the side of the neck, combed his fingers through the boy’s hair, then pushed him back, and looked at him in admiration.

  ‘Were you in here defending your brother?’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  ‘No need now, my courageous son. I am here.’

  37

  Positano

  Konrad Hoffmann was swimming deeper and deeper into the unplumbed depths of a restaurant fish tank and his voice streamed upwards in an angry buzz of bubbles to pop loudly but meaninglessly as they reached the surface, and Blume, observing that this was all far-fetched, especially the bit about the fish tank being bottomless, deep and dark, decided to wake up and grab at his mobile phone. He opened his eyes as he brought it to his ear, shocked to see daylight. If he had been asked to guess, he would have said he had been asleep for an hour at most.

  ‘Maria Itria has called for help. For real this time. She called Magistrate Arconti at around 4:30 this morning, but did not answer a call that he made later. After thinking about it for a bit he called me,’ said Caterina on the other end of the line.

  It gave him such an unexpected lift to hear her voice first thing after a stupid dream about… red fish or something, that he was not sure he had understood the content of her message.

  ‘Caterina? Wait… go through that again.’

  ‘Curmaci’s wife. She called for help last night.’

  ‘She called you?’ Blume shook his head. ‘Sorry, dumb question, I was asleep just now.’

  ‘She called Arconti and said if something happened to her husband, she would be willing to turn state witness. Then she said she wanted police protection and an escort the hell out of there. Since then, her phone has been off. Arconti told me and I’m telling you. It’s six in the morning, you’re usually awake at this time, not that that was a consideration. The woman and her children are in trouble. Your trick has become self-fulfilling, and now she really is willing to reach out to the authorities.’

  ‘She called Arconti on her own initiative, in the early hours of the morning?’

  ‘Yes, he said he definitely got the impression she was either unaware of or indifferent to the fact of his hospitalization.’

  ‘Why didn’t Arconti call me?’ asked Blume.

  ‘I can’t second-guess Arconti, but I can think of several reasons he might not trust you after that stunt you pulled with the false confession.’

  He felt a throb in the back of his head. If only it would remain there, but it would not. Within half an hour it would have worked its way to his frontal lobes and would sit pulsing like a toad all day long.

  ‘He’s very fucking busy for a man in a hospital bed. Why didn’t he call the local police, get them to pick up the Mafia wife and her progeny?’

  ‘Are you really asking that?’ said Caterina. ‘An order imparted from a magistrate in Rome to the local police would be intercepted pretty quickly, and the police themselves will be under surveillance, especially with the Polsi summit meeting coming up. They can’t move without being followed.’

  ‘Fine, but they’d still go and get her. Probably.’

  ‘He didn’t make that call.’

  ‘More strange behaviour on his part,’ said Blume.

  ‘You write false confessions but he’s the one who’s acting strange because he does not issue orders from his bed for the police at the far end of the country to go rescue a woman who is now not responding to calls? Apart from the fact he is not assigned to any case, on what grounds could he order a patrol around? For all he knows, it could be a trap or a diversion. She may have called to test his reaction.’

  ‘So what did he say?’

  ‘That he would pass on her message to a different magistrate who would contact her later in the morning. He said she could call the police herself if her need was immediate. At that point she hung up.’

  What seemed like a bubble of methane rose from the back of his throat into the back of his head and popped with a thud. He counted six heartbeats, before the next thud arrived.

  ‘Alec?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Still here.’ But he wasn’t. His mind had darted back to the idea of Curmaci’s wife fleeing, Konrad as a fast-moving fish, a fragment from his dream.

  ‘Maria Itria said she would co-operate with the authorities if something happened to her husband, but as far as we know, nothing has,’ said Caterina. ‘But something is up. Curmaci’s acting strangely and his wife and children are in trouble, just like you wanted.’

  ‘What’s Curmaci doing that’s strange?’

  ‘He was booked under a false name on a flight from Frankfurt to Lamezia Terme, but he never took the flight, and he disappeared yesterday evening,’ she said.

  ‘Those geniuses at the BKA lost him?’

  ‘No, we did. The BKA saw him board a flight for Bari instead of Lamezia Terme and alerted us. That is to say, they alerted the Finance Police at Bari airport. The Finance Police registered Curmaci’s arrival and reported it to the Carabinieri at the airport, who reported it to the police in the city. Problem is, the police in Bari were in Bari while Curmaci was at the airport, and no one had told the Carabinieri… Well, you’ve seen how it happens. By the time it had been cleared up, and authorization given for the Carabinieri to follow him, he was gone. It appears he rented a car, and they’re looking into it.’

  ‘He changed his route at the last minute,’ said Blume. ‘Three or four hours will take him to Calabria and Locri. Looks to me like he’s just trying to shake off anyone who might be following. We can try to pick him up after the Polsi summit, though it’s not so easy to find those bastards. They seem to vanish into the Aspromonte wilderness only to turn up a few days later in New York, London, Malaga or Amsterdam.’

  ‘Or he does not want to meet his welcoming committee in Lamezia Terme,’ said Caterina.

  ‘You mean because he fears for his life? No. That’s not it. If he feared assassination at the hands of his own people, he’d steer clear of Calabria altogether.’

  ‘Typically, Alec, you keep forgetting his family. He has the strongest and most urgent reason in the world to get there. They are vulnerable. Funny how you seem to block that out of your mind since, I presume, that was the original idea behind the forged confession. Or didn’t you think about the consequences for the woman and her children?’

  Blume paused to think. This was one of those questions Caterina liked to ask in which, whether he replied yes or no, he still came out of it looking like the bad guy. He chose the best response he could come up with: ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know,’ she echoed, scathing. ‘You realize Arconti may be trying to do you a favour by not calling in the local police? A woman from the Ndrangheta, a s orella d’omerta confessing to a magistrate, especially one who has become notorious because of the namesake killing, is going to be big news. And if her story is big news, your efforts to force her husband back into Italy via a false confession is going to be just as big, maybe bigger given the poisonous atmosphere in the country against investigators and magistrates.’

  �
��I’m not a magistrate.’

  ‘Arconti is. If the story breaks in the press, every magistrate in Italy will distance themselves as fast and as far as they can from you and all your dubious tactics before Berlusconi’s hacks turn this into another weapon to use against the judiciary. They’ll throw you to the lions.’

  ‘Those reporters aren’t lions. More like trained monkeys.’

  ‘Trained to tear people apart, Alec. You know better than to hope for solidarity…’

  ‘All right. Point taken. My thanks to Arconti for allowing me to fix this thing myself.’

  ‘Good. What are you going to do now? What about the German you are with?’

  Blume felt a small tingling in his stomach and arms, like a tiny version of the body’s aftershock to a near-miss traffic accident. Her question bothered him. ‘I think I need to talk with him,’ he said. ‘Right now, as a matter of fact. I’ll call you back.’

  ‘Sure you will,’ she said.

  Blume ran up to the hotel lobby in his boxer shorts, his mind’s eye already anticipating what he would see out the window of the lobby, the silver leaves of the olive trees, the mass of dark green and pale white of jasmine bushes in the background, and, off to the side, nodding in and out of view, a scarlet hibiscus bush he had noticed the day before. His eye immediately latched on to the revolting plant as soon as he arrived in the lobby. Blume stared across the room out at the fat red flowers already opening in the morning sun, their protruding stamens licking at the air. Yesterday, when he had glanced out the window, the plant had been obscured by the rear section of an old orange-and-white camper van. Slowly now, since he knew the answer and because each footfall travelled up his body and thumped on the side of his aching head, he walked out the front door of the hotel and stood there bare-chested, looking at the empty space where the camper van had been.

  38

  Positano

  ‘You’ve been very obliging,’ said Blume, now fully dressed.

  The manager stood back as he opened Konrad’s room and waved a generous arm to usher Blume in. Konrad had left his room not just empty but spotlessly clean. He had even made the bed and folded the towels. The manager then helpfully announced, ‘I heard the camper van very early this morning. But it is not my policy to check on the comings and goings of guests, even if they haven’t paid.’

  ‘You’ve got a credit card number for surety,’ said Blume. ‘I’m sure that helps you sleep through the sound of departing vehicles. What time was it?’

  ‘Around four.’

  ‘Right.’ He pushed his arm under the mattress, and swept his hand back and forth. It touched something, a remote control? No, a phone. To lull his controllers into thinking he was still here. Well done, Konrad.

  The manager was watching him with interest.

  ‘Oh, listen, I almost forgot,’ said Blume, ‘I left my weapon in my room. My spare weapon.’ He winked as if this had meaning. ‘It’s in a top drawer…’ He did not even have to bother making up the rest. The manager had almost squealed in delight as he promised to fetch it for him.

  When the manager had gone, Blume pulled out the phone from under the mattress. It was switched on. The Telefonbuch contained a short list of contacts, most of them consisting of shortened versions of first names: Max, Rob, Hlmt, Kris, Greg, Bea, Tri, none of which meant anything to him. He pocketed it, and headed to his room, where he told the manager, who was peering under the bed, that he had been mistaken about his weapon. The manager looked up from the floor, his eyes full of disappointment and suspicion as Blume set about stuffing his backpack with his dirty clothes and the copy of the documents he had lifted from Konrad. He then remembered that his suitcase, which should never have left the safety of his home, was in the damned camper van.

  He went up to the lobby with the manager, who positioned himself defensively behind the reception desk and glared at Blume. A crackle of gravel outside told Blume, without looking round, that a car had arrived. How many had they sent?

  ‘Those are my colleagues arriving now,’ he told the manager. ‘Two people, am I right?’

  The manager refused to look up.

  ‘Are they armed?’ whispered Blume in urgent tones, and the effect was immediate. The manager’s eyes lit up and he craned his neck to look behind Blume.

  ‘I can’t see. Two of them,’ he started retreating towards the back office.

  ‘They are police not assassins,’ said Blume. ‘I want you to take them down to Konrad’s — the German’s room. Don’t give any indication that I have been confiding privileged information to you. Can you do that?’

  The manager winked.

  The door opened behind them.

  ‘That means not even mentioning that he’s missing,’ added Blume quickly.

  ‘I understand,’ said the manager, helpless in the face of a confidence and willing to trust Blume one more time.

  Blume turned around, and was both relieved and annoyed to see who had been sent. The two men standing there hardly made up his age between them. The one closer to him, a mop of jet-black hair, ankle boots, broad shoulders, momentarily assumed a defensive posture as Blume turned round, then relaxed. His partner, smaller, thin fair hair, wearing a puffed-up Japanese-style windbreaker to give himself some heft, was still twirling the car keys in his fingers.

  ‘Shh,’ said Blume, looking at the small one with the keys. He flashed his badge. ‘You’re not BKA? The person we’re looking for is downstairs.’

  ‘BKA?’ said the smaller man. ‘No, we’re…’

  ‘You armed?’ said Blume. He took out his Beretta, offered it to the same man.

  The larger man stepped forward. ‘Of course we are armed, but we were detailed just to pick up two colleagues… nobody said nothing about a situation developing.’

  ‘OK,’ said Blume, holstering his pistol. He pointed to his backpack. ‘Let me throw this in the back, then I’ll need to explain..’ He took the car keys from the young man’s hand, then turned to the larger one. ‘I don’t think it’ll be a problem. The person you’re looking for is unarmed. Do you think you’ll be able to handle it, or shall I call in backup?’

  ‘What’s his problem? He’s supposed to be some sort of colleague, right?’

  ‘We had a falling out. I’ll call in some regular police support if you want.’

  ‘He’s not armed, you said.’

  ‘No. He’s never even worked in the field. Old guy. Older than me, even. Frail. Spent all his life behind a desk.’

  The man turned to his nervous colleague. ‘Come on, let’s go get him.’

  Blume nodded to the manager, who was bobbing up and down on the periphery and was overjoyed to be included in the action. ‘He’ll show you the room.’

  Blume watched the three of them descend the stairs out of the lobby, reach the landing, turn and pass out of sight.

  ‘Be right down,’ he called after them. He pressed the button on the car key as he reached the front door, walked five paces and hopped into the driver’s seat of the car, tossing his backpack on the seat beside him. He put the key in the ignition and reversed out of the hotel courtyard blindly on to the curving coastal road.

  Luckily, no one was coming from either direction.

  39

  On the Road to Calabria

  Blume found the Class A Mercedes 160 he had stolen a disappointingly boxy little car, though it ran smoothly, and, half an hour later, he had to admit it handled quite well as he engaged in the nifty steering needed to negotiate the alternating one-way lane of the A3 autostrada, in construction since 1964 and still unfinished.

  He was not likely to make up the two-hour headstart Konrad had and stop him from doing something stupid, but he saw no harm in trying. He directed the Mercedes into the narrow lane demarcated on one side by traffic cones and on the other by orange plastic road studs that slapped against the wheels in a satisfyingly rhythmic way as he drove over them, then negotiated a hairpin bend formed by concrete blocks.

  A faded warning
sign with two arrows indicated that the traffic was now two-way, which, in view of the trucks now bearing down on him, was self-evident. The effect was so like a video game that he found it hard to take the threat of an imminent head-on collision entirely seriously. Seeking a soundtrack to his adventure, he turned on the car stereo, and was horrified as Gigi D’Alessio’s wavering little voice started bleating out a folksy Neapolitan love song. He pushed at random buttons hoping to get the radio, but the stereo flashed some sort of message and then went quiet. He gave up. It was high time he got his eyes back on the road.

  The stretch of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria autostrada he was now on had given up any pretence of being a work in progress. The warning signs were themselves in need of some repair. The temporary concrete dividers had acquired an air of permanence. They were barriers to the south, actively discouraging visitors. The smallest act, a dropped piece of concrete, a broken-down vehicle, a misplaced barrier, effectively cut off road access to all southern Italy.

  A truck had stopped next to a cluster of porta-potty cabins, two of them toppled over. A few yards further on, a woman was selling fruit from a stall covered by a tarpaulin, held down by guy lines attached to butane gas canisters, which were sitting in the emergency lane. Blume had allowed a convoy of trucks to go hurtling by, adjusted the trajectory of the car which had been thrown sideways and towards the divider by the heavy slipstream they left in their wake, when he heard a phone ringing, apparently coming from the car stereo. He glanced down at the stereo, which displayed the message ‘incoming call’.

  A Bluetooth connection between his phone and stereo. Neat. Or it would be if he knew which button to press. There were a few on the steering wheel, and he gave them a try. The ringing stopped.

  ‘ Ma vaffanculo,’ he muttered, banging the steering wheel.