‘Sir?’
‘I want to take a stroll around Villa Borghese.’
He watches Stefano as he tries to conceal his surprise and alarm, tries to remain polite. ‘Now?’
‘Yes, right now.’
Stefano looks at the door that leads to the corridor and his colleagues outside, silently entreating their help. ‘But, Sir, the area hasn’t been cleared — it’s exposed. We need notice to prepare.’
He holds up a palm to stop him. ‘Forget all that. I don’t care. I have to go now. I will hear no arguments.’
Stefano shuffles, transferring his weight from one foot to the other. ‘Sir, I can’t allow it.’
‘You can and you will. Get your coat — we’re going.’
They turn into Viale Pietro Canonica. He loves the shade of this park, the dappled light pooling around the trunks, the scents of fresh grass cuttings and honeysuckle. He sees two lovers locked in an embrace beneath an ancient pine; a young mother in jogging gear running as she pushes a baby buggy; two old men feeding the birds, one drinking from a flask. How good it feels to be outside in the fresh air, away from the stench of power.
They pull up outside the entrance to the villa. Stefano steps out of the front passenger seat, scans the area, consults with his colleagues, and then finally opens the door.
‘I need to be alone for several minutes. Just wait for me here.’
‘But Sir …’
Again he raises a hand to silence him, and then turns and heads towards the back of the villa.
The gravel path is longer than he had expected, but then he sees him, waiting on the bench as they’d arranged. He is unrecognisable in his beret and dark shades. Wordlessly, he takes a seat beside him. There is no embrace, no kiss, no handshake even. A note is passed between them — two ghosts from a different world, a different time.
‘Be there at 6.00am,’ says the man, and then he gets up from the bench and silently walks away. There is no look back, no wave. He is a dead man returning to his grave.
57
SCAMARCIO SAT UP in bed. He’d only meant to take a catnap, but beyond the window the sky had bled purple. The metallic haze over the rooftops had finally melted away, leaving washing lines and roof gardens burned gold.
The mobile that Garramone had given him trilled beside him, but somehow he knew it wasn’t the chief this time.
The caller didn’t bother to introduce himself. The accent was thick, Calabrian, as Scamarcio would have expected: ‘There’s a nature reserve above Gela, slightly to the right: the Niscemi Reserve. On the southern edge is an abandoned gamekeeper’s hut. Until 6.00am tomorrow you’ll find them, but after that they’ll move on.’ The caller hung up, and the phone clicked.
Scamarcio placed his mobile on the table beside him and sank back into the pillows. He’d been right — they hadn’t strayed far from home at all.
‘There’ll be ten of us,’ said Davide Nepi later. ‘You coming along for the ride, Scamarcio?’
‘Why not?’
They were back in the flat opposite Ymeri’s place, the two surveillance guys still glued to their cans. Someone had rigged up a small TV in the corner, and he saw that Sky was running non-stop coverage on the Stacey Baker disappearance. Holiday snaps of her at the beach kept flashing up. Scamarcio wondered if they’d been taken in the days leading up to her disappearance — the age seemed about right. Her parents had been filmed leaving the police station in Portoferraio, flashbulbs exploding all around them. Mrs Baker was hiding behind huge sunglasses, and seemed to have lost several kilos since Scamarcio had last seen her.
Garramone turned away from the TV to face Nepi: ‘So if this goes down OK, we can proceed with the raid?’
‘We shall see,’ answered Nepi. ‘It depends on whether things develop as we want them to.’
Scamarcio resisted the urge to punch him. He wondered what ‘as we want them to’ meant — the brothers alive, no doubt, and ready to talk.
Nepi took a slurp of his coffee. ‘So, Scamarcio, you planning on telling me how you came upon this little gem of info, and so quickly, too?’
Scamarcio sighed, took a drag on his fag. ‘Nepi, you’re with the Anti-Mafia Squad. You’re probably the very last person I’d tell.’
Nepi laughed, nearly choking on his coffee. ‘It’s right what they say about you, then?’
Scamarcio eyed him tiredly. ‘Nothing’s ever as simple as they make out in the papers. You should know that by now.’
The knock comes on the bathroom window of the guestroom, as he is expecting. He opens the window and clambers up onto the basin. One of them is waiting for him outside. He is dressed entirely in black, complete with balaclava and electronic mouthpiece. He hoists him out and onto the ladder. He can hear the crackle of communications on the walkie-talkie strapped to the man’s belt. The freelancer whispers into his mouthpiece: ‘Target A collected, descending now.’
He helps him down the ladder, taking each step before him, there to catch him if he falls. They descend silently, rapidly. Waiting for them on the ground are two others. Wordlessly, they usher him to an Audi, also black, humming, poised to leave. They glide away, the engine nothing more than a purr. The streets around the centre are quiet now. Only a few taxis wind their way along Via del Quirinale, but on Via 20 Settembre he sees no one. The motorway will be a clean sweep to the field, where they will take off. No record will be made of this flight; no trace.
He winds down the window, tasting the air. There’s a salt tang on the breeze as they head towards Pomezia. He imagines the rusty musk of rotting hulls, ships long forgotten, abandoned to the tides.
Scamarcio felt newly awake, alert to all that was to come. In a building off the runway, the Antimafia guys were running through a final inventory of their weapons, checking ammunition and comms. Nepi was heading up the operation, having shown them satellite photos of the nature reserve, and explained the road leading to the abandoned gamekeeper’s cabin, and its entrances and exits. His team seemed young and keen, fired with the zeal of rooting out the nation’s cancer, cell by cell, regardless of the personal risk. Scamarcio was dislocated by their presence — a combination of admiration, insecurity, inferiority, and something that felt like resentment. Somehow they represented a new challenge, a further questioning of where he quite fitted in to this life.
Nepi consulted his wristwatch and then gave the sign. Scamarcio followed the team out onto the tarmac — red, green, and yellow cats’ eyes blinking up ahead of them, the control tower spinning in the distance. The plane was waiting for them, its turbines whirring. He saw two military pilots in the cockpit, consulting their clipboards. He wondered at how much the operation would be costing, aware that sentiment in Rome was subtly shifting against the anti-corruption crusaders — certain statesmen within the state feared that they were taking their work too far.
He took a seat behind Nepi, surveying the darkness outside. If all went well, in less than two hours the Moltisanti brothers would be taken into custody. Another head would be taken off the hydra — another head that would quickly grow back. Was there a point to all this? Were they really making a difference? To a few, but that was all. That was all the squad could do for now — basement by basement, branch by branch. Mussolini was the only one who had ever managed to slay the beast, who hadn’t baulked at torture, or taking women and children hostage, to get there. What Italy needed was a benign dictator, reflected Scamarcio. That was the only solution for a country such as theirs.
The engines roared beside him, and they began to move up the runway, gaining speed, faster and faster until the lights from fishing boats flashed beneath them and the sea was a dark emptiness swallowing everything around it. He felt a nervousness in the pit of his stomach now — a new sense that things might not go to plan, that he and Garramone had created trouble for themselves or that it had found them, a sen
se that Stacey Baker might not come out of this alive.
58
So many years have passed since he last set foot here. The outskirts have retained their brutal ugliness, their stench of battered hopelessness. If you grew up in Gela, all you ever thought about was the day you would get out. They leave the city limits behind, heading up into the darkness of the hills. The stars are sharp in the sky tonight, reminding him of winter evenings spent with the brothers when he should have been at home, when his mother was frantically calling for him up and down the street.
He winds down the window and hears the gentle movement of goat bells in the distance, feels the breeze as it moves through the olive groves, catches the citrus scent that stirs memories and then emotions.
He closes the window and sinks back against the comfortable leather. Soon it will all be over. One way or the other, it will finally be over.
He loses himself in the past for many minutes, somehow administering them their last rites, collecting and assembling the important scenes from their lives. Then there’s a tap on the glass partition, and they tell him they’ve arrived. He looks out at a dilapidated stone cottage, shutters hanging loose from the hinges, moss clinging to broken roof tiles. The men — his men, expensive men — have already surrounded the house and are going in. He can hear the back and forth of communication running through the headset of the one sitting up front, the man who will guard him until it’s over. Thern a strange silence, then two shouts, and then the rapid pop-pop-pop of fire — three, maybe four shots. Then someone knocks on the front window, and his temporary guardian rolls it down.
‘It’s done,’ says the man. His colleague up front nods, and then his door is opened and he’s helped out. His legs feel weak, and he struggles to stand. Two arms support him on either side. He follows the men inside the cottage. It’s dark, and the air is damp and musty and laced with the sulphur taint of gunpowder. He sees them then — two corpses crumpled in the corner, legs splayed, hands grasping for their guns, blood-splatter on their clothes. He draws closer, the metallic sweetness of fresh bloodspill catching the back of his throat. He bends down and checks for a pulse — first the one, then the other. Nothing. He feels his legs give way, but the arms are reaching for him again.
Scamarcio wished he could wind down his window so he could catch a taste of the island. Too many years had passed since his last visit. He would have preferred to have seen it by day, knowing that the citrus aromas would have stirred the same sorrowful excitement in him they always did when he ventured south. It was a clear, cool night, and his initial anxiety was gradually being replaced by adrenalin — the sense that he was about to be a part of something significant.
‘Almost there,’ said Nepi from the front seat of the van. ‘Everyone ready?’
One by one, over their headsets, his team gave the affirmative.
‘Approaching n …’ Nepi stopped in mid-sentence, and Scamarcio felt his spine tighten and his initial nerves return. The team stiffened beside him.
‘What on earth …?’ whispered Nepi.
Scamarcio leaned forward so he could see through the middle of the van between Nepi and the driver. Standing there, seemingly caught in their headlights, was a group of men in balaclavas with a short man in a long overcoat at their centre — a man who looked exactly like the prime minister. Scamarcio leaned forward some more. The similarity was remarkable. He blinked out into the night, closed his eyes, and then opened them again. It was the Prime Minister; the resemblance was too close.
‘What the …?’ repeated Nepi.
‘I’m getting out,’ said Scamarcio, not waiting for permission. He stepped out into the darkness and walked around the van so he was facing the prime minister and the frozen group of men. He sensed Nepi come up alongside him, and felt his heart in his throat.
One of the men with the prime minister stepped forward, his hand tightly on his gun. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’
Nepi pulled his badge from his pocket and handed it to the man, who then handed it to the PM. The PM scanned it briefly, and then handed it back to Nepi. The PM gave him a curt nod, and then repeated the gesture for Scamarcio. With that, he simply turned and got back into his waiting car, his men quickly following, climbing into a van parked behind. The engines buzzed and then choked into life, and within seconds they had sped off into the night, the smoke from their exhausts trailing in the darkness. Scamarcio had never felt such silence. And as he turned to Nepi, he finally caught the scent of citrus on the breeze.
59
GARRAMONE’S VOICE WAS RASPY from sleep. When Scamarcio finished his account of the events of that morning, the chief said flatly: ‘Yes, that would make sense.’
‘How in any way does what I’ve just told you make sense?’ asked Scamarcio.
‘They knew each other as children. Rumours were that they’d been a thorn in his side since he’d come to power.’
‘So he just decided to off them in the middle of the night? Risky strategy, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe he felt he had no choice.’
‘But why?’
Garramone sighed. He heard him shift position and adjust something on his night table. ‘He knew we were looking into them in connection with Ganza.’
‘And?’
‘Maybe he thought that if we went for them, they’d go for him. As I say, maybe he felt he had no choice.’
‘But now half the Antimafia Squad have seen him at the scene of a mafia slaying!’
‘My guess is that it won’t go anywhere. It will stop with what you saw tonight.’
‘He might be powerful, but he’s not that powerful!’
‘I’m not so sure.’
Garramone hung up before he had a chance to reply.
Scamarcio threw down the phone on the taxi seat beside him. Ymeri was more important than ever now, and Ganza would need to give evidence. With the Moltisanti dead, Nepi would not want the raid. With the Moltisanti dead, it would remain unclear who else was involved in the child-trafficking operations beyond the few men they already had in their sights. Depending on the deal they offered him, Zaccardo might cough up a few more names, but the tangible evidence still lay with Ymeri. He asked the taxi driver to drop him at Via Ludovisi so he could walk the last few streets to his flat. He wanted to lose himself in the morning scrum, enjoy some fleeting sense of freedom.
He paid and started to walk towards Via Boncompagni, where there was a bar he could get a coffee. People were in a hurry on their way to work, laughing and cursing, whispering sweet nothings or barking instructions into their mobiles, all blissfully unaware that their PM had just slaughtered two Mafia players in the middle of the night. Scamarcio sensed Stacey Baker slipping away from him, spiralling into some foreign place, a place he never wanted to know. He felt a hollowness in his chest, a persistent nausea rising up from the acid in his gut. He realised that when this was over he would need to get out of Rome for a while, out of Italy, and take some time to reflect on whether he was where he wanted to be. The bar was coming up ahead and he was about to turn away, already disheartened by the queue, when he felt his mobile buzz in his pocket.
Garramone was on the line again, sounding even more exhausted than before: ‘I have good news for you.’
‘Somehow I doubt it.’
Garramone ignored him, pressing on. ‘Nepi has seen the light — he’s going to let us have the raid. He figures that Ymeri and a few cronies might be better than nothing; he doesn’t reckon that there’s any bigger fish left to net. He’s depressed, and is seeing the whole thing as game over.’ Garramone paused for breath. ‘I couldn’t do his job.’
Scamarcio didn’t see the difference. ‘Are you drafting the unit? Is the case on the books at HQ then?’
Garramone sighed. ‘Sometimes, Scamarcio, you remind me of my wife. In a vague kind of way it’s on the bo
oks, but you’re the only one who knows the background; the rest of them just think this raid is about the American girl. Be at the station by midday so you can go along for the ride. We don’t know if the minions have got wind of the fate of the Moltisanti yet, but surveillance says there’s been activity — it does still look like something might be happening at the villa tonight.’
Scamarcio sighed. ‘We have to find her in time.’
‘We will.’
‘Any news on your friend? Anyone questioning him yet about his involvement in a Mafia …’
The line went dead.
60
GARRAMONE HAD HAD YMERI tailed from Rome. At 5.30pm, at a service station on the Autostrade del Sole, he met up with an associate in a people carrier. It was their suspicion that Stacey Baker was in the back. How she had been spirited across from the island was as yet unclear, but they suspected a vegetable truck or some such method. The forces on Elba did not possess the manpower to search every car, despite the new reinforcements.
Ymeri and his associate then proceeded south towards Siena in the people carrier, never clocking less than 120 kph. A series of different unmarked cars took over the tail so as not to arouse their suspicions, although Scamarcio formed the impression from their erratic driving that they were both nervous and hapless, and wouldn’t have noticed anyway. Once they arrived at Monticiano, the people carrier turned left at the first roundabout, as instructed, and stayed on the road for five minutes before indicating left again at the sign for the vineyard. At this point, Scamarcio and the other five members of the unit passed the entranceway and transferred to a chauffeur-driven limo that had approached from the other direction and was now drawn up on the kerbside 100 metres down the road. They switched cars in seconds, as they had been briefed, and were now approaching the entrance to the vineyard from the right.
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