The chair creaked under him.
‘This affair is complicated, and modern politics makes it no simpler. We still don’t know how Brexit will affect relations between our countries. I mean to say, sir, you are no longer a part of Europe.’
‘We haven’t left it yet,’ Desmond Harris objected.
‘I’ll need to take legal counsel on this matter,’ the magistrate said. ‘We aren’t in a state of war, after all.’
Not in a war, Cangio thought, but there was plenty of aggression on display.
‘If the ’Ndrangheta can work with the Camorra,’ Cangio said. ‘I don’t see why Scotland Yard and the Special Crimes Squad shouldn’t collaborate.’
He might have been the little boy who said that the Emperor was wearing no clothes.
All eyes turned on him. And silence reigned.
Then, Lucia Grossi shattered the silence by clapping her hands.
‘I have a proposal to make,’ she said.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Valnerina
Cangio saw the outcome of Grossi’s ‘proposal’ the following week.
It was the second item on the eight o’clock news on Canale 5, the evening round-up that everyone in Italy watched. The first item was the newly elected American president. Next up, Captain Lucia Grossi.
The press conference had taken place that morning at New Scotland Yard. DCI Harold Jardine, Inspector Desmond Harris, and other members of the London team were seated shoulder to shoulder at a long table, while Grossi stood in front of a projection screen, holding court for the journalists, video cameras, and TV reporters who filled the room.
She was wearing full-dress uniform with silver tabs and golden stripes, her cap clasped tightly beneath her arm. It made a sharp contrast with the dull, plain, clothes of the British policemen who were seated behind her. She looked more attractive on TV than in real life, Cangio thought, listening while she told the world what she had achieved with the expert input of the Special Crimes Squad of Perugia, and additional help from the police of Her Britannic Majesty.
‘This is a great honour for me,’ Grossi was saying, her eyes shining, eyelashes flickering, as if modesty demanded it, ‘though I do hope that this will be the first of many successful joint investigations. In a world of international crime,’ she added, ‘close cooperation with the police forces from other countries is a necessity. Discussions are already taking place in Bruxelles regarding the formation of a special European commission for the monitoring and reduction of cross-border crime and the smuggling of human organs …’
She hoped to be a member of the commission, of course, though she didn’t say so.
Go on, thought Cangio, why don’t you suggest yourself as the president?
As she pointed to the screen behind her and announced that this particular investigation had been given the codename ‘Operation Werewolf’, Cangio switched off the TV.
He had been invited, but he hadn’t gone to London.
In the first place, Lori might not have taken too kindly to the idea.
In the second place, he had more important things on his mind.
His wolves.
A low half-moon was cresting Monte Mòtola on the far side of the great rift as he settled down that night on a flat rocky ledge which overlooked the den. It shed a pale, steady light over the mountainside, a perfect set-up for night-vision glasses, adding detail, depth, and tonality on a neutral ground.
The she-wolf had almost certainly given birth by now.
She’d been closed deep inside the den for three nights now.
Sooner or later, she would come outside for a few minutes at least.
She would need to drink from one of the streams that ran like quicksilver in the green light of the binoculars. She’d be thirsty, dehydrated and weak, her blood thickening, her heart strained, after her labour.
He had seen the lead male come back a short while before, a dead rabbit dangling from his jaws. The hunter had carried the food into the den, left it just inside the entrance, then reappeared at once. Now, he was sitting on guard outside the hole beneath the rock.
But where were the others?
Birthing was the most difficult time in the yearly cycle. The family was under pressure to hunt, not just for themselves, but for the mother, too, which meant that they were forced to leave her alone in the den with her newborn cubs. A rabbit? Cangio thought. She must be starving. She would already have eaten the afterbirths and the excrement of her litter, her way of keeping the den clean, waiting for the other wolves to bring her more meat. Fresh meat was what she craved.
Her mate had done his duty, yet he seemed to be in no hurry to go off hunting again.
He prowled around outside the den, moving left, then right, climbing onto the rock about the entrance-hole, staring down into the valley, then up towards the summit.
A rabbit wasn’t much, a kilo of flesh at the most.
Not enough for a famished female that had just given birth. She’d need lots more before she recovered from her labour. Surely, the others would bring her something …
Two tiny lights flashed brightly from the pitch-black hole beneath the rock.
Then, two more lights made four.
The pups.
No, the pups were too tiny, too weak to move, still blind, totally dependent.
It hit him with the force of a rocket as two more lights appeared.
They were all packed inside the den with their mother.
The rest of the family was hiding in there, while the male kept watch outside. He wasn’t guarding the female alone. He was standing guard over his whole family, the older cubs, and the pups that had just been born.
There was nothing in the literature about anything like this.
It was as if the wolves were under siege.
He scanned the mountainside, looking left, then right, above the den, then below it.
He saw nothing. Absolutely nothing.
There were golden eagles in the park that might attack a young wolf, or a newborn pup, but eagles didn’t hunt at night. Wild boar would never venture up so high, knowing that there was nothing up there for them to eat. And what would men be doing on the mountainside at this time of night? The ‘great predator’ generally switched off his TV and went to bed before midnight.
Cangio stayed there for another hour, guarding the wolf who was guarding the den.
His question remained unanswered.
What were they hiding from?
TWENTY-EIGHT
Valnerina
Sergio heard it …
He knew what that sound meant.
He didn’t think of wolves or bears or any creature that God had made.
He leapt out of bed, ran down the corridor in the dark, dashed into his parents’ room.
‘Mamma! Mamma! Did you hear it?’
His mother threw back the blanket, made space for him.
His father turned, awake now. ‘What’s up?’ he murmured.
‘Something frightened him …’
‘What scared you, big man?’ his father said.
‘That noise … the one that Grandad heard …’
HISTORICAL NOTE
‘On 23rd September, 2016, a Marsican brown bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus) weighing about one hundred and eighty kilos, and standing over two metres high, was sighted in the woods near Spoleto between Montebibico and Acqualacastagna.’
www.umbria24.it
Lone Wolf Page 23
