‘Frauds. Conmen.’ Holding her shotgun in one hand, she reached into the pocket of her dressing gown for her phone. ‘Thieves.’
‘Please don’t.’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘You won’t get the rest of your money if you do.’
‘The rest!’ she scoffed.
‘It’s on the table,’ he said, blessing his sudden attack of conscience. Rarely if ever could scruples have been rewarded so quickly. ‘It’s not everything I owe but it’s all I can afford right now.’
She squinted at him for several seconds, expecting him to back down. When he didn’t, she gestured him aside then went across. Her shotgun barely wavered as she set down her phone to open the flap of the envelope and fan out the banknotes with her thumb. ‘You stole from others too,’ she said grudgingly.
‘I’ll get to them in time.’
‘What happened?’ she mocked. ‘Did you meet a girl?’
‘I’m sick of my life, that’s all.’
‘No one forced you to it. You chose it all by yourself.’
‘Yes.’
Her lower lip trembled. ‘Get out,’ she said.
He nodded towards his bedroom. ‘And my things?’
‘I’ll be keeping those,’ she told him, ‘until I get the rest.’
‘But I—’
She picked up her phone again. ‘Out,’ she said. ‘Before I change my mind.’
II
Dov woke early, as he always did on missions. He turned off his alarm before it could sound, then showered, shaved and groomed himself in the mirror, gelling his hair and spiking it just so. Then he stood beside the bed and gazed down at Zara. She’d put on a baggy sweatshirt and cheesecloth trousers before getting into bed with him last night, protecting her virtue with shapelessness. Then she’d turned onto her side to show him her back. Irritation flared. She should be so lucky. In fact, just for the hell of it, he decided there and then that he’d have her before the job was done. He took hold of the white duvet and tugged it back in a single sharp movement. She woke in confusion and grabbed it and pulled it back over herself. ‘What?’ she asked.
He held up his phone. ‘Your login.’
‘My what?’
‘You can’t go hunting this Nero woman yourself. She’s too likely to spot you. Fuck that up and the mission will be over before it starts. So I’ll find her, then I’ll call you and direct you where to go. For that, I need to know where she’s staying, what she looks like, what plans she makes. That means access to your discussion board.’
‘I’ll do it myself. I’ll send you everything you need.’
‘We’re here for our country, Zara. That might not mean anything to you. It does to me. So change your fucking password later, if you must. But give it to me now.’ She glared defiantly at him for several seconds, but then she gave in. He tapped in her details then nodded in satisfaction. ‘I’ll be off, then,’ he said, pocketing the car keys. ‘Wait here for my call.’
III
Carmen woke to the happy discovery that she no longer cared about Cesco. Unfortunately, that was largely because she was too worried about her upcoming appointment with the police sketch artist to have room for anything else. Yesterday’s hot fury with the kidnappers had burned itself out, as she’d known it would, leaving behind only the chilling memory of Cemetery Teeth sawing through the throats of Vittorio and Giulia, and the perverse, soft-spoken civility of Famine Eyes as he’d crouched beside her to explain the deal he was offering, the consequences of breach. Giving the police their descriptions would mean breaching that deal in a major way.
Yet she meant to do it all the same.
She put coffee on to brew then went down to the cafe for croissants. A man with spiked black hair was leaving as she went in, coffee in one hand, a pastry in the other. She stood back and held the door open for him, but he didn’t acknowledge her with so much as a glance, simply turned his back on her instead. A copy of the local paper was lying on the counter, its front page a huge splash of Baldassare, Alessandra and Bettina hugged tearfully together. She bought her croissants then went next door for a copy of the paper to browse over breakfast. Her spoken Italian might be wretched but she could read it well enough.
An article on an inside page caught her eye. A curator from a town called Ginosa had seen pictures of Vittorio’s hoard on the news, and had recognised them instantly, for they’d all been stolen from his private museum five years before, after being bequeathed by a local farmer. Carmen gave a groan of laughter and dismay. After all that, Vittorio hadn’t even found his key pieces here. He’d stolen them instead, presumably to convince his increasingly sceptical investors that Alaric truly was nearby. That was why he’d never tried to sell them, not even when desperate for cash. To have done so would have been to invite discovery. He’d been a fraud from the outset. Except that that wasn’t quite fair. A true believer, rather, so convinced of his case that he’d fabricated the evidence to support it. Not the first to fall into that trap. Nor the last either.
She checked her watch. Time to leave. She was at the door when a thought struck her. She hurried back to check. Yes, it was as she’d thought. Ginosa was in Puglia, heel of the Italian boot. There was no record of Alaric ever visiting it. How, then, had his ring got there? How, then, those brooches? Another thing: the stolen artefacts had apparently been part of a larger bequest. Was it possible that that larger bequest contained other important pieces? Pieces that might say something new and interesting about the Visigoths in Italy, and which would give her thesis its missing punch?
She checked the time again. It was leave now or be late. But she needed to know. There were two museums in Ginosa, it transpired. The bequest had been left to the smaller of the two, a privately owned ethnographic affair with a useless website – a single page with a brief description of the town and its history, a photograph of its façade, a thumbnail map, hours of opening and contact details. Her Italian wasn’t up to calling and asking. Besides, could she really trust some museum volunteer to decide for her what was Visigothic and what was not? No. She needed to pay it a visit. Her driving licence was back in Rome and a taxi would bust her budget, so she checked trains instead. The lack of connections meant that, even if she were to leave right now, she couldn’t reach it before it shut. It was closed all day tomorrow too. Wednesday, then. If she left Cosenza on the 7.05, she could have a good two hours at the museum and still be back in Rome by nightfall.
Next door, church bells began to toll. She grabbed the paper and her purse then hurried for the door.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I
Cesco was through with Calabria. Through, indeed, with the entire Italian south. All he wanted right now was to point the Harley north and not stop until he found himself some obscure small town in which to rest awhile, bedding in his new identity while making plans for the future.
The coast road passed too close to Cosenza for comfort, so he cut across Calabria’s mountainous spine at Catanzaro, passing through Crotone and Cariati to the Pollino National Park, where a lane closure for a bad accident so hampered his progress that by nine thirty he’d only just reached Campotenese. He was so saddle sore, hungry and weary by now that, when he needed to refuel, he chose a petrol station with a cafe attached, in which to shut his eyes for half an hour before jolting himself awake again with a large espresso.
There was a young Austrian family in the station shop when he went to pay for his fuel. The husband was at the till, holding back the years with an unconvincing comb-over and teenage jeans. But it was the wife who caught Cesco’s eye, with her tousled short fair hair and freckled pale skin save for the reddened armbands where the sun had exploited the gap between sleeves and lotion. She was dressed in a loose peach halter top and lemon slacks of unusual cut, so that Cesco couldn’t quite decide whether she was wearing her trousers short or her culottes long. She was looking after their two kids, a rascally boy and a giggly young girl who both kept pillaging sweets and toys
from the shelves, while she pleaded with fond exasperation for them to stop, too helplessly in love with them both to be able quite to lose her temper, hard though she tried.
They left before him. He watched through the window as they climbed into a white people carrier and then set off. Bittersweet memories overwhelmed him as he went out to his bike, of his childhood here in Italy and then in England too, with Emilia and Richard, Arthur and Lizzie.
Family. That was what he was missing. A family of his own.
Carmen came to his mind then, the possibility of happiness he’d thrown away. He swore loudly. Then again, even louder. Self-conscious suddenly, he looked around. A bearded trucker in baggy blue jeans and an unzipped tan jacket was leaning against the side of his cab, watching with sympathetic amusement. Cesco nodded at him. Then he climbed back on his bike, started it up and roared away.
II
The sketch artist was a thinly bearded thirty-something called Pietro, of such extreme earnestness and eagerness to please that Carmen had to fight the urge to laugh. He’d studied in London, he told her, in fluent if accented English as he led her to an interview room, where they sat either side of a plain pine table with a jug of water already on it, two glasses, and a plate of sugared biscuits so stale that she took one nibble and then threw the rest in the bin. He was a cartoonist by profession. His work had been published in all the region’s papers, and once or twice in the nationals. Police sketches were only a sideline, but an enjoyable and rewarding one. He’d helped capture at least a dozen suspects, including several very dangerous men. He knew how to get the best out of witnesses, too, so she was to trust him and follow his instructions as closely as she could. They had two portraits to draw, he understood, but for the moment he wanted her to concentrate on just one of them, whichever she preferred.
Carmen closed her eyes and thought back to yesterday morning, with Cesco speeding off down the road in his van and the black SUV screeching again to a halt beside her. Its window buzzing down as she stooped to talk, enabling her to recognise the two men in the front as Famine Eyes and Cemetery Teeth. Famine Eyes had been the boss, but it was Cemetery Teeth who’d had the more distinctive features. She brought him to her mind now, only to discover a kind of uncertainty principle at work; for as soon as she began trying to describe him, her mental portrait of him simply vanished. She kept her eyes closed and remained completely still, therefore, letting his image settle upon her mind like a butterfly upon her finger, not even looking directly at it lest she scare it away. She let herself absorb the details instead. His fat lower lip and open, hanging mouth. His teeth – spaced, pitted and grey. His nose, bulbous and misshapen, like a lump of putty shaped crudely by a thumb. His protruding small ears and receding hairline, his dull eyes beneath his hooded lids and prominent brow ridge, his dyed black hair revealed by the grey threads in his eyebrows and stubble, and his throat so deeply pitted by childhood pox that it looked to have been stippled with a matchstick.
She waited patiently until she had it all. Then she began to talk.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I
For the first time in months, the sun was up before Baldassare. The bedroom grew sticky from its warmth upon the heavy curtains. He checked the bedside clock and realised he’d slept almost twelve hours. They all had, after returning home from last night’s duties to giant helpings of pasta before crashing early, all three of them in bed together in a tangle of arms and legs. Even so, he felt exhausted. Ever since the kidnapping, he’d been impelled by furious purpose. Now, with that purpose finally fulfilled, his sails hung slack for lack of wind.
He sat up wearily then dragged himself to the bathroom to wash and dress. He made a tour of the house, making sure to embrace and thank every one of his bodyguards yet again for all they’d done for him. He heaved an armchair outside the bedroom door, to keep watch while he worked, then opened up his laptop. He had nearly five hundred new emails from friends and colleagues, from journalists and others. He answered them one by one, thanking everyone for their sympathy and support with courteous expressions of gratitude that for some reason he didn’t remotely feel.
One of his emails was from Carmen, appending a copy of her police statement. He read it through three times, then reopened Cesco’s message from the afternoon before, in which he’d begged Baldassare to keep secret his true identity. He was toggling back and forth between the two of them when Alessandra came tiptoeing out of the bedroom in her white nightgown, a finger to her lips. He waited until she’d closed the door behind her. ‘How is she?’ he whispered.
‘Still sleeping.’
‘Good.’ He shifted across to make space for her in the armchair. She snuggled in beside him, her thigh against his own. The warmth of her. How was it possible to miss something so simple so absurdly? ‘I need your advice,’ he said.
She put a fond arm around his shoulders. ‘Of course you do.’
Last night, on their return home from the press conference, he’d tried to explain the truth behind their rescue, but Alessandra had been too tired to care. He told her now instead. She looked at him in growing astonishment. ‘That poor Carbone boy?’ she murmured. ‘He survived? What about his sister?’
Baldassare shook his head. ‘Apparently not. Which I think may be the problem.’
‘Problem?’
‘Read his email for yourself. He claims to be afraid that the ’Ndrangheta will learn his true identity and come after him. Yet no one that fearful of them could have done what he did yesterday.’
‘Then…?’
‘Imagine what would happen if he were to reappear. The Carbone boy not only still alive after all these years, but also instrumental in finding you and Bee and Carmen in what might plausibly be the same bunker in which he and his sister had once been held. There’d be a media frenzy. He’d be forced to explain what had happened. He’d have to relive it. Can you blame him for not wanting that?’
‘Yet he told you.’
‘Yes. Because he had to. It was his only way to save Carmen.’
‘Ah,’ she said. She was silent a few moments. ‘And she? Does she feel the same way?’
‘That’s the thing. I never can read women. Not with confidence.’ He brought up her police statement, directed her to its last few paragraphs. ‘She’s clearly furious with him,’ he said. ‘But is that because she hates him, or because she doesn’t?’
Alessandra was silent as she read. ‘I can’t tell,’ she said finally. ‘Not from this. I don’t know her well enough.’
‘Me neither.’
‘How long have they known each other?’
‘Only a day or two. But it took me less time than that with you.’
She slid him a look. ‘You want to go see her, don’t you? To say cruel things about him, and watch how she reacts.’
‘Would you mind so very much?’
She took his hand in hers. She raised it to her mouth. ‘If he’s the one who got us out of that hellhole, my love, I’d mind very much indeed if you didn’t.’
II
For a man whose cartoons had been published in all the region’s papers, Pietro proved surprisingly diffident about his work. He shielded his pad behind his forearm and wouldn’t let Carmen look until he was satisfied. When finally he showed it to her, he made a face like a kicked puppy at her frown of dissatisfaction – even though it was herself she was dissatisfied with, her inability to remember and describe. But he soon pulled himself together. It was only a first draft, he assured her. A starting point, something to build on. They went through it feature by feature, starting with the line and colour of his hair, the height and width of his forehead, the spacing of his eyes. After each question, she’d close her eyes again and wait for the butterfly to settle. Whenever she got completely stuck, he’d prompt her with a catalogue of photofit examples he kept on his laptop, and she’d choose the closest. And finally, between them, they produced a likeness that, while far from photographic, was certainly evocative of the man – n
ot just his looks but his character too – and which she couldn’t work out how further to improve.
They broke for coffee before the second sketch. They stood at the machine and talked of Andalusia, where both had spent some time. She stretched her legs and went to the toilets to splash water on her face. Her brain was tired by now, however, and Famine Eyes proved more elusive – not least because what had affected her most about him had been his manner rather than his features; and how on earth was she to describe that? She did her best, however, and eventually they were done. They went together to give them to the ispettore. His assistant stopped them with the imperial manner of those who revel in their vicarious authority. He was busy on a very important phone call, she told them. They should leave the sketches with her.
Pietro agreed, and bid her farewell. Carmen did not, however, for she had unrelated questions she wanted answered. The very important phone call came finally to its end. She went in. The ispettore studied the sketches then thanked her for her help. She asked about her passport and phone. He shook his head but assured her in sign language and stilted English that he’d contact her if either turned up. She gave him Professor Bianchi’s email address at Sapienza University, to deal direct with him about the return of the ground-penetrating radar. She asked if she was free to leave Cosenza. She was. She wished him well and took her leave, proud of herself for having seen a hard duty through, yet perversely deflated not to be needed any more. Church bells sounded midday as she reached reception. The sun was dazzling against the station’s glass frontage. Her mouth was parched from all her talking. If anyone had ever earned themselves a bowl of ice cream, she’d earned it with her efforts that morning. And, if memory served, there was a gelateria directly across the road.
III
The Sacred Spoils Page 20
