The Sacred Spoils

by The Sacred Spoils (retail) (epub)

  Zara assured him that they were, and asked what it would cost. Faustino quoted an absurdly small sum per night, then asked her to leave it in cash on the kitchen table when they left. Or not, he joked, as she preferred. What was he going to do about it?

  ‘So it’s free tonight?’ asked Dov, once she’d reported back.

  ‘I guess,’ she said.

  ‘Then how about it?’

  Zara squinted sideways at him. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Why not? If we pack quickly, we can be there by midnight. I mean, be honest. Where would you rather wake tomorrow morning? Sicilì or Cosenza?’

  Zara didn’t answer at once. On the one hand, she didn’t want Dov sharing her hotel room again that night. On the other, the cottage only had two bedrooms. But her silence only offered Carmen the chance to speak. ‘I’d be glad to see the back of Cosenza,’ she admitted.

  ‘Excellent,’ grinned Dov. ‘Sicilì it is.’

  III

  A clap of thunder announced the storm. Soon it was tipping down. The windows of the silver Range Rover quickly misted up. Tomas had to rub the windscreen to keep watch. An evening service ended in the cul-de-sac church. Congregants came trickling out, huddled against the rain. In the tangle of traffic that ensued, he almost missed the scarlet Renault as it pulled up outside Nero’s building. Its rear door opened and a woman scurried inside, her arm above her head. Thirty seconds later, Nero’s apartment lights came on and then the woman herself walked by a window. ‘She’s back,’ he said.

  Guido nodded. ‘You sure you want to do it yourself?’

  ‘Just keep the engine on.’

  He pulled his cap back on, turned up his collar then hurried down the steps to resume his post beneath the fir tree. It offered less shelter than he’d hoped, the wind sweeping sheets of rain against his legs, his shoes quickly becoming soaked. He was looking about for somewhere better when Nero appeared in the lobby carrying an overnight bag. She came to the door. He reached for his gun. She cupped her hands around her eyes to peer out through the glass at the dismal weather, then stepped back again, set down her bag and checked her watch. Perhaps she was waiting for the rain to abate before heading off. Or perhaps someone was coming to pick her up. He considered shooting her through the door. But she was far enough back that he couldn’t be certain of even hitting her. If she got away, he might not get another chance.

  The rain slowed and then stopped almost as abruptly as it had started. Still Nero stayed inside. Five more minutes passed. Then the scarlet Renault from before pulled up in a slosh of water. The driver tooted for her attention then got out and hurried around to open the hatchback for her overnight bag, even as she picked it up and came out.

  It was his moment.

  He tugged the brim of his cap down low then zipped his jacket up over his chin, leaving himself a viewing slit like a medieval helmet. He held his gun down by his side then walked briskly forward, timing his approach to reach Nero as she swung her bag into the boot, waiting until the very last moment so that he couldn’t possibly miss.

  IV

  It was the slap of shoes on the flagstones that did it. There was something so purposeful about them that Dov instinctively glanced around. He took in all at once the man approaching, the deliberate way he’d hidden his face between baseball cap and collar, how his eyes were fixed on Carmen and the gun he was holding against his leg. Dov’s bodyguard training instantly kicked in, those three dull years in the secret service. He stepped across the man even as he raised the gun. He grabbed his wrist in one hand and the barrel of the gun in the other, wresting it from his startled grip. Their gazes briefly locked. There was a strange moment of mutual recognition, each appreciating the other for what he was. Then the man tore himself free and hurried off into the night, glancing all around as if expecting the police to come swarming. Dov was too startled to stop him or go after him. He watched instead as he fled up a flight of steps onto the bridge road where he climbed into a silver Range Rover that sped straight off. Dov glanced around at Carmen, utterly unaware of what had so nearly befallen her. ‘Get in,’ he told her. ‘I need something from my bag.’ She nodded and climbed in.

  That man had surely been ’Ndrangheta. His partner too. Possibly the very two Carmen had described to the sketch artist that morning, seeking to silence her before she could identify them in person. And now he had their gun, with their fingerprints still on it. He unzipped his suitcase for a T-shirt with which to wipe clean those parts of the gun that he himself had touched, then he zipped it away in an empty pouch. He closed the hatchback, got back in behind the wheel, pulled a three-point turn. He checked every which way as he joined the bridge road. There was no sign of the silver Range Rover, but maybe they’d have other ways of tracking her. And they knew about him now, so he needed to be alert. It wouldn’t be easy. He’d seen too little of the man’s face to be confident of recognising him again – and he hadn’t seen his partner at all. Ideally, he’d get hold of a copy of Carmen’s sketches, except he could hardly ask for them. He glanced around at her, still oblivious of her close call. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but there’s something been bugging me all day.’

  ‘Yes?’ she asked.

  ‘Those sketches you did this morning. This will make me sound like an idiot, but how does that even work? When I was at that bar in Ginosa, I gave it a shot myself, trying to see if I could describe my mother’s face from memory. My own dear mother! And, honestly, it was hopeless.’

  Carmen smiled. ‘It’s harder than you’d think, isn’t it?’

  ‘Damn right. So how did you do it? I mean, take those two men you described this morning, for example. What sort of things did you say?’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I

  Faustino proved perfectly correct. His cottage was not the Ritz.

  They reached it a little before midnight, having stopped for provisions along the way. It lay at the foot of a short, steep drive so badly potholed that it made the Renault lumber like an arthritic bull. To Zara’s consternation, there was neither brick nor key by the front door; to her relief, they found both outside the back door instead. It was chilly inside, and musty too. The kitchen walls were a sweaty yellow, as if they’d caught the flu, while the old cream refrigerator muttered and grumbled like an elderly concierge woken in the small hours. The bed linen had that clamminess to it, as if taken out of the drier too soon, and every time the loo was flushed, the plumbing made plaintive didgeridoo noises.

  Yet the place had an undeniable charm even so, especially with the pellet heater lit and an improvised supper of bread, cheese, ham and red wine on the table. Zara waited until Dov had chosen his chair, then sat as far from him as she could. He promptly stood to top up their glasses then sat back down beside her, resting his arm on the back of her chair, stroking her nape with his thumb, impervious to the looks she slid him. They cleared the table, said good night, went to their rooms. The moment Dov closed the door, his smile vanished. ‘The hell was that?’ he hissed.

  ‘The hell was what?’

  ‘We’re supposed to be lovers. What kind of lover flinches from their partner?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have touched me.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake! I’m playing a role. You should be too. You may already have put our mission into serious jeopardy.’

  ‘Sure!’

  ‘Are you blind?’ he asked in exasperation. ‘Carmen’s not stupid. She’s already worked out we’re here for the temple treasure, thanks to that half-shekel. Now you’ve got her doubting our friendship too. How long before she realises the truth? How long before she tells someone?’ He squinted at her. ‘Or maybe that’s what you want. Maybe you’re trying to sabotage us.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. I just don’t like being touched, that’s all.’

  He glowered at her some more before finally relenting. ‘Okay. Maybe we can still fix it.’

  ‘How?’

  He put a finger to his lips. Zara fell silent. They could hear the gamelan
tinkle of clothes being put away on metal hangers next door. Dov nodded. ‘She’ll be able to hear everything we get up to,’ he said.

  She looked at him in alarm. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you think I mean?’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Have you got a better way to convince her we’re lovers?’ He took her by her wrist. His grip was so fierce that when she tried to pull away she only burned her skin. He pulled her over to the bed then threw her down on her back. He leaned in over her, resting his weight upon his hands. His breath was hot upon her face, smelling of cheese and red wine. Her heart pounded madly. ‘This is not a game,’ he said. ‘Our mission is at stake. The temple treasures. Your freedom. Are you really going to risk it all for some childish notion of virtue?’ He put his hand on her waist and ran it up over her breast.

  She knuckled him in his eye then rolled free and scrambled to her feet. ‘Never, ever do that again,’ she warned.

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘You’ll find that out when you next wake.’

  He laughed and shook his head. ‘You’re no fun,’ he said. ‘You’re no fun at all.’

  II

  Baldassare couldn’t sleep. He rose in the early hours and took up his post outside the bedroom door, checking his new messages. The ispettore had sent through a number of reports overnight, including transcripts and recordings of the statement Alessandra and Bettina had given together yesterday afternoon. He’d offered to sit with them, but Alessandra had asked him not to, for there were certain parts of their ordeal they’d find easier to recount without his feelings to consider. He jacked in a pair of earbuds and listened now. Within minutes, he was weeping freely both at what they’d suffered and the calm courage with which they described it. That ordeal completed, he listened to recordings of interviews with the two ’Ndrangheta thugs they’d arrested. They were young and fearful, but they’d been well coached to keep their mouths shut until their lawyers arrived. One of them might have been cracked by a skilful inquisitor, but to his frustration the questioning had been so confrontational that the opportunity had been missed.

  A preliminary search of the dungeon had taken place. It seemed to date back at least as far as the 1970s, when kidnapping had been in vogue. The meadow had been thickly wooded back then, making it a perfect hide, but, after the authorities had clamped down hard, the trees had been logged for lumber, leaving the hatch exposed and making it risky to enter or leave by daylight. That, presumably, was why the proof-of-life clips they’d sent him had always arrived after dark.

  Significant traces of cocaine and heroin had been found, suggesting it had been used since for storing drugs. And over two dozen graffiti had been found, of which photographs were appended, including one that consisted only of the letters DCGC scratched low down on the wall.

  Carmen’s sketches had also arrived. He stared at the two faces. He didn’t recognise either, exactly, but he knew the type well. The first, with the wretched teeth, was middle-aged, lumpy, unprepossessing, a little stupid even, yet possessed of an awful power thanks to his unthinking capacity for violence and murder. But it was his companion who unnerved Baldassare, a rarer yet more dangerous breed. With his full lips and haunted eyes, he looked not only highly intelligent but imaginative and sensitive too. Baldassare had come across similar men twice before. They scared the life out of him. In ordinary families, their attributes would have been recognised, prized and nurtured. They’d have found rewarding careers in the arts or sciences. But both had grown up in Mafia families, and Mafia families were not like that. Sensitivity, intelligence and imagination were not gifts to such people. They were weaknesses to be mocked and despised. And, being sensitive and intelligent, those boys quickly understood this and so learned to use those same gifts to contort themselves into acceptability, creating a twisted parody of what they might otherwise have been. For lack of a better way of putting it, they became monsters. Only monsters of exceptional intelligence, imagination and sensitivity. And driven too. Driven to prove that they weren’t the weaklings and cowards that others might think them. The two bloodiest and most unrelenting Mafia wars Baldassare had ever witnessed had both been started by such men.

  He felt a draught on his neck. He turned to see Alessandra standing there. ‘Are those them?’ she asked, before he could close the laptop. ‘The ones who got away?’

  He pulled out his earbuds. ‘We think maybe. Do they… look familiar?’

  ‘Those teeth, yes. A bit. But they wore balaclavas. And anyway it was mostly the kids who dealt with us, the two you already caught.’ Baldassare made room for her on the chair. She snuggled in beside him and took his arm. ‘I got them talking once or twice. I thought it would make it harder for them, you know, when the time came. But then their shift would end and they’d be flint again when they returned. Angry with me too.’

  He glanced curiously at her. She hadn’t mentioned that before. ‘You think they were being monitored?’

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me. Everything they did, it felt… considered.’

  ‘As if they’d done it before?’

  ‘Maybe. Why?’

  ‘No reason,’ said Baldassare.

  III

  Dov was up early. He made coffee then scribbled a note to Zara and Carmen explaining that his office needed him on an important conference call. He’d therefore taken the car in search of Wi-Fi – he hoped they didn’t mind. But, should they need him or the car, just send a text and he’d come straight back.

  The sky was a pearl as he set off, a topaz by the time he reached Policastro. The railway station’s ticket office wasn’t yet open, but there were machines on either platform. He ducked his face from the CCTV and bought himself an open-ended single to Lamezia Terme Airport. He drove down to the seafront and the half-empty marina, then bumped his way north along the sandy track behind the beach to where the Bussento debouched into the sea. The track turned inland. So did he. He drove by a water sports club whose canoes were pulled up on the bank like basking crocodiles, and with slalom poles strung like wind chimes across the river. The track turned from rutted sand to rutted mud. The chalets grew shabby. He passed beneath road and railway bridges into a scrubby hinterland, too far from the sea to develop, too close to farm. He pulled on his handbrake and got out.

  A wall of rushes tall as trees blocked him from the river. He pushed between them, taking care not to tread them down or leave footprints. The river ran fat and slow, and there was another thick wall of rushes on its far bank. Not a sign of human life anywhere. Only half an hour’s walk from the railway station too. It could hardly have been better. He liked to be able to visualise things, so he made a pistol of his hand and imitated shooting both Zara and Carmen in the head with the gun he’d wrested from that ’Ndrangheta hit man, then tossing it into the rushes for the police to find. Yes, it would work. The only question was how to get them here. But they’d come for the Bussento, after all. It shouldn’t be beyond him.

  Satisfied with his morning’s work, he returned to the Renault then drove off south along the coast, looking for somewhere charming to take breakfast.

  Chapter Thirty

  I

  Carmen woke to the sound of the door closing and the car driving off, but tiredness persuaded her to doze on half an hour longer. She rose, dressed and went through, where she added a postscript to Dov’s note to let Zara know she’d gone into town for breakfast. Then she shouldered her laptop and headed out.

  It had been too dark last night to see much. This morning showed the cottage in serious need of work, with bricks placed strategically on its roof tiles to stop leaks, and black rainwater stains beneath its windowsills, like tearful mascara. But its garden was a quirky delight, sheltered from the road by a line of angel-wing cacti.

  The hairpin road up into Sicilì was steep. She soon felt it in her calves. The town itself was small and picturesque, its terracotta rooftops all connected by cat’s cradles of electrical wires. She re
ached a charming sloped piazza with a single cafe serving also as gelateria, restaurant, bar and pizzeria. Watermelon husks lay on the cobbles beside its door, like shelled green turtles. Men drinking coffee at the bar turned in unison to appraise her, making her Italian even more tortured than usual. She asked for a cappuccino, a pastry and the Wi-Fi password, then sat at an outside table to check her messages.

  Baldassare had thanked her for her statement. Certain things she’d written had distressed him, however. He’d very much like the opportunity to discuss them with her in person, if possible. The last thing Carmen wanted was to return to Cosenza, so she wrote back that she’d come to the Cilento for a few days, and was planning to return directly to Rome. But she was happy to video chat any time he liked.

  Her Sapienza professor Matteo Bianchi had also been in touch, thanking her for helping recover his ground-penetrating radar. So too the ispettore, with the welcome news that her passport and phone had been found, and asking what he should do with them. She was replying with her Rome address when a new email arrived from Baldassare. By happy coincidence, he’d be driving up to the Cilento for lunch tomorrow, and would gladly come and see her before or after. She sighed but wrote back with her Sicilì address and suggested he come at around three. Then, making a virtue of necessity, she asked if he’d collect her passport and phone from the ispettore, and bring them with him.

  He assured her that he would.

  Zara arrived in the piazza. Carmen waved her over. A waitress came out to take her order. Zara asked her about Genaro Scopece, the metal detectorist who’d left his finds to the Ginosa museum. She shook her head but went back inside for the proprietor, a cheerful, portly man whose bushy grey eyebrows danced like flirtatious caterpillars whenever he got lost in thought. ‘Scopece?’ he frowned. ‘Genaro Scopece?’