He knew them, and they knew him. They had visited him in the hospital in Spoleto six months before, and now they jumped out of the car, homing in on him like a pair of guided missiles.
Cangio saluted, and the director suggested that they move out of the bright sunshine. From the lee of the church, they watched as a coach arrived and unloaded a platoon of uniformed men that Cangio didn’t know.
‘They’re mostly from Abruzzo,’ the executive ranger remarked.
Men that Marzio had never met, Cangio realised. What was the point?
‘A formal send-off,’ the director general said, reading his mind, as he offered a cigarette to the executive ranger, then offered the packet to Cangio, too. Cangio didn’t smoke very often, but there was something in the gesture that said they were in the same boat together.
‘A woeful business,’ the director general said with a sigh.
The executive ranger nodded. ‘Let’s hope the police get to the bottom of it quickly …’
‘And with as little fuss as possible,’ Bruni added emphatically. ‘Whatever the cause, Marzio Diamante was in the wrong place …’
‘At the wrong time,’ Simonetti tagged on.
The director general grunted approval, as if to say And there’s an end to it.
Cangio blew out smoke and bit his tongue. He felt like smashing their empty heads together. They were building up to something, he could feel it.
‘Front-page news,’ the director general said.
‘The sort of publicity we need to avoid.’
‘The minister was on the phone this morning. A murder first, and now the occult!’
‘Poachers,’ Mario Simonetti hissed. ‘We’re all agreed on that, I hope. A bit of folklore’s fine, but Satanists and Devil-worshippers! The tourists would be terrified. It would be the end of everything we’ve worked for.’
Cangio recalled their visit to the hospital six months before. First, compliments for having faced up to the ’Ndrangheta single-handed, risking death at the hands of General Corsini. Then Director Bruni had clenched his teeth and said: ‘The less we say about this deplorable affair the better it will be for everyone.’
Suddenly, the director general crushed out his cigarette and turned on Cangio.
‘Have you been talking to the press again?’
Cangio dropped his cigarette. ‘I’ve only spoken with the carabinieri,’ he said.
‘Such rubbish in the newspapers! And now the TV’s got hold of it.’
For an instant Cangio was tempted to unbutton his lips and tell them that it looked as though the ’Ndrangheta had moved into the park again, and that there might be more than one ranger dead before things got any better.
Instead, he led them off in another direction. ‘Without Marzio,’ he said, ‘I’ll need some help, Director General. A replacement officer.’
‘That’s for the ministry to decide,’ Bruni said, raising his nose, sniffing the air. ‘With winter coming on, you won’t be busy, will you?’ He took a step forward and laid his hand on Cangio’s shoulder. ‘I mean to say, a young chap like you, full of initiative, I’m sure you can muddle along, at least until the case is closed. Then, well …’
Cangio nodded, translating thus: My career comes first, young man. As soon as this case is history, I’ll see what I can do for both of us.
‘What do the carabinieri have to say?’ Simonetti asked him.
Cangio, being full of initiative, pointed down the avenue.
‘Here they come,’ he said. ‘You can ask them directly.’
Simonetti looked down his nose, then turned away as a dark blue Alfa 159 skidded to a halt behind Cangio’s ancient Fiat 500 and the director general’s black Mercedes. Two and a quarter cars, Cangio thought to himself, comparing the size of the vehicles. The driver of the Alfa must have thought the same. Instead of cutting the motor, he accelerated with a spray of pebbles and parked the car in another spot closer to the church.
Brigadiere Sustrico got out of the rear door.
He advanced towards them, cap in hand, head bowed. He shook hands with Bruni and Simonetti, and might have offered his hand to Cangio too, but Bruni took him by the arm and leant close to his ear. ‘Any news, Brigadiere?’
Sustrico shook his head. ‘We’ll have to wait for the lab reports, I’m afraid. My instinct tells me that this was just an unlucky meeting. Diamante must have bumped into someone who was up to no good.’
‘Poachers,’ Alberto Bruni insisted. ‘Armed and desperate, it goes without saying.’
Cangio left them to their small talk.
A silver hearse turned into the avenue, followed by a long line of family saloons.
As the hearse pulled up, then reversed towards the church doors, he couldn’t help but notice that it dwarfed both the brigadiere’s Alfa Romeo and the director’s Mercedes. There ought to have been a coffin inside the base-extended Jaguar XJ, but he couldn’t see it for the mass of wreaths and flowers that filled the rear compartment. As car doors opened and people got out, hanging back in tight groups, an altar boy in a black cassock and lace-frilled surplice came running to unlock the church doors.
Brave boy, Cangio complimented him silently.
The first one in …
A priest in purple robes came next.
Then Linda Diamante made her way towards the church, her friends and family close behind her. Linda looked desolate in an ill-fitting black suit. She hadn’t expected to lose Marzio so soon, and the clothes she had evidently borrowed made her look far older than she really was. She crushed a white handkerchief to her mouth, glanced over at Cangio, then looked away quickly, as if she had nothing to say to him.
A hand touched his sleeve, then slid beneath his arm. Lips brushed his cheek.
‘Leave it to the carabinieri this time, Seb.’
As Loredana’s hand slid away, he caught hold of it.
‘You made it, then,’ he said.
He tried to sound detached, but that was not how he felt. He was glad to see her.
‘They’ve put me on the afternoon shift,’ she said. ‘I have to be back by three. They weren’t happy about it, but I told them I owed it to Linda and to Marzio’s family.’
Linda and Marzio’s family.
He didn’t come into it at all. There’d be no sleeping over tonight.
‘You be careful in the woods,’ she warned him. ‘Don’t do anything foolish.’
He let go of her hand as they moved towards the church. A black leather jacket and slim-fit black jeans showed off her figure and made her hair seem even darker than it was. Her eyes were glistening brightly, but not on his account.
‘What do you want me to do, run away?’
‘I don’t want someone phoning me to say there’s going to be another funeral. You were lucky the last time,’ she said with a heavy sigh as they were sucked into the crowd pressing into the church.
An usher asked them if they were family.
‘We’re with Linda,’ Lori said, and the man directed them to the pews at the front on the left-hand side where Linda Diamante and her family were sitting. The church was packed with local people, then row upon row of park rangers.
The altar boy swung a gold-plated thurible on a long chain and the Mass began.
Cangio stood up, or knelt down, following the lead of people near them who seemed to know what to do. His eyes fell often on the coffin propped on trestles in front of the altar.
Would his funeral have been like this? Would his parents have travelled from Calabria to bury him in Umbria, or would they have taken him back home before they buried him?
Would Lori’s face have shown the distress that marred the face of Linda?
He wasn’t a local man. The church would have been half-empty. Still, among so many people, was it possible that no one knew what Marzio had been doing in the woods that night?
He turned his head. Bruni and Simonetti had tagged themselves onto Linda’s family, looking suitably humbled in the wake of the calamity of an
awkward death. The park rangers sitting behind them looked bored for the most part.
Then Cangio’s gaze fell on a man whose face he recognised.
He whispered in Lori’s ear. ‘Who’s the man at the end of the bench?’
‘Antonio Marra,’ she murmured. ‘He went to school with Marzio.’
Marra’s face seemed to express a grief that went beyond what you might expect of an old schoolmate.
‘Were they close friends?’
Lori shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘Marzio was found near his reserve,’ Cangio said.
The woman next to Marra was kneeling now, hands clasped in prayer, her eyes shut tight. She looked like something out of a cheap horror film. Fifty years old, in black weeds, her hair dyed black but showing grey at the roots, her eyes made up as two spectral rings like one of those masks from a Greek tragedy.
‘Who’s Morticia Addams?’ he whispered.
‘Maria Gatti,’ Lori said. ‘D’you know what she does?’
‘Scares crows?’
Loredana made the sign of the cross, while Cangio watched the strange woman dressed in black.
‘She’s a medium,’ Lori whispered.
‘She’s certainly got the looks for it.’
When the service ended, he walked Loredana to her car. ‘Tell Linda I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got time to go with them to the cemetery. Are you going?’
‘Sure,’ he said, his thoughts drifting elsewhere. Bruni and Simonetti would be at the cemetery, breathing down his neck, warning him not to speak to the press.
‘Hey! Are you listening to me?’ Lori said. ‘Leave it alone, Seb. Don’t get involved, OK?’
‘OK, OK,’ he said, his eyes on Marra and the witch at his side.
Marra was still upset, it seemed, the woman’s hand on his shoulder, as if she wanted to help him bear the weight. They were climbing into a newish-looking Porsche that must have cost a fortune.
‘I’ll call you tonight,’ Lori said through the open window.
‘OK,’ he said again, but the car was already driving away.
FIFTEEN
‘MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN THE NATIONAL PARK.
‘Local people have long been afraid to enter the park at night. Fanatical sects worship the Devil by the light of the moon, sacrificing black cats on the altar stones of abandoned country churches,’ Simone Candelora read the article aloud, his lips pressed close to the phone.
‘Alongside the Catholic mysticism for which Umbria is renowned – the saints, Francis of Assisi, Rita of Cascia, and Benedict of Norcia, to name but a few, are revered throughout the Christian world – there is rising undercurrent of Satanism in central Italy, a senior police officer said today—’
He stopped short as Don Michele let out a grunt.
‘The cops are chasing weirdos, is that what you’re telling me?’
‘That’s the way it looks,’ Simone said. ‘We’ve got nothing to worry about. It might help to frighten off the nosy parkers.’
Was his voice too chirpy, he wondered. Would the don be convinced by it? You needed facts to convince Don Michele.
‘We’re right on course,’ Simone said, adopting a brisk and businesslike tone. ‘The plant’s up and running now. The product’s ready. We’ve got the local airport sorted, and the dummy load went through OK. The other consignments will be going out next, no problem. I told you, boss, this place is perfect.’
‘It was perfect,’ Don Michele snapped, ‘Now the rubberneckers’ll be on their toes. They won’t all fall for that Devil-worship stuff. A headless body in the woods? That’s not what I had in mind.’
‘Take it easy, Don Michè,’ Simone protested. ‘Like I said before, it ain’t all bad.’
‘What about that other ranger, Cangio?’
That was what was bothering Don Michele.
‘What about him? What can he do?’
‘You keep Ettore away from him, that’s my point.’
‘Sure thing,’ Simone said, wondering what else he could say to salvage the situation.
There was silence for a bit, then Don Michele said, ‘Don’t fuck it up, Simò.’ Definitive. An order. More than an order. A threat. ‘I don’t intend to fail in Umbria again.’
Then Simone heard the click of a lighter, the sharp intake of breath.
‘These people doing their thing in the woods at night …’ Don Michele was silent for a bit, taking it in, working it out. ‘You know, Simò,’ he said at last, ‘maybe we can make this Satan business work to our advantage.’
The line went dead.
Simone realised that the phone in his hand was dripping with sweat.
He cut two lines of coke on the bedside table, and snorted hard.
SIXTEEN
‘Didn’t you get shot, or something?’
The ranger rubbed the back of his neck and seemed embarrassed.
Antonio Marra felt damp beneath the armpits, but he didn’t intend to let the ranger know how nervous he felt.
‘I saw you on the news.’
Cangio cut him off quickly. ‘That isn’t why I’m here, Signor Marra,’ he said. ‘I’m interested in something that may have happened near your truffle reserve more than two years ago, and I was hoping that you might be able to help me.’
Was the ranger playing cat and mouse, or was he bumping around in the dark?
‘May have happened? Two years back? That’s precision for you!’
The ranger held up his hands in a dumb show of surrender.
‘It seems to have happened on a number of occasions,’ he said with an apologetic smile, running his fingers through his hair. ‘And always in the same area. Near your truffle reserve, as I mentioned, Signor Marra.’
The more embarrassed the ranger got, the better Antonio Marra felt about it.
‘This isn’t an official inspection, then?’
‘No, it isn’t. It’s just that we received some reports …’
‘Two years ago? And you’re checking them now?’
‘I don’t know if they were ever followed up.’
‘What sort of reports?’
‘Strange things going on at night in the woods.’
Marra felt a steel claw grab his guts and give them a twist.
The ranger had been front-page news for a bit. A tenacious twat, though the journalists had used words better suited to a family audience. He’d got himself shot playing silly buggers with a crooked carabiniere general. Now, here he was, wondering if anything odd had been going on in the truffle reserve two years before.
Antonio Marra shifted a pile of papers across his desk, his way of saying he had better things to do than waste time talking about the distant past. He felt like telling the kid to go and screw himself, but that was one thing he couldn’t do. He would just have to play along and show willing.
‘Who remembers what happened last week?’ he said, with a wave of his hand.
He regretted it immediately. Marzio Diamante had been murdered, hadn’t he? He had to tone down the sarcasm. ‘Sorry about that, just joking, officer. Tell me more. If I can do anything to help, I most certainly will.’
Cangio took a seat and told him about the reports his partner had received.
‘Poor Marzio,’ Marra said. ‘Me and him go way back. Not particularly close, of course, but I’d known him since school days. God rest his soul.’
‘I saw you at the funeral,’ the ranger said.
Marra nodded, tried to contain his surprise. ‘Duty, wasn’t it? So, what’s all this about the woods, then?’
‘As I mentioned, a number of people reported strange night-time activity in the vicinity of your truffle reserve. I was wondering whether you might remember hearing or seeing anything out of the ordinary.’
Antonio Marra felt ill, the ranger sitting there, looking at him.
He was going to have to say something.
‘These people,’ he said, and tapped his temple with his forefinger. ‘The world’s
full of headcases, right?’ He bit his tongue. He had to stop sounding so bloody snotty. ‘Do you fancy a coffee, officer?’ He picked up the internal phone. ‘My secretary—’
‘No, thank you,’ the ranger said. ‘I spoke to one of these witnesses yesterday. He was out in the woods one night with a friend setting nets to catch starlings. It’s illegal, as you probably know, so they could have ended up on a charge. Even so, they came forward at the time, saying that they had heard a loud scream. This was in July, the summer before last.’
Marra shrugged his shoulders, his heart racing. ‘Animals often screech at night,’ he said.
The ranger pulled a file from his shoulder bag. ‘Let me read you what they reported.’
Marra watched as he searched through a sheaf of papers.
He had a file … a fucking file!
‘Here it is: We were fifty metres away, and the moon was quite bright. We saw two creatures bending over something stretched out on the ground. They were small and wild-looking, making strange jabbering noises.’
Marra tried to laugh, though it sounded more like a grunt. ‘By the light of the moon? Fifty metres away? In the middle of the forest at night?’ He clasped his hands together, then rested his elbows on the desk. ‘And you’re asking me for an opinion?’
He congratulated himself on the tone of his voice. It sounded snappy now, amused, patience stretched, but still trying to help.
The ranger shifted uncomfortably in his seat as if he, too, harboured doubts.
Antonio Marra shook his head. ‘Never trust a poacher, officer. Two of them? Giving themselves an alibi, I bet. They’ll have dreamt it up. An excuse, you know. Us, officer? We weren’t doing a thing. I wouldn’t set much store by that sort of witness.’
Cangio pulled a face as if to say That’s possible.
Marra slapped his hands down lightly on the desk like a man playing the bongos.
‘I’m sorry, officer, but I’ve got a busy day ahead of me. Just let me ask you a question before you go. Do you really think these cock-and-bull tales have got anything to do with the death of poor old Marzio?’
A perplexed frown creased Cangio’s brow. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Still, something in these stories evidently attracted his attention. I … I just wanted to spread the net a little bit wider.’
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