Think Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  ‘Let’s start again, shall we?’

  Start again? He couldn’t say a word with the tube in his mouth. Then he heard a click – the feeder button – and saw the black paste snaking down the transparent plastic tube. The air pushed back into his throat and lungs, the pressure building up as the oily truffle paste came spurting out of the tube.

  ‘Tasty, eh?’ Candelora said.

  Marra struggled to breathe, his nose and mouth filling up with truffle sauce, choking on the stuff, trying to cough it out, then having to swallow, and swallow, and swallow again. It was that, or nothing. Swallow or die.

  Candelora pushed the button and ripped the plastic tube from his mouth.

  He leant close, his eyes like burning coals. ‘Unless you tell me what I want to know, Antò, you won’t be here to talk tomorrow. I’ve got everything I need in this fucking room. I’ve got cutters, grinders, mixers, bottles, packing machines. I can send you out of here in a cardboard carton in forty glass jars marked Marra fucking Truffles.’

  Cangio was on the hillside, staring through his night vision glasses.

  He wasn’t watching the wolves tonight, though. It had taken just half an hour to drive there from the airport. The factory car park was empty, which was no surprise. He had told them to be there at midnight, but who was ever on time in Italy? The truffle processing plant was dark, apparently empty, with dimmed night-lights here and there, and a couple of bright red dots that might have been fire or burglar alarm systems.

  The place looked deserted, no sign of a watchman or a security guard.

  And then he heard a noise.

  The night was full of noises, hooting owls, whistling bats, unexpected rustles in the undergrowth, but this was something grinding and mechanical, a machine of some sort.

  It went on for a minute or so, a distant humming, coming from Marra Truffles.

  Was something programmed to switch itself on and off at certain hours of the night? A fridge or a boiler, maybe.

  He started running across the hillside, the stubble shimmering in the moonlight like a million tiny metal blades where the grass had been cropped short by grazing sheep. He wanted to check the rear of the factory before he moved any closer.

  ‘What’s all this about Chinamen, Antò?’

  Antonio Marra puked up some more truffle paste. He looked a right fucking mess, as if he’d grown an oily black beard. He stank of garlic and truffles.

  Marra stared up at him. ‘Chinamen?’ he managed to say, still playing for time, still thinking he could pull the wool over the sheep’s eyes.

  ‘You heard me! What’s the story?’

  He held the feeder tube in front of Marra’s face and saw his eyes light up with terror. ‘And just remember this, Antò. I want the truth.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  He pushed the plastic tube into the silly fucker’s mouth and pressed the red feeder button again.

  Cangio ran for a hundred metres.

  He dropped down on one knee, aimed his binoculars on the back of the factory.

  The same red dots of light were visible on the first floor, but to the right on the lower floor, he saw a narrow strip of light where a blind had been left open. All the other blinds were closed, the windows dark. Had someone gone home, forgetting to switch off the lights and pull down the shades?

  He swept the building from one end to the other through the night-glasses, the contrast ranging from sparkling pinpoints of lime to murky bars of near-black where the limited infra-red spectrum failed. There was a door at one end of the building. Taller and wider than a normal door, it looked like a service entrance with a smooth metal shutter which rolled up and down, probably propelled by an electric motor. The door wasn’t shut. Not quite.

  There was a strip of impenetrable darkness at the bottom.

  Someone was inside the factory.

  ‘Let me go, Simò. I need to puke … ukh!’

  ‘This Chinaman was working for you. OK, and so?’

  ‘An accident. That’s what happened. He had an accident.’

  ‘And you got rid of him?’

  ‘Let me up, Simò, for Chrissakes! It was me—’

  ‘You buried him in the woods.’

  There was no way out of it. Lies, and more lies, otherwise the bastard would kill him.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘I didn’t think you had it in you, Antò. Hang on a bit, though. How did you do it? That’s what I can’t figure. I mean to say, did you bring him here to do the cutting and snipping, or did you do it out in the woods with an axe or something?’

  That stumped him. ‘I … I …’ he murmured. ‘I couldn’t bring him here, Simò.’

  Candelora reached for the plastic tube, held it up in front of his eyes.

  ‘Tell me how you did it. Exactly how. The details, everything.’

  Holy Christ, he thought, if the carabinieri ever get a hold of this …

  Cangio crawled beneath the open door, pulled himself to his feet.

  He was in an ample loading bay that doubled as a garage.

  There was a black Mercedes parked inside, no sign of Marra’s Porsche. That Mercedes … He’d seen it coming down from Cerreto the day Maria Gatti was found. He had nearly crashed into it. The Mercedes driven by Ettore Pallucchi, the ’Ndranghetista, who was dead in London.

  The other man must be in the factory …

  The one who’d been in the car with Ettore Pallucchi and Marra.

  Were they getting ready to celebrate with Ettore?

  That’s who they were expecting. After the message he’d sent from Ettore’s mobile phone – See you at MT after midnight – they’d be waiting for Ettore to come back and tell them how he had murdered the park ranger in London, celebrating over a bottle of champagne, or something.

  As he opened the inner door on the far side of the garage and stepped into the corridor, someone screamed.

  ‘What the hell do you think he’s up to?’

  ‘We’ll find out when we get there,’ Lucia Grossi said. ‘How much longer?’

  ‘I don’t know precisely. Five, ten minutes?’

  They raced through Sellano on the twisty old SP459 from Foligno. A shortcut to Valnerina, Jerry Esposito had said, but the narrow road kept winding back on itself.

  ‘We should have brought the riot mob,’ Esposito said. ‘Just the two of us? He could be armed.’

  ‘If you ask me, he wants to surrender, hand himself in. He’s already looking at life – two murders, Diamante and Gatti – plus those unexplained bones. He’d be mad to try and shoot his way out.’

  ‘If he thinks surrendering will earn him remission, he’s got another think coming.’

  ‘Step on it,’ Lucia Grossi urged him. ‘And mind you don’t kill anything.’

  There were metal signs at hundred-metre intervals showing leaping deer.

  At last they had entered the area of the national park.

  Cangio moved along the corridor in the gloom.

  The burglar alarms were false.

  At least they didn’t go off.

  He stopped and listened at every door.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  He reached the last door, put his ear to the wood and heard a voice, and another noise of some sort. That grinding sound again. Then a cry of protest.

  There were at least two people in the factory, and one of them didn’t sound happy.

  He glanced at his watch. Two minutes to midnight. He should have waited in the car park for the RCS, but you couldn’t ignore those screams. If he could just create a bit of confusion, the Twelfth Cavalry were bound to arrive. Sooner rather than later, he hoped, as he turned the handle, pushed the door and stepped silently into the processing room.

  A tall man was standing over Antonio Marra.

  Marra was stretched out on a conveyor belt, strapped to it with silver ducting tape, a long plastic tube sticking into his mouth.

  Marra’s eyes goggled at the sight of possible rescue. The
man turned round, stared at him for an instant, then pulled a pistol from the waistband of his trousers. He stretched out his right arm, pointing the gun.

  ‘Fuck me!’ he said. ‘Are you a ghost, or what?’

  Cangio dived behind a work bench and a shot rang out.

  ‘What happened to Ettore?’ the man called out.

  ‘Ettore sends his apologies,’ Cangio shouted back. ‘Unfortunately, he couldn’t come tonight. He fell in love with London. He’s staying in a nice hotel. They call it The Mortuary.’

  He heard the sound of footsteps, but he wasn’t sure where they were coming from.

  Had his luck exhausted itself in London?

  He had parked his van outside Marra Truffles.

  It was 00.02 as he approached the building. It shouldn’t be more than a three-minute stop, just to check the main door and the delivery door at the back. The front door was locked, as a solid rattle of the handle confirmed. He peered through the glass and looked down the long dimly lit corridor. All was as quiet as usual.

  At the back of the building he got a bit of a surprise.

  The loading door hadn’t been properly closed.

  Or had it been forced open?

  He crawled under the door, and saw the Mercedes parked inside. One of the owners, he imagined. He could hear voices coming from the production department. A big order, maybe they were working late.

  Should he leave them to it?

  He shook his head, smiled to himself. OK, being a night-watchman wasn’t a well-paid or glamorous job, but it was a job, and you did what you had to do. He couldn’t just pretend that he hadn’t heard the voices, he had to go through and check.

  He knocked on the connecting door, pushed it open, and a man pointed a gun at him.

  It had never happened to him before. Eleven years as a watchman checking shops, banks and other business premises at night, making sure the doors were locked, slipping a receipt ticket under the door, then moving on to the next one.

  He had a registered Colt revolver in his holster, but he had never fired it, except on the shooting range. Maybe it was the fact that someone was pointing a gun at him.

  His hand went to unclip the button on his holster when the other man fired.

  He used what cover he could and began to move.

  He crept towards the door the dead man had come through.

  It must lead straight to the garage. The security guard was sprawled on the floor, flat on his back, a pool of blood spreading out around his head, the shiny black butt of a pistol lolling half out of the holster on his Sam Browne belt.

  He made a feint towards the gun.

  Candelora fired. The bullet pinged off metal, went zinging around the room, dinging off something else, then shattered through glass.

  Cangio ignored the gun, skipped over the body and bolted for the door that led to the corridor. He turned left, running for the main entrance, heard the gunman close behind him, heard another sharp crack, another miss, the bullet ricocheting off the walls around his ears.

  He reached the door, saw figures out in the car park, moving fast towards the door.

  Candelora fired again, and the plate glass door collapsed in a shower of fragments.

  Think wolf, he told himself, holding up his hands, turning around.

  ‘Don’t shoot,’ he shouted.

  Jerry Esposito came flying in through the broken door, pistol in hand.

  Both guns exploded in the corridor. Esposito groaned and fell to the floor.

  Cangio tried not to think of the carabiniere.

  He blocked Esposito out of his mind.

  Think wolf! he told himself. Survive!

  He had to close the distance, then attack at the first opportunity.

  Candelora moved towards him, levelling the gun, holding it two-handed, sideways, the way they did in recent movies when mobsters were executing mobsters.

  ‘Drop that pistol!’ a voice shouted, as a figure burst in through the door that led to the garage.

  The voice was firm and strong.

  A female voice.

  Candelora fired again.

  Lucia Grossi went down with a shriek, and he turned on Cangio.

  ‘You bastard!’ Candelora swore, baring his teeth.

  The words were still ringing in the hallway as Esposito turned on his side, levelled his pistol and fired off a shot. Candelora collapsed against the wall, one side of his face blown off. His body slipped, then fell, his head bouncing on the rubberized tiling.

  Lucia Grossi was back on her feet, moving in, covering the corpse, her gun in one hand, her phone in the other, blood pouring from the left shoulder of her uniform jacket.

  ‘Agents down and wounded!’ she shouted, and gave the coordinates of Marra Truffles. ‘Multiple shooting. One dead, maybe more. We need a doctor, ambulances.’

  Esposito had been shot in the hip. He was in pain, but he would live.

  Candelora was beyond help, and no one was weeping.

  ‘What about you?’ she said, moving close to Cangio, her gun still pointing at the dead man on the floor.

  ‘Are you always late?’ he asked her. ‘Another ten seconds, and he’d have killed me.’

  Lucia Grossi looked down at him. Her lips stretched into a grin.

  ‘We’ll try to be later next time,’ she said.

  Then Cangio remembered the two men in the processing room.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘I want you to start the ball rolling.’

  Lucia Grossi had phoned him at seven thirty. The press conference was to be held that morning at Carabinieri Central Command in Perugia.

  ‘I’ll introduce you, then you kick in with the elves and the goblins,’ she said. ‘That’ll grab their attention. All the rest follows on from there.’

  ‘If you want fairy tales,’ he said, ‘I’ll sit in the audience.’

  ‘I want you on that stage,’ she said. ‘You’ve been in on this investigation from the start, and might have ended up on the pathologist’s slab! They’ll want to hear your account.’

  ‘You were ready to arrest me yesterday,’ he said.

  That made her laugh. ‘You did run off to London, remember?’

  Cangio swallowed the words on his lips. And wasn’t it lucky for you that I did?

  He didn’t want to argue with the woman. She had saved his life and risked her own in the process. Talking with her was like sniffing bleach, that was the problem. You knew you were going to end up getting burnt, feeling ill, or both.

  ‘How’s your arm?’ he asked.

  She ignored the question. ‘Your face will be on all the front pages,’ she said brightly. ‘The ranger who saved the Umbrian truffle industry. Don’t forget, Cangio, full uniform, please. You’ll cut quite a figure.’

  At 10.43 that morning, Cangio stood up as Lucia Grossi sat down.

  He looked out over the auditorium as the TV camera lights came on, and microphones and iPads turned in his direction. Somewhere in the thick of the crowd a voice said clearly, ‘Didn’t they shoot him this time?’

  Apart from the press, the room was packed with local politicians, high-ranking carabinieri officers with lots of gold braid and medals, the park director and the executive ranger. He had just spotted the pathologist Cristina di Marco, when he noticed Lori sitting quietly at the back of the room.

  What was she doing there, he asked himself. Had she taken the day off work?

  Lucia Grossi raised her finger at him, like a conductor to the first violin.

  He gathered his notes together, then put them down again, feeling nervous, playing for time. Where should he begin? He still hadn’t decided. Should he start with Antonio Marra, London, the ’Ndrangheta, the number of deaths involved?

  Suddenly, he realised that Lucia Grossi was right.

  Elves and goblins.

  The journalists in the conference room wanted a story packed with mystery and blood. And if the ’Ndrangheta were thrown in for good measure, so much the better.

&nbs
p; He took a deep breath.

  ‘Strange sightings in the woods at dead of night,’ he said. ‘This case begins with the murder of a forest ranger who was investigating reports of ghostly apparitions. Marzio Diamante interviewed a number of witnesses who claimed to have seen such things two years before anyone else began to guess that something wasn’t right in Umbria. Marzio paid for that knowledge with his life.’

  He held up the papers in his hand as if they were Marzio’s file.

  ‘Strange creatures making unintelligible noises.’

  He heard murmurs, one or two titters, but still the cameras flashed.

  ‘Elves? Goblins? Legends? Folklore? No one took those stories seriously, except for Marzio Diamante.’

  Let Marzio have his due, he thought. Let the ’Ndrangheta play second fiddle for the moment.

  ‘Then one of the witnesses reported hearing a scream. And suddenly, the sightings ceased. Everything stopped two years ago …’

  Cangio held the silence for several seconds. The audience shifted, as if they, too, felt safer in the knowledge that whatever had started was over and finished.

  ‘The year before that, Marra Truffles had run into financial difficulties. The owner, Antonio Marra, was making efforts to salvage the company. And not merely salvage it. He wanted to turn it around. He hoped to move into the big time, and he thought he’d found a foolproof way of doing it.’

  One of the journalists raised his hand.

  As soon as he asked his question, Cangio knew he was a local man.

  ‘Marra Truffles has never been big. Marra’s reserves are relatively small. You can’t just make truffles grow. Are you saying he’d found a Viagra pill for truffles?’

  That caused quite a laugh.

  Cangio raised a paper bag from the table. He held it up and the cameras flashed. They flashed again when he put his hand into the bag, and produced a small glass jar, which he held up to the assembly.

  ‘This jar contains four truffles. Their scientific name is Tuber himalayensis. They look exactly like Umbrian truffles, the Tuber melanosporum, but they come from the province of Szechuan in China. The Chinese variety grows in remarkable quantities, and examples are sometimes unusually large. Viagra was mentioned a few moments ago …’