Giulio Forlani’s brother, Bruno Forlani, and his parents claimed the body and Giulio was buried five days later in the family plot at Chiaravalle Cemetery, south of Milan. On the morning of 5 September, Milan’s most famous haute couture designer, Nanometric’s main investor, and Giulio Forlani’s good friend, Massimiliano Di Luca, had had a vague lunch appointment with Forlani at the restaurant Dal Pescatore. Forlani had never arrived and Sabrina had read the testimony of Massimiliano Di Luca, which was detailed, but not particularly helpful. The fashion designer had drunk a couple of Martinis in the bar while he waited and studied the racing pages before giving up. His driver had then taken him from the restaurant to the San Siro racecourse where he had spent the afternoon.
Sabrina inserted a CD from Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II into the computer and watched the grainy, blurred recordings from the two surveillance cameras in the shopping centre on 5 September 2007 over and over again. She saw Lucia Forlani and her twelve-year-old son, Salvatore, step aside for a young couple with a buggy before entering a lift on the ground floor. The doors had started to close when a man squeezed in at the last moment. She could see from behind that he was of medium height and wearing a green oilskin jacket and dark trousers. He had a cap on his head. Lucia Forlani had smiled at him and he had presumably smiled back. Then he leaned forwards and said something to her. Her smile disappeared. She staggered and the man put his hand around her elbow to support her. Salvatore Forlani started to cry.
There could be no doubt about this: two cameras, one behind the till in a menswear shop on the other side of the shopping mall and one directly opposite the lifts, had recorded the incident. Sabrina played the recording at a slow speed, fast-forwarded it and played it backwards. She cut out sequences and viewed them in Photoshop; zoomed in on the woman’s face and what little she could see of the boy’s.
If she had ever seen a smile of recognition, then this was how Lucia Forlani had reacted when the man had entered the lift.
She would have expected the trio to be picked up by the cameras that overlooked the café on the first floor, but they never arrived. In his report, the investigating officer had mentioned the possibility that cameras in the underground car park might have caught the boy, the woman and the man. These cameras, however, had been out of action – by unfortunate chance or sabotage. Lucia Forlani, Salvatore and the unknown man had vanished without a trace between three floors of one of the most frequented shopping centres in the world. An almost impossible achievement.
The officer had included a list of vehicles in the underground car park at the time of the abduction. Every owner had been interviewed with no result.
As the days and weeks passed, the tone of the reports grew increasingly despondent. The investigating officer had followed up even the most improbable theories and Sabrina was impressed by his diligence. No one could find fault with the investigation.
Sabrina lit a couple of candles behind her bed and was holding a small strip of magic between her fingers. Thin, sharp, black and bendy like celluloid. Half a centimetre wide and four centimetres long. The strip had fluttered down on her naked foot when she found Giulio Forlani’s apparently empty wallet in a paper bag. On the paper bag was the name and address of a famous patisserie in Milan. She could still smell almond cake.
The magic ingredient was in the luminous green numbers and letters that could be read from any angle at which she viewed the strip:
WED 2010:09:08
Which, as it happened, was today’s day and date. The date was followed by a twelve-digit code. She had run a fingernail across the strip. The numbers and letters drifted apart, but reformed when she removed the pressure. It was extraordinary. She now started to understand the potential of the strip, not just for goods produced by the fashion industry, but also for banknotes, DVDs, credit cards, passports and driving licences. She imagined a yuppie on a rush-hour train in Rome or New York with a Prada bag and a date strip that displayed 12 December, for example – at the height of summer. If the strip was sewn into or mounted on the relevant product, visible to anyone, with a date that changed at midnight like a clock, the combination would be unbeatable; and no fashion-conscious woman – or man – would ever risk exposing their expensive accessories as rip-offs.
She put the strip inside a copy of Northanger Abbey on her bedside table.
Forlani’s wallet was covered in dried blood and it had been emptied of photos, credit cards, driving licence and banknotes, which had undoubtedly been handed over to his family. The wallet itself had been stored with his bloodstained clothes, shoes and socks.
She poured the remaining contents of the grey sports bag out on to the floor, tiny fragments of glass from the Škoda’s broken side windows sparkling like sugar crystals on Giulio Forlani’s clothes. A dark blue anorak, socks stiff with congealed blood, a shirt that had once been blue, an enormous pair of moccasins, khaki trousers cut from the turn-ups to the belt loops and black underpants. Sabrina picked up the shirt and poked her index finger through a sooty hole, just the diameter of a fingertip, high up on the right-hand side of the chest. A shot to the right lung, as the trauma doctor, Dr Carlo Mazzaferro, had stated. This injury was in addition to multiple fractures, the gunshot wound to the head, internal bleeding and two collapsed lungs.
Sabrina searched the pockets and turn-ups without finding anything. Shards of glass from the Škoda pricked her fingertips. When she squeezed her fingers tiny drops of blood appeared.
Federico Renda had requested the case files and Forlani’s belongings from various agencies in Milan who had divided up the investigation between them. It was as Sabrina had expected: no single coordinating officer or public prosecutor had previously looked at the case as a whole.
The forces of law and order in Italy were a battlefield for feuding intelligence services, departments and police forces, each fiercely protective of their own privileges and remits and engaged in a never-ending turf war. Her father had always advocated a centralized effort to fight organized crime, like the FBI in America.
Perhaps that had been the real reason for his assassination.
*
She woke up at the sound of flapping wings and an excited cooing. She yawned, stretched and discovered that she had fallen asleep fully dressed. Two pigeons were fighting over some seeds on the bird table. Sabrina took the last cigarette, lit it, scrunched up the packet and threw it at the birds.
It was dawn and the air was cool and clean. She finished smoking the cigarette, dropped the butt into a half-empty coffee cup and pulled the duvet over her head.
CHAPTER 6
Qualiano, Naples the Estate of Francesco Terrasino
The nurse knocked politely on the door, but Don Francesco Terrasino had already heard her heels on the floor.
His fork hovered over the plate of ham and eggs, but he was no longer hungry. He was losing his appetite more with every passing day.
He opened the door to the grey-haired nurse.
‘Can I see her now?’ he asked.
‘She has had a good sleep, signore,’ she said. ‘La signora has had a bath and eaten a little.’
He followed her through a passage with a low ceiling to the living room and caught himself ducking under the door frame. When he and Anna moved to the estate, the beam had been level with his forehead. Now he could pass under it with space above his head.
They passed a room that had once been the office of his closest adviser, but was now used by his grandchildren when they came to stay. Don Francesco didn’t mind. He had moved with the times. Today his closest adviser was the senior partner in a major law firm in Rome and the family’s accounts were handled by an international accountancy firm. The estate was no longer the headquarters of the Terrasino family. Feuding was over. They had entered a post-war era, which everyone hoped would last. The big conferences in the nineties with the Cosa Nostra, the ’Ndrangheta, the Albanians and the Ukrainians had put an end to costly and pointless strife. Urs Savelli had been a masterful n
egotiator for the Terrasino family. Especially when it came to the Albanians.
Soon every decision in ‘The System’ would be taken by well-dressed MBAs in air-conditioned meeting rooms. In another place and in a language other than Italian. Today most of the family’s income came from legitimate waste-management firms, property companies and farming that attracted generous grants from the European Union’s Structural Funds. They had relocated practically all their bootleg factories to the Far East, just like legitimate businesses, to access the cheap, non-unionized, well-educated and compliant labour in India, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia or China. Countries only a mouse click away.
The age of the white containers was past. The wrecked container from the Taixan had been one of the last.
The nurse pushed Anna’s wheelchair up to the open terrace doors. His wife could hear the birds and breathe in the scent of the flowers. He hoped that they would take her to a happy place.
She smiled when she saw him. She smiled at everyone.
Her eyes hadn’t changed. They were still dark grey, and bright even though they no longer reflected her soul. The Alzheimer’s had eaten up Anna’s mind. Like black snails devouring white mushrooms, he thought.
He kissed her cheek.
She smiled and moved her gaze to the pots of forsythia on the tiled terrace, but no transition was reflected in her eyes. Everything she saw these days had the same value.
The estate’s staff knew that Don Francesco preferred silence and they kept out of sight while the old man inspected his vines. He walked slowly while his brain calculated the position of the sun, the wind on his neck and the humidity of the air: key factors. He opened the door to an ancient three-wheel scooter with a truck body, rolled up his shirt sleeves, took a NY Giants baseball cap from the front seat and put it on. He picked up a basket and walked over to the vegetable beds to select vegetables and fruit for today’s dinner.
He weighed a bunch of nebbiolo grapes in his hand, but decided on another, picked a melon and added aubergines, almonds and nectarines to his basket.
He heard Savelli’s footsteps on the gravel and turned around.
‘Don.’
‘Urs. Welcome.’
‘How are you?’
‘Well … very well, I think.’
The old man offered him a bunch of grapes, but Savelli shook his head. He preferred his grapes at least five years old and in a bottle from an authorized Barolo producer.
‘You should eat more fruit, Urs.’
‘I’ll try,’ Urs Savelli said. ‘Your wife. How is la signora?’
The old man took off his cap and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his jacket.
‘Her head is as empty as a drum. Perhaps she’s happier than all of us.’
Savelli nodded. ‘Perhaps.’
They sat down on a bench shaded by the pergola. The two men couldn’t have been more different: Don Francesco was thickset and weather-beaten, while Savelli was dark, lean and sinister. Don Francesco had broad, skilled peasant hands while Savelli’s were slender and restless. Don Francesco Terrasino was always dressed in well-worn, simple clothing while Savelli preferred expensive black suits, shiny shoes, a crisp white shirt and a dark tie. One spoke loudly and gesticulated eagerly, while the other whispered and let his eyes fill up the pauses.
The problem with these rare conversations was how to say the necessary without being specific. The bastards from the anti-Mafia unit, the ROS – Raggruppamento Operative Speciale – stuck to Don Francesco’s lips like limpets wherever he went, with their blasted parabolic microphones, satellites, drones, their lip readers and telephoto lenses, but within the walls of the estate, on his own land, it was still possible to speak openly.
Fortunately the moves of the ROS were predictable. Their electronic gadgets would get them only so far. The art was to learn from the past. But the men and women in the ROS and the GIS were too young, too arrogant and too lacking in imagination to understand that. The general, Baron Agostino D’Avalos, had been different. He had possessed the aristocrat’s genuine respect for the peasant.
Savelli took out his mobile and played the recordings from the white tents at the Vittorio Emanuele II Quay. The old man nodded.
‘It’s unfortunate,’ he said. ‘But does it matter? Everyone already knew.’
‘A random event,’ the Albanian said. ‘The container, I mean.’
‘It was an unfortunate coincidence. Most unfortunate,’ Don Francesco said.
Savelli nodded slightly and zoomed in on the last two names. Numbers twenty-nine and thirty.
‘These two haven’t been forgotten. Lucia and Salvatore Forlani. They’ve been identified. They were in the container.’
The old man nodded. He had always had the strength to do what was necessary, and to do it immediately. This ability had earned him a seat on the Council; it had earned him the estate, status and respect. Killing women and children would, however, always be a mortal sin.
He made the sign of the cross and his croaking voice broke.
‘Is this really necessary, Urs. Now? It’s been three years, hasn’t it? Why do I have to think about them now?’
Savelli played the recording of Assistant Public Prosecutor Sabrina D’Avalos; unrecognizable in the blue suit, leaning over tray number thirty-one, then easily recognizable, walking across the area between the containers on the quay. The pictures had been taken from one of the cranes at the port and from a considerable distance, but the quality was excellent. The assistant public prosecutor strode along, looking down at the tarmac. The sun bounced off her aviator sunglasses and the camera had caught a glimpse of her nickel-plated pistol in its shoulder holster as she got into her car.
‘Who is the woman?’ Don Francesco asked.
‘One of Federico Renda’s young ones. She’s in the NAC.’
‘Figlio di puttana,’ Don Francesco whispered quickly, as if the Albanian had spoken the name of the evil one.
He chewed a grape without tasting it, spat the pips out into the palm of his hand and flicked them on the ground behind the bench.
Savelli drew triangles in the gravel with the tip of his makila.
‘She had a meeting with Renda two hours after she left the quay,’ he said. ‘We can only guess at the content of their conversation, of course, but I believe they talked about the woman and the boy. Incidentally, they’re still on the Interior Ministry’s witness protection programme.’
‘Is she well connected?’
‘She’s the daughter of Baron D’Avalos, no less,’ Savelli said.
Don Francesco had to stand up. He walked over to a vine and tightened a wire loop to bring the stem closer to the post.
‘How much does she know?’ he asked.
‘I’m not worried about her. She knows nothing, Don. There is nothing to know.’
‘Get someone to watch her, Urs. From a distance. You don’t mess with a public prosecutor, you hear? Least of all her. That business with her father was bad enough. A sin. Like shooting the last elephant in the world,’ the Capo said. ‘You destroyed everything in that office?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good. Very, very good.’
Don Francesco turned his faded green eyes on his captain.
‘You don’t kill a public prosecutor, Urs,’ he repeated.
Don Francesco constantly reiterated that the organization’s new cause, its transformation, grew stronger with the passage of time. It was a simple message. They didn’t need another martyr, a new Giovanni Falcone who would make the public rise up, turn over every sacred stone, test their frail alliances with emasculated and vain politicians in Rome, make young Vatican priests write thoughtless things on their blogs. Federico Renda was an isolated incident and it had purely been a question of self-defence. Besides, he was from Naples and ought to have known better.
The Albanian didn’t disagree with Don Francesco. The murder of General Agostino D’Avalos had been necessary, a means to an end. But the murder had caused a storm of
protest and resulted in unprecedented political agreement to fight the Mafia. A tacit acceptance that retribution killings were carried out. This had meant new powers and resources for the ROS and the GIS. Leading figures in the Camorra, in the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria and Corleone on Sicily disappeared without trace in the months that followed the general’s death. These killings continued until the leaders of the elite units managed to restore discipline.
‘No idiots, Urs,’ the old man said.
Savelli straightened up and looked across the low, yellow buildings to the white walls that enclosed the estate. As always the world – Naples – felt very far away. Here reigned the same timeless peace as in the mountains and the woods around his house in Orbara in the Basque countryside.
‘I’ll find a couple of men to follow her who aren’t complete idiots.’
Francesco Terrasino nodded. ‘I know it won’t be easy,’ he said.
The Albanian smiled and stood up. He walked into the green shadows and disappeared.
It was so straightforward, Don Francesco thought. A masterstroke of simplicity. Savelli would open a trap door concealed under some empty feed sacks, climb down a ladder and walk through the tunnel that stretched under the greenhouses, the outer wall and the road outside. At the end of the tunnel, two hundred metres away, he would reach a door leading to the basement of an innocuous carpentry business. The carpenter was an old friend who would sometimes carry out work on the estate and who played cards with Don Francesco. There was a garage in the basement. Savelli would get into a van parked there and drive off.
CHAPTER 7
Sabrina packed quickly. Clothes, underwear and toiletries were followed by her iPod, four identical, cheap analogue wristwatches and an extra magazine for the Walther.
When the Dead Awaken Page 5
