When the Dead Awaken

by Steffen Jacobsen

  He kept catching her off her guard. It was a kind of amicable sparring match, like the hundreds of battles she had waged with her brothers, but Nestore Raspallo hit home. Just like her brothers had done. They usually pretended to be ninjas, while Sabrina was … the job.

  She made no reply.

  ‘I’ve been reliably informed he has left Milan for an extended break in the mountains,’ Raspallo told her.

  ‘Have you now? Where has he gone?’

  ‘I don’t know, but don’t forget you’re not the only one who can join the dots, Sabrina. They’re not morons.’

  ‘You’ve been waiting for me,’ she said with sudden, disturbing insight.

  She imagined his grey eyes. Right now they were probably pressed shut with irritation.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. But there may be people out there who have been waiting for someone like you. The murder of our former boss, your father, has not been forgotten. An unsolved murder of a man like the general changes the way the Camorra look at the world, in an unacceptable way. They think they have become inviolable. Talking about people waiting for you, don’t forget to call your boss.’

  She hung up and lit a cigarette.

  The rain was falling more heavily and she raced across Corso Vercelli and took shelter under a doorway next to a Vietnamese restaurant.

  Before her departure Federico Renda had given her his private number and she had felt suitably honoured. She didn’t know if he was answering his mobile from his office or his home.

  ‘How is your investigation going, Dottoressa D’Avalos?’

  ‘Quite well, I think.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear that and I know you’re in good hands with young Raspallo.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I’m in anyone’s hands, signore.’

  Smalltalk had never been Federico Renda’s strong point.

  ‘No, but nevertheless I am sure that you are. By the way, the bullets are a match. The gun that was used to kill Fabiano Batista and Paolo Iacovelli in Nanometric was also the gun that killed Lucia Forlani, wherever she was, and … General D’Avalos. Your father.’

  Sabrina rested her forehead against the cold bricks and felt black exhaustion rise up within her.

  ‘L’Artista,’ she said. ‘It was her. She killed them all. My father—’

  ‘That’s correct. That would be my guess, too.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking … or dreaming, about your problem, dottore,’ she said.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘How Don Francesco Terrasino and L’Artista contact each other. You’ll no doubt have thought about this already, but you described Don Terrasino as a medieval peasant.’

  ‘Because he is,’ the public prosecutor said. ‘Decidedly basic technology. He uses only natural fertilizer on his estate and everything is picked or harvested by hand. There isn’t a telephone in the house or a computer, barely a fridge. The only high-tech equipment are his cameras and alarm systems.’

  ‘I’ve a bird table outside my window,’ she said. ‘Pigeons come there. The most basic technology I can come up with is homing pigeons.’ She smiled. ‘Ridiculous, I know. But they usually get there and if you want to be sure you just send several with the same message. The Cosa Nostra in Sicily use homing pigeons.’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ he admitted. ‘But the ROS has had the estate under surveillance for years. There is nothing to suggest a pigeon loft.’

  ‘Have they been inside?’

  ‘That’s impossible. The estate is hermetically sealed.’

  ‘It was just an idea,’ she said.

  ‘You mentioned something the other day that I have given thought to,’ Renda said magnanimously. ‘You can imagine all sorts of things, of course, but what if messages were passed to a man who kept pigeons? I’m going to start looking for such a man. Did you manage to speak to the eminent Venetian?’

  ‘We had lunch together.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I told him that Lucia and Salvatore Forlani had been found. He seemed shocked and sad. Appropriately so, I thought.’

  ‘What did you make of him?’

  ‘Very charming,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘He seemed genuine, I thought. Sincere.’

  ‘I see. What are you doing next?’ Renda asked.

  ‘Looking for a place to sleep. I’m tired.’

  ‘Pleasant dreams,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She had never felt more awake.

  She looked at the mobile, dropped it through a grid in the gutter and peeled the cellophane off the next one.

  CHAPTER 22

  Qualiano, Naples

  Renda wasn’t in his office, or at home, when he spoke to Sabrina D’Avalos, but in an ordinary Portakabin that served as a mobile lunchroom for the road maintenance department of Qualiano. Two sturdy maintenance workers had carried Renda’s wheelchair inside the Portakabin and closed the door behind him while his official car left. This was not an area where a customized Mercedes GL blended in naturally with the urban landscape. This was Qualiano, a fairly bleak Neapolitan suburb dominated by small businesses, market gardens, smallholdings and very few residential properties.

  The Portakabin was located on Via Nicola Fele, one hundred metres from the tall white wall that surrounded Don Francesco Terrasino’s estate. The Mafia boss’s house was hidden behind a builders’ merchant, a supplier of swimming-pool cleaning systems and a row of trees.

  Renda looked around the inside of the Portakabin.

  ‘Nice.’

  The man with light brown hair whom Sabrina D’Avalos knew as Nestore Raspallo and whom Federico Renda knew under his real name, Captain Primo Alba, looked at the walls, which were decorated with Playboy centrefolds, and grinned.

  ‘Definitely,’ he said. ‘Quite inspirational.’

  He sat on a wooden bench with a laptop on his knees. Next to him was a visibly uncomfortable and sweating city engineer called Franco. Just Franco.

  ‘So tell me the story, Franco,’ Renda asked him.

  The man unzipped his orange boiler suit and revealed a string vest and a chunky gold chain whose links bounced off his hairy chest.

  ‘There’s not a lot to be said, signore,’ the engineer replied. He unfolded a large-scale map on the coffee-stained Formica table and Federico Renda wheeled himself over.

  The man pointed at the map with the tip of his pencil.

  ‘This is our most important tool,’ he said. ‘This map shows us every fixed underground installation in the area. That is, cables, drains, fibre-optic cables, water pipes, archaeological sites such as aqueducts, burial places, deconsecrated cemeteries – in as far as we know of them – sewers and so on.’

  Renda nodded.

  ‘Where are we?’

  The tip of the pencil landed in the middle of Via Nicola Fele, where it left a small dent. The engineer ripped off a sheet of kitchen towel and mopped the sweat off his forehead and neck.

  ‘The builders’ merchant called us yesterday. They had noticed that the tarmac at the end of their access road was sinking slightly, and seemed unstable. They use heavy trucks when they receive goods and deliver building materials. The outlet opened three months ago and before that the road was used only for domestic traffic.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The tip of the pencil hovered over the entrance to the builders’ merchant.

  ‘Yesterday my staff came to inspect the damage – that tarmac has sunk. Not by much, by three centimetres at the most, I would say. The strange thing was that the unstable area was regular and reached across the road to the opposite kerb.’

  ‘How wide is the indentation?’ Renda asked.

  ‘It’s around two metres wide and eight metres long.’

  ‘And what’s under the tarmac?’

  The engineer looked at the public prosecutor, pressed a clenched fist against his abdomen and suppres
sed a burp.

  ‘Nothing. According to the map. Apart from a narrow sewage pipe that runs close to the kerb and under the pavement,’ he said. ‘It was a mystery, Signor Procuratore – until we got the first underground photos, and then I thought it was best to inform you straight away. Especially since …’

  The engineer gestured vaguely to the north. In the direction of Don Francesco Terrasino’s estate.

  ‘You did the right thing, Signor Franco,’ the public prosecutor said warmly. ‘We’re very grateful. Aren’t we, Primo?’

  ‘Definitely,’ the young man said without looking up.

  The pencil traced the rectangle in the road and indeed there were no explanatory symbols on the map.

  ‘This morning my people dug up a section of the tarmac and discovered that the gravel foundation under the tarmac was seeping away at the deepest point of the fault. It can only go one way, Signor Procuratore. And that’s down. I sent for a flexible camera. There is a tunnel under the road. An unauthorized shaft of some kind. At first we thought it was an old, unmarked sewer or the remains of a Roman aqueduct. We’ve seen that sort of thing before.’

  ‘Mining?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘We have visual contact,’ Captain Primo Alba said.

  The engineer sighed while Federico Renda lifted his head like a hunting dog on the scent.

  A van from the National Highway Agency was parked behind the Portakabin. Renda and Primo Alba had made sure that the van’s logos and name had been obscured with plastic foil. A grey plastic pipe ran from the back of the van and into the ground where Franco’s men had removed the tarmac. From inside the van technicians had manoeuvred an armoured, flexible fibre-optic camera and a light source into the underground void. The technicians were transmitting the images to the computer on Alba’s lap.

  ‘We normally use the equipment to look inside blocked sewer pipes and drains,’ Franco explained. ‘It works just like those cameras doctors use to look in your stomach … or … up your backside. I myself have …’

  A glance from Renda silenced the engineer.

  The camera panned across a steel beam, a pole, a thick, white, perforated concertina tube hanging from an iron bracket in the tunnel’s concrete roof and a thick black cable with sockets and light bulbs. Both ends of the tunnel faded into total darkness far beyond the range of the builtin light source.

  ‘It’s unlikely to be a Roman aqueduct, Signor Franco,’ the public prosecutor said, pointing to the cables and the ventilation tube on the computer screen. ‘Unless we’ve seriously underestimated the technological capabilities of our ancestors.’

  Franco nodded.

  ‘Unlikely,’ he said sadly.

  ‘Is it possible that such a tunnel, a fine, straight, beautifully constructed, well-ventilated and presumably well-lit tunnel exists in the middle of your city without anyone knowing about it?’ Renda asked as he leaned back in his wheelchair.

  ‘I wouldn’t have believed it if anyone had told me,’ the engineer said. ‘Until today.’

  ‘Let’s take a look at the floor,’ Primo Alba said, and Franco gave a quick order into the walkie-talkie.

  The camera discovered a small, cone-shaped pile of gravel on the floor, close to the wall, where the stabilizing gravel under the tarmac of Via Nicola Fele had found a crack in the tunnel’s concrete roof.

  ‘Laser,’ Alba requested.

  The laser range-finder built into the apparatus measured a distance of 103 metres to the south, straight to an end wall, located well within Don Terrasino’s property, and 105 metres in the opposite direction.

  The engineer and the public prosecutor hunched over the map again. With a compass, Franco read the map’s scale and measured out 105 metres to the north from their position.

  Renda pointed to a small cluster of buildings.

  ‘What have we got there?’ he asked.

  ‘A carpentry business,’ Franco said. ‘It’s always been there. The carpenter is old, his name is Signor Marchese. He does a bit of work for the council every now and then. He lives there with his wife.’

  ‘And he would appear to have a second source of income,’ Primo Alba interjected.

  ‘So it would seem,’ Franco admitted.

  ‘Thank you,’ Renda said.

  He turned to the engineer.

  ‘Patch up the hole in the tarmac, Signor Franco. Tell the manager of the builders’ merchant to carry on as normal. Make something up. Say that the ground has stabilized. And get your people and your vehicles out of here. Now.’

  Franco rose, relieved at the prospect of leaving the Portakabin.

  ‘Signor Franco?’

  The engineer turned around.

  ‘Yes?’

  Franco looked at the handsome, smiling young man on the bench. There was something about Alba’s chilling smile that sent shivers down Franco’s spine. Then he looked into Federico Renda’s grave, brown eyes.

  ‘I don’t wish to threaten you with death and disaster if anything at all about this leaks out,’ the public prosecutor said.‘About the tunnel, I mean. But … No, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll make you wish that you had remained forever a hopeful glint in your mother’s eyes.’

  Renda folded his hands on his lap.

  ‘You’re an intelligent man, Signor Franco. You can easily imagine what I’ll do to you if the Camorra hear about this. Make sure your men understand it too. Capisce?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The engineer turned around again and took one step. He had put his hand on the door handle when Renda’s voice stopped him in his tracks once more.

  The public prosecutor smiled.

  ‘This Marchese. The carpenter. Do you know him?’

  The engineer shrugged slightly.

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to know if he’s interested in pigeons by any chance?’

  For the first time Franco smiled, genuinely surprised.

  ‘He talks about nothing else, Signor Procuratore.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Primo Alba said.

  ‘It’s absolutely insane.’ Renda looked at the map on the table. ‘There is a grain store and a smaller silo behind the carpentry business. Get some people up there. Tell them they may have to be there for a long time. The moment Signor Marchese takes a pigeon from the loft, they must stop him.’

  ‘And the tunnel?’

  ‘A stroke of luck,’ Renda said. ‘Get someone down there tonight. Remove the spilt gravel and mend the hole in the ceiling. Rig up microphones, sensors and cameras. And look after Signorina D’Avalos for me. We owe it to her father. How is she?’

  ‘Under pressure, but still functioning – even though she’s an amateur.’

  ‘Arm’s length,’ Renda said. ‘And only you. Savelli can smell a trap ten kilometres away. He must come to her of his own free will.’

  ‘And when he finds her?’

  Renda shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘We’ll think of something. Nearer the time. Nothing else will happen in the meantime. Perhaps nothing else will ever happen.’

  ‘No, perhaps not,’ the young man said.

  Neither of them believed that for a second.

  ‘So it was her,’ Renda said in deep thought.

  ‘Who?’ Alba asked.

  ‘L’Artista. Damn it. She killed General D’Avalos, Lucia and Salvatore Forlani, Fabiano Batista and Paolo Iacovelli.’

  A thin layer of moisture covered Renda’s forehead.

  ‘So Sabrina D’Avalos was right all along about that,’ Alba said pointedly. ‘And about the pigeons.’

  He looked at the public prosecutor.

  ‘Don Terrasino, the tunnel, L’Artista. What more do you want?’

  ‘Savelli. Savelli would be good.’

  He turned to face the young man.

  ‘I know that we agreed your services for only forty-eight hours, but wou
ld you be prepared to extend that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  CHAPTER 23

  Milan

  Dr Carlo Mazzaferro was a worrier, but he couldn’t have done anything about it even if he had wanted to. It was like having freckles or an underhung jaw. Just a fact of life. To him, anxiety was a comfort blanket. Any carefree, happy times which fate granted him only caused him stress. When he became conscious of feeling untroubled, he would instantly seek out a reason to worry. Whenever people talked of happiness he felt like a blind man to whom a sunset is being described. Of course there were varying degrees of anxiety. He had learned to navigate it. His life was a never-ending series of hurdles that had to be cleared. No hurdle could be too high or too low, and it was his task to jump one after the other. Always looking for what would happen next.

  Carlo Mazzaferro knew he was destined to travel through life with chronically wet feet, but at least he wasn’t in water up to his neck. If his clinical career and research were flourishing, he fretted about the absence of love in his life, even though he had been married for nineteen years and had two sons whom he definitely loved at that particular distance from which he viewed the people in his life. If he took a mistress, as he currently had, he agonized that he might be ill. Right now he enjoyed the benefit of the young woman sitting on the train seat next to him, good health, and he had recently been appointed professor at the Ospedale Niguarda. It was difficult, very difficult indeed, to maintain his pessimism, and it made him twitchy and anxious. He was convinced that the gods would soon notice their neglect, and return to punish such hubris. With a vengeance.

  Laura was lovely. She was twenty-five years old and a former PhD student of his. She was beautiful and intelligent. She came from a respectable family of lawyers, but had an unconventional, refreshingly artistic mindset, as well as several tattoos that only a few people had ever seen.

  She rested her head on his shoulder and Professor Carlo Mazzaferro looked at her dark, fragrant hair and at the raindrops lashing the window of the train. The suburbs of Milan seemed to him gloomy, rainswept and bleak. He caught sight of his own smiling reflection and tried to add it to his memories.

  They were on their way to his holiday house at Lake Como. They would have the place to themselves for a couple of days before he would have to put Laura on the train back to Milan – before his wife and sons arrived.