‘I know men like Stasio, and, fine, you can arrest him, bring him in for interrogation, train the guns on him, but he won’t talk. These guys never do — they’ve taken the poison oath. The culture of silence infuses them, makes them who they are. If one of their relatives is murdered and the police come to investigate, they’ll slam the door in their faces. That’s what’s going on here — omertà.’
‘Yes, but we are in Rome.’
‘But Stasio doesn’t think he’s fighting a Rome war. For him, this is a Calabrian matter: the taking of Proietti’s family was the settling of a score or a warning of some kind. Stasio’s Calabrian connection makes me think he’s got Micky into something. Perhaps it was a business opportunity that Micky fucked up. Did Micky gamble away ’ndrangheta funds? That would be my guess. Stasio had got his old friends to pump some money Micky’s way, but Micky lost control of it. I heard he liked to bolster his production budgets with cash from elsewhere. I reckon Micky was dipping his finger in the pie too many times, and it got way out of hand. Now he and Stasio are in deep shit.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Garramone. ‘So Stasio’s trying to sort it on his own terms — but obviously we can’t let him do that. There’s a child’s life at stake.’
‘We have to allow it to play out, but we can’t let it go too far.’
‘It will be a tricky one to call.’
Scamarcio smiled tiredly. ‘Isn’t it always?’
On his way home, Scamarcio’s thoughts turned to Fiammetta di Bondi. What had she seen in Manfredi? Why had she stuck it out? He found Manfredi’s wife’s confusion on this point interesting. Her doubts were significant, and he shouldn’t lose sight of them. He reminded himself not to leave it too long before revisiting di Bondi.
As he turned his key in the lock, he asked himself, yet again, if he was really going to go ahead with lifting those tapes for Piocosta. If he was going to survive in the force, the answer had to be no — he would never get away with it. What was he going to do? Rip out all the CCTV in the corridors, wear a disguise; hold up the night guard at gunpoint? And even if, by some miracle, he got his hands on the footage, it would only be a matter of time before suspicion fell upon him — his card was still too marked. He had no choice: he had to get down to Calabria; he had to get a handle on Piocosta; he had to find some leverage. He dialled Garramone’s number, his hand trembling.
‘I’m sorry to bother you again so late, Sir,’ he said.
‘No worries. What’s up?’
‘I need to go to Calabria.’ He knew he was rushing the words, but he pushed on anyway. ‘I’ve been thinking it through, and it’s the only real way to learn more about Stasio, who he’s connected to, what he and Proietti might be involved in. I’m not going to find the answers up here in Rome.’
The chief said nothing, and Scamarcio’s heart began to race. Had he pushed it too far this time?
‘How exactly are you proposing to come by that kind of information?’ asked Garramone eventually. But he sounded more exhausted than suspicious.
‘Legwork — I’ve still got contacts.’
The chief fell silent again for a moment. ‘After the mess of last year, I thought we all decided that the best thing for you was to stay well clear.’
‘What would you have me do?’ he asked, probably sounding too impatient. ‘We need to resolve this fast. We can hang on for Stasio to say more, but you know as well as I do that we may well have had the best of it.’
‘But it’s the same old risk, isn’t it — that you overstretch yourself with the wrong people? I don’t want you beholden. And if for any reason word of your little trip gets back to Chief Mancino, we’re fucked — same goes for Stasio. Wouldn’t it be safer to contact the Anti-Mafia guys down in Reggio or Catanzaro? To go the usual route?’
‘The usual route will lead to a dead end. Those guys aren’t on the inside. I’ll find the people with the real information. And it’ll mean I can be back in Rome within 48 hours.’
Garramone said nothing for a long time. Scamarcio heard the second hand on his watch completing its circuit, heard his heartbeart in his ears. Eventually, Garramone sighed and said: ‘OK, I hear you. But be discreet — we can’t afford any more trouble. You fuck this up, and Mancino will fire you.’
‘Goes without saying,’ Scamarcio heard himself murmur.
‘I didn’t want to tell you, but he’s still watching.’
‘I won’t put a foot wrong, trust me.’
22
SCAMARCIO HAD DECIDED NOT TO fly into Catanzaro. He didn’t want to be spotted by any of Piocosta’s people. His face was known down there ever since the national papers had run pieces on how he was Italy’s big bright hope. Far from being a beacon of honesty and progress, the way Scamarcio’s cousins and uncles saw it, he was the worst traitor to have ever been born into their locale. That one of their number might actually join the police, rise through the ranks, and make it to detective in the Flying Squad was so far beyond their field of reference that Scamarcio might as well have revealed himself as a Martian, put on earth to monitor the behaviour of humankind. How these cousins and uncles might react to him now, twenty years after he’d left, was difficult to predict. In certain villages, he perhaps risked being shot at first sight. That was why he’d made a decision to avoid direct family, and approach only a few of his father’s old associates, all of whom were probably very old and very infirm by now. He needed to leave the rank and file right out of it.
The ageing Alitalia MD80 descended rapidly above the Strait of Messina. Sicily’s Mount Etna rose up on the right as the plane banked left towards the Aspromonte Mountains and then sharply left again towards the southern suburbs of Reggio Calabria. Scamarcio’s unease grew. Sure, he could do his best to avoid the Scamarcio clan; but, by coming back here after so long, he was still walking straight into the lion’s den.
He picked up his hire car from the airport and swung right at the exit and then right again onto the Via Ravagnese that fed onto the southernmost point of the country’s motorway network. He fiddled with the radio, trying to find a station that wasn’t playing 1980s trash. He finally gave up when he spotted the exit leading to Croce Valanidi. A darkness settled on him, wrapping him in a tight cloak, but he knew he had to turn off, that he had to make this pilgrimage; Valanidi had determined so much of what happened in his life.
He spun the car up the shabby three-mile stretch from the motorway, reliving the war that once raged here. This godforsaken track had been the scene of one of Calabria’s most bloody ’Ndrangheta conflicts in which countless young men, little older than Scamarcio at the time, had lost their lives. It was a war that had exercised both his father and Piocosta for years, a war that had seen them huddled with their footsoldiers into the early hours while they studied maps and checked their bombs, bazookas, and Kalashnikovs for the hundredth time. Scamarcio had only been a teenager, but when his father had started driving around in an armour-plated car, even he knew that it was the beginning of the end.
Scamarcio pulled up alongside the Valanidi River. It was as if some other force was guiding him, willing him to be here. He turned off the engine, lowered the window, and just sat. There was a strange air to this place — too much suffering, too many trapped souls. He looked out at the waste-strewn channel running along the river valley. Beyond the worn tyres, broken refrigerators, stained mattresses, and mounds of brick and plaster he could just make out orderly groves of dark-green bergamot trees, the sun forming luminous pools beneath their branches. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. He needed to get beyond the squalid; he needed to reach those trees whose powerful fragrance masked even the vilest smells. He opened his eyes and fired up the engine. He’d seen enough; he’d leave Valanidi to its ghosts.
As Scamarcio passed the outskirts of Reggio Calabria, he was struck anew by the ugliness of the place. Reggio had been destroyed by earthquakes twice, and then pounded
by World War II bombers, so that almost nothing remained of the city Lear had once described as one of the most beautiful places on earth. The poet had found gardens of orange, lemons, and bergamot, but now all Scamarcio could see was concrete, barbed wire, and garbage dumps. There was no trace of green, no hint of nature here.
He pushed on north, glad to leave the city behind. The motorway was climbing steeply now, its carriageways soaring on towering viaducts suspended above deep ravines. He recognised the small town of Scilla where, according to Homer’s Odyssey, a six-headed monster had snatched oarsmen from Odysseus’s boat. Close by on the Sicillian side of the strait, a whirlpool called Charybdis had threatened to suck Odysseus and his band into oblivion.
Scamarcio reflected on his years growing up in this land. Murder had been a daily event. Probably everyone living here had seen at least one dead body in the street during the wars of the 1980s. By the time he turned sixteen, Scamarcio had seen half a dozen, although his father always preferred to keep the killing as far away from the family villa as possible. Scamarcio had always thought it ironic that Lucio Scamarcio had been killed outside his pristine home, the marble steps that had cost a fortune soiled by his own blood.
After a few minutes, Scamarcio took the turn off for San Alberto. Soon he was on a narrow road winding its way through the dense groves of the Sinopolesi — their thick, wizened branches creating dark, sinister hiding places, ideal for discarding a corpse or staging an ambush. Just the sight of these shadowy groves after so many years made Scamarcio sweat.
He had no idea whether Annunzio Morabito, his father’s former chief financial officer, was still alive. But if he was, Scamarcio felt sure that San Alberto was where he’d find him. The old guard always came home to die, and Scamarcio reckoned that Annunzio could not be far off — he would be nearing ninety now.
Scamarcio swung the hirecar onto a paved street leading up to a small park where the town looked out over the valley. He took a left and drove across the main square, the white expanse of the church giving back the light of the sun. He took in the view for a moment, then cut across the piazza and turned into an alleyway running down the hill. He didn’t want to leave his car in the piazza. Some might call him paranoid, but he knew a sniper would have a clearer aim from there. Would any of them recognise him after twenty years, he wondered. No doubt, like Piocosta, they’d been following his progress in the capital.
He locked the car and walked back up the alley, and then along the edge of the square, heading for the tobacconist to the left of the church. He passed Mario’s bar, and wondered if the old goat was still alive. He lowered his head and hurried on. He could have gone in and asked for directions, but that would have been tantamount to standing on a podium and announcing his arrival with a loudhailer. He pushed through the plastic fly strips hanging from the doorway of the tobacconists, and immediately recognised the familiar smells of dust, caramel, and furniture polish, unchanged since he’d come in as a boy to buy football cards. The sudden assault on his senses made him feel as if he’d slipped back in time to rejoin his twelve-year-old self, as if his adult life had been little more than a hallucination.
There was a young lad sitting behind the counter, reading a magazine. He looked to be around sixteen. Chances were good that he’d have no idea who Scamarcio was.
He asked for a pack of Marlboro and, as he was paying, said: ‘I’m looking for Annunzio Morabito. Do you know where he lives?’
The boy glanced up from his football magazine, more interested now. Scamarcio felt his heart quicken.
‘Annunzio, married to the Swedish model?’
Scamarcio had been about to say ‘No, not that Annunzio,’ but something stopped him. Morabito had always been a ladies’ man. Not only had he had the looks and physique of a matinee idol, he’d also had the silver tongue to go with it. Scamarcio remembered his father once remarking that he’d never known a woman to say no to Morabito. Word was that he’d enjoyed over a thousand conquests. Had the old bastard still got it, Scamarcio asked himself. At ninety, had he hooked a Swedish model? Something told Scamarcio that when he found Morabito he’d probably be in much better shape than he had anticipated.
He tore open the plastic on the Marlboro packet and said: ‘Yes, that might be him.’
‘He lives at the end of the road behind the church, where it becomes a track. His house is at the very end.’
Scamarcio thanked him, and stepped back into the glare of the sun. It was a different sun here: harsher, relentless, unforgiving. It was at least 4 degrees warmer than Rome, and he could taste the citrus of the lemon trees on the breeze. They gave off a sharp, heady aroma that unleashed yet another tide of memories and emotions — all of them ambiguous, all of them contradictory and confusing.
Scamarcio passed the white church, and thought of the old priest Carlotto who’d been around when he was a boy. Carlotto had always reminded him of a tortoise, his tiny bespectacled bulb of a head threatening to disappear inside his clerical collar at any moment. The old priest had been living proof that omertà didn’t stop at the gates to the House of God. He’d been the embodiment of ‘See no evil, hear no evil’, but that was how most southern priests survived back then. The situation had improved slightly over the years, but not enough, in Scamarcio’s opinion. The Church was still scared into silence far too often; far too many of its shepherds still looked the other way.
He emerged from the cool shadows of the alleyway and made his way towards the track. He had the feeling this might have been the same place Morabito had been living all those years back. He remembered hearing that he’d built himself a magnificent villa somewhere, and indeed when Scamarcio rounded the bend he was confronted with a huge pink-stucco confection, so totally out of keeping with the crumbling concrete decay in evidence all around that if it was not the house of the capo, it had to be that of his right-hand man.
After Scamarcio’s father had been gunned down, Morabito had stayed on as chief financial officer to the new boss Don Pecoraro. They said Morabito had worked hard to shore up his position, to make sure that he wasn’t pushed aside like Piocosta. Morabito had always been a pragmatist, whereas the hothead Piocosta had often been led astray by his ego.
Scamarcio approached the house, his heart hammering now. Through the bars of the iron fence, he took in an immaculate lawn, a sparkling, tiled fountain, and tumbling bougainvillea, already dense and plentiful. Another smaller fountain stood beneath the shade of some orange trees, its gentle murmur creating a sense of peace and wellbeing. Scamarcio froze as he noticed a sudden movement beneath the branches: a small figure was sitting hunched in a wheelchair, a red blanket draped across its knees. Scamarcio felt a spike of heat shoot up his spine, and fought a sudden urge to turn and run. But he knew he couldn’t. He’d come too far this time: this was his last chance, his one card left to play.
He pressed the buzzer on the gate, his heart pounding in his ears, his stomach liquid.
The figure in the wheelchair stirred again, then after a few seconds the wooden front door of the villa swung wide open. A tall, blonde woman stood blinking out into the sunshine, shielding her eyes.
Scamarcio held up a shaky hand, and she started down the steps towards him. As she approached, he saw that the woman was handsome, with a wide, kindly face. She was tall and lithe, and her long, sinewy legs emerged from tight white shorts. She was nearly at the gate now, and despite the athletic body, he realised that she must be in her fifties. Scamarcio tried to remember whether Morabito had been married before. Several times, he seemed to recall. There’d been some joke about how certain jobs were being done just to replenish his alimony fund.
Scamarcio took a breath and tried to think of what to say, how best to frame it. But before he could get the words out, the figure in the wheelchair was spinning towards him at a startling pace, dark brows set in a thick line of determination. Morabito’s small grey eyes were blinking rapidly, and h
is mouth was forming a large O. As he drew closer to the gate, he began crossing himself and whispering. Scamarcio suddenly wondered if the old man had dementia. He hadn’t considered this.
‘As God is my witness, I never thought I’d see this day,’ said Morabito, still making the cross. ‘Why have you come back to haunt me after all these years?’ He was smacking his lips together, moving his fluffy white head from side to side. ‘I was always loyal, I never did wrong by you. Never.’
Morabito’s wife reached gently for his hand in an attempt to stop the frenzied signing. ‘Annunzio, what’s going on?’ she asked in the strangest Calabrian accent Scamarcio had ever heard.
‘It’s my old capo, back to seek vengeance.’
The woman placed her other hand on his arm. ‘Darling, I don’t think this man is a ghost. He seems very real to me.’ She reached out and touched Scamarcio’s shoulder through the gate. ‘See — he’s quite solid.’ She looked into Scamarcio’s eyes, and her gaze was colder than he would have expected. ‘How can we help you?’ she asked.
‘Your husband is half-right. I’m Leone Scamarcio, son of his former capo.’
Morabito’s mouth fell wide open now, and Scamarcio watched a thin trickle of saliva dribble down his chin. Morabito just kept staring at him, his rheumy eyes prised open like mussels from their shell. Seconds passed, but Scamarcio didn’t see him blink.
‘My God,’ the old man rasped eventually. ‘This, I never thought I’d see.’
‘Can I come in? I really need a word,’ said Scamarcio, wiping his palms on his jeans. His mouth was dry.
Morabito laid a trembling hand on his heart. ‘Boy, I may be old, but I’m not stupid. You’re with the police.’
‘I’m not here on police business. This is a personal matter.’
Motabito’s tiny eyes narrowed even further, and his mouth pushed up into a frown. But then he stroked his nose a few times, and Scamarcio sensed he was wavering. Curiosity was getting the better of him.
The Hit Page 15
