The Savage Shore

by David Hewson

  He walked in front of the altar until he found a place where the electric light revealed the passage.

  ‘Genesis,’ Gabriele announced, retiring towards the back of the cavern where his brother waited, Rocco too. ‘Whence we all came.’

  Falcone cleared his throat, cast his eyes over the strange congregation in front of him once more then began.

  ‘Now the serpent was more cunning than any of the wild animals the Lord God had created …’

  The SWAT team was deep in the fir wood on the slope beneath the chapel, two hundred metres, no more, from the fleet of identical black people carriers parked in a herringbone line against the rocks in the space along the way. In his casual holidaymaker’s clothes Peroni felt out of place next to men like these. Combat fatigues, belts full of military gear he couldn’t name let alone understand, an impenetrable lingo all of their own. And weapons. Automatic rifles, pistols on their belts, knives in sheaths around their ankles. Casale, the leader, seemed polite enough but little interested in the opinions of an ageing street cop from Rome. These men lived in a different, more rarefied world.

  Then Teresa called.

  ‘We counted them from the helicopter,’ she said. ‘As they left the vans and walked up the hill. Forty-two all told.’

  ‘Forty-two?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did they look armed?’

  A pause and then she said, ‘I don’t imagine they’d carry weapons into a kind of church, would they?’

  ‘So you couldn’t see?’

  ‘They didn’t look armed, Gianni. To be honest from what I saw … they kind of looked like a bunch of middle-aged men on a day out. It’s not … not what I expected.’

  ‘You heard from Leo?’

  ‘Not a word. We daren’t call them. We spotted a small group of people going up the hill from the village. I guess it was them. Hard to see. They were under cover most of the way. If they take that path they could come and go and we’d never notice.’

  Casale was glaring at him. With some reason. This was his party.

  ‘You need to speak to the boss,’ Peroni said. ‘Tell him what you told me. He’s in charge, not me.’

  The SWAT man took the phone and vanished into the bushes to talk. Peroni looked at the team, looked at himself. He had on a light blue cotton jacket, creased, that had seen better days, a thin checked shirt with pockets, dark blue denims, cheap, no-brand trainers. Could pass for a tourist or a lost walker if he wanted.

  A couple of minutes later Casale came back, handed him his phone, muttered something about having to wait and see which he clearly didn’t like. Then he went back to his team and they did the things men like that enjoyed before action: checked their weapons and didn’t talk much at all.

  Teresa was still on the line.

  ‘Sixteen against forty-two,’ he said. ‘Not the best of odds.’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me. Lombardi was talking about bringing in some of the locals to even up the number.’

  That was alarming. ‘I thought we’d agreed that wasn’t a good idea. No guarantee you’d be evening up anything.’

  ‘Not going to happen. Don’t worry. I’ll see to that. Please take care of yourself. I want to go home. I want you with me. I’m used to sleeping on one side of the bed after all these years.’

  ‘Me too. Also we’ve got that shower to put in. The new bathroom.’

  It was funny how they always reverted to domestic trivia when things got personal.

  ‘Gianni—’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to offer to help with the plumbing. Keep a close eye on the camera from that helicopter. Watch the roads as well. I don’t think …’ He wasn’t a complete novice when it came to stakeouts. He’d done robbery work for a time and knew what they were like. Maybe this team had more firepower and surveillance toys than them but the feel of this kind of operation never changed. The tense anticipation. The guesswork. The way you sniffed the wind and wondered what it might tell you. ‘I don’t think this is quite what it seems. Nothing is in this damned place.’

  Something cast a shadow over them in the trees. He looked up and saw a huge bird, a buzzard maybe, wheeling slowly against the searing sun.

  ‘What’s your instinct telling you, genius?’ she asked.

  ‘Mostly that I’m not a genius. Just a fool chasing wisps of smoke. In the dark mostly. We are still sticking to the plan, right? You’ve put that idiot back in his box?’

  ‘Yeah. What else can we do? You take those men when they come out. Nic and Leo wherever they are can grab the Bergamotti and get them to the airport. As soon as we see something moving I’ll call.’

  ‘Casale. Call Casale. It’s his show. Not mine.’

  That seemed to puzzle her but at least she didn’t question it. Watching that raptor wheel through the air had given him an idea.

  They said goodbye in the perfunctory way people who’d lived with one another for years tended to. Then he wandered over to Casale and asked if he’d got a spare pair of binoculars.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘A hobby of mine.’

  Peroni took off his cheap jacket and threw it on the ground. Then pulled his shirt out of his jeans, let it hang, rubbed his trainers on the earth until they were muddy. He was good at looking like a lost idiot when he wanted.

  One of the team found a pair of small zoom binoculars and handed them over.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Birdwatching. I always like birdwatching. There are kinds here I’ve never seen before. You guys stay where you are. You’re not exactly … dressed for it.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Casale asked. ‘I need to know.’

  ‘I’m going to take a look around.’ He held up his phone. ‘If I find anything, I’ll call.’

  He slung the binoculars round his neck and ruffled up what was left of his sandy-grey hair. A man out for a walk. A townie who didn’t know the way.

  Casale didn’t argue. Or get the chance.

  An hour she’d spent in the back of the white van. It was dark by the time they got to the place they’d chosen. When the Bergamotti wanted a manutengolo to host a guest they usually picked a tame shepherd in the hills. Or, if a woman was involved, Aunt Alessia and her santina’s shack hidden away in the woods. Somewhere so remote there was no chance to run, no opportunity to be anything but what they were told: a temporary visitor, welcome provided one obeyed the rules.

  The Sicilians didn’t seem so hospitable.

  The place they’d turned up at was nothing more than a corrugated iron farm store set amidst some fields. As they’d bundled her out she could see lights glittering on the coast a couple of kilometres away. So many it couldn’t be a town. Then she’d caught the chemical whiff of petrol on the air and she knew. Beyond Catania, beyond Augusta, before the tourist sights of Siracusa, Avola and Noto, there was a hideous petrochemical complex built on the site of some precious ancient Greek settlements. Small farms were dotted through the dry low countryside alongside roads that took huge tankers down to the coast.

  It had to be there.

  After an hour or two a surly, scruffy man with a beard and a snappy dog had thrown a torch, some bread and cheese and a plastic bottle of water on the rough ground, then slid the door shut and chained it again.

  The torch died after an hour. She was surrounded by piled-up crates of lemons. The citrus smell and the stink of petrol stayed with her through the night, along with the dog’s barks and the rattle of heavy traffic on a road not far away.

  Could have been worse, she thought. They might have left her with Santo Vottari.

  When morning came she heard nothing at all. Not even the dog. She’d banged on the metal doors for ages. Tried to find a way out but they must have been padlocked hard from the outside and the storeroom didn’t have so much as a window. If it weren’t for a few rays of morning sun peeping through the joins between the walls there wouldn’t be light at all.

  So she finished the water and what was left
of the food. Looked through a few of the crates of lemons to see what was there. They smelled sourer than the Calabrian sort and none of them had a hint of the perfume that came from the bergamot orchards back home.

  For a while she sat in the corner and waited. Thinking of what had happened, what she’d say, how’d she’d plead for her life.

  Because it had to come to that. The Sicilians had been invited to the Chapel of the Holy Clasp by her father. Ever cautious, and with Santo Vottari’s help, they’d decided to take a guest as surety for their visit. It wouldn’t be long before they knew they’d been betrayed.

  A war was coming. They all knew that. The family was supposed to be out of Calabria before that started. But not her.

  They’d taken her watch but it must have been about noon. She told herself to stop thinking about her father, the odd, enticing and melancholic man from Rome and what might be happening back on Aspromonte. There were more pressing concerns.

  With that in mind she went back to the lemon crates, found a weak point in the wood at the edge of one, worked at it with her fingers, trying to ignore the splinters that kept stabbing at her skin as she prised a long shard of timber from the side. It was about the length of a dagger, the point as sharp though that would survive one strike only. Still she hid it beneath her shirt where the rough timber chafed and rubbed against her skin.

  Not long after she heard the chain rattle on the door. It slid open and the blinding Ionian light flooded into the room, silhouetting a figure against a perfect, cloudless sky.

  ‘And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.’

  Falcone finished his reading. The priest coughed in a way that told him he hadn’t done it well.

  ‘Apologies,’ he said and handed back the bible then worked his way through the half-dark, to the edge of the altar where an arm came out and stopped him.

  Behind them the priest began reciting some kind of prayer. It had to be in the local Greek dialect. The words were impenetrable, presumably to the Sicilians too since many of the faces in the audience looked puzzled, and a few a little bored.

  Then, in Italian, the man in the cope said, ‘Now we invite our honoured guest to celebrate the refrigerium, the refreshment of the dead.’ He held out his white caped arms and gestured at the three bronze jugs in front of the ancient sarcophagus. ‘With milk. With wine. With honey. With respect and love. Sir?’

  ‘Mancuso,’ Falcone found himself whispering, and hoped no one had heard. It was years since the police had had sight of the Sicilian. The man had proved so elusive they’d no idea what he looked like any more.

  There was a murmur among the seated figures then one of them in the second row stood up, bowed and walked to the front. As he bent down over the jugs gleaming in the soft candlelight his face caught in the bright beam of the electric lamp above the altar.

  About sixty. That sounded right. Tall, burly, bald as Falcone himself but with a full black beard flecked with grey.

  ‘Recite these words, sir,’ the priest ordered, passing him a sheet of paper. ‘Even if they mean nothing to you … they mean much to us.’

  The bearded figure shrugged as if to say, ‘If you want.’ His voice sounded deep and calm and cultured.

  The two men looked at each other. This had been agreed. Costa had his phone out low in his hands, the flash off, the settings of the camera turned up all the way to take pictures in the dark. Five seconds of video and a few stills later he stopped before anyone saw. Then he edged his way along the wall, past the men on the chairs, apologising to the few who were in the way, until he was out near the entrance and there was a signal. Just enough to send the pictures out to Teresa and Peroni wherever they were.

  Ten seconds was all it took. He stood in the shade looking at the path leading back to Manodiavolo, listening to the priest’s sonorous voice behind him, thinking again of that day she’d brought him there. Then there was movement. The scrape of wooden chairs on stone as men got to their feet. The strange, brief service was over. The visitors would soon walk down the hill. They had, he hoped, an ID for Mancuso. Things seemed to be going so smoothly.

  A hand took his arm. It was Falcone. He looked worried.

  ‘What is it?’

  The people inside would soon be wanting out of there. He could hear them talking freely now. A few laughing as if it was all a joke.

  ‘Didn’t you notice?’ Falcone said. ‘Bergamotti. The brother. The son.’ He glanced back at the line of figures coming up towards them. ‘They’re gone.’

  Teresa Lupo wasn’t taking notice of Lombardi any more. Things were happening and they needed her attention. The helicopter was making slow circles over Aspromonte trying to monitor as best they could. She had the photo and video but no time to do a thing with them.

  ‘Where are you, boys? For God’s sake call home,’ she murmured.

  One minute later Falcone phoned. They were outside the chapel, watching the line of men, dark clothes mostly, wander down the hill. A figure in priestly white was at their head. He told her the Bergamotti had vanished.

  ‘Dammit. I saw people leaving,’ she cut in. ‘Couldn’t make out who they were. But they were going back down to the village. I know that. Only two ways out. That was the one they took.’

  A pause and she told the nearest surveillance officer to get the camera turned on Manodiavolo.

  ‘Keep holding,’ she told Falcone. ‘We’re trying to work out what’s going on.’

  She kept her eyes on the screen as the video shifted to the new destination. The desolate square in the abandoned village, the half-toppled campanile, the ruined church and shops. Only one building stood out as intact, the palace with a red and blue-tiled roof.

  ‘Get in closer,’ she ordered. The camera zoomed in. People there, by the fountain in the centre. A scarlet car. A khaki three-wheeled farmer’s buggy. ‘Closer,’ she said, heart pumping. ‘As much as you can get.’

  Three men were standing by the table in the centre. In the back of the open buggy, surrounded by straw, was a figure she recognized. As she watched he shook himself down, climbed out of the back, and stood there looking lost as the buggy puttered off down the lane.

  ‘They’re in the piazza,’ she said. ‘Silvio’s with them. He’s safe. Go get. Go!’

  He was off the line already.

  Lombardi had followed the whole thing and never said a word.

  ‘That’s our man,’ she told him. ‘The one they took. Maybe this will work out. Get the cameras back on the hill.’ She watched as the view shifted from the helicopter. Saw something she couldn’t believe and yelled, ‘Stop!’

  ‘What the hell’s he doing?’ Lombardi asked.

  The line of men was coming down the slope. At the bottom was Peroni, no jacket, a touch dishevelled. Waving what looked like a pair of binoculars.

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Get Casale in there. Get his men …’

  She told them to zoom in on Peroni. She knew the man so well. He was smart. Unpredictable too.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’

  The priest was leading the way, the long sleeves of his white cope flapping against the scrubby bushes as the group made their way down the snaking mountain track. Peroni stood out in the open by their people carriers at the bottom peering at them through his binoculars. The more he saw, the less he felt concerned.

  His phone rang. Teresa. ‘Busy,’ he said. ‘Keep Casale out of here until I say.’

  ‘Gianni! I can see you. If I can … what the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘It’s fine. Keep cool. I’ve got Casale’s number. I’ll deal with him direct.’

  ‘No! I’m telling you—’

  He put the phone back in his pocket and went back to looking at these men thr
ough his binoculars. The birds up here were interesting, but not quite so much as this bunch, ambling carefully down the mountainside, some of them leaning on others’ arms for support. A few, a good few he saw, dabbing at their cheeks with very white, crisp handkerchiefs. People dressed for religion. Not that he was a churchgoer himself. All the same …

  He’d taken a good look at the vans they came in beforehand. No sign of weapons. But plenty to indicate they were from Sicily. Spent ferry tickets on the dashboard. In the back some bottles of white Grillo and red Nero d’Avola. And several religious pamphlets with photos of a curious, tent-like church in striking if ugly concrete. The name was there on the cover: the Santuario Madonna delle Lacrime, Siracusa. A funny place he seemed to recall seeing on the TV once.

  Then there was the tall, heavy, bearded man he’d seen in the photos and video from inside the cavern. The images were shaky and indistinct. But there was no mistaking him as he made his way down the hill right behind the priest. He was, surely, their leader. That was obvious in the way they deferred to him, coming to talk, listening, then retiring to the back to let someone else take their place.

  It was, he thought, entirely possible that each of these men was carrying some kind of weapon. Sicilians … you never knew. But those robbery stakeouts had told him something over the years, along with decades of police experience. Context, atmosphere and the not insignificant issue of surprise mattered too. On occasion more than any hardware you were carrying and a helicopter in the sky.

  His phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID. Casale this time.

  ‘Boss?’ he said quite casually.

  ‘I’m not your boss,’ the SWAT man snapped. ‘If I was I’d know what you were doing.’

  ‘I’m going to be a little reception party,’ Peroni told him. ‘Just say hello. Explain a few things. Let’s try and deal with this … politely.’ The priest had just turned up at the foot of the path. Peroni waved at him and smiled. ‘Unless you hear otherwise you and your men wander out in a couple of minutes. Let’s see how it goes.’