‘What? What’s the matter?’ He threw up his hands. ‘I thought the point of all this is that I’m honest.’
‘Honest with yourself, Leo.’
He did roll his eyes this time. ‘What’s going into today’s report then? Am I finally moving over to the dark side, proving all the naysayers right?’ He pushed the air out of his cheeks. ‘I can’t win, can I?’
‘Yes, you can.’
He ignored her. ‘I’m doing good, really good. Everything’s on track.’ He stopped, and examined his shoes. They were a mess — scuffed and dirty, and a lace was hanging loose. He felt like an actor in a play, delivering lines that weren’t his own. Lately, he’d been wondering whether he was living a life that wasn’t his, wasn’t what destiny had carved out for him: something in his DNA was out of kilter, made him feel like an imposter.
He looked up again, and saw that she was smiling at him now. ‘I think you need to change breakfast bars,’ she said.
He had planned to leave it ten minutes longer, get some of the useful talk out the way, but he could feel the heat rushing through him, up from his loins, along his gut, into his chest wall. He couldn’t get a hold of it now — it was too late. He rose carefully from his chair, and she followed him with her gaze, eyes questioning. He came to a stop behind her chair, paused a moment, and then bent low to kiss her neck, the line of her hair, her shoulder blades, and then he slowly pushed his hand beneath her blouse. She moaned, eased her head back against his stomach, reached behind her, and dug her nails into his forearms. Their session would end as it always did — just somewhat earlier than normal.
12
He picks up the framed photo of Elisabetta, studies it, and inclines his head to one side.
‘Your wife is very pretty.’
‘Who said she’s my wife?’
He frowns at him, disappointed, like he’s hurt his feelings. ‘Pino, my Pino. Why so defensive?’
He looks away, unable to keep eye contact anymore.
‘Been married long?’ A beat, then: ‘I hear you have two daughters now.’
He can no longer bear to remain seated. He gets out from behind the desk, and stands behind the chair, using it as some kind of shield.
‘What do you want?’
He grimaces at the coarseness of the question, and shakes his head a little. Then, after a while, he says, ‘Just what you can give us, Pino — no more than that.’
THE FLAT WAS COLD and silent when Scamarcio walked in. He didn’t like being there in the middle of the day: the light was too raw, showed up all the dust, made the place feel emptier. Once inside, he no longer knew where he wanted to be, where was right. He went into the bedroom and threw a few things into a bag, deciding that he might as well push north, grab a hotel, go visit Garramone’s shamed officer, and be back in Rome by the evening. He knew now that he wanted rid of this case — wanted out as soon as possible. He told himself he’d get it done and dusted in a week, all sealed up for the chief and his famous friend, and then he’d take a rest and move onto something calmer. This whole thing was testing him, making him antsy and on edge. He didn’t know where the lines were anymore, and he wanted out before they blurred any further.
After the session with his therapist, he slept most of the journey north, and was only awoken when the train screeched painfully as it slowed to enter the outer suburbs of Italy’s second city. Milan: a spasming, wheezing monument to the true cost of the post-war economic miracle — row after row of soulless concrete blocks, their ugliness so profound that he wondered how bad it must have been for the millions of immigrants to abandon their beloved south for this. He knew the answer, of course — it was either the industrial cities of the north, or starvation. But when he looked around him, and registered the complete absence of any point of beauty, any connection with the past, he wondered whether he would have preferred to starve, would have preferred to eke out what little he could from the land, rather than have his soul crushed so completely and his spirit sucked away. He had never been able to comprehend how people could make a life here, could settle for this monochrome existence. He had travelled a bit, seen the world, and to his mind there were only two places worse than the suburbs of Milan: one was Bratislava, and the other was Glasgow’s East End.
Giacomo Limoni’s parents had an apartment in a salmon-pink block on Via Binda as it entered Barona — perhaps Milan’s ugliest suburb, although the competition was fierce. It was done up in the usual suffocating style, untouched since the 1950s. Heavy wooden bookshelves crammed the walls, and garish, gilded pictures of the Baby Jesus filled the spaces in between. The stench of cooked cabbage hung in the air; ribollita for lunch. He didn’t want to stay and eat, hoped they wouldn’t ask.
Limoni was despondent, crushed into a beaten-leather armchair, humbled in tracksuit trousers and a faded ITALIA sweatshirt. The shame and disappointment was tangible — so much hope, so much time and money invested in our boy, and look where it had ended? Scamarcio didn’t want to talk here; didn’t want the eyes of the squat mother and sickly father upon them. When he suggested they go for a coffee, Limoni shrugged, seemed resigned, and followed like a sheep. The mother said something about lunch, but neither of them responded.
‘So, how’s it going? Good to be back with the folks?’
Limoni stirred the bottom of his espresso, added another bag of sugar, and slouched in his chair. ‘All this is so much shit. I shouldn’t be here.’
He was 25, but could have passed for 18. He had a good face, the usual Mediterranean look: strong features and a respectable jaw. Scamarcio figured that he probably didn’t have too much trouble finding girls.
‘Why don’t you tell me what happened?’
He could see Limoni surveying the street beyond the window: the cars backed up at the lights; the Chinese hurrying about their deliveries, tiny children in tow; a couple of Romanians leaning against a wall, undressing passing girls with their eyes. Limoni shook his head, obviously reliving a bad memory.
‘It was Rossi. It was his idea from the start. I was never keen, tried to argue him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen, didn’t want to know …’ He tailed off, turned to face Scamarcio, threw open his palms. ‘… and now look what’s happened.’
‘Talk me through it from the beginning.’
Limoni downed his coffee, stretched out his long legs beneath the table, and took a breath. ‘We were on the final stretch of our beat before returning to the station — Via Marche before it turns into Via Boncompagni. Suddenly, this guy comes up to us. He’s wearing sunglasses, although by now it’s nearly seven. He hands me this envelope and says, “I think you’d better take a look at this.” Then he turns and walks away, just like that, as if it was nothing.’
‘Did you notice anything about him — hair colour, height?’
‘No idea about the hair, cos he was wearing a baseball cap. But he was small, about Rossi’s height, in a long, dark coat.’
‘Then what?’
‘We opened the envelope there and then — we wanted to see what was inside.’ He shook his head again, as if wrestling with the memory. ‘We couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing.’
‘I know, I’ve seen the pictures.’
‘I say to Rossi that we should show them to someone, maybe our chief, and get advice on what to do. He starts shouting, tells me I’m an idiot, and don’t I realise we’ve just been presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He says I’d have to be crazy to pass up a chance like this.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘At first I didn’t get what he was on about, but then I twigged and I wasn’t comfortable. I wasn’t comfortable at all. But he was on a mission: he wouldn’t let anything stand in his way. To be honest, he was starting to scare me. I had the feeling that if I went to the chief, he’d come after me.’
&nb
sp; ‘So what happened next?’
‘He comes up with a plan — tells me how we’re going to get hold of Ganza and how we’ll bleed him dry. In the end, he organised the whole thing, found a way to reach him, arranged a drop-off for the money.’ He breathed out slowly, fiddling with the edge of the discarded sugar sachet. ‘Then someone blew the whistle, and the next thing I know, I’m suspended.’ He studied his reflection on the tabletop, his shoulders sagging a little.
‘You tell all this to my chief?’
‘Yeah.’ He looked up. ‘He called our boss at the precinct and gave him some cock-and-bull story, chose not to tell him what really went down — definitely better for me that way. It was real good of him; I’m forever in his debt for that.’ He stopped. ‘I don’t know how Garramone found out. Do you?’
‘No idea.’
‘I don’t understand what’s going on — when I’m going back, if I’m going back.’
Scamarcio said nothing.
‘Did Garramone say anything to you?’
Scamarcio chose not to answer.
The boy sighed. ‘Why did he send you anyway?’
Scamarcio thought he read something like hope in the boys’ eyes, and decided to milk it for what he could. ‘He wanted to make sure he’d got it straight. I think he’s weighing up the options, trying to decide how best to proceed.’
Limoni leaned forward and tried to meet his eye. ‘Listen, we don’t know each other, but if there’s anything you can do to help, I’d really appreciate it. This job is everything to me, everything to my folks. I can’t put them through this — not after everything they’ve done for me.’
Scamarcio gently patted his arm across the table. ‘I understand,’ he said. On a theoretical level, he did, but that was as far as it went, because his own father had never been someone he had wanted to impress. Lucio Scamarcio had been guided by a different compass, had traversed a darker, simpler world — a world of backhanders, intimidation, and torture, a world from which his son was still trying to break free.
He ran a tired hand through his hair, kneaded the knot in his neck once more. ‘Listen, I’ll try my best, because I can see you’re a good kid. But, in return, I will need something from you.’
Limoni was still leaning forward, still locked in. ‘Anything — you name it.’
‘I need you to think back. I need you to remember every detail, every conversation. Are you sure of the way it went? Are you certain, for example, that you’d never seen that man before, or that Rossi had never seen him before?’
Limoni looked down, focussed on an unknown point between floor and wall. He was thinking hard, searching for any scrap to throw him. Scamarcio scanned the street: a Chinese man had pulled up at the kerb in a battered Fiat 500, and had started unloading boxes. From a child’s seat in the back, a little girl with pink cheeks, laughing eyes, and hair scraped up in untidy bunches followed his every move.
‘There is something.’
Scamarcio lifted his gaze from the road, considering the boy facing him.
‘I don’t know if it’s anything — maybe just a hunch — but one night when we were on late and no one else was around, I heard Rossi in the locker room talking on his mobile, talking quietly like he didn’t want anyone to hear. He was saying something about the photos, but I thought that it couldn’t be Ganza he was talking to, because the conversation was too friendly, too light. And then I had this strange feeling that he was talking to the man, the man who had given us the pictures — that maybe it was all part of some bigger plan.’
He stopped and frowned. ‘I don’t know why I thought that, but I did. I asked him about it later, but he told me I was deluded, that he’d never seen that man before in his life. The way he was looking at me scared me, so I just left it. I never mentioned it again.’
13
It is the night of the victory party. They have hired out the top floor of the Principe di Savoia, and ordered in twenty crates of Veuve. His closest friends are there, and his mother has been brought from her home in Lecco. He watches her, holding court in a corner, stroking her hair flat in the same way she has always done: still refusing to admit she has aged, that the best of life is behind her. His youngest daughter is asleep in her lap, cheeks flushed, tiny arms outstretched. He sees his wife working the room — a smile here, a laugh there, making sure everyone is comfortable. This is meant to be the happiest night of his life, the pinnacle of all his achievements. But then he sees him, standing alone in the doorway, waving like an old friend just back from the war.
‘We go back a long time, old friends from Gela’, he hears him tell the bodyguards. He freezes for a moment and feels the room freeze with him before he collects himself and returns the wave, a heaviness in his heart, a blackness in his soul. Then the visitor is inside the room, smiling at his guests, helping himself to his champagne, heading towards him.
‘Just wanted to pass on my congratulations, Pino.’ He holds out a hand, and he reluctantly takes it.
‘Thank you.’
‘I can’t stay long — just passing through.’
‘Of course.’
‘So now you’ve really made it.’ He laughs, raises his glass to him, and downs the drink.
‘Maybe.’
‘You were always a modest guy: Prime Minister Pino. It doesn’t get much bigger than that.’
He takes another drink from a passing tray, and scans the room like a bird of prey. ‘Those your daughters? How lovely.’
Pino feels an icy claw in his stomach.
‘Like I say, I just wanted to pay my respects and let you know that we’ll be following your success closely. There’s nothing you can do that will escape our attention.’ He drains his drink, hands him the glass, and then leaves.
THE SLOPES OF TUSCANY rolled away from him into the darkness. The sky was ripe with stars, and every so often they’d pass a cluster of houses, ghosts of smoke frozen in the air, illuminated crosses punching through the blackness. In two hours he’d be in Naples — back in the south, almost home, whatever that was.
Scamarcio slept. When he woke, the lights of the bay were coming into view, fragile and expectant, reaching out across the water. He couldn’t decide whether to visit Rossi tonight or leave it until the morning. Somehow he wanted the answers now; he wanted to understand what he was dealing with. He headed for the taxi stand, running to beat the rush. The remnants of the day still clung to the air, dense and heavy: the heat had already arrived in Naples.
The driver edged the car out into a sea of traffic, but there was nowhere for them to go, no option of a left- or right-hand turn. Scamarcio tasted the pollution in the back of his throat, felt it hit his lungs. He wound up the window, watched the meter ticking over, saw the driver observing him in the mirror. He had switched on the radio: Juventus had just lost to Fiorentina. Again. He turned the problem over in his mind: if Rossi knew the man with the photos, why hadn’t they done this in secret? Why pull in Limoni? What purpose did it serve?
The car lurched forward and a horn blared. The taxi driver cursed, wound down his window, and made the Cornuto — Scamarcio wasn’t sure for whose benefit. They were moving now, edging along Via Cavour. Soon they would turn right for the dismal suburbs of Secondigliano. He watched as the liberty architecture of the centre gave way to the shabby palazzos of the Spanish Quarter.
Faded washing was strung across foetid alleyways, while kids with the faces of medieval urchins sucked on Luckies or tore up the neighbourhood on stolen motorbikes. Outside a Halal store, a couple of guys in Shalwar Kameez were drinking tea and playing backgammon. He caught a blast of Arabic music — sad and otherworldly, conjuring up the darkness of lost centuries.
The driver drew the car to a halt outside a brown block. It had that shiny bath-tile effect which made it look cleaner, less run-down than all the rest. There were well-kept
flower boxes on the balconies, and decent-looking cars on the street — a couple of BMWs, and a Mercedes. A woman passed: tough face, lots of gold. He smelt Camorra; knew it when he saw it.
He paid the driver and scanned the entry panel, looking for Rossi. He found the name on the fifth floor. The front door was ajar, so he decided not to buzz the flat and alert them to his arrival. The elevator was gold panelled, with mirrors to the ceiling, marble on the floor, and none of the external doors to bother with. The journey to the fifth floor was cool and smooth, like in a luxury hotel. He stepped out, and nodded to an old couple who wanted to come in; they were smart, and well kept, and the gent tipped his hat in the old style. Number 54 was off to the right. There was an umbrella stand outside, and a tidy welcome mat. He rang the bell, and imagined the layout: a generous living room with a view onto the street, windows to the floor, flower boxes granting some privacy. He strained to hear better, but it seemed that nothing was stirring inside. He rang the bell again, stood back from the door, and scanned the corridor: still nothing. He knocked this time. ‘It’s Detective Scamarcio from Rome. I’m looking for Stefano Rossi.’ Silence. Then he heard footsteps away to his right, and the scraping of a door. An old man blinked out at him from the neighbouring apartment, his tiny clam-like eyes exposed beneath bottle-end glasses.
‘They’ve gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Cleared out at four this morning. Made one hell of a racket.’
‘Any idea where they were heading?’
‘Well, they weren’t off on holiday.’
They both fell quiet for a moment.
‘You know them well?’
‘Did my best to avoid them. ‘
‘Why?’
The old man scanned the corridor furtively, looking like a weasel that wanted to scuttle back to his burrow. ‘Who’s asking?’
Scamarcio pulled out his badge. The old man wetted his lips, and pushed his glasses higher up his nose. ‘Clan.’ It was almost a whisper.
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