The Namesake

by Conor Fitzgerald

  A faded warning sign with two arrows indicated that the traffic was now two-way, which, in view of the trucks now bearing down on him, was self-evident. The effect was so like a video game that he found it hard to take the threat of an imminent head-on collision entirely seriously. Seeking a soundtrack to his adventure, he turned on the car stereo, and was horrified as Gigi D’Alessio’s wavering little voice started bleating out a folksy Neapolitan love song. He pushed at random buttons hoping to get the radio, but the stereo flashed some sort of message and then went quiet. He gave up. It was high time he got his eyes back on the road.

  The stretch of the Salerno–Reggio Calabria autostrada he was now on had given up any pretence of being a work in progress. The warning signs were themselves in need of some repair. The temporary concrete dividers had acquired an air of permanence. They were barriers to the south, actively discouraging visitors. The smallest act, a dropped piece of concrete, a broken-down vehicle, a misplaced barrier, effectively cut off road access to all southern Italy.

  A truck had stopped next to a cluster of porta-potty cabins, two of them toppled over. A few yards further on, a woman was selling fruit from a stall covered by a tarpaulin, held down by guy lines attached to butane gas canisters, which were sitting in the emergency lane. Blume had allowed a convoy of trucks to go hurtling by, adjusted the trajectory of the car which had been thrown sideways and towards the divider by the heavy slipstream they left in their wake, when he heard a phone ringing, apparently coming from the car stereo. He glanced down at the stereo, which displayed the message ‘incoming call’.

  A Bluetooth connection between his phone and stereo. Neat. Or it would be if he knew which button to press. There were a few on the steering wheel, and he gave them a try. The ringing stopped.

  ‘Ma vaffanculo,’ he muttered, banging the steering wheel.

  ‘So you steal a ROS vehicle and then you’re the one who starts shouting obscenities at me?’ said the stereo speakers.

  ‘You heard that?’ said Blume. He found the volume control and dialled down Massimiliani’s voice.

  ‘What the fuck, Blume?’

  ‘I am in hot pursuit.’

  ‘Of Hoffmann? The genius recruits they sent have let it be known that Hoffmann’s nowhere to be found. So they managed to lose you, Hoffmann and their car. I foresee two short intelligence careers.’

  ‘Not their fault,’ said Blume. ‘One partner should always be considerably older, and they thought they had been detailed just to act as chauffeurs.’

  ‘Forget about them. Tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘I am following Hoffmann.’

  ‘He’s in the camper van and you’re behind him in a stolen ROS vehicle? So those two also missed an orange motor home pulling out of the hotel as they drove in?’

  Blume thought about it. He wanted to talk to Konrad, maybe dissuade him, but he was not sure he wanted to hand Konrad over to Massimiliani just like that. Konrad had a big headstart but in a very slow vehicle, and Blume felt inclined to give him this advantage, at least for now. Also, though he suppressed the thought as best he could, he did not want Massimiliani to know he had been outwitted by Konrad.

  ‘Sure. I have him in my sights.’

  ‘This is unbelievable. Does he know you’re following him?’

  ‘No. I had to act quickly, though. No time to explain to the agents you sent.’

  ‘I didn’t send those two . . . If Konrad’s trying to get away, why didn’t he make a run for it during the night, or in the early hours of the morning?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ask him. Maybe he just found something out,’ said Blume. He rummaged with his free hand in his backpack and pulled out Konrad’s phone to make sure it was still on.

  ‘Talk about a loose cannon. Don’t let him out of your sight while we arrange a roadblock. We can use the signal from his phone to see where he is. Keep yours on, too.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Blume. ‘But I need to know where he’s going, what he’s doing.’

  ‘Not now. I’ll call back.’ Massimiliani’s voice vanished.

  Blume was so busy pressing buttons on the car stereo that had turned into a speaker phone to see how it worked that he almost went hurtling into the back of a Y-10 with a number plate from the late ’80s dawdling along at around sixty kilometres an hour. His passing swerve took out three traffic cones. Then, unexpectedly, there was a brief section of genuine two-lane divided road, just like a motorway in an ordinary country.

  He got the radio working, and turned up the volume the better to hear a woman singing a song, which sounded Disneyesque. He found her voice a bit nasal, too, but was sorry when the song ended, then was inordinately annoyed at the fact they did not identify what it had been. When had they stopped identifying songs on the radio? When he was young, they always told you before the song and then again afterwards. The unidentified song faded into another. But he recognized this as Beyoncé. He remembered sitting in the company of Caterina’s son Elia and watching a music video, and actively committing the name to memory. Beyoncé so called because she’s bouncy. Maybe it would be a second topic of conversation with Elia besides the perpetually disappointing performance of the Roma football team. Elia was too young for the bouncy woman anyhow. The voice had a nice growl and power and invincibility. Shoulda put a ring on it, uh-huh-huh. Good song to encourage reckless driving.

  It was possible, if damned unlikely, the extra speed would eventually bring him up behind the camper van. The dangerous driving required his full attention, which kept his thoughts away from the complicated mess he was making of everything. He needed to catch up with Konrad, stop him, talk to him, and then turn him in. He needed to get down to Calabria, find out about this woman, Curmaci’s wife. Massimiliani, for all he thought he was subtle, had failed to register any surprise whatsoever that Hoffmann was headed southwards on the A3. Evidently they already knew Konrad’s destination.

  Blume switched off the stereo that presumed to answer his calls for him, and when his phone rang a quarter of an hour later, he had to hold it against his ear in the normal manner of all the other drivers on the road.

  ‘Can you see him?’

  ‘At this precise moment, no,’ said Blume. ‘But we are on the A3. There is no other way to go.’

  Massimiliani seemed to find Blume’s answer believable. ‘I’m going to call you back soon.’

  He meant what he said. Three minutes later, he was back.

  ‘Look, before I get to asking you about the change in plans, I want you to fall back a little,’ said Massimiliani.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re too close. Your phones started moving away from the hotel at exactly the same time, and have remained locked at the same point ever since. From here it looks like you’re tailgating him. Drop back a bit. If he goes off the autostrada, we’ll let you know.’

  ‘You’d think Konrad would know better than to leave his phone on,’ said Blume. ‘He’ll probably turn it off any minute now, though I suppose you’re tracking the IMEI number, so he’d need to dump or destroy the phone . . .’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that sort of stuff,’ said Massimiliani. ‘I’m just passing on some advice from a person here who knows more than me, and he says to drop back.’

  ‘OK,’ said Blume. He trapped the steering wheel between his knees and pulled Konrad’s phone out of his pocket with his other hand and tried to slide the battery cover off with his thumb. It would be suspicious if Konrad vanished from the network just as they were talking about it, but he saw no alternative. Finally, the battery cover popped off.

  ‘Of course, now we know his story, we know his destination,’ said Massimiliani.

  ‘We do?’ said Blume.

  ‘Sure. He’s headed towards Calabria. Where else does that road you’re on lead? You’re still too close, if you don’t mind me saying. Pull back.’

  ‘Konrad speeded up. I need to stay close.’

  ‘Yes, I noticed that. That camper van must have some engi
ne,’ said Massimiliani.

  Blume fingered the battery in Konrad’s phone. ‘Suppose you’re wrong?’

  ‘About his destination? No. We know it’s Calabria, but not for the reasons we thought.’

  ‘What are the reasons?’

  ‘You’ll get briefed in good time, but for now . . .’

  ‘Tell me what you know about Konrad. I’ll be waiting for your call,’ said Blume. He hung up and put both hands on the wheel.

  40

  Milan

  They found Teresa Resca’s body on Tuesday morning between the railway lines and the quarry lake, half a kilometre from the abandoned buildings they had searched. A team of volunteers, policemen working overtime and, crucially, dog handlers, beginning at first light, had spread out over the area, and there she was, Teresa, a small heap, face down, already sinking into the mud. The great mystery was how she had not been discovered earlier. The other was why whoever had done this to her had not tried to dispose of the body in the lake. Or maybe they had.

  By now it was clear there was no organized crime connection. Fossati was not surprised that Bazza had been right. From the start he, too, had doubted that the father’s denunciations of the Ndrangheta had had anything to do with the disappearance, thought his articles and opinions, ignored for so long by the mainstream press, were now being reprinted as part of the late-summer horror story.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  Teresa’s mother received the news in hospital, where she had been taken two days before. She was under sedation, suicide watch, and armed guard.

  The suspects were Kosovars, already in custody. They had been arrested on charges of loansharking in the past, and now faced life for murder. They started confessing and accusing each other within half an hour of the body being found.

  Lost in his political obsessions, Giovanni Resca had failed to notice that his wife, who worked nights in the Policlinico San Donato, the very hospital in which she now lay drugged, though this time legally, was living far beyond her means. The jewellery he had assumed was cheap imitation was real, the clothes he attributed to her innate sense of style were designer, the irascibility, constant running nose, late lie-ins and increased tolerance and liking for liquor were not signs of an unshakeable cold. Nights out had been disguised as night-shift work, requiring her not only to hide the expenditure but to create the impression of earning overtime. She had borrowed €50,000 five years ago, had made regular payments, yet now owed the Kosovars €180,000. Her apartment was rented, her car was a Skoda, and her husband a failure, so when they came looking for collateral, they found nothing but her child.

  Whether they had intended to kill the girl was another matter. The woman at the bus stop, who now had a face and a name, Altea Agushi, seemed also to have a conscience, or it might have been an instinct for self-preservation. Whatever it was, her testimony put her partner Dardan, now in San Vittore prison, in a very bad position, even if she continued to insist Dardan had not really meant to harm the girl. They had only wanted to scare the parents. But Dardan was a kick boxer, and hardly knew his own strength.

  Fossati believed her, in that he believed the killing made no sense and was unplanned. When the girl started screaming, Dardan probably just lost it for a moment, as his wife said. But the moment was a long one. It had taken more than one blow to silence her, and when the moment was finally over, time had stopped for ever for Teresa.

  ‘I told you it could never end well, this story,’ said the magistrate.

  The inspector beside him shook his head in disgust at the whole sorry mess, then brightened up a little. ‘Amazing that dog. It was like it knew. You’d almost arrest the dog and the handler for the way they went straight to the spot.’

  ‘What can you do with people like Dardan and Altea?’ asked Fossati. ‘You can’t make them care. That would be the best punishment: make them care. But you can’t. You can put them away for life, but you can’t touch them inside.’

  The policeman ignored his musings. ‘I hear that the wedding ring we found helped make a breakthrough in that case of the dead Romanians. You know, the one that’s connected to the killing of the insurance guy, Arconti, and the judge in Rome?’

  ‘That is no concern of yours or mine,’ said Fossati.

  ‘Word spreads,’ said the inspector, unrepentant.

  ‘You police talk to each other too much.’

  41

  On the Road to Calabria

  Massimiliani did not call back for half an hour, so Blume was able to continue his pell-mell driving and listen to young people’s music full blast on the stereo. When Massimiliani came back on the phone line, it was with another person.

  ‘Alec, I’m on speakerphone here with Weissmann.’

  ‘Schiess los,’ said Blume.

  Weissmann laughed heartily, ‘Aber du sprichst gut Deutsch!’

  ‘Ein bisschen,’ said Blume modestly. He removed the battery from Konrad’s phone, opened the window, and dropped it out. Bad for the environment, apparently. Couldn’t be as bad as the car batteries left on the pavement outside his apartment in Rome.

  Massimiliani cut in. ‘I already find difficult English, but speak no German. Please use English.’

  ‘Ja, doch!’ said Weissmann.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Blume, raising his voice against the inrush of air from the open window beside him. He flicked Konrad’s SIM card out, then crooking his arm and cupping his wrist, tossed the phone itself towards the back wheel of the car. If his wheels didn’t crush it, maybe the bastard tailgating him behind would, or someone after that. He rolled up the window.

  ‘OK, now . . . I have some notes,’ Weissmann was saying. ‘You are aware of course that Italian organized crime in Germany is considered a new phenomenon? I talk of the press, not of us in the BKA. We have been following it for years. But the Duisburg killing on the Feast of the Assumption interested the press, and now they write articles. But of course we are not as expert as you Italians.’

  Blume heard Massimiliani say, ‘Thank you.’ He was not sure if Massimiliani’s English stretched to sarcasm, but it might.

  ‘The Ndrangheta was established well before we began to investigate it properly,’ said Weissmann. ‘I am talking about very recently. The late 1990s, you understand? And resources are still not . . . well, that’s not your problem. But the phenomenon is still underestimated, I believe. This is because what we have in Germany are only branches of the main organization, or . . .’ Blume heard the rustling of papers. ‘Offshoots. That is the word. Ableger, oder? They are offshoots of the main tree, which is in Calabria, in a town called San Luca. And so we have hoped that the Italians will someday cut the tree down. But what has happened is these offshoots . . .’

  ‘’ndrine bastarde,’ said Massimiliani.

  ‘Wie? Bastards?’ Weissmann sounded delighted.

  ‘That’s what the Ndrangheta calls its offshoots,’ said Blume, ‘’ndrine bastarde’, bastard units. A locale is a set of various ’ndrine. If one of them gets too big, it might split and give birth to an ’ndrina bastarda. Sometimes a bastard unit grows up to become larger than the whole locale. It often happens, in fact, because the new Ndrangheta is more powerful and wealthier than the old. Each generation gets stronger. Maybe Seitentrieb in German?’

  ‘No! They must be bastard units,’ said Weissmann. ‘That is a very good name. And that is what has happened in Germany. Now even without Calabria, the Ndrangheta in Germany has its own base of power.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Blume. ‘But without Calabria as a home base, I think they mightn’t be as strong as all that. I thought you were going to talk about Konrad Hoffmann.’

  ‘Commissioner Blume?’ It was Massimiliani’s voice sounding formal and concerned.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hoffmann has just disappeared from the network. He must have shut down his phone, taken the battery out and everything. Have you still got him in your sights?’

  ‘I was backing off like you told me to. So he
’s got a bit far ahead. I can try to catch up.’

  ‘We’ve decided to intercept you at Atrena Lucana. That’s about seventy kilometres ahead of you. You’ll need to make sure Hoffmann doesn’t turn off before then, but there is no reason he would. He’s headed for Locri, San Luca, Africo or Polsi. The Locride zone for sure.’

  ‘I need to know what you have found out about Hoffmann,’ said Blume.

  There was a pause and Blume could hear someone nearby speaking to Massimiliani. Eventually the DCSA captain said, ‘Look, Blume, I only learned about all this just now from the BKA. I’ll let Weissmann fill you in, then we need to talk.’

  After a few moments’ silence, Weissmann’s voice came through, clearer than before, as if he had picked up a receiver and was speaking directly into it.

  ‘Commissioner?’

  ‘I’m here,’ said Blume, ‘and listening.’

  ‘OK, I must tell you this is what we have found out . . . In 1992, a young woman named Dagmar Schiefer was working in the Finanzministerium in the Nordrhein-Westfalen region. She was highly begabt, you understand? She was a clever, gifted young woman who had a good eye for data analysis, which was even more important in those days before we started to use good database abstraction layers. Dagmar, who was twenty-five years old and just out of a specialization course at university, became interested in what turned out to be what we call Karussellgeschäft, which in English is . . .’ He paused, presumably to look at his notes.

  ‘Carousel fraud,’ said Blume. ‘Almost the same as the German.’

  ‘You are wrong. Here it says the English translation is “missing trader intra-community fraud” . . .’

  ‘Let’s just call it fraud. Dagmar discovered fraud,’ said Blume. He thought he had glimpsed a familiar orange-and-white slow-moving vehicle disappearing over the crest of a hill. Cones and barriers had turned the autostrada back into a one-lane highway with a surface that ripped at his tyres.