His heart was racing faster now. He felt a bead of sweat form on his forehead.
He had seen the general on television, read about him in the newspapers. The Legend, as the journalists called him, was the head of the Special Operations squad, an officer who had led daring raids against the Mafia, international terrorists, drug-runners, arms dealers and slave traders. Cangio wondered whether he had made a mistake which might cost him dearly.
It was summer outside the window but the office felt chilly. The sparseness of the furnishings made it seem even colder. A set of grey metal filing cabinets took up one side of the large room. A street map of Rome filled the wall above it. There was an L-shaped wedge of desks: one large, one smaller, each with a computer on them. A scanner and printer took up a corner next to the wide picture window.
General Corsini waved him to a chair in front of the desk then sat himself down at the smaller of the two desks inside the L, facing a computer screen.
‘Do you mind if I take notes?’ he asked. ‘We won’t involve anyone else for the moment, Cangio. Your fellow officers might not look kindly on the fact that you have chosen to approach me. Private’s best, I think. Don’t you agree?’
Cangio opened his mouth to speak, but managed nothing better than a grunt.
‘Do I take that to be a yes?’ Corsini asked him, looking directly into his eyes. The indefinable sadness in General Corsini’s gaze watered down any suggestion of superiority or arrogance. It was as if he had seen far more than he cared to tell you, yet wished to spare you the painful details.
Cangio nodded. ‘I stepped out of line, sir, contacting you. I realize now that I might get into trouble.’
‘Trouble?’ the general echoed, a thin smile tightening his narrow lips. ‘Sometimes rules are made to be broken, Cangio. You did the right thing coming straight to me. Now, tell me about this wolf that lost its head.’
It didn’t take Cangio long to tell the tale, nor give his opinion of what he had seen in Corrado Formisano’s barn.
‘There must be many wolves in the park, I suppose?’ Corsini concluded.
‘They keep out of sight as a rule, sir. Except when food is scarce. In winter they sometimes scavenge through village rubbish tips. But never in the spring or summer. They avoid people when the cubs are born—’
‘A farmer might lose patience with a wolf that was robbing him of profit.’
Cangio shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘That wolf belonged to him, General. He kept it a cage and fed it like a pet. Yet the same man hacked its head off, sir.’
‘As you told your carabiniere friend, you’ve only got a ball of hair to go on. And he does keep other animals in his barn.’
‘Corrado Formisano isn’t a farmer,’ Cangio said. ‘He’s a known member of an ’Ndrangheta clan.’
‘Can you be so sure, Cangio? Perhaps this man is trying to put his criminal past behind him. Indeed, it may well be the reason why he chose to settle in Umbria, so far away from his home.’
Cangio ran his hand over his thigh, drying the sweat on the leg of his trousers. ‘He left that wolf’s head where he knew that I would find it, sir.’
Corsini settled the glasses more comfortably on his nose. ‘Why would he do a thing like that?’
‘He wanted to be caught, sir. There’s no other explanation.’
‘That does sound odd, don’t you think?’
‘I … I suppose it does, sir.’
General Corsini stared at him for some time, the bluish light from the computer screen reflecting off his glasses. It was impossible to see his eyes or guess what he was thinking. He didn’t look like Mister Nobody now. The small, neat features of his face were mild no longer. He was waiting in silence, expecting Cangio to fill the void.
‘I …’ Cangio hesitated. ‘I think it was a message, sir. Something he wanted everyone to know about.’
General Corsini whipped off his glasses and peered at him myopically.
‘What would he want everyone to know, Cangio?’
Cangio cleared his throat again. ‘That the ’Ndrangheta is in Umbria, sir.’
Corsini’s fingers danced across the keyboard, then he sat back in his seat and folded his arms. ‘The ’Ndrangheta? A traitor to his clan? Is that what you are saying?’
Cangio felt the heat of his hand through the damp material on his thigh.
‘I … I can’t say for sure. But as soon as I entered his barn I had the feeling that I was back in Calabria again. There are farms down there, sir. They call them factories – isolated places with concrete baths and acid … like the one that Formisano had. They say they use them to dispose of animal remains, but … well, sir, those baths can be used for getting rid of … well, other things, too. Enemies, rivals …’
‘You certainly have a fertile imagination,’ General Corsini said, replacing his glasses. He pursed his lips then cocked his head to one side. ‘And you could be wrong. Formisano may be a better farmer than you give him credit for. He could have been using the acid to rid himself of rotten meat, infected carcasses. Or, as he claims, what was left of his dog …’
‘But it wasn’t a dog, as I told you, sir.’
‘I’ve worked in the south myself,’ the general went on. ‘I’ve seen those things, too. But you may have read the signs incorrectly. We’re talking about Umbria, Cangio. Why, it’s one of the most crime-free areas in the whole country …’
Cangio couldn’t stop himself. ‘A body was found just the other day, sir, shot through the head at point-blank range …’
Corsini raised a forefinger to halt the flow. ‘A corpse?’
‘A skeleton, more or less, sir.’
‘I read a brief report from the local carabinieri,’ the general said. ‘We need more evidence to go on before we come to any conclusions.’ He tapped a button and the computer closed down. With the light gone, his grey eyes were visible again, as mild and patient as before. He joined his hands on the desk and said: ‘What were you expecting from this meeting, Cangio?’
Cangio thought of the operations that the general had led: helicopters whirling overhead, screaming police cars encircling the criminals, armed masked men in uniform – that uniform, the one the general was wearing – handcuffing the wrongdoers, driving them off to jail, reassuring the world that the State was in control no matter what.
‘I was hoping you would come the way you always do, sir. With an army of men. Even the most remote and isolated places are up for grabs when organized crime moves in. Umbria won’t remain remote and isolated if they are interested.’
‘The way I always do? Ha, I like that.’ He peered intently at Cangio. ‘What makes you think that we aren’t already keeping tabs on the situation?’
Cangio gulped hard. His throat hurt, as if he had tried to swallow sand.
‘I … I apologise, sir. I’ve put my foot in it, I can see that now. Are you going to report me to my superiors, sir?’
Corsini shook his head. ‘I’d have done the same thing in your shoes.’
Cangio wiped his hand on his trousers again. ‘I ought to have reported my suspicions to the regional parks commission commander, sir.’
‘No, no,’ the general said. ‘Keep on reporting directly to me. You are a valuable asset, Cangio. You work in a position that we could never hope to fill. You see things that my officers would probably never notice. Let us say for the moment that the situation is under control. There has been no significant criminal infiltration in Umbria.’
General Corsini took a printed card from a box and handed it to Cangio. ‘You can contact me at this number at any time of the day or night,’ he said as he stood up. ‘Keep me informed of anything that may arouse your suspicion. Me. Not your superiors.’
Corsini came around the desk, holding out his hand. Cangio leapt to attention, and felt like dying on the spot. Mister Nobody wanted to shake his sweaty paw.
THIRTY-THREE
Lunchtime, the same day
Tonino Sustrico was eating a porchetta
roll when the telephone rang.
He picked up the receiver, held it to his ear and carried on chewing. The bread was crusty, the roast pork dry and salty. It clogged his tongue as he attempted to speak. Of course, it did no harm to sound a bit gruff and busy when the phone rang. The public shouldn’t be encouraged to ring the carabinieri directly over any old thing.
‘Yes?’ he managed to mumble.
‘That is that the local brigade of the carabinieri?’
‘Hm … mm.’
‘I asked to be put through to the senior officer.’
‘Mm … that’s me.’
Sustrico nearly choked as the caller announced his name and rank. He shot to attention, watching in horror as an overturned can of Fanta flowed in a tidal wave across the paper-covered surface of his desk. He gulped hard and the roast pork roll went down in a solid lump.
‘Brigadier Tonino … Antonio Sustrico, sir. At your service!’
He pulled a tissue from his pocket, wiped his mouth then dropped the rag in the Fanta puddle, watching it transform from snowy white to soggy orange as the voice said calmly over the phone: ‘I need some information, Sustrico. The head of a wolf was found in your area two nights ago, I believe.’
Sustrico’s hand frantically brushed the crumbs from his uniform. ‘A wolf’s head, sir?’
‘Exactly, Sustrico. What can you tell me about it?’
The Legend might have been standing there, staring at him. It wasn’t such a farfetched notion. How did he know about the bloody wolf? The mayor had phoned the day before, ordering him not to release any news of the atrocity. ‘We don’t want to frighten the tourists, Sustrico. I’ve told the newspapers to play the story down. If anyone asks, just tell them it’s a rumour that’s going around.’
You couldn’t spin a tale like that to the Legend.
‘We arrested a man named Corrado Formisano …’ he began to say.
‘So I believe. A park ranger, wasn’t it?’
Next thing, Sustrico was telling him about the crazy ranger who had walked into the Questura in the middle of the night with a prisoner in handcuffs. A man who had been identified as – or rather, a man who had identified himself as Corrado Formisano.
‘A record as long as the Bible, sir. Brought in like a poultry thief.’
The Legend seemed to find the description amusing – not quite a laugh, more of a grunt than a chuckle emerged from his throat. ‘And did this “poultry thief” make a full confession, Brigadier?’
Tonino Sustrico cleared his throat. ‘Not as such, sir. He wasn’t saying much at all. That ranger held on like a ferret chasing rats, sir. He wouldn’t let it go. And anyway, he had the evidence with him … the head of the wolf, sir. It was safe in the back of his Land Rover. He insisted on pressing charges, said that he was ready to testify. Of course, we – I would have—’
The Legend cut him off, as if he had no time to waste. ‘I’m sure you would, Sustrico. Now, listen to me carefully. I want you to fax me a copy of the statement that Formisano made, and I want to see a copy of the charges that Sebastiano Cangio brought against him. Faxes of the originals, do you understand? Not email copies. Send them directly to my office number. Is that clear?’
Sebastiano Cangio?
Sustrico saw black. The Legend knew Cangio’s name, though Sustrico hadn’t mentioned it. He knew a great deal more than he was letting on. What the hell was it all about? Was the Legend investigating how the local carabinieri station was run, his pen hovering over an order that would despatch Brigadier Antonio Sustrico immediately to Pantelleria, the southern-most island of the Italian peninsula, for the rest of his working life?
Sustrico saluted the empty room. ‘I’ll do it immediately, sir.’
‘I know you will,’ said the voice at the other end of the line.
A minute more, and it would be too late. ‘Signore …’
‘What is it, Sustrico?’
Sustrico took a deep breath. ‘There’s … well, there is another thing that may interest you, sir. A corpse was discovered some days ago. In the strangest circumstances, a skeletal leg sticking out …’
‘The body in San Bartolomeo sul Monte?’ the Legend interrupted. ‘Who is he?’
‘It’s too early to say yet,’ Sustrico reported. ‘The preliminary forensic assessment arrived an hour ago. I thought you’d want to know, sir, seeing as how …’
Sustrico finished the sentence in his head. Seeing as you probably know already!
‘A bullet through the brain, I believe.’
‘Calibre .38, sir. There’s no match on the record, sir.’
Sustrico swallowed hard. The Legend was testing him, verifying what he knew against what he was being told. Any divergence, Sustrico thought, and he’d be packing his bags for Pantelleria at the very least, though early retirement on half-pay was another possibility.
‘What about Cosimo Landini, the director of the local bank? He’s missing, I believe.’
Sustrico felt as though he might be going to faint. The Legend knew about Landini, too.
‘We are checking out all the possibilities, sir. Landini disappeared some time ago, but another man has gone missing more recently. Andrea Bonanni was released from prison a short time ago after collaborating with a magistrate.’
‘And there’s nothing in the autopsy to indicate which one of them it might be? If they have the names and the medical records, it should be easy … Unless, of course, that corpse belongs to someone else.’
‘In which case, it will take more time, sir.’
The general was silent for some moments.
‘Which magistrate was Bonanni collaborating with?’ he said at last.
‘Calisto Catapanni, sir.’
‘Send me those faxes, Sustrico, and be quick about it!’
The telephone line went dead without a goodbye or a thank you.
Tonino gasped for air like a deep-sea diver breaking the surface after his oxygen tank had run out. His legs gave way and he sat down heavily in his padded leather chair.
What the hell was happening in Umbria? Earthquakes, unidentified corpses, missing persons, and now … the Legend.
The sun, the moon and the stars had changed trajectory.
It was time to think of taking early retirement.
THIRTY-FOUR
The next day
Something wasn’t right.
Zì Luigi came storming out of the bank manager’s office, his mug blacker than the ace of spades. Raniero reached to take his briefcase, but the Zì shrugged him off.
‘We need to talk, Raniè,’ he snapped. ‘Remember that trattoria down by the river?’
‘The one with the ducks?’
‘That’s the place.’
A crowd of bank employees were standing outside the main door, chattering and smoking, blocking the way. Raniero strode straight through them, inches taller than the guys and gals in the crappy grey suits. He turned back when he realized Zì Luigi wasn’t keeping pace with him. The clerks and secretaries were eyeballing him resentfully as he pushed his way past them. Short and heavily built, he might have been a farmer who’d put on his best suit and gone to town to beg a loan off the bank manager. They might smirk now, Raniero thought, but they wouldn’t have dared to mess with Zì Luigi when Corrado Formisano was standing at his elbow.
Raniero waited for him by the car.
‘What the fuck are you grinning at?’
Raniero didn’t answer him, just held the car door open, closing it gently before he walked round to the driver’s side. He fired up the Mercedes and joined the traffic that was building up as the lunch-hour rush for home began.
Zì Luigi sat staring out of the window, the corners of his mouth drooping down like a poxy dick. Someone had fucked his day up good and proper. Raniero didn’t say a word. He knew that Luigi would tell him once he got his brain in working order.
‘You’d think the chequered flag had dropped.’ Zì Luigi let his hand fall with a heavy slap on his knee. ‘Vroom, vroo
m, vroom! Stupid fuckers fighting over a bit of road, then queuing up at the next set of traffic lights.’
Raniero was tempted to laugh. A bit of road? Zì Luigi had come through a dozen wars with hundreds of victims and all for the sake of a few square feet of territory. Was he trying to be funny, or was he being serious?
They drove for another mile, and still Zì Luigi didn’t say a word.
Fuck a duck, Raniero thought. ‘How’d it go this morning, Zì?’ he asked. ‘You seem a touch pissed off.’
That snapped Zì Luigi out of his mood. He liked it when you tried to guess what he was thinking. ‘That director,’ he said. ‘The new one.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He’s started talking like Landini.’ Zì Luigi’s voice went up a scale, took on a whining tone like a nagging wife. ‘We need to slow things down, Signor Corbucci. We’re treading on thin ice, Signor Corbucci. These bullets somebody sent to President Pignatti … the coppers’ll be swarming all over the place like flies on a fresh turd.’
Luigi pulled out a white linen handkerchief, his monogram stitched in blue, and wiped his mouth.
‘Fucking Corrado! You gave him the message, didn’t you? Send them to her home. And what does he go and do? He sends the bullets to her office instead of leaving them on her doorstep! She’d have kept her gob shut and done what I wanted. Now the papers are full of it. The nationals, too. Franzetti had them lined up on his desk.’
‘Corrado’s lost it, Zì Luì. He ain’t sane no more.’
Zì Luigi gave no sign of having heard him. ‘There I was, trying to help that piece of shit, trying to get him back on his feet for old times’ sake.’ He made a dismissive gesture with his hand, as if he were swatting flies. ‘Jesus Christ, who told him to go and fucking improvise? Didn’t I always give him what he deserved?’
Zì Luigi liked the old ways, the big symbolic gestures. A gold watch for your first blood, a St Christopher medal if you had to go abroad, a bottle of Sassicaia if you knocked someone off. He seemed to think that things would never change, that business would go on the way it had always done. He was living in cloud cuckoo land. Raniero had had a quick word with Don Michele while Zì Luigi was in the office chatting with the bank manager. As soon as he’d opened Corriere dell’Umbria and read the news.
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