Lone Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  ‘We may be out of luck,’ Cangio said, as they reached the entrance.

  A sign had been pinned to the door: CHIUSO PER FERIE.

  ‘Chiuso means closed,’ Harris chipped in, ‘but what does ferie mean?’

  Cangio had shaded his eyes with his hand and was peering through the glass door.

  A man was standing by a huge open hearth, a broom in one hand, a dustpan in the other.

  Cangio pushed the door, a cow-bell rang, and the man in front of the fireplace glanced over his shoulder. ‘Can’t you read, son?’ he said. ‘We’re still closed. I’m just putting the place in order.’

  Then he stood up straight and turned around, noting Cangio’s uniform.

  ‘I’m sorry, officer,’ he said quickly. ‘Like I told you …’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?’

  The man chuckled humourlessly.

  ‘There’s no harm in trying,’ he said. ‘I’ll answer you if I can.’

  ‘Is this the only restaurant that does truffles with Parmesan?’ Cangio asked him.

  The man stared at him for a moment, surprised by the question. ‘Well, like I said, we’re …’

  ‘Closed for the holidays, I read the sign,’ Cangio said. ‘But that’s not what I’m asking. I know that you do truffles with Parmesan cheese. Does anyone else do that dish?’ He waved his hand towards Harris. ‘My friend here is English. Someone recommended a restaurant in Valnerina, but he forgot to get the name of it. I thought of you, straight off, of course, but if you’re closed … Do you know of anyone else that serves truffles and cheese?’

  The man propped his broom against the wall, and set down the dustpan.

  ‘We used to have a monopoly on it, just us, you know,’ he said. ‘It was a roaring success, especially with the foreign visitors. Truffles and Parmesan, the best of the best, and all on one plate. It was Edna’s … my wife’s idea.’ He blew a raspberry. ‘Last season someone else decided to have a go. Bloody thieves! It’s not a scratch on ours, of course, I’m telling you.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Cangio agreed. ‘His English friends were over here last week, though. There were two of them. Two men.’

  The man scratched his ear. ‘We’ve been closed the last six weeks,’ he said. ‘My only daughter’s living in Australia, see. Just had a baby. Me and the missis just got back. We’ll be opening up next Monday if you’d care to come back?’

  ‘We’re too hungry to wait till Monday,’ Cangio smiled. ‘What did you say the other place was called?’

  It was raining even heavier when they got outside.

  ‘What was all that about truffles and cheese?’ Harris asked him.

  ‘That bill of yours. You were looking at truffles and trout, but I spotted part of another word that was written on the paper … parm. Parmesan cheese, that’s my guess. Truffles and Parmesan. Not many restaurants offer that combo here in Valnerina.’

  As they got into the car, Cangio glanced in the direction of Monte Coscerno.

  You could hardly see it now for the clouds. The weather would be savage up near the summit, he thought, wondering about his wolves as he turned the key in the ignition, and they drove north on the SS 209 again.

  Valnerina

  The rain was pelting down near the summit of Monte Coscerno.

  The young wolf lay in a sheltered hollow behind the den, licking his wound.

  The den was built into the side of a mound, beneath a slab of rock that the earth had thrown up.

  He couldn’t go inside the den, though.

  The female was resting, waiting in there, gathering her strength.

  Her time was nearly up.

  If he tried to go inside, she would tear him apart.

  He couldn’t move, couldn’t stand, and water was beginning to pool all around him. He had fallen into a stupor the night before in the hollow where he usually slept, but he didn’t feel safe there any more. He hadn’t been able to mark his terrain, had been obliged to urinate on the spot where he was lying, and that was a sign of weakness.

  Maybe the rain would wash it away before the others could smell him.

  He had woken during the night and found one of the younger wolves licking the blood from the gash in his stomach and thigh. They were starving, desperate now. The pack had gone off hunting again, searching for food. They hunted at night as a rule, but the day and the night were equal now. They needed fresh meat, especially the female. If they brought back meat, he might be safe for another night.

  There would be no food for him, though.

  They would never feed him now that he was unable to hunt.

  The end was drawing near, closing in on him like a heavy weight.

  He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, despite the cold, persistent rain, willing the end to come soon. He would have crawled away to die, but he didn’t have the strength.

  The water was slowly rising in the hollow, but he couldn’t lift his head.

  NINE

  Valnerina

  Il Covo del Pescatore was practically empty.

  The rough stone walls were hung with nets and fishing gear that might once have been dipped in the Bay of Naples, but had never been used in the trout stream on the other side of the main road. The gnarled wooden beams above their heads had been painted white, which showed off the cobwebs to perfection. Every bit of space was crammed with junk that you might have found in a flea market. A spruced-up cellar, Cangio thought, the sort that drove the foreign tourists wild. They came into the country looking for country, and this was what they got.

  It seemed as though progress had given the Valnerina a miss.

  They sat at a table next to the picture window, though there wasn’t much to see. A mist swirled over the river, and the mountain beyond it was capped with clouds.

  ‘It really is a beautiful area,’ Harris said. ‘You’re lucky to live here.’

  ‘If I’m really lucky,’ Cangio said, ‘I’ll probably die here, too.’

  He wondered whether to mention the fact that things were not as idyllic as they might appear. There’d been two attempts on his own life in the last eighteen months, after all.

  Desmond Harris smiled, seemed to think that he was joking.

  Cangio stared out of the window again, leaving Harris to look at the menu.

  He was worried about the wounded wolf, and would have gone to check on it if Lucia Grossi hadn’t called him that day. If things had looked bad, he would have called the vet, stunned the wolf with a tranquilliser dart, then taken it into care at the wildlife recovery unit in Norcia. That was what he should have been doing, not ferrying a visitor around the park to save Captain Grossi the bother.

  Harris was still busy scrutinising the menu.

  ‘Did you spot it?’ Cangio asked him.

  ‘My Italian’s not so hot …’

  Cangio pointed it out to him. ‘Truffles and cheese. That’s blasphemy in these parts. But foreigners like Parmesan with everything, including truffles, and lots of them stop off in roadside restaurants like this one when they’re cruising through the area.’

  A man in a waistcoat came bustling over, bright-eyed and smiling.

  ‘Are we ready to order, gentlemen?’ he asked.

  Cangio smiled back at him. ‘We’d like to try something from your tourist menu,’ he said. ‘Scrambled eggs with truffles and Parmesan cheese. We were told that it was excellent.’

  ‘It’s the house special,’ the waiter said. ‘Our very own invention.’

  ‘That isn’t what they told us at the Tartufo Nero,’ Cangio said.

  The waiter seemed to stiffen, then glare at Cangio. ‘Did he send you here?’

  ‘That’s right. They were closed, he said.’

  The waiter pursed his lips. ‘Been closed a month, they have. To be honest, I thought they might have gone out of business. You know, given up, the competition being too hot. He tells everyone that he invented the recipe, but my missis got there before him! Cristoforo Colombo discovered Amer
ica, but they named it after that Vespucci fella, didn’t they? Being first means nothing. It’s being the best that matters. And we do the tastiest uova strapazzata in Valnerina.’

  ‘Good,’ said Cangio. ‘We’ll start with that.’

  Five minutes later, the man appeared from the kitchen, plates in hand.

  ‘Uova strapazzata con tartufo e parmigiano,’ he announced, as he set them down on the table.

  Harris tasted a mouthful, a look of caution on his face, as if he feared he might be eating poison. Suddenly, his eyes lit up. ‘Hm, that’s delicious,’ he said. ‘Maybe this is what he came to Italy for.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Harris patted his stomach. ‘Our man. The victim. For the food. Mangiare.’

  ‘You think they beat him to death at Stansted for the recipe?’

  He was being droll, but Harris didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘What comes next?’ he asked, as he cleared his plate.

  Harris’s truffled trout and Cangio’s grilled chops came next.

  ‘The trout really is tasty,’ Harris said. ‘I like the truffles, I must say.’

  ‘Now comes the hard part,’ Cangio said when they had finished eating. ‘We don’t have a picture of the dead man. Not one that we can flash around in public, at any rate.’

  ‘If the place is usually quiet at this time of year, they may recall a foreigner.’

  ‘If he was foreign,’ Cangio warned him.

  Harris took another sip of wine. ‘Will you do the talking, please?’

  Cangio waved his hand and called the owner over.

  ‘We need to ask you a couple of questions,’ he said, as the waiter reached the table. ‘This gentleman here is …’

  ‘Health and bloody hygiene, I thought as much.’ He held up his hands in surrender.

  Cangio laughed. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ he said. ‘I was about to say that he’s a British policeman from Scotland Yard. He enjoyed his lunch, by the way, especially the scrambled egg with truffles and cheese. Complimenti! The thing is, he’s looking for an Englishman who may have got himself into trouble, let’s say. Inspector Harris was wondering whether the man has ever eaten here.’

  The waiter’s brow uncreased, and his jaw relaxed, but he didn’t remember who had eaten there the day before. The previous week was lost in the Dark Ages. ‘You’d better ask Nora. She serves table normally, though she’s working in the kitchen today. I’ll send her in,’ he said.

  He walked away across the room, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Harris asked.

  ‘He thought you were a food inspector.’

  ‘Me?’ His eyebrows shot up on his forehead like Stan Laurel’s. ‘Eating all day? That does sounds fun.’

  ‘It’s the suit and tie you’re wearing. He felt less threatened when I told him you’re a cop.’

  ‘Really? It would be exactly the opposite in London.’

  ‘Let an Italian food inspector loose in a restaurant kitchen,’ Cangio explained, ‘and you’re talking about fines, big ones, too. He might even close the place down—’

  ‘The boss said you wanna see me.’

  Nora was the size of a wardrobe. Arms like cured hams bulged out of her XXL T-shirt. Plump cheeks and multiple chins had pushed her snub nose, blue eyes, and pert mouth into the centre of her face. The green and white striped apron she was wearing was spattered with flour.

  ‘Please, have a seat,’ Cangio said.

  The girl looked at him and frowned. ‘I gotta cut the strangozzi before the dough dries out,’ she said, showing her hands which were dusted with flour. ‘We make all our pasta fresh every day.’

  She served at table, but helped in the kitchen, too. A Jack-of-all-trades, Cangio guessed.

  ‘Just a quick word,’ Cangio said. ‘Last week, Tuesday, maybe …’

  ‘We’re closed on Tuesdays.’

  ‘Monday, then.’

  ‘It was pandemonium,’ she said. ‘A wedding lunch and a bike club. Run off our bloody feet, we were.’

  ‘Were there any foreigners in the restaurant that day?’

  Nora didn’t need to think. ‘Two men,’ she said, and a smile curled her lips.

  ‘Two?’ Cangio glanced at Harris. ‘At separate tables?’

  ‘Naw, they were sitting together,’ she said, ‘British, I think. One of them was sitting just where you’re sitting now.’

  Cangio felt his heart go up, then down. Thanks to the truffles and cheese, they had struck lucky.

  ‘Do you remember what they ate?’ he asked her, just to be sure that they were talking about the right men.

  Nora glanced at him, then squinted. ‘You must be joking,’ she said. ‘The place was chock-a-block. The same thing as you, probably. One of them foreigners stuck in my mind, ’cause he was a good tipper.’ She leant close and dropped her voice. ‘Wedding guests! I can’t stand ’em. They aren’t paying the bill, so why leave a tip?’

  ‘What did he look like, the man who left the tip?’

  Nora’s cheeks bunched up in a smile. ‘You’re pushing it now,’ she said. ‘They’re all just faces to me …’ Then she tapped the tip of her nose with her forefinger. ‘Hang on a bit,’ she said, and pulled out her mobile phone.

  Her fingers were large, the phone seemed tiny. It might have been the Book of Destiny, as she scrolled through it, a look of concentration on her face.

  ‘Here we go!’ she said. ‘I knew I hadn’t cancelled it. This lot were cyclists up from Rome. What a bunch of jokers! One of them asked me to take a snap, but I couldn’t get his phone to focus, so I took a pic with my phone, then I texted it to him.’

  She handed the phone to Cangio.

  A group of men in cycling kit, all in their forties, all dressed in fancy synthetic colours, were holding up their wine glasses to the camera.

  ‘You see them two there?’ Nora said, plonking a white finger on a table in the background of the photo. ‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘Him, and his mate. They were here together that day, then he came back a couple of days later.’

  ‘He was alone?’

  ‘That’s right. That’s when he left me the tip.’

  Cangio looked at the display, then handed the phone to Harris.

  One man was looking straight into the camera, frowning at the rowdy cyclists, maybe. The other man was frozen in the act of turning away, as if he didn’t like the thought of being photographed.

  ‘Which one came back the second time?’ Cangio asked.

  ‘The one who’s facing the camera,’ Nora said.

  Cangio used his thumb and forefinger to blow the picture up to full-size. He stared at the narrow face and greasy, slicked-back hair. Over thirty, under forty, maybe. ‘Is this a good likeness?’ he asked the girl.

  ‘It should be,’ Nora said. ‘That phone cost me four hundred euros. I wanted one that took good photos, see.’

  ‘Can you forward that picture on to me?’ he asked her.

  ‘No problem,’ Nora said. ‘What’s your number?’

  A few seconds later, Cangio’s phone gave a ping. He checked the screen, then sent the picture on to Harris, who immediately stood up, took out his wallet and gave the girl a fifty-euro note.

  ‘Is that enough?’ he asked Cangio.

  ‘More than enough.’

  Then again, he thought, Scotland Yard was paying.

  Nora asked if she could take a photo of them. ‘Just so I’ll remember who gave me the best tip of the year,’ she said.

  Out in the car park, Harris told him where he wanted to go next, then he pulled out his phone again. ‘I’ll just let Captain Grossi know how things are shaping up,’ he said.

  ‘How’s the gastritis?’ Cangio asked him, as he got into the car.

  ‘Gastritis?’ Harris said, and this time he was smiling.

  Catanzaro, Calabria

  Rocco Montale’s phone trilled.

  Gino’s report from the hospital mortuary.

  ‘Three today,
Rocco. I’ll have a look, then let you know.’

  A couple had died in a head-on car-crash, the driver over the limit in every sense, speed, drink, and maybe drugs, while the other one had been knocked off his bike by a hit-and-run driver. Two men and one woman. Sex made no difference, that’s what they’d told him, anyway. Man or woman, it didn’t matter.

  Fresh was more important …

  He pulled the handle and the drawer rolled out with hardly a sound on well-oiled bearings.

  He shone the torch inside.

  The man on the bike was a mangled mess.

  There’d been an item on the local TV news that morning, describing the accident. He’d been knocked off his bike on his way to work, and the body. …

  Body?

  It had taken the traffic police and forensics ages to find all the pieces scattered along the road for over a kilometre. There were still bits missing, apparently, but that was par for the course, and nobody was complaining too much. They had enough to put in the coffin, so the family would be happy enough in the tragic circumstances.

  There were several witnesses to the accident. At the moment it was still being listed as manslaughter, though the word ‘murder’ was now being used in cases where the driver hadn’t stopped. The cyclist and his bike had been trapped beneath the vehicle for more than a minute. It must have been like being caught up inside a meat-grinder. They’d shown the dead man’s wife a mole on his wrist when she came to do the identification, couldn’t show her the face or the body, not in that state.

  They’d catch the driver, too. He’d be going to jail. It wouldn’t take them long to find him. Let’s face it, how many people in the Catanzaro region were driving a bright red Seat SUV with an F registration? Two or three max.

  The dead man’s head was like a punctured rugby ball, all out of shape, black and blue, though the mortuary staff had washed off the blood. The right eye was crushed. He lifted the dead man’s left eyelid with his thumb.

  Empty …

  They needed two in any case, so this corpse was no use.

  The couple were in an even worse state. The woman had gone flying through the windscreen, not wearing a seat belt. They hadn’t got around to cleaning the man up yet, his face still a pulped mass where he’d slammed up hard against the glass. There was a shard of crystal poking like a spear into his left eye.