Think Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  He turned towards her, laid his hands on her shoulders, held her down on the bed.

  ‘I won’t let you get away,’ he said, nuzzling between her breasts.

  ‘Is that so?’ she said. ‘What do you need me for? Since you’ve been back on your feet, I don’t even get to hand out the painkillers. You don’t need anyone, Seb. A pair of binoculars, a jeep and the park, and your life’s complete.’ She raised her head from the pillow, looked straight into his eyes. ‘Did I forget something there? Oh, yeah, the wolves, naturally.’

  Was this tale about Todi true? Had they asked her, or had she asked them? Was she taking a break from him, or was she putting him to the test? Then again, maybe she was putting herself to the test, seeing whether she could live without him.

  He didn’t like the idea, that went without saying. Todi wasn’t Alaska, but it was a long way away, too far to drive there and back every day, and a lot of things could happen to two people in two months.

  Things had changed between them, there was no denying it, and it had all started with the ’Ndrangheta and General Corsini. She’d taken time off work after he had been shot, ready and willing to do whatever needed to be done. Sitting by his bed, running errands, paying his bills, holding his hand when the doctors took him off the morphine drip and the pain kicked in.

  He didn’t like the idea of being without Loredana.

  ‘I thought that you might run away to London again,’ she had confessed one day. ‘I mean to say, Seb, they tried to kill you, didn’t they? They could try again. And if you stay here …’

  ‘I don’t intend to run,’ he had told her. ‘Ever again.’

  ‘We could leave Umbria, go somewhere quieter.’

  Quieter than Umbria?

  He had put his hand over her mouth.

  ‘Look at me, Lori,’ he had said, seeing the fear in her eyes. ‘Listen to me. I’m not going anywhere. This is where I live. This is where I intend to stay. I’m not leaving or running away.’

  Now, the shoe was on the other foot. She was going away. She was running scared for her job. She was going to Todi. OK, in two months she’d be back, but would things still be the same between them?

  He held her wrists, raised her arms, and pushed himself inside of her.

  She let out a cry of surprise; there was fear in it, pleasure, too.

  She had turned up out of nowhere; she could disappear the same way.

  He made love to her, hard and passionately, but there was no tenderness in it.

  Like a wolf, he thought, a wolf on the run.

  A wolf that knows that time is running out.

  It’s now, or never.

  Now, or never again.

  The sense of danger excited him.

  But there was no running away from danger.

  If you ran, you were lost.

  The next day, Lori went to Todi.

  SEVEN

  Sibillines National Park, Umbria.

  ‘What do you mean, no good?’

  ‘That is not what I said, Antonio. Not positive. That’s what I said.’

  As usual, the tarot cards were laid out on the kitchen table in the form of a cross.

  As usual, Maria Gatti was sitting there in the flickering light, staring at him, her long fingernails petting the cards, making scratching noises on the wooden tabletop.

  Talk about a witch! Dyed-black hair, the grey roots showing through. Black mascara, black nail varnish, blue and red tattoos on her chest and shoulders, and that silver ring stuck in her nose. Her eyes stared out at him from deep dark caverns caked with eyeliner. It was like peering into a well, her eyes two points of light far away in the darkness.

  ‘They look … hm … real negative to me.’

  Antonio Marra was sitting in Maria Gatti’s kitchen, the room lit only by candles.

  Her spirits had led her to the farmhouse in the woods, she claimed, the spirits of the dead, though everyone knew that she’d inherited the place from her mother. He hated going up there at night, and not just because of the dead souls she said had made their home with her. It was the wolves he was frightened of, the place was so isolated. The wolves had never bothered her, she said, calling them her ‘sisters of the night’, but where did that leave him?

  As a rule, he got her to stop by the factory after the workers had all gone home.

  Today, though, he’d been in a hurry to see her.

  The deal had gone through, the finance manager telling him his credit problems were solved, something about moving forward into a new era of prosperity and tranquillity. Capaldi’s exact words: ‘The bank will be honoured to meet your every need.’

  And now Maria Gatti was telling him that the tarot cards said no?

  He ought to tell her this was the end.

  When things had been black, it had done no harm to know just how black things really were. But now? What the fuck was he doing here? Why had he asked her to read the cards for him? He hated that fucking kitchen, the mouldy smell of fry-ups and goat’s cheese. The only thing the kitchen had going for it was the lack of cats. She kept them away from the food, and there were no photos or stuffed felines to be seen in there, unlike the rest of the house.

  To think that he’d let her creep into his bed a few years back made his skin crawl.

  Jesus, had he been desperate!

  And he’d come so full of hope and light, good fortune shining on him! He’d wanted to brag a bit. He’d wanted her to confirm it, to tell him that she saw it in the stars. And what had she done? She turned over the cards and pulled a fucking face – the Hanging Man, the Moon with the howling dog and the snarling wolf, then the Tower.

  The worst of the worst.

  ‘Do you know these people?’ Maria had asked him, resting her clammy, cold hand on his, digging her nails into his skin, not letting go of him.

  ‘Who they are, you mean?’ he’d said. ‘Who the fuck cares! OK, I’ve been through some tough times. They know I need hard cash to get things back on the rails. They’re happy to invest, proud to be a part of Marra Truffles.’

  The more he talked, the angrier he got.

  With himself.

  Why waste time with the likes of Maria Gatti?

  In the end, he’d told her.

  ‘My dear Maria, I hate to say this, love, but the cards have got it wrong.’

  Maria Gatti had raised those lamps and turned her dark orbs on him.

  ‘Have they ever been wrong before, Antò?’

  When he finally got out of there, he cursed himself for wasting time and the bag of truffles he’d given her instead of paying cash. Still, he thought, as he climbed into the old Mondeo, he could afford to be generous now.

  Generous with himself, too. Yeah, why not?

  He’d call in at the Porsche dealership in Foligno before he went home and have a look at that near-new midnight blue 911 Turbo they had up on display. What a way to celebrate the comeback of Marra Truffles!

  The name on the bank draft belonged to an investor from the south with an advanced degree in agronomy, whatever that might be. Simone Candelora …

  He liked the sound of the name, and liked the healthy bank balance even better. The old nursery rhyme came into his head: ‘Con la Madonna candelora dall’inverno semo fora.’

  When Our Lady of the Candles comes …

  What was the date of the candelora, the middle of March? It meant the end of the dark days of winter, and forty days to the start of spring. Simone Candelora had brought him more candles than he could have hoped for.

  Now there’d be some bright lights for a change.

  If he put his foot down, he could be in Foligno before the dealership closed.

  EIGHT

  Sibillines National Park, Umbria.

  ‘These folks are nutters, Cangio.’

  Marzio Diamante, the senior ranger, was something of a nutter himself. As they were changing shifts at two o’clock, Marzio had told him to take a look at the abandoned church on the road out to Poggiodomo.


  ‘I stopped off there this morning,’ Marzio had said. ‘A sect’s been messing about in the chapel if you ask me. See what you make of it.’

  There was a park to look after, maintenance work that needing doing, reports of poachers out near Roccaporena, wild boar wrecking gardens and allotments down by the river, and Marzio wanted him to drive up to Poggiodomo and take a look at an abandoned church.

  He had been to Roccaporena, taken the farmer’s statement, and then he had made the circuit, stopping off at Poggiodomo on the way back to keep Marzio happy.

  He parked on the track, and walked towards the building.

  The church looked like a cowshed. If not for the tourist information sign, no one would ever have thought of stopping there. And yet, someone had been there. The heavy door had been kicked in, the lock and the bolt hanging loose, revealing a low barrel-vaulted chamber that might have held a dozen people at the most. Though the church was named after San Pancrazio in the regional guidebook, local people still called it the Sacred Image.

  If there had ever been a sacred image, it was long gone.

  Could you still call it a church?

  All that remained were four crumbling walls and a primitive fresco of the Virgin Mary which thieves had never judged worth stealing over the centuries.

  There was no saying no to Marzio, that was the trouble. Talk about stubborn. When he got something fixed in his head, there was no shaking it out again.

  He clambered over the rubble, lit his torch, then stepped inside the hovel.

  It was dark in there. Spooky, Marzio would have said. The roof was ready to come down; it was sagging badly on one side. It would fall down too, sooner or later, because no one was going to pay to restore a forgotten country chapel that hadn’t been used for centuries.

  There was a circle of stones on the ground, bits of burnt wood and dry ash.

  He picked up one of the stones, sniffed it and dropped it back inside the circle.

  Sometimes these places were used by tourists, walkers, boy scouts, sometimes tramps; people looking for a free roof over their heads for a night without any mod cons, like a bathroom or a toilet.

  Sometimes you found the evidence smeared on the walls.

  Have a look at the altar stone, Marzio had told him.

  It was dry inside the chapel, warm. There was nothing sinister about the place, though Marzio saw the sinister everywhere. He had visions of people dancing naked beneath the stars, orgies by candlelight, witches whispering magic formulas, conjuring up ghosts, sacrificing beautiful virgins on desecrated altars.

  Wishful thinking, Cangio thought.

  A bit like him and London. Marzio couldn’t get over the fact that he hated the place.

  Marzio would have given his right arm to live and work in a big city. Like a lot of people born in the country, Marzio hated the land, hated his job, though he was conscientious about it. He would hang on, doing his duty, no doubt, until he was pensionable.

  ‘You should go back to London,’ Marzio had said one day. It wasn’t that he wanted to be shut of him. He hadn’t meant to offend. It was just his way of saying things. Marzio would never imagine that you might take it badly. ‘After all the bloody fuss you caused, you’d be a celebrity in England now.’

  Cangio moved towards the altar, pointing his flashlight, holding it steady.

  Six-six-six, Marzio had said. That’s the Devil’s symbol, they say.

  He played the light all over the altar-stone, top, front, back and sides. There were squiggles and scratches, nothing he could make much sense of, apart from a heart done in charcoal around the initials PV + AT.

  What should he tell Marzio?

  Tell him the truth, obviously.

  Someone had been roasting sausages over an open fire in the church of San Pancrazio.

  What difference did it make? Orgy or sausages? Even if you caught these people, nothing would ever come of it. Marzio was right about one thing, though. If they took their clothes off in that place, they really were nutters. With all the rats, they’d catch a dose of leptospirosis.

  He left the chapel, retraced his steps, jumped into the Land Rover and swung it around.

  His shift was nearly over. Back to the ranger station, pick up the Fiat 500, and then spend an hour or two watching the wolves.

  Tomorrow he’d tell Marzio what he hadn’t found.

  NINE

  Umbria, Central Italy.

  He knew he was dreaming.

  Lori’s silhouette was moving on the ground glass screen, raising her arms as she washed her hair and soaped her breasts inside the shower. Only the splashing sound of cascading water was missing.

  It was like a silent movie, action only, a hollow vision, nothing more.

  She’d been in Todi two weeks now, and every morning he woke up in the middle of the same dream: Lori taking a shower …

  He was like one of those amputees who can’t get used to the idea that an arm or a leg has gone forever, who still feel the itch of a missing limb.

  Was that how he missed her?

  He woke up every morning in the grip of a desire to hold her, to touch her, and then a cold, metallic voice would sound in his head as the dream drew towards its close.

  Just a couple of months, Seb. A couple of months.

  The first day, he had phoned her a dozen times. The second day, half as often. It was exponential. Each day they seemed to have less to say to each other, their worlds so far apart. The last few days, it had just been text messages, and they were getting shorter and shorter.

  Are you OK?

  Busy.

  He threw off the bedclothes, swung his leg out of bed and pain bit into his thigh. The gunshot wound was taking time to heal, and Lori had left him to his fate. Rain today, he thought, and maybe thunder. It was better than a barometer, though the weather forecast the night before had been quite promising. If legs could speak, he knew what it would tell him.

  Stay in bed, Seb, make the most of your free morn—

  His telephone trilled like a grasshopper, vibrating and shifting on the bedside table.

  He groaned again, picked it up, hoping it was Lori.

  ‘Cangio? Sustrico here.’

  Tonino Sustrico, commanding officer of the carabinieri in Spoleto, had visited him in hospital and taken his statement regarding the shooting that was causing the pain in his thigh, clearly embarrassed by the fact that a fellow carabiniere had nearly let Seb Cangio bleed to death. Sustrico had come back more than once to see how he was getting on.

  ‘More papers to sign?’ Cangio asked him.

  The carabinieri general who had put Cangio’s life at risk would soon be going on trial.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with General Corsini,’ Sustrico said brusquely, and then he went quiet.

  ‘So what is this? An early wake-up call?’

  ‘There’s something I want you to see,’ the carabiniere said at last.

  ‘Do you want me to come into town this morning?’

  ‘I want you to meet me at the Vallo di Nera turn-off in fifteen minutes.’

  The phone went dead before Cangio could ask him why.

  Cangio rode north in the Fiat 500.

  There was no heating in the tiny old car which Lori’s dad had loaned him.

  The sun was coming up, promising another Indian summer day. Its rays were like a golden crown above the dark hump of Mount Coscerno, but it was freezing cold down in the valley. A light coating of October frost glistened off the black tarmac surface, so he had to take it easy. The Valnerina road was dangerous at any time of the year, weaving like a snake through the valley as it followed the winding course of the River Nera.

  Sustrico was alone in a patrol car at the Vallo di Nera turn-off, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. As Cangio pulled in behind the midnight blue Alfa Romeo 159, the carabiniere threw open the passenger door. The message was clear. Cangio cut the motor, removed the ignition key and climbed in beside the brigadiere.

  ‘What’s al
l the mystery about?’ he asked.

  Sustrico fired up the engine and pulled away sharply. ‘A body’s been found in the woods above Vallo di Nera,’ he said. ‘Two of my officers were out on night patrol, so I sent them up there immediately. Just before I called you, they’d called me back.’

  Cangio felt his blood go cold. A death in the national park was the last thing he wanted to hear about. There had been too many dead bodies in the park in the recent past.

  Sustrico took a bend too wide and the big car skidded on the gravel.

  ‘I thought the body might be yours,’ the carabiniere said.

  Cangio struggled to make sense of what he was hearing. ‘Mine?’

  ‘I mean to say, if you’ve been shot once …’

  Did that make sense to Sustrico? If there was a body in the woods, it had to be Cangio’s?

  ‘You phoned to check if I was alive or dead?’

  ‘In the first instance, yes. You know this area better than most people.’ Sustrico cleared his throat. ‘And, well … the body will need to be identified.’

  Cangio ran through the possibilities in silence. There were lots of ways to die in a national park. Poachers sometimes shot each other by mistake. People fell off mountain bikes, slipped off cliffs, capsized canoes, or waded out of their depth while fishing for trout. Sometimes people just got lost in the woods and there was no one to report them missing – old age pensioners who went out looking for mushrooms and never came back. It happened more frequently than people might imagine. In the wild, if something went wrong, you were on your own.

  ‘Where was the body found?’

  ‘Somewhere up there,’ Sustrico said, pointing his finger at the wood-covered mountain that loomed ahead of them. ‘What do they call it? Coscerno?’

  ‘Coscerno’s the next one in the range, brigadiere. This is Mount Bacugno.’

  The carabiniere didn’t have the foggiest idea where he was. He probably hadn’t been into the mountains for months or years. Maybe never. As the Alfa raced into the shadow of the cliffs, he fumbled with the headlights. The sun wouldn’t reach that side of the mountain for hours yet. Less than a kilometre beyond the town, the road rose sharply. As they rounded a bend, flashing red-and-blue lights came into sight.