Think Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  ‘Might she and Marra have met last night?’

  ‘He was dining out with those two men,’ Lucia Grossi said.

  Cangio stood up and faced her. ‘They backed him up, of course.’

  Lucia Grossi pursed her lips. ‘Naturally. Why shouldn’t they?’

  ‘She left him a voice message,’ Esposito said. ‘He played it back for us.’

  Cangio decided to push harder. ‘I bet it didn’t say much.’

  ‘Something about the tarot cards,’ the woman said. ‘She’d been reading the cards for him.’

  ‘That’s what she did for a living.’

  ‘Did she ever read the cards for you?’ Lucia Grossi asked.

  Esposito nodded in the direction of the kitchen table. ‘That’s what she was doing before someone killed her.’

  Cangio turned to look.

  A pack of cards had been loosely discarded, other cards laid out in the form of a cross, three exposed, two face down.

  ‘The cards of destiny,’ Esposito said.

  ‘She was preparing dinner,’ Lucia Grossi said. ‘One plate, one glass, one knife and fork, a glass of wine. She was treating herself to truffles, so there must be money in the job. She wasn’t afraid when someone came to the door. Whoever it was, she let the killer in.’

  ‘Maybe someone turned up out of the blue for a reading.’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘But it wasn’t Marra.’

  Grossi and Esposito replied in chorus, ‘Not Marra.’

  Which left the thug with the lizard tattoo on his neck. Or the other man.

  ‘So what can I tell you?’ Cangio asked.

  Lucia Grossi arched her eyebrows. ‘When the corpse of Marzio Diamante was found, you spoke about satanic rites and ritual sacrifices.’

  That threw Cangio for a moment.

  Where was this leading?

  ‘Like I told you, Marzio thought weird things were going on in the park.’

  The cops swapped glances.

  ‘You think this was a ritual killing?’ Cangio asked them.

  Lucia Grossi pursed her lips at him. ‘That’s what someone would like us to think.’

  Should he tell them about the murder at Soverato beach, and what he thought the two men in the car with Marra might be doing in Umbria? He dismissed the idea. He knew how these two would react if he mentioned the ’Ndrangheta. They would accuse him of trying to derail their investigation, and get himself into the news again.

  And what did he have to go on, except a tattoo of a lizard?

  Jerry Esposito turned to his partner. ‘Cangio’s a big boy. He’s been around. He’s been shot, too. He won’t faint like the lab guy did. Shall we show him what happened here last night?’

  Lucia Grossi seemed to consider it for a moment. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘If he’s so keen.’ She looked at Cangio, nodded when he did, then bent over, stretched out her hand and pulled away the green cotton sheet that was hiding the body.

  Cangio didn’t faint, but his head began to spin.

  ‘The position of the knife is odd,’ Lucia Grossi was saying. Her voice seemed to come from a long way away. ‘Vertical, you see? Driven straight through the heart. Like those wooden stakes they use to kill vampires in the movies.’

  A bread knife had been pushed deep into the body right between the breasts.

  ‘She was dead when that was planted there. The head had already …’

  Cangio blew out air and said, ‘Where is the head?’

  The two men dusting down the draining board moved aside like automatons, exposing the big stone kitchen sink, as Jerry Esposito said, ‘Go on, take a look.’

  Cangio took half a dozen paces, stared at the wall for a moment, then looked down.

  Two eyes stared glassily up at him. Maria Gatti’s severed head had been laid out like the Sunday joint before it went into the oven.

  Three tarot cards had been carefully laid around it.

  The Ace of Clubs – The Two of Cups – Death.

  ‘When we saw this set-up—’

  Lucia Grossi cut her partner off. ‘Someone wants us to believe there’s black magic and satanic evil behind what’s going on in the national park. We were hoping you might be able to explain it to us.’

  Cangio was too surprised to speak for some moments.

  ‘What can I tell you?’

  Esposito turned on him.

  ‘You could start by telling us …’

  ‘You are a person “informed of the facts,”’ Lucia Grossi cut in, ‘though you may not be aware of the full significance of the facts that you know. It’s a matter of formal procedure, Cangio. We need to question you now as a potential witness. The interview will be recorded and then transcribed. If necessary, our findings will be passed on to the investigating magistrate. As you can see, we’re going to be busy here for the rest of the day, but we’ll be expecting you tomorrow afternoon in Perugia. At two o’clock, let’s say.’

  ‘You know the address,’ Esposito said. ‘Third floor.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘Murderers!’

  The kick that hit the back of his knee could have come from a mule.

  He collapsed like an empty sack, cracking his mouth on the rim of the toilet as he went down, a molar snapping off as it hit the porcelain. He tasted blood and spat red drool into the frothy water where he’d been peeing just a minute before.

  Arriving at the factory from Maria Gatti’s, they’d pulled him out of the Mercedes and marched him into the hallway, holding him up like a drunk, or a prisoner. He’d hardly been able to stand on his own two feet.

  Rosanna had come running from behind the reception desk, making a fuss, but Simone Candelora had shrugged her off. ‘He’ll soon get over it. A bit of a shock, that’s all. A dear friend who died all of a sudden.’ Then his voice had hardened. ‘Signor Marra would like to be left in peace for a bit. Spread the word, will you?’

  Next thing, they were in the office. Him and them. No one else in the factory would know if he was dead or alive. As they sat him down on top of his desk, that was what he thought was coming next.

  They were going to snuff him.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘The bog … I need to pee.’

  The bathroom window might be his only chance to get out of there. It was a trick he’d often used before, when someone turned up unannounced to collect a debt. If he could put a bit of distance between him and them, he could call the cops he’d spoken to at Maria’s place.

  ‘Sure, go ahead,’ Candelora said, then they followed him into the toilet, stood by the door and watched him do it, so the window was a dead loss.

  ‘You ain’t pissing much for a man who’s desperate,’ Ettore sneered.

  The bastards had killed Maria. Now, they were going to kill him, too.

  That was when the first kick came.

  A second kick slammed into his kidneys as he hit the floor.

  What had they done to her?

  The carabiniere hadn’t let him see the body. All they wanted to know was why she’d left that voice message on his phone the night before. He was the last person Maria Gatti had tried to contact.

  ‘What was she trying to tell you?’ the lady copper had asked him.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ was all that he had been able to say.

  The day had started badly, Simone and Ettore waiting on the doorstep when he drove into the factory car park. Simone wanted him to go to town to sign some papers. Then his mobile had rung, he’d had to answer it, and they had heard every word.

  The carabinieri needed to speak to him immediately in Cerreto.

  ‘No problem,’ Ettore had said. ‘We’ll take you up there, then go to town later.’

  Like guard dogs, watching over him.

  They’d known what was up. It was them that had done it. Ettore probably. Not that it made much difference. Whatever Ettore did, Simone would have told him to do. They had loaded him into the car and told him what to say to the carabinieri before th
ey dropped him off near Maria’s house.

  ‘We’re customers, Antò, old friends. We’ll be waiting outside.’

  ‘Keeping an eye out for you,’ Ettore added.

  Maria had had an accident. That’s what he’d been thinking. The carabinieri wouldn’t let him into the house. Then the woman copper had told him what had happened the night before. Maria had been murdered. It had hit him like a bullet in the brain.

  Ettore had done it.

  Looking over the shoulders of the carabinieri, he could see Ettore and Simone standing by the Mercedes, watching what was going on.

  He should have told the coppers there and then that Ettore had left the restaurant early the night before. He should have shopped the bastard. It was the perfect moment. They were there, the carabinieri were there, and he’d have been pointing the finger, making the accusations.

  They used me, tricked me – killed my only friend, and probably that ranger too.

  But the cops had sent for him, not them. He was the one that they suspected. He had dithered too long, telling them about the phone message, about Maria and how long they’d known each other. Then the other thing had come back to haunt him – the séance in his office, the vision that Maria had seen.

  He couldn’t tell them about the torso Maria had conjured up.

  He couldn’t tell them about that without getting himself in the shit. He was being crushed, caught between the past and the present, the coppers asking questions about the bodies sprouting like truffles all over the place, his partners killing anyone who got in their way.

  Maria had seen this coming.

  All except the last bit, obviously.

  Or had she seen her own death in the tarot cards? Was that what she had wanted to tell him?

  The carabinieri had asked him how he knew Maria, the male cop stifling a grin at the notion of a grown man going to a woman to have his future told with playing cards.

  As the cops dismissed him, he’d been tempted again to tell them everything.

  The three of them eating barbecued pork chops at the Girarrosto the night before, him telling Simone and Ettore about Maria, the tarot cards, the future looking grim. Trying to frighten them into letting him go. Trying to make them think twice. People like them, people from the south of Italy, they believed in magic, the Evil Eye, messages from Beyond the Veil.

  They’d laughed at him, told him to grow up.

  Then Ettore had turned the Evil Eye on him. ‘You still haven’t learnt, have you? You’ve been telling her our fucking business.’

  Simone Candelora had dropped his pork chop, pinched Marra’s shirt sleeve between his thumb and forefinger, wiping off the grease and the fat, smiling all the time. ‘What’s it all about, Antò? Last time it was the dead fucking sheep. What’s the problem now?’

  ‘That dead ranger,’ he had tried to explain, ‘his body found near my land. Them other bits of bone when those sheep got massacred. Then, Maria and the tarot cards. I … well, I thought it might be bad for business.’

  ‘You think too much,’ Ettore had said.

  Then the waitress came and Simone had ordered coffee and brandy nightcaps.

  Ettore didn’t fancy anything. ‘I’m heading back to make some phone calls.’

  ‘Take the Merc,’ Simone had said. ‘Antonio here’ll give me a lift.’

  He and Simone had left the restaurant an hour later, around ten o’clock.

  Now, he knew where Ettore had gone.

  ‘You’re a pair of animals,’ he said, his mouth clogged up with blood.

  He tried to spit, but before it hit the water, Ettore was on him, grabbing him by the collar, pushing his throat down hard against the porcelain, cutting off his breath.

  ‘That mouth’ll be the end of you,’ Ettore snarled into his ear.

  ‘You two are finished. Kill me, and—’

  Ettore pushed his head deep into the bowl and flushed the toilet.

  Water filled his nose and throat, burning into his lungs. He’d paid top-notch for one of them two-speed flushes, and Ettore had hit both buttons together. The water kept on coming, and his head was blocking the exit pipe.

  Next thing, he was jerked up by the hair, gasping for breath.

  ‘That fucking witch!’ Ettore cursed. ‘Now, listen to us, you stupid fucker. We’ll tell you what to do, OK? You – understand – me?’

  His head hit the toilet bowl three times to emphasize each word.

  Then, he blanked out.

  They weren’t talking about him any longer.

  They were still standing over him, him bleeding on the bathroom floor.

  Ettore sounded tense. ‘D’you think he spotted me, Simò?’

  ‘Nah. It was over in a flash. He was too busy keeping that dinky car of his on the road. A Fiat 500? Do those things still exist?’

  Marra swallowed hard, trying not to move, trying not to attract their attention.

  ‘That lizard,’ Simone Candelora was saying. ‘It’s so fucking obvious, Ettò. You ought to get rid of it.’

  ‘All of us had one,’ Ettore said. ‘First blood, you got the lizard—’

  ‘You had the chance to do Cangio at Soverato, and you let him get away.’

  ‘The fucking Bersa jammed—’

  ‘So, what do we do about this one?’

  The question resounded with a kick in Marra’s ribs.

  Simone dropped down on his heels, stared into Antonio Marra’s eye.

  ‘You stay here this morning, feeling sick, OK, Antò? If the cops come round, you let Rosanna handle them. No visitors.’

  Ettore’s shoe dug sharply into the small of his back, as Simone stood up.

  ‘I need to pee,’ Ettore announced.

  Marra heard the swish of a zip. Then the swish of another one. ‘Me, too,’ Simone Candelora said.

  Two powerful jets, warm and stinking, streamed down on his head and shoulders. His face was running with urine. It was running with something else, too.

  Tears.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be seen in that state, would you, Ettò?’

  ‘Me, neither. He looks as though he’s pissed himself.’

  As the pissing stopped, the tears flowed faster.

  He would have given the Porsche for a clean shirt and dry trousers.

  THIRTY

  Lucia Grossi closed the file she was reading and looked up at him.

  She wasn’t wearing lipstick or her cap; her hair was tied up in a tight bun.

  Cangio wondered how to read the signs. One sign was obvious, though. She was sitting behind the desk, while Jerry Esposito perched on a chair at her side. He waved Cangio towards the only other chair in the room.

  The hot seat, Cangio told himself.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ he asked as Jerry Esposito switched on the voice recorder.

  Grossi took the lead. ‘A couple of things need clearing up, Cangio. In the initial statement you made to us in Spoleto, you suggested that Marzio Diamante was concerned about black magic and satanic rituals in the national park.’

  ‘I’ve already told you—’

  ‘Tell us again,’ Esposito said.

  He told them again about the desecrated church in Poggiodomo, trying to say neither more nor less than he had said the last time.

  ‘You didn’t tell us what you found there,’ Lucia Grossi said.

  ‘Signs of a fire. Maybe someone had been sleeping there.’

  ‘Black magic, signs of Satan?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  Lucia Grossi opened the file again and glanced at the contents.

  ‘Marzio Diamante was of a different opinion,’ she said. ‘How else would you explain the fact that he was asking people whether they had seen anything odd in the woods at night?’

  Cangio felt his blood go cold.

  Did they know about the ancient file in the bottom drawer of Marzio’s filing cabinet?

  Had Marzio submitted a copy of the report to his superiors?

  ‘It’s news to me,�
�� he said. ‘When was this? Recently?’

  ‘The day before he died,’ she said.

  That took Cangio by surprise. ‘Who did he ask?’

  Lucia Grossi picked up her notepad, flicked a couple of pages. ‘During our investigation we spoke to a man named Andrea Bottini. He runs a mink farm not far from Vallo di Nera. Do you know him?’

  Cangio shook his head. ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Marzio warned him to stay out of the woods.’

  ‘I don’t see where this is going,’ Cangio said. ‘I don’t know the man.’

  ‘Listen carefully to me, ranger Cangio,’ she said, pointing a finger at him. ‘Your partner was murdered in the woods at night, yet he told Andrea Bottini to avoid the woods at night. You prefer the night shift, you say. Did Marzio ever warn you not to go out after dark?’

  ‘No,’ Cangio admitted, ‘he never said a thing to me.’

  Grossi and her partner exchanged a look that brought a smile to Esposito’s face.

  Cangio could smell a trap, but he couldn’t see it. When wolves smell traps, they turn and run. But what was he supposed to do, leap out of the window?

  ‘And then there’s Maria Gatti,’ Jerry Esposito piped up.

  ‘I don’t follow you,’ Cangio said.

  ‘The MO says it all,’ Esposito said. ‘Black magic, ritual sacrifice. It’s got everything that Marzio Diamante was talking about.’

  ‘Everyone knew she was a medium,’ Cangio said.

  He let it hang in the air, waiting for a reaction.

  The two carabinieri didn’t react.

  They sat there, staring at him, waiting for him to go on.

  ‘Including Antonio Marra.’

  That was the moment to ask them what Marra had been doing in a car with the man with the lizard tattoo. To insist that the Calabrian mafia were tied up somehow in Marzio’s murder. They could only kick him out, or accuse him of wasting their time.

  ‘Did Marra go to Maria Gatti’s house last night? Did either of his clients? Maybe you should ask them what they did after dinner,’ Cangio went on.

  Lucia Grossi waved her hand dismissively. ‘We believe Marzio Diamante was spreading those stories for a specific purpose: frightening people away from the forest at night.’