‘Who?’
The boy sighed, and it turned into a yawn. ‘I’d prefer not to elaborate.’
There was something about this boy that made Scamarcio wonder. ‘You a good boy turned bad?’ he asked.
Claudio scratched at his nose. ‘My parents are wealthy. I was given everything, but I still managed to fuck it all up.’
‘You’ve got a serious habit then?’
‘Yep,’ said Claudio all matter-of-fact. ‘I need help.’
‘That explain why you were back playing when you were still in debt?’
‘Yep, you know how the gambler’s mind works …’
He sounded like he’d just fled therapy, thought Scamarcio. ‘Your parents talking to you at the moment?’
‘No.’
Scamarcio shook his head. He’d heard it all before. He pressed play on the phone once more, and watched as the kicking continued. One of the thugs seemed to be weighing in with considerably more gusto than the rest. As he turned his smiling mug towards the camera, Scamarcio felt the air leave his lungs.
‘You seen a ghost, Scamarcio? You don’t look too good,’ said Moia. ‘I was going to offer you this brioche, but as you’re a bit peaky, I’ll eat it myself.’
Scamarcio wasn’t listening. He recognised the grinning man. He worked for Piocosta.
20
SCAMARCIO HAD WANTED TO HEAD home early and digest what he’d just seen on the video, but a call from Manetti, the chief CSI, had forced him to scrap that idea.
‘I was just passing the squadroom, so I decided to deliver my news in person for a change.’
Scamarcio felt an irrational urge to punch him. Why couldn’t Manetti just have emailed it through, as he always did?
Manetti reached into his briefcase and pulled out a shiny A4 sheet of photographic paper. When he handed it across, Scamarcio saw the dusty outline of the imprint of a shoe.
‘What’s this?’
‘We found it on the ledge outside Gianluca Manfredi’s bathroom window.’
The desire to punch him quickly faded. ‘Nice work,’ said Scamarcio.
‘It’s from a size-43 Adidas trainer.’
‘Lucky that it’s still there after so many days.’
‘There hasn’t been any rain for nearly two weeks now.’
Manetti reached into the briefcase once more, and handed over another couple of photos. They were a wide shot and a close-up of Manfredi’s corpse on the autopsy table.
‘Mrs Manfredi had delayed the funeral, so the body was still at the funeral home. It had been nicely embalmed, but that didn’t present Dr Giangrande with too many problems. You’ll see from the photo that Manfredi has an inverted-V bruise around his neck where the noose made contact with the skin.’
‘Isn’t that what we’re supposed to see? Isn’t an inverted V the sign that he did in fact hang himself?’
‘Yes. We’re not seeing the straight-line bruising we’d normally have in a murder. Giangrande also found the customary small bleeding sites on the lips, inside the mouth and on the eyelids.’
‘Manetti, I don’t get it. You seem to be telling me that Manfredi did hang himself.’
Manetti nodded. ‘Manfredi hung, all right, but the question is, did he hang himself?’ He smiled, clearly enjoying the game. ‘It is my belief that he was pushed off a chair and made to hang.’
‘Yeah, Manetti, but you know as well as I do that pinning down that shit in court is like trying to prove the existence of God.’
‘Wrong, Scamarcio. In this case, I’ve got evidence. I found the same shoeprint on a chair in the Manfredi’s kitchen, and I’ve got DNA in the bathroom and on the chair that does not belong to Mrs Manfredi, her husband, her twins, or the cleaner who comes once a week. Apart from those people, Mrs Manfredi tells me that nobody else has visited the flat in a long time. Luckily for us, the Manfredis don’t like to entertain.’
‘Is this substantial DNA?’
‘Hair and skin.’
‘Any hits?’
‘This is where it gets weird. We got a partial match to a Calabrian low-life who died five years ago.’
‘Name?’
‘Raimondo Stasio.’
Armed with the breakthrough from Manetti, Scamarcio knocked on Garramone’s door.
When he had finished talking the boss through Manetti’s findings, Garramone smiled and said: ‘This might help my case with the penny pinchers.’
‘So we can maintain the surveillance on Stasio a while longer?’
‘Yes, but if the man’s committed murder, I’m not going to let this one play out. We need to bring him in soon.’
Scamarcio nodded, expecting as much.
‘So how do we think this feeds into the Proietti kidnapping?’ asked Garramone.
Scamarcio rubbed his nose. It was time to come clean on the ’ndrangheta angle: ‘I’m still not sure, but I do have firm evidence that Proietti had run up a significant gambling debt with the Calabrians. What side of the fence Stasio sits on is as yet unclear.’
‘So the Calabrians may have taken the Proietti family as a warning?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘And the money coming in and out of Stasio’s business?’
‘My guess is that he was cleaning up ’ndrangheta cash. But whether this arrangement was in place before or after Proietti ran up his debts, I don’t yet know for sure.’
Garramone became pensive, and a silence descended between them. ‘All this must be pretty uncomfortable for you,’ he said.
‘How do you mean?’ Scamario fired back, too defensively by far.
‘Well, I think I’m right in saying that you’ve never had a case before that touches so directly on your father’s old stamping ground.’
Scamarcio shrugged. ‘Maybe not, but perhaps this is my chance to finally prove to everyone that I’m clean.’ God, why had he said that? Was he out of his fucking mind?
Garramone shook his head and said: ‘You don’t need to prove that to me.’
Scamarcio suddenly wanted to tell Garramone everything: about the mess he was in with Piocosta; about how he couldn’t find a way out; about how every which way he turned he ran up against a wall. He wanted to unload it all, have the boss take care of everything. But instead all he said was: ‘Thank you, Sir.’
21
SCAMARCIO POURED HIMSELF A LARGE glass of Glenfiddich and finally sat down to think. So, one of Piocosta’s boys had been involved in roughing up Micky Proietti. This was significant because it told Scamarcio that Piocosta was across the ’ndrangheta’s gambling ops in the capital, on top of his other interests such as loan sharking and extortion. Up until now, Scamarcio had never really thought too hard about Piocosta’s current role in the organisation. He had always viewed him through the framework of the past: when Scamarcio’s father was capo, Piocosta had been his general, his capo crimine, and had been responsible for running the locale’s criminal activities. In some ways he was like a minister of war or a minister of defence. When Piocosta had showed up in Rome, it meant that he had moved higher up the ranks, but Scamarcio had still tended to see him as a San Alberto native made good, dispatched to oversee aspects of the clan’s business interests in the capital. But Piocosta was across far too many things lately. He seemed to be travelling a lot between Rome and Calabria’s regional capital, Catanzaro. He’d also mentioned recently that he had been ‘abroad’, and that he had had to take an early-morning flight to get back to Rome. There were a few places he might have been, but Scamarcio’s guess would be Germany. He knew that the locale Piocosta and his father had run had sown its influence through a series of small towns in Baden Würtemburg, thanks to other family members who had emigrated there and set up front businesses, such as pizzerias and bars, ideal for disguising the far more lucrative trade of drug dealing and money laundering.
All this travel of Piocosta’s was making Scamarcio wonder quite how influential he had become. Rather than being responsible for one aspect of the clan’s dealings in the capital, was Piocosta in fact responsible for all of it? Had he scrambled his way to the very top? When Scamarcio’s father had been gunned down on the steps of his villa twenty years ago, a new capo bastone had stepped in, and Piocosta had been pushed aside because he did not enjoy the same close relationship with the new boss. As a result, Scamarcio had presumed that Piocosta had remained somewhat in the shadows until he had resurfaced almost twenty years later and worked hard to convince Scamarcio to return to his roots. Until now, Scamarcio had been too absorbed considering his own position. But now, understanding exactly how Piocosta fitted in to the ’ndrangheta matrix seemed of urgent importance. If Piocosta had risen up through the ranks and was now running the show in Rome, Scamarcio was in fatal trouble. If Piocosta presided over the usual web of contacts of a big-time boss, that could quickly prove catastrophic. Scamarcio thought about Piocosta’s constant commute between Rome and Catanzaro; about the huge river of public money that flowed that course; about the powerful politicians the ’ndrangheta held in their pockets. Scamarcio knew now that he had been blind and perhaps suicidally stupid. If he was as powerful as Scamarcio now suspected, Piocosta could end his police career with a snap of the fingers.
Scamarcio took a Marlboro from a fresh packet on the table, and lit up. He needed to find out exactly what Piocosta had become. But this wasn’t the kind of information he could get on the street; neither was it the sort of question he wanted to raise with the Anti-Mafia squad. With his history, it was wise to stay below the radar. A realisation was starting to dawn, but it was troubling and deeply unwelcome: if he analysed his situation coldly, stripping away all emotion, it seemed as if there was only one real option left: he would need to travel south, back to the heart of the beast. He would need to visit people he hadn’t spoken to for years, people he’d hoped never to see again.
Scamarcio was the black sheep, the one who had been bold enough or crazy enough to reject his inherited position. Unlike his cousins who, suited and booted, had taken the business across borders, witnessing the murder of his father had made him want to take a different path, and, while she was alive, his mother had done all she could to make sure he kept to it. Scamarcio thought of her and the debt he owed her. He needed to finally shake himself free of Piocosta; he needed to start building the kind of life his mother had tried so hard to give him.
He was about to turn in for the night when Garramone called. ‘We’ve got something from Stasio,’ was his opener.
‘What kind of something?’
‘Want to come and listen?’
When Scamarcio arrived at the squadroom, Garramone was the only one there.
‘Things kicking off?’ Scamarcio asked.
‘I’ve got every man out,’ said the boss, taking a large slug of coffee. ‘And I don’t have enough to cover all that’s coming in. The budget tightening is going to turn parts of Rome into no-go areas.’
Certain suburbs are already there, thought Scamarcio. ‘I thought you were off that stuff,’ he said, motioning to the cup in Garramone’s hand.
‘I told the wife to forget it.’
Scamarcio had a feeling she probably didn’t know. ‘So, Stasio?’
Garramone leaned over his computer monitor and fiddled with the mouse. ‘This audio has just arrived,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll agree that it’s a nice piece of work.’
Garramone clicked the mouse a few times, and a strong Calabrian accent came through. The recording was crystal-clear.
‘I’m doing all I can to contain this mess,’ the Calabrian was saying. ‘But you need to accept that you’ve fucked up.’
‘What do you expect? They’ve got my wife and son — your sister and nephew, in case you’ve forgotten.’ It was Proietti. His voice was hoarse, as if he had been shouting moments before.
‘But why didn’t you come to me? That would have been the logical thing to do.’
‘Christ, Davide, we’ve been through this a million times. They’d bloody run us off the road, and my boy had broken his arm. Then when I get to the hospital, they weren’t there. What the hell would you have done in my position?’
‘I’d have stopped and thought, Micky. Where I come from, you think first and act later. And you don’t get the pigs involved.’
Proietti said nothing.
‘You’ve turned a small problem into one huge fucking problem.’
Scamarcio heard Stasio suck in air, then exhale loudly. Smoking, probably.
‘A small problem?’ You call the kidnapping of my family a small problem?’
Stasio was breathing more heavily now, and seemed to step closer to the mike. ‘Micky, I’ve got a good mind to resolve this once and for all.’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ Then, after a beat: ‘You don’t scare me, Davide; you never have.’ Proietti sounded as if he’d been drinking again. ‘That approach might work for you down south, but you can lose it up here. This is where civilisation begins, in case you hadn’t realised, you illiterate cunt.’
Scamarcio grimaced and exchanged glances with Garramone. Did Proietti have a deathwish? He continued with the kamikaze insults: ‘You’re nothing but a hulking ape. Your fists almost scrape the pavement. How you and Maia can be related, I have no idea. I wish I’d never met you. You’ve brought me nothing but misery, you filthy peasant.’
Scamarcio felt a wave of heat push up along his thorax. He didn’t like Proietti, but he didn’t want to hear him die. But Garramone would have told him if that had happened, surely …
Stasio had fallen silent. When he did finally respond, he sounded disquietingly calm. ‘You know what, Micky, I’m sick of running behind you all the time, cleaning up your shit. I wash my hands of you. Maia was a fool. She should have stayed with her real family, where there were people who would have taken proper care of her. As for the Manfredi fuck-up, you’re on your own.’
It was Proietti’s turn to fall silent. ‘What Manfredi fuck-up?’ he asked eventually, his voice suddenly small and quiet. For the first time, Scamarcio heard real fear.
‘You’d screwed up, as usual.’
‘He owed me money!’
‘You should have just let it go.’
‘How could I?’
‘But couldn’t you have thought it through? If you back a bastard like that into the corner, he’s going to use whatever he has on you. You needed to think first, think.’ Stasio fell silent, and Scamarcio imagined him drumming his temple.
‘But Manfredi killed himself …’ Proietti’s voice sounded even more fragile now. It was a child’s voice — a child who had never properly become a man, thought Scamarcio.
‘Manfredi killed himself …’ Stasio mimicked, exaggeratedly high. ‘Your parents might have made sure you never had to grow a backbone, but you sure as hell need one now. You’re about to be eaten alive, Micky.’
‘I never asked you to do anything about Manfredi,’ Proietti said slowly. He was working it out now, seeing it in all its horror.
‘You’d been whingeing about him for weeks.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m not saying anything. But from where I come from, it doesn’t always work to just stroll over there for a friendly chat; to ask someone to be a gentleman and just forget an entire conversation. Especially when you have no money to offer them because your fuck-up of a brother-in-law has made it all disappear.’
Was Stasio admitting to killing Manfredi? And what was that about the money? Scamarcio wondered. Was he saying that Proietti had gambled it all away, or was Stasio referring to something else? Scamarcio glanced at Garramone, but the boss was staring at the wall, apparently deep in thought.
For a few moments, all Scamarcio could hear on the recording was faint s
tatic, then Stasio finally spoke. ‘Micky,’ he said, his tone more conciliatory now. ‘Take a breath, keep your head; stay clear of the police.’
‘How can I stay clear of them? They’re in my apartment 24 hours a day.’
‘Just don’t tell them anything, Micky,’ Stasio sighed. ‘I have this under control. We’ll get Maia and Antonio back. I’ve got people on the ground who’ll make sure of it.’
‘Yeah, but what can we give them in return?’
‘I’ve got a plan, Micky,’ said Stasio. ‘But because I can’t trust you not to open your mouth, I won’t be sharing it.’
‘Davide, for God’s sake!’
‘Shut the fuck up, Micky,’ screamed Stasio, his rage spilling out of the computer and filling the room.
Garramone leaned forward and clicked the mouse.
‘Is Proietti still alive?’ Scamarcio asked. ‘Stasio sounds like he’s about to kill him.’
‘Don’t all Calabrians sound like that?’
When Scamarcio failed to reply, Garramone confirmed: ‘Yes, he’s back in the flat.’
‘So, what now? It looks like Stasio killed the culture secretary.’
‘Yes, but that audio could be interpreted either way. We could haul him in on suspicion, but that’s a long shot. The alternative is to let it evolve a while longer.’
‘But we’ve got the DNA partial.’
‘The prosecutor thinks we could do with a bit more.’
‘Jesus, what do they want — a signed confession?’
‘You know what they’re like. So do we let it play out?’
Scamarcio sighed. ‘I guess. We’ve got nothing from CCTV that helps us locate that family. I suppose that if we bring Stasio in, we’re going to shut our only window into Proietti’s life, because Proietti sure as hell ain’t talking. We need to know what Stasio knows, and the only way to do that is to keep him on the outside.’
‘I thought you’d say that.’
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