‘And you think my husband planned all this?’
‘I certainly think he is capable of it.’
‘That is an evasive answer, Commissioner. My husband has so many enemies. Some of them very close. I am still trying to see how my phone call last night to Arconti is supposed to be connected to all this that went before — and to your presence here in my kitchen.’
‘Months ago, Arconti phoned you, and you refused to answer his questions. Do you remember that?’
She nodded.
‘Someone altered the transcript of that call to make it sound like you had made a willing confession. The idea was to force your husband to intervene, to get him into the open, and maybe even to force him to break with the Society.’
‘What Society? Are you implying organized crime? And what sort of evil person would risk the life of a mother and her two children on the strength of a mere suspicion, a misplaced one at that?’ she said, looking straight at him.
Blume returned the gaze. ‘What sort of sick community do you live in where the life of a mother and her children would be at risk because she had spoken to a magistrate of the Republic? What sort of evil peasant culture have you chosen? And don’t deny that you chose it.’
‘My call yesterday was a moment of weakness. That can be suppressed and forgiven. It can be made to have never happened. What I want to know is what sort of person altered my conversation with the magistrate… Hush!’
Blume listened, and heard nothing. He was about to speak when she held up a warning finger and he heard the sound of an infant making a few practice sounds like little coughs, a clearing of the air passages in preparation for the bawling phase, which began almost immediately.
‘He wakes up hungry,’ she said and slipped quickly out of the kitchen, leaving the door ajar, her footsteps thudding quickly up the short flight of stairs.
The speed with which the infant’s cries filled with desperation was remarkable, as was the immediacy with which his lament turned into contented burbles as he was picked up. Blume could hear the mother softly talking and comforting the child as she made her way downstairs again. She stood outside the door for a moment, muttering something to the baby. He heard another voice, presumably the elder boy.
She opened the kitchen door slowly, still leaving it open. Framed in the doorway, cradling the baby, she was a lovely sight, and her expression still seemed tender and comforting as she looked up from the child’s face and across the kitchen at him, but there was an expression of alarm there, too.
‘I see you haven’t moved, Commissioner,’ she said. Then, instead of taking a step forward, towards him and the table, she stepped aside, and pulled the baby up to her shoulder protectively cupping the back of its head, while she pressed it against herself and squeezed her eyes shut. Blume was still smiling at her when a dark shape he had begun to pick up in the corner of his eye came through the door at speed, seeming to grow in size as it moved. The figure moved across the narrow space that separated them, holding a black pistol at the end of an outstretched arm as if it were a smoking pan he intended to dispose of.
Agazio Curmaci merely clicked his tongue twice in rapid warning as Blume’s hand reached across his stomach towards his side holster, then he hit Blume’s forehead hard with the barrel of the pistol and even then continued advancing, forcing Blume’s head back and finally toppling him off the chair. Another person appeared, a hefty ageing man in heavy trousers, a filthy shirt and an incongruous red silk handkerchief knitted around his throat. He, too, was holding a weapon, a massive old shotgun, probably legally owned since its ends were not sawn off and he was clearly some sort of peasant hunter. It was characteristic of the Ndrangheta to use buckshot and to aim for the face. Blume was so intent on looking up the barrels of the shotgun and waiting for the flash, the pain and the eternal darkness afterwards that he hardly noticed as Curmaci squatted down and disarmed him. Curmaci patted his hands up and down his body looking for other weapons. He found and confiscated Blume’s mobile phone.
‘OK, you can stand. We’re leaving here,’ said Curmaci. He was different in the flesh from the photos Blume had seen in Arconti’s office. For a start, he had aged and gained in girth. In the photos, he had been scowling or tight-lipped, but from up close, despite the circumstances, he seemed to have an open face and a ready smile. He came across as likeable, solid, frank, dependable.
Blume got to his feet. The shotgun man, who stank of game and meat, grabbed the back of Blume’s filthy jacket, bunching it up, and marched him past the doorway where Maria Itria stood, one child still in her arms, the older wordless child standing beside her, his arm around her waist either seeking or giving comfort.
‘Was your husband here all the time?’ said Blume as he passed her. It was the only question that came to mind, or the only question he could ask without feeling completely foolish in the eyes of this woman. He was concerned not to cut too bad a figure in front of her, even though he might be dead within minutes.
‘No, I was out on business, Commissioner,’ replied Curmaci, answering on his wife’s behalf. ‘I got a call.’
‘Who called? No one knew I was…’ Blume saw the bright blue eyes of the boy looking unblinkingly at him.
‘Here, Ruggiero,’ said Curmaci, tossing Blume’s mobile phone into the boy’s hand. ‘Get rid of this, and destroy it completely. Not here. It can’t go offline at this address. Can I trust you to do this?’
‘Yes, Dad. You can always trust me.’
‘I know I can, son.’
The look on the boy’s face as Blume filed past was of ecstatic pride.
47
Ardore, Locride area
The stinking man with the shotgun tied Blume’s wrists behind his back, but did not show much interest or skill in the task, simply wrapping the cord casually like he was trussing a chicken. Blume felt the knot loosen almost immediately.
They bundled him into a car, a small Fiat Ritmo from the 1980s that seemed to be made of tin. The stinking giant drove. Blume sat in the back, Curmaci beside him looking pensively out the window, like he was a train passenger keen not to enter into conversation. Blume could almost sympathize given the state of his clothes and skin, and the sour stench of soot he could smell coming from himself. Curmaci was casually but immaculately dressed in a Zenga polo shirt with stripes so narrow they could only be seen close up, an elegant pair of lemon-yellow slacks, slip-on moccasins, a pair of designer sunglasses tucked between the buttons on his shirt. His hair seemed to have been cut an hour ago, so precise was the razor and scissor line above his ear. Where it swept elegantly down towards the back of his head, Blume could see individual strands of white. He wondered if Curmaci was aware of them, and if they bothered him. Blume had been rather pleased with his first white hairs, but disliked the emergent salt-and-pepper look he now had.
They were headed inland and upwards again, though not on the same road Blume had come from. Either the car had only one gear or the moron driving did not know what the clutch was for, but after half an hour, the constant screaming of the engine being forced to do everything in second was beginning to weigh more heavily upon Blume’s mind than the thought of his own imminent death. And now the driver seemed to forget how to steer. Instead of following the curve of the narrow road, he drove straight at a shiny green bush of buckthorn and myrtle. Blume braced for impact, but they were already through what had been no more than a curtain and, in fact, were still on a road hardly any worse than the one they had left. As they came to a downward slope, the driver finally stopped gunning the overworked engine and allowed the car to freewheel. Blume tried to grip the seat with the back of his tied hands, but was quickly jolted sideways, banging his ear against the window. As the car hit a ditch and bounced out again, he experienced a moment of zero gravity that ended when his forehead hit the back of the driver’s skull. He was almost knocked unconscious, but the driver growled and swatted blindly at the back of his head and neck as if he had been attacked by a mosquito. For the next fifteen minutes, they continued like that, up and down fields, and Blume concentrated on bracing his legs and not biting his tongue. Finally, they stopped at the bottom of a valley next to a clump of oaks.