Breathing through his nose to keep calm, resisting the temptation to open his mouth and gulp down extra oxygen because he knew panic would set in if that failed to work, he allowed the sloping roof to push him closer and closer to the floor. There was no light, no sign of anyone before him or behind him, and the only sound was his own breathing and grunts. The rocky roof now came so low that he was forced on to his hands and knees. To calm himself, he started counting backwards, randomly choosing seventeen as the starting point, and subtracting one number for every two shuffles forward of his knees. If he reached zero and the tunnel had not widened — he did not want to think about it. Maybe he should have started at thirty. His forehead hit a wall of stone.
‘Oh Christ.’ Being killed in the open air with the sound of the gunshot racing across the open waters of the lake was what he had wanted, not this. He was at a dead end. Although impossible to do so, he must somehow have taken a wrong turn. He pushed himself backwards, and his knees became wedged against each other, and the walls of the tunnel pushed slowly in, he could feel them moving.
Stuck! Like a rat in a sealed pipe. He could not go backwards!
Without his mind having anything to do with it, his mouth opened in a moan. Then something pushed at him from behind. It was the animal with the shotgun, which meant that he had not taken a wrong turning, but this was worse, for now he would be pushed and crushed against the rock face by the oversized brute to his rear. Blume’s mouth opened again, and this time he tasted the slight movement of air from in front of him. Where had Curmaci gone? He understood his forehead had hit a ledge, not a full wall, and that the air and now also a sheen were coming from directly in front of him, where Curmaci was using his telephone to light his way. He ducked his head below the ledge, and plunged in, resolving to bludgeon himself to death against the sides if he became stuck. He squeezed deeper in, and found he could no longer lift his legs high enough to give his feet purchase. Using his stomach muscles, he wriggled forwards, stretched out his arms, and dug his fingers into the hard ground. Finding a little bit of lateral space, he started using his arms and shoulders in a sort of swimming stroke, and effected an agonizing front crawl.
He’d dragged himself a body’s length along the ground when his hand touched something hard, metallic, and familiar. It was his Beretta. He knew it at once, like a neglected old friend. The nicks and imperfections on the grip, the tiny chip out of the hammer, the stickiness of the release catch, now on. It must have dropped out of Curmaci’s pocket. Almost without thinking, he scooped it into his hand, even though it impeded his movements. Curmaci would no doubt have noticed and would be waiting at the end of the tunnel, but even so it felt like a providential gift. Even better, the collapsed section of the tunnel was over. The cavern opened upwards and outwards, suddenly becoming a spacious chamber in which he could stand up. In front of him was a metal door with a sliding bolt like the one to the communal roof of his apartment in Rome, and behind that a larger room where white LED-bulb lanterns were hanging. He saw all this with absolute clarity after the darkness of the tunnel.
He walked into the cavernous space, tucking his Beretta into the back of his waistband under his shirt.
Curmaci was waiting for him, but at a distance, and half hidden behind a rock. Already he could hear Curmaci’s henchman wheezing and cursing as he emerged from the tunnel. It must have been even tighter for him.
‘It’s a limestone cave, ten or twelve metres high at the centre, shaped like a big tent. Most of the tunnel into it was already there,’ said Curmaci, switching on another lamp and lifting it up to reveal the last corner of the room with a camp bed and neatly folded blankets. The room contained piles of old newspapers, what seemed like a complete collection of Dylan Dog comics, chipped mugs, plates, a few food cans with faded labels. A bench-chair was fashioned from fruit crates, and was placed in front of a truncated section of a single log of heavy wood that served as a table.
‘The door and that log are far too big. How did they get down the tunnel?’
Curmaci shrugged. ‘Why do you care, Commissioner?’
‘Everything needs a logical explanation.’
‘I don’t agree,’ said Curmaci.
‘But the metal door…’
‘Shh!’ said Curmaci. ‘Listen, this place has running water. You can hear it.’
A creaking sound of reluctant water came from the back of the cavern.
‘It takes a while to fill a cup, but you just leave one there. Basile stayed here for eight months once, during the Second Mafia War, venturing out only at night. But maybe you don’t even know who Basile is?’
Blume shook his head. How had Curmaci failed to noticed the missing pistol? Behind him, smelling even worse than before, stood Pietro, shotgun pointed straight at him. All that bulk and a shotgun through the narrow tunnel. It was an unwelcome marvel to see him here.
Curmaci inclined his head in the direction of the corner of the cavern, and Pietro waved the gun in Blume’s face and, finally, verbalized the death sentence. ‘Over there, into the corner.’
‘This also doesn’t make sense,’ Blume said over his shoulder to Curmaci, pleased to hear that the cavern deepened and echoed his voice, removing the tremor of fear he could feel in his chest. ‘All the way down here just to shoot me.’
‘That’s what Pietro said, too, but it does make sense. You’ll see in a minute, won’t he, Pietro?’
‘If you say so,’ said Pietro.
‘I do say so, and that should be good enough for both of you.’
‘What happened to Konrad Hoffmann?’ said Blume.
‘My idea for Hoffmann,’ said Curmaci, ‘though I need to check the logistics of this, is to ship what’s left of him back to Germany, throw the pieces into the same sewage pipes into which they poured his girlfriend all those years ago. What do you think, Blume? Will I make all that effort and run the risk of detection just so as to lay the grounds for an ironic story that I could tell to myself and two, three other people at most?’
‘I think you might.’
‘Is that how you see me? OK, Pietro, do your stuff.’
Blume moved back into the depths of the cavern in the direction of the water, drawn there by thirst as much as anything. Pietro came up behind him. Just as it was becoming too dark to see, Blume stopped dead, causing Pietro to lumber into him. Pietro stood back and aimed a vicious kick at the small of his back.
The kick was hard and sent him lurching forwards, but he exaggerated his fall. The floor was irregular and jagged, and he took his full weight on his left hand as he went down, but in his right he had the Beretta, and as the shotgun appeared over him, Blume fired directly into the space where Pietro’s stupid face should be, realizing as he did so that this was the first time he had ever killed a man, and surprised at how quick it was, and how easy. His would-be assassin did manage to utter a half-shout half a second after the gunshot. The acoustics of the cave seemed to combine the two sounds into a single angry roar that ricocheted off the walls, and returned with renewed vigour just as Pietro’s body hit the floor. Even his going down worked out nicely. He fell neither forwards nor backwards but crumpled in on himself, like a smokestack being demolished by expert engineers. After the gunshot and shout, the flop of his body on the stone was like a whisper.