box of Mantega’s villa. It was unstamped and addressed only with his name. The note inside, printed by a typewriter in block capitals, gave detailed instructions to be followed in the event that meeting in person proved to be necessary. Mantega had followed these to the letter, and Giorgio had duly shown up at the designated station on the secondary line to Catanzaro.
So far so good, but since then nothing had gone according to plan. Mantega had expected a warm welcome from his associate, a rapid update on the latest developments regarding both of them, followed by a discussion of the most appropriate means to bring their joint enterprise to fruition. None of that. Giorgio had remained silent and glacially cold throughout the twenty-minute drive to the ruin where they now were, and had offered absolutely no explanation for having insisted on the meeting in the first place.
‘We’ll talk once we get there,’ was all he would say.
As he watched his host return, carrying two tumblers full of some colourless liquid, it occurred to Mantega that an important component of the primitive terror which had him in his grip was that Giorgio appeared physically different. He was still the same wiry weasel of a man, as thin and heavy as a sheet of beaten lead, but his movements had lost their fluidity, their naturalezza. He bristled with suppressed tension, and the hand that offered Mantega his glass of grappa might have been robotic.
‘ Salute.’
Neither man wanted to drink. Both did. Once this ceremony had been concluded, Mantega waited for Giorgio to get to the point. He felt sure that Peter Newman was being held near by, possibly even in the cellarage of the barn, and was anxious to discuss the ways and means for his release and their payment by the son. But Giorgio didn’t seem to want to discuss anything. He just stood there, his back to the light, eyes focused on nothing within view, listening intently to the silence between them. Eventually Mantega could stand it no longer.
‘I’ve been under a lot of pressure, you know!’
Giorgio moved his eyes, though not his head, and regarded him for a moment dispassionately.
‘From the police, as a matter of fact,’ Mantega continued with a hint of sarcastic emphasis. ‘This outsider that they’ve brought in as a temporary replacement for Rossi seems determined to make his mark at my expense. He gave me a very unpleasant grilling yesterday, and seems to regard me as a probable accessory both before and after the fact.’
Still Giorgio said nothing.
‘Rossi couldn’t be bought, but he’d grown lazy,’ Mantega went on. ‘The new man has a quite different approach. He’s given the case top priority, is heading the investigation in person and, since the victim is a prominent foreign citizen, he’s getting full cooperation from his superiors and the judiciary. I therefore have to assume that all my phones, both at home and at work, are being tapped. I may even be under surveillance.’
‘You are.’
Mantega’s relief at having finally made the other man say something was undermined by what he had in fact said.
‘How do you know?’
Giorgio put his glass in his pocket and lit a small cigar.
‘Don’t worry, it’s all part of the price of doing business,’ he replied.
‘That’s all very well for you to say! You’re not under suspicion. How could you be when there’s absolutely nothing to link you to the American? Anyway, as I told you last night, Newman’s son has arrived, so let’s get down to this business of yours. That call was from a public phone box, incidentally, with a tramp passed out in a doorway on one side of me and a violent outburst of road rage on the other. I don’t want to live like this, Giorgio, so let’s stop pissing around and get down to negotiating.’
Giorgio plucked the cigar from between his lips and exhaled a dense cloud of smoke. Then he smiled. When Giorgio smiled, you knew that the news was really, really bad.
‘Negotiating what?’
Too late, Mantega sensed that he was on a steep, slippery slope with nothing left to do but slither down as best he could.
‘For Christ’s sake, Giorgio! The money angle. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to see my share of the profits sooner rather than later.’
‘For doing what?’
He can’t be planning to stiff me, thought Mantega, but in his heart he knew that Giorgio could and that there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
‘We had an agreement, Giorgio!’
‘Have you a copy with you?’
‘You gave me your word! We embraced and kissed!’
‘And what did you do for me?’
Mantega flung his arms wide.
‘What did I do?’ he repeated dramatically. ‘The whole thing was my idea! You would never even have known about this rich American if it hadn’t been for me.’
‘You told me he was Calabrian. A Calopezzati.’
‘Who cares who he is? He’s rich and he’s here, totally out of his depth and all alone. I marked him down for you and arranged for him to visit me that evening so that you could take him. Without me, none of this would have been possible! You can’t deny that.’
Giorgio bent down to stub out his cigar, then placed the butt carefully in his pocket.
‘Let’s have another drink,’ he said.
‘I don’t want your damned drink, I want my money!’
But Giorgio had once again vanished into the dark recesses of the barn. A few moments later he returned, bottle in hand.
‘Give me your glass,’ he said.
‘I don’t want a drink!’
Giorgio stood quite still. He allowed the silence to reform and listened to it attentively for a while.
‘Neither do I.’
In one motion, he swivelled round and hurled the bottle of grappa against the wall. Sensing that he was in great danger, Mantega did not move or speak. Giorgio reached into his jacket pocket and handed out a bundle of fifty-euro notes.
‘What’s this?’ Mantega asked.
‘Your fee.’
‘My agreed fee was ten per cent of the ransom, Giorgio. We haven’t even started negotiating yet. How can you possibly know how much the family will end up paying?’
‘There won’t be any negotiations. You get a kill fee of a thousand. Take it.’
‘What do you mean, no negotiations? What’s happened? What’s going on?’
‘At the back of the barn you’ll find an old Vespa. Full tank, key in the ignition. Turn right when you reach the road, then left at the next junction. After that follow the signs for Cosenza. Dump the scooter in the outskirts and take a bus into town.’
There was a long silence.
‘And Newman?’ asked Mantega.
‘He died.’
The two men stared at each other.
‘What?’ Mantega shouted. ‘You let your hostage die and now you expect to buy me off with a lousy thousand euros? You must be crazy!’
Giorgio unhooked the torch from its support.
‘Let me show you how crazy I am.’
He shone the stark beam up and to one side, coming to rest on one of the transverse timbers supporting the roof. Attached to the side of the joist was a silver box terminating in a glittering glass eye.
‘Digital camcorder,’ said Giorgio. ‘I switched it on by remote control when I fetched the grappa and off again when I went back for the bottle. One of my cumpagni fixed it up for me, as well as the wire to hang up the torch that would draw you into its field of view.’
He shone the light straight into Mantega’s face, blinding him.
