'It is the P38, Claudio. The weapon of the fighters of the NAP.
It is loaded and I have only to draw back the trigger. Only to do that and you are dead, and rotting and fly- infested. Am I clear, Claudio?'
The boy could not recognize himself, could not recognize the strength of his grip upon the gun.
' It is the P38. Many have died by this gun. There would be no hesitation, not in sending a Calabrian pig to his earth hole.'
'What do you want?'
' I want an answer.'
'Don't play with me, boy.'
'If I want to play with you, Claudio, then I will do so. If I want to tease you, then I will. If I want to hurt you, then you cannot protect yourself. You have nothing but the information that I want from you. Give it me and you live. It is that or the P38.'
The boy watched the man strain in the night stillness for a vibration of life from the building, ears cocked for something that might give him hope of rescue, and saw the dumb collapse at the realization that the pensione slept cloaked in night. The big body crumbled back flat on to the bed as if defeated and the coiled springs tolled under the mattress.
'What do you want?'
He is ready, thought Giancarlo, as ready as he will ever be.
' I want to know where the man is hidden that was taken this morning.' The message came in a flurry, as a transitory shower of snow falls on the high places of the Apennines, quick and brisk and blanketing. 'If you want to live, Claudio, you must tell me where to find him.'
Easier now for Claudio. Easier because there was something that he could bite at. Half a smile on his face, because the drink was still with him and he lacked the control to hide the first, frail amusement.
'How would I know that?'
'You will know it. Because if you do not you will die.*
' I am not told such things.'
'Then you are dead, Claudio. Dead because you are stupid, dead because you did not know.'
From the toes of his feet, moving with the swaying speed of the snake, Giancarlo rocked forward, never losing the balance that was perfect and symmetrical. His right arm lunged, blurred in its aggression till the foresight of the gun was against the man's ear.
Momentarily it rested there, then raked back across the fear-driven, quivering face and the sharp needle of the sight gouged a ribbon welt through the jungle of bristle and hair. Claudio snatched at the gun, and grasped only at the air and was late and defeated while the blood welled and spilled from the road hewn across his cheek.
'Do not die from stupidity and idiocy, Claudio. Do not die because you failed to understand that I am no longer the child who was protected in the Queen of Heaven. Tell me where they took the man. Tell me.' The demand for an answer, harsh and compelling, winning through the exhaustion and the drink, abetted by the blood trickle beneath the man's hand.
'They do not tell me such things.'
'Inadequate, Claudio… to save yourself.'
' I don't know. In God's name I don't know.'
Giancarlo saw the struggle for survival, the two extremes of the pendulum. If he spoke now the immediate risk to the pig's life would be removed, to be replaced in the fullness of time by the threat of the retribution that the organization would bring down on his dulled head should betrayal be his temporary salvation.
The boy sensed the conflict, the alternating fortunes of the two armies waging war in the man's mind.
'Then in your ignorance you die.'
Noisily because it was not a refined mechanism, Giancarlo drew back with his thumb the hammer of the pistol. It reverberated around the room, a sound that was sinister, irretrievable.
Claudio was half up on the bed, pushed from his elbows, his hand flown from the wound. Eyes, saucer-large and peering into the dimness, perspiration in bright rivers on his forehead. Dismal and pathetic and beaten, his attention committed to the rigid, unmoving barrel aimed at the centre of his ribcage.
'They will have taken him to the Mezzo Giorno,' Claudio whispered his response, the man who is behind the velvet curtain of the confessional and who has much to tell the Father and is afraid lest any other should hear his words.
'The Mezzo Giorno is half the country. Where in the south has he gone?'
Giancarlo pickaxed into the strata of the man. Domineering.
Holding in his cage the trapped rat, and offering it as yet no escape.
'They will have gone to the Aspromonte..
'The Aspromonte stretch a hundred kilometres across Calabria.
What will you have me do? Walk the length of them and shout and call and search in each farmhouse, each barn, each cave?
You do not satisfy me, Claudio.' Spoken with the chill and deep cold of the ice on the hills in winter.
'We are a family in the Aspromonte. There are many of us.
Some do one part of it, others take different work in the business.
They sent me to Rome to take him. There was a cousin and a nephew of the cousin that were to drive him to the Aspromonte where he would be held. There is another who will guard h i m..
'Where will they guard him?' The gun, hammer arched, inched closer to Claudio's head.
'God's truth, on the Soul of the Virgin, I do not know where they will hold him.'
The boy saw the despair written boldly, sensed that he was prising open the area of truth. 'Who is the man that will guard him?' The first minimal trace of kindness in the boy's voice.
'He is the brother of my wife. He is Alberto Sammartino.'
'Where does he live?'
'On the Acquaro road and near to Cosoleto.'
' I do not know those names.'
' It is the big road that comes into the mountains from Sinopli and that runs on towards Delianuova. Between Acquaro and Cosoleto is one kilometre. There is an olive orchard on the left side, about four hundred metres from Cosoleto, where the road begins to climb to the village. You will see the house set back from the road, there are many dogs there and some sheep. Once the house was white. His car is yellow, an Alfa. If you go there you will find him.'
'And he will be guarding the Englishman?'
'That was what had been arranged.'
'Perhaps you try only to trick me.'
'On the Virgin, I swear it.'
'You are a pig, Claudio. A snivelling coward pig. You swear on the Virgin and you betray the family of your wife, and you tell all to a boy. In the NAP we would die rather than leave our friends.'
'What will you do with me now?' A whipped dog, one that does not know whether its punishment is completed, whether it is still possible to regain affection. On a lower floor a lavatory flushed.
' I will tie you up and I will leave you here.' The automatic response. 'Turn over to your face on the pillow. Your hands behind your back.'
Giancarlo watched the man curl himself to his stomach. In his vision for a moment was the shamed grin of self-preservation on Claudio's face because he had won through with nothing more than a scratch across his cheek. Gone then, lost in the pillow and its grease coat.
When the man was still, Giancarlo moved quickly forward.
Poised himself, stiffened his muscles. He swung down the handle of the pistol with all his resources of strength on to the sun-darkened balding patch at the apex of Claudio's skull. One desperate rearing convulsion that caused the boy to adjust his aim. The breaking of eggs, the shrieking of the bedsprings and the tremor of breathing that has lost its pattern and will fade.
Giancarlo stepped back. An aching silence encircled him as he listened. Not the creak of a floorboard, not the pressure of a foot on a staircase step. All in their beds and tangled with their whores and boys. Blood on the wall behind the bed, spattered as if the molecules had parted on an explosive impact, was running from drops in
