He turned back and looked at Konrad, who had moved closer to the camper van. Another stream of air from the sea lifted up a new type of blacker and harsher smoke, smelling of diesel fumes, which clung to the ground, turning over and over on itself. Fuck this, he thought to himself, and turned back.
A sudden dull thump made him look around as, fanned by a crosswind, the rubbish heap burst into orange flame. The heavy oily smoke merged with the faster-moving yellow clouds to create an opaque fog that billowed outwards and upwards, far higher and faster than the quantity of material seemed to justify. There was no question now of approaching to investigate. If the blaze became any more intense, maybe one of the neighbours, or the arsonist himself, would call the fire brigade and ask them to save his house. If they turned up too late, he would appear on national television to denounce the government authorities for his misfortunes.
The subsiding black soil in the middle of the flame seemed to writhe and emit a hissing and screeching sound. As Blume stood fascinated, something scampered across the top of his shoe, and a moment later another object, soft but with compact mass and moving at speed, knocked against his ankle.
Blume felt his flesh tighten against his bones. Fleeing rats, many of them, were rushing towards him, escaping the fire and smoke. The writhing mass on the ground was almost upon him, as he broke into a run.
He was far too late to escape the living tide. Hundreds of rats overtook him, fanning out in front of him as if he were the pursuer and they the pursued. As he drew near the camper, gathering pace all the time, he saw Konrad leap in and slam the driver’s door behind him and vanish.
Faster rats from behind mounted the backs of the slower ones in front, sometimes leapfrogging them, sometimes tumbling in the process, causing a pile-up, into which other rats would run until three or four of them stacked on top of each other, momentarily as high as his kneecaps.
Konrad was invisible, still deaf to his appeals, so Blume adjusted his flight and headed for the side of the camper van, which he hit at full speed. The door was unlocked, but he had to stop and pull it outwards. He jumped in and kicked it closed, but had the feeling that something else had leapt in with him. He surveyed the floor, the walls, and thought he saw a movement near Konrad’s suitcases. Well, one or two rodents wasn’t a problem. He shoved his head through the curtain separating him from the cab, where Konrad lay across the two seats, as white as if he were dead. When Blume appeared, Konrad let out a low moan of abject terror, before making a slight recovery, edging himself out of his prostrate position into one that was merely slumped.
‘Keys,’ demanded Blume, climbing with difficulty through the gap and into the front.
Konrad started fumbling around in his pockets. The soft thuds against the side of the camper and the dancing and trembling sensation from the ground beneath were like heavy rain. Blume manoeuvred himself into the driver’s seat. Konrad was now waving the keys in front of him, but Blume was staring transfixed out the window. The rats had gone already, and the sea wind had snatched the toxic smoke and whipped it away into the clouds to poison the raindrops.
Blume, still pumping adrenalin and overcome with a desire to laugh and whoop, found it difficult to keep his hands steady as he inserted the key in the ignition, and started the engine. He turned the steering wheel slowly, to give any lurking rodents a chance to escape. He did not want to spare them, but he did not quite relish the idea of driving over their hunched grey backs like they were furry cobblestones. As he reversed he felt a suspicious bump under a wheel, then another.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Blume. ‘That is something else.’
Konrad was sitting up almost straight now, and was in the process of composing himself when, out of nowhere, a rat skidded across the bonnet so fast it seemed to Blume that the animal had cleared the front of the van with a single leap. Konrad screamed. Instinctively, Blume slammed on the brakes, sending himself and Konrad lurching forward against the window. The vehicle shuddered to a halt, the engine cut out, and they sat in the unexpected silence, looking at each other.
Konrad had frozen up so much that when he spoke it was almost without his lips moving. ‘Please, take me away from this place.’
Blume pulled the key from the ignition and swung the key ring on his finger, looking thoughtful.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Waiting for you to tell me what you’re doing in Italy, Konrad.’
25
Milan
The inspector turned on the light, which shed a blue-tinged glow and bathed the young policeman beside him in a deathly pallor. The room contained a plastic bucket-seat chair with rusting legs, and the floor was made of unlevelled cement.
The building they stood in had belonged to the Mancuso clan, one of the principal Ndrangheta ’ ndrine in Milan. The seizure of the property by the police was supposed to have a symbolic effect, which it did — but not the intended one. Private investors turned out to be too afraid to use the building and the City failed to do anything with it. The final message was that the Ndrangheta was stronger than the state.
‘Give the walls a kick, see if they sound hollow.’
The young policeman was more conscientious than that, and methodically worked his way across the narrow space tapping the wall every inch from bottom to top and back again. His older colleague, shamed, did the same. After ten minutes, they were pretty sure nothing was hidden behind the walls.
‘There’s some staining here,’ said the young policeman.
‘That’s just damp.’
‘Maybe, but then it has to be recent because there is no mould and I can’t smell much damp in here. Some, but not a lot. Also, there’s a patch on the floor. It’s like they hosed down the place not too long ago, which would be strange. Who’d want to clean up in here?’
The inspector hunkered down and touched the floor with the back of his hand. ‘It seems fairly dry.’ A dull sheen near the corner of the room caught his eye, then disappeared. He went over to investigate and found himself marvelling at the fact they had not seen it immediately.
‘Look here,’ he said.
‘What? I can’t see anything.’
‘It’s a gold ring. It looks like a wedding ring.’
Magistrate Francesco Fossati held the clear plastic bag up to the light and examined the ring.
He handed it to a white-suited technician. ‘Can you use luminol spray in here, and examine those stains?’
‘This place is overrun with rats and stray animals who have been shitting all over the place,’ said the technician. ‘The whole place will light up blue. The important thing is to get a fleck of blood from the wall or floor, if that’s what you’re looking for.’
‘You’re the experts,’ said the magistrate. ‘Get scraping, or whatever you need to do.’
The technician handed the magistrate back the evidence bag. ‘There’s something written on the inside of the ring. A name… date. See?’
Fossati pulled out his reading glasses and perched them on the end of his nose. ‘Letizia,’ he read. ‘And then there is a date. “23 July 1985.” ’
‘Some wife is going to be pissed off with her husband for losing that,’ said the inspector.
But Fossati knew what they had found. ‘Was it covered in dirt?’ he asked the young policeman, who immediately reddened.
‘I don’t think so, but I didn’t touch it.’ Then he brightened up. ‘But they took photos. You can ask the technical team…’
‘Asking you was supposed to be a shortcut. Did it look like it had been there for long?’
The policeman decided to risk an opinion. ‘No. It looked newly lost.’
‘Yes,’ said Fossati, mainly to himself. ‘From a few days ago.’
Fossati had listened to his old friend Bazza and had not been concentrating on the Ndrangheta as likely perpetrators of the kidnapping. But Mafia-owned or not, this was an abandoned building that lay close to the place
