be the top floor of a building of three levels that developed in a step pattern downwards towards the sea. From a window on the left, they could see the roof tiles of the next two levels down, the lower of which jutted out into what seemed to be empty space. It was as if the entrance lobby where they now stood was the only part of the building sunk into safe ground. Konrad was unabashedly delighted with the place, at one point even nudging Blume and pointing at the vertiginous prospect, as if Blume, who felt a little giddy, could miss it.
Blume was sure the buildings below were actually nestled safely into the rock and resting, at least in part, on solid earth, but he still walked down the hallway with the same cautious tread he used when shuffling up the aisle of an aeroplane in flight, thinking of what would happen if his foot went through the floor. Konrad’s room was in the lowest of the three buildings to the far left, Blume’s in the building above to the right.
Blume was reassured to find the back wall of his bedroom was thick and uneven and it followed the contours of the rock face. It was cold and slightly damp to the touch. He had a shower to wash off the memory of rats. Then he opened his backpack and took out fresh clothes rescued from the suitcase. Fresh, but wrinkled, so he decided to put them on, lie on the bed, force them into some shape against his body.
The wide rectangular window, which swivelled open on a central hinge so that it could complete a 180- degree turn until the outside panes faced in and the inside panes out, framed nothing but sea. He had to stand right next to it and peer downwards to see the cliff into which the building was embedded. He caught a glimpse of a tiny garden set on a narrow ledge fifteen feet below, large enough for maybe one child to play in, a child with very laid- back parents. A ball dropped from his window would bounce once, bang in the centre of the garden, then fly over the cliff edge and down into the sea for ever.
The air that came in was salty but not clammy. The temperature was perfect. A three-masted tall ship lolled halfway to the horizon, headed out west. He opened his mouth wide and with three deep breaths cleared his mind and gratefully exhaled the threatened headache that had been lying in wait all day.
He expected Konrad any moment now, demanding his notes back, accusing him of bad faith. He flicked through the binder he had taken from Konrad’s suitcase, shaking his head at the sheer number of pages in German. Blume’s German was just good enough to see that the texts dealt with the ceremonies, history and beliefs of the Ndrangheta. One or two articles were in English and the rest in Italian. The leaves were filled with marginalia in blue and red. Konrad Hoffmann was a conscientious and fastidious scholar. No surprise there.
Blume took out the small curved black notebook he carried around in his back trouser pocket, which he used only when he had forgotten or deliberately set aside his larger one. His intention was to note down any points of particular interest among Konrad’s papers that caught his eye, but he gave up after ten minutes to focus instead on the image of the torn Madonna signed on the back by Domenico Megale. Konrad’s putative passport to somewhere, a membership card for something. What was the etiquette about ripping a Madonna in hal f? The Ndrangheta initiation ceremony involved the burning of images of the Archangel St Michael. For all he knew the tearing up of a Madonna was fine. But Konrad should not have it in his possession. Far from a voucher or token of safe conduct, the half Madonna was a death sentence that the foolish German was going to deliver with his own hand.
He picked up the reassuringly heavy handset of the bedside phone and called reception. Yes, the girl told him, they did have a fax and of course she would be happy to send something.
Blume took his Samsung and, after moving icons back and forth like he was trying to solve a tile-puzzle from his childhood, finally found the number pad, pressed ‘1’, held it, and waited.
Massimiliani answered on the third ring.
‘Nice of you to call in. Do you know how many times I have tried to contact you?’
‘No, but I’m sure this clever phone can tell me,’ said Blume.
‘It looks like you’re near Positano.’
‘Very clever phone. Actually, we’re there, in the hotel. We took a bit of a detour to Lake Avernus, which was the mad German’s idea. No reason that I can see, except he says he studied Latin once. Do you have a fax number up there?’ asked Blume.
‘A fax… I suppose we must still have one. Hold on.’
Blume heard the plop of a hand being placed over the mouthpiece, as if Massimiliani felt it was important not to let himself be heard calling out to someone in the room about whether they had a fax.
Finally, Massimiliani was back with a number, which Blume noted down. Very much to Massimiliani’s surprise and annoyance, he hung up as soon as he had finished writing.
The girl behind the desk smiled at Blume as he walked over, but the smile faded as Blume slapped the 83- page document on the desk in front of her and said, ‘You told me you had a fax.’
He wrote the DCSA number on the back of the first page. ‘These need to go out immediately.’
The girl picked up the file and seemed to weigh it in her hand. Then, with what sounded like relief, she said, ‘I can’t fax this: it’s in spiral binding.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Blume. ‘You fire up the fax machine or whatever you have to do, and I’ll rip the pages out and hand them to you one by one.’
‘That’ll take hours. Look, when I said we had a fax…’
‘And that you’d be happy to oblige,’ added Blume.
‘Yes, I did say that but…’ The girl picked up the phone and pressed a number. ‘Dad? I need you up here.’
When the hotel owner arrived at reception, he immediately dismissed his daughter with a curt nod of the head. He then turned to Blume with an expression of loathing, which Blume couldn’t justify unless the girl had telepathically communicated his unreasonable fax demands. He began to explain about the fax again when the manager interrupted him.
‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to leave. Both of you.’
Blume turned around, looking for Konrad, but he was alone in the lobby. Through the window of the hotel he could just see a small part of the rear section of the ridiculous old camper van.
‘Your skinny boyfriend isn’t here. You know how I know that?’ said the manager. ‘I know that because he is at this moment lying naked on a ledge beneath our private garden. There have been complaints. Three children and a very respectable woman have seen him so far. Lucky for him my daughter has been spared the obscenity.’
‘My boyfriend?’
‘Partner, whatever you people call yourselves these days. I should have guessed, two men in a camper. There’s a campsite in Salerno, an hour from here, I’m sure you can park for the night there.’
‘Look, he’s German,’ said Blume in his best soothing voice.
‘Not only that,’ continued the manager, his voice trembling now, ‘he took two of our white towels and a bathrobe with him, when it is expressly written in large red letters on the door that they are not to be removed from the rooms.’
‘He’s still down there?’ asked Blume. ‘On the ledge?’
‘Yes, he is. Unless he’s taken off his bathrobe and dived into the water again. There’s a sign that says no swimming, dangerous currents, but if he can ignore our polite request about the towels, I suppose he’s not going to pay any attention to public notices. He’ll probably dash himself to pieces against the rocks. I’m calling the police.’
Blume pulled out his police badge, placed it on the counter between them, and tapped it with his forefinger, where ‘Commissario’ was written. ‘Before you do that,’ he said, ‘consider that this strange German and I have separate rooms.’
The manager looked at the badge, then picked it up and examined it closely. He looked back at Blume and, for the first time, noticed the fat document on the counter.
‘What is that?’
Blume made a show of checking that they were alone in the lobby, then opened the file, pointing at the German text. ‘These are files belonging to the German. He doesn’t know I have them.’
‘So you two are not…?’
‘I’m investigating him.’
‘Really? Sex crimes?’
Blume shook his head with great sadness and ambiguity.
‘It’s part of an operation. See the number on the back of the first page here? It’s an 06 number to a fax in Rome. It would be good if we could get this to them before the German finds out. The pages will have to be detached leaf by leaf before it can be faxed.’
