He unbuttoned his shirt, and stood there bare-chested, thinking of the car in the ditch, the opened gate. He often practised trying to overcome the feeling of vulnerability that being bare-chested gave him. Logically, it made no sense, since a knife or bullet wound inflicted through a shirt was exactly the same as one inflicted on bare skin, and yet he could not help feeling that it would be worse.
His mother had stopped moving around downstairs. In the next room, Roberto sighed in his sleep. The effect was always comical when he did that, the sigh sounding so world-weary.
A foot scraped on the gravel outside the house. It was an unmistakable sound, the same that his own feet made day after day. Ruggiero froze. Downstairs he heard a click, then a thud. It was the back door being opened. Walking on his toes, paying attention to his arms to make sure they did not bang into anything, he made his way over to his bedroom door, and listened. There would be at least three of them. He had heard no car. He thought he heard a gasp and a muffled thud. They must be using knives. His mother could be lying in a pool of her blood. He ran to his bed, and in one movement swept his hand underneath, spun around, and faced his bedroom door. In his hand he held a small black throwing knife that he hadn’t learned to throw yet.
The house was in utter stillness. Ruggiero stretched towards his bed to reach his pyjama top, but could not get to it without moving, and he found his legs were rooted to the floor. With enormous effort, he forced himself forward, away from his bed, towards the door. His left leg was trembling uncontrollably, he breathed in deeply, and the vibrations abated. He needed to talk to the killers, tell them to leave Roberto, or tell them that if they could murder an infant, it should not be with steel, which served other purposes.
‘A knife, a sword, a cutlass: these are called “white” weapons because they are associated with the noble warfare of knights. They demand skill and put the user at risk. A gun is a black thing that does not do this,’ his father had told him once. ‘But of course there is no honour in using a white weapon on an infant or a woman.’
But another time he had offered a different explanation, saying a knife was white when the light of the sun glanced off the flat of the blade.
Ruggiero’s puny black throwing knife reflected nothing. Gathering courage, he quietly slipped out his door across the hallway and into his little brother’s room, which smelt of talcum powder and bread. If his mother was alive, she should be here protecting Roberto. And she should be trying to protect him, though he would protect her. He sat down in the dark beside the cot, choked back his tears, and waited.
He heard a footfall on the stairs. The first step was quiet and careful, but the next were louder and more careless as they drew closer, and there were other feet coming up the stairs behind that and more behind that. At least three of them. Five perhaps. He could not count or reason.
Ruggiero touched the side of his brother’s sleeping head. The temple was still soft, and the child’s brain was pulsing with innocent thoughts beneath. There were voices in the hall outside. He went over and placed himself in front of the door, and pushed his chest out. He realized he had gone completely numb from his feet to the bottom of his neck, and it made no difference in the end if he was bare-chested or not.
They checked his room, and there was a surprised grunt as they found it empty.
Now the door was swinging open, and Ruggiero stood up. He put his arms behind his back and braced himself.
The man who entered the room strode over to Ruggiero, embraced him hard, kissed him on the side of the neck, combed his fingers through the boy’s hair, then pushed him back, and looked at him in admiration.
‘Were you in here defending your brother?’
‘Yes, Papa.’
‘No need now, my courageous son. I am here.’
37
Positano
Konrad Hoffmann was swimming deeper and deeper into the unplumbed depths of a restaurant fish tank and his voice streamed upwards in an angry buzz of bubbles to pop loudly but meaninglessly as they reached the surface, and Blume, observing that this was all far-fetched, especially the bit about the fish tank being bottomless, deep and dark, decided to wake up and grab at his mobile phone. He opened his eyes as he brought it to his ear, shocked to see daylight. If he had been asked to guess, he would have said he had been asleep for an hour at most.
‘Maria Itria has called for help. For real this time. She called Magistrate Arconti at around 4:30 this morning, but did not answer a call that he made later. After thinking about it for a bit he called me,’ said Caterina on the other end of the line.
It gave him such an unexpected lift to hear her voice first thing after a stupid dream about… red fish or something, that he was not sure he had understood the content of her message.
‘Caterina? Wait… go through that again.’
‘Curmaci’s wife. She called for help last night.’
‘She called you?’ Blume shook his head. ‘Sorry, dumb question, I was asleep just now.’
‘She called Arconti and said if something happened to her husband, she would be willing to turn state witness. Then she said she wanted police protection and an escort the hell out of there. Since then, her phone has been off. Arconti told me and I’m telling you. It’s six in the morning, you’re usually awake at this time, not that that was a consideration. The woman and her children are in trouble. Your trick has become self-fulfilling, and now she really is willing to reach out to the authorities.’
‘She called Arconti on her own initiative, in the early hours of the morning?’
‘Yes, he said he definitely got the impression she was either unaware of or indifferent to the fact of his hospitalization.’
‘Why didn’t Arconti call me?’ asked Blume.
‘I can’t second-guess Arconti, but I can think of several reasons he might not trust you after that stunt you pulled with the false confession.’
He felt a throb in the back of his head. If only it would remain there, but it would not. Within half an hour it would have worked its way to his frontal lobes and would sit pulsing like a toad all day long.
‘He’s very fucking busy for a man in a hospital bed. Why didn’t he call the local police, get them to pick up the Mafia wife and her progeny?’
‘Are you really asking that?’ said Caterina. ‘An order imparted from a magistrate in Rome to the local police would be intercepted pretty quickly, and the police themselves will be under surveillance, especially with the Polsi summit meeting coming up. They can’t move without being followed.’
‘Fine, but they’d still go and get her. Probably.’
‘He didn’t make that call.’
‘More strange behaviour on his part,’ said Blume.
‘You write false confessions but he’s the one who’s acting strange because he does not issue orders from his bed for the police at the far end of the country to go rescue a woman who is now not responding to calls? Apart from the fact he is not assigned to any case, on what grounds could he order a patrol around? For all he knows, it could be a trap or a diversion. She may have called to test his reaction.’
‘So what did he say?’
‘That he would pass on her message to a different magistrate who would contact her later in the morning. He said she could call the police herself if her need was immediate. At that point she hung up.’
What seemed like a bubble of methane rose from the back of his throat into the back of his head and popped with a thud. He counted six heartbeats, before the next thud arrived.
‘Alec?’
‘Yes, yes. Still here.’ But he wasn’t. His mind had darted back to the idea of Curmaci’s wife fleeing, Konrad as a fast-moving fish, a fragment from his dream.
‘Maria Itria said she would co-operate with the authorities if something happened to her husband, but as far as we know, nothing has,’ said Caterina. ‘But something is up. Curmaci’s acting strangely and his wife and children are in trouble, just like you wanted.’
