we’re looking for is downstairs.’
‘BKA?’ said the smaller man. ‘No, we’re…’
‘You armed?’ said Blume. He took out his Beretta, offered it to the same man.
The larger man stepped forward. ‘Of course we are armed, but we were detailed just to pick up two colleagues… nobody said nothing about a situation developing.’
‘OK,’ said Blume, holstering his pistol. He pointed to his backpack. ‘Let me throw this in the back, then I’ll need to explain..’ He took the car keys from the young man’s hand, then turned to the larger one. ‘I don’t think it’ll be a problem. The person you’re looking for is unarmed. Do you think you’ll be able to handle it, or shall I call in backup?’
‘What’s his problem? He’s supposed to be some sort of colleague, right?’
‘We had a falling out. I’ll call in some regular police support if you want.’
‘He’s not armed, you said.’
‘No. He’s never even worked in the field. Old guy. Older than me, even. Frail. Spent all his life behind a desk.’
The man turned to his nervous colleague. ‘Come on, let’s go get him.’
Blume nodded to the manager, who was bobbing up and down on the periphery and was overjoyed to be included in the action. ‘He’ll show you the room.’
Blume watched the three of them descend the stairs out of the lobby, reach the landing, turn and pass out of sight.
‘Be right down,’ he called after them. He pressed the button on the car key as he reached the front door, walked five paces and hopped into the driver’s seat of the car, tossing his backpack on the seat beside him. He put the key in the ignition and reversed out of the hotel courtyard blindly on to the curving coastal road.
Luckily, no one was coming from either direction.
39
On the Road to Calabria
Blume found the Class A Mercedes 160 he had stolen a disappointingly boxy little car, though it ran smoothly, and, half an hour later, he had to admit it handled quite well as he engaged in the nifty steering needed to negotiate the alternating one-way lane of the A3 autostrada, in construction since 1964 and still unfinished.
He was not likely to make up the two-hour headstart Konrad had and stop him from doing something stupid, but he saw no harm in trying. He directed the Mercedes into the narrow lane demarcated on one side by traffic cones and on the other by orange plastic road studs that slapped against the wheels in a satisfyingly rhythmic way as he drove over them, then negotiated a hairpin bend formed by concrete blocks.
A faded warning sign with two arrows indicated that the traffic was now two-way, which, in view of the trucks now bearing down on him, was self-evident. The effect was so like a video game that he found it hard to take the threat of an imminent head-on collision entirely seriously. Seeking a soundtrack to his adventure, he turned on the car stereo, and was horrified as Gigi D’Alessio’s wavering little voice started bleating out a folksy Neapolitan love song. He pushed at random buttons hoping to get the radio, but the stereo flashed some sort of message and then went quiet. He gave up. It was high time he got his eyes back on the road.
The stretch of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria autostrada he was now on had given up any pretence of being a work in progress. The warning signs were themselves in need of some repair. The temporary concrete dividers had acquired an air of permanence. They were barriers to the south, actively discouraging visitors. The smallest act, a dropped piece of concrete, a broken-down vehicle, a misplaced barrier, effectively cut off road access to all southern Italy.
A truck had stopped next to a cluster of porta-potty cabins, two of them toppled over. A few yards further on, a woman was selling fruit from a stall covered by a tarpaulin, held down by guy lines attached to butane gas canisters, which were sitting in the emergency lane. Blume had allowed a convoy of trucks to go hurtling by, adjusted the trajectory of the car which had been thrown sideways and towards the divider by the heavy slipstream they left in their wake, when he heard a phone ringing, apparently coming from the car stereo. He glanced down at the stereo, which displayed the message ‘incoming call’.
A Bluetooth connection between his phone and stereo. Neat. Or it would be if he knew which button to press. There were a few on the steering wheel, and he gave them a try. The ringing stopped.
‘ Ma vaffanculo,’ he muttered, banging the steering wheel.
‘So you steal a ROS vehicle and then you’re the one who starts shouting obscenities at me?’ said the stereo speakers.
‘You heard that?’ said Blume. He found the volume control and dialled down Massimiliani’s voice.
‘What the fuck, Blume?’
‘I am in hot pursuit.’
‘Of Hoffmann? The genius recruits they sent have let it be known that Hoffmann’s nowhere to be found. So they managed to lose you, Hoffmann and their car. I foresee two short intelligence careers.’
‘Not their fault,’ said Blume. ‘One partner should always be considerably older, and they thought they had been detailed just to act as chauffeurs.’
‘Forget about them. Tell me what’s going on.’
‘I am following Hoffmann.’
‘He’s in the camper van and you’re behind him in a stolen ROS vehicle? So those two also missed an orange motor home pulling out of the hotel as they drove in?’
Blume thought about it. He wanted to talk to Konrad, maybe dissuade him, but he was not sure he wanted to hand Konrad over to Massimiliani just like that. Konrad had a big headstart but in a very slow vehicle, and Blume felt inclined to give him this advantage, at least for now. Also, though he suppressed the thought as best he could, he did not want Massimiliani to know he had been outwitted by Konrad.
‘Sure. I have him in my sights.’
‘This is unbelievable. Does he know you’re following him?’
‘No. I had to act quickly, though. No time to explain to the agents you sent.’
‘I didn’t send those two… If Konrad’s trying to get away, why didn’t he make a run for it during the night, or in the early hours of the morning?’
‘I don’t know. Ask him. Maybe he just found something out,’ said Blume. He rummaged with his free hand in his backpack and pulled out Konrad’s phone to make sure it was still on.
‘Talk about a loose cannon. Don’t let him out of your sight while we arrange a roadblock. We can use the signal from his phone to see where he is. Keep yours on, too.’
‘Sure,’ said Blume. ‘But I need to know where he’s going, what he’s doing.’
‘Not now. I’ll call back.’ Massimiliani’s voice vanished.
Blume was so busy pressing buttons on the car stereo that had turned into a speaker phone to see how it worked that he almost went hurtling into the back of a Y-10 with a number plate from the late ’80s dawdling along at around sixty kilometres an hour. His passing swerve took out three traffic cones. Then, unexpectedly, there was a brief section of genuine two-lane divided road, just like a motorway in an ordinary country.
He got the radio working, and turned up the volume the better to hear a woman singing a song, which sounded Disneyesque. He found her voice a bit nasal, too, but was sorry when the song ended, then was inordinately annoyed at the fact they did not identify what it had been. When had they stopped identifying songs on the radio? When he was young, they always told you before the song and then again afterwards. The unidentified song faded into another. But he recognized this as Beyonce. He remembered sitting in the company of Caterina’s son Elia and watching a music video, and actively committing the name to memory. Beyonce so called because she’s bouncy. Maybe it would be a second topic of conversation with Elia besides the perpetually disappointing performance of the Roma football team. Elia was too young for the bouncy woman anyhow. The voice had a nice growl and power and invincibility. Shoulda put a ring on it, uh-huh-huh. Good song to encourage reckless driving.
It was possible, if damned unlikely, the extra speed would eventually bring him up behind the camper van.
