The Namesake (20 page)

Blume put the phone down. ‘For Christ’s sake, Konrad!’ He brought it back to his ear. ‘Listen, let’s not mix things up, Caterina. I’ll call you back soon.’ He hung up abruptly.

Konrad stopped singing. Blume couldn’t decide whether he had been serious or was engaging in some sort of exercise in humour that only Germans appreciated. Konrad’s tenor voice had, in fact, been quite good.

The real problem was Konrad’s driving. He was bouncing in his seat and swinging the steering wheel left and right like a five-year-old pretending to steer as he swerved around the potholes and sought to avoid the bumps in the road. The sunlight was lighting up his fiery hair and streaming directly into his face so that there was no way he could possibly see where he was going.

‘That was not the right exit for Positano, or Naples, or even Salerno,’ shouted Blume above the rushing air.

‘I am perfectly aware of where I am going,’ said Konrad, his tone now scornful. He swerved around one pothole but hit a second, larger one, almost bouncing Blume into his lap.

Blume steadied himself. ‘Oh yeah, and where might that be?’

‘To the gates of hell,’ shouted Konrad, facetious as ever.

22

Near Pozzuoli, Naples

‘We could get a bite to eat at that
osteria
,’ suggested Blume.

Konrad continued driving.

‘I’m hungry,’ said Blume. ‘It’s past two. We’re going to miss lunch if we don’t stop. If I skip a meal, first I get a blinding headache, then I start killing Germans. Seriously, I need to eat. It’s a blood-sugar thing.’

‘You are a diabetic,’ said Konrad. It did not sound like a question; it sounded more like a reprimand. ‘That
osteria
is abandoned. You can see it has not been painted or restored in fifty years. I did a course in urban tracking in 2002. We were taught to see things at a glance. The trick is to see the whole thing and the details, and keep moving, while you consider the implications of what you have captured in the first glance.’

The camper van dipped and its suspension groaned as Konrad drove them through a series of potholes and over a lattice of tree roots that had burst out of the tarmac.

‘So you’ll have noticed the five cars and the van parked outside it?’ said Blume, when the rocking had stopped.

‘Yes, of course I saw them.’

‘So, Konrad, it is not abandoned. It is still serving lunch.’

Konrad slowed down. ‘My point is that eating at this time of the day is bad for clear thinking.’

‘OK. Forget it. You’re obviously in a hurry to get to . . . where is it you want to get to?’

‘Lake Avernus,’ said Konrad. ‘But now I am looking for a place to turn, so that we can go back.’

‘To the abandoned
osteria
?’

‘I now recognize that it is not abandoned. I was not focused at the time. Now it is all clear in my mind’s eye.’

The
osteria
served food directly to the table without any menu. Two bottles of water, a jug of wine and a basket of bread sat between them. Walking quickly by, the waiter placed two dishes of
caprese
in front of them. Konrad tried to say something in Italian to the waiter, who listened patiently, an expression of pity verging on concern in his eyes. When Konrad had finished his incomprehensible sentence, the waiter gave him an encouraging smile and moved away to deal with normal people.

Blume quartered his mozzarella, speared a tomato slice and, with the help of a piece of bread, pushed the mozzarella on to his fork. It was sweet and creamy.

‘My speaking skills are rusty,’ said Konrad.

‘Corroded, I’d say,’ said Blume. ‘I didn’t understand a word.’

‘
Non è che io non sappia parlare italiano, sai?
’ said Konrad.

‘Now I understand you fine,’ said Blume. ‘How come you didn’t speak like that to the waiter?’

‘I was speaking Campanian dialect.’

This time, there seemed to be no humorous undertow in Konrad’s demeanour. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Of course. Perhaps the waiter isn’t from these parts.’

‘Apart from the fact you were entirely incomprehensible . . .’ Blume replayed Konrad’s phrases in his mind and began to laugh. ‘Dialect . . . with that accent. You should be on
Zelig
.’

‘What is this
Zelig
?’

‘A TV show for stand-ups.’ Blume tried to suppress his laughter. The trick was not to think of . . . No, it was no good.

Three minutes later, drying his eyes with the back of his hand, Blume said, ‘No foreigner can ever speak dialect. You might pick up some of the accent if you stayed here long enough, but you can’t speak dialect.’ He looked at Konrad’s plate. ‘You haven’t touched your
caprese
. Why are you not eating that mozzarella
di bufala
? That is local produce, and this is the best area in the country for mozzarella.’

‘I am not sure I like it. I would have preferred to choose from the menu.’

Blume stripped a crust off a piece of bread and crunched it between his teeth. ‘No menu here.’ He pressed the flat of his knife on the mozzarella, bleeding milk across his plate.

The waiter came back, stared wordlessly at Konrad, then removed his mozzarella and tomato. The next course was homemade pasta and San Marzano tomato sauce with plenty of basil.

Once again, Konrad sat immobile, ignoring his food.

‘No wonder you’re thin,’ said Blume. ‘What’s wrong that you’re not eating your pasta?’

‘I must not be hungry.’

‘Then leave the fucking bread alone.’

Konrad took his hand out of the bread basket and tucked it guiltily under the table.

‘That’s better,’ said Blume. ‘Now eat up. And let’s get some business out of the way.’

‘What business?’

‘Your colleagues saw you in the company of an Ndrangheta boss. Domenico Megale, to be precise.’

Konrad looked so utterly shocked that Blume burst out laughing. ‘I can’t quite work out when you’re trying to be funny, but there’s no mistaking when you’re shocked. It seems you wore a disguise so bad they want to use it as a sort of reverse example.’

‘As soon as Weissmann called me, I realized there was a good chance they had seen me.’

‘Why the look of shock, then?’

‘I am only very surprised they should have told you this. After all, who are you?’

‘Don’t try to turn the questioning around.’

‘Are you particularly expert?’

‘No,’ said Blume.

‘Then you must have a direct interest in this. What is the link between you and Megale?’

‘The questions are still flowing in the wrong direction, Konrad. I have already levelled with you. Time to reciprocate. Give me something I can put in a report.’

‘I am observant,’ said Konrad. ‘I saw immediately that you have no ring on your finger, but you have a girlfriend.’

‘She is above all a colleague,’ said Blume.

‘Tell me about your relationship with this woman.’

‘Fuck off.’

Konrad blinked a few times as if he was trying to compute something. His long nose, pointed chin and sad mouth gave him the appearance of a mistreated horse. Eventually, the cogs of his logic stopped whirring and he delivered his finding. ‘If there is a woman in your life, then you must be happy,’ he told Blume. ‘But you are running away from her.’

The suddenly personal turn in the conversation disconcerted Blume. The least he could do was regain his function as the person asking the questions. ‘Do you have a girl?’

It was unlikely, surely, but women were strange. Sometimes they became overwhelmed with such intense feelings of pity for spectacularly ugly men that they ended up marrying them.

‘Not any more,’ said Konrad. ‘Not for a long time.’

‘That can be good. It gives you time to concentrate on your work,’ said Blume. He did not believe this for a moment. All the extra hours made available by not being in a relationship were filled obsessing on what was so wrong with you that women could not bear to be near you. Then as soon as you found someone, you began to long for the solitude you thought you hated.

Blume steered the conversation back towards pertinent issues. ‘Have you found some connection between the Camorra and the Ndrangheta? Is that what this is about? They both specialize in poisoning the earth, which is your area of expertise, right?’

‘It is one of my areas of expertise,’ said Konrad. ‘I have been engaged in a long investigation into toxic dumping, and that involved the Camorra, of course. The investigation is now over, prosecutions have been made. I am an acknowledged authority by now. There is talk of me writing the preface to Saviano’s next book. As an expert in Italian crime, I obviously know a good deal about the Ndrangheta, but I have no evidence of a direct connection between the organizations.’

‘What about the visit to Megale’s house?’

‘Did they see me leaving or entering?’

Blume racked his brain. He couldn’t remember what he had been told. ‘Both, I imagine.’

‘But you don’t know. I will admit that I have been privately studying the Ndrangheta a little, and maybe talking with an exponent of that organization.’

‘Well, that’s a start,’ said Blume.

‘I am very surprised at what I have found.’

‘And what is that?’

‘It is a very effective and quiet organization and extremely efficient. I thought Italians could never be that organized.’

‘That’s because you’ve been dealing with the Camorra. They are chaotic,’ said Blume. ‘With 100,000 men they can’t control Naples, but with around 30,000 the Ndrangheta controls Europe, Australia and fifteen African states as well as Central and South America, and has a turnover about the same as the GDP of Slovakia, or Slovenia . . . or Serbia. I can never remember which.’

‘The obvious conclusion is that Italians are organized only in crime,’ said Konrad. ‘I think that is undeniable.’

‘That sort of facile conclusion is why you Germans are so useless as investigators,’ said Blume. ‘The Ndrangheta has taken over East Germany better than the Soviets ever did. They own all the seafront houses in the Baltic, they control half the municipalities in the Ruhr valley and all the drug money in all your cities except for Berlin where they allow the Moroccans to sell hashish, on a franchise basis. They import metals for your industries, take out the waste, and clean the money. They mediate between the Russians and your industries, and they help capitalize your banks. They know how to wait, to accept sacrifice, to tough it out, to hide wealth, to remain mute, help each other, bide their time. They can do that better than any German criminals, and they can do it better than your politicians and businessmen. They own you.’

‘You sound almost proud of what they do.’

‘Italians are better at self-sacrifice, discipline and savings than anyone else in Europe and, above all, they – we – are extremely organized. The problem is that we divide into units that are too small. We organize into families instead of neighbourhoods, neighbourhoods instead of towns, towns instead of provinces, provinces instead of regions, and regions instead of a country. The same goes for our industries. They’re always too small. We have the same problem in the police. Basically, we should have just one force. But we are an organized people. Just look at an Italian travelling. Neat, clean, everything planned, budgeted. The northern Europeans are chaotic, dirty, dishevelled, lost, drunk, loutish . . . As for your police and their efforts to stop drug smuggling, words fail me. Eat your lunch, what’s the matter with you: are you some sort of fucking anorexic?’

‘Dioxins,’ said Konrad.

‘What?’

‘This food. It is probably all poisoned. We are in Campania. I know about this region. People burn rubbish in the streets and fill the air with dioxins from burning plastics. The Camorra has filled the land with heavy metals and maybe even nuclear materials. You keep telling me the food was produced locally. But I don’t want to eat produce grown from the toxic soils of Campania. These are filthy people,
ein Dreckvolk
, and I do not want their food.’

‘You ate the bread.’

A gratifying look of panic crossed across Konrad’s face.

The waiter, who had taken back Konrad’s untouched plates one after the other, now came over to find out what was going on.

‘
Non si sente bene
,’ Blume explained. ‘
No, figurati, il cibo era ottimo. Poi, è un tedesco, quindi non capisce un cazzo né della buona cucina, né delle buone maniere.
’

Konrad had pulled out a notebook and was writing something down. In the middle of all Konrad’s extravagantly curly hair was a great bald patch where the freckles looked like liver spots. From above, Konrad looked like an old man, and this pleased Blume immensely.

Konrad paused in his writing for a moment to look up and smile at Blume, saying, quite mildly, ‘You forget I understand when you speak Italian and insult me to the waiter.’