When the Dead Awaken (30 page)

‘I don't suppose a man's responsibility exceeds his ability, Don.'

‘Are you making excuses for him?'

‘No, I don't think I am. I'm …'

The Capo looked closely at Savelli.

‘What's wrong, Urs? Have you made up your mind to fail?'

‘You're very perceptive, Don.'

The old man shrugged his shoulders.

‘It's what we do. We know about people.'

‘I'll speak to Cesare,' Savelli promised. ‘At length.'

‘You do that. But Massimiliano Di Luca is a problem.'

‘He is famous,' the Albanian said.

The Capo nodded.

‘A genius, they say. At dressmaking.'

‘If he dies, the media will—'

‘Without a doubt. But he can do a lot of damage to us, Urs. The Venetian and this Giulio Forlani. Again.'

‘We can't kill him, but equally we can't let him continue.'

The old man looked towards the veranda. He could just make out the outline of Anna, his wife, in the deep shadows. She hadn't spoken an intelligible word for three years.

Urs Savelli followed his gaze.

‘Not dead and yet not fully alive,' Don Francesco pondered.

He turned to the Albanian.

‘Somewhere in between, Urs.'

Savelli looked into the other man's eyes. The old man never ceased to amaze him.

‘Datura?' he suggested.

‘Why not?'

‘L'Artista?'

‘Of course. He'll be forgotten, Urs.'

‘And Forlani?'

‘They're friends, aren't they?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where one is you may find the other.'

It was harder than Primo Alba had thought. The hardest thing he had ever done in his GIS career. Just watching Urs Savelli, the artist of death, was intolerable, to see him stroll back through the tunnel, stopping briefly in Signor Marchese's house – possibly to deliver a vital message, or possibly not – and drive away from the carpenter's house, unchallenged.

Every instinct in Primo Alba begged and pleaded with him to hit the
send
button on the radio and give the order: to the young man who was pretending to fix his perfectly functioning motorbike by the kerb in Via Nicola Fele opposite the carpenter's house; to the young couple out for a walk with an empty pram a little further down the road; to the man who was busy loading floor tiles into his van in the car park outside the builders' merchant. All were members of the GIS, all were excellent marksmen and all of them longed to blast Urs Savelli out of his expensive Paul Smith socks. Once and for all.

The girl, who was now manning the telescope and the CO
₂
rifle didn't move. Primo Alba could hear her steady breathing.

‘Wait,' he said. ‘Do nothing.'

The sun was about to set when he sensed a further
heightening of the girl's concentration. Primo Alba crawled on his hands and knees across the treacherous planks and put his eye to the telescope.

The carpenter had opened the door to the courtyard with the pigeon lofts. It was dark enough for the light from the kitchen to cast an elongated rectangle across the flagstones. Signor Marchese was carrying a small wooden cage in his hands. The girl took a deep breath and pressed the rear sight to her eye. Slowly she exhaled till her lungs were half full and then held her breath. The breathing of the long-distance sniper. Primo Alba placed his hand on her thigh and bent his fingers to signal to her silently. Marchese's head and shoulders disappeared behind the middle of the three pigeon lofts. Primo Alba counted the seconds. The carpenter's head appeared. The girl took another precise breath. She was as still as a statue.

Everyone had expected the pigeon to be thrown up into the air like a child tossing a handful of sea water into the sun.

Just before that point the girl would fire the tranquillizer dart.

But Signor Marchese never raised his arms in the expected sacrificial gesture. He merely closed an invisible hatch in the pigeon loft, turned around and went back into the kitchen with the cage.

Primo's earpiece crackled from everyone's voices.

‘Was there something in the cage?' he said, not directing the question at anyone in particular.

‘Don't know,' muttered the girl on her exhale.

‘Giovanni?'

‘I didn't see,' said the boy who had wedged himself in next to Prima Alba.

‘
Vaffanculo!
' the girl muttered.

‘Now!' said a new voice in the earpiece.

‘What?!'

The young biker outside the carpenter's house reported in an agitated voice that Marchese had just launched a bright white homing pigeon from his front garden. The bird had soared in a tight spiral before setting its compass to north-north-east. Like an arrow. It was gone. And hadn't any of the geniuses in the corn silo noticed the low-hanging high voltage cables that went across the industrial area just south of Marchese's house? Of course he wouldn't send his pigeons that way!

Primo Alba removed his hand from the girl's leg and leaned against a crumbling beam.

And put his hand right into a pile of fresh pigeon crap.

Porca puttana!

‘Perhaps it was nothing,' the boy said out into the darkness.

‘I agree,' the girl said quietly. ‘Probably just a bird for
another nerd from their little brotherhood of pigeon fanciers. A breeder, something like that.'

It was hard not to love them.

The public prosecutor, His Excellency Federico Renda, wasn't quite so gracious, but neither did he waste time pointing the finger. What was done was done and in every field operation, no matter how well planned, there was always an unexpected, infuriating element of randomness.

Had Captain Alba heard from Sabrina D'Avalos? Like where she was, for example?

Primo Alba had called her last known mobile telephone number at least ten times and sent her a series of inquisitorial text messages without result. Total silence.

Go home, Federico Renda advised him. Get some rest. Regroup. If something unusual happens in the next few days, something that could possibly be the work of L'Artista – they would bring in the carpenter.

A sack over his head and a truck battery were sure to produce some much wanted answers.

Ticino, Milan

‘Who are the people looking for Giulio?' Massimiliano Di Luca asked that same evening over the rabbit ragout that Alberto had prepared.

Alberto joined them for dinner and turned out to be a pleasant and witty man. Sabrina noticed that the Venetian never gave him a direct order.

She glanced at Alberto.

‘I don't believe we have secrets from Alberto,' Giulio Forlani muttered.

‘Certainly not,' the designer said.

‘The Terrasino clan. The aristocracy of the Camorra,' she said. ‘The biggest, oldest, best organized and wealthiest family. They have interests in container ports, landfill sites and waste management, every new building and public construction project in and around Naples … and the piracy industry. They still have a handful of sweatshops in Naples where illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe and
China work, but most of their bootleg products are now manufactured in Macao, Mumbai and Shanghai. They make sure that the designs and the know-how reach the Far East, and the Chinese take care of the rest.'

Massimiliano Di Luca nodded: ‘That part we already know, dottoressa, but who exactly are they?'

‘Urs Savelli,' she began. ‘An Albanian. He's a senior Camorrista responsible for the family's bootleg industry. He organized the attack on Nanometric and he personally killed the chemist Hanna Schmidt and, more recently, Doctor Mazzaferro's girlfriend. We have no photographs of him. No description. We know he carries a walking stick and that's it. No one knows where he comes from, how old he is or what his real name is. Perhaps even he doesn't know. As a criminal he's a complete success: a killer with no identity.'

‘Go on.'

‘Then there is L'Artista. The sharp end of the Camorra. A younger woman. She is Francesco Terrasino's black angel of death. She is used for executions and has an almost one-hundred-per-cent success rate. She was the one who put my boss, Federico Renda, in a wheelchair.'

‘A young woman?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you know what she looks like? Christ, how are we even supposed to know what we're looking out for?'

‘You won't ever see her,' Sabrina assured him. ‘She's a
specialist assassin for difficult, famous or inaccessible people. She travels. She will kill all over the world for Don Terrasino. She's well educated and innovative. She killed Paolo Iacovelli and Fabiano Batista.' Sabrina looked down at the table. ‘She killed Lucia and Salvatore Forlani. And my father.'

‘Are you sure it's a woman?' Di Luca asked. ‘Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I really can't—'

‘We have a single night-time recording from a surveillance camera in a multi-storey car park in Milan. She's walking across one of the levels. Later you see her getting into the back of a Volvo belonging to a private detective. A former police inspector. He was good at his job. His body was later found in the boot of his car, but he was buried without his head.'

Sabrina looked at the designer.

‘I'll make sure you get protection, maestro.'

‘Me? I think you should spend your resources on my friend Giulio.'

‘I'll take good care of him, too,' she said gravely.

‘I don't feel at risk, dottoressa. As far as everyone – including the Camorra – is concerned, I was merely one of Nanometric's backers. Nothing more. Besides …'

‘Yes?'

Massimiliano Di Luca looked at Giulio and Alberto, who both shook their heads.

‘Yes!' The Venetian looked at Sabrina. ‘I'm dying. I
wouldn't mind leaving with a heroic monologue … for an audience of three … That's not asking too much, is it? … But the point I'm trying to make is that there isn't very much to protect any more, signorina. You're looking at the sad remains of what was once Massimiliano Di Luca.'

‘As you wish. But I think you underestimate your own importance. If Savelli knows that Giulio is alive and on the run, he'll expect him to call on old friends. And he'll undoubtedly know of this house.'

‘If the Camorra start killing designers, who will make the things they rip off? Besides, Giulio could be anywhere in the world. Absolutely no one knows that he and I have been in contact in the last few years.'

‘I'm not sure that the Camorra think like that,' Sabrina said. ‘But tell me what happened on the fifth of September 2007. Did you meet my father?'

She found the tote ticket in her pocket and put it on the table.

Di Luca turned it over in his hand.

‘Bucefalo. A fine animal. Everyone knew he was, obviously, so the odds were small. Your father found me on San Siro. I had been waiting for Giulio in Dal Pescatore. Our lunch date was a bit vague because I knew he was busy with the patents applications, but I hoped that he would have time to stop by. Drink a toast. It was a big day for the Camera Nazionale. A very big day.'

He looked at Giulio Forlani across the kitchen table. In a presumably extremely rare attack of affection they clasped each other's hands. Then Di Luca's hand returned to the stem of his wine glass. He hadn't touched a drop and had eaten practically nothing. He rested his chin in his hand, blinked wearily and looked at Sabrina.

‘I don't know … I heard strange music on the radio in the bar as though a radio channel from the twenties had suddenly sprung to life and I had this terrible premonition. And I just knew … I just knew something dreadful was about to happen.'

‘And my father?'

‘Your father was unique in every way, dottoressa. He told me about Giulio. Together we went to the Ospedale Maggiore, but Giulio was in theatre. Afterwards he drove me to my studio. He often spoke about you, signorina. More about you than about your brothers. “The family's last warrior,” he said. I can see that he was right.'

‘Thank you. And the code?
Corriere della Sera
?'

‘Oh, yes. That was my idea. Your father was obviously busy organizing everything. Hiding Lucia and the boy, taking care of Giulio, getting a handle on what had really happened at Nanometric. He had already arranged to have Giulio flown to the US if …'

‘I survived.' Giulio Forlani completed his sentence.

‘Exactly. If you survived. I thought about how we could all keep in contact when everything had …' The designer
blushed slightly. ‘It's a bit
Boys' Own
, I admit. But it was a good method.'

‘And it worked,' Forlani said, looking at Sabrina.

‘So the Camorra will carry on?' Alberto wanted to know. ‘Until they find Dr Forlani again?'

‘Or until he dies again,' she said, instantly wishing the ground would open up and swallow her. ‘I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!'

She cast her eyes down at the table and went red.

But Giulio Forlani and Massimiliano Di Luca were both laughing.

‘Now that might be an idea,' Di Luca said.

‘I know an undertaker,' Giulio Forlani said.

Sabrina looked at him.

‘Who?'

‘Forget it,' he said.

‘No. What did you mean, Giulio?'

‘Nothing. Like I said, forget I ever mentioned it.'

Ticino, Milan

The house was more than quiet. There was a deep humming silence, like the noon hour by Lake Como, when the cicadas fell silent and the wind calmed down.

When the rest of her family was asleep, Sabrina would lie awake in her bed – not so very different from the one she had now been shown to by Alberto – and gaze at the columns of sunlight in between the shutters. Stare as far into the light as she dared, because she knew that deep inside a white light there was a black core that one should never look at for a long time.