Tomas Gentile knew the building that Carmen Nero was staying in from his prior monitoring of her phone. Her specific apartment became apparent when he and Guido arrived to scout it out, thanks to the balcony flowerpots that matched the website photograph. Its lights were out, however. Maybe she and Cesco Rossi had both left town. Certainly Rossi was likely gone, after fleeing them and crashing his van. But Nero had given those sketches to the police that same morning, which suggested she at least was still around. There were parking spaces outside the building, but in a kind of cul-de-sac that would leave them at risk of being trapped by a traffic snarl-up. He had Guido park on the bridge road instead, choosing a spot with views of the building’s front door and Nero’s apartment.
‘Want me to do it?’ asked Guido.
Tomas shook his head. Jobs like these required subtlety and quick thinking, not exactly Guido’s strengths. If the nightmares came, so be it. After all, one didn’t judge a man by how he felt but by what he did. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘Keep the engine running.’ He turned up his jacket collar, put on his dark glasses and baseball cap. He got out and stood against the car to tuck the hunting knife and automatic pistol into his waistband, hiding them beneath his jacket. Then he made his way down a flight of steps into the cul-de-sac and across to the building. It had a glass front door. He could see the brightly lit lobby inside with two rows of letterboxes and a CCTV camera. It had a keypad lock and intercom buzzers for each apartment.
There was a fir tree across the way. He loitered against it for ten minutes before a woman came out holding a furled umbrella and looking nervously upwards. He grabbed the door before it closed and slipped inside, head averted from the camera. He hurried light-footed up to the top floor. A TV was playing across the landing, but Nero’s apartment was silent. It had a peephole but no doorbell. He took his gun in his hand then stood to one side and knocked. There was no response. He knocked louder. Still nothing. He hid his gun again then went back down and out to the car.
‘No luck?’ asked Guido sympathetically.
‘She’s not there.’
‘What now, then?’
Tomas looked around. The evening passeggiata was underway, couples streaming arm in arm towards Corso Mazzini to greet with astonishment and delight the exact same people they’d greeted with astonishment and delight the night before. But they were away from the street lamps here, with a clear line of sight of Nero’s apartment and the building’s front door. They were highly unlikely to find anything better. ‘We wait,’ he said.
Lightning ripped open the sky as they approached Cosenza, letting the heavens fall. Rain swept in frenzied flurries across their windscreen. Huge puddles formed upon the motorway, so that each car sent up a great curtain of white spray to blind the one behind. Within a minute or two, traffic had seized up.
Zara took her phone back out. She’d been trying, on and off, to find a place to stay in Sicilì itself. But in vain. The town had no hotel, nor even an inn with rooms. It did have two apartments for rent, and a nearby agriturismo, but all were fully booked. And it was hard to judge the options further afield on her small screen with her battery already running low, so they’d agreed to leave it for the night then head up in the morning, taking whatever they could find. But now, idly searching for more information on Sicilì itself, she landed on a municipal website she hadn’t seen before with helpful lists of local shops, businesses and properties for rent. Most were in the neighbouring town of Morigerati, but it also included the three Sicilì properties she’d already seen, and a fourth which she had not – a two-bedroom cottage on the lower fringes of the town, whose owner, Faustino – according to its brief blurb – had moved to Rome for work, and so rented it out for a little extra income. She described it to Dov and Carmen. They urged her to call the number. Faustino himself answered on the second ring. Background noises made it clear he was out with friends. They each had to shout to make themselves heard. He and his girlfriend would be visiting Sicilì the weekend after next, he told her, but it was free until then. It was fully furnished and they’d find the key beneath a brick outside the door, but they had to understand that it was not the Ritz. There was neither Wi-Fi nor signal for their mobiles, though they could find both up in Sicilì itself. As for the cottage, it was a thing of beauty in fine weather but cranky in the bad, suffering from draughts, damp and temperamental plumbing. Were they still interested?
Zara assured him that they were, and asked what it would cost. Faustino quoted an absurdly small sum per night, then asked her to leave it in cash on the kitchen table when they left. Or not, he joked, as she preferred. What was he going to do about it?
‘So it’s free tonight?’ asked Dov, once she’d reported back.
‘I guess,’ she said.
‘Then how about it?’
Zara squinted sideways at him. ‘Seriously?’
‘Why not? If we pack quickly, we can be there by midnight. I mean, be honest. Where would you rather wake tomorrow morning? Sicilì or Cosenza?’
Zara didn’t answer at once. On the one hand, she didn’t want Dov sharing her hotel room again that night. On the other, the cottage only had two bedrooms. But her silence only offered Carmen the chance to speak. ‘I’d be glad to see the back of Cosenza,’ she admitted.
‘Excellent,’ grinned Dov. ‘Sicilì it is.’
A clap of thunder announced the storm. Soon it was tipping down. The windows of the silver Range Rover quickly misted up. Tomas had to rub the windscreen to keep watch. An evening service ended in the cul-de-sac church. Congregants came trickling out, huddled against the rain. In the tangle of traffic that ensued, he almost missed the scarlet Renault as it pulled up outside Nero’s building. Its rear door opened and a woman scurried inside, her arm above her head. Thirty seconds later, Nero’s apartment lights came on and then the woman herself walked by a window. ‘She’s back,’ he said.
Guido nodded. ‘You sure you want to do it yourself?’
‘Just keep the engine on.’
He pulled his cap back on, turned up his collar then hurried down the steps to resume his post beneath the fir tree. It offered less shelter than he’d hoped, the wind sweeping sheets of rain against his legs, his shoes quickly becoming soaked. He was looking about for somewhere better when Nero appeared in the lobby carrying an overnight bag. She came to the door. He reached for his gun. She cupped her hands around her eyes to peer out through the glass at the dismal weather, then stepped back again, set down her bag and checked her watch. Perhaps she was waiting for the rain to abate before heading off. Or perhaps someone was coming to pick her up. He considered shooting her through the door. But she was far enough back that he couldn’t be certain of even hitting her. If she got away, he might not get another chance.
The rain slowed and then stopped almost as abruptly as it had started. Still Nero stayed inside. Five more minutes passed. Then the scarlet Renault from before pulled up in a slosh of water. The driver tooted for her attention then got out and hurried around to open the hatchback for her overnight bag, even as she picked it up and came out.
It was his moment.
He tugged the brim of his cap down low then zipped his jacket up over his chin, leaving himself a viewing slit like a medieval helmet. He held his gun down by his side then walked briskly forward, timing his approach to reach Nero as she swung her bag into the boot, waiting until the very last moment so that he couldn’t possibly miss.
It was the slap of shoes on the flagstones that did it. There was something so purposeful about them that Dov instinctively glanced around. He took in all at once the man approaching, the deliberate way he’d hidden his face between baseball cap and collar, how his eyes were fixed on Carmen and the gun he was holding against his leg. Dov’s bodyguard training instantly kicked in, those three dull years in the secret service. He stepped across the man even as he raised the gun. He grabbed his wrist in one hand and the barrel of the gun in the other, wresting it from his startled grip. Their gazes briefly locked. There was a strange moment of mutual recognition, each appreciating the other for what he was. Then the man tore himself free and hurried off into the night, glancing all around as if expecting the police to come swarming. Dov was too startled to stop him or go after him. He watched instead as he fled up a flight of steps onto the bridge road where he climbed into a silver Range Rover that sped straight off. Dov glanced around at Carmen, utterly unaware of what had so nearly befallen her. ‘Get in,’ he told her. ‘I need something from my bag.’ She nodded and climbed in.
That man had surely been ’Ndrangheta. His partner too. Possibly the very two Carmen had described to the sketch artist that morning, seeking to silence her before she could identify them in person. And now he had their gun, with their fingerprints still on it. He unzipped his suitcase for a T-shirt with which to wipe clean those parts of the gun that he himself had touched, then he zipped it away in an empty pouch. He closed the hatchback, got back in behind the wheel, pulled a three-point turn. He checked every which way as he joined the bridge road. There was no sign of the silver Range Rover, but maybe they’d have other ways of tracking her. And they knew about him now, so he needed to be alert. It wouldn’t be easy. He’d seen too little of the man’s face to be confident of recognising him again – and he hadn’t seen his partner at all. Ideally, he’d get hold of a copy of Carmen’s sketches, except he could hardly ask for them. He glanced around at her, still oblivious of her close call. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but there’s something been bugging me all day.’
‘Yes?’ she asked.
‘Those sketches you did this morning. This will make me sound like an idiot, but how does that even work? When I was at that bar in Ginosa, I gave it a shot myself, trying to see if I could describe my mother’s face from memory. My own dear mother! And, honestly, it was hopeless.’
Carmen smiled. ‘It’s harder than you’d think, isn’t it?’
‘Damn right. So how did you do it? I mean, take those two men you described this morning, for example. What sort of things did you say?’