It happened maybe once or twice a year that Cesco would be watching the news or a Mafia documentary when suddenly he’d see a photograph or short clip of a face familiar from his childhood, and he’d realise with a shock that the kind man who’d given him sweets or ruffled his hair or taken him for a ride in their sports car was actually an ’Ndrangheta boss or killer with multiple murders to their name. Such men had looked surprisingly normal, even benign. They’d loved their families and had frolicked on the floor with their dogs. Meet them in the street and you’d never guess what manner of men they truly were.
The Hammerskins were not like that. They wanted people to know exactly who they were – that they were men of greed and violence and cruelty. Everything about their appearance and manner was designed to intimidate. And Dieter was the worst. Even with his mask on, the exhilaration was apparent in his eyes as he held the power saw to Cesco’s trousers, chewing through the cloth and cutting into his thigh before he managed to jerk his legs out of reach. He made a feeble effort to swing his feet at Dieter’s face, like a gymnast on a pommel horse, but he could get no leverage, so that all he achieved was to make Dieter step back and snort loudly with disdainful laughter.
There was something so cruel about this that it drove Cesco berserk. He knew already what his own end was going to be; but now he accepted it. Instead of trying to save himself, therefore, he put his rage and strength and energy into inflicting some small measure of retribution. He worked his hands violently to and fro behind his back, ignoring the way that the tape cut like wire into his skin, stretching it enough for him finally to rip his right hand free. At once he put it to the rope around his throat, briefly taking the pressure off and allowing himself to breathe.
Dieter scowled in irritation rather than alarm. He aimed the power saw at Cesco’s right wrist. Cesco fended him off with his feet while unzipping his back pocket with his left hand to take out Emanuela’s canister of pepper-spray. He squirted Dieter full in the face with it, making him screech with pain and drop the saw to grab at his burning eyes. Cesco now turned it on Ox, who howled and let go his end of the rope, letting Cesco crash heavily to the floor. He threw off the rope, grabbed up the power saw and swung it at Knöchel’s knees as he came for him, making him jump back. He slashed through the tape around his ankles, then staggered to the scroll gates, slapping the fat red button to set them rising. Ox and Dieter now came after him, zombie nightmares of inflamed faces with weeping red slits for eyes. He held them at bay with sweeps of the power saw until the gate was at knee height. Then he threw down the saw and rolled out beneath it.
A concrete ramp led upwards. He ran up it. The white van and the Harley were both parked on the forecourt, but neither had their keys. The front door was unlocked. There was an intercom inside with a buzzer for opening the gate, and a set of keys on the table. He grabbed the keys and set the main gate opening, then ran back out, pressing the fob. The van’s corner lights flashed orange. He climbed in, locked it from within, started the engine.
The gate was already halfway open, but now it stopped and went into reverse. Ox appeared at his driver window. He punched the glass so hard that it turned opaque yet somehow still held. Cesco spurted away before he could hit it a second time. Headlights lit up the road outside. The other Hammerskins returning with the pizzas. There was nothing for it. He had no choice. He stamped on the accelerator, charging at the narrowing gap even as the green Audi arrived to fill it.
An occupational hazard of dating a photographer is that you became their muse and model too. Cesco had snapped Carmen all the time, mostly when she was unprepared: at study, out with friends, laughing at a joke, in contemplation and in love. He’d framed his favourites and hung them all around the living room. She’d found it so uncomfortable to be the subject of so many portraits that she’d never really looked at them before. Not properly. Not as a set. But now she did. And, doing so, it bore in on her how happy they made her look.
No. Happy didn’t quite catch it. She looked settled.
A bitter irony, how keenly she’d looked forward to their American trip. To review progress with her doctoral advisors, show Cesco off to her mother and her old friends. Then he’d been refused his tourist visa, despite the forceful backing of their celebrated friend, the anti-Mafia magistrate Baldassare Mancuso, so she’d flown home alone. She’d noticed within minutes how much clumsier her mother had become, even since her last visit. How forgetful and short of temper. Repeating the same stories; struggling with simple words.
The doorbell had gone early one morning. A kindly neighbour had found her wandering in her dressing gown a hundred yards down the street. And not for the first time either, he’d admitted. Carmen had taken her straight to the doctor. A long talk, an MRI, referral to a specialist. Their worst fears all but confirmed. Yet her mother had opted for denial. Bad days, that was all. Only a provisional diagnosis. And what did doctors know anyway? She thought this made her impressively independent. In truth, it simply made her dangerous. Cigarettes on the carpet. Stumbles on escalators. An angry refusal to give up her car.
What choice had Carmen been left with?
She’d stayed on a few extra days to interview carers before settling on a no-nonsense, burly young man. Then she’d returned to Naples, exhausted, confused and miserable, only for Cesco to ambush her with his proposal. Desperate for his support and understanding as she’d been, his poor timing had genuinely exasperated her. But it was also true to say that she’d seized the moment a little too greedily, because she’d known inside it had to happen, and plasters are less painful when they’re ripped.
Noble acts and declarations are rarely noble all the way through. They want to be seen. She’d noticed that with her mother, whose rejection of her help had been less about the help itself than the obligation it would place her under. But was she any better herself? Was her decision to give up on life in Italy truly based on what was sensible or right, or on what made her look good? Because, in some perverse way, she’d wanted to be admired. And admired by Cesco too.
The impossibility of good outcomes added to her weariness. She closed her eyes. Her head nodded, jerking her back awake. The temptation to climb beneath the duvet and wait for Cesco there was strong. But she didn’t give in to it. She wrote him a note instead, asking him to call, however late, then left it on his bed and went back out, trudging through the drizzle to her hotel.
For once, tonight, luck was with Cesco. When the driver of the Audi saw the van charging towards him, he swung instinctively out of its way – though not quite fast enough. Cesco still caught it as he hauled the steering wheel round, hard enough that his front and side airbags instantly deployed. Metal shrieked against metal as his front bumper clawed along its side, but then he was away and clear, fumbling for his headlights. The right one was smashed. Only the left still worked. He turned it on full beam, then glanced in his rear-view even as Ox and Knöchel clambered into the back of the Audi. Then he braked into the first hairpin and lost them from view.
Six turns, as he recalled. Six turns and then a junction. Headlights flashed in his mirrors as he reached the second. The Audi was catching up fast. It appeared again behind him when he was just halfway along the next straight, before closing right up as he braked into the final bend. Gunfire pinged his bodywork. A window shattered and fell away. His damaged front bumper screeched along the tarmac and threw up sparks until it fell away altogether. The road straightened and flattened out. The Audi tried to pull alongside. He weaved to block it. A junction ahead, its lights red. A main road with cross traffic. He put on his seat belt then screeched out onto it, wrenching the steering wheel round. A lorry tooted furiously. A blue Renault estate braked and swerved out of his way. He righted himself and stamped his foot back down.
The Audi had had to stop to avoid the lorry. Now it came after him again, weaving swiftly through the traffic. The road was too wide for Cesco to block it. It pulled alongside. He glanced across. Knöchel had a gun in both hands, the better to keep it steady. A bullet buzzed by his ear. Another punctured and deflated his front airbag. He steered into the Audi, driving it into the verge and making it drop back. They’d left the last cluster of traffic well behind by now but were closing fast on another. A commuter train trundled slowly over a low railway bridge ahead. He could see passengers gawping. The Audi pulled level again. Knöchel fired twice more. A bullet flicked Cesco’s shirt. His windscreen shattered and fell out, pebbles of glass cascading over his legs and feet, cool night air blasting in his face. He wrenched the steering wheel around so violently that he’d have flipped onto his side if he hadn’t hit the Audi instead, forcing it off the road and up a grass bank. It smashed into a concrete drain, ripping out its undersides before tipping up onto its side and then its roof, sending out cascades of sparks as it skittered along the road. A rear door opened. A man staggered out and then collapsed.
A motorbike travelling at absurd speed sped right by. Cesco’s heart sank. Dieter. He caught him briskly, pulled alongside. He was bareheaded but he’d found another gun, holding it across his chest and aiming blindly as they hurtled along. A slip road ahead. Cesco took it at the last moment, forcing Dieter to brake sharply and cut across broken ground. He sped through a junction at the bottom, followed the road round beneath a bridge and then on until he found himself in a busy town centre. He sounded his horn repeatedly to clear people from his way. Dieter pulled alongside once more. Cesco nudged into him, sending him veering away then slamming back into him. He grabbed hold of the frame of Cesco’s broken windscreen as the Harley went from beneath him, spinning on its side along the pavement. Dieter hauled himself onto the bonnet. He reached in to grab Cesco by the throat then squeezed hard to choke him of air. Cesco slammed on the brakes, using momentum to rip him free. Dieter grabbed hold of the dashboard instead and clung grimly on, glaring up at Cesco, their faces only a couple of feet apart. His eyes were bloodshot and his lips were drawn back like a Rottweiler raging at its leash. Never had Cesco seen such hatred in a human face. Never such murder.
Some months before, Carmen had talked Cesco out of killing a man. He was grateful to her for that. It had made their life together possible. But she wasn’t here now. And, anyway, that had been about revenge. This was pure self-defence. Dieter would never let this go. Put him in jail for life, he’d only send his Hammerskins after him instead. And not just after him either. He’d send them after Carmen too. So, quite deliberately, Cesco took his foot off the brake and stepped on the accelerator instead, while Dieter was still clinging to his bonnet. Then he turned the steering wheel around to bound over a short patch of broken ground outside a factory wall. Dieter bellowed in rage and fear. He clawed at Cesco’s face. But the van smashed into the wall a moment later, so hard that the van’s bonnet crumpled up against Cesco’s knees, slamming him into his seat belt before snapping back so violently that for a moment he blacked out.
Pietro Chiellini insisted on driving Romeo Izzo back to Napoli Centrale, from where he caught the Circumvesuviana out to Herculaneum. The train was so crowded that he waited until he was on his walk back home before calling Valentina to share news. They were still talking when he arrived back at his apartment. He paced back and forth outside until they were done, lest Mario overhear the grisly details.
Isabella was in a poisonous mood. There was no dinner ready and she gave him the silent treatment too. What they called a win-win. Except she hadn’t packed yet and she’d got Mario upset too, alarmed by the evacuation and despondent at the prospect of leaving his friends behind. He liked his Aunt Teresa and his cousin Emilia well enough – but not to share a small apartment with. Izzo read him a story and promised that everything would be great. Then he ordered his favourite pizza of ’nduja sausage and drank a bottle of wine while waiting for it to arrive, ignoring the filthy looks that Isabella kept shooting him. She went to bed. He opened a second bottle in celebration, then stretched out on the sofa to eat his pizza and watch TV.
That woman from the Vesuvius Observatory was on. Fatima Zirpoli. She tried to explain why she and her team were convinced the volcano was perilously close to a cataclysmic eruption. But all the questions were about the evacuation instead. Where would their children go to school? Where were they to live? What jobs would there be for them? With admirable calmness and patience, she explained over and over again that this wasn’t her responsibility, that she was qualified only to talk about the science; yet still the questions came, ever more angrily too, as if they somehow blamed her for all that was happening. Most certainly, they’d turn that fury on the police tomorrow when the full evacuation was announced, and they were sent out door-to-door to enforce it. Not for the first time, it struck him how resistant people were to new realities, as if they had no proper understanding of the difference between inconvenience and catastrophe. He hoped, for their sakes, that such ignorance would continue. That in three months’ time they’d all return to their homes, still seething at the unnecessary disruption.
For, dear God, the alternative…