She turned away from the stove and started to lay the table.
‘I apologise. I invited you into my house and now I’m insulting you and your culture. That’s unspeakably rude. I don’t know what’s the matter with me tonight.’
‘I don’t care. Just keep talking. I like listening to your voice.’
She glanced at him sharply.
‘You mustn’t fall in love with me, you know.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re homeward bound, Tommaso.’
‘I am home.’
‘Don’t start that again! It’s just expatriate sentimentality, and sentiments are of no importance here. All that matters is power. Sex may matter. Pregnancy and marriage certainly do, because those things have consequences. But don’t imagine for a moment that anyone gives a damn about your feelings. Or mine, for that matter. The pasta’s ready, let’s eat.’
They ate in almost complete silence. Tom felt totally exhilarated and utterly crushed. He’d never been talked down like that in his life. Mirella said nothing more, and he was afraid that anything he said would sound stupid. But he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He remembered now something that had been submerged by the shock of what had happened in that alley, when she was taking his attacker down with her feet and threw her hands up to maintain her balance and he’d seen the tufts of hair in her armpits and realised that she wasn’t a brunette but a redhead who dyed her hair to blend in on the street. An Albanian redhead, at that. The prospect was challenging, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her, couldn’t wait for her to speak to him again, couldn’t wait to suck the sweat off those hairs, to lick the tender hollow beneath and inhale the sweet, gamy essence of her flesh.
When the meal was over, Mirella brusquely rejected Tom’s offer to help with the dirty dishes.
‘That’s woman’s work. Go and lie down. You need rest.’
‘So do you.’
‘It’s quicker and easier if I do it myself. After that I’m going to watch TV. Later on, I’ll come and check the dressing on your wound.’
‘Are you a doctor as well?’
‘No, but I’ve got excellent first-aid skills. We have to take basic training and then refreshers every year. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing and it won’t hurt.’
She piled up a stack of plates and dishes and set them in the sink.
‘And then, if you’re not too tired, we might fuck.’
Clatter, bang went the pots and pans.
‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to move much,’ Tom said.
‘That’s all right, we’ll work something out. It’ll help you sleep.’
‘And you?’
She shrugged.
‘I like being manhandled once in a while, and opportunities for casual sex don’t come along often in Calabria. Besides, since you’re staying here everyone will assume we’ve done it anyway, so I’d be a fool not to take advantage. But if you don’t want me…’
‘Are you crazy? Of course I want you!’
‘Then there’s nothing more to say. Go and lie down.’
Tom stood there uselessly, taking up space in the tiny kitchen, getting in Mirella’s way. He had no idea what to say or do, so he asked the question that was uppermost in his mind.
‘May I kiss you, Mirella?’
‘No, that’s too intimate.’
Once again he was tongue-tied and ended up speaking the truth.
‘You’re the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met.’
Mirella laughed dismissively.
‘Nonsense, I’m very normal and boring. But I’ll try not to bore you tonight, and tomorrow I’ll take you to the hospital for your final check-up and then pack you off on the plane home to your American beauties with their stainless-steel teeth.’
Tom met her eyes.
‘You can’t get rid of me that easily, Mirella. I do have to go now, but I’ll be back. I may not qualify as a Calabrian in your eyes but even you can’t deny that I’m an American. We don’t quit just because the going gets tough.’
Mirella held up her right hand and extended the little finger and thumb.
‘What’s that?’ demanded Tom angrily. ‘Some superstitious gesture against that thing you believe in here…’
She flashed him a mischievous smile.
‘ Cuntru l’affascinu? No, I’m not that fascinated by you. Not yet, at least. Anyway, that sign is made with the forefinger, not the thumb. All I meant is that I want you to phone me while you’re away. Now go to bed and get some rest, because that’s not the only thing I want.’
The trap was set. There had been no phone calls to any of Nicola Mantega’s numbers, but piecing together the previous evidence, including the recent delivery and return of the genuine Roman gold artefacts, Aurelio Zen had concluded that Giorgio was now on red alert and communicating only in writing. The team watching Mantega had therefore been instructed to keep a close eye on possible maildrops.
Shortly after six that evening, a roughly shaven individual of about thirty with the piercing gaze and rolling gait of the mountain folk had walked down the block of Corso Mazzini where Mantega’s office was situated, entered the building and emerged precisely six seconds later. He was followed back to his car and at a hastily improvised road-block near Camigliatello he was pulled over by the Polizia Stradale and arrested for drunk driving, even though his blood alcohol level was in fact zero. Long before that, Nicola Mantega’s compartment in the letter boxes mounted on the wall just inside the entrance of the office block had been opened and the plain brown envelope inside extracted. This was rushed to forensics for tests, then opened, the contents copied and replaced, the envelope resealed and replaced in Mantega’s letter box.
The allegedly drunk driver had meanwhile used the one telephone call he had been allowed to make to contact the house in San Giovanni in Fiore which was the incoming conduit for Giorgio’s communications network. Shortly afterwards, Dionisio Carduzzi was observed leaving his house and walking up the long, twisting main street of the town to Via del Serpente, part of the slum area of apartment blocks built illegally in the 1970s, many of them unfinished and unoccupied and all lacking double glazing and insulation and improperly positioned to face the full blast of the Siberian winds that dragged the temperature far below zero for much of the winter. Dionisio had entered the unit that contained Silvia Fardella’s address of official record, but his visit was a short one. No sooner had he stepped back on to the street than Nicola Mantega’s mobile in Cosenza rang and a woman’s voice said, ‘Check your mailbox.’ The yob who had apparently passed out in a shady corner of the entrance hall, clutching an empty bottle of limoncello, confirmed a moment later on his encrypted mobile that Mantega had done so. What il notaio didn’t do was inform the police of these interesting developments, but Aurelio Zen already had a copy of the missive in question in his hands. Stripped of its many orthographical errors, it read as follows:
I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE NICOLETTA BUT IT’S TOO RISKY COME TO THE DAM ON THE MUCONE RIVER AT EIGHT THIS IS URGENT AND I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE
Zen smiled unpleasantly as he put the note down on his desk. Right now Nicola Mantega must be wondering how in the name of God it had come to this, running his mind back over each of the steps which had brought him to where he stood now, on the brink of a precipice, yet unable to fault himself for a single one of them. It had all made complete sense at the time, so how on earth had he ended up having to drive off after dark to a rendezvous on a remote country road up in the Sila mountains with a drug-addicted psychotic who would slit his throat if he found out what Mantega had been up to in his collaborations with the chief of police and the late Martin Nguyen, and for that matter might very well slit his throat anyway? But Mantega would go nevertheless, because he knew that if he didn’t then sooner or later Giorgio would come to him. Better to calm him down now, deny Rocco Battista’s absurd allegations and press a large bundle of banknotes into Giorgio’s hand with the promise of more to come.