The Fallen (18 page)

“Will you try again?” Greaves asked.

Maglietta laughed. “Of course I will. Otherwise, what’s the point of my being here? If I don’t have the foolish hope that somehow things will change, then I will just wither away like the damn vines.”

“Maybe you should try to grow something else.”

“I could do that, but then it would still be like I was giving up. And I am too stubborn a man for that. Besides, sometimes failure is as good as success. It’s the attempting that matters.”

“You really believe that?”

Maglietta leaned forward in his chair and rested his elbows on the table and looked across at Greaves. “I believe it absolutely, Thomas. A man’s intentions say more about him than his achievements. Take our friend today. What are his achievements?” Maglietta held out a hand and counted off on his fingers. “He killed a boy not much older than himself. And he was a good boy, too. I knew him, knew his family. So
he did that. And he ruined a young girl’s life. What is her future going to be like, knowing that she was the cause of her brother’s death? A family he left devastated. Actually, two families. Because now there is a vendetta, and it will collect its victims—the next male in line. And how far will
it
go? To the cousins? The cousins of the cousins? Right now some poor fool is out there somewhere sleeping soundly in his bed, not a care in the world, but one day there is going to be a knock at the door and when he opens it, he’ll be shot or stabbed or have his head bashed in, and he won’t even know why. And then there is our young friend himself. His life is over. He is going to Poggio Reale, and that will be it for him. These, Thomas, are his achievements. And they are appalling, contemptible, shameful.”

Maglietta sipped his plum brandy and drew deeply on his cheroot. Then, as the blue smoke he exhaled caught the breeze and swirled like a mist before him, he said: “But his intentions, now, that is a different story altogether. I say that his intentions were the most honourable. Don’t you think? All that he did, all this misery he caused, it was driven by love, or at least what he thought was love. And even though it is my job to arrest him, my job to make sure that the rest of his life is continuous anguish—even after all of this, I can say quite honestly that I have admiration for him. Admiration and a great deal of sympathy.”

Greaves watched Maglietta as he sat back and began to run his fingers again through his thick moustache. The
brigadiere
was pleased with himself.

“So are you saying, Francesco,” Greaves said, “that you believe in redemption?”

Maglietta made a face. “Redemption?”

“Yes. You believe that a man can make amends for the wrongs he’s done.”

“Absolutely not.” Maglietta shook his head. “It’s impossible.”

Now it was Greaves who sat forward and propped his elbows on the table. It was the way their conversations often went, a push and pull of opinion, eagerness drawing one forward and then, argument made, easing him back again.

“My grandfather,” Greaves said, “always preached that sacrifice was the way to redemption. A man can atone for his sins through acts of selflessness. If you give of yourself, he used to say, if you honestly give of yourself—forgo your own comforts and your own desires and strive only to do good—then absolution will be your reward.”

“And you believe this?”

Greaves considered it for a moment. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I think that your grandfather was a wise man, Thomas. But I also think he hadn’t a clue of what he was talking about. It’s a fairy tale. A man cannot undo what he has done. That child locked up in the station cannot make un-dead the little girl’s brother. Perhaps that family could forgive him for what he did. But to make amends, to achieve some sort of redemption—no, Thomas, I don’t think so.”

“So there’s no point, then? There’s no point in trying to make up for your mistakes?”

“I didn’t say that,” replied Maglietta. “There is always a point. Even if a man can never make amends for the things that he has done, it is important that he try. In fact, it is
everything
that he tries. Because what kind of man is he if he does not?”

There was the sound of giggling behind them, and they turned to see Cordelia with Maglietta’s two daughters.

“They wanted to tell you good night,” Cordelia said.

Each girl in turn came around the table to Greaves and let herself be kissed on each cheek. Then they went to their father. Maglietta tossed
his cheroot away and swept them up onto his lap. He tickled their sides and they nuzzled their faces into his neck.

“Francesco, please,” said Cordelia. “I’ll never get them settled again.”

“Of course you will,” Maglietta said. He looked at both girls and said, with feigned severity: “You’re not going to give your mother any trouble, now, are you?”

“No, Papa,” they chirped in unison.

“And you are going to go straight to sleep without any complaint?”

“Yes, Papa,” they chirped again.

“Good, now off you go with your mama.”

After the girls had gone inside, the stillness of the night lengthened. They finished off another two glasses of plum brandy and played a few hands of cards, and then Maglietta got up from the table and went to the brazier. He stirred the embers with a stick, flattening them out so they would cool. A small flurry of sparks rose up but burnt out before they reached the trellis.

“The dead boy’s family will know that you are here,” he said.

“I should leave early, then,” said Greaves. “Daybreak is probably best.”

“I think so, yes.” Maglietta turned away from the brazier. “Come. Cordelia has made up your bed for you.”

“It’s the dark as much as the cold,” Varone said, “that would get to me.”

He looked down at Renzo Abruzzi, curled up on the floor, his arms wrapped around his shins and his chin tucked into his knees. He could smell the sharp tang of the man’s urine and imagined that his trousers must be stiff and raw against his flesh. It had been more than twelve hours now since they’d put him in the meat locker. The lunch crowd, mostly American officers from the AMGOT headquarters two streets over, had just begun to arrive when Paolo wrestled him out of the car and down the stairwell into the cellar of the café. He’d put up a good struggle—Paolo had the split lip to show for it. The fight, though, seemed to have gone out of him now.

“We used to keep sides of beef in here,” Varone said. “Pork and lamb, too. Prosciutto we had shipped straight from Parma. You can see that we have other uses for it now.” Varone turned to Paolo. “Get him out of there.”

The cellar of the Caffè Diplomatico was littered with empty crates and boxes of restaurant supplies. It had a faintly earthy odour, and there was, as well, the stink of something gone rotten. The only light came from a single bulb that hung from a wire in the middle of the room.

Varone grabbed a chair and set it below the light bulb. “Sit him down.”

Abruzzi blinked against the brightness as Paolo forced him into the chair. The slivery brown twine that bound his wrists had rubbed the skin raw and there was dried blood on the backs of his hands. Paolo pulled the gag out of his mouth and he began to cough and retch.

“Can I have a drink?” he asked hoarsely.

“Give him some water,” Varone said.

Paolo went to one of the crates and pulled out a bottle of mineral water. He pried the cap off with his belt buckle then held the bottle out to Abruzzi, who took it in his bound hands and drank greedily. Water spilt from the corners of his mouth and down his shirt front. When he was finished, Paolo took the bottle away.

“Better?” Varone asked.

“Yes, thank you,” said Abruzzi. Then he shrugged and asked: “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Why? You already know why, Renzo.”

“No,” Abruzzi said. “No, I don’t.”

“But you said so yourself. Remember? Because I am a businessman.”

Varone began to walk a slow circle around the chair, so that Abruzzi had to crane his stiff neck to see him.

“But I thought we had an agreement.”

“I don’t recall agreeing to anything,” said Varone. “I recall that you came to me with a proposition and that I listened, but now I’ve decided that I don’t like it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t.” Varone held out his hand and Paolo passed him the knife. “This is yours, isn’t it?” he said to Abruzzi. “People know you by it, I’m told. You have a reputation. Is that right?”

Abruzzi nodded.

“Well, my young friend, I also have a reputation. A reputation it has taken me a very long time to build. And to maintain it, on occasion I have to do some very unpleasant things—things I have not always wanted to do, things that I have found distasteful, but, at the same time, things that have been entirely necessary. I’m sure you understand what I mean. I’m sure that you’ve had to do things yourself that you wished you could’ve avoided. Are you following me, Renzo?”

Abruzzi shook his head. “No. No, I don’t know what you mean.”

Ignorance, Varone thought: forever the first line of defence. It always amused him to see people revert to the position of stupidity, as if somehow this made them more sympathetic rather than less, never imagining that a further deceit would likely only help to seal their fate.

“Let me put it to you another way, then,” he said. “Tell me how it would look to others if—after having taken such care to preserve my name—I were to let a man like you not only steal from me, but also dictate the terms of … what should we call it? A truce? A partnership?”

“But I could work for you,” Abruzzi protested. “Me and my men. We would all work for you.”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m afraid that wouldn’t do either.”

Abruzzi was frightened. It seemed that for the first time since Paolo had disarmed him and bundled him into the car that was waiting outside the gates of the Villa Comunale, he understood the gravity of his situation. Now, as Varone unfolded the knife and held it out for him to see, he began to tremble.

Varone touched the tip of the knife to his thumb. “Tomorrow morning, they are going to find your body on the Corso Umberto Primo, outside that shitty little
ristorante
you like so much. And people are going to recognize your face. They will know who you are and they
will know who put you there. And that way, the next man who thinks he can steal from me will think twice.”

In one swift movement, Paolo slipped in behind the chair and grabbed hold of Abruzzi under the chin, pulling his head back.

“Please—”

With two quick stabs, the words died in Abruzzi’s throat. A spurt of blood arced across the floor. Paolo released his hold of him, and Abruzzi quickly put his hands to his neck. The blood pulsed between his fingers, leaking over his shirt front. He tried to stand up, but the chair slid out from beneath him and he landed heavily on the floor. He sank slowly onto his side.

Varone stepped past the overturned chair. He crouched down and tilted his head to the side and regarded the stunned expression on Abruzzi’s face: it was the look of a man who realizes too late that he has understood nothing of his life.

He patted Abruzzi gently on the cheek. “Big fish eat small fish,” he said. “Now, close your eyes, Renzo. Just close your eyes.”

Abruzzi’s breathing became shallow, his mouth filled with blood. He shuddered and his pupils dilated, then they swelled again until the blue iris turned fully black, and there was a soft sound like air escaping a deflating tire.

Varone stood up. He wiped a spot of blood from the palm of his hand. “Like I said,” he told Paolo. “Put him out on the street where he’ll be seen.”

Greaves woke before the sun, frightened from sleep by the dream of Agira, only this time, when the screaming started, he imagined it was the patients of Ospedale del Santo Sepolcro who suffered the burning agony, and as he walked through the rubble, a cold black rain fell
from the night sky, and all around him was the smell of burnt flesh. He tripped over limbs, feet, hands, bits of hair, bone; and the blood mixed with the rain and made a thick stew of the ground that pulled at his boots.

He threw back the blankets and put his feet on the cold floor. He could feel the sweat cool on his skin. He rubbed his arms and then stood up. The wind howled and beat against the shutters. He went to the window and looked out.

There was a strange radiance to the night. Across the mountain range were lightning flashes of a distant storm. It was like observing a battle from afar, the bursts of brilliance at once beautiful and terrifying. Watching it, Greaves was gripped by a cold fear. He sensed, for a moment, his world coming apart. As if there were a force at work over which he had no control. He had felt like this before, in the days after the assault on Agira, when he lay on the ward in the field hospital, unable to move, though the doctors could find nothing that might explain the paralysis.

Greaves was dressed and waiting when Maglietta knocked gently on the bedroom door. He came in carrying a tray with coffee and
cornetti
. The sun had not yet risen.

“We’ll go as soon as you’re ready,” he told Greaves.

They drove through the early morning darkness, the beams of the headlamps picking out the low stone wall that guarded the cliffside. When they arrived at the Carabinieri station, the young policeman was at first hesitant about opening the door; the distant thunder of the early morning storm across the mountains had unsettled him.

Inside, Maglietta went to his desk. He double-checked the transfer orders and placed them in an envelope while Greaves walked over to the closet to inspect the prisoner. The boy, he noticed, had a swollen lip and there was dried blood in his left nostril. A bump
below his eye had begun to turn purple, like a small grape beneath the skin.

Maglietta brought the documents to Greaves. “You should take him now,” he said.

Greaves put the envelope into his satchel. He got out a pair of handcuffs as Maglietta helped the boy to his feet.

“Take the
tenente’s
keys,” Maglietta told the young policeman, “and go start his car for him. Keep an eye outside until we bring the prisoner.” Then he went to the gun cabinet behind his desk and took out an ancient Cei-Rigotti carbine and slipped the bolt and checked the magazine.