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Prologue
Many years earlier, many years later
He felt, rather than saw, the gun in his hands. This was no
dream, but a vivid memory, with the power to tear apart
whatever he was doing at that moment. Once it came over him,
it was all there was. And here it was again.
How could an actual memory break into a dream? He was
sure this only happened to him. And when it did, he had to sit
down or lean against something. Calm down, let the images run
their course, wait for them to stop. That’s what he did this time
too, perching on the edge of the mattress. He could hear soft
snoring from the bed above him. He’d given his place to the latest
arrival – almost begged him to take it.
He breathed and waited in the darkness.
It started with touch, then moved to sight. Everything was clear
in his memory, even though the day was dark and the main colour,
grey. He felt the rough stock of the Tokarev TT-33, a Yugoslavian
pistol with nine rounds.
Gazing down the barrel of the gun, he saw a man holding two
children by the hand, a boy and a girl. He stared at them, knowing
full well what was about to happen. He wasn’t afraid – not
for himself anyway. Looking around, he saw trees, flowerbeds, a
crowded street, the road ahead and cars stuck in traffic on this
winter’s morning. The chaos, crowds, and people – none of this had
ever stopped them. But the children were new. They’d chosen to
strike before the man dropped them off at school. Why? Wouldn’t
it have been better after? That was the one detail he couldn’t see
clearly. Maybe because it belonged to the previous days.
He looked at the gun again. Nothing was happening. Everything
was on hold. It was all down to him. He was supposed to open fire.
He was the leader. In the meantime, the man pushed the girl a few
metres away and she looked shocked, almost hurt by his sudden
behaviour. He couldn’t move the boy, who held on to his hand with
improbable strength, sticking stubbornly at his side. That’s why
he hesitated. He gripped the Tokarev, which was just waiting for
his orders: loyal, reliable, a weapon that had never let him down.
The gun sat still in his hand while he watched the boy, who
wouldn’t let go of his father’s. He felt something sharp – a knife in
his guts – at the scene. It wasn’t just fear in the boy’s eyes: there was
something deeper, something that went beyond familial affection.
This was more than a lifeline chucked to a dinghy from a rescue
boat during a storm. But even if it hadn’t been, he asked himself:
is there anyone I could throw a rope to? He didn’t care about the
man or the boy. It wasn’t pity or emotion he was feeling. He only
cared about that question, so violent it stopped him in his tracks.
His thoughts were drowned out by a gunshot. He turned to his
accomplice, who had just opened fire and he grimaced as if to say:
what are we doing here with our guns in the middle of the road,
while people are screaming and fleeing, and somebody’s called
the police? So he started shooting too, on auto-pilot: one, two,
three times. The man, at first hit only in the arm, now collapsed to
the ground, dragging the boy with him. The boy started sobbing,
but he was unharmed, considering that he was still clinging to his
bullet-riddled dad and covered in his blood. The accomplice was
moving in to finish the man off, when sirens started blaring close
by. He turned back with a nasty grin. ‘He’s croaked.’
He looked at the boy once more, before someone pulled him
away.
A few minutes later, when they’d driven some way from the
shooting, the other man growled: ‘The fuck were you thinkin’,
eh, Pino?’ That Neapolitan accent grated on him like nothing
else in the world.
He didn’t reply. He was thinking, like he would nearly every
day for the next thirty years, of the small hand gripping the larger
one, of the tie that bound them together. Something powerful,
something absolute. Something he would start feeling himself
only many years later, during his life’s second act, on the final
downhill slope.
Dedication. Loyalty.
There: that’s what it was. Having someone you’d never let go
of, someone you’d hold on to tightly. Someone who was special.
Dedication. Loyalty.
For thirty years, that memory had knocked him sideways each
time he mentally reran the details. (He added nothing, omitted
nothing: if he wanted, he’d have been the perfect witness.)
Yet even though it kept coming back, the memory no longer
troubled him.
He’d found the answers he’d been looking for. He could finally
make that phone call.