Malavita by Tonino Benacquista Page B

Italy. You’ll be safe there.”
    â€œYou’re ready to cross the ocean to save my skin?”
    â€œIf it was up to me, I’d ring one of those crime-team guys right now, I’d do it for free, just to see a scumbag like you with a bullet in your head, which is what you deserve. But the trouble is, you dying would give organized crime twenty years of impunity, with all that crap about
omertà
and sealed lips. On the other hand, if you get out of it, I’ll get a list of rats long enough to keep me going for the rest of my life and it’ll pay for my retirement. It’s what Washington wants. Your survival is worth a lot to us, and you’re much more useful to me living than dead.”
    â€œIf that’s the only solution, then I want to go to Italy.”
    â€œOut of the question.”
    â€œIt would give some sense to us being in exile, otherwise there’s none. Let me get to know the land of my fathers, I’ve never been there. I promised Livia the day we got married that we’d go there some day. Her grandparents were from Caserta, mine from Ginostra. They say it’s the most beautiful place in the world.”
    â€œSicily? Great idea! You might just as well walk around Little Italy with a placard saying HAVING FUN IN JAIL, DON MIMINO?”
    â€œLet me see Italy before I die.”
    â€œIf I land you in Sicily, you’ll be made into
spezzatini
in less than ten minutes. Think of your family.”
    â€œ. . .”
    â€œTalk to Maggie, we’ve still got a little time.”
    â€œI know what she’ll say. It’ll be Paris, Paris, Paris – all women dream about it.”
    â€œTo be quite honest, I’ve spoken to my bosses, and Paris is one possibility. Also Oslo, Brussels, Cadiz, with a slight preference for Brussels – don’t ask.”
    A few weeks later the Blakes were installed in a quiet building in the second
arrondissement
in Paris. Once past the first few months of adaptation – new life, new country, new language – they got into an everyday routine which, without really satisfying them, helped them get over the trauma of the move. That was before Fred began single-handedly undermining the protection programme.
    *
    Both arms in plaster, suspended by straps to the bedhead, Didier Fourcade, the most sought-after plumber in Cholong, watched his wife sleeping, not daring to wake her. The pain had subsided thanks to powerful analgesics.
    He relived that morning in his mind – how, suffering the pains of hell, he had pushed open the double doors of the Morseuil clinic with his shoulder. He had presented himself at the admissions desk, with his arms in the air, like a flightless bird, torn between pain, shame and terror.
    â€œI’ve broken my arms.”
    â€œBoth of them?”
    â€œIt hurts, for God’s sake!”
    An hour later, in plaster up to the elbows, he had had to face questions from an intern who walked around him without taking his eyes off the X-rays of his arms.
    â€œFell down the stairs? . . .”
    â€œI fell two floors on a building site.”
    â€œIt’s odd, you can see points of impact, as though you had been hit . . . Like hammer blows on the wrists and the arms. Look, there.”
    Didier Fourcade turned away to avoid another wave of nausea. He was still haunted by the sound of his own screams as that psychopath had hammered at his wrists. He was taken home in an ambulance, the straps were fixed up and he was put to bed, all under the amazed stare of his wife, Martine.
    They had got married twenty years earlier, surprised at wanting to commit to each other only three months after meeting, but unable to prevent themselves. However, as though to counterbalance the euphoria of the first years, the boredom of daily life had caught up with them sooner than with most couples. Both had begun to daydream, imagining a third party entering the equation, imagining