Conor Fitzgerald - The Namesake

‘That is no concern of yours or mine,’ said Fossati.

‘Word spreads,’ said the inspector, unrepentant.

‘You police talk to each other too much.’

On the Road to Calabria

Massimiliani did not call back for half an hour, so Blume was able to continue his pell-mell driving and listen to young people’s music full blast on the stereo. When Massimiliani came back on the phone line, it was with another person.

‘Alec, I’m on speakerphone here with Weissmann.’

‘ Schiess los,’ said Blume.

Weissmann laughed heartily, ‘ Aber du sprichst gut Deutsch! ’

‘ Ein bisschen,’ said Blume modestly. He removed the battery from Konrad’s phone, opened the window, and dropped it out. Bad for the environment, apparently. Couldn’t be as bad as the car batteries left on the pavement outside his apartment in Rome.

Massimiliani cut in. ‘I already find difficult English, but speak no German. Please use English.’

‘ Ja, doch! ’ said Weissmann.

‘Sorry,’ said Blume, raising his voice against the inrush of air from the open window beside him. He flicked Konrad’s SIM card out, then crooking his arm and cupping his wrist, tossed the phone itself towards the back wheel of the car. If his wheels didn’t crush it, maybe the bastard tailgating him behind would, or someone after that. He rolled up the window.

‘OK, now… I have some notes,’ Weissmann was saying. ‘You are aware of course that Italian organized crime in Germany is considered a new phenomenon? I talk of the press, not of us in the BKA. We have been following it for years. But the Duisburg killing on the Feast of the Assumption interested the press, and now they write articles. But of course we are not as expert as you Italians.’

Blume heard Massimiliani say, ‘Thank you.’ He was not sure if Massimiliani’s English stretched to sarcasm, but it might.

‘The Ndrangheta was established well before we began to investigate it properly,’ said Weissmann. ‘I am talking about very recently. The late 1990s, you understand? And resources are still not

… well, that’s not your problem. But the phenomenon is still underestimated, I believe. This is because what we have in Germany are only branches of the main organization, or…’ Blume heard the rustling of papers. ‘Offshoots. That is the word. Ableger, oder? They are offshoots of the main tree, which is in Calabria, in a town called San Luca. And so we have hoped that the Italians will someday cut the tree down. But what has happened is these offshoots…’

‘ ’ndrine bastarde,’ said Massimiliani.

‘ Wie? Bastards?’ Weissmann sounded delighted.

‘That’s what the Ndrangheta calls its offshoots,’ said Blume, ‘ ’ndrine bastarde ’, bastard units. A locale is a set of various ’ndrine. If one of them gets too big, it might split and give birth to an ’ndrina bastarda. Sometimes a bastard unit grows up to become larger than the whole locale. It often happens, in fact, because the new Ndrangheta is more powerful and wealthier than the old. Each generation gets stronger. Maybe Seitentrieb in German?’

‘No! They must be bastard units,’ said Weissmann. ‘That is a very good name. And that is what has happened in Germany. Now even without Calabria, the Ndrangheta in Germany has its own base of power.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Blume. ‘But without Calabria as a home base, I think they mightn’t be as strong as all that. I thought you were going to talk about Konrad Hoffmann.’

‘Commissioner Blume?’ It was Massimiliani’s voice sounding formal and concerned.

‘What?’

‘Hoffmann has just disappeared from the network. He must have shut down his phone, taken the battery out and everything. Have you still got him in your sights?’

‘I was backing off like you told me to. So he’s got a bit far ahead. I can try to catch up.’

‘We’ve decided to intercept you at Atrena Lucana. That’s about seventy kilometres ahead of you. You’ll need to make sure Hoffmann doesn’t turn off before then, but there is no reason he would. He’s headed for Locri, San Luca, Africo or Polsi. The Locride zone for sure.’

‘I need to know what you have found out about Hoffmann,’ said Blume.

There was a pause and Blume could hear someone nearby speaking to Massimiliani. Eventually the DCSA captain said, ‘Look, Blume, I only learned about all this just now from the BKA. I’ll let Weissmann fill you in, then we need to talk.’

After a few moments’ silence, Weissmann’s voice came through, clearer than before, as if he had picked up a receiver and was speaking directly into it.

‘Commissioner?’

‘I’m here,’ said Blume, ‘and listening.’

‘OK, I must tell you this is what we have found out… In 1992, a young woman named Dagmar Schiefer was working in the Finanzministerium in the Nordrhein-Westfalen region. She was highly begabt, you understand? She was a clever, gifted young woman who had a good eye for data analysis, which was even more important in those days before we started to use good database abstraction layers. Dagmar, who was twenty-five years old and just out of a specialization course at university, became interested in what turned out to be what we call Karussellgeschaft, which in English is…’ He paused, presumably to look at his notes.

‘Carousel fraud,’ said Blume. ‘Almost the same as the German.’

‘You are wrong. Here it says the English translation is “missing trader intra-community fraud”…’

‘Let’s just call it fraud. Dagmar discovered fraud,’ said Blume. He thought he had glimpsed a familiar orange-and-white slow-moving vehicle disappearing over the crest of a hill. Cones and barriers had turned the autostrada back into a one-lane highway with a surface that ripped at his tyres.

‘Dagmar was brilliant,’ said Weissmann. ‘It is always easy to spot a fraud afterwards, when it has already been exposed, but Dagmar managed to identify profiles and models of behaviour. She created a sort of checklist of suspect actions so that fictitious companies set up to steal VAT from the government could be caught while still in the act. Even now, with all our computer power, it is hard to do this. This is also because everything is legal until one of the companies disappears. Also, we have to operate in different jurisdictions with different police, and that is very difficult, especially with the Dutch and the Spanish. The Dutch can be very unhelpful. Ein schwieriges Volk. We have good relations with the Italians in this area.’

‘Delighted to hear it,’ said Blume.

‘Yes. Of course it’s not just police but also tax officers, finance ministries, bureaucrats and accountants… In 1993, thanks to Dagmar, who also testified as an expert witness, we arrested thirty people, your colleagues in the Carabinieri arrested ten in this country, and there were more arrests in Spain and England. It was a very successful operation, but it was like a raindrop on a hot stone. In Germany, one of those arrested was a man called Domenico Megale.

‘More serious charges came later. That is why he stayed in jail from back then until now. Anyhow, we have been observing him for years, because it is clear that he still commands, or it was clear. In the last year of his imprisonment, he had few visits. Agazio Curmaci was one. Then, as you know, Domenico Megale was released a few weeks ago, and remains in Germany. So it seems he will not participate at the general meeting of the bosses in Polsi, but his son will. Also this Curmaci, whose role is hard to understand.’

‘It sounds like you are not sure if Megale is still the boss of the Dusseldorf colony, or if he has passed the command on to his son, or if someone else — Curmaci — has stepped in between them,’ said Blume.