Conor Fitzgerald - The Namesake

He got to the partially collapsed section of tunnel, and was so overcome with anguish at the idea of pushing his head into the jaws of the rock, that he thought he might prefer to die where he was. He remembered the hope he had felt when his hand, emerging from the narrow space, had touched the warm polymer of his pistol.

He pulled Pietro’s lighter from his pocket and used it to illuminate the space around him. Right in front of him, touching his feet, though he had not felt it, lay Pietro’s shotgun, cracked open and discarded by Curmaci before entering the narrow space. He pulled the shotgun to him and poked and pushed it into the black hole in front of him. It came up against an obstruction that had not been there before. He probed at the blockage, which yielded. Curmaci, deliberately or not, had caused a small avalanche of rubble to fall. As he bent down, an unmistakable taste of fresh air streamed into his dry mouth, and it was this that drove him on. Squirming like a worm, floundering like a fish on dry land, and scrabbling like a rodent, he managed to make his way through the narrow section and emerged in the first section of tunnel that had seemed so dark before, but now seemed bathed in soft light. The tunnel roof rose in height, and he walked the final part stooped but on two legs.

The light that came down from above was green, filtered through the corrugated plastic cover that hid the entrance from police helicopters and anyone else who might be interested. The ladder had been drawn up. This did not surprise him, yet it brought tears to his eyes, and he felt ashamed. The glistening rocks and silt that formed the walls of his new prison were appalling in their smoothness. Even with both arms functioning, he could never have scaled them.

He took the phone out of his pocket again and slid the cover back. The small antenna symbol flashed at him, and the reception bars were still absent. He walked around the walls, holding the phone above his head. Nothing.

Blume retreated to just inside the tunnel entrance, and banged the shotgun barrel against the dry rock shaking out as much dirt as he could. He cleared out the left bore and, holding it up to the green light from above, peered into it. The barrel was filthy, but it was a shotgun. With no rifling in the bore, even quite a lot of dirt would not be a problem. The only thing that needed to be precise was his aim, because he had one shot only. He put the left barrel of the shotgun into his mouth, and blew down it. That was as clean as it would get.

He could not suppress the thirst that was taking over his whole being, but in between thoughts of water, he patiently gazed at the green plastic above, watching the play of the sun and shadows on its surface, looking for the hinges and for signs of any objects weighing it down. The best point to hit it would be where the border of the plastic rested on the rim of the hole. He fixed the spot in his mind, stared at it, and imagined how, when he had blasted a hole through it, the sunlight would come in as an angled beam hitting the walls of his deep prison halfway down like a searchlight.

He fished the cartridge out of his pocket, inserted it into the left chamber of the shotgun. The only way this was going to work was if he was lying down. He pressed the recoil pad against his right shoulder and slowly, pausing now and again to let the pain subside, brought his left arm over to steady the barrel. No. He was shaking with pain, and would bury the shot in the sides of the pit. He set the recoil pad on the ground below his armpit and, crooking his arm, pressed the stock into the side of his body. He focused on the pain in his left arm. It was all in the shoulder, not in the finger that was going to pull the trigger. The finger that was going to pull the trigger was steady, and firm. Steady and firm. He looked upwards and fired.

The roar deafened his ear, the shotgun leaped away from him like a pogo stick and a pile of dry dirt and stones tumbled down onto his face, and for a desperate moment he thought he had hit the walls. Instead, he had blasted a patch of blue sky into the green trapdoor and a sunbeam was shining down, not at an angle but straight down upon his face.

He tried to shout for joy, but his voice came out as a dying croak.

He slid open the phone, worked out its menus. There was one bar left on the battery. He found the option for redial, and set it to maximum, which was just five. The phone would dial the same number five times, then give up. And there was no point in calling emergency services, since none of the operators would give a second thought to hanging up on a mute call from a mobile phone.

Blume tested the phone by lobbing it up half a yard and allowing it to fall. As the phone hit the ground, its front panel snapped closed and the call was shut down. Even the slightest bump snapped it closed. He scraped at the earthy parts of the walls till he had come up with some twigs and pieces of root. He shoved them under the sliding panel of the phone, pushed in small pebbles and dirt, and let it fall. The panel stayed open. He stripped his shoelaces from his shoes, and using his teeth and his good hand, bound them tightly around the battery cover.

Blume only had one phone number in his memory. He dialled it with reverential care and lobbed the phone upwards towards the hole he had blown in the corrugated plastic. He missed twice. The first time he caught the phone one-handed before it hit the ground. The second time, it clattered at his feet, but the battery cover stayed on and the panel stayed wedged open. He brushed it down, pressed disconnect, kissed and blessed the phone, then dialled the same number again. He could already see the message flashing no signal as he lobbed it skywards again. This time, it sailed through the shining gap above.

Milan

She need not have worried about her reception in the bereaved household. Letizia Arconti did not expect Caterina to answer angry questions. She was just thankful, immensely thankful, that Caterina had taken all the trouble to come up here and talk to her. She had heard that the East Europeans who had done this to Matteo were dead and that it had all been part of some warning to a judge in Rome. What she really wanted Caterina to tell her was how he had looked when they found him.

‘You came down to identify him in the morgue in Rome. You saw what he looked like,’ said Caterina.

‘But they had cleaned him up then, closed his eyes, his mouth. My father died at home, and I remember how my sister and I smoothed away the rictus of pain on his face before we let my mother see him again. What did Matteo look like when you found him? Were his eyes open? Could you see fear?’

They taught you that it was better to withhold as many details as possible from the family of a murder victim. It did no one any good.

‘No, no. I could not see fear,’ said Caterina.

‘That’s because it was a stupid question. Of course, you can’t see fear. The dead are dead. I’m sorry. I’m doing the hysterical widow act.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Caterina. ‘And it wasn’t a stupid question. I’ve seen fear on the faces of the dead. Immigrants who suffocated in the back of a semi. I promise you he didn’t have that sort of fear in him.’

‘Are you trying to be kind?’

‘Yes, but I’m a widow, too. I lost my husband in a road accident.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘He was on a motorbike, got hit by a car. His body was broken all over, his face pulped, and so there was no recognizable expression on it, but I can guess it would have been shock and anger. He would have been so angry to die at that age. I knew him, knew what he was like. I see the same look of stunned anger on my son’s face, sometimes. You knew your husband. How you imagine he faced his death is probably how he died. They didn’t torture him, you know.’