It was a large square room with one small window so that it was in semi-darkness in spite of the bright sun outside. He brought a bottle of wine to the table, filled a couple of glasses and motioned me to sit. His wife flitted from the stove like a dark wraith, a tray in her hands, and vanished through the door.
‘Now, what brings the capo’s grandson to Bellona?’
‘Serafino Lentini,’ I said.
He paused, his glass half-way to his lips, then lowered it again. ‘You’d like to get your hands on Serafino?’ He laughed. ‘Mother of God, so would I. And the capo told you to see me? I don’t understand. The Society has been after Serafino for nearly two years now. He’s given us a lot of trouble and the people round go for him in a big way.’ He swallowed some of his wine and sighed. ‘Very discouraging.’
‘What is he trying to be?’ I said. ‘Another Guiliano -a Robin Hood?’
He spat on the floor. ‘Serafino’s just like the rest of us, out for number one, but he does the shepherds a few favours from time to time or stops some old woman from being evicted, so they think the sun shines out of his backside. Six months ago, near Frentini, he held up the local bus that was carrying wages to a co-operative, shot the driver, and a bank clerk. The driver died two days later.’
‘A real hard man,’ I commented.
‘Wild,’ he said. ‘Never grown up. Mind you he suffered greatly at the hands of the police when he was younger. Lost the sight of an eye. I personally think he’s never got over it. But what do you want with him?’
I told him as much as he needed to know and when I was finished, he shook his head. ‘But this is madness. You could never hope to get anywhere near Serafino. Here, I will show you.’
He opened a drawer and produced a large-scale survey map of the region. It showed the whole Monte Cammarata area in detail.
‘Here is where Serafino is staying at the moment.’ He indicated a spot on the map on the other side of the mountain about fifteen hundred feet below the summit. ‘There’s a shepherd’s hut up there beside a stream. He uses it all the time except when he’s on the run.’
I showed my surprise. ‘You’re certain?’
He smiled sadly. ‘Let me tell you the facts of life. Knowing where Serafino is and catching him there are two different things. Every shepherd on the mountains worships him, every goatherd. They have a signalling system from crag to crag that informs him of the approach of anyone when they’re still three or four hours hard climbing away. I’ve tried to catch him with local men who belong to us-mountain men. We’ve always failed.’
‘How many men does he have with him?’
‘At the moment, three. The Vivaldi brothers and Joe Ricco.’
I examined the map for two or three minutes, then asked him to describe the area in detail. I didn’t need to make notes, I’d done this sort of thing too often be-fore.
In the end I nodded and folded the map. ‘Can I keep this?’
‘Certainly. It’s impossible, you realise that?’
‘On the contrary.’ I smiled. ‘I feel rather more confident than I did earlier. Now I think I’ll go for a walk. I’d like to have a look round. I’ll see you later.’
I paused in the street door, half-blinded by the sudden glare, and put on my sunglasses. Rosa was seated at the wooden table nearest the car, the tray in front of her. She wasn’t alone. The two specimens who lounged on the edge of the table were typical of the younger men still to be found in the region. Features brutalised and coarsened by a life of toil, shabby, patched clothing, broken boots, cloth caps that any-where else in Europe belonged to another age.
Rosa’s back was stiff and straight and she smoked a cigarette and stared into space. One of them said some-thing, I couldn’t catch what, and got what was left of her coffee in his face.