August handed me the Smith and Wesson, looking more than happy, and I pushed it into the spring holster. Had they only known it, at that range I could have given each of them a bullet in the head within the second.
We went down through the trees in a line, Serafino and I together at the rear. Apparently he still had Hoffer’s twenty-five thousand buried in an old biscuit tin somewhere in the area. He thought the whole thing very funny and laughed frequently in the telling.
‘So, I’ve killed a few people in my time. That’s life.’ He scratched his face vigorously. ‘I did a couple of jobs for Hoffer when he was having trouble with construc-tion workers on the new road through the mountains. Leaned on one or two and then we dumped some trade unionist down a crevasse. And then he gets in touch with me through a friend and lays out this job concern-ing the girl.’
‘Did you know who she was?’
‘Not a hint. He told me she was a blackmailer-that she could ruin him unless she had her mouth closed for keeps. I’d insisted on payment in advance so I had the cash anyway and when I saw her, I liked her.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘Not that I’m half the man I used to be so she’d nothing to worry about there.’
‘Yes, I heard about that.’
He laughed uproariously. ‘Life, it’s a bastard, eh? No, I liked her for the way she stuck out her chin and stood up straight when she thought I was going to shoot her. It put me off, her standing there like some princess from Rome. Then it struck me as how funny it might be to put one over on Hoffer, seeing I already had the cash. He’s a rat and anyway I don’t like Mafia.’
He spat again, I stumbled, put off my stroke to such an extent that I almost lost my balance. I grabbed him by the arm. ‘Hoffer is Mafia?’
‘Didn’t you know? One of those American syndicate boys the Yanks deported during the last few years.’
And my grandfather hadn’t said a word. ‘Does the girl know?’
‘Not really.’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, she thinks he’s a swine all right, but this is only her second visit to Sicily. To her Mafia is the two lines in the tourist hand-book that says it’s a romantic memory.’
Which was reasonable enough. What would she know, spending the greater part of the year at some fancy English boarding school and most of the rest following the social round in France, Switzerland and the usual places. We had something in common there.
‘So Hoffer is working for the Society over here?’
‘Do me a favour.’ Serafmo seemed surprised. ‘You know the rule. Once in, never out. He’s the last of half a dozen similar.’
‘What happened to the others?’
‘Two pressed the starters in their Alfas and went straight to hell. The rest were ventilated in one way or another as I remember. They had the knife out for Barbaccia, but they made a big mistake. The old wolf was a match for all of them.’
‘The attempt on his life,’ I said. ‘The bomb which killed my mother, who was responsible for that?’
‘Who knows?’ He shrugged. ‘Any one of them. Does it matter? Barbaccia will have had all of them before he is through.’
My flesh crawled at the enormity of it. Vito Bar-baccia, Lord of Life and Death. He was well named. I shuddered and went after Serafino who was striding ahead, whistling cheerfully.
The shepherd’s hut looked as if it had been there since time began. It was constructed of rocks and boulders of various sizes, the gaps in between filled with dried mud and the low roof consisted of sods on top of oak branches.
At that point the stream had turned into a brawling torrent, descending rapidly through several deep pools,
disappearing over an apron of stone about fifty yards below.
The hut was built into a sloping bank in a clearing beside the stream and looked remarkably homely. A couple of donkeys grazed nearby with three goats and half a dozen chickens moved in and out of the under-growth, pecking vigorously at the soil.