Steal You Away (20 page)

Behind the glass a monstrous face was leering in at him.

Then he recognised it.

That son of a bitch Bacci!

He lowered the window a couple of centimetres and roared. ‘Are you out of your mind? You nearly gave me a heart attack! What do you want?’

‘Get out!’

‘Why?’

‘Because I say so. You were asleep.’

‘No I wasn’t.’

‘Get out!’

Miele looked at his watch. ‘It’s not my turn yet.’

‘Get out of the car.’

‘It’s not my turn yet. Half an hour each.’

‘I’ve been out here for well over half an hour.’

Miele checked his watch and shook his head. ‘No you haven’t, there are still four minutes to go. I’ll get out in four minutes.’

‘Fuck you, I’ve done over forty minutes. Get out.’

Bacci made a dive for the door handle but Miele was quicker, he pushed down the safety catch before that lunatic could open the door.

‘You son of a bitch, get out,’ yelled Bacci and started pummelling on the window again.

‘What’s the matter? What’s got into you, are you crazy? Relax. Calm down. Okay, so you didn’t get your holiday in the Tropics, relax. It’s only a holiday, it’s not the end of the world.’ Miele tried not to laugh, but the guy was such a loser, he had bored the pants off him for two months with his talk of tropical atolls, Napoleon wrasse and palm trees, and after all that, he hadn’t even got on the plane. It was such a hoot.

‘What are you laughing about, you bastard? Open the door! Or I’ll smash the window and ram your teeth down your fucking throat, so help me!’

Miele was tempted to rub it in and tell him he shouldn’t get so angry, it didn’t matter if he hadn’t gone to Mauritius, he was getting plenty of water anyway, but he restrained himself. Something told him the guy really might smash the window.

‘Open up!’

‘No, I won’t. I’m not opening up until you calm down.’

‘I am calm. Now open up.’

‘No you’re not, I can see you’re not.’

‘I am calm, I swear. Completely calm. Open the door now, come on.’ Bacci drew back from the car and held up his hands. By now he was soaked to the skin.

‘I don’t believe you.’ Miele glanced at his watch again. ‘Anyway, there are still two minutes to go.’

‘So you don’t believe me, eh? Well, take a look at this.’ Bacci drew his pistol and pointed it at him. ‘Do you see how calm I am? Do you see?’

Miele couldn’t believe this, how could he believe the fool was pointing his Beretta at him? He must have gone off his head, like those guys who get sacked and murder their bosses. But Miele wasn’t prepared to get killed by a psychopath. He drew his own gun. ‘I’m calm too,’ he said with a mocking leer. ‘We’re both calm. High on camomile.’

‘Look what the cop’s doing,’ said Martina.

Her tone contained a hint of surprise.

‘What is he doing? I can’t see.’ Max was leaning over towards
her but he couldn’t see a thing, the seat belt restricted his movements and it was dark outside.

The blue light illuminated a human form.

‘He’s holding a gun.’

Max nearly choked. ‘A gun?’

‘He’s pointing it at the car.’

‘The car?’ Max put his hands up and started shouting. ‘We’re innocent! We’re innocent! I didn’t see the road block, I swear I didn’t!’

‘Shut up, you idiot, not our car.’ Martina opened her mini-rucksack, took out a packet of Camel Lights and lit one.

‘Well, what car, then?’

‘Be quiet a minute. Let me see.’ She lowered the window. ‘The police car.’

‘Ah!’ Max sighed with relief. ‘But why?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe there’s a thief inside.’ Martina blew out a cloud of smoke.

‘You think so?’

‘Could be. He might have slipped in while he was stopping cars. Police cars are always getting stolen like that. I read about it somewhere. But the cop must have caught him.’ She seemed very pleased with this theory.

‘Well, what shall we do, then? Drive on?’

‘Wait. Wait a minute … Let me handle this.’ Martina put her head out of the window. ‘Officer! Officer, do you need any help? Can we do anything for you?’

Now I know why she came with me even though she’d never met
me before
, thought Max in a panic,
she’s completely stupid. The girls
I know have nothing on this, she’s completely stupid
.

‘Officer! Officer, do you need any help? Can we do anything for you?’ A distant voice.

Bacci looked up and saw it, at the side of the road, the blue Mercedes that hadn’t stopped. A female voice was calling to him.

‘What’s that?’ he shouted. ‘I can’t hear you.’

‘Do you need any help?’ shouted the girl.

Do I need any help?
‘No!’

What kind of a dumb question was that? Then he remembered his gun and quickly put it back in its holster. ‘Are you the guys who didn’t stop earlier?’

‘Yes. We are.’

‘Why have you come back?’

The girl waited for a moment before replying. ‘Didn’t you flag us down with your stick?’

‘Yes, but that was earlier …’

‘Can we go, then?’ asked the girl hopefully.

‘Yes,’ said Bacci, but then had second thoughts. ‘Just a minute, what’s your job?’

‘We haven’t got jobs. We’re students.’

‘What do you study?’

‘Italian literature.’

‘You’re not an air hostess, by any chance?’

‘No. I swear I’m not.’

‘Why didn’t you stop, before?’

‘My boyfriend didn’t see the road block. It was raining too hard.’

‘It’s hardly surprising your boyfriend didn’t see me, he was driving like a maniac. One kilometre back down the road there’s a great big sign that says 80. That is the speed limit on this stretch of road.’

‘My boyfriend didn’t see it. We’re sorry. We really are. My boyfriend’s extremely sorry.’

‘Okay, I’ll let you off this time. Don’t drive so fast, though. Especially when it’s raining.’

‘Thanks, officer. We’ll drive really slowly.’

Inside the car Max was jubilant, for three reasons.

But Max was wrong to be jubilant, for at that very moment Bruno Miele’s half hour began.

When he had seen that peach of a car pull in, officer Miele had shot out of the police car as if there had been a swarm of wasps inside it.

A 650 TX. The finest car in the world, according to the American
magazine
Motors & Cars.

He switched on his torch and shone it on the car.

Cobalt blue. Yes, the only colour for a 650 TX
.

‘You in the Mercedes, pull right in,’ he said to the two of them and turned to Bacci. ‘Leave this to me. I’ll deal with it.’

The powerful beam of the torch made the drops of rain glitter as they fell, dense and regular. Behind them was the face of a squinting, dazzled girl.

Miele peered at her.

She had blue hair, a ring in her lip and another in her eyebrow.

A punk? What the hell’s a punk doing in a 650 TX?

Miele couldn’t stand the idea of punks in a Panda, let alone in the flagship of the German firm.

He hated their dyed hair, their tattoos, their rings, their sweaty armpits and all their other anarcho-communist crap.

Once Lorena Santini, his girlfriend, had told him she fancied putting a ring in her navel like Naomi Campbell and Pietro Mura. ‘You do that and we’re through,’ he had snapped. And the whim, as quickly as it had appeared, had vanished from Lorena’s mind. If she’d had a boyfriend with less balls, she’d probably have rings in her pussy by now.

A worrying thought struck him.
What if Michela Guadagni has
rings in her pussy?

They’d suit her. Michela Guadagni isn’t like Lorena. She can
do that kind of thing
.

‘Your partner told us we could go,’ said the punk girl, shielding her eyes with her arm, in a hoarse Roman croak.

‘Well, I say you’ve got to stay. Pull in.’

The car parked in the lay-by.

‘It’s true. I told them they could go,’ protested Bacci in an undertone.

Miele didn’t lower his volume by one decibel. ‘I heard. And you were wrong. They failed to stop at a road block. That’s a serious offence …’

‘Let them go,’ Bacci interrupted him.

‘No. No way.’ Miele stepped towards the Mercedes, but Bacci grabbed him by the arm.

‘What the hell are you doing? I stopped them. It’s none of your business.’

‘Let go of my arm.’ Miele shook him off.

Bacci started jumping up and down with rage and breathing in and out through the corners of his mouth. His cheeks swelled and deflated like a pair of bagpipes.

Miele looked at him, shaking his head.
Poor guy. What a pathetic
sight. He’s gone completely off his head. I’ll have to report that
he’s in a serious mental state. He’s not responsible for his own
actions any more. He’s dangerous. He doesn’t realise how sick he
is
.

If those two were students, he was a merengue dancer. And that imbecile wanted to let them go …

They were car thieves.

How did a punk bitch come to be in a car like that? It was obvious. They were taking the Mercedes to a fence. But if they thought they could pull the wool over Bruno Miele’s eyes, they were making a big mistake.

‘Listen, get into the car. Dry yourself, you’re soaked through. I’ll deal with this. It’s my turn now. Half an hour each. Go on,
Antonio, get in, please.’ He tried to make his tone as conciliatory as possible.

‘They came back. I’d flagged them down and they came back. Why? Do you reckon they would have come back if they’d been thieves?’ Bacci now seemed exhausted. As if he’d just given three litres of blood.

‘So what? Get into the car, go on.’ Miele opened the door of the police car. ‘You’ve had a hard day. I’ll check their papers and let them go.’ He pushed him in.

‘Hurry up, and let’s go home,’ said Bacci, completely drained.

Miele closed the door and released the safety catch on his pistol.

Now then
.

He straightened his cap and strode towards the stolen Merc.

Bruno Miele’s role models were early Clint Eastwood – Dirty Harry – and Steve McQueen in
Bullitt
. Tough guys. Cool customers who’d shoot you in the mouth without turning a hair. Short on chat, long on action.

Miele intended to become like them. But he had realised that in order to achieve this you had to have a mission, and he had found one. Reclaiming the area from urban blight and crime. And if he had to use force, so much the better.

The trouble was, he hated the uniform he wore. It made him sick. It was awful, pathetic. Lousy cut. Shoddy cloth. Like something made for the Polish police force. He would look at himself in the mirror and feel like throwing up. With that uniform on he would never be able to give of his best. Even Dirty Harry, in an Italian police uniform, would have been a nonentity, not for nothing did he wear tweed jackets and hip-hugging trousers. One more year and he’d be able to request a transfer to the special branch. If he was accepted he’d wear plain clothes and then he would feel at ease. A P38 in his shoulder holster. And that smooth white trenchcoat he’d bought at Orbano in the summer sales.

Miele knocked on the driver’s window with his torch.

The window came down.

At the wheel was a boy.

He sized him up without showing any emotion (another distinctive feature of early Clint).

He was very ugly.

About twenty years old.

In five, maybe six years at the most, he would be bald. Miele could spot a baldy a mile off. Although this guy’s hair was long and tied in a pony tail, above his forehead it was as sparse as the trees in a burnt-out forest. And his ears were as big as doughnuts, the left one sticking out more than the right. As if the deformity weren’t obvious enough, five silver rings dangled from the lobe. The punk probably thought he looked like Bob Marley or some other fucking junkie rock star, but he looked more like Stan Laurel dressed up as the Wizard Zurlì.

The little turquoise-haired tart looked straight ahead with her jaw set. She had headphones over her ears. She wasn’t that bad looking. Without that hardware on her face and that dye in her hair she would have been passable. Nothing to write home about even then, but okay for a blow job or a quickie with the lights turned off.

Miele leaned into the window. ‘Good evening, sir. Can I see your papers, please?’

A strong aroma, as distinctive as that of cow dung, stimulated his receptors, creating a flow of ions which rose through his cranial nerves into his encephalon, where it discharged neuromediators onto the synapses of his memory centre. And Bruno Miele remembered.

He was sixteen and sitting on the beach at Castrone singing
Blowing
in the Wind
with some kids from the Albano Laziale branch of Communion and Liberation who were camping nearby. Suddenly some hipsters had come along and started rolling cigarettes. They had offered him one and he, to impress a Catholic brunette, had accepted. One inhale and he had started coughing and spluttering and when he had asked what the hell it was, the hipsters had burst out laughing. Then someone had explained to him that the cigarette was filled with marijuana. He’d felt terrible for the rest of the week, because he thought this had made him a junkie.

In this Mercedes there was the same smell.

Hashish.

Smoke.

Drugs.

Stan Laurel and Pretty Hair had smoked a lot of joints. He aimed his torch at the ashtray.