Now here they were, husband and wife at last! Bella was so happy she thought she would burst.
But life was hard, even if she was newly married, and in love. In the dry baking heat of an Italian summer, with Vesuvius rumbling and smoking on the horizon, it was a difficult time to be pregnant, and Bella suffered badly from morning sickness. She struggled to keep the house nice while, as camorristi, both Astorre’s father and then Astorre himself were drafted into the Fascist Party.
Four years earlier, Benito Mussolini, the blacksmith’s son from Romagna, had declared himself Il Duce and the leader of the Fascists. Astorre’s father, a widower, became involved in political life, but Astorre contented himself with trading in the port, where there were good profits to be made on the sly with cigarettes and drugs and other lucrative contraband.
It was a risky time and Bella was full of fear for her new husband. Just the year before their wedding, there had been unrest on the streets, many deaths. Yes, the Fascists were in power, but that communist bastard Matteotti had accused them of poll-rigging. After he was shot for his trouble, Casalini, Mussolini’s deputy, was gunned down in a retaliatory shooting.
‘Be careful,’ Astorre told his father Franco when at last he held his own first-born, Tito, safe in his arms. Bella’d had a bad time with both the pregnancy and the birth, but here was their reward. They had a son.
Astorre was concerned about his father. The communists were still causing trouble, targeting those in power, and Papa had made a particular enemy of one of the scum, Corvetto. A hard-nosed thug who had once been camorristi, Corvetto was a turncoat and a braggart. Papa knew secrets about the man, secrets the communist did not want known.
‘No worries,’ said his father. ‘Il Duce has banned all the left-wing bastards now, they can’t form parties any more.’
Astorre didn’t believe that would make any difference. Nevertheless, he joined his father in politics.
And Bella worried all the more.
1975
‘Put the money in here! Right here, cunt, don’t you make one funny move or you’re DEAD, you got me?’
The terrified female bank teller behind the smashed counter stared in horror at the men, four of them, big threatening blocks of muscle clad in balaclavas and boiler suits, each one wielding a pick handle.
Some of the customers were screaming. Moira Stanhope had seen her kids off to school this morning, come into work as usual, set up her position – it was just another day. And now, all hell had broken loose.
