There is a bunker in Platì which belonged to the Trimboli-Marando ’ndrina, built inside a wood-fired pizza oven. I’ve been there, I was brought there by the carabinieri of Colonel Valerio Giardina, who is at the forefront of the battle against the ’Ndrangheta in Locride. You climb into the oven and then, moving aside a block that slides on rails, you enter a tunnel that ends in a room from which another tunnel, about two hundred yards long, leads out to the open countryside. All just a little over a mile from the centre of town, in a modest peasants’ house that is now impounded. When it was discovered, this particular bunker was ‘cold’, meaning that there was no fugitive hiding inside.

Another time, again in Platì, I was surprised to see a group of houses built near a waterway that had been covered up by the ’Ndranghetisti (a little like certain canals in Milan or Bologna that flow underground as cars pass above them). They did this because they built interconnected bunkers under the houses that in turn were all connected with the underground river, through which they could find another way out. The houses are run-down, but you can clearly see the opening mechanism concealed beneath the stone stairs leading to the first floor. The two staircases slide into the wall, leaving a space. A passage opens up, leading to a room that then connects to another tunnel, which leads to two neighbouring houses. They are all connected. Two fugitives were captured in these bunkers, which were discovered in 2001.

An ingenious system of pulleys, counterweights and ropes enabled the opening of another bunker, where Saverio Trimboli was arrested on 13 February 2010; a fugitive since 1994, he was accused of international drug trafficking. By moving a heavy concrete block and some bricks, you entered a very large space (over 300 square feet), where catalogues featuring watches could still be found, along with thirty scanners, twenty portable radios, devices to detect bugs and ten thousand euros in cash.

It is extremely difficult to discover a bunker. The special division of the carabinieri uses numerous methods, such as dumping a bucket of water on the ground to check the gradient. Because it’s useless to rap on the walls: the other side will never be hollow, the reinforced concrete slides on tracks.