by Jo Nesbo
I passed the Duomo di Milano. In front of the imposing cathedral, queues of the tourists and the faithful extended into the large square of the Piazza Duomo. At the other end of the square I passed the tables of what those of us working in the business call Café Morte, Café Dead. The men sitting there – and they were exclusively men – had newspapers and phones in front of them while their eyes swept the square in search of possible employment. The market for contract killing had grown exponentially once the cartels and an unregulated open market took over, and those offering the service could principally be divided into two classes, a bit like prostitution. Café Morte was the outdoor market, for the street-walkers. Customers using the place could get a job done for a fee in the region of 10,000 euros. The quality was variable, as was the discretion offered; but in a society in which both the police and the authorities were drastically reduced and institutionally corrupt the risk of being caught was acceptably low. So the response of the family members or the employers of a target was quite commonly to arrange a contract killing. It meant that the business – like gun running or drug smuggling – was expanding.
The first cartel killings, in which personnel from rival cartels were killed in order to weaken their competitors, were carried out by taxi drivers, and it’s generally believed that that’s why we’re referred to as ‘drivers’. But you’ve got those who wait for their fares at a taxi rank like the Café Morte, and then you’ve got the limo drivers, the ones who work the indoor market, the luxury prostitutes, the ones you need to approach through a middleman called a ‘fixer’. Drivers like that have reputations and can cost as much as ten times what they charge at the Café Morte, but if you want to take out some well-protected employee from one of the cartels then these are the ones you need to hire. People like me.
I had no idea I had a talent for work of this kind, would even have thought the opposite. But a high degree of empathy can also help in understanding how an opponent thinks. In the two years I’d been in the killing business I’d become one of the most in-demand names. Income from my psychology had been sinking from the day my son turned eight years old and died, and after Maria committed suicide it dried up completely. But money wasn’t the reason I became a driver. As a psychologist I’m used to deducing people’s simple and often banal motivations, and that includes my own. And my motive was revenge. I was able to live with the fact that my child had been born dumb. That was just mere chance, no one’s fault, and it didn’t spoil anyone’s happiness. But I couldn’t live with what had taken Benjamin’s life: human greed, businessmen who had worked out that if they took a few discreet shortcuts around the expensive fire regulations required for their electrical products they could sell them cheaper than their competitors and still increase the profit margin. I realise it might seem a bit strange to claim that a defective bedside lamp could be the cause of a man abandoning his humanity and embarking on a career as a spreader of death. And I use the word ‘spread’ advisedly; because I didn’t have one name to focus my anger on I had to take revenge on all of those who ran the cartels and took those kinds of decisions, those whose unscrupulous worship of Mammon had taken Benjamin and Maria from me. The way a terrorist whose family has been killed by a bomb will fly a plane into a skyscraper full of people he knows aren’t personally responsible for his loss but who are still complicit in their death. Yes, I knew exactly why I had become a man who murdered prominent members of the cartels. But such knowledge doesn’t change anything; insight like that doesn’t necessarily lead to a change in behaviour. Spreading death did nothing to slake my thirst for revenge – I had to keep going. I could of course have ended my own life, but the sudden realisation that life is meaningless doesn’t necessarily mean that people want to stop living. People like Maria are, after all, the exception.
* * *
—
I carried out a test which I did at regular intervals, letting my gaze sweep across the pavement tables outside the cafe. Noted that I still did not register any flicker of recognition in the gazes that met mine. They simply recorded the fact that I was not a customer and moved on. Good.
To carry on making a living in the limousine trade it was imperative that no one – not even the customer – should know your face. The fixers took twenty-five per cent of the fee and they were worth it, if for no other reason than that we could hide ourselves behind them. Among those who got taken in the limo branch – and by ‘taken’ I don’t mean by the police – there were more fixers than drivers. You only had to look at the gravestones in the Cimitero Maggiore to know that.
In addition to my unquenchable thirst for revenge I had certain other advantages as a driver. One of them was Judith Szabó, known simply in the business as the Queen. She was one of the three or four best fixers and her abilities were legendary. People said the Queen never left a boardroom meeting without a deal, and at this moment in time I was her only regular client. And only lover. I think. Of course, I can’t be certain – her previous steady client also believed he was her only lover. Another advantage was that unlike many of the other drivers I had a credible cover, at least I did as long as I had enough patients not to make it seem odd that I should keep on turning up at the office. My third and most important advantage was that I had a murder weapon the others didn’t. Hypnosis.
* * *
—
I stopped at a pedestrian crossing and waited for the light to change from red to green, all senses on the alert. I no longer like standing still in a public setting without knowing who the people around me are. A rifle with a telescopic sight and silencer behind one of those French balconies, a knife in the back as the lights change to green, the blade up into the kidneys so the initial pain is so great the victim is unable to make a sound but is left lying there as the crowds move on.
There was a time when drivers were at the top of the food chain, or at least had no need to walk in fear of their lives. This was before the cartels began employing the best of them on a permanent basis, so that the drivers themselves became key employees and, as such, legitimate targets. The cartels had organised their own militia which were in practice above the law, and competition for the markets – meaning principally technology, entertainment and medicine – was becoming more and more reminiscent of old-fashioned wars than old-fashioned capitalism. I had recently read an article that compared the situation with that of the Opium War of 1839, when the British East India Company, with the support of the British government, went to war against China to defend their right to export opium to the Chinese, on the basis of the mercantile principle of free trade. Today it was no longer about opium but technology, entertainment, a kind of mild stimulant known as artstimuli, and medicines that extended one’s lifespan. The strange thing was that while the markets were deregulated and the competition in every way tougher, the number of actors had fallen, not risen, and the incidents of mono- and oligopoly more frequent as a result of the acquisitions. Because as they say in the world of the sharks: size is everything. Or rather, size won’t help if you’ve got no teeth. The teeth were the best brains, the best inventors, the best chemists, the best business strategists, and in due course these rose to the same status and wage levels as the top footballers. But after a while those companies that were unable to afford these wages – and were unscrupulous enough – began to kill the best brains of the others as a way of lowering the standards and enabling themselves to compete. The best companies had to respond in kind in order to remain market leaders, and the best chemists, inventors and leaders were replaced by a new aristocracy: the best contract killers. It looked as though the company with the best killers would, in the long run, turn out winners. And that’s what started the cannibalising process we’re in the middle of now. Companies hired killers to kill their competitors’ best contract killers.
And that’s why I froze when I heard the voice behind me, and a little to my left, in what is so aptly called the driver’s blind spot. It wasn’t because I r
ecognised the voice – I didn’t – and yet I knew it had to be him. Partly because he spoke the Neapolitan variant of the Calabria dialect, which was why they called him ‘il Calabrese’ (Broccoli). Partly because I had been halfway expecting him to appear sooner or later. Partly because no other driver but Gio ‘il Calabrese’ Greco could have sneaked up on me like that. And partly because I could see, reflected in the windscreens of the passing cars, that the man behind me was wearing a white suit, and Greco always wore a white suit when out on a killing.
‘Now that’s quite an achievement,’ said the voice into my ear.
I had to steel myself not to turn. I told myself there would be no point, that if he was going to kill me he would already have done so or would do before I could do anything about it. Because what we are talking about here is the best driver in Europe. This is not a matter of opinion. For several years Greco had been the highest paid driver in Europe, and we live in an age in which it is generally accepted that the market is always right. According to Judith, when she was Greco’s fixer she could get double what Thal, Fischer or Alekhin were paid.
‘Think you’re better than me, Lukas?’
I stepped back half a pace as a trailer whizzed by in front of my face and made the ground shake.
‘To the best of my knowledge they pay you three times what they pay me. So no.’
‘What makes you think I’m talking shop, Lukas? I’m wondering if you think you fuck her better than me?’
I swallowed. He laughed. A hissing laughter that began in a T and then turned into a long, jerking S.
‘I’m joking,’ he said. ‘I am talking shop. The killing of Signor Chadaux. The board of his company couldn’t decide whether it was a traffic accident or a suicide. So they called in an expert on death. Me. Because on the footage from the traffic-monitoring camera –’ he pointed up towards the facade on the other side of the road where I knew the cameras were mounted – ‘you see Signor Chadaux standing with the other pedestrians waiting for the red light right where we’re standing. But when the lights changed to green and everyone began to cross, Signor Chadaux was left standing here alone. He looks like he’s asleep on his feet as another crowd of pedestrians comes up alongside him. But then the lights change to red, he closes his eyes and moves his lips, as though he’s counting inwardly. Have you seen the recording?’
I shook my head.
‘Then perhaps you saw it when it actually happened?’
Again I shook my head.
‘Really? Then let me describe it for you. He steps straight out onto the pedestrian crossing. Know how many cars ran over him before they managed to stop the traffic? No, then you probably don’t know that either. Let me tell you something they didn’t put in the newspaper, and that is that Signor Chadaux had to be scraped off the asphalt like chewing gum.’
‘Did they find out whether it was an accident or a suicide?’
Greco laughed that thin, hissing laughter of his. Softly, but so close to my ear I could still hear it above the traffic.
‘Chadaux’s company is a competitor of one of the companies you’re working for. You believe in coincidence, Lukas?’
‘Sure. They happen all the time.’
‘No, you don’t.’ Greco wasn’t laughing any more. ‘I studied the video a few times, then I came down here to take a closer look. In particular I checked that traffic light that you can see in the video Signor Chadaux has his eyes fixed on.’
Gio Greco pointed to the set of lights directly opposite us. ‘It has screwdriver markings on it. And when I checked the security camera it turns out it was down for about an hour the previous night, not that anyone could explain why. How did you do it, Lukas? Did you install a screen in the traffic light which you could use your phone to communicate with to hypnotise Signor Chadaux? Did you tell him when to step out into the road, or was there a trigger? The red light, for example?’
Through the winter cold I could feel the sweat breaking out over my whole body. I had only ever spoken to Greco twice before, and I was afraid both times. Not because there was anything to be afraid of – this was before drivers were used to liquidate each other out. It was just his aura. Or rather, the absence of an aura, the way cold is just the absence of warmth. The way pure evil is just the absence of mercy. As I see it, a psychopath is not a person possessing a special quality, but someone just lacking something.
‘Have they put you on to me?’ I asked. ‘Chadaux’s company?’
On the traffic lights in front of us the red figure gave way to the green, and on either side of us people streamed across. If I moved, would I get a bullet in the back?
‘Who knows? Whatever, you don’t sound as if you’re all that afraid to die, Lukas?’
‘There’s worse fates than leaving this vale of tears,’ I said as I watched the retreating backs of the pedestrians who had left us alone on the pavement.
‘Better than being left – I think we can agree on that, Lukas.’
The first thing that occurred to me was, naturally, that he was talking about how Judith had left him. It would have been naive to suppose that he wouldn’t find out somehow or other that I had taken his place as both her client and her lover. But something in the way he said it made me think he might have been referring to me. That it was me who had been left by my son Benjamin and by my wife. I had no idea how he might have come by such information.
‘Hello, I’m…’ he said in English. The words came slowly, rhythmically. I stiffened.
‘Relax,’ he said with a soft laugh. ‘I’m not going to shoot you here right in front of the security cameras.’
I forced one foot forward, then the other. I walked on without looking back.
* * *
—
The most obvious reason Milan has become the capital for Europe’s drivers is, of course, that it has become a centre for technology and innovation. The best brains are here, the richest companies. The city is a watering hole on the savannah where animals of every kind congregate; apart from the handful of herbivores so large they’ve got no need to worry, most of us are hunters, prey or scavengers. We live in a symbiotic relationship of fear from which none of us can escape.
I walked along one of those narrow cobbled pedestrian lanes that twist slightly so you can’t see far ahead. Maybe that’s why I always choose this route to my office: I don’t have to see everything that lies ahead.
I passed the small, exclusive fashion shops, some of the less exclusive, and the workshops housing the craftsmen who experienced a renaissance after the mass production of so many goods came to a standstill as a result of the shortage of raw materials.
My chessboard was waiting at home for me, set up for my favourite game, Murakami versus Carlsen. It was a game from the years after Carlsen peaked, but well known because in the very early stages Carlsen wandered into a trap so obvious and yet so cunning that it was afterwards called the Murakami Trap and became as famous as the Lasker Trap. Murakami would later use a brutal variation of the trap in an even more celebrated game of lightning chess, against the young Italian comet Olsen, from right here in Milan.
My heart was still pounding after the encounter with Gio Greco. I knew, of course, that murder in the street wasn’t his style; he left that kind of thing to the drivers. But when he had said ‘Hello, I’m…’, I had felt certain my time was up, and I would soon be meeting Benjamin and Maria again. I don’t know whether it’s because Greco is a fan of Johnny Cash, but his calling card, his farewell to his victims is, according to legend, ‘Hello, I’m Greco.’ I know some people say he only began saying that after the legend arose. If he wasn’t actually present, that is. Because he was capable of remote killing too, as the case of the spectacular attack on the Giualli family in the Sforzesco Castle the previous year showed.
I knew no one was following me, but naturally I couldn’t help wondering why he had suddenly appeared li
ke that and given me just half of his famous line. Because Greco had been right; I didn’t believe in coincidences. Was it a threat? But why should I take the threat seriously when both he and I knew he could have done the job there and then; it would have been a perfect opportunity. What was he planning? Maybe he just wanted me to believe he was planning something, maybe that was just an old lover wanting to make sure the new one didn’t sleep too well at night.
My thoughts were interrupted by loud voices and shouts ahead of me. A crowd of people were gathered in the narrow street, standing with their heads looking upwards. I looked up too. Black smoke was belching out from a French balcony on the floor below the top. Behind the balcony bars I saw something, a pale face. A boy. Eight maybe? Ten? It was hard to tell from below.
‘Jump,’ shouted one of the onlookers.
‘Why doesn’t someone run up and get the boy?’ I asked the man who had shouted.
‘The gate’s locked.’
Others came running. The crowd doubled, trebled in size and I realised I must have arrived just after the fire had been discovered. The boy opened his mouth, but no sound came out. I should have realised at once, and maybe I did. It probably wouldn’t have changed anything; I could feel the tears welling up inside.
I ran to the gate and hammered on it. A small aperture opened and I was looking into a bearded face.
‘Fire on the sixth!’ I said.
‘We’re waiting for the fire brigade,’ the man answered, his voice suggesting a line already learned and rehearsed.
‘That’s going to be too late – someone has to rescue that boy.’
‘The place is on fire.’
‘Let me in,’ I said quietly, though everything in me wanted to scream.
The gate opened slightly. The man was tall and broad, with a head that looked as if it had been beaten down between his shoulders with a sledgehammer. He was wearing an ordinary driver’s uniform, a nondescript black suit. So when I pushed my way in and past him, it was because he allowed me to do so.