The man, could be a boy’s, panic levels had then broke through the roof. He’d dropped the shotgun and fell to his knees, next to the body on the floor. The Italian that followed was a foreign language to her, but the tone was loud and clear: it was tender, remorseful - and hysterical. The man, could be a boy, definitely knew the man on the floor. And cared very deeply for him. The kissing and blubbing painted the picture.
She knew the man on the floor wasn’t dead, although he’d taken some pellets which would definitely leave a scar. And he would need those extracted before they went septic. He’d also need a stiff drink, as would his attacker, who was wiping the man on the floor’s brow, kissing him on the cheeks and then mopping his brow again. The man on the floor was awake and … offering consoling words in broken Italian. It was all very curious.
Sam picked up the shotgun, checked the safety catch and moved away from the two men. She slung the weapon under her arm. And waited.
There was more Italian between the two men. Then they both seemed to remember that, when all this had kicked off, they hadn’t been alone. And that situation hadn’t altered much.
The man, could be a boy, stood, turned to Sam and carefully raised his hands, shoulder height.
The man on the floor was more stoic. He lay on his back, his torso raised by his elbows and he stared in Sam’s direction.
‘Chi è la ragazza?’
Sam thought she got that, but couldn’t answer.
‘English please. I can’t do Italian.’ Sam replied.
‘Who are you?’ The man, could be a boy, then asked.
Sam was reassessing the Italian who originally had the shotgun. He wasn’t a boy. He was probably mid-20s, slim, but athletically built and very attractive - in a young Clint Mauro way. Of course, for her he lost all of that attractiveness the moment he broke down in tears, but that was Sam’s view. Some people found men who blubber a lot pressed all their buttons.
Now that he had both hands up and was surrendering, she found him less attractive still. But, there was no doubt that he’d look good on a catwalk.
Sam raised the barrel in the direction of the Italian model.
‘I have the shotgun. I ask the questions. Who are you?’
He looked confused.
‘I am Giorgio Placido.’ The Italian model sniffed.
She pointed the gun at the man on the floor and nodded.
‘And you?’
‘Gareth. Gareth Jones. Are you going to hurt us?’ He was nursing his arm.
‘Don’t touch the wound. You’ll make it worse. You two know each other?’
The two men looked at each other. They nodded.
‘Lovers?’
They looked again. And nodded again.
She pointed the gun at the model.
‘You’re the guard?’
‘Yes. You have broken the door.’ His English wasn’t that bad.
‘Who do you work for?’
The man on the floor made an attempt to get up. Sam swung the barrel faster than he was moving and raised it to her shoulder so he could see she was clearly taking aim.
‘Let’s not do anything rash, Gareth.’
Whilst pointing the gun at Gareth, she nodded to Giorgio. ‘Answer the question.’
He looked to Gareth for support. Gareth nodded.
‘My father.’ Giorgio replied.
‘Who is your father?’
There was a pause.
‘I’d like to know that as well, please, Giorgio.’ Gareth added.
The three of them remained still. The room was a mixture of silence and expended cordite. This was clearly a big question.
‘Come on. I need to know.’ Gareth asked again.
‘Andrea Placido.’
‘And he employs you to guard this house?’ Sam added.
‘Yes.’
‘But a week ago you were a waiter?’ Gareth asked.
Giorgio didn’t know which way to turn. Whom to answer first.
‘He’s with the Mafia. He’s very high up …’
Sam was a question ahead of both of them.
‘Which Mafia?’
Sam could see that Giorgio was at a crossroads. And she wasn’t the only one urging him to choose the right road. Gareth was hung on every syllable; his face scrunched up in pain.
Giorgio’s shoulders went first; they began to rock gently. His hands fell to his side, and then he started to blub - again.
Gareth ignored the trained weapon and struggled to his feet, pain writ large across his face. He took Giorgio by the shoulders and turned him so that they were face to face. He then pulled him close.
Sam let the tragedy unfold.
The next half an hour was one of those extraordinary stories that you couldn’t write in a book. Without disclosing anything about herself and keeping a firm hold on the shotgun, Sam moved the two lovers to the kitchen. Gareth had defrocked - he wasn’t bad looking himself - and Giorgio had taken a pair of tweezers to the fifteen shot holes that had punctured Gareth’s arm and shoulder. There was some TCP under the sink, along with plasters and bandages. Giorgio was tender. And Gareth was brave.
Gareth told his story of trying to investigate his third-year arts dissertation whilst being terrorised and then beaten by, ‘Your Dad’s lot?’.
‘They weren’t stopping you from your studies.’ Giorgio stopped dabbing for a second. ‘They were stopping you from seeing me.’
Sam had got there before Giorgio had made the comment - but it was easy to make that leap in hindsight.
Giorgio had been a waiter, but his Dad had pulled him out of Naples, away from Gareth. He’d been given the simplest of tasks: guard the villa.
And then there was a bombshell.
Giorgio was now behind Gareth, wrapping a bandage around his shoulder.
‘I am to marry tomorrow. In my village. Serrastretta.’ He whispered.
‘You can’t!’ Gareth turned in his chair. ‘To a woman? You don’t want to. It’s not right. You … love me!’ Gareth was furious. He’d obviously forgotten about the pain in his shoulder. He stood, the bandage unravelling to the floor. He put his hands on either side of Giorgio’s head; their faces no more than a few inches apart.
‘I have to.’ More tears. ‘But I don’t want to. My father will kill me if I don’t. Really. Kill me. The girl is from a very important family. He knows that I am not straight … and he thinks this will cure me. He wants bambinos. Lots of them. And he’s never wanted a gay son.’
At that point the soap opera had run to too many episodes for Sam. She had things to do. And her own leg to bathe and dress.
‘Stop!’ She shouted. Both men shut up. Gareth turned to face Sam.
‘Giorgio, put the kettle back on. I’ll finish the dressing. And Gareth, sit down. You can get dressed when I’ve finished what Giorgio started. And then I’ve got things to do.’
Giorgio looked confused. Gareth translated. Giorgio did as he was told and headed across the kitchen for the kettle.
And then a second bombshell.
‘You never fully answered my original question, Giorgio.’ Sam had put the shotgun down within easy reach and had a pin in her mouth. She was winding the dressing around Gareth’s arm. ‘Which Mafia does your father work for?’
Giorgio paused, kettle in hand.
‘I don’t want to have to shoot you …’ She nodded to the gun.
‘The 'Ndràngheta.’
Sam immediately stopped nursing.
Shit!
Frank had said the 'Ndràngheta ran Gioia Touro.
The container port.
It’s all connected. The men from Eritrea, their route to the UK. The ferry hijacking. The Hungarian prime minister - with the oddest of change of hearts. He gets a free holiday home, with Mafia guards.
Are the 'Ndràngheta the orchestrators of NT?
It all makes sense?
‘What are you thinking?’ Gareth asked; he’d reached to the floor and found his peppered shirt.
She
ignored him. ‘Do you have a car?’ Sam’s question was directed at Giorgio.
He nodded. ‘In the garage.’
‘I need to dress my own wound. And then we’re all going to Serrastretta. You …’, she nodded at Giorgio, ‘... are going to tell your bully of a father that you’re not going to marry a woman. You …’, she nodded at Gareth, ‘... are coming along to provide moral support. And I’m going to meet your father, Giorgio. And we’re going to have a heart-to-heart.’
‘What? About the wedding?’
‘No. About something even more serious.’
Chapter 13
Roseberry Gardens, Orpington, London, UK
The polyphonic sound of Status Quo’s Rocking All Over The World cut through Frank’s sleep. It took him a couple of seconds to compute it was his phone. Half-awake he tried to grab it, knocked it off his bedside table, reached down and picked it up, and then, bleary-eyed, swiped the green phone icon to the right. He hadn’t registered who it was.
‘Frank?’
It was Sam.
Frank pulled the phone away from his ear and checked the time on the top-right corner of the screen. It was 5.15 am.
Sam didn’t make a habit of phoning at unearthly hours, so this was probably important. But, then again, Sam didn’t do time. She did awake and asleep; this might, therefore, not be a call about the end of the world.
‘Yes, Sam. Do you know what time it is?’
Frank shuffled around in his single bed until he was half-sitting up. The room was dark, save for a frame of streetlight-yellow that backlit the bedroom window behind the curtains.
‘Yes. But it’s not that early. You’re an hour behind?’
‘Yes. That still makes it a quarter past five. That’s early in my country.’
‘Oh. Sorry. Look, I’ve made a bit of a breakthrough here. I think. I need you to get someone in Babylon to do some translation for me. I’ve just pinged you a photo of Viktor Molnár’s August calendar. It’s in Hungarian and I can’t make head nor tail of it.’
Frank was awake now.
‘Where did you get it from?’
‘In his kitchen. His Italian villa’s kitchen.
What?
‘Hang on, Sam.’ He was whispering now. He had no idea why. ‘Did you break into the villa?’
‘Yes. But don’t worry. I’ve befriended the guard. It’s a very long story, but all you need to know at the moment is the guard is the son of the 2IC of the 'Ndràngheta Mafia.’ Sam paused, probably waiting for that point to sink in.
Frank made the connection instantly. His brain was catching up.
‘So, this could be about the Mafia? They’ve bought Viktor Molnár? Literally? Given him a villa? And they provided the conduit for Abir al-Rasheed and the rest of the ferry team to get onto mainland Europe? They run the port of entry?’
‘Exactly. But … that’s nowhere near enough to declare that we’ve solved the problem. It’s all pretty circumstantial. But it should give you something to work on. The problem will be getting a handle on the 'Ndràngheta. If they could be dissected the Italian anti-corruption police would have done that long ago. Even with this sort of lead, getting in among them is going to be tricky, if not impossible.’
‘That’s because the anti-corruption police are corrupt.’ Frank added.
And then something struck him - a random but penetrating thought. All of a sudden he was absolutely convinced that this was Mafia related.
‘Sam?’
‘Yes, Frank.’
‘Hold the phone for a second. I’m going to send you a couple of animations that one of the team knocked up for Jane. Let me know when you’ve looked at them.’
Frank reduced the phone screen and dabbed at the SIS’s secure drive. He found Jane’s presentation, accessed a drop-down box, pressed the ‘declassify’ button and downloaded it. He then sent it to Sam.
‘I declassified it - I have that authority, it was only marked “Confidential” in the first place. Let me know what you think.’
‘OK.’
Frank put Sam on loudspeaker. He left the phone on his bedside table, got out of bed and put the light on. He then slipped on his woollen dressing gown, found his slippers, picked up his phone and went downstairs.
Tea.
‘Italy.’ The phoned squeaked from the small kitchen table where Frank had placed it. Sam’s voice could only just be heard above the boiling kettle.
Frank shouted across the small kitchen.
‘I need more than that.’
‘Eritrea and Libya are ex-Italian colonies. They’ve not had a terrorist attack in the past nine months. That in itself may not be unusual. But neither has Italy, when nearly all other countries in Europe have suffered multiple attacks. The Mafia are looking after their own?’
‘That’s what hit me just now. Anywhere with Italian connections has been avoided by NT. But neither Switzerland nor Sweden have been hit?’ Frank added. He was pouring boiling water into a Roger Daltrey mug.
There was a pause.
‘Neutral countries?’ Came the squeal from the phone.
Frank fished a tea bag out of the mug with a spoon.
‘So was Ireland. But that’s been hit twice. The Cork waterfront shooting and the Dublin bar bomb. Seven neutral Irishmen are dead.’
‘Maybe they’ve been ignored so we can’t see the pattern? To put us off the scent that someone in Italy is making this happen, whilst the only safe place to be is in Italy or one of its ex-colonies.’
Frank took two steps to the fridge.
‘Don’t know.’ He replied.
‘No. Looking at Jane’s work, there is something very particular about the way this has been organised. Very detailed. Sweden and Switzerland have been left untouched for a reason. But, I do think the Italian connection is decent intelligence. It all adds up. You’ve got to talk to Jane about it. Oh, and get that calendar translated.’
‘OK, boss.’ Frank had his backside against the worktop and a cup of tea in hand. ‘And what are you doing now?’
‘The 2IC of the ‘Ndràngheta Mafia’s son is taking me to say hello to his dad.’
Frank coughed a mouthful of hot tea over the top of his mug and onto to the floor.
‘Are you mad? We’ll never see you again?’
‘That’s why I’m phoning you now, Frank. The three of us …’
The three of you?
‘... are heading to his dad’s house now. His name’s Andrea Placido. We’re going to stop for breakfast and I need a shower and a change of clothes. And then we have to think through the best way to pull this off. I’ll keep you in the picture. But if you could let Jane know. Oh, and the team in Rome, that would help.’
‘The three of you?’
‘That’s the bit of the story I’ve not told you about.’
Café Noir, Catanzaro, Calabria, Italy
Gareth played with his empty espresso cup.
What an unlikely trio they were. Giorgio, his gorgeous and ever-so gay lover, who had taken a pot shot at him but had now regained his composure. Sam (no surname elicited), who claimed she worked for the Department of International Trade and was trying to meet with someone senior in the 'Ndràngheta Mafia because there were potential conflicts of interest in the exportation of olive oil. He didn’t believe that for a moment. Nobody from the British government breaks into an Italian villa unless they were a spy or an undercover policeman. She wasn’t working for the government. His guess was she was involved in industrial espionage. But there was no elaborating on her cover. Every time he pressed her, she changed the subject.
And him, a love-struck lunatic chasing across Italy in the vain hope he’d rescue his darling from the clutches of an unworthy woman.
First, though, they’d have to deal with an evil dad. And Gareth didn’t know what he thought about that.
Giorgio’s first reaction to Sam’s idea that they confront the issue head-on, was one of panic.
‘I can’t! I can’t! He’ll kill me!’
Sam, who Gareth was already beginning to like even though she was as non-committal as a priest in a betting shop, had made Giorgio a cup of coffee whilst keeping the shotgun within arm’s reach.
‘I met a Romanian truck driver yesterday.’ She’d said. ‘He was an unassuming man with a pivotal message. “Face your demons. Fight them. It is the only way. And God will judge you kindly on that.” And that’s what I’m doing. And you, Giorgio, unless you deal with this now, it will dog you all of your life. You have to make a stand.’
Gareth had had to translate some the message. It didn’t lose much: Giorgio got it. He sniffed. And then accepted Sam’s coffee.
‘You two talk this over whilst you clear up any of the mess you can.’ She’d tipped her head towards the hall which led to the study. ‘I need half an hour to phone a pal and deal with this.’ She was pointing at her leg. ‘We leave at six-thirty. Giorgio, you can drive as I guess, like me, Gareth’s not slept much.’
The two of them had stared at each other for a couple of seconds. Gareth was trying to work out why, other than the fact that the woman had the shotgun, she was naturally in charge.
‘Come on, fellas. Get a move on.’
And they had done.
That was six and a half hours ago. Giorgio had driven all the way to the major town in the area, Catanzaro. Sam had sat in the front of the ancient Fiat with the shotgun resting between her legs - and slept. He had napped in the back. They made the town for shop opening time and parked in the first carpark they could find.
‘Do you need a shower?’ She’d asked, looking over her shoulder.
Gareth definitely needed a shower.
‘Yes. Why?’
She turned her shoulders so that she was facing both of them.
‘Look, you could run away together and I wouldn’t come looking for you. I now know where Giorgio’s father lives, which I guess is a closely held secret. So I don’t need the pair of you to do what I need to do - although it would probably be easier to get to Giorgio’s dad with him present. Leave if you want to. But, if you’re unsure, we can figure this all out together. I can get a room in a local hotel. I can shop - eat something. You can sort yourselves out. I’ll then have a shower and we can sit down over a cup of coffee and work out a game plan. What do you think?’
On the Back Foot to Hell Page 26