Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1

by Ian St. James

  Bonello nodded. "Yes. The children were well educated, privately-"

  "Taught several languages," Kaufman said.

  "That too," Bonello agreed.

  Kaufman threw me another look. The emphasis of his interruptions, combined with the looks he was giving me, somehow stirred my memory. But Bonello mistook my look of concentration for one of understanding because he said, "I see you are ahead of me, Mr Harris. But let me fill in the missing years."

  "Just the important ones, Enrico." Kaufman cautioned.

  "Nineteen-sixty-one was the most important of all," Bonello looked at me. "I'll remind you of what I said earlier, Mr Harris. The early sixties in Palermo were a bloodbath. Franka's eldest brother had long since returned from the hills to establish himself as capomafiaosi. God knows he was vicious enough - but his son!" Bonello threw up his hands. "His son was the wildest of all. Fiore he was called - Fury in English. Fiore was involved in every killing in Palermo. He was a butcher! A sadist, who tortured his victims before killing them. He terrorised the whole of Western Sicily until finally he went too far. Some of the other families turned against him. They fought back, and with the carabinieri hounding his every move, Palermo got too hot for Fiore - so he fled to Milan."

  "Nineteen-sixty-one, Sam," Kaufman said sharply.

  Bonello continued swiftly. "In Milan Fiore made no effort to contact Vito and Franka. After all, he barely knew them, and the child they loved as their own - Fiore's own sister - had been a baby when he last saw her." Bonello shook his head: "No, Fiore submerged into the underworld. Smuggling currency across the Swiss border, running prostitution, trafficking drugs, and bleeding club owners for protection money."

  "Nineteen-sixty-one," Kaufman said again.

  Suddenly I knew what he was saying! Pieces fell into place. He was wrong about it being my story - quite wrong - but I knew whose it was. Two girls. Italian, well educated, speaking several languages. And what was it Bonello said about the marriage? The names of both families were linked - as was the custom. A hyphenated name! Serracino-Torregiannil A hard name to say and a hard name to live with.

  Bonello caught the sudden interest in my eye. "Within a year," he was saying, "Fiore's protection rackets spread to cafes and shops and the construction industry. Building sites are very vulnerable especially at night. As I said - Milan was booming - new construction projects were starting every day - and Vito was the biggest builder in Milan. And he refused to pay protection money. Vito was a brave man, Mr Harris. He fought like a tiger. He even formed his own security corps to guard his properties. He toured his sites every night. Some of the carabinieri helped, but some-" Bonello spread his hands "-some were already on Fiore's payroll. The fight lasted a year. Every week one of Vito's sites was hit. Fires would break out, work would be wrecked, materials looted. But still Vito fought. Until, on the fourteenth of December 1962, he went to a site on the outskirts of the city. It was night time. Two of his security guards travelled with him, and the site was supposedly guarded by twenty of his own people. But when he arrived none of his staff could be found - and Fiore was waiting for him."

  Bonello paused to eject the half-smoked cigarette from its holder. He stubbed it into an ashtray and his voice took on a harsh new note as he finished his story. "I arrived on that site the following morning. Of course I was younger then - not in charge, you understand - but I was the one who cut Vito's body down from the scaffolding. His eyes had been gouged out, his testicles cut away, and - and every inch of his body had been mutilated. He was barely recognisable as a man - as a human being - a thing of dignity -."

  His voice tailed off. Nobody moved. We sat in silence, watching the play of muscles in Bonello's white face as he struggled with his emotions. I risked a glance at the others. They were all the same, perhaps not displaying the same degree of personal misery as Bonello but grimly tense and determined. The common denominator was there now - in their faces. And Bonello had said he wasn't in charge. What did that mean? That he was a policeman of some kind? Were they all policemen of some kind?

  My imagination struggled with the picture of Bonello handling that terrible corpse. I shuddered - at the exact moment the cigarette holder snapped in Bonello's hands. It broke the spell. He looked up at me and said, "Terrible though that was, it was not the end of the story. Vito had fought with the courage of a tiger, but his wife was to fight with the demented fury of a wounded tigress. She insisted on identifying Vito's mutilated body. She had it photographed. She sent copies to every paper in Italy. Many published it, some on their front pages, and then Franka took over Vito's business and ran it herself," he paused, shaking his head. "Franka was unique, Mr Harris. Never was there a woman like her. Proud, beautiful, determined and-" a smile played briefly at the corners of his mouth, "and stubborn. People wanted to help, believe me - not all Italians are cowards or scum like Fiore. But Franka would have none of it. It was her fight and she fought it. She went broke fighting it. She sold her home, her jewellery, everything she possessed. Her daughter sold many of the more valuable pieces in London - and for why?" He sneered in sudden anger, "For why? Because many Italian dealers were afraid to buy in case the Mafia burned their shops to the ground."

  He sat with an expression of disgust on his face, fumbling through his pockets for a cigarette until Kaufman passed him a pack. I was leaning forward, watching intently, but at the back of my mind I saw another face. Lucia's face. Her eyes brimming with tears as I told her how Maria met Jack. Selling the family heirlooms in Sloane Street!

  Bonello puffed on a new cigarette. "Finally Franka had only one property left. An apartment building. Vito's staunchest workers fought the world to finish that project. Completing it might have saved Franka from ruin. Day by day it drew nearer completion. Week by week it inched up above the city skyline. Even Milan's cowards watched its progress with admiration. Franka SerracinoTorregianni was spitting in the eye of her husband's murderers. It was something to be proud of - to make men walk tall again - the defiant courage of one woman and a loyal band of workers. But it was too much for Fiore - the humiliation was too much. A week before the apartment block was due to be opened, Franka was kidnapped and - and taken to a basement."

  His voice dropped to a whisper. I strained to catch his words. "And what they did there was, was-", finally words failed him. His head shook from side to side, as if denying some terrible knowledge. His hands clasped and unclasped in front of him.

  "Enrico," Llewellyn said so gently that I looked at him. His soldier's brusqueness had slipped, now there was only sympathy in his voice. "Enrico," he said, "I want to show the film. Why not get yourself a breath of fresh air-"

  "No!" Bonello sat bolt upright. "No. I'll stay. As Kaufman said it's my end of things. Mr Harris - Sam - may ask a question which only I can answer. I have to be here."

  Kaufman shook his head sadly, raising his shoulders in a faint shrug. He went to the windows to close the drapes. "This isn't very pleasant, Sam," he said, "but I want you to see it. The can's through the door if you need it."

  The room turned grey as the natural light was shut out. Grey and stuffy, like the inside of a tomb. Even the silence was oppressive. Then the screen in the far wall flickered and drew my attention like a magnet. I sensed Kaufman walk behind my chair.

  "That's the entrance to the basement," Bonello said as a narrow doorway appeared. "Franka was taken down there and stripped naked. A proud, handsome woman of forty-seven years of age. Then she was spreadeagled across a table, tied securely - and raped by twelve men. At the end of it she was revived with a glass of wine, and asked if she had a last request before they killed her."

  His voice shook - then he astonished me by sounding close to laughter. "Do you know what she said? Yes, she said, she did have a last request. She would like sexual intercourse with a real man - if they could find one."

  He laughed outright then, a thin crackle of sound which drove a shiver up my spine.

  The camera was going down the steps and along
a passage. Blue paint peeled in strips from the walls. The lighting was dim and the picture lost definition, then an arc lamp blazed directly into the lens and shattered the image into a million fragments. The light turned aside and the camera focused on a crude wooden table.

  "That was the table, Mr Harris. After they raped her they applied electric shock treatment, and after that-"

  The arc lamp probed slowly along one wall. The bricks had been painted blue, but time and damp had stripped the colour; so that the splashes of bright red stood out vividly. Then the camera began to dip towards the floor.

  Bonello said, "They shaved her head first - and removed hair from all over her body. They, they -"

  "That's enough! FOR CHRIST'S SAKE - that's enough!" I had seen what was on the screen. I had seen it! "For God's sake!" I shouted. I shut my eyes and raised my hands to my ears to blot out Bonello's commentary. I tried to rise in my chair but Kaufman's hands were on my shoulders.

  Kaufman's shouts rose above mine. "Look at it, Sam. Damn you, look at it! Another week and you'll say something like that never happened."

  "Get off! For pity's sake, get off!" I struggled to break his grip. I felt sick. Sick to the pit of my stomach. Sick that someone could have done that to another human being.

  "It took eight hours for her to die," Bonello was saying. Kaufman snapped, "Shut up. It's enough that he sees it." I was fighting Kaufman and shouting at Bonello at the same time. "You can't know! You can't know these things. How long it took how they did -"

  "There was a witness," Bonello lashed back angrily. The camera was moving away. Thank God! The camera was moving away from that - that terrible corpse. But then it found another one - smaller, less disfigured, still recognisable as a human being. A young girl, face down, her back mutilated as if cut by a thousand lashes, strips of skin and flesh hanging like ribbons. The gorge rose in my throat as I watched a figure lean over and gently turn the body onto one side.

  "She was made to watch," Bonello was saying. "For eight hours they made her watch. Then Fiore did - did that-"

  It was the face of death itself. Except it was so beautiful. The face of a lovely child. No more than twelve years old. A girl with the promise of vivid beauty still visible on her white skin. Cheek bones that I recognised. Then her eyelids flickered and opened. Wild staring eyes. Grey eyes that had seen hell. Lucia's eyes! Bonello said, "Fiore did that - to his own sister."

  Then, mercifully, I broke free of Kaufman's grasp and was stumbling towards the door, holding the hot vomit in my mouth as I struggled to reach the lavatory in time.

  I returned to find Kaufman had opened the french windows and was about to follow Llewellyn out onto the terrace. They were both looking out at the garden and as I joined them I saw Bonello pacing a path by the rose beds, his hands clasped behind him and his eyes cast down, as if searching for something lost a long time ago.

  "Ah, Harris," Llewellyn said through his pipe. "Feeling better?"

  Kaufman smiled. "Waste of a good breakfast, eh?"

  I was still angry. "Why was I shown that filth?"

  "My idea really," Llewellyn said mildly. "Bit of a shock to the nervous system, of course, but - well, there were reasons." He pointed the stem of his pipe at a garden bench. "Let's sit down, shall we? It's warm enough now, and I daresay you could use a breath of fresh air."

  So we sat, Llewellyn in the middle and Kaufman reaching across to offer me a cigarette, which I declined. I sniffed at the clean air, faintly scented by flowers growing nearby. A thrush sang. The sun shone in a washed out sky. It was a perfect morning. An English morning as opposed to an Italian night. A country garden, instead of a cellar. Life, not death.

  "This is by way of being a second career for me," Llewellyn observed. "I was in the army for thirty years," he smiled at the memory. "Overseas mainly, but once upon a time I had to deal with chaps like you. Like you were, I mean, when you were doing National Service. Of course, they mostly hated it. Called it a bloody waste of time. Uprooted from their homes and families, with only the NAAFI girls for comfort. So I used to pack them off to the camp cinema and show them war films. The real war. War Office material, not the diluted stuff shown to the general public. All the atrocities and concentration camp bits. Made them think a bit I can tell you. Gave them a reason for being there - stopped them feeling sorry for themselves."

  "And you thought I needed that?"

  He smiled. "It did seem appropriate - don't you think?"

  I was about to tell him exactly what I thought when I saw Lucia walking along the side of the house. She carried a basket of cut flowers over the crook of her arm and made such a perfect picture that she might have belonged there - as if the setting had been designed for her. Thin sunshine turned her hair a lighter shade of brown and the yellow dress matched her golden skin. Even from thirty yards away she look beautiful.

  Bonello had seen her too. He hurried across the garden, raising his head as he called her name. She turned, startled at first, then glowing with a smile when she saw who it was. Then they were in each other's arms.

  "He's her uncle," Llewellyn said, following my gaze. "Franka's brother."

  "Franka's brother? And he watched that film?" The horror of what I had seen filled my mind.

  "He shot it actually," Llewellyn said. "When they first went into that basement they thought Lucia was dead as well. Took her pulse of course, but it was so weak they missed it. It was only when she opened her eyes that they realised she was alive."

  I was stunned by the nightmare.

  "Interesting chap," Llewellyn said in the same dry voice, nodding at Bonello. "He was fourteen when Franka left home to get married. Like her he had seen the Mafia from the inside and hated it. But he could never escape it in Sicily - he knew that - so he ran away, and a month afterwards he turned up in Milan. He waited for Vito to go out, then he called on Franka - and begged her not to send him back."

  "And did she?"

  "How could she? She had run away herself, in a sense, to seek her own happiness. She could hardly deny Enrico his. Luckily she had a maid, a woman called Rosana Bonello, who agreed to look after the boy. Of course Franka paid for his keep so it suited everyone. As a result Enrico grew up under his sister's eye, and when he was old enough he joined the police force."

  "And nobody ever found out? What about - Vito? Did they never tell him?"

  Llewellyn knocked his pipe out on the heel of his shoe, scattering strings of charred tobacco over the flagstones. "Franka couldn't tell him - not without revealing her secret. Of course she made a clean breast of everything eventually - when the Sicilian gun battle broke out in the fifties, and she took charge of Lucia. But Enrico was a young man by then, and away at police college. Meanwhile Rosana Bonello had adopted him - to give him a new name along with his new life."

  I shook my head and said, "Remarkable," without even realising

  it.

  "They're a remarkable family," Kaufman said.

  Lucia and her uncle strolled towards us, arm in arm, their heads close together as they talked in low, soft voices. Suddenly she looked up and saw me watching her. She halted at the bottom of the terrace, confused for a moment, then she unlinked her arm from his and slowly climbed the steps. She stopped a yard away, stretching her hands towards me, her face anxious as her eyes met mine. I understood that expression now. All that suffering. Her subsequent life; haunted by those terrible memories.

  "Please forgive me, Sam," she said as our hands touched. "For deceiving you."

  I rose and drew her into my arms. The gaps in my understanding were enormous. What was going on? How was I involved? But I suppose I would have forgiven her anything after watching that film. She saw it in my face because when she drew away she simply said, "Thank you."

  Llewellyn stood up. "We've a lot to talk about. If you've had enough fresh air we ought to resume."

  He looked at Lucia. "Perhaps you'd care to join us?"

  As we turned for the doors Henderson came out carrying
an envelope. Kaufman opened the flap with his thumb, read the letter quickly and passed it to me. "It's from Tomlinson," he said casually. "That statement for Davis. Better sign it, and we'll get it back to him."

  Tomlinson! An hour ago he had been my ace in the hole. The one man who might get me out of here. Now I was so confused that even leaving would worry me - until I found out what was going on.

  "Is Tomlinson in on this?" I asked. "Is he - one of you?"

  "Hell no," Kaufman shook his head. "But we couldn't have him all steamed up about your appointment, so we phoned his secretary. Said you couldn't make it but you'd send a messenger." He shrugged. "Sign it, Sam - we've other things to talk about."

  But I wasn't buying that. Not that easily. "How did you know I was meeting him?"

  Kaufman smiled. "Rex Place. You made the arrangements there, remember? The whole place is wired. We can even hear you brush your teeth."

  Tiny spots of colour appeared on Lucia's cheeks. So I had been right! What had seemed preposterous last night, was perfectly true. No wonder she had wanted to discuss the notes there - Kaufman had heard every word we said.

  His lack of apology infuriated me. I snapped: "Just who the hell are you, Kaufman?"

  "William Kaufman. United States Bureau of Narcotics," he said, his manner still cool and unconcerned.

  Narcotics? Even that surprise failed to stem my temper. "And that gives you the right to pry - to eavesdrop - to abduct-"

  "With a little help from my friends," he waved a hand at Llewellyn and Bonello. "Sam," he said, "we'll explain everything if you give us a chance."

  "Explain," I sneered. I wondered what Kaufman's explanations were worth. I looked at Bonello. "And what do I call you? Bonello? Serracino? Torregianni?"

  He smiled sadly. "So you know my secret as well? It's quite a chapter of revelations, isn't it? But Bonello will do. I've lived with the name for most of my life and tried not to dishonour it."

  "Please, Sam," Lucia squeezed my hand. "Please hear us out."

  I never even bothered to read Tomlinson's statement - just scrawled my signature and handed it back to Kaufman. Then we all went back into the conference room.