See Naples and Die

by Ray Cleveland

  “Tigran, my big bad friend,” said Angelo. “How do you think things are going?”

  “They are going okay,” replied the disinterested Armenian.

  “Yes, you have done well,” smiled Angelo. “You and your accomplices have taken to assassination like babies to milk.”

  Angelo reflected on the nine contracts so far. Tigran had personally executed five of these, and with a chilling efficiency that the Italian could only admire. The Armenian network was complete, with around fifty immigrants dispersed around the country. Some were more skilled than others – and only action in the field would create a natural hierarchy – but one thing was already apparent, and that was the fact that in the art of cold-blooded murder Tigran Sadorian was in a class of his own.

  Angelo handed over an envelope containing some photographs and the details of the next contract.

  “This is our next job.” He leant forward. “The organisation is involved in a major construction deal. We have provided finance to get things off the ground … literally. And now the people who have taken our money say they are having second thoughts, and maybe they don’t need our assistance any longer. This is how people with no principles treat our generosity. Our employer has tried to negotiate and I have personally had talks with the men involved to point out the repercussions, but to no avail. They are greedy men who place too much value on their own importance and so-called power. They have thrown in with other backers – who include local criminals, who should know better – and now it’s time for all of them to be taught a lesson. There was a time when this could have been sorted out peacefully, but it’s gone beyond that now. We have been openly disrespected. And that action has a cost.”

  Angelo stroked his chin, and then pointed to the envelope. “We are to take out the two men at the top. One is Walter Monreal, a politician. The other is Ian Spencer, an architect. The details are all there but I can tell you that the politician has a house in the country, which is very isolated. I have been there for meetings. He lives with his boyfriend, and I would like you to take care of both of them – and make it as bloody as possible. The scenario I envisage is where he stabs his lover to death and then puts a gun into his own mouth and tries to find his brain with a bullet. The architect I leave to you.”

  The Italian leant back in his chair. “I know it’s a long shot, Tigran, but did you ever see the film The Man Who Would Be King? It’s a Rudyard Kipling story. He was an English guy brought up in India, and he wrote books. I know this because the man I work for loves the film – with Michael Caine and Sean Connery – it’s a brilliant film. Anyhow, Caine and Connery are British soldiers fighting in India but come up with a scheme to go it alone and take over a country called Kafiristan. They do this by contacting the local tribes with a proposition, and say to them, ‘If you have enemies then we will help you to defeat them. We can teach you to be better warriors, but we must be the leaders because we are the most skilful at what we do.’ They defeat one tribe after another, with each tribe then joining their ranks, until they have a huge army and no more enemies. Then they become the kings of Kafiristan.

  “This is our blueprint. My employer can be Sean Connery, I am Michael Caine, and you can be the little Gurkha guy who ran the foot soldiers.”

  Tigran looked as if he’d switched off. Angelo had probably lost him at Rudyard Kipling, and he was studying the pictures taken from the envelope.

  “Were you listening to me, Tigran?” asked Angelo.

  “No,” said the Armenian. “But, tell me, does your story have a happy ending?”

  Angelo was taken aback. “Well … as a matter of fact, no. But that’s not the point.”

  “It isn’t? Oh, okay then,” said Tigran, and went back to sifting through the photos.

  “Tigran …” said Angelo, as if willing him to be more attentive. “Listen: this is important. You are only one division of our Armenian army. Others are already in place in other parts of London, and elsewhere. I need someone within the whole group to be my general. I want you to be that person. You quickly made yourself boss of this house. They are afraid of you, and that’s good for me. Here is a telephone list of people I want you to contact. In the very near future we have plans that will involve everyone, and I need a man to control operations for me. Can you do that?”

  Tigran nodded.

  “Okay, then. Good man.”

  Angelo opened a briefcase at his side and showed the contents. He pushed the briefcase across to the Armenian. “This is for you and the boys. There’s ten grand in there. You’re moving out of here tomorrow, so have a party. Go get yourself some hookers, get a blonde with big tits … and, for Christ’s sake, take a bath. Just make sure you don’t leave the house. Order everything to go, and be ready at nine tomorrow morning.”

  Tigran made no effort to confirm his instructions but Angelo knew this was just his way, and got up to leave. “The hit is important,” he confirmed, “but I also want you to think long and hard about what I have said. You are Zico Scarpone’s wild dogs, and very soon I will be asking you to show your teeth.” Angelo gave his coat several hard strokes with his hand to clean away the fluff picked up from the chair and walked to the door, shaking his head. “I’ll see you again on Monday, after the job. We will have much to discuss.”

  As the door closed behind the Italian Tigran bent down and took out one of the bundles of money. He fanned the bills like a deck of cards then dropped them on to the floor. He glanced through the list of Armenian names and telephone numbers and smiled. Then he looked at the chair Angelo had been sitting in and threw the hunting knife, which was by his side. The knife hit the chair blade first and split the fabric apart, right at the point where the Italian’s head had been only a few moments earlier. Different-coloured pieces of fibre spewed from the cut, like guts from the belly of a slaughtered animal, and Tigran laughed out loud.

  Chapter Nine

  Bruno the novice had acquired a nervous twitch, with his head suddenly swinging to the right as if heading an invisible football. It had started as an ever more frequent nod but now it was getting worse, and the girls were worried. If it became any more forceful he would fall off the bench they were sitting on, and turn into Norman Wisdom. Someone had to try and calm him down, and unfortunately it was Chrissie who acted first.

  “For fuck’s sake, Bruno, will you keep your fucking head still?”

  Bruno was shocked. Although – if provoked – Chrissie could swear like a fishwife, she had controlled her language in the presence of the priest up to now.

  “Chrissie,” shouted Megan. “For goodness’ sake, we’re in enough trouble without you upsetting God.”

  “Give me a break, Megan. We’re supposed to be keeping a low profile, and Buckaroo here is getting more attention than a wildebeest in a lion’s pen.”

  “Can’t you see he’s hyperventilating?” said Brenda. “It’s the anxiety of meeting these Mafia guys. Ever since this was arranged he’s been withdrawing into himself. Look at his breathing. It’s ten times faster than ours. We need to snap him out of it. Let’s go through everything again … that could calm him down.”

  “Or tip him over the edge, more like,” sighed Chrissie.

  “Well … let’s try, shall we?” said Megan calmly. She changed places with Chrissie and sat next to Bruno. “Bruno,” she whispered, in a soothing tone that came straight from a chocolate advert. “Two days ago we thought we were in a hopeless situation, with no way out. Then you came up with this brilliant plan. It is totally brilliant. Well done, you.”

  Chrissie groaned.

  Megan continued. “You actually spoke to Roberto Vialli and, not only that, you got him to come all the way to London for a meeting. So now it could be that we have a good Mafia man on our side who can make the bad Mafia man go away.”

  Chrissie had to interrupt. “What on earth are you doing? Reading him a bedtime story? You’re supposed to be snapping him out of it, not sending him into a coma. And, by the way, I don’t know much
about this – but I don’t think there is such a thing as a good Mafia man. Now I propose we all be quiet for a few minutes and think about what we are going to say when this Roberto guy gets here, because I have a feeling that Bruno will be sucking his thumb by then.”

  The girls and Bruno sat on the park bench and looked across the green fields of Kensington Gardens. They had entered through Black Lion Gate at the junction of Bayswater Road and Queensway, and walked past the children’s play area and ice cream van until they found the first empty bench on Broad Walk.

  It was Brenda’s idea to pick a busy location with wide open spaces: she reasoned that an assassination here would be pretty difficult. They also understood how Roberto must be viewing all this. He receives a phone call out of the blue from someone he’s never heard of, who tempts him to leave the security of Naples on the pretext of acquiring valuable information about his arch-enemy. He must be half expecting a trap … so the park seemed a good idea, all round.

  The only problem was that they were easy to recognise. Three girls and a priest isn’t something you see every day, even in London, but these Mafia guys could be anywhere. They were scanning the groups of people sitting on the grass, who were mostly couples and women with children. Two skinheads with a pit bull were being a nuisance, and in the distance four young boys were trying to fly a kite. A continuous flow of people was passing by, either enjoying a stroll or making their way through the park towards the more affluent areas of Knightsbridge and Kensington – but, other than a cursory glance at three pretty girls and what looked like a priest on drugs, no one seemed interested in them.

  Then Brenda spotted two tall dark-haired men turning away from the ice cream van. They were smartly dressed – too smart for a walk in the park. The men very slowly made their way down Broad Walk. When they got to the bench they stopped and faced the girls. One of the men looked at his ice cream and said, in broken English, “This-a gelato is disgustoso.” Then he tossed it into the rubbish bin at the side of their seat.

  The other man smiled. “Forgive my friend. He hasn’t acclimatised to your English ways. We are from Italy, but I suppose you know that already.” His English was perfect, and somehow that eased the tension.

  “But the ice cream man is Italian, so it should be good,” said Brenda, waffling.

  The man looked at the brilliant white ice cream in his hand. “The man is Italian, but the products and process that make the gelato are English. It is what you call a bad reproduction.” And he also threw his cornet in the bin.

  “Let’s walk,” he said.

  They bunched up, and all adapted a slow Mafia swagger as they took the path towards Hyde Park.

  “My name is Armando,” said the well-spoken Italian. “You do not need to know my colleague’s name.”

  They glanced at the other Mafia man, whose eyes were everywhere. He was obviously the shotgun guard.

  “I am here on behalf of my employer, and I believe you have something that is of great interest to us. Is that correct?”

  Chrissie looked at Bruno and decided it was best that she handled things from now on.

  “Yes, Armando. We have a USB memory stick that contains all contacts and business dealings of the Scarpone family. Names, addresses, and payments made and received from past and ongoing operations.”

  “Where is this data?” asked Armando.

  “We have it in a safe place,” said Chrissie, in a firm and confident voice.

  Armando thought for a moment as if considering his options. “And what do you want from us in exchange for this information?” he said.

  “We want to get out of this situation alive,” said Chrissie “It was all a mistake that we got involved in the first place, and now this Scarpone lot have a contract out on us. We know we can’t reason with them. Even if we return the data they won’t let us go.”

  “So you don’t want any money?” asked a surprised Armando.

  “What? No! We just want our lives back,” said an impassioned Chrissie.

  It seemed the Italians were finding this a little hard to understand. This was business, and everyone is in it for a profit. But then again, what is more valuable than life? Maybe these girls were telling the truth.

  “How did this memory stick come into your possession?” asked Armando.

  Chrissie had to be careful here. She didn’t want to tell him everything. Not because of any loyalty to Luigi – he had tricked them, big time – but one thing she had learnt in life was to always hold something back. If you show all your cards straight away then you have nothing left to gamble with, and you lose control of the board. But she had to start somewhere, so she decided to start at the beginning.

  “We were on a cruise, and visited Naples on holiday – just a holiday. We were in the marketplace and a boy named Fabio, who had stolen the data stick, was being pursued. In a panic he put the thing into my bag. I didn’t even find it until we got back to England.”

  “Fabio, you say?” said Armando.

  “Yes. Do you know him?”

  “I knew a boy with that name. He has disappeared.” Armando was very interested now. These girls weren’t making it all up. They knew about Fabio the runner. “So if you acquired this information by accident and knew nothing until you found it in your bag – just a small memory stick of no significance – how do you know about Fabio, and how do you know about the Scarpones?”

  Chrissie was in a corner. She was going to have to tell them a little more. “We were approached as soon as we left the airport in England. These Italians, who said they were related to Fabio, wanted the memory stick. They said they were making a movie and that the data was a list of possible investors, and we could become part of everything and be co-producers of the movie.”

  Armando stopped and turned to scrutinise Chrissie. “And you believed that?”

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “It does make us all look incredibly stupid, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.”

  Armando shook his head in disbelief and walked on. “And what about the Scarpones? How do you know about them, and how do they know you have this data?”

  “Well …” said Chrissie. “It gets worse. We were told that we needed to meet with these investors and take the money from them. I know it sounds ludicrous – but, honestly, that’s what happened. We thought they were giving us the money to be a part of this movie project. We had no idea anything was untoward until the meeting with the bishop and Bruno.” She pointed to the priest, who threw a spasm. “We went to a hotel room and the bishop started waving a gun about and saying we were evil, and that’s when we knew something was wrong.”

  “The bishop had a gun?” said Armando.

  “Yes,” said Brenda, “and he threatened to kill us. And I’m sure he would have done, if Chrissie hadn’t headbutted him.”

  “You hit a bishop?”

  “She had to. He was seriously crazy. Bruno told us that he would have shot us. Didn’t you, Bruno?”

  This time Bruno did manage to nod in agreement.

  Chrissie picked up the story again. “So we ran out of the hotel, but another guy was outside with a gun. He was trying to abduct us. He mentioned the data stick and said we had to take him to it but Bruno pulled a gun on him … well, actually, he stuck two fingers in his back – but it worked, and we got away. Then we went into hiding, and Bruno told us the truth – and that we had been blackmailing everyone, and about the Scarpones and what was really on the memory stick. Then he got the idea that your boss might also be keen on knowing what’s on it. And, if he can do some sort of deal with the Scarpones, then part of that agreement could be that everyone leaves us alone.”

  This time it was Chrissie who stopped walking, and she squared up to the gangster. “So what do you think?” she asked.

  Armando raised his eyebrows. “There are things that bother me – for example, this Italian who set you up. If he is Italian he knows you cannot extort money from a Mafia family, or from those they protect. It’s different if y
ou want to sell or exchange something, but to blackmail the families is madness. Maybe for many millions of euros you may consider it, but not for a few thousand: in no way is it worth it. So what are his real motives? It could be that you are innocent pawns in this game, or perhaps you are also part of a bigger plan.”

  “No, we’re not, honestly. What we’ve told you is all we know,” said Chrissie.

  Armando rubbed his chin. “I would like it if you took me to this man.”

  Chrissie groaned. “I knew you were going to ask that, and we can’t do it. I know he’s a bastard, and could have got us all killed – but if I take you to him then I’m probably sentencing him to death, and I couldn’t live with that.”

  “What if I said it was him or you?” Armando said grimly.

  Chrissie closed her eyes and squeezed. “I can’t do it.”

  The Mafia hardman looked at Chrissie as if seeing her for the first time. “What are your names?”

  They all answered in turn, with Megan introducing Bruno.

  “I’ll tell you what we must do,” said Armando. “If this is true, and this information really exists, then no matter about anyone else. You will give us the data, and we will look at it. If this is a trap you will die, because I will shoot you myself. If the information is poor quality and tells us nothing that we don’t already know then you are also dead, because the Scarpones will find you and kill you. However, if we discover secrets that can destroy the Scarpones then you are saved. But we will only know these things when we see what you have.”

  “You’ve forgotten the one where we hand over the data and you kill us anyway,” said Chrissie.

  “Unfortunately, I don’t think you have a choice,” said Armando. “But, in most cases, we are men of our word.”

  “That’s comforting,” said Brenda. “What are the odds?”

  “The best odds you’re going to get,” said the Mafia man bluntly. “Now, where is the data stick?”