No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying they know you’re here, and they’ll come when they’re ready.’

  ‘But do they know who I am – who Bentley Horrocks is?’

  Jack knew the answer might have been: ‘Absolutely, Bent. That’s why they’re in no hurry to meet you.’ If Humphrey had said that the furniture might have started flying. He didn’t.

  Humphrey said, ‘It’s nothing personal, Bent. When the top man sees you it’ll be worthwhile. That’s a promise.’

  ‘Believe me, esteemed colleague, if I could help you I would.’

  ‘But you cannot or will not.’

  The prosecutor walked along the wide pavement. To his left was the Via Vittorio Emanuele where the great magnolia trees shook off the last of the rain. To his right was the sea and the far-off lights of Messina, across the strait. The man he was with had hooked a hand into the angle of his arm.

  ‘I cannot – I’m not involved in the investigations into people you’ve named.’

  ‘There are few friends I can turn to.’

  ‘Forgive me – I have the greatest admiration for your work but you shouldn’t attempt to drag me into it.’

  The prosecutor was with a middle-ranking officer of the Agency for Information and Security (Internal). The Secret Service played a role in anti-’Ndrangheta operations, but an ill-defined one. It was accepted that their equipment was far superior to that used by the Squadra Mobile and the carabinieri. The prosecutor thought that AISI officers had informal links with the gangsters of Calabria, and that the relationships went back to the days when it was convenient for the state to utilise the Mafia groups against Italian Communism.

  ‘I didn’t know where else to turn.’

  ‘My apologies. It’s always a pleasure to see you, but there are many more fish in the sea. Good night.’

  His arm was loosed, and the figure beside him drifted away. The prosecutor was alone for a few seconds, then the escort closed around him. They had given him space while he was with the intelligence officer, but now the cars were brought level with the little group. He was isolated, and knew it. He did not have to say so to his protection detail: they would have observed and recognised the signs of rejection. Time slipped through his fingers.

  The City-Van drove through the village, where men watched and noted it, waved to Stefano and showed respect to the padrino’s grandson. Lights lit the front of the house and the trees to the side and behind. Marcantonio thought a white plastic bag was flapping in a tree a little up the hill. He ignored it. He went through the front door, and Stefano used the back, where the dogs were. The wind was bad – there had been branches down over the road. The dogs wouldn’t go far tonight because they were valuable and it would be dangerous for them if a tree split or fell.

  Every light was on in his bunker. Bernardo lay on his back. He had changed into flannelette pyjamas, but had kept on his vest and socks. The air was damp, and he could hear the TV programme but hardly see it because condensation blurred the screen.

  He knew that Marcantonio had been taken to witness the landing and distribution of the latest shipment. It was a step forward in his grandson’s advancement to be seen by the foot-soldiers. It would give him authority. That had been how his own father had brought Bernardo forward, and how, twenty years ago, he had introduced Rocco and Domenico to other families. His father was buried in the village cemetery, killed in a knife attack in Siderno. His sons were in gaol. The future of the cosca depended on the boy.

  That worried him. At least, it was among the worries that burdened him, but they were linked. The light dazzled him, but that was as nothing against his growing horror of the darkness.

  The priest, Father Demetrio, was prominent in his mind.

  There had been no explanations, but the old fool would have understood. A stumbling progress up the hill to a small flat area, where there had been sufficient earth to dig the hole with a spade and pickaxe. A crude mound where the soil had not yet sunk over the small, near-emaciated corpse. Some gabbled prayers. The photograph of the child with the newspaper would, the day after, have been delivered to the parents. It was rare for Bernardo to listen to Mamma’s blunt demand: a prayer had to be said over a grave. She could not do it. Since that day, neither he nor Father Demetrio had mentioned the grave or whose body lay within it. But Bernardo no longer trusted his old friend to keep silent – and had condemned him.

  How to kill a priest? The question exercised him.

  One had been shot dead while he was putting on his vestments, but that was twenty years ago, near Naples. Another had been shot outside his church but that was even longer ago, in Sicily. Among the Aspromonte villages one had had a pistol fired at him, unsuccessfully, four years previously. A severed pig’s head had been left on the doorstep of Father Stamile’s home further up the coast from Locri. It was a big decision for Bernardo, but he had taken it. The priest would be silenced. It was about the child, the grave he had never revisited, the money paid by the duped parents that had set the family on the road to huge wealth. Other families, after this child’s death and the ransom payment, had given up taking the children of rich northerners and bringing them south: they had claimed that the cases attracted too much attention from the carabinieri and Squadra Mobile. The families had met, head man with head man, on the hills – where they could pose to the inquisitive as mushroom pickers – and the practice had been ended. The investment in the child had enabled Bernardo’s first purchase of uncut cocaine, and he had not looked back until now.

  More than two hundred kidnappings had been controlled from the villages close to where Bernardo lived, many millions of dollars paid in ransom. One man had escaped from the prison where his captors had held him, reached a house and begged the occupants to call the carabinieri. He was given coffee and bread and sat in the warmth until men arrived, but not from the barracks. The man of the house had returned the escaper to his gaolers. What else would he have done? Another had freed himself, blundered into the forest and come across women searching for porcini. They had overpowered him, brought him back to the village and passed him to their men. Best of all, in Bovalino, down the coast from Locri, there was a part of the town that local people called Polghettopoli after the billionaire’s grandson, Paul Getty, for whom more than three million dollars were paid. They had sliced off a part of the kid’s ear and posted it to the Messaggero newspaper in Rome, with the demand that the family speed up the negotiation. They had not realised that the postal workers were on strike so it had taken three weeks to reach the capital. Another captive had managed to flee, had been hunted down, shot dead, then kept in a bar’s freezer so he could be regularly lifted out, propped up and photographed to encourage the closing of a final deal. Good stories. They roved in his mind but came back, always, to Father Demetrio and the danger to the family’s future. And with Father Demetrio was the image of the child . . .

  An accident, perhaps . . . Bernardo considered the options.

  Soon, he would try to sleep. The light would stay on.

  Jago might have slept. The moon was bright and there were stars high above, but dawn was not far off. He was so cold, so cramped and so hungry.

  His clothing was laid out around him – why? He remembered. The moonlight showed Jago his trainers, trousers, coat, pants and socks. His vest had floated away on the wind.

  He looked for it.

  Anxiety gripped him. As he recalled it, the vest had caught on a tree that was level with the near end of the house. He could see the tree, and the spread of its branches, but not his vest. The wind was still strong so the vest should have been flying, like a windsock at an airfield, stretched horizontally. He couldn’t see it. He had been wondering how he’d get up a tree and crawl along a branch . . .

  Then he saw his vest. It was crumpled on the ground. It had to be retrieved or . . . He could turn his back, put on his clothing and forget the vest. He could get to the road, hitch a ride, find a bus or walk to whatever degree of
civilisation existed in this neck of the woods, and put himself clear. He might be at the bank by lunchtime.

  The FrauBoss: ‘Where have you been, Jago? We were worried, and you’ve missed several meetings.”

  Jago Browne: ‘Something that seemed a good idea at the time. Apologies, Wilhelmina. It won’t happen again.’ At school they’d had lectures on responsibility and consequences – For want of a battle the kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a horseshoe nail. The nail this time was an old vest from Marks & Spencer.

  It lay close to the City-Van, within five metres of the front door. He could get it or he could turn back.

  Jago started to dress, his clothes still very damp. The cockerel crowed. He could retrieve his vest or abandon it and be gone before daylight. A choice.

  Fabio and Ciccio watched.

  They had night-vision optics and binoculars but they hardly needed the enhancing gear as the scene was played out in front of them. Ciccio had been sleeping when he’d started awake, Fabio’s hand across his mouth. A little stab of his partner’s finger had told Ciccio where to look.

  ‘There’s clothing by the vehicle.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘It’ll be what flew past – belongs to whoever’s further down. He’ll be wet through with no proper kit, trying to dry it and himself. The wind took his vest. And that’s where it landed.’

  ‘Look how he’s moving – doesn’t know where any trail is. Where are the dogs? What do we do?’

  ‘I don’t know! He’s on borrowed time.’

  They watched.

  A shadowy figure came out of the thin line of trees at the base of the hill. It crouched, took stock, then went forward, bent double. The wind pitched him forward and he lost his balance, then regained it. There was a light inside the house, on the main landing at the top of the stairs.

  A dog barked.

  The man went forward, a sort of crabbing movement, towards the vest. He dropped down beside it, picked it up and thrust it into a pocket. He was wearing a camouflage jacket, jeans and trainers. His shirt clung to his body and his jacket flapped open. He seemed to hesitate.

  Fabio said, ‘The dogs are shut inside. If they’d been loose . . . What’s so important about a vest?’

  ‘Thank him,’ Ciccio muttered. ‘If they’d found it there would be a search – and we’re where they’d look.’

  A dog barked, woke the pack. A cacophony of noise came from the house towards them . . .

  They did surveillance: they were there to observe and the unforgivable crime was to blow a position. It was the ultimate sin. They could use force only if their lives were endangered. They could do nothing but watch. The man seemed to grope in his trousers and was beside the City-Van.

  ‘Fuck me! Did you see that?’

  He thought the man, from the glint of poor light on chrome, had keys out of his pocket and was beside the City-Van. Incomprehensible.

  He held the keys hard against the bodywork of the vehicle, took a deep breath and walked.

  He did it steadily, as if he had time to kill.

  A few metres away the dogs pounded against the door.

  He had a job to do. He would do it in his own time as best he could.

  The line was cut into the paintwork as he went from rear to front. Jago pressed hard with the short blade of the penknife Consolata has given him. Above the front wheel, he turned and started back. He did it methodically. It seemed important to use the blade.

  He heard a shout from inside the house and lights were coming on upstairs. His clothing chilled him, and the light-headed recklessness he felt was close to the delirium he had experienced at the height of the storm . . .

  There were cats in Canning Town, around their building, and many were strays. Some were put out at night and allowed in only to be fed; others were pampered, their owner’s best or only friend. It didn’t matter whether the cat was an outsider or on the inside track if it was male: they sprayed their territory so that every other cat knew they had been there. They made their mark. Jago left the scratch, tramlines, the best he could manage.

  If he’d had petrol and matches he could have sloshed it over the vehicle and set fire to it. If he’d had some dry paper and a functioning fag-lighter he could have made a spill and flung it down the fuel pipe. He had the penknife. He bent one last time and stabbed, with all his strength, at the rear passenger-side tyre. He felt the rubber give under the pressure and the blade slipped in. He tugged it back, folded and pocketed it . . .

  There had been a teacher at his school who was ex-military, a disciplinarian, and never took shite from the kids. That teacher never hurried. When there was a fight in the playground, he never sprinted to break it up. Never broke sweat. Jago turned away.

  A light on now downstairs and shouts from far away on the track. Jago slipped back towards the cover of the trees.

  He didn’t know whether what he had done was puerile or something to be proud of. Would he, one day, be sitting in a comfortable swing chair in a glass-sided office and considering with satisfaction what he had done against the might of ’Ndrangheta, organised-crime barons, annual turnover approximately forty-five billion euros? He climbed. He had little light to guide him, using his fingers to haul himself up the wet rock faces.

  The dogs were out. The men who came up the track shouted and waved torches. The daughter, Giulietta, was outside – he could hear her voice and the orders she gave.

  The dogs quartered the ground, scattering gravel, bursting through the lower scrub, but the wind would have screwed up their sense of smell. He noted a thinner voice then, and thought the boy who patrolled with the dogs was there, and the man who drove the car. They were all milling around, confused.

  Would he go back to Lamezia, ferried there by Consolata, and tell her he had done well? That he had confronted the family, taken a step against them? What had he done? she might ask, as she drove towards the airport. He had put the penknife she’d given him to good use. How good? He had scratched the side of a vehicle. A Maserati, a Ferrari, a top-of-the-range Porsche? No. A City-Van fit for the scrapyard. And he had punctured one of its tyres. He might give her back her penknife or keep it as a souvenir. Her head would shake and any admiration in her eyes would vanish.

  He could return to Berlin, take the S-bahn across the city, go to the square and sit on a bench, then wait to see if the girl came out of the pizzeria. If she did, he could go to her, tell her that he had been to Calabria, had hidden above the home of her attacker and scratched the paintwork of a car. He might even show her the penknife. She would look at him with contempt.

  Jago climbed on. The last of the moonlight guided him. He heard Marcantonio’s voice. He found the two boulders, twisted round and slid backwards inside.

  Giulietta had a dressing-gown on, was bare-legged – she seemed to have lost interest. Marcantonio was beside the City-Van, Stefano showing him the scratches. Jago was just near enough to see his astonishment. Marcantonio wore boxer shorts, flip-flops and a T-shirt, his carefully spiked hair a wild mess. Only Marcantonio understood.

  Jago lay very still. He saw that Marcantonio had a torch, a spotlight type, with a long, powerful beam. It was aimed up the slope, showing branches, tree trunks, and bounced off rock faces. Because of the torch he could no longer see Marcantonio’s face but imagined it creased with fury. It was still dark, but dawn was on the horizon. It would not be bright for hours. Marcantonio had time to brood on the City-Van’s scratches.

  It was personal, between himself and the grandson of the family, who could strut about and not be confronted. Jago wondered how it would be to have come from a family of huge wealth and power, and be destined for vast authority. The torch beam played on the trees and found nothing. The others would have wondered when the vehicle had been damaged by vandals, wherever it had been. Not Marcantonio.

  The torch was killed. The dogs were quiet. Marcantonio and Giulietta headed for the house, as did the driver. The kid, half dressed, called the
dogs. The men went away down the track, and silence fell, but for the wind in the trees.

  He thought he had done well. The rain had passed. Jago imagined the anger he had provoked. He wanted to see more. Today would be bright and hot. He hadn’t done enough but it was a start.

  11

  He had not seen it before the sun had risen high enough to clear the trees. An emptiness. There were heavy shadows behind the back door of the house, and beyond the line of the overgrown vine on the trellis, then darkness.

  When the sun cleared the roof tiles, the warmth fell not only on Jago but also onto the washing line. The light was brilliant so he had a clear view of the path and the low retaining wall behind it. He could follow the broken stone paving to a halfway point where the slabs had slipped. The ground under them had slid down and the path went on to the pole from which the line was slung, then another wall and the roof of the derelict shed. Without the sun, Jago would not have registered the path and its emptiness.

  The wind had dropped: the gale was now a blustery breeze. He studied the track, and the taut line.

  The sheets had been a casualty. They were in the mud at the side of the path, trapped against the stones of the retaining wall. They were of good quality, he thought, better than those he had had in the attic studio on Stresemannstrasse, but had been left out to take their chance when the storm had hit. They lay in crumpled heaps. The emptiness was where they had been. Now they would need a double wash, with plenty of detergent – they were covered with mud.