A hand was offered. He took it. The handshake was indifferent. He thought the kid reckoned it a chore to have to shake his hand, like he was doing Bent a favour. The kid looked into his face, seemed to evaluate him and showed no indication of being impressed. He sat down in the chair that Bent would have taken, and Humphrey lowered himself towards the carpet – he needed help to get down, then produced a notepad and pencil. That was how they would do business: with a notepad.
Jack whispered in his ear, ‘Steady, Bent. Outline agreed now, then a handshake, and no going back. The detail tomorrow, or the day after. The handshake is final, Bent. It’s the big man’s grandson. Bent, please, smile at him. They’ll want to know how much weight, cost per kilo and shipment, which is extra.’
The kid lounged in the chair, then swung his feet onto the low table, scattering the magazines and brochures. His eyes went to the TV and lit up – girls were dancing on the screen. The kid had good hands, solid, chunky fingers. No acne, only a small scar. Humphrey reached to Bent, tugged at his trouser leg, pointed to a hard chair and started to write.
Bent brought the chair forward. The kid ignored him. The lawyer had written on three lines: Weight. Price. Delivery. No hassle, no barter, no bargain – he could have been in a fucking pound shop down the Elephant and Castle. He bit his tongue, held tight to the pencil, and considered what he would do to Jack when he was shot of the business. He considered what weight he’d buy, how much he would pay, and where he would want delivery. But the kid turned away from the TV screen. Humphrey muttered in his ear, then wrote down the figure for the weight they would sell, the price per kilo and where they would deliver to. The pad was passed back to Bent. No negotiation, no respect. He seethed.
He moved, not with a plan but from desperation.
Jago was in poorer shape than the wolf. Hard to see the beast but it lay on its side on a slab of rock, the wound open to the air. Since it had found the slab, it hadn’t moved.
Only God knew how many hours earlier he had heard the sneeze – too long now to be clear in his mind. He came out of the gap where the two boulders bedded and turned away from the wolf, from the kid who was feeding the dogs from a washing-up bowl, from the old woman, who had brought out Marcantonio’s shirts and hung them from hooks behind the trellis – there was no room for them on the line with the bed linen – and away from Giulietta, who paced and smoked and quartered the front area. It was obvious to Jago that Bernardo’s shirts would be washed, dried and ironed inside, then taken to the cellar or the excavated hole or the cave to which the cable ran.
He went up the hill, with only the memory of the sneeze to guide him. He had known, through the late afternoon and into the early evening, with the light failing, that he must find food. Two choices: he could go down, bang on the door, appear, like a vagabond in the kitchen and ask to be fed or go up the hill, in the direction of the sneeze, and try to locate whoever was there. Jago was close to collapse. Delirium lapped in his mind, threatening to drown him. He had to eat. He didn’t know whom he would find, whether he would be welcomed or attacked. Uppermost in his mind was the certainty that he could not see through another night without food. It was a steep climb.
If he came to the place where a man had sneezed, it would be by an animal’s instinct: he had no other guide.
He reckoned himself close to the end of the road. Last time he’d been there? Maybe when his phone had been taken and Billy had saved him. He should have collected water during the storm and hadn’t. The hunger-strikers in Ireland had used water to prolong their fast. He hadn’t eaten or drunk any water and the weakness ran through him. Each movement seemed to weaken him further. He went on. He tried to be quiet but sometimes a twig cracked beneath his feet and song birds careered away from him. He went on, and his mind rambled . . . dishes his mother cooked, the stuff that came round on the trolley in the City, the health fascists’ favourites in Berlin, a spider’s meal and . . . He was on his knees and his hands. It was aimed at the centre of his forehead.
He saw the darkened recess. He saw two faces and camouflage clothing.
Closest to him was the barrel of the pistol, and the foresight; its paintwork was chipped. The pistol had the look of a world-weary object, but one that was kept in good enough order to work. The hand holding it was steady. Jago had found the man who had sneezed.
He stood. He was confused and it was an effort to get upright, but the elementary truth was that they wouldn’t shoot because of the noise. He saw another hand, which clutched a canister. He remembered, hazily, the dog with impaired eyesight. Jago stood upright. He spoke no Italian and imagined that the men were unlikely to speak English. He had no wish to debate. The pistol barrel followed him. He put his fingers to his mouth and made a chewing motion. Simple enough. Then he gave them a profile, raised his hands and cupped them at his mouth, as if he was about to shout. Clear enough. The final signal: his hands – with two thumbs and eight fingers he seemed to start a countdown. The pistol was loosed and laid in front of them.
Food materialised in small sealed packs and juice sachets. Not much, sufficient. Nothing was said. He was crouched and stumbling, grabbing at the pieces and stuffing them into pockets. A hand that held a phone or transmitter snaked to him, holding a lit screen. It was for him to look at. Jago saw himself. He wore a suit, a decent shirt and a quiet, conservative tie, as the bank required. He smiled, in the picture, self-deprecating, not arrogant, as Wilhelmina would have wished. He didn’t know what to say.
One grinned, then gave him the universal sign, the middle finger, and waved him away. One called after him, with a hint of humour, ‘Vaffanculo, amico.’
Jago was gone. He thought he understood what they had told him, grimaced, and went down.
Bernardo ate an early dinner with Mamma.
She served pasta with tomato sauce, then pork. Later she would bring cheese. Bernardo consumed his food at a steady pace, but his plate was overloaded. Age and lack of exercise had curbed his appetite. He had downed only half of the pasta, and now he struggled with the pork. She ate little, had never eaten much, and had never cooked well. She was unimaginative with what she prepared, which was the prime reason why Giulietta joined them infrequently at the table. She often had meals at Teresa’s, or went to Siderno where there was a lawyer with whom she did business. She’d eat with him twice a week, or take a sandwich to her office. He didn’t need to eat out of politeness for his wife’s efforts. If he didn’t like what she had made, he would push it away. He didn’t eat that late afternoon because a new worry had begun to nag at him.
As Giulietta had worked on her computer, two development possibilities had caught her attention – apartments and a club-house on the extreme southern sliver of land where Croatia met Serbia, and a similar site on the Bulgarian coast north-east of Varna, near to the border with Romania. He might need to invest up to five million euros, and couldn’t make such a decision without her advice. It would be good when Marcantonio came back to live with them. Then he could rest, knowing his back was protected.
The nagging worry was about protection. The decision on the priest, his long-time friend Father Demetrio, had been taken. When his mind was made up on such a matter, he did not change it. It was as if a door had closed. The method of the accident would be resolved. After the priest, who posed the next threat? Who, outside the close blood links of the family, could wound him?
He had known Stefano since his driver was a baby and he himself was ten. Stefano had been at his side as punch-bag, servant, driver and keeper of secrets. Stefano had carried the child, dead, cold and stiff, head lolling – out of the cave, into the daylight and up the hill. He had searched out a place for the grave and dug it. He had wrapped a towel around the body, than had covered it with the soil. Bernardo had been unable to watch – too difficult. The worst part was when the priest had said the prayers two days later, and they had scrambled down the hill afterwards without a backward glance. He had studied Stefano’s face, expecting to see moisture in
the eyes – nothing. Months later, the money had come. It had been on the old oak table in the kitchen and it had taken most of an afternoon to count it. It had stayed that night in the bag under the big bed. The family had not looked back from the day it had been invested and the first shipment had come through.
He wondered now from which man came the greater threat: from the priest or his driver, who brought food to the house, cleared the fires, was always at the kitchen door and knew the entry mechanism for the bunker. Bernardo had killed men and had brought into Europe vast quantities of narcotics. He had bought and sold firearms, and had traded in juveniles, who went to the brothels of northern Europe or Spain. He had cheated the government, and the taxpayers of the European Union. All of this, yet it was only the child that lingered with him.
Now he considered Stefano to be a threat. Headlights flared through the front windows, pierced an open door and briefly lit the table. He heard the chugging engine of the City-Van. Bernardo could not live beside a threat.
Doors slammed. The dogs bounded to the back of the kitchen, the utility area where they slept, and scratched at the outer door. His grandson had returned. Marcantonio nodded to him, kissed his grandmother, then went to the fridge for a beer. Stefano was in the doorway, calm and impassive. He might be a threat. Bernardo was alone. He doubted he had a friend in the world.
It had been a huge decision. Father Demetrio rarely shocked himself, but had done so that afternoon. He was at the funeral.
He had not been in church but was at the cemetery. For many years in the village, he had been pliant. His mind was almost made up. A road stretched ahead of him, and it was not yet too late for him to reverse back the way he had come. He stood among tall gravestones, apart from the small group of mourners. None of the dead man’s family was present. They would have stayed in the village and might have worn bright clothing to demonstrate that nothing deserved any show of grief. A son had died, a brother and husband, but not a tear would be shed in that home, and no word of covert sadness would reach the padrino, whose home was high on the hill. Father Demetrio had barely known the pentito, had baptised and christened him, had rarely heard his confession, had kept away from the man’s home when Rocco and Domenico Cancello had been convicted on his sworn evidence.
The low light threw long shadows and made the stones huge and grotesque. The cemetery was outside the town of Melito di Porto Salvo, north of the E90 highway, and the throb of lorries’ engines drowned the words that were spoken. It was a little less than an hour’s drive from the village. The man had been brought back to Calabria, but was distanced from his bloodline. Father Demetrio tested himself by his presence – he was not a fool. A retired schoolmaster was there and would have taught the turncoat, a carabinieri officer, who might have watched over him before he had given his testimony, two young women, who wore the T-shirts of the Addio Pizzo movement, a gravedigger and a junior priest, who had gabbled the prayers. Father Demetrio thought the priest would have experienced real fear if a camera was present to record him officiating: few volunteered to stand against the current’s flow. The mayor was present.
Father Demetrio understood. Something about the way the padrino had eyed him at the old woman’s lunch. Something about the old City-Van that had followed him for a time that morning, or the scooter that had trailed him the previous evening. He knew so much. It was often done in the aftermath of a substantial meal. A man slipped unseen behind the victim’s chair and hands gripped the throat. Death by strangulation: said to take four or five minutes. He suspected it. It had been a gesture of defiance to come to the cemetery; he had challenged his conscience, his courage – and his cowardice. The grave was in a corner of the cemetery, with only one bouquet. He mouthed the prayers, wished he had had the nerve to take the service himself. Father Demetrio harboured ever-present shame for having said similar obsequies over a mound in the hills.
He toyed with the decision, as yet unmade.
‘Rubbish’: that was what he called the Englishman he had met.
The Englishman was ‘useless’, ‘boastful’ and ‘boring’. He snapped through the figures. The cosca of Bernardo bought fifty kilos of 80 per cent pure, and paid twelve hundred dollars per kilo to the agents at the Latin-American end of the supply route. It arrived in Europe and the family must pay transportation costs before selling on to an agent in northern Italy, who paid forty-five thousand dollars per kilo for 50 per cent purity. When the cocaine was offered for sale in London, a kilo, further diluted with baking powder, would bring in ninety-five thousand dollars. The man hadn’t known where he wanted to buy: he could buy in Calabria and be responsible for all shipments onwards, or he could buy in Rotterdam, Felixstowe or Hamburg. Alternatively, he could take his chance in the port cities of Venezuela, the jungle of northern Peru or in Medellín with the cartels. He said that tomorrow Giulietta could visit the hotel in Brancaleone to find out what the man would pay and under what terms, but the money should be up front. ‘Perhaps he should stick to cigarettes,’ Marcantonio had told his grandfather. He knew the figures and the profit margins, and thought the Englishman incapable of getting his mind around the monies involved. He had come on the scene too late in life. The newspapers in Germany had recently focused on an Italian academic study. In the city of Brescia, population 200,000, it was estimated that $750,000 was spent on cocaine every day – every day. He had escorted his grandfather back to the bunker, had crawled after him down the concrete piping and smelt the damp.
The lights were on. His grandfather sat in his chair.
Marcantonio thought the old man might be better off in a cell at Novara or Ascoli, where his father and uncle were. Scarface had ended in the shoot-out because Al Pacino would not be taken. He said he would be outside for hours that evening with a shotgun and the dogs. He would be careful, he promised. He was told that a road accident would be arranged for the priest. He accepted that, but asked, ‘Why not send him away with money, padrino?’
Because Father Demetrio was an old man and had no use for it.
‘But you can buy anyone – a judge, a clerk, a colonel, a mayor.’
He wouldn’t want money, only to cleanse his soul.
‘Grandfather, is your own soul in need of washing?’
The boy laughed. He did not see the flash in his grandfather’s eyes, when he repeated that it would be a road accident, on a bend where there was a cliff. Marcantonio left, and the quiet closed round him. He scrabbled to find the television zapper – he needed company. He wondered who was watching his home and what they had learned . . .
Fabio said, ‘Should we have done that? Given him food?’
‘I didn’t see anyone give him anything,’ Ciccio murmured.
The screen was on. Fabio used his hand to shade the picture. He flipped between the two images. He wondered why a young man would give up life in a suit and tie and a job with a hefty salary to become what they had seen. He wondered, too, how far it would take him. The light was falling. He liked it when dusk came because then they had the chance to crawl out of the hole among the rocks, merge with the trees and stretch, drop their trousers, squat and hold the tinfoil in position. He didn’t see how they could have helped him more, other than by pressing grenades into his hand. He felt inadequate, and reckoned Ciccio did too. He seemed to see the gaunt, stubbled face, the mud on the skin and in the hair, the depth of the eyes beyond anything he could read, and the pain. For what? He cut the picture. The log on the screen showed that Marcantonio – Mike/Alpha Bravo – had returned in the vehicle driven by Stefano, Sierra Bravo, and that the message had been sent. It did not refer to the stranger who shared the hillside with them, whom they had fed and in whose interests they had jeopardised their careers. Funny old world . . . A convulsion would happen soon. Couldn’t say when or what it would be, but blood would be drawn.
‘You all right?’ Fabio asked.
‘Sure. Better than rotting in a jar.’
They had had lunch. They had been to the carabinieri
headquarters, on Via Aschenez, had proffered the piece of paper and met those they had been drinking with the previous night. They had been rewarded with a temporary ID slip, which requested that they be granted reasonable co-operation, then had arranged to meet again.
They had seen the gaol in the rain, and the aula bunker where the ’Ndrangheta accused stood before judges in an escape-proof, bombproof underground courtroom so they went for a walk, in sunshine, along the sea front.
It was better, Fred had said, than coming away from Bismarck-strasse in rush-hour. He’d been told that the Dooley Terminal, HMRC section, was a living death.
In 1908, Calabria had suffered an earthquake, thirty thousand killed, and another forty thousand in Messina across the Strait. No historic buildings had survived. They watched men fishing with rods from the base of the monument to Victor Emmanuel III, had seen nothing caught, but it had been worth lingering because the views across to Sicily and smoking Etna were good.
They had visited the Roman baths, part excavated, and looked down on the uncovered Greek walls of the city, dating back eight centuries avanti Christi. Fred had talked of Barbary pirates raiding the city centuries later and taking men to slavery in Tunisia. The money for more digging seemed to have run out. Fred confessed that, already, he was bored with his mission, and that knee-bending rarely suited him. They should get the hell out of this city and head for where any action might be.
Fred said, matter of fact, ‘We said nobody liked him, our boy from the bank.’
Carlo said, ‘And we reckoned that didn’t matter.’
‘We might get to like him.’
‘How come?’
‘He’s out there, sitting, watching and absorbing. Everything is swimming in his mind. When he moves, he’ll make chaos.’
No Mortal Thing: A Thriller Page 27