Lone Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  It would have helped if he had had the printout of the photograph that Lucia Grossi had handed over to DCI Jardine in the pink file, though there was no guarantee that a half-profile and a full-face portrait of the same man would match up.

  And yet, there really was a distinct similarity …

  Were his eyes playing tricks, letting him see what he wanted to see?

  He looked at the photograph for the hundredth time.

  He would – almost – have sworn it was the same man.

  Were the ’Ndrangheta supplying gear to London dealers?

  They were supplying drugs to Europe and the world. If coke was being smuggled into England, it was more than likely that the ’Ndrangheta were behind it.

  But how did Peter Hammond fit into the scheme?

  Was it merely a coincidence that he and Vince Cormack had been on the same plane, as Lucia Grossi had seemed to think? And how had that bottle of anti-malaria pills prescribed for Peter Hammond ended up in the cellar of the Argenti farmhouse?

  Suddenly his mobile phone squealed in the bedroom.

  He fumbled with the photo-frame as he jumped up, almost dropping it, though he managed to catch it before it hit the tiled floor, avoided breaking the glass.

  He went into the bedroom, grabbed his phone from the bed, pushed the button.

  ‘Hello, who is it?’

  ‘What do you mean, who is it? Were you expecting Loredana?’ Lucia Grossi asked. ‘Desmond Harris will be here in ten minutes. He’s taking us out to dinner, remember? He said he was going to pick us up at eight. A restaurant in Soho, he said. Some grotty place in Chinatown, I bet. Get moving, Seb. I’ll be waiting for you down in the lobby.’

  ‘Oh, yes, right … dinner,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve been dozing, haven’t you? Well, screw your head back on, and get into gear.’

  He put the phone down, looked around the room in a daze.

  He might have been looking for his head and the screw.

  He grabbed his jacket, thrust the stolen photo under his arm, and headed for the lift.

  Valnerina, Umbria

  It was dark in there, pitch-black, like an underground cavern.

  The air was stale. It smelled of mould, rot, ancient straw, and animals long dead.

  A voice shouted, ‘Lights,’ and switches were thrown.

  Click! Click! Click!

  Powerful arc lamps lit the scene starkly like a sound stage or a film set.

  Scene 1: The Undercroft …

  A long narrow room with a cracked floor of paving stones, a low and undulating ceiling, thick beams supporting a floor of narrow wooden boards above. The wood was so old, it had turned black long ago.

  ‘Let’s get started. Take it very slowly. If you spot anything, stop work and call me.’

  They started by removing the paving stones near the rear wall.

  There was something odd about the way they were laid down, something that didn’t look quite right. As if they might have been pushed into place by hands that didn’t usually do that sort of work. The others sagged, but these seemed humped.

  They used crowbars for the paving stones, then metal picks and trowels, gouging a hole, brushing away the dirt, examining the hole up close before they made it any bigger.

  ‘Take it off millimetre by millimetre, as if you were whittling wood …’

  Four men in white nylon coveralls with zips, their faces masked like surgeons, their boots concealed by green plastic overshoes. A slow and dirty job, but a job that they were used to. Avoid contamination. That was the first rule of onsite excavation.

  They hadn’t been at it for more than five minutes when a voice said, ‘Sir!’

  Everyone stopped, put down their tools, gathering to see what had come to light.

  The arc lamps on the left were refocused on their tripods, the ones on the right moved further back.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Here, sir, you see? It looks like fabric … the sleeve of a jacket, maybe …’

  ‘Yes, sir, look. There’s a button …’

  ‘OK, brush it down. That’s better. Now, take out another piece … just here.’

  A rubber-gloved finger tapped the floor sixty centimetres away.

  ‘That’s it. Use a chisel, not the trowel. Prise the dirt away, rather than digging into it. Please, bring that airbrush over here … That’s right. Keep the air jet fixed on the cutting edge of the chisel. Slowly now, very slowly … There’s no rush … That’s good, very good.’

  Three minutes later, the first tooth appeared like a fossil embedded in a rock.

  Ten minutes more with the airbrush and chisel, there was a full set coming out of the ground. Upper and lower teeth tightly clenched together.

  Human teeth.

  Eight thirty

  Cangio caught the Underground to Brixton.

  He was still amazed at the ease with which he had shaken off Lucia Grossi.

  Or had it been the other way round? he wondered. Had she been glad to get rid of him, leaving her to dine tête-à-tête with Desmond Harris? He couldn’t imagine any reason why she would have wanted to do that. Unless she was a man eater, and the one thing missing from her list was an English detective?

  She’d been dressed to kill, that was for certain. He had found her waiting for him in the hotel lobby, taking a surreptitious glance at herself in a full-length mirror.

  ‘Smart outfit,’ he had said, meaning it as a compliment.

  ‘This is the uniform I wear when I’m on parade, but not on duty.’

  A light-blue blouse, a dark-blue two-piece suit. Only the silver braid and badge were missing. The suit was pinstriped, the blouse rough silk, the top three buttons left undone, but there was a slit up the side of her skirt which showed her knees and a tempting vision of nylon-covered thighs. Still, it was as close to a carabiniere uniform as you could possibly get. And she was wearing that sexy perfume again.

  She had given him the once-over, then arched her eyebrows.

  ‘Aren’t you dressing for dinner?’

  At that point, he had trotted out the tale he had made up in the lift. An old friend who lived in London, someone he owed a meal to. If they didn’t meet tonight, they might never get a second chance, etc., etc.

  ‘An old friend? What would Lori have to say about that?’

  ‘This friend has a bushy beard and bad breath.’

  ‘Pull the other one,’ she had said with a laugh.

  Still, the fact that she had let him off the hook so easily was rattling through his mind as he rode the Underground. Did she and Harris have things to tell each other that were not intended for a park ranger’s ears?

  Then he started thinking about the photo hidden inside his jacket.

  There was a big chalk blackboard hanging on the wall outside the Tarantella Club.

  TONITE ONLY – The Bashdog Squad, Hoagie James, & Big Kenny Young – back-to-back, whatever that meant.

  A bouncer was guarding the door. Sharp suit, massive shoulders, a shaved head, a thick neck. His lips pursed in imitation of a smile as Cangio began to pull out his wallet.

  ‘Free entry before ten on Thursdays. You’re luck’s in, mate.’

  Cangio put his money away. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I need a bit of luck.’

  He had already had his fair share: the bouncer hadn’t bothered to pat him down, and discover what he was hiding under his leather jacket.

  The club looked totally different at night.

  Bigger, more exciting, less like a dusty cellar.

  It was the light show that did it, the twirling mirror-ball overhead, the multicoloured strobing lights bouncing off it, shooting out dazzling flashes in all directions. The noise made a difference, too. A black guy with dreads and beads was testing his sound system, blasting out funk, house, soul, and an occasional oldie that Cangio recognised, then hip-hop, hip-hop, hip-hop.

  Cangio knew what the music was because the DJ kept telling him.

  ‘Dis da massif hit o�
�� Diddy, da hip-hop king …’

  And all the while, the bass thumped hard.

  There were less than twenty people in the club. A group of girls on a hen night, maybe, were drinking hard, laughing loud, getting ready for what the night might vomit into their laps.

  Cangio walked over to the bar.

  The girl behind the counter was a punk maybe, pretty enough, but not his type: blue hair, rings in her ears, rings in her nose. He didn’t like to think about the other possibilities.

  ‘What you drinking?’ she asked.

  He surveyed the pumps. ‘A pint of Foster’s.’

  ‘Tequila spritz is half-price tonight,’ she said, pointing to a sign on the wall behind her.

  ‘Foster’s is fine.’

  ‘Your choice,’ she said as she pulled him a pint. ‘That’s seven quid.’

  He couldn’t stop himself. ‘Seven pounds for a pint of Aussie piss?’

  She chuckled, and nodded. ‘Yeah, a rip-off, innit? Brewed in fucking Manchester, too. The tequila cocktail’s cheaper, but it’s too late now. There you go, lover boy.’

  He took his beer to a table in the furthest corner from the music.

  As he sipped, he looked around.

  The hens were shouting louder now, two guys giving them the eye, ordering drinks at the bar while the punk went through her cheap drinks routine all over again. No one was paying any attention to him. Slowly, he unzipped his leather jacket and let the hidden photograph frame slide out onto the bench-seat beside him.

  A couple strolled onto the floor and started dancing, stopping whenever the sound test stopped, starting up again when something else came blasting out of the speakers. They were really good, changing style and stance to match the noise, sometimes dancing close together, sometimes far apart.

  Other people were slowly drifting in, but the place was still quiet.

  ‘We gonna kick off proper in fifteen minutes,’ the DJ announced. ‘Dis is a part of the session we be playin’ here come Sunday.’ He put on a tape, then headed for the exit, a tobacco pouch in one hand, a packet of Rizla papers in the other.

  Cangio picked up the framed picture, and carried it over to the bar.

  ‘You wan’ a refill?’ the barmaid said.

  He held up the photograph.

  ‘I found this over there,’ he said. ‘Someone must have lost it.’

  The girl glanced at the photo in his hand. ‘Some joker, more like. That pic’s one of ours. They’re always arsin’ around in here, movin’ things about.’

  She took the picture from him, and propped it up against the back wall.

  ‘What can I get you?’ she said, reaching for a glass. ‘Boy Scouts deserve a reward.’

  Cangio sat down on a high stool at the bar. ‘Not that crap from Manchester again.’

  She winked, and ducked beneath the counter to open a fridge.

  ‘Try this,’ she said. ‘Dead Pony. Important customers only.’

  He looked over his shoulder. ‘This lot don’t look up to much.’

  ‘Where are you from, then?’ she asked him.

  ‘Italy.’

  ‘Yeah, I figured that much,’ she said, glancing at the photograph behind her. ‘The boss is Italian, too. That’s him in the middle. Signor Franco Carnevale.’

  ‘Which bit of Italy does he come from?’

  The girl shrugged her shoulders. ‘How should I know? Italy’s Italy, innit.’

  Cangio laughed. ‘You’re right about that. Still, if this is his place, he’s done all right for himself, hasn’t he?’

  The girl smiled, then rubbed her index finger with her thumb. ‘This is just one of his clubs,’ she said, then mouthed the word Money. ‘It can’t buy you everything, though. Good health for starters.’

  ‘At seven quid a pint, it can buy you a lot. That was quite a party they were having,’ he said, nodding back at the picture. ‘The champagne in this place must cost a fortune.’

  ‘You pay a fortune,’ she said, resting her elbows on the bar, ‘but they drink free. It wasn’t a party, though. Not a proper celebration, anyway. Can you imagine? They were toasting to the success of Jimmy’s op. He was set to go into hospital the following week.’

  ‘Which one’s Jimmy?’

  ‘Jimmy ain’t in the photo. Just his dad, Franco, and a couple of mates.’

  ‘What’s Jimmy’s problem?’

  ‘Something up here,’ she said, and tapped her temple with her finger.

  Someone ordered a drink further down the bar, but she drifted back as soon as she had served the customer.

  ‘What ya doing in Brixton, then?’ she said.

  ‘Temping. A few more days in London, then I’m flying back home.’

  ‘A pity,’ she said. ‘I, er … I get off work at two tonight …’

  She left the invitation hanging, waiting for him to pick up on it.

  Cangio nodded back towards the photograph. ‘None of them looks too hot,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with the other guy’s neck? He looks as if he needs an operation, too. Was he burnt, or something?’

  She glanced at the photo. ‘Nah, that’s a tattoo. A horrible, slimy-looking thing.’ She showed him a red rose tattooed on her bicep. ‘I like my ink, but that one? Like he had some sort of a lizard creeping inside his shirt.’

  Cangio drank deep from the bottle of Dead Pony.

  Champagne couldn’t have tasted any better.

  The man with a salamander tattoo …

  ‘Hey, like I was saying, I get off work at two, if you wanna hang round.’

  For a moment, he wondered what it would be like to fuck a punk, discover all the fancy silver rings and bizarre tattoos that were hidden in places yet to be discovered. Then he thought about Loredana, and his conscience kicked in.

  He drained his glass, took out his wallet, laid a ten-pound note on the bar.

  ‘Have a decent drink on me,’ he said. ‘None of that Aussie piss from Manchester, mind.’

  ‘Are you off, then?’

  She sounded disappointed.

  ‘Afraid so,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to meet a man.’

  ‘Oh, shit, another one,’ she sighed.

  The brush-off was as easy as that.

  Valnerina, Umbria

  Dino De Angelis stopped the car, and the engine died.

  He didn’t want to be seen, didn’t want to be asked what he was doing there.

  He pressed the button and opened the side window; the windscreen was clouding up with condensation from his breath.

  What were those people doing at the Argenti farmhouse?

  He could see figures moving about in the woods inside the curtain wall.

  That was where he had heard the screams that night. The Brunoris had heard them too, though they lived further down the hill from his farm. And now, these folks wandering around in the woods at night, dressed in white like ghosts. He could guess who they were, but he didn’t feel any better for knowing.

  He was going home after spending the day on the mountainside with his cattle.

  He wouldn’t spend another night up there. Davud, the Albanian boy, was out of hospital now, and he had his brother, Zamir, up there to help him, too.

  Dino had been too frightened to stay up there alone himself.

  Three nights and no one looking after the herd …

  It had cost him one stillborn calf, and he knew he’d been lucky to get off so lightly. But once the sun started going down, he had only one thing on his mind. He couldn’t forget it. Never would. The noise the cows had made that night. And the noise that other … thing had made outside his … He started sweating just to think of it. Cristo santo, he wouldn’t pass another night up there on his own for a million euro.

  Davud and Zamir would cost him a hell of a lot less …

  When he’d seen that figure in white step out on the road, he’d stamped on the brake in fright, and the engine had stalled.

  What were they doing up here?

  The figure in white bent low, poin
ting a torch at the ground, sweeping it back and forth, as if he was searching for something.

  Suddenly, a second figure in white appeared from the bushes. They started to sweep the area with light. It was almost hypnotic, watching them from the growing darkness.

  They were forty or fifty metres away, too busy to notice him.

  Dino wondered why they were dressed like something out of a space movie, and whether the force of gravity was heavier where they were. It seemed to slow down their movements and gestures.

  A gust of wind brought the sound of their voices.

  He lowered the window a bit more to hear what they were saying, but he couldn’t make much of it. Then a third figure in white came bursting out of the bushes, yelling, ‘Hey, you two! Come up straight away. We’ve found a skull …’

  Dino’s hand was shaking as he twisted the ignition key, and the car sparked into life.

  He accelerated hard down the road, sweeping past the people in white, heading in the direction of Borgo Cerreto.

  Get away! Get away fast! That was what his head was telling him.

  And while he pressed the accelerator to the floor, he wondered whether those creatures dressed in white were hunting down other strange creatures in the woods that night, and whether they might have found one.

  We’ve found a skull …

  He ran to his front door with his keys in his hand, jamming the key into the lock, opening the door in a rush, and closing it behind him even faster. Then he went from room to room, closing the shutters, and locking the windows.

  ‘Is there a storm coming?’ his wife asked, without taking her eyes from the television.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Who knows?’

  Brixton, nine thirty

  Outside, the air was warm and damp.

  It would rain before long, he thought, but the weather was the last thing on his mind.

  He was thinking about that photograph. Franco Carnevale, the Italian nightclub owner, with Vince Cormack, the man who had been murdered near Stansted. And the other man, the one who had a tattoo of a salamander on his neck.

  Lucia Grossi would have said that he was paranoid.

  He hoped to God he really was paranoid.

  What the hell were they up to in Umbria?

  A man stepped out of a doorway and zapped him in the face with a cosh.