Lone Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  ‘We have to catch that plane!’

  It was leaving at 8.30, he had to get up, get dressed. She had helped him into his shirt and his trousers, even tied his shoelaces for him. His bag was packed, she had brought it from the hotel. They’d made a fuss about releasing him from the hospital at four o’clock in the morning, but Desmond Harris had explained the situation to the doctor on duty. Even so, they had forced him to sign a voluntary discharge sheet before letting him go.

  Grossi had a minicab waiting to take them to the airport.

  She’d been sitting up front in the passenger seat, talking with the Bangladeshi driver to keep him from falling asleep at the wheel.

  Cangio didn’t remember the journey.

  He had slept on the back seat in a drug-induced oblivion.

  On the plane he had managed to drink a cup of coffee, complaining about the pain in his nose and jaw.

  ‘This should help,’ she had said, and had handed him a pill. ‘Just consider yourself lucky, Seb. If you can feel the pain, you’re still alive.’

  Then she had turned away, and closed her eyes.

  He had had no idea whether she was sleeping or not. One thing was certain: she wasn’t talking. As the plane swooped down on Assisi Airport, he had tried to break the barrier of silence.

  ‘So, what will happen now?’

  ‘A joint investigation is inevitable,’ she said. ‘I’ll be working shoulder to shoulder with New Scotland Yard.’

  ‘That’s a feather in your cap.’

  She hadn’t been able to suppress her glee. ‘And what a feather!’

  ‘You and Harris?’

  She had turned to look at him as if he had just said something very foolish. ‘Harris? I hardly think so. Detective Chief Superintendent Jardine will want the lion’s share of the glory, I imagine.’

  She was staring out of the porthole as she said it, a transfixed look of satisfaction on her face. Floating out there on Cloud Nine, if he was any judge, imagining the bright future that was opening up before her, a female carabiniere who had shown New Scotland Yard a trick or two.

  The plane had hit the tarmac with a jolt, the engines screaming as the thrust reversers opened, and the jet had rolled slowly towards the terminal building.

  ‘As soon as we get off this crate,’ she had said, ‘I’ll put you in a taxi.’

  That was the moment.

  That was when he had decided not to tell her what he had discovered at the Tarantella Club. Lucia Grossi thought she had it all sewn up. She thought that she was one step ahead of everyone. But what he had just discovered from the Internet put him many steps ahead of Lucia Grossi.

  She still had no idea who was behind it all.

  The photo filling his computer screen showed a man in his mid-twenties whose face had appeared on the front page of the Daily Mail the year before. Giacomo Carnevale – known as Jimmy to his friends – had been arrested after a prostitute accused him of maiming her. The woman had told the court what had happened in shocking detail, and the story had run under the front-page headline THE BEAST BIT OFF MY NIPPLE.

  The article cited a plea which had been made on the defendant’s behalf by his lawyer:

  ‘My client denies the accusations made by Miss Jennifer Reilly. The teeth marks on the lady’s breast may well be his, but I submit this declaration made by a competent medical expert who avows that Mr Carnevale is suffering from a long-term clinical psychosis, a severe form of schizophrenic disorder, which renders him unfit to plead. He was not aware of any aggression, either during or after the sexual act. Nor can he recall it now. If a crime was committed, then my client was unaware that he was committing it.’

  Jennifer Reilly had been awarded a quarter of a million pounds in damages.

  Jimmy’s father, Franco Carnevale, a ‘well-known nightclub entrepreneur’, had paid it.

  On impulse Cangio had entered the name Giacomo Carnevale and the word morso in an Italian search box to see if the news had filtered back to Italy.

  The Internet had taken him far from London, back to another time and a different place.

  Twelve years earlier, an Italian newspaper had reported a story that featured Giacomo Cannavolo, the teenage son of a ‘well-known businessman’ from Naples whose name was Franco Cannavolo. The Cannavolo family had gone on a Mediterranean cruise aboard the good ship SS Costa Lucente, where a fight had broken out between Giacomo and an English boy. The father of the English kid – a lawyer, as the article reported – had been so outraged by what had happened, he insisted that the captain put the Cannavolos off at the next port or face a legal action for damages. Father, mother, and teenage son had been marooned on the island of Crete, and all because young Giacomo had taken a huge bite out of the other kid’s shoulder. The journalist had ended the piece by asking whether Giacomo ‘Jimmy’ Cannavolo would be known forever afterwards as ‘Jaws’.

  It didn’t take much to guess that the Cannavolo family had changed its name to Carnevale, and moved to London. The ‘well-known London entrepreneur’ was likely importing drugs on behalf of the ’Ndrangheta, distributing and selling them through the chain of nightclubs that he ran in south London, while keeping his son out of trouble.

  Cangio took a sip of coffee.

  It was the third cup he had got through since sitting down at the computer.

  It was time to print out the articles he had cached.

  But then he hesitated.

  Giacomo Carnevale had an operation …

  That was what the barmaid at the Tarantella had told him.

  He typed the word dottore into the search engine, then followed it with sparizione.

  The icon twirled for a second or two, then a page appeared. He checked the list, and felt the need to drain the last of the coffee. The liquid was cold, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t even taste it. He glanced at his watch. It was twenty to eight.

  Would Lucia Grossi still be in her office?

  The phone was picked up on the second ring.

  ‘Cangio?’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t you be resting?’

  He didn’t bother to answer the question. ‘I was surfing the net,’ he said. ‘I came across something you’ll want to know about.’

  She let out a groan that almost ripped his ear off.

  ‘Cristo santo, it’s late! You should get some sleep.’

  ‘You think so?’ he said, and a smile hurt his face. ‘Let me ask you a question.’

  Lucia Grossi blew a raspberry into the phone.

  ‘Do you know how many doctors have disappeared this year?’

  ‘What the heck … Have you lost it completely?’

  ‘Give me a number.’

  ‘A thousand? A million …’

  ‘Five,’ he said. ‘Five doctors have disappeared without trace this year.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Five doctors walked out of the door and were never seen again. Not alive, at any rate. One of them was an ophthalmic surgeon from Catanzaro in Calabria. Guess where they found his corpse.’

  ‘Will you stop this fucking quiz?’ she growled.

  ‘In the nearby Aspromonte mountains buried beneath a pile of rocks.’

  ‘That’s what happens in the mountains,’ she said. ‘It’s called an avalanche …’

  ‘His wife was puzzled. He never goes near the mountains, she said. He wasn’t dressed for the outdoors. But you know what’s really strange?’

  Lucia Grossi took a deep breath. ‘You tell me,’ she said.

  ‘The post-mortem reported multiple fractures, a pulverised skull, yet every contusion on the body was exactly the same shape. Perfectly round was the phrase …’

  ‘I don’t see where this is leading!’

  ‘You know the name of one of the doctors the computer coughed up.’

  ‘O Cristo …’

  ‘We know where he disappeared, and we know that it wasn’t an accident.’

  She was silent for a while.

  ‘I want you in my office first thing t
omorrow morning,’ she said.

  The line went dead before he could speak.

  There was one thing he wanted to check before he went to Perugia.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Villa San Francesco

  Cangio staggered up to the front door.

  He had ripped off the bandages that were covering his face.

  His eyes were black and blue, his nose was puffed up, his lower lip was split.

  He looked a sight, and he knew it.

  He held his stomach as if he’d been shot, then pressed the intercom button, holding his finger there, looking up into the lens of the CCTV camera fixed high above the door on the right.

  Beyond the door, he heard nothing, only the echoing whine of the electronic buzzer.

  He stared hard at the camera lens, showing all the pain that he could muster, letting out a tortured groan, still pressing hard on the button.

  The seconds stretched out. Almost a minute, and still the door remained closed.

  If this was a hospital, they couldn’t ignore an emergency cry for help …

  ‘Yes?’

  He held on to the button, let out a groan that sounded hideous to his own ears.

  ‘Yes?’ the metallic voice said again, more sharply this time. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Help me … please,’ he moaned. ‘I … feel … so …’

  He let go of the button, and collapsed on his knees, still holding on to his stomach.

  As he heard the bolts being drawn and the door was opened, he closed his eyes, fell forward flat on his face, groaned with real pain, then lay there like a dead man.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ he heard. ‘What the fuck …’

  ‘Bring a trolley,’ another voice said. ‘We’d better bring him in. Be quick about it.’

  Hands rolled him over onto his back. A finger lifted an eyelid, saw an eye that had rolled upwards in its socket.

  ‘He’s out cold by the look of it.’

  He felt himself being lifted onto a gurney which began to move quickly into the clinic. A minute later, he was being lifted again, and laid on what felt like a hard bed.

  ‘Off with those shoes. Raise his legs on a pillow.’

  He felt his shoes being pulled off, a pillow or two being bundled beneath his feet.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ a voice said, and he felt warm breath on his ear. ‘Bring in the ECG. You, roll up his sleeves and his trouser legs.’

  He felt a finger pressing hard on his neck beneath his left ear, and a minute passed. Then his shirt was pulled open and he felt a cold metal disc pressed hard against his chest above his heart. He heard the same voice saying, ‘Hm,’ three or four times. ‘The heart’s beating fast, and the pulse is strong. Nurse, we ought to check his blood sugar. Have you got a test-strip handy?’

  Some moments later, he felt his hand being turned to expose the palm, then a quick jab with something sharp in the fatty tip of his middle finger. It took all his concentration not to react as a drop of blood was squeezed from his fingertip.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It seems quite normal, Doctor. Seventy-one mg/dl.’

  Nurses, doctors. Cangio felt better, though he still didn’t move or open his eyes, not even as he felt a cold hand resting flat on his stomach.

  ‘Not a diabetic coma, then. There are no signs of insulin injections here. It isn’t epilepsy, either. And his breathing seems regular, so we’re not talking about a collapsed lung. Take a good look at the veins in his arms, will you? Maybe he’s a user …’

  ‘No track marks, Doctor,’ the other voice said.

  That hand was still on his stomach, moving slowly over his skin. Suddenly, a second hand pushed down hard on the first hand, and Cangio let out a groan, though he managed not to open his eyes.

  ‘Peritonitis, Doctor?’

  ‘A burst appendix, probably. The one thing that surprises me is … well, this faint. I mean to say, two or three minutes would fall within the safety limit, but this has been going on for … what, five minutes now? Hand me that, will you?’

  Whatever that was, Cangio had no idea.

  And whatever was in that, it acted so fast as the needle slid into Cangio’s arm that he didn’t have time to open his eyes and tell them that he had been testing them.

  He went out like a light.

  ‘We’ve got a window of about three hours …’

  ‘Only three?’

  ‘We could stretch it out a bit, maybe. It depends how long we can keep him subdued with “twilight” anaesthesia. I don’t want to go too heavy on the sedation and knock him out cold. I could do the job now, of course, and keep the stuff on ice in the fridge until you get here, but, as a rule, I prefer to work with fresh tissue. I’m sure that you do, too?’

  The silence at the other end of the telephone stretched out too long.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘Yeah, I heard. I’m looking at logistics, organising my departure. It’s not an easy thing to do at such short notice.’

  ‘He took us by surprise, as well. I didn’t expect to see him here again so soon, and not in that condition. But I couldn’t turn him away. I had no choice but to let him in. And then I thought, well, who actually knows he’s here? The more I thought about it, the more the situation seemed perfect …’

  ‘You done good.’

  There was that silence again, the merest hint of voices beneath the surface.

  ‘OK … OK. I’ll be on the jet in twenty-five minutes max. Send the chopper to meet me at Assisi. I should be there in just over an hour. Phone the control tower, they’ll give you the IFPS flight plan with the time of arrival, OK?’

  ‘That puts us well inside the three-hour threshold. The surgeon’s less than an hour away. He lives in Terni. Now, remember, please, do not eat or drink anything from this moment on.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  They were both silent, then the question came that everyone asked.

  ‘OK, so I arrive … and then what happens?’

  ‘We’ve been over this a number of times, Don Michele. It shouldn’t take more than forty minutes, and at the end of that time, you’ll have the immense satisfaction of killing two birds with one stone. You’ll remove a nuisance from the face of the earth at this end of the line, and you’ll get a pair of brand-new eyes into the bargain. We’ve been waiting a long time for the right occasion to come along. This one, believe me, is absolutely unique.’

  ‘If everything works out as it should, we’ll be drinking champagne tonight. And then I’ll tell you how it really feels …’

  His patient seemed to be in the highest of spirits.

  The medical director waited a moment for him to explain, then he asked: ‘How does what really feel? In what sense, I mean?’

  ‘I was thinking of the priest who says mass in my private chapel each Sunday.’

  The laugh that followed those words raised the hackles on his neck. He couldn’t help but wonder how a man who laughed like Don Michele would react to the idea of things not working out well.

  ‘What does the priest say?’ he asked nervously.

  ‘The same advice. Every Sunday, the same damned line. “See the world through the eyes of your enemies.” That’s what he tells me.’ He laughed that frightening laugh again. ‘We’re gonna put the priest’s words into practice. So, tell me this, Doc, how should I answer him next Sunday?’

  It was like a curdled dream.

  A nightmare, fading in and out of consciousness, aware and unaware, hearing, not hearing, as the sedative swept over him in waves.

  ‘… should be arriving soon …’

  ‘… we’ll worry about that when the time comes.’

  ‘What the hell was he doing …’

  ‘… he’s been here before …’

  ‘But these are fresh …’

  ‘You can bet on it …’

  Then he heard no more – for how long, he had no idea.

  Yet even as he drifted away, he knew that there was something wrong.


  Very wrong …

  Apart from a broken nose, there was absolutely nothing wrong with him.

  Something woke him.

  A noise, perhaps. Or something in the air.

  He tried to open his eyes, but they were already open.

  It was the drug-induced darkness that was passing away.

  Like a blind being drawn, a curtain being slowly lifted, his sight began to fill with blinding light from overhead. An arc light with reflecting mirrors, a light so strong it burnt his eyes like the noonday sun in a desert.

  He tried to close his eyelids, but they wouldn’t close. Something was holding his upper and lower lids in a tight grip. Pins or clamps, perhaps, cold and metallic, were holding his eyes wide open.

  An eyelid speculum …

  He knew the name. He had used the tool – seen it used, at any rate – while still a student, attending an operation on a wolf that had a thorn impaled in its eye. The speculum was a device that pulled back the lids and kept the eye immobile, a window locked open for easy access.

  What was going on?

  ‘Prepare the trephine,’ a voice said, somewhere behind his ear.

  What was a trephine?

  ‘We need to increase sedation, Doctor. He’s coming round. His heart is racing …’

  ‘In a moment,’ the voice said. ‘Just a moment …’

  Were they waiting for something? For someone?

  Who or what were they waiting for?

  He tried to move his arms without success.

  He tried to bend his legs, then shift on his hips.

  He wanted to move his body, to stand up, but he couldn’t do anything.

  He was strapped by the wrists and the ankles to a cold unyielding table. The table was made of hard planes, strange bumps and angular ridges where he didn’t expect them. It was damned uncomfortable. An anatomical table. The sort that a surgeon used.

  He wanted to say, ‘This is a mistake. There’s nothing wrong with me. I was play-acting. I’m as well as you are,’ but he couldn’t. He wasn’t able to form the words, couldn’t get them out of his throat.

  ‘He’s getting agitated,’ a voice said behind his head.

  ‘Give him a touch more Propofol,’ a soft voice answered. ‘That’ll keep him quiet.’