Lone Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  ‘The other patient’s being prepared,’ a third voice said. ‘Tell me when to bring him in.’

  Something loomed over him, cutting out some of the light. A dark shadow that wore a surgical mask, a white plastic cap, and glasses with drooping telescopic lenses.

  ‘It won’t be long now,’ the voice said. ‘Not long … not long … not … long …’

  With the fading echo came total darkness.

  He woke up with a chemical jolt.

  The blackness dissolved, and he was staring at a different face.

  This face was big and bloated, strangely disproportioned, not hidden by a surgical mask.

  It loomed closer and closer, coming so close he could smell the man’s breath, peering into his eyes, as if the man had trouble focusing or seeing him.

  ‘Seb Cangio?’

  He couldn’t answer, not even if he tried.

  He heard a growl that might have been a laugh. ‘You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment, you fucker. This is the first and the last you’ll ever see of Don Michele Cucciarilli. You won’t be seeing anything again, you bastard. I need those eyes of yours. I’ll be looking out of them for the rest of my life, and you won’t have a life to look out of. You’ve fucked with me too many times, but you never will again.’

  Then blinding light came back as the head bobbed away, and Don Michele said to the surgeon, ‘OK, Doc, I’m ready. Let’s get this over and done.’

  Who was Don Michele Cucciarilli? Cangio wondered in a daze.

  A Calabrian by the sound of it.

  A clan boss, maybe …

  What had he ever done to offend the Don?

  He was awake in an instant.

  His eyes were still wide open, held open by the medical clamps.

  Eyelid speculums …

  The term came back to him, and so did his memory – being prepared for surgery, the arrival of Don Michele Cucciarilli, the threats and insults, then his own final terrifying thought: I will never see again.

  Staring up, he could see three things: a large piece of white enamelled medical equipment with a silver tube at the centre which blocked out most of the view, a segment of the head of a person wearing a surgical mask and a cap, and what looked like the end of a pistol being pressed against the surgeon’s head.

  ‘What’s this thing called?’

  ‘An ocular trephine …’

  ‘Get rid of it!’

  A motor whirred, and the medical equipment moved upwards, growing smaller, enlarging his field of vision, exposing his eyes to the light.

  ‘Those things on his eyes?’

  The voice was that of Lucia Grossi.

  ‘Speculae …’

  ‘Is it safe to remove them? OK, get rid of them.’

  Gloved fingers closed in on one his eyes like enormous spiders.

  Then something went click, and his right eye was free.

  His eyelid closed as he blinked.

  And in that instant, a sharp explosion shattered the silence. He saw the snub-nosed pistol shift from the side of the surgeon’s head. Now, it was directly above him, sixty centimetres from his face. He saw a forefinger jerk backwards, heard a loud bang, saw a brilliant flash of light, then a trace of smoke. Then the gun turned, and was gone.

  He heard, but didn’t see, the rest of the gunfight.

  It must have lasted five or six seconds, seven or eight shots, echoing and reverberating around the room, then Lucia Grossi was leaning over him, saying, ‘Are you all right, Seb?’

  The surgeon’s hands were shaking as he released the second speculum.

  ‘What’s a trephine?’ Cangio managed to say, as the surgeon leant close.

  ‘It’s a … a medical instrument …’

  The gun was pointing at his head again.

  ‘Tell him,’ Lucia Grossi said.

  ‘It’s a … a drill and circular saw combined. We … It is used to remove the cornea …’

  ‘That Don Michele would have got,’ Cangio said.

  ‘They were going to bore your eyes out,’ Lucia Grossi said, ‘then bury what was left of you with Peter Hammond.’

  The anaesthetist was ordered to wake up Don Michele.

  ‘The operation did not go well,’ Lucia Grossi told him. ‘You’re under arrest for …’

  She didn’t know where to start, the list was so long.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Perugia, Umbria

  A carabiniere standing guard saluted Cangio as he entered Room 23.

  Desmond Harris was propped up in bed on a pile of pillows, his right shoulder held in a plaster cast. A plastic tube fed fluid into his left hand from a drip. He looked happier than he ought to have looked, given that a bullet had grazed his right lung before shattering his collarbone. Did the presence of Lucia Grossi on the far side of the bed have anything to do with it, Cangio wondered. He would have sworn that she’d been holding Harris’s hand when he opened the door.

  ‘How’s the patient?’ Cangio asked.

  Harris groaned. ‘My shoulder’s killing me.’

  Cangio understood the feeling. He was still limping a year after taking a bullet in the thigh, still in pain on days when it was cold or damp. Most days of the year, if he was honest.

  ‘It’s like a ton weight pressing you down,’ Harris said.

  If he was fishing for sympathy, he seemed to have found it.

  ‘The important thing is that you’re alive,’ Lucia Grossi said, her words sounding all too familiar to Cangio’s ears. ‘Other people didn’t get off so lightly. One of the nurses was hit by a stray bullet. She died in the line of her mistaken duty, I suppose you might say. And so did Don Michele’s right-hand man. Rocco Montale was the one who started trying to shoot his way out of there. He got what was coming to him … The papers will make a hero out of you, Desmond.’

  ‘What about the Don?’ Cangio asked her.

  Lucia Grossi smiled. ‘He won’t be giving you any more trouble, Seb.’

  That was easy to say, Cangio thought, though not as reassuring as she intended. Don Michele Cucciarilli ordered other people to kill you. And knowing that you had put him in a cell, he wouldn’t wait too long before taking his revenge.

  The door burst open and a man as bulky as an aircraft carrier came bustling in, carrying a briefcase. He might have been an overgrown baby with red hair, a red beard, and bulging red-ringed eyes.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said wheezily. ‘The traffic here beats Mexico City’s!’

  Alberico Rondini was the magistrate who would be handling the case in Italy.

  That was how Lucia Grossi had described him to Desmond Harris.

  The magistrate seemed to fill the room with his physical presence, and he seemed to drain it of air each time he took a breath. He headed straight for the only vacant chair and lowered himself into it.

  ‘I have called this preliminary judicial hearing to clarify the facts as we know them,’ he announced. ‘Fortunately, Inspector Harris is here to represent New Scotland Yard. You had a lucky escape this morning, I believe, Inspector?’

  Harris smiled at Lucia Grossi. ‘Captain Grossi was in the right place at the right time.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Cangio seconded.

  Lucia Grossi tried to look blasé, though she was evidently flattered.

  ‘I tried to tell you not to come to Perugia this morning, Seb,’ she said. ‘Desmond had phoned to say that he was arriving in Assisi, so it would have been easier for us all to meet in Valnerina. But you didn’t answer your phone … I had the feeling something was wrong, so I called your girlfriend. Loredana really should join the police force, Seb. Her built-in lie-detector system is second to none. You told her you were going to Perugia, but you didn’t bother to don your uniform! She guessed that you were up to something … unofficial, let’s say. Given what we’d learnt in London about Peter Hammond and Jimmy Carnevale, I guessed that you might be at Villa San Francesco. I had ordered a raid, in any case. Cristo, Seb, that was a r
isky thing to do. They were keeping you under sedation, waiting for Don Michele to arrive by helicopter …’

  Alberico Rondini held up his hand for silence.

  ‘I declare this court open,’ he said in excellent English. ‘I will ask the questions from now on, and no one will speak without my permission. Is that understood?’ He was silent for a moment. ‘It is the sequence of events which concerns me in particular. We need to decide whether this investigation belongs to England or to Italy …’

  ‘The story starts near Stansted Airport,’ Harris said without waiting to be asked.

  ‘It begins with a murder in Italy some months earlier,’ Cangio corrected him.

  ‘Cangio is right,’ Lucia Grossi insisted.

  Rondini let out a snort, and shifted in his seat. ‘Where exactly in Italy?’

  ‘Catanzaro, Calabria,’ Cangio went on. ‘Michele Cucciarilli, an ’Ndrangheta boss, was going blind. He turned for medical help to a local eye specialist. When the treatment failed, the doctor was punished. His body was found in the Aspromonte mountains beneath a pile of rocks, so it seemed like an accident …’

  ‘Can this be proved?’ Rondini asked.

  ‘No conclusions were reached at the time,’ Lucia Grossi chipped in, ‘but we believe that he was stoned to death … maybe with billiard balls. The first scena criminis certainly took place in Italy.’

  The magistrate shuffled through his notes. ‘And how does this relate to the murder near Stansted Airport?’

  ‘Vincent Cormack was a low-ranking member of a London gang …’

  ‘Low-ranking, Lucia?’ Harris pushed himself up on his pillows. ‘He murdered Peter Hammond …’

  ‘Please, ladies and gentlemen, no bickering. One thing at a time,’ Rondini protested. ‘We have got two deaths so far then, the first in Calabria, the second one near Stansted. That is, two murders committed in two different countries.’

  Italy 1 – England 1, Cangio thought, though he knew the game wasn’t over yet.

  ‘But Cormack killed Hammond in Italy,’ Harris insisted. ‘Then he was killed in England to keep the story under cover. We’re talking about two dead Englishmen …’

  ‘Which story?’ the magistrate asked him.

  Lucia Grossi laid her hand on Desmond Harris’s thigh. ‘As Inspector Harris just said, Dr Hammond was murdered in Italy, together with his patient, Jimmy Carnevale. So we’re talking about three deaths in Italy now, and only one in England …’

  ‘Three dead Englishmen,’ Desmond Harris insisted. ‘Two here, and one there.’

  ‘Surely you aren’t claiming that Jimmy Carnevale is English, Desmond?’

  ‘He may have been born in Italy, but …’

  ‘No, no! This will not do!’ Magistrate Rondini exploded. ‘The European guidelines on cross-border murder investigations assigns the case to the country which is most intimately involved, and which has the strongest likelihood of carrying the investigation to a successful prosecution. Until I know the simple facts of the case, or cases, I cannot assign anything to anybody.’

  He looked around the room.

  ‘Ranger Cangio,’ he said at last, ‘you seem to have been involved from the very start. Please, tell me how you see things.’

  Cangio gathered his thoughts for a moment. ‘The basic factor in all of this,’ he said, ‘is Michele Cucciarilli. Don Michele became interested in Umbria after the last earthquake. He was involved in the reconstruction, trying to siphon off money from the rebuilding fund, I imagine. He made many investments in Umbria, and one of them was Villa San Francesco in Valnerina. When Don Michele started to lose his sight, he came up with a bright idea.’

  Rondini might have been an owl, his eyes fixed on Cangio. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He turned Villa San Francesco into an exclusive private clinic, and he made his enemies an offer that they couldn’t ignore. These men are hunted criminals,’ Cangio said. ‘If they fall sick, where can they turn for help? Villa San Francesco was the answer. The patient could fly in by helicopter, protected by his own bodyguards. No one would know that he had been there. Doctors and surgeons, the world’s top specialists, could be bought. Money was not a problem for these people.’

  Rondini held up his hand. ‘Some of the doctors didn’t go home, it seems. Captain Grossi?’

  ‘We don’t know how many Mafia big-shots may have used the clinic,’ Lucia Grossi said. ‘Not just members of the ’Ndrangheta, but the Camorra and Cosa Nostra, too. No register of names has come to light, but we do know that a number of highly qualified specialists have disappeared since the clinic opened its doors. At least four Italian doctors are dead, as well as the brain surgeon who flew here from London to operate on a man whose remains have also been found at the Argenti farmhouse, which lies inside the boundary wall of Villa San Francesco.’

  ‘Do you think there will be more bodies?’

  ‘There could be many more,’ Lucia Grossi confirmed.

  ‘There may be other English doctors, too,’ Harris threw in, clutching at straws.

  ‘My men are working to crack the computer codes,’ Lucia Grossi said. ‘I’m sure we’ll have a better idea of the scope of the clinic very soon, the names of the doctors and their patients. The doctors may not have known who their patients were. My feeling is that the majority did not. The ones who did … I imagine they put the squeeze on for a larger fee, and they paid for it with their lives.’

  Rondini shook his head, a glum expression on his face.

  ‘The idea that these doctors knew what they were letting themselves be dragged into,’ he said. ‘There’d be a frightful scandal.’

  ‘We already have a scandal,’ Lucia Grossi said. ‘One of Italy’s leading urologists was arrested this morning. It is believed that he may have operated on a very big name from Palermo, a Cosa Nostra boss, one of the top dogs. The doctor carelessly forgot his fountain pen at Villa San Francesco. He denied ever having been there, of course, but there wasn’t much to deny. His name was engraved on the barrel of the pen. His daughter collapsed when her father was taken into custody …’

  ‘Thank you, Captain Grossi.’

  ‘I was about to say that we also arrested two surgeons and the anaesthetist this morning, sir. They knew that there was nothing wrong with Cangio, yet they prepared him for an operation. They knew what was going to happen, and that it was strictly illegal.’

  Cangio knew what would have happened. Don Michele would have stolen his eyes, and buried his body with the others in the Argenti farmhouse. He shuddered at the memory of the trephine drill, the mechanical whir of the blades closing in on his eyes. He imagined the viscous pop as a cornea was extracted, and Don Michele gloating as he saw again through eyes which had once belonged to the park ranger who had caused him so much trouble.

  Fortunately, Magistrate Rondini turned to him again.

  ‘Tell me about the English patient,’ he said.

  ‘Jimmy Carnevale had a problem. A malformation of the brain, a tumour, perhaps. His father, Franco, knew about Villa San Francesco, and he managed to find a top surgeon in London who was willing to perform … well, a lobotomy, I suppose you might call it. Jimmy had been flown to Italy by air ambulance, and Vince Cormack brought Doctor Hammond to Umbria on a Ryanair flight. But something went wrong at the Villa. Jimmy escaped, and he had to be eliminated. Maybe the operation didn’t work the miracle they were hoping for. At that point, Peter Hammond was killed to keep him quiet, and the bodies of the surgeon and his patient were buried in the Argenti farmhouse.’

  ‘We have dental evidence in both cases,’ Lucia Grossi told the magistrate.

  ‘Then, Cormack was killed when he got off the plane at Stansted on his way home,’ Desmond Harris went on. ‘Franco Carnevale wanted no living witnesses. That’s how New Scotland Yard sees it playing out.’

  ‘Only the man with the tattoo is missing,’ Cangio said.

  Magistrate Rondini stared at him. ‘Who?’

  ‘The man with the salamander tattoo,’ Cangio
said more boldly now, looking at Lucia Grossi. ‘While we were watching security videos in Assisi Airport, I spotted a man on one of the CCTV cameras. The image wasn’t clear, and I couldn’t see his face, but I was pretty sure that he was wearing a distinctive ’Ndrangheta tattoo …’

  ‘Cangio was shot last year by a member of the same clan,’ Lucia Grossi explained to the magistrate. ‘The younger thugs wear a special tattoo as a sign of their membership.’

  ‘It’s a badge,’ Cangio added. ‘It means that they’ve killed someone.’

  The magistrate stared at him. ‘That sounds silly. Why tell the world you’re a killer?’

  ‘They want the world to know,’ Cangio said. ‘The police can’t arrest a man for having a tattoo, but everyone in Calabria knows what it means. And the message is simple. Watch out, or you’re dead.’

  Lucia Grossi was on her feet now. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Cangio held up his hands in surrender. ‘What could I tell you? It was only when we got to London that I made the connection. There was a photo on the wall in the Tarantella Club in Brixton: three men drinking together, the Camorrista, Franco Carnevale, a man with what may have been an ’Ndrangheta tattoo, and Vince Cormack, who turns out to be a killer.’

  ‘If only we had that photograph,’ Rondini said.

  Cangio pulled out his mobile phone.

  ‘I took a snap of it,’ he said, ‘before I handed it over to the barmaid at the club.’

  Rondini beamed at him. ‘Excellent! That should give you something to start work on, Captain Grossi.’ The magistrate stood up, gathered his coat and briefcase. ‘I’ll expect your written reports at the earliest opportunity.’

  He might have left the room, but a voice from the bed stopped him.

  ‘I brought copies of documents relating to Cormack and Hammond from London,’ Harris protested. ‘And I’m expecting a summary of the interrogation of Franco Carnevale at any time now. He’s been arrested on suspicion of the murder, or conspiracy to murder, Vincent Cormack. I need to take back copies of the Italian documentation. Franco Carnevale will be standing trial in London, obviously. We’ll need to know what you know, magistrate.’

  Rondini sat down again.