Mafia Princess

by Merico, Marisa

  It was like the atom bomb had gone off inside my head. My thoughts were all over the place. I wasn’t worried about myself – I’d do the time if I had to. Or even Lara, who is eighteen now and a strong girl. But Frank is just about to turn nine years old. Would I be free for his birthday on 21 October? And Mum? How would she cope? God, this was so unfair on her.

  I was in turmoil – and then that other part of me, my stronger personality, took over and I began making arrangements. First, to fight the extradition warrant, and then to ensure my family would be safe if I was sent back to Italy and to jail.

  I was straight with young Frank – I didn’t want to be carted off in handcuffs without him being warned. No matter how absurd everyone told me the situation was, I was the one who had suffered it before and I knew anything could happen. So I told Frank I might have to go away but assured him he would be safe. My assurances didn’t stop his tears or his anguish, and with every tear he cried, my heartbreak became more and more. You think you’re going insane when you consider the prospect of your child being taken from you; it makes your mind rattle.

  Lara and I were able to speak more freely about it. But it was one thing bang after the other. The day in 2009 when the Preston police came to my front door, Bruno was finally being released from prison in Italy. He is a proper free man now. Lara was happy for her dad but shaking her head at what was going on around her:

  ‘After seventeen years – just about all my life – my dad’s out of prison and I have him back, I can see him in the open air. At the same time they’re trying to take my mum away from me. What is happening?’

  I could understand her confusion. It was a mess. But one I couldn’t clean up myself. I had to work with the system. It wasn’t comforting. When we studied the paperwork being delivered from the Italian authorities – the European arrest warrant described me as a Mafia operator in the 1970s, when I would have been little more than a toddler – it was hard to comprehend, and hard not to laugh. They’d got their paperwork wrong and the dates were all askew. But no matter how silly some of it seemed, I knew just how very serious the situation was.

  There’s not much more terrifying than faceless bureaucracy.

  On 1 October 2009 I arrived at Westminster Magistrates Court in Horseferry Road, London, wheeling my overnight bag. Trevor Colebourne had travelled south on the early morning train but I didn’t want to risk not being on time so I stayed in a cheap hotel near the court the night before. It was very much a formality but my nerves were jangling. The main reception area was quiet, people just whispering to each other, and I was taken into a side room by Trevor and a tall detective. I was officially arrested but not taken to the cells. Instead we went directly into a brightly lit, modern courtroom to hear if they would lock me up to wait for a decision on the extradition or whether I could get bail.

  The police were not opposed to me being free and suggested ideas like me checking in from my home phone to show that I had not skipped the country. And to give up Frank’s passport as well as my own. They knew me well enough to know I’d never leave the kids behind.

  I was sitting at the back of the court when the magistrate ordered me into the dock. I looked around, a little lost. At first, I was also lost for words and could hardly confirm my identity, my name. I couldn’t hear my voice as I spoke.

  But I clearly heard the lawyer acting for the Italian authorities say that I had four years, eight months and eight days of my sentence to run; there was no mention of my time spent in Durham or Italy. The girl from the Crown Prosecution Service didn’t push too hard, although she said the charges involved narcotics trafficking. Legally, it was a mishmash of technicalities and precedent and of the time that had elapsed.

  I also had to think about what might happen to me in the Italian prison system. I’m the Mafia Princess, the daughter of a man giving testimony against organised crime families. Genuinely, there was every reason to believe that I might be murdered in jail just to get at my dad.

  Trevor explained that my case was unique – ‘I’ve never known of such circumstances before’ – and as he talked it did seem ludicrous that there was even a remote chance of me being extradited.

  I knew better. It had happened to me before. I put the odds at 50–50. Still, I’d have to wait till 20 October when the full extradition hearing was to begin. Then, within days of the international paperwork starting to land on Trevor’s desk, it became clear that date would come and go. It had to be postponed into nearly December 2009. And after that, postponed again.

  There was a London hearing in January 2010 and a couple of weeks later another appearance, which I can only call a cameo, at Westminster Court. Each time I was up and down the country by train, not knowing if I’d be going back to Lara and Frank.

  Then, in early 2010, it started in Italy. Dad was knocked down in a hit-and-run incident just before he was due to give evidence in a case involving one of the international arms dealers from his past. The case involved the dumping of toxic waste and had the potential to be extremely embarrassing for the influential people involved.

  Immediately afterwards, the offices in Calabria where Mafia investigations were being co-ordinated were firebombed. My aunt’s bar there was attacked. A very violent message was being sent, and it wasn’t hard for anyone to understand. Especially me.

  I became really paranoid. I had an alarm system installed in the house. I’m careful and I watch who is around, but it is in Italy that I know there is most chance of paying for my father’s new life with my own.

  In the extradition courts I believe I wasn’t just fighting to stay in England with my children and mother, I was fighting for my own survival. I knew I was strong enough to fight, for I have much to hold on to, but in the early hours of the night I would sometimes lie there and wonder. In 2010 I’d been back in Britain for more than a dozen years. Would it be another dozen before I’d be truly free?

  Will I ever escape my life with the Mafia, a life I was born into, bonded to by love, and for which I’ve been paying for such a long time?

  Will I end up paying the ultimate price?

  But, even alone in the dark of the night, I know I will come through. I have got this far. I am a survivor.

  They say life begins at forty. I hit that landmark at the start of 2010 and I plan to attack the rest of my time with a ferocious intent. No matter what happens to me, or what the future holds.

  As the extradition horror invaded my life, I received firsthand evidence that our family’s 21st-century Mafia generation is firmly established. A group of teenagers and kids in their early twenties from our family visited Nan on the Piazza Preapli. They were not there to offer condolences about her failing health or her imminent demise. They were there to talk about the death of my dad and my Auntie Rita. They were to be killed for providing evidence to the authorities. My dad’s brothers were also going to be wiped out, not, it seemed, for any offence other than being related to Dad.

  Not long ago these punks would have risked death and certainly punishment simply for turning up unannounced. Now they arrived with threats. The word on the streets of Milan is that a territorial battle, something big, is going to happen.

  The intelligence says there is something or someone behind the threats, not just a bunch of wannabe Mafiosa. But the youngsters are the ones carrying the weapons. I learned one vital lesson from my life in the Mafia and it’s that the real power is in the hands of the gunmen.

  And once again they are on our doorstep, the new guntoting generation of the Serraino–Di Giovine clan, putting a family at war.

  By 2010 the ’Ndrangheta had overtaken the Cosa Nostra as Europe’s most powerful Mafia organisation. The influence may still come from the South, from Calabria, but the action is going on in Milan.

  The ’Ndrangheta’s power infiltrates the catwalks, the fashion industry as pressured as the governing bodies of the city’s other big crowd-pleaser, the soccer teams, who are regularly urged to be generous with their profits.
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  At present the Mafia are eyeing up a fifteen billion euro government investment fund aimed at helping Milan prepare a proper welcome for the Expo World Fair in 2015. It’s not if, but how much of that cash will go into the Mafia coffers. In the second decade of the 21st century the ’Ndrangheta has an annual turnover of £30 billion. It supplies at least 85 per cent of the cocaine in Europe. Like Dad before them, they have cut out the middlemen. The ’Ndrangheta buy direct from Colombia at a cost of 1,000 euros a kilo, which is sold on the streets at a rate of 30,000 euros a kilo. They’re snorting all the way to the bank. And the profits are being invested in legitimate businesses across the North of Italy. There are high-level board meetings about the corporate plans every working day.

  But, as I said, the action may be in the North but the historic methods still resonate from the land of the orange blossom. It doesn’t matter when or where or whom – if something or someone gets in the way, it’s dealt with the old-fashioned way.

  That became evident outside a pizza parlour in the German town of Duisburg in 2007. It’s no coincidence that Duisburg boasts the world’s biggest inland harbour. A good asset for import and export.

  When two ’Ndrangheta clans feuded over who ran the harbour, the Pelle–Romeo family won control. They executed six of the opposition Nirta–Strangio family outside the pizza palace. It was a classic shoot-and-run operation.

  There have been no arrests.

  People ask me if the influence and lethal power of the Mafia will ever end. From what I’ve lived through I suspect that’s unlikely. Control is the key, and attitude determines how it is applied. The Mafia say: Ser vo mortu lo to nemicu, nun fari scrusciu [If you kill your enemy, he can’t make any noise]. It’s not a life-affirming motto.

  I’ve turned my back on all that, for that’s not how I see my future or the future of my kids. Life should be celebrated, not destroyed. The two things I’m proud of in my life so far – and I’ve much to be sorry about – are Lara and Frank. They’re my achievement. Our love is everything.

  As it says at the beginning, this book is for them.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I want to thank all the people who have helped me to reach a place where I’ve been able to tell my story with complete honesty: not just the professionals who have been supportive and kind but all those who have been so much part of my life. I send my love to them all.

  My mum and dad: Mum, it’s only now I know exactly how much you mean to me. I’m sorry for all the hurt I’ve caused. Dad, I’ve always loved you even when I shouldn’t have. You’ll always be my father; if at times I’ve not liked you, I never stopped loving you.

  Frank and Lara: the love I have for you both is like no other. You are the truly pure and innocent results from my life, my achievements. Look after each other always.

  Bruno: for our young love and giving me our beautiful daughter Lara. My nan in Italy, no matter what, I love you.

  Vera: a lovely, caring lady who has taken me in her arms as if I were her own daughter.

  Tracy: who listened to me a million times over during the past ten years and helped me through my darkest moments.

  Sue: you helped me through prison life, gave me hope, love and affection; you were like a mum to me.

  Naima: you have been like a sister, always there for me.

  Ashley: you helped me find my real self once again. Thank you for being there when it mattered.

  Uncle John: I truly appreciate all you’ve done for young Frank through the years.

  Maxine and the Barns family: for making me laugh even when I wanted to cry. Rachael and family and Johanna for caring. My aunties and uncles and all the others who have also cared so much.

  The special people who I’ve lost: my Auntie Eileen, my English nan and grandad, my Italian granddad and, of course, Frank Senior. He was a tormented soul on earth and is hopefully at peace in Heaven. He might have done bad things but he was a good person and they say the good die young. Out of our love came our precious son and for that I will be for ever thankful.

  This book is the result of marvellous team work:

  I want to thank Douglas Thompson for his expertise, advice and caring, and Lesley and Dandy for their kindness and hospitality; also Amanda Stocks at Exclusive Press & Publicity, Diane Banks at Diane Banks Associates Literary Agency and Nick Owens. I owe great thanks to Susanna Abbott at HarperCollins for giving me the opportunity to tell the truth at last.

  And to my solicitor Trevor Colebourne, who knows me as well as he does the law and deals with heartache and legal headaches with equal calm and an acute level of understanding of the difficult process of both.

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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  First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010

  © Marisa Merico 2010

  Marisa Merico asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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  EPub Edition © MARCH 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-33205-2

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