by Rob Ashman
Piazza Tasso was the beating heart of Sorrento, a beautiful square full of cafés, bars and restaurants, with a web of small roads radiating from it. She sat outside Fauno’s café, ordered an espresso and watched the throngs of people milling about.
Today was Maundy Thursday, and the procession of Our Lady of Sorrows had taken place earlier in the afternoon. Hundreds of people dressed in hooded white robes had marched through the narrow streets. Mechanic was waiting for the later, much larger, procession, commemorating the Madonna’s mourning when she found her son dead.
She lifted a newspaper from her bag as her coffee arrived.
‘Grazie,’ she said, stirring in dainty cubes of sugar.
Thousands of fairy lights burst into life, piercing the dusk with pinpricks of colour, while waiters busied themselves lighting candles in jars. The heat of the day was fast disappearing and Mechanic zipped up her jacket.
The coffee was strong and the mountain of sugar masked the bitterness. She flicked through the pages and scanned the headlines, not paying the slightest attention to what they said, concentrating instead on the middle-aged man taking his seat four tables away. He was dressed in a white linen suit and brown sandals. His skin had the appearance of worn leather and he sported a white Fedora hat, which made him look like a Bond villain.
Fedora man clicked his fingers and a waiter scurried across. Without looking at the menu he ordered food and a bottle of wine in fluent Italian.
Mechanic followed his lead, but with iced mineral water and no finger clicking.
The clock face said 11.30 and the square was packed with people eager to see the Madonna’s statue carried aloft, supported by the hundreds of white-robed figures.
Fedora man wiped his mouth with a napkin, clipped a handful of notes into the bill folder and left his table. Mechanic had already left the café and was sitting across the square on a low wall watching the swelling crowds. She followed him as he meandered his way along the side streets. He frequently stopped to browse the tourist mementos outside the shops and doubled back on himself several times. Mechanic kept her distance, she was used to dealing with textbook anti-surveillance measures.
There was an eruption of singing and the sound of a band striking up in another street. The procession had begun.
Fedora man quickened his pace and weaved his way towards the music. At the end of the road Mechanic could see a gathering of white-robed people all jockeying for position behind the holy statue. Fedora man ducked through a doorway into a bar.
Mechanic darted into a dark alley opposite, opened her backpack and took out a white hooded robe. She flattened out the backpack, pushed her arms through the straps and pulled it tight. She slipped on the white robe and watched the entrance to the bar as the minutes ticked by. A man wearing an identical costume emerged from the bar. He was minus his hat but recognisable all the same. He jerked the hood forward and pushed himself into the throng of people.
Mechanic kept her eyes firmly targeted on Fedora man and joined the tight knot of people. She weaved between the worshippers and in less than two minutes he was in front of her, his brown sandals clearly visible beneath his robe. Mechanic mingled with the sea of white, keeping within six feet of her target. The singing grew louder as more people joined the throng, walking down Corso Italia and winding their way through the narrow lanes.
Fedora man veered off to his left and started talking to someone. Mechanic couldn’t hear what was being said, but they were definitely having a conversation. Fedora man lost his footing on the cobbled stones and stumbled. The person to his left stepped forward and grabbed him around his waist. His right sleeve rolled back as he did so and Mechanic could see a man’s arm. There were audible exchanges of grazie and prego.
That was it, the exchange was made.
Fedora man slowed his pace allowing people to pass him. He was now level with Mechanic and going backwards as the people marched on through the streets. She ignored him and kept her focus on the new guy wearing bright yellow running shoes underneath his robes. The procession stopped outside a church, and some people broke off and went inside. Yellow shoes guy stayed put.
After a short ceremony the parade moved onto the next church, and the next. Each time was the same. At the sixth church Mechanic saw the man in yellow shoes drift to the edge and when the parade stopped he entered the church. Mechanic followed.
The inside had a traditional layout, with a central aisle leading to an altar with a tall stained-glass window behind. Either side of the aisle were rows of wooden pews with kneeling cushions on the floor. The place was half-full, with people crammed into the front rows and the priest standing at the front. The figures in white sat amongst the congregation and the priest started speaking. Mechanic watched her target take a seat at the back against the wall. She shifted her place in the queue and sat beside him. No one else joined them.
She pulled back her hood, glancing to the side. The man was in his mid-thirties with angular features and pale skin, which blended into the whitewashed wall. The service started and everyone stood – he was taller than Mechanic with a slender build. His hands were fidgeting in front of him.
The priest chanted and people mumbled in return. The soulful sound of an organ reverberated against the vaulted ceiling and the congregation sang. Mechanic glanced down at the order of service. Her Italian wasn’t good but she could understand enough.
She could see the word preghiamo.
The priest was intent on making up for the empty seats and bellowed out the song like Pavarotti. He particularly enjoyed the end of the chorus and gave full vent to the high notes, which he could barely reach. Mechanic counted down the verses, waiting for the final chorus.
The man beside her sang under his breath, his eyes searching the pews, his hands still fidgeting. She slid her right hand through a side slit in her robe and drew the gun tucked into her belt. The silencer made the weapon difficult to manoeuvre under the material. The priest built himself up to a rousing finale and blasted out the final line of the hymn.
The gun spat.
The .22 hollow-point shell made a small neat hole just below the man’s ribcage, then flattened to the size of a dime as it tore through his body. Mechanic wound her left arm around his waist and gripped him tight. The second round entered through the same hole and ripped into his heart. He went limp.
Mechanic supported his weight against the wall. He was heavy and she jammed her body against him to keep him upright. The singing stopped.
The priest looked up from his book and said ‘Farci preda’. The entire congregation sank to their knees in prayer, clasping their hands in front of their faces.
Mechanic lowered the man to the floor. She raised his arms and propped him against the pew in front, flicking the hood over his head.
As the church filled with the sound of murmuring prayer, she patted her hands against his body and felt the slim package tucked into his shirt. She removed it and pushed it inside her own.
The congregation stood up and started filing out. Mechanic didn’t move. She kept her head bowed mimicking her colleague, both of them kneeling in the act of silent worship. The red stain on his robe was getting bigger and blood was pooling at his right knee. When the last of the people shuffled past, Mechanic eased away from the body and joined the line of people exiting the church, pulling her hood forward.
Outside she merged into the crowd and after walking a short distance broke away into a side street. She stripped off her robe and bundled it into the backpack before walking back to Piazza Tasso where her scooter was waiting. The key turned in the ignition and she drove away.
She reached the hotel and parked, just as a parade of a different sort was starting up. Two police cars thundered down the main road closely followed by an ambulance.
Mechanic had no idea what was in the package, even less why it was worth killing a man to get it. But two things she was sure of: in fourteen hours she would be back on American soil, and she’d be a damn sight w
ealthier than when she left.
3
When the sniper’s bullet exploded his wife’s head into a thousand pieces, it shattered Lucas’s life into a thousand more. The shock took away his ability to function, rendering him unable to do the most basic of tasks. And being unable to cope, Harper took over.
Dick Harper, a man famously unable to get through the week without causing himself significant harm, stepped up to the plate. He looked after his friend in his own inadequate way. He made the arrangements for the funeral and sorted out Darlene’s affairs, while Lucas spent his days sitting in a chair staring with moist eyes into the middle distance.
Lucas did have one searing burst of emotion which tore him from his grief-induced stupor. He met Heather Whitchel at the funeral.
Heather Whitchel, the woman who had given his wife a place to stay when she finally snapped and left him. The woman who had confirmed all of Darlene’s grievances and told her she was doing the right thing. The woman who had acted as his wife’s self-appointed guard dog, repelling his attempts at a reconciliation. The woman who had got her rocks off by playing judge and jury on whether or not to hand over the phone.
Heather Whitchel, the woman who had denied Lucas his last chance to speak to his wife before her life was snuffed out.
At the funeral, the room was full of polite chitchat over tea and sandwiches. Heather spotted Lucas and made a beeline for him, wanting to give her condolences. Up to that point Lucas had dismissed her attempts to contact him, she was the last person in the world he wanted to talk to. Harper had played the guard dog role by blocking her calls, but she was slow on the uptake and was not taking the hint.
But under these circumstances she had direct access, and if she was foolish enough to persist, then Lucas wasn’t going to hold back.
She slithered up to Lucas dressed in a stick-insect trouser suit and a starched plain white shirt that matched her face. She oozed simpering remorse.
She put her hand on his arm.
‘I’m so sorry.’ She layered an amateur dramatic emphasis on the word ‘so’.
Lucas placed his hand on hers. It was the touching reunion she had dreamed of.
‘You know, Heather, every night I wish I could turn back the clock.’
‘I know, I know,’ she nodded, a crocodile tear welling in her eye.
‘And every night, I wish it was you who took that bullet, and not Darlene.’
Lucas pressed his hand on hers.
‘But all I mean is …’ She glanced down at her trapped hand.
Lucas pulled her close.
‘What did Darlene say, Heather, the last time I called? What did she say?’
Heather tugged at her hand.
‘I don’t know, please let me go.’
‘No, and neither do I. And why is that, Heather?’
‘Please let go.’
‘Because you wouldn’t let me fucking talk to her,’ Lucas hissed in her ear. ‘So when you’re lying in bed tonight, staring at the ceiling, trying to work out why your life is such a car crash, think about me turning back the clock and picturing your brains splattered over that car park floor.’
Lucas released her and stepped away, leaving Heather with a pink complexion and an open mouth.
That certainly did the trick and Lucas hadn’t seen or heard from her since.
Unfortunately, that was his only show of emotion in a morass of numbness. Afterwards Lucas went back to sitting for days staring at nothing a thousand yards away.
In the early days he couldn’t bring himself to stay at his house. He hated everything about it. Every room reminded him of a time when his wife filled the place with warmth and laughter. Now it was full of nothing. It was too painful, so he filled a bag with clothes and moved in with Harper, which was a mixed blessing.
Harper wanted to play host and slept in the spare room with a mattress on the floor. Lucas took Harper’s bed, with broken slats in the base. The sagging mattress gave Lucas the feeling of being sucked into a black hole every night. Eventually his back hurt so much he made Harper swap.
Another peculiarity of living with Harper was his refrigerator, which could simultaneously keep things cold at the bottom and room temperature at the top.
‘Don’t put food in the top of the refrigerator,’ Harper told him. ‘It’s not cold.’
One day Lucas suggested it might be a good idea to buy a new one.
‘What for?’ Harper rejected it out of hand.
Also, the freezer defrosted itself whenever it felt like it, which meant mealtimes were a constant round of feast or famine. They either had to cook enough food to give a horse a heart attack or not enough to feed them both.
With the help of this absurd normality, Lucas started to get back on his feet. He gradually spent more time at his home and after three weeks waved goodbye to Harper’s hospitality and moved back in. Which was a blessed relief for both of them.
The bereavement counselling provided by the force was the best on offer, but it didn’t help. They met every Tuesday evening, a sad collection of people struggling to come to terms with the loss of a loved one. It was led by a young woman whose police officer husband had died in a road traffic accident.
She was good, but Lucas felt little benefit from attending. On reflection, this was probably due to him meeting up with Harper after the counselling sessions and spending the remainder of the evening drinking himself into oblivion. When he woke the next morning he couldn’t recall a thing the woman had said or anything about the class.
It had been almost a year since he laid his wife to rest in Roselawn Cemetery. Lucas ghosted from day to day achieving the mundane – laundry, shopping, watching TV and drowning himself in a vat of whisky and beer every night. He ate all the wrong foods and drank enough alcohol to give three people liver failure.
Harper had well and truly fallen off the wagon and Lucas was fast joining him in the gutter.
The force offered to pension him off, so Lucas accepted early retirement, and the gross misconduct charges evaporated with no further action. His boss was fantastic after Darlene’s death, which pissed him off. The man was a total dick. Why did he insist on being generous, caring and supportive at the very time when all Lucas wanted was someone to hate.
The various payments from his wife’s life insurance policies meant Lucas didn’t have to work, which was just as well. His life was a collection of nondescript days where nothing happened, and forgotten nights where he drank until he blacked out. It was a sad sequence he repeated over and over again. Everytime he tried to break the cycle his resolve clattered to the floor. Try as he might the scabs kept coming off his life, exposing the deep wounds below, and preventing the healing process taking place. His life was in a flat spin and he couldn’t pull out of it.
The phone rang. Lucas picked it up.
‘Hello.’
It was Chris Bassano’s father.
4
It was testament to the depth of his decline that Lucas no longer minded meeting Harper in the worst café in Florida. In fact, over the past year, he was at risk of being considered a regular.
There was a time when he would physically recoil from his suits if they hadn’t made it to the dry cleaners following a visit to the café. Nowadays the reek of stale smoke and bad hygiene permeated his clothes and he put them on without even noticing.
Lucas shoved open the door and was enveloped in the stench of a hundred wet dogs. The neon signs buzzed behind the bar and grey smog clung to the ceiling like rain clouds. The guy behind the counter looked up and acknowledged him, not with a ‘Good morning, sir, I will be your server today’ type of greeting, this was more of an imperceptible nod of the head.
Harper was in his usual spot, with a steaming mug of black sludge in front of him. He looked up and raised his hand. Lucas moved between the tables and chairs, which looked like the leftovers from a yard sale, and pulled up a seat. Their usual topics of conversation eluded them.
‘I can’t believe it,�
�� Harper said.
‘I can,’ Lucas replied. ‘Mechanic was never going to stop at killing Darlene.’
‘Are they sure it’s her?’
‘No, they haven’t a clue. But it’s Mechanic alright, her signature is all over it.’
‘How did he …’
‘Massive blood loss, the autopsy report said he died in minutes. She attacked him in an alleyway outside a club. It was some kind of singles night, a masked ball with over three hundred people there. No membership required, just buy a ticket and turn up. You know what Chris was like, she probably came onto him and he swallowed the bait. She took him outside and sliced him up.’
‘Did they find …’ Harper hesitated again.
‘No, the SOCOs tore the place apart, but didn’t find his cock and balls. I can only assume she took them.’
‘They’re probably in a jar taking pride of place on her dressing table.’
‘She did that before with the military guy who raped her, remember?’
‘Yup, she called an ambulance for him though.’
Lucas clenched his fists on the table.
‘Bassano’s family are devastated. His father called to break the news.’
‘They get their kid back on his feet only for this to happen. What have the police said?’
‘It looks like they got jack shit. No CCTV, no forensics, and of course from their perspective, no motive.’
‘And if we give them the motive, we open ourselves up to a whole world of pain.’
‘Exactly.’
The two men sat in silence. The guy behind the counter appeared carrying a mug and slopped it down in front of Lucas.
Harper waited until he had retreated out of earshot. ‘We gotta kill this bitch.’
‘Agreed. If we don’t, it’s you or me next.’
‘Are you up for it? I mean you’ve taken a beating and I wouldn’t blame you if you needed more time.’