No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (21 page)

There was a wooden building near the summit; its windows were shuttered and the gravel car park was empty; she said it was for the use of forestry wardens. She told him local people despised them and the restrictions they brought with them. A wolf had been shot and its carcass hung in front of their shed. It was a protected animal, and its killing was a sign of indifference to authority. She spoke of the French general, Charles Antoine Manhès, and the villagers he had hanged in an attempt to subdue the mountain people. He had failed. Later in the morning, she said, the lay-bys along the road would be full as the elderly came with big baskets and searched among the forest trees for mushrooms and other fungus. She showed him a place where a great meeting of the heads of families had been held but the police had scattered them: the work of an informer, a
soffiato
. The word derived from
soffiata
, meaning ‘the whisper of the wind’. ‘Aspromonte’, she said, came either from the Greek, for ‘white mountain’ or the Latin, which, loosely, meant ‘mean, bitter or brutal mountain’. It was there that kidnap victims were brought – taken in the north, sold on, driven ever further south, kept in conditions of appalling barbarity while their freedom was negotiated.’ She showed no emotion.

The light grew. There was nothing gentle about her face, nothing sleek about her hair, which was a messy chaos of naturally blonde strands, and nothing insignificant about her sharp-angled nose, her mouth, full lips and teeth. They had peaked a summit and she drove faster down the hill. There was a first glimpse of the sun across the sea and beyond the black outlines, ragged and sharp, of the mountains’ lesser peaks. At last, now, she was quiet.

Her phone screen showed the crabbed lines of roads. One went close to a winking red point. A download from the group she was with – confidential to the leader but she’d hacked into it: the locations of the leading families’ principal homes. She’d grimaced as she’d told him that Bernardo Cancello was fortunate to have been allocated that status along with the de Stefanos, the Pesches, Condellos, Pelles and Miromallis. What would Jago do? Wait and see, take a look. Enough? Perhaps and perhaps not. He’d do what he could.

She swore. The road was blocked. A boy drove goats. Dogs ran among them and they stampeded. The boy cursed at her for frightening his animals and Jago smelt the acrid scent of the tyres, then the livestock pressed against his door. She went on, bundling the goats aside. Behind him, on the small bucket seat, were the clothing and the ground sheet she had stolen. She would want the cover of darkness and shadows, not the brightness of sunshine. He had nothing sensible to say.

In less than an hour the first of the team would arrive at the bank, where his life had been nailed down. Around him there was only desperate, cruel country, rocks, sharp stones, gorges, tumbled boulders, then lights, far ahead.

Stefano, a shrewd old bird for all his image as a helpless and limited buffoon, had reversed the City-Van to the back door, which led into the kitchen. He had unloaded some baskets, vegetable trays and firewood, then Bernardo had slipped from the cover of the doorway into the back. He had a large foam cushion to sit on. Marcantonio was with him.

Stefano drove. Bernardo reflected on the meeting ahead of him. His grandson yawned. Bernardo did not know which girl’s bed the boy had graced, whether he had been into the village or had gone as far as Locri to find company. He wondered where Marcantonio would find a wife. He had discussed it with Mamma – he would not make a decision based on her opinions, but would consider her suggestions as to who would be suitable. Mamma would know which families had a history of fertile women, and which were plagued with miscarriages or deformities through breeding too close to the blood line. His own opinion would be based on matters of finance and power, areas of influence and control of territory. There were families in Locri and Siderno, and one at Brancaleone with daughters, but serious negotiation had not begun. The windows at the back of the City-Van were dusty but Stefano had drawn a small smiley face in one so that Bernardo could see out.

The boy yawned again. God, had he been at it all night? It was a long time since Bernardo had been his age. In his day, a girl would fight tooth and nail to preserve her virginity. Now she would drop her knickers in exchange for a mandarin or a ripe lemon. He strained to see through the window. They passed the house where the shutters were always closed. He kept that traitor’s family there as an example. They existed in a living hell, as he intended. He saw them sometimes as they trudged, isolated and ignored, through the village. They had no money, no friends, and even the priest did not visit. Maybe they would watch television that day.

Stefano drove out of the village and pulled into an abandoned quarry.

A kid on a scooter waited there.

The kid knew him, was bright-eyed and eager to please him. He knew Stefano and helped him clean engines, learning how they worked. The boy knew Marcantonio, too, and had joined the school at Locri when Marcantonio was leaving. The kid knew them better than he knew his own father, who was serving the twelfth year of twenty after conviction for murder: Bernardo had ordered the killing. The height of the kid’s ambition was to become a
giovane d’onore
, ‘honoured youth’, rise to
picciotto
and gain the family’s trust. He had a Vespa, the Piaggio model, 124cc engine. It was silver, his pride and joy, and had cost more than two thousand euros. The kid waved to them: cheeky, cocky and proud to be close to them. The family’s trust showed in the cost of the scooter, paid for by Bernardo, which was the envy of other village boys. He might marry into the fringes of the extended family. The kid was important, and Bernardo, with Stefano driving, went nowhere without him.

Stefano told the kid where they would go, which route they should take. The kid had a mobile phone in his jacket pocket and waved it at them. Then Stefano rifled in a bag at his feet and peered through his spectacles at a dozen different mobile phones, their distinguishing covers, and frowned as he remembered which one he needed. He concentrated, selected and tossed it into Marcantonio’s lap. It was switched on. The kid was told that the phone was live.

They went in humble transport to meet a man with whom the final decisions would be taken on the purchase of a half-ton of pure cocaine. They would also discuss the transshipment of Syrian exiles inside the EU. The Arabs would be provided with well-forged documentation. It was good that he had brought his grandson: the boy’s presence would show that Bernardo’s dynasty had a future. The scooter would travel at a little under forty kilometres an hour, and the gap between them would be two kilometres. The kid’s phone was live, the number set. He would have to press a single button to indicate that a
carabinieri
or
polizia
roadblock was in place. They would pass through a remote area of countryside. On some roads there would be interference or a weak signal, but they would avoid them.

He was uncomfortable in the back but accepted the hardship. The road surface was poor and the cushion gave him only limited protection from the ruts. A few more days, and he would be able to ride again in the front. He would know that a special investigation on him was closed, the file consigned to a cupboard, the spotlight moved elsewhere. With Stefano, he would go to the open market in Locri and to Brancaleone. He would sit in the mountains where his father used to go, while Mamma and Stefano searched for mushrooms. He would plan and . . . There was much to look forward to.

In truth, Bernardo wanted little. They had a decent television but not an exceptional one, a decent kitchen, but not from one of the magazines that Annunziata had enjoyed, and a decent bed, old and breathing family history. He had no luxury. Neither did Mamma. They lived without gold taps, jewellery, and servants, yet the family had such wealth that only Giulietta and her calculator could accurately assess it. Great riches meant little to him. The most important matter in his life, which was drifting to a close – not tomorrow but not far away – was that he could pass on what he had achieved to Marcantonio and know his legacy was in safe hands. His grandfather had done that for his father, and his father for him. Marcantonio was a good boy. He could strangle a man and kill a woman. Now he must learn more about the trade of the clans.

The light broke. The sun came low through gaps in the foothills and rose above the sea behind them, throwing long shadows.

They were late. She drove recklessly. The car was not built to negotiate mountain switchback roads and twice she had lost control. The tyres had slid and they’d skidded close to the edge. Both times, there had been a thirty-metre drop. He did not seem to react. Most would have been clinging to the top of the glove box for dear life, white-knuckled. She supposed it was ‘the calm before a storm’.

She thought they had met through luck, coincidence and chance. She said to herself silently, ‘When was life different?’ She thought of the people she knew, who reckoned they had control over their lives. They were fools and failures. He seemed remarkable to her. She swerved to give more room to a tractor pulling a trailer of cattle fodder for the winter and drove a scooter off the road. She was on the wrong side of the road on a bend and had to heave the wheel to miss a Fiat City-Van driven by an old man, with a boy beside him, and . . . The light was coming.

Too much time on the beach at Scilla? If accused of it, she would have answered robustly: he had lost his inhibitions there; with inhibitions, where he was going, he was the walking dead – no use to man, beast or her. Consolata started to talk about covert surveillance in the mountains, relaying all she had been told by the guy in the ROS who did stake-outs. She told Jago about the basics of survival – but he would be without a firearm, a colleague, a radio, and back-up poised for fast intervention. She talked about stiffness, the cold and damp. The guy, Francesco, had not enjoyed being quizzed about intelligence gathering, but they’d had fun in the hills, playing concealment games. She’d hide, and he’d find her, or she’d hide and he’d look for but not locate her. Or he’d be on a hillside and have to move, and she’d be at an observation point and yell when she saw him. When he lost he was pissed off. She remembered everything he’d taught her, and now passed it to the Englishman: he would be going close to the house, near extreme danger, where she would not go. She helped him and he would hurt them. Then she would rejoice . . . and he was nice-looking.

If they found him close to the house then he would have to have shed every inhibition drilled into him at home and work, since he was a child. Any inhibition, failure to fight, and he was dead.

Consolata had been with him for about twelve hours but already she cared. He had not touched her in the sea or on the beach. She had never cared for a man so quickly before.

She told him everything she knew, hammered into him the detail she had learned when she was with that guy. She remembered her parents’ shock when the shop and the business were taken from them, their humiliation. They’d had no one to turn to in Archi. No wonder she hated the families.

She drove him to a place that the map on her phone indicated could be a drop-off point. The light rose.

She was a manager.

Wilhelmina, as an employee with status, working for a prestigious bank, could demand attention – and did.

She was put on hold, but only briefly. A middle-ranking official at police headquarters on the Platz der Luftbrücke, where memories of the Berlin airlift were celebrated, had contacted the station on Bismarckstrasse, talked with the KrimPol unit there, ascertained the complaint that Jago Browne had made, concerning assault and extortion, determined who had fielded the complaint and what action had been taken. They had to consider the importance of the known facts when set against the – out of character – disappearance of the individual, and his apparent journey to Calabria. The official pleaded for a few more moments of her time.

‘I can refer this to one of my bank’s vice presidents, who would expect to speak to an officer of higher rank than yours. Your name would feature in any such conversation.’

That was not necessary, she was assured. It was always a pleasure to co-operate with the banking industry. Her aggression was fuelled by nerves. She knew of the crime networks based in the extreme south of Italy, the corruption, the danger of extreme violence. She did not know what had been downloaded, what confidentiality was compromised. Her fingers drummed on her desk.

An answer. Seitz, an investigator in the KrimPol unit at Bismarckstrasse, had been recalled from his weekend vacation and would visit her by midday. The official hoped that was satisfactory. He was pleased to have been of service. She accepted what she was told. She had set a train in motion, did not know where the journey would end but felt confident that her back was covered.

His empty seat intrigued her. Magda had mentioned how little the apartment had told of its tenant. Wilhelmina had left her children with her neighbour because her husband was abroad. She wasn’t thinking of the kids, or the chaos at home after the birthday party, or the state of her marriage, but was gazing at Jago Browne’s seat. Where was he? And why was he there? She gripped a pencil between her fingers, bank issue, twisted – and broke it.

A phone call. Confidences.

Magda said, ‘It’s a police matter now. He’s fucked.’

Elke said, ‘Finished, so I’ll never know.’