No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (27 page)

The sand was in her hair and on the back of her legs. The tide had reached its high point and waves frothed over her toes. Consolata thought she was in the right place.

The rain had started on the far side of the Aspromonte and would have beaten in off the Ionian Sea, then lingered at the mountain barrier before edging to the Tyrrhenian Sea and the beach. The couple had gone, and so had the man repairing nets. His boat was only a few metres from the incoming tide. She was alone.

She thought of the boy, neither with fondness nor a suggestion of guilt. The water curled between her toes, but fell hard from the sky, soaking her clothes, which stuck to her skin and outlined her body. She pictured the boy: water streaming down his face, hair and clothing drenched, but he would be there. He might have found cover, and might not. He would be close to the house, and might already have cobbled together an idea. He would do something. She herself had crossed a frontier, had aided and abetted illegality, and rejoiced. Nothing would be the same again. She remembered humiliations, inflicted pain, a small shop window where paint tins had been on display. She might have felt gratitude to Jago Browne for changing her.

She was on the beach in the rain, soaked to the skin, and she had shared in his experience. He had seen her in the sea and that would have been enough to send him forward. Of course he would go forward. She couldn’t imagine what he would do when he’d cornered Marcantonio. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps he would crumble under a counter-attack. She had played her part and was satisfied.

Close to three millennia before, the boats would have tried to navigate the strait, with the whirlpool of Charybdis or the razor rocks of Scylla. Only the bravest and most skilled were able, in grim weather, to navigate the gap. Consolata was confused. She had happened on him, had heard a gabbled story, had stiffened his resolve, had helped him. She had made retreat difficult. She didn’t know whether he was brave and skilful or a lonely fool.

The rain and the wind lashed her.

Carlo had been given the number. He rang it from the airport concourse.

About fifty paces away, a man waved: tall, angular, unshaven, pale. In appearance he was all that Carlo was not. It had been a bumpy flight – cross winds had flung them around on their final descent – and Carlo thought the next hop would be worse. The rain was heavy and there was standing water on the apron.

They met. Carlo had been told that the German, from a KrimPol unit, had been in Italy, on a steep learning curve, after the Duisburg massacre in 2007: a quiet industrial town in the west of Germany had played host to a big-time ’Ndrangheta
faida
– six dead. The country had woken up to news of a large-scale Calabrian infiltration to their society, and what happened when a feud erupted. It had been going on for sixteen years, had started with offence given when a visiting circus had performed in San Luca; insults were exchanged between two families. Killings punctuated the feud, tit for tat, but the big hit had been in Germany where the families had their major money-spinning interests. The word for Carlo was that the German had been sent to the south of Italy and told not to come back until he understood the organised-crime culture of the area. He had managed to extend his stay – and extend it again. Three days before, he had met the missing Briton. It was a start.

A firm shake of his hand. ‘I’m Fred.’

‘How did you come by that?’

‘From Manfred. But always I have been “Fred”. You have a problem with it?’

‘No problem. I’m Carlo.’

‘Are you Italian background?’

‘No.’

It was just the name that he’d attracted while doing his four years as a Liaison Officer of HMRC and attached to the embassy . . . not that he had seen anything of his old stomping ground from the aircraft as it had come in. Dense cloud and the Eternal City was blanketed and they hadn’t broken through till almost on the tarmac.

Carlo said, ‘Did anyone see you off this morning?’

‘When I left Tempelhof? No.’

‘No big boss there?’

‘No.’

‘Did you get a speech – stirring stuff, motivation?’

‘Last night they talked about damage limitation.’

Carlo said, ‘They wouldn’t have wanted guilt by association. I fancy a coffee. I’m to emphasise that we “care passionately about the furtherance of good relations” and also that we “take very seriously an unwarranted intervention” by this crackpot kid. I’m not a senior man, so they sent me.’

‘Coffee would be good. I think they scraped the bottom of a sewer to find me. It is not a job for a man of ambition.’

‘Plumbed the depths in my case. Can I say something?’

There was a shrug.

‘We may not agree on much, but we have a saying – ‘We must all hang together or we’ll hang separately.’ You understand that?’

‘Benjamin Franklin, American . . . You want
cappuccino
or a latte, yes? We do a job . . . I do not expect to be loved here, or welcomed.’

‘My people say you’re at the heart of this, fielding blame.’

A wintry grin. ‘My people say the same. If my bosses were here, most of them half my age, not yet out of kindergarten, they would be concerned as to who had seniority on the jaunt. It would be important. Who is Alpha and who is Bravo?’

‘But our bosses are not here.’

‘So we are felons freed on a day-release scheme. We achieve a little here and there. We are too lowly to harbour ambitions.’

‘But expert in screwing up the best-laid plans of mice and men.’

‘Approved – which?’

‘
Cappuccino
, thanks.’

They were at the bar. A fast transfer, then the next leg. Life would get harder – guaranteed.

It was his favourite film. In his opinion, it was the best movie ever made. Marcantonio was watching Al Pacino as the Cuban kid who made the big-time. He had the DVD back at his apartment in Berlin and saw
Scarface
once a week; he had left his first copy at home when he had gone to Germany. Not that it would have been watched while he was away – his grandmother liked romance, Teresa the programmes on new kitchens. Giulietta had the set tuned to financial news channels. His grandfather, in the bunker, watched crime series. The man Pacino played was a hero to Marcantonio.

It never failed him.

He could recite all of the lines spoken by the star, and the end always excited him. A downfall, a table of scattered coke, then the shoot-out: no pain, a grand death, a man who would never grow old. Marcantonio had little time for the world of business and investment, the milking of public contracts and alliances with other families. To Marcantonio, what mattered was creating fear, winning admiration, being able to walk tall on the street, men bobbing their heads to him and girls edging forward to make the offer. And to kill. He had never fired a machine pistol in the way Al Pacino did, but he had strangled, he had put a live woman into acid and he had shot one round into the back of the head of the man who’d cheated his grandfather. He watched the film: it was near to the shoot-out.

The rain hammered on the windows. He had business later in the day – some shit from abroad. He didn’t do drugs – his grandfather would turn him out of the house if he did. There was another family, further north in the mountains, whose eldest son had been identified, by a Squadra Mobile bug in a car, as a rampant homosexual. The information had been leaked, and the kid was disowned – as was the kid of another family who dressed as a woman. His grandfather would have thrown him out if he believed that Marcantonio did drugs. It was bad to use them, but good to deal in them. A wide grin played on his face, and the movie came to its conclusion.

His grandmother was in the kitchen and seemed not to notice the amplified soundtrack. She never criticised him, whatever he did. The rain was incessant. He had a man to meet, would weigh and evaluate him, then tell his grandfather what he thought. Marcantonio was trusted, the favourite . . .

Not many stood their ground when Bentley Horrocks’s temper flared. ‘What are we supposed to do in this fucking place?’

Jack understood the need to bend with the wind and had made it an art form. ‘Good shout, Bent. What are we supposed to do?’

‘Leaving me hanging about!’

‘Wrong, that.’

‘And where’s the fucking eagle? I pay him enough. He leaves me here, in this dump, and the rain’s pissing down. Does he think he has free rein to let me hang about? Nowhere to go, nothing to do. He’ll hear my tongue – and so will the local man. He’s a big man, the eagle said. He’d better be – and he’d better be ready to crack a good deal, after keeping me cooling my heels. Who do they think they are – and who do they fucking think I am? You tell me.’

It was all said in a whisper, close to Jack’s ear, while a game show played on the TV. The eagle was Humphrey. Between them, a legal man – solicitor or barrister – was always an eagle. Humphrey had said that the family would visit later in the day. They could barely see the beach. The cloud was almost flush with it: grey skies, grey beach, grey shoreline. The street running through the strip development of Brancaleone was nearly a river, and the traffic threw up water in waves. The sliding doors leaked at the base and the rain was pooling there. Jack knew enough of his man to sense insecurity. He did the massage of the ego bit, which kept him in his place at Bent’s side and good money in his pocket. There had been people before Jack who had thought themselves close to Bent, and hadn’t been . . . That had made for a bad future.

‘And they deserve it, Bent, your tongue. No call to be leaving you cooling your heels. Who do they think they are? That’s what I’m wondering, Bent.’

They were trapped in the room. The smoke alarm in the ceiling was disconnected, the battery removed, and Bent went steadily through his cigarettes. No one had come up from Reception to challenge it – and where else was there to smoke? If you opened the balcony door, the rain came in at an angle, blown on a gale. Bent was a big man at home and owned Crime Squad detectives. He lived well, but always needed to push on. He couldn’t stand still and was no good at treading water. Too many little bastards circling, watching, hoping to sniff weakness. He needed a big move forward, which the journey would bring – but insecurity gnawed at him. He had no language and was off his territory.

‘Best we can hope for, Bent, is that it lifts and we can take a turn outside.’

‘Are you some sort of fucking moron? You see a hole in that lot? I don’t. It’s solid. I tell you, when this old bastard turns up he’ll be in no doubt what I’m thinking, left in this hole. He may be the top man but he’ll need some answers before I’ve finished with him.’

‘It’s what you deserve, Bent, answers from the top man . . .’

The bunker leaked.

He had the lights full on. Water came out from under the unit on which the microwave was placed and lay on the vinyl there, glistening from the bulbs above. More water had gathered on the carpet towards the chemical toilet. Only in exceptional rain did the container fail to repel the damp.

He had the television on.

The aerial cable went up from the container roof and used the same cavity that brought reasonably fresh air down the pipe – its outlet was in the hollowed-out trunk of the long dead tree above. A little more water dribbled down the pipe, enough to dampen the air inside. The heating created a sweat effect, and twice in the last ten minutes he’d had to wipe the TV screen, which left it smeared. He’d watched the news and the weather forecast. The news had shown flooding of roads on the Ionian side of the Aspromonte and some landslips, and the weather forecaster had said there would be no break in the rain before the end of the afternoon. When it rained incessantly and was damp in the container, Bernardo always kept the lights on.

It had been wet that year. The clouds had been low and heavy day after day, night after night, when the child had been brought down from the north and sold to the family. Bernardo remembered taking the short, steep goats’ trail up the slopes behind the house to where they had chained her. So dark in the cave and the torch he had brought with him barely penetrated its depths. It dripped when there was rain and the beam showed the water that fell onto the lower rock surfaces. He had found her dead. Enough water had fallen on the candle to put out the flame. She would have died in darkness. It cost them serious money to buy her, and represented a greater loss to the family than any capsizing at sea of a fast launch bringing in cigarette cartons from north Africa. Financially, it could have proved difficult. Too much money to lose – but negotiations were proceeding. The camera had been brought, and a newspaper.

The child had been propped up and her clothing straightened. It had been Mamma’s idea but she had not come to the cave. He had arranged the newspaper, that day’s
Corriere della Calabria
, and had used a finger to wipe water from a bucket in a trail down the child’s cheeks, having prised back her eyelids: she would appear to be weeping. That would accentuate the misery of her condition and speed the negotiations for the ransom. At the time he had thought nothing of it, and the word from the far north was that the intermediaries believed a deal was possible – probable, in fact. Recently, since he had been sleeping in his bunker, he had remembered – been unable to forget – the damp, cold and darkness in which the child had died. He had every light on, and the heater turned high.