No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (49 page)

He was jolted forward.

The impact was harsh and sudden, as if the driver behind him had hit the accelerator. He wore his belt but it was loose, and he hit the headrest, then swung forward and his temple cracked the top of the wheel. But he held on – he had to. He held the steering wheel with all his strength and kept the tyres on the road. He was nudged towards the cliff edge, but resisted – he felt himself going and thought the vehicle behind had insinuated its bonnet and front wheels between the rock wall and his own rear tyres. It was inexorable. He was driven towards the edge and—

He was supposed to be a man of God and was considered a reasonable priest, who did not flout the rules of his profession. He didn’t know what he should say, so he said nothing. He did not beseech his God for help. He swore – which he never did, not even in the hearing of his cat – did not pray, and was answered.

A lorry came round the corner, braking and slewing across the road.

Father Demetrio hit his pedal and went clear. The space in front of him, between the rock wall and the lorry’s giant wheels, was minimal. He went through the gap. Paint fragments flew and the contact screamed. He was free. Sweat poured off his body and his eyes were misted. He looked into his mirror. The vehicle behind him had not had room to skirt the lorry. He drove at full speed. He abandoned caution.

He knew where he would go.

Father Demetrio had sensed it would happen, but not when or how. He was past the turning to Montalto and was on the Reggio road. It would have been sensible to take a slower, more obscure route to the city, but he wanted speed to be his saviour. The high pines flowed past, and he saw the cars of the mushroom pickers. When he looked into his mirror, often, but he couldn’t see the black HiLux. His hands shook as he held the wheel, and the enormity of his intended actions confronted him.

He had done something unusual during the early hours of the morning: he had unburdened himself to his wife. The prosecutor would be on course for new pastures when the guillotine blade came down on Scorpion Fly. He had left his bed, shaved hurriedly, kissed her cheek, then bawled something encouraging at the kids. He had shoved an apple into his pocket and been hustled to his car by the escort. Had he won the lottery? He had said, ‘A new day, a new start,’ to his chief guard, then explained his thinking. The prosecutor had watched his initial bemusement, then heard a chuckle, and finally saw them accept his view.

They were early in the building. It was not a place where people hurried – the wide staircase never doubled as a racetrack. He ran up the steps, a smile on his face, his guys chasing him. Their footfall echoed off the high ceilings and bounced off the bare walls. He clattered across the lobby, punched numbers at his door, waved to them and was inside, alone. He lit a cigarette, then turned on the coffee-machine and sank into his chair. He felt liberated.

When a light blinked at him, he got up and went to make his coffee, a harsh espresso, good for the start of a new day, a new target. He poured it into a dirty cup and swigged. He savoured it, then went to the floor safe.

At home his wife would be setting out breakfast for herself and the children. He had rarely talked to her about his work, but today she had given her opinion, then sunk back into the pillows.

He took the Scorpion Fly files from the shelf where they had been untidily wedged, and made certain that the strings binding them were fastened securely, carried them to the appropriate cupboard and opened it. A sight well known to any Italian government servant confronted him: layer upon layer of paper. A near lifetime’s work was in front of him, crazily organised, the successes and failures of his career. Successes against ’Ndrangheta? A few – not many, but some. At that moment, he could have wallowed in the self-pity that had governed him over the last several days, or he could have flicked through the pages of those that had produced better results. One detailed the investigation, under his leadership, that had convicted Rocco and Domenico from that family of adders. It might have been labelled ‘success’, but their convictions had been based on the testimony of a turncoat, a
pentito
. They had not been able to safeguard the wretch’s life: the man was barely cold in his newly dug grave. Did he and others at the Palace of Justice care sufficiently about the men and women who came forward, putting their lives on the line, to testify? He doubted it. He heaved the file into the cupboard and shut the door.

A new file welcomed the prosecutor. There were similar cupboards in every ministry of central and local government, in courthouses and police buildings – anywhere bureaucracy ruled: agriculture and forestry, tax, VAT and Customs, health, utilities . . . the Italian curse. The new file was slim; the family was based in Monasterace.

The Greek colonists had been to Monasterace and had called their settlement Caulonia. The town was built on a hilltop, once fortified, and holidaymakers came in the summer to use the beach and the marina. The case would involve alleged murder, extortion, narcotics trafficking, the sale of military weapons. Only the names would be different. Next week he would go there to walk on the esplanade by the marina, then drive up the hill into the town and stroll in the narrow medieval streets, sniff the air and test the atmosphere. He would regain the keen sense of the hunt that he had last felt when he had first gone to the village in the foothills of the mountains where the
padrino
, Bernardo Cancello, held court. He lit another cigarette, sat at his desk and thought they were mocking him. Sheets of paper, held together with string and cheap cardboard, surveillance photographs, a few witness statements: all mocked him. Freedom was short-lived. The ache in his mind returned.

The family were laughing at him, and Scorpion Fly was in its last hours. It was a failure. What else could he do?

When she stretched, her bones and joints creaked, the sound of branches cracking. She had food and water, but Consolata didn’t eat or drink. Her back against a tree, knees hard up against her chest, she had slept after a fashion. In the distance a cockerel had crowed. Above her, birds had flapped and called, the wind had sung in the trees and a church bell had chimed, but she had been alone in a pit of misery. Above all she was insulted. The dent to her pride hurt more than rejection.

A punch or a kick would have been easier to bear. She might have kept some of her dignity if she had turned on her heel, left the wood, found the car and headed home, but she had reached for him and he had pushed her away. He had said nothing, just indicated that she was surplus to his requirements.

Consolata knew what she should have done. She had waited throughout the day, having convinced herself he would come back, then through the night. She had woken, expecting him to be sitting opposite, watching her. Consolata would go to look for him. She would find him on the hillside, slap his face, then hold him hard and . . . She stretched fiercely. She was from the city, the streets of Archi, and all she knew of the countryside was what a lover had taught her.

She would go slowly. How would she find him? She didn’t know.

The kid came back.

There were
carabinieri
further down the track, on the far side of the men who kept the oil drum burning through the night. They monitored who came to the
padrino
’s house. Many were allowed through that morning, and all would have been photographed discreetly by the
carabinieri
.

His scooter tyres sprayed gravel when he turned sharply.

The women would be in one room. Teresa would bring them coffee and juice and they would sit with Mamma – who often fed the kid and might have been fond of him. The men would be in the room with the wide-screen television and the copy of
Scarface
. It was likely that the big man would be there now. The kid knew about the bunker: he had not been told but had realised where it was. Stefano came from the side of the house and greeted him. The kid thought Stefano took liberties, that he was over-familiar with the family – he didn’t understand why. The man had no blood link with them, and no skills other than driving.

The kid reported what he had been told at the farm, and asked what he should do now. He always looked for more work because that was how he would gain the family’s trust. There was a network of cousins and nephews, couriers who went to Gioia Tauro and were sent to the north, or Germany and Spain. One travelled twice each year to Venezuela, and two others went together once a year to Melbourne in Australia and Toronto in Canada. He thought that if he worked hard, the matter of his blood would be less important and the family would come to value him. The kid thought he might become a killer for the family, if he was trusted enough. He had been inside the house and had seen Marcantonio in the open-topped coffin, much of his face covered with white silk to hide the damage. He did not know what it would be like to kill. He felt no grief at the death of the old man’s grandson.

Stefano told him to keep watch at the back of the house with the dogs. There was always juice for him in the fridge in the kitchen and he was permitted to go inside and take it. He did so now, and the dogs crowded against his knees. He knew all the paths, tracks and footholds on the steep slopes behind the house.

They had come through the village. A
maresciallo
– pale face, rimless spectacles, and a well-pressed uniform – explained the geography of the village, where the priest lived with his housekeeper, the shopkeeper, the butcher, and the collector of any produce that could be taken to Locri vegetable market. At a shuttered building he had slowed and told the story of a dead
pentito
, a man who had been promised protection then denied it. He had served his purpose and was dumped as flotsam.

Carlo liked him – he thought he was at the level in the
carabinieri
where corruption, politics and watching your back were inappropriate. When they had come disguised as scenes-of-crime officers, they had been in the back of a van and had seen little. The village was a series of jerry-built homes; some had rusted scaffolding poles round them. Many had outside walls that were not yet rendered, the window frames held in position by daubed cement, without paint. There was a football pitch near to the school but ponies grazed on it, and two male goats, tall and haughty, were tethered near the centre circle. The place seemed to him to exude rank poverty, with one exception. He did not need to remark on the sort of cars that stood outside the unfinished buildings: Mercedes saloons, BMW coupés’ off-road Audis.

The
maresciallo
parked the jeep. They smoked and reflected . . . Carlo asked himself,
What am I contributing? What is my good deed for the day? When did anyone here last change anything?
He was glad he wasn’t required to give any answers. He did his job, didn’t he? Same as Fred and the Italian – same as an army of men and women low on the promotion ladder in Britain, Germany and Italy. No rubbish on the street, expensive cars. Men at the junctions, where rough tracks led to the olive groves, wore grubby trousers and shirts, cupped their fags and watched. A big place for watching. The
maresciallo
said he’d appreciate it if his guests stayed low-key; they were not to take photographs or produce their phones.

Two jeeps were across the road, parked to make a chicane. Their engines idled. Carlo and Fred were invited to get out and did so. The sun’s warmth flared back from the tarmac surface. Fifty or sixty yards ahead they could see an oil drum spewing smoke and half a dozen men. Carlo didn’t doubt that firearms were readily to hand, and pickaxe handles. He and Fred were watched, impassively or indifferently. Tomorrow there would be a funeral but they would not be there. The
maresciallo
would, and the spotters with their telescopic lenses, but Carlo and Fred would be on their way, excuses to stay exhausted. They were told the approximate area where the surveillance post was in place, and the assumption was made that the intruder – they called him the
crociato
, the crusader – was nearer to the building, lower on the hill.

What was he doing? Why was he still there? Fred said a compulsion drove him. ‘He was never been anywhere that is remotely a front line, never experienced close-quarters danger and may never have another opportunity to match this so he is reluctant to leave. What will he go back to? Driving a taxi? A factory bench? The work of a ledger clerk in an insurance company? Of course it is difficult for him to prise himself away from what he has here.’

But they and the guys on the hill were pulling out. He’d be on his own if he stayed, no friend within reach. Fred used his phone to check flights out, and book seats, to Rome together, then onwards separately. Carlo thought it would be fun to meet Bentley Horrocks on the leg to Heathrow – intimidating but fun.

Cars streamed from the house higher up the track, younger men driving, their elders beside them, their faces turned away from the
carabinieri
photographer. From what he could see of them, Carlo thought their expressions masked their feelings: there was no sign of hate, contempt, arrogance or humility. They didn’t notice the men in uniform, and the cars travelled a respectful speed, slowing to go into the chicane, then accelerating out of it. Dust billowed after them.