No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (19 page)

She asked him about his past.

Jago did not think she was truly interested, but if they talked about his youth, his studying and his breakthrough job, he would not be able to interrogate her. When he tried, she deflected him.

He spoke of Canning Town, his mother, cul-de-sacs with violent histories – flowers laid on anniversaries – and his school.

‘Are we going to the village tonight?’

He spoke of a school that commemorated martyrs, men of faith, the inspiration of a teacher and the influence of a captain of finance.

‘Whether it matters or not, Consolata – that’s a beautiful name – I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll get there, and hope for an opportunity. What will it be like? I’ll find out when I’m there, then work out what’s possible. Something to hurt and make them angry . . .’

He talked of university, a useful course, ambition growing, not knowing why the captain of finance had selected him, whether he had salved a fat cat’s conscience or encountered a Samaritan.

‘Marcantonio was strutting about, arrogant. If I can knock him off balance, he’ll be humiliated. Can’t ask for more than that. Can I get close to him?’

He talked about his first job, and supposed that work in this part of Italy was baking pizza, sweeping streets, pushing paper in a town hall or serving in a shop. He talked about the City, what he did there and how opportunities came on a conveyor-belt, then about the Berlin transfer because he had been marked out for fast-tracking.

He coughed. ‘I know what I want to do – and I’m frightened. Sort of beyond my experience.’

Her hand came off the wheel, and found his. She never looked at him – kept her eyes on the road. When vehicles drove towards them, he saw in the headlights that her face was calm. The hand was there to comfort him, did its job, then went back to the wheel. There was a great lit area to their left and across the bay, endless high lights, and he saw the dark shapes of heavy ships.

‘What’s that?’

‘The port of Gioia Tauro.’

‘It’s huge.’

‘The biggest in the Mediterranean. The life blood of southern Italy.’

‘What industry does it support? Is it export primarily?’

Again her laughter, brittle. ‘It’s for import. It keeps this part of Italy alive. It’s the chokepoint for the European cocaine trade. Jago, some 80 per cent of all cocaine in Europe comes through this port. We are talking not in kilos but in tons, not millions of euros but billions. To keep the trade flourishing the ’Ndrangheta must employ many thousands of men. Where you are going there is a small family, not unimportant but of minor influence. Marcantonio is old enough to cut a girl’s face but not old enough to be a prominent player. We talk about “winning”. A boy, not old enough to shave each day, is angry because a car is damaged. Creating rage – is that “winning”? I repeat what I said to you. They do not know who I am, so I do not criticise you, I help you.’

She turned off the highway. The window was down and he smelt the sea and heard the wind. The little car chugged towards a small town, and the moon made silver lines on the rippling water.

Consolata said, ‘I think, Jago, you smell. Do not be frightened. And I also smell. Each time they make you frightened, it is their victory. We cannot smell and go to war.’

Fred stood outside the camper, and smoked his pipe. He could hear his wife’s rhythmic breathing. The smoke broke the scent of the sea. He was among the dunes and could feel the wind and see the small navigation lights of a freighter in the Baltic’s lanes.

He was in a good place to achieve what all older police officers found necessary: purging his memories. He went through them, analysed them, took the failures and gave himself no credit for successes. The corralling of a group of Albanian cigarette smugglers, operating in Hohenschönhausen . . . The identification of a Ukrainian bank-robbery team, targeting branches in the Treptow area, shots exchanged at the arrests . . . And – more recently – the delicate investigation he had headed in which two local politicians had been on a monthly wage from a Camorra group and peddling the contracts for the building of three new schools in Reinickendorf . . . Each of those in the last four years had been a success, but he did not consider them while he smoked in the darkness and silence. He was drawn to failure. He was, his wife said, a ‘miserable crow of a man’.

Failure haunted him. A four-month-long operation to intercept a shipment of Moldovan children being brought to Berlin for paedophiles: the van was tracked from the Czech border and north through Erfurt and Halle; the operation had been close-guarded by the KrimPol in the capital, and the van had been lost among a confusion of roadworks short of Potsdam. It had disappeared. That had hurt, as had an arrest request from Palermo for a Mafia fugitive holed up in Siemensstadt; the building had been under surveillance and magistrates had queried the warrant the Italians had issued. The Sicilian was required to answer three counts of murder: the wife, father and child of an informer. Would the informer give evidence against a prominent gang leader after three killings in his family? The killer should have rotted in a high-security Italian prison, but the magistrates had rejected the warrant and an opportunity was lost. That was failure.

More recent failure: in the week he had just escaped from a young man had reported extortion. Fred had made a few calls, and put together a little profile. No action had been taken although a girl had been scarred hideously – perhaps because his focus had been on a weekend in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

She slept; he watched the shore. A principle: consequences ruled and clocks could not be wound back. He had failed that girl and doubted he could put it right. Leaving open his laptop was poor recompense for failure.

They’d set off for home in the late afternoon. The past gave no second chances. He might take another look at the matter, but doubted it.

Carlo was on a bench behind Sandy’s greenhouse, where her tomatoes ripened. A spit of rain was in the air but he wore only pyjamas, with an anorak round his shoulders. He smoked, felt empty. The hope that he could sit in the darkness unnoticed was daft. Any time he tried it, the dogs were roused. Two were with him; others would have woken her.

She came silently. A whispered question: ‘Who said and did what? Why?’

He had never had been sure what role he played in Sandy’s life: not intellectual, not financial security. He was as useful as an old waxed coat. Carlo said, ‘The woman who spoke to us at Dooley gave us the usual pep talk. There’ll be no new money, no new people, no new kit, but they’re all unimportant because “You make a difference.” It’s simply untrue. I know it, and if she doesn’t she’s a fool.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I suppose it does – lies count.’

‘You have to believe.’

‘It was a lie, that we make a difference.’

‘Then you’re wasting your time. Perhaps it’s the moment to step aside. Leave it to others.’

‘I can’t. Other than you, it’s all I have.’

‘Carlo, if you, with your savvy, can’t keep faith with it, who will?’

‘The youngsters treat it like it’s a duty, a vocation.’

‘You must believe you can make a difference.’

‘I have to try.’

She left him, and the dogs followed her. He lit another cigarette. Kind words from her, but he couldn’t imagine that an individual might ‘make a difference’. That wasn’t life as he knew it – as he had seen it. Plenty trying, all failing. As he laughed sharply to himself, he saw steam rising. A man had opened his flies, a battle raging around him, and pissed on the slots into the water-cooling system around the barrel of a Vickers machine-gun. He might have had his pecker shot off, but he was keeping the barrel cool enough for the weapon to go on firing. He loved it – the importance of the little man who had pissed to keep the defensive line intact and wouldn’t get a medal or a mention in despatches. Carlo’s sort of man. He had been in Rome when a junior Treasury minister had swanned through and asked Carlo whether he felt his work was sufficiently valued. He had probably asked the same question fifty times on that tour. He’d told her about the value of the man who pissed on a machine-gun to keep the barrel cool, then added, ‘Everyone has worth, not just the glory boys. He was that sort of man.’ The minister, a smart young woman, had blushed and turned on her heel. He’d skipped the ambassador’s reception for her that evening – he’d been at his desk, working.

Bent Horrocks was beside the water. She’d wanted to talk; he hadn’t. When she wanted to, and he didn’t, she’d sulk. Might sulk too much one day. He sat on the cold concrete of a wall that enclosed a small garden feature. It was five hours till Jack would pick him up, but he was wearing his suit. His shirt and tie were impeccable, and he had on the cufflinks Trace had bought him for his birthday, with his money. His shoes were polished. He would travel as an anonymous businessman. He had been to Spain, years before, done cigarettes there, had thought the place ‘leaky’ and felt his security was compromised. He had not been abroad, looking for contacts, in years. He questioned his position, let it revolve on a flywheel in his head. He could hear distant traffic but the area around the block was pedestrian. The last of the drinkers were going home; an Afro-Caribbean man came past him with a rubbish trolley and a broom, emptied a bin and wished him well. A stranger wishing Bent Horrocks ‘well’? That didn’t often happen. His photo was never in the papers. He was in a few Flying Squad files but had arrangements in place that would let him know of new investigations.

He was troubled. He didn’t share his anxieties with associates, with the lawyer he kept on retainer or his money-man, and certainly not with Jack, who carried his bags and did the administration, Angel or Trace. There was an Irishman in Silvertown, who seemed short of respect for him and had taken two waste-clearance contracts that Bent had regarded as his own. There was an Asian crowd in Peckham, flush with the rewards of a vodka scam – they were bringing in bootleg booze from Naples, sticking on brand labels and selling it on to corner shops. They had two clubs now within spitting distance of premises Bent owned, and were undercutting him. Troubling. . . . But before he went to war, last resort, he’d need to strengthen his powerbase.

The deal abroad would ensure it. But Bent didn’t know ‘abroad’. He didn’t know the people from ‘abroad’, and didn’t speak the language. What he did know was that they had cocaine, top quality, in tons. It would lift him if he did the deal, put him way above the Irish shite and the Asians. He sat on the concrete – troubled, but didn’t know another way. Jack was clear on it – Jack, who was Giacomo and whose family were in Chatham, had done the outline fixing. He had said nothing could go wrong – nothing. Bent liked to have control, was nervous when it slipped away.

‘Now we go to swim, Jago.’

‘Swim? You sure?’

‘Of course I am . . . You can swim, Jago?’

‘Yes.’

In the moonlight the beach was the colour of silver, clean and without rocks. It was broken only by two open boats, for inshore fishing, that had been pulled high beyond the tide line. Even after midnight, it was the sort of place that featured in holiday brochures. They’d have called it ‘quaint’, ‘old world’ and ‘unspoiled’. She had left the Fiat in a parking bay overlooking the beach. There was a sharp wind and he’d felt it when he stepped from the car, heaved himself upright and stretched. His back had cracked. She had said, in the car, that the town was Scilla – did he know the myth of Scylla and Charybdis? He didn’t. Off the headland of Scilla knife-edge rocks would tear the bottom out of a boat, and Charybdis was the fearsome whirlpool that could suck boats down and swallow them. Odysseus, according to Homer, had come through the strait and had had to decide whether to go near to the whirlpool or the rocks. He had gone towards Scilla, had thought he might lose a few sailors when tossed among the rocks but that was better than risking the whole crew and the boat in the whirlpool. He’d said, again, that he didn’t know the story, but it sounded like out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Jago didn’t believe that Consolata did anything by chance. He barely knew her, hadn’t seen her face in daylight, had endured long silences beside her, but felt sure of her. The story she had told him was about choices. The chance of him spinning on his heel and taking transport to the north had diminished. In five hours the first of the bank’s team would be at their desks, charging up their screens; in six the
FrauBoss
would be in her chair, and his place would be empty. A ‘die has been cast’ moment. He thought Consolata subtle and softly manipulative. She would use him as a vehicle to go where she hadn’t travelled before – it was obvious to him, and he accepted it. For now it was about mutual reliance.

Music wafted to him softly over the sounds of the sea and the whip of the wind in the awnings of the cafés behind them. Jago followed her. She kicked off her shoes. So did he. The sand had a chill and there were islands of smooth shingle that they avoided. Further down the beach, towards a castle built on a rock beyond the stranded boats, a couple lay on a rug or a towel with a radio playing, the source of the music. It didn’t break the mood of the beach. She walked him to the edge of the tide line, with its fringe of seaweed.

She said, ‘I smell and you smell. It is necessary to be clean.’

He had swilled his face with cold water in the toilets at the airport in Rome, and he had a washbag in his holdall, but that was in the little car. The darkness gave a sort of privacy. He had learned to swim at school, splashing clumsily in a public pool. Twice he had been down to an apartment in a complex between Málaga and Marbella when he was in the City, sharing it with a gang. They’d spent time in the pool, less on the beach.