No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (30 page)

But for that pain, Jago might have caught his vest. It floated, and the wind took it across to where the hillside fell away. It cleared some scrub and snagged on a branch, waving like a flag.

Jago sagged. He could have cried. He was no longer a part of that family.

They were in a bed-and-breakfast because the German embassy in Rome had not thought it appropriate to book them into a hotel. The place was three streets back from the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, no view from either room, but the showers were hot.

They had come back to the address and checked in. They had left a trail of rivulets from the front door to the reception table, made lakes under their feet while they checked in, then splashed towards the stairs. That had been where Carlo had declared himself. He’d said, ‘Fred, I want you to know I’m a low achiever, a plodder. That’s the nature of my working life.’

The German had answered, ‘I am no different. Our word is
Arbeitstier
. I do what I can, give my best, but have not yet changed the world. My best is probably poor. I am beyond middle age, almost a veteran, and I am not considered suitable for promotion.’

A sodden hug at the top of the stairs and they had gone to their rooms. Carlo assumed that a pile of clothing lay abandoned on Fred’s floor. The shower warmed him – gave him hope for the future. But the knock on the door was peremptory, the sort that cops or Customs delivered. He’d done it himself. There was a towel round his waist when he opened the door, and he’d dripped more water across the floor from the bathroom.

Carlo had said, ‘A “plodder” is an honourable rank, but seldom wins a medal. I think we oil the cogs.’

Fred had replied, ‘The crowds don’t cheer when an
Arbeitstier
goes by, but we have a part to play.’

Three
carabinieri
stood in the doorway: impeccable uniforms, laundered white shirts, neatly knotted ties. One’s fists were clenched, all had set jaws, and no respect in their eyes. Carlo was not sure whether the tuck he’d done with the towel would hold, and whether he’d suffer worse embarrassment. The next door was open too: Fred’s head poked out. There was a face at the back, the last of the three. He might have been an older man, with three-day designer stubble. The uniform looked inappropriate on him. His face lightened. The grin cracked it open. Laughter rang out. ‘Hey, it’s Carlo!’

‘Fuck me, Tano! Top man.’

The guy’s arms wrapped around him. The towel might have slipped but it didn’t seem to matter. The
carabinieri
hadn’t been given their names, but knew where they were staying. They had come to deliver an ultimatum from the prosecutor: the Palace of Justice at eight in the morning. An old association was rekindled, and kisses were exchanged. Then Fred was pulled in, and the other two in their uniforms. Fred said whom he had worked with after Duisburg. No one talked shop, and nothing was said about the missing Jago Browne. There was chatter about promotion and retirement, marriages and mistresses, who had moved away, who was disgraced, and a time was fixed for a meeting in the Ciroma Bar when the uniforms would have been ditched for jeans and T-shirts.

A grimace, and Tano, the
maresciallo
with the build of a veteran boxer said, ‘But I could weep for the circumstances that bring you back to us, Carlo. Your fugitive may speed the professional death of a valued law enforcer – but that’s for tomorrow. Tonight is old times.’

They were gone. He clutched the towel and felt a little better.

Fred smiled, wintry. ‘Friendship is good but never helped put on handcuffs. A girl’s face was cut, there was extortion. I was as unprofessional as I’ve ever been. I, too, want to hurt that family. We are not here for a vacation, a circus or nostalgia.’

‘A few beers, and whatever we can manage, that’s all we can hope for. Why they sent us.’

‘We are here to cringe, Carlo, because of Jago Browne. They will piss on the
Arbeitstier
and the plodder.’

They closed their doors, went to dress.

The bet had been on two safe certainties. Marcantonio had watched the transfer from the fishing boat in the port of Villa San Giovanni.

It wasn’t unusual for the boat to have been out in poor weather because swordfish was a delicacy and paid better in the market than anything else dragged out of the strait. Also, the fishermen were exceptional sailors – and these were difficult financial times: work must be done. The boat had brought in two fifty-kilo packs of the highest quality cocaine, the purest – the profit margin for the family would be at least ten times what they had paid for it. It had been hidden in the space above the rudder-shaft housing before the container vessel had left Venezuelan waters. North of the strait, a crew member had checked the flotation belts and that the electronics on the packages were armed, then tipped them into the sea at a point registered by his GPS gear. The fishermen had caught no swordfish but the cargo they brought back was worth infinitely more.

Marcantonio had been at the back of the quay when the two parcels were lifted ashore, Stefano alongside him. Rigging rattled sharply around them. It would have been a hard night at sea – the gusts were fierce, channelled up the strait. Neither the fishermen nor the men who had met them spoke to him. They were freelancers, available for hire. His own family took charge of moving the cocaine, wrapped in protective canvas, with water-resistant paper underneath. Heavy adhesive strips held the packages together. It was good that he should be seen, but he would not interfere: he had to keep a firewall, if possible, between himself and those who handled the product. That he was there showed he would soon be a major player. The craft bounced against the quay, its rigging rattling. There would have been officials on duty in the port offices but they were looked after when a consignment came ashore.

They had driven north.

Now they were stopped on a side-road, south of Rosarno, due east of Gioia Tauro and a kilometre beyond the few lights of Rizziconi. The road ran straight and headlights could be seen from hundreds of metres in either direction. Two Ford vans waited and men talked quietly, smoking hard. There was occasional muffled laughter.

When the first lights appeared there was a simultaneous radio message, a number of bleeps. The backs of the vans were opened, and the drivers readied the engines. There would be two more packages, each weighing in at fifty kilos. They had been among the container ship’s cargo when it docked that evening. The men who controlled the docks could decide in which order containers were taken off by the cranes. Others, who had duplicate seals for the container locks, could open them and put the bags holding the product inside a ‘clean’ container then replace the seal. The main exporter did not know that they were being used as a mule. Dock workers at the supposedly secure complex at Gioia Tauro, could break the duplicate seal, take out the bags and replace the seal with another. A Customs check would show an unbroken seal and they would have no interest in searching the container, a slow, laborious, man-intensive job, even with dogs. The bags would have gone into the boot of a worker’s car and be driven out when he came off shift. Now that car arrived, scraped and muddy after the storm. As was usual, the affluence was hidden.

A man came up to Marcantonio and shook his hand, kissed his cheeks, then ducked his head in respect. The packages were stowed, and the vans’ doors closed. The car left, the vans followed. More switches would follow north of Naples, and then beyond Milan. The family had facilitated a sale to a dealer in Hamburg, another in Cologne, and a third package would be split for cutting and degrading, for sale on the streets of Scandinavian cities. The fourth would be shipped across southern France to northern Spain, then onwards to markets in Barcelona, Santander and Bilbao. Marcantonio did not have to be there, but it was further indication that he would soon be a true Man of Honour. He had felt the excitement and the tension on the quay and at the roadside. He felt fulfilled. Berlin was so dull.

He knew the market held up well in difficult times. It was not so true of Berlin but he had read there of an analysis of sewage in Milan, Naples and Rome: cocaine sold well and the profits they enjoyed now seemed guaranteed for the future.

Stefano would drive him home in the City-Van.

Consolata made a list: apples, milk, water, ham, bread, cheese and energy bars. That was the first. The second should have contained items such as trainers and waterproofs – but she hadn’t enough money. She was loath to borrow or steal from her mother, and wasn’t prepared to go back to the squat and demand a float from expenses, so, it remained empty. She could afford to buy some of the food but she’d get the rest from her mother.

She was at her parents’ home. They had gone to bed, and their car was in the lock-up at the back. She had the foldaway bed in the room that had once been hers and was now her mother’s workroom – she should not have had to take in sewing. A guest at the hotel had a jacket that had shed a button: Consolata’s mother would take it home, return it the next day, and a little more cash would slip into her purse. If the business had not been stolen she would have worked in the shop, and Consolata’s father would not have had to drive a delivery truck in Sicily.

She had thought of Jago during the night. He was rarely out of her mind. He would have been cold and drenched. The certainty would have oozed out of him. She would go back. It was important that she kept her word. The radio news said nothing about ’Ndrangheta but was filled with stories of floods, landslips, closed roads and power cuts. He might be on the road. She had imagined him struggling along, shoes waterlogged, no cars stopping on such a night. She had no idea whether her journey, after daybreak, would be wasted. She might see him at the rendezvous or on the road, if his resolve had cracked – perhaps even where she was now: Consolata had his rucksack. She did not know how he would have survived the storm.

Consolata had thought she understood the naïve Englishman who had come to Reggio and whom she had accosted. She had searched his rucksack, expecting to learn more about him. He had not touched her on the beach and had not looked back when they’d arrived at the drop-off point, just stared through her. The rucksack had told her nothing. It held the bare necessities – no book, pictures or music. Spare underwear, socks, another shirt, and a pair of trousers. Consolata could not have said what she’d hoped to find in the bag, but she had looked for a degree of meaning and found nothing.

She was annoyed that he confused her. But what he achieved would be on the radio, and she would feel a private pride. She wouldn’t share it.

‘I sit around all day, half the night, watch the rain falling . . . and wait. What sort of message am I supposed to get from that?’

‘Different people from us, Bent, without our sense of timekeeping,’ the lawyer, Humphrey, soothed him. ‘Not an easy place to do business, but the rewards . . .’

‘Do they know who I am? Answer me.’

‘I’ve learned – the hard way – that it’s best to relax and go with the flow. Always best, Bent, to keep calm.’

‘I might as well go home.’

Jack had been down to Torbay, in south Devon, when Humphrey had last slipped over for a few days with his elderly father, using the Brittany Ferries route from Spain to Plymouth. Humphrey had not enthused at the prospect of Bentley Horrocks making the journey. Jack had insisted. ‘He’s a big man who’s getting bigger.’

Humphrey had grimaced. ‘They’re picky about who they do business with. They’re not just thugs, Jack. They’re thugs
and
businessmen.’

They had been in a working men’s club and Humphrey had been moaning about the absence in Calabria of English beer, as they’d talked in a corner – no way Crime Squad detectives would have had a wire in there.

Jack had said, ‘He’s got young dogs snapping at his heels, and he’s static at the moment, needs to move into a bigger league. Big fish in a puddle. You can fix it.’ Most of that day, Jack had wished that the old solicitor – good at what he did and always close to the wind – had turned him down. He hadn’t. Now they were in the crap hotel in Brancaleone and a whole day had gone by with barely a view of the beach. He had tried to set some ground rules and top of the list was keeping the mobiles switched off, all six that they had brought with them.

‘Sorry and all that, Bent, but walking out won’t help. Cutting off your nose to spite your face. I can’t—’

‘Tell me what you
can
do.’

‘—hurry these people up. They’re the major players in the world. They have people knocking on the door most days. You have to be patient.’

Another shrug. Jack wondered what they could do to kill time. The food here wasn’t great, there was a noisy party going on in the dining room and the pool had been drained. The shops were long closed, and they couldn’t even use the phones. There was no Scrabble and he doubted Bent could play chess. Jack thought it interesting that Humphrey, who’d licked arses in London till his tongue was raw, had tried to pacify Bent, stop him pacing and jabbing his finger. He’d stood up for himself. Jack understood: Humphrey now ran with serious players and did little jobs for them. He fed off the crumbs from their table – while Bentley Horrocks was at the level of ‘Take it or leave it’.

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying they know you’re here, and they’ll come when they’re ready.’