No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (37 page)

Now he considered Stefano to be a threat. Headlights flared through the front windows, pierced an open door and briefly lit the table. He heard the chugging engine of the City-Van. Bernardo could not live beside a threat.

Doors slammed. The dogs bounded to the back of the kitchen, the utility area where they slept, and scratched at the outer door. His grandson had returned. Marcantonio nodded to him, kissed his grandmother, then went to the fridge for a beer. Stefano was in the doorway, calm and impassive. He might be a threat. Bernardo was alone. He doubted he had a friend in the world.

It had been a huge decision. Father Demetrio rarely shocked himself, but had done so that afternoon. He was at the funeral.

He had not been in church but was at the cemetery. For many years in the village, he had been pliant. His mind was almost made up. A road stretched ahead of him, and it was not yet too late for him to reverse back the way he had come. He stood among tall gravestones, apart from the small group of mourners. None of the dead man’s family was present. They would have stayed in the village and might have worn bright clothing to demonstrate that nothing deserved any show of grief. A son had died, a brother and husband, but not a tear would be shed in that home, and no word of covert sadness would reach the
padrino
, whose home was high on the hill. Father Demetrio had barely known the
pentito
, had baptised and christened him, had rarely heard his confession, had kept away from the man’s home when Rocco and Domenico Cancello had been convicted on his sworn evidence.

The low light threw long shadows and made the stones huge and grotesque. The cemetery was outside the town of Melito di Porto Salvo, north of the E90 highway, and the throb of lorries’ engines drowned the words that were spoken. It was a little less than an hour’s drive from the village. The man had been brought back to Calabria, but was distanced from his bloodline. Father Demetrio tested himself by his presence – he was not a fool. A retired schoolmaster was there and would have taught the turncoat, a
carabinieri
officer, who might have watched over him before he had given his testimony, two young women, who wore the T-shirts of the Addio Pizzo movement, a gravedigger and a junior priest, who had gabbled the prayers. Father Demetrio thought the priest would have experienced real fear if a camera was present to record him officiating: few volunteered to stand against the current’s flow. The mayor was present.

Father Demetrio understood. Something about the way the
padrino
had eyed him at the old woman’s lunch. Something about the old City-Van that had followed him for a time that morning, or the scooter that had trailed him the previous evening. He knew so much. It was often done in the aftermath of a substantial meal. A man slipped unseen behind the victim’s chair and hands gripped the throat. Death by strangulation: said to take four or five minutes. He suspected it. It had been a gesture of defiance to come to the cemetery; he had challenged his conscience, his courage – and his cowardice. The grave was in a corner of the cemetery, with only one bouquet. He mouthed the prayers, wished he had had the nerve to take the service himself. Father Demetrio harboured ever-present shame for having said similar obsequies over a mound in the hills.

He toyed with the decision, as yet unmade.

‘Rubbish’: that was what he called the Englishman he had met.

The Englishman was ‘useless’, ‘boastful’ and ‘boring’. He snapped through the figures. The
cosca
of Bernardo bought fifty kilos of 80 per cent pure, and paid twelve hundred dollars per kilo to the agents at the Latin-American end of the supply route. It arrived in Europe and the family must pay transportation costs before selling on to an agent in northern Italy, who paid forty-five thousand dollars per kilo for 50 per cent purity. When the cocaine was offered for sale in London, a kilo, further diluted with baking powder, would bring in ninety-five thousand dollars. The man hadn’t known where he wanted to buy: he could buy in Calabria and be responsible for all shipments onwards, or he could buy in Rotterdam, Felixstowe or Hamburg. Alternatively, he could take his chance in the port cities of Venezuela, the jungle of northern Peru or in Medellín with the cartels. He said that tomorrow Giulietta could visit the hotel in Brancaleone to find out what the man would pay and under what terms, but the money should be up front. ‘Perhaps he should stick to cigarettes,’ Marcantonio had told his grandfather. He knew the figures and the profit margins, and thought the Englishman incapable of getting his mind around the monies involved. He had come on the scene too late in life. The newspapers in Germany had recently focused on an Italian academic study. In the city of Brescia, population 200,000, it was estimated that $750,000 was spent on cocaine every day –
every day
. He had escorted his grandfather back to the bunker, had crawled after him down the concrete piping and smelt the damp.

The lights were on. His grandfather sat in his chair.

Marcantonio thought the old man might be better off in a cell at Novara or Ascoli, where his father and uncle were.
Scarface
had ended in the shoot-out because Al Pacino would not be taken. He said he would be outside for hours that evening with a shotgun and the dogs. He would be careful, he promised. He was told that a road accident would be arranged for the priest. He accepted that, but asked, ‘Why not send him away with money,
padrino
?’

Because Father Demetrio was an old man and had no use for it.

‘But you can buy anyone – a judge, a clerk, a colonel, a mayor.’

He wouldn’t want money, only to cleanse his soul.

‘Grandfather, is your own soul in need of washing?’

The boy laughed. He did not see the flash in his grandfather’s eyes, when he repeated that it would be a road accident, on a bend where there was a cliff. Marcantonio left, and the quiet closed round him. He scrabbled to find the television zapper – he needed company. He wondered who was watching his home and what they had learned . . .

Fabio said, ‘Should we have done that? Given him food?’

‘I didn’t see anyone give him anything,’ Ciccio murmured.

The screen was on. Fabio used his hand to shade the picture. He flipped between the two images. He wondered why a young man would give up life in a suit and tie and a job with a hefty salary to become what they had seen. He wondered, too, how far it would take him. The light was falling. He liked it when dusk came because then they had the chance to crawl out of the hole among the rocks, merge with the trees and stretch, drop their trousers, squat and hold the tinfoil in position. He didn’t see how they could have helped him more, other than by pressing grenades into his hand. He felt inadequate, and reckoned Ciccio did too. He seemed to see the gaunt, stubbled face, the mud on the skin and in the hair, the depth of the eyes beyond anything he could read, and the pain. For what? He cut the picture. The log on the screen showed that Marcantonio – Mike/Alpha Bravo – had returned in the vehicle driven by Stefano, Sierra Bravo, and that the message had been sent. It did not refer to the stranger who shared the hillside with them, whom they had fed and in whose interests they had jeopardised their careers. Funny old world . . . A convulsion would happen soon. Couldn’t say when or what it would be, but blood would be drawn.

‘You all right?’ Fabio asked.

‘Sure. Better than rotting in a jar.’

They had had lunch. They had been to the
carabinieri
headquarters, on Via Aschenez, had proffered the piece of paper and met those they had been drinking with the previous night. They had been rewarded with a temporary ID slip, which requested that they be granted reasonable co-operation, then had arranged to meet again.

They had seen the gaol in the rain, and the
aula bunker
where the ’Ndrangheta accused stood before judges in an escape-proof, bombproof underground courtroom so they went for a walk, in sunshine, along the sea front.

It was better, Fred had said, than coming away from Bismarck-strasse in rush-hour. He’d been told that the Dooley Terminal, HMRC section, was a living death.

In 1908, Calabria had suffered an earthquake, thirty thousand killed, and another forty thousand in Messina across the Strait. No historic buildings had survived. They watched men fishing with rods from the base of the monument to Victor Emmanuel III, had seen nothing caught, but it had been worth lingering because the views across to Sicily and smoking Etna were good.

They had visited the Roman baths, part excavated, and looked down on the uncovered Greek walls of the city, dating back eight centuries
avanti Christi
. Fred had talked of Barbary pirates raiding the city centuries later and taking men to slavery in Tunisia. The money for more digging seemed to have run out. Fred confessed that, already, he was bored with his mission, and that knee-bending rarely suited him. They should get the hell out of this city and head for where any action might be.

Fred said, matter of fact, ‘We said nobody liked him, our boy from the bank.’

Carlo said, ‘And we reckoned that didn’t matter.’

‘We might get to like him.’

‘How come?’

‘He’s out there, sitting, watching and absorbing. Everything is swimming in his mind. When he moves, he’ll make chaos.’

‘He’ll shake the tree violently, which spells . . .?’

‘Mistakes. Bad boys making ‘mistakes’.

‘I’m getting to like your drift, Fred . . . might be entertaining. Mistakes, yes, and they add to vulnerability. Not often that we get a show put on for us.’

‘It would place the boredom, Carlo, on the back burner . . .’

The oleander was in flower, the rubbish bins overflowing. The great magnolia trees gave shade and they sat under one. Fred took a penknife from his pocket, passed it to Carlo and let him perform the first act of vandalism. He gouged the shape of a heart, put an arrow through it, then cut the initials and handed back the knife. Fred scratched ‘KrimPol’ beside the arrow’s head and ‘HMRC’ by its feathers. A gesture of affection between two old stagers in the law-enforcement gig.

‘How old?’ Fred asked.

Carlo looked down the line of trees, which dwarfed a memorial to the fallen soldiers of an Italian war he knew nothing about. ‘Could be fifty years, could be a hundred. They look healthy – probably see us out.’

They reached a compromise, which neither was used to. They would go at dawn. Now they would make time for Fred to buy swimming trunks and a beach towel, and, by way of exchange, they would walk up to the Castello Aragonese, gaze at the great twin towers, and bemoan the lack of activity in restoring the rest, which had toppled in the earthquake. The Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi crossed their route. When Fred went into a shop for his swimming kit, Carlo waited outside. A girl approached him – quite pretty. She wore the usual uniform of jeans and trainers but her T-shirt bore the logo of Reggio Libera, and she thrust a leaflet into his hands. She seemed to challenge him as he glanced at it. He said, in Italian, with a grin, ‘I congratulate you, signorina, for taking on the challenge of a Sisyphean labour, fighting organised crime in its best backyard. From my experience, you’re pushing a rock up a steep hill. As soon as you get it to the top it’ll roll back down again. Good luck.’

‘What would you know?’

He chuckled. ‘Not much. Only that it’s hard to change the world.’

‘Somebody has to try. With the restrictions of non-violence, it’s difficult, but must be attempted.’ She spoke without enthusiasm or sincerity.

‘Accepted – but it’s a road of hard knocks, cuts and bruises.’

‘And you’re a policeman?’

‘Is it that obvious?’

Fred had come to his side with a plastic shopping bag.

‘And my friend is from Berlin, hoping to swim in the warm sea and—’

‘You are English and travel with a colleague who is from Berlin, yes?’

There was something droll in her eyes: a hint of the magic moment when all the boxes were ticked. A half-smile played at her mouth. Not a girl he would have followed to the gates of Hell and beyond, but he would have gone pretty close to the entrance. Too many women had flitted into and out of Carlo’s life, and most had led him a dance. Few had been as attractive as this one. But he was too bloody old for her now. She had turned away from them to give out another of her leaflets. A woman looked at it and dropped it. Carlo was paid to have a nose, to make deductions. Seemed pretty bloody obvious to him.

He crouched, picked it up for the girl and said quietly in her ear, ‘We wondered how he got there, who guided him. Did you twist his mind? He’s an innocent. He shouldn’t be there, and anyone with influence over him should get him out. It’s a bad place at a bad time. Anything you’d like to tell me?’

She gazed into his eyes, seemed to regard him as a lesser species, and ran down the street into an ice-cream parlour. A hundred metres back a young man was wearing the same T-shirt. Carlo was at his side, and asked his name – Massimo. Then he asked for his colleague’s name, and a phone number for their principled campaign. She was Consolata. He could have made a call, given a name, a location and a contact, and she’d have been in the cells within a half-hour.