No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (41 page)

Ciccio had said quietly, ‘If we get the old goat, we get him. If we don’t then I won’t cry myself to sleep. I’ll forget him and move on.’

The quiet lulled them. If nothing developed there would be just one more day. Their rubbish, kit and bedding would come out with them, and it would be as if they hadn’t lived in the cave. The rats would have free rein. Both were awake, but not alert.

The empty jar was close to Fabio’s hand, with the screw-on lid perforated for air circulation. When morning came, and the sun settled on the stone ledge in front of them, there was a good chance that a scorpion fly would materialise, a beautiful creature that Fabio had come to respect. Its forward feelers were as long as its body, and its legs were thin as hair; the wings were long and tucked back when it alighted, and at the base of the body the tail was honey-coloured and pointed at the tip from which its name came. Sad to see it trapped in the jar.

They were a peculiar breed, those who mounted watch on others, observing a target’s movements, and likely to be damned. He didn’t know if they had the stomach to catch more insects before time was called on Operation Scorpion Fly.

When the light came it was Ciccio’s turn to do breakfast. There was stillness in front of them, quiet, a sort of peace.

The slight tide of the Mediterranean pulled back. Bentley Horrocks walked on wet sand. The wind whipped his face. He felt cleansed. There was enough light for him to see the ripples, the water was cold on his feet and the sand clung to his skin. He didn’t do holidays. He’d send Trace and her sister away together, and Angel could take warm-weather breaks with the kids – they did the South of France or yacht cruises among the Croatian islands. He’d go to Margate to see his mother, no further, and he’d work, the phone – a different one every other day – latched to his ear, deals done, scores settled.

He felt good, and confident enough to let his anger surge.

They had sent a boy, showing no respect for Bent Horrocks. It would be different today, later this morning, Humphrey, the lawyer, had promised. The big man, the boss. He rehearsed them, the lines in his head. Peasants, weren’t they? They had the trade stitched up, the stuff coming on the long sea route from South America, but they were still peasants. He’d take no shit from them. He’d have guarantees of supply dates, and there’d be no payment until delivery reached him. He could have talked through the tactics with Jack, but he was half Italian – might have gone native and forgotten where his lifestyle came from. The lawyer had definitely gone native, and was in their pockets. He had not sought advice, didn’t need it. He was content . . .

God, Mum, in the apartment he had bought her at Margate, looking out on Marine Terrace and the beach, would have cackled if she’d seen him with his trousers rolled to the knee and walking in the darkness in the sea. She would have howled with laughter.

The stress of London, of running territory in Peckham, Rotherhithe and Deptford, keeping back the shites who snapped at his ankles, was behind him. He’d walk a bit further before he turned back.

He’d seen the driver leave, with Giulietta, and the kid depart on his scooter. He’d heard the cockerel crow. He hadn’t seen the dogs, or Marcantonio, while the kitchen light had been on. It still lit the yard.

He made a mental checklist. Normally he would have made sure his shoes were clean, his tie straight, his jacket not too creased, that his laptop and BlackBerry were charged and the work for his next appointment was loaded, then glanced through his schedule.

Today the checklist was short: a tyre iron, a penknife, the stick and the pocket torch, which he could use only on the track and behind the sheets. He did not know if, from the hiding place, he would hear cries for help when the cable was cut. He didn’t know where the air vent was, but there had to be one. There was so much he didn’t know.

A last pause and a last listen. He heard the wind in the leaves, and the wolf below him. He had kept vigil with the animal through the night. Together they had endured.

Jago stepped forward, committed. His legs were stiff and his movements clumsy. The night was hard around him. The men behind and above might have seen him from their eyrie. He knelt, swung his legs into the void and scrabbled for a grip. His lead foot found a secure stone, and he was away from the security of the cleft between two great boulders.

He went down. Ledges and cracks in stone to hold his weight, the stick in his hand to guide him. He could make out the sheets that hung on the line, screening the path – he needed the place where the third sheet was against the fourth. He would have been close to the wolf but didn’t hear it. He went lower. He saw a film in his head, the one that had been screened every Christmas when he was a kid, and heard the great lines. A man jumped off a ten-storey building, and as he’d gone down on each floor people had heard him say, ‘So far so good. So far, so good.’ About right. Another line, same movie: a man had stripped off and jumped into a mass of cacti and was asked why he’d done it. ‘It seemed a good idea at the time.’ A stone slid from under him, bounced, rolled away. Then was still.

The eruption was total. The crows and the pigeons thrashed at leaves and branches and rose, screaming, into the darkness.

The torch came on – but the boy had been in the kitchen. The torch had a strong narrow beam and raked over the hillside. Jago went down on his knees, then his stomach, and tried to burrow but was on unforgiving rock.

14

Every bird rose in flight. The noise split the darkness. If there had been earth under him, Jago would have scraped at it with his fingernails. Impossible. He tried to snuggle lower, but had to see what happened in front of him. The torch was powerful, had a sharp-edged beam.

It would be Marcantonio with the torch. Jago realised he’d been duped. He had thought himself intelligent, street-wise and had believed that the boy’s patience was exhausted. Wrong. At the bank, if he had made a mistake, he would expect to be hauled before a mini Star Chamber – Wilhelmina and two grey-faced men – and made to understand that the bank had to put right the loss to a client. A million, a thousand or a hundred euros, whatever the sum the gravity of the error was emphasised. No one was here to watch over him. He thought the men in the camouflage suits, above and behind him – who had his photograph – would be cursing him, with good reason: the torch beam threatened them, as well as Jago.

It had started high in the trees where the crows and pigeons had been, but now raked over the leaves, branches and rock faces. It seemed to pry into the little crannies where there was shadow and wipe away darkness. It moved steadily, avoided nothing, paused where something was unclear, then moved again.

The dogs screamed. Jago had had his head down and dared to lift his face fractionally to peer below him. The scream became a howl. The torch beam would have found the wolf, enough to make the eyes light up, two spots of gold. The dogs were barking, furious but not yet brave enough to scamper from the safety of Marcantonio. The light came back.

He thought the wolf did not have the strength to leap off the rock where it had been through the night. It would stay and fight for the final moments of its life. The beam, on full power, was locked on it. Jago could see part of its head – he thought its mouth was open, teeth showing. It was crouched. If it had not been for the injury, Jago thought, the wolf would have turned tail, slipped from rock to stone, jumped and manoeuvred, scurried, found cover and been gone in the darkness. But it was injured.

The beam lit it.

Then the light shook, was readjusted. The three dogs were flooded with light and danced at Marcantonio’s feet, rearing on their back legs and howling. If the wolf responded with growls or snarls, it did so too softly for Jago to hear. He saw why the beam meandered. It was full on Marcantonio’s face, then on his arm, which held the shotgun. The boy aimed the weapon, the shortened barrels were resting on his left arm. His left hand held the torch, which wobbled and wavered, searching for the wolf. Jago almost shouted, but the words stuck in his throat, a jumble about the beast getting clear, using these moments to find a refuge. He held his silence because that was survival.

It was found.

The wolf had risen half up and Jago saw the wound, dark-rimmed, pink at the heart.

The barrel was up. The light was steady. The shadow thrown by the wolf’s head was still. First, the flash. Then the puff of the fumes from the barrel, and the crash of the shot. It toppled.

The range was too great. Not a killing shot. The wolf would have been hit by a spray of pellets. The beam leaped off the animal, climbed and seemed to wash the rim of the rock that was in front of Jago’s head. He might have been seen and might not and—
The beam found the beast.

Jago thought the second shot, from the other barrel, was about to be fired. He was in darkness again. He supposed it would be like the death of a friend. He had no friends who had died. His mother was estranged from her parents, and he didn’t know if they were alive or dead. The wife of a director in the City had died in hospital. No one had met her, but her husband received notes of sympathy from his colleagues. He felt for the wolf, and tears welled. He had the tyre wrench in his fist, tightly held. The wolf was upright. There was blood on its face and chest. Jago thought the animal was blinded. It seemed not to know what to do, where to go. It went forward, seemed to grope with its front paws, and fell. Jago heard stones and rocks spiral down with it.

It came to rest.

Still the dogs lacked courage. It was a dozen paces in front of them. They circled it. It seemed barely to have the strength to turn its head to face them. They barked at it. Marcantonio came close, the shotgun aimed, wary . . .

An English class: a young teacher, fresh from training college, had made them read from Tennyson, ‘The Revenge’. An Elizabethan galleon had happened across a Spanish fleet, had been overwhelmed by cannon fire and was surrounded, gunpowder exhausted, most of the crew dead or maimed. Jago remembered a line of a survivor, who sees the Spanish circling them: ‘But they dared not touch us again, for they feared we still could sting.’ Neither the dogs nor Marcantonio went close to the wolf. Jago stood up to his full height.

He had enough blow-back from the torch to see Marcantonio.

It was a target. At the school, discuses had been thrown, hammers and javelins lobbed. He had thrown stones on the beach when his mother had taken him to Southend or Clacton. Now he hurled the tyre iron. It would have been the moment at which Marcantonio’s finger left the trigger guard for a close-range shot.

He saw it arc away, watched its flight and saw it strike.

There was an explosion. The light failed. The dogs stopped barking. The tyre iron had hit the boy, who had dropped the torch and pressed on the trigger. The second barrel had fired.

A light went on inside the ground floor.

Then another, brighter. The kitchen door opened. Enough light now spilled out for Jago to see what he had done. He gaped. Marcantonio was on his side, blood pooling from the upper part of his body – his head or his throat. The shotgun was still in his hand.

Jago stood to his full height, and the first warmth of the new day was on his face.

‘Mamma’s within five metres of him – barefoot and in her dressing-gown,’ Fabio murmured.

Ciccio pressed the keys and they had a live connection. The night intensifier had burned out. Sufficient light from the house came through the window and the kitchen door. They had hesitated for a moment, then snatched a link to an operations room in the basement of a barracks on the outskirts of Reggio Calabria. There was never pandemonium when a link came into a communications area, which was as quiet and unemotional as air-traffic control, but a senior man would now be reading over a shoulder. He’d have a phone at his ear and would be warning his own superiors.

‘The indications are that Marcantonio, grandson, has a self-inflicted wound, seemingly fatal. A confused run-up. He’d sat out through most of the night, semi-concealed with a sawn-off shotgun. A disturbance on the hill between his position and ours alerted him. Birds taking off. A flashlight identified a wolf – correct, a wolf. He fired one barrel at it, at maximum range. The wolf went down, fell, landed by Marcantonio – sorry, that’s Mike/ Alpha Charlie, and—’

‘I already have that.’

‘It’s getting complicated. Just listen. Don’t send yet. Something hit him. He dropped the flashlight and the weapon fired. I don’t know what hit him, but there’s an object near to his left foot – a spanner, wrench, iron bar. How did that get to hit him? You hearing me?’

‘Sure.’

‘It isn’t the beach at Tropea here and it isn’t Sunday afternoon. Few people could have thrown a piece of metal at him. Only one person I know of.’

‘Just one.’

‘I don’t send that?’

‘If you do, you’ll open the can, shake out the worms and they’ll crawl every-fucking-where. Keep going.’

Fabio did so. ‘Mamma reacts – that is, Mike/Charlie reacts. She kneels. It’s like the old movies, the Mafia woman, the street, the corpse, the blood. You didn’t send that?’

‘I already did.’

‘They’ll eat my balls . . . No, she’s up. I tell you the wolf moved. She goes to it – fucking hell! She’s kicked its head. Barefoot. That was one hell of a kick, maybe broke its neck. She’s set the dogs on it – God, I could throw up. She’s gone inside. The dogs are fighting over it. She’s back, carrying a chair. Now she’s sitting beside the body of her grandson. What can I say?’