No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (51 page)

The sun was at its zenith, the heat as intense as it would be that day.

Where the men were was hazy, but the light fell high on the hillside, leaving it clear and easy to watch.

Fred saw Carlo mopping his forehead with a handkerchief and there were sweat stains on the Englishman’s shirt, across his back and at the armpits. They had no hats. Most of the men had taken refuge inside the vehicles but the doors were open to allow any breeze to blew through. They stood together in the shade available from a stunted oak, which offered little cover. They were surplus to requirements but had half a day to kill. It was often like that. Fred’s superior officer, young, groomed, climbing, would have forgotten he had sent a man to Calabria, the cliff edge of the known world. If he had talked of his man’s presence on the Ionian coast he would have justified it as ‘someone else’s problem, the Italians. We’re giving them all possible support’. No great moral issue at stake.

Carlo was swaying on his feet, suffering. Fred prodded him.

‘I was reflecting, my friend, on my senior officer’s view of this affair. And you?’

‘I was about asleep on my feet. My gold commander will be with a chum on a golf course. I won’t figure among the bogies.’

‘And nothing’s happening.’

‘My experience,’ Carlo said, ‘is that when nothing
seems
to be happening, all hell is about to break loose. Remind me to tell you a few old tales that prove it. It’s confusing, sudden, chaotic and . . .’

Fred was no longer listening. The
maresciallo
was peering through his binoculars, not scanning and searching but focused and following. He slipped them towards Fred and pointed. Fred locked on the kid. Dogs barked far away, the sound they made when they’d found a scent or a target. The kid followed them, skipped between rocks, then was lost among trees that towered up behind the house. He was above the line of sheets to the right of the house. The binoculars were taken from him. He asked the
maresciallo
what his orders were. His response: to observe, monitor and have a presence, no more, until dusk. In the evening there would be a farewell gathering.

‘Confusing, sudden and chaotic’: when was it ever different? Where was their boy? Why was he there? When would he appear? The mood had changed, as if the sun had cooled. The lenses watched the hillside.

She drove well and was calm. The priest led and she followed on the Reggio road, past the Montalto turning, and past the place they called Serro Juncari. Her father liked to talk about it. He had not been there but her grandfather had. A great meeting of important men held in secret one misty morning on a high plateau, hidden from view by wild pine trees. An informer had betrayed them:
carabinieri
had crept close and attempted a mass arrest. Her grandfather had escaped but many had not. Those captured had spent a short time in the San Pietro gaol in Reggio. The combination of political influence, judicial complicity and well-targeted envelopes had ensured that life soon, in the mountains, regained normality. The role of the informer had hurt the families, the whispers of the
soffiato
; different from a
pentito
, more dangerous. The latter ended up in a police cell, then called for a prosecutor and appeared in court. The damage could be contained. The
soffiato
was the murmur in the wind, unknown and unsuspected, probably liked and certainly trusted. The leeching of information went on over months and even years; the details of arrests were muddied at the Palace of Justice and the role of the informer was hidden. When her father had used the word –
soffiato
– he had spat.

Her father thought that Father Demetrio, booked to conduct the funeral of Marcantonio the next day, might be about to betray the family. Good enough for her. She trailed the priest towards Reggio, staying two or three vehicles back. She had lost any opportunity to drive him off the road. It was against her leg, hidden from view.

If the Beretta was needed, and the chance came, she was experienced in its use.

Shaken, but more determined, Father Demetrio crossed a high point and could see the city below. A group of men and women were spread out close to the road, standing behind telescopes and tripods. He identified them as a group of the foreign birdwatchers who came to Reggio to monitor migrating species. They straggled along ground left rough after road widening, and would have been half suffocated by vehicle fumes. He had read about them in a newspaper: they complained persistently about the old sport of shooting as practised in Calabria. Enough. Calabrians did not need foreigners to dictate their behaviour. It should be done from within. The future was in the hands of persons such as himself, and conscience tore at him, leading him towards his ultimate destination that day. He saw the city and the brilliant blue of the sea, the hazy outline of Sicily and the massive shape of Etna, capped with a wisp of thick cloud. He was looking for the piazza that lay in front of the Duomo, his destination.

He left the bird watchers behind. The road dropped ahead of him. His hands shook and his leg muscles were wire tight. He glanced into the rear-view mirror several times but he didn’t see the black vehicle again.

He drove down the steep, winding hill and accepted that his life had changed.

Jago heard the dogs before he saw them.

A sharp memory: a weekend of executive bonding in the Herefordshire countryside, on the edge of the Welsh Marches, when he had been slogging in the City. There had been hiking, zip-wire riding, paint-ball fighting and quad-bike racing. They’d been trying to cross the river with a ball of string and ten different egotists offering opinions when, out of the mist, on a Saturday morning, the hunt had cantered by. It jogged him now. Not the riders in fancy dress, or the big horses that probably lived better than their grooms, but the baying of hounds on a scent. At first he hadn’t seen them, but he’d heard the cry. On a dark moonless night, the sound would have terrified him. Now, though, it was bright sunshine and the cries of the dogs rang in the air, bouncing off the rock walls.

It was not for him – Jago had that comfort. The dogs were headed, guided by whistles and calls, along a line that ran higher than where Jago was.

The kid slipped into view, then out of it, but took secondary place. The dogs held him. They did not race ahead and have to be called back. They worked at a steady pace, quartering the ground, prancing on rocks and diving into caves. The kid held them with his commands. Jago didn’t know what or who they were tracking, but it was a form of sport. He assumed that the dogs had a line on the men who had fed him, but they’d have firearms and probably dog repellent – they’d be equipped to protect themselves. The dogs were almost as much a part of the family as any of the humans. He knew what their teeth could do because they had taken apart the wolf’s body.

The kid directed them, and they must have been close to where he sent them. They seemed to have caught his mood because their cries were sharper. Then, at a final command, the noise was cut. Jago could see the outline of their ribcages, their spines, their flattened ears. The three dogs advanced in silence, their bellies hugging the ground. He thought they were closing on their target. He waited to hear shots fired.

The yard beyond the kitchen remained empty and the solitary chair threw a longer shadow. Again he could hear the radio playing inside. The kid went slower and more carefully. Jago thought they were close to the target but far above him.

She could no longer see the dogs.

It was a moment of fear, unique to Consolata.

Quiet cloaked the trees. She had not identified where the dogs were or the kid who was with them. She had frozen. She didn’t know where to go, what to do, where to turn.

She looked around her, saw and heard nothing. She had come across the cleft between two great boulders. It was obvious that he had been there. She had found his rubbish and stayed too long. She thought of how he had been with her at the rendezvous, when he had taken the food but not her. The ground was squashed and she had found the poorly hidden rubbish – how had he come by food issued to the Italian military?

Consolata, looking down onto the back of the house, gave Jago credit for having found a perfect vantage point. The panorama offered a clear view of the back door. She saw a trellis, with ripe grapes hanging from it, a washing line, with sheets, towels and pillow cases pegged to it. She saw a chair, and a place where the yard had been scrubbed. She strained to hear. She was aware only of a radio playing light music. The silence unnerved her. The peace, she knew, was not real.

At the squat, as a campaigner, she was thought of as determined and without fear. Those traits – she knew – unsettled some. She should have had a lover in the squat, but did not. Because she had no lover, Consolata had come in search of one. She had made her commitment: if she found him, she would drive him off the mountain and take him to Scilla. She would let the darkness fall and the moon rise, then lead him to the beach and would brook no argument. She hadn’t found him.

The shadows were longer now, and dusk would come fast. She turned to look away from the house and wondered if he had spent his entire time in this place, where he was at the moment and what he was doing. Then she looked for a way to haul herself clear of the plateau and start back.

She cursed him, not aloud, and despised herself for following him. It had been easy to come down, find this ledge, sliding on the backside of her jeans the last two metres, but was harder to pull herself up. She had a grip with one trainer and a hold with one hand, fingers gripping a smooth rock surface, but her foot slid away and she lurched back. She tried again, but her fingers couldn’t take the strain and, once more, she toppled back, and swore, then went at it yet again.

She was up off the ledge and had a good grip with foot and fingers when the dogs came. Not big ones, not the dogs the police used or the military. There had been dogs of that build, that aggression, round the bigger rubbish dumps in Archi. They would fight each other for food scraps, but the worst ferocity would be directed at anyone foolish enough to interfere with them. They had her legs and she lost the foothold, kicked to get them clear of her and fell over the edge.

The dogs went with her. Two leaped after her and one clung by its teeth to her jeans and held tight. She was shouting, near terror, and the dogs were snarling. She rolled and cannoned off a tree, then bounced into a rock face. She was dazed now, unable to help herself, and another dog had its teeth on her arm. The anorak was ripping. The kid was above her, crabbing sideways, sure-footed, managing the ground with ease. It was a snapshot moment, as if a camera had captured it: the coldness in the face, the absence of excitement, the lack of emotion. He was a teenager and had smooth cheeks. His eyes never left her and showed no pleasure at her fate but no sympathy either. Dead eyes. She rolled further, and the ground came up fast to meet her. She hit a chair on the slabs of the patio.

An old woman had come out with a broom, which she waved at the dogs. They backed off. Consolata saw a face that was lined with age and the skin sagging, and knew she was confronting the mamma of the family. First a cackle, then the face set. Aspromonte granite.

The old woman, ankle to throat in black, called, ‘We have a little bitch, all bones, a little spy, watching us.’

They had a fine view of the yard, and the kitchen door.

Women spilled out of it. They seemed uniformed in black, the ‘mourning squad’, and came armed. Some were hideously skeletal, others grotesquely obese. They would have been roused from their vigil over the dead boy by the snarling of the dogs and the old woman’s shout. From the kitchen, some had brought knives and one had a saucepan. Another brandished a meat cleaver, and the last gripped the handle of a lump hammer.

‘Report or not?’

Fabio hissed, ‘I have never been unprofessional and—’

The dogs were outside the circle of women, sniffing the backs of legs. The kid had come down from the rocks and had the wisdom to stay back. The low sunlight caught the steel of the knives, the pan, the cleaver and the rim of the hammer head. Fabio thought he might be sick. He could no longer see her. She was blocked by the women’s backs. They bent. He heard no scream, and the dogs were quiet. The kid was at the edge of the yard and did nothing.

‘Do we shoot?’ Fabio asked.

A hoarse answer from Ciccio: ‘We shoot only to preserve life, our lives or a victim’s. We do not shoot to warn. If we shoot it is to kill. Do you need me to read you the regulations? We do not do warning shots. Ever.’

‘Or shout?’

‘We’re not “intervention”, we’re “surveillance”. We watch, we note.’

‘She was your girl. You knew her . . .’ Fabio let it tail off. It was a cheap shot. He couldn’t see her. He hadn’t met her. Ciccio had not brought her on a foursome outing for a meal, a drink, a movie. He had kept her to himself. It was difficult to work out what the women were doing. They were crouched now, but he didn’t think the knives had been used, while the hammer and the saucepan were not raised high to strike. A card came up in a wizened hand. It was encased in cellophane, and would have been hung around Consolata’s neck. Fabio had his pistol in one hand and a pepper spray in the other, but Ciccio held the binoculars. It was an ID card. It was passed among the women. Ciccio mouthed that it was the card for a member of the Addio Pizzo or the Reggio Libera. Gales of coarse laughter rose to them.