No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (52 page)

Fabio said, ‘The camera! Use the camera.’

‘Can’t.’

‘Use the camera! Record it!’

A hesitation. ‘It’s packed. It’s in the fucking case. Lenses are off. Everything stowed.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘Fuck you, Fabio. You saw me pack it. We agreed. We were due to go – we had nothing to report, nothing to see. It was over, finished.’

Two good friends had fallen out. That was new in their relationship. It had damaged mutual fondness and respect, which might not be retrieved. They didn’t shoot, shout or use the camera. The women were bent over the girl.

He could have intervened. Jago was close enough to use his fingers to root a stone from the ground – which wasn’t hard after the rain – and hurl it at the bent backs of the women. Guaranteed a hit. They were, he thought, a colony of ants boiling over the girl: he couldn’t see what they were doing. Had he thrown a stone, hit someone and caused her to squeal, the ants would have exploded in all directions, but Jago wouldn’t do it.

If he deflected their attention from Consolata in any way, he would kiss goodbye to any chance he might have of reaching the cable. He would do nothing. He had only seen the cable from a distance but he could almost feel the smooth plastic that coated it. He was near enough to the washing line to see the different colours of the plastic pegs and distinguish the simple pattern on the sheets, autumn leaves on one and faded full-bloom roses on an other. Where they hung together, hiding the track, he would unearth the cable at the join. He would not give up the chance. It would come only once.

He barely moved, only the flicker of an eyelash. His heartbeat and breathing were regular. He could see what they were doing to her. There were many stones he could have used – they had fallen down long slopes, dislodged by heavy rain.

When he had sat on the bench, fresh off the train, and her poster had blown out of the overfilled waste-bin to snag against him, he had said to her, ‘I think I know what winning is against them. I did it yesterday. It was only small but I won.’ She had stopped and had asked him what ‘winning’ was. She had never managed it. He would win when he broke the cable, trapped the
padrino
in darkness and frightened him. The child chained in the cave would have been terrified, and the old man would be.

The knives were on the ground, with the saucepan, the cleaver and the hammer. The kid collected them, then was waved away by a gaunt, scrawny arm. Women’s work, not for the kid to see. Jago was the witness. The laughter came more often, guttural. Sometimes shoulders shook because this was their joke. He couldn’t see her but knew what they were doing. The kid was at the kitchen door, watching unnoticed. The clothing came off, to be flung over shoulders. An anorak, jeans, trainers, and the two T-shirts – everything she had offered to take off for him. The women broke apart.

She lay huddled in the foetal self-preservation posture. All that she wore was the ID card in its plastic holder, hung from her neck on its lanyard. He had seen it on the beach. They pulled her up. The sun, low-slanted, caught her skin. She was not given her clothes, which were left at the kid’s feet, close to the door. They marched her round the side of the house. He thought her beaten, but was wrong.

She flailed with her arms and her hair flew, fighting free of the hands clawing at her and yelled to the skies, in his language: ‘Jago, where are you? Jago, I need—’

A moment of defiance, which was gone as fast as it had come. The hands had her arms and one pulled at her hair, shaking her head hard.

They walked her to the side of the house, up past that wall and out to the front, then took her across the gravel, where the City-Van was usually parked. She would have walked over sharp stones but she no longer resisted. They took her as far as the gates that led onto the track. In the distance, ahead of her, was the block where the village men were and beyond them the
carabinieri
vehicles.

She was pushed, dismissed, and began the long walk.

Jago’s target was the cable. He had not been compromised.

Ciccio said, ‘We didn’t have to shoot. Her life wasn’t at risk.’

‘Good-looking, all of her.’

Ciccio hit Fabio. With a clenched fist.

Stefano was a humble man, ran errands, said what he was told to say and played his part well. He had no language other than the dialect peculiar to the Ionian coast of the Aspromonte. The lawyer who lived in the near-deserted coastal development up the beach from Brancaleone, Humphrey, was the go-between. He could not have faulted Stefano, even to the way the man held his cap across his stomach, in counterfeit respect, and realised the seriousness of his own situation. Stefano had told him, and he had understood the implications, that two foreign policemen had been seen talking with Horrocks. He and a member of the family had witnessed it. Humphrey should be careful about the company he kept, whom he took money from. He had shivered and protested that he knew nothing of such a security breach. He hoped fervently that he was believed. He explained the situation to Horrocks and tried to smile.

‘This chap is going to drive you to the meeting. You’ll meet the top man – that’s out of my league and I’m not invited. They’re in mourning because of the death of the boy who came to see you, so they’re making a big gesture by seeing you. A mark of respect, you might say. Jack will stay with me but you’ll be fine. It’s the big league, Bent, top-table stuff.’

Humphrey did his best. Bentley Horrocks was vain, not really a man of the world. The lawyer thought Stefano played it well. A smile and a wink, they said, was best when handling a man who had been condemned but was ignorant of it. He remembered seeing the two men with Bent outside the hotel – he had been in the lobby. Bent hadn’t answered when Humphrey had asked who they were. Silly boy for being seen with them, and a dangerous boy for Humphrey to know too well.

Jack said, ‘Where you deserve to be, Bent, top table and big league. Brilliant.’

Humphrey drove a big car, and assumed Bent had a Beemer or a Merc in London, perhaps even a Bentley
cabriolet
, so it had been a surprise for him to be ushered into the passenger seat of a Fiat mass-market, seen-better-days, City-Van. He went off, good as gold. They watched him driven round the corner and out of sight. He saw that Jack – no fool, Giacomo, a survivor, who put up with serious shit in the interests of comfort – was white-faced and his hands were trembling. He told Jack to clear their rooms, and pack the two bags: they’d be leaving for Lamezia in a half-hour.

‘You know what’s good for you, Jack? They’ve long arms, and not many places they don’t reach to. Always gets awkward when anyone opens their mouth out of turn, pulls anything fast on them . . .’

‘I do, Humphrey. I think I know it quite well – what’s good for me. Yes.’

‘Is that her?’

‘It is.’

Carlo’s question, Fred’s response.

She came towards them.

The
carabinieri
, same as the Customs man and the investigator, would have ‘seen it all’ and were not often fazed. Heads dropped or eyes went to the skies, to the lowering sun, big, red and full of war, and the loose puffs of cloud. She walked as if in a dream, the ID card on her chest. Her arms hung slack at her sides. She made no attempt to cover herself, as if she were beyond modesty. At first the
maresciallo
had followed her with his binoculars but now he let them hang from the neck strap. The women would have resumed the vigil, something to chat about over the open coffin.

She was alone and walked in the centre of the track, with no protection for her feet. Sometimes the rhythm of her stride broke and she hopped – must have stepped on a sharp flint.

The men stood aside, ignored her. Backs were turned, shoulders offered. One, not meeting her eyes, offered her an old sack, hessian, which he’d picked up from the ground beside the oil drum, and held it out to her. She didn’t take it so he let it fall.

She left them, looking straight ahead. From where they were, that far away, they had heard one long shout, an entreaty, but not her words.

Fred had said to Carlo, outside the communal house in Archi, when the door had been slammed on them, ‘God protect us from crusaders, bigots, her and her crowd . . . She laughs at us because we are the little people.’

Hilde was his wife, and Carlo’s woman was Sandy. That was established. They hadn’t fished out photographs but had mentioned them on the long journey from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Ionian coastline. He would not tell Hilde what he could see as he stood beside the bonnet of the
carabinieri
vehicle. None of the men were at ease, but he reckoned he and Carlo bore the heaviest responsibility. He would never speak of this walk to a living soul when he returned to his home and doubted that the Englishman would. It was because of him, because of the laptop left on a table in an interview room at the station in Bismarck-strasse. He could source it all back. She walked steadily, and he reckoned that her mind was numb. She hid nothing of herself, and nothing about her explained where Jago Browne was.

The
maresciallo
, at his elbow, said, ‘It’s about the power have. You understand? You think Carlo understands? They have the power to hurt far beyond the inflicting of pain. Total humiliation is worse than anything physical. That is what they have done to her. I cannot see a mark on her body. No electrodes have been used, no cigarette burns. They have broken no bones. She has lost her clothing, which she can replace for a hundred euros. She is scarred, though. She may never be free of the experience. Maybe six or seven women took part in stripping her. Technically that is an assault, but if I try to put them into a courtroom with no witness, I’ll be laughed at. Standing here, we are ignored. If I go closer, I risk a confrontation. They tolerate us here, but no nearer. On the eve of a funeral it doesn’t suit them to kick us half to death. They make the rules. They have awesome power.’

Fred tried to look into her eyes, to offer solidarity – and thought Carlo would – but she sleep-walked past them. She was given a blanket from the tailgate of a vehicle. It was draped over her shoulder, lay on the soft skin, covering one nipple but not the other. She didn’t wrap it closely around herself. A car door opened and she was helped inside. He considered, not seriously, going to the door and asking her if she had seen Jago Browne on the hill. If she had, how was he? Had he yet explained his intentions – and when was the silly fucker coming out and getting himself onto a plane? He could have asked all of that, but did not. He wondered, again, where the boy was and what he would do. He heard sobbing, quiet and not theatrical.

The
maresciallo
said, ‘They do what they want. They buy who and what they want. It is difficult to win.’

Carlo, murmured, ‘But we have to keep trying.’

Both men were sombre. Where was the boy and what would he do? And when would they have a chance to decide on his vision of victory, if ever?

Jago Browne went down the last few yards of the slope with almost excessive caution. The women were gathered in the kitchen, with a television on. The kid had lit a fire in an incinerator and Consolata’s clothes had gone into it, all except the trainers. The kid had poked the fire, then called the dogs to him and now was on the high hillside. Why she had been there he had no idea, but it would have been ungrateful not to thank her – silently, fleetingly – for the diversion she had promised him. He didn’t know whether she was still with the police at the block far down the track. The daughter-in-law was at the house, with the children, and he could hear their shrieks as they played inside. The open coffin was not enough to quieten them. He thought now was a good time. He was certain that the old man, the head of the family, was in his bunker, underground. He went towards the sheets.

He slid the last few feet. The chickens ran to him, but the cockerel was wary. They came near to his legs and pestered him. He kicked dirt at them and they pecked at it, looking for food. He came past the derelict shed and saw where the ground beyond it was sub-soil, with no bed of rock. There was weed and thorn, and he registered that part of the shed’s wall was of newer stone, freshly pointed. He went past a sheet where the motif was roses with wide stems. In front of him, almost under his feet, the earth was scuffed with footprints. He stood still and listened. He heard the sounds from the kitchen and the kid’s whistle from up the hill. He wondered whether his new friends – the providers of food – had watched him come down the last short cliff face. They couldn’t see him now, wouldn’t know where he was and what he was doing. The earth was loose and had been stamped on but had not settled. No excuse. He thought it the supreme moment of his life. No excuse to delay.

He dropped to his knees.

He scraped hard with his hands, tore at the soil and scratched, as a cat would have. The earth came clear and he drove his hands into the soil and found where it was looser. The pile he made grew.

Jago opened the hole.

He had been accurate to a pinpoint. The cable was revealed, and the PVC insulation tape wrapped round the join. He scrabbled with his fingers under the tape and cleared a further section of the cable.

His fingers fastened on it. He had it in two hands and eased himself onto his haunches. The cable strained. He drew a deep breath.