No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (56 page)

They were thorough. The bag from the vacuum cleaner went into the incinerator at the back, and sparks flared up. The interior surfaces were washed carefully, the cloths frequently rinsed. The water went down a drain. Then, the kid was sent for a hosepipe, which was plugged into a tap on the patio. The wheels were jet-sprayed. There would have been evidence on them of where the City-Van had been driven to and from. Jago wondered how often they needed to clean the vehicle, and why a man with the affluence of the
padrino
, and the authority, denied himself a better set of wheels. He had much to learn, but the course was nearly run.

He thought, when the work was done, that the handyman might be sent to bring the family leader out from his hole. He wanted to see it and would hold his position until he did.

He’d have to wait longer. The old woman had come out of the front door with a scrap of paper. The kid had gone to feed the dogs.

There was a moment when the handyman and the old woman were together. Jago saw it. A little gesture – fingers on an arm. He hadn’t seen it before. A girl from Sales might have stayed in the pub with a guy from Investments after the others had left. The next morning the gestures and the eye contact would tell the story: his place or hers. Everyone knew. He’d learned more about the family and their home – the handyman and the wife of the
padrino
. They’d taken a massive risk.

He thought she had given the handyman a short shopping list. Now he drove away to fetch what was wanted, which meant he would not go into the bunker yet. Jago had to wait, but could revel in imagining the degree of torture he had inflicted.

He had given up.

His father never had. He had fought right up to the moment when they had taken his life in the open-air market. His uncles had been fighters, too, and his brothers – one knifed in gaol, the other bound and thrown into a ravine – would have struggled until they had drawn their last breath. In their own ways, his sons in their northern gaols would fight to maintain their pride. They would never capitulate. Bernardo almost did.

No one saw it. When men looked at him they assessed his strength by his posture, whether his hands shook as tension mounted, if he blinked too much. The men with him at the vigil beside his grandson’s coffin would have watched him to see if he had a grip on his future.

Now he was not watched. He was not seen or heard. Bernardo didn’t know if anyone would come soon or whether they would leave him until morning.

He was on the floor. Each time he moved he hurt himself. He had found a chair and lifted himself up but the chair had turned over under his weight and he had cracked his head. He had groped to the side of the container, close to the sink. He had taken hold of it and was dragging himself up, but his hands had shifted and one had landed on the soap – scented stuff that Teresa had bought. He had toppled, twisting his knee.

He could make no sound other than a croak. His sense of combat was gone because he couldn’t imagine which enemy faced him. He felt abandoned. He did not know where Mamma, Stefano and Giulietta were. He wallowed in self-pity and the darkness wrapped around him. He hurt himself each time he tried to move. He lay still, his strength dribbling away. He waited, as the child in the cave had waited. Everything that Bernardo was, all that he had achieved in power and wealth, was off the back of that child who had been in darkness.

No one came.

The Palace of Justice was lit. Floodlights bathed the high walls. More shone over the wide car park. But it was evening and the majority of those who worked in the justice system had gone home or to restaurants. Two SUVs in army camouflage stood in one corner and a knot of troops huddled close to them, automatic weapons slung on their chests or handguns in holsters.

Walking forward briskly, Giulietta held the Beretta close to her thigh. She hadn’t fired at a man before. She was accurate in target practice – against bottles, cans or a ripe melon – which would explode dramatically. She had followed the car into the parking area and it suited her that he had stopped in shadow. There were trees among the marked parking spaces that provided good cover. She had seen him get out of the car, not bothering to flash his keys at it. Then he had wavered and lit a cigarette. That he had brought her there confirmed her father’s suspicion. Beyond him men lounged at the main doors. She sensed they had been alerted and were there to meet a new prize. He would soon, a few more paces, be within their orbit. She closed on him.

She had left her keys in the HiLux and the engine idled softly behind her.

He was under trees, about to enter a row of empty bays where the light fell brightly. Giulietta did not dither: a job to be done. She lifted her headscarf to cover her nose, mouth and chin. She called his name softly. ‘Father Demetrio, a moment, please.’

He stopped. Turned. She saw his ravaged features. He might have forgotten himself and noted that, at a Calvary moment, he could see a familiar face, which smiled warmth at him. He gave her enough time. A full second, two seconds, no more. Realisation was coming but his brain worked faster than his limbs. She had the pistol up. He had two options: he could spin and run for his life or charge her, arms swinging, and try to knock the pistol aside. She saw only something craven. It was just a few days since he had been an honoured guest at her mother’s birthday celebration, the lone outsider. She loved her father, mourned his ageing, but believed in his judgement. The man before her had headed from the cathedral to the Palace of Justice, and was expected. He was statue still, and seemed to plead with his eyes.

As Stefano had taught her, Giulietta did the Isosceles stance. She knew the Weaver stance and the Chapman, but had always preferred Isosceles. Feet apart, knees fractionally bent, weight forward, her arms were outstretched, her right hand held the butt and her index finger was beside the trigger’s guard. Her left fist was locked across the right and held it steady. One in the breach and safety off.

She had known Father Demetrio all of her life. He had lectured her on the Church’s teachings, had heard her teenage confessions, and she had walked behind him in saints’ days’ processions through the village. It was thought he favoured her because of his friendship with her father. Old friendships, past kindnesses were of little value. Her finger groped for, then found, the trigger.

She thought, in the last moment of his life, that he still did not believe what confronted him. His chin shook and his throat wobbled, as if words were blocked there. The men behind him at the door had looked around but not seen him. They were beside the main entrance to the parking area.

She fired.

Better, of course, if the weapon had been fitted with a silencer, but it was not. The second shot was immediate. Not chest shots, when a man might be saved by the immediate skill of a surgeon practised in dealing with bullet wounds, but the head. There would be several medics at the Ospedale Riuniti in the city who were used to handling gunshot injuries. Two shots to the head, so fast that it barely had time to sag and she had not needed to adjust her aim. The recoil was hard on her rigid arms and spent itself in her shoulders. The smell was in her nostrils. He slumped.

She crouched, looked for and found the shiny cartridge cases ejected from the Beretta, picked them up and dropped them into her pocket. A plastic bag would have been better: her good suit trousers, from the new mall outside Locri on the Siderno road, were contaminated now, as was her top. She noted that blood trickled from his head, and that there were no convulsions nor gasped breathing.

She thought it had been easy, but she did not feel elated or excited. A job had been satisfactorily completed. She had to step over him – a wide stride because of his size and she had to avoid the blood.

Rifles and handguns were armed. She heard shouts. Inside the HiLux, she jammed it into gear, then swung into the oleanders, planted to separate the rows of bays, bumped over them and reached the far side of the parking area. She used an emergency entrance, designed for fast access to ambulances or police vehicles, and was gone.

Giulietta might have congratulated herself, but did not. She went into the city and cut down onto Corso Vittorio Emanuele. She thought she had left chaos behind her, which was good, and with it stark confusion, which was better. She wanted to get home and tell her father what she had achieved. She wanted to see his smile spread, feel his hand on her shoulder or cheek. He never looked at her nose or spoke of it. She heard sirens but they were far away. She felt confident because the Blocker spray, purchased in Locri, would reflect off the registration plates and disable any cameras efforts. Giulietta accelerated. She thought her father would be proud of her and praise her.

Pandemonium spread clumsily at the Palace of Justice. The police,
carabinieri
, soldiers and the prosecutor’s escorts, who had waited at the door, were hit by the depth of the failure.

The medical team came, and the blame game began before the body was cold. Whose fault was it? Everyone’s, except each accuser’s. Some claimed to have seen the taillights disappearing and there were CCTV cameras. How many were working? Some. There would be a few images. They would show a woman with a face mask and a handgun, a HiLux but the registration would have been tampered with to prevent the number being read. There had been hopeless efforts to revive the victim. It was agreed that the assassin had been trained, expert and was formidable. The priest was identified from his wallet. One of the escorts made the call on his mobile to the office high in the Palace.

He came, ashen-faced. The prosecutor had dared to hope. All he had been told in the priest’s phone call was his name and his village, which had been enough to whet the appetite of a starving man. His joy had been huge, but short-lived. The ambulance had arrived. He had been promised that roadblocks were in place around the city on all principal routes to north and south, and on the main road heading up into the mountains. Useless. Why? Myriad routes led from the outskirts of Reggio towards the high villages of the Aspromonte.

When he arrived beside the body, the recriminations ceased. A man of dignity, wedded to his work, had been dealt a crushing blow. He was handed the contents of the pockets and a phone, and saw that the last call made was to himself. It was the nature of his work: the Lord in his wisdom gave and the same Lord with the same wisdom took. The flashes were from the photographer. The forensics and scenes-of-crime people were impatient to collect what was left in the way of evidence that had not been trampled over. The prosecutor saw, under arc lights, the face of the priest. The colour had drained from it and the jowl hung slack. He reflected that death had not treated the corpse kindly. He had not met but had known of him, and would have regarded him as one of the professionals who wormed close to the families and facilitated respectability.

His guards hovered close to him. The phone vibrated in his shirt pocket. They closed round him, feeling his frustration. He noted the number, answered it, then listened to what he was told from the control room. He thought himself a man who clutched at dreams. It was a calm voice, without the emotion of the chase, and he could gain no impression of whether he was offered a good chance, an average chance, or a chance with no provenance. He was told of a young man of above average intelligence, but of junior rank and limited experience. He could have demanded answers to a cascade of questions. He stood within two or three metres of the body of the priest, who might have resurrected an investigation and had been silenced. He was nudged aside and the ambulance team began to heave the cadaver onto a gurney. He thought one question important.

‘Is he sure?’

Carlo said, ‘What you have to understand, Luca, is that – to quote – ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men . . .’ You have to jump on it and ride the wave up the beach. Know what I mean?’

Fred said, ‘It was their beloved Shakespeare, writing about Rome, and it is from one of Caesar’s killers, from Brutus, “Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries”. In other words, don’t think me impertinent, you get off your arse and get on with it or spend a long time regretting the inaction. Are you with me, Luca?’

Luca, the
maresciallo
, shrugged, betraying nervousness. ‘I take a huge chance. I was very definite. Apparently the prosecutor was about to receive the priest from the village. He was walking across the car park at the Palace of Justice, and had requested a meeting. A confession? What else? He was shot dead. The killer escaped and the chance was lost. He was told what I said. He tries to grasp it, the last throw. He asked Control one question, about me. ‘Is he sure?’ Am I sure, Carlo, Fred? They’ll flay me if my intuition falls short.’

Carlo said, ‘You’ll be good, Luca, and you’re riding with the A Team, the best.’
Then, shit, do I believe that? A confident blow on the back followed.

Fred said, ‘It’ll take you onwards and upwards, Luca, and when you’re at the top you’ll remember two old men who gave you a push in the right direction.’ He thought that if it failed, and the line of the sheets was irrelevant, he and Carlo would be long gone, not facing the brickbats. He clasped the
maresciallo
’s arm and squeezed confidence into it.

A helicopter was tasked. The
cacciatore
would be deployed, and the local
carabinieri
would have a role. A senior prosecutor was coming from Reggio, and there would be tracker dogs. The
maresciallo
had said it was the last chance. It was Carlo’s work, and Fred’s. They had opened their mouths, woven a skein of trust and now had to wait.