No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  Two treats awaited Mamma for her birthday. The death of a rat and, a more joyous gift, the return of his grandson for the celebration. He would not stay long, but Bernardo would see the boy he had missed so much. His organisation was sealed in blood and by the family ties. The greater the trust, the closer the blood. None was closer to Bernardo than his grandson . . . and the reports that came from Germany were not good. He shrugged.

  His lettuces had flourished. The tomatoes were good, and the vines had done well. The olive groves he owned were lower in the valley, and the crop was excellent; the harvest was almost complete. He lived a fine life. The imprisonment of his sons was the price the family had paid for its success. He had little to worry him and the children of the ‘disappeared’ Annunziata had moved in with Rocco’s wife, but they were often in his own kitchen and Mamma was firm but loving. A large cargo was at sea. A rat had been identified and would be dead within the week. Marcantonio would soon be home, and as the day approached, he had noticed a softening in his wife’s stern features. And he had, he supposed, come to terms with the hidden bunker that had become his second home.

  Giulietta told him each month what she estimated the inner family, where the blood line was strongest, to be worth. She would list the value of investments and would murmur a figure in his ear. Each time she did that, her voice shook and her cheeks flushed. They were worth, Giulietta told him, in excess of four hundred million euros. She was like her father and mother – and there was nothing in the modest room at her parents’ home where she lived that stank of wealth. For her, it was about power.

  Giulietta was a fine daughter, almost as good as another son. She worshipped at the same altar as himself: wealth was power. Power was the ability to buy. Any man had his price. There were two important men in his life: the first was a clerk in the Palace of Justice, and the second worked as a civilian at the Questura; sometimes as he went about his work he heard gossip and saw screens used by men and women of the Squadra Mobile. From those two men, Bernardo had discovered that he was under investigation and that his liberty depended on him sleeping in the buried container and being always watchful, always suspicious. He could do that without difficulty. He was a peasant by nature, a contadino. The peasant, mindful of enemies, looked for what was best in the future. It was easy for him to be an optimist, and the news that day had been gratifying.

  It was a fine morning. The skies above the village were cloudless. He believed himself secure.

  ‘If he’s there, wouldn’t we see him?’

  They had seen chickens, dogs and Mamma – but not their target.

  ‘He’s as cunning as an old vixen.’

  Fabio said, ‘He’s seventy-four. What sort of life can he be living? He’s somewhere in a hole in the ground, no daylight, can’t walk down the track to see his family. What’s he hanging onto – if he’s there?’

  A rueful grin from Ciccio. ‘He’s there.’

  Their heads were together. They spoke in the faintest of whispers. Their appearance differed only to their wives and the maresciallo who commanded the surveillance unit. Fabio was two centimetres taller than Ciccio and his feet a size smaller than his friend’s; there was fractionally more brown in Ciccio’s hair, and a trace of ginger in Fabio’s beard. They had been together, a bonded partnership, for four years and took leave together from the Raggrupamento Operativo Speciale barracks outside Reggio Calabria. They holidayed in the same hotels or beach apartments, and their wives endured their relationship. It was under strain, had probably run its course, but neither would yet speak of fracture. That morning domestic life was far in the background. They had come to the hide that overlooked a part of the house seven hours earlier, at dead of night.

  ‘It’s a fucked-up life,’ Fabio said.

  ‘The price he pays for being the boss . . .’ Ciccio managed a slight shrug.

  They wore British-manufactured gillie suits, German-made socks under their Italian boots, and the ’scope was Chinese. The smell was their own. It would get worse. They had done a week’s reconnaissance in August when they had found this cleft between two mammoth rocks. It was not perfect because, below them, the trees had not yet shed their leaves and the view of the house was partially obscured. They could see the wide turning point of the track and any car that came up it but not the door. At the back, the kitchen door was masked from them but they could identify anyone who took three or four paces away from it and kept to the right of the yard. If that person, usually Mamma – Maria Cancello, aged sixty-three and wearing her age poorly – went to the left, a conifer allowed them a fleeting glimpse. She kept a line of washing up alongside a path leading away from the yard, up rough steps to a shed, of which they could see the back wall and all of the roof. Windows on the far side of the house were hidden from them but if lights were on in the master bedroom or the one adjacent to it, where the daughter slept, they saw the occupants. If they had come nearer to the house they would have been at greater risk of discovery by the dogs that were always with Mamma or the daughter. If they had been further back, higher and able to see over the tree canopy, they would have endangered themselves – there were herdsmen’s tracks where the slopes were gentler and every day picciotti came with dogs. They had brought with them survival rations, plastic bottles for urine, tinfoil strips to wrap faeces, and would take their rubbish out with them. The hide was ‘protected’: a man would have to scramble, clinging to rocks, roots and branches, as he descended into the space between the big boulders. They must not leave a trail of scuffed earth, dislodged stones or crushed lichen when they came and went. When they were not there, another ROS team kept a watch on the house but from higher and further back. As Fabio said, often enough, ‘They can’t see anything.’

  As Ciccio said, frequently, ‘They’re just clocking up overtime and might as well be in Cosenza or in bed.’

  They thought themselves the best, took pride in their work, but hadn’t yet located their target, the padrino of the Cancello clan. It hardly mattered to them where they were and who they were searching for: there was no shortage of photographs on the most-wanted lists. ‘Scorpion Fly’ was a long investigation and a prosecutor in the Palace of Justice had emphasised its importance. Scarce resources had been committed to it.

  Both knew most of what there was to learn about the scorpion fly: Panorpa communis. The male’s wingspan averaged thirty-five millimetres, and it trailed what seemed to be a scorpion’s sting from its rear. In fact, it was two tiny hooks with which the male held tight to the female during mating. It was a member of the Heteroptera family.

  They captured them, when they could, for a cousin of Ciccio’s, an entomologist. When they laid hands on one it went into a small plastic jar. It was a poor morning for scorpion flies.

  ‘If he’s there, in a hole, how would that make life worthwhile?’ Fabio asked.

  Two driven men, hating corruption and the virus of organised crime endemic in their society, little cogs in a big wheel, watched the limited view of the house and saw Mamma wave away her daughter. What kept them alert was the hope that they would identify the target, find his hole and call in the arrest squad. They knew about the missing daughter-in-law, Annunziata, and of a grandson who seemed to have left home. ‘Hope’ was a candle flame and often it guttered.

  On the ground floor of a drab house in an uncared-for quarter of Reggio Calabria, a photocopier needed replacing – it was painfully slow to operate – but there were insufficient funds for a new one. Consolata cursed. Paper churned at snail’s pace into the tray. The printed sheets would be stuffed into plastic sleeves, then tacked to telegraph poles. In the committee meeting, everyone had argued against her.

  ‘We can’t frighten people, Consolata. It’s not up to us to hector them into action. They must be persuaded.’

  ‘Your suggestion, Consolata, of sticking our posters in the windows of businesses that we can only suspect of paying pizzo is ludicrous. We have to take people with us, not confront them.’

  ‘
We’ll stay on the high ground, Consolata. We don’t stoop to their level.’

  ‘We know change is slow, Consolata, but it’s coming. Last year thousands marched on the Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi. Thousands.’

  ‘You must be patient, Consolata. Not this generation, but the next – perhaps – will reject the ’Ndrangheta state. Have faith.’

  It was early in the morning, she wasn’t yet dosed up on coffee and had ‘turned the other cheek’, which was rare for her: she had torn up the page of notes she had made to justify ‘direct action’ going to the edge of violence, or beyond. She had proposed, too, that those who tacitly supported the taking of the pizzo, a percentage of the profits made by legitimate business, should be confronted and shamed . . . A deep breath. She had disappointed the committee – they would have expected her to fight, argue and then be destroyed by their arguments. She had ducked her head, almost with good grace, but Consolata burned with fury.

  The pages continued to flop out of the photocopier. Soon the ink would run out.

  Life, she believed, had passed her by. She was thirty-one, and reasonably slim. Her hair was medium length and naturally blonde, which was unusual in Calabria. She came to work in trainers and jeans, a T-shirt and a light loose jacket. No jewellery and no makeup. She was from the town of Archi, a few kilometres up the main road north from Reggio. Her parents were still there but she no longer lived with them. If circumstances had been different, she would have worked in a shop selling curtains and good-quality wallpaper. Her parents had owned the business, built it up and made a living from it. ‘One day’ they would have retired and she would have taken over. Then they had come. A figure had been fixed, which her father couldn’t pay. A whispering campaign had followed, and trade evaporated. Questions had been asked – was her father a paedophile? Had he been questioned by the police over the molestation of children? There had been no violence, no threats. Then they had made an offer to buy out the business. A few months before the price would have seemed ridiculous, but the bank was now calling in the overdraft and they would have prompted that. The business had been, in effect, stolen. Her father now drove a delivery van in Messina across the strait, commuting there each day, and her mother cleaned bedrooms in a hotel fronting the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, near to the ruins of a Greek settlement, dating to eight centuries before the birth of Christ. Consolata would have said that a new dark age had replaced the glories of that civilisation.

  Archi was the town of the de Stefano and Condello clans, the Imerti people and the Tegano family. It didn’t matter which of them had decided to launder their money through a legitimate wallpaper and curtain business. One of them had and the business was gone. Consolata had been sixteen, in the year of supposed optimism, the new millennium, when her father had come from the bank, ashen with confusion. Now there were cut-price goods in the window and cocaine money was rinsed there.

  The most significant bosses in Calabria lived in Archi. None would have known her name. None woke in the morning wondering what she was planning.

  She had gone to university, to keep her mother happy, and had studied modern history. Then she had enrolled at a language laboratory and become an interpreter, but had seldom returned calls offering work. Now she was a volunteer with a group that denounced the plague of organised crime in their community. Four or five years before she could have left the toe end of the country, abandoning her parents, and flown to Germany, Belgium, France or Britain to put her language skills to use. She could have made a new life. She had not. Now it was too late – a window had closed. Her fervour for the group she had enrolled with was gone; her loathing of the target remained undiminished . . . They had laughed at her ideas.

  She would probably spend the whole morning coaxing the machine to cough up more posters.

  Consolata’s ambition had almost atrophied. She was, she believed, the typical cuckoo in the nest of optimists. When she stopped to let the copier cool, she rolled a cigarette. The nicotine improved her mood a little. Those she had been at school with or known at university were mostly married and pushing prams, had jobs or had flown to freedom. She soldiered on, knew her enemies but not her allies. She could see, through the glass window in the door, the committee: men and women satisfied that they were ‘in the vanguard of changing attitudes’, ignoring her. She was, they thought, a ‘doubter’, perhaps even a ‘heretic’. Again, she started the machine. Again, it spluttered to life. Usually she said it to herself, but this time she shouted over the noise of the photocopier, ‘Not one of those people knows my name. We’re doing nothing. Until they know my name, we’ve failed.’

  No one heard her, but more posters fell into the tray.

  In her Charlottenburg apartment, the client said, ‘I like you, Mr Browne, and I like your apology. I also like your explanation of the circumstances of the error, and that you have not attempted to deflect blame from yourself. I’m impressed, too, that you came to me, your client, before going to hospital for treatment to your face. You came here as a priority and ran through the performance of my portfolio. Now you must report to the police the assault against yourself and the young woman. The police are at Bismarckstrasse, to the north of Savignyplatz.’

  Jago nodded. He thought her attitude to him was pretty gracious. He had come to her door looking a mess – his tie was askew, his hands dirty, his nose still bleeding and his hair all over the place. She had led him to the bathroom, then given him a towel and soap. When he had emerged, sheepish, she had offered him a slug of schnapps. He had refused, but she’d poured it anyway. Twice during his explanation, the phone had rung – the FrauBoss. The client had been fulsome in her praise of him and had made no mention of his ‘adventure’.

  ‘Promise you’ll give a statement to the KrimPol on Bismarckstrasse, Mr Browne.’

  She dripped money, but without ostentation. Her jewellery was discreet, her clothing simple but classic; her face and throat showed her age. Most of the pictures on the walls would have been valued at more than Jago’s annual salary.

  He started to retrieve the papers he had used for his presentation. The client had three accounts: one in Zürich with Credit Suisse, one with Deutsche in Frankfurt, the third with Jago’s bank. Her money, targeted by the FrauBoss, was the stuff from which bonuses flowed.

  Jago closed his briefcase. He had given her a brief description of what had happened on the pavement, just enough to account for his appearance and his reason for being four and half minutes late. Where he came from in East London, nobody went to the police to complain of a minor assault. He said softly, ‘Hardly worth it.’

  ‘But you should.’

  ‘I’m sure they have better things to do.’

  They stood up. There was a trace of perfume about her. Her eyes were watery and had lost youth’s sharp lines. Her hand was on his arm and crabbed fingers clawed a grip on the material. ‘Because you do not wish to be involved?’

  He tried to laugh it off. ‘Someone where I used to work, in London, would say when anything went wrong, “I expect worse things happen in Bosnia.” I don’t know much about Bosnia, or what happened there, but it’s what he always said.’

  ‘Was it at the new pizzeria?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Were they Italian?’

  He grimaced.

  ‘Perhaps you’re an innocent, Mr Browne.’

  He still had nothing to say.

  ‘Of course the police should be involved. You should stand up as a witness, Mr Browne. In Germany, still in living memory, we made an art form of avoidance. Evil flourished and we did nothing. Evil of any sort should be confronted. I am an old lady. I speak out because I have nothing to lose by doing so. For the young it may be different. Perhaps your pride is hurt because you were knocked over. Perhaps you can put the attack behind you because your place of work is on the other side of the city. Can you?’

  He worked on the old east side of Berlin and here he was on the old west side. He lived miles from here and might not need to c
ome back. The chance of the FrauBoss allowing this client to drift from her orbit was slight. He smiled, as if he was about to leave, but she persisted. He felt her intensity through the grip of her fingers.

  ‘There was a theologian, Martin Niemöller. He was imprisoned for many years but survived in a camp while many around him were hanged. He was ashamed that he had lived when so many brave men and women had been murdered. He wrote about those who, like himself, did not stand up to evil. When they had arrested the socialists, he didn’t speak out because he wasn’t a socialist. When it was the trade unionists, he did nothing because he was not a trade-union supporter. When it was the turn of the Jews he was silent because he wasn’t a Jew. He wrote, ‘And then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.’ That was the big evil, the mature oak. The little evil is the acorn, thriving unnoticed – crime on the streets. Did you see a woman sitting in the little park, as old as myself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she wore odd shoes? Expensive but not matching?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she see what happened?’

  ‘Saw the start, then slipped away.’

  ‘Her father was hanged in the last days of the war, at the Flossenburg camp. Eighteen days later the Americans arrived. The evil consumed her. She says her father would have been better to close his mouth, do nothing, look away, and live to bring her to adulthood. I hope, Mr Browne, that you will find time to visit the KrimPol detectives. The girl won’t. Her elder brother is the manager of the pizzeria. He won’t either. They are Italian and would say they know better.’