No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  There was an alleyway at the side of a building. He ducked into it, went to a recessed doorway and pulled out his phone. Lamezia? The screen told where it was, and which airlines flew there. He began to shiver. It was step towards a different level. Was he a career banker, on the path that would lead him one day to become a successor to the FrauBoss? Did he care if clients slept with true ‘peace of mind’ because he watched over their finances? He shut his eyes and saw the scar on the girl’s face, the scar on the bodywork of a top-of-the-range car. He walked away, back to the street.

  Hilde would drive north from Berlin to the coast and was already at the wheel of the camper.

  Fred Seitz carried their bags out of the apartment door. His office computer was switched off, as was his phone. Hilde’s was on: if their son or daughter wanted them they would call her. If someone at Bismarckstrasse wanted him, they could wait. He dumped the bags in the boot and got into the passenger seat. Hilde eased the car out into the street. Ahead of them were the high walls of the Moabit gaol, where some of his clients would sleep that night. He would sit quietly, at least for the start of the 220–kilometre drive to the Baltic. They would grab fast food in Rostock, then go west towards Rerik and park among the dunes above their favourite beach. He wanted quiet because of what he had seen that day, what he had said about getting a life and . . . The girl’s face, had upset him. Leaving his iPad switched on had been unprofessional and irresponsible. There were moments when his work seemed to constrict him. He needed to be away, to forget.

  He was probably making too much of what he had done.

  The FrauBoss had been surprised to see him, but Jago had explained that the pills must be working because he felt better. He needn’t have come in at all, late on a Friday afternoon. He had gone through his emails, which had piled up.

  Was he going away for the weekend? Hannelore was taking an evening flight to Stuttgart to see her parents – he was welcome to go with her. Magda was ready for her run but she supposed he wasn’t up to joining her. Sigismund and Elke were going to the new DiCaprio, and the FrauBoss was without her nanny that evening so she was off home.

  They drifted away.

  He had gone back to his apartment earlier, put on his other work suit and taken the damaged trousers to the dry cleaner’s. They would do what they could with the tear. The previous receipt they had issued him was in his wallet. The woman had been sympathetic about the trousers, and unconcerned about the ‘lost’ receipt. He had taken home his clean clothes.

  The FrauBoss and her team had gone; the great clocks that showed the time in other countries had been dimmed. There was a night-duty boy, Boris, but only the crown of his head was visible above the partitions. The TV screen flickered but the sound was off, and he had little interest in how the Dow was performing.

  Jago saw the face of the girl, the scar that would never heal, and the face of Marcantonio. He worked at his computer and the emails diminished.

  What was he for? He didn’t know. When would he find the answer?

  Soon, perhaps, because it would be difficult if he did not.

  5

  The team at the bank was paramount. It had an ethos, a code, a discipline. Jago turned his back on them. A guy at Broadgate, in a bar after dismissal for poor time-keeping, had yelled: ‘The best-kept secret in that bloody place? There’s life outside.’ The bank was supposed to be his life, his horizon, would answer all his needs in exchange for total loyalty. Now he opened the door to another world.

  It was the door to his apartment. He was at the top of the building. Below him was a house of several storeys, unoccupied because the family were on sabbatical. He looked back. The bedroom light was off, but the bed was made, his clothing neatly stowed in drawers and the wardrobe. His accommodation was occupied but anonymous. In the kitchen, the shelves were clean, the crockery washed, the tea-towel folded and the cleaning stuff put away. In the living area, the television was unplugged, the chair cushions plumped and the parquet swept. He had made no life-changing decision about not coming back.

  He hesitated. The staircase in front of him led downwards. Jago realised what now it would mean to him when he closed the door and took the first step in his descent. A pause . . . He could not justify indecision. He was supposed to have organised his mind during the night when he had lain on his back and stared up at the ceiling, waiting for the alarm to go off. He had seen the slash of the pistol down the girl’s cheek, the pride with which she had shouldered aside the investigator in the hospital corridor. He had felt himself on the ground and the humiliation of looking up from the pavement at the amusement he had aroused in passers-by. He sensed again the pleasure of walking past the BMW, holding the key and applying pressure, the thrill of the hearing shouting behind him. It was about more than the girl’s face, and more than the investigator’s old-world indifference.

  The key might have been enough, but was not. He didn’t do drugs, but assumed that the first time would be as mind-blowing as running a key down the side of a sixty-thousand-euro car.

  He closed the door. It had been a ‘defining moment’ of the sort that the motivational speakers, beloved by the bank, preached. The FrauBoss, the blessed Wilhelmina, was big on motivation, as had been the man who had dragged him into Canary Wharf, giving him a chance. He started down the stairs. His bag was light. No bank uniform. Instead he had with him what he would have worn if he’d gone with Hannelore on a Sunday walk round the lakes at Köpenick and the Langer See. Jeans and trainers, T-shirt, fleece and a light anorak.

  He opened the front door, stepped out and looked right, then left on Stresemannstrasse. He wondered if, at the bank, anyone would say as an epitaph that he had been good at his work.

  It was hard for Jago to imagine how this street had been before the end of 1989. The Wall had run down the centre and beyond had been the free-fire area, a death zone. Elke was from the old east and had told him over a sandwich in Ernst Thalman Park that the guards, armed with assault rifles, were given cash bonuses if they shot a fugitive. The street was poorly lit now, but then the high lamps would have produced perpetual daylight.

  At that time of morning, dawn, only a few people were about, those with pressing business. The first cigarettes were lit and newspaper headlines glanced at. Jago made for the U-bahn station. A street-cleaning cart followed him along the pavement. The girls and boys at the bank would still be in bed. Perhaps contemplating the gym. Jago Browne couldn’t imagine what the day would bring him. He pressed on, dropping a letter into a postbox as he passed it. The envelope contained a message to the FrauBoss: Dear Wilhelmina, Apologies for my no-show. I’ve been called away on personal business. I’ll be in touch soon. Regards, Jago. It would arrive on Monday morning. He doubted any of his colleagues had seen a cheek slashed with a pistol, that they had vandalised a top-range car, argued with a KrimPol investigator or challenged a youthful gang leader. He wanted more.

  Much more? Was he ready to burn his boats?

  The motivational speakers talked about thinking ‘outside the box’. Jago would have said he was ‘not quite there’ and that his options remained open. His target? It was a ‘work in progress’, but he was far enough down that road to know that he wanted to stand in front of Marcantonio, showing no fear, and faze the little bastard. If he had to burn his boats, he would, but not yet. He wanted to stand in front of him and see his confusion spread.

  His journey had begun. At the station, he bought his train ticket.

  Driving fast, in poor visibility, taking a bend on a mountain road, the farmer did not see the animal before he hit it. The vehicle jolted, and the creature flew upside-down past the windscreen to the edge of the road, where the pine trees pressed close. There were dogs of that size but he thought it more likely to have been a rarely seen wolf. A motorbike was speeding towards him, its headlights dazzling. He could hardly see and had to swerve. He thought the earlier impact would have dented his bumper, but the lights weren’t broken. He was fifteen minutes from the outskir
ts of a village close to Locri, and his bed. He assumed he had killed whatever animal he had hit.

  The delays seemed endless, one after another. Stefano was driving Marcantonio home. Now they were in fog. Stefano spoke little: from long association with the padrino, he had learned to hold his tongue until he was asked for his opinion. There was no direct flight between Berlin and Lamezia but there were good connections via Budapest and Nice, then on through Milan. If there had been a direct flight, Marcantonio would not have booked it. He was coming home and took precautions. Any direct flight to the far south would be under close scrutiny. It was always necessary to be careful at home.

  As they came through the mountains, the light lifted and the dawn mist was visible in the valleys.

  Marcantonio had never needed to consider what any item cost before he purchased it. His grandfather was a millionaire many times over, but used this vehicle, the rusty old Fiat City-Van and Marcantonio followed the example he had been set. He had bought a ticket to Budapest on a budget airline, but the flight had been cancelled because the plane had engine trouble. A feeder flight from Budapest to Milan had already left, so he had been stuck in a transit hall for six hours, then bribed his way onto a tourist charter. From Milan, he had been on the red-eye flight down to Lamezia. Stefano had waited for him, with trademark patience, and had not complained. Instead he had kissed Marcantonio’s cheeks and settled him into the passenger seat. He had cleared out rubbish and a pair of vegetable crates, than rearranged an empty chicken-feed bag so that the rust holes were hidden beneath Marcantonio’s feet.

  Stefano had to drive slowly, which irritated Marcantonio, who was reminded of the acceleration his Audi was capable of, then of the scar along the bodywork. He was angry: they hadn’t followed the bastard who had done it because of the supposed tight flight schedule. They could have chased him, caught him, beaten him into the ground and dumped him in the canal or had a driver take him out to the Grunewald and dig a grave for him – and still have had time to cancel the booking and buy another ticket. He had sent no message ahead. He would not have used a phone to communicate with his family.

  They were on the back road, far beyond Taurianova and Cittanova. It was narrow, with sharp bends, and rock faces towered above them. He saw a boy with a herd of goats, a teenager, probably only three or four years younger than himself. The kid would have seen the little vehicle coming towards him and slowing because the road was filled with his animals. The kid went forward with his dog and a stick to move them to give the City-Van free passage. That was when Marcantonio knew he was close to home. The vehicle had been recognised. The kid waved cheerfully as they passed him . . . In time, Marcantonio would rule the village, and his word would be law. He did not know how long it would be. He saw a church, a small bar where a man was wiping the tables, and the first children were arriving at a school, an old woman walking along the road, bent under a load of wood. All gestured with affection and respect to the little vehicle that Stefano drove.

  If there had been watchers, the City-Van would have aroused no suspicion, as a Mercedes or BMW might have done. Such vehicles were suitable for Locri, Siderno and Bovalino, where the tourist hotels were, but in the foothills of the Aspromonte, money was guarded and kept hidden. There was a story Marcantonio loved. An old man, a leader of a cosca – a favourite word, the protection of close, tough leaves – had buried eight million euro in banknotes to keep them safe from the polizia and carabinieri. He had dug a pit, put the cash in plastic bags, then filled in the hole. Later, the bags had been dug up. The notes were sodden, disfigured and useless. Eight million euros! They had been left beside the road.

  They were in the village and drove up the one street. There were waves from a woman sweeping her step and a man smoking a cigarette. He felt good, safe, and the frustrations of the journey were behind him.

  The family always kept the wooden shutters closed at the front of the house. At the back, in the sweltering heat of high summer, every door and window was wide open. A mother lived there, with her son, the son’s partner, and two small children. They would have heard, early in the morning, the chugging engine of the Fiat City-Van. Everyone in the village knew the sound of that engine. It was because of the mother’s first-born, the son’s elder brother, the wife’s brother-in-law and the children’s uncle that they lived in a bubble of privacy; the mother wore black, although she wasn’t widowed – her husband was employed on building sites in Scandinavia. The son wore black, too, and the daughter-in-law, and the children didn’t play in the street. They were isolated, had nowhere to make another home. It was because of the elder son, the elder brother, the uncle. He was a pentito – meaning ‘penitent’, or ‘he who repents’ – and was long gone. He had last been seen in Calabria when giving evidence in the aula bunker, the underground, bombproof courtroom, against Rocco and Domenico Cancello, plus nine of their blood relations and associates. He had been granted immunity from prosecution because his evidence had resulted in two sentences of Article 41 bis and other terms of imprisonment ranging from nine to fifteen years. He had not repented, but had faced the prospect of a lengthy stretch for acting as a courier in bringing forty kilos of unrefined cocaine out of the Gioia Tauro port complex. He had collaborated with the state, believing that to be a fair exchange. The remaining members of that household walked a tightrope close to death because they had harboured an infame, a traitor. They were cousins, with a trace of blood to Bernardo. They wore black to imitate a state of mourning. They said, to whoever would listen, ‘We are no longer his family,’ and had made a statement to the Cronaca declaring, ‘He is not and never has been worthy of belonging to a clean-living, honest family like ours.’

  That had saved them from assassination.

  Since the day he had been taken out of the aula bunker to the helicopter pad they had had no contact with him. They didn’t know where he was resettled and what identity had been given him. They were captives in the village, an example to others of the danger of harbouring a turncoat, an informer. Now they denounced him but on the day before he had set off for the docks to drive away with Class-A drugs he would have been called ‘a wonderful son . . . a beloved brother, an uncle who was a gift from God’. Always, in that house with the closed shutters, there was tension when they heard that engine. Their survival rested on the goodwill of the padrino, who held their lives in his hand. After him it would be his potential successor, the grandson. They lived under the shadow of fear.

  He was alone and lonely.

  Loathed by his family, despised by his community and hunted by his enemies, he trudged along a street. He was at the outer edge of central Rome, and away to his right was the expanse of the Borghese Gardens. That was where he would be later. Now he was on his way back from an early visit to the convenience store where he had bought milk, cheese and ham. For four years he hadn’t spoken to his mother, his brother or any of the extended family.

  He came past the big red-brick church dedicated to St Teresa d’Avila – a sixteenth-century Carmelite nun – and crossed himself. She looked down on him with what he reckoned was love. No one else did, except the dogs. Behind him was the Porta Pia and the Via Venti Settembre. When he was there he liked to stare through the railings at the gracious lawns and fountains of the British embassy, and would stay until the troops on guard waved him away. In front of him was the turning towards the apartment blocks where he worked and existed.

  That he survived, he thought, was because St Teresa d’Avila watched over him, but should she be distracted . . . There was rubbish in the doorways – kids came out of school, bought fast food on little polystyrene trays, gobbled it and dropped them. In the days when the security men were still with him, a few weeks after the trial, they had referred to the kids as ‘feral vermin’ . . . Let them visit Reggio Calabria, then see if they complained of Rome’s pavements.

  He hurried. The men, and sometimes women, of Public Security, who looked after state witnesses before they gave evidence, then briefly prep
ared them for an afterlife, had long been withdrawn. One day they were with him – a curt handshake, a telephone call from a magistrate wishing him well and thanking him for what he had done – and the next gone. He was left with an emergency phone number, and had been told that the heavens would have to fall in before he gained any response from the operations room at the end of the line.

  He turned into Via Giacomo Puccini, then the gated, sprawling apartment block. He was lucky they’d found him a job, they’d told him. He was in the basement, close to the communal boilers, and had a cramped room near the portiere’s small apartment. That man, with a uniform, regarded him with suspicion.

  They would find him, one day. He had gambled and lost – was condemned.

  The milk, ham and cheese were not for him: the portiere would take them to different households in the block above, and would receive a gratuity. He could be grateful for little, that he was still alive, that today he was beyond the reach of Bernardo, the padrino, his wife, the sons in the northern gaols and the grandson who, they said, was more brutal than any older member of the family. They had such power that all efforts against them were doomed. He had heard a journalist from Reggio say on television, ‘If the ’Ndrangheta target a man he is dead. There would be no escape not even on a Pacific island. When they want to kill him and are ready to do so, they will.’ He tapped in the code, let himself through the gates and did not look back. He was the walking dead.

  He was in Rome.

  The girl on the desk shrugged. Jago’s ticket was for Lamezia Terme, not Reggio Calabria’s Tito Minniti airport. Anyway, the next two flights to the city were fully booked so he would be on stand-by. Would he get on? Another shrug. And the connection to Lamezia Terme? A flight was due to leave in an hour. There were seats on it, but it was delayed. How long? There was a dispute with baggage handlers at Lamezia Terme. The early-morning flights were not affected because the baggage was handled by night-duty staff. The day shift were taking industrial action.