No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  His certainty had slipped.

  Men and women from around the world swept past and around him, anxious to display the urgency of their business. He was told that the industrial action at Lamezia Terme would be settled towards the end of the day shift because they would be paid electronically before the start of the weekend. No one was particularly helpful to him: why should they be?

  He was not asked his business in Reggio Calabria, why it was important for him to travel and what priority he might be afforded. Had he been, Jago might have struggled to answer coherently. A Lufthansa flight to Berlin was called.

  He could have gone to a desk, made a booking, and been back in his apartment by early evening, or searching out a bar where Elke might be. The final call for the Berlin flight. The bench he sat on was uncomfortable but he endured it. Jago was not quite ready to light the fuse that would burn the boat, but was considering his goal: it was not just to stand in front of the young man and see confusion but to achieve more. How? No idea.

  He waited.

  Bernardo heard the entry sounds. The outer doorway squeaked when it was opened or closed. Scrapes and scuffles came to him from the tunnel’s pipes. A smile lit his face.

  In his mind he had been with the child in the cave, on one of those days when he had brought food to her and she lay on her side, convulsed in coughing, no longer crying. By the second week only Bernardo would take food to her – bread, cheese, perhaps an apple, water – and the dogs with him wouldn’t come into the cave. They stayed outside, their ears flat to their heads. His torch would find her in the far corner of the cave, beyond the lichen, and she cowered away from him. He never brought his boys, Rocco and Domenico, to the cave because he didn’t trust their reaction. The girl had given the family everything. She had been a sound, shrewd investment, and was the basis of the family’s success.

  He heard the light knock on the outer wall of the container, scrambled across the interior and unfastened the makeshift doorway. Fresh air engulfed him as he held the boy who was his future, the dynasty’s.

  They hugged, the clasp of two men, one old, one young, who had for each other the love that kept the family alive and was its strength. He remembered when he had struggled with his hands on the man’s throat and had called his fifteen-year-old grandson to his side, shown him the grip and had him finish the strangulation. He hadn’t seen him for six months. He had missed him. Now his grandson led the way. Bernardo switched off the lights, closed the inner door after him and started the long crawl up the sewer pipe.

  Coming into the daylight was like breaking the surface of the sea after a dive – not that Bernardo could swim, but he had seen divers on the films. The chickens were round his feet, and Marcantonio had the bowl for their corn. They took the hidden path, passed Mamma’s sheets, then the trellis. He was in the kitchen, and had forgotten the child in the cave. He saw the pure joy on Mamma’s face.

  A call came to the private-wealth section at the bank. A junior in the analysis unit, on a weekend watch, had had a query from a client in Bad Godesberg. The client, a widow, Frau Niemann, was persistent. She had been talking to her nephew, who was with Deutsche, and needed to know whether her account was listed as medium or low risk. She was an important client because her investment portfolio was worth some ten million euros. The junior was sitting at the end of a long work area, no natural light, and promised the client he would get straight back to her with an answer.

  He rang the manager of the sales section, with overall responsibility for the client’s account, at home. He reached her as children flooded into her apartment for a birthday party. He heard the din, apologised to Wilhelmina for bothering her and was told to call Jago Browne immediately. Was Jago Browne not listed on the weekend duty sheet as being on stand-by? If he wasn’t, he should have been. Jago Browne knew about Frau Niemann’s affairs. He had been sick but was in the office the previous evening so had obviously recovered.

  The junior found Jago Browne’s corporate mobile number, dialled it and let it ring. It went unanswered. The client’s enquiry was only about medium or low risk, and could have waited forty-eight hours to be dealt with on Monday morning. He called the number again.

  Within a half-hour he had tried it seven times. It was unprofessional for any stand-by executive to be away from their phone for as long as thirty minutes. He rang the client, apologised and grovelled. He would be able to get back to her again within an hour.

  He walked along the beach, the soft dry sand trapped between his toes. Fred Seitz felt free. His wife was nearer the sea, paddling and looking for shells. He almost felt free.

  It was where he was happiest. Almost free, because the beach was almost a naturist venue. Nothing could be quite perfect. His work lingered because the break they had taken was not long enough for him to shrug it off entirely: he dealt with muggings and burglaries – not the small-scale thieves and pickpockets but those in large gangs with serious turn-over – day-to-day, but had responsibility at the station for organised crime with international implications. It could be Russian-originated, Albanian or Lithuanian, or it might have the stamp of the ’Ndrangheta. If it had been a ‘listed’ beach, Hilde would not have gone there.

  It was early autumn and the usual chilly wind came off the sea and from the Scandinavian plains. She was topless but with a thick towel hanging round her shoulders and she wore drill shorts. Fred, in deference to the weather, also wore shorts.

  Fred had cooked lunch in the camper and they’d slept after the meal. The sun was slipping now and he thought the day almost perfect. He was never away from his job. The kids in the section had lives beyond the police station – they went clubbing, rode mountain bikes in the forests around the capital, joined book groups and socialised with each other. Some studied for university-sponsored e-degrees. The wind tugged at his close-cropped hair and sometimes a gust shook him or he shivered. He was dedicated to a job that the kids found obsessive – and tedious. His wife, bless her, knew when to leave him to his thoughts. He nurtured images, couldn’t escape them: the scar, the girl pushing past, elbowing him aside.

  She hummed softly beside him, and the gulls screamed. One naturist had braved the chill, a woman, and a small dog scurried close to her. It wasn’t fair. If the victim made no accusation and no other witness corroborated the Englishman’s story, the case would collapse.

  Fred walked on. He knew where the boy came from – he had been to San Luca, Plati and the coast at Locri, where the beaches were warm and the carabinieri had their barracks.

  Did he make a difference? he wondered. The question nagged at him whether he was at work or not. It was hard to imagine that he did, or ever had, and even harder to believe he could in the future.

  ‘The key thing to remember, all of you, whatever your rank, is that you make a difference.’

  Carlo sat at the back. The canteen was the usual venue for a talk by an HMRC visitor from London. The woman doing the chat might have been from Human Resources or one of the myriad managers who seemed capable of beating the cull that emasculated uniforms and investigations.

  ‘What we’re aiming for is what I call “harm reduction”. Cutting down the damage caused to the addicts in our society, and getting a firmer grip on the revenue lost to the Treasury by the smuggling industry. We want a lean, modern organisation to be at the cutting edge of knocking back the power of today’s criminal sitting cockily on the international scene.’

  He didn’t yawn. Some of the younger uniforms seemed impressed that a big player had travelled to see them, and at a weekend. The old sweats – Carlo to the fore – were too canny to show their contempt.

  ‘We know when we’re on course because the price of cocaine rises. The higher it goes – through your efforts – tells us we’re doing well, seizures are up and the criminals are suffering, losing money. The higher the price, the better we’re placed. It’s evidence of our success at interception. You are on the front line and you’re doing damn well.’

  Except tha
t the price was in free-fall. There was a journalist at the back, from a national paper, scribbling energetically. He might even have believed some of the crap that the press office was feeding him. In common with most of the guys who had cut their teeth on Green Lanes, Carlo was underwhelmed by administrators. But he needed his job and kept quiet. He should have been at home, raking leaves or . . . If redundancy beckoned, the future didn’t look good.

  ‘We want to improve the statistical rate of seizures, arrests and convictions. They all send a message loud and clear that the United Kingdom has elite security on its borders. We want to see a rise in the confiscation of assets, so that felons cannot live the good life after release from well-deserved custody sentences. Whatever it is – bootleg vodka, cigarettes without duty paid, bogus labels on clothing that comes from cheap sweat-shop labour – we want to demonstrate zero tolerance. You are achieving this, and we’re sincerely grateful to you. Thank you.’

  No mention of cutbacks or staff lay-offs, nothing about the price of Class-A stuff being at rock bottom because narcotics were swamping the country . . . and nothing about China, the big moneybags who must not be offended: a container load of cheap leather wallets of third-world origin is shipped to a UK dock, then reshipped to Naples on Gioia Tauro, where the fake Gucci labels are added, and sent on, as genuine, to China. The Italians bankroll the operation with British criminal connivance, and the money comes back from China, rinsed and dried, perfectly laundered.

  There was faint applause, then a stampede to get back to the duty posts. He would return to the cottage, maybe do some expenses, rake some leaves and dream.

  ‘It’s an opportunity. Don’t know much about the people or the place . . .’

  Bent Horrocks lay on his back and the woman’s fingers, not her finest feature but with long nails, played in his chest hairs. By now Angel, his wife, would also be flat on her back, snoring quietly after her lunchtime drink: ‘I’m not an alco, love, just like a drop to help my digestion.’

  ‘Can’t take you, Trace. Like to, course I would. Hardly fun, but an opportunity.’

  The apartment he had bought her was high in the tower. One of the best that had been available in Canada Wharf, it was convenient and discreet. There were lifts, or staircases, if he had the energy. He was not at his best that afternoon. His mind was not on the business of justifying the basic outlay of a thousand a week, which was what it cost to keep the roof over Trace’s head, food in her belly, the frequent hair and nail appointments, the holidays with her sister, clothes and pocket money. A grand a week wasn’t unreasonable.

  It was his fault. She’d tried hard – wasted effort. She was unsettled and it showed. Bent could have said, no fear of contradiction, that he ruled that part of east London – Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, Peckham – where Trace was installed. No one would have denied it, neither the Flying Squad detective who’d checked his file, nor any dealer in the area. He’d dealt with foreigners enough times, of course, and none had considered taking a liberty with him, except one Russian. The man had gone home and would have had a bad flight – difficult to travel by air with a leg in plaster because your kneecap’s shattered. Different, what was coming. Off his territory. He’d not met them, didn’t speak their language.

  Trace said, ‘You’ll be all right, Bent. It’ll be fine, like it always is.’

  The room behind the floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window, with a view up the Thames to die for, was immaculate. He liked it that way, ordered. Her clothes were folded in a small pile on a chair, and his hung from hangers. He disliked mess and confusion. He had a phobia about the unknown, but his life was about taking opportunity when it came up. He couldn’t back off.

  He said, ‘Good one, Trace. Fine for me, like it always is.’

  The party was finishing. The magician had performed well. The bell was ringing as parents came to collect their children. Wilhelmina was on the phone and the noise swelled around her. The junior in the analysis section was adamant. Jago Browne wasn’t answering his landline or returning mobile calls. He hadn’t responded to emails or texts.

  Wilhelmina spluttered indignation and wiped a child’s chocolaty face. There was lemonade on the cheque for the caterers. It was about discipline. She had no quarrel with his work, his attitude towards clients or his behaviour in the office – but he was foreign. Also, he was aloof, and not a team player. With discipline went the requirement that he should be on call one Saturday in three and one Sunday in five. He could be in the middle of an ice-rink, or with a girl in the Tiergarten, playing tennis or at the cinema, but on those few days he was required to answer his phone – and had not.

  Peculiar. Three parents waved and left. The birthday party was, for her, a major social opportunity and a chance to identify possible clients. It was more than peculiar. Wilhelmina, annoyed, was unforgiving and formidable.

  She said, ‘Leave it to me. I’ll speak to the client. Thank you. And I’ll deal with the young man who is on call.’

  ‘It’s a murderous place. They slaughter them and enjoy it. Barbarians . . .’

  The man was two rows behind Jago Browne and he spoke with a thick Yorkshire accent. The coach was taking them from Lamezia Terme airport to Reggio, and tempers had frayed. Jago hadn’t noticed his fellow travellers in Rome or on the flight.

  ‘They butcher them. It’s a mark of manhood, down here, to kill.”

  There were eight of them and they belonged, he’d gathered, to a conservation group. Their speciality was watching birds’ migration routes, and a hot-spot was the straits between Sicily and Calabria, which was less than three miles wide at the narrowest point.

  ‘They’re not choosy, a vulture or an eagle, a harrier or a falcon – but they love to massacre the buzzards. It’s a sort of choke point for the birds, and the bastards are waiting for them. It must be like flying in a Wellington through concentrated flak, if you’re a raptor.’

  A woman said, ‘For God’s sake, Duncan, leave it.’

  ‘Top of the list is the honey buzzard. If any make it over the strait, going south now or north in the spring, it’s a miracle. Tells you what the people are like. If your top thrill is bringing down something as beautiful as one of those, it shows what you’re made of.’

  ‘People are on holiday, Duncan, looking for a break. They haven’t asked for your opinions.’

  He’d seen them board the coach, lugging rucksacks and tripods. Their spotter scopes were in canvas lagging. Jago had never done any birdwatching, but there had been people in Lancashire, at the university, who had gone out onto the sands of Morecambe Bay. He’d never seen the point. But the relevance of the story was forced down his throat.

  ‘Why shed a tear, if you’re Calabrian, for a honey buzzard, or a lammergeier, or an imperial eagle? Life’s cheap down there. Murders are two a penny. No bigger deal to take a human life than to blast a kite or a sparrow hawk to kingdom come.’

  Another voice: ‘The killing of raptors at migration is well documented, but we hope to show by the example of our international interest that all wildlife matters. We don’t want only to look on the dark side.’

  The Doomsday merchant came back strongly: ‘And this road we’re on. It’s wonderful – and so it should be for what it’s cost over the last thirty years. It’s a Mafia road, courtesy of European taxpayers. Billions paid, and most of it into gangster pockets . . . I bet there’s a fair few in the concrete. This lot down here, they make ours look like choristers.’

  ‘Shut up, Duncan.’

  Now there was quiet behind him. They went along a wide, fast road, through massive tunnels that lanced big spurs of rock, over steepling viaducts and could see tiny lights, isolated, in the deep gorge valleys below. There were lines of cones and stretches where the work had been left unfinished. It was fifteen hours, close enough, since he had left Berlin.

  The talk behind him changed, and the gloom lifted. He wavered. Jago’s bag was in the overhead rack. He didn’t know whether he would dump it in Reggio later that evenin
g, or in the airport at Lamezia Terme. They compared makes of spotter scopes to the Swarovski range. Jago had no interest in that, but had heard about the killing of people, rip-offs on construction projects and the slaughter of birds. He sat upright, rigid, and could not recapture his earlier certainty.

  There were banks of lights ahead, but to his right a dark strip, a gulf, then more streetlights and homes. He checked his phone screen and realised they were close to the strait and Sicily. He sought to grip the talisman images and sounds: a facial scar and twin scratches in metallic paint, a shout of shock and a yell of venom. He had no plan, he was hungry, and someone behind him was snoring softly. He would look into the man’s face, into the eyes, see confusion and fear . . . They came into the city, and he was beyond the limits of his experience.

  Consolata could have taken his eyes out with her fingers, but kept them clamped tight on her bag. It was the end of their wasted day.

  Massimo had said, ‘I’m entitled to criticise you. Your bag is almost full and mine is almost empty because I have given out our fliers and you have not. You glare at people and you’re rude to them. Your problem is that you don’t believe in non-violent action.’

  He had gone back to his mother with his empty bag. He would eat with her, then take a bus to Archi. In the squat he would tell them about Consolata’s heresies. The air would be thick with cigarette smoke and she would be denounced.

  She sat on a bench. Consolata could recall each word that had been said and fancied her link with the group had been cut. ‘You seem to threaten people when you want to show an alternative to the aggression of ’Ndrangheta. I wouldn’t stop to talk to you. You saw for yourself where your attitude takes you – they hurry past you. They don’t want a lecture. Consolata, ’Ndrangheta is a criminal conspiracy that depends upon fear, terror and suspicion. If you hector those you seek to influence, you show no alternative to the gangsters. It’s about turning the other cheek and demonstrating the supreme example of non-violence. I don’t think you’re capable of that. You want to fight, fight, fight.’