No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  He was uncomfortable in the back but accepted the hardship. The road surface was poor and the cushion gave him only limited protection from the ruts. A few more days, and he would be able to ride again in the front. He would know that a special investigation on him was closed, the file consigned to a cupboard, the spotlight moved elsewhere. With Stefano, he would go to the open market in Locri and to Brancaleone. He would sit in the mountains where his father used to go, while Mamma and Stefano searched for mushrooms. He would plan and . . . There was much to look forward to.

  In truth, Bernardo wanted little. They had a decent television but not an exceptional one, a decent kitchen, but not from one of the magazines that Annunziata had enjoyed, and a decent bed, old and breathing family history. He had no luxury. Neither did Mamma. They lived without gold taps, jewellery, and servants, yet the family had such wealth that only Giulietta and her calculator could accurately assess it. Great riches meant little to him. The most important matter in his life, which was drifting to a close – not tomorrow but not far away – was that he could pass on what he had achieved to Marcantonio and know his legacy was in safe hands. His grandfather had done that for his father, and his father for him. Marcantonio was a good boy. He could strangle a man and kill a woman. Now he must learn more about the trade of the clans.

  The light broke. The sun came low through gaps in the foothills and rose above the sea behind them, throwing long shadows.

  They were late. She drove recklessly. The car was not built to negotiate mountain switchback roads and twice she had lost control. The tyres had slid and they’d skidded close to the edge. Both times, there had been a thirty-metre drop. He did not seem to react. Most would have been clinging to the top of the glove box for dear life, white-knuckled. She supposed it was ‘the calm before a storm’.

  She thought they had met through luck, coincidence and chance. She said to herself silently, ‘When was life different?’ She thought of the people she knew, who reckoned they had control over their lives. They were fools and failures. He seemed remarkable to her. She swerved to give more room to a tractor pulling a trailer of cattle fodder for the winter and drove a scooter off the road. She was on the wrong side of the road on a bend and had to heave the wheel to miss a Fiat City-Van driven by an old man, with a boy beside him, and . . . The light was coming.

  Too much time on the beach at Scilla? If accused of it, she would have answered robustly: he had lost his inhibitions there; with inhibitions, where he was going, he was the walking dead – no use to man, beast or her. Consolata started to talk about covert surveillance in the mountains, relaying all she had been told by the guy in the ROS who did stake-outs. She told Jago about the basics of survival – but he would be without a firearm, a colleague, a radio, and back-up poised for fast intervention. She talked about stiffness, the cold and damp. The guy, Francesco, had not enjoyed being quizzed about intelligence gathering, but they’d had fun in the hills, playing concealment games. She’d hide, and he’d find her, or she’d hide and he’d look for but not locate her. Or he’d be on a hillside and have to move, and she’d be at an observation point and yell when she saw him. When he lost he was pissed off. She remembered everything he’d taught her, and now passed it to the Englishman: he would be going close to the house, near extreme danger, where she would not go. She helped him and he would hurt them. Then she would rejoice . . . and he was nice-looking.

  If they found him close to the house then he would have to have shed every inhibition drilled into him at home and work, since he was a child. Any inhibition, failure to fight, and he was dead.

  Consolata had been with him for about twelve hours but already she cared. He had not touched her in the sea or on the beach. She had never cared for a man so quickly before.

  She told him everything she knew, hammered into him the detail she had learned when she was with that guy. She remembered her parents’ shock when the shop and the business were taken from them, their humiliation. They’d had no one to turn to in Archi. No wonder she hated the families.

  She drove him to a place that the map on her phone indicated could be a drop-off point. The light rose.

  She was a manager.

  Wilhelmina, as an employee with status, working for a prestigious bank, could demand attention – and did.

  She was put on hold, but only briefly. A middle-ranking official at police headquarters on the Platz der Luftbrücke, where memories of the Berlin airlift were celebrated, had contacted the station on Bismarckstrasse, talked with the KrimPol unit there, ascertained the complaint that Jago Browne had made, concerning assault and extortion, determined who had fielded the complaint and what action had been taken. They had to consider the importance of the known facts when set against the – out of character – disappearance of the individual, and his apparent journey to Calabria. The official pleaded for a few more moments of her time.

  ‘I can refer this to one of my bank’s vice presidents, who would expect to speak to an officer of higher rank than yours. Your name would feature in any such conversation.’

  That was not necessary, she was assured. It was always a pleasure to co-operate with the banking industry. Her aggression was fuelled by nerves. She knew of the crime networks based in the extreme south of Italy, the corruption, the danger of extreme violence. She did not know what had been downloaded, what confidentiality was compromised. Her fingers drummed on her desk.

  An answer. Seitz, an investigator in the KrimPol unit at Bismarckstrasse, had been recalled from his weekend vacation and would visit her by midday. The official hoped that was satisfactory. He was pleased to have been of service. She accepted what she was told. She had set a train in motion, did not know where the journey would end but felt confident that her back was covered.

  His empty seat intrigued her. Magda had mentioned how little the apartment had told of its tenant. Wilhelmina had left her children with her neighbour because her husband was abroad. She wasn’t thinking of the kids, or the chaos at home after the birthday party, or the state of her marriage, but was gazing at Jago Browne’s seat. Where was he? And why was he there? She gripped a pencil between her fingers, bank issue, twisted – and broke it.

  A phone call. Confidences.

  Magda said, ‘It’s a police matter now. He’s fucked.’

  Elke said, ‘Finished, so I’ll never know.’

  ‘You didn’t go out with him?’

  ‘Not for want of trying.’

  ‘Nor me. I put a Post-it on his screen. Nothing happened.’

  ‘We weren’t grand enough.’

  ‘I think he would have done well with Wilhelmina. I reckon she was ready for him.’

  ‘Bastard. He’ll go through the mill now.’

  ‘We never knew him.’

  ‘Right. Never did – he wouldn’t let us.’

  It was their sacred home. His grandmother, had she been there, and his mother, would have bent the knee, kissed crucifixes and muttered prayers. They had come down the steep road, leaving the hillsides of rock and scrub high above them, and were beside a dry stream. The scooter was parked and the kid drank fruit juice.

  The sacred home of the ’Ndrangheta, certainly for the clans on the eastern coast, was the shrine at Polsi, dedicated to the Madonna of the Mountains. It was regarded as holy and valued. Marcantonio had just travelled from Berlin, where there was no rubbish, no filth, no litter. This was a precious site. He saw the weeds between the cobbles, the carpet of cigarette ends, the fast-food wrappers and the booths where souvenirs were sold. Mass would be said in the morning at the church, but his grandfather and Stefano would duck their heads in sham respect at the outer door and not enter. They sidled into the shadows thrown by the early sunlight. He followed. He had been away for six months but took no liberties with his grandfather. He hung back and would come forward when called.

  A guide was leading the first pilgrims of the day on a tour and told them that initial Christian recognition of Polsi’s significance had come from Roger
II of Sicily, in the twelfth century: he’d had three wives, ten children by them, five more from his mistresses, and had begun the veneration of the Madonna here. The guide added that there had been pagan ceremonies on the site linked to the goddess Persephone and fertility, but it was too early for the pilgrims to chuckle.

  Marcantonio had been brought here a month before the killing of Annunziata, and his grandfather had taken him to a ramshackle café above the church. They had had a lunch, cooked in primitive conditions, and planned how he would deal with his aunt, then go to Germany. Nowhere in Germany, in any Italian restaurant, had he eaten such superb goat’s cheese, neck of pig and stomach wall, or strawberry grapes. The woman who had cooked for them had looked hard at him, then said, ‘I hope the Madonna will help you. If you touch her heart, you will come back.’ That day they were not in Polsi to linger.

  It was important to be there, to be seen. In days past, the principals of all the families had met at Polsi to share business, examine procedures and settle disputes. Men came from Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland and northern Italy, and followed the instructions of the elders. Years later, when he was in his early teens, men had been photographed by an undercover carabinieri officer, with a camera strapped to his belt and a lens hard against a fake button in his coat. The big groups no longer came. Because of undercover efforts, many had gone to gaol, but Polsi was good for small meetings.

  His grandfather met two men in shadows against a wall. He gestured Marcantonio forward. Two cold faces, two forced smiles, two iron handshakes. He was looked over as if he were an unbroken horse – perhaps promising, perhaps not, perhaps good for a marriage, perhaps not. He was waved away. If his grandfather felt disappointed or annoyed at his dismissal, he did not show it. For fuck’s sake, he had been up early, left the girl, had dressed and shaved, than sat in that car. Had he come all this way to be ignored? He bowed and moved back graciously, giving no hint of his irritation. Marcantonio understood the powers that existed in the mountains and did not challenge them. His time would come. His grandfather was frail, heavy on his feet, and breathed hard when climbing steps. His time would come soon.

  The man had dozed and dawn rose over the gates of the city’s premier public gardens.

  The movement of their car alerted him. The engine was switched on and the lights of the dashboard brightened. A high performance vehicle.

  He glanced into the rear-view mirror. They had seen him enough times not to need a photograph. He eased his buttocks across the seat and freed the pistol, then reached inside the compartment above his knees, with a gloved hand, for the silencer. He screwed it on fast, and cocked the weapon. Better to arm it inside the car and have the scrape suppressed by the closed windows.

  The target, to the man with the pistol, seemed pathetic. He had four dogs with him, two big and two small. All had been washed and clipped. They dragged on their leashes, ran excitedly around his legs and had him tangled and stumbling. He had once been, the gunman knew, a player with a certain respect, a second cousin of the inner family, close to the cosca but not quite part of it. Useful but not essential. Well paid but not wealthy . . . Capable of saving himself from long imprisonment with information that had put the two brothers into the aula bunker, then into the isolation cells. The gunman did not reckon that the pentito had understood, when he had begun the ‘collaboration’, that funds would dry up and he would be cut adrift. He tripped over the leashes. An owner, high in the block, wouldn’t tolerate him jerking the leash and wrenching the dog’s neck. He was attempting to free himself. He looked as if he had slept poorly. They crossed the road, the dogs dragging him excitedly. The gloved hand reached for the car’s door handle.

  The dogs might be his best friends, his only friends. The gunman had no pets. The dogs he had known were those that patrolled the perimeters of the various gaols where he’d been held. These animals were pampered and exclusive. He would have liked to take their lives as well as his target’s. The pentito was dragged into the gardens, through wide gates and down the hill. There were joggers about at this hour, cyclists and more dog people. He drew down the balaclava, eased out of the car, then reached back. His clenched fist touched the driver’s. He had the weapon hidden under his coat, held tightly to it. Another pentito, a Sicilian, had been about to give evidence in Palermo, then had retracted. He had been debriefed by interested individuals: he had been taken to the Borghese Gardens, in Rome, by his protection team for exercise; they had seemed over familiar with the paths cutting through it, and had been on good terms with the owner of a mobile bar who served coffee and brandy in winter, ice cream in summer. A watch had been kept. This pentito had been spotted three days before the withdrawal of the security men. An entrepreneur had circulated the picture of the potential target. No takers in Palermo, or in Naples, but identified in Reggio Calabria from a performance on the witness stand at the aula bunker. Money had been paid, a date named.

  The gunman let the car door swing shut, but not fasten. The dogs rambled at the extent of their retractable leads and were in the grass near to the statue of King Umberto I. The gunman had little idea of the historic significance of the king, but had noted that the target used the same bench each day. He could have been shot many times over, but this was the given date. He came from behind. For the first time he reached to his belt and checked the knife. His instructions were specific, the reward was considerable.

  He was close.

  A dog growled. The other three edged back, their leads tightening as the man sat on the bench and smoked. When the dogs showed fear, he would have known. The gunman thought he would have expected him and was unlikely to bolt. The target did not move. The gunman fired into the back of the head and blood spurted. There was an explosion of skin, bone and matter from the exit hole. The target toppled. His hand let go of the leashes and the dogs scampered away. A cyclist watched but was fifty metres away, and two joggers seemed to stop in mid-stride, but they were more than a hundred metres from him. The target lay on his side across the bench.

  He came to the front of the bench, slid the pistol into his pocket and released the knife from his belt. He crouched over the man, groped below the belt and found the zip. His movement was clumsy because of the gloves. He undid the trousers, reached inside and exposed the man. He used the knife. Firm incisions, no hesitation. The mouth was conveniently open. He tilted the head a little, then forced penis and testicles into the mouth, hard enough for them to lodge in the throat. Sometimes banknotes were used, but he thought this sent a better message – and it was better paid.

  He did not run. At the gate, he pushed up the balaclava. He heard no shouts behind him. The chance of intervention by a member of the public was small. He did not look back, did not need to. His driver would have taken him well clear of the Borghese by the time the sirens blared. He had done as he had been told.

  She’d spun the wheel, let the tyres skid, then stamped on the brake. There was an old shed, stone walls and a sagging roof, space for her to inch into, but no door. It was near to the road, fifteen paces along a track with old wheel indents and grass growing. She would be there just moments – for the last two kilometres she’d had a hand locked on her phone and the map. Sometimes Jago’s hand had been steering, and she was then using her free one to flick around the gears.

  ‘It’s the best I can do.’

  He took a deep breath. Consolata reached behind him and grabbed the kit. He already had the boots on, not a bad fit. She had the ground sheet and the coat, then scampered to the back, opened the boot and rooted in a toolbox. She brought out a penknife, a three-foot-long tyre iron, a small first-aid kit, a water bottle and a pocket torch, then slammed the lid. There was chocolate in her pocket, a fancy bar – Jago thought it might have been her dinner.

  He clenched his fist. She looked into his face. He reckoned he saw happiness. Her fist smacked into his. They crossed the road. She glanced at the phone screen, seemed to line herself up, then plunged down a slope.

  It wa
s almost a helter-skelter. She was lighter than him, bounced on rocks and evaded the tree trunks he careered into. It might have been a goat trail, but the marks and indentations were clear to follow. They would be overlooking the top end of the village. Consolata stopped. He cannoned into her. Jago wasn’t sure if he could see, far below, the colours of clay roof tiles. She pointed, jabbed her finger. Funny old life – different worries now from what he usually had on board: the FrauBoss, whether a potential client would switch to them if the portfolio value might increase by 7.5 per cent, the bonus and the holidays chart. He didn’t want her to leave him.

  She caught his arm. ‘This is the place,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where I’ll come in forty-eight hours, twenty-four if it is possible, so you can eat and drink.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Food, water, or to take you out.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Hurt them.’

  ‘That’s what I came for. It was good that we met.’

  She pointed down the slope. He could barely see a way, at best a scramble, at worst a fall, with rocks to block him. But he heard, very faintly, dogs barking. A kiss? No. A handshake? No. He had the ground sheet, the coat, the water bottle, and her chocolate was in his pocket, the tyre iron in his belt. He looked down to see where his first step should be, then back to make sure he remembered the place, and she was gone. He heard a twig break and a rustle of leaves, then nothing. He had made a bed and had better now think of lying on it. He would have liked to touch her face, run his finger again where a scar might have been. Jago bit his lip. The quiet settled about him, and the aloneness. He took the first step, then another, clung to a small birch and allowed it to sag while he slid over a vertical rock face. He let it spring back, and found another to latch to.