No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  The beam had picked up one of those small orange boxes that used to hold Kodak film. He’d lifted it up and the date was stamped on it – 1987. He had gone further in. His feet had snagged on cloth, and the torch had shown him a child’s dress and small shoes with tarnished buckles, scuffed at the toe. There were blankets and two buckets, a plastic plate, several plastic cups and a candle-holder. In a recess he found a rotting mattress. He’d seen a chain – it had fine links but was strong enough to withstand the efforts of a kid to break it, and ended with an iron collar where a padlock was still fastened. The far end disappeared under the mattress. He was driven by a compulsion to know where the chain led. He pulled back the mattress and mice scampered out. He saw the staple buried in the stone – it would have been driven home with a sledgehammer. There were small socks, skimpy underwear and a pullover of fine-quality wool. He was in a den where a child, aged ten or twelve, had been chained.

  He had gone back out into the light, which seemed heaven-sent after the depths of the cave. He imagined the child held there, wondered how long she had been there and how it had ended.

  Jago watched the house, and the shaking ebbed. Impossible, but he tried to square a circle: a home where a sort of normality seemed unthreatening, and a cave where a child had been chained in darkness, with rats and mice, mosquitoes, cold – and fear.

  He caught the movement. It was in the corner of his eye. He focused. A boy, seventeen or eighteen, slender, sallow-skinned, dark curly hair, walked along a track above and to the right of where Jago was, with three dogs. It was not a Sunday-afternoon stroll. The dogs were doing a job, scampering around him, over rocks and among trees. Often enough Jago lost them. Consolata had taken him into the water and made him wash off the smell of sweat. The dogs were thin. Their ribs and teeth showed. The boy controlled them with a thin whistle and shrill commands. He would have been a hundred feet above Jago and there were cliffs between them . . .

  There was a shout from far below. A hoarse old voice. The boy called the dogs to him and started to retrace his steps, the dogs bustling around his legs. Jago reckoned that if the kid had kept going, and continued around the hillside he would have crossed, with his dogs, the line of his own descent.

  He breathed hard and forgot the cave. He had a good view of the house. Jago felt calm, as if his earlier confusions were settled, as if he had signed a last will and testament. Why was he there? He knew the answer to that. What would he do? Take time to learn. He would not stampede down the hill. They would know he had been there, he promised them that. Specific action? He needed time to decide and would not be hustled: that preconceived ideas were usually rubbish was a lesson he had learned at the Bank. Learn and assimilate, they preached. Then act.

  The dogs milled around the back door, and the old man who had called was gunning his van. Marcantonio’s football game was over and he had slipped into the passenger seat. The boy with the dogs, recognisable by his shirt, had a crash helmet on his head now, the visor over his face. He drove away on a scooter, the van following.

  Jago lay on his stomach. The shadows were longer, and the day died.

  The investigator called from his apartment in the Moabit district and spoke to a friend who was also at home, an apartment overlooking the Ionian Sea, at the Catanzaro marina. From his time with the ROS, the GICO and the Squadra Mobile, Fred Seitz had learned that bureaucratic labyrinths were best avoided by personal and discreet contacts. He did not explain why he needed help, and would return the favour in the future. He was told the implications of a failed inquiry.

  ‘This is the situation, Fred. For this prosecutor much rests on it, not least his prestige. The operation is called Scorpion Fly and the target is Bernardo Cancello, from the hills above Locri. He’s not in the first flight but is still considered a high-value target. His two sons are in gaol – they’ll be old men when they’re freed. He has a grandson, Marcantonio, who will succeed him. The aim of the investigation was to arrest the target – Bravo Charlie to us – and cut down the family. I don’t know how much evidence can be laid against him, but the immediate problem is that the old man has gone to ground so cannot be arrested. Normally, Fred, as you know, we rely on phone intercepts for nailing locations. This family doesn’t use electronic communication so we have to deploy human surveillance. I can get the air force up, with heat-seeking gadgets, more easily than a skilled surveillance team. The prosecutor’s running out of time – he has only a few days left. Anything that interferes with his remaining time would be a serious blow to him. The competition among the prosecutors and magistrates for surveillance teams is intense. No result, the team is withdrawn. I think this investigation is floundering. That’s a black mark against the prosecutor. These people fight like feral cats. Sometimes I watch those wildlife films from the Serengeti. There’s an old wildebeest, legs going, unable to graze because its teeth are rotten, can’t keep up with the herd. High in the sky, there’s a speck. The old wildebeest knows it’s there, and that there’ll be another, and another. Vultures sense weakness. They’ll drop, circle and land. Whether the animal is dead or still alive, they’ll start to feast. Understand what I’m saying, Fred?’

  He went back to his packing.

  ‘What does he think it’ll be like, going after those people? Does he think it’s some sort of squirrel shoot – out with an air rifle? Is he dumb, ignorant or both?’

  Bagsy said, ‘Not too sure, Carlo. But the people down in Reggio are going to blow a gasket when they hear a freelancer, our national, is plodding about close to a prime investigation target.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Good question, Carlo.’

  The building had the echoing quiet of any government institution at a weekend. A file had been flipped in Carlo’s direction: Jago Browne, copies of a confirmed air ticket, a decent-quality picture of him going onto a pier at Rome. All that was in the file would be backed up on the phone, and there was a contact address. Carlo could play gruff but in fact he appreciated being dragged out of his home, and had driven fast to get there. Bagsy would have skipped a pub session to field him. They went back a long way.

  ‘I tried your successor out there. Can’t do much arm-twisting at a range of fifteen hundred miles. He refused – pretty much made an issue of it. He wasn’t going to traipse down to Calabria and tell them that a loose-cannon Brit was about to screw them up big-time – and I don’t blame him. He has to work there. It’s liaison, as you know, and that’s a two-way trade. He’s better off out of the bad-news zone. You speak the language.’

  ‘What’s our line?’

  ‘Grovel?’

  ‘And I’m with a Hun?’

  ‘Organised-crime officer in Berlin, did an exchange after Duisburg. They’re shitting themselves that this boy is about to trample over a sensitive investigation at a critical time. I’m not briefed up on the connection between the policeman and our banker boy but it exists. You suggested, Carlo, that the boy is either dumb, ignorant or both. Could be both. What’s his motive? Fuck knows. Maybe he doesn’t know. It used to be your territory – and it’s not a nice place. Right?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Bernardo had regarded Father Demetrio as a friend, for many years.

  Friendship could be temporary or everlasting.

  Two old men, in the twilight of their working lives, sipping brandy with water: the friendship was sealed because each knew enough of the other for a prison sentence stretching to a distant future, a bullet and a body in a ditch, or a disappearance.

  The priest had a history of collaboration and association with Bernardo’s family. Bernardo had committed the grievous crime of child murder and the priest had played a peripheral part in the disposal of a body. Neither was free of the other. Priests had been shot dead, had found severed pigs’ heads on the sacristy steps, had been denounced for the abuse of children to the bishop and forced into premature retirement and poverty. Bernardo worried about his friend Father Demetrio.

  It was in Berna
rdo’s nature to identify a cause of worry and take action to staunch it.

  They talked about men they had known who had died in their beds, women who were eccentric, younger men who languished in the prisons of the north, the weather forecast for the coming month, and the quality that year – good – of the projected olive harvest. They smoked and talked of plans for a new football pitch in the village that would need heavy plant to level a playing area, a project likely to warrant plaudits to the priest from his bishop, and credit to Bernardo, who would bankroll it. It would bring enhanced respectability to both men. They discussed the price of diesel – and, briefly, the increasingly intrusive investigations by the carabinieri and the Squadra Mobile. They did not mention the death of an informer, or a family in the village who now mourned a murdered but disowned man.

  Bernardo’s anxieties stemmed from being alone in the bunker, from hearing and seeing the child. Her open eyes had caught the light of the flash and the newspaper had been laid on her chest. The photograph had told the lie. His age and his loneliness in the bunker made him think most nights of the cave and their prisoner. Mamma had insisted that Father Demetrio should come to the place in the woods. In the years of his married life, Bernardo had listened to her only rarely on a matter of conscience or tactics. He had then.

  He let the priest shuffle the deck. They would play cards for an hour and talk a little more, though silences between them were not awkward. There was an old cellar underneath the kitchen of the presbytery where the priest lived. Once, both of Bernardo’s sons had hidden there when the carabinieri had come for them – the steps down were well disguised in a pantry cupboard. The church roof had been a good enough reward, new timbers and tiles; the school had needed new toilets and the bureaucracy in Reggio had backed away at the cost.

  The cards were dealt. Father Demetrio’s hands were unlike Bernardo’s: no callouses, few wrinkles and no old blisters from hard work with tools. They were smooth-skinned and narrow, the nails clipped like a woman’s. There might have been truth in the rumours of where those hands had strayed but Bernardo had scotched them. He lifted his cards and scanned them.

  It was about his age, the faint weakening of his resolve, and his inability to wipe away the image of the child. He worried that Father Demetrio might harbour similar feelings. The papers had said police were searching for a child, and later reported that a photograph of her, living, had been sent to her family, then that a ransom had been paid, but the parents had not been reunited with their child. That money, a million American dollars, had paid for the first investment, a deal done in Medellin in distant Colombia. The priest had been called and escorted to the place. He had knelt on a plastic bag beside the grave, a mound of earth. He would have realised a child lay in it, from its length, and had said a prayer.

  He was ageing now. He would want to go to his Maker having made a clean breast of it. Presumably the priest believed in his Maker. Increasingly Bernardo worried that Father Demetrio might visit a senior figure in the archdiocese and confess his part in the matter.

  It was a day of celebration, Mamma’s sixty-third birthday. Their grandson was at home with them. A ship was approaching the docks at Gioia Tauro, and a foreigner was coming in the hope of doing business – Giulietta had slid him a slip of paper with nine figures in a row on it, then had burned it and kissed him. He studied his cards.

  Anxiety and worry were to be avoided at his age. He did not tolerate either. Neither would he accept a possible threat to his security. The priest might wish to purge old guilt. Bernardo’s security depended on constant vigilance and confronting danger.

  Bernardo smiled – a decision taken – and topped up Father Demetrio’s glass. He played a card. All danger should be confronted.

  Consolata was on the beach.

  A fisherman was repairing a small net to her right, and a couple lay a hundred yards from her, towards the castle high on the rock, and music came from the café behind. Later she would return her parents’ car and borrow it again the night after next to go back to the place she had named. Tomorrow she would have a radio on, tuned to the local Radio Gamma NonStop. She would hear if he had done anything and thought he would. Consolata had a psychologist’s mind: she could predict men’s actions. She was on her back, soaking up the last of the sun, stretched across the still-damp pink towel.

  She thought she had helped him towards a goal. She had provided support and steeled him. She didn’t understand him – couldn’t comprehend why he had travelled so far and on such vague terms, but that didn’t matter: he was there, in place.

  She didn’t know what he would do, or the likely consequences of any action he took. A broken window, a vandalised car, paint daubed on a wall in the village – even a fire started. Any of those she could have justified. Her part in them would have been worthwhile – more so than handing out leaflets. If he did something more dramatic she would know of it from the radio – and would know also if the family caught him.

  If he was caught he might be hurt. Consolata did not regard that as her responsibility. She had only aided him on his way. If he suffered, it wouldn’t be down to her, whatever the radio said . . . but he was attractive.

  Her skin was warm. She had watched him scrub himself clean, washing away his inhibitions. A smile wreathed her face.

  The prosecutor’s protection team would have caught his mood.

  The shift had changed.

  He had seen the little huddles form as they exchanged gossip.

  His wife had gone to her mother, the children with her.

  He sat in the garden as the light faded. He was low in the easy chair but could see the top of the nearest hills, the depth of the range behind them, and each flaw in the brickwork of the wall that surrounded him. He had dreamed a little. How things would have been if . . . Other prosecutors would be hovering in the courtyard, clutching files, hemmed in by their guards and jostled by photographers. His prisoner would be led past the flash bulbs. A tray of coffee would be brought from the café nearest the barracks, and he would see Bernardo. They would greet each other, a moment of respect. They were such vain men, the high-value targets, and expected to be treated with dignity, the handcuffs hidden from the lenses. It was usual for these ‘great men’ to congratulate the prosecutor responsible for their arrest, as if only a man of immense talent could have achieved it. He had been asked once by a foreign journalist whether he would sidle close to his prisoner while the shock of arrest was still at its height and suggest he might ‘turn’, become a pentito. He had been amazed. Such an idea would offend the prisoner: he would be insulted. The prisoner must initiate such a move. The journalist hadn’t understood. Would the prosecutor see the day when Bernardo was brought by carabinieri helicopter to Reggio?

  There were two men on the hillside above the house. The forecast was poor, but he depended on them.

  They didn’t talk about kit or food. It was all about what Ciccio had seen and Fabio’s insistence that he describe the man again and again. There was nothing about scorpion flies. They discussed the pistol that Ciccio had drawn and the pepper spray that Fabio had pulled out of his rucksack. Nothing moved on the slope between them and the house. A boy had been out with dogs well below them. They knew his route and had based their hide well clear of him – they were up an escarpment from the track he took and thought themselves far enough away for the dogs not to pick up their scent.

  A decision had to be taken: what should they report? They were professionals, well versed in the ways of their world. Communicate to back-up and have those guys at an additional state of alert. They were now on Black. ‘An unknown in camouflage going past, close, then disappearing’ would trigger Amber. Back-up would report to ROS HQ. The weekend-duty officer, bored out of his mind, would log it, then refer it higher. A honcho would be called from his barbecue to receive a garbled message and they would be ordered back. That was the way it went when small stuff was passed up the command chain. If they were recalled, they would never return. />
  Ciccio didn’t know what he had seen. Fabio had seen nothing.

  ‘If we’ve shown, and they’re flushing us out, we’d have a problem. But I reckon we’d see signs of it at the house. At least, that’s what I’d like to think.’

  The hide was one of the best, in that cleft, that Ciccio and Fabio had found. As good as any they had used before. The guy coming past? Might have been a hitman from another family, but he’d had no rifle or rucksack of explosives. Perhaps he was with the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna. If so, he might be working alongside the ’Ndrangheta families or against them. But his approach down the slope had not been that of a trained man or of a covert source.

  ‘Call in and it’s panic.’

  ‘Their health and our safety. They wouldn’t take a chance, just bring us out.’

  ‘We wouldn’t be coming back.’

  ‘Don’t know what we’d hit on the way out.’

  ‘But we wouldn’t be back.’

  Ciccio said, ‘I couldn’t face our prosecutor, poor bastard. I’d swim the Strait to avoid him questioning me.’

  Fabio said, ‘We’ve given our prosecutor precious little. We’ve not found what he wants. We’ll stay as long as we can – but it’ll be a bitter pill for him to swallow when we pull out.

  Ciccio, bemused: ‘Who could it have been, coming past us – and why?’