No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

They were motionless, breathing suppressed to basic need, coughs and sneezes stifled. There was a wonderful moment – they knew it well – when their information nailed a prized target to the boards, and a bleak period after a mission had failed.

  Ciccio said, ‘He didn’t get as far down as the house, but I’d swear he’s in front of us. He’s hidden. Why?’

  ‘He’s too close because of the dogs.’

  He soaked up information.

  The cold was in his bones and his skin itched. It was almost a first for Jago Browne. There had been a long-ago camping trip down to the West Country, a few nights under canvas on Dartmoor – a Duke of Edinburgh Award venture – his only previous experience of roughing it – but he had never had to lie still like this, not coughing or fidgeting.

  He wasn’t close enough to watch the daily life of the house. At school it had been thought that the trip to the great outdoors was ‘character building’. He’d loathed it: the chill, the damp, the barely cooked sausages, the communality of the tent where others were close to him, could tease, ignore or hurt, and his aloneness was challenged. The men at the banks who had given him the chance to shine had been impressed by his enhanced description of the experience. For that they would have thought of him as a good team player, a man unlikely to hide behind a curtain of comfort. He had not disabused them. But he could cope – he had to.

  He had eaten only half of the chocolate. At any other time, in any other place, if he had bought chocolate he would have ripped off the wrapper and wolfed the contents. He had created a regime of rationing. There had been nowhere en route to buy food. He would survive, though, he didn’t doubt it.

  He saw the old woman. He had a fine memory, as his employers recognised. When a query was thrown up at a meeting, he seldom needed to go to his screen and hunt for an answer: if he had read it once, it was stored in his head. On the file, she was Bernardo’s wife, and he could have listed the names of her three children. Jago understood the scale of the family’s wealth. He was on the periphery of the team that handled the accounts of clients who were valued in excess of ten million euros. One young woman was handled exclusively by the FrauBoss. She was an heiress of divorced parents, living on the lake of Geneva, and came to Berlin four times a year to meet her asset handlers, accountants and lawyers. She was worth close to fifty million euros. He had met her. She had not shaken his hand but had acknowledged him. He had carried Wilhelmina’s laptop bag and a file, had sat at the side and not spoken. He thought that the people whose accounts he had monitored in London and Berlin were almost paupers in comparison to the family whose home he watched, if he could believe what Consolata had told him, and he had no reason not to.

  The old woman moved awkwardly, as if her hips hurt. The day was nudging on but she was hanging sheets and towels on a line. Jago studied her. She had plastic clothes pegs between her teeth, and more in a bag that hung from her shoulder. No servant did that job – she did it. When she had finished she stood to admire it. He thought she took great care over hanging several double sheets and large towels.

  In her face he saw neither happiness nor misery, and thought her a woman without emotion. She did not pause to watch the chickens at her feet, or to gaze at the grapes hanging from the vine or entwined in the trellis. He considered the sheets. There was no breeze and the sun would soon dip behind the trees’ foliage. He watched her move away. Despite her hip problem, she betrayed no pain, and he thought her eyes were hard.

  He was proud that he had eaten only half of his chocolate, and drunk less than half of the water.

  Jago couldn’t read the old woman: he didn’t know whether she had enjoyed the time with her grandchildren or whether she had felt loved. He hadn’t seen, at her throat or on her fingers, any of the diamonds that would be commensurate with her wealth. When he strained he could just see a slender gold ring on the wedding finger. He had noticed the handyman leave a plastic bowl of vegetable peelings where the chickens were, and that the path the man took was behind the sheets.

  The priest left.

  The children were taken home.

  He saw Marcantonio.

  He saw the daughter, Giulietta – she had a bent nose. It would have been broken many years before and not set correctly. Her chin jutted out too far and her teeth overlapped. She wore no jewellery. Jago knew who she was from her photograph in the file, and that she was in her early thirties. She had glasses perched on the end of her nose.

  Jago watched, the plan not yet firm in his mind. He remembered the pizzeria girl’s face, the impact with which he had hit the ground, the blows thrown at him. He remembered the anger of the shouts as he had pocketed his keys. He had started to know them all – except the head of the family.

  ‘It should have been me.’

  ‘Our father never thought it would be you.’

  Marcantonio pirouetted on his heel. ‘Because of where my father and my uncle are, I should have done the bastard.’

  His aunt, Giulietta, countered, ‘It was never going to be you. Our father always had it done by those not associated with us. It’s a mechanical process.’

  ‘I wanted to hurt him – I wanted to look into his face and see the fear, hear him beg. Then I wanted to finish him.’

  ‘What you did with the whore was different. It was personal to all of us. Marcantonio, you’re the future.’

  ‘I would have done it. I’d like to have done it.’

  ‘You’re in Berlin to learn a new life – to learn about investment and opportunity. Marcantonio, your father and your uncle are in gaol. The family needs your vitality, your youth and strength, if it’s to survive.’

  She stroked his arm. He recognised the moment. Down the road, in the village, there were cats. Sometimes they were shot to keep down the numbers. Often, a litter was put in a sack and taken to the stream, usually by boys, then thrown in to drown. The boys did it so that they could kill if they had to. Sometimes the female cat was old but would nuzzle the youngest male. He lifted the hand. It was large, pudgy, sinewy and strong. It could have strangled as well as his could. He kissed the back. And did it again. And laughed. Marcantonio had had girls in Berlin and in the village. Giulietta did not have boys – Stefano had told him so. He allowed his lips to linger on her skin and she did not snatch away her hand.

  They were in the open, as far as possible from any hidden microphone, and switched to the dialect they had been taught as children. Business talk – what would happen, the successes were close at hand.

  ‘It’s a dump.’

  ‘Right, Bent.’

  ‘Why’d they put us here?’

  ‘It’ll be because they own it.’

  ‘It’s crap . . .’ He saw Jack’s face screw up. ‘I’d thought they’d do better for us.’

  ‘As you say, Bent. They might have done better for us. But . . .’

  They were in Brancaleone, which barely figured in the guidebooks. The hotel was on the hill behind it. An English guy lived up the coast – Humphrey. He’d met the flight and driven them down in an old Jaguar, almost a museum piece. He’d checked them in but hadn’t come upstairs with them: the lifts were ‘resting’. Humphrey had been, long ago, a sharp junior who had traded at Woolwich Crown Court on the defence side, taken early retirement to Torquay, needing a quick change of location, then made another move. He ‘fixed’ for trusted people, and was now in a development seven klicks towards Reggio. Humphrey had seen that there was no need for passports to be shown at the desk – good ones or otherwise – no signatures or addresses required. Now he had gone, and had been vague about the schedule. It had been a long day, and Bent had spent half the night sitting out at Canada Wharf. He felt nervous, and his temper was short. They were on the second floor. The room was for tourists and the signs were in German. Jack was pointing, jabbing with his finger.

  It took Bent a moment to read him. The finger went from the ceiling light to the television, from the floor switch to the air-conditioner, then to the telephone.

  Bent
said, ‘Will we get a steak here?’

  Jack answered him, ‘More likely pasta, then fish.’

  ‘And a mouthful of bones.’

  ‘What you say, Bent.’

  The sliding door squealed and he went out onto the balcony. From the keys hanging on hooks at Reception, Bent Horrocks had reckoned they had about 15 per cent occupancy, but it might have been less. It would have throbbed in high season – maybe half of Hamburg or the Ruhr would have been there. There was a ribbon road below them with shops and small businesses, nothing much that caught his eye, a few villas and some two-storey apartment blocks – the latter confused him, half built, floors, roof and supports but no walls – then the beach. Not pretty, like the Algarve or anywhere Trace would have liked. The sand was dun-coloured, like the biscuits his mother always had in the tin when he went to Margate. He had sharp eyes, and even at that distance, it was obvious that the rubbish had not been cleared from round the bins. Jack had joined him, cigarettes out. They lit up.

  Side of mouth: ‘We likely to be bugged?’

  ‘My advice, Bent, say nothing except when you’re wanting a piss, unless Humphrey’s with us. He’ll know. If it’s you and me it’s down on the beach. It’s a serious place, Bent, with serious people, and big rewards for getting it right.’

  ‘I hear you. Why are all those blocks unfinished? Seems a waste to . . .’

  ‘What you say, Bent, a waste. Could have been a laundering job, but the law landed on them and confiscated the property. They do that, take the assets.’

  ‘We right to come here?’

  ‘It’s the big league, Bent. Where you should be.’

  ‘Where I want to be.’

  ‘And ought to be.’

  ‘I’ll not take shit from them. Never have and never will.’

  ‘It’ll be good, Bent. Big league.’

  It looked a pretty ordinary place. Quiet. It looked as if not much happened at Brancaleone. He liked the thought of ‘big league’.

  ‘If he’s in difficulties, he’ll get no sympathy.’ Carlo had taken a train.

  ‘Too grand for us. We’re not up to his standards.’ He’d walked from the station.

  ‘Forgot about us and where he came from.’ There were little side roads off the main streets, and cul-de-sacs. The light was going and TV sets flickered. The kids were out on the corners, hoods up and forward, scarves looped across their faces. Too late for children to be playing outside. The fast-food outlets were slack. He’d been past the pub, had known of it from his days working in London, and Freemasons Road. He found the turning he wanted. The kids would have reckoned him a policeman because of his walk and posture. They’d have known about policemen, every last one of them.

  ‘Don’t they call it the throw-away society? If you’re last year’s big thing, you don’t take kindly to being trashed.’ He’d rung the bell. A girl had answered it, nice nails and hair. She’d have been the sister listed in the file. Behind her was the brother, different father. Carlo had introduced himself. He could do the look well when he needed help. He’d been gestured in, had wiped his shoes carefully, shown respect. It was a decent home, clean and warm. Comfortable, but the value of money counted. There were neat front doors and handkerchief gardens in the street, all filled with refuse bins. The mother was washing her hair but came down, with a towel as a turban. She sat on the sofa, her daughter and son behind her, as if she needed their protection.

  ‘We did all that we could for him, and got nothing back.’ She was slight, her face worn and tired. She might have been attractive once, a long time ago. Still, she had managed to attract three different blokes – nothing to do with Carlo. He had to build a profile and start to understand the man who had gone bare-arsed to Calabria, planning to start a commotion. He might get his head blown off or his face rearranged to the extent that he was unrecognisable when he lay in intensive care. Bizarre. Carlo had come to Canning Town expecting to hear about a good guy who helped old ladies across busy roads, did meals on wheels at weekends, but his own mother had bad-mouthed him.

  ‘He went to the best school round here. Uniform was dear. Billy and Georgina went short because of him. He had the chance to break free . . . I’m not saying we wanted to cling to his coat tails and have him pull us up, not saying that, but Jago hasn’t been to see us for two years, not even at Christmas. You want to know about him? He needs to win. Going to university was winning. Getting into a bank was winning. You say he’s on an exchange in Germany. He’d count that as winning. He’d see us as losers, wouldn’t want to know. Where he’s gone, what he’s going to do there – what’s brought you here on a Sunday afternoon – it’ll be about winning. You say it started with a girl getting her face slashed. It’ll be about excitement. Excitement is winning. From you being here, I suppose it’s a bad place to go for excitement and a hard place for winning. Don’t answer that. It was good of you to call, but you needn’t come back. A text will do if you’ve something to say.’

  He let himself out.

  There was a guesthouse by the airport where they’d booked him in, convenient for early-morning flights. Nothing was as it seemed – the spice of life. It never was, in Carlo’s experience. He’d have agreed with what she’d said. A hard place for winning. That hit the nail on the head. He walked fast towards the station. There’d be tears at the end of it. There usually were when amateurs got involved.

  The beast was hurt. It was separated from the pack, frightened, and flies clustered over the wound. It was hungry, isolated and lost. The clouds had built. Evening seemed to come fast and the light failed.

  A big clap of thunder.

  Jago was on his stomach. He had not decided what he would do. He was uncertain about his target. He had a degree of security when he was wedged into the space under the two great boulders but had not yet summoned the strength of purpose – guts or commitment – to wriggle out of his hide, go down the slope and do something.

  He was on the groundsheet, wrapped in the coat. Wind blustered through the trees, scattering leaves. The sheets behind the house had begun to flap where previously they had been limp.

  The first drops fell. He was watching the back door, wondering which of them would run out to snatch the laundry off the line, throw them into a basket and rush back inside. He waited and watched and no one came.

  Lights went on inside, and he saw two windows closed. Big drops of rain hit the leaves above and the stones in front of him. The first little river had begun to flow. There was more thunder, and sheet lightning. He wondered whether a shower or a storm was coming.

  The rain pattered hard and Jago had nowhere to shelter.

  9

  When he moved, a lake of trapped water lapped round him. There was no light, only a lessening of the total blackness.

  It was not the best place to be. Jago had thought himself blessed when he had found the gap under the two great stones. It gave him a matchless vantage point where he was protected and hidden. Now, the rain made rivers on the hillside. One tumbled under the twin boulders and flowed over the slab where he lay, dammed by his body. Its depth built up under his armpits and against his crotch. His clothing was inadequate and the ground sheet useless.

  It had seemed to Jago that the village marked the epicentre of the storm. Thunder had crashed and flashes of lightning had lit the roof of the house . . . The cockerel had woken him, crowing for attention. There were no cockerels in Canning Town or Stresemannstrasse.

  Rainwater cascaded down the slopes of the boulders to fall on his shoulders and the back of his head. It was down his neck and had puddled under his chest and waist. It dribbled across his forehead into his eyes and mouth.

  The cockerel had given up. Other than the rain, Jago heard nothing. He had begun to take pride in his disciplines. He didn’t cough or sneeze, and stayed where he was – he didn’t know where the dogs slept. There was a covered box near the back door and they had hung around it during daylight, but whether they were there now asleep or awake and alert, h
e had no idea.

  He had put off a big moment. When to eat the second half of the chocolate. Now resolve fled. Jago fished it out of his pocket. It was soaked and the chocolate was sticky as he peeled off the wrapper. There were no lights in the upper windows of the house. There was nothing there on which he should concentrate. He ate the chocolate in three mouthfuls. It was not how they ate at the bank, either in the coffee shop before the day started or when the trolley came round mid-morning. Some would already have been to the gym, then showered and headed for coffee and a biscuit – they would have taken tiny bites and made it last. When the trolley came there were fat-free meals – salads, fruit and fish. It would have been noticed halfway across Sales if he had gobbled half a bar of a chocolate in three bites.

  The lake he was lying in had become a fast-flowing stream. He wanted to pee. Should he manoeuvre onto his side, put his weight on his hip, then try to direct the urine into the rainwater coming past him? The alternative was to crawl forward, drag himself upright and hope his hands weren’t too frozen to fumble with his zip. Important to check the wind direction. It would be futile to attempt to determine the value of being where he was. Better to worry about relieving himself and at what speed to eat chocolate.

  A man sneezed.

  There was the noise of water flowing, of the wind catching high branches, and the crisp, clear sound of a sneeze, then a choke, which was a second stifled. It had come from behind and above him. He couldn’t have estimated how close it had been because the wind was blowing from that direction. Twenty yards or fifty.

  Jago lay on his stomach. He didn’t pee, just strained to hear better. The second sneeze had been fainter, more muffled. He froze, as still as stone.

  Ciccio thought it a noise to raise the dead. Fabio was humiliated.

  Ciccio couldn’t believe that his friend, colleague and surveillance partner would sneeze so loudly. Fabio gripped the sleeve of Ciccio’s jacket: his gesture of apology. The moment passed.