No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  Jago studied them. He was supposed to be capable of making good judgements. The bank paid him to be sharp.

  Between the third and fourth sheets, where they had been dumped by the wind the path was deeper in the centre and shallower at the edges. The slip ran for some three metres, more than a third of the distance between the trellis and the wall that blocked the view of the near-ruined shed.

  A cable . . .

  . . . He could see a join in the centre of a length of cable – electrician’s tape had been used to join two lengths, then wrapped in transparent plastic. The cable had been buried along the part of the path that was hidden by the sheets. Not now.

  At Canary Wharf, they’d rated him as intelligent. They’d thought the same of him at the university, where he’d done a business course, and in the City, where he had been recruited by the bank and reckoned worthy of the transfer to Berlin. They had rated him sharp and bright enough to go after prospective clients and meet those who had already signed up. The sun was on the cable. In Jago’s estimation, it had been laid recently – the plastic coating was not yet stained with damp or deterioration. It ran from the back of the house, below the path and towards the derelict shed. Then it continued alongside the building to a slope where rubble and earth were heaped high. Thorn and broom bushes grew there, but no trees.

  It was as if his lottery numbers had come up. A special moment. A new challenge screamed at him that good times lay ahead. Jago was always at his best when he was challenged – and that was why he hadn’t run when he’d done the car.

  The back door opened.

  He felt elation. It wasn’t a moment for punching the air – as some in the City did when news of bonuses came through – but more as if he’d sipped a good whisky in front of a blazing log fire. He felt contented, as he had that Christmas when he he’d stayed in the country-house hotel. Answers tumbled towards him.

  The old woman came out of the back door, the dogs close to her, and saw her sheets on the ground. In her black cardigan and skirt, black socks and black shoes, with the black scarf knotted over her head, it was clear she had no truck with sunshine. She would despise ‘luxury’, he thought. No silk underwear for her, no stylists queuing to do her hair. A stupid thought: he’d bet what little money he had in his wallet that she’d have cooked him an amazing pasta dish, and would have dried his clothes, then ironed them expertly. Nothing about her was attractive. Her photograph had been on the policeman’s file in the station on Bismarckstrasse so she had flitted into Berlin and was linked, therefore, to a slashed face. He was there, in part, because of her and what she would have taught her grandson.

  A second stupid thought: she would fight to her last breath to protect her family.

  She smacked her hands together, then spread her feet so that she could bend down to collect the sheets. She moved along the path and stopped short of where the ground had slipped. The hole was in front of her and one more sheet lay on the far side. She whistled, a note he recognised: it was the one the kid used when he had the dogs on the hills. The dog closest to her knee was brindled, a crossbreed. The command – from between her teeth – was faint but clear. It bounded forward, reached the last sheet, scratched it into a tighter ball, then clamped its jaws on it and dragged it to the woman. Jago looked for a sign of appreciation shared between the dog and its mistress. He saw no love, no gratitude. She looked towards the end of the path, stared at the honeysuckle that grew up the building’s wall, still in flower. Her mouth twitched. Then she wiped the back of her hand across her nose and went back to the house.

  The sun rose. The cable was now in dense shadow.

  Jago understood. What to do with his knowledge would exercise him. What to do that was more than scratching vehicles. He thought her magnificent, uncompromising.

  Jago checked his watch, worked out when he could make the rendezvous with Consolata and have water, food and clothing. He wondered briefly what she would bring, but was more concerned with the exposed cable.

  ‘What could you see?’

  Fabio answered, ‘I can’t see from here where the sheets were – that rock blocks it – but she’s picked them up, the four sheets.’

  Ciccio tapped the newest message into the keypad.

  ‘And what do they make of what happened last night?’

  ‘Not my problem.’

  They lapsed into silence and the message was sent. Ciccio had one certainty: it was someone else’s problem. He didn’t know who that someone was, had seen only a shadow moving, and the image-intensifier glasses had not shown him a face. The shadow had crawled out of the night and attacked the home of a noted player, the head of a medium-ranking family. He had not dynamited the place or splashed petrol on the door and tossed a match or sprayed the upper windows with automatic fire from an AK. He had scratched a car. Why? And the consequences?

  That was easier to answer. Ciccio had seen the results of ’Ndrangheta killings, those who had been strangled, starved to death in makeshift gaols and shot in the street. Once, part of a corpse had not quite dissolved because the acid in the vat had been used too often. As a consequence there would be a body. They had done their job, had observed and reported, and it was for others to pick over the information they had provided. It seemed to have no relevance to the Scorpion Fly surveillance operation. The clock ticked, and time slipped by.

  ‘Can I tell you something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The scorpion flies we collected are dead and useless. We tried. Is that good enough?’

  ‘Always. We tried and there’s a reward.’

  It diverted them to talk about the insect that looked like a killer and was harmless. The fate of the scorpion fly collection mattered almost as much as sighting the target. The wretched little creatures gave them a degree of sanity. They treated themselves to a dawn lunch, wurstel and a can of fruit cocktail. The combination would play havoc with their digestion, but they reckoned they deserved it. To Ciccio, the consequence for the shadowy figure was inevitable – as night follows day.

  ‘You’ve been here before?’ Carlo snapped, from the side of his mouth.

  They were escorted up wide stairs – it hadn’t seemed worth waiting for the lift. A uniformed man was ahead. They had been through a metal detector – they had dumped their change and phones in a tray for X-ray, and their ID cards and passports had been photocopied. ‘Yes. Nothing’s different,’ Fred answered him.

  ‘We have an agenda?’

  ‘Bend the knee, apologise, be helpful. Say as little as possible.’

  It was a best-clothing occasion, trousers, jackets, ties. The walls had been recently painted but institutional grime seemed to cling to them. There were no works of art, and the paintwork was a dull cream. On the landing there were ranks of closed doors, numbered, the occupants’ names not displayed. They walked the length of a corridor. Ahead they could see an open lobby area.

  Men pushed up from the sofas and hard chairs where they smoked, read magazines or watched their phones’ screens. They were not those who had entertained them in the Ciroma bar the previous night. Carlo had drunk too much and Fred had matched him beer for beer. It was the story of his life that, too often, he was half-cut when he needed to be stone-cold sober, his antennae alert. He felt flushed and sweaty. The German looked better, which was a bitter pill for Carlo to swallow: Fred could hold his beer better than himself.

  The men were the protection team. Some carped that they were superfluous, and, he’d heard, when he’d done the liaison from Rome, that they provided a visual symbol of ego. He knew enough of the differing Mafia groups to believe they sensed weakness and exploited it. They would kill their enemies, if it suited them.

  He had been told a story about the killing of Paolo Borsellino, in Palermo, when that prosecutor had been a ‘walking cadaver’ and it was known he had been condemned. He’d had a team of five guards, always with him, in as much danger as he was. It was said that Borsellino used to evade the team and go out, when he needed
cigarettes, that he hoped he would be shot then, alone, so that their lives would be spared. They had all died with him, four policemen and a policewoman.

  These men would be the prosecutor’s family. Their anoraks and denim jackets were on the arms of the sofa and they wore their shoulder holsters. They would know that their man was facing ever-increasing isolation, and that an investigation was close to failure – all in the ‘briefing’ at the bar. He and Fred added to the burden on the man’s shoulders. The Mafia sent out their gunmen and their bombmakers when a target was isolated. Now he and Fred faced cold stares. He would have expected nothing else. One checked their names, their ID, went to an unmarked door and spoke into a microphone. They were waved inside. He doubted a single prosecutor in London or Berlin grasped this man’s lifestyle.

  A cigarette burned in a cheap tourist ashtray, already half filled with butts, and the day had barely started. He wore braces, his shirt was unbuttoned low on his chest – a crucifix hung from a chain round his neck – and his fingers were stained mahogany with nicotine. The shirt cuffs were open, the links undone. He had three or four days’ stubble on his cheeks and his spectacles were balanced high on the crown of his head. The wall, predictably, was covered with the shields of other forces: German, French, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Spain, Greece and an elaborate one from Colombia. A carabinieri cap lay on a shelf, with a child’s model of a helicopter in carabinieri livery. In Carlo’s experience, some men carried the burden of their work easily and could muster a smile of welcome. In a few, hope had died. The other shelves groaned under the weight of the files stacked on them.

  Nothing had changed. It was as Carlo remembered it. They dealt in paper, made mountains of it, and the burden grew. In London, in Green Lanes, Peckham, Deptford or out on the Essex fringes, there might be a celebration in a bar if a big player was brought in. There was nothing as crude here as a rogues’ gallery of wanted men: there wasn’t room – it would have covered all of the walls and maybe the ceiling.

  The prosecutor sat down. They were not offered chairs.

  ‘You came to tell me . . .’.

  The German spoke up. He was good at taking blame and accepting shit. He talked about a bank worker and a pizzeria in Berlin’s smart Charlottenburg, the young man’s intervention, a girl’s face disfigured and . . .

  ‘Would you get to the point?’

  Fred spoke good enough Italian. He told the prosecutor of an error made, a file left visible on a computer screen, a message calling him from the room. The bank worker’s disappearance, a vandalised car . . .

  ‘The car was the property of the grandson of Bernardo Cancello? And the vandalism was the act of a Briton, Jago Browne?’ The prosecutor spoke reasonable English. ‘What was the act of vandalism?’

  Fred told him. A uniformed policeman from Bismarckstrasse had checked Marcantonio’s address. The vehicle had been parked outside and two parallel lines had been scraped on the bodywork: expensive to repair.

  ‘He’s there. Your man, Browne, has reached us. Last night, officers on surveillance duty witnessed an unidentified man scratch the sides of a City-Van outside the home of that padrino. The vehicle is an artisan’s transport, old and worthless. He is there for what purpose other than to scratch cars?’

  Fred said he didn’t know what the Englishman, who had no military training, no police experience, no law-enforcement knowledge, intended. He was in the sales division of a bank specialising in attracting investors. It was unlikely he had either accomplices or a lethal weapon.

  Carlo did not intervene. They had come to help in any way possible, to be present, demonstrate solidarity and liaise. He saw the cigarette ground out and another lit. He reckoned Fred had done well in the circumstances.

  ‘He is now in hiding. I think that soon they will find him. If they do, they will kill him. To me that is irrelevant. I am looking for Bernardo Cancello. I am coming towards the end of a lengthy investigation that depends on his capture. With a stranger close to him, he will have gone even further into those goddamn mountains where an army can disappear. Will I try to save him and thereby wreck the last hours of my mission? Or do I leave him to his fate? I don’t doubt its certainty. At the end of the week I lose my assets, my eyes on the ground, and start on another case. I shall have failed. Where I work there is danger in failure. Each time I fail, or we fail, they have won. They exploit all victories. Your man is helping me to fail. Have you anything else to say?’

  Fred nodded in agreement with all that had been said – no medals in confrontation – and said that their bosses expected them to remain in Calabria until the bank worker could be located and brought home: repatriated, alive or dead. The prosecutor scribbled a name on a sheet of paper and a phone number in the carabinieri building on Via Aschenez. A file was opened and a meeting ended.

  A final word: ‘And stay the fuck out of my way.’

  They were outside.

  ‘You did well,’ Carlo told him.

  Fred clasped the scrap of paper with the name and number. They’d get some paperwork done.

  ‘Just have to look on the bright side,’ Carlo said. ‘Achieve what’s possible . . . It’s what we do every day.’

  Fred said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can’t do any more. Won’t be anything new.’

  ‘Because we’re just the little people. I said it’s “unlikely” that he had accomplices. But he can’t have got himself this far without help.’

  ‘In the time he had available, it would have been impossible.’

  ‘Don’t sell him short,’ Fred said. ‘I did – I won’t again.’

  The sun shone as they emerged from the building.

  ‘Is this any business of ours?’

  ‘We should make it our business.’

  Carlo paused on the pavement. ‘Tell me, he has no experience of the military, no training in covert warfare, has never fought hand to hand, except perhaps as a kid. Is he better off for knowing nothing? Or is he a lamb to the slaughter? I don’t know.’

  Fred frowned. ‘Might be better off. He’s not dependent on support, back-up, no rule book in his pocket, no commander bleating in his ear. And he’s a true volunteer. I think he’s better off. But he is not quite alone because he has a helper. God, what do I know?’

  She had done her shopping early at the mini-mart, put fuel in her parents’ car and was on the road. Nothing on the radio that involved her, except reports of flooding in the north and landslips on a railtrack south of Naples, the usual shit about a month’s rain falling in a day. Consolata had gone through his rucksack again and taken out dry clothing.

  She drove north of Archi, then turned off the main road at Gallico towards the mountains and began the climb. Had anyone been with her, she would have said that you left civilisation at Santo Stefano in Aspromonte. There were few road signs but she was comfortable enough with the route. Boys herding goats, women collecting mushrooms, hikers in columns, cars travelling fast and lorries hugging cliff edges. The sun was higher and the road gleamed in her face. She had the window down and let the wind ripple the skin of her arms and throat. She was east of Varapodio, making good time, while the radio played soft music between news bulletins and weather reports and— She hit the brake.

  The tyres screamed, burned. If she hadn’t stamped on the pedal, she would have hit the car in front of her. In front of it, a tractor was towing a trailer and in front of the tractor there was a roadblock.

  She didn’t know what had happened on the hill above the house. Didn’t know what he had done. Didn’t know if they had her name. Didn’t know whether he was alive, dead or hunted. She had food for him. His rucksack was in the back of her car, with travel documents in his name; she had fuel for the vehicle in a plastic litre bottle. The roadblock was mounted by carabinieri, but not the ones with the fancy uniforms. These men wore military combat clothing, with sub-machine guns. Their protective vests were weighed down with reserve ammunition magazines and they carried gas, pistols and handcu
ffs on their belts. She thought she was about five kilometres from the point above the village where she had parked and left him.

  What to do? The tractor driver was being interrogated. He was not handed back his papers and waved through. This was planned and thorough. If they had his and her names, she would go into a cage.

  Consolata swung the wheel – she did the equivalent of tiptoeing away. A discreet three-point turn, and then she hit the zigzags. So, he had no food, no water and wet clothing – if he was still there. She shrugged. She’d come back when the roadblock had gone. She didn’t know him and the radio had said nothing about him. She retraced her route. She barely understood him and he hadn’t helped. She resented that – she wanted to know him . . .

  He watched Giulietta.

  The confirmations came in a line . . .

  Jago knew the bus route to school that went along Barking Road. The shelter was inadequate if it rained, but he’d have to wait ages – then three would come at once. Old rule. Predictable. Three confirmations in a line, like London buses.

  There was Giulietta and the washing for the line. The handyman was following with a spade. The chickens and the dogs were with them.

  He could see enough.

  Giulietta would have been barely older than the girls at the bank, but Renate, Elke and Hannelore wouldn’t have been seen dead in clothing like hers or have left their hair to its own devices, as Giulietta did. She had a plastic basket tucked under one arm, which she put on the ground. She shook out the folded sheets, then started to peg them to the line. Each time a sheet was placed in position, it denied Jago a view of that section of the path. The sheets made a screen. To a casual observer, they were there to dry. The second fell off at one end and she had to go back to refasten it.

  The handyman was in front of her with the spade and dug a trench, then toed the cable into it and patted the earth back into place, stamped on the loose soil, and manoeuvred the slabs so that the walkway was smoother. He worked where earth had subsided and Jago had seen the join in the cable. Giulietta jabbed her finger at him, issued instructions and flounced about in annoyance at the time he took. The chickens squawked and bustled at her feet. Twice she aimed a kick at them. When all the sheets were hung, and the path had been levelled, Jago could no longer see the cable.