No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  The join in it had been a yard left of where the third and fourth sheets overlapped. Jago took two small twigs, fallen in the night and scratched a line with his penknife on a rock; beyond it he worked the twigs into the ground. He had a pointer to the overlap of the sheets and the join in the cable.

  There was a whistle and a shout. Marcantonio was at the back door, dressed. The sunlight caught the muscles in his arms and his hair. The dogs came to the whistle, and the kid to the shout.

  Jago couldn’t see either Giulietta or the handyman on the path because they were on the far side of the sheets. He breathed an oath. The young man, Marcantonio, had called the dogs and the kid, then had gone back into the kitchen and retrieved a shotgun. The barrels were sawn off a little more than halfway down.

  Jago had time now to break and run.

  Marcantonio gazed up and around, his eyes raking across the trees, slopes and sheer rock faces, as if he knew. It stood to reason: a man who had scratched his car in Berlin wouldn’t come all this way to do the same to another a vehicle then quit. The scratches symbolised a challenge to fight. Had Jago meant that? His difficulty now was to get clear. He had to come out of the hole under the two boulders, then scramble up a rock face where he would be silhouetted against light grey rock and soft lichen. He didn’t know if he was within range of the shotgun, but the dogs would have him. He lay still, barely breathing, head down. In his mind he saw Marcantonio’s face: cold, brutal and angry – the latter a victory of sorts.

  He heard whistles and shouts. He thought Marcantonio and the kid had taken different routes but the dogs ran between them. How would it be if feet or paws appeared before his eyes? The penknife was in his hand, the short blade exposed.

  ‘What did the woman do, Fabio?’

  ‘Hung out the washing, of course.’

  ‘I saw that – but what did he do with the spade?’

  ‘I don’t know. But the grandson’s out with a firearm and the fucking dogs.’

  ‘What’s the engagement regulation again?’

  ‘You know that as well as I do, Fabio. If our lives are threatened we can shoot.’

  ‘Ciccio, if we shoot, we can’t expect support in high places. But those bastards won’t take me . . . Do we just get the hell out?’

  There was no answer. Both men had eased their Berettas clear of the holsters, armed them and checked the safety. Both hardly dared to breathe. It was the body smells they feared, the food wrappers in their bag, the excrement in the tinfoil . . . Fabio watched as Ciccio sent a message of the danger closing in on them. They heard whistles, shouts and dogs barking.

  The boy went directly behind the house and climbed a scree slope. Marcantonio was to his left, and the dogs roved between them.

  Below, Stefano had the City-Van jacked up and the spare wheel ready on the ground.

  Marcantonio came warily. He had explained little to the kid of why they were searching the wooded, rocky slope or what they expected to find. The kid was the son of a cousin and would never be within the family’s inner loop. He would be a foot-soldier, a picciotto, and would grow old in a junior rank. He might go to gaol for years, and would never be able to break free of the family’s control. Now, and in the future, the kid would do as he was told, and receive explanations only if it suited. He didn’t know where the City-Van had been when scratched, or when the tyre had been cut.

  Marcantonio couldn’t control the dogs the way the kid did – the kid guided them with shrill whistles, but Marcantonio had to shout at them. He stumbled twice. His trainers had lightly ribbed soles, good for walking in Locri or Siderno, but not suitable for the hills. He had been a child when his father was taken, but his father had rarely been in the valleys or on the mountains. He had spent time in Reggio and Milan. Marcantonio wasn’t used to covering almost vertical ground where the rock could be razor sharp or slid away under his weight. The kid was like a goat, and climbed fast. The dogs wanted to be with him, not with Marcantonio.

  It was years since he had fired a shotgun, and then it had been at a cardboard box, at a range of twenty metres. The spread would have brought down a running man or crippled a deer, but that was the limit. He was poor with a pistol, had seldom been out with other teenagers to fire at cans – for fear of failing. It was not in the nature of the ’Ndrangheta to kill at random. His grandfather had always said that killing was done to exert extreme pressure on enemies and remove obstacles to a quiet life. He had enough reason to carry the shotgun, which was loaded, and it would have been the work of three or four seconds to lock it, draw back the hammer, squeeze and fire.

  Two lines had been scratched on the body of the car – done with a knife or keys. The second stumble had pitched him onto his knee and ripped his jeans – Ralph Lauren, bought on the Ku’damm, when he had put them on he hadn’t realised how difficult it would be to scramble around the rocks with the dogs. His knee was bleeding. As he went higher, Capo, the alpha dog, was close to him. There were moments when it seemed to go after a scent, but there would have been rabbits here, and small deer or a boar or— He slipped again, went down several metres on his backside. He couldn’t use his hands to steady himself because they were on the shotgun. Eventually a bush broke the fall, but his pride was dented. He heard the kid whistling for his dogs, then Capo above him, and Stefano banging the new wheel into position. He was high above the bunker. It was sad that his grandfather had to live in that hole . . . He thought of how it would be when he headed the family and the old man was buried in the cemetery at the bottom of the village. Marcantonio would be a man of status, his name displayed in the files of the carabinieri and the Squadra Mobile. There would be meetings in the Palace of Justice to discuss evidence that could be brought against him.

  It was a diversion. He was on a hillside, being teased and laughed at. The old City-Van had had twin lines drawn on it and Marcantonio alone knew why. He barely remembered the girl’s face. A man had come to taunt him.

  His knee hurt.

  He sat down. He had not been with a woman since he’d got home. He had listened as his grandmother had talked interminably about the priest, the Madonna of the Mountains and the small children, Annunziata’s. His mother, Teresa, had watched him with suspicion: Berlin might have alienated him from his home and if he became part of a city’s life the family would fail. His grandfather was old and whined . . . and above him, some way distant, he heard a dog growl.

  It had come upon them. Fabio had the Beretta pistol, cocked. Ciccio had the Sabre Red, law-enforcement strength, CS tear gas/red pepper canister.

  Fabio had not spent a day on the range for eight months. Ciccio had seen a demonstration of the spray’s effect two years before.

  Their bodies were fused, Siamese style, thigh to thigh, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, the canister and the pistol pointed at the dog’s head. It snarled, showing its teeth. Some were missing or broken, but Ciccio reckoned there were enough in place to do serious damage. The dog had its front feet forward and was ready to spring. There were more dogs to their right, but this was the one that mattered. The brute had almost passed them, had been at the edge of the little parapet in front of their hole. They had lain stock still and stifled their breathing. It had stopped, sat on its arse, and scratched, then faced them. Ciccio knew it was his call, and that Fabio would not shoot. He sensed that sound welled deep in the dog’s throat. It would bark, high-pitched, urgent, and the kid would come with others. Marcantonio was carrying a sawn-off shotgun. They couldn’t run and abandon their gear. They knew why the hillside was being searched. They’d had a message: a man was on the hill, had scraped a car of Marcantonio’s in Berlin, had travelled to Calabria and scratched the car here. Dry mouths, hearts pounding, slow breathing – and fear. Ciccio thought it not a dog to be bought off with a biscuit.

  He used the spray, his target the centre of the dog’s face, at less than two metres range. On the canister the instructions gave four metres as the maximum effective distance. Two fast squirts – not enough
to blind, but enough to irritate.

  The dog backed away, blinked and whined. Its tail was locked under its legs.

  It came down, reached Marcantonio and moaned. It was bouncing off the bushes, trying to rub its nose with a front paw. Marcantonio did not know why dogs had facial irritations. He looked for the kid and saw him high on a crest, above the back of the house. He had business to do and time was running out. It was possible he had been mistaken: perhaps the City-Van had been out of sight when they were at the docks, close to Villa San Giovanni. He waved, caught the kid’s attention, pointed back down. The boy started his descent. In front of the house the wheel was on and Stefano had gone. In his opinion, Stefano was arrogant, too much listened to. He would be cut down to size when Marcantonio took control of the family’s affairs.

  ‘I want my breakfast,’ Bernardo had shouted.

  He had been told to wait. Either Mamma or Stefano, sometimes Giulietta, gave him the all-clear to leave the bunker.

  ‘Wait,’ had been Stefano’s surly response.

  ‘I want my breakfast in the kitchen, not in this hole.’

  ‘You must wait.’

  Bernardo had waited. When he was about to emerge from the bunker, the walls seemed to press harder against him and the container to have shrunk. He was carried back to the cave – and the child. He would not emerge unless his wife, daughter or Stefano sanctioned it. Stefano was a rogue and took liberties with him, but Bernardo would have trusted him with his life.

  ‘How long must I wait?’ he had called up the tunnel.

  The delay with the ransom had not resulted from the parents’ suspicions that their daughter was already dead. They had had to persuade cousins, uncles and close friends to help because their own resources did not match the demand.

  The family, in Calabria, had manipulated the situation well. Two lawyers, with roots in the region, had been appointed as go-betweens. One had taken the role of ‘friend’ and had seemed to wring his hands at the pain the parents suffered and work tirelessly for the child’s freedom. The second had played the part of the enemy, bullying them with demands for speedy payment or their child would die. The parents had regarded the friend as a sympathiser, and the enemy as scum. But the money had been paid over, in a rucksack that had been left beside the bronze statue of Christ above the town of Plati. It was extraordinary: at that time in that area seven kidnapped children were held, awaiting ransom, all giving employment because each needed at least ten men to guard them and look out for the carabinieri. The money had been brought to a house in the village, where many had had to be paid for their work during the long wait. He remembered it all . . . and that in her life with them, the child had never been given clean clothing. On her back had come Bernardo’s family’s advancement, wealth and power. Of course she was not forgotten.

  He called again: ‘What’s the delay?’

  ‘Your grandson.’

  ‘Why?’ Bernardo knew that Stefano had little affection for his grandson, that he did not value Marcantonio’s talents, which might – one day, after Bernardo’s passing – kill him.

  ‘He’s searching the hill above us with the dogs.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I didn’t ask but, you should. And ask him what happened in the night to my vehicle.’

  The kid didn’t know what had happened to Capo’s eyes. He might have been stung by a wasp. He sat on a low wall beyond the trellis and bathed the dog’s eyes in warm water that Mamma had brought. The wind had dropped and the sun was high and warm, all trace of the storm gone, but for a scattering of leaves on the slabs by the door.

  Jago saw Marcantonio – only a snip of him after he came out of the back door, then went behind the trellis, but his spiked hair stuck up above the hanging sheets.

  It would have been further confirmation, if Jago had needed it, but he didn’t. The sun’s warmth bounced from the stone in front of him into the recess under the boulders. He didn’t know what had happened with the search and the dogs, but thought himself lucky. The penknife was close to his hand.

  The family had learned a lesson. Any of them could live a lie, but if that lie challenged Bernardo’s authority only an imbecile would fail to confess it to him. The same lesson was taught in every family, each cosca, in the mountain communities. Marcantonio might have lied to his sister-in-law, might even have been flexible with the truth to his grandmother, and would have lied relentlessly if questioned by a prosecutor, but he would not lie to his grandfather.

  He talked of the boredom in Berlin. He hung his head. The old man horsewhipped him with words: he was a fool.

  He talked of a new pizzeria in a good inner suburb of the city, Italians managing it and money from a Baltic town. Had he been greedy and reckless? He didn’t deny it.

  He talked of going to collect the first pizzo, a fiery girl, making a point to her that she had ignored, a pistol-whipping. Had he not been told to learn the arts of finance and to cause no trouble?

  He had accepted the blame – and told his grandfather about a man who had intervened and been put down, and should then have backed off. As he talked he saw the old man’s frown slip away and the fist unclench. He was asked how it had ended. The old man’s hand was on his and they shared the tunnel.

  He talked of the scrape on his car and seeing a man walk away, but he was late for his flight to come home for Mamma’s birthday, the street was one-way and they couldn’t drive after him, so the act had gone unanswered. And last night, the rear tyre of the City-Van had been slashed and there were scratches on the side. He had searched the slope and found nothing. Was Marcantonio saying that a man had come here from Berlin – because he had been knocked down and kicked? To do what? To scratch Stefano’s vehicle? His grandfather’s face creased in puzzlement.

  He couldn’t answer Bernardo’s questions. No boy of Marcantonio’s own age had ever stood up to him in the village or at school. None had tried to face him down. He had the authority of his blood, his face and name were known and what he said went unchallenged. If he wanted a girl, a father didn’t dispute it. If he wanted a pizzo, a shopkeeper or bar owner would hand it over. When he was about to drown Annunziata in acid she had looked at him with loathing, but had not fought him. He couldn’t say why that young man had joined in with an argument that was none of his business. He shrugged. To his grandfather he had shown humility and honesty, and Bernardo kissed his cheeks.

  The old man said, ‘I have a problem with the priest, Father Demetrio. Mamma doesn’t know. For him, an accident – very soon, before you go back. Dear boy, I trust you.’

  They crawled along the tunnel together, threw the switches and opened the outer door. Marcantonio went first into the sunlight, his grandfather following. They shut the door behind them, and stayed close to the sheets as they scurried towards the back door. The City-Van was backed up there and masked the entrance. Soon Marcantonio would go to do business, and after he returned he would talk to his grandfather about the priest, the man who had baptised him and heard his confession – all shit – and consider how best to cause an accident.

  The sun’s warmth swamped him.

  Bent walked on the beach. Jack stayed behind him, giving him space.

  There were clusters of pebbles and broken shells on the sand, but near to the tideline so Bent could go barefoot. Jack knew when to ingratiate himself and when to back off, which was now. The beach was littered with the sea’s debris. Jack had little trouble with dropping a fag packet, an apple core or a fast-food carton, but the rubbish thrown up by the storms’ winds was exceptional. He saw plastic bottles, fuel cans, rope, oil slicks and birds that had been swamped. Heavy industrial trays and a couple of wood pallets. The chance of the rubbish being picked up, from what Jack knew of his parents’ former homeland, was remote, at least before next spring and the arrival of the German hordes. In these parts there was little interest in the cleanliness of the environment. It wasn’t Jack’s concern, but he knew that the water tables in Campania, inland from Naples
– the source of the prized mozzarella cheese from the buffalo herds – were contaminated. Toxic waste was dumped there: Mafiosi scams brought the industrial filth down from the north and the cancer rates soared. He knew also that a pentito from Calabria, one of the few, had alleged that waste was brought by lorry to Ionian sea ports and loaded onto old cargo ships, which were taken out to sea and scuttled. It was said that waste seeped from the hulls into the Mediterranean and poisoned it. Calabria cared little about the environment. Jack had seen uncollected rubbish mountains in Reggio when they had driven through.

  Bent would have been suffering worse withdrawal symptoms than an addict short of smack at being unable to use his phone, deprived of deals to close. Sensible of Jack to hold back.

  Carrying his shoes and socks, his jeans rolled above his ankles, Bent was paddling, and the sun made a narrow shadow of him as he tripped through the wavelets. Some, it was said, in south London regarded Bentley Horrocks as an ogre, but here he was like any other end-of-season tourist. The storm was past and – pray God – the big man of the family would attend to them that day.

  Jack knew how to deflect attention and keep himself clear of responsibility. There was a saying of the Cosa Nostra in Sicily: ‘When the wind blows, become a reed.’ That was Jack’s way. His own parents, good people, working all the hours the Lord sent and ignoring retirement age, would likely have died convulsed with shame if they’d known what their beloved son did for a living and who he associated with. When Jack went to see them in Chatham he took a small car from one of Bent’s scrapyards, leaving his own pricey wheels behind.