No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  When the big man came, Jack would have lectured Bent on the etiquette of respect. He would translate for them, and a deal could be done. Bent needed to close a deal because of the little fuckers that were snapping at his heels.

  The cramps had got him again. Sometimes Jago writhed in agony, kicking into the back of the hole behind him. Then there were the stabbing pains in his skull, his clothing was still damp and he was close to fainting from lack of food. He had been back up the hill and had found the place they had agreed on. He had waited there for fifteen minutes.

  She should have been there, sitting under a tree or on a rock. At worst she should have left a bag of food, water and dry clothing, then drifted away. She was not there. Neither was a bag. He had two options: he could head for the road or return to the small open space, hedged by beech and birch trees, the next day.

  He had gone back to his hide. He had thought he might have passed close to where the sneeze he’d heard had come from, but had gone on and felt a sort of comfort when he got back to his familiar spot. The only place in Calabria he knew: a sodden bed of stone, grass, moss and a groundsheet under two boulders. The hunger hurt.

  He wondered how many more chances he would ignore. It would have been acceptable to give up when the girl had not been there – as it would have been when his vest had taken flight, when he had flopped down on the bench in the park or had been naked on the beach. He had rejected each opportunity. Enough of that. She had come out.

  He watched Giulietta. The sun caught the side of the big Zippo lighter, the flame flashed and smoke blew away from her face. She paced away from him. He thought her handsome. Wilhelmina was handsome. He thought her five or six years older than himself.

  Stefano came back with the City-Van and brought it to the front door. She did not get out of his way but made him wait until she had walked across the space where he’d park. She did not acknowledge him but smoked and looked up at the slope. She had her hand to her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun. She studied the slope, as the driver did. The last time that the mother had appeared she had done the same. When the kid was there, he gazed at the hillside, as the dogs did. He thought them uncertain that danger lurked there. He had seen the path and the cable, which played in his mind.

  He watched her. She tossed away the filter. He knew their names, what they wore, knew their posture and gait – all except those of the family’s leader. Marcantonio was out of the front door now and he, too, studied the hill, the dense trees, their heavy foliage and the bleak rocks. Then, he walked to the vehicle. The driver was already inside and it started to move before the passenger had closed his door.

  It might be the next day that it finished, or longer. Should Consolata not come, it couldn’t be more than two days. He cursed to himself. A broken promise. He felt himself drift, and sleep culled him.

  12

  The whiskers woke him.

  He had been asleep, flat out, dead to the world, and his trainers were off, drying hopefully. The soft brush of whiskers nuzzled his ankles. Jago blinked to work focus back into his eyes. The shadows had lengthened but the sun was still above the trees to his right. It was the most delicate movement, little sweeps of the whiskers where his shin ended at the ankle. He didn’t dare to twist round and peer back into the gap where he had made his refuge. He heard sniffing and sensed that a snout was almost on his ankle. He lay motionless.

  The smell of the creature’s breath alerted him. It was feral. Less penetrating was the odour of the body, which was damp and unclean. He could see down in front of him to the shallow ledge, then a cliff and the confusion of trees rooted in crevices, the roof of the derelict shed, the walls and the washing. He could also see the dogs. The biggest was the brindle cross, which lay in a shady corner, avoiding the sunlight. Every few seconds it would scrape at the fur under its eyes. He counted the dogs: all present. The mother was outside the kitchen door, flapping a floor mat, and the dogs watched her.

  There was a snort. He couldn’t see the beast but his hearing was acute and he realised that the nostrils were inside his trainers. He heard one shoe lifted, then dropped. Next, the bottom of his left trouser leg was tugged, then dropped. The whiskers were off his skin. He heard a sharp scraping sound: strong claws getting a grip on the back of the big boulders under which he lay. The sounds came from above him, where the boulders lodged together. The animal skidded – the claws had no traction. It came down clumsily.

  The wolf eyed him. It was bigger than any of the dogs that milled around the family’s back door. It had a thick grey coat, and vertical russet lines on its legs. It was thin and the ribs showed. Its head was a foot from Jago’s face. His own eyes would have been wide, and his breathing harsh. Jago didn’t know much about dogs. His mother had never had one. There were strays on the streets in Canning Town, and there were dealers on the far side of Freemasons Road with bull terriers that lunged at pedestrians. Some of the girls in the City banks had stuck photos of Labradors or spaniels around their work spaces. Beyond the physical similarity, nothing about this creature was domestic.

  The eyes were yellow and brown, the iris was solid and the gaze never shifted, were riveted on him. There was life in them, not the dead and the cold that Jago thought would have been obvious if the creature was about to savage him. He took it from the eyes that the threat was not imminent, but what did he know? Sod all. Jago Browne had no knowledge of a wild creature’s mood swings.

  He thought his breath would have been in the wolf’s nostrils. They twitched, seemed to take in the scents that came from his mouth. The lower part of the snout, where the hair was short, was scarred. At least three lines were etched there and all had healed. Below the nostrils was the mouth: a long tongue, reddish interior with pink streaks, ranks of teeth. Jago concentrated on the teeth: bright, clean, sharp. Behind them were the shoulders that would give the jaw the purchase it needed to tear him apart.

  The wound gaped in front of him. It was behind the right shoulder, low on the flank and near to immature nipples, long, deep and nearly clean, but flies buzzed around it. He thought the animal young, hungry and separated, at the peak of the storm, from its pack. It would be frightened, hurt, lost. It was a bad wound—

  It was gone. The wolf went over the rim of the platform in front of him. He heard it land, not a controlled fall but a stumble. A branch snapped and smaller stones tumbled further down. Then silence. The dogs at the kitchen door were aware of the movement and had their ears back, but didn’t bark.

  How long? Jago thought he had shared space with the wolf for not quite a minute. He felt good.

  ‘Can you see it?’ Ciccio asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On a rock.’

  ‘I saw it move once, then lost it.’ Ciccio grimaced.

  ‘It’s on a rock and I can see its haunches.’ It was licking itself, working solidly on one place.

  ‘First time I’ve seen one.’

  ‘There are just two or three packs in the entire Aspromonte. It’s incredibly rare.’

  ‘It was injured.’

  ‘A cut, a lateral one. It couldn’t move properly.’

  ‘It’s young. The family will kill it.’

  ‘They’ll shoot it or the dogs’ll get it,’ Fabio muttered.

  ‘Not our problem.’ Ciccio usually led their conversations. A listener could have been less than five metres from them and heard nothing. Often Ciccio talked while Fabio slept – it comforted him. ‘We might get a city stake-out after this, with rats. I’d rather have a wolf at a distance than rats.’

  Fabio understood the need to talk, and the crisis in Ciccio’s life, with Neomi’s degenerative condition. ‘Makes no difference to me. We’ll have some beer, a shower and sleep, then go on to the next job. I don’t care who the target is. More important, if the dogs come again, will the spray keep them off? You saw Mamma then and Giulietta, both looking up here – because he scratched the car. Why the fuck did he do that? Makes it more diffi
cult for us – even worse for that young wolf. What are you thinking?’

  ‘That he’s in front of us.’

  ‘Close to the wolf?’

  ‘Just a feeling,’ Ciccio muttered.

  ‘And he didn’t spook it?’ Fabio could see the wolf’s tail and part of its rear. If he strained to his left he could watch the animal working to clean the wound – it had to or gangrene would set in. He had heard they killed the wolves not to protect the goats and sheep but for sport and because the government had issued a protection order for them. ‘I don’t know. We’re on the final countdown. Maybe we’ll have a chance tomorrow, if it’s warm, to get some more scorpion flies . . . I’m exhausted and I need some sleep – but I can’t. When I get home I’ll watch crap TV and hit the gym. Last time I went round rubbish bins looking for cast-off clothes to use on street surveillance, or I hiked in the mountains. Where is the target?’

  Ciccio didn’t answer. He couldn’t have said anything sensible. Fabio was tempted to slide forward on his belly and find the man who was sharing the hillside with them. Why was he there?

  It wasn’t the wolf that was a problem but the dogs. If the dogs came for the intruder, what would they do? Not their job to do anything. He wondered if the man had a courier, but there had been no indication of back-up. He and Ciccio watched, as they were paid to. Two little cogs in the slow engine that confronted the ’Ndrangheta machine, which was sleek, oiled, expensively maintained. He watched the wolf, too, and bonded with it a little. He had come to care about the wound. It was a quiet late afternoon, with sunshine, the damp steaming off the rocks and from the ground at the base of the trees. He waited.

  As she came into the room she was watched. There was no welcome for her. Only Piero did not look up. Instead he studied, pointedly, the laptop that lay on his knees. A meeting was in progress and she had intruded. She had rung the bell. They would have known who was at the door because there was a camera above it and the picture would have been beamed inside. They had made her wait until Piero had finished speaking. He and six others were there, the hard-core, the believers. Consolata smiled, ducked her head to them and put her bag on the floor.

  An explanation was demanded of her, she felt, and gave it.

  She regretted her actions in moving out of Headquarters, and apologised for her rant about direct action. She had been away from them long enough to reassess the virtues of non-violent confrontation. She wanted, she told them, more leaflets to hand out in central Reggio. She had reflected sufficiently to realise the errors in her attitude.

  Why? She was hungry. Why again? She craved to belong. And why once more? Because being with them purged her guilt at having broken her end of a bargain: a rendezvous.

  She was accepted without enthusiasm. Her room in the squat had been assigned to a new volunteer, but she could have a camp bed in the store room in the basement. She went down, set up the bed, found a sleeping bag stuffed into a corner and put on her radio. Consolata needed company and to be busy. She didn’t like the thought of another night on the beach at Scilla or in her parents’ small apartment – they would question her incessantly on her plans for the future, when would she work, why had she no man . . .

  The radio was on an orange box that would be her bedside table. Nothing about him. Instead she heard a litany of stories on the aftermath of the storm, and that arrests had been made in Rosarno for ‘Mafia association’; a trial dragged on in the aula bunker and the financial crisis was rampant.

  She had no plans for her future. She would work as an unpaid volunteer, would beg and borrow from her mother and father. She had a man: slim body, pale skin, flat belly, thin legs and arms, bright eyes and a dream. She had guided him to a hillside on the far slopes of the Aspromonte, and could tell no one what she had done. She could not be alone, not while he was . . .

  Consolata went upstairs. ‘What can I do?’ she asked cheerfully. ‘How can I help?’

  She would do leaflets, then try to get across country and close to him. The guilt was crushing: she was warm, dry and fed. She had failed to make a rendezvous.

  ‘I have roadblocks in place.’ The colonel sipped coffee. It had not been brought in from a bar but made in the Palace of Justice and tasted disgusting. He was in the building because a meeting was due to start in a few minutes. A major investigation, centred on the town of Taurianova, was to be planned. It had priority.

  The prosecutor answered, ‘I’m exceptionally grateful for the allocation of resources.’

  ‘Only the main roads. I can’t seal off the village.’

  ‘A show. Sometimes all we can do is make gestures.’ The prosecutor’s tiredness was poorly hidden. That morning, his wife had suggested forcefully that he call in sick, rest and try to clear his mind. He had ridiculed the idea.

  ‘A display of force for two more days.’

  ‘Would there be . . . I wondered if . . .’ The prosecutor hesitated. An indication of a failing cause was the inability to make specific demands. ‘If it were possible to . . .’

  He was helped. He enjoyed the company of the colonel. The senior officer had done time in Iraq and that other ‘bad land’, the flat plain inland from Naples where the Camorra families ruled. He was straight-speaking and thinking. He seemed sympathetic. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want the property of Bernardo Cancello searched by an experienced team. He’s there, I’m sure of it. Months of work committed, resources I’ve fought for. It’s all slipping away from me. Please. I need a cordon set up close to the house and a quality team.’

  The answer came fast – it might have been rehearsed. ‘I can’t authorise that. Too many men, too many hours, too much preparation, and no prior intelligence. Get me the man’s location and I’ll be there. No location, no search.’

  ‘He’s there. La presenza e potenza. He has to be there.’ But he’d said the obvious, which wouldn’t change the colonel’s mind. All of those who worked from the Palace took as a maxim for any padrino who had dropped out of sight that ‘presence is power’: they must be close to their contacts, dominate their heartland, be known to have control. He had aerial photographs of the house where the wife lived, with the daughter, and where the grandson was staying at the moment. When he gazed at the roof, the small backyard, the washing lines, the shed, and the old car at the front, he could also see caves, gullies, rock clefts and herdsmen’s tracks, a landscape that could swallow an army.

  ‘If you find intelligence, you’ll have support.’

  He had no intelligence, and had the added complication of the man who had hidden near to the house. They shook hands and he let the carabinieri officer go to his meeting.

  The door closed. He was alone – and had been for several days – and would soon be even more isolated. In the corridors people would whisper to each other behind their hands, and voices would drop when he passed.

  They stood, facing the door.

  The lawyer had warned them that the family’s arrival was imminent, then had hurried to the car park to greet them.

  Bentley Horrocks was a half-pace ahead of Jack and stood with his arms folded and feet a little apart. He was working at the look he would give the man when he pitched up. Bent had enjoyed his walk in the sunshine, but now he had changed into an expensive shirt and trousers: Jack had polished his shoes. In his head he had the figure he would pay, and he knew the profit margins. Nervous? A little. Far from home and what he knew? A long way. He thought Humphrey, the lawyer, was a smarmy little bastard. He had been good in the old days when he’d practised close to the Central Criminal Court, and at Snaresbrook and Southwark, but had gone downhill since he’d moved to the sunshine and new avenues.

  He broke his silence. ‘Getting near the big-time, Jack.’

  ‘Too right, Bent. The big-time, nearly there.’

  ‘I’ve come a long way for this.’

  ‘You have, Bent. A proper long way.’

  ‘And I’ll not be fucked about.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be clever, Bent
, to fuck you about. They won’t, though. You’re meeting a main man, not just a gofer. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Someone at my level. Yes.’

  He heard the sharp intake of Jack’s breath and a little involuntary whistle. It was a noise similar to the one Trace made when he shagged her. He missed Trace – missed everything he’d left behind in London or at the big house in the Kent countryside. Might even miss his wife.

  ‘Can I say something, Bent?’

  It wasn’t often that Jack struck up a conversation. Far down the corridor, he heard a fire door slam. He nodded, waited to hear the footsteps. It was about status and prestige, him being accepted as a major player, meeting a leader of equal importance – not of greater importance – and doing business with a man such as himself who had clawed his way up the ladder to the heights. A man such as himself would value meeting Bentley Horrocks, who ran an area of south-east London, a man who stayed free and was, at a cost, untouchable. He had bought enough police to fill a section house, he liked to joke to himself, when he walked in his garden with the dogs for company.

  ‘Bent . . .’

  Now he heard the footsteps. ‘Shoot.’

  A touch of a stammer: ‘Give them respect, Bent. My advice is—’

  ‘I don’t beg, Jack. You learned nothing?’

  ‘You don’t have to beg, Bent. Just give them respect. It matters to them. Do it like you’ve never had to before. Please, Bent, respect.’

  Of course he would. It would be an old man, a veteran of survival, like himself. There was a light tap on the door. He said, ‘Enter.’ First through was the lawyer, who stepped aside. Bent’s jaw sagged. It was a fucking kid. The lawyer was gabbling a name, but Bent didn’t take it in. His fists clenched. A fucking kid. Anywhere on his territory, south of the river, a kid of that age would reckon himself honoured to be tossed Bent’s car keys and told to park the motor. It would make his evening if he were given a few notes and told to fetch Trace and him a takeaway.