No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  He saw it arc away, watched its flight and saw it strike.

  There was an explosion. The light failed. The dogs stopped barking. The tyre iron had hit the boy, who had dropped the torch and pressed on the trigger. The second barrel had fired.

  A light went on inside the ground floor.

  Then another, brighter. The kitchen door opened. Enough light now spilled out for Jago to see what he had done. He gaped. Marcantonio was on his side, blood pooling from the upper part of his body – his head or his throat. The shotgun was still in his hand.

  Jago stood to his full height, and the first warmth of the new day was on his face.

  ‘Mamma’s within five metres of him – barefoot and in her dressing-gown,’ Fabio murmured.

  Ciccio pressed the keys and they had a live connection. The night intensifier had burned out. Sufficient light from the house came through the window and the kitchen door. They had hesitated for a moment, then snatched a link to an operations room in the basement of a barracks on the outskirts of Reggio Calabria. There was never pandemonium when a link came into a communications area, which was as quiet and unemotional as air-traffic control, but a senior man would now be reading over a shoulder. He’d have a phone at his ear and would be warning his own superiors.

  ‘The indications are that Marcantonio, grandson, has a self-inflicted wound, seemingly fatal. A confused run-up. He’d sat out through most of the night, semi-concealed with a sawn-off shotgun. A disturbance on the hill between his position and ours alerted him. Birds taking off. A flashlight identified a wolf – correct, a wolf. He fired one barrel at it, at maximum range. The wolf went down, fell, landed by Marcantonio – sorry, that’s Mike/ Alpha Charlie, and—’

  ‘I already have that.’

  ‘It’s getting complicated. Just listen. Don’t send yet. Something hit him. He dropped the flashlight and the weapon fired. I don’t know what hit him, but there’s an object near to his left foot – a spanner, wrench, iron bar. How did that get to hit him? You hearing me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It isn’t the beach at Tropea here and it isn’t Sunday afternoon. Few people could have thrown a piece of metal at him. Only one person I know of.’

  ‘Just one.’

  ‘I don’t send that?’

  ‘If you do, you’ll open the can, shake out the worms and they’ll crawl every-fucking-where. Keep going.’

  Fabio did so. ‘Mamma reacts – that is, Mike/Charlie reacts. She kneels. It’s like the old movies, the Mafia woman, the street, the corpse, the blood. You didn’t send that?’

  ‘I already did.’

  ‘They’ll eat my balls . . . No, she’s up. I tell you the wolf moved. She goes to it – fucking hell! She’s kicked its head. Barefoot. That was one hell of a kick, maybe broke its neck. She’s set the dogs on it – God, I could throw up. She’s gone inside. The dogs are fighting over it. She’s back, carrying a chair. Now she’s sitting beside the body of her grandson. What can I say?’

  ‘Not much. How about “You reap what you sow”?’

  ‘Or “He that kills with the sword must die by the sword” Book of Revelation . . . The dogs have ripped that fucking wolf apart. It’s not pretty. Will the old man show himself?’

  Jago backed away. He had killed a man. He supposed he should have been shaking, and turned away to shut out the sight. He was quite calm, but deep in his guts adrenalin pumped.

  A tableau laid out below him.

  The grandmother was keeping vigil. He’d heard the word, seen TV documentaries on tribal life in Africa: there had been a particular sound that women made, a high-pitched wail. He heard it now, as would the men above him . . . and others.

  Villagers came up the track, the thin and fit leading the rest, who were obese or old and struggling. Some had clubs, two carried handguns and one had an assault rifle – Jago thought he had been delayed by the need to go to a hiding place and collect it. It would have been a prime killing machine and marked him out as trusted. They ignored the woman, let her sit and cry while they worked quickly around her. It would have been their evaluation. Some crouched and others stood. They formed a ring around the body, the blood and the old woman’s chair. The evidence was noted. The dogs had abandoned the wolf and were now beside and under the old woman’s chair. The weapon was close to Marcantonio’s right hand and one man lifted it, broke it, ejected the cartridge cases and passed it to the rifleman. Jago saw all of that, the shrugs, the feeble shows of sympathy, and reckoned that the investigation was almost concluded, with a verdict of ‘accidental death’. He saw that the tyre iron was between the feet of a big man, one of those who had watched the end of the lane, one of the last to get there, who had taken off his cap and was holding it in respect with both hands.

  Jago felt neither guilt nor elation.

  Teresa appeared. He knew her from the photographs on the laptop. A good-looking woman, she had thrown on some clothes and a pair of sandals. Jago had seen her several times, at the front door, but the old woman had never come out to see her off: no kissing, no hugs. She crouched over her son’s head. It was inevitable that blood from the wound would soak into her blouse. She had done what was asked of her and produced the heir – Jago assumed that Marcantonio had had a destiny in the pyramid structure of the family, had been destined for the top. She had reason to hug the broken head, near to unrecognisable after the pellet blast. Jago fancied he had had an insight into the family’s workings. It was an interesting spectacle. He thought himself a changed man.

  The man with the cap in his hand caught at the sleeve of the one with the assault rifle, and seemed nervous. He pointed at the tyre iron.

  ‘Just a diversion.’

  ‘Light relief.’

  ‘Go and hack it,’ Carlo prompted.

  He was a long way from home, the manuals of procedure locked in his floor safe. Being involved in a bit of unauthorised detail gave him acute pleasure – as it had when he had left the fired-up laptop open on the desk.

  Fred said, ‘Good, isn’t it, what we do? Just nudging things along.’

  Carlo said, ‘We might use short-cuts and go up no-entries. Cut corners.’

  ‘Like a couple of puppies off the leash.’

  ‘Cause some havoc . . .’

  First light, and the greyness matched the lobby’s interior. Fred had left Carlo sitting on the bonnet of the small hire car. He went through the swing doors. A girl was doing her makeup behind the reception desk, and an older woman was manoeuvring a floor polisher. Fred, if pressed, could manage charm and a conspiratorial way that usually saw him home. He had a talent for being believed. He was at the desk, smiled and lowered his head to speak softly to her. She looked up from her mirror.

  ‘You have a gentleman here, a Mr Horrocks, staying with you. I want to surprise him. Which room, please?’

  He was told that the gentleman had gone out.

  ‘Already? Extraordinary.’

  He was walking on the beach. His friend was still in his room on the second floor. Did the gentleman wish . . .?

  ‘No, thank you. He’ll come back through this door, yes? He’ll be so pleased to see me.’

  The smile, a little wink. He went back out through the swing doors and was crossing the car park when he had to skip out of the way of a Mercedes coupé, driven by a man with a flushed face and sparse silver hair. When he reached Carlo, he told him what had happened.

  Carlo said, ‘That old guy who almost ran you over – he’s Humphrey somebody. Used to work at the Old Bailey, hot-shot lawyer, more twisted than a corkscrew. Interesting if he’s meeting Horrocks. I’ll get the coffee ordered.’

  It looked to be the start of a fine day, and the wind was pleasant. They had a good view of the sea and the narrow beach, and of a man who walked alone. Fred didn’t know where the day would lead him.

  Quiet and composed, Giulietta ran through the figures in her head.

  Stefano drove in a respectful silence. Shipment charges varied if the cargo was sold at t
he exit point of the Gioia Tauro docks, at a service station south of Salerno on the A3, in Milan, Rotterdam, Felixstowe, Tilbury or the Port of Dublin. No other family on the eastern slopes of the Aspromonte permitted a woman such access to the inner workings of its business. Her own cosca would revert to type once her nephew returned permanently from Berlin. Within the next two days he would be on a flight back to the German capital then would be away for, perhaps, another three months. After that he would be at home, calling the shots and . . . She detested him.

  The kid on the scooter had long left them. He had been their escort as far as Gabella, almost into Locri, then had gone into the town to hang out with kids he knew. She and Stefano would pick him up on their way home. It was a laborious procedure but she knew the value of care. If caution seemed too great a burden, she would think of her elder brothers in gaol in the far north, the aching boredom of the Article 41bis regime. Teresa had said they were weakening. No phone was switched on in the car. Most men who endured the longest sentences could turn their minds back to a call made when it should not have been. There was, she knew it, a building on the south side of Reggio, sandwiched between the railtrack and the beach, close to the prison of San Pietro, where a small army employed by the Direzione Investigativa Anti-Mafia were huddled in half-light over their keyboards, earphones clamped to their heads, and hacked into phone links and internet connections, but the mobile phone was the easiest for them. They were alone in the car, silent – the radio would have disturbed her concentration. Not yet, but soon, they would no longer need the City-Van’s headlights.

  She had the figures in her head. She would not have to use a calculator. She would dominate the Englishman.

  Stefano brought her into the outskirts of Brancaleone, as the town woke.

  Bent had come off the beach. They’d seen him there, ambling along, then lost him – and found him again.

  The coffee had been on a tray, proof of Fred’s expertise with the girl inside. They drained the cups and Carlo took the tray to the hotel’s steps. A few moments to wait . . .

  ‘Hello, Bent. How’s it going?’

  A choice moment for Carlo. He enjoyed it. Not quite as good as those involving the ram on a locked door, but it came close. He’d spoken in his best estuary accent, the one most favoured by detectives from the Flying Squad, the organised-crime teams or the people on the Customs units who dealt with major importers. ‘Nice to see you, Bent. Hotel up to scratch?’

  Bentley Horrocks – credit to him – didn’t duck, skip or scoot. He took his time, stopped, probably set his face in the scowl that did the business as a frightener to most who were stupid enough to pull his pecker. Carlo might just get to dine out on this story, and it wouldn’t need embellishment. The man turned, and surprise spread across his face. Carlo could understand that, because he and Bentley Horrocks had never met or spoken. Horrocks would know the senior figures, and those who were on his payroll, but had no idea who this intruder was. His expression was supposed to intimidate – it might have done so on home territory, but not here. A first ray of sunlight came through the hotel garden’s trees.

  ‘Always difficult to know, Bent, how a hotel’s going to shape up. I’d be careful at this one – just a friendly warning. Keep your wallet on you and your valuables in sight. It’s the ownership you want to worry about. One of those ’Ndrangheta clans, via front companies, is the stake-holder. Criminals, Bent – best avoided . . . Nice for you to be getting a bit of sunshine. Weather was awful, wasn’t it, back in London? Anyway, good to see you.’

  It was, thought Carlo, worth a whole lifetime of freezing stake-outs at dawn when the ice was on the roads and pavements. Nobody spoke in that tone of impertinent familiarity to Bentley Horrocks and the man quite obviously didn’t know how to react. It was worth all those years of carbo-excess from fast-food outlets, the cock-ups when they’d shown out or when the Crown Prosecution Service said the evidence wasn’t tight enough to warrant charges. And Bentley Horrocks was in the process of walking out on him. He clearly couldn’t place either of them and Fred was grinning, like a fool.

  Carlo said, as if he was a friend, ‘You’re wondering who I am. Fair enough. Haven’t the boys you pay all that cash to told you about us? Not sure it’s money well spent, Bent. I’m Customs and Excise, and my colleague here is from the German Federal Police, the KrimPol crowd who do stuff in the brackets of Serious and Organised. Anyway, we’re just keeping an eye on you, making sure you don’t fall foul of some serious people. A pleasure to have met you, Bent. Have a prosperous day – if you’re going to have lunch here, the squid is usually good. So, have a good day – and be careful. You’ve left a trail that my old granny could have followed.’

  The lawyer, Humphrey Somebody, was in the lobby, visible through the swing doors. Bent headed through them. Carlo couldn’t see his face but had an idea it would have been creased in fury. Time to get the hell out – they might have overstayed their welcome. Fred was still grinning ear to ear.

  They hadn’t noticed a City-Van, a little Fiat, which looked as though it did runs for a smallholding or a tradesman. It had waited for them because they’d blocked its way into the car park. Both nodded to the driver in apology. Time for coffee and cake, then to head on into downtown Brancaleone.

  Funny thing, the City-Van came past them – an old guy driving and a young woman beside him. It kept going, went straight out of the far side of the car park and turned as if to go back onto the main road. Odd.

  To Stefano it was obvious.

  To Giulietta there was no doubt.

  He swore, waited for a lorry to clear the way in front of him and swung onto the coast road. He drove away from the hotel, past the trattoria that would soon be opening for the day. He turned off abruptly, without indicating, and went up a side-street, then accelerated into another that ran parallel to the main drag. He took another turning and parked where he had a good view of the vehicles on the main coast road. She sat boot-faced. She had clamped her arms tight across her chest and bit her lip.

  Stefano said to Giulietta, ‘The one who was talking with him, the fat one, he was police.’

  She said, ‘The one who stayed by the car, a hire car from Lamezia, was another policeman.’

  ‘He walked away, smiling, like he’d met a contact. We were early.’

  ‘Looked well pleased with himself. Thank God we were early.’

  He said, ‘That man, Horrocks, is a danger to the family.’

  She said, ‘And a danger is never ignored, always faced.’

  They saw the hire car, black, go by. Stefano edged the City-Van forward and came to the junction. It was being parked opposite a limp flag, green, white and red. A sign designated the building as the Brancaleone barracks of the carabinieri. The jacaranda flowers were still bright purple and overhung the pavement against which the hire car was being manoeuvred. The two men got out of it, crossed the street and went into the building.

  Where did she want to go?

  Home. The sun was fierce through the windscreen so she peeled off her jacket and tossed it behind her. She was livid.

  The old woman screamed. She lifted her head every ten minutes and howled as Jago watched.

  Much to observe. The fate of the tyre iron held his attention. The one with the automatic rifle had given it to another to take away.

  The old woman threw her head back and vented her grief. Then she sagged on the hard chair. Jago thought her wailing biblical. He assumed that she had accepted her grandson was dead. She would never have chastised him for his criminal actions. She would not have wanted him to train as a teacher or an accountant, and move to the centre or north of the country, divorcing himself from the risk of a prison sentence. The men gave her respectful space. They were joined now by a knot of women, young and old. Then the priest arrived. The body had not been moved and the head was now hidden by a tea-towel someone had brought from the kitchen.

  The priest was elderly, overweight but not obese. Jago remembered him from
before the storm. He was deferential and talked quietly to the mother. He stood close to her but did not touch her. He carried a small leather bag with him and now took from it one of his vestments – Jago recognised it from his schooldays. He hung it around his neck and knelt. After the prayer, and the gesture of the cross over the chest, the priest reached behind him and was given a hand to steady him as he stood up. Then he brushed the dirt off the knees of his trousers. Jago had thought the priest would make more of a show, and was puzzled by the lack of ceremony.

  Then Teresa was back, the children in her wake. She came running. Jago couldn’t understand why she wore smart clothes but lived in an out-of-the-way village. She might have had no life other than the visits he had seen her make to the house. But what did he know? The priest had backed away. Teresa was on the ground, holding her boy’s head and the world could hear her sobbing. Jago was a new man, unrecognisable to himself.

  He did not regret having hurled the tyre iron. Neither was he triumphant. Other kids from school had supported West Ham, and in the City several of his colleagues had raved about Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur or Arsenal. When there was a ‘result’ the excitement was electric. It seemed to Jago that the death of a juvenile crime boss, groomed for high levels of violence, corruption and extortion, should have stacked higher than a goal scored on a September afternoon. He had felt no need to clench his fist and celebrate the moment. He felt very little. He had presided over a killing and now considered that what he had done was nothing special. That was why he was new and unrecognisable to himself.

  He often walked from Stresemannstrasse towards the old Gestapo house, then along Niederkirchner-strasse. The pavement ran beside a wall behind which there had been the holding cells from which men and women were taken for interrogation or execution. He imagined that the men who inflicted pain or killed others would have gone home at the end of a day’s work and played with the kids, had a beer or shagged the wife. Similar men had tortured, then killed the remembered martyrs of St Bonaventure’s heritage – the Blessed Henry Heath, Arthur Bell and John Forest. He felt neither better nor worse for it.