No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  Now Giulietta appeared, the handyman behind her. He took off his flat cap. She stood back and did not howl like the old woman’s or the boy’s mother. She stood tall and said a prayer – Jago saw her lips move – then crossed herself. He thought she wouldn’t have wanted to hold the shattered head under the tea-towel for fear it would stain her blouse.

  Would the grandfather come, the old man? Had he been told? Plenty to watch, much to wait for.

  The phone rang beside his bed. He reached for it, knocking away his spectacles. When he was younger there might have been a Beretta automatic pistol there, but his career had supposedly prospered and now he warranted a security detail. He had no personal firearm within arm’s reach.

  The prosecutor answered it, and listened. He was told what was known.

  The call came from the barracks at Locri. The duty officer had first referred the news of the death by gunshot – as relayed by a parish priest – to the operations centre in the region’s capital city, Reggio Calabria, but had been directed to call the prosecutor in person. He sat in his pyjamas on the side of the bed, his paunch hanging over the cord. His top was open and his wife massaged the knot of muscle at the back of his neck as he was briefed on what little information was available. Was an ambulance present, with paramedics? They had been refused entry by men blocking the track to the family’s residence, but the priest had confirmed death. No pulse, and half of the skull had been removed.

  Were investigators present and had there yet been qualified examination of the location? Not yet. The priest had been told that the discharge of the shotgun was ‘accidental’. He considered, but took little time over it. A little sunlight came into the bedroom to play on the sheets and his wife’s hair. One of the children was at the door, woken by the phone, and he heard his car start outside, as his boys always did when there was a dawn call and they might be leaving in a hurry. He remembered the faces, expressions, sneers, of the families when a man was taken, the lingering hostility he could feel in the glares from the gallery when he appeared in court and worked towards a conviction. He recalled the arrogance of the men, who were punctilious in their politeness, and would have ordered his killing if it had suited them. And the loathing of the women, whose faces contorted with hatred for him.

  ‘Get there. Put a team in,’ he rasped into the phone. ‘Turn the place over. Look for the old man, any sign of him. It’s a gift from Heaven. Don’t waste it.’ The caller from Locri put in another request for guidance. The prosecutor barely considered the answer, agreed to it – an irrelevance.

  There were men and women at the Brancaleone barracks whom Fred knew, and more at Locri. Old friendships did not easily die. They had driven between the two at fearsome speed, with a squad car clearing the way, blue light spinning and siren wailing. There were police from European forces who came to southern Italy and never seemed able to lose the appearance of contempt for their ‘colleagues’ wrestling with the differing brands of the Mafia, Italy’s ever-present, crushing cross. Not Fred. He had spoken his mind quietly when the law-and-order people of Calabria had eaten, drunk and swum with him. He had listened and had been accepted. A bigger point, which weighed well: Fred carried the most recent CCTV pictures of the grandson, Marcantonio, which offered the best hope of a formal identification that did not rely on the family and their associates. He was a friend and beside him was Carlo, who had a magic slip of paper, authorisation, in the breast pocket of his shirt. Things happened in times of confusion; doors were left ajar. Men like himself and Carlo were skilled at getting a foot into the gap and exploiting it. When chaos flooded in so did advantage. It was a rare chance to be marginally useful, and to be closer to where the banker boy was.

  The radio played. Consolata stirred on the camp bed in the storeroom. She caught a news flash. The station had the name, the village in east Calabria, and the reporter said ‘First reports state that the shooting was accidental.’ She almost gasped. Accidental? She was surrounded by crude shelves on which were stacked packets of paper, pens, pencils, pamphlets, and booklets issued by the government that listed successes in the war against the ’Ndrangheta. Cardboard files held indexed newspaper cuttings going back to the founding of the group’s campaign. Her clothes were folded on a wooden chair. She knew . . . Accidental . . . She understood.

  Consolata had slept poorly, but for some of the night she had dreamed of him. The openness of his face, the flatness of his belly, his quiet when the stress had built as they had approached the village, the way he had left her, not turning for a last glance. She had thought of him, and the dream had carried her towards a time when the winding road on the Aspromonte was behind them, the sunlit beach stretched away, and the castle at Scilla watched over them. She had played her part, and he would have known it. There was chemistry between them, no doubt about it. They would walk on the beach, arm in arm, hip to hip, and elsewhere – far away. Consolata was sure of it. She was off the bed and dressed hurriedly.

  It was done, finished. She would extract him.

  She slipped out of sight.

  It was cold, calculating, and was done. In her room, Giulietta shrugged off her suit, then put on old jeans and a lightweight cardigan. She transferred her cigarillos to her hip pocket.

  It was easy for her to go from the kitchen door, unseen, and bypass the gathering on the patio where the corpse still lay: her mother remained in her chair, her sister-in-law was still on her knees, and Annunziata’s children hugged the legs of a village woman, a cousin. The men talked quietly, and the priest was on his phone, calling the undertaker in Locri. She went behind them. The wolf’s carcass had been kicked aside, and she had to step over it. She had heard already that an ambulance crew was blocked further down the road, near to Teresa’s villa, but she assumed the carabinieri would soon be there, would demand access, which could not be refused.

  She went behind the trellis where the ripe grapes brushed against her hair, and past a child’s plastic pedal car. There were small beds where tomatoes grew well, and also chillis. She was behind the sheets. Her head was down so she would not be seen.

  To Giulietta, it was a disgrace that her father – past the average age of death in the Aspromonte communities – had to live out his last years in such degrading conditions: a hole in the ground.

  There was a switch behind a stone in a wall. The stone was always removed carefully – lichen grew around it and it was kept sprinkled with soil. She pressed it, then replaced the stone. She rarely went into her father’s bunker – she detested it. More of the stones were mounted on a vertical slab, concreted and pinned to it; they slid away to expose the tunnel. Stefano oiled the mechanism. She took a deep breath and crawled inside. A concrete sewer pipe stretched ahead of her with low lights to guide her. She pressed another switch and the outer door was sealed. She crawled forward on her hands and her knees. There was another door ahead. Among the families there were many such bunkers. The most significant and luxurious belonged to the Plati clan, but the Pesche clan in Rosarno was similar. Both had refinements that her father had not wanted, that of champagne in the fridge, the internet and . . . She went on down the tunnel, scuffing her jeans. When she reached the door, she paused to collect herself. Was she stricken with grief? Hardly. She had had no love for her nephew, little respect. Was she angry? Consumed by it. More important to her than making an exhibition of grief beside the body was the image in her mind of a foreign client, coming to do business with her, staying at a hotel the family owned and being seen in the car park with two men who were quite obviously from European police agencies. She had seen them only because it was her practice to attend meetings early, scout and watch.

  She went inside.

  ‘What in God’s name has happened this morning? Where’s Stefano? Have you brought my breakfast?’

  She brushed the dust from her clothing. Sharply, she told her father to sit down. He did so.

  They were given the white paper suits, over-boots and face masks. They were told not to speak.
They sat in the back of an armoured jeep.

  Carlo said, ‘We’ve fallen on our feet, mate. This beats sitting in an office.’

  Fred was grinning. ‘We have been lucky, but I like to think that luck only goes to those who deserve it.’

  The seats in front of them filled. Some of the men and women wore camouflage gear and others were kitted as they were. They lurched away, heading towards the narrow roads that led into the mountain foothills.

  Bernardo listened.

  He knew it was said of him, in the village and by other clans, that he had never shed a tear in his life. She spoke briskly, telling him what she knew, the facts. She omitted speculation. He had not wept when his mother had died, when he heard that his father had been killed by people from Siderno, or when his elder brother had died by the knife in a Roman gaol, or when his younger brother had been taken, trussed then thrown to his death in a gorge close to Plati. There had been no tears when news was brought from the aula bunker in Reggio that, on the word of a pentito, his two sons had been sentenced to the living death of Article 41bis. He heard what she said, and reflected. He was told it had been an accident, that a tyre iron, unexplained, had been near the body. She mentioned the wolf and its injury before Marcantonio had shot it at maximum range. He remembered what his grandson had told him – casual, expecting forgiveness, unrepentant – about a girl in a northern sector of inner Berlin who had an injured face, and a young man who had confronted him twice. About a pizzo . . . And he remembered what he had been told about an Audi sports car scratched in Berlin along its side, and back again, and the scrape on the City-Van, done during the night. He kept his counsel. If Marcantonio had had half of his aunt’s brains, if Giulietta had been a man . . . He could think it but not say it.

  She said nothing that indicated any sorrow. He admired her honesty.

  She made him coffee. She began to wash up the plates from his dinner. She allowed him to reflect. She went behind him and made the bed. He thought her nose, still bent from when he had dropped her, wrinkled as if the air in the bunker smelt stale. If he had not let her fall, she would have been a fine-looking woman, but he had, and she was not.

  She told him about the Englishman.

  Bernardo let rip his feelings. He swore, flooding the small area with obscenities. Her eyes seemed to say that he belittled himself. The man, meeting overseas policemen in the place where she had been to visit him, had insulted him grievously. He had never met him, had never seen a photograph of him. He had only the recommendation of an English lawyer living in a housing development up the coast from Brancaleone. He condemned the man. It was to pass sentence on an individual he didn’t know. She told him that the matter was safe in her hands. He raised the question of the priest. She would think about it. He sensed the passing of power: the shift from nephew to aunt. All his life he had never been dependent on any one person, not his father, his uncles, his brothers or Mamma. She should think urgently about the priest. And how much longer was he to be shut away under the earth, recycled air to breathe, a proper wash every two days? How much longer? She told him what the clerk had said. Another twenty-four hours maximum, and the pressure of close investigation would be lifted, resources moved and he would have something of his freedom. He asked her opinion: had Marcantonio brought the possibility of ruin on them, the scratched vehicles, or was it his imagination? Was there danger? Were they threatened, or safe?

  She told him she didn’t know. Then she was gone and he was alone again. He sat, his head in his hands, but his eyes were dry.

  There had been negotiations, which Jago had witnessed.

  A uniformed carabinieri officer had come forward. The man who had held the assault rifle – it had gone – spoke for the family. Jago assumed that ‘respect’ was called for. The old woman remained in her chair and refused to meet the officer’s eyes, and Teresa was still on her knees. Her children had been escorted away. The men kept a perimeter around the body.

  Jago wondered how the officer felt to find himself in the den of an organised-crime family, studying the body of a juvenile criminal whose offences went beyond delinquency. Other movements had attracted Jago’s eye. ‘Follow the money’ was the diktat of the fraud investigators: his was ‘Follow Giulietta, the daughter.’ He had seen the direction she had gone, past where the cable had been exposed. He thought himself clever. He would wait for an opportunity.

  The negotiations were over.

  The officer had departed. An ambulance was now coming up the track from the village. In its wake were two all-terrain long-wheel-base vehicles in carabinieri colours. Teresa was eased aside by other women. The principal mourner was helped up from her chair. The women, family and spectators, backed towards the kitchen door. A man and a woman crew, neither looking comfortable, came towards the body from the ambulance. They were ringed by the village men, and the handyman was there but stayed back. Jago saw, too, the kid who drove the scooter and handled the dogs. The tea-towel was lifted away. The woman paramedic gulped and sat back on her haunches. Her colleague felt at the neck for a pulse, then shook his head. They had a collapsible stretcher, but were waved away: the scene-of-crime team, after a fashion, took over. The shotgun was bagged in a plastic sack. The tea-towel was removed and they took photographs. The uniforms kept back, leaving the area around the body to the forensics team. They were dressed in brilliant white coveralls, their faces hidden, and Jago wondered how their breath might contaminate the yard. They seemed to take few samples. They were not given the tyre iron.

  The wolf carcass was dragged out and examined. It was noted that there was already a considerable wound behind the creature’s right shoulder and pellets in the chest and face. They spent time examining the eyes.

  Jago noted that two of the uniforms wore protective vests and sub-machine guns slung from straps. They seemed nervous. They would have been looking for the wolf’s position, where it might have been when Marcantonio had shot it.

  Not the men in uniforms. Not the men crouched over the body and making that examination. There had been a moment, as the cloth was lifted and the face exposed, when the most senior officer had looked behind him, met the glance of one of those men, and there had been a slight nod: that moment in TV cop drama when identification is made in a mortuary chapel, confirmation. Jago focused on the two who seemed to have no role to play. They looked for the ledge on which the wolf had been. The shorter one was slight and his suit too large. The other was heavier, taller and had a beer belly. They looked at the escarpment above the yard. Why were they interested in where the wolf had been? Their noses and mouths were covered with the face masks, but he could see their eyes. Not casual. Both men were gazing across the rocks and trees for a reason. They exchanged comments in whispers, mouth to ear, beyond the hearing of the uniforms, forensic team and village men. Abruptly, both seemed satisfied. It was natural when something of significance had been noted to take a last look, but they did not.

  The stretcher was unfolded. The body was lifted, then a blanket pulled over it. The handles were taken but not by the two other men. They left, and the body was loaded into the ambulance.

  The handyman brought out a bucket and a yard brush, then washed away the blood, scrubbing hard, then left it to dry. He went to the wolf carcass and lifted it by the tail. Jago saw him take it to the front and down the track, the dogs following hopefully, but he kept them back. Perhaps he threw the wolf into a riverbed in a deep gully. When he came back he filled another bucket, and scrubbed some more. Jago knew what else he should do, but not when.

  Soon he would go to look for the girl.

  15

  Jago wriggled from his belly to his knees and elbows.

  The dogs were asleep by the door, and the area where the blood had been swilled away was now drying. The whole yard had been swept and the handyman had gone inside. He had seen no one else. The daughter-in-law and the children had gone, the village men were back down the track. He could smell food cooking. A death in the family but the living
needed to eat. And must have needed clean bedding: a half-hour ago the old woman had emerged and hung out double sheets, pillow cases and towels. He’d looked for extra washing – the clothing of the hidden man, the padrino – but Marcantonio’s shirts, boxers, vests and socks were hanging with the rest. Not dead five hours and his gear was already on the line. No one had come to the house to share with them their grief.

  Had the living not liked the boy? Did they find him an arrogant waste of space? Did they exist in a climate of death and judge it an unremarkable event? Jago didn’t know. No one was in the yard and the dogs were asleep. The kid wasn’t there to take them to work the hillside, and he didn’t know how suspicious they were about the tyre iron, but he moved with extreme caution. He thought he had learned fast the ways of the Aspromonte.

  He kept his body low, hugging the ground, and went in a sort of spider crawl. In a few yards he was among the trees and the foliage would close behind him so he could straighten. But he didn’t hurry. He reckoned himself a good student. He watched for dried leaves and twigs and seemed to remember the route he had taken before. With each hour that had passed, he had become more familiar with the family and was – almost – a part of it, but the old man, the missing piece of the puzzle, was still just a photographic image in monochrome. In it he was young, with a good head of hair and smooth skin. Now the eyes might have dimmed.

  He was glad to have moved and not fallen victim to the scent of the cooking coming through the kitchen door. He remembered the wolf, and the feel of its whiskers at his ankles, its gentle tugging with its fangs at the hems of his jeans. He remembered it in the moments before its death: defiant, caught in the beam, too weak to find cover, a proud animal. Best, he remembered how it had not cringed when the dogs had been close and when the barrels were aimed at it.