No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  The last day . . .

  Lights came on in the kitchen and the door opened. The dogs bounded out and the cockerel ignored them. That was the routine.

  He had the feeling, relentless, that it was the last day.

  The old woman appeared. He had no name for her. There would have been a name in the file he had glanced at it, but she had not been a priority family member. He looked hard at her and wondered whether she was capable of kindliness, whether she had wept that night in her bed. She held herself erect and carried a bundle of sheets . . . At that time in the morning. It was confirmation.

  It seemed inevitable to Jago that the last day had dawned. The target ahead of him – the ultimate worthwhile challenge – was the old man, and the weapon was a buried cable.

  She turned, called, seemed almost to stamp her foot in impatience. She waited, perhaps half a minute. The birds chorused and a strange fly danced on the rock in front of him – wide-winged, camouflage colours, with a tail that suggested it might sting. The pigeons and crows were stirring above him, and the dogs followed her, close to her legs. She was by the chair she had sat on when the boy’s life had bled away on the uneven concrete. She was only a few yards from where she had kicked the head of the injured wolf. She had not cried then, or shivered in grief. Her composure had been iron strong. He knew it was the start of the last day and was glad.

  The handyman came to her and she cuffed him behind the ears. Jago saw it. He wasn’t sure if it was offensive or friendly. A familiarity, but it had hurt the man – his head had flipped sideways. He was given the sheets. The ritual began. He unfastened the old ones from the line and folded them over his arm. He lifted the one handed to him and pegged it, checked the length so that the hem hung within a centimetre of the pathway. She hovered near to him, approved or made him adjust the peg. It was good that it was the last day, near the end. Jago was calm.

  At this time of the morning, the old man would have gone with the bucket, water bottles and food to the cave. There had been a child – Jago knew because he had seen the dress – a prisoner, with a chain to hold her. The cave had been abandoned and the evidence left where it was. He assumed the child had died. He could judge her age from the size of the dress. He remembered himself at that age, a kid in Canning Town, not yet at St Bonaventure’s. The streets around his home had been a kind of a jungle, but he had not been chained in darkness, alone and drifting towards death. At this time of day, the child would have heard the soft brush of footsteps on the ground – it might have lasted days or weeks, even months, and each morning the man would have come before the sun was up. He might have spoken and might not; he might have hit the child if she screamed and might not.

  Those thoughts left Jago confused, so he moved on. He found new points on which to concentrate. The fly had deserted him. He would have liked something to eat, but could go without for a few hours longer. There was no warmth yet in the sun but the sky brightened slowly, the grey was softer and the haze thicker beyond the house and the small City-Van. Down the track and towards the slight bend the men had their fire in an oil drum. He had seen nothing unusual.

  He was trained to observe clients, and credited with the knack of understanding their moods. The FrauBoss might talk to them and engage their attention while he watched and evaluated. They would find excuses for moments together out of earshot: most likely the client would need a comfort break or they would go to make coffee or bring fresh water. He would advise: a business approach, calculated and without eye contact, but with reference to the performance pamphlets. A softer approach to the client, a smile, understanding of what was needed, and empathy. He couldn’t read the old woman, and didn’t know how to interpret the smack she had given the handyman.

  The sheets were up. He assumed that Bernardo would now return to the bunker – lit, heated, served by the cable that had been reburied, the join where the third sheet met the fourth – after a night in his own bed.

  He thought it would be a busy day at the house because of the body.

  Bernardo lay on his bed, facing the bright strip ceiling light.

  He had been careless, which annoyed him. He had spent the night keeping vigil beside the open coffin, had stayed there after the old men had driven back to their own villages or down the hill to Locri. He had stayed too long. The men of the cacciatori team pulled victims from their beds at dawn. It was easier then for them to secure a building, and easier for the helicopter to make a safe landing. A target of importance, such as himself, would have warranted a helicopter flight – in handcuffs – to the barracks in Reggio on the far side of the mountains. He should have moved an hour earlier. Had they come, he would have been trapped in the old bed where he had been conceived and born, where he had made his sons and daughter – then given minutes to dress, yesterday’s shirt, socks and underpants, and spirited out. If it had happened he could have guaranteed he would not die in that bed. The end for Bernardo would have come in a prison cell, or a guarded room in a public hospital, a chain holding his ankle to the bed frame. He had overslept. They might well come that day. The clerk at the Palace of Justice was the provider of much information – all of it proving genuine. He was a necessity on the payroll but cheap: a hundred euros a week. But he would not have known whether a last-resort raid was to be launched. Bernardo shivered. Tomorrow would be different. He had the clerk’s guarantees that, as matters stood, the surveillance would be lifted and the file slid onto a high shelf to be forgotten.

  He shivered because he had overslept after the long night with the open coffin.

  The bird had woken him – his fingers must have fumbled when he set the alarm clock, which hadn’t roused him. And much would happen that day. He must be seen in his own home, scrutiny must be at its most intense and danger to his freedom constantly evaluated. He had made a list and briefed Giulietta on what was required of her.

  So much to be completed that day – there always was when death came to a family – and other matters concerned him. So much to be done. The ceiling light flickered. It was newly installed – Stefano had done it – but it flickered. The annoyance fuelled his tiredness, but he couldn’t rest.

  The pigs were the product of Italian Large White sows and a Calabrese boar, noted for their size and the quality of the meat they produced. Also on that small farm, high beyond the foothills and at the edge of the most remote mountain ridges, there were specimens of the locally bred Black Pig. Their owner farmed some seventy of them. They were valuable to him when the slaughter man came and also when requests of a different nature were made – which also paid well.

  The few boars were kept apart, but the sows had areas, when not farrowing, where they foraged among the scrub and thin woodland. They seldom found enough to gorge themselves but had to search for food and stayed lean. It was said that the meat they provided was the finest in that small area of the region. They were never bloated, always hungry. At all hours, such was the reputation of the farm, customers called to be sold meat – fresh or smoked – and visited for other services.

  The kid arrived on his scooter.

  The reason for his visit had not been explained to him but there was an envelope in his hip pocket. He thought the place was as lonely as anywhere he had ever been in his short life. He rejoiced in the trust placed in him. He was two and a half years younger than Marcantonio and had been regarded as a shepherd – good with goats and dogs – until the grandson of the padrino had travelled to Berlin. The kid had not been outside Italy, or the Calabrian region, and had been over the Aspromonte to Reggio only once, with a school trip to the museum to see the bronzes. He parked the scooter, put it on its stand. Two men came from a hut away from the main house, where washing hung and smoke spilled from a chimney. One wore a rubber apron stained with blood. They eyed him.

  He told them, stammering, who had sent him, produced the envelope and passed it to them. A hand was wiped on the seat of its owner’s trousers, then took the envelope. The man read what had been written on a smal
l sheet of paper, then took from his pocket a cigarette lighter, set fire to the paper and held it until the flame was against his skin. Then he let it fall and ground his heel into it. What was asked of him would be ready, the kid was told. Nothing more.

  Pigs were around him, big, comfortable and reassuring. They butted at his legs with their snouts and seemed no threat to him, broad enough for a child to ride on. He went back to his scooter, swung his leg across the saddle and fired it up. He started on the journey down the mountainside on the rough track. It was good to be trusted.

  Massive concentration. Two men wholly focused. A plastic jar was held ready. The target was in front of them.

  Fabio would respond first. His call, not Ciccio’s. They had been talking about their wives. They would be out by the end of the day – not allowed to call ahead, of course not, from the stake-out site, but they would ring home when the transport brought them to the barracks and after the debrief. It might be midnight or into the small hours. The job had wreaked havoc on his marriage, on any relationship, and the surveillance teams were flooded with guys trawling foreign dating sites. He and Ciccio were from the same town, Cittanova, and their parents’ homes were separated only by the park with the old trees in it, near to the war memorial and the school where they had been pupils. Fabio and Chiara never went back together to the town to see their families. She could; he could not. When he wanted to see his own parents a rendezvous had to be agreed in Cosenza or further north: he would don the disguise of a priest, or a crippled beggar, and all the time he’d watch for cars coming out of a steel-fronted gate. Chiara hated the job, and one day he’d have to choose. Fabio had the plastic jar, but it might be that he’d cede authority to Ciccio, who had the handkerchief.

  The scorpion fly was beautiful. They had killed so many unnecessarily in the jar: they had been trapped, then died in the damp captivity.

  His own situation was bad, but Ciccio’s was worse. Ciccio was Fabio’s best friend, only friend, his irreplaceable friend. Ciccio’s Neomi had a degenerative condition of the hip or pelvis. The four use to ski together in the Alto Adige but that was not possible now. In the summers they would go together to the beaches up by Salerno, where the men would not be recognised, but Neomi hardly swam now and could not play beach games. The strain told on all of them. When they talked about women it was not their conquests but the value of being together, quiet and calm. Hard times. Enough stories circulated in their barracks about men coming off a surveillance duty, arriving home in the middle of the night to find a strange car parked outside the block, knickers on the stairs and chaos. There but for the grace of the good Lord . . .

  Fabio murmured, ‘Do you hate it?’

  ‘Hate what?’ Ciccio, puzzled, looked away from the scorpion fly but his hands were poised to sweep it up.

  ‘Do you hate that insect?’

  ‘Of course not. I love it.’

  ‘Why condemn it for the benefit of an entomologist’s study if it’s done you no harm?’

  Ciccio took the plastic jar from Fabio. He put it by his shoulder and let it slip. It rolled back to lodge between them. Both chuckled. They could laugh soundlessly, and rejoice. Better to have saved the life of a Scorpion Fly and have laughed than to have gone further with their analysis of the women. The insect stayed close. It was not afraid of them.

  And Scorpion Fly, the operation originated by a prosecutor in the Palace of Justice on the far side of the Aspromonte peaks was running towards its conclusion.

  They watched it – and watched the old woman, Mamma, bring out more washing, which would have been hers and her daughter’s but, as always, nothing of her husband’s. They watched Stefano feed the chickens, and Giulietta emerge from the front door to light her first cigarillo of the day. The sun climbed at leisure, and there was a babble of children’s voices. They had an agenda: enjoy the Scorpion Fly, prepare a cold breakfast, look after their personal hygiene, then start the slow business of packing up what they had brought. It would be a long, hot day.

  ‘Does it matter, Ciccio, if we fail in the mission and he stays free?’

  ‘It matters no more than the last time we failed and the last time we won. It’s the job. It’s not personal.’

  ‘The young man down there – that’s personal.’

  ‘Maybe he’s already pulled out.’

  ‘Did he kill Marcantonio?’

  ‘Of course not. A bank clerk against a seasoned criminal? No. Don’t forget, see, hear, know nothing. And survive.’

  The children’s voices were louder.

  He felt a serenity in the woods and among the rocks, with the cool of the early morning. The school group added to the atmosphere of peace and dignity.

  They came in a crocodile and wore brightly coloured bibs. Boys and girls, who looked, from a distance, to be six or seven. They were shepherded by a teacher at the front and another at the back. Two of the men from the block on the track escorted them. Their voices were shrill. Jago assumed that the coffin lid would be off and that the undertaker would have tried to clean up the boy’s face after the basic autopsy had been done in the mortuary. The children were not cowed by where they were – they might have been going to play football in a park. Jago liked that. It would have been by arrangement. A dozen women, of different ages, all in neck-to-ankle black, had already arrived and now formed up at either side of the entrance to the house. Men had arrived in the last half-hour from the village but they stayed inside.

  The moment was for the children. The old woman was on the step, with her daughter and daughter-in-law. The teachers propelled the children into a crescent, and they sang. It was hurriedly rehearsed but a flavour of spontaneity reached Jago in his vantage point. It might have been a hymn, one of the choral arrangements that were popular at St Bonaventure’s. There was no accompaniment, just the sound of little voices. Jago wondered how difficult it had been to persuade the staff at the school to bring the children up from the village. Perhaps a new roof was being talked of, or a playing field. Perhaps they had come simply because the family ensured that the community under their control lived well and had the money they needed to survive. Fun for the little ones to miss a morning’s lessons to sing at the home of the boss, whose words were law to their fathers, but who was hiding underground and had lost a grandson because Jago had thrown a tyre iron at him. One of their teachers was conducting them – too flamboyantly. Perhaps the school needed a new toilet block.

  At a sudden gesture from the teacher, the children were silent for a moment, and the sound in Jago’s ears was of the birds singing their own anthems. The children said a prayer, only a few lines, more hesitantly than they had sung. Jago wondered whether the old woman – confronted with so many small innocent faces, clean, unblemished cheeks and laundered clothes – would have a wet eye. He looked hard at her. He could see a profile of her face, but no clenched hand, a wisp of a handkerchief held tight. He saw no movement towards her eyes. Neither the daughter nor the daughter-in-law wiped away a tear. He assumed it was how they lived, that it was about power. A family imported scores of kilos of cocaine and had produced an immature young man, who had found his pleasure in beating the prettiness out of a girl who was trying to establish a business in Berlin. The family’s power showed in the arrival of a class of schoolchildren to sing and pray. The family owned the village. It was a brief lesson, and he assimilated it. He doubted there were gold taps inside, and knew there was only a Fiat City-Van at the front door, but he sensed the power and would answer it. He knew where the cable join was.

  The children waved. The old woman went back into the house. The daughter-in-law followed her. The children, with their escorts and teachers, skipped away down the track. In a few minutes they would be back in the sanctuary of their classroom. Giulietta stayed outside, lit her second cigarillo of the day and spoke to the handyman. A short exchange: her talking, him nodding agreement, showing he understood. Jago had expected the priest to be there, and noted his absence.

  The sun
had crawled a little higher. The dogs were quiet in the sunlight, their bellies full of the food that had been put out for them an hour earlier. More women came up the track.

  There was a route down the hill, which seemed to lead from the boulders towards the stone on which the wolf had rested. It had tumbled directly down when shot, but Jago thought he saw a way to the right where it would be possible to crab among ledges. He would have to scramble the last twenty feet and would be behind the derelict shed, on ground that was hidden from him now. He would be within a minute of the sheets that hid the pathway.

  He would have liked some coffee – strong, the coffee that the Turks in Kreuzberg would drink. Something to stiffen his resolve. There was no one to do that but himself.

  He watched the dogs. It might take him hours to descend. They were curled up, asleep.

  It was a brotherhood. Carlo held back as Fred led with the hugging and the brush kisses. It wasn’t how they did reunions at the Dooley Terminal, or how old friends met up at the Custom House on the Thames, but Fred knew what to do and did it well. They were in the back car park of the carabinieri building at Locri. They’d spent the night in a small hotel north of Siderno and dried out their clothes, set off at dawn and reached the barracks on the edge of the town. It was a fortified stronghold and, other than the road, looked out onto olive groves. Fred was their friend. A piece of paper confirmed Reggio’s authorisation for the two men to intrude but the reunions did the job better. Word had passed from Brancaleone that had put them in crime-scene gear the previous day. When Fred had been down in previous years, topping up his ’Ndrangheta file, he had brought whisky and dropped money into the box for the dependants of dead or sick men and women in the force. The whisky went into Christmas raffles, but the thought counted. Laughter ripped round the canteen at the story of a swim in the sea and soaked clothes. But the conversation soon turned serious. Fred was lectured on what it was like to be a maresciallo living in the town, with a wife, and children at school, being shunned and having no friends. The posting would be for four years and was necessary if an officer had ambitions. Living alone, but for the company of colleagues, was bearable for men, but the women suffered from the isolation. The talk moved on, the maresciallo leading it.