No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  Word would seep out. A very few would know. Neither Stefano’s nor the Englishman’s name would feature. But among the ‘very few’ Bernardo’s prestige would be enhanced – as if that were important.

  He laughed again. They were high in the mountains, on a plateau, with pine trees close to the road. He steered between deep ruts and potholes, and saw no other vehicle. Stefano thought the man ignorant – but that would make it easier when the time came.

  Giulietta’s devotion to the word of God might have matched that of Father Demetrio but did not compare with her mother’s.

  She had never been to a service conducted at the Duomo in Reggio. The cathedral was the largest house of God in the region. She found it neither enticing nor attractive – it had gone up hurriedly after the great earthquake. Because her target had led her there, Giulietta – on side lights and unnoticed – double-parked fifty metres from the priest’s car. He had looked around him, seemingly anxious, maybe imagining himself already a fugitive. He had put money into the hand of a thin elderly parking attendant, a meagre gratuity, no doubt. The man who had baptised her had once been overheard to describe her as ‘a sad creature, trapped by that facial aberration’. When Giulietta needed to leave the HiLux, with the distinctive dented front bumper, she would drop a twenty-euro note into his hand and hold a handkerchief across her face to hide her nose.

  Her telephone, switched off, lay in her handbag. The Beretta pistol was under her thigh, hurting her flesh. She might leave him alive overnight if the opportunity to take him down didn’t present itself, or until after he had conducted the funeral mass for her nephew. On the other hand, she might end his life in the next few minutes. She smoked. It was risky to light a cigarillo – she must not discard it in a gutter, thereby giving a chance to the forensics technicians, who would search for DNA traces – but she needed to smoke. It relaxed her.

  He had gone to a side entrance, a discreet one, not used by the cathedral’s flock, and rung a bell.

  A man, tall and austere, had opened the heavy door for him. And that man, a fool, told Giulietta all she might need to know. The man glanced sharply to the right, to the left, then straight out into the poorly lit parking area. Then his arm went round Father Demetrio’s shoulders and he was brought inside. The priest was not there to discuss a set of hymn books for the village school or the service to celebrate the next commemoration of the patron saint, Francis of Paola. It was an entry of stealth and guilt.

  She waited.

  ‘That’s what I know.’

  Two heads close together, almost touching.

  ‘I cannot, Demetrio, make up your mind for you.’

  A choir of children were practising without accompaniment, guided by the master.

  ‘I’ve harboured the guilt for too many years.’

  They were in a darkened corner of the cathedral, where few candles burned. ‘You didn’t have to come to me. You know the words of the Holy Father. “Blood-stained money, blood-stained power, you can’t take it with you into the next life.” That was what he said to the mafia leaders.’

  They sat on hard seats, hunched.

  ‘I’m getting old and want to leave this world in peace.’

  ‘You must follow, Demetrio, the road that is clear to you. Conscience cannot be manipulated for convenience. The Holy Father also said, “Repent. There is still time not to end up in Hell, which is what awaits you if you continue on this path.” His message was unequivocal.’

  ‘A prosecutor at the Palace of Justice is investigating this family.’

  ‘Don’t ask me to be your messenger, Demetrio.’

  ‘To see him would be a mockery of my whole professional life as a servant of God, a friend of that family. I believe I have little time.’

  ‘Is your health not good, Demetrio?’

  He could have mentioned then that he had almost been driven off the road. Had the tyres lost purchase, gone over the edge, there would have been a drop of forty or fifty metres into a dry riverbed. He supposed he had come to the cathedral to see a man he had known for many years – he was not a close friend – and had hoped his resolve would be strengthened.

  ‘I’m reasonably well. Thank you for your support. I hope I have enough time.’

  ‘Because of your unique position in relation to this clan, would you consider, Demetrio, an anonymous denunciation? An alternative if your courage fails you.’ You might also consider the wider implications.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You would be aware of the potential for the embarrassment of the Holy Church, should a priest be required to testify in the aula bunker and be associated with a matter so sordid. Ponder the difficulty the Church might have to confront. Yes?’

  ‘I’m grateful for your wisdom.’

  ‘You’ll consider it, then?’

  He thought they would work late at the Palace each evening. The newspapers reported that they were always at their desks. He had looked up the number before leaving and would announce himself before he reached the building. He thought he had been offered an unworthy escape from responsibility and responded in time-honoured fashion. He squeezed the man’s arm, a gesture redolent of comradeship and understanding. Demetrio was rewarded with a smile of complicity. Their cheeks brushed. It would be believed, as he left, that he would write a letter but not sign it, then post it, having wiped the paper and envelope to remove his fingerprints. He was told he was brave, that one day his courage might be known to a wider audience and that it was the task of all citizens to fight the evil of criminal conspiracy. He was asked if he would now drive back to the village, cross the range of mountains and prepare himself for the funeral mass in the morning. He smiled, turned and was gone.

  His shoes clattered on the flagstones and he crossed the three great central naves, ducking his head before the principal altar. There, he crossed himself and went out through the door.

  Near to the parked car, he made a call. He said whom he wished to speak to, and on what matter, then rang off. A great tiredness afflicted him, and fear.

  ‘Is there a rhinoceros here?’ Fred asked.

  They were at the roadblock. The fire in the drum burned ahead of them. They could see the men’s cigarettes glowing and sometimes heard their voices. The lights of the house were up the hill before the wall of darkness that was the foothills of the mountains.

  Carlo answered, ‘I don’t think so.’

  A carabinieri van with women officers had come for Consolata. They’d brought a rucksack of assorted clothing and underwear, uncertain as to what would fit. She’d dressed in the back of the van – the women had put newspaper up on the windows.

  ‘You cannot say for definite that there’s no rhinoceros.’

  ‘There is no rhinoceros here. I can say it with complete certainty. I am with Mr Russell and your German is a fantasist.’

  From inside the vehicle she would have seen and remembered them. The clothing loaned her was too big, which seemed unimportant. Now she peered at them – they were in front of the headlights. It was an intense stare, but she asked nothing. She would have had a list of questions: who was he? Why was he there? Who was controlling him? Neither Fred nor Carlo could have answered because as yet they had no idea of what motivated Jago Browne.

  ‘You will not, Carlo, have heard of Ludwig Wittgenstein, a great thinker, a German. He argued with your Bertrand Russell, a British philosopher and a man of high intelligence. Was there a rhinoceros in the room? Russell said there was no rhinoceros in the room, but Wittgenstein would not admit to its absence. Russell searched the room, looked under the table, moved the chairs, but the German refused to accept the absence of the rhinoceros. It could be there, but not seen. Two fine men, blessed with huge reservoirs of intelligence, and that was the area of their dispute. I side with Wittgenstein.’

  While she had dressed, Carlo had murmured to him that she’d have been more useful to her protest cronies if she’d had herself murdered, or at least maimed. ‘Walking down the road stark naked is hard
ly the stuff of martyrs.’ He had not disagreed.

  ‘Where is the rhinoceros?’

  ‘Behind the sheets. Would your mother have left out washing for that long, allowed it to dry until it’s as stiff as a board?’

  She had been driven away. He doubted, poor kid, that her ordeal would be kept secret for long. He hadn’t seen a flash, but one of the men ahead would have a camera phone – any picture taken would go viral. He thought her brave, endowed with a rare nobility. The other girl, the one coming out of the hospital with stitches in her cheek, had had that stubborn defiance – and she’d have thought them two old men who’d lost the taste of the fight. She might have been right.

  ‘My mother would not. She filled the backyard with sheets at dawn and shifted them at dusk. If it rained they were dried in front of the fire.’

  ‘The rhinoceros is behind the sheets.’

  ‘I’m not arguing.’

  ‘It’s staring us in the face.’

  The moon was not yet up. The house would have been more than three hundred metres from them. He went to the maresciallo and asked to borrow his binoculars. He focused and peered, his eyes aching from the effort. He thought he could see the sheets. They masked a hideaway – he would have bet his shirt on it. He did not gamble – against his morals and his religion.

  He turned to Carlo. ‘Do we go with this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re not looking for medals.’

  ‘No medals, no citations, just a glass of beer.’

  Fred went to the maresciallo and gave back the binoculars. It would be the young Italian’s call. He explained briefly, handed over evidence and intuition. His face was studied hard, a search mounted for certainty. Fred had total confidence. It had been there in front of them, had beckoned them and been ignored. It was the elephant, the rhinoceros or the giraffe in the room. Big decision for the young man. He could fall on his arse or end up with the smell of roses in his armpits.

  The maresciallo used his phone, had the secure link.

  Women walked past them, all in black. Their fingers had pulled off the girl’s clothing. Now they made no contact. They were going back to the village – Carlo, Fred and the uniforms might not have been there. They went on into the gathering night, with the shuffle of flat shoes on the track and little trills of laughter.

  Carlo whispered, ‘Watch this space, ladies.’

  He was Bentley Horrocks, a man of status.

  The vehicle was parked, and the driver – a fucking peasant – reached across him to unfasten the door and pushed it open. He gave that dumb smile. Bent stepped out, straightened his back and stretched. There wasn’t much to see. They were off the metalled road, and had come up a track, passing a field with two rusted tractors and a collapsed cart. The air was cooler than it had been on the coast and a wind riffled his hair. Then the smell was in his nostrils.

  A farmhouse stood in front of them. He assumed it was a farmhouse – a bungalow, built with cement blocks, no rendering or paint to finish the job. His home, the country one, a farmhouse in rural Kent, had half a dozen bedrooms, a tennis court, a swimming-pool and a few acres. It would fetch three or four million. And no one was there to meet him. He’d expected a big car and another for the goons to be waiting, and the main man to be there to welcome him. The smell was vile – it wouldn’t have been tolerated in the part of Kent where his place was.

  Bent snapped his fingers. It was what he would have done in a restaurant if the owner was slow with the drinks or the menus. He snapped them and shrugged – a ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ gesture. The peasant grinned. There was the smell of animal shit, then the sound of them grunting, whatever pigs did.

  Men came forward. Torches shone into his face.

  Half a dozen men. One goon would come forward, do a fast frisk for a weapon or a wire, then the big fellow would walk out of the shadows and there’d be a handshake, maybe a kiss because it was that part of the world. The Turks liked a kiss, as did the Albanians. He tried to look confident. Always said, Bent did, and Jack would echo it, that the first responses were the ones that mattered. Going to do business with a man, a stranger, about to talk over four or five million euros’ worth of stuff, and it was necessary to show you weren’t fazed, took it in the stride . . . had gotten it wrong.

  It was difficult for him to see properly because the torch beams were shining at him. No one welcomed him. He looked for the little fucker – the peasant – but couldn’t see him. He’d seen two faces, never seen them before, at the front of the hotel, smiling through the introductions, in broad daylight where the rest of the fucking world could see . . . He could smell the pigs and hear them.

  The men behind him did the pinioning. Something round his arms, then his wrists. The necessary violence to control him, but nothing more.

  He started to kick out – waste of fucking effort. And started to shout – waste of fucking breath.

  They hadn’t bothered to hood him, or to stuff his mouth so he couldn’t yell. Not one man reacted to his shouts. He would have started to jabber – in English, because he had nothing else – about what he could pay. How much his life was worth. Jewels, cash, bullion. More light blinded him, and he realised the headlights of the City-Van were full on him as the peasant drove past him, seeming not to notice him, and went off the way they had come. Then he was left with the torches and they took him forward. They brought him closer to the pigs’ pen, which had a low wall round it, more cement blocks. The heads came up and one man stood beside the pen and poked at them with a stick, goading them. He would have angered and hurt them.

  He wondered if Jack had known. Too fucking right the lawyer had known. Everyone had known, except Bentley Horrocks.

  Only at the end did he shriek. He heard himself. He tried to thrash around and free himself but they were lifting him, like he was a bloody kid. He could hear the pigs and the frenzy of grunting. He was over the wall and, for a moment, they held him up, then dropped him. He saw nothing else, but the smell was with him, and the noise, and the pain.

  Humphrey drove and didn’t make conversation. Jack had nothing to say.

  The radio was turned up loud, which was useful because they couldn’t talk over it. Jack sat in the passenger seat and imagined unpleasant scenarios. They centred on whom he would have to provide with explanations as to why he had come home early and left Bent, his boss, to travel alone. Not much wriggle room, and he had Bent’s bag with him, and the phones. There might be a problem over why he was carrying Bent’s passports. He’d come up with one solution to his anxieties. He’d make sure that Bent’s passports and phones stayed in the lawyer’s car. Not quite sure yet where he would stuff them, but they’d be there. If it got nasty, and he ended up in an interview room at Old Street, then Humphrey’s name would be bouncing off the walls all the time the recorder was doing its job.

  They were onto the main road, dual carriageway, the really good earner for the Calabrian clans, all done with Brussels cash, among camper wagons and loaded cars. It was the fag end of the season. He wondered where Bent was, what they’d prepared for him, and if anything of him would ever be seen again. There’d be serious fighting round Peckham, Deptford and Rotherhithe when it became known that Bentley Horrocks was off his manor, not expected back, and some tidy little interests were going begging. He’d have to keep his head down while the territory was carved up. And detectives in the Crime Squad would be going short of the cash in the brown envelopes. Trace was about the only one who wouldn’t blink, would just get a replacement and carry on, nice girl, not unintelligent. He’d never been accused of being fond of Bentley Horrocks, but Jack shivered a little, even in the heated car, at the thought of what they might have done with him.

  As people often said, ‘Some you win and some you lose.’ Jack thought it a tidy old loss, but said nothing.

  Giulietta had a good view of Father Demetrio. The village priest walked backwards and forwards, agitated. He had made just the one call, then had set off on the tr
amp that took him again and again round the car park. Twice he was nearly run down by motorists leaving. Once he had hopped back, and the other time the driver had hammered his horn at him. He smoked all the time, and lit each new cigarette from the end of the old one. When he was nearest to her she’d thought he was shaken. His eyes were staring at nothing. He would lead her. She would follow. To wherever.

  The files were spread across his carpet. The prosecutor, on hands and knees, was in front of them. The cupboard was wide open and part of a shelf was empty. Now he pored over them. He had been working that afternoon and into the evening on new challenges, new targets, trying to ease the burden of a failed investigation, to move on. His coat had been hitched over his shoulders, his bag in his hand, and he had made the call to his wife that he was leaving – yes, he was, truthfully, he’d be home in a quarter of an hour – and the phone had rung. He could have let it ring and ignored it.

  The escort boys had been on their feet, their magazines dumped in the chairs, radios at their ears, weapons at their hips. They would have thought themselves blessed that their principal’s attention was diverted from failure. But he had turned and gone back in. He had heard a stammering, hesitant voice, words that spewed with a degree of incoherence. A name had been given – and the trumpets had blasted recognition – the location of the padrino and of his cosca, the place where he was hiding, and the soffiato was on his way, driving to the Palace of Justice. The call had been cut. What was the informant’s name? Not given. What make of car was he coming in? Registration? No time to ask. He was no longer going home. He asked if two would go down to the main lobby. A car was on its way – unidentified. The driver would park, walk to Reception and ask for the prosecutor by name. He was to be brought to the office.