No Mortal Thing: A Thriller

by Gerald Seymour

  The surveillance team checked into Control.

  They were not asked how they were, what they had achieved, whether they’d enjoyed the ready-to-eat rations, whether they’d fucked up or were heroes of the republic. They dumped their kit, were told where to go on Monday morning. There was a whiteboard on the wall, and they saw their names on it, beneath ‘Scorpion Fly’. That would have been cleaned off by the morning. Some of the kit went into the store, the weapons to the armoury . . . They’d drive together, find a beer somewhere, talk about something else.

  The prosecutor had been to see the place, the hole leading into the bunker, and had declined to crawl inside. He was driven home and would be fresh in the morning to start his investigation into a family in Monasterace.

  The aircraft had not been up for long. The flight path would take it north along the coast, then over the Bay of Naples and into Rome’s airport, Leonardo da Vinci.

  Jack, or Giacomo, had been hustled on board by the lawyer.

  There was a party of bird-watchers behind him and behind them the two men he had seen talking to his boss, Bent Horrocks, who had brought – according to the lawyer – catastrophe to the venture. He would ask few questions and would strenuously attempt to answer none. He assumed he would be met by the Flying Squad or the Crime Agency and would dedicate himself to seeming stupid, ignorant and amnesiac. He listened. Always one loudmouth on a plane who thought any opinion he held was valuable and wanted to share it. Jack couldn’t help but listen.

  ‘. . . I’m very pleasantly surprised . . . Did I say that on the bus? Well worth repeating, don’t you know? It seemed quieter, less hassle, in Reggio than usual. I didn’t feel threatened in any way. Maybe they’ve got things under control, the authorities, and the criminals are on the run. Not before time. It all looked pretty normal to me, just like anywhere . . . and the birds were wonderful. I’m thinking, and I’m never afraid to admit, I’m wrong, that all this talk of organised crime, corruption, violence may be overstated. Bloody newspapers – you know what I mean. Maybe it’s a myth . . . It’s been some of the best migratory birding I’ve ever known. That’s what’s important.’

  He thought of Bent climbing awkwardly into the front passenger seat of the City-Van, touching his hair because he was off to an important meeting and wanted to look his best, and shivered. He looked behind him. The man with the mouth was quiet, eating a sandwich. The heads of the two guys behind the tripod crowd were lolling. He wondered how they could sleep, after what they’d done.

  Water dripped from the roof of the cave.

  The wind blustered outside. The damp clawed at his skin. He sensed the waiting was over. Thunder burst around them, funnelled through the cave entrance – the storm must have edged closer. The lightning flash lit them: he saw the girl and her father – one of her arms was around her father’s shoulders and the other was at her side, the hand in her lap. The pistol was beside her but she wasn’t holding it. The cave was in darkness again, except for the light of the torch, thrown on him and hiding them.

  Jago wondered how long he had sat there, with the full beam in his face, since she had put down the weapon.

  He held up his own torch, the bulb and the glass facing the roof of the cave, and switched it on. It would have to compete with the flashlight that was balanced on the stone floor beside her hip. The two of them were at the very back of the cave, close to the old mattress. He thought it would have split years before, its innards used by mice and rats for their nests. He thought he had seen the chain but was sure he had spotted the bucket.

  He did it slowly. Jago was not some explorer landing on a beach of what would become a French territory in the Pacific Ocean, an Australasian coast or the edge of any part of the unknown world. He didn’t need to say that he carried no weapon, had only beads and a Bible in his pocket. He thought they would have judged him because the pistol was down. He did it slowly, but with purpose. It was all about bluff. If his were called he would be shot – acceptable risk. The sort of risk that the traders lived with, not the investment analysts. The alternative? Perhaps the civil service – Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or Work and Pensions. Or industry, if he was lucky. He might open a tea room in the Cotswolds or trek off after water sources for the nomads of the sub-Saharan deserts of Africa. The torch edged across the roof of the cave and the wetness glistened. He saw more drips forming after others had fallen. His beam, fainter, came down behind them. They were where the child had been. And there was the ring. The beam wavered as he adjusted it. It caught the old man first.

  Nothing special. Rather ordinary. It seemed a pasty face, not the deep colour of old stained wood. There were bags under the eyes, the lips were thin and the stubble was sparse, irregular. There was no indication of wealth and confidence, or of an old man who looked after his appearance, his health, except in the eyes. Jago thought the eyes betrayed him. They were dull. He wondered what would make the man laugh and bring a sparkle to those eyes. He had a long, hard look at the face. If he’d sat next to the man on the U-bahn or a Central Line train in London, he wouldn’t have considered him worth engaging in conversation, giving the spiel of the sales team, dropping a card into his hand. The lack of lustre in the eyes told the truth. The old man, head of his family, wouldn’t have cared if Jago Browne was dead or alive, would have stepped right over him, then forgotten him. The eyes said it.

  He shifted the torch beam. She had the pistol in her hand now. Jago didn’t know whether it was cocked, whether the safety was on. She didn’t aim it. His light, poor by comparison with theirs, caught two small blemishes on her skin, one at the centre of her forehead and one on the left side of her chin. He assumed them to be blood spatters, that she had killed someone at close range and that most of the blood had soaked into her clothing, which had been burned. Her face was different from her father’s. There was life in it, and interest. A strong face, with a hint of a mocking smile. She raised the pistol. Two hands on it. He thought the searchers had gone and the helicopter was far away. He switched off his torch and lost sight of her.

  Jago didn’t know whether she was playing with him, teasing or taunting him or whether she still had the aim, if a finger was against the trigger and if she had started to squeeze. The torch-light burned his eyes, and he saw nothing. The storm built to a frenzy.

  He didn’t know if he would register the flash before the bullet hit him. But Jago dared to hope, and waited to be answered.

  After the autumn gales and deluges, it was a hard winter in the Aspromonte. Local people, the elders in the communities, said it was the harshest in living memory. Small villages, towards the peaks, were cut off by blizzards, and several farmers lost pigs because they couldn’t feed them. But, with wonderful inevitability, spring followed the thaw, and wild flowers proved their ability to survive deep frosts. The trees sprouted blossom and foliage, the vines prospered and the olive groves showed promise of a fine harvest.

  The winds from the east had been vicious and the snow had come from leaden skies across Berlin. A park near Bismarckstrasse had been carpeted, and each day the employees of a private-wealth section at a bank had struggled to get to work. There was a new favourite among the girls, a Norwegian-born young man, who had settled effortlessly into the foreign-exchange programme. Spring broke, and the crocuses were blooming in the beds in front of the iron benches in a small open space.

  In autumn, winter or spring, the same criminality taxed the HMRC people working out of Dooley Terminal at the British container port of Felixstowe. Drugs came in, and the trafficking of weapons and children, for paedophiles, continued with few interruptions. Foul weather blew in off the North Sea, and those rummaging through Continental lorries and trailers were cut to the bone by the cold in the open-ended hangars. Going to work required commitment – but a driven man required no nudge. He pursued a target through days of rain, sleet and ice into the first days of the new optimism that came with the warmth.

  A café where the open-air chairs and tables wer
e bathed in strong sunshine was a good place to meet for two irregular colleagues, associates in kind. The prospect of such an occasion could be said to have sustained the pair through five and a half harsh months.

  ‘Looks to me like she’s had a nose job.’

  ‘We say “rhinoplasty”,’ Fred answered.

  ‘I’d call it an improvement,’ Carlo said.

  They were on the Boulevard du Midi Jean Hibert on the waterfront at Cannes. Not a bad place for a German investigator and an unpromoted Customs officer from Britain to find themselves on an April morning. They had a pocket-handkerchief table and two grimly uncomfortable chairs. The German had a citron pressé in front of him and the Briton bottled mineral water. Because the table was against the road that divided the buildings from the beach and the sea, the drinks would normally have cost fifteen euros, but for them the question of payment had been waived.

  ‘I’d call it a match made in Heaven – would you challenge that?’ Carlo asked.

  ‘What else? Lovely couple. Makes you feel good just to look at them.’

  Which was possible. Beyond the pavement and the palm trees, the road and the beach – far out to sea – a cruise liner edged calmly along, heading west, and a tall ship, triple-masted, lay at anchor. Sailing boats, under power, skipped in loose circles across the water and motor launches made bow waves. Residents walked at the edge of the beach and let toy dogs romp. The two men were not looking at the sights that made the resort so famous and expensive, so sought after. The couple inside, close to the window, had their attention. The two watchers exuded raw pleasure at being close to what Carlo would have called ‘fingering a collar’.

  ‘She’s wearing a decent ring.’

  ‘Only what she deserves.’

  Each, in his home city, had made a dawn start. Fred had been at Tempelhof at first light, having crawled out of bed to the shriek of the alarm. He had pecked his wife’s cheek and thought he would be back in time for a late supper. Carlo had struggled out of Sandy’s bed, then left in darkness for Stansted and a bucket flight to the South of France. The French had shown willingness, by their standards, to co-operate.

  The previous day the couple had followed their briefly established routine and walked from the apartment he rented to this café-bar and had ordered. Coffee had been brought, and glasses of bottled water. The man had picked up the water when a waiter had intervened, apologising for the dirty glass he had been given, whipped it away and produced another. In a van behind the premises the locals had equipment to check the print on the glass with the one transmitted from Berlin. The match had left no room for doubt.

  Carlo and Fred had wanted to be there at the end – probably unnecessary, but good for their morale.

  ‘She’s a nice-looking woman, now they’ve straightened her face up.’

  ‘A bit old for him.’

  ‘Think of the baggage she brings to the marital bed.’

  They knew what the marital bed looked like – they’d seen it that morning. The Cannes-based detectives had met them at the airport and driven them into town. The concierge had told them that the couple had left the apartment. The door had been easily opened, the alarm disabled, and they had wandered round the rooms and seen what magazines the newly wed couple were reading. He was learning Italian from books and CDs and she was trying to improve her English. The bed was unmade and her clothing, some of which lay on the floor, was new and like nothing she’d worn in the village last autumn. He was smart-casual and left behind him the signs of new affluence. They’d have thought themselves safe.

  ‘You satisfied, Fred?’

  ‘Just like to finish my drink. Have you been busy?’

  ‘A bit of this and a bit of that. Doing what I do best, the stuff no one notices.’

  ‘I’ll finish my drink and then we’ll let loose the hounds.’

  A month before, Fred had said, he’d been in the small square as the last of the snow was being cleared and he’d seen the girl from the pizzeria. She might have recognised him because she’d ducked inside quickly. He’d noted that the scar had knitted but not well. The man had come out. Fred had made some remark about the girl’s wound and had been told she was due to see a quality plastic surgeon next week. They couldn’t have afforded it, but an envelope had been delivered: ten thousand euros, in large-denomination notes. No letter, no explanation. A bank had been instructed to make the delivery by hand. Fred had found the bank, based in Liechtenstein, but had been blocked by its secrecy culture. Carlo’s turn. He’d handed it to Vauxhall Bridge Cross, the spooks, where it had been used as a training exercise for the ‘best and brightest’ of a new intake. The big computers had been set to work and had located the origin of a telephone call. Simple.

  Fred said, ‘It was flawed, sending the money to the girl to have her face fixed. Idiotic.’

  ‘He’s soft. He’d think himself hard but he isn’t.’

  ‘You can’t grow into them. They’re unique, those families. They’re successful because others can’t equal them. No one from inside such a family would show such weakness, sentimentality. It was an outsider’s error.’

  Fred voiced the opinion that she was radiant, a woman on the edge of middle age who had lately found love.

  Carlo thought he seemed confident, calm. His shades were over his eyes, and a gold chain hung round his neck.

  ‘They’ve done a good job on her nose.’

  ‘I never saw her smile when we were there . . . They’ll do her for murder and bang him up for “association”. She dropped a chap who was about to turn state witness. Made a good clean job of it.’ Carlo shrugged.

  The French police could make the arrest and the Italians would swamp the town with a legion of government lawyers to hack through the extradition process. But it was a pleasure for Carlo and Fred to be there. It would happen with a degree of theatre. Carlo reached into his pocket and took out a scarlet handkerchief that Sandy had given him the previous Christmas. At last it had a use.

  They could see Jago Browne and Giulietta Cancello easily from where they sat. What stuck in Carlo’s craw was that he had, at first, admired the bloody-mindedness of the young man who had dared to confront the family. In time he might find out, from interrogation reports, when the transfer of loyalty had happened, who had conjured it up, him or her.

  ‘Would you call it greed, Fred?’

  ‘I would quote to you from Friedrich Nietzsche. “For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.” You accept that?’

  ‘I looked it up. It bothers me – the ease of corruption. We had Robert Walpole. He said, “Every man has his price.” Takes the gilt off the day.’

  Fred said, ‘From George Washington, “Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.” But it hurts. The young woman who did the driving for him, she’s gone to Milan and works in an orphanage. She hasn’t lost faith – didn’t look for a pay-off.’

  Carlo had the handkerchief in his hand. He said, ‘Sir Walter Raleigh was a buccaneer and a pirate four hundred years ago, a man of letters, too, a poet. “No mortal thing can bear so high a price, But that with mortal thing it may be bought.” Time to hit the road.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘A good result.’

  ‘Very good. An alright result. Yes.’

  Carlo took a last look at them. They were laughing together, holding hands. Unremarkable and unexceptional, just two affluent people in a sea-front café-bar facing the promenade at Cannes, a playground for the well-heeled. It was unlikely he would go back, for work, to Calabria. He had been left with many loose ends, and few would be tied. He might never know whether the old man, head of the family, was still living like a rodent, buried underground and on the run, or how well the old woman had survived the upheaval. He remembered the handyman who drove the little City-Van, and the kid who was good with dogs. He might never know if the wedding had taken place at that house, a clean damask tablecloth over a dresser to double as an altar, the new priest officiating, or
whether they had used the church and relied on the community’s obedience and silence. He would never know whether the wedding night had been spent in the bed of the padrino, or how much expertise had been brought to the field of investment. Neither did he know whether Luca, the maresciallo, had gained entry to the fast track programme, or whether the prosecutor had prospered or not at the end of what they had called ‘Scorpion Fly’. He hadn’t learned much about the young man who had joined the family.

  He made few judgements on the behaviour of others, and now was not a particularly rewarding time to slough off the habit. He would never forget the village and the hillside above it, the remote house with mountains as a backdrop, or forget Jago Browne. The German hadn’t asked about the aftermath of Bentley Horrocks. If he had, the answer would have been economical because little of that was written up in his mission report: best buried, with a missing-person file. Carlo, punching Fred lightly on the arm, did his job as a plodder. He waved the handkerchief.

  The gesture would have alerted the link. A radio call was made. A few seconds of peace, calm – the pavements were filling as the lunch-hour approached, the cruise liner had drifted further along the coast, more yachts had taken to the water and the sea vista had hazed. Some, Carlo reflected, would have been about to rise to their feet, push aside the table and lift a clenched fist of triumph, as the arrest squad went in. Damn it, he felt suddenly empty. Carlo didn’t need to say it, but it would have been about ‘belonging’. The young man had never been in a tribal reserve, like the squads at HMRC, which hunted up Green Lanes or any investigator in the KrimPol. With belonging came power, the proof of which was money. The noughts floated in his mind. He’d gone philosophical in search of an answer but it was not his business to understand, just to do his job.