Lone Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  A bell tinkled above their heads as they opened the door and entered.

  Lucia Grossi marched up to the nearest assistant, a tall black girl in a white doctor’s coat who was showing off some sort of an elastic girdle to a middle-aged woman. ‘I’m with the Italian police,’ she said. ‘I need some information.’

  The assistant looked at her, then at the customer.

  Then both of them looked at Lucia Grossi.

  ‘If you’d just wait your turn,’ the girl said. ‘I haven’t finished serving this lady.’

  Lucia Grossi reared up for an instant, and Cangio feared that he was going to witness one of those scenes where a foreigner complains and is given a talking-to about respecting the queue and other people’s rights. It was a battle she was bound to lose, and Cangio knew it. Fortunately, Grossi had the good sense to back down. They were going to need all the goodwill they could get.

  It took the assistant five minutes to ring up the till and send the lady on her way.

  ‘Good afternoon. May I help you?’

  The girl smiled as if the word police had never been mentioned.

  Lucia Grossi opened her document case and pulled out a glossy photograph.

  ‘I’m making enquiries about this label,’ she said, handing the picture over the counter.

  The young woman glanced at the picture, looked at Lucia Grossi, then handed it back.

  ‘You’ll need to speak to the pharmacist,’ she said. She put her head through a door behind her, and called out: ‘Dr Attar, it’s for you!’

  A small middle-aged man with a full black beard came flying through the door. He was wearing a long white coat, a large blue turban on his head. He looked over the counter at Lucia Grossi, who towered above him.

  ‘What may I do for you, madam?’

  She bent the truth a bit. She was an Italian policewoman, she said. She was working with Scotland Yard. ‘Your label was found on a bottle at the scene of an accident,’ she said, as she handed him the photograph. ‘It may have belonged to someone you can identify.’

  The pharmacist scrutinised the picture. ‘It is definitely one of ours,’ he said. ‘The shop label is very, very dirty, but you can just see the address here at the bottom.’

  ‘That’s what brought me here,’ Lucia Grossi said.

  ‘It’s a repeat request for Malarone …’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘Well, it’s a medicine. Pills. They use them in places where malaria is common. The generic name is atovoquone or proquanil …’

  ‘A repeat request, you said?’

  The man smiled, showing off large white teeth. ‘That’s right, madam. A chronic malaria sufferer, perhaps, or someone who travels frequently in areas with a high risk of infection. Africa, India, or even my own homeland, Quetta, in Pakistan.’

  Lucia Grossi threw back a warm smile of her own.

  ‘Can you tell us the name of the patient?’

  ‘Normally, it is printed on the label … but, well, these dark brown smudges …’ He looked up, his eyes sparkling bright. ‘Is it blood?’

  ‘Dirt,’ Lucia Grossi corrected him. ‘Mud, or something similar. The bottle was left out in the rain. Is there any way of tracing back the … Cazzo, Cangio, how do you say ricetta?’

  ‘The prescription,’ Cangio helped her. ‘Can you tell who issued it, Dr Attar? There’s a date …’

  ‘That is confidential information, I’m afraid,’ the pharmacist said, shaking his head, his eyes fixed on the photograph.

  ‘If you wish, you can clear it with Scotland Yard. Inspector Desmond Harris, or Detective Chief Inspector …’

  ‘The man who took this medicine is missing,’ Cangio piped up quickly. ‘We don’t know who he is, which is making things very difficult. If he has a wife or children, they’re bound to be worried. We need to find them, too.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ the doctor murmured. He pulled a biro from his pocket, tapped it against his teeth. ‘And it is a special case, it seems. An accident, you said, and the man is now missing? Please, give me a few minutes, and I’ll see what I can do for you.’

  Cangio smiled. ‘It’s very kind of you.’

  ‘A patient of ours,’ the pharmacist said. ‘One feels a degree of responsibility.’

  Five minutes later, they had much more than they had expected.

  The address was on the better side of Harley Street.

  Nothing had been done to mar the Georgian beauty of the terrace.

  A midnight-blue door was topped by a dovetailed fanlight, the iron-work railings and balconies freshly painted black, a string of large new cars standing at the kerb beside the parking meters.

  Cangio spotted two new Bentleys, and enough Jaguars to run a race.

  ‘A ten-minute walk from the chemist’s,’ Lucia Grossi said, checking her watch. ‘There and back on his lunch break.’

  Cangio pressed the button on a name panel.

  ‘N-R-I. Good afternoon. Do you have an appointment?’

  Lucia Grossi hadn’t been expecting that. ‘Police,’ she said loudly.

  The door clicked open, and they stepped into a spacious reception hall with a crystal chandelier and a wide staircase. A youngish woman wearing a smart dove-grey suit with matching horn-rimmed spectacles came skipping down the stairs to meet them.

  ‘N-R-I,’ she said.

  ‘Police,’ Lucia Grossi said again, just in case anyone happened to be listening. ‘And what does N-R-I mean?’

  The woman’s plucked eyebrows arched. ‘The Neurological Research Institute,’ she said.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘The secretary. Mary Brown.’

  Cangio was amazed at the way the British reacted when face to face with authority. This woman was an easier nut to crack than the pharmacist’s assistant in Lamb’s Conduit Street. The address made all the difference, of course. Police was a word that no one in Harley Street would ever wish to hear.

  ‘I’m not sure who we need to see,’ Lucia Grossi said. ‘The director, perhaps?’

  ‘Professor Cottrell? He’s away in Germany, I’m afraid …’

  ‘So, who can I speak to?’

  The secretary glanced left and right. There were four doors leading off from the vestibule, each one with a brass plaque or a name panel.

  ‘Well, look … you’d better come up,’ she said.

  She turned away and trotted up the white marble steps and bolstered red carpet ahead of them, then led them into a combined office and waiting room on the first floor, closing the door behind them.

  ‘Professor Cottrell is travelling in Germany, as I said. There’s no one else …’

  ‘So, who’s in charge here?’ Lucia Grossi asked her.

  Mary Brown took off her glasses. ‘No one, as a matter of fact. Unless, that is, you count the humble secretary. We are a consultancy, you see. A wide range of specialists and surgeons work through us, but only on request. If we have a specific case which requires a particular consultant, we call in whoever is best qualified to make the diagnosis and carry out the follow-up procedures.’

  Lucia Grossi took it in. ‘So if I made an appointment, someone would be waiting here to see me?’

  The woman put on her spectacles again, as if the worst part of this particular examination was over. ‘That’s right,’ she said.

  ‘And what about a …’ She glanced at Cangio, then remembered the word. ‘What about a chemist’s prescription, if that were necessary?’

  ‘It would be made out on the doctor’s own prescription pad. It’s their responsibility, you see. We just provide the contacts.’

  ‘So, any prescription issuing from this address would be made out by … who?’

  ‘Whom? Oh, Professor Cottrell, of course. It would be from his pad.’

  ‘Will he have taken it with him to Germany?’

  The secretary smiled, then shook her head. ‘Oh no, he wouldn’t need it there. He’s doing a series of lectures and seminars on neurological …’

&
nbsp; ‘If he hasn’t got it,’ Lucia Grossi said, ‘where is it?’

  ‘It will be in the safe, I imagine.’

  ‘And the key?’

  The secretary looked up timidly. ‘He isn’t in trouble, is he?’

  Cangio wondered whether this might be termed intimidation. Lucia Grossi hadn’t raised her voice, or made any threats, she just behaved as if authority came to her as a gift from the Gods which could not be denied.

  Grossi smiled reassuringly. ‘For doing his duty? Of course not. The fact is that a man has disappeared in Italy, and a medicine prescribed for him by Professor Cottrell was found in his room,’ she lied, equally gently. ‘We’re just trying to identify him.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that!’ the secretary said. She was visibly relieved.

  ‘We know which medicine it was, but we need to confirm the name of the patient, and inform his family of what has happened. They’ll be worrying about him.’

  ‘Why, of course,’ the secretary said.

  ‘Can you check if Professor Cottrell issued a prescription recently for Malarone? And if so, who it was for? Professor Cottrell doesn’t even need to know,’ Lucia Grossi said.

  The woman pursed her lips and kissed her forefinger, as if thinking it over.

  ‘It can’t do any harm,’ she said, ‘and it may do some good.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Lucia Grossi smiled. ‘It’s in the patient’s best interests.’

  They hadn’t been sitting on the big brown Chesterfield five-seater sofa for three minutes, when the secretary came back with a slip of paper. ‘Professor Cottrell doesn’t write very many prescriptions,’ she said. ‘Only five in the last three months, as a matter of fact. He lectures mainly, as I told you. And there’s only one for Malarone.’

  She handed the paper to Lucia Grossi.

  Lucia Grossi read the name, then looked up. ‘Do you remember Peter Hammond?’

  ‘Peter?’ the woman said. ‘Well, of course, I do. He’s one of our consultants. He didn’t look too well, the last time I saw him. Ah, so that’s why! Malarone’s a malaria treatment. He had just come back from an assignment in … Egypt, I think it was. And now he’s missing, you say? In Italy? Well, I wonder what he was doing out there. Professor Cottrell will be so concerned. You will let us know when you find him, won’t you?’

  ‘Do you have an address where I can ask for him?’

  ‘Not his home address, no, but someone there will have it, I’m sure. It’s only a ten-minute walk away. Do you know Queen Square?’

  Cangio asked himself which English divinity was helping them out.

  It was all there within the space of a quarter of a mile.

  More like a village in Valnerina than a city of eight million people.

  Valnerina, Umbria

  Antonella was used to seeing things that turned her stomach.

  She was a dentist with her own surgery. She spent five days a week peering into people’s mouths, probing and repairing, extracting when there was no alternative, doing what she could to put things right, doing it with all the professional detachment she could manage.

  Some of the things she saw in her job were truly revolting.

  Decaying teeth were the cream on the cake.

  There were lots of things worse than bad teeth, abscesses for a start, especially if you had to lance one. The stuff that came out …

  She didn’t like to think about it. She didn’t like blood, or pus, and knew that she had made her career choice without giving it sufficient thought. Being a dentist was like facing up to your personal devils every day, hour after hour, as one patient followed another into the hot seat.

  That day had been a bad one.

  She had seen things she’d be having nightmares about for weeks.

  A seventy-year-old man had been in first thing that morning. He hadn’t been to a dentist in twenty years, he admitted, his black gums oozing watery blood whenever she touched them with a probe.

  Then a teenage girl had come in with a sore tooth and a rusting ‘silver’ pin sticking up out of a big black patch in the middle of her tongue …

  Antonella shuddered at the memory.

  She had sent the girl to the hospital, suspecting that they would need to cut out the pin, and a piece of the girl’s tongue, as well. Necrosis had set in. They ought to film it first, then put the film on YouTube and Facebook, and warn kids not to mess about with their delicate young bodies.

  The rest of the day had been standard – teeth in various stages of decay or collapse, bad breath and nicotine fumes, minor infections, and, of course, the man who came in just after lunch and apologised as he opened his mouth.

  ‘My wife always uses a lot of garlic,’ he said.

  ‘Does she really? I hadn’t noticed.’

  As always, she was glad to close the surgery door for the day and head off home.

  Her cottage was outside Borgo Cerreto, looking down on the small town and the sparkling River Nera. Going home was always a pleasure. The cats would be waiting for her. There were fifteen at the last count, though an accurate census was out of the question. She kept her special pets inside the house: the Lords of the Manor. There were others that lived out in the woods, coming down to the cottage when she set out silver oven trays in the evening loaded with crunchy dry cat food. The renegades headed back into the woods again when they had eaten their fill.

  They were hers, but they didn’t really belong to anyone.

  She didn’t try to pet the cats from the woods, or even touch them, except when one looked ill. If she was able to catch it, she would take it down to the vet and get it treated, but most of them darted away, and, sooner or later, they didn’t come back.

  A cat’s life.

  You did what you could, but you couldn’t do everything. All you could give them was food and respect. Some cats were wild, and you were never going to change them.

  Even so, they must have felt some sort of feline gratitude.

  Often, she would find a ‘gift’ on her doorstep.

  She climbed out of the car and walked up the path.

  A black cat was watching her from behind a geranium plant.

  She called him. ‘Hey, Mishy!’

  Mishy pulled back into the bushes, but he didn’t go away. Mishy was always one of the first to start gathering for the evening feast. He’d be sitting there waiting for her, though he seemed to know that it wasn’t feeding time yet.

  As a rule, she would stop off at a supermarket on the edge of Spoleto, pick up whatever she needed, groceries and cat food, then drive through the Sant’Anatolia tunnel, heading for home.

  ‘First things first,’ she said out loud, as if Mishy might know what she was talking about. There was a bottle of wine to put in the freezer, other things to put in the fridge, then she would wash and change, start cooking dinner, feed the Lords of the Manor, then fill the trays outside with food for the renegades …

  She let out a squeal and dropped the shopping bag.

  Fortunately, it fell on the grass, so the bottle didn’t smash.

  One of the cats had left a gift. Coming home at night, or leaving the house first thing in the morning, there was often something waiting for her on the doormat. It shows that they love you, everyone said,

  She stared at the thing for some moments.

  It was muddy, dirty, bent. It wasn’t a vole or a mouse. It lay there, black, decomposing, the same length as a …

  Then it hit her.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off it, scrambling for the mobile in her handbag.

  The good thing about emergency numbers, they were short.

  She pushed the digits 1-1-2.

  ‘Emergency. How can I help you?’

  ‘There’s a finger on my doormat. A human finger …’

  ‘We have localised your call and recorded your number,’ the voice came back. ‘Do not move from the vicinity. Help will be there within five minutes.’

  Antonella sat down on the damp grass and waited.


  Mishy pushed his head through the geraniums and watched her.

  He was waiting, too.

  He was getting hungry now.

  Queen Square, London

  The sign outside the red-brick building spoke of Neurology and Neurosurgery.

  A notice board in the busy entrance hall listed the names of the various departments and the doctors who were working at the hospital.

  Peter Hammond was a consultant oncological neurosurgeon in the Biological & Tissue Engineering Department.

  Mr Hammond hadn’t been seen for two or three weeks, the man in the porters’ lodge reported. He might be off on an assignment abroad. He travelled a lot. All over the world, as a matter of fact.

  ‘When is he expected back?’ Lucia Grossi asked.

  ‘I really couldn’t say,’ the porter told them.

  Outside on the street, Lucia Grossi took Cangio by the arm.

  ‘It seems we’ve found our man,’ she murmured, purring like a cat.

  Cangio was thinking of a different man, the man in the photograph that was nestling inside his leather jacket.

  ‘What was Peter Hammond doing in Umbria?’ he wondered.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Seven thirty

  The bedside light was weak in his hotel room.

  Fortunately, the bulbs surrounding the mirror in the white-tiled bathroom were brighter. He’d been in there for quite some time, sitting on the closed loo-seat, studying the picture he had lifted from the Tarantella Club and carried off beneath his jacket.

  What had Vince Cormack been doing in the club?

  And who were the two men he had been drinking with?

  They were celebrating something by the look of it, raising champagne glasses to the camera, Vince Cormack on the left, an older man in the middle wearing dark glasses, and a younger man on the right who might just have a tattoo hidden in the shadow on the side of his neck.

  Could it really be the same man?

  He was thinking of the man at Assisi Airport who had stopped beneath the car-park camera to light a cigarette.

  The man with the salamander tattoo.

  Had he arrived on the same plane from London as Vince Cormack and Unknown Two – Peter Hammond, the Harley Street surgeon, as they had discovered that afternoon – or had he been waiting there in Assisi for one, or both, of them to arrive?