Tarantula

by Mark Dawson

  He packed the kit away and took his case into the semi-circular bedroom. There was a luxury king-size bed, silk-draped walls, and a private terrace. He opened the French doors and stepped out onto the terrace. The view was impressive: the Bay of Naples spread out below him and the vista extended all the way to Mount Vesuvius, the island of Capri and the Sorrento coastline.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MILTON AWOKE at six feeling fresh and ready to get started. He showered and, with a towel wrapped around his waist, he opened the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony. It was early but it was still warm and there was a humid closeness in the air that promised to become sweltering as the morning drew on. He left the doors open to ventilate the room and made his first coffee of the day with the machine on the bureau. He took the espresso, thick and bitter, and flicked on the television. It defaulted to an Italian news channel. Milton dropped to the floor and began his usual morning routine of five hundred sit-ups.

  He hit the four hundredth rep when the picture on the television switched to an outside broadcast. A female reporter was standing on the edge of a road. The sea was to the left and the terrain climbed steeply to the right. The woman was delivering a piece to camera. The road had been blocked by two cars from the carabinieri, slotted back to back so that there was no way to get past. A large mobile crane had been parked at the edge of the road, its long arm extended out over the water. As Milton watched, a waterlogged car was hoisted up into view. Plumes of seawater poured out of the cabin, the water sparkling in the light.

  The reporter turned to watch the operation and the camera zoomed in. Milton’s Italian wasn’t good enough to understand what the woman was saying but as the car gently revolved on the cable that had been fastened to the roof with a grapple, the numberplate became visible.

  NA 301GE.

  The number snagged Milton’s attention. He knelt by the desk, taking the hotel’s headed notepaper and a pencil and writing it down. He went over to his phone and scrolled through his notes until he had the page that he wanted.

  It was a summary of the information that Control had provided.

  Owen Grieve had hired a car from Naples airport.

  The registration was NA 301GE.

  MILTON SPREAD talcum powder over the carpet next to the door. It would be disturbed if anyone came into the room while he was away. He hooked the DO NOT DISTURB sign over the handle, closed the door and then took a hair, licked it, and pressed it across the tiny gap between the door and the jamb. If the door was opened, the hair would be disturbed.

  He went outside to the street, away from the bugs, and walked. He called back to London and asked to speak to the Group Fifteen intelligence officer who had been assigned as his liaison for this case. The woman was already aware of the discovery of the car and had been assembling information ready for it to be provided to him.

  She explained that the car had ended its plunge on a narrow ridge that meant that it was only submerged beneath a couple of feet of water. The bottom fell away steeply to the left and right of the ridge and if the car had not landed there, or had the tide nudged it off its perch, then it might never have been found.

  Instead, it had been spotted by the skipper of a pleasure craft cruising between Diamante and Salerno. The tide was breaking across the upturned chassis, a frothing spume that revealed the two rear tyres when it drew back. The skipper had moved in close enough to confirm that it was a car and had called the police.

  The analyst said that she would send the dossier immediately.

  Milton ended the call and stopped in a shop to purchase a new set of clothes and the other things he knew that he would need and, when he returned, he took out his laptop and powered it up. There was an email waiting for him. He opened it, waiting patiently as the decryption algorithms stripped away the protection, and then he read.

  The initial thesis was that a driver had taken the bend too fast and lost control, leaving the road through the gap in the guard rail. A frogman had dived down to investigate. The body was still strapped into the driver’s seat, bloated and starting to decompose, the soft tissue already nibbled away by the fish and the crabs. The body had been cut free and recovered and then the car had been hauled out. Both had been taken to a forensic laboratory in Naples.

  The initial thesis had been quickly debunked.

  The windshield of the car was still intact save for the single circular hole two feet left of centre, so precise that it might have been drilled. The hole matched up perfectly with the hole that the pathologist observed just below the right shoulder of the driver.

  He had been shot.

  The victim had been identified from dental records as a Mr Owen Grieves, a businessman from London who was in Naples to close a deal with a supplier of artisanal olive oil.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MILTON RODE the Ducati out of Naples and headed south, following the A3 until he reached the Via Belvedere. He carried on, through the picturesque villages with the stone buildings, the undulating hills that climbed into the Vallo di Diano National Park and then, on the right, the endless blue of the Mediterranean. The bike throbbed powerfully between his legs and Milton opened the throttle all the way and gave it its head. He followed the switchbacks and the hairpins, climbing and falling with the camber of the road as it negotiated the cliffs.

  Eventually, he reached the spot where Number Three’s car had come off the road. It was marked by a long double skid, burnt rubber markings that swung towards the wall. There was a further tracing from where the car must have bounced against the rock face, markings that pointed straight for the unguarded drop to the water below.

  The sun was bright and strong as he stepped off the bike and removed the helmet, the fresh air washing across his hot skin. He pushed his glasses onto his head, walked back to the start of the skid, crouched down, and turned to the south. The sun was overhead and he held his hand up to block out the glare. The terrain climbed sharply, a sheer face of rock with the sharp edges of boulders that must have been exposed when the cliff was dynamited so that the road could be cut through. There was scrub and vegetation above that, then a line of cypress trees and then, behind them, a climb up to a ridge that was seventy or eight feet above. Milton looked at the ridge line. There was a clear line of sight from a point just a little less than one hundred and eighty degrees ahead of him, a channel that passed through the trees and the scrub and terminated right where he was crouching.

  He looked from the ridge line back to the skid on the road. A single shot fired from there into Number Three as he came around the corner, following the road as it bent around to the left. The car loses control, strikes against the cliff face and then bounces off, heading straight off the road and over the edge.

  You’d need a decent shooter but, if you had one, it stacked up.

  MILTON WENT back to the bike and rode on. He saw a single-lane track branching off to the left and he slowed as he approached it, turning off and then climbing steeply up the cliff. There was a passing space. Milton slid into it and stopped the bike. He stepped out and examined the loose dirt. There were tyre tracks imprinted there. It was impossible to say when they would have been left but it was a useful sign.

  He set off, hiking up into the hills and heading back towards the north. He walked for five minutes. It was rough and difficult terrain. There were vines on the floor and strung out between the branches of the trees. There were shrubs and low trees and then the tall cypresses, a canopy of green that filtered the light into slanting columns. He walked carefully, his eyes focussed on the ground and the vegetation ahead and, reasonably quickly, he found signs that someone had negotiated the climb up to the ridge ahead of him. A clump of nettles had been flattened down, low twigs had been snapped, there was the muddy imprint of a hiking boot. He tracked the signs for ten minutes until he broke out of the green cover and clambered up to the flat escarpment he had seen from the road below.

  He was sweating a little.

  He paused.

>   He assessed.

  He could see all the way down to the surface of the road. The black skid marks were clear against the grey asphalt. He could see all the way to the unguarded section of the road, the drop itself obscured by the lip of rock that preceded the fall.

  He lowered himself to his belly and sighted the spot just before the skid had begun. He worked out an approximate firing solution in his head: distance and angle were simple enough, wind was unlikely to be much of a problem, either.

  It wasn’t a difficult shot to make. A sniper even half as good as him should hit the target nine times out of every ten shots fired. A good sniper wouldn’t miss at all. It was a good spot for the purpose. The fall from the cliff edge was dead ahead and it would be impossible to avoid it if the driver was even momentarily disabled.

  An easy shot.

  An excellent way to make the body and the evidence disappear.

  Milton stood. He was smeared with moss and green pollen dust and he swept the worst of it away with brisk downward strokes with both hands.

  Milton was impressed. A method like this was something he would have used himself.

  Whoever had killed Number Three was like him.

  Very dangerous indeed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MILTON RETURNED to the hotel, found a table in the bar and, over a gin and tonic, reviewed, once again, the files of information that had been provided for him.

  The intelligence provided by MI6, the Metropolitan Police and their counterparts in the Italian judicial system suggested that the port of Naples was run by the Camorra. It was an offshoot of the mafia with an estimated membership of ten thousand men. Their activities ran the gamut of criminal enterprise: racketeering, drug trafficking, gambling, loan-sharking, prostitution, insurance fraud, waste management, pornography, murder.

  It was not as famous abroad as the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, but it was estimated to be the most powerful Italian syndicate. A US study estimated that it was responsible for three per cent of Italy’s gross domestic product, with a revenue of fifty billion Euros a year, and that the money was drenched in the blood of their rivals.

  Their history was littered with tales of kidnap and murder; John Paul Getty III was reputed to be one of their victims. Politicians, judges and the police had all been targeted and, eventually, cowed. There had been internal feuding between the clans that made up the syndicate, and hundreds of deaths, but the organisation that had been birthed in all that blood was more powerful and dominant from Naples all the way south into the Italian boot. There were rumours that the the syndicate was casting its eye north, and members had been arrested as far up as Lombardy.

  Intelligence suggested that the deal between the Camorra and the Patterson family had been consummated two years ago. The Liverpool family had an established distribution network and they had ramped it up again and again as the relationship had been developed. They cut the pure cocaine with laxatives and baby powder, bulking it out so that one kilogram became one and a half. The product was divided and passed to the wholesale providers, who then supplied it to the local dealers. It was cut and recut again and again until the purity was just forty or fifty percent. By the time it hit the streets in the north of England it was wholly adulterated and retailing for forty pounds a gram.

  Number Three had filed his final report the day before he had dropped out of contact. He noted that he had made contact with a go-between who, he believed, would be able to introduce him to the capo of the Camorra crew responsible for the deal with the Patterson family.

  Her name was Antonietta Agosti and she managed a Camorra restaurant in Castellabate.

  Milton decided he would visit the restaurant for dinner tonight.

  THE SMALL town of Santi Maria di Castellabate was found between Paestrum and Velia, nestled in a hollow in the rugged coastline. The night was drawing in as Milton rode towards it, the lights glittering against the darkening green of the surrounding countryside and the velvety dark of the sea. The breeze whipped around him as he gunned the bike, eventually slowing it to a languid forty miles an hour as the road twisted and turned and led into the buildings that marked the edge of town.

  The town centre was at the top of the hill that offered a stunning view of the gulf between the Punta Licosa and Punta Tresino. The place had a medieval feel, especially at night, with a series of narrow streets, ancient stairs, and arches that appeared unannounced around corners. There was the Angel’s Castle, a Papal basilica and a bell tower that dated from the twelfth century.

  Milton rode down into the Santa Maria area. The houses were painted in traditional white with bright red roofs, the street lights were strung across the road on ropes and lines, verdant ivy clambered across walls, and the air was salty with brine. The restaurant was right on the esplanade. A wide promenade separated it from the sea wall and the expanse of sand that led to the tide’s reach. Tables and chairs had been positioned on the promenade with an awning that could be extended in uncertain weather. The main body of the establishment was opened out with a series of wide French doors and Milton could hear the sound of conversation and the tinkle of cutlery against china as he descended the stone steps that led down to it. The landward side was bordered by a road into which a line of cars had been crammed, with barely enough space for others to pass.

  Number Three had identified the place in one of his reports as the place where he had engineered a meeting with the Camorra. It was not unusual in that it was owned by the mafia, since they owned most of the property in this part of the country, but it was apparently the venue that they had chosen to vet those who wanted to see them. Milton went inside: wooden floors, simple wooden furniture, nautical items on the walls and ceiling, soft jazz playing through discreet hidden speakers. There was a simple bar with a generous array of bottles racked behind it. The food smelled good, and featured the staples of the area: fish, olive oil, mozzarella, garbanzo beans, salami, and confections made from figs.

  It took Milton ten seconds to identify Antonietta Agosti from her mugshot. She had been arrested by the carabinieri on a minor drugs charge six months earlier and Number Three had been able to find a copy of the photograph. She had looked sultry then, despite the bleaching from the harsh artificial lights and the orange jumpsuit that she had been wearing. The woman at the bar had the same thick black hair, the same olive skin and the same arrogant, expressive lips. She was dressed in a simple black dress that emphasised her natural curves.

  Milton crossed the room and took a space at to the bar next to her.

  “Miss Agosti?”

  She turned to him, wafting sweet scent in his direction. She looked at him with a cool, almost regal, regard.

  “Who is asking?”

  “My name is Smith.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I am sorry, Signor Smith…”

  “But you know Mr. Owen Grieve, I believe.”

  A pause.

  “The name is not familiar.”

  Milton had seen the flicker in her eye and he knew what that meant. “Really? You met him here,” he said. “A week ago.”

  She frowned. “I do not know him.”

  He held her gaze until she had to look away. “That’s a pity. I want to speak to the men Mr. Grieve was dealing with. I have a very lucrative opportunity for them.”

  She shrugged expressively and said nothing.

  Milton stood. “Never mind. My mistake. I’m going to take a seat over there for half an hour. If you do find you remember him, you should come over and have a drink with me.”

  MILTON ORDERED a gin. He found a table where he could observe the bar and waited. He watched the woman. She spoke with the barman, spoke with a couple of the waiters from the restaurant. She looked at him on occasion and, upon noticing that he was looking at her, she turned her head away. He watched as she took a phone from her purse and pressed it to her ear. She glanced back at him again as she spoke and then looked away.

  He finished
the drink and stood, taking the empty glass back to the bar so that he was stood next to her.

  “What do you want?” she said, her voice tight with nerves.

  “I’m not a policeman, Miss Agosti. Far from it.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “I worked with Mr. Grieve. We were part of the same enterprise. The same business. I don’t need to spell it out, do I?”

  “No.”

  “You knew him, then?”

  She paused and then, a decision made, she spoke quietly. “I met him here, as you say. Two times.”

  “You made some introductions for him?”

  She was flustered for a moment.

  “I’m not here for revenge. And, if I was, I wouldn’t be here for you. You’re just the go-between. I know that. My employer knows that.”

  “Yes,” she said, her confidence returning. “That is right. That is what I am.”

  His precise definition of her role, and the absolution of any responsibility she might have had in Number Three’s death, seemed to restore a measure of her previous haughtiness.

  “Would you have a drink with me?”

  She turned her head to look at him. He thought she was going to turn him down until she said, “Very well,” and gave a shallow nod of her head.

  Milton ordered two vodka martinis. The bartender shook vodka and vermouth together with ice, strained it into two fresh glasses and garnished with olives.

  Her eyes shone with a darkness and her lids were heavy and languorous, her lashes long and thick. Milton took his glass and touched it against hers.

  “Cheers.”

  “Salute.”

  She sipped it carefully, watching him over the top of the glass.

  As he drank he became aware that he was being watched. There was a mirror above the bar. He looked up at it discreetly and saw two men behind them. They were sitting at a table towards the rear of the room, partially shrouded by the gloom, but he was sure that they were observing him. He drank a little more and then glanced up again. One of the men had risen from the table and was moving towards the exit. He was slim and wiry and moved with jerky energy. The other man, bigger than his friend, stayed at the table and watched.