The wind buffeted Jude’s map, turning it inside out and creating a lengthy tear down the centre. Her hair had blown into her face and she was struggling to focus as she found a tree to shelter behind. She looked up momentarily, and it appeared as if the whole floor of the forest had been blown up into the air, spinning crazily in the lower stratosphere before it settled, completely blanketing their car. From high above she heard the loud crack of a branch as it crashed from the topmost reaches of the canopy to the ground, perilously close to where she stood. She looked around anxiously for Leigh, who had planned to check a small cave nearby, just as she too was to tick off one only metres from where she now huddled against the trunk of an old pine. With her map folded awkwardly into a squarish pad, she pushed it down the back of her jeans and under her blouse. She gathered her bearings as best she could and crab-stepped tentatively down a few metres to the entrance of her cave, taking one last glance for Leigh who was obviously still busy elsewhere.
The howling wind hit her once more, the cold sending shivers through her core. She attempted several times unsuccessfully to sweep her thick straight hair from her face while shielding her eyes with both hands; otherwise, she may well have noticed the excessive number of footprints and the half-dozen cigarette butts at the cave’s small entrance. She ducked her head slightly to clear the threshold of the well-camouflaged opening and shone her torch inside. To her amazement, the cave was massive—and empty. She decided to step in and shelter out of the wind, and perhaps have one quick look towards the rear, an area beyond the shine of a torch. Four paces in and she could see the back end of the cave fifteen metres away, a vast cavernous vault. It felt unusually warm; she had expected it, like all the other caves, to be chilly and eerie. A little confused at this peculiarity, she dropped the light of her torch down towards her feet. There, lying in the dirt, were a dozen loose, pearly white ecstasy tablets. Jude turned around quickly to leave and find Leigh. She faced instead a smiling Massimo.
‘Juuuude!’ echoed through the forest. An exhausted Leigh ran, yelling, first in one direction then another. The best he could do was run short distances in different directions, yelling her name as loudly as he could. Most of his calls were lost to the wind, and Leigh was lost to his search. He had been scouring the area for more than an hour now, becoming disoriented at the noise of the wind. He turned a full 360 degrees, stress ripping across his face. He had lost sight of the car. He pulled the .32 pistol from the front of his trousers and yelled again: ‘Juuuuude!’ A massive crack of thunder broke over the dark forest floor.
The Commissario had changed tack in his investigation many hours earlier, throwing every man, motorcycle, four-wheel drive and powerful floodlight into the forest. The need for being covert in the massive N’Drangheta investigation had been abandoned. A visiting international detective was missing. The wild storm continued to play havoc, making D’Alfonso’s work much more difficult than he would have liked. He, Mario and Cole had found Leigh some hours earlier, slumped against the grille of the rental car, exactly where the picnicking couple had originally parked it. Leigh’s lone fruitless search had left him totally fatigued, dehydrated and depleted of any of his considerable reserves of strength.
The car was now isolated and surrounded by crime-scene tape, and Leigh, having been checked over by paramedics, had joined Cole in the wait for information on their partner. The big Italian Commissario stood over the bonnet of a four-wheel drive issuing instructions to an army of well-equipped Carabinieri who had just arrived. Like giant fire flies, dozens of torches danced and flickered between the trunks of the tall trees on his horizon as an earlier group searched for clues. After setting the tasks for the newest arrivals, he regained some valuable solitude to enable him to consider his next move. He privately feared that he knew exactly what had happened to Jude. He couldn’t bring himself to discuss his suspicions with his two Australian detective friends, least of all Cole, who leant, hunched and gutted, against the trunk of a nearby oak tree. Had it really been Massimo, or had it just been the stress, manifested in the form of the face of his adversary, in a darkening forest? He asked himself this question over and over, and got no answers.
The Commissario was walking towards him as he heard the frantic calls of Mario: ‘Commissario, Commissario!’ He turned and bolted in the direction of Mario’s torch, not fifty metres away. It became a scramble as to which of the three men would arrive first at the cave entrance, to stand alongside Mario who was shining his torch towards the well-camouflaged opening and onto the many footprints and cigarette butts outside. The first thing Leigh could think of was of how absurdly close the cave entrance was to the parked vehicle. Strangely, the head of the Anti-Mafia unit didn’t concern himself with that particular detail. He was more fascinated at the perfect choice of cave by the N’Drangheta, so inconspicuous in the thick of the forest. The thing that struck Mario was that at that exact moment the storm, the wind and the thunder stopped completely. There was an eerie silence as the four stood looking at the entrance and also at each other.
Mindful to preserve any footprint evidence, Cole, overdosing on anxiety, snatched the torch from Mario, stepped clear of the still-preserved imprints in the dirt surface, and bent down onto his knees to push the dense brush aside. He shone the powerful light into the cave and four heads lowered simultaneously to peer in. Still lying dry on the cave floor were a dozen ecstasy tablets but next to them was a sight that sent shivers through the four men. In the dead centre of the cave lay Jude’s map, opened fully, corner to corner, with a knife fastening it to the dirt floor.
13th July
It was extraordinarily busy for a Friday. No one was winding down; in fact the entire southern peninsula of Calabria was seeing more law enforcement activity than it had since the day Mario’s father had been murdered. Carload after carload of Poliziotti converged on the area to help in what was now being broadcast as an international incident. Lina’s kitchen, in fact Mario’s whole modest villa, had become the command post, with Commissario D’Alfonso moving from house phone to mobile to radio transmitter as he directed the search, primarily for Jude but also for the 15 million ecstasy tablets. Mario passed him Cole’s BlackBerry for the umpteenth time.
‘Pronto,’ he answered.
It was Spud on the other end. They had been talking for most of the morning.
‘Did you get the fax?’ asked Spud.
The Commissario turned to the portable fax machine plugged in on top of the washing machine. He walked across and pulled the pages free, numerous sheets of colour photographs of Inspector Mack.
‘Si, si, Spud.’
‘His corrupt mate Donny, in Melbourne, has coughed up some more information. Apparently Inspector Mack is due to arrive in Reggio this morning to collect nearly a million dollars from Massimo.’
The Commissario handed the photographs onto Mario, whispering an instruction in his ear and pointing to Leigh, who was assisting other Anti-Mafia investigators, crossing off the searched caves on a new map. D’Alfonso continued his conversation with Spud as Mario grabbed Leigh’s arm and pulled him towards the front door.
‘ We must go. Your boss is coming to Reggio,’ he told the rejuvenated Leigh. The Commissario removed the coffee cup from his lips, the BlackBerry Bold from his ear, and called out to the two men as they walked through the door, ‘Mario, shut down Porto Gioia Tauro—nothing leaves!’
The pair left the house and fought their way through the media to a squad car.
As Mario’s squad car raced from Gerace to Reggio, Cole trudged exhaustedly over the same territory he’d walked since last night in the Aspromonte Mountains. Over and over, he paced the earth. Around him, scattered loosely in pairs, were support search teams of the uniformed Carabinieri. Yet nothing had stirred in the forest since the wind had fallen away at midnight. Cole rested briefly and leant his right shoulder against a tree, pushing his left hand deep into his trouser pocket. He pulled his fist free and opened his hand to once again stare at the
twelve pearly white ecstasy tablets and a smattering of dirt from the cave floor. He shoved them back into his pocket and resumed his search.
The Neptune overnight ferry from Marseille to Reggio, via Palermo in Sicily, had now docked. Inspector Mack had slept like a baby, all things considered. He’d paid for a double cabin, ensuring that he would be alone and comfortable on this most important of journeys. As he had said to Dorothy, whom he had left after lunch, this would be ‘the beginning of the end’ of his long career. Once he had returned home, they would set about hiding their money in a false wall they intended to build between the bedroom and the dining room. The building materials needed for the construction had arrived only a few hours before he left their Beaucaire haven. Dorothy would oversee the local carpenter complete the task, until Mack returned in a few days’ time with the lovely. It was around that time that the DHL international freight courier had delivered their packing chest with the clothing that would see them through the winter months to come—and with the secreted stash of money.
It was all running so smoothly, Mack had thought, as he struggled with the chest, heaving it up the stairs to the apartment to be locked away until his return. The false wall had kept his mind ticking overnight on that ferry ride, in between sips from his half-bottle of Gordon’s gin.
The ferry’s huge, rusted, metal crossover-cum-drawbridge winched downwards onto terra firma. Mack kicked life into the tiny Citroën 2CV, rolling it over the metal and into Italy. With a brief flash of his passport to an uninterested customs official, he was waved on to the streets of San Giovanni, and pushed on into the traffic to Reggio, a few kilometres away, the capital of Calabria.
Complete silence hung in the muster room of the ACA office in Melbourne; not a single investigator had gone home. Every member of the team was hunched over a desk staring at the various TV monitors, catching the late news. The lead item showed a photograph of Jude in better times. Information concerning the suspected importation of ecstasy had been fed through an otherwise impenetrable united front to the hungry journalists. Solidarity and camaraderie kept the hard-working officers of the Australian Crime Authority glued to their seats.
It was the next occurrence that took everyone’s eyes from the TV monitors, yet surprised none. Spud and Sandra were at each end of Inspector Mack’s office desk, midway through lifting it into the common office area. They struggled through the doorway. As they reached the main security door, the other investigators seemed to cotton on to their endeavour, and lent a hand. The whole squad either helped in carrying the desk and its chair and coat rack or opened the various doors, all the way through the building to the street level. Without a word, they plonked the desk unceremoniously onto the footpath, as well as its accompaniments, and quietly filed back into the building, to pick up the news stories again.
An empathetic Superintendent Fountain sat in his car at the front of the building, having just come to a stop. He watched the furniture removal escapade. It was obvious that the squad was hurting in more ways than one. Once the detectives had all re-entered the building, Fountain quietly stepped from his vehicle and, circumnavigating the office ensemble, continued up the steps to sign himself in. He completely understood the anguish of the crew. Apart from the corrupt behaviour of one inspector, he had great admiration for an exemplary body of people. Besides, he had a late-night meeting with the director to seek a provisional extradition warrant for Inspector Mack—once he was located.
The roller door to the dispatch depot of the La Cucina canning company in the industrial zone of San Gregorio had been slammed shut since the Anti-Mafia unit arrived. Two machine gun–wielding Carabinieri stood out the front as their investigative team scoured the factory. With no contraband located, they walked back to their squad cars, dejected. Four blocks away at La Nova canning company, a similar raid was underway. The drama on this occasion was not drug-related; rather, it centred on the otherwise honest proprietors. A small brawl had developed inside the factory, their reaction to the insult of being raided. After a short time, however, the Anti-Mafia unit again moved on, disappointed that it had located nothing sinister.
Simultaneously, the eight food canning companies in Reggio Calabria were hit, locked down and searched. The production of cannellini beans, pomodoro sugo, peeled tomatoes and artichokes had come to an abrupt halt in town. The industrial streets now swelled with angry workers, mostly women, annoyed at the heavy-handed ways of the Napoli and Roma Anti-Mafia units. Hundreds of disgruntled employees, an army of blue-uniformed, white-capped peasant labour, moved through the streets, spitting vitriol at the truck-loads of Carabinieri who stood sentry on every corner. On the horizon hung container cranes, frozen, as armed police ringed off the entrance and exit and every gangway on the massive port. All manifests were seized and had been safely transported to the hands of the investigating magistrate. By afternoon, the women were joined by husbands and sons as they marched on to the Piazza Grande. Still, the shipment of ecstasy remained missing. A now very tired Commissario D’Alfonso stood on the top step of the Municipio building and discreetly watched a new storm brewing.
Inspector Mack, like a few other brave—or possibly stupid—motorists, pressed on through the midst of the army of protestors in the tiny Citroën. He’d advance a metre or two, then stop, and then another couple of metres and stop again, edging his way painfully, slowly, through the melee. He had taken a risk with the crowd—and occasionally the flimsy little car was rocked from side to side as hands banged on the pristine duco—but he’d taken a lot of risks in recent weeks. Every now and again a tough and angry Calabrian would break into laughter at the odd shape and look of the ugly duckling car. Mack worried most about the couple of attempts the crowd made to open the doors, for it was what he had stashed behind the rear seat that was his greatest concern.
He’d spent a good part of his visit to the capital city parked illegally down a back laneway in the industrial estate in San Leo. Massimo had made him sweat it out. He seemed to enjoy delaying the Inspector’s receipt of his million dollars, disappearing as he did for a couple of hours to put together the money before returning to help secrete the tennis sports bag behind the back seat of the small car. It was a last-minute conversion of Australian dollars to euros that slowed the Inspector down most. He had come to the meeting with an up-to-date conversion rate, and felt that the Mafia had undercut him by $10 000 or thereabouts. A bewildered Massimo, not one for figures unless they were female, baulked at the attitude of the Australian as he argued his end of the bargain. Massimo just ached to cut the throat of the ageing imbecile, and would have—save for the fact that he was absolutely necessary to the export of the ecstasy and its subsequent safe arrival in Australia, now and in the future. Eventually, he agreed to the Inspector’s demand, paid out a few euros more, and handed him a full copy of the manifest for the shipment to Australia.
The Inspector felt uneasy with the way in which Massimo had conducted the affair and didn’t bother with the request for him to do away with Donny Benjamin at a later date, nor did he bother warning Massimo of his impending arrest for the murder of the New Zealander. He was now more concerned with fleeing with his lovely. And after all, he thought, Donny wasn’t a bad sort of bloke, and he hadn’t done him any harm.
Mario and Leigh had just finished checking the last of the arriving ferries, a hydrofoil from Lipari Island, full of sunburnt tourists who whined at their slow egress from the vessel. It would be the last inspection for the day, as none of the ferries were returning to their points of origin to bring additional passengers; they were all tied up on the dock. Mario fielded a mobile call from his Commissario, who was still overseeing the near riot in the piazza.
‘Pronto.’
‘Mario, we need to speak to your informer again.’
‘Si, si, Commissario.’
‘We’re going backwards here. He has to help us again.’
‘Si, si. I’ll pick you up and take you there.’
‘Bravo. But go arou
nd the town and beware of the piazza.’
‘Grazie.’
Mario turned to Leigh and explained that it was time to leave. They both handed their photographs of Inspector Mack to the team of Carabinieri guarding the wharf, before stepping back into their squad car. Mario took to the relatively empty, narrow laneways. He dropped the gear box of the Alfa Romeo down a cog or two and roared through the familiar network at breakneck speed, giving Leigh a white-knuckle ride.
Mario stopped once only before they gathered up the Commissario, for a run of traffic consisting of four cars heading out of town in the opposite direction. A route that wove past the port on the A3 autostrada on the road that goes directly to Naples, Rome and further north. Unbeknown to them both, the second car in this run was driven by Inspector Mack, the fully laden Citroën 2CV, heading in the direction that would eventually take him around to France, and then home in twelve or so hours. Mario sped on through the southern end of town, to the coastal road running along the Mediterranean, in the opposite direction.
On the Run Page 27
