On the Run

by Colin McLaren

  The Alfa roared up the ten kilometres of road off the beach highway, coming to a halt on the top of the hill at the other Mafia stronghold, San Luca. As had been the case in Plati, it had been surrounded by police all day. D’Alfonso’s vehicle was given immediate clear passage and it sprung to life again, heading straight to the centre of town, braking sharply in the tiny piazza, beside a small basilica. The three men strode from the car down three or four lanes towards the edge of town to face the aged and weathered façade of the finest villa in the region. They banged softly on the 200-year-old timber door with the heavy knocker. A quaint, almost delicate Signora pulled open the door. Oddly, the woman of the house bowed at the sight of the big man and his friends. She seemed to recognise Mario, and motioned them in before closing the door behind them.

  They were led, without comment, through the grand old palazzo, past unpolished antiques and tired paintings, alongside heavy drapes, across the rippled surface of terrazzo to a rear courtyard where the aged man of the house sat under a wisteria that was almost as old as he. He was halfway through devouring a peach, taking thin slices with a finely sharpened small knife. He watched with affection as his brindle-coated whippet, with its long narrow snout, licked the inner surface of an empty can of Chow Ciao dog food, nudging it noisily across the terracotta-tiled surface. The Godfather of the San Luca clan offered his three guests a seat, as his wife followed with a jug of homemade lemon granita and a set of glasses.

  ‘Young Mario,’ began the Godfather. ‘You have closed my town.’ He shifted his eyes to Leigh. ‘And this must be the Australian we have heard of?’

  ‘One of them, Signore,’ replied Mario.

  ‘Why have you lost sight of the shipment?’ the old man asked as he rose and walked over to the ornate wrought-iron aviary, stocked with illegal North African birdlife. He fed a slice of peach to a red-crested parakeet that had shoved its beak expectantly through the bars.

  ‘ We are searching everywhere, Signore. The mountains, the canneries, the ships, Plati.’

  ‘And you haven’t found it?’ He turned and sat back down heavily on his chair.

  ‘No. That’s why we’ve come to see you.’

  ‘I have helped you many times now, Mario. You forget … I helped you find the laboratory in Germania.’ The Godfather looked at the big man. ‘Do you not remember, Commissario, I helped you to get rid of the Plati gang who killed our six sons?’

  ‘And we are very grateful for your help, Signore,’ said the humble but still proud D’Alfonso. ‘ We couldn’t have come this far without your valued assistance. But you have enjoyed your revenge, now let us finish the job.’

  ‘And so you’ve come back to the well, Commissario.’

  ‘I’ve come back to the hand that works with me just this once,’ said D’Alfonso.

  The Commissario watched the tired yet supremely relaxed old man skilfully take another sliver from his peach; spearing it with his knife, he offered it to the policeman.

  ‘Answer me one question, Commissario. Is it because you have lost the shipment or is it because you have lost a pretty blonde girl? Think hard,’ he said. ‘All rests on whether I help you even more.’

  The Commissario thought as he watched the whippet, which had now given up on the pristine can and nestled in for a nap at his owner’s feet.

  ‘It’s for Mario and the memory of his father, that’s why I ask.’

  The old man looked across at Mario, whose head was bowed.

  ‘You know, young Mario, that the Plati clan killed your father?’

  Mario nodded without speaking.

  ‘Then your answer is a good answer, Commissario. Massimo came to see me yesterday. He asked to use my own cannery to pack his drugs. He pleaded with me, after killing our six sons.’ The old Godfather shook his head slowly in disbelief before continuing, ‘Because he knows you are watching the other canneries.’

  ‘Do you have a cannery, Signore?’ asked Mario.

  The Godfather cast his eyes down at the beloved whippet and then across at the empty tin. His last words on the subject were, ‘You must hurry. He was packing it this morning. Now take your men from my town.’

  Mario bent down and picked up the dog food tin. The packaging address was printed clearly on the back of the label: San Leo, in Reggio, one suburb away from San Gregorio.

  The Supervisor of the Carabinieri search team had just finished addressing his men. He was standing in the centre of the only clearing in the area. The men had worked consistently on east to west grids and then repeated their effort north to south, convinced they had searched every cave in the Aspromonte Mountains. The supervisor fully intended to take the search on to the docks and each vessel that was tied to the moorings. There was a solid couple of days’ work ahead of them, and he began to dispatch his instructions. Midway through, a police helicopter eased from the sky onto the clearing, causing the team to dissipate. It had come to collect Cole, under advice from D’Alfonso, to take him to the port, where he might like to assist in the unfolding search. In no time Cole had said his goodbyes and was in the air. He would be in Reggio in minutes.

  Mario hurtled down the San Luca road to the coast, drifting his vehicle onto the siding at every turn until he finally braked at the T-intersection at Porto Bonamico. The highway traffic was full of holiday-makers. They allowed a large royal blue transport to pass before swinging onto the highway in the opposite direction. Mario gunned it as fast as he could towards Reggio. His Commissario was in the front, holding tight to the seat with one hand and, with the other hand, clutching a tin of dog food. Leigh was in the back seat looking through the rear-view mirror at the royal blue truck that had just gone past them in the opposite direction. He placed both his hands onto the rear of the Commissario’s headrest and pulled himself forward, leaning in to the free space between the two front occupants. The car was now travelling at 160 kilometres per hour.

  Leigh stared at the tin in the Commissario’s hand and the royal blue label that spelt out Chow Ciao, the same name as on the tarpaulin on the passing truck.

  He looked up with a tinge of renewed excitement and said to the big man, ‘The truck carrying the drugs has just gone past us.’

  ‘What, Leigh?’ queried the big man in disbelief.

  ‘The arse-wipe’s just gone past.’

  Mario brought the Alfa Romeo to a screeching halt in a cloud of white smoke, before executing a near-perfect 180-degree turn in the oncoming traffic. He worked some heat into the gear box as it raced forwards. It was now Massimo who was on the run.

  Inspector Mack was starting to lose patience with his wife’s quirky little car, with the two-cylinder engine that didn’t seem to want to go fast enough. Although he was now a hundred or more kilometres north of Reggio, halfway to the border of Campagna en route to Naples, he wondered when in the hell he would get home at this 80-kilometres-per-hour crawl. He pulled in to the wayside stop on the freeway at Falerna. It was certainly a beautiful part of the road, raised above the ground on forty-metre pylons at the gulf of Santa Eufemia. It afforded stunning views across the water to the seven Aeolian islands, the most prominent of which was Stromboli. As the Inspector alighted from his vehicle to stretch his cramped legs and allow the tiny engine of his getaway car to cool down for a spell, he mused on the possibility of turning on his mobile phone for the first time in four days. He was, he thought, safe—and very fucking wealthy.

  The telecommunication network’s mobile roaming system sprang to life. He was confused, however, by the constant pinging of his phone once it switched on. One message, two, three, four: on and on it beeped in an extraordinarily quick fashion, forty-eight new messages in total. He stared at the screen filled with foreboding. He leant on the bonnet of the car to collect his thoughts. He sighed and looked back at the incessantly flashing blue light on his phone and did what he had to do. He listened to the first message.

  Mario knew the slow corners and the fast bends. The Alfa was immediately behind the fully laden semi-t
railer. The Commissario was busy on the police radio, calling for assistance. He had ordered that the freeway be blocked at the Roccella bypass, the newest section of the highway. At this speed it was less than ten minutes away and the perfect location to pull up a truck, as the road surface was elevated ten metres. No escape.

  The first response, in fact the only response thus far, was from the helicopter transporting Cole. It had only been airborne a couple of minutes. The pilot banked to the left. Leigh heard the adrenalin in the captain’s voice.

  ‘We’ll be at the Roccella bypass in three minutes, Commissario.’

  ‘Then land on the Roccella bypass,’ came the instruction from the chief of operations.

  The pilot demanded a repeat of the order, normal procedure in such a potentially dangerous manoeuvre. The big man had no hesitation in reiterating his demand.

  ‘Land ON Roccella bypass!’

  Mario held his position immediately behind the truck. There were two potential turn-offs ahead, one after the other in quick succession, both towards Marina, a seaside village riddled with cheap and nasty hotels and Russian prostitutes. To their relief, the last turn-off disappeared; they were on the right track.

  The helicopter with the Carabinieri livery appeared in the sky about one kilometre ahead of them. Cole looked both left and right and helped guide the helicopter in, as he reached for his handgun. There was no turning back now.

  ‘Down, down,’ commanded Cole as he looked up to see the truck fast approaching. The pilot hesitated momentarily.

  ‘Down, now!’ Cole ordered, watching, face on, the cabin of the prime mover get larger.

  The pilot eased the helicopter expertly into the centre of the autostrada as the brake lights on the transport flashed on brightly and its screeching wheels began to lock. Mario struggled with his steering wheel to keep the Alfa Romeo immediately behind the truck and hidden from the view of the driver, who was reducing the speed of his semi-trailer at an alarming rate. Cole and the pilot waited a few seconds for the blades to lose some velocity before opening their doors and jumping onto the roadway. Cole stood his ground for few seconds, gun raised, before he turned and ran after the pilot.

  The rear tarpaulin, now only five metres away from the windscreen of the Alfa, was flung open, to reveal Massimo, Illario and Giuseppe all standing in front of forty tonnes of tin cans, the intended contents of which had been largely replaced at the cannery during the long previous night. Each of them was holding an Uzi submachine gun. Mario braked instantly, broad-siding the vehicle at right angles to the road. The Alfa’s tyres were peppered with rounds.

  They watched as the truck suddenly accelerated forwards and the three men each emptied a clip of rounds just short of the Alfa. At the opposite end of the highway, Cole and his pilot were sprinting, and glancing back at the truck, grinding its gears and racing forward towards them. It was evident that both men needed to be clear of the elevated freeway to avoid the collision. But they were trapped ten metres above the ground; a jump would surely cripple if not kill them. Foreseeing such an outcome, the Commissario, Leigh and Mario ran towards the rear of the truck, each with a handgun aimed and ready to fire. At a speed of 150 kilometres an hour and with a gross weight of 52 tonnes, the semi-trailer, its driver, passenger and the three Mafiosi from the hills of Calabria hit the recently refuelled chopper with its nearly full tank, and exploded in a massive ball of orange and yellow flames.

  One week later

  The only thing shared by the trio of hilltop towns of San Luca, Plati and Gerace was their perfect views to the marina below, and out across the Mediterranean. On a clear day Africa was visible, or so the locals bragged. Otherwise, the towns kept to themselves.

  It had been a busy week.

  Jude was still missing.

  The small Citroën 2CV still sat unobtrusively at the wayside lookout at Falerna, covered in freeway dust. A gang of highway bandits had gotten to it, removing the quirky hood-badge, grille and even the two front tyres. Otherwise, it was just as Inspector Mack had parked it before attending to his string of messages. The doors were locked, the pristine interior was still neat and tidy, although free of any luggage and, of course, free of the lovely. A cursory vehicle registration check by passing Carabinieri the night before, upon observing the missing front wheels, traced the ownership to a Pierre Leblanc in Provence. It was just another dumped vehicle littering the autostrada.

  On the Roccella freeway on the opposite coastal peninsula, the municipal traffic police had only just reopened the carriageway, having finally cleared the burnt remains of the semi-trailer, its illicit contents and the helicopter. The only evidence of the world-shattering news event that remained was the charred surface of the road and a half-dozen mangy dogs that scoured the area for the few remaining broken tins on the roadway.

  In the main piazza of San Luca was gathered a great portion of the town, sitting happy and united again; a feast was underway. The aged Don of the Mafioso clan wandered contentedly through his domain, with his whippet close at his heels. It had been a quiet week for the old man; no one had connected the dots and he was confident no one ever would. He thought, as he looked out across the waterfront towards Locri, of renewing telephone contact with Otto, just to see how his suntan was faring, and when he might be thinking of returning.

  In the piazza in Plati sat the sole figure of a melancholy teenage girl, on the chair at the Café La Vista normally occupied by her uncle. The town was empty and the church bells had gone silent long ago. Lydia had lost her virginity and her innocence. More tragically, she had lost her father, her uncle, three other town friends, and the town’s Godfather, who had died from grief almost before the dirt had hit the lids of the other coffins. She had also lost her desire to live, for even another day, in Plati.

  The disappointment. The waste.

  There was no reason to stay. But she could see a life to be made elsewhere, perhaps university in Torino in northern Italy, away from the drugs, the anger and the vendetta.

  Seated in the beautiful and idyllic medieval piazza of Gerace were Cole and Leigh. Cole was focused on an image of Massimo that had hung in his memory for a week, next to another indelible image: Jude. They had just been joined by Nick the Greek, who, having watched the awful news unfold, had come to help in the search for Jude. He had always known that the Australians were more than just reunited travellers; their bond was too strong.

  The men had just returned from another round of cave searching. Leigh was certain they had been inside each and every cave at least three or four times. But he would continue searching until Cole chose to go home.

  Cole’s BlackBerry Bold rang and was ignored, as was the accepted practice since the Commissario had gone back to Naples. The pesky ringtone continued chirping, until Leigh gave in and took the call.

  He walked into the centre of the piazza as he listened, and looked down onto the coastline six kilometres below, down to the village of Locri where the famed bronze warriors of Riace had been found, mysterious, serene, in the shallow water, gazing towards the mountains. He could see the faintest signs of flashing red, blue and white emergency lights on the foreshore beyond the brush and the dotted terracotta rooftops.

  The caller was brief. Leigh clicked the BlackBerry off, and stood staring at his feet and the weathered white marble blocks that made up the surface of the piazza. He didn’t move. Nick had watched the conversation take place and walked over to Leigh. He, too, could see the flashing lights. He turned to look at Leigh, who nodded slowly without a word.

  Cole read the play. He reached into his left trouser pocket, into the jeans he had worn for a week. Pulling his fist free, he glanced again at the ecstasy pills still covered in the cave soil. He looked back at the men who had stood so loyally by him and limply tossed the pills onto the well-worn marbled piazza.

  Ten minutes later, the three men stepped out from their Alfa Romeo. They walked in single file towards the water’s edge and the wall of Calabrian uniforms. Leigh and Ni
ck dropped back to allow Cole lone passage.

  He walked slowly and solemnly forward, then stopped and knelt down beside the supine body. Jude looked peaceful, he thought, as he reached his fingertips out to caress the ends of her long blonde hair, which floated gently in the still waters. She was dressed in the same clothes in which she had gone picnicking with Leigh. There was no evidence that she had been in the water for a very long time, and she bore no obvious injuries. Her face was tilted upwards and slightly towards the Aspromonte. In a state that would never fully be understood, she alone held her secret, and a haunting look of serenity.

  Mario was standing nearby, his uniform replaced by a suit. The new Commissario of the district turned and walked from the scene, taking a few uniforms with him to shield Cole from the media throng. Mario then stepped aside from the flurry, to stand alone for a moment to raise his hand to the sun and look towards his mountain. His past, and his future.

  To be continued …

  Acknowledgements

  The difference between a writer and a hack is an editor, and I’m blessed with the best. Thanks Alison and Susan.

  Colin McLaren

  cm@scuttlebuttmedia.net

  On the Run is a work of fiction. No character has any bearing on any living person. Although, I did take divine inspiration from a few colourful souls I met in my career as a detective.

  VICTORY BOOKS

  An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

  187 Grattan Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

  mup-info@unimelb.edu.au

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  In association with X15 PTY LTD

  First published 2009

  Reprinted 2009

  Text © Colin McLaren and X15 PTY LTD, 2009

  Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Limited and