No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (25 page)

He was ageing now. He would want to go to his Maker having made a clean breast of it. Presumably the priest believed in his Maker. Increasingly Bernardo worried that Father Demetrio might visit a senior figure in the archdiocese and confess his part in the matter.

It was a day of celebration, Mamma’s sixty-third birthday. Their grandson was at home with them. A ship was approaching the docks at Gioia Tauro, and a foreigner was coming in the hope of doing business – Giulietta had slid him a slip of paper with nine figures in a row on it, then had burned it and kissed him. He studied his cards.

Anxiety and worry were to be avoided at his age. He did not tolerate either. Neither would he accept a possible threat to his security. The priest might wish to purge old guilt. Bernardo’s security depended on constant vigilance and confronting danger.

Bernardo smiled – a decision taken – and topped up Father Demetrio’s glass. He played a card. All danger should be confronted.

Consolata was on the beach.

A fisherman was repairing a small net to her right, and a couple lay a hundred yards from her, towards the castle high on the rock, and music came from the café behind. Later she would return her parents’ car and borrow it again the night after next to go back to the place she had named. Tomorrow she would have a radio on, tuned to the local Radio Gamma NonStop. She would hear if he had done anything and thought he would. Consolata had a psychologist’s mind: she could predict men’s actions. She was on her back, soaking up the last of the sun, stretched across the still-damp pink towel.

She thought she had helped him towards a goal. She had provided support and steeled him. She didn’t understand him – couldn’t comprehend why he had travelled so far and on such vague terms, but that didn’t matter: he was there, in place.

She didn’t know what he would do, or the likely consequences of any action he took. A broken window, a vandalised car, paint daubed on a wall in the village – even a fire started. Any of those she could have justified. Her part in them would have been worthwhile – more so than handing out leaflets. If he did something more dramatic she would know of it from the radio – and would know also if the family caught him.

If he was caught he might be hurt. Consolata did not regard that as her responsibility. She had only aided him on his way. If he suffered, it wouldn’t be down to her, whatever the radio said . . . but he was attractive.

Her skin was warm. She had watched him scrub himself clean, washing away his inhibitions. A smile wreathed her face.

The prosecutor’s protection team would have caught his mood.

The shift had changed.

He had seen the little huddles form as they exchanged gossip.

His wife had gone to her mother, the children with her.

He sat in the garden as the light faded. He was low in the easy chair but could see the top of the nearest hills, the depth of the range behind them, and each flaw in the brickwork of the wall that surrounded him. He had dreamed a little. How things would have been if . . . Other prosecutors would be hovering in the courtyard, clutching files, hemmed in by their guards and jostled by photographers. His prisoner would be led past the flash bulbs. A tray of coffee would be brought from the café nearest the barracks, and he would see Bernardo. They would greet each other, a moment of respect. They were such vain men, the high-value targets, and expected to be treated with dignity, the handcuffs hidden from the lenses. It was usual for these ‘great men’ to congratulate the prosecutor responsible for their arrest, as if only a man of immense talent could have achieved it. He had been asked once by a foreign journalist whether he would sidle close to his prisoner while the shock of arrest was still at its height and suggest he might ‘turn’, become a
pentito
. He had been amazed. Such an idea would offend the prisoner: he would be insulted. The prisoner must initiate such a move. The journalist hadn’t understood. Would the prosecutor see the day when Bernardo was brought by
carabinieri
helicopter to Reggio?

There were two men on the hillside above the house. The forecast was poor, but he depended on them.

They didn’t talk about kit or food. It was all about what Ciccio had seen and Fabio’s insistence that he describe the man again and again. There was nothing about scorpion flies. They discussed the pistol that Ciccio had drawn and the pepper spray that Fabio had pulled out of his rucksack. Nothing moved on the slope between them and the house. A boy had been out with dogs well below them. They knew his route and had based their hide well clear of him – they were up an escarpment from the track he took and thought themselves far enough away for the dogs not to pick up their scent.

A decision had to be taken: what should they report? They were professionals, well versed in the ways of their world. Communicate to back-up and have those guys at an additional state of alert. They were now on Black. ‘An unknown in camouflage going past, close, then disappearing’ would trigger Amber. Back-up would report to ROS HQ. The weekend-duty officer, bored out of his mind, would log it, then refer it higher. A honcho would be called from his barbecue to receive a garbled message and they would be ordered back. That was the way it went when small stuff was passed up the command chain. If they were recalled, they would never return.

Ciccio didn’t know what he had seen. Fabio had seen nothing.

‘If we’ve shown, and they’re flushing us out, we’d have a problem. But I reckon we’d see signs of it at the house. At least, that’s what I’d like to think.’

The hide was one of the best, in that cleft, that Ciccio and Fabio had found. As good as any they had used before. The guy coming past? Might have been a hitman from another family, but he’d had no rifle or rucksack of explosives. Perhaps he was with the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna. If so, he might be working alongside the ’Ndrangheta families or against them. But his approach down the slope had not been that of a trained man or of a covert source.

‘Call in and it’s panic.’

‘Their health and our safety. They wouldn’t take a chance, just bring us out.’

‘We wouldn’t be coming back.’

‘Don’t know what we’d hit on the way out.’

‘But we wouldn’t be back.’

Ciccio said, ‘I couldn’t face our prosecutor, poor bastard. I’d swim the Strait to avoid him questioning me.’

Fabio said, ‘We’ve given our prosecutor precious little. We’ve not found what he wants. We’ll stay as long as we can – but it’ll be a bitter pill for him to swallow when we pull out.

Ciccio, bemused: ‘Who could it have been, coming past us – and why?’

They were motionless, breathing suppressed to basic need, coughs and sneezes stifled. There was a wonderful moment – they knew it well – when their information nailed a prized target to the boards, and a bleak period after a mission had failed.

Ciccio said, ‘He didn’t get as far down as the house, but I’d swear he’s in front of us. He’s hidden. Why?’

‘He’s too close because of the dogs.’

He soaked up information.

The cold was in his bones and his skin itched. It was almost a first for Jago Browne. There had been a long-ago camping trip down to the West Country, a few nights under canvas on Dartmoor – a Duke of Edinburgh Award venture – his only previous experience of roughing it – but he had never had to lie still like this, not coughing or fidgeting.

He wasn’t close enough to watch the daily life of the house. At school it had been thought that the trip to the great outdoors was ‘character building’. He’d loathed it: the chill, the damp, the barely cooked sausages, the communality of the tent where others were close to him, could tease, ignore or hurt, and his aloneness was challenged. The men at the banks who had given him the chance to shine had been impressed by his enhanced description of the experience. For that they would have thought of him as a good team player, a man unlikely to hide behind a curtain of comfort. He had not disabused them. But he could cope – he had to.

He had eaten only half of the chocolate. At any other time, in any other place, if he had bought chocolate he would have ripped off the wrapper and wolfed the contents. He had created a regime of rationing. There had been nowhere en route to buy food. He would survive, though, he didn’t doubt it.

He saw the old woman. He had a fine memory, as his employers recognised. When a query was thrown up at a meeting, he seldom needed to go to his screen and hunt for an answer: if he had read it once, it was stored in his head. On the file, she was Bernardo’s wife, and he could have listed the names of her three children. Jago understood the scale of the family’s wealth. He was on the periphery of the team that handled the accounts of clients who were valued in excess of ten million euros. One young woman was handled exclusively by the
FrauBoss
. She was an heiress of divorced parents, living on the lake of Geneva, and came to Berlin four times a year to meet her asset handlers, accountants and lawyers. She was worth close to fifty million euros. He had met her. She had not shaken his hand but had acknowledged him. He had carried Wilhelmina’s laptop bag and a file, had sat at the side and not spoken. He thought that the people whose accounts he had monitored in London and Berlin were almost paupers in comparison to the family whose home he watched, if he could believe what Consolata had told him, and he had no reason not to.

The old woman moved awkwardly, as if her hips hurt. The day was nudging on but she was hanging sheets and towels on a line. Jago studied her. She had plastic clothes pegs between her teeth, and more in a bag that hung from her shoulder. No servant did that job – she did it. When she had finished she stood to admire it. He thought she took great care over hanging several double sheets and large towels.

In her face he saw neither happiness nor misery, and thought her a woman without emotion. She did not pause to watch the chickens at her feet, or to gaze at the grapes hanging from the vine or entwined in the trellis. He considered the sheets. There was no breeze and the sun would soon dip behind the trees’ foliage. He watched her move away. Despite her hip problem, she betrayed no pain, and he thought her eyes were hard.

He was proud that he had eaten only half of his chocolate, and drunk less than half of the water.

Jago couldn’t read the old woman: he didn’t know whether she had enjoyed the time with her grandchildren or whether she had felt loved. He hadn’t seen, at her throat or on her fingers, any of the diamonds that would be commensurate with her wealth. When he strained he could just see a slender gold ring on the wedding finger. He had noticed the handyman leave a plastic bowl of vegetable peelings where the chickens were, and that the path the man took was behind the sheets.

The priest left.

The children were taken home.

He saw Marcantonio.

He saw the daughter, Giulietta – she had a bent nose. It would have been broken many years before and not set correctly. Her chin jutted out too far and her teeth overlapped. She wore no jewellery. Jago knew who she was from her photograph in the file, and that she was in her early thirties. She had glasses perched on the end of her nose.

Jago watched, the plan not yet firm in his mind. He remembered the pizzeria girl’s face, the impact with which he had hit the ground, the blows thrown at him. He remembered the anger of the shouts as he had pocketed his keys. He had started to know them all – except the head of the family.

‘It should have been me.’

‘Our father never thought it would be you.’

Marcantonio pirouetted on his heel. ‘Because of where my father and my uncle are, I should have done the bastard.’

His aunt, Giulietta, countered, ‘It was never going to be you. Our father always had it done by those not associated with us. It’s a mechanical process.’

‘I wanted to hurt him – I wanted to look into his face and see the fear, hear him beg. Then I wanted to finish him.’

‘What you did with the whore was different. It was personal to all of us. Marcantonio, you’re the future.’

‘I would have done it. I’d
like
to have done it.’

‘You’re in Berlin to learn a new life – to learn about investment and opportunity. Marcantonio, your father and your uncle are in gaol. The family needs your vitality, your youth and strength, if it’s to survive.’

She stroked his arm. He recognised the moment. Down the road, in the village, there were cats. Sometimes they were shot to keep down the numbers. Often, a litter was put in a sack and taken to the stream, usually by boys, then thrown in to drown. The boys did it so that they could kill if they had to. Sometimes the female cat was old but would nuzzle the youngest male. He lifted the hand. It was large, pudgy, sinewy and strong. It could have strangled as well as his could. He kissed the back. And did it again. And laughed. Marcantonio had had girls in Berlin and in the village. Giulietta did not have boys – Stefano had told him so. He allowed his lips to linger on her skin and she did not snatch away her hand.

They were in the open, as far as possible from any hidden microphone, and switched to the dialect they had been taught as children. Business talk – what would happen, the successes were close at hand.