No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (55 page)

He wondered if Jack had known. Too fucking right the lawyer had known. Everyone had known, except Bentley Horrocks.

Only at the end did he shriek. He heard himself. He tried to thrash around and free himself but they were lifting him, like he was a bloody kid. He could hear the pigs and the frenzy of grunting. He was over the wall and, for a moment, they held him up, then dropped him. He saw nothing else, but the smell was with him, and the noise, and the pain.

Humphrey drove and didn’t make conversation. Jack had nothing to say.

The radio was turned up loud, which was useful because they couldn’t talk over it. Jack sat in the passenger seat and imagined unpleasant scenarios. They centred on whom he would have to provide with explanations as to why he had come home early and left Bent, his boss, to travel alone. Not much wriggle room, and he had Bent’s bag with him, and the phones. There might be a problem over why he was carrying Bent’s passports. He’d come up with one solution to his anxieties. He’d make sure that Bent’s passports and phones stayed in the lawyer’s car. Not quite sure yet where he would stuff them, but they’d be there. If it got nasty, and he ended up in an interview room at Old Street, then Humphrey’s name would be bouncing off the walls all the time the recorder was doing its job.

They were onto the main road, dual carriageway, the really good earner for the Calabrian clans, all done with Brussels cash, among camper wagons and loaded cars. It was the fag end of the season. He wondered where Bent was, what they’d prepared for him, and if anything of him would ever be seen again. There’d be serious fighting round Peckham, Deptford and Rotherhithe when it became known that Bentley Horrocks was off his manor, not expected back, and some tidy little interests were going begging. He’d have to keep his head down while the territory was carved up. And detectives in the Crime Squad would be going short of the cash in the brown envelopes. Trace was about the only one who wouldn’t blink, would just get a replacement and carry on, nice girl, not unintelligent. He’d never been accused of being
fond
of Bentley Horrocks, but Jack shivered a little, even in the heated car, at the thought of what they might have done with him.

As people often said, ‘Some you win and some you lose.’ Jack thought it a tidy old loss, but said nothing.

Giulietta had a good view of Father Demetrio. The village priest walked backwards and forwards, agitated. He had made just the one call, then had set off on the tramp that took him again and again round the car park. Twice he was nearly run down by motorists leaving. Once he had hopped back, and the other time the driver had hammered his horn at him. He smoked all the time, and lit each new cigarette from the end of the old one. When he was nearest to her she’d thought he was shaken. His eyes were staring at nothing. He would lead her. She would follow. To wherever.

The files were spread across his carpet. The prosecutor, on hands and knees, was in front of them. The cupboard was wide open and part of a shelf was empty. Now he pored over them. He had been working that afternoon and into the evening on new challenges, new targets, trying to ease the burden of a failed investigation, to move on. His coat had been hitched over his shoulders, his bag in his hand, and he had made the call to his wife that he was leaving – yes, he was, truthfully, he’d be home in a quarter of an hour – and the phone had rung. He could have let it ring and ignored it.

The escort boys had been on their feet, their magazines dumped in the chairs, radios at their ears, weapons at their hips. They would have thought themselves blessed that their principal’s attention was diverted from failure. But he had turned and gone back in. He had heard a stammering, hesitant voice, words that spewed with a degree of incoherence. A name had been given – and the trumpets had blasted recognition – the location of the
padrino
and of his
cosca
, the place where he was hiding, and the
soffiato
was on his way, driving to the Palace of Justice. The call had been cut. What was the informant’s name? Not given. What make of car was he coming in? Registration? No time to ask. He was no longer going home. He asked if two would go down to the main lobby. A car was on its way – unidentified. The driver would park, walk to Reception and ask for the prosecutor by name. He was to be brought to the office.

He went over the old files so that he could control an interview. The walk-ins were always the best. To turn a criminal, make him a
pentito
, was seldom satisfactory. But when a man came to the door, asked to come in, was willing to talk and lay his life on the line, he was a rare treasure.

He demanded fresh coffee. The leader of his team would telephone his wife and make the excuses.

They were out of their hide, with the canvas kitbags, the rucksacks and the plastic rubbish bag. It was dark and Fabio had the lenses over his eyes, which gave a watery image of what lay ahead. They were held by the sounds, wasted effort to fathom their source or what they meant.

The dogs patrolled at the door restlessly, the kid sat on the hard chair, listening, and Mamma had come to the door every three or four minutes, looked up the path past the sheets, then turned away. They had gear for enhancing sound but that was packed away now and neither had the inclination to root in the bags for it. They were ready to go. For them Scorpion Fly was over, but they hesitated.

Ciccio said it was the television. It was a muffled noise, faint, maybe distant shouting, or perhaps a poor soundtrack on whatever programme was on. They wanted out. It was always difficult to walk away from failure, but it wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last. Both were more familiar with failure than success.

Fabio slapped Ciccio’s arm. Enough. They had authorisation to quit. Ciccio nodded. He punched in the code and was poised to transmit. A message on the screen blocked his own.
Maintain location. Observe and report
.

They went back to the entrance to their shallow hole, lay down and seethed.

Carlo watched the
maresciallo
. A little fellow, unlike most of the unit. He lacked their physique, and his spectacles were high magnification. He was giving someone serious stick on the phone. Carlo had the impression that he was being fobbed off. They’d all experienced it: the greatest revelation ever in law enforcement came into a control room, but the bastards were all too busy, or hadn’t the sense, to react. He wasn’t winning.

‘I can tell you where the fugitive is lying up. Have I seen him? No, I have not. Have I a direct informant? No. What I have are my eyes and my instinct. Isn’t that good enough?’

No. The phone was snapped off. The little guy came to them. They had new information at the Palace of Justice. An informant was coming in. The
maresciallo
was surplus to requirements.

‘Their privilege,’ Carlo said. ‘We’ll see what shows. That’s where the
padrino
is, don’t doubt it.’

He had fallen over. His head had caught on the table where the TV sat. Blood ran from his nose. He hadn’t found the torch, the matches or the candles. The nightmare played out. When he had been with the other older men Bernardo had shown, he thought, composure and dignity in the face of disaster. The loss of his heir had weakened him, left him adrift. He had met their eyes as they observed him, searching for signs of a loss of willpower. Not now.

He howled. He had found the door and tried to open it, but had failed. He was trapped, like a man laid in a coffin who recovers his senses and can hear the blows as the lid is nailed down but cannot move or make himself heard. He was on the floor, on thin carpet, and he screamed towards the ceiling. Nobody was listening and his voice was hoarse. Mamma wouldn’t come – she never did. Stefano would, but he’d gone to the place where the pigs were bred. Giulietta was tracking the priest, the bastard Demetrio, whom he had identified as a traitor. The kid, who was around the house, did not know the workings of the bunker. Marcantonio did, but he was cold in a box on trestles. His nose bled freely. The shouts had become a scream. An old man’s call, pathetic.

No one came. He couldn’t see his hand. When he moved he hit himself. Each movement seemed to Bernardo to show his growing weakness.

When the child had been in the cave, at the start, they had left a candle to burn during the night in a jar that had once held jam. They had come one morning and it had toppled over. The flame had scorched part of the bedding. If it had caught seriously alight, the child might have been burned alive. She could not have escaped from the flames because the chain secured her leg to the wall at the back of the cave. They had not lit it again. The child had been left in darkness. It would have been the same total darkness in the cave as it was now in the converted container. No glow from distant streetlights or car headlights. No light. The child would have cowered on the bedding they’d brought her. He was as frightened as the child would have been.

He had watched on the television in the kitchen – many years before – a programme made by the RAI featuring the ‘kidnap industry’, as they had called it. The parents had been interviewed. The father had said a few words, tears streaming down his face, but the mother had cursed him: the money had been paid six months or more after the child had been buried on the hillside, higher than the cave. The mother had hurled abuse at them because the money had been paid and the child had not been returned. Then he had been unmoved by her voice. All had changed now.

His voice was failing so his cries were weaker. No one came. He went unheard. The blood dribbled from his nose and he lay on the floor.

It involved a man he had never met. Jago Browne thought he knew how it would play out. He felt strong.

There had been shouting and Jago assumed there was a vent near to him, for fresh air, that the noises from inside the bunker were funnelled up to him. They had started as inconsistent, deep-pitched yells, part impatience and growing annoyance. Later they had become angry, aggressive, but with an element of self-control. Last, the breakdown: screams and what he thought might be whimpers. Jago had felt good. He had thought himself close to achieving his objective. Now there was no sound.

He would stay long enough to see him.

The climax would come when he looked into the eyes of the man, whose chin would shake. He did not think himself in danger, did not consider that he had been there too long, putting his life at risk.

Jago had folded the coat and sat on it, making himself as comfortable as possible, hidden on the rock. He didn’t know how long he would have to wait, and didn’t particularly care. His mission was in its last hours. That he knew.

19

Something to watch, at last, other than the chickens.

The lights were feeble in front of the house, but headlights approached and threw a fiercer beam. Jago saw it from his vantage point – it was a while now since he had last heard the distant sounds of yelling, then crying. The dogs bounded round the side of the house and the kid strolled after them, smoking. Jago noted that some of the men from down the track had moved closer to the house. The handyman parked the car and killed the engine. He called the kid and dismissed him.

It was nearly over. Jago wanted to put a living face to the photograph he held in his mind. He wanted to see the man collapse, and be able to tell himself that
his
work had achieved it. He cut out the role of the girl in Charlottenburg and on the beach in the moonlight.
He
had done it.

This was his territory. He didn’t know anywhere else as well as he knew the narrow panorama in front of him. Not the street in front of the one-parent family home in Canning Town, not the walk from the bus stop in Barking Road, or the stretch from St Paul’s Underground station to a tower block in the City. The hike to the bank in inner Berlin was already a faded glimpse. He knew everything about this place. He had absorbed each sprouted shrub in the apology for a garden, the trees and grass. He knew how many paving slabs made up the patio and how many struts held the hard chair’s legs in place. He knew the volume of the grapes on the trellis, the colours of the dogs’ coats and their pecking order. He could smell what they cooked in the kitchen. He could assess the old woman’s hip or pelvic problems. He knew the range of the sheets used on a bed in the house. He felt a sense of belonging to this place, was reluctant to leave it . . . and the time had run its course. Like a curtain coming down. People walked urban streets often enough to know where they could stand, see into a lit window, watch the life of a family with children and become a part of it in loneliness. Jago hated the thought of leaving. Here he viewed extreme power and excessive wealth.

The kid came back with a steaming bucket and cloths. He had an extension lead, too, which ran from an outside power point, and a vacuum cleaner. Under the older man’s direction, he was to clean the City-Van. It might have been fifteen years old, Jago thought, and they worked hard. It was easy enough for the one-time banker to fathom. The vehicle was being cleansed of clues left by a passenger sitting in the front. A murder – not a wounding or an assault. The handyman had been the driver and Jago saw nothing different in his bearing from the other times he had seen him. It shouted at him that a killing was no big deal and was rounded off with a methodical car wash. He watched it all, and waited. He should have been on his way up to the road.