See Naples and Die (7 page)

Bruno the novice had acquired a nervous
twitch, with his head suddenly swinging to the right as if heading an invisible
football. It had started as an ever more frequent nod but now it was getting
worse, and the girls were worried. If it became any more forceful he would fall
off the bench they were sitting on, and turn into Norman Wisdom. Someone had to
try and calm him down, and unfortunately it was Chrissie who acted first.

“For fuck’s sake, Bruno, will you keep
your fucking head still?”

Bruno was shocked. Although – if
provoked – Chrissie could swear like a fishwife, she had controlled her
language in the presence of the priest up to now.

“Chrissie,” shouted Megan. “For goodness’
sake, we’re in enough trouble without you upsetting God.”

“Give me a break, Megan. We’re supposed
to be keeping a low profile, and Buckaroo here is getting more attention than a
wildebeest in a lion’s pen.”

“Can’t you see he’s hyperventilating?”
said Brenda. “It’s the anxiety of meeting these Mafia guys. Ever since this was
arranged he’s been withdrawing into himself. Look at his breathing. It’s ten
times faster than ours. We need to snap him out of it. Let’s go through
everything again … that could calm him down.”

“Or tip him over the edge, more like,”
sighed Chrissie.

“Well … let’s try, shall we?” said Megan
calmly. She changed places with Chrissie and sat next to Bruno. “Bruno,” she
whispered, in a soothing tone that came straight from a chocolate advert. “Two
days ago we thought we were in a hopeless situation, with no way out. Then you
came up with this brilliant plan. It is totally brilliant. Well done, you.”

Chrissie groaned.

Megan continued. “You actually spoke to
Roberto Vialli and, not only that, you got him to come all the way to London
for a meeting. So now it could be that we have a good Mafia man on our side who
can make the bad Mafia man go away.”

Chrissie had to interrupt. “What on
earth are you doing? Reading him a bedtime story? You’re supposed to be
snapping him out of it, not sending him into a coma. And, by the way, I don’t
know much about this – but I don’t think there is such a thing as a good Mafia
man. Now I propose we all be quiet for a few minutes and think about what we
are going to say when this Roberto guy gets here, because I have a feeling that
Bruno will be sucking his thumb by then.”

The girls and Bruno sat on the park
bench and looked across the green fields of Kensington Gardens. They had
entered through Black Lion Gate at the junction of Bayswater Road and
Queensway, and walked past the children’s play area and ice cream van until they
found the first empty bench on Broad Walk.

It was Brenda’s idea to pick a busy
location with wide open spaces: she reasoned that an assassination here would
be pretty difficult. They also understood how Roberto must be viewing all this.
He receives a phone call out of the blue from someone he’s never heard of, who tempts
him to leave the security of Naples on the pretext of acquiring valuable
information about his arch-enemy. He must be half expecting a trap … so the
park seemed a good idea, all round.

The only problem was that they were easy
to recognise. Three girls and a priest isn’t something you see every day, even
in London, but these Mafia guys could be anywhere. They were scanning the
groups of people sitting on the grass, who were mostly couples and women with
children. Two skinheads with a pit bull were being a nuisance, and in the
distance four young boys were trying to fly a kite. A continuous flow of people
was passing by, either enjoying a stroll or making their way through the park
towards the more affluent areas of Knightsbridge and Kensington – but, other
than a cursory glance at three pretty girls and what looked like a priest on
drugs, no one seemed interested in them.

Then Brenda spotted two tall dark-haired
men turning away from the ice cream van. They were smartly dressed – too smart
for a walk in the park. The men very slowly made their way down Broad Walk.
When they got to the bench they stopped and faced the girls. One of the men
looked at his ice cream and said, in broken English, “This-a gelato is
disgustoso.” Then he tossed it into the rubbish bin at the side of their seat.

The other man smiled. “Forgive my
friend. He hasn’t acclimatised to your English ways. We are from Italy, but I
suppose you know that already.” His English was perfect, and somehow that eased
the tension.

“But the ice cream man is Italian, so it
should be good,” said Brenda, waffling.

The man looked at the brilliant white
ice cream in his hand. “The man is Italian, but the products and process that
make the gelato are English. It is what you call a bad reproduction.” And he
also threw his cornet in the bin.

“Let’s walk,” he said.

They bunched up, and all adapted a slow Mafia
swagger as they took the path towards Hyde Park.

“My name is Armando,” said the well-spoken
Italian. “You do not need to know my colleague’s name.”

They glanced at the other Mafia man,
whose eyes were everywhere. He was obviously the shotgun guard.

“I am here on behalf of my employer, and
I believe you have something that is of great interest to us. Is that correct?”

Chrissie looked at Bruno and decided it
was best that she handled things from now on.

“Yes, Armando. We have a USB memory
stick that contains all contacts and business dealings of the Scarpone family.
Names, addresses, and payments made and received from past and ongoing
operations.”

“Where is this data?” asked Armando.

“We have it in a safe place,” said
Chrissie, in a firm and confident voice.

Armando thought for a moment as if
considering his options. “And what do you want from us in exchange for this
information?” he said.

“We want to get out of this situation
alive,” said Chrissie “It was all a mistake that we got involved in the first
place, and now this Scarpone lot have a contract out on us. We know we can’t
reason with them. Even if we return the data they won’t let us go.”

“So you don’t want any money?” asked a
surprised Armando.

“What? No! We just want our lives back,”
said an impassioned Chrissie.

It seemed the Italians were finding this
a little hard to understand. This was business, and everyone is in it for a
profit. But then again, what is more valuable than life? Maybe these girls were
telling the truth.

“How did this memory stick come into
your possession?” asked Armando.

Chrissie had to be careful here. She
didn’t want to tell him everything. Not because of any loyalty to Luigi – he
had tricked them, big time – but one thing she had learnt in life was to always
hold something back. If you show all your cards straight away then you have
nothing left to gamble with, and you lose control of the board. But she had to
start somewhere, so she decided to start at the beginning.

“We were on a cruise, and visited Naples
on holiday – just a holiday. We were in the marketplace and a boy named Fabio,
who had stolen the data stick, was being pursued. In a panic he put the thing
into my bag. I didn’t even find it until we got back to England.”

“Fabio, you say?” said Armando.

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“I knew a boy with that name. He has
disappeared.” Armando was very interested now. These girls weren’t making it
all up. They knew about Fabio the runner. “So if you acquired this information
by accident and knew nothing until you found it in your bag – just a small
memory stick of no significance – how do you know about Fabio, and how do you
know about the Scarpones?”

Chrissie was in a corner. She was going
to have to tell them a little more. “We were approached as soon as we left the
airport in England. These Italians, who said they were related to Fabio, wanted
the memory stick. They said they were making a movie and that the data was a
list of possible investors, and we could become part of everything and be
co-producers of the movie.”

Armando stopped and turned to scrutinise
Chrissie. “And you believed that?”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “It does make
us all look incredibly stupid, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.”

Armando shook his head in disbelief and
walked on. “And what about the Scarpones? How do you know about them, and how
do they know you have this data?”

“Well …” said Chrissie. “It gets worse.
We were told that we needed to meet with these investors and take the money
from them. I know it sounds ludicrous – but, honestly, that’s what happened. We
thought they were giving us the money to be a part of this movie project. We
had no idea anything was untoward until the meeting with the bishop and Bruno.”
She pointed to the priest, who threw a spasm. “We went to a hotel room and the bishop
started waving a gun about and saying we were evil, and that’s when we knew
something was wrong.”

“The bishop had a gun?” said Armando.

“Yes,” said Brenda, “and he threatened
to kill us. And I’m sure he would have done, if Chrissie hadn’t headbutted
him.”

“You hit a bishop?”

“She had to. He was seriously crazy.
Bruno told us that he would have shot us. Didn’t you, Bruno?”

This time Bruno did manage to nod in
agreement.

Chrissie picked up the story again. “So
we ran out of the hotel, but another guy was outside with a gun. He was trying
to abduct us. He mentioned the data stick and said we had to take him to it but
Bruno pulled a gun on him … well, actually, he stuck two fingers in his back – but
it worked, and we got away. Then we went into hiding, and Bruno told us the
truth – and that we had been blackmailing everyone, and about the Scarpones and
what was really on the memory stick. Then he got the idea that your boss might
also be keen on knowing what’s on it. And, if he can do some sort of deal with
the Scarpones, then part of that agreement could be that everyone leaves us
alone.”

This time it was Chrissie who stopped
walking, and she squared up to the gangster. “So what do you think?” she asked.

Armando raised his eyebrows. “There are
things that bother me – for example, this Italian who set you up. If he is
Italian he knows you cannot extort money from a Mafia family, or from those
they protect. It’s different if you want to sell or exchange something, but to
blackmail the families is madness. Maybe for many millions of euros you may
consider it, but not for a few thousand: in no way is it worth it. So what are
his real motives? It could be that you are innocent pawns in this game, or
perhaps you are also part of a bigger plan.”

“No, we’re not, honestly. What we’ve
told you is all we know,” said Chrissie.

Armando rubbed his chin. “I would like
it if you took me to this man.”

Chrissie groaned. “I knew you were going
to ask that, and we can’t do it. I know he’s a bastard, and could have got us
all killed – but if I take you to him then I’m probably sentencing him to
death, and I couldn’t live with that.”

“What if I said it was him or you?”
Armando said grimly.

Chrissie closed her eyes and squeezed.
“I can’t do it.”

The Mafia hardman looked at Chrissie as
if seeing her for the first time. “What are your names?”

They all answered in turn, with Megan
introducing Bruno.

“I’ll tell you what we must do,” said
Armando. “If this is true, and this information really exists, then no matter
about anyone else. You will give us the data, and we will look at it. If this
is a trap you will die, because I will shoot you myself. If the information is
poor quality and tells us nothing that we don’t already know then you are also
dead, because the Scarpones will find you and kill you. However, if we discover
secrets that can destroy the Scarpones then you are saved. But we will only
know these things when we see what you have.”

“You’ve forgotten the one where we hand
over the data and you kill us anyway,” said Chrissie.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think you have a
choice,” said Armando. “But, in most cases, we are men of our word.”

“That’s comforting,” said Brenda. “What
are the odds?”

“The best odds you’re going to get,”
said the Mafia man bluntly. “Now, where is the data stick?”

The realisation of their predicament had
shaken Chrissie, but now her natural instincts were kicking in and she was
ready to fight back.

“Not so fast, Armando. You can stand
there being the tough guy and threatening us, as if our ball had gone into your
garden, but we aren’t the ones with nothing. We’re the ones who have something
that your boss – and let’s say his name, Roberto Vialli – craves. It’s something
he would normally have to pay a fortune for. So, as I see it, you’re getting a
good deal from us. Now start treating us as equals and not some scared-shitless
Neapolitan teenagers. We will hand over the data stick, but it will be on our
terms and at a place that we choose.”

Chrissie threw back her shoulders, which
automatically thrust out her breasts, and looked hard into Armando’s eyes while
waiting for a response.