No Mortal Thing: A Thriller Page 13

  He had walked away, tall and haughty. By now he would be regaling his mother with Consolata’s shortcomings. He would have rated it a thoroughly satisfactory day, in which he had spread the word of opposition to criminality and corruption. He believed in the group’s solidarity and that radical opinions should not be tolerated. No quick fix but the importance of holding the high moral ground.

  He had left her on the street in the gathering darkness. The Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi was the nearest Reggio Calabria had to a main shopping street. There were good brand names on display, but many were fakes, and the premier banks that did well out of the region’s criminality: the families needed banks, accountants and lawyers, and paid them well.

  She had tried. She had stood in the middle of the street, pedestrianised, and had handed out fliers that called for non-payment of the pizzo, a boycott of any business that bowed to extortion and contributed. She had been ostracised. She accepted that perhaps her voice had become more shrill, as the evening crowds of window-shoppers and promenaders flowed around her. Most had looked at her with contempt. Some had brushed aside her outstretched arm. Others had glanced at what she held, then shaken their heads. The bag had stayed full. Then the shutters had begun to come down, and the lights behind the window displays had gone off, doors were locked and the street was emptied. She had finally turned away when the accordionist ceased playing.

  The bench was in a small piazza. There was an obligatory monument to the writer Corrado Alvaro: celebrated, revered and taught in schools. At the bottom end of the piazza was the museum, but she had never been inside it. The foliage on the trees was thick and in daylight threw shade. At night it blocked out the light from the streetlamps. It was, she supposed, a pivotal moment. The wind was gathering off the sea, funnelled up the strait to enter the chokepoints between the buildings, and leaves blustered around her ankles. The bag was on the seat beside her. Her anger soared, its target the group. It wouldn’t last – after a couple more years its members would be applying for college places or town-hall jobs – all those places of employment where the introduction of a ‘friend’ was essential. Perhaps handing out leaflets was a rite of passage for the young before the serious business of adulthood and collaboration or the blind eye. If she dumped them, there would be no turning back, no crawling late at night to the squat in Archi and begging forgiveness: she would get her clothing and be regarded as a leper. To throw the fliers into the overflowing bin would result in an appearance before the Inquisition: no crime could be greater.

  But she did it. She didn’t know how to escalate to a different level of protest, strike at ’Ndrangheta families, their corruption and complacency. She felt defeated, worthless.

  She took the fliers from the bag and flung them in the general direction of the bin. The wind caught them and they scattered across the paving slabs. The wind was brisk enough to carry some to the darker shadows where other benches were. Dropping litter was an offence. She bent, snatched up some fliers and took them to the bin, then went for more.

  Jago couldn’t read what was printed on the flier. He had stepped off at the small bus station on the sea front and approached some men to ask for a connection to the far side of the Calabria peninsula. They had pulled faces, made gestures of ignorance and turned their backs. He had walked past two four-star hotels and it was after eleven. There was a bench in a park, and the wind was strong but warm, with none of the cutting cold he had experienced in Berlin. He had sat on the bench.

  The papers blew towards him and the girl followed them. He watched. He didn’t have the language to understand what was printed on them. She scooped them up and flounced to the bin, then went for more. She was, he thought, at the end of her tether.

  She reached him – she was slight, muscular, nothing smart about her. A flicker of light showed she wore no makeup. Studs in her ears, nothing else. And there was no scar on her cheek. He’d almost looked for it. The face was the same as the girl’s in Berlin, with defiance written on it. He thought she was angry. Now she was on her knees, close to his legs, rooting beside his trainers and under the bench for more of the fliers. She snatched one in his hand.

  ‘What does it say?’ He had no Italian so asked in English. She looked up at him. Her eyes pierced him, and her lip curled. Jago persisted, ‘Please, would you tell me what it is?’

  On the sheet of paper there were close-printed lines of text. In the first two or three, just below the headline, he saw a word he knew – pizzo. Then a frown cut her forehead. He thought she had been about to stand, take the last sheet from him and stride towards the bin.

  She was someone to talk to – he groped towards the contact. ‘What does it say?’

  She sucked in a long breath. ‘You are English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have been many times to Reggio Calabria?’

  ‘It’s my first time.’

  ‘You sit on a bench at night, and the city is about to sleep. Why?’

  ‘I have nowhere to go to.’

  ‘There are hotels, plenty, all prices. Why not go to one?’

  ‘Confusion. Lack of certainty.’

  ‘What is confused? What is uncertain?’

  It was a staccato interrogation and the frown had deepened. At any meeting with a client, in London or Berlin, he would have covered his true aims and intentions. There was honesty in her face, though, which trapped him. He wouldn’t dare lie to her. The night was around him and nothing intruded.

  ‘I’m confused about why I came here and uncertain about what I’ll do. What is the flier about?’

  ‘If you haven’t been here before, it will mean nothing to you.’

  ‘Try me. I know what pizzo is.’

  She rapped out the translation. The fight against corruption. The demand for civil courage. The call for honesty in the judiciary and among politicians. The announcement of a march for peace and justice next week. There was no animation in her voice – she might have been a child parroting a Bible text. She finished. ‘For what reason have you come to Reggio?’

  Jago said, ‘Why does an activist take a bag of fliers and dump them? Why aren’t they stuck to shop windows, under windscreen wipers?’

  She stood up. He caught at her arm. She shrugged him off.

  ‘Because we lose. Too often we lose. More exact, every time we lose. You fight a force that has incredible strength, and you look for reaction and for small victories. I see none. Against ’Ndrangheta we do not win. Today I know it. We have forgotten what is winning.’

  She had the empty bag on her shoulder. The last papers were in her hand and she was at the bin. She dumped them, rubbed her hands together and took the first step towards the piazza’s exit.

  He called into the night, ‘I think I know what winning is, against them. I did it yesterday. It was only small but I won.’

  She stopped and turned.

  6

  ‘What was “winning”?’

  She had good, accented English. He had her attention. She was in the heart of the small piazza, and what light there was filtered through the trees, silhouetting her body against the backdrop of a building behind her. He had halted her in mid-stride, hands on hips. In her question he heard a trace of annoyance, as if a foreigner, a stranger, had no right to mock her. But she had given him her attention. Jago named the place. She nodded. She knew of that village.

  He kept his voice quiet and conversational and made her strain to hear him. A dog howled and youngsters laughed, all far away and unseen. They had the stage. Jago named the family, the old man who had topped the pyramid on the laptop report in the interview room.

  There was no response, except a low hiss. She knew the village and the family. He told her the name of the grandson.

  She walked back to him. They made an island in a sea, as if a spotlight were trained on them in the darkness.

  ‘I’m Jago.’

  ‘And I am Consolata. What happened?’

  He was a banker, had gone to see a client in C
harlottenburg, had time to kill, sat in a park. She flapped a hand at him. He told the story with no more fanfare than if he had been speaking to the FrauBoss – the first incident outside the pizzeria, his visit to the police station and what he had been told there. Then the second: a pistol produced, a girl’s face slashed, his charge at the young man, the trip and the hospital. She was on the bench beside him. He went on to detail his return to the police station, and the open screen.

  Then he told her about the pavement, the keys, the Audi convertible and drawing the tip of the key along the paintwork. She laughed. He told her of how the guy behind the wheel had yelled as he had walked away, then of Marcantonio’s fury. She laughed again.

  ‘What’s so funny? I won, didn’t I?’

  He had enjoyed telling the story, and had felt a trace of certainty return to him. But she had laughed. He thought she was ready to push herself up from the bench and leave.

  Jago said, ‘If you’d heard him you’d have known I won. He was late for his flight and couldn’t chase me. He would have tried to kill me – he was that angry. I might as well have pissed in his face. That’s winning. I don’t believe anything like that had ever happened to him before. Any sort of comfort zone he inhabited, well, I’d bounced him out of it.’

  Her hand touched his arm. ‘That was Berlin. This is Reggio Calabria. That was day, not night. Why not stay in Germany and continue with vandalism?’

  ‘Because of the girl. I don’t know her name, but I came because of her.’

  ‘That is ridiculous.’

  ‘Have you ever done anything that wasn’t sensible? It seemed a good enough reason.’

  ‘And here?’

  ‘Next week, next month, next year, that girl will live with the ugliness of that scar, deliberately inflicted. I was told by a policeman it was too small a matter for serious investigation. Marcantonio believed himself immune, that he could just walk away. Then I heard his fury. I came here to hear it again. I bought into it and now I want more. Is that a drug? I don’t know about narcotics but I want to hear that anger again. More than anything. That would be winning big.’

  ‘You would kill him?’ Her lips were close to his ear.

  ‘I don’t know. A big step, beyond my pay grade.’

  ‘And you tell a stranger all this.’

  ‘We all make judgements on trust.’

  ‘I said “ridiculous”. That was the wrong word. Remarkable. But you will hurt him?’

  Jago said, with child’s simplicity, ‘I will do what I can to make him feel pain. I don’t know how yet. Am I boring you?’

  His eyes and mouth were close to hers. He reached up with his hand and used a finger to trace a line across her face: from under the lobe of a small ear, across a thin cheek to a point just below her lips. She did not flinch or push away his hand. He had traced where the scar was. His finger dropped. Her eyes had never left his. He supposed she needed a final instalment of explanation.

  ‘I work in a bank. I handle other people’s money, their pensions, life savings and inheritances. I’m supposed to be logical, careful and risk averse. Everything I’ve done in the last twenty-four hours contradicts all of that. That’s how it is. It’s what I want to do and will do. Time you were getting home. Goodnight.’

  She stood, then reached back and took his hand. She yanked him to his feet. He picked up his bag and she led him towards the lights and the sea.

  Giulietta had condemned him. Information had reached her. Marcantonio was at home but that did not change its import.

  He crawled, alone, the length of the tunnel.

  A paid informant at the Palace of Justice had stated that a particular prosecutor had won three more days of resources to target Bernardo. The official did not know what that meant – a phone tap, a surveillance team, aerial plotting of the village by the air force. He had told Giulietta also of tensions inside the Palace, arguments concerning priorities. She had told her father that he must be patient: she had condemned him, as he saw it, to a few more days and nights – the rest of the week – in the bunker. He was grateful for the diligence with which she protected him.

  If they came for him, it would be in the small hours. The Squadra Mobile or the carabinieri usually swooped between four in the morning and six. They liked to take a man when he was half asleep. Stefano had led him back to the bunker’s outer entrance; the dogs had been sent to roam the boundaries of the property before the two men had slipped out of the rear door. Bernardo relied on the dogs for the quality of their noses and sensitivity to sound and movement.

  He put on the light, which flooded the inside of the buried container. He hated being alone in the bunker in darkness because then he saw the child in the cave, looking at him. The dogs captured a mood. Many litters back, they had been with him when he had tramped up the hill to the cave with the basic supplies. They would never go inside, but that day they had howled. They had not done so on the day his father or mother had died, and had always been quiet when the carabinieri searched the villa. They had never made it before or since.

  She had been dead in the cave and the dogs outside had known it. She had been dead and cold.

  In the bunker, when the lights were out, he saw her face. It was strip illumination and he kept it on when he tried to sleep.

  When he had satisfied himself that the child was dead, he had gone back and told his father. They had found a camera and returned to the cave, bringing Mamma with them, a bucket of hot water and cloths. He hoped, soon, he would be able to sleep in his bed, away from the sight of the child.

  He anticipated a good day ahead for the family. Good news, good business, and celebrations for his wife’s birthday. He thought his gift to her was appropriate and would be appreciated.

  The man sat in the passenger seat of his car. The block with the windows facing out onto the Villa Borghese and its gardens was behind him, and he could see the gate on the far side of the Via Pinciana, that the infame would use. He knew the route, but was there at night to cover all opportunities. The route he expected the bastard to take was from the block’s gates, between the Harley Davidson showroom and the windows behind which he could see Ferraris and Maseratis. Then he would cross the road and the dogs would drag him towards the grass. Some mornings, the traitor took the dogs into the gardens first, then went to buy milk and pastries near to the Porta Pia. The presence of the British embassy, always guarded, meant there were too many troops and police near to the gates for the man to approach his quarry. The gardens offered a better opportunity. He had killed pentiti of the Cosa Nostra groups in Sicily, and from the Camorra in Naples. He had never knifed, strangled or shot one of the ’Ndrangheta: there were so few.

  If he had used a phone he would have left a trace, so he sat and made quiet small-talk with his driver, mostly about football, but a little about children and women – not their wives but whores. There was soft music on the radio, which soothed him. The pistol was under his thigh, uncomfortable but convenient. They had water to drink, needed nothing else, and waited. Both men were calm. They watched for him, and thought of home and the mountains, of a celebration for a respected family.

  She was first out of the taxi and let Jago follow her.

  The moon was up and its light shimmered on the street. She waited. The driver had his hand out of the window. Consolata let Jago pay. He was five or six years younger than her, and she thought he had talked with a teenager’s enthusiasm. He passed her the money, and she was left to negotiate and challenge the driver’s estimate – he hadn’t switched on the meter. She beat the man down, paid him, and, was sworn at. The taxi drove away, but the driver gave her the finger.

  They had hardly spoken in the car. She had said she would take him to the village. He had thanked her. Consolata thought him an innocent.

  They were outside her home. Since her fifth birthday she hadn’t met anyone, male or female, educated or ignorant, young or old, who knew so little about ’Ndrangheta. She had done well at school, had been to college, b
ut had never lived outside Calabria. Everyone knew of the ’Ndrangheta and its ability to destroy. No one she knew was ignorant of it: to explain anything about the ’Ndrangheta, other than at a comic-book level, was beyond her. She reflected. To travel as he had – away from Berlin and from the security of a job he should be returning to the next morning – was the mark of an innocent or a fool. But there had been, she acknowledged, something honest and clean in his ambition. The ambition of an imbecile?

  The streetlights were dim. There was a glimmer behind the door, but the upstairs window was dark. She did not plan to give him a tour. The cruise boats came into Catania, across the strait, and Naples. They sailed past Archi through the narrow point where the Scylla and Charybdis myth had originated. Few tourists visited Calabria and needed guiding. She would not have known how to go about it.

  If it had not been for the moon she would not have seen the high rubbish pile outside the doorway. Men loitered across the street, which stank: it was now the fourth week that the refuse carts had been on strike in her parents’ area. It was ingrained in her: in Archi there were always men on street corners who watched. In daylight and at night, men watched to see who came and went.

  She rang the bell. They would be asleep – they had to be up early to get to work, driving the courier van across the strait, in Messina, or cleaning a local hotel. She would not show him either of the de Stefano villas, with the high walls around them, or the modern church where the body of Paolo de Stefano had been greeted by the priests in a way that would have graced a head of state. Thousands had gathered to watch the coffin arrive, drawn by eight coal-black horses; he had been killed – without dignity – in a drive-by shooting. She would not show him the social centre, expensively built and never used: the ’Ndrangheta would not tolerate a government programme that in any way violated their control. They had put horses into the grounds and the buildings stood derelict. She would not show him the prime locations of the faida: the street corners where the great feud had claimed the lives of the most powerful families’ blood relations. She would not show him the filth and decay, where hope had died – her hope. A window opened above her.