Detonator (30 page)

A young couple was pointing at stuff in the window of Luca’s mate’s store and I joined them as they went inside. I spent some more time trying to decide which pillow to go for, then made my selection and took it to the till. As soon as the lad behind the counter heard my voice, he motioned me towards the back office.

I caught a stream of turbocharged Italian when I was still a couple of paces away from the door. The room was filled, floor to ceiling, with ledgers and fabric samples, some on wire hangers, some just piled on whichever work surface was nearest. A guy in his late thirties with tortoise-shell glasses on the top of his head sat facing me, waffling into a mobile.

Luca’s dark hair was longer than it had been when his
Il Diavolo
mugshot was taken. It was almost shoulder-length. He wore a brown moleskin jacket, immaculate jeans and a crisp white shirt. His feet were up on the only desk, and a laptop open on his knees. There was no air-con in here, and not much air, but he looked like he never broke sweat.

I had, big-time. I took off the baseball cap and wiped a small river of it off my forehead.

He waved me towards one of the two remaining chairs without pausing for breath. After a lot of
ciao
s and one or two
bello
s he pressed the red button, slid the laptop and the phone on to the table beside him and swung his feet to the floor.

‘You must be Nico.’

He sprang up, gave me the world’s warmest handshake and clapped me on the shoulder. Close up, his cheekbones and chin looked like they’d been carved out of granite, then polished, and his piercing blue eyes missed nothing. ‘All clear?’

‘Yup.’ I nodded. ‘I stopped by the church to make sure.’

‘Ah, yes. The Santissima Annunziata. Did you see the infamous
ruota
?’

‘The revolving basket in the wall? I just read about it. Is that shit for real?’

‘Sure. Desperate mothers used to put their babies in it. The nuns plucked them out once they were inside, washed them, labelled them, baptized them. And saved their souls, of course.’

‘Where I come from, they just dumped kids they didn’t want in carrier bags or wheelie-bins and did a runner.’

He chuckled, not knowing that I was speaking from personal experience. ‘They had to close it down when people started forcing their unwanted teenagers into the basket as well.’

There had been plenty of times when the woman I called Mum must have wanted to do that with me.

‘But enough social history. Pasha …’ He held out both hands, palms up. ‘Pasha says the most
terrible
things about you.’

‘Pasha is a
very
smart guy.’

‘And Anna is your … partner?’

‘You know her?’

‘I worked with her in Libya. Brilliant journalist. Incredible woman.’

I wasn’t expecting that. I probably should have done. The Middle East connection. Their world was a small one.

‘And
che bella
…’ His eyes sparkled. ‘
Very
beautiful, of course. You know, she always reminds me of the blonde one in Abba.’

‘Me too.’ I hesitated. ‘We’re not … together any more. Still mates, but … you know how it is …’

He nodded. ‘I know how it is.’

He did, too. I could tell by the look in his eyes.

He cleared a pile of fabric samples off an electric hob and fixed us both an espresso. As he completed the ritual and handed me one in a small thick glass with a metal base and handle, we talked about the people-trafficking drama.

I took a sip of my coffee. ‘I read your Mafia piece.’

‘The Sicilians have been making a fortune out of this shit since the Third Balkan War. And the Georgians, and the Russians – from Moscow and St Petersburg. The Albanians, too. They are all over here.’

‘Do they have a subscription to
Il Diavolo
? They must
love
you.’

He smiled ironically and chewed at the corner of his lower lip. ‘It’s true to say that I’m not very popular with some of these guys. And having seen Pasha’s latest email, it seems that you’re not either.’ He rotated his laptop in my direction, lowered his glasses on to his nose, tapped the keyboard and brought up a series of photographs. None of them was posed. They all looked like they’d been snatched through car windows or from darkened doorways.

And they all featured two men, one of whom I recognized immediately. Shiny head. Sharply tailored suede jacket. Black skinny jeans. I hadn’t been near enough to admire his snakeskin cowboy boots when I’d seen him getting out of Hesco’s wagon at Aix-les-Bains. Or advancing towards me at the Adler construction site. Or rubbernecking outside what was left of Laffont’s bank yesterday night. But I was now.

I glanced up from the screen. ‘Do you have names?’

‘Of course.’ He pointed a finger at the bald guy. ‘Meet Elvis Uran.’ Then the other one. ‘And his kid brother, Rexho.’

I took a closer look at Rexho. He was a hairier, bearded version of the fucker I’d dropped beside the concrete pit. Same eyes and nose. No stiletto scar, but a badly burned neck instead.

And they both shared Hesco’s taste in rings.

‘I was told they want to kill me.’

‘Then I’m very glad that we are keeping in the shadows, Nico. These men are from Lushnja. And the Lushnja Mafia are the worst of the worst.’

I thought about what the Omani waiter had said about Mr Lover Man being a true believer. Hesco telling me that Allah had given the thumbs-up to drowning the refugees, and using jihad in his password. ‘They’re Muslims, right?’

Luca shrugged. ‘Along with more than half their fellow countrymen. Why do you ask?’

‘These arseholes may not be wandering around with detonators in their trainers, but they’re starting to smell like Islamic State to me. And everywhere I’ve been lately, IS fans have been up to some kind of shit. It’s going to happen here sooner or later.’

He wasn’t about to disagree. ‘They look at us, and what do they see? A lot of Cs. Italy is the cradle of Christianity, corruption and crime. Our Twitter feeds think it’s all a joke: hostile militants will be beaten by our bureaucracy and our traffic. But you’re right. They’re already coming in with the migrants from North Africa and Syria. We’re the perfect target. And so are you.’

‘What else do you know about the Urans?’

‘There is a third brother—’

‘Not any more there isn’t.’

‘Ah. I’m beginning to understand why you are also not welcome in the home of this family. Pasha and I are examining them more closely. For now, all that I can tell you is that they are experts in trafficking – drugs and girls and children and people who have nowhere to go.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘And they are experts in vengeance.’

I gestured at the photographs. ‘Have these two been seen here?’

‘I have asked around – including my police contacts – and there have been no sightings in Naples. But someone looking very like Rexho has been spotted in Brindisi.’

‘This place have Wi-Fi?’

He nodded.

I pressed the Google button on his laptop and scrolled down the Adler site until I reached the photographs of the depot opening. I zeroed in on the head of logistics and pressed the zoom button. ‘Pasha is already on the case, but could you add this guy to the list of people we need to … examine? I think he’s their boss. His name is Adel Dijani.’

‘What do we know right now?’

‘Not a lot. Lebanese. Educated in America. MIT. Strong affiliations with the Saudi political elite, but not with any extremist groups. As far as we can tell. On the other hand, he hired Zac Uran as his security chief.’

Luca knocked back his espresso. ‘Better luck next time, eh?’

‘I think he’ll want to keep it in the family.’

Up went the glasses again. ‘You make him sound like an Italian.’

‘Mate, I need to know what’s driving this fucker. If he smells clean, maybe there’s another connection with the dark side. Through someone close to him, maybe.’ I caught the look on Luca’s face. ‘Oh, fuck. You don’t need me to tell you this shit …’

‘Apology accepted.’

‘He was at the Romeo last night. And I’m pretty sure he’s also on his way east, if he’s not there already.’

‘So, where does this take us?’

It was time to give him the headlines.

I told him about Frank’s killing. The stuff I’d found in his desk at the chalet. Laffont and the safe-deposit box. Adler and Nettuno. Mr Lover Man’s high dive from the balcony. The fire at Lyubova’s place. The explosion at the bank in Albertville … Finally, I heard myself mention Stefan’s name.

‘The boy who was abducted?’

I shook my head. ‘The fuckers killed him, Luca. They drowned him in a sea of concrete.’

Luca showed the normal signs of revulsion that people have when a kid is killed but there wasn’t any time for that.

‘I thought there was a Putin connection at one point. That maybe this was all part of his plan to cut the oligarchs down to size. But I was wrong. Putin has sown the seed for a lot of this shit by fucking up Ukraine, and he won’t be mourning Frank. But Dijani and the Urans never were his people. They need Frank’s companies – but not for people- or drug-trafficking.

‘As you say, the Mafia have been doing all that perfectly happily since the Balkans imploded in the nineties. They don’t need any help from Nettuno. So Dijani and his team must have a different agenda. And if I sort that shit out, I can sort my own shit out along with it.’

I got the rest of the coffee down my neck and put the glass to one side. ‘Mate, could one of your people locate a container boat for me? With auto ID software, maybe?’ I took out the blueprint and draped it across the desk top. I’d fucked around with it so many times now that it was starting to go at the folds. ‘It’s on its way from Odessa, according to Frank’s banker, and a Nettuno crewman says it’s somewhere between the Bosphorus and Puglia. It’s called
Minerva
.’

‘Ah, Minerva … The virgin goddess of wisdom, medicine and poetry.’ Luca grimaced. ‘But her name conjures up a certain sadness in the southern Italian heart. You know about the Martyrs of Otranto?’

I shook my head.

‘August the fourteenth 1480. Eight hundred and thirteen inhabitants of the city were slaughtered by the Ottoman invaders on the Hill of Minerva. Supposedly for refusing to convert to Islam.’ He paused. ‘What is the significance of this vessel?’

‘I’m still working on that. Frank was really worried about it. Laffont was too—’ I stopped in my tracks. Another piece of the jigsaw had fallen into place. Frank hadn’t just left me the blueprint to find in the safe-deposit box. He’d also talked specifically about
Minerva
in the green room, the night before he was killed.

I pictured him rotating his laptop screen, the way Luca had done. And this time I saw what was on it.

Instead of grainy shots of Albanian mobsters, he’d shown me detailed multi-coloured specs of a variety of different vessels. Vivid blues, greens, reds and yellows, representing the configuration of containers in the load space.

I’d been amazed by how many of those lumps of metal you could fit in the hold, and how many more you could put on the deck without tipping the whole thing over.

He said I’d missed the point. The vein above his temple had started to pulsate. I wasn’t
looking
properly. He’d tapped the images of
Minerva
. ‘
Look again
…’

He hardly ever raised his voice. I could still feel his frustration now. But it wasn’t a patch on mine. Once again, the harder I tried to remember what it was that he’d spotted, the further our exchange swam out of reach.

‘Nico?’

I wrenched myself back into the present. Luca was wearing the kind of expression you save for people who have really lost the plot. ‘Sorry. I won’t bore you with the details, but I got a bang on the head when this whole thing kicked off a few days ago, and some stuff got buried. I think a bit of it has just shaken itself loose.’

I picked up my day sack and extracted Hesco’s HP. ‘There’s something else I could really use your help with. I took this off the third of the Uran brothers. Maybe the answer’s in it.’

Luca reached across and powered it up.

‘I have the pass code:
baab al jihad
. Lower case. No gaps.’

His smile returned. ‘The second of the eight gates to Jannah. If only it were always this easy to find your way into Paradise …’

‘The problem is, it doesn’t work for the individual files. I’ve already tried all the other gates I could remember, and hit a brick wall every time.’

He picked an icon at random and tried to open it.

‘Have you got a tame geek who could crack them? Quite a few seem to have been downloaded from Frank’s laptop. I think we should start with those.’

I watched his fingers dance across the keys and his frown deepen as he ran through five or six different strategies and none of them worked. Eventually he shut the thing down. ‘If we can’t do it at the office, there
is
a guy I know.’

I handed him Hesco’s iPhone. ‘Maybe he can have a crack at this too. I’ve tried the second gate. And a few of the others. Got me nowhere.’

As he put Hesco’s gear in his shoulder bag, alongside his own, the door opened. The lad who’d been behind the till poked his head through and made the sort of noises you make when you want to fuck off home. They’re the same in any language.

I checked the Suunto. We’d passed last light. ‘How many ways out of here?’

‘Two. Front and back. That’s one of the reasons we’re here. And the boy tells me he’s padlocked the roller shutters at the front.’

I asked him when he thought he might have some answers about
Minerva
and Hesco’s data.

‘Perhaps tomorrow evening. More probably the day after. If the vessel isn’t registered on the Automatic Identification System, it won’t be easy. And the computer?’ He sighed. ‘We live in hope.’

‘Fair one. But I need to go east. That’s where it’s heading. I can’t just hang around at the Romeo’s virtual driving range all day.’

In fact I couldn’t hang around at it for thirty seconds. I’d never picked up a golf club in my life. Except when I’d nicked some kind of iron from a sports shop in Peckham when I was a kid. I only managed to fence it for 25p. I hadn’t realized you needed the whole set.