‘Would you work here? If you had the choice, would you want to transfer to Calabria? Tell me, Carlo.’ Old friends and new had gathered. They drank Dutch beer. It was a back bar, far up the Via del Torrione, distant enough from the barracks and their senior officers. They’d eaten but the business of the evening was in the bar. There were old friends for Carlo and new friends for Fred. ‘I ask you, Fred, are we all crazy to stay in this city in a shit region?’
There was no need to answer. They could have talked about the Turks of Green Lanes in Haringey, or opened a second front on the Albanian quarter of Berlin, or the Russians, who had a presence in Hamburg, or the Vietnamese . . . It was best just to fight a fast path to the bar and put beers on the tables. There was gossip: who was sailing well, who was shipping water, who was holed in the hull and sinking. There was talk, some proud, of successes, and of the women who had been in the squads in Carlo’s time, who they had been with then and who partnered them now. They had the slip of paper that would smooth introductions. Over on the east coast there would be carabinieri Fred knew from his time there after the Duisburg massacre. Each had sent a message to his office, in London and Berlin, that they could be useful for another forty-eight hours, and had added that the apology to the prosecutor might require reaffirmation. They had moved on to a vexed subject: the merits of the Glock, the qualities of the PPK, the superiority of the Beretta, and—
A voice behind Carlo: ‘Carlo, do you know anything about a man named Horrocks?’
He turned expansively. ‘Horrocks? Bent by name and bent by nature. Bentley Horrocks. That who you mean?’
‘You know him?’ The questioner was young, fresh-faced and pale enough to work in a communications room. He had no beer gut and was ornamented with big spectacles. Probably from the computer world, in which Carlo had few skills and enough sense to offer respect.
‘I know of him but he won’t have heard of me. He’s a bad bastard, south London. Make my day, tell me he’s fallen under a bus.’
‘A big man, Carlo?’
Serious questions. The young officer, already with the rank of maresciallo, had sought him out. That was clear. He would have heard which bar the Englishman from Customs, trusted by colleagues, had decamped to. He would have come off duty at ten that evening and walked up. He was nursing an orange juice in a fragile fist. The questions were serious enough for Carlo to sober up fast.
‘He’s about as much of a big man as we have in London.’
‘His speciality is what?’
‘This is a long way ahead of what I do. He’s a principal target, a major player. Sorry, I must correct myself. He should be a principal target – what we call a high-value target – but he’s protected. He has a reputation as an ‘untouchable’. We’re too yellow bellied to admit it. At my level that’s what he is because otherwise he’d be banged up for twenty-five years in high security. What’s he into? Extortion, protection, corruption of officials, smuggling Class-A drugs, fags and kids. Or that’s what the gossip says.’
‘What is “untouchable”?’
‘He has police on his payroll, those in the specialist agencies that are supposed to hunt him down, but they take his money, screw up investigations and tell him where potential witnesses are holed up so he can beat hell out of them and they don’t testify. It’s about buying some people and intimidating others. Why?’
‘I was merely clarifying who Horrocks is.’
Carlo gazed at him. ‘You’ll have to do better than that. Why’s he on your radar?’
‘Because of where he is.’ The officer grinned, as if he was trailing a plastic mouse, on a length of string, in front of a lively kitten.
‘Which is where?’
The officer named a hotel, its ownership and location, then offered a confession. The usual – it might have been in English, German, French or Italian: lack of resources; a difficult week. Perhaps the following week would be easier for resources, but there might not be a target to direct them against. A shrug. The maresciallo was on the move. He went to another table where others greeted him. Always cocky, the guys who trawled the computers in the warm and dry, had good meal breaks and delivered gold dust.
Carlo said to Fred, ‘Did you get that?’
‘I think so.’
‘Do you have a word for men like Horrocks?’
‘It is Unbestechlicher, but we do not use it for a gangster. In Hamburg it would be employed for a big businessman living in the “bacon belt” and using bribery to get contracts. In Frankfurt, it would be used for a senior banker who is corrupt, fraudulent and evades tax but is too powerful to bring down, and protected. It’s not only Italy.’
‘Makes me want to throw up,’ Carlo spat. ‘Little bastards like me get nowhere because they block us, the detectives and investigators.’
‘What might you do, Carlo, while we take our vacation? I have an opportunity, I believe, to assuage my sense of responsibility for this entire affair – for what I did.’
‘Not called for.’
‘And it would be good to create some collateral. Satisfying.’
‘If we get on the road early, we might screw him up.’