The Milan Contract Read online

  “Are you Nyala Abebe?”

  “What’s all this about, Nyala?” her father asked.

  She ignored him, but Amadi Abebe knew something was very wrong. His daughter was trembling, and her eyes kept flicking towards – ‘What? The bread paddle?’

  “I heard that Lieutenant Conza sent you?” she said, her voice cracking.

  Amadi slowly reached out a hand and wrapped his fingers around the heavy oak handle.

  “That’s right,” said the tall one. “Conza asked us to speak to you. Now, where can we find this Kadin Bennani?”

  “What department does Lieutenant Conza work for?” Nyala asked, stubbornly ignoring his question.

  “What?” Nyala saw his fingers fiddling with the end of the knife.

  “It’s not a difficult question. You say he’s a colleague of yours. So you must know which department Lieutenant Conza works for.”

  Amadi Abebe’s hand slowly raised, drawing the shovel level with his shoulder; neither man noticed, their gaze remaining fixed on Nyala.

  “We don’t need this shit, Leo,” the tall man said angrily, taking a step towards her, his hand opening so that the knife dropped into his palm.

  “They’re not police!” yelled Nyala suddenly.

  The tall man with the knife made to grab her, but Amadi Abebe was poised and the man’s head rocked sideways as the oak paddle crashed against his skull with a sickening crack. The man’s legs buckled, and he groaned as he landed on his knees, blood pouring into his eyes and onto the stone slabs.

  Nyala screamed.

  As Amadi had brought the shovel down, the other man had instinctively ducked. Now it was coming back towards him from the other direction and he was caught in a crouched position. Just before the blow struck, he raised his hands in defence and took the full force of the strike on his right forearm, the bones shattering instantly. He screamed in agony. In launching his attack, Amadi had swung himself off his feet, stumbling backwards onto a stack of flour bags.

  “Run, Nyala – run!” he boomed so loud that it made Nyala jump.

  She yelped, but couldn’t run, she couldn’t move.

  The man on the floor started to rise, pulling himself to his feet using a table leg. Nyala could see the knife in his hand. Amadi regained his balance and raised the shovel in readiness for the next assault, just as the one-armed man reached into his jacket to pull something out. Amadi’s face froze in horror, but he managed to shout one last time.

  “Run, Nyala!”

  The man with the knife lunged at her as she leapt towards the open door. She reached the steps in two bounds, but the explosion of the gun made her stumble forward and she tripped.

  Crying and screaming, Nyala Abebe began sprinting up the steps, just as she felt fingers wrap around her ankle.

  34

  As Conza sprinted into Via Enrico Cosenz he caught sight of a red Alfa Romeo turning right at the far end of the road. He slowed to a walk when he reached the top of the stairs and as he descended, he saw two small pools of blood near the cellar door and specks of red sprayed on the wall near the bottom step. Stopping to listen, he pulled out his service revolver.

  “Polizia. I’m coming in.”

  He peered quickly around the door frame. No movement.

  “Polizia,” he shouted again, training his gun on the cellar’s interior. Edging forward, he spotted the body lying face-down in front of the open oven. He put his gun back in its holster and ran towards the motionless figure.

  The man’s sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, the flour on his forearms contrasting with his dark olive skin. Conza knew immediately the man was close to death; his breathing was shallow and Conza’s trembling fingers could only find a weak pulse in his neck. He’d also lost a lot of blood; it framed his shoulders and chest in a red shiny pool.

  Conza rolled him over and ripped away the blood-soaked shirt. By wiping the man’s chest with the side of his hand, Conza found the single bullet hole, below and to the right of the man’s sternum. Blood was bubbling out of the wound and the man’s breathing began to sound wet and erratic. Conza pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it over the hole.

  On his mobile, he thumbed the number for dispatch.

  “Lieutenant Conza, badge number 751092, I need an ambulance and police back up at the following address, a man’s been shot.”

  Conza read out the address and checked the man’s breathing. He could hear gurgling in his throat and his pulse was weak and slow.

  His mobile rang. He put it on speaker.

  “You OK?” Sergeant Moretti asked with concern.

  “No not really, Georgio. I’m at the bakery. The girl has gone, and the father’s been shot. I’m doing my best to keep him alive right now.”

  “Shit, Raffy. Is help on the way?”

  “They should be here soon. Not sure the old man will make it though. He’s bleeding pretty badly.”

  “Did you see who did it?”

  “I saw a maroon Alfa leaving the scene in a hurry. Too far away to get a number.”

  “Do they have the girl?

  “I don’t know. God, I hope not.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t there, or she managed to get away.”

  Conza looked back over his shoulder at the open door.

  “You could be right, there’s blood splatter on the stairs. I don’t think it’s the old man’s and if it’s not hers, then maybe she escaped. There’s been quite a scrap down here,” he added, noticing a clump of black hair matted with blood on the blade of a large oak paddle.

  “Did she live there – at the bakery?”

  “No, it’s just an old warehouse, I never got her home address, but I’m guessing she doesn’t live far away.”

  “I’ll contact social security and see if the family’s registered. She must go to school. Education may be able to help.”

  Moretti rang off.

  “Shit,shit,shit,” shouted Conza, as he pushed his index finger into the wound.

  35

  Apartment 3, Villa Nuova, Genoa, Italy

  Kadin stared at the images of the barn. His father had made this happen. He’d somehow wired the system so that the cameras would send their pictures to the black boxes humming quietly in a cupboard in Genoa.

  Kadin pushed the rewind button, but the pictures remained static. He got up and looked again at the black boxes. No controls. ‘One of these boxes must be a recorder,’ he concluded.

  Kadin called up the ‘Source’ menu again and selected ‘HDMI 2’. The screen flickered and suddenly a grainy, close-up image of his father’s face appeared in the top right quadrant. The remainder of the screen was black. Seeing his father again made Kadin’s chest tighten and he realised he was trembling. He pressed the play button on the remote, but nothing happened.

  Kadin found the second remote controller in the drawer of his father’s worktable. He pushed the play button and for a few seconds the image became distorted behind a black and white band that flickered and danced across the screen. At the bottom of the image, a date and time box appeared. He was watching a recording of the day his father had failed to return home from the bar – last Tuesday. The screen cleared and his father’s face withdrew as he stepped down from the ladder. One by one, the four mini screens came to life as Issam Bennani connected them to the system.

  Kadin twitched when he heard the car pull up outside. He ran to the window and saw a middle-aged woman in a blue smock dress slowly pulling herself out from behind the wheel of a battered Fiat.

  “Shit – cleaner,” he said as he ran to the kitchen.

  Snatching up two 100 euro notes and a red felt-tip pen from the corkboard, he scribbled on one of them, ‘No cleaning for next 2 weeks – sorry, Issam.’ He pulled out a drawing pin and sprinted to the front door.

  Kadin pushed the door gently shut and laid his head against its frame. He heard the lift whine into life followed by the sound of the gates opening and closing on the ground floor. He held his breath. The lift doors opened
and closed, much nearer now. A key sliding into the lock. He braced himself. The scratching of fingernails against wood. The metallic rasp of the key being withdrawn, followed by a thin chuckle. The lift doors opening and closing again. The electrical whir of the lift as it descended.

  Kadin ran back into the lounge and, crouching low, carefully eased the window closed. The car started and moved away towards the docks. He sat on the floor, his cheeks filling before blowing out in relief.

  ◆◆◆

  For the next two hours, Kadin watched his father fixing cables into the barn ceiling under the ambivalent gaze of the two men. Occasionally, his father would answer a question or make a comment, but generally, he worked in silence, painfully hauling himself up and down the ladder, his arms straining to compensate for his deformed and strengthless legs.

  When Issam Bennani climbed down the ladder for the final time, Kadin watched him explaining how the cameras worked. The short, fair-haired man was called Max. Issam gave Max a tablet-sized monitor and showed him how to turn the cameras on and off. Max pressed the screen, looked up, pressed it again and walked to the next camera to repeat the process. He seemed satisfied.

  Kadin laughed out loud and clasped his hands above his head. All the time, these idiots thought the cameras were under their control, whereas his father had wired them so that only the red lights and the corresponding images on their monitor turned on and off. In reality the cameras were always working.

  “The watchers are being watched,” Kadin said aloud in amazement at his father’s ingenuity.

  Issam and the two men left the barn and with the film set to fast-forward, Kadin watched shadows dancing across the screen as day turned into night. Grainy images of a fox sniffing the air as it paused on the forecourt, peering at the camera for a few seconds before following the scent of something unseen. Daylight brought crows to peck at the sandbag, but inside the barn, nothing stirred but the odd mouse as it flitted across the dirt-covered floor.

  When the recording reached Thursday morning, a car pulled up outside the barn, but the occupants didn’t get out. Kadin switched the recording to play in normal time. A few minutes later, the silver BMW pulled into the yard and Kadin sat up. Five men got out of the two cars: Max and the tall, pony-tailed thug, a bald man in a suit, a slender man also in a suit, and a very tall, older man with wide shoulders, an enormous head and long arms. He was wearing slacks and an open-necked shirt.

  The large man and bald man embraced before walking towards the barn. ‘They know each other,’ Kadin thought. The three others remained in the courtyard and the slender man offered the other two a cigarette, which they accepted.

  On the second camera, a shadow filled the bright oblong of the doorway as the large man stopped and held up a shovel-sized hand. Kadin turned up the volume.

  “What’s with the cameras, Marco?” ‘The bald man’s called Marco.’

  Marco squeezed past him and picked up the tablet from the table.

  “Relax, Alex, they’re off – don’t worry.” Marco showed him the screen. ‘The big ugly one’s Alex.’

  Alex’s giant hand fell away, but he remained staring into the camera.

  “What they for?”

  “You tell me this job is important, my friend. I take that seriously. I’m guessing this will be your last job, so I want to personally oversee preparations. From a distance,” he added with a faint grin.

  Alex thought for a few seconds before turning away to drag a chair towards him.

  “I hate fucking cameras. And why do you think this will be my last job?”

  “Come on, Alex. You’ve been talking about it long enough. You’re ready to retire. We both are. I’ve always said, when you stop, I will too.”

  The men sat down opposite each other, and Kadin could now see them quite clearly. Alex’s face was pockmarked, his nose pitted and bulbous. He had bushy grey eyebrows that almost met above his nose and he spoke Italian in short, clipped sentences. ‘East European?’

  Marco wasn’t short, but his rounded waist made him look squat against the bulk of his partner. He fidgeted with his cuffs and pulled at the lapels of his jacket whenever he spoke. He talked in long, thoughtful phrases and cocked his head to one side whenever he asked a question.

  “Do we have a target?” Marco asked, feeling the need to change the subject.

  “We do. You’ll get photographs tomorrow. We don’t have much time, he’s due to check out of his hotel on Sunday morning. He needs to be taken down before he leaves Milan and don’t forget, we need his phone.”

  “Which hotel is he staying in?”

  “The Napoli. It’s out in the suburbs. Quiet at the weekends but you set your own agenda. The timing is your call. I’m trusting this to you, Marco.”

  “And I have no intention of letting you down, Alex.”

  Alex glanced up at the cameras again and scowled. Marco continued.

  “Hotel Napoli, yes, I know it. Very good.” His head was still leaning to one side. “Did he bring a car?”

  “No, flew into Malpensa. He has a return flight booked on Sunday. I’ll send you the details. He’ll be collected in a black Mercedes sometime after six-thirty. We don’t have an exact time.”

  Alex sat back in his chair. “Who will you use?”

  “Yes, well I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve discounted our usual friends. You asked for someone ‘disposable’,” he said with relish.

  “That’s right. I want this one buried once it’s over. No traces. Can’t you use a druggie? Someone high and in need of a few euros?”

  Marco laughed, sure of himself.

  “No good I’m afraid. If he’s high on crack, he’d never hit the target. If he’s been dried out, he’s probably…” Marco searched for the words as he fingered his lapel, “too emotional, and more likely to shoot himself than the mark.”

  Alex was irritated by the bald man’s procrastination.

  “So who will you use?”

  “You’ve met my techie?”

  “The cripple?” Alex stated in disbelief.

  “Yes, but not him. His son. He’s perfect. Complete unknown, no criminal record and no direct link back to us.”

  “Will he do it? Can he be relied on?”

  “Oh yes. There’ll be no problem there, the father is a washed-up alcoholic, and the son loves his family. Sees himself as their protector. No, there’ll be no problem there.”

  “And after. How will you tidy up?”

  “Simple; a few days after the hit, the police will receive a tip-off on the murder weapon. It will be discovered along with the boy’s blood-stained clothes and they’ll trace him back to his low-life, petty criminal father and put two and two together.”

  “And what will you do with the boy?”

  Marco brushed imaginary fluff from his sleeve.

  “Oh, I expect the police will find coke under his bed and the whole thing will just go down as one more drug-crazed African kid robbing the rich to feed his habit.”

  “They won’t buy it. It doesn’t even smell like a robbery. They’re not that stupid.”

  “Maybe not, but they are desperate. They will buy it because it suits them. They won’t care. They’ll have the killer, the weapon and enough evidence to point at drugs as a motive. After that, they’ll stop asking questions. They need to solve murders. We’re going to help them.” Marco smiled at his own joke.

  “Won’t the father be a problem – when his son gets wiped out?”

  “No Alex, don’t worry about the father. If he stays sober long enough to even notice his son has gone, he’ll assume his eldest died in tragic circumstances, racked with guilt, topped himself in his bedroom. In any case, I intend sending him the same way as his son. Shame really, despite his drinking, he’s been a good technician, but all things must come to an end.”

  Alex nodded slowly and rose from his chair, his bulk overshadowing Marco, who suddenly looked very small again.

  “OK, you seem to have a plan. But don’t
fuck this up. You know who’s paying for this. He plays serious and plays rough. He doesn’t ask me questions, but he does expect results.”

  “I understand Alex, don’t worry. This will go like clockwork.”

  Kadin paused the film and stared at the screen. He’d just witnessed two people reducing the value of his life and that of his father, to a few casual phrases. No doubts, no regrets. ‘Are they human?’ he thought. ‘Do they really feel nothing?’

  He got up and went over to the window. A small dinghy was sailing out to sea from the marina. Two people on the deck laughed, then kissed. Kadin thought of Nyala and found himself feeling sorry for the men in the barn, but his pity only made him angry.

  He fast-forwarded the recording until his father reappeared. It was Friday morning. Marco and Alex had gone, leaving the two thugs to tell his father of the plan. Kadin watched as Issam begged them not to involve his eldest child in the murder of a man he didn’t know. They weren’t listening and eventually, after being told what would happen to his wife and children if he failed to cooperate, his father sobbed his acceptance and agreed to prepare his son to commit murder.

  Issam Bennani’s surrender was complete, and Max threw a bottle of whisky onto the floor, from which Issam drank in long, breathless draughts.

  But his father hadn’t surrendered. It was an act. In reality, he’d fought them with the last shreds of resistance that alcohol and despair had failed to erase. He’d set them up. Kadin knew his father had watched Marco and Alex plot the death not only of some stranger, but also of his eldest child. How had his father felt when he saw and heard them scheming, without remorse, without emotion, except for the bloated arrogance and pride in their ability to arrange the deaths of others?

  Kadin was crying. He was exhausted. For a while, the screen remained frozen on the image of his father holding a bottle to his lips, but Kadin couldn’t look away, because now for the first time, he thought he understood.

  Eventually, he ran the film forward to Sunday morning, the early sunlight lying in thin bands across the barn floor. He saw himself and his father sleeping. They were holding hands. His father stirred and slowly leant over to kiss the crown of his son’s head. As Kadin watched this extraordinary moment of tenderness, he knew without the slightest doubt that his father loved him, but he also knew that his father was saying goodbye.