The Milan Contract Read online

  Conza didn’t respond but ran his finger along the black magnetic tape running along its length, before flipping it over. The card was red, which to Conza seemed to add to its importance. The words ‘Skyguard Defence Industries’ were printed in white over a stylised silver shield. An arrowhead trailing thin, white streaks circled above the lettering, but the card offered no clue as to the door, zone or building it would unlock.

  “Oh, and there’s a piece of paper with numbers on it.”

  Conza found the scrap of paper in the button-down section of the wallet. On it was written ‘DLR-EAC1 4D/9C/555’. Conza read it twice but, failing to discern its meaning, made another note and returned it to the wallet.

  Brocelli laid a black attaché case on the table. It was black leather, expensive but well-used. Conza flicked open the locks and began searching through its contents.

  “There’s nothing of any value. Some scribbles in a notepad. An English magazine from last month and a newspaper, also English, printed last summer. We also found his passport, a calculator and a bunch of keys. They look like front door types.”

  Conza glanced at the calculator and picked up the keys. He was about to toss them back into the case but hesitated. With a deft flick, he laid them out on his palm.

  The keys were joined to a plastic fob about two centimetres square sporting the Skyguard logo. Conza could see it actually comprised two squares laid on top of each other. They had been machined to form a narrow slit along the bottom edge. He tried to pull the squares apart but whilst the two halves remained fixed at their centre, they started to rotate around each other. Brocelli watched in amazement as Conza twisted the squares in opposite directions, making a slim tongue of metal appear from the slit.

  “It’s a USB stick,” said Brocelli in amazement.

  Conza exercised the fob a few times, making the blade bob in and out.

  “We should let the techies see what’s on it,” declared Brocelli with excitement.

  “We can’t – unless we have sufficient grounds to believe it’s connected to his murder,” said Conza as he tossed the key fob back into the case. Brocelli’s objection never reached his lips.

  Conza started flicking through the leaves of the A4 notepad, many of which were filled with calculations in tight, neat script. On a page near the front was written ‘FC-AUTO?’ It was underlined and penned in a heavier hand than the rest of the characters. Conza didn’t recognise the acronym ‘FC’ but made a note to look it up when he returned to the office.

  The magazine was a well-read copy of Jane’s Defence Weekly published a month ago. The newspaper was The Times dated the fifteenth of July, almost exactly a year old.

  “Did he have any luggage?” Conza asked eventually.

  Brocelli waved a flaccid hand towards a travel bag next to his desk.

  “It’s been wiped. No trace of drugs. I would have catalogued it by now if I hadn’t been interrupted.”

  Conza ignored him.

  “Did you find his mobile?”

  Brocelli picked up the inventory log but was already shaking his head.

  “No. I assumed the killer took it.”

  “You’re probably right,” agreed Conza to Brocelli’s surprise. “But at least we can request a trace on his number.”

  Brocelli’s expression mirrored his confusion.

  “But we don’t know his number.”

  “Try the one on his business card,” Conza said, trying not to smile.

  Brocelli’s mouth moved, but no words formed. Conza stood up.

  “What about the dead guy’s next of kin?” Brocelli suddenly blurted out.

  “What about them?”

  “Well, if this is a Finanza matter it will be down to you to contact them to sort out a positive ID.”

  Conza raised his arms in mock defence.

  “Oh no, I’m not getting saddled with this one yet,” he affirmed with a shake of his head. “Other than the bullet to the head, this could be a botched hold-up.”

  “You’re kidding, right? You trying to tell me this was a robbery? At seven a.m.? The junkies aren’t out of their pits at that time, and the average snatcher doesn’t ride around on a moped looking for victims on a Sunday morning. Seems a bit far-fetched to me.” Brocelli snorted in contempt.

  “You may be right, Captain, but on the other hand, contract killers don’t usually rob their victims, do they?”

  The two men glared at each other in silence for a few seconds.

  “Until I’ve finished the prelims, this remains a State Police matter. So sorry, you let the German police know one of their citizens has had his brains blown out. They’ll inform his family.”

  Brocelli sat up and thought about arguing, but Conza was already retreating.

  “Once you’ve bagged all this up, send a copy of the paperwork to my office. I’ll write up my report and then we’ll see if Finanza wants to take it off your hands.”

  Conza opened the van door, allowing a wave of warmth to roll in, but paused as something occurred to him.

  “Is someone checking who else is staying at the hotel at the moment?”

  “We do know how to run a bloody investigation you know!”

  A vivid purple vein pulsed in Brocelli’s pale forehead and Conza raised his hands again before pushing the door closed behind him.

  Brocelli swore and grabbed the radio handset.

  “Bruno, are you still with the hotel manager?”

  “Yes, Captain. I’m just taking his statement.”

  “Have you asked him for a copy of the hotel register?”

  “No. Do we need it?”

  “Just get a copy and bring it to me, you bloody idiot.”

  4

  When Amadi Abebe held his daughter a few seconds after she’d emerged into the world, she had kicked him with such force that he immediately named her Nyala; Ethiopian for ‘mountain goat.’ The fleeting disappointment he felt when told his wife had borne him a daughter and not a son, was no longer even a memory.

  Fifteen years later, those legs, slender, dark and muscular, were rhythmically pumping at the pedals of her old bike as Nyala Abebe sped past a black Mercedes parked outside the Hotel Napoli.

  Amadi had spent Saturday night working in the makeshift bakery off Via Enrico Cosenz that he rented for cash. His bread was popular, partly because it was good quality, but mostly because it was available every day of the week. On Sundays, Nyala took a few bags of bread to sell to the street cafés and mobile vendors servicing travellers passing through the railway stations, tram depot and bus terminus. This morning, as Amadi had watched his daughter set off for the city, he knew two things for certain: she wouldn’t return home until all the bread had been sold; and he loved Nyala more than any other person in the world. Even more than the woman who had died in sweat and agony, just a few days after bearing her.

  Nyala cherished the solitude of Sunday mornings, when the quiet, empty streets allowed her thoughts to wander. And on Sundays, when she returned from the city, she would be allowed to wear her best dress to attend church with her grandmother. Growing up in the country chosen by her father, Nyala had always preferred the comfort of running shorts or a track suit. But recently, she had started looking forward to tying her hair in tight plaits around her forehead and putting on the flower-print dress bought for her by her nana. Although she wouldn’t admit it, she revelled in the reaction of the boys now they saw her as someone other than the girl who could ‘run like the wind’.

  As she picked her way across the junction of the main road with Via Giovita Scalvini, she heard the first curious, metallic popping sound. It reminded her of the firecrackers that she’d once heard in Chinatown. She was sure the noise came from behind her, so using her foot as an anchor, she wheeled the bicycle around and stopped, raising a hand to shield her eyes.

  Two more ‘pops’ in quick succession. She felt a cold chill ripple across her scalp and became aware of her own heartbeat. Unconsciously holding her breath, she strained to id
entify the cause of the noises.

  The sound of the screaming motor reached her at the same moment she saw the motorcycle lurch into the road a few hundred metres away. Instinctively, she pulled her bike towards the pavement as it raced towards her.

  “What is he doing?” she heard herself whisper, as the Vespa rider struggled with something attached to his head. A second later, he managed to free himself from the black balaclava and he saw her. He was only a few metres away and while she immediately recognised the face, his expression was a surprise. His eyes may have been staring wildly and jaw clenched in anguish, but there was no doubt; the Vespa rider was her friend, her boyfriend, the son of the man who rented a cellar to her father; Kadin Bennani.

  Subconsciously, she started to raise an uncertain hand in greeting. But she didn’t wave, she didn’t smile or call out his name, because in that split second, she knew that Kadin Bennani was absolutely terrified.

  5

  Pete Salterton didn’t take long to decide on a plan. His mobile told him there was a train leaving Milan for Paris at 09:10. Just thirty-one minutes to reach the station, buy a ticket and get on board. A taxi across Paris to the Gare du Nord, from where he could catch a Eurostar to London. It was going to be tight. No time to pack. He stowed his passport, wallet and mobile phone in his jacket and ran to the lift at the end of the corridor. When it arrived, he punched the button marked ‘0’ but changed his mind and pressed ‘-1’.

  As the lift doors opened, Salterton spotted the hotel manager talking to a policeman at the reception desk and through the glass doors, two more policemen guarding the entrance.

  The lift doors closed and as he began to descend once more, Salterton puffed his cheeks out in relief.

  There was no one in the dimly lit basement corridor and he scurried past a laundry room where he glimpsed the back of a short, stocky woman loading towels into a tumble dryer. She was humming along to the radio and didn’t hear him as he passed by.

  The fire exit was lit by a pale cream wall lamp and a sign displaying the familiar ‘green running man’ symbol. In silent prayer, he gently pressed the spring-loaded bar. The metal door swung open and daylight flooded the grey, concrete-lined corridor. He exhaled when no alarm sounded but held his breath when the door grated against the floor. The woman was still humming, so he stepped out into the sunshine and gently pushed the door closed behind him. He ran up the steps to street level.

  He found himself at the rear of the hotel, in an unfenced yard of cracked and splintered concrete, peppered with weeds, broken bottles and discarded beer cans. To his right, a narrow alleyway ran between two apartment blocks and he could see the main road at its far end. He emerged onto a road running parallel to the front of the hotel.

  Twenty-three minutes until the train abandoned him in Milan. His pace quickened. Turning right onto Via Derganino and despite his contempt for all things religious, he found himself praying.

  His brother used to call him ‘Lucky Pete’ on account of his uncanny ability to evade the law. In his youth, if a house alarm sounded, Pete was long gone before the first police car showed up. Assault victims failed to pick him out in identity line-ups. And if his house was searched, the sniffer dogs always missed the stash of money hidden behind the bath.

  His brother’s nickname echoed in his memory as, passing the spot from where Nyala had watched the speeding Vespa, he flagged down a taxi that had been turned away from the police barricade.

  Eighteen minutes later he was running along platform 12 at Milano Centrale to board the train to Paris via Zurich.

  As he flopped into his first-class seat, he looked back along the platform. He hadn’t been followed. ‘Lucky, lucky Pete,’ he heard a voice whisper, but the memory provided no solace.

  The train moved off and Pete Salterton departed Milan along the same tracks that only a short time earlier, had carried away the person he was certain had tried to kill him.

  6

  Friday – Two Days Before the Murder

  Bennani Family Apartment, Milan, Italy

  Walking home from the shops, Jamila Bennani laughed quietly and shook her head, as Youssef darted behind her legs to escape being tagged by his big sister. It was becoming easier to forget that since Tuesday afternoon, Issam, her husband of seventeen years, had failed to stagger through the front door, smelling of beer, swearing and prickling for a fight.

  On Tuesday evening, she’d cursed his name as she put his dinner in the refrigerator before switching off the lights in the hallway.

  By Wednesday night, she’d begun to feel concern, and guilt for not being concerned enough.

  It was now Friday, and she dared to contemplate life without him. The notion brought her no tears. She laughed again and tickled Youssef’s neck as he giggled and squirmed away.

  Seventeen years ago, she’d arrived in Italy; eighteen years-old and heavily pregnant. Her new husband had written to Jamila’s father, assuring him that he’d secured well-paid work at Malpensa Airport and that he could provide a home for Jamila and their impending child. Her father had blessed the arrangement and Jamila’s mother helped her pack a small, worn suitcase before tearfully kissing her goodbye at Tripoli Airport. Jamila had worn a loose-fitting long-sleeved kaftan for the journey to Milan because Issam was concerned Italian immigration would not allow a pregnant Ethiopian to enter the country.

  For the first few years, married life had been bearable – even happy at times. Jamila found friendship amongst the other north-Africans who attended Sunday services in the Coptic church of San Pietro Celestino and Issam worked hard in his engineering job. Whilst their apartment was small, it was comfortable, and Issam gave her enough money to keep the family fed and clothed. She’d also been blessed with Kadin a few weeks after arriving in Milan and when he was placed in her arms, she had discovered the true meaning of love.

  And then came Issam’s accident; his legs crushed when a freight pallet fell from a forklift in one of the goods hangars. For months, Jamila nursed him and comforted him when he cried with pain as he reached out to her in the night. The accident enquiry did nothing to relieve their stress, especially when the union refused to support Issam after it was discovered that he’d been drinking immediately prior to the accident. The union representative, a nationalist sympathiser, seized on the opportunity to assist in the departure from the airport, and Italy, of yet another African usurper. Issam Bennani was dismissed without notice from his job and his claim for financial compensation refused.

  Four surgeries had failed to untwist Issam’s shattered legs, and while Jamila knew how hard it was for a disabled immigrant to secure work, her sympathy ended when his drinking began.

  Jamila took cleaning jobs as Issam’s drinking bouts turned into daily events. She would often find him asleep at the kitchen table when she returned home from taking Kadin to school and their fights became a regular occurrence. Her second child, Soraya, was conceived during a short period of reconciliation – and marked the only time since the accident that Issam made an effort to quit drinking and find work. But a steady job remained elusive and so out of resignation and desperation, Issam’s drinking returned. It was around that time that he began hanging around with men, who Jamila’s father would have called ‘jalad alqarsh’ – ‘shark skins’.

  And the shark skins took what was left of her husband away from her. For at least one week each month, Issam would just disappear. But Jamila soon stopped asking him where he’d been or what he’d been doing whilst away. Her questions invariably ended in a fight, and Jamila quickly discovered that she no longer cared.

  Whatever it was they got him to do while he was away, Issam always returned home with money, and despite her misgivings she was relieved to be able to buy new clothes and shoes for the children. Nevertheless, as far as she could, Jamila had always tried to distance herself and the children from her husband’s dealings. Eventually, she managed to convince herself that what Issam did when he left the house was not of her making. She found so
me comfort in the notion that her husband was not alone in providing for his family from the ‘dark economy’ that existed in the poorer quarters of many Italian cities.

  Then, about ten years ago, Issam acquired some properties; two adjacent garages in a converted industrial unit on Vialle Vincenzo Lancetti near the city centre, and in Via Enrico Cosenz, a small cellar beneath a warehouse, which the tenant converted to a bakery. Jamila was seriously worried about the new acquisitions and for years, she wouldn’t allow Kadin to accompany his father to collect the rents on a Sunday evening. But despite the reasonably steady flow of rental income, there were still nights when Jamila would lie in fraught suspense clutching her pillow if woken by a passing police car; convinced that it was only a matter of time before the front door was kicked off its hinges and scores of uniformed policemen charged through the house to take her screaming children away from her. But the police hadn’t come and eventually, Jamila stopped worrying about the properties and how her husband had come to own them.

  Youssef, her youngest child, was the product of one of her husband’s violent and beer-fuelled assaults. Jamila never acknowledged that her beautiful, gentle boy was the product of Issam’s forced penetration of her on the cold, hard kitchen floor. But the attack changed her, and while she was condemned to living with a man who had raped her, she would never allowed Issam in her bed again and fitted a heavy iron bolt to the bedroom door. Regardless, her slight frame would tremble, and her slender fingers would clench in readiness whenever she heard the apartment door slam shut.

  In recent years, Jamila would call out to Kadin and he would help her wrestle Issam into the lounge or bathroom when he returned home drunk and spoiling for either a fight or sex – to Jamila there was little difference and one usually led to the other. ‘Too many times,’ she thought to herself as she put the shopping bags on the kitchen floor.