No Mortal Thing: A Thriller by Gerald Seymour Read Free Book Online Page A

principal representatives of the generic Mafia are the ’Ndrangheta. Have you heard of ’Ndrangheta, Mr Browne? It would help your understanding if you have.’
    ‘I know nothing about them. Why should I?’
    ‘Because you are a banker. It says here, above your signature, that you work in a bank. You can recite big numbers, understand spreadsheets and statistics . . .’
    ‘I’ve reported what happened to me and a young woman. Have I wasted your time?’
    If Fred Seitz was about to lose his cool he hid it well. ‘They bring into our country billions of euros. Billions . They buy up hotels and apartment blocks, businesses and restaurants. A man who has no visible sign of income suddenly purchases a four-star hotel and pays ten million euros. We are swamped by them. It is the proceeds of cocaine money. Right at the bottom of the scale, their protection rackets are perpetrated on legitimate business – not for billions or millions or even hundreds of thousands. They’re Italians, and that is how they live. What am I supposed to do? Nothing – so I cannot justify spending much more of my time on it. Sorry, but that’s the truth.”
    ‘You’ll turn your back on it and walk away?’ Jago felt the tiredness crushing him. He stood up and picked up his briefcase.
    ‘Do you want my advice?’
    He said he did.
    ‘Does your employer know you’re here?’
    He shook his head.
    The investigator said, ‘I admire what you did. You intervened when many didn’t. Pin a medal on yourself, but do it in private. You will note that I took no statement from you. As far as the legalities of this incident go, you played no part in it. What is it to do with you? Get a life – look the other way. The Italians and their gangster habits are not your priority. Do you smoke, Mr Browne? Would you like a cigarette?’
    He did. Jago felt the need of one. The investigator must have liked him because Rauchen Verboten took a back seat. A window was opened on one side of a central pillar, then a second. Both had been locked but the other man used a straightened paper clip to unfasten them. He led and Jago followed. A leg out and over the window ledge and they could almost have kicked the heads of pedestrians on the Bismarckstrasse pavement. There was a cloud of smoke as the pipe was lit, then acrid fumes. Jago dragged on his cigarette. He thought it the work of an expert because there was a smoke detector in the centre of the interview-room ceiling. He was told that if you sat under a desk in the office and smoked close to the floor, the alarm would sound because it was well made, German manufactured. A flicker of a grin. When he had finished his cigarette he threw it onto the pavement while the investigator hammered the pipe bowl on the outer wall. Jago saw many marks on that stretch of wall where the paintwork was dented. It would have been a familiar routine. He brought his leg back inside.
    ‘Will you follow this up?’
    ‘I am away tomorrow evening for a few days’ vacation with my wife. I will look at it when I return, perhaps. No promises. Thank you, Mr Browne, for coming. A last word. Forget it. No one will thank you if you do otherwise.’
    The investigator showed him to the door.
    He’d wasted his time. Jago Browne walked towards the S-bahn to go east and back to work.
    ‘Get a life,’ the man had said. ‘Look the other way.’
     
    Marcantonio paid cash. The two shirts, a hundred euros each, were wrapped by the sales assistant, and the girl slid glances at him. The shop was on the Ku’damm, small, smart and exclusive. He dressed well, though the knuckles of one fist were scratched and his right shoe was scuffed at the toecap. He never used a card, and the two hundred euros were from a wad of more than two thousand he carried in his hip pocket. The girl would have noticed the money. Most days he went to the shops on the Ku’damm. He preferred the range there to those on Potsdamer Platz or Friedrich-strasse. He shopped,