‘Nothing, pal. You sure you’re OK?’
‘Positive. Heck of a sore head, that’s all. And pissed off. I should’ve realized the danger, though, but I’m still trying to work out why Fazil was important enough to take such a risk to nail him. Real heavy stuff.’
‘Shit like that happens. We deal with desperate people, Karl.’
‘Oh God, do we!’
‘What are your plans?’
‘Ugh… tidy up here, make peace with the locals who are running around like headless chickens. Finish my statement for them, then I want to get back to Lancashire… see where, or if, Petrone’s death fits into all this.’
‘I can deploy someone else to that if you like?’
‘No. I know them up there, especially the guy in charge of the investigation. We go way back and he always needs my help.’
‘Only if you’re up to it, but don’t overdo it, OK? If it’s eyeties versus eyeties, let’s not get too involved, eh?’
‘I hear ya.’
Their conversation ended. Donaldson groaned as he stood up, unsure whether it was injury or old age — or possibly a combination of both — and a lifetime of law enforcement. He stood by the balcony railings overlooking the harbour and noticed, peeking over the frosted glass panel separating his balcony from the next one, that the sliding doors into the room were open. Gentle jazz music filtered out. He edged along until he could see on to the balcony, also empty, although there were signs of recent activity on the lounger and table. An empty glass, a half-full bottle of wine, a paperback book, cigarettes and a lighter. Donaldson’s eyes honed in on the cigarettes and something moved inside his chest. A yearning. He’d been a light smoker in his teens, but hadn’t had a cigarette for many years and was very much against them — usually. But there and then, with a bad head, in a horrible situation, he found he had an irrational need for a cancer stick.
A movement caught his eye. He glanced up, moving his head a little too sharply, causing him to emit a muted howl.
Still clad in her bikini, the forward Scandinavian lady stepped out through her net curtains on to her balcony. There was a wry smile on her face.
‘Spying on me now?’ she admonished him. Then she saw he was holding the ice pack to his head. ‘My, what happened to you?’
‘Long story, ma’am,’ he replied, quickly pulling the blood-soaked cotton wool out of his nostrils and dropping them on the floor. ‘But I wonder if I could trouble you.’ She regarded him with deep misgiving. ‘I know, I know.’ He held up a hand to reassure her he wasn’t the sick pervert she thought he was after seeing the photographs on his laptop. ‘I’d really love a cigarette. Been a bad day.’
‘O-K,’ she said unsurely, but took the pack, shuffled one out for him and one for her. They were Superkings and as he inhaled the smoke spread into his lungs with a deeply pleasurable sensation.
He exhaled deliciously. ‘First one in twenty-five years.’ He held the cigarette between his first and second fingers and pointed it at her. ‘I’m not going off the wagon, though, even though this is absolutely wonderful and I thank you kindly, ma’am.’
She too was smoking and regarded him through a cloud of her own.
He took another deep draw and as he exhaled this time it was with a growl of pleasure. Then he looked at his neighbour. ‘Sorry for freakin’ y’all out earlier,’ he said in his best Yankee drawl.
‘Yes, I was freaked.’
‘OK, understood. My name is Karl Donaldson and I’m an FBI agent,’ he said, not even beginning to understand why he was telling her this, because he did not need to, nor should he have done really. ‘The photos you saw were of a dead guy, obviously, and I was asked if I could identify him.’
‘You’re an FBI agent,’ she asked in disbelief.
‘Really, I am.’ He didn’t wish to explain exactly what he did in the Bureau because that made things complicated. Everyone sort of understood the concept of an agent.
‘What are you doing in Malta?’
‘Interviewing a witness… that’s where the bad day came in.’ He showed her the ice-packed towel, then tilted his head. ‘Hit on head
… long story. See it, touch it.’
She reached across the partition and felt his scalp and the quail egg-sized lump on it. Her fingers withdrew quickly.
‘Ooh, the witness did not like you?’
‘Something like that.’ He took another drag, enjoyed it, then said, ‘I think that did the trick. And you are?’ He knew she had introduced herself at their previous encounter, but that hadn’t gone too well and he couldn’t quite recall the name. Then it clicked. ‘Vanessa.’
‘Vanessa Langstrum.’
‘What are you doing in Malta?’ he asked. The combination of alcohol and cigarette smoke was having an effect on his social skills. Normally, he was pretty shy and reticent with women, but for some reason he wanted to talk to this one.
‘I’m a photographer on assignment for a Scandinavian woman’s magazine.’
‘Nice,’ Donaldson said. He swayed slightly. Despite his bulk, he wasn’t too good at holding his drink. ‘Care to step around and maybe we could restart our relationship?’ He gave her a very childish smile.
The MIR was silent. The lights were lowered, the hush respectful as DC Jerry Tope took centre stage at the front of the room. He set up his laptop, wirelessly connected to the ceiling-hung data projector. For a few seconds it looked as though technology was going to let him down as the screen turned blue and the words ‘NO INPUT DETECTED’ came up.
He pressed a couple of buttons and the screen came to life with the photograph of a man — short, grey-haired, sitting at a street cafe, leaning across the table pointing at someone who was out of shot. The man looked angry. In front of him was a large cup of coffee and in his left hand was a walking stick.
Tope positioned himself so that he could see his laptop screen without having to crane his neck to look at the projector screen behind him and the audience in front.
‘Let me present our victim: Rosario Petrone,’ he said. The eyes of all the assembled officers flitted between the screen and him. ‘Although we have yet to have a formal ID, information suggests that this is the man who was murdered last night in Charnley Road. Comparison between the photographs of the dead man and photographs I have acquired are pretty conclusive — plus, this.’
He pressed the enter button and the next slide came up.
‘The photo you’ve just seen is one of a series of surveillance shots taken by an anti-Mafia task force in Naples — and this is a blow up of one section of that photo.’
And indeed it was. It showed, in quite good detail, Rosario’s left hand, his fingers gripping the walking stick. ‘The head of the walking stick in this shot is the same as the walking stick found at the scene of the murder… so I have no doubt that Petrone is our victim.’
He picked up the remote mouse and right-clicked. The next slide came up — showing the first slide again of Petrone at the cafe table. Tope held up the walking stick that had been found at the scene, which, back from forensic analysis, was in a long, thin plastic cover, just to emphasize his point.
‘So, who is Rosario Petrone and why did he die?’ he posed the question dramatically. ‘Why,’ he went on, ‘did the head of one of the most ruthless Mafia families in Naples, otherwise known as the Camorra Mafia, end up dead on a Blackpool street?’
Everyone sat and listened earnestly.
‘But I’ll come to that later,’ Tope said, easing the tension in the room, rather like the evil quizmaster with everyone in the palm of his hand. ‘First off, I think it might be useful to give some background on the Camorra, so it’ll give you an idea of what we might be dealing with…’
The next slide was simply entitled ‘Camorra’ and had a series of bullet points under it, which came in with the special audio effect of gunfire, a simple device that seemed to please Tope no end. He spoke over the prompts.