‘The Camorra is like the Mafia and is based in and around Naples in Italy. Its activities include drugs, protection rackets, smuggling people and goods and the production of high quality fake goods in factories in the area previously mentioned. Murder levels are horrendously high in the areas it operates in and to put that boast into perspective, the Camorra have been blamed for…’ With a flourish he jerked the remote mouse at the screen and a figure ‘4’ appeared thereon, accompanied by a gun shot, then three zeros — ‘0’, ‘0’, ‘0’ — each with their own sound effect. ‘Four thousand deaths in the last thirty years, mostly in that geographical region.’ The next slide, mercifully appearing silently, showed a map of Italy with the Campania region highlighted.
‘Da-da-daah!’ one of the detectives in the audience said dramatically, causing a ripple of laughter.
Tope shot the offender a look of stern disapproval. ‘Hm,’ he muttered, not impressed. This was his show. ‘Anyway, the Camorra have probably been in existence since the 1700s and they’ve always operated in a decentralized way, meaning their structure has always been flatter than the hierarchical structure of the main Mafia clans. Because of this, the Camorra clans are always at each other’s throats, but they are more resilient when their top men are arrested, or go into hiding.
‘The 1980s saw the number of clans increasing and today, if Wikipedia is to be believed, with over a hundred clans and over six thousand members, they outnumber the Sicilian Mafia. Rosario Petrone is — was — the head of one of the most ruthless clans of them all. No prizes for guessing its name… the Petrone clan.
‘This lot produce fake luxury goods in their factories in Naples, they traffic thousands of people across the world each year, they control unions in Naples — particularly in public service facilities. They deal drugs, prostitution, money laundering and kidnapping. They are huge and are reckoned to turn over about a billion Euros each year
…’
‘Did you say a billion?’ someone asked.
‘Yeah, you heard right, a billion and, depending on the exchange rate, about eight to nine hundred million pounds — ish — every year. They are phenomenally rich and well organized.’
‘So what was Petrone doing in Blackpool?’
‘He was in hiding following a particularly brutal fallout between clans, as a result of which it’s believed about thirty people have been murdered in the last three years. Certainly a dozen have, and the figure may be as high as fifty. Lots of people just disappear and are often never found. Some have fled, like Petrone, others are encased in concrete or rotting on rubbish dumps… whatever.’
Henry Christie, watching and listening to all this at the back of the MIR, felt his arse twitch with excitement again. He loved it. Loved being in murder room briefings, loved setting off on the hunt for a killer. He knew it was the sort of thing he did well and the thought of having to hand it over to someone just because he was going on a short break made him sweat with frustration. Damn the holiday, he cursed inwardly.
‘Let me take you back about three years,’ Jerry Tope was saying at the front of the room. ‘To a tale of jealousy, revenge and murder
… and garbage.’
‘I should apologize for my earlier forwardness,’ she said. ‘I was a little tipsy and a little annoyed, I suppose.’
‘Annoyed?’ Donaldson said. He and his neighbour were out on his balcony, sitting alongside each other on loungers. He was sipping a small beer from the minibar and she had a gin and tonic from the same source. Donaldson’s supplies were sparse now.
‘My boyfriend. He was supposed to be joining me but,’ she shrugged, ‘pressure of work, or so he says.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘In Sweden… probably being laid by the twenty-year-old tramp I caught him texting last week,’ Vanessa said fiercely. She took a long drink of the G amp;T. ‘So I was annoyed and I made a bit of a fool of myself because of my rocky relationship.’
‘Ah, rocky. I know that.’ Donaldson raised his glass to salute that intangible phrase.
‘So I am sorry.’
‘Apology accepted.’
‘But.’ She turned to him and despite his best intentions he could not keep his eyes off her cleavage. ‘I would still like to fuck you
… you know, now that we have ironed out our misunderstandings. I know you are an FBI agent, not a pervert. You know I was a bit mad, but I’ve had some sleep since then and my head is clear.’
Donaldson averted his eyes and squinted across the harbour. Even in the extended trough that his relationship with his wife was foundering, he had never been unfaithful to her. He’d had the opportunity. Women at work. A very sexy female Cypriot detective he’d met — and that had been a very close run thing — but he’d always held back, hoping things would improve with Karen. A forlorn hope. Even though both had tried, it was a struggle.
His head turned.
Seconds later they had dragged each other through to the bedroom, wrestled each other out of what little clothing they wore and passionately attacked each other. But as Donaldson finally clambered above her, the fingernails of her left hand digging hard into his muscled backside, the fingers of her right curled around his hard cock, easing back the foreskin, and he was about to commit adultery, there was a loud, incessant knocking on the door.
‘Jesus, not now,’ she hissed.
The knocking persisted. A woman called his name.
‘Shit,’ he said, rolling off the bed and grabbing a hand towel that he could have hung on his full-to-bursting penis, holding it in front of him. He padded to the door and peered through the spyhole. The fisheye lens distorted the view, but he could still work out that two people were in the corridor, a man and a woman, in the uniform of the Maltese cops.
‘Yes?’ he shouted through the door.
‘Mr Donaldson.’ The woman leaned to the door. ‘Could you open up?’
He sighed impatiently and opened it on the security latch. ‘What is it?’
‘Please could you accompany us?’
‘Why, am I under arrest?’
‘No, nothing like that… we… we’ve found the body of our colleague. He’s been murdered.’
‘That was good.’ Henry congratulated Jerry Tope on his presentation. Tope nodded.
‘I did my best. Is that everything?’
‘For now, thanks, Jerry.’ Henry was in one of the tiny offices off the MIR, leafing through a paper copy of Tope’s PowerPoint. Tope gave Henry a nod and left.
Henry’s eyes went to the slides giving some background to Rosario Petrone, head of the Petrone clan. Born in Naples in 1934, making him seventy-five years old, he had spent his entire life in the gangs of the Camorra. His early years were mainly running protection rackets and drug dealing, even in those days. But as times moved on, people trafficking became profitable, as did running factories making fake designer goods and taking a stranglehold on the garbage disposal service in Naples. This latter business didn’t actually give a shit about how rubbish was disposed of. Often lethal chemicals were simply dumped by roadsides or burned, or tipped into streams causing dangerous water and land pollution. But the Camorra-run businesses did it cheaply and legitimate businesses were more than happy to use their services. Petrone’s empire flourished.
But there was always inter-clan rivalry. Shootings were common. Ruthless scare tactics were regular — such as cutting off victims’ genitals and stuffing them into their mouths, from which their tongues had already been cut. Petrone was believed to have either killed or ordered the assassination of forty rivals. Some were found with their heads blown off, others were burned with the garbage, others were never found. There were times when he was on the run from rival factions or the police or both, although he was never successfully prosecuted for any of the murders he was suspected of. The disappearance of vital witnesses was usually the reason for his acquittals. About six years ago, he was involved in a shooting incident in Naples when he took a bullet in his side and survived. He was sixty-nine at the time and the people believed to have winged him were found later, dunked in a vat of hydrochloric acid one of his companies was supposed to have disposed of.