No Mortal Thing: A Thriller by Gerald Seymour Page B

at his shins. Her shoes were light, for wearing all day in a pizzeria, not for brawling on the street and disputing extortion money.
    Jago ran.
    He seemed to see his mother, the pocket-sized Carmel, who had come back into their home, breathing hard, and had tipped his phone onto the table where his homework was unfinished. Then she had enrolled him in the boxing club. Two weeks later he had fought for survival in the ring and stayed on his feet. Four weeks after that, one of the boys who had taken his phone was mismatched with a clever fighter and had had the arrogance punched out of him. Jago had gone to boxing all the time he had been at St Bonaventure’s and had never been hurt again. He had been left alone.
    He ran out of the park, through the gap in the trimmed privet hedge, and into the street. Two cars blasted their horns at him, and he heard the screech of tyres.
    She had not been shot, but the barrel, a dull black, was inches from her forehead.
    There were shootings, knifings and kickings in Canning Town, reports of such filling the local paper, but he had never seen one. He didn’t know what a shooting would look like.
    The pistol was used as a blunt instrument. Jago thought it deliberate, calculated. The barrel went into her face, the tip buried in her cheek. The foresight was jerked up, tearing apart the skin, the muscle and cartilage. He saw the blood.
    The fight had gone out of her. The hand came off her throat and she sank to the ground.
    Jago was on the pavement. What to do?
    The leader showed no pleasure in what he had done, no concern, and acted like it was everyday business. In a sharp movement he wiped the barrel and the bloodied foresight on her jeans and apron. A last glance at the wound and the blood now was flowing freely. She whimpered, beaten. The bullet lay close to her. It was picked up and pocketed.
    A life-defining moment. Jago took his last steps across the pavement, readied himself for the impact and flew. It would have been a leg that tripped him. He had no control and his arms couldn’t break his fall. The pavement soared at him. He struck it and the breath jerked out of him. He gasped. There was blood on his face. He had no strength. A car pulled away. She cried softly, and he saw the length of the cut on her face, how wide it was. He felt vomit rising into his throat, and felt the depths, too, of his failure.
     
    Bernardo heard the child.
    He heard her most clearly, and the clank of the chain, when he had switched off the bunker’s internal lights and was on his hands and knees in the tunnel. The concrete was rough against his trousers, his bones ached and he had only a small torch beam to show him how near he was to the outer entrance.
    The child had been in a cave, its opening between slabs of granite, half hidden by boulders. First the family had found the cave, then raised the money to buy the child. She came from Firenze, a surgeon’s youngest, aged twelve. She had been walking to school when she was taken and had been held for two weeks while her captors looked for a buyer in the Aspromonte. It was the first time that the family had invested in the trade. They had paid the equivalent in lira of a hundred thousand euros. The child had been driven south and the handover had taken place in a disused quarry off the main highway near to Capistrano. There was no sign of illness – only terror.
    Bernardo had dragged her into the cave – his brothers had held back – and had fastened the chain to the ring they had concreted in the previous week. There was straw for her, and a bottle of water – it was summer so it would not have been too cold. Bernardo, of course, had never been to Firenze, had never seen the luxurious apartment block where the family of a prominent surgeon might live. He would have understood little of the child’s mind, would have thought it similar to his sons’ – they were close to that age. But he had barely known them, and had waited impatiently for them to