Lawless (5 page)

And Vittore!

Bella’s lip curled. Her favourite boy, the middle son, had shocked and upset her by insisting on marrying that whore Maria. He’d been ready to break his mama’s heart by moving out, setting up his own household with the slut.

Bella soon put a stop to
that.
She had cajoled, pleaded, cried, clutched at her chest. ‘I am losing my son!’ she wailed.

In the end, Vittore had relented, as she had known he would. Now Vittore and Maria had their own set of rooms – lounge, kitchen, wine cellar, bathroom, bedroom, even their own little patch of garden – in the big family home, and there was no more talk of them moving out.

The rain battered against the window and Bella gazed out at the dark sky, the lashing rain. She sighed then, and cursed the weather in this country. In Napoli, sweet hot Napoli, people sat outside, sharing grappa with their neighbours and laughing at the problems of the world under a brilliant, scorching sun. Here, they huddled indoors even in the summer months, and the air was never dry, it was always damp, humid: everyone went out in raincoats to dodge the showers. But there could never be any going back for the family; she knew that.
This
had become their country, their home.

Once it had seemed that nothing could touch them here, nothing at all: and then
it
happened. Her son Tito, walking out of the renovated Docklands one night. An assassin, lying in wait, striking when it was least expected. A single thrust with a long, narrow blade, and her precious boy, her eldest, was dead.

With trembling fingers Bella placed her long-dead husband’s picture back on the mantelpiece. She was so tired of it all: the fight, the struggle. Tired to death; all she wanted was
peace.
No reprisals, no beatings. She’d told the boys and she meant it. Tito was gone,
nothing
was going to bring him back. Let him rest.

Blinking back tears, she focused on her reflection in the mirror. Why not admit it? Her husband might have been no looker, but she wasn’t either. Years of sophisticated company, high-end dinner parties, charity galas, and still she looked like what she was: an Italian peasant woman, her greying hair scraped back in a bun, her face a pallid network of wrinkles, her sallow complexion not flattered by the unadorned black dress she wore, her eyes stricken with grief.

‘Mama?’

Bella turned. It was her Vittore. Her beloved boy. He too was showing signs of age: his hairline was receding, forming a widow’s peak at the front. It gave him a sinister look, wolfish.

Vittore had always been her favourite, the one she had nursed at her breast for longest, the one she doted on the most. Now he was the eldest living boy and head of the family. He came forward, looking at his watch. It was nearly ten thirty. He kissed her dutifully on both cheeks, held her close for a moment, then pushed her back.

‘
Finally
he comes to see his mother,’ Bella sniffed.

‘Shouldn’t Bianca be here?’ asked Vittore, ignoring her remark. He was used to such things.

Bella gave a shrug; Bianca was a law unto herself. She smiled faintly and patted his cheek. Vittore was her special one, that would never change.

She thought of the old English rhyme:
A boy’s your son till he takes a wife, a girl’s your daughter all your life.
Bella’s heart clenched with pain as she thought how Vittore had gone against her wishes and wed Maria. She had
warned
him about dirty girls and their seductive ways, but what could you do? Men had their needs, and that bitch Maria had snared Vittore despite all Bella’s efforts to prevent it.

But Bianca was completely hers. And she was proud of her. Bianca was intelligent, incisive – she was a true daughter of the Camorra. Bianca had adored Tito ever since she’d arrived on the scene, and her affection had been amply returned. It was Tito who had taught the girl how to shoot, how to do business.

‘She said she would be here,’ said Bella. ‘Or maybe she’ll go straight to the church.’

Vittore grunted a reply.

‘Where is Fabby?’ asked Bella, using her son’s baby-name. Her youngest son was always off doing something or other, mostly things that were best not known about. She had no illusions about her family; she knew what her husband and then her sons had become. What her daughter might be, too, now that she was finally getting involved in the business. Still, she loved them and excused them so much. But today, Fabio should be
here.

‘Something to do with the funeral director,’ lied Vittore.

There was no trouble with the undertaker. Vittore knew that because he had handled all the arrangements himself. Fabio was off somewhere, doing something he shouldn’t. That was for sure. If he screwed up, today of all days, then Vittore promised himself he would kick Fabio’s stupid arse from here to the moon. ‘There were one or two things to be straightened out, that’s all.’

The doorbell rang, and Vittore went to answer it. A moment later, he returned, followed by Bianca – dressed in black today, not her usual white. She embraced Bella, who started to cry.

‘This is breaking my heart,’ she said.

‘I know, Mama. I know,’ said Bianca.

Maria appeared in the doorway. Pretty, curvy, dark-haired. Bianca went and hugged her briefly.

Bella ignored her daughter-in-law. ‘I don’t want Fabby to be late,’ she fretted. She was wondering whether she had done the right thing, phoning Ruby Darke. And she wondered whether the woman would even bother to show up.

‘He won’t be, Mama. Don’t worry,’ said Vittore.

Don’t worry!
Bella had spent her lifetime worrying over her family, trying to maintain an iron hold over them. She couldn’t alter her ways. And now Tito was gone to join his father Astorre in heaven. In her mind’s eye, Bella always pictured her Astorre as he’d been way back in the days when they’d been young, and still living in their proper home, their
true
home – Napoli.

9

Naples, 1925

Bella came out of the church feeling deliriously happy. She was blinking in the blaring sunlight, her laughter drowned out by noisy trumpeters as friends and family showered her and her new husband with rice. Bella beamed up at Astorre, her groom. Astorre Danieri had done the decent thing and married her, his childhood sweetheart, and she loved him dearly.

‘Bellisima!’ everyone yelled at the bride.

Bella was twenty years old and for the first time in her life she felt beautiful. Astorre was twenty, too – and Bella was already pregnant, having succumbed to Astorre in one of her father’s olive groves and allowed him to lift her skirts and have her. Only once, it had happened – Bella always afterwards blamed the heat for her weakness that day, for why else would a good Catholic girl lie with a man unwed?

When she told Astorre of her condition, he shrugged. He’d half-expected this would happen: he was a stud – a stallion, the girls said of him in tones of admiration – and it came as no surprise to him that his arrow had found its mark. ‘We’ll marry,’ he said, and went immediately to see her father.

Now here they were, husband and wife at last! Bella was so happy she thought she would burst.

But life was hard, even if she was newly married, and in love. In the dry baking heat of an Italian summer, with Vesuvius rumbling and smoking on the horizon, it was a difficult time to be pregnant, and Bella suffered badly from morning sickness. She struggled to keep the house nice while, as camorristi, both Astorre’s father and then Astorre himself were drafted into the Fascist Party.

Four years earlier, Benito Mussolini, the blacksmith’s son from Romagna, had declared himself Il Duce and the leader of the Fascists. Astorre’s father, a widower, became involved in political life, but Astorre contented himself with trading in the port, where there were good profits to be made on the sly with cigarettes and drugs and other lucrative contraband.

It was a risky time and Bella was full of fear for her new husband. Just the year before their wedding, there had been unrest on the streets, many deaths. Yes, the Fascists were in power, but that communist bastard Matteotti had accused them of poll-rigging. After he was shot for his trouble, Casalini, Mussolini’s deputy, was gunned down in a retaliatory shooting.

‘Be careful,’ Astorre told his father Franco when at last he held his own first-born, Tito, safe in his arms. Bella’d had a bad time with both the pregnancy and the birth, but here was their reward. They had a son.

Astorre was concerned about his father. The communists were still causing trouble, targeting those in power, and Papa had made a particular enemy of one of the scum, Corvetto. A hard-nosed thug who had once been camorristi, Corvetto was a turncoat and a braggart. Papa knew secrets about the man, secrets the communist did not want known.

‘No worries,’ said his father. ‘Il Duce has banned all the left-wing bastards now, they can’t form parties any more.’

Astorre didn’t believe that would make any difference. Nevertheless, he joined his father in politics.

And Bella worried all the more.

10

1975

‘Put the money in here! Right here, cunt, don’t you make one funny move or you’re DEAD, you got me?’

The terrified female bank teller behind the smashed counter stared in horror at the men, four of them, big threatening blocks of muscle clad in balaclavas and boiler suits, each one wielding a pick handle.

Some of the customers were screaming. Moira Stanhope had seen her kids off to school this morning, come into work as usual, set up her position – it was just another day. And now, all hell had broken loose.

The noise of the screens being broken, the sudden impact of the men’s entry into the bank, the shouting, the threats of violence, the bags being thrown across the glass-strewn counters, all conspired to make Moira and the two other tellers freeze, unable to function.

‘NOW! You hear me? Get the money in the bag NOW!’

Moira started fumbling the cash into the bag. Such was the shock of this intrusion, she didn’t even think to press the panic button that was connected straight to the nearest police station. The other tellers were doing the same as her, every one of them white with fear, moving like stuttering automatons.

Fabio Danieri watched with satisfaction, feeling so wired that he could barely keep still. Shout at anyone loud enough and they crumbled, anyone in the armed forces could tell you that. And sweet Jesus, could he shout. They
all
could, all his boys, all the little gang he’d grown up on the Clerkenwell streets with, they were swearing and screaming at the tellers,
Move! Do it! Hurry Up!

And like dumb cattle the tellers were obeying, ladling the loot into the bags, pushing them back over the counter.

Piece of piss
, thought Fabio.

Then they were leaving the building, hurrying out – not too fast – to the car where Derby their jockey sat at the wheel of the high-performance car, engine running. They whipped off their balaclavas as they went, piled in, and Derby was away, slowly at first, sedately, but soon . . .

‘Holy fuck!’ shouted Derby, his eyes glued to the rearview mirror.

‘What?’ Fabio strained to see. A cop car was nudging in behind them.

‘Shit,’ he said. They had the bulging bags of cash stacked up around them. Quickly Fabio and the others started stripping off their boiler suits. Fabio was wearing jogging shorts and a black T-shirt under his. He could hear the bank’s alarms going now.

‘It’s OK. No lights, no siren. Just a patrol car, it’s nothing,’ said Derby.

Then Fabio saw the customers running out of the bank, waving wildly to the occupants of the police car, pointing to the car stuffed with men and bags with Derby at the wheel.

‘Double
shit,’ said Fabio. ‘Hit it, Derby.’

Derby wasn’t called that for nothing. Give him a few thou of stolen horsepower and he could outrun anything the filth could chuck at him. It was close, but they raced through the streets and finally Derby gave them the slip. The boys dumped the car and the bags in a coach depot car park, stashing the cash all over their bodies under their clothes. Then they split up – and
shit
here came the filth again, just as they were saying their farewells.

‘Leg it!’ said Fabio.

All the boys scattered.

‘Oi! Stop right there, arsehole!’ shouted one of the police, coming up fast at Fabio’s rear.

Fabio had no intention of stopping. He took to his heels, hurling himself down an embankment straight into a huge patch of brambles. The copper – no doubt dreaming of promotion – followed.

Both men started swearing and wincing. Shit, those things
hurt.

It was the death of a thousand cuts. Flesh tearing, blood dripping off him like raindrops, Fabio hauled himself out of the damned brambles, seeing the copper still in there, trapped, struggling, trying to break free. Fabio sped off as fast as he could. He found himself in what appeared to be a deserted storage depot, surrounded by lorries in for repair.

Exhausted, he ran to the nearest shed door, slid it open. He slipped inside and slumped down on the floor, sweating, bleeding, shaking with the force of the adrenaline pumping madly through his veins. Minutes passed. He got his breath back, and . . . then he heard it.

A police radio, crackling, coming closer.

Shit.

He had to get out of here. He had the cash stuffed down his underpants. He inched open the door. No one in sight, but they were
there
, he could hear the bastards.

Fabio slipped outside, looking around for a way out. Quickly he pulled himself up onto the low roof of the building and nearly messed himself when a policeman went straight by the door, talking into his radio. A couple of seconds earlier, and he’d have seen Fabio coming out.