The Mafia Emblem Read online



  THE MAFIA EMBLEM

  Michael Hillier

  The right of Michael Hillier to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  Copyright © Michael Hillier 2014

  ISBN 978-0-9568650-9-0

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  To my late wife Sue.

  Inspiration, researcher, critic, editor and best friend

  Acknowledgements

  I wish to thank Ken Hankinson for guidance he gave me about rock climbing. Any blunders in these sections of the novel are due to my misunderstanding of his advice in striving for dramatic effect in the narrative.

  Once again I would like to thank Kelly Walsh for the cover design.

  Author’s Note

  This novel was first published by Robert Hale under the title of The Wolf of Hades. I recovered the rights in late 2013 and restored it to the original uncut length. As a result I changed the title to The Mafia Emblem.

  Because of the change I decided it was not reasonable to charge purchasers of the e-book, so it is available free on Kindle and other e-sites.

  At the time of writing, my wife is dying from ovarian cancer and I feel this deadly branch of the disease is under-funded. Therefore I ask readers, if they consider the book is worth it, to donate the value to one of the following charities which are researching into ovarian cancer:-

  In the UK –

  Cancer Research UK –donate by cancer type.

  In the USA and world-wide –

  Ovarian Cancer Research Fund

  Thank you for your help.

  Prologue 1

  Far below in the plain it was still the height of summer. Down there the grapes and the olives were ripening in the late afternoon sun. The grass was dry and brown. The fields shimmered in the merciless heat.

  The autostrada was hot and dusty, crowded with returning weekend travellers from the coast. It was a creeping, juddering line of noisy, bad-tempered people jostling for position and blaring their horns at each other.

  But here, two thousand feet up on the mountain, things were very different. The massive limestone cliffs were damp and slippery. Tendrils of thin cloud drifted around the buttresses of the precipice, swathing the climbers in waves of penetrating cold. The relentless wind buffeted and plucked at the puny figures clinging to the rock face as though trying to tear them from it and dash them on to the jumble of dragon’s teeth far below.

  Ben Cartwright tried to wedge himself even further into the scant protection of the shallow chimney where he was anchored. All he could feel was the aching cold striking through his climbing jacket and the wet, gritty feel of the rock beneath his hands.

  There came a jerk from above the buttress telling him to pay out another ten feet of rope, and he did so.

  “That’s beyond the safe limit,” he yelled. “Don’t let Carlos have any more.”

  He heard Toni repeat the message in Italian up the rope to his brother-in-law, but he couldn’t make out the reply

  “He says just another three metres,” came Toni’s voice.

  “Three metres is too much,” Ben called back. “If he slips now we won’t be able to hold him.”

  There was a pause while the message was repeated. Then the reply came back, “He must have another three metres. He can’t get another anchor point at the moment. It’s just over five metres to the arête.” Toni was talking in careful, slow phrases so that he could be heard clearly, but he couldn’t keep the fear out of his voice.

  Ben thought for a second. Really there was nothing else to do. “OK,” he shouted, “But tell him to go very carefully. And he’ll have to wait while I strengthen my anchor.” After a moment’s further reflection he added, “Toni – you make sure you get some extra nuts in while you’re waiting.”

  He set about fitting another three chocks into available cracks to duplicate the first three which he’d already arranged just above his head. That would cost him another thirty euros if they had to abandon the face in a hurry. He put them in to a distinct pattern, keeping the chocks linked all the time with a strap.

  He was thankful to be able to do something at last to relieve the cold. It seemed as though they had been pinned down in this position for hours, clinging like flies to the gigantic cliff face while Carlos tried to find his way up.

  Ben wasn’t quite sure that he trusted Carlos. He was the eldest son of a big Naples family called the Vitelli. One day, Toni had told him, Carlos would be a big man in Italy. Like many young Italians the man talked a lot in an excitable way, but when you thought about what he’d said, you realised that he’d revealed very little – about himself or about what he thought or did. Was it because there was nothing to reveal or was there a hidden world behind the façade? Ben thought Carlos was slightly worrying. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Toni, he would have kept well clear of him.

  It was Carlos who had organized this attempt on “The Brow of the Devil” as the Italians named the mountain face. This was the first time he had climbed with Toni and Carlos and he regretted agreeing to come. They should have realised the climb was too difficult for them. With their level of competence they ought to have planned a full expedition spread over two or three days.

  Carlos talked as though he had the experience to tackle the climb, but his technique showed little sign of it. His preparations were even worse. He had minimized the difficulties of the climb before they started. He was the one who had organized the inadequate equipment, made vague arrangements with the mountaineering club in Tortorro, and prepared the inadequate timetable. Perhaps that was the way the Italians always did things.

  For Ben it was becoming an unpleasant experience. It was the most difficult climb he had ever attempted. He made no claim to be an expert. He had enjoyed several holiday climbs on Cornish cliffs and in Snowdonia with the guidance of experienced British rock climbers, but that hadn’t prepared him for this climb. He knew that Toni had done very little climbing before – just a few short rock-faces with his brother-in-law.

  As for Carlos, he climbed like he did everything. His progress was in bursts of intuitive brilliance which often left him dangerously exposed. He was also unwilling to listen to the views of others. He seemed to think he had some divine right to lead, even when he didn’t quite know what he was doing. Ben wished that his command of Italian was better. He might have been able to influence the man a bit more, although even that was unlikely.

  It was obvious to him now that their timing was wrong. To attempt the climb in one day they should have come up the night before and bivouacked at the foot of the mountain so that they could set off at dawn. They would then have been well up the face before the day became too hot. Instead they had driven a hundred kilometres from Toni’s home after breakfast and started the climb casually, as though attempting a mere three hundred-foot cliff. Now the short summer evening was already approaching and they were still five hundred feet from any safe shelter.

  Furthermore they weren’t carrying adequate gear for a night in the open. Carlos had talked of abseiling down if darkness overtook them. However Ben thought they were too high for that. He couldn’t see an adequate anchorage for the ropes
, and the rocks on the sloping scree at the foot of the cliff were not the best place to land in darkness from that height. Ben decided these Italians were too reckless. In future he would only climb with the British, whom he understood.

  It also didn’t help that, in the sudden rush to leave, he had forgotten to put his mobile phone in his rucksack. Carlos told him that he had one in case they needed to summon help, but that didn’t stop Ben from feeling cut off from the rest of the world.

  Twice a jerk came from Toni for the release of more rope. Twice he back-jerked to say that he wasn’t yet ready. Finally he judged that he had an anchor which would take the weight of at least one additional man – more if the load wasn’t too sudden. Then he started to pay out the rope again.

  He could tell by the speed that he had to let it out that Carlos was gathering it together, and that also worried him. It gave the impression that the man wasn’t finding suitable anchors to support himself. Was he about to abandon all technique and make a dash for the arête?

  “Tell him not to hurry,” he shouted up forlornly to Toni.

  Ben had a nasty feeling in his stomach that everything was going sick on them. He braced himself as firmly as he could and strained to hear what was going on further up the face.

  At that moment a thicker, darker cloud wrapped itself around the cliff and plunged them into a damp, chilling gloom. The sunny valley below was blotted out and Ben felt as though he was shut into a small cell miles from anyone else. The strange, numbing sensation which he had felt earlier crept through him again. His dull mind slowly acknowledged that he was afraid.

  There was another double jerk. Lost in his own thoughts, Ben paid out another three feet of rope. God knows what that was for! Then he became alert again. The rope should only have jerked once. Suddenly he became aware that the disaster that he had feared was actually happening.