Free Tarantula by Mark Dawson Page B

norm.
    Acceptable.
    None of it was new to Milton.
    He stayed there until six o’clock, paid his bill and got back onto the Ducati.
    He rode further into the city. It was awake now, with commuters setting off to their offices, trucks delivering produce, queues of traffic that clogged up the main roads and jockeyed impatiently as they waited for the lights to change. Milton rolled up to the front of the queues on the outside, the engine of the big bike grumbling restively.
    The hotel was on the crossroads where the Via del Grande Archivio was bisected by another, smaller road. The street was narrow, a canyon that ran between opposing ranks of grand five storey buildings. Cars were parked on both sides meaning that it was only possible to pass along it slowly, and in single file. The hotel was set back a few feet from the thoroughfare, sheltered behind a double row of parked cars and a collection of small trees. It, too, was five storeys tall, painted in cream and brown, boasting a chocolate covered awning upon which its name, Il Palazzo Decumani, was stencilled in tasteful gold letters. It was a luxury, boutique establishment.
    Milton positioned the Ducati in the smaller street that ran into the Via del Grande Archivio. He wheeled the bike backwards so that the front end was pointed out, rested it on its kickstand and then sheltered from the rain in the recessed doorway of a branch of the Poste Italiane. It offered him a good view of the hotel and the road that approached it but it would be difficult to notice him.
    He took out a packet of cigarettes, put one to his lips and lit it.
     
    HE HAD been waiting for forty minutes when he saw the four men emerge from the front door of the hotel. They were expensively dressed, wearing suits that they might, perhaps, have had tailored for them during this trip. Two of them were big, obviously serving as muscle, following a few paces behind the pair of smaller men in front. Milton recognised both of those men from the information that Control had provided him with. One of them, slender and with an acne scarred face, was Curtis Patterson, the scion of the Patterson criminal family that ruled the drug market in the northwest of England. The man to his right was his brother, Leon. Both of them lived in big mansions in the Wirral and had fortunes that measured in the seven figures. The police knew very well that they controlled the family’s affairs, but the men were shrewd and careful and they had been unable to lay a glove on them.
    That was unfortunate. A life in prison would have been preferable to what was about to happen to them.
    Milton flinched as he saw a fifth person emerge from the hotel. It was Antonietta Agosti. She was wearing jeans, tight enough to accentuate her natural curves, and vertiginous high heeled shoes. She kept a few paces behind them, aware of what was about to happen—aware of some of what was about to happen—and keen, no doubt, to make sure that she could easily get out of the way. Curtis Patterson paused, though, and turned back to her. He said something that Milton couldn’t hear and then held out his hand. She managed a thin smile, caught up with him and took it.
    Milton felt a flicker of irritation that she was involved. She was a proud, strong-willed woman, and it struck him as offensive that she should be used by the Camorra in this fashion: as bait, effectively, prostituting herself in order to entice the victims to their doom. But he caught himself. What else was she to do? Say no? That, he knew, was not a choice that she would have been able to make.
    He reassessed.
    She was a complication.
    He would try and protect her but, ultimately, she was not his problem.
    He checked his watch.
    Eight-fifteen.
    Milton prickled with anticipation and the first tweak of adrenaline.
    He watched, continually reassessing.
    The street was beginning to thicken with traffic from the Via Duomo and the Corso Umberto. A refuse lorry was slowly making its way from the