Free See Naples and Die by Ray Cleveland Page A

And he
also threw his cornet in the bin.
    “Let’s walk,” he said.
    They bunched up, and all adapted a slow Mafia
swagger as they took the path towards Hyde Park.
    “My name is Armando,” said the well-spoken
Italian. “You do not need to know my colleague’s name.”
    They glanced at the other Mafia man,
whose eyes were everywhere. He was obviously the shotgun guard.
    “I am here on behalf of my employer, and
I believe you have something that is of great interest to us. Is that correct?”
    Chrissie looked at Bruno and decided it
was best that she handled things from now on.
    “Yes, Armando. We have a USB memory
stick that contains all contacts and business dealings of the Scarpone family.
Names, addresses, and payments made and received from past and ongoing
operations.”
    “Where is this data?” asked Armando.
    “We have it in a safe place,” said
Chrissie, in a firm and confident voice.
    Armando thought for a moment as if
considering his options. “And what do you want from us in exchange for this
information?” he said.
    “We want to get out of this situation
alive,” said Chrissie “It was all a mistake that we got involved in the first
place, and now this Scarpone lot have a contract out on us. We know we can’t
reason with them. Even if we return the data they won’t let us go.”
    “So you don’t want any money?” asked a
surprised Armando.
    “What? No! We just want our lives back,”
said an impassioned Chrissie.
    It seemed the Italians were finding this
a little hard to understand. This was business, and everyone is in it for a
profit. But then again, what is more valuable than life? Maybe these girls were
telling the truth.
    “How did this memory stick come into
your possession?” asked Armando.
    Chrissie had to be careful here. She
didn’t want to tell him everything. Not because of any loyalty to Luigi – he
had tricked them, big time – but one thing she had learnt in life was to always
hold something back. If you show all your cards straight away then you have
nothing left to gamble with, and you lose control of the board. But she had to
start somewhere, so she decided to start at the beginning.
    “We were on a cruise, and visited Naples
on holiday – just a holiday. We were in the marketplace and a boy named Fabio,
who had stolen the data stick, was being pursued. In a panic he put the thing
into my bag. I didn’t even find it until we got back to England.”
    “Fabio, you say?” said Armando.
    “Yes. Do you know him?”
    “I knew a boy with that name. He has
disappeared.” Armando was very interested now. These girls weren’t making it
all up. They knew about Fabio the runner. “So if you acquired this information
by accident and knew nothing until you found it in your bag – just a small
memory stick of no significance – how do you know about Fabio, and how do you
know about the Scarpones?”
    Chrissie was in a corner. She was going
to have to tell them a little more. “We were approached as soon as we left the
airport in England. These Italians, who said they were related to Fabio, wanted
the memory stick. They said they were making a movie and that the data was a
list of possible investors, and we could become part of everything and be
co-producers of the movie.”
    Armando stopped and turned to scrutinise
Chrissie. “And you believed that?”
    “Yes, I know,” she said. “It does make
us all look incredibly stupid, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.”
    Armando shook his head in disbelief and
walked on. “And what about the Scarpones? How do you know about them, and how
do they know you have this data?”
    “Well …” said Chrissie. “It gets worse.
We were told that we needed to meet with these investors and take the money
from them. I know it sounds ludicrous – but, honestly, that’s what happened. We
thought they were giving us the money to be a part of this movie project. We
had no idea anything was untoward until the meeting with the bishop