I called his office from a payphone, mentioned Pasha’s name, and fixed a meet.

2

Despite the cloud cover, Vesuvius, the volcano that fucked up Pompeii, dominated the skyline to the south-west as we came in to land. Nothing was spilling out of it right now, but it still looked angry.

There was only ten metres of tarmac between the bottom of the aircraft steps and the terminal, but it was enough to raise some sweat. The temperature must have been thirty plus, and the humidity was outrageous.

Inside, the Aeroporto di Napoli Capodichino couldn’t seem to make up its mind whether it wanted to be a designer boutique and sushi franchise or a bus station. But, being Italian, it didn’t give a shit. I liked that.

I helped myself to a fistful of leaflets at the hotel reservation desk in the arrivals hall and circled the twenty I thought Dijani would be most likely to stay in. They were all on or near the waterfront. I started calling them in alphabetical order from the nearest payphone. It was a long shot, but still worth a try.

The Continental was first on my list. It seemed suitably grand and had a commanding view of the castle and the western side of the bay. Whatever, the receptionist didn’t recognize his name.

By the time I’d had the same response from the next fourteen on my list, I was flagging. Number sixteen was the Paradiso. Another negative. Maybe Dijani didn’t feel the same way about the afterlife as Hesco had. The seventeenth was the Romeo. I tapped in the number and repeated my request. By now I sounded like a recorded message.

‘I’m extremely sorry, sir. You’ve missed him. Mr Dijani was staying with us last night. He checked out earlier this morning.’

‘You don’t know where he went, do you?’

She was even more apologetic. ‘I’m afraid we can’t share that kind of information, sir …’

It wasn’t the best I could hope for, but it wasn’t the worst either. It told me I was on target. It also told me that the clock was ticking on whatever these fuckers had planned.

I took the shuttle to the car-hire area and was handed the keys to a white Seat Leon twenty minutes later. It had just two hundred Ks on the clock and was so factory fresh that some of the interior was still coated with plastic wrapping.

Keeping my Nick Savage passport and driving licence, and a bundle of euros in my jacket, I put the rest of my cash and Nick Browning’s ID in a plastic bag under the spare tyre in the bottom of the boot, then replaced the lining. I got behind the wheel, opened Frank’s map at the large-scale grid of Naples and aimed for the city centre.

I navigated my way to a two-storey underground car park in the Via Shelley where there was loads of neon and twenty-four-hour security, and none of the wagons looked like they’d been recently looted. I slid Hesco’s laptop under the driver’s seat, pocketed the binos, left the day sack in the boot and stuck a couple of hairs across the crack when I’d closed it.

Luca didn’t want me to show up at the Il Diavolo office, and I wasn’t about to argue with that. Given the kind of hard-nosed journalism they were known for, it was bound to be a target. He’d asked me to come to the back of a mate’s mattress store on the Via Annunziata instead. Unless he was just short of sleep, it meant he was already on high alert. He’d fixed for us to meet at 19:30, which gave me about six and a half hours to kill.

My plan was to familiarize myself with the lie of the land around the RV, recce the Romeo, then head for the docks. I’d kick off by checking the unloading bays for Nettuno containers and try to bring myself up to speed with the latest rumours on the people-smuggling circuit.

I’d bounced around on the cobblestones on the drive in. Now I was on foot I realized they were everywhere, in all shapes and sizes. Either the town planners were in the quarry Mafia’s pocket, or they believed you couldn’t have too much of a good thing.

The merchants along the Via Annunziata seemed to feel the same way about budget bedding and kids’ clothes and toys. Every single shop sold one or the other. And the magic was clearly working. The pavements were crammed with people. Wagons were double-parked up one side, leaving zero tolerance for the one-way traffic. I made a mental note to keep the Seat where it was. A quick getaway would be out of the question here.

One of the things I loved about the Italians was that they never changed their style for anybody. Apart from the massive yellow and grey façade of the local church, the whole street needed a power spray, and a pile of rotting rubbish had spilt across the pavement opposite, but nobody seemed to care.

Luca’s mate’s store was thirty beyond the overflowing wheelie-bins on the right-hand side. I wandered past, looking in most of the windows, as you do when you’re hoping to pick up a nice bargain to take home. A good few doorways and open-fronted workshops provided cover for both concealment and surveillance.

I didn’t stay long. It made no sense drawing attention to myself. I headed to the Romeo via a choggy shop in the back-streets where I replenished my stock of previously enjoyed Nokias.

The hotel was a shiny glass-and-steel monster about eight blocks from where I’d left the Seat. It looked like it had made the journey from another planet and come in to land beside the hydrofoil pier. I could see why Dijani fancied it. It had great views across the harbour and the water, and was so stylish it made your bollocks ache.

Hoping that my jeans and jacket would be mistaken for shabby chic and my six-day growth for designer stubble, I strolled inside. I kept the baseball cap on. The wound on my head was still livid enough to put people off their lunch, and that made it an identifying feature.

I headed straight for the lift. I wasn’t in the mood for see-thru table football or a visit to the screening room and the virtual golf driving range. As I was being propelled soundlessly to the restaurant and bar on the ninth floor, I heard Frank’s voice again: ‘Italian design, German hydraulics …’ His favourite combo. I just wished his elevator chat didn’t keep drowning out the other stuff he must have told me. I knew he had a place near Brindisi. Had he mentioned Naples?

It was the maître d’s pleasure to guide me to the corner table on the roof terrace. He showed no disappointment when I ordered a club sandwich and Diet Coke instead of Beluga caviar and Stolichnaya. He was too chilled for that. Or maybe he wasn’t on commission and didn’t give a shit.

I got some designer water and crusty bread down my neck as I waited for my order, and gave the binos some exercise. I could see a fair distance along the main, which fringed the port, but pointed them at Vesuvius first because that’s what everyone else in the world must do. The cloud had lifted a fraction. The mixture of heat haze and pollution softened its outline and turned the buildings that surrounded its lower slopes to gold.

When I’d finished the token sightseeing I adjusted the focal length and zeroed in on each of the quays that lined the seafront. There was no shortage of Maersk and ZIM and Christian Salvesen container ships, and plenty of passenger liners closer to me. On my second sweep, I spotted a lone Nettuno cargo vessel in the distance.

My club sandwich and Coke arrived, and between mouthfuls, I scanned the fence that separated the main from the outer parts of the dock. There were any number of ways through it, where either the chain-link had surrendered to time and repeated attacks by the salt spray, or simply been ripped apart by whoever wanted to get in and out without troubling the security detail.

I left a pile of cash on the table when I’d finished most of the sandwich and all the Coke, including the ice and slice of lemon.