The Collaborator

16

It was not mercy that stopped the beatings, but their exhaustion. He was a punch-bag, a kicked football, a bleeding, bruised mess.

Eddie lay on the floor of the same space where he had removed the chain’s pin from the wall and the door’s hinges. He had no longer any sense of time, or of hunger, but his throat burned with thirst. He thought he’d swallowed some of the blood, and mucus, and the sweat that poured in rivers off his head. He didn’t know whether his ribs were broken, only that the pain there came in sharp spasms if he moved an inch to right or left. He thought his forearm wasn’t broken, but it might have been: it had protected his kidneys and had probably screened his liver.

He was on his side.

His wrists were fastened together behind his back, held with a plastic stay that had been pulled tight and cut into the skin, but with so much pain elsewhere that was a small matter and he ignored it. His ankles had new manacles. He was on his side and had been since they had dumped him. He had been able to lift his knees into his stomach, twist his shoulder and chest towards them, drop his head and shorten his neck, and he had kept his eyes tight shut. Eddie knew he was condemned. They had not hooded him. It seemed unimportant to them that he saw their faces. One was contorted in rage and had new scars across one cheek. He had kicked and punched hard. One had laughed each time he had kicked and punched, and had the blood on his T-shirt. Eddie knew a name. He had heard the one whose testicles he had kneed call another Salvatore. Again, it had not seemed important to them that a name had been used within his earshot. It was confirmation that he was condemned. The one they called Salvatore was the man who had taken him in the via Forcella, who had kicked him before, who seemed to have a slack, irresolute mouth and vacant, distant eyes.

Between the first beating and the second – the one from Salvatore and the one from the man with the scarred face – he had almost called out to Immacolata to end it for him, back off, quit, refuse. He had slid into weakness, but he had ditched it in the gap between the second and third beatings. He had thought of little between the third and fourth, nothing coherent. After the fourth, now, he had no thought of anything beyond survival for the next five or ten minutes.

He did not have a noble, romantic or heroic thought. All gone. He existed in a vacuum, no hope and no despair, where no intellect was admitted. He was the animal in the snare or the burrow, or the treble-hooked fish unable to reach the reed bed. He did not consider a greater picture, the rule of law over the supremacy of criminality, that might govern Immacolata. Eddie thought of nothing beyond lying still and managing the pain in his ribs and the pain in his forearm, which might be broken, and the pain in his lip, which was bloody and swollen, and the pain in his eyes where the bruising had spread. His vision was through tear-wet slits. He didn’t think of his class filling a room, or the guys in the house, didn’t think any longer of Immacolata. They had nothing to do with his possible survival for the next five or ten minutes.

They hadn’t closed the door on him. He could see, through the open door, the shoes, trainers, that had kicked him and they were propped on other chairs, and he could see the fists that had punched him, which cradled cigarettes – one was wrapped in a handkerchief and the blood showed through.

The inspiration of escape was behind him.

He could see a spider. It was in the angle between the wall and the ceiling. A monster of a spider, with a fortress of close mesh around it and a food store. It moved lethargically. Eddie wondered how long it took a spider to weave a web of that extent. It was his first thought – other than survival – since the fourth beating. Who was the enemy of the spider? Who threatened it? His mind turned, cranked, on the queries and…

Salvatore had gone, was no longer in the room with the others, but the one with the shirt wound, blood in the chest from the nail, came to the door and stood there, tobacco smoke playing across his face. He was a grown man, might have been thirty. Eddie didn’t understand how a man of thirty could be as savage as a cat with a victim as helpless as a winged songbird. He didn’t have the clarity to think it through. The man watched him. Was it work for a man? The man was older than Eddie. He guarded prisoners, kicked and punched them. Maybe he might just get to kill one. Eddie shivered. Did it fucking matter whether the man had a wife he went home to sleep beside, or small children to play with at the end of a long, hard day of smoking, kicking and punching? Did he talk about kicking, punching and guarding over supper with his wife and kids? Eddie knew nothing. Did the man say to his woman that it had been a good day at work?

To think, to imagine, was all the independence left to him. Better off without them. He turned, which hurt his ribs and tried to get on to his other side so that his back was to the man, but the pain was too bad. He managed only to flop on to his back, which left him more vulnerable: his privates were unprotected. He rolled back. He was where he’d started. Better to have stayed put, better not to think and not to imagine.

There had been the one chance. He’d given it his best shot, but it hadn’t succeeded. And he was condemned, which was what Immacolata had done for him, and the certainty of it gave him a sort of peace.

Were the foot-soldiers of the Borelli clan inside the Palace of Justice?

Immacolata had been given a soft drink, iced, and now was brought down a corridor, guns in front of and behind her.

Did Salvatore, Il Pistole, have access here?

She could smell the gun oil, the chilli on their breath and the scent from their armpits.

A door was knocked at respectfully. A pause. Then it was opened and a smartly dressed woman, who might have been as old as her mother, gazed at her with the expression that was devoid of approval or criticism, then stepped aside. She was walked through an outer office. She realised now that the guns were gone. So this was the sanctum into which her father’s foot-soldiers and even Salvatore were thought unable to penetrate. An inner door was rapped on. Another pause, long enough to indicate that work must be completed, then a call: ‘Enter.’ Of course the prosecutor had not looked up. His head was low over carpets of papers that were rumpled across the desk.

She was not asked to sit.

She realised then that this was deliberate – a casualness meant to implant in her the certainty that she was not extraordinary. There were many files on the floor and she wondered if they had been laid out to a purpose: they carried the names in heavy indelible ink of Lo Russo, Contini, Mazzarella, de Lauro, Misso and Caldarelli. It might have been done to demonstrate to Immacolata that she was a small fish, that she swam in a big sea, but she didn’t know.

He asked, ‘A good journey, Signorina?’

‘I sat in a car. It was satisfactory.’

‘I’m told your mind is made up.’

‘I said so.’

‘You will give evidence?’

‘I said I would so I will.’

‘I regret that your decision may cost the life of Eddie Deacon. I regret that.’

‘I will give evidence.’

‘And you will not, Signorina, be surprised if I seek to stiffen your resolve.’

She was told where she would be taken. She turned on her heel. It was a grander exit than had been her entry. She knew they did not trust her word.

*

Salvatore stood by a broken wardrobe. Under its plywood sides, back and doors there were dozens of cellophane-wrapped shirts. None of the packaging had been opened, none of the shirts used.

The man sat in his chair. The television played. He seemed oblivious to the movement around him.

The apartment was filled with men.

The truth came slowly to them all – to Salvatore and to the men of the Sail clan. He was Davide. He was an electrician and could be relied upon to fix a broken fusebox, to route power round a meter box and bypass it. He would come at any time, was so helpful. He was a man of routine and went to the city centre, down the long hill, on the bus every week and would mutter to any who listened that he thought, that week, he needed a new shirt. He was a man who polished the window behind his chair, which fronted on to the walkway. When he had been ordered to stand, there had been a secreted mirror in his chair, like a woman kept in her handbag to check her eye makeup or lipstick. He was almost unique in the great block in that he had allowed a fugitive to enter his apartment. Either his main door had been unlocked, or he had seen the fugitive and decided to aid him. Nothing fitted. Only suspicion meshed.

With the suspicion, the adding of the parts, came realisation of a truth.

The apartment was searched, stripped bare.

The camera was found.

The cables from the camera led to the recording box.

The recording box and its loaded tapes were lifted from the hidden recess.

The wire that ran from the recording box to the audio microphone, the pinhead type fitted to the outside wall, was ripped clear.

And he stood. None of the men, the clan foot-soldiers or Salvatore, seemed aware of him as he left his chair and the television. He took a last glimpse at the screen. It was afternoon scheduling, too late for the midday film and too early for the girls to be topless; they wore flimsy one-piece swimming costumes and pranced cheerfully. He did not, of course, bolt for the front door. He went down the corridor.

He did not know what he had achieved in his recent life.

Could not know to what use the handlers had put the information he had supplied.

He understood that the men who swarmed in his apartment were, almost, in shock at what they had found, and that time was short for him. Soon enough heads would clear and thoughts would focus. He went down the corridor towards his bathroom.

‘Duck here. Can you speak?’

‘Wait one-’

Lukas was in the corridor, had passed the main desk, where his ID was checked, had been through the metal detector, and turned. It raised eyebrows that he went back through the doors and on to the street, then into the square. He made for a central point, and it didn’t concern him that he had intruded into the middle of a soccer game. The kids buzzed round him.

‘Shoot.’

‘It’s like you’ve been on the dark side of the earth.’

‘Nothing to report. Didn’t report because I had nothing.’

‘I’m not nagging.’

‘I didn’t report because I had nothing to report. One-syllable stuff.’ The ball came by him and he hoofed it away. The kids clapped. ‘There’s no intelligence. There are no assets that anyone will share. Every agency here is fighting a breezy turf war. The contact, my door-opener, thinks the spooks are less than frank. Duck, how many times we heard that? But it’s just his reading of body language. I have nothing to do. I can’t advise on negotiation because we haven’t reached that status. I can’t suggest how a rescue might be launched because we don’t have a location. There’s no role for a co-ordinator if no negotiation’s in place, and there’s nowhere for a storm team to assault. Sorry and all that, Duck. That’s pretty goddam obvious. It’s frustrating.’

‘You want to hear about something?’ The voice rasped in Lukas’s ear.

‘What is it?’

‘Could I try you with a snatch off the Niger Delta, about sixty klicks into the Gulf, an oil-flow platform? Yanks, Canadians and three Brits. What makes it different is that local workers were killed when the hostage-takers came on board the rig so they can’t simply be paid off. The temperature’s hot. Chevron have the rig and their security people asked for you. I’m merely passing it on.’

‘You could tell them I’m spoken for, regrets and all that.’

‘Any idea how much longer?’

‘It’ll move fast.’

‘Too fast for you?’

‘Maybe.’

He liked Roddy ‘Duck’ Johnstone, trusted him and was appreciated, and he thought the call didn’t yet have purpose. It was peculiar for the boss not to needle in on a point without preamble – without crap.

‘I’m just throwing past you the second call on your time. The German Red Cross have contacted us. They have people in western Afghanistan, round Herat, and they’ve lost a field worker. Well, not actually lost him, just don’t know which warlord has him, and if he goes into the hands of the AQ… Well, they asked for you.’

‘Like the man said to Chevron,’ Lukas answered.

‘That you’re spoken for?’

‘That I’m spoken for. I feel kind of obligated to stay with this, let it run its course.’

‘Not getting soft and sentimental in your old age?’

He heard a brief grim chuckle. No one who knew him would ever accuse him in seriousness of either.

‘Hope not.’ Lukas bridled, and the ball was back at his feet. The kids stayed off him and he did a shimmy, kicked for goal. Wide. Lukas thought hostage co-ordination was easier than kicking footballs.

‘Don’t take this as impertinence, but can you see yourself making a contribution of value?’

‘Hope to. Will try to.’

‘A good kid?’

‘I didn’t do the legwork. You did,’ he said softly. Lukas wouldn’t put down his boss. No one had ever labelled him sarcastic… and he thought of those he had searched out, the close-up witnesses: the hotel manager, the fish-seller, a priest with a knapsack of guilt.

‘It’d be nice to bring him out.’

‘Yes. I have a desk to get back to.’

‘I’ll tell them you’ve work in hand – not available for the Niger Delta. Tell them you’ve things stacking up, not available for Herat. Damn you, Lukas, because you never give me anything. He’s an ordinary kid with an ordinary background, yet I think he’s special. It’s what people say and-’

‘The desk calls.’ Lukas rang off. He understood why the company boss, the God almighty of Ground Force Security, should waffle on about a ‘good kid’ and ‘nice to bring him out’. In the company there were people from differing law-enforcement and military backgrounds, and personal involvement was regarded as suitable for the fairies, not for them. But the matter in hand involved the fate of a kidnap victim, not pipeline security, not close protection for an ambassador, not convoy escort up a road blighted with culvert bombs. Kidnapping was different. It had a particular status with the people of this company, all levels, and of every other company in the same trade. He understood why his boss had put saccharine on the assignment, would have known there was no possibility of Lukas pulling out from Naples and taking a flight to Lagos or heading to Kabul. Almost the boss had pleaded with him for a best effort. He’d never done that before. He’d trawled the boy’s background, had done the parents, the guys who lived in the east London house and maybe some people the boy worked with. Most important, the boss had been lined up by a guy, one-time Special Forces, who did close protection for the company in the dark corners where the money was earned and where the risk of getting lifted was greatest. They were all, in this trade, bound together like blood relatives. All that made sense to Lukas, but there was something more – as if his boss had been well hooked… Funny thing, the emotion business: he could feel emotional about a complete stranger. Lukas didn’t do emotion – if he did, he could be slashed, minced. Great to feel good when the hostage walked to a helicopter or an armoured Humvee, a luxury of indulgence. And when the hostage didn’t walk, but stank from the sun, the flies swarmed, and was carried away in a black bag, emotion would wreck him. He needed the protection of apparent indifference… but it had gotten harder to play-act.

He had seen bad things in his time, and been party to them, and a tear had not fallen from his eye. Might be time to quit when it did. Should have felt calm, but didn’t. Should have felt on top of his game, the acknowledged expert in the field, but didn’t.

He went back inside, walked through the operations room and took his chair in the annexe. Quiet and respectful, he asked what was new, and was told that nothing was.

Two rats came close. They didn’t approach the body but blood had spurted from the mouth on impact.

Salvatore saw the rats when he craned out of the bathroom window. They had realised Davide had gone through the window a full half-hour before, and from three floors up each of the men who had looked at the man lying with his head at such an angle had pronounced death. They had gone on with the search. More had arrived. There was a capodecine , bustling with urgency, there to see at first hand the scale of an intelligence failure in the midst of the Sail, a comando piazza, who traded off that walkway, came to check on the parameters of that failure, and two magazzinieri who warehoused on the third level. There was an aquirento, the principal buyer for the clan. All came, from the walkway, to try to measure the limits of a small disaster. They had gone.

Salvatore watched the rats from the window and saw them lap the blood of an old man who had played at being an idiot, like cats with milk.

The body lay on the concrete paving, with a crown of weeds for the shattered head, the feet between two overflowing rubbish bins.

Immacolata stepped out of the Alfa, Orecchia and Rossi on either side of her. Two more men had peeled from the police car outside the gate. The front door was open and she saw more men in the hallway. She wore dark glasses that covered most of her cheeks, with a headscarf over her hair: it was a crude disguise, would have fooled few. A man, with no intention of backing off in the face of force, the guns and the threat, watered a flowerbed in the middle of his front garden. She had been told she shouldn’t hesitate on the pavement or the path. Across the street, a couple watched the show – little else would match the arrival of an armed convoy. Orecchia had taken her arm.

She had been to the house before but it seemed an age since she had last walked up that path and gone through the front door to be greeted with the hug and the kiss of the closest friend she had known.

It was because they didn’t trust her that she had been brought here. There had been no consultation. She was a gift-wrapped parcel on a conveyor-belt. She had not spoken in the car but her mind had turned over the previous time she had been on that road out of Naples and across the flat inland plain that stretched to Nola. Then Silvio had driven. Then there had not been a machine pistol on the seat, gas grenades and a vest. She could not have said, tracing that same route, how many days, hours, nights it had been since Silvio had driven her to Nola. The days and nights since had concertinaed, and the spread of time no longer had meaning for her. She couldn’t have said how long it had been since she had run from the basilica, how long since she had paid fifty euros for a ten-euro posy, how long since the heel of her shoe had broken, her clothes had been torn and she had lain on the ground, assaulted and abused. She didn’t know.

She followed Orecchia into the hall. Castrolami was there. He seemed to tower in the place, to minimise it. On the floor, near to his feet, there were two neat piles of female clothing at hip height. Across the hallway there were three black plastic sacks, filled and knotted at the neck. She realised her visit had interrupted a schedule. One of the two piles was of clothes for early spring, late autumn and winter, and she recognised the anorak Marianna had worn on a January day, down on the via Partenope, when they had walked and done the farewells. The next day Immacolata had gone to London. The other pile was of late-spring clothes, which would have lasted through summer and early autumn, and at the top of the heap lay the faded T-shirt with the image of Che that had been a favourite of Marianna. She had arrived, which meant the disposal of her friend’s clothes was delayed. She assumed the plastic bags would go to a rubbish tip, and that the heaps had been sorted carefully and would be taken to a charity – perhaps one overseen by the nuns at the basilica. She could remember her friend in the yellow anorak with the black underarm panels and the North Face logo, and in the guerrilla T-shirt.

Castrolami said, not dropping his voice, seeming not to care if he was overheard, ‘At the palace the decision was taken to provide security for the family as soon as rumour would have reported your collaboration, Signorina. It was thought that the parents of your friend were at risk when you came into our custody, as leverage. Then the boy, your one-time lover, made himself available to them and the threat against the parents was – briefly – reduced. We anticipate that the boy will be murdered. You have not made a public announcement that you are withdrawing your potential testimony and the deadline expires in a few hours. If we had a good line into the kidnap situation we would be able to delay and protract the process. We do not. We cannot rescue him because we don’t know where he is held. He will be murdered very soon, we anticipate tomorrow, unless we can stall and deceive. Then they – the Borelli family – will need more leverage. Possibly they will come here for it. The lives of these people are doubly ruined, Signorina. They have lost their daughter, poisoned by toxic greed, and they should – if they have any sense – pack up, sell their home, leave their employment and move away. They would then have left behind the grave of their daughter, and to visit it they would require an armed escort.’

‘Will they run?’ she asked.

‘For them to answer,’ was his curt response. ‘There is a consequence for your actions. You should know that. If they were to stay, we couldn’t commit the resources for a permanent guard. They would be alone. The support of their neighbours would be temporary and soon they would be alone. Every day they must look over their shoulders and try to spot the killer stalking them. Quite soon, at their places of work, Human Resources will say, “It’s not personal but you bring danger to your colleagues, and it’s with great regret that we must ask you to leave. We must think of the company’s welfare, the school’s, the safety of colleagues and pupils.” If they stay they won’t be forgotten. They’re marked. They’re a permanent way of hurting you. It’s the world in which we live.’

‘Why do I have to see them?’

‘So that you can never say you didn’t know the consequences of your actions. And when the boy is dead and we’re given the body, I’ll drive you to the mortuary – perhaps the small one at the Incurables – so that you can look into his face and see what they’ve done to him. You’ll never be allowed to say you didn’t know.’

She stepped out. She pushed past him. She knew the layout of the house and went right, through a door that bypassed the kitchen entrance, then out through the room where the computer was that Luigi Rossetti used to prepare the modules of his classes for his pupils, and where Marianna had done work she brought home from her college course. The doors were wide open and there was a patio outside, with chairs and a table, and wire mesh on which a vine grew, throwing shade.

Beside that door there was a large cardboard box, whose top flaps had not been folded down so she could see textbooks – the same she had used – and ring binders. She thought they had eradicated their daughter from the home. How long was it? She had kept no track of time, but it might have been a week.

They were sitting down. The garden stretched away, neat and small, and a policeman stood at the far end with a machine pistol slung on his neck from a webbing strap. She saw the hands that had snatched at her clothing, the feet that had kicked her and the mouths that had torn away her dignity. Neither stood and neither waved her to a chair. Nothing, Immacolata thought, is forgiven.

Marianna’s father, Luigi, said, ‘We didn’t want you to come, but they insisted. There is no welcome.’

Marianna’s mother, Maria, said, ‘There is a boy, nineteen, admitted this week to the ospedale. He has followed Marianna to the Santa Maria della Pieta. He may now be in the same bed, but certainly in the same ward, and he has the same symptoms. I don’t know the family but Luigi taught him for a year. It’s said he’ll die the day after tomorrow.’

Luigi said, ‘We haven’t visited the family – we didn’t want to intrude on the crisis afflicting them.’

Maria said, ‘There were others before Marianna. There will be others after the boy.’

‘Will you go?’ she blurted.

‘Go where?’ A frown knitted the father’s forehead.

‘Will you leave?’

‘And take Marianna with us, break her peace? Or leave her behind? Can you imagine us doing either?’ The mother’s shaking head expressed her incredulity.

‘I wondered if-’

‘We shall stay. If they kill us we’ll join her. We’re not frightened of them. There’s nothing else they can take from us,’ they said in chorus.

‘You know what I’m doing?’

‘We were told,’ the father said.

‘We respect it… but we do not forgive and we do not forget,’ the mother said. ‘Also, we were told of a boy who loves you, and that they’ll kill him. But you won’t weaken – it is what we were told.’

‘I’ll testify against my family.’

She had said it, ‘I’ll testify against my family,’ and at that moment the scales tipped and she had made her commitment. They turned away from her. It was as if she was of no further use to them. She was ignored, vulnerable. Did Castrolami rescue her? He did not. She fidgeted and shuffled her feet. She wondered if, one day, she would be somewhere in England, in the countryside, green, near cows, and she would be with the father and the mother of Eddie Deacon, explaining to them what choices had been made and the consequences.

She spun on her heel.

She faced Castrolami who lounged at the door. Immacolata said, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’

A smile widened at his mouth, his arms unfolded and he took her elbow. At that moment, she believed, she had his respect.

She walked past the box of books, the files, and past the bags that would go to a tip, and past the two heaps of Marianna’s clothing. Orecchia came out of the kitchen, Rossi following him, and they readied their weapons.

They went out into the sunlight and the brightness dazzled her.

They headed back towards the dual-carriageway and Naples, driving past fields that had been harvested and groves of apple trees, and crossed a stream that was almost dry. She didn’t know where the poisons had been dumped or where Marianna Rossetti had played, or whether that was the stream she had paddled or swum in. The car was silent.

Nothing more to be said. She had made her pledge and could not turn back if she wanted ever again to walk with a pinch of pride. She had killed the boy – might, herself, have held a knife or a pistol.

She broke the quiet: ‘Am I a circus freak?’

She wasn’t answered.

‘Do I have the right to know where I am to be exhibited next?’

No reply.

It couldn’t be challenged. A lawyer’s clerk had the right to escort the mother-in-law of an accused woman, not yet convicted and entitled to legal presumption of innocence, to see the daughter-in-law, and take her toiletries, clothing and fruit.

Massimo escorted Anna Borelli, drove his car and listened.

‘Too much time is lost, and no message is sent.’

He wished he hadn’t heard.

‘It should be done in the morning.’

His own grandmother had a baggy stomach, wide hips, an excessive bosom, a twinkling eye and a smiling mouth. She teased him about the marriage invitation that hadn’t been sent to her, the lack of babies to drool over. This woman, the hag, was sheer contrast: not a gram of spare flesh, no fullness in her chest, a dulled deathlight in her eyes and thin lips. She seemed to find no pleasure in her world. His own grandmother, on his mother’s side, living in comfort in Merghellina, north along the coast and only a few kilometres from the city’s centre, couldn’t have spoken those whipped words.

‘Or done in the night, then dumped in the morning.’

He crossed the piazza Sannazzaro, then cut down to the via Francesco Caracciolo. Soon they would be close to his grandmother’s apartment. At this time of the day, she would be watering the plants on her balcony, or maybe she would have started to mix a pesto for Massimo’s uncle, a bachelor of fifty-three who hadn’t yet left home. His grandmother’s life was ordered and regulated. His other uncle, Umberto, the lawyer, was on his father’s side and his character was harsher and colder. Umberto would have been at ease with this woman – a strega – in his car and would have listened unfazed as she discussed, without passion, the killing of a young man.

‘I have thought of where the cadaver should be left.’

His own grandmother was nervous of small spiders and wouldn’t even swat a fly on a window-pane. Massimo wondered as he drove – near to his grandmother’s now – how many men and women had lost their lives on the witch’s say-so. He could imagine those fingers, with the wrinkled skin and the pared nails, wrapped tight round a man’s throat – he swerved and nearly hit a taxi.

‘The cadaver should be where the impact is greatest.’

They were past Merghellina and the marina where the launches rolled on the gentle waves in the shelter of the breakwater. At one more set of traffic-lights they were beyond the franchise area of the Piccirillo clan, and were entering the territory of the Troncone and Grasso families. That information might have been given on an advertising hoarding or a frontier control point. A man who answered to the Piccirillo would not cross that street beyond the traffic-lights and go north to trade narcotics or to extract protection dues; neither would a man employed by the Troncone or the Grasso come south. Very ordered. He would be at the gaol in ten minutes.

She said, ‘The cadaver should be left at the main door to the Palace of Justice, but not before nine in the morning.’

He didn’t ask how a vehicle would bring a dead body across a wide piazza that was a pedestrian-only zone. How could it be tipped on to the patterned paving, under the sign that read, ‘Palazzo di Giustizia’ and the flag, when there was always a carabinieri vehicle parked there, with two armed men inside it from the protection unit? How? He did not ask.

‘I have spoken to Carmine. I told him what I thought and then I told him what he thought. It was the same.’ He thought, incredibly, that a suspicion of a smile hovered briefly at her lips. ‘You, Massimo, will take my instructions to Salvo. There is no time for a rendezvous. You take them to him. Kill him early in the morning and leave his body for when they arrive at work.’

His hand shook. The direction of his car wobbled. He would not have dared to contradict Anna Borelli. They drove in silence the last kilometres to the parking area outside the walls, fences and watchtowers of the women’s gaol where the daughter-in-law was held.

What did guys do? They had last visits, sent messages and wrote final letters. Eddie would have no visit, did not expect an opportunity to send a message, and could hardly write a last bloody letter with his hands trussed behind his back.

What else did guys do? They put their affairs in order. Problem was that Eddie had no ‘affairs’ worthy of the name, none that were tidy or chaotic. He had no money beyond a current account and a Post Office savings book that had somehow been forgotten while he was at college or it would have been stripped bare. He had other things to exercise him than worrying about whether he had paid his tax, and whether the last pension contribution had gone out of his account, and that he hadn’t made a will.

Was that actually what guys did?

He thought that his father’s and mother’s affairs would be in order – last letters sealed, with a second-class stamp on them, legal things up to date, all relevant tax settled.

It was because Eddie had become, after a fashion, comfortable and because his body hurt less that his mind had allowed that door to open. He was better off when the pain was rich and thinking didn’t intrude.

Next thing would be – going through that door. How would they do it?

Had to squirm. Had a flash in his mind of the hood going over his head, but seeing a pistol before his eyes were covered, or a knife, or being taken to a high floor and feeling the air on his skin and knowing he was beside an open window. Quite deliberately, Eddie turned on to his right side so that his weight crushed his ribs. The pain might have made him squeal, but he welcomed it, which seemed to slam that door. When ‘How would they do it?’ was gone, he rolled back. The exertion sent the pain into his head and feet, legs and arms, chest and stomach, but the mind was cleared.

More philosophical.

Quite a jab on the nose, actually. A reality check. Eddie Deacon’s life didn’t count when it was set against a principle.

Pretty bloody heavy stuff.

He chewed on it. Who had made the decision? Who had sat on the judgement bench? Had they applied logic and intellect to the process? Or tossed a bloody coin?

If it was logic and intellect, would they go to a chapel, lower themselves on to a hassock and say a smug little prayer? If a coin had been tossed, would they have headed off to the pub and sunk a few, raising a glass to him – ‘Sorry and all that, Eddie, nothing personal’?

Would have been nice if it was all faceless people. Big policemen in fancy uniforms, with medal ribbons in bright lines, politicians waiting for the limousine to pull up, escorts to open the door, and judges in robes – easier for Eddie if it was men who did not have faces.

It was her.

It was his Mac who had said that the ‘principle’ won out.

His Immacolata… He was curled on his side, the pressure off his ribcage, and the pain had subsided. It might have been, from what Eddie remembered, three weeks after he had met her, maybe four, and they had been in the pub with the boys from the house. He’d only been on the second pint and his glass wasn’t even half empty, but she had pushed the table, reached out her hand and taken his, then yanked him up and led him out. They had gone back to the house and she had set the pace, going ever quicker, had run the length of the street to the steps and the front door. It had not been a slow seduction undressing, but a strip-off – and she had beaten him to it, naked when he still had his socks on. They had made love fast, then again, slower, and hadn’t stopped when the boys had come back from the pub. They had done it again when the house was quiet and the boys’ late film was finished. He’d probably only ever said it to her once, whispered it in her ear with wonderment: ‘I love you, Immacolata, and will love you till… ’ She hadn’t let him finish. He thought, remembering the declaration, that it had been after the first time and before the second. The third time, bloody near knackered, she had brought him on hard and deep, and he had damn near broken the bed. He had meant it, every word, every syllable – ‘… will love you till… ’ She hadn’t let him say how long he would love her, and her mouth had closed over his, and her tongue had stilled his, and her body had brought warm sweat to his and he had squirmed under her. ‘I love you, Immacolata… ’ He had said it, she had not. There was a cough at the door.

Salvatore was there.

His Immacolata… Only once had they shared a sour exchange. He’d drunk too much, she was sober. He’d wanted horseplay, she’d wanted to read a textbook. He’d had a normal, undemanding day tomorrow, she’d had an exam.

Salvatore leaned on the door jamb and watched him, was huge above him.

His Immacolata… He had told her, boisterous, to ‘lighten up’, she had told him he was wasting his talent, could do more and go further, that he could make a difference – and he had flounced out, gone for a leak, and it had never been mentioned again and there had been no suggestion as to how he could ‘make a difference’.

Salvatore studied him, as if he was an enigma. Mindful that he was open to another kicking, Eddie glimpsed the face looming over him, and thought it vulnerable – bloody bizarre.

Returned to the core theme. The principle had won, breasted the tape, for Immacolata’s prize. He had not won, bloody hadn’t. Principle coming before his survival didn’t make him angry: it stifled his feelings.

Salvatore had a cigarette in his mouth. Smoke came up from it and went towards the web where the big spider was. Abruptly, he moved a hand – Eddie, trussed, unable to shift, didn’t feel threatened – which went into his pocket and took out a pack of Marlboro Lights. He pulled out a cigarette and bent to slip the filter into Eddie’s mouth, where the lips felt triple-size swollen, and lit it. He didn’t say anything, and Eddie didn’t thank him.

Three times the ash broke off and scattered on Eddie’s chest, then Salvatore retrieved the stub and trod it out under his trainer. He didn’t leave, but stayed in the doorway and stared down.

He did not know if it had been, for Immacolata, a big or small decision to go with the principle rather than his life… He didn’t think he’d ever get to know.

There was a sliver of window that Eddie could see, past Salvatore’s shoulder, and he realised that the day had died and the light had failed, that dusk closed on the buildings. He didn’t know if he would see the dawn – because he was second to the principle.

A body lay on the paving at the base of the giant block that was the Sail where in excess of ten thousand souls lived, and it was unreported. Many who lived in the disparate towers of Scampia, with a population of seventy thousand souls, walked close to it as the shadows lengthened, but were careful not to see it… The rats had drained the pool of blood. Later, with darkness, they might start on the cheeks or the throat.

Few of the residents of the third level of the Sail knew of the first movements along the walkway. It was a precaution. Heavy sacks, filled with packages sealed in oiled, water-resistant paper, were carried away. And – an additional precaution – the locks on the barred gates were checked and heavier chains used to fasten them. Merely as a precaution, the clan capo who controlled that sector moved out, slipped away, went unnoticed.

Massimo had waited more than fifteen minutes at the chaotic road junction at piazza Nicola Amore, one of the pods for tunnelling the new metro system, when he was flashed by a scooter.

He was given a helmet. Awkwardly, he climbed astride the pillion and had barely achieved a grip on the man’s heavy leather coat when it surged away. Massimo knew the statutes of the law – he could have quoted the article that listed Accessory to Murder. The scooter wove though rush-hour traffic. He didn’t know whether he could control the feeling of acute sickness or whether he would fill the interior of the helmet with vomit.

Castrolami came into the annexe.

Lukas raised his head, queried with his eyes.

Castrolami said, ‘She’s strong, she’s fine. I have other surprises for her, but she’s good. What do we have here?’

The collator used his hands for the gesture. The psychologist murmured, ‘ Niente di nuovo,’ and shrugged, seeming to squirm a little at ‘Nothing new’, and the ROS men kept their heads down, as if they declined to be part of the failure.

Lukas said, to himself, to Castrolami, to anyone with nothing better to do than strain and listen to the gentle lilt of his voice, the soft accent when he spoke in Italian, ‘It’s what we do, isn’t it? We sit around and we wait. We live off sandwiches and fries and high-dosage coffee, and we tell ourselves that the break will come. Don’t know from where and don’t know how but we have to believe it will. Smoke too much, eat too much, drink too much caffeine, but be ready to go, because we’re not the people out with the kids at a parents’ staff meeting, and we’re not at the goddam cinema, and we’re not doing a fishing weekend up-country, so we wait, and we believe it’ll come… And if we get the break, and if we get up front and we have audio contacts, maybe even an eyeball contact, it may get played out for a week or be settled in a half-minute – a few words that foul up or do the business. We hit the break running, and we can’t say we’re tired or that we’re coming off shift, or that we’re going into a meal stoppage, and because of all that we’re the privileged few. What’s best – my small, insignificant opinion – is that we’re not in armies and we don’t have a big picture to fulfil, or generals breathing on our shoulders. We’re anonymous and unsung, and we don’t get to stand in a line for a regulation quota of medals. We live in the dirt, we operate in dark corners, we’re accountable only to success or failure. We smell and don’t get back home or to a hotel room for changes of underwear and socks, but there’s no place I’d rather be, and there are no people here that I wouldn’t want to be with. I hope we get the boy back. That about wraps up the bullshit stakes – apologies and all that.’

One of the ROS guys muttered, ‘Bravo,’ and repeated himself. Another slapped the stock of a weapon he was cleaning. Lukas had not, in his adult and working life, made a remotely similar declaration. It was as if the boy, the victim, had released something trapped deep in his soul, reached where no others had. Someone else folded his magazine tight and hit Bravo’s head with it in simulated applause. And he recognised that a sense of growing apprehension, new and unlearned, had driven him to make the speech. And there was a short rippled clap from the collator and the psychologist. Apprehension? He cut it. Before it blazed, he doused it.

Castrolami, dry, asked, ‘You do that talk most days?’

‘Every morning in front of the shaving mirror.’

The quip, bogus, was ignored. ‘Are you quitting, win or lose?’

‘Doubt I’ve anything else to do. Suppose not.’

‘Why did you say that stuff?’

‘Seemed a good idea.’ Lukas grinned. ‘You wait for the break – what’s the puzzle? You don’t know where it’s coming from, but the chance is that it comes.’

Gerald Seymour

The Collaborator