The Collaborator

19

‘My name is Lukas. I’m a friend of Eddie’s parents, not a policeman. I’d like to help.’

He twisted a little, lowered his head and murmured to Castrolami below him, ‘This is advice. If you ever incline to hostage-taking and a jerk says, “I’d like to help”, my advice is to shoot him, and fast.’

Lukas had that mischief in his face, but then his head rose and it was gone. He was sober, sombre. ‘I’m here to see if I can help,’ he shouted, throwing his voice down the walkway.

The mischief was off his face but it stayed inside him. First time the mischief had taken root since he had been at the forward airstrip in the mountains beyond Bogota and the captain, Pablo, had asked for advice and it had been suggested that the assault team go in: there was not much else in Lukas’s life that pumped excitement.

The tip of a directional microphone lay in front of his trainers, and by his ankle the comms kid took off his headphones and gave them to Castrolami.

He yelled again: ‘Would be good if I could help to sort this out, and that’s what I want to do – if you’ll allow me.’

Because he now stood square in the centre of the walkway he could see far down it. There had been an accident in the hanging of the washing so there was an avenue of vision for him. He had manoeuvred himself into a position where he had a good eyeball on the boy and on the hood who held him.

‘My name, I’m saying it again, is Lukas. What I’m looking to avoid is anyone getting hurt, and any way I can, I’ll try to help prevent that.’

What Lukas saw: every few seconds, the hood’s head moved and took the boy’s with it, and he rated it as a hell of a hard call for Franco, the sniper, to have a zero on the small piece of skull that was visible as a target. And the bodies were locked together, like they were in stand-up sex out in the yard at a kids’ party. He didn’t rate the chances of the sniper getting a clean shot. And the pistol was against the back of the boy’s head, and Lukas could see in the available light that the finger was inside the loop and against the trigger bar. Most likely a shot to the head – a killing shot – would induce a muscle spasm through the body. Most certainly, a chest shot – whether fatal and into an organ or a wounding shot – would set off a decisive twitch through tissue and ligament and it would go to that finger. A spasm, a twitch, would be sufficient to depress the trigger bar… wasted exercise. They had taught the siege-busters at the Quantico training unit to do a double tap in the head, close range, pistol if possible. Two shots to the brain might suppress a spasm.

‘I told you what I want. I want it. Now you have twenty-five minutes. You use time.’ The voice came back, reedy.

Lukas thought the hood was exhausted. God alone knew how long it had been since he’d slept in a bed. Maybe not for two nights or three. Exhausted and hungry – wouldn’t have eaten proper cooked food. Exhaustion and hunger, to Lukas, balanced out. The hood would be irrational and unpredictable. He would make mistakes and be subject, big-time, to judgement errors. They were the equations Lukas worked on, were what he knew.

Castrolami, below him, beside him, murmured, ‘We have a feed through, the psychologist hears this. He says that Salvatore would dream of a legend – was never taken, killed with honour, will already know that nothing can be negotiated and that he is boxed. Salvatore knows it. He is a killer, he expects to kill. More important than anything to Salvatore is the belief that woven into the legend will be respect. The psychologist says-’

Lukas said, ‘I have his drift. Thank him.’

‘What do you do?’

‘What I try to do is get up close, talk a bit, get the pistol off the boy’s neck, take it from there. Do you want to indulge the hood, give him police-assisted suicide – his legend – or do you want to fuck him?’

‘Charge him, convict him, hear the key turn and lose it, smell the decay as he rots and the years go by. That is a better message than giving him respect.’

‘Harder to achieve, but a goal… Just watch me, just be ready… as they say, on a wing and a prayer.’

He moved forward but slowly. Like he was the tide coming in. Short, crabbed steps and he was gone from Castrolami and the comms kid and was, in a few steps, separated from the Tractor, the Engineer and the Bomber.

Lukas could see the boy’s face, part of it. There was bruising in rings, multicoloured, round the eyes, the cheeks were scarred, the lips grotesque, and there were blood smears from a wound on the forehead and from the nose, and more blood was caked where it had dribbled from the mouth. The boy wouldn’t be standing if he hadn’t been held by the belt and the arm. There had been just blind fear on the face when he had first seen it, but there had been a change, subtle. Like hope was born.

There were many burdens on Lukas’s back and shoulders. The one he liked least was that he gave little packages of fragile hope to hostages when he approached them.

He saw the increasing agitation on the hood’s face, and went slower. He did short steps that were barely the length of his shoe… If the mother-fucker moved the pistol from the boy’s neck, if the mother-fucker moved his own head clear of the boy’s, then he made an opportunity for Franco, the sniper, to shoot with the Beretta M501 rifle. Lukas reckoned, through a 1.5-6 x 42mm Zeiss scope, that the sniper would have a good view, wounds and warts, of the two faces… It would be Castrolami’s call before the sniper fired, and that was not the goal set.

He did not, of course, but he would have liked to offer more of his advice to Castrolami. Would have stopped and turned and the advice would have been: ‘If a little guy who says he’s just there to help ever starts walking towards you – and you’re a hostage-taker – and has a decent, honest smile on his face, and looks concerned for you, just shoot him. Don’t hesitate. Shoot.’ He must have reached close to halfway from the start point to where the boy and the hood were. Would have been about twenty paces from them.

Lukas felt the crisis moment was on him.

The scream: ‘Stop.’

The pistol did not move off the neck and the heads did not separate.

A second scream: ‘Stop. Do not come close.’

At twenty paces, Lukas could be almost conversational. ‘You don’t want me nearer, I’m not coming nearer. Like I said, I’m just here to help. Let’s make a start. I’m Lukas, and I’m not a policeman. I’m a friend of Eddie’s mother and father. I want to help them, and help Eddie, and I want to help you. I want this to end with everybody winning. It’s where I’m headed – everybody wins. You don’t want me closer, I don’t come closer. You’re called Salvatore, yes? Good name. The Saviour, Il Salvatore – it’s a great name to have. Right, I’m going to start doing some helping. Salvatore, what do you need? Do you need some food? We can get pizza up here. You need water? We can do water that’s still or with gas. Cigarettes? Tell me the brand and I can get it.’

The pistol hadn’t shifted and the heads hadn’t separated. It was early. Lukas had time.

‘I will help you, and you can trust me…’

There were some of them, dumb and stupid, exhausted and hungry, who believed they could indeed trust the little guy who came close and offered help, food and drink and cigarettes, and they either stared up at a cell window or were dead, buried.

‘Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.’

He realised, now, many things. Clarity swamped the mind of Salvatore. The walkway was sealed at either end. The apartments fronting on to it were either evacuated or locked and barred. He had no freedom of movement, was as a rat in a corner – with teeth – without anywhere to run. He wondered at what stage Fangio had slipped away on his scooter. No mention made of Immacolata and whether she would retract evidence. No appeal, grovel or beg for the life – safety – of the boy he was close against. If he killed the boy, Eddie, who had slept with Immacolata and was her lover, then he himself was dead. Maybe half a second after he had pulled the trigger, he was dead.

Was it his destiny? Did he crave death?

Didn’t know. Had no one to tell him. Didn’t have Pasquale Borelli, who had taught him to read, write, shoot and kill. Didn’t have Gabriella Borelli to tell him whether he wanted to die, be shot down, and didn’t walk behind her and follow the sway of her hips. Had no one, was alone… He had seen so many. They didn’t lurch back when shot, as the movies showed it. They fell. They were like the cattle in the abattoir that the clan owned. They subsided. And they twitched. Chickens did, they flapped. Men’s muscles moved. While the blood flowed, the fingers fidgeted, tried to catch dirt or the concrete on a pavement, the vinyl tiles on a bar floor. He had seen it. Death was frozen on a face, that last expression. Laughing? Never. Happy? Never. Supreme? Never. Etched on to a dead face was, at the last, fear. Did he want it?

He saw a television cameraman who filmed and smoked, then heaved the camera off his shoulder, dragged a last time on the cigarette and threw down the filter. It would be on the walkway near his head. He saw two reporters and heard their laughter, as if they were the latterday crowd in the piazza Mercato when the aristocrats were hanged, and maybe the laughter was about the filth of his clothes and the smell of his body, and he saw children who stared blank-faced at the blood. He didn’t know how long his photo would stay on the screens of the kids’ mobiles.

‘One step more, and I blow his head away,’ Salvatore yelled. Didn’t have to, not to be heard twenty metres away. If he did, if he squeezed the trigger, he was dead a half-second later. Knew that, realised it.

The voice was so calm. ‘Because I’m here to help, I need to know the type of pizza we can order, and if the water should be still or with gas, and the brand of cigarettes. Look, we’re not in a hurry. You think about it, give me an answer when you’re ready – what’s on offer is food, something to drink and cigarettes. Take your time, Salvatore – we have all the time you need.’

And the face was so reasonable, and it smiled at him. He had no one to ask, to tell him whether he wanted to eat and drink and smoke, to die or to live, and the hands of his watch moved – couldn’t be stopped.

Three raids, supported by arrest warrants… In the via Forcella, a good-sized crowd watched as Carmine and Anna Borelli were led out through the main door of the block, escorted past the stall, empty, where the fish-seller traded. They didn’t look fearsome. Anna Borelli carried her teeth, had not inserted them in her mouth, and wore a pink night wrap over a white gown and had on fluffy pink slippers. Carmine Borelli looked confused and his hair was wild. He clutched his stick and wore striped pyjamas. A police officer followed them with two overflowing bags of day clothes. They had not been given time to dress because the police had feared a riot when they were taken away, but it didn’t happen. No riot, neither were they handcuffed. Two insults, both hard to stomach. To prompt no reaction in Naples was to be dead, irrelevant.

In an alleyway off the via Tribunali, the section running to the west of the via Duomo, the lawyer was arrested. He fared worse than the old clan leader and the old brothel keeper: he was handcuffed and the photographers of Cronaca and Mattino were there to poke lenses in his face. He was ashen. He wore the previous day’s socks, shirt and underwear, and had to hold up his trousers because he had dressed at such speed that he had forgotten his belt. The crowd jeered because it was a sport to see a big man taken down. He was headed now for the foul, faeces-smelling cells reserved at Poggioreale for prisoners arriving late at night. It was the ultimate insult to him that he was not ferried to the Questura or to piazza Dante, but to a common cell.

Near to the Palace of Justice, behind the Holiday Inn that rose in the business zone of the city, there was an apartment block that was a target only for the most successful to aspire to. It was – had been – the home of Massimo, the lawyer’s clerk and nephew. On a table in the kitchen area there was a fulsome letter of apology to his family, of explanation to the prosecutor, of pleading to his God. He apologised for the disgrace bred from greed. He explained the link between the kidnap of the English boy, the Borelli veterans and the hitman, Il Pistole. He pleaded that he should not be eternally damned for carrying a sentence of death. One of the police officers who found him suspended from a skylight in a smaller bedroom by a sheet had had experience of hangings. He said that the signs on the neck showed that the young man, having kicked away the chair, and choking, had tried to save himself, and failed; weals at the neck showed the efforts he had made following his change of heart.

The net closed around a clan, stifled its breath, strangled it.

Her mother spat at her.

Gabriella Borelli had been given an officer’s coat to drape over her shoulders but, with or without it, she gave no sign of cold.

No response from Immacolata.

They had thought, at the palace, that she would lecture her mother in her conversion from the clan’s culture. She did not. She said nothing. The tactic, employing silence, had been determined in the car that had brought her round the bay, along the coast road and through the gaol’s gates.

The spit was on Immacolata’s cheek and her chin and she did not wipe it.

There was a table between them. Two women guards were behind her mother, but Immacolata sensed they would intervene only if there was a physical attack. She thought them in awe of her mother. Rossi and Orecchia were behind her. Her mother, before spitting, had used different avenues to demonstrate her disgust, contempt for and loathing of her daughter: the shame to the family of a collaborator, the betrayal of her relatives, the treachery of siding with the prosecutor against her own.

She had not flinched. She had stared back at her mother, had ridden the punches as a boxer did. She had been taunted: where would she live, who would befriend her, could she live a lie for the rest of her life? Did she understand what it would be to cringe each time on a darkened street if she heard a footstep behind her? Did she know how much bounty money her mother and father in joint enterprise had placed on her life? Did she understand that she would never be forgiven?

There was the spit, then her mother’s final throw: ‘You sleep with a boy, you curl your legs round him, you take him into you, you fuck him, and you kill him… I never betrayed your father. You took the boy into your bed, and he means nothing to you. You kill him. It is not Salvatore who kills him, it’s you. I love your father and I love Vincenzo, Giovanni and Silvio, and they love me… You cannot love. The boy comes, searches for you, will give his life for you. You cannot love because you’re cold. You’re not a daughter. You have the cold of a whore. You don’t know what love is, what loyalty is. The boy did. You’re cold, not of Naples. You kill the boy. It’s as if you fire the shot or hold the knife. Do you imagine that one of our family, if there was love, would turn away and condemn to death? Perhaps you fucked him like a whore does, were cold… You will never love. You’re not capable. You’re not your father’s daughter, not my daughter. You’re not your brothers’ sister. All of our family have warmth, can love, not you. The proof of it? You killed the boy.’

Her mother swung round, did not spit again, and strode to the door. As if she was a monarch, the two women officers scurried to get to it first and to open it for her. They stood aside so that she could pass through. Immacolata heard more keys jangle in harmony, more doors opened and closed in slammed timpani, the distant trill of her mother’s laughter, as if she deigned to share a joke with her escort. Then the voices, the footsteps, the music of keys and the percussion of doors faded, were gone.

Her chin trembled.

They had set Immacolata hurdles to leap, she understood that. She had cleared them all, except this one. Here, she had stumbled.

She looked at her watch – had no reason to but did – and saw that the minute hand showed five to the hour. The watch was in a gold setting but discreet. It had been her father’s present to her on her twenty-first birthday, one of many presents, and had become part of her. She had worn that watch in the telephone kiosk on an east London street when she had made the international call, and in an east London park when she had met the enemy of her family, and on a flight to Rome and in a car that had carried her south and home. It was five minutes to an hour, and the time had no significance to her. The watch was part of an old life. She took it off, opened her fingers, let it fall to the concrete floor of the room that had been made available to them in the late hours while a prison slept. She had been wounded, and knew it. Deliberately, Immacolata put her heel on the watch face, and killed it at five minutes to an hour.

Rossi pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, unfolded it and – without fanfare – wiped the spittle off her face. Orecchia took her arm.

She left the watch behind her, for a cleaner to find or a trustee prisoner, as she had left behind a padlock on a bridge.

‘Do we have long?’ she asked.

‘Not long,’ Orecchia answered.

She said where, now, she wanted to be taken. Rossi shrugged. Orecchia said it would be done. She thought they humoured her because of what her mother had said. She didn’t know the importance of a watch stopped at five minutes to an hour.

He did not want food. He did not want water. He did not want cigarettes. It was five times now that he had been asked if he wanted to eat, drink, smoke. He yelled it back at the small man who sat cross-legged on the walkway. Nobody listened to him. Why did nobody listen? In Forcella, in Sanita, men listened when he spoke. He didn’t have to raise his voice. He could whisper and men would crane forward to hear what he said, and others would hush those at the back. If he was angry, men were fearful. If he made a joke, men laughed.

‘I don’t want anything.’

‘It’s just that it’s a long time since you ate or drank, Salvatore. Myself, I could do with a cigarette and-’

‘Anything except that you look at the time. Look.’

The man had a gentle voice. ‘Use my name,’ he said. ‘It’s Lukas. What I always say is that a guy’s name is the most important thing he owns. I’m Lukas, you’re Salvatore, he’s Eddie. I don’t want to be hustled by time.’

‘Look at your watch.’

‘All right, easy, all right. Can I say something, Salvatore? The gun. Can the gun be moved from where it is? Eddie’s head? You’re tired, course you are. Can you just shift the gun a little? They frighten me, guns do.’

‘Look at your watch – see the time.’

‘How about you move the gun and I look at my watch? Is that reasonable? You’re tired, that situation, your hand might slip. Maybe you have a hair trigger. We don’t want an accident.’

‘Look at the time.’ He couldn’t now see his own watch. Hadn’t seen it since the man had come forward and offered food, then sat, and Salvatore hadn’t dared to move, not a centimetre, and the guns’ aim was on him. The way his arm was across the boy’s chest, and his own head was half buried in the hair at the back of the boy’s skull, didn’t allow him to see the face of his watch… but now he heard the chime, distant. A church’s clock, a church’s bell. Could have been the Church of the Resurrection he had passed on Fangio’s pillion. Midnight’s strike… If a player of importance, a figure who was respected, let a given deadline drift, allowed an ultimatum to slip, then face – authority – was lost, could never be regained.

‘That is fair exchange, Salvatore. You move your pistol, shift it a little, and I’ll check my watch. Listen, friend, all I’m here to do is to help.’

He screamed. He heard his own voice, detached from it, as if it was another who howled in the night, a cat’s cry. ‘Where is she? Where is her statement? Where is the retraction? Answer me.’

The gentle voice was so reasonable, and there was a shrug, helpless, from the small shoulders and the hands gestured it. ‘Way above my level, that sort of decision, Salvatore. Nobody tells me anything. The jerks who make that sort of decision, they’d have gone home long ago. People like us are left out of bed, no food and no water and no goddam cigarettes, and there’ll be no decision from them till the morning comes. Better, Salvatore, for you, for me and for Eddie, that we sort this out ourselves, and I can go home, and Eddie can, and you can go get some sleep.’

It was like honey, the voice, sweet and cloying and satisfying, and he knew the deadline of an ultimatum had gone and could not be clawed back… If he killed the boy then he, himself, was dead, and he could see the light reflected from the scope’s lens. He couldn’t clear it from his mind: did he want to die?

He cocked the pistol, scraped metal on metal, and the sound echoed along the concrete of the walkway and filtered through the washing lines, and the hammer was back. He had no hatred of the boy. He had no love for Gabriella Borelli, or loyalty to Pasquale Borelli who had created him. He loved the respect that was shown him. A slow gathering smile came to his face but his stomach growled and his throat was dry, and he craved to smoke, and his finger tightened on the trigger stick, squeezed on it.

The watch face was in front of his mouth, and it looked as though Lukas examined the time it showed and had difficulty in that light. He murmured, lips barely moving, ‘Don’t shoot. Don’t respond.

‘You were asking me the time, Salvatore, about five minutes past-’

The shot was fired.

Lukas saw the flash and the recoil of the weapon, and saw the boy flinch, cringe, sag, but he was held up by the arm and the belt. There was no blood.

He knew that if a second shot was fired it would be a killing shot.

What a fucking way to live, what a fuck-awful job to have… He had stood once in a corner of the board room of Ground Force Security, had been a day back from Baghdad and had come out with a freed hostage, and Duck had led the directors in celebration drinks – Lukas wouldn’t have been there had there not been delays at Heathrow from the baggage handlers. He had been sober and his employers had not. One had quoted, declaimed it, a Shakespeare speech: their King Harry on the eve of the battle. ‘And gentlemen in England now abed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here…’ Not if the ‘here’ was a mud-wall village beyond the conurbation of Ba’aquba. Likewise, not if the ‘here’ was a stinking, foul, dirt-laden walkway on the third level of the Sail. Bullshit… And any right-minded person, valuing sanity, should have been ‘now abed’. But it was what Lukas did, and was all he knew. He had slipped out of that boardroom and doubted that any of them had noticed that he, the cause of their celebration, had quit on them. He had the watch again in front of his face.

‘Next time will be for real. I’m not usually this much of a glory-hunter, but I fancy it’s time to go and do some walking.’

There was no answer in his earpiece. He didn’t expect it. It was the side show. It was the B flick. The main event was Miss Immacolata and her denunciation, and the boy was rated as secondary. He could do what he damn well pleased.

He called forward, ‘I think I have that message, Salvatore. You should trust me. I am here to help, and best for all of us – if I am to help – is that you give me trust. Watch me.’

Lukas stood. He had seen so many men, women and children with a knife close to their throats or wired explosives round their bodies or a pistol against the soft skin at the back of an ear. He had seen mute terror on the faces of the old and the young, and sometimes he had been far back from them, linked only by a closed-circuit camera or binocular vision, and a few times he had been close and they had seen him, and the burden was goddam near intolerable then because of the dependence on him focused from their eyes, as if he was a final chance. Maybe most of those people – intelligent or stupid, experienced in the world or innocents – had been side-show material or B-flick fodder. There were some he’d lost and they’d had a half-minute of fame, posthumous. There were some he’d helped to save and they might, just, have secured a full fifteen minutes in the limelight. Only an idiot without a life, without an idea of a proper job, without a bed, would have been there, midnight gone, and the next bullet drawing blood, and feeling the night cold in his knees. What Castrolami had not asked: would he ever, all these years in, forget the basics that underpinned success, lose the mischief and excitement, and ever just get – so simple – goddam bored, been there and seen it? Questions not asked were those not needing answers. He flexed – so damn tired… Not a long time left for the resolving of it. Folk in Charlotte went up into the hills and hiked trails at weekends, on public holidays and for their summer vacations. They took cabins, and the last morning there was a cut-off when the cabin had to be vacated and them gone, forgotten, no sign of them left behind. Lukas thought that by five, before the dawn, they would be off the third level, out of the Sail and driving away down the road from Scampia. He appreciated the agreement made, through third parties, between Castrolami and the local big-shot player. By first light, the ROS team would be gone and the dealers would be back, and Salvatore was either in handcuffs or dead, and Eddie Deacon was either in a body-bag or walking free. It wasn’t a big window of time but more than sufficient for Lukas to climb through. What bothered him, this time, he cared about the target – which was shit. Didn’t do concern and emotion, except… Saw the face and the fear, saw the hair and the pistol barrel, saw the eyes and the bruises and the lips and the swelling and the cheeks and the cuts.

He said it again, pleasant, like he talked to a friend, a trusting one. ‘Just watch me, Salvatore. Watch me very carefully.’

He bent and pulled loose the knots on his laces, then kicked off his trainers and used his toe to shift them to the side. Then he ducked down again and pulled off the socks. He couldn’t remember how long he’d worn them, and smelled them. He dropped them on to the trainers and stood in his bare feet.

‘Just as I say, Salvatore, keep watching me.’

He did it as a palming motion, slipped his hand past his ear and extracted the gear, moulded and flesh-coloured. He hadn’t expected Castrolami in his ear, or wanted it, and he admired the investigator for not burdening him with queries, hesitancies. The palm went into the pocket of the lightweight windcheater, then Lukas shed the coat and tossed it on to the pile. He had never done a strip before, but the tiredness ate him and he sought to push the matter on – force it. His shirt went next, unbuttoned, taken off, discarded.

‘Watch me, Salvatore, watch me all the time and have trust in me. I’m here to help Eddie and to help you.’

He did everything slowly, nothing suddenly. His hands went to his belt and unfastened the buckle. He was not self-conscious, never had been. Almost, because of the way his mind worked, he shared the agony of self-doubt inflicted on the hitman. In seminar talk it was ‘police-assisted suicide’, but in any canteen in Paris, Berlin, New York or London it was ‘suicide-by-cop’. It was the easy way, lifted the decision-taking out of the equation, had somebody else do the dirty stuff. Didn’t have to climb on to a parapet on a wide-span bridge or go up a crane ladder and feel the wind swaying it as he went higher, and didn’t have to sweat on whether there were enough pills in the bottle and he’d come to, alive and vegetable-brained. And easier than turning the firearm on himself, feeling the ugliness of the barrel in the mouth and the foresight in the roof above the tonsils. All about self-doubt, and all about the selfishness of a bastard who thought of himself only; most certainly did not think of the poor guy, police marksman, who blew him away, then went on to trauma counselling. It was a fucking awful place to be, and a fucking awful job – and Lukas had always said he would fight bare-knuckled any man who tried to take it off him. He did the zip on his trousers, let them fall and kicked them off, used a bare toe to move them aside and shove them with the heap.

‘Just keep watching me, Salvatore, and know that you can trust me. It’s all going to be fine. You and me, we’re going to sort everything.’

He took off his undershirt.

Not a fine sight, he thought.

Damn near twenty years before, the medic from the Bureau’s recruitment programme had taken a sight of that chest, the concave bit between the bones, the spindly arms sprouting, and failed him. He was told afterwards, when all the rest had gone well, that he presented, next to naked, a poor example of young manhood, and it hadn’t improved in two decades. He chucked aside the undershirt. Might have killed then for a cigarette and might have killed as well for a shower, long and hot, and soap. Not right for him to shiver and he didn’t. They watched him, as they were supposed to. Didn’t think that seeing him would give too much comfort to the boy. Didn’t think, looking at him from twenty paces would summon up too much suspicion and anxiety in Salvatore. Their eyes, the two sets, were never off him.

He heard, alongside him, a door open. He said, in his mind, bawled it: Fuck me, do I need that? Do I hell? He turned his head, not full on and used the periphery of his vision. An old woman stood in a doorway and she had a goddam cat in her arms. She looked hard at Lukas and shoved the cat down. It yowled, and she kicked it hard with a gnarled foot that was half in and half out of a slipper, and the cat flew behind him. The door slammed and a bolt was drawn. Silence. He thought the old woman had either refused to move or had been too deaf to know of the evacuation, the cat wanted to pee or crap and had roused her. End of story. I was near, God believe me, to a damn coronary. Don’t do it to me again, please. He had his arm up, scratched above his ear, and could say to his watch face, ‘I don’t aim to make it easy for the shite. We want him rotting.’

He wore navy boxer shorts. They had seen better days and the colour had faded from rich to dull and the elastic in the waist had lost the snap, and the shorts hung slack on his belly.

The pistol barrel had not moved, was in the boy’s hair.

‘I can’t abide shouting, Salvatore, so I’m coming a bit nearer. There’s sensitive things to talk about and I don’t want the world knowing what our business is.’

There were good goose pimples on Lukas’s skin. Mustn’t shiver. Mustn’t show fear. All bluff. He took the first step forward. All a bluff, and an opaque mist chucked over the reality. If the mist was blown away, the bluff called, he was dead and the boy was dead and Salvatore had achieved his bus-pass ride to the angels. The smile was good. It was a rare talent: Lukas’s smile never looked as if it was pasted on his face, and it was calm, quiet and as sincere as it came. He was on the fourth and fifth steps, stretching them.

‘I’m not a danger to you, Salvatore, I’m a friend, and I’ve come to offer help. Trust me.’

He didn’t know how much of what he said was understood, and was unable to gauge the Italian’s comprehension of his message. Lukas thought his bearing more important than anything. His nakedness and his lack of physique proved he threatened nothing, nobody. He heard behind him a soft but strangled howl, and wondered if the bloody cat was nuzzling its damn face against a rifle barrel, and if the animal had been hit with the heel of a hand. Had done ten paces, then twelve. The eyes of Salvatore seemed wider, the lower lip jabbered and the jaw wobbled. He had no voice. Lukas thought he tried to speak and couldn’t.

A hell of a way to spend a night. Good damn thing he looked down because there was syringe glass on the walkway concrete, and shit from a dog – not the cat’s. A hell of a place to be… He kept the smile in place. An instructor for the training of the Critical Incident Response people had said it was the best smile he’d come across and asked why it couldn’t be carried from the role-play scenarios into the canteen when they ate together. It was an act, had no truth. Fifteen paces taken, then sixteen. Always smile. The boy gazed at him like he was a messiah.

‘You have my word, Salvatore, and my word is my bond, that you can trust me, and that way nobody’s hurt, and we get to go home, and you get a proper bed and some sleep and a meal. What I’m working at, Salvatore, is that every one of us is a winner. You know about winning. You win because you’re smart, Salvatore. I can see that. You’re a big man and smart, a winner.’

He could see more of the boy’s face than the hood’s. Shouldn’t have allowed a personal feeling to intrude in the work – had done, and Lukas saw that as a failure. A small one, but failures totted. Too many small ones and there was weight enough for catastrophe. Catastrophe was the pistol being fired, blood spurting, bone splintering… The boy had a good face. Assault teams, negotiators and co-ordinators all wanted to believe that the target for rescue was worth saving, was of gold-plated value. Found half the time, after a rescue, that they were creeps, useless – some too fucking arrogant to offer gratitude, not that Lukas wanted thanks. Wanted a job done well. Had counted them, had done twenty-one steps, was level with the doorway. It was a good face and a terrorised face.

‘I appreciate you letting me up close, Salvatore. An idiot wouldn’t have, but you’re a smart guy. Can I call you “friend”? I’d like to.’

He wasn’t certain. Lukas stood in the centre of the walkway. The boy and Salvatore, wrapped together, like one, were in the doorway. The pistol had not moved from the back of the boy’s head and he saw that it remained cocked, the finger inside the guard, resting on the trigger bar.

‘I want to talk with you, hear you, and that way I can best be your friend, and I can help you.’

He was not yet certain that the hood would not shoot. Inexact sciences – whether, when, why a gunman would pull the damn trigger. One of many sciences for which there could not be textbooks, only a bedrock of experience, was getting into the mind of a holed-up gunman and anticipating whether he wanted to be in a warm, cleaned-out cell or hankered after a one-way ride to Valhalla. Lukas didn’t know.

He did a little roll of his eyebrows to Salvatore. ‘I doubt he means anything to you, that Eddie, anything at all. Doesn’t mean anything to me. Not smart like you, friend, not a winner. Means a great deal to his parents. Pretty ordinary people, and that’s why I said I’d try to help. They’re not winners either – not like you are.’

He put his hands on his hips, as if he was standing in a bar, talking with a man he knew and respected, and sent a message big and clear, and spoke a confidence.

‘He – that’s Eddie – doesn’t know that the bitch – the woman he came to find – wasn’t prepared to lift a finger for him. I’m not supposed to tell you this… She couldn’t care less for him – could have sent signals, could have opened up channels. She’s not changing her mind. You could have sent bits of him back to her, or all of him dumped on her doorstep, and she wouldn’t have changed. Only word for her, “bitch”, but he, that’s Eddie, has only found that out these last three days, whatever. Hurting him, Salvatore, won’t change her, won’t alter a hard bitch… It’s just what I’m thinking.’

They were in the doorway. From where he stood, he couldn’t have touched the boy. Would have had to take a couple of steps to be close enough, then could have tousled the boy’s hair, pinched his cheek or slapped his upper arm for encouragement, but he hadn’t yet convinced himself that the hood wouldn’t shoot. It all happened, in these situations, so damn fast – was so damn unpredictable.

He thought that at least five rifles were aimed at the little part of Salvatore’s body protruding from the doorway’s recess. Not enough to give the marksmen an aim and have them shoot, and the pistol remained at the boy’s neck. It would be one word, or a short sentence, one movement or gesture that could change it, and the pistol might be moved and might be fired. Lukas didn’t know. He stood, near naked and cold, fighting the urge to shiver, and couldn’t know whether what he said or did would win or lose it. The lips moved. He strained to hear.

‘They will never take me…’

They all say that, friend, he murmured in his mind, and kept the smile. And I don’t know whether I believe you. Have to find out, don’t I? The smile clung to his face.

*

‘They will never take me as a prisoner.’ His voice seemed to growl from deep in his throat. The breath hissed on the back of Eddie’s neck.

He didn’t know whether the smile, six or seven feet from him, was real or manufactured.

‘Not me, not a prisoner. One step, I shoot.’

Eddie felt himself a spectator. The man’s arm was tight round him and the man’s fingers were hard in a fold of his T-shirt, and the man’s bones were against his buttocks, the chest against his back, the head against his own. A spectator, a voyeur, a watcher. He could not relate to the incoherent babble of the man and the breath on his neck and the wet spit coming with it.

‘I kill him. One step closer, dead, him.’

Almost, Eddie thought, the man cried tears, and edged to hysteria. And he was a spectator also when he gazed into the calm face of Lukas. He could see each hair on his head and face, the stubble growth, what was in his ears and nostrils, the curled hair on his chest and at the base of his stomach, visible because the boxers drooped.

‘I shoot him. Do you not believe me? You will.’

The skin was broken by the force used to press the pistol barrel against his neck and Eddie could feel the wet there. Lukas had not moved, had not gone back or forward, and his hands were still on his hips. They were not flexed and there seemed no strategy of deceit about the posture. Lukas was, Eddie believed, in control.

‘You believe me when I shoot him. Not one step.’

He felt comfort given him. The man, Lukas, oozed competence and experience. He didn’t have to speak. He had the calm of a parent while a toddler rages, knows the child will quieten. He’d had an old teacher at school, sixth-form English, forty years in the job and a new headmaster, half his age, had trashed the veteran’s ideas: ‘Experience often clouds judgement, best without it.’ The pupils had thought it bullshit. Eddie valued experience. Valued it big when it was in a smile from a man who masked any trace of fear. A weedy little beggar. No strength to him, no muscle, spindly legs, arms almost emaciated, and that burn mark on his lower lip that came from smoking cigarettes to the filter. Seemed to offer no threat.

‘I tell you, you believe me, I will shoot.’

‘What I believe, friend – I want to call you that, OK? I believe, friend, that you’re a big man, a smart man. Too big and too smart for an accident. I think, friend, you’re hurting Eddie with the barrel. Can we do something about that? Not hurt him… That’s good.’

The barrel was less pressured on his neck, Eddie knew. It no longer gouged. It had an indent, but less force was used.

‘That’s good, friend, and it’s generous. I appreciate that. We have to figure a way out of this.’

‘I shoot. I have no fear.’

‘You have no fear, of course you don’t. Fear is for little guys. Him, Eddie, he’s fit to shit his pants, but he’s not a big guy.’

‘You come no closer.’

‘I’m not moving.’

Maybe there was cramp in Salvatore’s hand – maybe it was, ironic, bloody generosity – but the pistol had moved again, imperceptibly but a further lessening of the pressure. Eddie didn’t move, was one of those guys with painted faces and robes who struck statue poses at tourist sites. He realised that Lukas, too, had moved, edged closer. Eddie knew it because he could match the window-sill across the walkway with the corner of Lukas’s right elbow, and there was less of the sill to see, and a big paint flake was obscured by the arm. Eddie knew, standing and held upright, with the pistol in his skin and the tiny sounds inside his ear from the firings, where all the paint scrapes and flakes were on the window opposite. It could have been a full pace closer – could have put him, damn near anyway, with a lunge, in touching distance. Eddie reckoned Lukas knew what he was doing and the comfort in him grew.

‘You don’t move.’

‘I don’t move… What I care, friend, is how we come out of this, before there’s an accident.’

‘They don’t take me.’

‘Not a surrender, no… Not paraded like some damn chimpanzee in a zoo cage. Absolutely not.’

‘You call me scimpanze? Do you? A scimpanze, chimpanzee, cannot shoot. I can. I am not taken.’

‘How about, friend, you try to shoot? Try. Not Eddie, not worth the cost of a bullet. You try to shoot me. You jam and-’

‘What is “jam”?’

‘It is “block”. Malfunction, does not fire, but you tried… a smart guy, you know about weapons. There could be dirt in the ammunition, dirt in the pistol with a build-up of cordite in the barrel, dirt in the magazine mechanism. It can be the extractor bar breaking. The automatic blow-back can fail. For many reasons it can block and jam… the word gets passed.’

‘I will not be taken.’

‘Yes, yes…’ Eddie thought then that he heard the first wisp of impatience. Like it had been a good game, and an interesting experience, and it had run its course, and the first twist of boredom was there, and a little of the confidence slipped in him. ‘What is important is your prestige and dignity, friend. You tried. You did not surrender. You were good to your word. It was just that the damn machine, the pistol, the kit, failed you. That message gets put around. Nobody can say that Salvatore, big man and smart man, bottled out. Not him. It was the pistol that failed. There’s another thing.’

Eddie could watch the eyes of Lukas. Every feature of his body was unremarkable, stunted, without authority, except his eyes. There was less of the window to see and the gap between Lukas and the two of them shortened, and it would only have been a short lunge for the touch. The eyes were extraordinary. They were locked on the man who pressed his body against Eddie. They had the quality to hold and mesmerise. Eddie did not think that he, himself, held interest to Lukas, only Salvatore – the friend. He didn’t know how it would end, but knew it would be very soon. A minute or two minutes. His comfort bled because he thought he recognised impatience.

‘The other thing… You get a good lawyer. You’re intelligent and you have the resources, and you get a top man to front up for you. You pull a prosecution case to pieces: not difficult because they’re always second rate. Maybe you walk at the trial. Maybe you go free on appeal. It doesn’t last, locked up. Show me, Salvatore, that you’re a big guy and a smart guy, and I already know you’re a generous guy.’

‘Do what?’

‘We all have some food. We all get some sleep. There’s no accident. What do you say, friend?’

Lukas had moved again, could have touched. Two bright flashes on the dirt and the concrete, which caught in Eddie’s glance. Two discharged cartridge cases. Two shots fired and two cartridge cases thrown out – no fucking jam, play-acted or otherwise… The comfort had gone and he felt the stress build again and his body was rigid.

‘You did not listen.’

‘Course I did, friend. I listened well. Heard all you said. Just giving you the good back way out and-’

‘You did not listen.’

The pistol was off Eddie’s neck, gone from his skin. It was out in front of Eddie’s face, and the arm was loosed that had been across his chest. Two hands on the pistol grip. Eddie understood. Should have taken longer… maybe too tired, maybe too hungry, maybe just bored pig-sick with a thug with a gun, maybe done it all before and so many times… saw the shock spread on Lukas’s face, like disbelief.

Eddie heard, ‘God, did I do this, did I?’

And then the pistol blast and the cordite dust flashed in his face, and the bright brass of the cartridge was ejected, fell, bounced and rolled. Blood came back at him, a fine spray, and there was more behind. He saw the slight ugly knees bend, then falter, then collapse, and saw the shock on the face, preserved, like the scale of a mistake and its consequences were the last thought that… He did a sort of hop. Eddie had no legs free to kick backwards. As he jumped up, held by the belt, he hacked his heels behind him and felt them hit and hurt, and he could punch with his hands, all done in one crazy, uncontrolled moment – his clenched fists hit the belly.

The pistol arced, fell and clattered.

They went down. He was underneath Salvatore and his head was held, gripped, and his face was beaten into the concrete… and they came. His eyes were closed, shut tight – couldn’t absorb more.

Nightmare engulfed him. He was crushed. Weight on him squeezed out the breath from his lungs. His head was in blood. He couldn’t move, see or breathe. There were voices, muffled and indistinct, and he didn’t understand what was yelled. He felt himself sinking, then falling, then lost, and the abyss closed over him… and the weight was lifted. Eddie dared to open his eyes.

He was ignored.

He lay in a smeared strip of blood that now sank into the porous dirt of the concrete. Two figures, huge in vests over black overalls, with firearms hooked on their shoulders, took turns to work on the chest of the man who had called himself Lukas. They pounded on the chest and didn’t stop until the door behind him, where he had been held, was kicked flat, then used as a litter. Two more of them took him. Hoisted on the door, Lukas was carried away. Eddie didn’t know whether it was boredom or impatience, or just shit luck that had failed Lukas.

He didn’t move his head. Beyond where Lukas had been, Salvatore lay on his stomach as his hands were hitched behind him and fastened with ties. One more of them in the black overalls and the masks stood over Salvatore and had a dirty boot across his neck, and Eddie knew he was alive because the chest heaved and there were small yelps of pain when the boot was shifted or pressed harder. Eddie was glad he lived. He thought it a worse, more severe punishment to live than to be proxy shot.

Last they came to him.

A big man towered over him, wearing a suit that now had rents at the knees and elbows and was stained with the dust of the concrete; a vivid tie was loosened at the neck and a collar button undone, and his hair was a tangled mess, and there was blood on his shirt and jacket. Eddie might have been wrong, but he thought he saw wet glisten in the man’s eyes. A short-bladed knife was used to cut the ties at his ankles and wrists.

He was turned over.

The man in the suit stood back. Another, whom they called Tractor, crouched over him and felt his face with mittened fingers, then lifted each of his arms and flexed them, did the same for his legs. There were cuts, abrasions and bruising on every part of his body that the hands touched but he didn’t cry out. The Tractor stood and backed away, as if he had no more interest. Another, and he was called the Engineer, stood over Eddie and reached down.

Eddie took the hand, the fist closed over his wrist and he was heaved up.

The suit led… The Tractor followed, then their prisoner with men close around him. Eddie trailed, and the one they called the Bomber was behind him. The cat that had been shut out scratched at a door but was not admitted. They went past the broken apartment he had run into and he saw the wreckage and didn’t ask about the man who had opened his home to a fugitive. They went through two barred gates, one open, one destroyed, and down three flights of stairs.

There was a crowd at the main entrance of the block.

He was not jeered or jostled. He was stared at. The black overalls were close round their prisoner and hustled him to the transport, but the crowd didn’t push or surge. Eddie thought they wanted either their beds or to get back to their work and trade. It was a far place that he had come to and he didn’t know them and they didn’t know him, so he gave them no greeting or acknowledgement.

The suit stood beside the door of a minibus. The prisoner was in already. The suit waited for him.

Eddie came to the door.

The suit said, ‘I’d known him for less than one week. He was the best… What are you? Are you worth the life of the best? But you didn’t think of that…’

He climbed in. He was driven away.