The Collaborator

by Gerald Seymour

At shouts from below, he turned and saw the black-clad carabinieri on the roof ridge. Then he would have known he was as trapped as if he had stayed in the shower cubicle or his bedroom. He ripped out a single tile and threw it viciously, two-handed, at the hunters.

  It was theatre, and the crowd’s participation in the performance was demanded. Forgotten: the pizzo taken from every shopkeeper, every small man trying to build a business, the extortion that robbed them. Forgotten: the conceit and bullying by the son of a clan leader. Forgotten: the weeping mothers, wives, sweethearts, sisters of those slaughtered to create discipline. Giovanni Borelli had milked the moment.

  They had him. His wrists were wrenched behind his back and handcuffed.

  Who ruled here?

  One carabinieri vehicle was overturned and torched before they brought him out. Three volleys of the plastic baton rounds were fired and a dozen gas canisters. Men in full riot gear, the masks distorting their faces, used their clubs to batter a passageway to a vehicle with mesh over its windows. By then they had found boxer shorts for Giovanni Borelli. The scugnizzi, the urchin kids of the street – the watchers, couriers and wallet thieves – cavorted near to the burning truck. Giovanni was driven away. More gas was fired, but with him gone the anger fled. Show over.

  It was said that, within an hour, half of the kids on the north side of Forcella and the south side of Sanità, had transferred the image of the naked Giovanni Borelli to their mobiles’ screens, and that the penis, hair and testicles were in good focus. He was, if briefly, a hero.

  A police team from the Squadra Mobile knocked at the door of the old couple’s apartment. When it was opened, they stood back respectfully, as if apologising, and Carmine Borelli stepped aside and allowed them to pass him. The detectives wore their own clothes, rough-wear garments. Their jeans were faded, some torn and ragged at the knees, their sneakers had not been cleaned and their T-shirts were sweat-streaked and creased. They had on, also, lightweight plastic tops with Polizia emblazoned across the chest, and holsters that pulled down their belts. Carmine Borelli, founder of the clan, was treated with deference. The detectives used the mat inside the door to wipe their feet before they went further inside and, in the living room ducked their heads to Anna Borelli, who sat and sewed and watched television, a hundred-centimetre-wide screen that dominated the small room, the sound turned high. She did not acknowledge them and kept her eyes on the needle.

  He was given respect because he was of the old guard of clan leaders. His fortune had been founded in the weeks after the Allies had reached the city in the autumn of 1943 when a mercato nero had run free. Its profits, from trading in every commodity that commanded a price, had been huge. It was long ago, and actuality was blurred. Pimping, prostitution, the corruption of medication, the purchase of politicians, the killing of rivals, the theft of funds sent by the military government for the restoration of utilities were unknown to these young detectives, who saw a humble, bent old man in a cardigan, a faded shirt and trousers, with scuffed leather sandals. He was in his eighty-eighth year, and his marriage to Anna had been celebrated, and consummated, sixty-eight years earlier. Together they had chased money and tracked power and… He was asked where his youngest grandson was.

  Silvio was brought from his bedroom and was not handcuffed. Now his grandmother discarded her needlework, rose stiffly from her chair and smoothed his hair. The detectives took him down the flight of stairs from the apartment – Carmine and Anna had lived there since their wedding day and it was furnished in the fashion of four decades past – to the lobby on the ground floor. The door was closed quietly by the last detective to leave.

  There was no riot. Carmine Borelli was as good as his word. A crowd was outside now and resentful murmurs eddied. The police stood nervously, defensively, around their vehicles and the outer door, with gas loaded and baton rounds. The grandfather came to the window. He opened it wide, pushed back the shutters and his arms were out – as if he were Papa, the place was piazza San Pietro and it was the Sabbath. He made a calming gesture with his gnarled hands. His word, in Forcella, carried weight, and had done since American troops had released him from a cell in the Poggioreale gaol after he had told the intelligence officer that he was a political prisoner, a youthful but implacable enemy of Mussolini’s Fascism. He did not wish a disturbance outside his home because it might aggravate his wife’s heart condition. The scugnizzi were denied their hour. They let the rocks drop to the cobbles and put the fire bombs – petrol in Coca-Cola bottles – in shop doorways. Not even they, feral and wild, would ignore the demand of Carmine Borelli.

  Silvio was driven away. His hair was in place, and no missiles were thrown or gas fired.

  When they had gone and the street had emptied, Carmine Borelli leaned against the living-room wall. His jaw jutted, his face was set and the blood drained from his bitten lips. He knew, and Anna knew, that they couldn’t use a telephone but must wait for news. How great was the attack on the clan, his family?

  She had the shop, its owner and contents to herself. In the salon, below the piazza dei Martiri, Gabriella Borelli was queen. It was in the folklore of the family that she had spent sixty thousand euros on dresses, chosen, purchased and carried away on the afternoon that her husband had stalked, confronted and shot a man from the piazza Garibaldi who had ambitions to reach into Forcella. Also in the folklore of the family, but not talked of, was the stacking of the boxes containing the dresses in a lock-up garage for a full half-year before Pasquale had decided it safe for her to wear such expensive clothes at a hotel south of Sorrento where, under false names, he had taken her.

  The obvious shops for her to visit, the most exclusive in the city, were down the hill from the piazza dei Martiri in the via Calabritto where there were the outlets for Valentino, Prada, Damiani, Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and shoes from Alberto Guardini, but she preferred a smaller street behind the via Calabritto. She was, of course, one of the wealthiest women in the city, and had control of sums in excess of half a billion euros. Price was immaterial to Gabriella Borelli. What mattered to her more was that she could not drive a top-of-the-range Mercedes sports to Capodichino, book a first class air ticket to Gran Canaria, stay at a hotel with a hundred luxury rooms, take a suite, then soak up the sun during the day, dance in the evening, and strip for the night in a king-size bed with Pasquale or… It was not possible. She stood in her underwear – brassière and knickers – in front of the full-length mirror and held up to her the dresses and pirouetted, letting the music, a string quartet, waft over her.

  She had no stake in the shop, minor or major. Could have bought it outright, and not noticed the price. The family owned hotels, apartments, time-share blocks, offices and many shops. However, it was more satisfactory to have a straightforward commercial arrangement to buy clothes even if they were seldom on her back.

  Those she didn’t like – too small or tight, too revealing for her age, she threw on the floor. The owner could pick them up, smooth and rehang them. Those she liked she laid across a chair. She could have had any of the dresses she tried – which were a genuine label from Paris, Milan or London – manufactured for her, exact imitations, in the sweat-shops on the slopes of Vesuvio. The little factories, hidden among villages on the slopes, were the responsibility of her eldest son, Vincenzo. She yearned for Vincenzo more than she did for her husband, suffered from her inability to talk to him, to hear his certainties. In fact, she purchased the label, not the dress. It was an escape for her.

  Discarded dresses lay on the carpet, but she had chosen four. Perhaps one more would go on the chair. She was, normally, a middle-aged woman scurrying alone on the streets, or driving a small car with plates that showed it to be old. There were the boxes in the lock-up garage, and more in a basement, and she had had an air-conditioning system fitted in a cellar behind the Duomo where more clothes were stored, unworn, and in three of the safe-houses she flitted between there were wardrobes filled with dresses, skirts, light jackets and blouses. The esc
ape was to dream, and dream alone. The money the clan had accumulated brought power, influence, control and authority – but the opportunity to pamper herself was remote. She smiled cheerfully and the owner clucked with enthusiasm. The dress was turquoise, not so close round her waist as to accentuate the first traces of flab, neither a tart’s dress nor a matron’s. It covered her knees. It would have looked well on her daughter, Immacolata – it was the first time that day she had thought of her. It would have fitted Immacolata but she wouldn’t have chosen it. There were girls at the heart of the Contini clan, the Misso clan and the Lo Russo clan who would have worn that dress, turned heads and stopped conversations, but not her dull, dreary Immacolata. She held the dress up to her and the owner – with skill – gave a small squeal and clapped her hands. Gabriella Borelli turned the full circle, then laid it on the chair with the others. She didn’t know when she would wear it… she saw herself – made up, with jewellery from strong boxes in two of the safe-houses, or the diamonds kept for her by the few she could depend on – as she walked on the young man’s arm past the small orchestra, the restaurant manager grovelling a greeting, and was taken to the best table. Above her was the suite, and in the suite was the king-size bed, and the young man who admired the turquoise-silk dress was— A telephone rang.

  She felt a chill and shivered. She recognised that call tone. It had no romance, no style, was not stolen from an opera aria or something popular. It was piercing, like a car’s alarm. Brief, then silence. She turned her back on the clothes and went to the chair where her coat and bag were.

  Salvatore had that number, the young man who… and Umberto, the lawyer long used by the family. It was for times of emergency.

  A text message waited. ‘Three run, Four run – Bravo five boxes – Twelve walk – block 5 alpha.’ She studied the text, memorised and deleted it.

  She said to the owner that she would call for the dresses she had chosen and would then settle the account. The owner was at pains to indicate that settlement was a small matter and should not concern the signora. Gabriella Borelli left the shop the way she had come, through the staff area, past the toilets and the storeroom, then went out into the street through a reinforced door. She waited. She listened. She looked from a corner for a loose cordon, for men who lounged and smoked or sat in parked cars. The text messages she sent and received on her mobile were always coded: ‘Three’ was Giovanni, ‘Four’ was Silvio and ‘run’ was arrested. She was ‘Bravo’ and ‘boxes’ were safe-houses that had been hit. ‘Twelve’ was Salvatore and ‘walk’ meant still at liberty, while ‘block 5 alpha’ told her where he would be and at what time.

  She was a woman in a dowdy coat because the chill came in from the sea with the evening, and slipped among shadows. Dreams had been curtailed and an escape cut short. Fuck Giovanni and fuck Silvio. If five of her safe-houses had been hit, searched, then the security of the clan, on which she prided herself, was split open. How was it possible? Almost – not quite – fear held her.

  The pictures came on the screen. There were digital images of Vincenzo Borelli in the custody suite at a London police station, full face and profile. They were replaced by a photograph of Giovanni Borelli being brought out of a door, wearing only boxer shorts. An officer behind him carried a bundle of clothing. The youngest, Silvio, walked meekly, appearing confused, between two towering men. The locations followed the individuals, a sequence of smashed-down doors, succeeded by an interior of a living room or bedroom.

  The deputy prosecutor, unable to mask his disappointment, said, ‘We have the three cubs, but not the vixen. We were given five safe-house addresses, have hit each of them but she wasn’t there. Possessions? Yes. Recent clothes down to dirty ones? Yes. Jewellery not put away? Yes. She was due back at one of them. I suppose we have to query the tactic of overt hits.’

  The liaison officer smarted. ‘We agreed on simultaneous strikes and—’

  ‘And we do not have Salvatore, Il Pistole.’

  ‘We were given five locations for the vixen, and couldn’t have delayed the lift.’ The liaison officer was prepared to rebut any criticism of the operation, which he had overseen.

  The deputy prosecutor, maybe from frustration or tiredness, or from the simple matter of dashed expectations, snarled, ‘You had a free hand. They were your decisions. Where is she? Under your leadership we were the Gadarene swine in a headlong dash. Perhaps – and I say this with all charity – a calmer approach and surveillance stake-outs might well—’

  ‘We had to act in concert.’

  The prosecutor thwacked a fist on his desk. ‘If we’re divided, we lose. I believe we’ll have the mother within hours. The plane is now, I estimate, thirty minutes away. We’ll push the girl harder.’

  The prosecutor reckoned it was not his optimism that won a truce in the recriminations, but his mention of Immacolata Borelli. They had all been in the room when the tape was played and her tinny voice, with traffic noise surging across it, had told them a plain truth: ‘It is my intention to collaborate. By saying that on the telephone to you, I put my life at risk.’ The voice, the memory of it, might have shamed the protagonists. The deputy prosecutor shrugged, and the liaison officer went for water. They were all thinking of her, the prosecutor decided, and the enormity of what she had done. He was offered a biscuit, but waved away the plate. He said, ‘I don’t know how, but we’ll have the vixen.’

  Two and a quarter hours of street tramping, and failure. Fortune did not shine on Eddie Deacon. He had started so brightly, full of hope and anticipation, when he had reached the street corner to which he had brought her from the pub. There, she had slipped her hand off his arm, grinned, waved and wandered down the street under the streetlamps. She hadn’t looked back. He had stood on one corner and she had disappeared round another. He had never been back. Always his Mac had turned up on time, punctual as a digital clock. He knew only that she had turned off to her left. He had stood there and had seen a pretty much main route with bus stops, and smaller streets going off to right and left. There were shops with flats above. There were smart little residential roads where professionals from the City or the Law Courts had come with their Polish builders, and there were bollards at the end to stop rat-runners and twockers. There were streets where there seemed to be more bell buttons on a pad by the front entrance than windows. She might have gone to a high-grade road, or to a couple of rooms above a launderette or a travel agent.

  What to do? He could hardly stop anyone he saw going about their business: ‘Excuse me, have you seen an Italian girl in this street/road? We have this big thing, but she never gave me an address or a phone number, and she stood me up for a meal in the Afghan up Kingsland Road. Do you know where I can find her?’ He had walked – had been into Pakistani-run shops that sold everything and takeaways that did chicken or curries, and at first he had shyly shown the photograph he kept in his wallet, but for the last two hours he had just walked, peering into every young woman’s face, and found that he was doubling back on himself.

  He went past a doorway, Edwardian, set in London brick, between a Turkish bank and a charity shop. Both had been open when he’d gone by the first time but now they were closed and showed only security lights. A pair of police stood outside, a regular officer and a Community Support girl. He remembered now that the door was covered with tacked hardboard.

  His feet hurt, but not as much as his mind. He kept seeing her. Every time a girl materialised, round a corner, off a bus, out of a shop, into the throw of a streetlight, Eddie Deacon stared her out. Worst was when he had run after a girl – had seen the swing of the hips, the straight back, the chuck of hair over a shoulder – had caught her, gone in front of her, damn near blocking her on the pavement and she’d been reaching into her handbag – could have been a nail file, a personal alarm or even a pepper spray – when he had seen the spectacles. He had apologised, grovelling, had just about scraped the knees of his jeans on the pavement. She had walked on after one glance that measured h
im up as a sad thing or maybe a lowlife pervert. He stopped. Everybody watched policemen. Everybody pretended policemen standing on the first step of a flight were interesting, and doubly interesting when the door was opened, two men came out with filled plastic bags and put them into the back of an unmarked van, then went back inside. So interesting… and it rested his feet, which hurt bad. He looked down at them, and noticed the glow beside his legs.

  The kid smoked. Eddie Deacon thought he was about ten, but the face was too near the pavement for him to make out the features. He sat on the kerb and his feet were in the gutter. He couldn’t have been seen by the police across the street.

  The kid asked if he was looking for Vinny.

  He said he wasn’t. It was just good to stop walking and rest his feet.

  Was he looking for Vinny, the Italian? He heard a tremor of worship in the kid’s voice, as if he was talking about a footballer.

  Eddie Deacon took a deep breath and told the kid he was looking for a girl – an Italian girl. Then he had his wallet out and bent down with it. The kid struck a match, and Eddie showed him the photo.

  ‘She’s Immacolata,’ the kid said, reedy, then coughed and flicked away his cigarette. ‘She’s Vinny’s sister. There’s filth here. They took Vinny, and I stayed to warn her if she came so they didn’t lift her. They put a girl’s bag and clothes in the van. Then I heard them talking and one said to a sergeant who came in a car that her bag was for shipping home to her. That was all.’

  He thanked the kid. It was an afterthought but he asked him if he’d still be there later.

  ‘Something of yours in that place? Something important?’

  He said there might be. Then, ‘I have to get inside.’

  Was he a friend of Immacolata? He was.

  A good friend?

  He thought so.

  ‘Did you shag her?’

  Eddie Deacon looked at the kid crouched on the ground, his shoulder level with Eddie’s knees. He said quietly, ‘Not your business. Important? Maybe. How do I get inside? God – you’d know, wouldn’t you?’