The Collaborator

by Gerald Seymour

  From his living room, he often looked out into the hall, but no red light winked and no bell rang.

  7

  There were kids at the top of the street. They wore a uniform of faded T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms or denims and scuffed trainers, had close-cropped hair that made them look as though they were recovering from a louse infestation. They had darting eyes that crossed over the pedestrians who came off the via Duomo, turned and headed on down the street. When the T-shirt of one was lifted in a sudden arm movement, Eddie Deacon saw the handle of a knife and the upper part of its sheath. The kids did not kick footballs. Behind them, astride a scooter, smoking, was an older boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, and he kept the engine idling. Against the wall two more boys, maybe seventeen or eighteen, had mobile phones clamped to their faces.

  Eddie Deacon was not an idiot – some said he was bone idle, that he lacked ‘drive’, that he was short on ambition – and nobody had ever called him ‘stupid’, but he had common sense, ‘nous’. He had realised that everyone who went down that street was visually checked over. There was a rhythm to it. A man or a car appeared and the kids seemed to rush in front of him, maybe to slow him. The scooter’s engine speed quickened and the mobile was spoken into. Once he had seen the scooter pull out and go down the street, and a signal must have been sent because, within seconds, another scooter had taken over sentry duty. He had walked past two other streets leading into the district and there had been kids, a scooter and mobile phones at the top of each. He could recognise it, could not deny it. Eddie had slept poorly because of the nerves. He was as intimidated by the street, hesitating and hovering at its mouth, as he had been in the darkness the night before. He felt his intelligence dulled. But it was what he had come for, to go down that street and find Immacolata Borelli.

  Nobody had accused him of cowardice, or ever mocked him for fast-fix religion.

  It might have been the nerves. On the via Duomo, before he reached the junction with via Forcella, he had found himself outside the cathedral. He had gone inside and lingered there. He had read that the huge high interior was built four hundred years ago after earthquake devastation had brought down the thirteenth-century building, and that under the most recent foundations were a Greek temple and a Roman-era rainwater canal. He’d read, too, of San Gennaro, who protected the city from disaster and whose blood, kept here in a vial, liquefied each first Sunday in May and each 19 September. The saint had died in 305 – he did a simple sum fast – 1704 years ago, beheaded after torture as punishment for his beliefs, and his blood was a dried cake for three hundred and sixty-three or -four days of the year, but went liquid on those two days. If Eddie Deacon had told the guys in the house off the Kingsland Road this story, and that he didn’t doubt it, he would have been laughed all the way to the pub, to do the first round and the second. Flowers were being arranged near the altar and he imagined there would be a wedding later. A scattering of chairs was taken by crouched figures. He was happy to have been there, yet he never went into the church on Hoxton Street or the one on the other side of Dalston at Middleton Road. Being there, hearing a choir of treble angel voices rehearse, settled him a little.

  So, best bloody foot forward.

  The light didn’t come down the street. The alleyways leading off to the sides, spars off a mast, were narrower and dim, and above them washing hung. There were shops: for hardware, groceries, bread, cheap clothing. The façade rendering had peeled away and the paintwork was chipped and flaking. Often, in the first few paces, he reached back and touched his hip pocket, where the slim wallet was. He wore faded jeans, trainers and a short-sleeved shirt; he had left his passport, his plastic and most of his cash in the little safe in the pensione room. It seemed necessary for him – under the gaze of the kids, the boy astride the scooter and the older boys with the mobiles – to feel for his wallet.

  He said softly to himself, ‘For fuck’s sake, Eddie, get with it. Where are you? In western Europe, the cradle of civilisation. Why are you in western Europe? To find Mac. What are you? A bloody wimp. When are you going to grow up? Now… now.’

  A woman carried two thin plastic bags that were heavy with vegetables. Eddie asked her – in stuttered Italian – if she knew where Immacolata Borelli lived. The woman looked through him, as if he didn’t exist, and he repeated the name, but she walked past him.

  He didn’t know where the street ended, where the vicolo Vicaria began, but he did not think via Forcella was long, maybe two hundred yards. Everyone should know her… A man stopped in the centre of the street, a dog squatted and defecated, a cat crouched at his feet and chewed gristle from a bone, and a scooter swept by them. The man had paused to light his pipe. Eddie asked if he knew, please, where Immacolata Borelli lived. The man gaped at him. Eddie said the name again. The match burned until it touched the skin of the man’s fingers, then the man pushed past. He stepped in the dog’s mess, four square in it, and seemed not to care.

  The kids were behind and level with him. If he faced them, they met his gaze. They made a cordon behind him when a car came down and it had to hoot for them to give space. Two men sat at a table on the street, and the car slowed to get past them. Eddie saw they had dominoes. He stood over the table, waited for a play to be made, expected that one would look up, but neither did so he interrupted the game. He asked once more: did they know where in the via Forcella the home of Immacolata Borelli was? He couldn’t read the faces, tanned, cracked, as if the skin was old leather, or the eyes, but one spat and the brightness lay on a cobblestone beside Eddie’s trainer, and the game went on.

  He was confused. He didn’t understand why she lived there. It was poverty. So were parts of Dalston, corners of Hackney, Hoxton and Haggerston, but he did not see any of the pockets of wealth, anything of quality – the small areas that had been tarted up – as there were in his corner of London. He thought he sounded like his father. But it had been clear enough on the scrap of paper – Borelli, Via Forcella, Zip code, Napoli. He stood outside a shop that sold bread, rolls and cake. He was taken inside as the queue moved in and the kids were left on the pavement. Now the scooter was with them and the engine was gunned. He reached the counter. He asked for the home of the Borelli family, said that he was looking for Immacolata Borelli. The woman heard him. Eddie thought she considered what was requested of her. He spoke the name again: Immacolata Borelli. The woman looked away from him and her eyes went to the next in the line, her smile broad. What did that customer want? Eddie went out of the shop.

  Bells clamoured in his mind. A broken front door in a north London street and a police guard, his Mac never giving him an address or a phone number, and she had disappeared. This was her home, and he was watched, and no one in the street responded to his request for information. The bells rang loudly. What to do?

  Should he stop, turn, walk away and quit? He didn’t doubt that each person he had spoken to had known of Immacolata Borelli. He swore. Stop? No. Turn and walk away? No. Quit? He went on down the street and looked for the next man or woman to ask, the kids and the scooter trailing him.

  She talked of her mother, had done since she had woken. She had taken a perfunctory shower, gobbled a roll, gulped coffee and sat at the table, drumming her fingers for the tape to be switched on.

  ‘An account she values is that with the Dresdner Bank – I can’t tell you the number. It’s at fourteen, Karl-Liebknechtstrasse in Leipzig. It’s the first place cleaned money goes, fixed-rate deposits for six months. She goes in October, doesn’t stay overnight since my father’s arrest. She has a travel agent that routes her from Reggio Calabria to eastern Germany on budget flights for German tourists. The turn-round time for the aircraft is sufficient for her meetings. There’s never less than eight million euros in the Leipzig account, and she’s a generous supporter of the bank’s nominated charities. You understand?’

  Castrolami sat opposite her. He was swivelled sideways and did not look at her, or at the picture of Gabriella Borelli on the wall. He d
idn’t look at her because he was shaving. Had he faced her, the action of the battery-powered machine would have interfered with the recording. She couldn’t tell, with his cheeks and eyes away from her, whether he was impressed by what she said, or indifferent to it, but he didn’t prompt her. Perhaps, Immacolata thought, he had turned on a tap and preferred not to interrupt the flow. He shaved, working the machine with three heads across his face, his throat, below and above his lips, and she talked about the distribution of money. Where were the accounts placed? In what banks in what cities? She spoke of huge sums but he never raised his eyebrows in astonishment or disbelief.

  The sun shone on her.

  A maid sluiced the tiles of the kitchen floor.

  Orecchia lounged on a settee behind her and read his newspaper – a socialist one that her father, Pasquale, said was fit only for wiping a backside. He never spoke or coughed or intruded in any way, but his holster harness was round his shirt.

  Rossi was on the balcony and swept up dried leaves that had fallen from the plants in the ochre pots. He would have been aware that he could be seen by the residents in other blocks so his holster was hitched on a chair. She had fired a pistol, but never at a human target. Had her mother? Perhaps, but she didn’t know. She couldn’t have said whether her mother killed by proxy – Vincenzo, Giovanni, or the cold, creepy one they used – or had done it for herself. It didn’t matter. After she had talked about money, she would go on to killings. With killings she might raise Castrolami’s eyebrows. Rossi swept diligently, but sometimes she looked up and out through the opened glass doors to the terrace and she thought he watched her, and each time she set her shoulders back and allowed her blouse to be stretched. Then he swept some more.

  There had been no views from the apartment her brother rented in London or from the buildings they had occupied in Sanità and Forcella: roofs, water tanks, satellite dishes, and glimpses of the great mountain where the cap was missing. Here, from Collina Fleming, the view was exceptional. Clear skies above, trees and an autostrada link below, and a distant horizon of grey hazed hills on which clouds perched. Maybe she would live here… Have a maid who came in and cleaned… Finish accountancy courses and have diplomas… Set up in a small business with money provided by Castrolami’s people, or the prosecutor’s people, until she was able to support herself… A new name… And maybe meet someone, have babies, maybe… The warmth filled the apartment but a small zephyr wind came with it. Immacolata had dreamed of her future and talked of her mother.

  ‘Every April she goes to the Société Générale bank on the road called La Canebière, number fifteen, in Marseille. She is driven to Bari, then flies to Milan and connects to Marseille. She starts early. She has lunch with her manager, and is back the same evening. They think she’s a resident of Milan. That account is for more than two million euros and—’

  A plastic bucket on the balcony toppled. She realised then that Rossi had swept and now watered the pots. He had kicked over the bucket. She stopped. That brought a reaction from Castrolami, a little hissed curse because she had been interrupted and the flow broken.

  ‘How am I doing?’

  ‘You talk and we listen. That’s what’s expected.’

  It was the place, in a dream, that she might live, away from the dark, drear streets of Naples, beyond the reach of Sanità and Forcella – and the gaols at Poggioreale and Novara – beyond the reach of the hands that would be scrabbling for her eyes.

  ‘Please, I want to go out.’

  Now wariness clouded Castrolami’s face. ‘You know what’s dictated. No phone calls, no meetings, no contacts. Signorina Immacolata, they’ll kill you.’

  ‘I want to buy food – I want to cook.’

  He sighed. She thought him confused. He had finished shaving. Now he opened the head of the machine and blew the mess out on to the floor. ‘What other banks outside Italy does your mother use?’

  ‘And we’ll shop and I’ll cook?’

  ‘Yes… The other banks?’

  ‘She doesn’t visit it but meets a representative in Turin each January, the Danske Bank in Stockholm, on Norrmalmstorg. In Spain, in Madrid, the family uses the Banco Santander for fixed-term deposits.’

  Her mind had drifted. It was where she could be, could settle, could live, could make a new family.

  His mobile rang. The noise, insistent, clamoured in his pocket: he had tried to emphasise that he shouldn’t be called when he was with the pentita, Immacolata Borelli, unless to be given information of seismic importance. They had gone beyond European banks, were now in the Cayman Islands – a Swiss bank – and had just talked through Greek Cyprus, a Larnaca branch. She stopped and he switched off the tape.

  He listened. It was the message he had expected – he might have been surprised had it not surfaced the previous evening.

  A Naples newspaper, Cronaca, had telephoned the Palace of Justice and asked for guidance on a rumour in the Forcella and Sanità districts that Immacolata Borelli, twenty-five-year-old daughter of Pasquale and Gabriella Borelli, was collaborating. Was the rumour confirmed or denied? He was told that time had been bought, that the prosecutor was unavailable, in meetings, and that the press office could neither confirm nor deny – but only a few hours could be bought. He thanked the caller and pocketed the mobile.

  They had had the gentle hours. He imagined the word racing through the district of her birth and childhood – as it had with an Alfieri, a Contini, a Misso and a Giuliani. But for it to be a girl, pretty, educated, intelligent, would captivate the city. He did not hide news. Good or bad it should be spelled out.

  He said, ‘It’s rumoured in Naples that Immacolata Borelli is an infame. Word is out and on the streets. They would spit at your picture, if they had you in via Forcella, they would stamp on you until your breath had gone. If you ever believed there was a time for turning back it’s gone. Now I shall ask you a very serious question.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is there anything in your life that I should know about which you have not told me? Signorina Immacolata, is there anything that can be exploited, a weakness?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Should I believe you?’

  ‘You insult me.’

  She looked at her best when she was angry. But, and it troubled Castrolami, the sunlight was reflected on to the white marble floor and her eyes, making them black pockets. He liked to look deep into the eyes when he was deciding whether a suspect was truthful or lied. He could not see hers. He thought her strong, and that she would need to be strong.

  He said, ‘In an hour, maybe, we will go to the piazza, where the stalls are, and you can shop. I think you’ll find that a chic corner of Rome is more expensive than Forcella or any part of Naples, and probably the produce is inferior. That we give permission is a gesture of trust.’

  She didn’t thank him. He thought her an enigma: tough and vulnerable, resolute and frightened, hard and pliant. He didn’t yet know her, didn’t know whether he ever would – whether a gesture of trust was misplaced.

  She had shuffled towards him. Salvatore watched the approach of Anna Borelli, grandmother to the family and icon in the clan. He had heard she had been the strength behind her man, that the clan would not have prospered without her and that she was the worst woman in Naples to make an enemy of. He knew her to have been born in 1922, the year Mussolini had launched, from Naples, the march on Rome that elevated him to power. He knew her to have been married in 1941 when her husband had come out of hiding from military conscription and posting to Montenegro. He knew her to have stepped back from the running of the clan in the middle 1980s when its strength was assured and Pasquale was given authority, knew that she had paramount importance in the clan’s territory. She came close to him.

  She was frail, with bent shoulders, and walked with a stick to mitigate her rheumatism. She had cropped white hair, but her clothes were always ebony black. If she ever smiled he hadn’t seen it. If she ever laughed he hadn’t heard her. She paused
outside a hardware shop and he saw her examining brooms, weighing the advantages of one against another: she was worth, by whatever calculation, millions of euros, but fingered brooms to decide whether one that cost three euros was as good value as one that cost five. He came close to her, and the owner of the shop, who had been solicitous and grovelling as if to royalty, stepped back to give him room and privacy.

  He said, ‘Grandmother, it is a time of maximum danger to the clan. Nonna, the wolves circle because they believe us weak. Nonna, without Pasquale, Gabriella and Vincenzo, and with the bitch Immacolata whoring with the palace, we need leadership or we’ll disintegrate. Everything you and Carmine achieved will be lost. Unless you lead now, your lives will have been wasted. I beg you, take control. Fight. Umberto can find me, but in extreme emergency call this…’ He slipped a piece of paper into her clawed hand. He relied on her memory, in her eighty-eighth year, to absorb the number. He was satisfied she would have done so within an hour. With total sincerity Salvatore said: ‘We depend on you, Nonna, and on Carmine. If we’re led we’ll follow. If we don’t fight, we’re dead, and the whore has killed us.’

  He walked away from her. At an entry fifty metres down the via Forcella from the hardware shop, he paused in the shadow. The priest passed her, the bastard priest from the church of San Giorgio Maggiore – should have been shot – and she didn’t acknowledge him. Salvatore thought she bartered with the shop owner for a discount on the broom, and – for certain – she would be given it. There were many who would delight in dancing on his corpse and many who would queue for the privilege of dropping him. He reached his man, Fangio, put on the helmet with the smoked-glass visor and was gone.