The Collaborator

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by Gerald Seymour


  He thought it had been an hour, but it might have been two, before he could use his full strength, tug on the pin and feel it rock – but it wasn’t yet loose. Would be soon.

  Carmine was under surveillance. Anna was not.

  ‘I promise you that the contract will be honoured, payments will be to the accounts you have nominated, nothing is different.’

  Carmine, with his escort – he had life-long experience in recognising when he was tracked – went to a café in the square opposite the old entrance to the Castel Capuana, where he had done his first sentence of penal servitude a half-century before. He took coffee and, with old friends, played a game, twenty-ones, with cards and looked for the watchers. He had pleasure in identifying six, and two cars. Anna, with no tail, talked business.

  ‘For how long will I be making decisions that affect our contract? As long as is necessary. Depend on it. I have the authority to speak for my family, for my daughter-in-law, for my son, and you have my hand.’

  Anna Borelli, who was less than 1.60 metres in height and less than forty-five kilos in weight, peered across a table at a Venezuelan, an Ecuadorian and an Irishman who together made up the cartel that would oversee the shipment from the Colombian port of Cartagena, via west Africa and transhipment at Dakar, into the port of Naples, of a tonne of cocaine. And she could haggle.

  ‘You have my guarantee, and I tell you that predictions of the collapse of my family are exaggerated, lies spread by envious rivals. You are wise to trust me.’

  In front of her was an old calculator she had not used for more than twenty years. Her first stop that morning had been at a corner shop for batteries. What concerned her was the drop in the street price of cocaine, and she showed keen determination not to commit herself to an excessive front price when the market rate had deteriorated through saturation. A bony forefinger alternately rapped rhythms on the table and pointed at the men for emphasis. When her small hand was wrapped successively in the fists of the two South Americans and the Irishman, they would each feel the strength of her claw grip.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to do business with gentlemen,’ she said. Behind her, the clan’s treasurer beamed.

  She was asked then – natural and inevitable – for news of her daughter-in-law, Gabriella.

  ‘I expect her home very soon, and my grandsons. We had a sweet granddaughter, wonderful as a child, but now suffering a mental collapse, a fugitive from those who tricked and deceived her. It’s cruel what they will do to turn the head of a naïve and simple young person… It’s a good deal. Please don’t forget that my hand is my bond.’

  She stood, tiny. They towered over her. She revelled in the deference offered her. She would have stood in line to slit the throat of Immacolata, ‘naïve’ and ‘simple’, who had been ‘tricked and deceived’, and would happily have used a blunt knife.

  She walked out of the shop, the sun beat down on her and the early-morning traffic built. Its fumes were in her nose, horn blasts in her ears, as she carried the bag they had given her.

  She knew the stories of betrayal in her home city. She had learned them at school. Betrayal was in the culture of Naples, bedded in its stonework.

  One story she had always enjoyed was that of Belisarius. The sixth century after the birth of Christ had been, Immacolata’s teacher had declared, a time of catastrophe. The city had fallen to Odoacre, king of the Ostrogoths, Roman rule had disintegrated, the network of lucrative trading routes had collapsed, malaria was rampant. A dark age had begun.

  It was a story that still lived with her, carried forward from the classroom.

  But in the year of our Lord 537 deliverance advanced. The Byzantine emperor, Justinian, sent his finest general, Belisarius, to win back the city. He came to Naples, saw the height and strength of the city walls, and despaired of capturing and sacking it. Then he found a traitor.

  Immacolata could remember the hush of the children, the sucked-in breath of those around her, and the teacher spoke of an infame, a collaborator, a pentito.

  And the traitor guided the general to a broken, disused aqueduct that had carried water to the city in the great days of the Empire. Led by the traitor, the soldiers of Belisarius entered the city through the forgotten tunnel, moved in silence in the quiet of the night – and sacked the city, butchering the Ostrogoths.

  No child in Immacolata’s class had raised a squeal of indignation against the act of treachery. It was the Neapolitan way.

  She walked towards the river.

  Around the table in the annexe, there had been no criticism of Castrolami’s long absence from his chair. Reports were brought to the collator who beavered at them, opened computer cross-files, pushed paper at the others. The psychologist drew a word profile of Salvatore, enforcer to the Borelli clan, and painted a psychopath’s portrait. Lukas put bricks in place, built contact: he murmured, never allowing his voice to intrude, to both men the hopes he harboured for the hostage’s behaviour, how Eddie Deacon should be.

  Should be… combating the sense of disbelief that ‘this is actually happening, and to me’, confronting fear and holding on, however grimly, to a sense of control. He should establish a routine for himself, and learn the routine of his captors. Regrets and sentimentality should be ruled out, unacceptable. Talk with his guards should be kept to a minimum and attempts to ingratiate himself with them would usually be doomed; they ‘don’t like a crawler or a whiner’, Lukas had said, or a guy who hit back and antagonised; ‘he’s best staying quiet’ and should never complain. He should not be uncooperative or short-tempered, and should not compromise his integrity. Always he should be remote from the cause of the hostage-taker. When a phone rang, or more paper was brought, Lukas would back off.

  ‘And escape?’ the psychologist had asked. ‘Does he work towards an escape attempt?’

  ‘Should he, shouldn’t he?’ the collator demanded, and the men behind – the storm squad – murmured support for an answer, an opinion.

  Lukas said, ‘Eddie Deacon’s a nice guy, a second-rate guy, a teacher. He’s in a bunker, a cell, probably in darkness, likely hooded. Assuming he breaks clear of restraints, chains, gets through a door, a trap, he will have no knowledge of what’s beyond. Again, assuming he gets out of the building, he doesn’t know where he is, on hostile ground. Who will help him? Escape is the measure of desperation at a last resort. Almost inevitably it will fail.’

  ‘You paint a black picture,’ the psychologist said.

  ‘His situation is black.’

  ‘He depends on us,’ the collator said.

  ‘A failed attempt arouses a reaction of extreme brutality.’

  He heard footsteps stamping along a corridor, then across the operations room.

  ‘Usually, then, they kill.’ Lukas saw Castrolami’s entry. He questioned with his eyes, spoke the name of the girl, and the collator – as if it was his personal cross to bear – shook his head.

  Castrolami lifted a phone, dialled. Lukas heard him tell a minder in Rome that he had walked twenty-four times round the piazza Dante, and had thought. Then he told the minder where to find Immacolata Borelli, bit his lip and rang off. The breath sang through his teeth, like dice rolled but not yet settled.

  14

  He had crossed the space, the chain dragging behind him.

  He was against the door, standing, and when he pressed an ear to the crack below the upper hinge he could make out, very faint, voices and music. He couldn’t understand what was said or by whom, or distinguish what music was played.

  Once the pin had come clear of the wall and the chain was free, Eddie had not stopped to consider, step by step, his actions. He had gripped the nail tighter in his fist and had crawled across the space, groping in the darkness until he reached the door. He had moved his fingers up the smooth metal sheeting nailed to the wood, then listened. He would have worried if the sounds had been more distinct.

  He didn’t think he would be heard.

  A glass is half full: the nail would
enable him to break out, flee for freedom. A glass is half empty: he would fail, be mutilated, butchered, buried in secrecy and some day, some time, someone would find this place and read his name. He scratched with the nail tip in the blackness and trusted that he had fashioned the capital characters: EDDIE. Didn’t do a message, or an epistle, didn’t do an approximation of a date, didn’t make a heart and arrow and gouge ‘Immacolata’, just did his name and thought that if, some time, it was read and files were turned up, it might just be that the bastard who had him there would face some sort of retribution. He didn’t believe that to have done his name with the nail was the same as admitting defeat, accepting ultimate failure. He didn’t know whether it could be deciphered.

  Eddie began to work on the lower hinge, sank down to his knees. He knew what he had to do. His dad, back in Wiltshire, had given over the inside end of the garage to shelves and boxes. Neat as a hardware-shop display, he had about every tool a man could ever want and plenty more. His mum shrugged about it, and Eddie had sort of sneered, but his dad had the tools to get the hinge off in about two minutes flat. Now Eddie didn’t sneer. He used the nail, first off, to try to open a fraction of a gap between the hinge and the metal sheet – and didn’t like to think again about a glass being half empty.

  And didn’t like to think about whether his name could be read or was just the scratching of an imbecile.

  Minutiae dominated Eddie Deacon’s existence. Top of the list was the depth that the nail tip could go down behind the hinge bar, starting at two millimetres, estimate, and needing to open right out so that it could go down more than ten, and likely twenty. Then there were the screws to be loosened, and he had no screw-driver. Any time before he had been ‘lucky’ and had caught that flight, ‘lucky’ again and had caught the train from Rome Eddie Deacon would have said, ‘Fuck it,’ or ‘No can do,’ and walked away from the problem. Would have said, before, that Eddie Deacon did not take off hinges, the lower one first, without the necessary tools. He would have said that it was impossible to dislodge two old hinges, both held in with likely rusted screws, without a cordless or powered drill – and he had only a single nail that was slightly bent halfway up.

  He did not acknowledge ‘impossible’.

  Through the focus came small solutions. He had the pin extracted from the wall as a lightweight hammer. He had a handkerchief in his pocket, dirty and disgusting, and could fold the corner and use it as a wad across the nail head to dull the hammer sound. He had the bucket – and he had the thought of the knife: he could feel, on his head, on his hands and in his privates, what the knife would cut.

  He had no way of judging time.

  Eddie hit the nail three or four times, then stopped, listened, let the quiet cling round him, and the darkness, then repeated, listened again, and had the nail behind the hinge bar by – his estimate – five millimetres. Double that insertion, then utilise the bucket, and he reckoned he made progress, did well and—

  Voices, louder music, as if an internal door were opened. He scurried, hands and knees again, back towards the far wall, used his fingers to find the hole where the pin had been, jammed it home, stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket, put the nail into his right trainer against his instep. He had his back against the wall, had found the hood and slipped it on, and his knees were drawn up, his head dropped and resting on them. He waited.

  Seemed a damned eternity.

  Couldn’t be certain, but Eddie thought that men had come close to the door and had started a bloody conversation. He resented that, was pissed off that he’d heard them, had backed away from his work and now sat idle, wasting time and— The bolt opened – which told him, because now he listened hard for everything, that it was lightweight, and a key turned. A heavy key. The door was opened.

  Through the hood he realised a torch powered against his body.

  The voice was the same as before, the bastard’s voice: ‘You did not eat. Why did you not eat?’

  Didn’t eat because he’d been too busy – got that, bastard? ‘I wasn’t hungry.’

  ‘If I bring you food you should eat it.’

  ‘I wasn’t hungry.’

  ‘Did you drink?’

  He’d needed the water – hot work, dragging out a pin, in the stifling space with flaked concrete making a dustcake in his throat, and heavy work, trying to ram a nail tip behind a hinge bar. ‘Thank you, yes.’

  ‘You have used the bucket?’

  ‘I have – the minimum. There is no paper and if I use the bucket and have no paper I will stink worse than I do already. Thank you.’

  ‘I bring you food, Eddie, and water, and I change your bucket. Am I kind, Eddie, or not?’

  ‘Kind. Thank you.’

  ‘I leave food for you, and water, and a new bucket.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I hope, Eddie, that we hear something today of Immacolata. We give them until tomorrow. For you, I hope we hear today.’

  He heard the food, in a bag, dropped, a water bottle, plastic, roll, and the clatter of a new galvanised bucket.

  ‘Thank you for the food and water, and the bucket.’

  Then wistful, softer: ‘I think she is very beautiful, Immacolata…’

  Eddie anticipated. He was kicked.

  He used his legs to protect his stomach and groin, and his arms were over his hooded head. Not a single kick but a flurry of them. Eddie understood it. He understood that the bastard regarded him as a rival – not just as a bargaining chip but as a rival for Immacolata Borelli’s affection. Could have laughed while the kicks came. Maybe she hadn’t done it with him, the bastard, maybe she’d turned him down. He heard the bucket, the one he’d used, knocked over. The kicking stopped.

  He heard the rhythm of it. Door opened, voices, door closed, faint voices. Door locked and door bolted. Silence. Only his groans… She had been his, not the bastard’s. He saw her face, then crawled awkwardly through the mess from the upturned bucket, which wet his hands and knees. He saw her face clearly, and began again to work with the nail.

  The river level was down. The Tiber’s flow was erratic and followed channels between sandbanks.

  She was on the bridge.

  She lifted the lock from the bag. It had plastic wrapping round it, and she used her teeth to break it open. There was another couple on the bridge, their arms locked, and the girl was kissing the man. Immacolata pulled the padlock clear of the packaging, and the keys fell to the paving. She bent to retrieve them. There was, immediately below her, a current moving in the water, a free flow between two banks. The river had been low long enough for scrub to have taken hold on the banks. Great dead boughs and trunks were scattered in it, old trees that had been swept downstream by the early spring’s flood rip.

  All she knew of the bridge was what Castrolami had told her – not the crap about its history, but about the lamppost that had threatened to collapse and the replacement of low metal posts with a chain running between them that the city mayor had ordered to be erected. The padlock she had bought was heavy-duty, would have been a struggle to break through even with large bolt-cutters. It had two good keys that shone in the morning sunshine. The man in the hardware shop had wanted to sell her a padlock with combination numbers. She had refused and he had persisted until she had flared at him that it was not his business what sort of padlock she purchased. Then he had understood, and the smile had crossed his face, a patronising tolerance of the young, and he had offered her a cheap, shiny model, made in China; the implication was that a good padlock would be wasted when fastened to the column. Castrolami had said that young people in love came to the bridge with padlocks – like the couple who stood along the rail from her and kissed. She had told the shopkeeper she wanted the best, and that she was prepared to pay thirty-five euros for a lock with keys. Only when she had paid did he tell her slyly that it was possible to buy the padlocks from an Albanian trader on the bridge, but not of quality. She could see the one the couple had. Together they hooked it
on to the chain, and she thought it would have cost ten euros at most. For them it was a joke, a diversion, and a chance to kiss again. There was a long line of padlocks on that section of chain, enough to make it sag. Names had been written in indelible ink on some.

  Immacolata did not have a pen with indelible ink: if she had, she would not have used it.

  She threw the packaging over the bridge’s stone rail, watched it flutter down, fall into the flow and float away, like a boat. The couple had broken in their embrace and now eyed her with hostility. She gave them the look of contempt of a daughter of the Borelli clan, and must have intimidated them because they hurried on with their business on the bridge. She might, perhaps, in that gesture of throwing away the plastic and cardboard, have unsettled them; they would have seen her face – her chin and eyes – and been nervous of intervening to chastise her. Their moment of declared love had, maybe, been lessened by their fear of her. She watched them go south, and towards the road sign for the Lungotevere. They didn’t turn, kept their backs to her, and held close to each other.

  Immacolata thought that placing the padlock on the chain on the bridge was about as relevant as laying fresh bouquets beside a road where there had been a fatality in a traffic accident. Irrelevant, but she thought it worthwhile.

  She wondered then if he saw her, pictured her. She had the image of him: grubby jeans, socks that usually had a hole at the heel or the toe, yesterday’s shirt, his hair unbrushed, the smile and the laughter that walked with him, the flatness of his stomach, the delicacy of his fingers, the thin thighs and… She seemed, inside herself, to arch and press and be closer so that he went deeper. She remembered Eddie. She knew what they would do to him. She was of the Borelli family, and she knew how pain and fear were used as regular weapons of choice. She did not have him there to kiss.

  She kissed the padlock face: it was cold, remote. She let her lips linger on it.

 

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