The Collaborator

by Gerald Seymour

  The chain was rusted, lower than the rail, and festooned with the padlocks of lovers. She hesitated. She heard a little squeal of mirth, mocking, and the Albanian who sold the padlocks on the bridge was staring at her and would have been wondering why she had come alone, and why she paused. Could she not make up her fucking mind? He might have thought that. The water was dull, dirty and wound between the banks. There was nothing attractive about the view upstream, nothing of majesty.

  She made her commitment. Immacolata took three steps, four, to the chain, then looked for a section that was not already crowded and found one. She didn’t kneel because that would have been an act of sentimentality. She crouched, used a key to open the padlock, then secured it to a link in the chain and snapped it shut. It hung there, and for a moment the sun was on it.

  She stepped back, held the keys between her fingers and remembered what Castrolami had told her, and what she had seen the lovers do hurriedly after they had scowled at her for letting the packaging drop. They would have taken longer over it but she had destroyed their moment… Not important to her. The sun was over the next bridge, still low enough to dazzle her. It was indeed her commitment. There were three keys on the ring, little bright trinkets of her mood. Not diamonds, not jewels, not flowers, but three keys from a Chinese factory. She raised her arm, saw his face, threw them, watched them fall, irretrievable, saw the splash and the fast-forming ripples, then only the swirl of the current.

  ‘The old mendicante was right. I’m surprised,’ Rossi said.

  ‘The old beggar’s usually right,’ Orecchia said.

  ‘Is she going to jump in after them?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Do we go for her now?’

  Orecchia said, ‘As we would for a mourner beside a family grave. Half a minute for contemplation, then we go.’

  They had been there a quarter of an hour. They had been sitting on a low railing in the shade of the trees, with the scent of the market’s fruit stalls behind them, and they had waited to see if Castrolami’s judgement was sure or whether it leaked. They had seen her come, with that haughty stride, as if she was of God’s chosen few, on to the bridge – as Castrolami had said she would – and each man had let out an involuntary sigh of relief.

  ‘Would we have been fired?’

  ‘Probably “returned to unit”, probably on a trash heap. I think he told very few. It’s contained.’

  ‘Would you do that? Buy a padlock, waste it, throw away the key?’

  ‘I know too little about romance.’ A faint grin broke on Orecchia’s face. ‘Come on.’

  They stood.

  ‘How do we treat her?’

  ‘Like an old friend. How else?’

  Orecchia led. They skipped through the traffic, crossed the far pavement and walked out on to the bridge.

  Rossi asked, ‘Do we go gently or kick hell out of her?’

  Orecchia answered, side of his mouth, ‘I lead, Alessandro, an uncomplicated life. I have a wife who tolerates me, a kid who accepts my usefulness to him as a milch-cow, I have a cat who ignores me but doesn’t scratch. I have an apartment I can afford, I have a cheque in the bank on the first day of each month and an attractive pension fund. I don’t live with a perpetual crisis at my shoulder. They do, the collaborators. She does. I would say, Alessandro, that betrayal brings a heavy burden. It would be attractive to kick her for what she has done to us today, but our anxieties are small in comparison with her agony.’

  ‘Sensitively put. It does you credit.’ Rossi grinned wryly. ‘But has she capitulated? Is that what this crap, the padlock and the key, is about?’

  ‘I think not,’ Orecchia said.

  She looked proud, the older of the two thought, and seemed in no hurry to leave the bridge. She would have seen them coming from the edge of her vision but made no move. Orecchia had seen the flash of light on the keys but not where they went into the water. Almost magnificent – better than proud, he thought, as she stared up the river. Beside him, Rossi was alert, on the balls of his feet, ready for pursuit. Orecchia was beside her, close but not intruding on her mood.

  He said, ‘I think, Signorina, that it is time for us to go back up the hill and continue with our work. Are you ready, or would you like a few moments longer?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You’re ready?’

  She nodded.

  He was at her shoulder as they came off the bridge, Rossi behind them. They walked briskly at his pace, and she matched it. She told him she’d paid thirty-five euros for the padlock, and seemed to expect a comment.

  Orecchia quoted a frequent remark of his child, usually offered when the father attempted to limit expenditure: ‘I think in this world, Signorina, you get what you pay for. I imagine that for thirty-five euros you have a very fine padlock.’

  He wondered if she would be weeping, eyes glistening, but she was not.

  Fangio drove him. Salvatore was pillion. The clan that had offered help to Carmine Borelli had asked for a great deal in return – narcotics, an investment portfolio and Salvatore’s services. It might have been that there was a genuine requirement for a stranger’s face among the towers of Scampia, or a need to demonstrate power and humiliate the old man from Forcella. He had been given a photograph of a face and a map that showed a wide street and a cut-through leading off it. Then a bar was marked, built into the ground floor of a fifteen-storey block. Rare for Fangio – the most skilled scooter driver Salvatore knew – to demonstrate apprehension. On the pillion, knees clamped on the padding and one hand in the deep pocket of his leather jacket, Salvatore sensed the older man’s nerves. He, Salvatore, would never grow old. His friend, Fangio, had a less fatalistic mentality and did not look to die that morning. It was not their territory, and others back at the Sail building played with them.

  Fangio had studied the map drawn for them, memorised it, did not need directions from Salvatore. In silence, of course, they rode on the high-performance scooter, couldn’t have spoken through the visored helmets. Salvatore leaned with the cant of the machine as they came off the via Arcangelo Ghisleri, and the alley was ahead. They were seen. Watchers tracked them. In unison, Salvatore and Fangio lifted their smoked visors. Without showing their faces they would not have reached the far end of the narrow cut-through. Little enough space but Fangio had to weave between heaps of rubbish bags, most broken open with refuse spilling out. Once he swerved hard and missed, by a tail’s length, a large scurrying grey rat. They went into an enclosed piazza and the bar was under the end of the block. It seemed squashed under the weight of stained concrete above, and weeds sprouted outside. When Salvatore swung his leg off the pillion he walked on a carpet of discarded cigarette tips.

  The doors were open. They had little paint and the glass was cracked. It was dark inside except for the glimmer thrown by candles on the carved-wood Madonna. He saw three men sitting at a flimsy table, Formica top on steel tube legs. There were empty cups in front of them and they played cards. The one who faced Salvatore most directly wore a short-sleeved green shirt, was bald and had a goatee-style beard. It was the description he had been given at the Sail. He realised then the extent of the pain in his leg as he limped to the door. Why did his foot hurt? How had he injured it? A kick. Repeated kicks. The big toe of his right foot had been the strike-point when he had kicked the boy. The boy had loved Immacolata, maybe Immacolata had loved the boy. Twice he had thudded his foot against the pelvic bone, which was hard, reinforced. Immacolata had not loved Salvatore, had seemed not to notice him – as if he was merely a paid servant of the clan. So he limped into the bar, and felt a fucking idiot because he couldn’t walk casually, as if he was in control.

  He took the pistol from his pocket. Around him chairs scraped and table legs screeched as they were pushed back; the television in the corner seemed louder and dinned into his ears. He fired. Always two shots, and for the head. Salvatore didn’t know the name of the man who pitched forward, whose head fell withou
t the protection of his arms on to the table surface. Blood spilled, the cups jumped, the ashtray flew sideways and emptied, and the cards scattered. He didn’t know the man’s name, or why he had been killed. What hadn’t he done?

  He turned. He saw Fangio astride the scooter, gunning the engine; he had lowered his helmet’s visor. A bottle was thrown at him – Sprite, Fanta or Coke. It came from behind the bar and he saw it in flight, then the figure ducked. He was hit full in the face and the bottle broke – his helmet or his nose – he couldn’t see and felt the moisture. A hand clawed at him, another. He fired once more – into the ceiling. He was freed. Couldn’t run so he limped out.

  Fangio snatched at him, pulled him clumsily on to the pillion and was gone, and Salvatore realised then that what he had not done was lower his visor as he had gone into the bar. He wiped a sleeve across the bridge of his nose and there was blood on the leather. They went back up the alley and now he had the visor down. He had shown the world his face. Blood was in his nostrils, already caking, and when he snorted to clear it there was a spray on the visor’s screen.

  Fangio drove him away.

  It was the clumsiest killing Salvatore had done, without finesse, and the first in which he had not known a man’s name or what he was accused of. Because he had kicked the boy, because he had limped, it was the worst of his killings.

  The bucket was crucial to Eddie. The nail eased the hinge bar a few more millimetres from the steel surface of the door, at last enough for the rim of the bucket. There was insufficient leverage from the nail for the heavy effort of shifting the screws. The bucket did the job.

  The first hinge, the lower one, was loosened. One more heave, the big effort, all the muscles in use, and it would come apart. Eddie didn’t finish it off. He didn’t know when the bastard would come back. Couldn’t take off one hinge, then start to free the other: he had to do the break-out when both hinges were ready – a few moments of heaving – to come away. When he had used the galvanised-steel bucket, which stank, the noise of the screws moving, the scraping against the steel and the splintering of the wood had seemed to shriek in the black space… But no one had come.

  He had heard nothing, not even the faint voices and the murmur of music.

  One last time he had the bucket rim behind the hinge bar and dragged it back, the sound screaming at him. The sweat ran on his shirt, and his knees were still damp from crawling in the urine, but he felt a glow of triumph.

  The kicking hadn’t hurt, couldn’t compete with the elation. He was Eddie Deacon, ‘steady Eddie’. Many said that nothing flapped or fazed him. He didn’t do football and hadn’t the tribal loyalties of those who howled and yelled when a goal went in or didn’t. A woman from Algeria, in a class taken by Eddie Deacon, had gone into labour, and he had cleared the room, except for a woman who could help, then called the ambulance and had taken his coffee in the staff room, as if it wasn’t a big event. There had been a— Didn’t matter what else there had been because everything in Eddie’s old life had been to the shredder. He clenched his fist, didn’t punch in the air, but allowed it to shake as if that was good enough.

  Nobody would have recognised him now. All who had been in his life would have recoiled at the sight and smell of him, wouldn’t have understood the ecstasy of moving a hinge bar with the rim of a galvanised bucket.

  He started again.

  He was up on his toes to give himself the fraction of height that helped, and had the nail tip on the angle where the upper hinge’s bar was flush against the steel plate, had the filthy handkerchief folded as a cushion on the nail head. He beat down on it with the pin from the chain.

  There was a little give and he thought the nail tip was down by a millimetre or two, but it might have been wishful thinking – or even bloody fantasy. Nothing before in his life that was measured in a couple of millimetres had been important to Eddie Deacon.

  It was late morning in the annexe off the operations room. The ROS men were back on their chairs, legs splayed out in front of them, and a couple snored quietly. One used a multiple-blade knife to clean the dirt from beneath his fingernails, and another read a magazine called Fur, Feather and Fin, seeming interested in waterproof socks. A fifth chewed gum and had a list in front of him of what was included in a personal survival kit, available in a mail-order offer; he elbowed Pietro, distracting him from the socks, and told him that this PSK had two non-lubricated condoms for water-carrying. He was Luigi.

  The collator often worked alongside the ROS men. They seemed good at taking rest where it was offered, on a hard-backed chair, a floor or in a car. In fact, they seemed to rest more than anything else and had the weird magazines, everything about the kit they wore and how to improve it. But the collator knew that, when the location surfaced, they would be running, awake and alert. Pietro did not speak to him. Neither did Luigi. He was not regarded as having a useful opinion on condom water-carriers or water-resistant socks. It was nothing personal – the psychiatrist was similarly ignored. Both men would have agreed that they found the personnel of the storm team extraordinary: could face amazing crises, could hibernate mentally in lists, and could be mawkishly sentimental, cold-blooded or uncaring, and juvenile in their humour. Both men had a deep, sincere respect for them.

  Castrolami was not in the annexe, but was on the end of a mobile signal. The man, Lukas, was with him.

  They talked. A question and an answer, a pause for maybe five minutes, then some more talk.

  It took time to get round to the psychiatrist’s big question: ‘This American – whatever he is – is he good? Is he the best? Is he a man who talks well? Does he deliver?’

  Then the collator’s big answer: ‘He has the pedigree of a prizewinning mastiff. Can he deliver? Tell me the circumstances.’

  ‘Some would say it’s an insult to our professionalism that he’s here.’

  ‘Some, also, would say his presence was not asked for.’

  ‘If he succeeds, and delivers the English boy, our reputations are denigrated.’

  The collator grinned, flashed his teeth, showed mischief. ‘Have faith in our city. Naples doesn’t bow the knee to foreigners.’

  The ROS man interrupted their murmurs, hit Pietro again with his elbow and told him that this personal survival kit, top-of-the-range in America, had a brass snare wire, a length of fishing-line, six hooks with four weights, and a leader trace with an integrated swivel. Both men – as if at a signal – laughed, were close to collapse and held each other. They wondered whether the PSK was designed for the third world of Secondigliano or the via Baku of Scampia, and whether two condoms would be enough. The collator and the psychologist returned to their screens.

  A phone rang. The collator answered, listened, put down the receiver. ‘They have the Borelli girl.’

  ‘What’s she going to do? Stay or quit?’

  ‘Do we have her or not?’

  Castrolami was told. He showed no enthusiasm, no excitement.

  ‘Do you believe her?’

  Lukas hovered. He didn’t crowd Castrolami.

  Castrolami took a big breath, as if that was necessary when a decision of importance was taken, and let the air whistle out again between his teeth. He said, ‘Bring her down to us. She’s not hidden now. If she runs on these streets she’s committing suicide. That will end the shit. Bring her.’

  They walked.

  ‘Things you have to understand, Lukas.’

  ‘What things?’

  A square stretched out in front of them, with big churches on two of the four sides; on a third there was a view of the sea’s horizon. They were near to a fountain with statues at the four corners; no water flowed and the basins where the water might have been were filled with cardboard, plastic and other junk. The statues were of crouched lions but each had been decapitated, and the centre of the square was populated with kids’ bikes, plastic tractors and tricycles, and plastic garden furniture. It should be a fine place, Lukas thought. In Paris it would have been a fine
place. Castrolami told him it was the old mercato.

  ‘Do I get a lecture in history?’ Lukas asked quietly, and the smile flickered.

  ‘It was the last year of the eighteenth century. The English navy restored a Bourbon tyrant to the throne. The piazza dei Mercato was the execution site, it was where those who had sided, erroneously, with the Napoleonic revolutionaries, were brought for hanging. Many thousands died here over several months, kicking the air, to the drunken jeers of the lazzaroni, the street thugs. One hangman was a dwarf and it pleased the crowd when he climbed, like a monkey, on to the shoulders of the condemned, putting more weight on the strangulation. Women were hanged here and abused – it was a true terror. It satisfied the mob – it was their narcotic. It has not died in Naples. On the streets they like a good killing and a display of horror. Nothing has changed, Lukas. If we deny them the ears, fingers or penis of the boy coming through the post, or hand-delivered, they will be angry. Certainly, they will not help us. It is a lesson of Naples I learned many years ago, and learned well: the mob enjoys death.’

  Lukas looked around him. It was a place of decay. He did not like to imagine but he felt the presence of the baying drunken crowd, a lynch mob, and saw a gallows of rough wood and used, well-stretched ropes. The sun blistered his forehead and he had to squint. There seemed no takers for the toys and the plastic furniture.

  His gaze had gone beyond the church in front of him and past the broken statues. He saw the mountain, huge, grand and hazed. Cloud sat on it, a white cushion.

  Castrolami said, ‘In the rest of Italy there is no love for this city. It does not concern the citizens because they have each other’s love. You know Narcissus? Of course you do. He could be the patron saint of Naples. The society is fashioned by the mountain. The mountain dominates. Tomorrow it may blow, or next week, or next year. The mountain creates fatalism. If it blows it will be fast and there will be no escape – perhaps half a million people will die, most sitting in their cars and hooting in a traffic jam as the ash comes down. There is resignation and acceptance of death. They used to be in this square to watch the death dance at the hangings. Today they gather, crowded close and pressing forward, to see the spasms of a man bleeding on the pavement after being shot. I hate this city, my home, and I hate its absence of morality, its acceptance of corruption, its compromising of honesty. They are total in the city. I have to tell you, Lukas, that Immacolata Borelli swears she will testify. She will not back down.’